Go Free Yourself

The city of Chicago is on a budget crunch, and its citizens are already the highest-taxed in the country, but why not get the Chicago Police Department a whole new fleet of SUVs?!

This is the latest brilliant idea from the powers that be. At a Chicago Crime Commission luncheon on Wednesday, Police Superintendent Jody Weis “said he would like to update the department’s ‘horrible’ fleet of squad cars…with Chicago’s rugged winters, a sport-utility vehicle might make more sense than the traditional Ford Crown Victoria.”

Rugged winters? Give me a break. I know it’s cold and we get some snow, but this isn’t exactly Alaska. I don’t know if Weis has bothered to take a quick tour of Chicago’s topography lately, but it’s pretty much a big flat grid. I’m actually not sure if Chicago could be any farther from rugged terrain.

Also on the shopping list? Better flashlights and more uniform guns. Chicagoans, your tax dollars at work.

(To be fair, Weis did note that these changes could be difficult to implement given the city’s financial crunch. He also touched on a variety of other plans to improve the police force. But, seriously. A whole new fleet of taxpayer-funded SUVs? You’ve got to be kidding.)

If I were a huge nerd, I would begin this post with a quote from Spiderman (”with great power comes great responsibility”). But I’m not going to do that. (Whoops! I guess I already did.) Anyway, nerd or not, the sentiment is still true.

Having the freedom (or power) to make your own decisions and plan your own life is of utmost importance. But this freedom doesn’t come without responsibility—you can’t use your freedom to harm others or infringe on others’ rights, and so on. Unfortunately, however, the whole responsibility part often gets drowned out by loud cries for freedom.

This seems to be especially true in cases of free speech. Take JuicyCampus.com, for example.

Their mission is simple: “enabling online anonymous free speech on college campuses.” Their content is is simple-minded.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for free speech. I looove the First Amendment. But Juicy Campus’s idea of preserving this fundamental freedom includes scintillating posts like, “Where are the sluts?,” “Who is the hottest soccer player?,” and lists of the “best bars to pick up drunk chicks.”

Really? Providing a forum where college students can “anonymously” post advice on where best to find inebriated girls is protecting free speech on college campuses? I think not.

Columnist Deb Saunders calls Juicy Campus’s take on free speech “a modern view…all of the privilege and none of the responsibility.” She goes on: “…this site encourages its anonymous participants to rate their professors, sorority girls, football players and other students by name. Don’t like your grade? Your advances were rejected? Juicycampus.com is the perfect venue for payback.”

Somehow, I don’t think this was what the First Amendment was intended for. (Read Saunders’s full column on Juicy Campus here.)

Tiptoeing the line between free speech and slander might sometimes be something like navigating a minefield—and to avoid disaster, we ought to remember the responsibilities that come with our treasured freedom.

(Hat Tip: Cagle Post Cartoons & Commentary. Do you subscribe? You should! The Cagle Post organizes all of America’s top columnists and political cartoonists by topic, and you can subscribe to your favorites. You can even purchase cartoons for your own publications!)

Score another point for libertarians: Mike Gravel is deserting the Democratic party and joining the Libertarian party to continue his bid for president.

I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I do know that this is the weirdest campaign video of all time:

Well, with stunning messaging like this, we libertarians are sure to succeed!

Speaking of beer, an Atlanta sports bar brings us what just may be “the greatest invention of the millennium”: a table-top beer tap, created by 26-year-old Jeff Libby.

Check it out:

I don’t know about you, but a haircut that comes with a complimentary beer sounds like a pretty good deal to me. That’s what Thomas Martin (owner of Jude’s Barbershop in Grand Rapids, Michigan) thought, too—as did his many satisfied customers—until authorities ordered him to stop serving beer since he didn’t have a liquor license.

Martin challenged the case in Lansing, but Attorney General/Senior Government Killjoy Mike Cox ruled yesterday that Martin would have to get a license to continue offering customers free beer.

Puh-lease. It’s one complimentary beer. This is overregulation at its worst. Besides, what happened to Gov. Jennifer Granholm pushing her “Cool Cities” plan to help Michigan retain a “young, hip” workforce? Someone should mention to Jenny that regulating businesses to death is very much the opposite of cool.

I’ve said it before: Hillary Clinton is an unstoppable monster.

Except now, it’s not so much that she keeps surviving the race against all odds—it’s that she won’t pull out of the race even though her odds of winning are very slim. David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a great op-ed yesterday about her “Long Defeat”; you can read it here.

Oh, and the Obama Girl has some stuff to say about this, too:

Do you roll your eyes at your boss’s comments? Do you glare at your coworkers? Do you let loose dismissive snorts at dumb tasks assigned to you?

If so, you might be a workplace bully. And, if you live in New York, you could soon be breaking the law because the New York State Legislature is considering an antibullying bill. (New Jersey and Connecticut have also attempted such “healthy workplace legislation” without much success so far—but don’t think that will stop them from trying again.)

Good thing they don’t have this law in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Dunder Mifflin’s Jim Halpert would be in a world of trouble for his many pranks on Dwight:

Well, that is, if he were real.

Time’s Swampland blog has an interesting post today about the “Internet Effect” on news, written by Michael Scherer.

Because of the Internet, you, the reader, no longer have buy information in pre-fabricated packages like “newspapers.” You can just go online and individually select the articles you want to read.

True. Scherer goes on to point out that as the value of the package (newspapers) declines, the value of the individual article increases—therefore, the competition to make your article stand out from the herd increases tenfold. This forces better writing and responsiveness, but it also means reporters and bloggers tend to push the envelope on sensationalism.

Assume, for instance, that 12 news organizations do the same story on the same day about how Hillary Clinton has a tough road ahead of her to get the nomination. Which story is going to get the most links and therefore the most readers? Is it the one that cautiously weighs the pros and cons, and presents a nuanced view of her chances? Or is it the one that says she is toast, and anyone who thinks different is living on another planet?

Well, I know which one I’d read. Scherer’s point, ultimately, is this: “If you say something provocatively, in a new way, or with an unexpected spin, you will succeed online. If you play it safe, you will not.”

Do you agree? If so, isn’t this true with anything? Achieving success in any arena is almost always about setting yourself apart from your competition (for example…job interviews, marketing, advertising, sales, etc.) so is this really anything new? Do you think this will affect the quality of news? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Today the Columbus Dispatch reports that nearly 1 in 10 Ohio citizens now receive food stamps, the highest amount in state history and double since 2001.

Things just keep getting better, don’t they?

UPDATE (3/28): The article linked above states that low wages, unemployment, and the rising cost of groceries, gasoline and other necessities are to blame for this financial hardship in Ohio. Here, read an interesting article about the “Government Engineered Food Crisis,” written by Linda Chavez (chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of “Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics”) and posted on Townhall.com.

In the coming weeks, the federal government will be putting $120 billion in the hands of individual citizens across the country as part of its economic stimulus package. The hope is, of course, that these individuals will then turn around and pour this $120 billion back into the faltering economy.

However, it looks like most people are counting on these rebate checks ($600 for singles earning less than $75k, $1,200 for married couples filing a joint return for combined income of less than $150k) just to make ends meet.

According to a CNN Money article today:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 41% of respondents plan to use their rebates to pay off bills, and 32% will put the money in savings. Just 21% of those polled intend to spend the money, while 3% said they will donate the extra money to charity.

How shocking.