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Micheal Lewis, Starbury... and me

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D for Vendetta

The normally mayor-loving Press-Republican teed off on Don Kasprzak over his squirrel hunt the other day:

He took a mean-spirited shot at the MLD workers that might give casual observers the idea he's got it in for the unionized utility workers after being rebuked on the layoff plan he supported. The city's MLD crews are known and respected for their professionalism and ability.

Wait, there's more:

Kasprzak should have made sure that the standard operating procedures that the utility has in place will be strictly adhered to in the future and left it at that. Instead, he comes across looking petty and, yes, vindictive.

Would have been fun to tap the PR's phone line to hear the earful they got Wednesday morning. Oh, but wait, there's even more, from today's PR letters page:

Mayor Kasperzak's favorite thing to do, it seems, is to wring his hands and say all is lost, we have no money and that it is not my fault and we must cut; it's the people who don't listen to him who are at fault. The only things that the mayor promotes are the city's problems. Why would any business want to move here?

Wonder what caused the switch in tone.

Old friends

The Daily News I-Team receives some richly deserved attention in this week's New Yorker. Great quote from Mike O'Keeffe:

O’Keeffe is a former crime reporter, and he looks the part: long hair, goatee. “It’s just a little more specialized,” he said of his I-Team work. “Instead of the daily diet of murder and mayhem, it’s, you know, sports, murder, and mayhem."

Hope this doesn't mean they've jumped the shark.

Torture comes to the North Country

Great news! Tasers are here!

MALONE — Malone Village Police officers are shooting each other in the back.
But they laugh about it.
The department recently took delivery of two Taser X26 model electric-control units...

What a hoot!

Detective James Russell was one of the first men shot.
He even has a video clip of the event on his cell phone.
He kneels at the edge of a soft, blue, padded mat with his elbows bent and ticked tight to his sides as he's held by two other officers.
He is told when the charge is coming, the jolt hits, and he falls forward onto the mat, as the laughing and kidding starts.
"It's feels like — if I was hiding and as you walked, I jumped out and went, 'Ahhh!' — that is the kind of shock you feel," Russell said.
The jolt of 50,000 volts that he took lasted one second.
But the jolt of 50,000 volts that an uncooperative suspect will get lasts five seconds.

No big deal, right? Five seconds. And these people are highly trained to assess the risks, with clear parameters for the Taser's use, surely.

The probe remains in the skin to deliver additional zaps from the gun if officers feel more jolts are needed

If officers "feel" more are needed. Just good police science. Anyhow, watch this really funny YouTube, of a mentally ill man in court, surrounded by a half dozen court officers, who gets tased until he loses bowel control and is rendered unconscious. The officers seemed to "feel" the lump on the floor might need even more. Until they start to get worried and call paramedics. It's a gas!
And read this commentary on the hilarity.
Now you have no reason to be surprised when some drunk, or some crazy lady, or some obstreperous teenager dies in police custody, and a huge lawsuit results costing you your tax money, because somebody "felt" the need to keep zapping away with their perfectly safe new Taser X26.

Blame it on Spitzer! All of it!

We need a correction, please. The story, about big bills coming due to local counties because the state has kept open near-empty juvenile jails, has a howler in it:

Borges said the state simply failed to adjust the rates when it should have, from 2002 until 2006, when the Democratic regime of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer was in place.

Um, actually, George Pataki, a Republican, was governor from 2002-2006.
Spitzer, despite his many diabolical talents, had not yet mastered time travel to stage a coup and unseat Pataki earlier in the century. The Luv Guv took office in 2007 and was gone the next year. And Spitzer tried to close the juvenile facilities but was out of office before he could follow through.

Squirrelly

Lost in the latest mayoral public display of outrage against city electrical workers (Angry Mayor Don is upset that employees let a guy with a camera too near them while they worked) is the fact that the Plattsburgh Municipal Lighting District employees did their jobs, and well.
A squirrel got caught in the works and shut down power in the middle of a winter's day. That's kind of scary up here. MLD solved it, pronto. That was impressive, so I wrote this letter to my councilman, Mike Kelly:

Mike,
I was already leaning this way, but today we had a power outage in our neighborhood, and MLD fixed the problem (an errant and now deceased squirrel caused it, we hear) within 30 minutes. We, like a lot of Plattsburghers, rely on electric heat. I hate to think what would happen if we had to go through a night, or several nights, without power.
A back of the envelope cost calculation: Do I pay $5 to $10 a month more, or buy a $4,000-$5,000 generator?
Those six jobs are a helluvan insurance policy.
Keep em.

I'm all for keeping paparazzi at bay. Pretty sure this could have been handled in private, though, no?