Worcester County Freedom Trail

The big talk about town for the last few days has been about the new video cameras the City Manager and Police Commissioner propose installing at key traffic intersections throughout Worcester. I listened to their defense of the project on WTAG yesterday and how it is going to help them find serious criminals and keep them off the road. I thought, well, maybe. I certainly would like the police to make better inroads into serious crime.

But something sounded fishy when Hank Stolz asked the City Manager about the revenue potential from these cameras. O’Brien replied along the lines of, “What? Revenue potential? We never even considered that side of the issue.”

So, you’re telling me that Worcester is proposing to shell out a million dollars for these new cameras and they never considered how they’d offset the cost? That’s either a blatant lie or unbelievably incompetent management.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal tells the story behind the new traffic cameras in today’s issue. From Holman Jenkins’ “Political Diary”:

The future will be a grim and joyless place, but at least the traffic will move smoothly. Our lord and master will the ANPR, or automatic number plate recognition. You may want to stop reading this now if you have a history of depression or speeding tickets.

ANPR exists today in 150 US cities in the form of ‘red light cameras’: Violate a stop light and a camera snaps yor picture and sends you a ticket in the mail. Britain leads the world in consigning itself to the rule of ANPR. Tony Blair’s government will complete the task this year of networking the country’s 2000 traffic cameras and interlacing them with thousands of anti-crime cameras focused on downtown areas, parking lots, and even PRIVATE COMMERCIAL PREMISES [emphasis mine].

With traffic safety in hand, the aim next is to ‘deny criminals use of the roads,’ or so claims the British police chiefs’ association. Cynical Brits — or perhaps just those who are awake — suspect another motive is money.

The Mail on Sunday, a tabloid, sent reporters to visit the head of a leading speed camera company posing as buyers for an Eastern European government. The executive gleefully informed them, ‘The beauty of the mobile units we sell is their flexibility. They will catch businessmen going into work in the morning and school-run mums in the afternoon…the money will come in in buckets.’

Mayor Anthony Williams of Washinggton, DC, credits his city’s 70 traffic cameras with making the city safer. He also acknowledges that the cameras are helping balance the city’s budget. Since DC began installing them five years ago, the annual take has grown to about $30 million. But if traffic is slower and safer, why does the haul keep growing?

In a systematic review, the Washington Post found that accidents had actually increased at the targeted intersections compared to intersections without cameras. One likely reason is drivers stomping on their brakes when they observe the presence of a camera, prompting a surge in rear-end collisions [ed.--we have enough of those in Worcester without encouraging more!]. Critics also notice the incentive for operators to shorten the duration of yellow lights to ring up more fines. (In fact, the best solution for an intersection with excessive red-light running is usually a longer yellow, not a camera.)

The conclusion of this article is spot on…

Under Lord ANPR, citizens are excused from regulating their own behavior in one of the chief realms where, on a daily basis, we encounter the law in both practical and theoretical terms. When enforcement becomes robotic, citizens become children. Whether this will make us safer is debatable. It will not make us better citizens.

But the socialists in our midst certainly like the sounds of this. After all, average citizens can’t possibly be expected to make their own decisions about how to live their lives.

Rep. Lew Evangelidis (R-Holden) will be hosting a seminar on Tuesday, Feb 6th, 7pm, in the dining room of the Holden Senior Center. Speaking will be Robert Baker, Director of Operations for the Massachusetts Sexual Offender Registry Board, along with a representative from the Holden Police Department. Recently elected District Attorney Joe Early is hoping to attend if his schedule permits, or he will be sending a representative from his office.

“I hope this seminar will allow members of our community to hear from the experts and ask any questions that they may have about current laws regarding the Sexual Offender Registry and what information is available the public,” stated Rep. Evangelidis.

All are invited to attend. For more information, contact Rep. Evangelidis’ office at 617-722-2263 or 508-829-1711.

The Telegram & Gazette reports this morning that state Senators Chandler, D-Worcester, and Steven C. Panagiotakos, D-Lowell have filed bills for a green building code. They want to impose by diktat higher energy efficiency standards to raise energy efficiency by 30%. According to the T&G this will add 3% to the cost of construction. That’s like believing those that said the Big Dig will only cost $3 billion when in fact it has risen to over $13 billion! The bill offers tax incentives to builders and new home buyers and renovators to offset the costs: a 5% tax credit on the total cost of the building.

Now let me get this straight. We want to add 3% to the cost of housing and give a 5% tax credit. That means that the State coffers would choke out a 2% payment to not only the builders but the home buyers and owners. I wonder what that will “cost” the state in tax revenues? Do we really think that they will be willing to give up those dollars to make houses green? Or is it really, as with the Big Dig, that they know that costs will likely rise a great deal more than 3%?

This is just more regulation that will cause housing cost up further in a state that already has out-of-this-world housing costs. Just what we need!

All through the campaign, there were lots of signs that our new Governor wasn’t really going to be much of a financials man. Here is another case in point. This just in from the Boston Globe:

In November, two weeks after Deval Patrick swept to a resounding victory in the governor’s race, his political advisers believed that his campaign was so flush with cash that they reimbursed the candidate $200,000.

Now, his campaign manager, John Walsh , acknowledges that Patrick’s political committee made a miscalculation and is struggling to pay off its debts.

At year’s end, Patrick’s committee owed $58,662 to a host of companies, consultants, and government agencies that provided services to the campaign, including a big-shot national political consultant, the Lowell public schools, and the Quincy police. Some are still waiting for payment.

So, let me get this straight…Gov. Patrick got reimbursed more than enough for his expenses, and right away. But outside companies and consultants are still waiting for payment? And what “government agencies,” I’d like to know, provided services to the campaign? Isn’t that illegal or at least a nasty conflict of interest?

The Boston Herald and the Boston Globe both headlined a story today about Amber Abreu an 18 year-old pregnant woman who appears to have aborted her 24-week old baby. After taking misoprostol, a prescription drug for ulcers but is also used with RU-486 to abort a baby, Miss Abreu showed up at Lawrence General Hospital complaining of cramps. She gave birth to a one pound and one quarter ounce baby girl shortly after arriving. Miss Abreu left the hospital three hours after giving birth. The hospital transported the premature baby girl to Tufts Medical Center; she survived four days before passing on to her Creator. The Essex District Attorney has charged Miss Abreu with one count of “procuring a miscarriage” and may very well face homocide charges.

The question is why charge Miss Abreu with anything at all? Everyday in Massachusetts, and throughout the country for that matter, women legally abort 24-week old babies and even 30-week old babies. The only difference is that Miss Abreu did it herself.

Planned Parenthood can’t have that. To them the tragedy is that Miss Abreu could have aborted her baby legally by paying one of their “clinics” to do it.

Most of us, however, know that the real tragedy is that a young woman made an unfortunate choice of being intimate with a man without the protection and security of a husband. The consequences are far reaching for Miss Abreu, the greatest of which is the lose of her daughter.

Please pray for Miss Abreu.

I can’t believe this is happening here in Massachusetts, but I’m not surprised given the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Anne Wolf (D-Cambridge) and Senator Ed Augustus (D-Worcester). Who in their right mind thinks it’s right to start SexEd in Kindergarten…or even 3rd grade?!?! Yet here it is in black and white on Townonline.com:

Legislation mandating K-12 health education, cutting off federal funding for abstinence-only education and repealing outmoded anti-abortion statutes drew dozens of legislators to a strategy session and bill-signing hosted by the Massachusetts Coalition for Choice on Monday morning.

A packed hearing room listened as coalition members, who hail from Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice and other public health groups, rallied legislators to support their agenda and discussed a game plan for dealing with opposition. The young 2007-2008 legislative session is just getting underway.

The health education bill, sponsored by Sen. Edward Augustus (D-Worcester) and Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge), would add health education to the “core curriculum” at primary and secondary schools. The bill reintroduces legislation that died in committee at the end of the last session, but “the prospects for this bill are very good,” according to Angus McQuilken, vice president for public affairs for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

This is perverted thinking, at best. Contact your legislators ASAP and tell them to let this die in committee like it did in 2006.

This just in from GOPUSA:

In a victory for grassroots activists across the country, Republicans stood united Thursday night and helped strike Section 220 from the Senate Ethics Bill. This section would have put undue regulations on the activities of grassroots organizations. Almost all Democrats voted to keep Section 220 in the bill.

By a 55 to 43 vote, the Bennett Amendment which would strike Section 220 from the Senate Ethics Bill (S. 1) passed with unanimous support from Republicans. Seven Democrats supported the amendment while all other Democrats voted against it.

As we mentioned previously, Section 220 would have forced grassroots organizations to meet burdensome reporting requirements…and it would have forced blogs with more than 500 readers to “register”.

Kudos to the Republicans for keeping us a democracy for just a little while longer. But these intrusions by the new Democrat-controlled legislature are sure making it feel a lot like China. Can you say “communism”?

Today’s papers reported on the wild Democrat schemes for energy independence and control of man-made globe warming. The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 6 the Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act. By Heritage Foundation accounts this bill will worsen our dependence on foreign oil, increase our energy bills, and all for nothing, since there’s no definitive link between so-called greenhouse gases and a warm globe.

Deval Patrick and Secretary of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, announced today that Massachusetts will rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Romney withdrew Massachusetts from the seven-state initiative in 2005. The now eight-state initiative includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Other states such as Pennsylvania and a couple of Canadian Provinces are also considering jumping in.

Untimately, the objective of the initiative is to provide a regulatory framework to require electric power generators to purchase carbon dioxide emmission permits for each ton released. If I understand the process correctly, these will be tradeable permits allowing those plants that wish to release more carbon dioxide to purchase additional permits. Sounds like a wonderful market oriented program except for two things: electric bills will increase and we’re not even sure that man-made globe warming is occuring!

The only outcome of both state and federal schemes is high electic bills and gas prices at the pumps! Take a look at this WSJ Column about the Melting Algore to find out what we get for all of this.

This is serious. The Lefties in Congress (you know, the ones who like to pretend they are the defenders of your civil liberties) are at it again. The last time they “protected” you, we got the unconstitutional assault on your right to free speech, a.k.a. McCain-Feingold “Campaign Finance Reform”.

Now the Congressional Lefties want to shut you up some more. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has introduced a bill requiring REGISTRATION OF BLOGGERS who have more than 500 readers (what blog doesn’t?), who comment on public policy issues (most blogs do one way or another), and who are “paid”. Do you trust a judge or bureaucrat to say that if you receive a contribution, that’s not being “paid”?

Oh, and failure to register would be a CRIME!

This is more of the career politicians and the MSM who cannot STAND to be criticized attempting to shut up their critics.
Read about it at Townhall and Of Arms and the Law.

Sickeningly, one of the sponsors is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was one of the main heroes in the fight AGAINST McCain-Feingold.

Townhall says to call 202-225-3121 to complain.

B*st*rds.

I found an official Stop Mel Martinez from being Chair of the Republican National Committee advertised on National Review Online. I just love revolts!