Racism maybe not actually gone?

Thanks to another of those terrible "local leaders weigh in on _____" articles, today we get to learn what local officials think about the arrest of Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., a situation that you're probably already aware of.

For this we will turn to the Sentinel's catchily-named article: Gates' arrest draws variety of views.

This is probably going to hurt.

The controversial arrest of renowned Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has sparked a conversation throughout the country, including in North Central Massachusetts, where leaders are offering diverse views about the incident.

Police arrested Gates in his Cambridge home after he allegedly berated them and told them they didn't know "who they were messing with," when they came to his home to investigate a possible break-in.

Well that's not a very complete description of events! You get no context, you get only the officer's side of the story, and Gates is immediately portrayed as the bad guy.

Never mind that this whole incident should have ended the moment that Gates showed ID proving that he was in his own house. The guy was rude!

Apparently we're supposed to believe that it's a crime to be rude on your own property. I have no idea how I've stayed out of jail so long.*

Gates believes his arrest was motivated by race, while some, including Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested Gates, maintain the professor's belligerent tone, not his skin color, got him arrested.

This part of the tale is actually somewhat annoying to me. I don't know if the arrest was racially motivated or not (though I suspect it was to some degree). But really, it doesn't matter. It's not a crime to be a dick. We also don't know if Gates actually was a dick or not, but for the purposes of argument let's just assume he was.

Okay, enough of the setup, what do local leaders think?

Adrian Ford, the executive director of local community advocate group Three Pyramids, said the answer may lie somewhere in between.

"What I've found in working on these types of issues for 40 years is that we all have subconscious views and opinions that rise to the surface when we're not aware," Ford said Thursday. "It doesn't mean there's a conscious racism there, but this sort of thing is very common."

Yay, a smart person to start off with! I agree with Ford, and this sort of thing is unquestionably very common.

Now on to the dumbassery.

But Westminster Police Chief Sam Albert said police officers deserve more credit.

"I think trends are changing, the job is changing, and officers are becoming more educated," Albert said Thursday.

Well, that's nice. Those things are probably all true. They just have nothing to do with this case. You can be educated and still be a racist asshole or a power-hungry cop. Education doesn't fix those things.

Then the article gets sidetracked into talking not about the case, but about President Obama's statement that the cop did something stupid. How dare the president say such a thing!

The comments from Obama -- a personal friend of Gates' -- surprised most local leaders.

"It shocked me," Fitchburg community activist Yvette Cooks said. "I didn't expect that."

Cooks, an African American, is a member of the city's Human Rights Commission.

Okay, I guess that's nice too? But it doesn't tell us much. I'm a little surprised he weighed in on this too, but I also absolutely agree with him. And really, he only weighed in because he was asked about it at a press conference.

Who else has something to say? More cops? You know they'll give an unbiased opinion, because who's ever heard of a cop reflexively standing up for another cop even when they're clearly in the wrong?

John Collins, general counsel for the Massachusetts State Police Chiefs Association, called attacks on the Cambridge Police Department -- as well as Obama's comments -- "premature."

"It doesn't add anything to the situation, and knowing (the Cambridge Police Department) as I do, I suspect they'll address any issues quietly, and not necessarily in the newspapers," Collins said Thursday.

Oh, that's great. Yes, let's please keep important discussions about race and police misconduct quiet. It's not like we'd actually want to do anything about these issues.

Let's add yet another cop!

Chief Bourgeois, like Chief Albert, shot down Ford's assertion of "subconscious" prejudices.

"We train all our officers regarding any kind of racial profiling," Bourgeois said. "Officers approach every call objectively, no matter race, color or religious preference."

Okay, this is just blatant bullshit. There's no way even Bourgeois could believe this, unless he's the most naive man in the world.

Just because you "train" people not to be assholes doesn't mean they won't be assholes. I don't know what sort of training actually takes place, but does anyone with half a brain believe that it can eliminate the problem?

What's more, you can't just train subconscious prejudices out of people. That's sort of what subconscious means. They're not even aware of their prejudices, so how do you expect to train them out of them?

Also from the Obama part of this story, we had this:

Lancaster Town Administrator Orlando Pacheco said the White House "is too far from the situation" to comment.

Now, let's listen to Pacheco comment, because he is obviously right in the thick of things!

But minorities reported they sympathized with Gates, whether or not they considered Cambridge police racist.

"Profiling definitely happens, and I deal with it even in Lancaster," Pacheco, who is Dominican, said. "And it's not just races. Gays and lesbians, in some ways, are discriminated against even more."

When asked whether she has ever felt profiled by police, Cooks did not hesitate.

"Oh my God, yes," she said. "From police, from everybody. It's common."

Dang, that was actually a good comment. What the hell was his problem with Obama commenting? Also, yay our surprised friend Yvette Cooks is back! She's now relegated to the "minorities say this" part of the article, but at least she said something decent. I guess her surprise from earlier was similar to mine.

We'll also give Adrian Ford a little more to say, what with him being a minority and all:

Ford said profiling occurs regularly, and dismissed as "stupid" the notion that America has overcome racial tension by electing an African-American president.

Holy crap Adrian! Didn't you learn anything from Obama? Now everyone is going to get all mad at you for daring to call a stupid idea stupid.

See?

But Fitchburg Councilor at-large Dean Tran disagrees.

"The majority of people in this country have spoken, and voted for an African American, which means that race doesn't play as big a role," Tran said.

Tran is, of course, an irredeemable idiot.

He's actually using the exact same argument that the racists I profiled back in November were using (and will undoubtedly be using in the comments section of the S&E article).

Others have made this argument too. Here's a quote from an email that was sent to the W.E.B. Dubois Institute this week**:

"you can't possibly claim racism, don't you know we have a nigger in the white house?"

Presumably Tran didn't send that email, but he's making the exact same argument.

Never content to stop at saying one stupid thing when there's an opportunity to get even stupider, Tran continues:

Tran, who is Vietnamese, said he has never experienced profiling.

"For me, all this situation does is make me very fearful that police will be hesitant in responding to incidents that involve people of color because they will be afraid of something like this happening," Tran said.

Yeah, I'm sure that minorities (who are of course fully and respectfully served by the police now) will now suffer with sub-par police service because Skip Gates was arrested for being loud at his own home.

Talking about police abuse of power will make the cops scared of doing their job? Only if they're abusive cops.

Dean, you seriously need to take your own Twitter advice and look up "clueless."

Okay, enough of dumbass Tran. Perhaps there's someone out there who's not stupid?

Christina Gonzalez, youth development supervisor at the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center, said electing Obama doesn't mean a society has overcome its racial history.

"That's like when someone tells a racist joke and then qualifies it by saying, 'It's okay, I have a black friend,'" Gonzalez said. "You still feel a certain way about those people. It still shows in your facial expression."

Thank you, Christina Gonzalez! What you've said is totally honest and self-evident to all thinking people. Sadly, we seem to be lacking in thinking people right now.

Let's wrap this up:

Ford questioned Gates' vocal reaction and his call for an apology.

"This is an opportunity to create a learning experience, and a leader's job is to influence other people," Ford said. "(Gates) needs to step back, make this issue less about him, and approach it from a less emotional standpoint as a chance for everyone to learn. That's not happening. All we're doing is perpetuating divisions."

Adrian, I think you've got your wires crossed somewhere.

Here's what Gates said in an interview (emphasis mine):

I've received thousands of e-mails and Facebook messages; the blogs are going crazy; my colleagues at Harvard are outraged. Allen Counter called me from the Nobel Institute in Stockholm to express his outrage. But really it's not about me-it's that anybody black can be treated this way, just arbitrarily arrested out of spite.

Now, you could argue that he's making it about him despite saying that, but in the end it really isn't about Gates no matter what he does.

In fact, I'm not even sure that the arrest itself is the really interesting part here. The arrest was absolutely stupid, but whether it was racially-motivated or not is hard to know for sure. Personally, I see it more as another authoritarian cop (and there are lots of those) arresting someone for "contempt of cop" than as a pure racial issue. Of course, minorities are arrested with those sorts of charges at a disproportionately high rate, so there's no reason it can't be both.

Rather, the part that's revealing when it comes to race is not the arrest, it's the reactions. It's the guys sitting behind their keyboards screaming about "reverse racism" and utterly denying that the real problems exist.

It's the total failure of people to appreciate that if they had just come home after a 20-hour trip back from China and a cop started treating them like a criminal in their own home, then maybe they'd get pretty pissed off too.

It's the inability of people to realize that yes, there are cops out there who will arrest you for things that aren't illegal, and will justify those arrests however they feel they need to.

We shouldn't be asking ourselves "was the cop right" or "was Gates a jerk"? We should be asking ourselves what we'd do in Gates' situation. Whether we'd feel that we were being protected and served, or intimidated and harrassed.

More importantly, we should realize that for every Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who gets arrested for no reason, there are a few thousand normal, everyday people (of all races) who suffer the same treatment, but don't have the means or influence to draw attention to it.

Whatever you think of this particular case, it's unquestionably true that people do get arrested for the crime of being black. It's unquestionably true that some cops are keen on showing how "tough" they are by mistreating those they are meant to serve.

If nothing else, Gates' arrest should be a wake up call. Like Adrian Ford desires, and like Skip Gates has said, it's not about Gates. It's about all of us.



* That's a lie. Of course I know how I've stayed out of jail: I'm white and I'm scared of arguing with people who could shoot me.
** Check it out, I have a contact! Take that, journalists!

Is this seriously their new argument?

Yesterday I read this editorial in the S&E. It was mostly boring "give us whatever services we demand, but screw everyone else" bullshit, but one particularly odd pseudo-argument stuck out at me.

Here it is, with my bolding added:

We urge the mayor to remember she is still proposing a $92 million budget, which we feel should be more than enough to not only reject the idea of reducing the days of operation at the library and Senior Center, but to increase them.

Obviously, this stuck out because the fact that there's a $92 million town budget has fuck-all to do with there being money to spend on any particular service.

It's not like there's just a pile of 92 million dollar bills sitting around, unspoken for. The vast majority of it is going to be tied up, and there are far more programs and services that deserve funding than $92 million can cover.

Budgeting is about choosing what gets part of that money and what doesn't. The total amount of money in the budget is somewhat irrelevant, unless it's so high that you can fund absolutely everything anyone suggests, or so low that you can't even fund the very basics. Even the richest of oil-rich nations don't fall into the first group, and few (if any) places in the US fall into the latter one. Everyone else needs to make choices about what to fit within the available budget.

Using the town's $92 million budget to suggest that money is readily available for any particular purpose is about as sensible as using Sudan's $12.95 billion budget to claim they should have no problem building a dozen world-class hockey rinks. That's just not the way it works, guys.

But we expect to find baffling non sequiturs presented as arguments in everything McMenemy writes, so it wasn't such a big deal.

Then just this morning, I noticed this (my bold):

"I have said all along that I don't believe we need to implement any kind of waste disposal ordinance in order to generate revenue because our budget is still in the mid-90 million (range)," [City Councilor Dean] Tran wrote in an e-mail.

I don't know who's stealing whose talking point there, or if Tran is actually just as pathetically clueless as McMenemy and they both arrived at their red herring independently, but it really doesn't matter. It's a stupid argument, no matter where it originated.

There may be sound arguments against a trash fee (although I've yet to hear anyone present one), but just mentioning the size of the entire budget is absolutely not one of them. You could have a $92 million budget with a trash fee paying for part of it and helping to fund services, or you could have a $92 million budget with no trash fee and fewer services.

And that's assuming a balanced budget. If revenues are below expenses we're still screwed, even if it were a $92 billion budget.

The total size of the budget is irrelevant to this argument. Well, it's irrelevant unless Tran believes that every service that deserves funding can be funded perfectly well on this size. Maybe he does, but since I haven't seen giant billboards listing the names of all area sex offenders at 100-yard intervals on every street in town, I'm going to bet he doesn't.

Of course, it's possible that Tran and McMenemy know that they're putting forward nonsense arguments. In which case they're just using the size of the budget as a rhetorical tool, because they think you're stupid enough to fall for it.

So we're left with two choices: Either the editor of the local newspaper and a prominent city councilor are totally clueless, or they believe that we're the clueless ones and that we'll fall for their nonsensical rhetoric.

Neither one especially fills me with hope.

Councilor-at-large time!

Note to readers: I started this post reviewing all the Councilor-at-large websites but got distracted part of the way through. The election is now happening tomorrow and I'm too tired and lazy to finish what I started and update the bits that have changed since I wrote this like two weeks ago. Rather than let what I had go to waste I'm just going to post it. Enjoy. Or don't. Whatever.

Do vote though. And vote for the right people. Or else.

Post begins here ----\/

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Time for more website reviews!

We've been through the mayoral candidates. We've been through the Ward Councilors who actually bothered to have websites. Now we have the councilors-at-large!

There are five councilor-at-large positions. One of them is currently held by Tom Donnelly, who won't be returning. Annie DeMartino and Thomas Conry are both incumbents, but don't seem to have websites. Jesus "Jay" Cruz and Dean Tran are incumbents who do have websites! We also have newcomers Shaun Cormier and Marcus DiNatale running (who have websites).

Once again I've failed to find a decent list or just who's running and how many seats are contestable (I'm assuming all, but who knows!). Shouldn't stuff like this be easy to find? Isn't that what the internet is for? Could some kind person with more time than me put one together? Maybe the city clerk or a newspaper reporter or somebody? Sheesh!

Not that it matters for this post. Here I'm just going to critique the websites of the four Councilor-at-large candidates who do have websites. Anyone else can go to hell.

Let's go in alphabetical order, shall we?

Shaun Cormier: www.shauncormier.com

What are the first impressions of Cormier's site?

Every page has a bigass picture of the city, which is actually the only picture on the site! It's not a bad picture though, and the site is actually pretty simple and clean-looking. Also at the bottom it says "This website is designed and maintained by Shaun Cormier," which I'm going to take literally. If he did indeed make it all himself he actually did quite a nice job. Seems like a FrontPage jobby.

On his front page he does the traditional "I'm running for office because I want improvement in the stuff that currently sucks" thing, lists where to vote, and gives this more-specific paragraph:

If elected as Councilor At-Large, I will strive for improving communications between city officials, propose that the City of Fitchburg use renewable energy sources, look into tax relief for first time homebuyers, and find ways to attract more recreational businesses to Fitchburg. I will further strive to find ways for the city to save money.

Not terrible, but not inspiring either.

Moving to his About Me page, we find no picture! Hey, everyone else has had a picture! This lack of picture may not be a bad thing. Cormier's quite young-looking (and I believe is just 22, so that makes sense), and conceivably his youth could turn off some old fogey voters. Personally I see it as a strong point, but old people have more votes than I do. Then again, young people have computers.

He gives some of his background (lived here forever, etc), talks about his job (sadly without mentioning the really awesome parts), and takes this interesting swipe at the current state of political discourse in the town:

There have been many negative articles written towards city departments blaming city council or city council blaming city departments on certain issues. I want to see all city departments working together to help solve problems. I would especially like to see a better relationship with the city council and mayor.

Oh, snap! Take that, stupid people who can't get along! Cormier's coming to town and he's going to make you all do trust-building exercises and give each other Secret Santa gifts!

Next we have his Ideas page, which is like an "Issues" page, but without the word "Issues" being involved.

It's pretty decent, actually. The best we've seen from Council candidates so far, at least. Renewable energy is the top bullet (I'll come back to that in a moment). He wants to kick the asses of "Delinquent Tax Payers," who I would argue should actually be called "Tax Non-payers," but whatever. He spells "increased" wrong in this bit, but it's just a typo. Still, Unicow hates tpyos!

He also proposes incentives for first-time home buyers, which is nice. Wisely wants to exploit FSC, which is something a lot of people have been saying for awhile now but nobody has managed to do. Then there's more bugging the city officials to get together and hug. Fine.

Last, he proposes a Route 2 On/Off ramp (both West and Eastbound) on Mt. Elam Rd. Which I've heard talked about before and isn't a bad idea.

The next page is actually the most prominent link, entitled Renewable Energy Information. Cormier is clearly big into renewable energy, which is something I also feel strongly about. So kudos for that!

He talked about the need for renewable energy on his "Ideas" page, and here he gives basically just a buttload of links to information about it. Unfortunately he doesn't go into any great detail. Just links. Which I suppose is okay, but I'd like to see more explanation of where and how these technologies can be best used in Fitchburg. Wikipedia pages do not help me with that! They're great if you want to learn to speak Klingon or find out the history of LOLCats, though.

Then there's a Links page.

Hey, I'm on it! That's awesome! Go me!

Anyway, it's just links and links are boring. It's sort of nice that he links to his opponents though. Classy touch!

The last page is a contact page, and suitably uninteresting.

Conclusion: Actually, not too bad. It's sparse, yes, but it does have a few specific ideas and remains pretty light on the political rhetoric. The design is simple but unobtrusive. I'd like to see the renewable energy stuff fleshed out a bit more, though. Also, the site is totally devoid of any pictures of the toys he made. I want to see the fire-breathing horse "Butterscotch!"

Moving on...

Jay Cruz: www.councillorcruz.com

First off, I have a major problem with Cruz spelling the word "councilor" as "councillor" (with two l's). Yeah, I know both may in fact be acceptable in some areas, but "councilor" is the right way! If you're on the fucking council you should know how to spell councilor!

Anyway, Cruz's page is done by Kreative Dezign, the same people I criticized for the god-awful Seney site. Yet this site doesn't look too bad. It does have a very strange looking blobby blue picture on the front page. Which I guess is an old-timey picture of Fitchburg, but looks like crap.

Let's start with Jay's Bio!

He went to Monty Tech, was in the Marines, has some kids and a wife, served on a couple of boards, and owns a heating & air conditioning business. Boring. Next!

Oh, next he just tells me How to Volunteer. But he hasn't given me a reason to want to volunteer yet so I'm not going to. Then it's Make a Contribution. Same deal. And on to Fundraising, which I almost skipped!

Good thing I didn't, because I would have missed the charming photos of him surrounded by former mayors, children, and assorted old people!



Okay, that was a waste of time too. How about some issues or something Jay?

The next link is called Articles and has one article on it: "Cruz Plans City Council Campaign / If Elected, Cruz could be the only Latino on the Fitchburg City Council." Umm, he already is. He's an incumbent (albeit an appointed one). Big whoop.

Then he has Contact Information, an offsite link to register to vote, Where to Vote, and Useful Links, which aren't all that useful and don't include me!

What the fuck, Jay? No issues at all? No information about where you stand? Nothing?

Oh wait, there's a link to Charter Reform on the other side of the page. But argh! It just takes you to a question of whether you'd sign a petition to support charter reform! He doesn't even tell you if he supports it!

Fucking waste of time.

Conclusion: This site wasn't half as ugly as the other Kreative Dezign site I've looked at during this process, but it suffers the same problem. Total lack of meaningful content. It has like 5 different ways to contact Cruz in order to help him, but absolutely nothing about how he'd actually help me. This is not an informational website. It's not even about self-promotion. It's about trying to get people who already support you to help more, because nobody else is going to have a clue what Cruz thinks. Plus he spells councilor wrong. Bad!

Marcus DiNatale: marcusdinatale.com

First impression? This site was designed for a tiny browser window. There's a little box with the important stuff in it, then a giant field of purply-red stars (communism?) as the background. I'm not crazy about the style, but it does look professionally done.

The front has a picture of Marcus, along with his slogan: "Stabilize, Prioritize, and Harmonize." For some reason this makes me picture him in a barbershop quartet.

He "respectfully" thanks you for visiting his website (really Marcus, it was no problem!), and seems to want you to send him a yard sign for some reason. His "priorities" are also listed, but is really the first part of a linked page (fancy!), so we'll deal with that when I visit the links.

Handily, the annoying "Volunteer/Contribute/Contact" links are all set aside from the links that might actually be interesting to me, so I'm just going to ignore all of those! Let's see what Mr. "I have a cooler goatee than Jay Cruz" has to say!

First we have Meet Marcus. Oh my god that's a confusing picture! The picture of Marcus in the banner has a goatee. In the picture of his family his father has a goatee and he's clean-shaven! But they look fairly similar! I've added some stuff to this screenshot to try to explain it:



As you can see, the goatee-Marcus up top corresponds to the clean-shaven Marcus down below. Disregard the goateed older DiNatale (state Rep. Steve!), and the sister (who really you wouldn't get confused about anyway but happened to be in the picture).

Why is everyone so proud of being a "lifelong resident" of Fitchburg? That's not a qualification! Also, he lists education and stuff. He's on the school committee too, which is good.

Moving on, he has a lengthy Priorities page! Like really dense-looking and long. The sort of long thing that actually discourages me from reading it, to be honest. I'm going to do it anyway, of course. But if I'm discouraged, then you can bet the casual web-weenie is even more discouraged.

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Hello again, readers. This is where I got distracted! I don't remember what did it, but it was probably related to sex, drugs, or rock'n'roll. Regardless, I didn't finish, but really all that was left was to make fun of Marcus some more and then hit Dean Tran.

I'll give super-short reviews of both of their sites just so you don't feel slighted:

DiNatale: Okay, but boring.
Tran: Has a thing called a "shoutbox", which is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Man, if I ever actually developed the motivation to review this thing I would have endlessly made fun of it. But I didn't, so bully for him.

There you go, folks!

Tran is obsessed, Donnelly is a pussy

I've been bored shitless with Fitchburg politics lately. There's only so much pointless bickering and vapid proclamations from people running for office that I can take before needing a break.

But one thing seems to get me back in the mood to ramble, and that's Dean Tran's insane focus on sex offenders.

As I've blogged about before, Tran was instrumental in pushing the law that now says level 2 and 3 sex offenders can't live within 1,000 feet of things like schools and playgrounds. I criticized it at the time as being "nearly impossible to enforce", among other problems.

Guess what, seems like they're having trouble enforcing it! Go figure!

Per a recent Sentinel article:

Not one sex offender has paid a citation for living within 1,000 feet of a school, park or daycare center, more than eight months after city councilors unanimously passed the residency restriction ordinance, city officials said this week.

[...]

Some councilors suggested this week that the difficulty in moving forward with both of Tran’s proposals shows such legislation is easy to vote for, but too difficult to implement.

The other proposal of Tran's mentioned here is of course his brilliant idea to put the names of level 2 and 3 sex offenders on water bills, because there's nothing people enjoy more than paying their bills while thinking about sex crimes. It's two great tastes that go great together, as they say.

I think Tran has watched too much Fox 25 news or something, because he seems to have sex offenders on his mind far more than anyone really ought to. He did offer this lame defense of his bill:

Tran defended his petitions, saying that those who are against these ordinances offer nothing in their place.

“There’s no stakes higher than losing a child in the city, and I’d rather be proactive then reacting to a situation such as this,” Tran said.

Umm, Mr. Tran... call me crazy but I'm pretty sure this is reactive and not proactive. These are people who already committed a crime. You're just really keen on shouting their names around after the fact. Perhaps you've convinced yourself that putting names on water bills is the way to keep them from re-offending, but since there's a pretty low recidivism rate among sex offenders anyway maybe you could focus on preventing these crimes from happening in the first fucking place. You know, with things like treatment of those who are at risk but haven't committed a crime, or giving kids more safe havens and activities in the community. Just a thought.

Also, about not offering anything in their place... If I propose a bill to have skywriters decorate the sky above Leominster with insulting slogans (fuck those assholes and their fiscal solvency!) and everyone says "no, that's a dumb idea" they're not obligated to present something similar in its place.

Anyway, Tran's lost to the horrors of tabloid news, but at least mayoral candidate Thomas Donnelly has the right idea. Too bad he's only developed a spine recently:

Councilor at-large and mayoral candidate Thomas Donnelly slammed the ordinance as “feel-good legislation.”

Donnelly said even the smallest amount of effort or tax money to support these ordinances should be considered too much.

Donnelly said that he couldn’t have voted against the residency petition last September because, “I tried questioning it last time, and I was crucified.”

Okay, I agree it's feel-good legislation. I agree that tax money going to support these ideas is a bad idea. Like Donnelly, I've felt this way for quite awhile. But unlike Donnelly, I didn't vote in support of the very fucking thing I'm currently criticizing. Because I'm not a giant pussy.

Maybe Donnelly would indeed have been crucified then, but at least he'd have shown some guts and taken a stand on something he believed. He should be crucified now for voting for his own political expediency rather than principle or for the good of the city.

Mr. Donnelly, if you get elected mayor you'll have to stand up to situations where you could get "crucified" if you do something unpopular. For Christ's sake I hope you have the balls to ignore that peril and do the right thing whether or not it's popular.

As always, Crazy Ted DeSalvatore got a few words in too. They're typical of him in that they're directly contradicted by fact.

Ward 4 Councilor and mayoral candidate Ted DeSalvatore said he thinks the laws have a big effect in the long term in persuading sex offenders to move somewhere else.

[...]

“Does it stop child abuse? No,” DeSalvatore said. “Does it create a new atmosphere of consequences? I think so.”

What consequences would those be, Ted? Oh yeah, the unenforceable ones... Yeah, I'm sure those are super-effective.

Man am I glad we've got more mayoral candidates than just a giant pussy and a terminally-deluded fucktard. We've also got a mayor who doesn't seem to grasp basic math, a guy I don't know much about who probably won't win, and umm... an economist. Wong looks better all the time.

Incidentally, it's actually worth reading the Sentinel article in full here. It's much better reporting than you generally get from the Sentinel, and even presents the viewpoints of someone who actually knows what she's talking about!

Tran, DeSalvatore, and Theodicy

I've been a mixture of sick and super-busy lately, so no blogging for me. I remain slightly sick and relatively busy, so here's a quick one.

Ted DeSalvatore writes letter to the Sentinel instead of talking to his fellow council members. In return, Dean Tran calls him "cowardly and immature". DeSalvatore responds that Tran is a pee-pee head.

In the same article:

[City Council President Jody] Joseph said Tuesday the current level of inter-council bickering is "unprecedented" in his six years on the council. The change began when the current set of councilors came into office in 2006.

"I've tried to ask the councilors to be a little more civil to each other. ... I guess they're not going to heed the warning and act professional."

...

"It's a very difficult group of people to work with at this time. Everybody seems to have their own agenda, and it's just hard to move the city forward," Joseph said.

And people wonder why I think DeSalvatore is an embarrassment...

Also, Pastor George Small's article at Fitchburg Pride shows not only that he sucks at theodicy, but that he is perfectly willing to attempt to capitalize on a tragedy to lure people into a church. Sad... Plus he looks a little like Biff from "Back the Future".

Finally, go read this article in the Guardian showing how the Bush administration is doing what fascists do. I'm just heartened to see that there's someone else out there who finds the use of the word "homeland" as creepy as I do.

That's it for now. More when I have a bit of time.

This is getting tiresome.

Candidates announcing they're running for things just isn't that exciting.

Donnelly's officially in the mayoral race, having pulled papers yesterday.

He had a few things to say, but has yet to really present a platform. He does think the town needs a CFO, which given our recent bond rating issue makes sense.

That's about the only idea presented in the Sentinel piece though, aside from a vague (and somewhat naive) statement that places that can't stand on their own feet shouldn't necessarily get federal grant money to help them. Not sure what to think about that, but the thought requires more fleshing out before it can be either accepted or rejected.

Whatever the case, he should make haste on presenting a damn platform!

Dean Tran is also running for re-election to City Council. Like every other damn candidate for everything he thinks we need business growth.

He's also proud of his sex-offender law, which I already discussed back in October. Aside from his unhealthy obsession with sex offenders (which is hardly uncommon in politics these days), Tran seems like a pretty decent councilor. So good luck to him I guess.

On a non-election related note, I stumbled across the Sentinel's Locals reflect on four years of war article and was struck by this remarkably honest but geographically delusional quote:

Leominster resident Antonio DiGeronimo, 92, said he thinks the war is necessary.

"We have to protect our oil," he said.

Holy fuck.

Here's another one

Well, we have another mayoral candidate. Or will shortly, anyway.

According to a whopping four paragraphs in the Sentinel, city councilor Thomas Donnelly is indeed going to run for mayor. He hasn't pulled papers for it just yet, but has confirmed that he plans to.

That's it. That just told you absolutely everything of significance in the Sentinel piece. Gee, I wonder who the local press is going to back...

Anyway, I don't know a whole hell of a lot about Donnelly, but from what I can gather he seems like a pretty decent guy. He opposes Dean Tran's dumbass idea to put sex offender names on water bills, which means he has at least half a brain.

Once he announces a platform (supposed to happen in "the coming weeks") there will be something to talk about. For now just thank your lucky stars there's a viable alternative to Mylott and DeSalvatore.

Oh, and if you're in the mood go over to the Fitchburg Pride Poll and give him a vote. He's already got half the votes of the ballot-stuffing DeSalvatore team. Even if you don't support him, it'd be nice just to even things up.

(PS If you're a geek like me and use the Firefox NoScript extension, set it to temporarily allow fitchburgpride.com or the JavaScript-based poll won't show up for you.)

Sex Offenders

Sex offenders. They're constantly in the news. They're people who've done some truly horrible things. Some ex-offenders live among us, just like anyone else who has committed a crime and done their time. Maybe you don't think the punishments are harsh enough (I for one don't), but they've taken their punishment and are back in the community.

This post isn't really about sex offenders though, it's about a particular law.

Fitchburg city councilor Dean Tran has recently pushed for (and passed, on Sept 21st) a law to regulate where Level 2 and 3 sex offenders are allowed to live in the city of Fitchburg.

More accurately, it defines areas that sex offenders aren't allowed to move into. That forbidden ground would be within 1,000 feet of any playground, park, school, or day-care center in the city. The goal, of course, is to keep sex offenders out of the city.

In a June 22nd Boston Globe article, Tran was quoted:

``Make no mistake about this petition," Tran said. ``It does not ban sex offenders from coming into the city. We're not regulating their movements. We're just restricting them from living close to schools and other facilities where children are."

Nice choice of words, since their constitutional "right to travel" would clearly be restricted if you were "regulating their movements". Yet in the same article we're offered this nugget:

Tran said he did not intend for his proposal to exclude sex offenders from moving to Fitchburg, a city of 39,000 about 50 miles from Boston, but he hopes it is one of the petition's consequences. ``If that happens, it would be great," he said.

So he's not trying to keep them from coming to Fitchburg, he just hopes that's the effect it has.

On the surface, it sounds fine. Nobody wants sex offenders around children. Then again, nobody really wants sex offenders around anyone else either. After all, most sex offenses are committed against adults.

There are a number of problems with this law. First of all, most of Fitchburg is within 1,000 feet of one of these facilities. That severely limits the housing available. Great, right? Not if you live in one of the areas outside the law's range. Expect to have a lot of new sex offender neighbors. Furthermore, what do you think the impact is of having small areas of sex offenders clustered together? Property values in those areas may well drop, but worse than that recidivism rates may rise. Grouping sex offenders together isn't generally considered to be a good idea.

Police Chief Edward Cronin has already expressed concerns that the law may be not only nearly impossible to enforce, but also unconstitutional.

Unconstitutional how?

Similar laws have been challenged for infringing not only the right to travel, but the right to due process under the law, the right against self-incrimination and the right to family association and privacy. It has even been argued that such laws impose cruel and unusual punishment because the restriction is "the functional equivalent [of] the old sanction of banishment."

The chance of this law standing up to constitutional muster is low, in other words.

Now, a few basic facts about sex offenders. A 2003 US Department of Justice study found recidivism rates among child molesters to range from roughly 3.3% to 8%, depending on the subgroup being measured. While any recidivism is terrible, these are hardly high numbers when compared to other violent criminals.

In 2004 the state of Washington commissioned a detailed recidivism report of its felons (.pdf here). How did sex offenders rank?

Out of categories of assault, murder, burglary, manslaughter, property crimes, robberies, and sex crimes, sex crimes had the second lowest rate of recidivism (only manslaughter was lower). While their figures may not be universally applicable, they do provide a pretty clear image of where sex crimes (not just child molestation) fall within the grand scheme of things. It's just not as big a problem as people want you to believe.

Robberies had the highest recidivism rate in that study. Perhaps Mr. Tran should have proposed that convicted robbers not be allowed to live within 1,000 feet of convenience stores instead. It would likely have more impact. Or maybe they'd just take a car.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. Do sex offenders have a range of 1,000 feet or something? It takes all of two minutes to walk that far, at a pretty comfortable saunter. Do they have invisible tethers, or are we assuming that most child molestation occurs because the child wanders into the predator's back yard?

So it's a likely unconstitutional law that addresses what's really a fairly minor problem and even then it addresses it in a terribly naive way. Admittedly, it's a problem that's been blown way out of proportion by the media. So it's good for political points. After all, who wants to be accused of "supporting" sex offenders by daring to oppose this ridiculous law?

With all the problems Fitchburg has, is this really the way we should be spending our time?


[Also worth a read is Frankie Thomas' recent blog on Huffpo, Pedophiles: America's Security Blanket]