Grey Matters

Poverty is defined by income rather than by standard of living. Government benefits don’t count as income. So, government could take the typical poverty-stricken family of four, put them up in the penthouse at the Ritz, feed them with free round-the-clock room service, chauffeur their kids to free public school in the hotel limo and give them free lunch at school, clothe them with with free stuff from the boutique in the lobby, give them unlimited pay-per-view TV and use of the fitness center and they would still be “poor” by government standards.

One note I found interesting some years back: Poor people spend, on average 1.5 times as much as the income they report. This is a government finding!

If “poverty” didn’t exist, Poverty Warriors (remember the War On Poverty?) would invent it. They don’t want to work themselves out of a job by ending poverty. That would be silly. No, they want to “serve” the poverty stricken. At least until they’re pension-eligible.

As is, poverty is defined in such a way as to ensure that there will always be “poor” people among us — job security for the bureaucrat class.

Fun With Numbers:

Let’s say that Jimmy Jones is in the lowest quintile (bottom 20%) income-wise. Jimmy invents a better mousetrap and sells the patent rights for millions of dollars. Suddenly, Jimmy is in the top quintile of earners and someone from the second quintile drops down into the lowest quintile to fill his place. The headline will read: “Rich Get Richer!”

Oh, and from the “Figures Lie and Liars Figure” department we learn that the the top “quintile”   which is supposed to be one fifth of the population — has a lot more people in it than the lowest “quintile” does. This, of course, has the effect of exaggerating the differences between “rich” and “poor” incomes because politicians compare the top quintile’s income to that of the bottom quintile.

I remember back some years ago, (Carter administration?) they loosened the eligibility requirements for food stamps. This allowed more people to sign up. They then promptly pointed to the huge growth in Food Stamp recipients as proof positive that people were poorer than ever (except for the “rich,” of course) and that the Food Stamp program needed to be further expanded. This happened within the space of a year and a half or so.

I have to admit, I am, without fail, just a bit incensed when the folks in front of me at the supermarket pay for their T-bone or Porterhouse steaks and such with food stamps and then pay for their whiskey and cigarettes with the cash they didn’t need to spend on food.

If you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it. Government subsidizes poverty. Hence, we have more of it than we would without the subsidies.

Think of it this way, thanks to subsidies, more people can afford to be poor. Without the subsidies, they’d have to increase their incomes by getting jobs and such. But the pressure to do that is relieved by the subsidies we provide poor people. It makes “poverty” affordable to more people.

Pundits all across the political spectrum have been saying that Arizona’s new law cracking down on illegal aliens is unconstitutional. On the news last night I saw the AZ  governor saying that racial profiling is illegal and Arizona will not do it or words to that effect.

OK, I get it. Some federal court has held that “racial profiling” is unconstitutional. But what does that mean, exactly?

Does it mean that any criminal profile used by law enforcement, and which has as an element the race of the unknown subject, is “illegal” and unconstitutional? Or are the rules for profiling like the rules for racial discrimination — the profile/discrimination is unconstitutional only if the object of the profile/discrimination is non-white?

I’m guessing that it’s the latter. Picking on whitey is perfectly acceptable, even Politically Correct. Whitey, after all, has it coming.

This is political correctness at its worst.

A remarkable thing happened the other day. I was driving home from the post office and when I stopped at the stop sign on Sixth Avenue, at the Elm Street intersection, there was a pedestrian crossing the street! He was crossing Sixth Avenue right in front of me. Really! I saw him with my own eyes. I’m not making this up!

Now, you may ask, “What makes this remarkable? What’s remarkable about a pedestrian crossing the street?” I’d answer that it’s an extremely rare occurrence to see a pedestrian at this intersection when I stop. Not Haley’s Comet rare, but really, really unlikely to occur.

Probably 99.95% of the time that I stop at that sign, coming from either direction, there are no pedestrians at all and hence no reason to stop, except for the stop sign, of course. I don’t know for certain that others see pedestrians there as infrequently as I do but it would be unusual if I’m the only one who practically never sees anyone crossing Sixth Avenue when i stop at that intersection. In my experience, the occurrence is so infrequent as to bear remarking. Hence this blog post.

There didn’t used to be a stop sign for traffic on Sixth Avenue at the Elm Street intersection. It was previously a two-way stop. Only Elm Street traffic had to stop before pulling out onto the busier Sixth Avenue.

Then the Stop Signs were added for traffic on Sixth Avenue. We were told that the occasional tourist had difficulty crossing Sixth Avenue and this was the reason for the new stop signs stopping all traffic, day and night, on Sixth avenue. The occasional tourist. More correctly, the occasional tourist who apparently, doesn’t know how to cross a street unless traffic is stopped.

I can’t help but wonder if the “authorities” did any sort of research before plopping the new stop signs there or if they just said, “Hey, let’s put up some new stop signs.”

In any event, The signs are there now and each time I stop, I pay what I think of as the “Stop Sign Tax.” The Stop Sign Tax is that little bit it costs me, that it didn’t cost me previously, to go through that intersection at Sixth and Elm. A little bit of time, a little bit of additional wear and tear on my vehicle’s brakes and drive train and that extra fuel that must be expended starting again after my stop. The environment too is further taxed by the extra vehicle emissions, above and beyond what cruising through the intersection without stopping would cause. Stop signs are not green.

I pay another Stop Sign Tax at the corner of South Navajo Drive and Aspen Street.

This used to be a one-way stop (only traffic from Aspen onto South Navajo had to stop) until someone decided to stop traffic on South Navajo Drive as well, turning it into a three-way stop. What caused these signs to be erected? For more than 30 years, I’ve lived on South Navajo Drive and toodled right past the Aspen street intersection on my way home from the store, post office or whatever and this intersection was not any kind of a problem of which I was aware.

Was there a sudden drastic jump in traffic accidents at that intersection? What justification was put forth for the new stop signs on South Navajo Drive at Aspen? I’m aware that the authorities were trying to discourage people from using Aspen Street but the new signs on South Navajo help Aspen Street traffic as much as discourage it. Vehicles coming off Aspen onto South Navajo now find it easier going as South Navajo traffic now has to stop at Aspen.

If the new signs were meant to discourage Aspen Street traffic, they’ve failed. The only people really inconvenienced are persons like myself who live on South Navajo Drive and its intersecting streets beyond Aspen and who now have to pay this additional stop sign tax on our way to and from home.

It makes me wonder if anyone in city government actually does a cost/benefit analysis before saddling the public with yet more stop signs. There are very real costs associated with each stop made by a vehicle. They may be small but they are numerous and we have to pay them in perpetuity. Stop signs, once erected, will probably never come down, even after the original “need” has long since passed into history.

I mean, if they put them up with so little (apparent) justification, I can hardly imagine them worrying over whether the older ones are still necessary.

When I first moved to this town, there were only two intersections (outside of a very large mobile home park) of which I am aware that had stop signs. We had no traffic signals and the population was larger than today. Somehow, we managed. Are drivers today so much worse than times past that we must be micro-managed in our travels?

Good government should “First, Do No Harm.” Any new restrictions on the populace, be they stop signs or Keep Off The Grass signs, should be well thought out and justified, not someone’s whim.

Even if some rare, hapless tourist grew impatient waiting for a break in the traffic before crossing Sixth Avenue, does that justify the stop signs which inconvenience every single vehicle traversing the Sixth Avenue thoroughfare? Does it justify stopping traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including in the dead of night, including when it’s not even tourist season?!?

Much of the Stop Sign Tax I pay is unnecessary and unjustified. And it’s only getting worse.

Now, lest I be accused of being insensitive to the plight of the hapless tourists, let me tell you how I’d have preferred to see this handled, if indeed, a fix was in fact needed.

I’d have hung a blinking orange light at the intersection visible to Sixth Avenue traffic with a “press this button to cross” switch at each corner. Pressing the button would turn the flashing orange (caution) light into a flashing red (stop) light for 30 seconds and the pedestrian would be able to cross the street, as traffic on Sixth Avenue would stop for the flashing light. The stop signs for traffic on Elm Street would be replaced by a perpetually flashing red light for traffic on Elm. Thus a single traffic light would replace the signs and serve to control traffic from all four directions.

A traffic signal, as described, would have the virtue of stopping Sixth Avenue traffic only when someone actually needed to cross the street, not 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rain or shine, as do stop signs.

Would a traffic signal cost more up front than a couple of stop signs? Absolutely. But it would “pay for itself” over time in avoided stop sign taxes and moreover would show that the city fathers have some appreciation for the value of people’s time. The latter is no small consideration.

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, the clamor for “social justice” is becoming louder. But what is “social justice?”

All justice is social in nature. Absent a society of some sort, there can be neither justice nor injustice. Alone on a desert island, who is there to treat you unjustly, or justly, for that matter? With no one else there, can you yourself be unjust? Hardly.

When criminals are convicted of breaking laws, they “pay their debt to society.” Absent society, there is no one to wrong, and consequently, no one to whom recompense must be paid. Justice (and injustice) cannot exist absent a society. Justice is, by definition, social in nature.

So, if all justice is “social,” are those demanding “social justice” just being redundant? I wish it were so. Those calling for social justice want the opposite of justice. They don’t want fair, impartial treatment, they want special treatment — practically the opposite of “just” treatment.

They are dissatisfied that fate, the gods, the universe did not parcel out talent, wealth, good looks, ambition, intelligence (but mostly wealth) evenly to all persons. They bemoan the fact that we do not all enjoy the same standard of living. And they demand that this be remedied. In short, “social justice” is socialism. They want it. Well, they want more of it. The present level of socialism is not working to their satisfaction.

To hear them tell it, the cause of poor people is rich people. Rich folks, you see, hog all the money leaving very little available for the poor. Shame on them.

Now some people, it’s true, inherit their wealth and, arguably, don’t “deserve” it. The rest of us have to create our own wealth — that is, work for it. We apply our talent, good looks (in some fields), ambition, intelligence and we labor to earn a paycheck.

Since talent, good looks, ambition and intelligence are not equally distributed, the income that these traits can earn is not equal for all of us either. That’s natural, not unjust. But socialists would have you believe that the unequal results necessitate government intervention to even things out — to “spread the wealth” as it were.

That’s what those seeking “social justice” are after — more of other people’s money.

In the case of State of Arizona versus Shelton, the prosecutor added multiple charges (4) after the arrest, hoping something would stick (and changed the original charge too, since there was no such offense as that with which Shelton was originally charged). The creative interpretation of the laws by both prosecutor and judge does not bode well for any of us.

I especially like the criminal nuisance charge.  The prosecution took the position that, since the officer’s car was parked in the street (albeit, up against the curb), this created an unsafe condition for passing cars due to the flashing lights and constricted roadway. That the officer’s patrol car was a hazard to traffic was, apparently, Shelton’s fault.

Here’s the law under which Shelton was charged. Necessary elements to have violated this law include: 1) That the officer suspect Shelton had committed, was committing or intended to commit a crime (the officer admitted that he suspected no crime) and 2) that the officer advise Shelton that failure to give his full name is unlawful (the officer never so advised Shelton). 

Despite the absence of these necessary elements, the judge let this charge go to trial, using his own interpretation of the law: that once a police officer is dispatched to a scene, that is, in and of itself, enough to constitute reasonable suspicion that a criminal offense is being or has been committed.

So, apparently, by this judge’s interpretation, any time a cop shows up, he can demand that everyone present identify themselves.

Something that should be noted (and of which this case presents an example) is that we already have enough laws on the books. Most every new law covering some criminal act, can already be prosecuted under existing law. The only purpose served by making yet more laws is that it enables prosecutors to pile on heaps of charges in the hope that something sticks. It’s also useful in adding up lots of potential jail time to give the prosecutor a stronger bargaining position when plea bargain time comes. He has more charges to drop in exchange for your acceptance of a plea. You’re more likely to roll over, if the prosecution has charged you with lots of different crimes. 

The easy thing for Shelton would have been to roll over and pay a fine or whatever (or just give the officer his name straight-away). It’s always nice to see someone — anyone — stand up for their rights.

I’ve said it before: the authorities don’t like it when we citizens know our rights. And they really hate it when we actually defend our rights, as Shelton did. “The authorities,” and this includes most police officers, would prefer that we all simply did as we are told. “Rights” just get in the way of them doing their jobs.