The Everlasting Phelps

More waste that serves no purpose but to pay cops:

A majority of Dallas County commissioners said Tuesday that they favor eliminating constable traffic operations as part of massive budget cuts that are needed to close a $43 million shortfall.

The topic came up during a lengthy budget session – the first of many – during which numerous programs and positions were targeted for the ax. Everything is on the table, officials said, including a tax increase and employee pay cuts of up to 3 percent.

The constable traffic divisions don’t generate revenue for the county, and some have come under scrutiny in recent years because of controversies over towing and high-speed chases. Also, people have complained of speed traps, and some deputies have accused their bosses of instituting illegal ticket quotas.

You’ll never believe what is going on.  They are losing money writing tickets.  Why?  Because they can’t collect on them.  People just sit on the warrants.  Who is supposed to be serving the warrants?  The constables who are out writing more tickets.

Constable traffic operations have grown considerably in recent years, generating millions of dollars in ticket revenue for the county with the help of automated ticket-writing machines. But the county has struggled to collect the fines and is owed millions of dollars for citations.

Two constables have already said they will significantly scale down their traffic units to focus on their core mission of serving warrants and civil papers.

So why are they still out writing tickets?  Two reasons:  First, it is a “full employment” program for time-wasting constables.  The other?  Flat out theft and kickbacks:

The county’s investigation concluded earlier this year with a 91-page report that accused Cortes, among other things, of accepting bribes from a towing company that has an exclusive contract to impound vehicles stopped by his traffic deputies.

On top of that, there’s evidence that strongly suggests that the constables themselves are driving around these cars on dirty titles.

Every single person in the Dallas County Constables should be fired, all five Constables indicted and removed from office, and everything should be started from a clean slate.  The whole damned system is ruined.

Let’s muse about toll roads, shall we?

We have an unusual system here in Texas.  There aren’t a lot of toll roads, but there are some.  The ones that we have in North Texas as all administered by the NTTA, the North Texas Tollway Authority.  The NTTA is a non-profit corporation operating under the aegis of the Texas Department of Transportation.  NTTA has to raise its own money, run its own books, and operate on its own revenues.  I moved at the start of the year and began driving the Dallas North Tollway as my everyday commute, and I’ve noticed a few things.

The main thing is that almost as soon as I started driving it, the NTTA gained the power to set its own speed limits.  It did the utterly astonishing thing of following the state law.  They did a traffic survey, determined the “prevailing speed” on the road, and actually set the speed limits based on that.  The Dallas North Tollway went from 55 mph to 65 mph, and the George Bush Turnpike went from 55 mph (I think) to 75.

The results were, well, astounding.  Two things happened.  One, traffic improved.  The people who didn’t want to drive 65 actually moved to the right instead of poking along in the left lane fuming with indignation.  The second thing is that the speed traps disappeared.  What didn’t happen is that people didn’t go from driving 10 mph over (65) to 10 mph over (75.)  The vast majority of people now drive right at the speed limit, some 5 mph over in the left lane, some 5 mph under in the right lane.  The really amusing thing is that almost no one drives 75 on the George Bush, and almost everyone drives 70 or so.

The law says that this is how speed limits are supposed to be set in Texas.  This is virtually never how speed limits are set.  You know why?  It’s right up there.  Speed traps.  There’s no revenue profit in sitting a state trooper on the Tollway anymore.  They’ve all moved to the side streets.  You know, the ones where the speed limits are set by some other method than conducting a traffic survey (actually measuring the average speed) and setting it with the results.

The second thing that I’ve noticed is how little congestion there is on the Tollway now.  The NTTA has made significant changes to create this situation.  They took out the tollbooths — all the tolls are collected by mail, using electronic metering, reading RFID tags or license plates.  They promote the RFID method by making the toll cheaper if you have an account with them.  (BTW, if you are on paper dealer tags or out of state plates, tolls are now free.  Yay!)  More importantly, there are crews ready to provide roadside assistance if anyone breaks down.  They are there in minutes, get the vehicle off the road, and get the tire changed or provide some gas if the car can be put back on the road.

And what does that mean?  More people use the road because it is likely to not be backed up.  That means more tolls, which means more revenue.

The NTTA gets more revenue by making it faster and safer to use its roads.  The state gets more revenue by artificially lowering speed limits, writing tickets, and loses money by providing services.  Is is any surprise that the difference between the two is so stark?  But, you know, us libertarians are still insane for thinking that private roads would ever work.  That’s like thinking that you could build something like the internet by relying on private telecoms and peering agreements rather than complete government control over the wires.

So this is apparently a big story.  I heard the talking heads on the morning show say, “when there was a naked man on an interstate billboard a couple of weeks ago, there were tons of 911 calls, but in this instance, there was not a single report.”

I can explain that.

The nekkid guy on the highway backed up traffic.  Badu did not.  She was there for a minute or so, got off the road, and things went back to normal.

The 911 calls weren’t bitching about some guy being naked.  They were bitching about the asshat making them late for work.

Could Dallas please, pretty please, get a black politician that isn’t on the take?

That’s a bummer, man.  That’s a bummer.

I say that this is pure-D bullshit.

A short-sleeved squabble ended suddenly Thursday when Town East Mall security raided a kiosk and seized a stash of T-shirts that had southeast Dallas business owners up in arms.

Half an hour after the raid, a half-dozen Pleasant Grove business owners gathered at the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce and celebrated a medium-sized victory.

In the center of the room, draped across the back of a chair like a pelt, was one of the vanquished T-shirts:

“Welcome to Pleasant Grove,” it read – below a silkscreen image of a man tossing a body into the trunk of an old Buick.

Yeah, not having T-shirts on sale is going to cause someone to forget getting their car broken into, or make them think that the gun shots in the distance are “fun” shots.

(FWIW, I have one of the “Only the Strong Survive” shirts that I got as a gift a few years ago.  They told me about the Buick one and I told them that I would have rather had that one.)

via Dallas Morning News.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins filed court papers late Thursday asking a judge to halt the county’s civil investigation into the employment practices of two constables.

Watkins argued in his request for a restraining order and injunction that county commissioners and their special investigator are exceeding their authority by conducting a criminal investigation of the offices of constables Derick Evans and Jaime Cortes, of Precincts 1 and 5.

Watkins said in the petition that only his office can investigate criminal matters and that investigator Danny Defenbaugh is hindering an investigation his office is conducting.

I’m a big Watkins supporter.  I fully support the Project Innocence work he has been doing, but if he’s going to turn around from that and start playing the good old boy games,  then I’ll do a 180 on him faster than that.

If he really is doing an investigation, and this is interfering with it, then I’m on his side.  If there is anything less than a 100% full court press going on from his office (and I’ve seen nothing to indicate anything like that) then this is bullshit of the highest order, and I hope he gets roped into the investigation.

You don’t get “crime points” for good acts.  You can’t do good things like free innocent men and think that this gives you the leeway to cover up for criminals.  We better see the fruits of the DA’s “investigation” really, really soon, or I’ll be added to the ranks of Watkins haters.  This doesn’t sound like an “investigation” from the DA’s office:

In a status report Defenbaugh wrote to Foster that is attached to Watkins’ petition, Defenbaugh wrote that he is trying not to interfere in any investigation the district attorney may be conducting. He said in the report that of the 52 people he’s interviewed, only two have had contact with the district attorney and only one of them gave a statement.

(My emphasis.)