Towns, Tank and Otherwise

Way back in the 50s I lived in a tank town in Central Ohio where I learned the full implications localism. Idling at the marble countertop in the drugstore at morning coffee break, someone was bound to tell you: "you know, when those Russkies drop the big one"--and then the speaker would fall inarticulate as he pointed into the air over his head and then the floor under his feet. Had he commanded the power of speech, he would have said "right here."

And he wasn't alone. I think Art Buchwald did a column in those days about how every town had its own un-American activities committee--so many of them that we were running out of Communists to investigate ("No! He's ours!" "No, we saw him first").

I thought of my old tank town this morning when I read about the City of Keene, NH, and how it is adding new meaning to the old label. Keene (last murder: 2003), thanks to the Homeland Security Administration, will soon be the proud owner of a $286,000 eight-passenger APV--proudly described by the mayor as a "tank." And as the sales manager for the seller says:

"I don't think there's any place in the country where you can say, 'That isn't a likely terrorist target,'" ... "How would you know? We don' t know what the terrorists are thinking."

If tank town was a target and if Keene stands in need of a tank, then you can't be surprised to learn that folks in Kansas feel the pressure to protect themselves as well. Here is a squib from what appears to be an authentic letter now circulating among the sunflowers:

First of all pray. Secondly, contact the senators listed below and ask them to vote to get the bill NO FOREIGN LAW out of committee so it can be voted on in legislature. Thirdly, pass this email on to others with your encouragement to do the same. The people of Kansas need to be informed.

There is quite an Islamic lobbyist group at work at the KS state Capitol. IN the past couple of years, they have wined and dined many legislators with trips to Turkey, etc. and they make their presence known on the hill. These people persevere with their agenda and are willing to wait patiently to see their agenda fulfilled. If you have any doubts about not wanting to have Sharia Law in KS, you need to do research on the topic and it will curl your hair.

 Two thoughts:

•  An Islamic lobby in Kansas?

• Kansas has a hill?

Research assistance: Wichita bureau.  

And the Winner Is...

Wired confirms what we had begun to suspect: the Times Square bomber must have been one of the most incompetent in the history of car bombing.

9/11 Changed Everything

...in the sense that cops can now do any damn thing they want. Cf., from Schnier on Security (link):

London Heathrow security stopped someone from boarding a plane for wearing a Transformers T-shirt showing a cartoon gun.

and from BoingBoing (link, with cool video):

A BB reader says: "A local news crew was interviewing an Amtrak spokesman at D.C.'s union station who told the reporter that photography is allowed in the station. During the interview, a security guard interrupted them to say that photography/video was not allowed.

They Hate Us for our Freedom

You knew this already, but here is a good summary:

According to a 2005 report … the United States—with five percent of the world’s population—houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial countries, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate emp[loyers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and correction at all levels of government, a fourefold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century. . . .

Source: that’s Glen Loury, here, as quoted in Timothy Taylor, Recommendations for Further Reading, 21 Journal of Economic Perspectives No. 4, 229, 230 (Fall 2007). Couple that with Jon Markman’s estimate that the share of our work force in the, ahem, “security industry” is 25 percent. Wonder how to analyze this in terms of the fact that the U.S. also accounts for 48 percent of all world military spending…