Monday, October 1, 2007

October 1

We've got some new laws-- including No Parole for Pervs and the the country's first statewide Living-Wage law (there are cities with laws though).

Assault with box-cutter, two assaults with brick, a stolen tomato in the Blotter.

Police are looking for a hit-and-run driver in a Saturn who struck a police van, causing it to flip on 83 at around midnight last night.

"Justice Department statistics show that the number of inmates in federal and state prisons age 55 and older shot up 33 percent from 2000 to 2005 ... That's faster than the 9 percent growth overall."

State Delegate Pat McDonough, a Republican who represents portions of Baltimore and Harford counties, wants to make MD less hospitable to illegal workers.

Burbs
In AAC, parents of a 5-year-old boy, Connor Freed, who drowned in an Anne Arundel County pool, won a $4 million judgment against the pool’s management company.

In DC, a job fair for ex-cons.

The Post has an update on the Samuel Sheinbein case: In 1996 in MoCo Sheinbein murdered Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr., 19, apparently just for kicks, then fled to Israel.

Off-Topic
The bad news: 20% of two-year-olds watch more than two hours of TV a day! The good news: the resulting brain damage may be reversible.

It's fun to collect typos: "Md. spending on sprawl curb not monitered, report finds" (Sun front page)

Consider skipping the ground beef for while. 21.7 million pounds of it may contain poop germs. Grody!
And it gets worse: "Topps said it believes that the vast majority of the recalled product has been consumed."
Blargh!

31 comments:

ppatin said...

I can't believe it's been over ten years since the Sheinbein case occured. I remember the fight about that.

We should've told the Israelis we'd cut the $3 billion that we give them every year. I bet that would've made them extradite Sheinbein in a hurry!

ppatin said...

Someone needs to tell Connor Freed's parents that supervising their son is their responsibility. Ah well, chalk up another one for lawsuit nation.

Gor said...

What's wrong with curbing illegal activity, especially if it's costing the state money. Illegal aliens cost the state millions and they pay virtually no taxes (and don't even bring up the issue of free college tuition for illegal aliens when my kids have to pay for it, also I thought we were $1.7 billions in doubt and we are giving free services to people who aren't allowed to be here in the first place?)

My wife went through the legal process to live in this country, why can't they? In fact, the best thing that can happen to illegals is to have them go throw the process and become legal so scumbag employers can't take avantage of them and make the work under slave wages.

Maurice Bradbury said...

No one said there was anything wrong with it... cutting off in-state tuition for immigrants' kids is a little mean-spirited though. (And should be the decision of the Board of Regents)

Gor said...

I remember seeing the Samuel Sheinbein case on a tv news journal once (can't remember which) and the life in a Israelis prison is very different than an American one. It's like being a college, two prisoners in a dormatory size room, college classes, they play ball, socialize, make phone calls anytime, unlimited internet, good food and some "holidays" with the families outside the prison. Yea, that's real justice for a scumbag thrill killer.

Cyb, If the kids are legal then they should be treated like my kids, if the kids are illegal than they shouldn't be treated better.

ppatin said...

The article said that Sheinbein had already been granted several furloughs, and should be eligible for parole in about six years. It's pretty disgusting, since he should be spending the rest of his life in Jessup or Hagerstown. You can bet that life there would be significantly less pleasant for a Jewish kid from the suburbs. Don't drop the soap...

Speaking of which, I wonder if John Gaumer is anyone's bitch yet?

Maurice Bradbury said...

How is that being treated better than your kids? And the parents are illegals, but the children are citizens.
It's rawther unAmerican to punish children for their parents' behavior.

ppatin said...

Cybes, there was a bill that would grant in-state tuition to students who were here illegaly. No one is suggesting that students who are citizens should be punished because of their parents immigration status.

ppatin said...

The real villains in the whole immigration fight are employers who hire/exploit illegal immigrants. What we should do is make it easy for employers to verify immigration status, and then vigorously prosecute companies that hire illegals. I get really sick of hearing business owners complain that they can't hire enough workers when they're paying something pathetic like $6.50 per/hr. Guess what dickhead, you don't have a right to unlimited cheap labor. Either pay the market rate or don't hire anyone.

ppatin said...

The no parole for perverts law is a good first step, but we should extend it to cover all violent felonies. Any serious violent crime should mean serious, no-parole prison time.

John Galt said...

Patin, define market rate ?

At $6.70 an hour, I'm not going to hire some Baltimoron who shuffles around all day and accomplishes one hour's work in eight hours.

Nor would I pay him that to pocket my inventory, break my equipment, or subject himself to hazards of his own creation on my worksite.

The net value of most of the indigenous idle males around here is less than $5 per hour. But it's unlawful to pay them that, so they are not hired. Immigrants are better workers, partly because they haven't gained the 'constitutional right' to be worthless. They are the market rate. This is largely a byproduct of this country's best efforts to make employees difficult to dispose of or penalize for irresponsible behavior.

If government doesn't want to assume responsibility for babysitting the illegals, then it needs to diligently remove them from the population BAMN.

It is cowardly, however, to leave 15 million people sitting here in full view and delegate to small business the distasteful task of denying them the American way of life.

Question: if an employer cannot verify an individual's legal employability, do you propose that the feds immediately scoop the applicant up and timely deport him/her ? They will then become self-employed, so you would have to go after all their other paperwork for that purpose.

The bottom line is that no matter how you delegate the task, ultimately the feds will have to hunt these folks down and deport them, regardless of how it looks to hispanic voters and regadless of how costly it may be. Or bite the bullet and legalize them.

Are you aware that many illegals have been repeatedly deported from here? You'd need a draconian sanction for repeat offenders in order to deter violation of our sovereignty, and going back to [fill in country of origin] to try again is not it.

Americans pass paper laws and then shrink from enforcing them in a credible way. We're wimps.

ppatin said...

Galt, my point about "market rate" is that the whole "there are jobs that Americans won't do" argument is a BS excuse for allowing illegal immigrats. My mother is a naturalized citizen so I'm certainly not against immigration.I think that LEGAL immigration into the US should be easier. What I hate is how we have hordes of people swarming across the border and ignoring the law. If a productive, law-abiding person wants to come to the US that's fine with me, I just expect him or her to learn English (we are NOT a bilingual country, nor should we attempt to be one) and enter the legal way.

As for business owners, they're obvioulsy not solely responsible for the problem, but there are plenty of employers out there who knowingly hire illegals, and they deserve to be punished for that. Just as an example, I know for a fact that all the cooks at Amicci's in Little Italy get paid in cash at the end of every night. Gee, I wonder why that is...

John Galt said...

Case in point: the new truancy-linked driver's licensing regulation.

And how stringent do you think the penalties are supposed to be for driving without a license, because young 'uns in Baltimore do it all the time.

They get off with juvenile PBJ because, Hey, in this town a frickin' assault will only get you a coupla months. So, don't expect our truancy rate to improve because of the new regs. There are no teeth in regs in Baltimore City.

Mind you, they're the same regs as in Kent County. It's just that in Kent County, the citizens don't allow government folks (police, judges, SAs) to de-fang the statewide law. But the throngs of voting underclass Baltimore citizens do.

John Galt said...

The proper policy is to precondition trade with Mexico on a tough internal Mexican sanction for violating U.S. sovereignty. I wouldn't want to imprison border-jumpers here, because prison in the U.S. is more costly than subsistence in Mexico.

Instead, you repatriate violators not to freedom in Mexico, but to stiff prison sentences in Mexican facilities. That's a deterrent. Now, we might need to pay Mexico some share of the cost of confinement, but it's better than shelling out $20,000 a year here.

You will then see the immigration decline, once people get letters from cousin Jorge doing a long, miserable stretch at Islas Marias.

I also believe in shooting those who while unlawfully crossing the border resist or evade arrest. No has to mean no.

Anonymous said...

I'm happy that they passed the version of Jessica's law here. But I find myself wondering how its so easy to allow one class of felons to go without parole while not batting an eye at the violent criminals in this city.

Gor said...

Ground Rent?

I don't understand how anyone can agree that owning a home (non-mobile), but not the ground that it is attached too is in anyway a smart thing to do?

Yes, I know that property tax is a form of "rent", but let's not open that kettle of fish.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I think we should outsource our prisons to Mexico, pay them per prisoner to keep our felons down there. I'll bet they could beat $30k a year.

So WMAR's story is factually incorrect: the law is not "offering discounted tuition at Maryland colleges to the children of illegal aliens"
but to the illegal aliens themselves.
You're right and The Deuce is wrong!
That's a pretty major typo!
But I don't get it, don't have you have to be a legal resident of MD for a year to get tuition anyway?

But I gotta say, this topic totally bores me. For 400+ years people have been coming here and "nativists" have been beating their chests about it. Yawn!

Maurice Bradbury said...

Wow, Pat McDonough looks just like Vincent Pastore ... if Vincent Pastore used Nice n Easy #112 Natural Dark Auburn.

ppatin said...

"But I don't get it, don't have you have to be a legal resident of MD for a year to get tuition anyway?"

Yes, that's the current law. The proposed new law would have granted in-state tuition to anyone who (I think this is how it would've worked, I may be off on the details) graduated from a Maryland high school.

ppatin said...

Just be glad that the US isn't being overrun by extremist Muslims like Europe is. They're the ones who really need to be worried about immigration.

John Galt said...

Yep.

Personally, I find a bunch of hardworking, nominally catholic, somewhat undereducated folks from south of the border rather, uh,... benign,... compared to some of the crazies now running around some parts of this planet.

When our immigration peaked, we were kinda worried about a small minority of syndico/anarchists making it in among the southern italians. They were small potatoes compared to today's salafists and Hez b'allah.

Kylie Jane said...

It's completely unfair that children would get in-state tuition if their parents are illegal. That's even more of an incentive for illegal immigrants to come here- so that their children would be legal. They're cheating the system. Of course we can't deport all of them, so the government just needs to legalize the ones that are here, spread the English language and find some way to keep more from coming in. The reality is, our economy is now dependent on hiring cheap labor. It's a pretty messy and terrible situation...

John Galt said...


"We have high hopes that our gun registry in Baltimore will be very successful." - today, Sheila Dixon



What it requires - a photograph, an address, report to a supervisor every six months for 3 years


Excuse me,... but isn't this kinda the same as for the Dept. of Parole & Probation, with whom almost all the gun offenders are already registered ????

Much ado about nothing, but a great photo-op.

Maurice Bradbury said...

What is the deal with that registry? Is it going to add information that police & parole can't access? Does it centralize some kind of info that's currently all over the place? Is it supposed to deter web-browsing home-invaders from selecting armed targets? I keep searching for some kind of benefit and I am not finding it. Please someone tell me there's something I'm missing here and Dixon and Mrs. J aren't crowing about creating thousands of hours of redundant work for officers!

The city doesn't have the resources to find the 50,000 people there are warrants out for right now! Are they going to nab these people when they register their guns?

taotechuck said...

Man, I would loooooove to live in a place where the cops take reports about a stolen tomato.

kris said...

...it's the tomato that makes it art.

John Galt said...

Link here to an editorial on our impotent state prosecutorial apparatus.

ppatin said...

If we abolished parole/suspended sentences for violent felonies you can bet that hoodlums would start fearing state prosecutors.

John Galt said...

This was posted re: crime in Hampden on the Sun's site:


I live near the area,,,I've seen quite a bit of crime, it went unreported. Not "good enough" crime to report. Since the Roland Park rape, it brings more attention. I have to say, most of the crimes have been considered "low-crime", but it still went unreported. Sometimes it didn't even make the "Police Blotter"!

John Galt said...

Another writer in Hampden wrote:

looks like the federal government cares more about keeping cities safe than the local goverment does
.

John Galt said...

The newly-released final 2006 data from the FBI tell us that we had 2,974 total police officers as of year-end. I can't wait to see how low it is in two months.

How many years can you go without adequate police manpower before someone outside local government declares a state of emergency ??