Shaun Kenney

That’s what one proposed piece of legislation in this year’s General Assembly would accomplish. From the Free Lance-Star:

Usually the legislature sees bills focusing on limits to texting while driving, or talking on the cell phone while driving.

But “texting, putting on makeup, snarfing down a cheeseburger, whatever” while driving can all be dangerous, Orrock said. He said he even saw a man driving down Route 1 using an iPad. Some people should definitely invest in something like florida driver’s Ed courses online to remind themselves how important it is to be fully focused when you’re driving; not many people recognize the potential destruction they could cause for themselves and others. It’s particularly important to understand the dangers if you’re a fleet truck driver, as your vehicle is bigger than the majority on the roads and can, therefore, cause more damage. Luckily, many employers of fleet drivers are preventing distracted driving to protect their drivers and vehicles on the roads using industry-leading equipment.

“They’re clearly engaging in a dangerous activity,” Orrock said of such drivers.

But such distracted driving isn’t currently illegal as a primary offense, he said.

OK OK… goofing off with an iPad is bad news. But eating a cheeseburger? Really?

Orrock wants to give police the tools to stop such drivers before they cause accidents.

“My intention is to create a new driving offense … so law enforcement will at least have the authority to pull someone over,” Orrock said. “I think this is a tool that they need to assist in that end. We know distracted driving leads to accidents.”

The language of Orrock’s bill outlaws driving a vehicle “while engaged in an activity that is not necessary to the operation of the vehicle and that actually impairs his ability to operate the vehicle is guilty of a traffic infraction.”

Let’s put this one in plain English, folks. Changing the radio station now becomes a primary offense in Virginia. Heck — setting your cruise control in your vehicle is a primary offense under this legislation. Glancing at a map? That’s a primary offense now too. Maybe even looking at your satnav that is build into the great new car you have because you’ve had a good car loan quote through someone similar to Money Expert, is illegal
If you’re thinking these laws affecting you in Virginia are mightily over the top, and you want to hire the help of a lawyer, this Virginia based traffic ticket lawyer could be a good starting bet if you ever find yourself having to make a claim.

Now granted, Orrock isn’t entirely incorrect. In an era of iPhones and portable electronic devices, using Google Maps to get your way around is natural. The temptation to text or type in an address while on the move is sometimes irresistible, and as an EMS responder, Orrock has probably seen his fair share of accidents where someone got into a wreck that never should have happened.

It’s still bad legislation — banning cheeseburgers and all that — yet it’s a great conversation to have as Virginia’s laws are constantly refined to catch up with technology.

(crossposted to Bearing Drift)

Great article in the New Yorker regarding America’s prisons and the sense of “timeless time” that pervades:

That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.

Read it all.  If you’ve ever been in a pound and known that a few dozen furry eyes are staring at you begging to be sprung from the joint, that’s close to the feeling expressed here…

It does make one wonder whether our prisons (or more inaptly named “penitentiaries”) really are serving a purpose?  What good does it do to warehouse 6 million Americans to no ostensible purpose?

It’s certainly starting to look that way, with Syria on the tipping point and an Iranian oil embargo in place, every day that ticks by puts the Iranian mullahs and the Syrian regime on softer footing.

Here’s the additional catch: Iran could very well instruct Hezbollah to play its aces all at once.  Between a Syrian government looking to re-assert itself, a Hezbollah looking for a moment to strike, Iraq in turmoil and an Iranian regime looking for an out… the mix could very well be in for a wider regional conflict.

…or it could be nothing.

Still, the American people certainly did not see Libya coming up on the radar.  Now we have 16,000 troops on the ground.  With the massive NATO presence in the Persian Gulf right now, there’s enough powder in the keg.

I listened to this the other day on BBC Radio:

Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

The report is worth reading, if not a bit hyperbolic.  The picture of the child in the UK Daily Mail is, indeed, a stock photo… not an abandoned child.  In fact, that child is probably making money compared to some.

Greece’s inability to cope with its spending is the reason for the shortfalls, and austerity without a plan for economic growth is no plan at all.  Austerity measures inevitably create that downward spiral unless the government can arrest the decline in government spending and/or peel back the socialist command economy.

The nations of Eastern Europe after 1989 have much to teach in this regard.  Romania and other nations more deeply wedded to the idea of socialism as a mode of economy took their time adjusting to the European common (and relatively, more free) market, whereas nations that had socialism imposed such as Czechoslovakia and Poland were very quick to throw off those shackles.

The result?  Poland thrives alongside Germany as one of Europe’s more stable economies.  The Czech Republic continues to thrive as well, alongside several Eastern European economies that are emerging in the region (Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and even tiny Kosovo).

The lesson?  The sooner you allow the old system to collapse and allow the free market to clear the muddy stream, the faster one can resolve issues of poverty and bureaucratic largess.  The longer you wait, the more painful the recovery.

Always glad to pass along new Virginia blogs, in today’s contribution of awesome I give you: Virginia Black Conservatives.

Here’s a sample of the awesome:

I’ve been discouraged lately by the lack of enthusiasm that the blogosphere has had for welcoming the growing population of black Republicans into the fold. I have heard for many years, and have said many times myself, that our party is a big tent party. I believe we’ve got the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to recruit more people like myself into our party. Yet it seems that the only thing that generates responses out here in the blogs is conflict. If I post a video or a blog post about the growing minority movement in the GOP I get no responses. But if I attack a fellow Republican, I can generate 50-60 comments. Why are we more interested in seeing cat fights than building our party?

I want to capitalize on the movement that my fellow African-Americans are putting together to strengthen our party, but I can’t do it alone. It’s time we prove to the Democrats that minorities are not their slaves and they don’t own our lives or this country.

This is the time to show the country real change – that the Republican Party is the party of the future, not just the party of old rich white dudes. It’s time to remind everyone what we stand for – life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue the American dream.

Now how can you not add this blog to your RSS reader with thoughtful commentary like that?

Frankly, the author (fdgoldwater — a pseudonym, but I’ll let that pass) is absolutely correct: Republicans have always shown a tendency to be “more pure” in their ideology than the other Republican standing next to them.  As the party of free minds, free markets, and a free society we should expect nothing less than the healthy competition of ideas.

Emphasis on healthy.

Looks that way…

Given the wide margins the GOP has carried Virginia since Obama’s 2008 romp, it appears as if the former DNC chairman is being more coy than candidate.

It almost begs the question “why run?” — if Kaine’s intent is just to play nose tackle for Obama’s re-election bid.

This is a boldfaced scam:

A survey last year by two Chicago-area finance professors, Paola Sapienza at Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago, found that roughly three out of 10 mortgage defaults in 2010 were by homeowners who could afford to make their payments, up from 22 percent in 2009.
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“It’s a looming problem that’s in the shadows,” said Jason Kopcak, a mortgage trader at Cantor Fitzgerald who advises lenders on how to value the loans on their books. “It’s very worrisome to mortgage lenders.”

Researchers point to a number of forces that are driving borrowers to walk away from their mortgages. At the top of the list is the estimated 12 million homes that are underwater, meaning the owners owe more than they are worth.

…and you know who makes the money when you default?  Mortgage lenders.  Bankers.  Realtors.

If you own an asset, keep it.  If you can afford an asset, keep it.  This is basic Austrian economics, folks… doing this just means someone else snaps up your asset at a fraction of the cost, with the fees going back to the industry.

Remember that these guys want liquidity in the market.  Liquidity keeps them in business.  Everyone holding onto their homes until the storm blows over means fewer transactions.  Fewer transactions means fewer fees.

We’re in Year 4 of a five-year credit crisis, folks.  About eighteen months to go before Americans have paid off their credit cards, their ratings recover, and they feel better about spending again.  This isn’t rocket science, folks…

So sayeth the Huffington Post, ergo it must be true…

Noting a “rising sense of frustration” at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires “adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth.”

…

The message laments that “some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity.”

Authentic education, Benedict writes, teaches the proper use of freedom with “respect for oneself and others, including those whose way of being and living differs greatly from one’s own.”

Fun with excerpts?  Of course, Catholic News Service picked up a much different tone coming from the Holy Father:

Continue reading →

So instead of acting to save the old Eurozone, Germany appears to be opting for a more compact and stable Eurozone— abandoning the PIIGS to their fate, and the world economy with it.

Sounds simple enough.  Let them fail.

The implications for the world economy, on the other hand, will be much more profound.  Apparently, someone in Berlin has determined that a brief double-dip and Club Med fire sale will allow the Germans to emerge stronger in the long run.

Cold calculus, but it just might be better for the long-term health of the global economy as well.

…and good on the federal courts for forcing Harrisburg to make tough calls:

The Susquehanna River city of 50,000 is saddled with about $300 million in debt tied to its nearly 40-year-old trash incinerator. Beset by environmental problems and fines for years, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shut it down in 2003 with about $100 million in debt already piled on it, some of which had gone to finance other city projects.

Guess we’ll be a bit more careful about where to place the public trust next time, won’t we?

Lessons learned?  Governance is hard work… but you pay your bills.  All the more reason for taxpayers to keep a keen eye when the public trust is used for back risky initiatives — public or corporate.