Eideard

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Warm sun, white beaches, and million-dollar mansions notwithstanding, Miami has captured the dubious distinction of being the most miserable city in the United States, according to a new poll.

The playground of the rich and famous is home to a crippling housing crisis, one of the highest crime rates in the country, and lengthy daily commutes for workers, all of which have propelled it to the No. 1 position in the Forbes.com list.

“Miami has sun and beautiful weather but other things make people miserable. You have this two-tier society: glitzy South Beach attracts celebrities, but the income inequality has skyrocketed in recent years”.

The rankings are based on factors including jobless rates, violent crime, foreclosures, income and property taxes, as well as considerations like weather, commute time and political corruption…

“We’re trying to judge cities where residents have a lot of complaints. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t terrific things there,” said Kurt Badenhausen. And for the haves Miami’s charms remain undiminished.

“The one percent in Miami is doing fantastic. But for the vast majority, who make less than $75,000 a year, Miami can be a challenging place,” he said. “Forty-seven percent of homeowners sit on underwater mortgages. That’s tough.”

The complete list can be found at: tinyurl.com/75clrr9

Why am I not surprised? Florida voters keep professing their love for politicians devoted to screwing them to a wall of poverty, overextended budgets and reliance on corrupt bureaucrats.

Looking for a last-minute baby sitter? Want to let your neighbors know about a break-in? Wondering whether anyone else received an unexpectedly high water bill?

A number of people are logging on to private neighborhood websites to ask questions like these, get advice and share information through an electronic version of the backyard fence.

A company called Nextdoor, which offers a free online platform that enables people to create social networks for their own neighborhoods has launched.

Today, more than 800 neighborhoods in 43 states plus the District of Columbia have set up local websites where they can communicate one-on-one, as well as with the people nearby. There are five Nextdoor websites here in New Mexico, including three for Santa Fe neighborhoods: Los Milagros, Sol y Lomas and Talaya Hill.

Each website includes a neighborhood map, member postings, a directory of residents (including brief profiles), links to resources and reports of interest, and photographs of community events…

Access to each Nextdoor website is password-protected, and only verified residents can become members, log on and post messages. No one else has access to the content, so that people can safely share information on neighborhood topics…

Neighbors log on to the site, using their own user ID and password, to read postings, but they can also elect to receive posts instantly via email…

There are currently no advertisements on the websites, but the revenue model calls for eventually working with local businesses to provide special offers to website members — Groupon meets Facebook — according to Nextdoor spokeswoman Whitney Swindells.

It all sounds useful, practical and positive.

Hermit that I am, I probably would remain mostly as unresponsive to dialogue in the neighborhood as I am at the blogs I contribute to. But, I can think of the few times that my curiosity while out and about – spotting someone I thought might be a gangster preparing to burglarize or vandalize someone – would be useful to everyone in the neighborhood. After I called the Sheriff.

A British businessman is facing jail for insulting the Prophet Mohammed after getting into an argument in a shop in Dubai.

The man, named in court papers as Andrew Graham, 40, is said to have told Hassan Habib, a Pakistani computer salesman, that the Prophet was a “terrorist”. Insulting Islam is a serious offence in the United Arab Emirates, as in other Gulf countries, and can attract a fine and a sentence of up to a year in prison.

Mr Graham pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Dubai Courts on Tuesday, admitting he had an argument with Mr Habib but denying he had attacked the Prophet or muslims…

“It was not the first time – he has had arguments in other outlet stores, according to my friends. But they are Indians and with me he increased the argument.”

The court was told Mr Graham had got into an argument with Mr Habib about the Taliban. When Mr Habib insisted that muslims were peace-loving, Mr Graham allegedly said: “All Muslims are mad and your Prophet Mohammad was a bad man. Your Prophet Mohammad was a terrorist.” Mr Graham…had to be told to change after arriving at court wearing shorts…

When you are a stranger in a strange land, discretion can be the better part of valor. Instead of trying to win every argument – especially with invective barely acceptable in your homeland – consider shutting up. And wearing long pants.

Post-It Notes

Body bags go for $20. Yellow crime scene tape is $6. Toe tags are normally $5, but they were sold out this month. The merchandise comes in a white plastic shopping bag that says “Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.”

Tucked in the corner of a squat brick building that houses a huge depository of the dead is the strangest of gift shops. For years, the county coroner has run the shop, aptly named Skeletons in the Closet, selling knickknacks playing off the rather morbid humor that the department’s business arouses in many people.

But it turns out that the shop’s slogan — “We’re dying for your business!” — is all too accurate. The shop was once supposed to make enough money to pay for an anti-drunken-driving course for teenagers that includes a visit to the morgue.

But a recent report from county auditors shows that it has not made a profit for years and is actually subsidized by the very program it was meant to finance…

“It’s certainly a problem for us from a financial sense,” said Craig Harvey, the director of operations for the coroner. “We’re not necessarily a place that has a lot of experience in business, so this is simply a kind of wake-up call to see if we can do better at selling what we have…”

But for the most part, the shop’s only marketing has been word of mouth and free publicity in the news media. The store has a rudimentary Web site and is only now starting to explore ways to use the Internet to drive sales through Amazon, eBay and Facebook. There, it hopes to find a larger market for sweatshirts, notepads and pens bearing the same logo that department officials display in the field…

Ms. Pereyda said that much of the merchandise in the store had been the same for years, leaving many regular customers eager for more. So she is brainstorming new ideas and is particularly excited about a shipment of water bottles that is supposed to arrive next month.

The containers will be labeled “bodily fluids.”

Sounds like a fun place.

A decade ago, politicians and the press routinely reported on gun stores across the nation that had the most traces for firearms recovered by police. In 2003, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress passed a law that hid from public view the government database that contained the gun tracing information.

The Washington Post has obtained the names of the gun dealers nationwide with the most traces over the past four years…

Topping the overall list with about 2,390 traces is Vance Outdoors in Columbus, Ohio. Owner Todd Vance said his that grandfather started the business on Cleveland Avenue in 1938 and that the store is a top source for shooters, hunters, anglers and boaters in central Ohio.

“We are one of the higher-volume gun dealers,” he said. “We sell thousands of guns.”

Vance said that he and his employees are “very vigilant” about straw purchases, in which someone buys for a person prohibited from owning a gun, and that they turn down 10 to 20 suspicious sales a week. He said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducts a month-long inspection annually…

Of the more than 60,000 guns recovered in Mexico and traced back to the United States, the ATF is able to link only about 25 percent to the dealers who first sold the weapons and the purchasers who bought them. In the United States, on average, 65 to 70 percent of the weapons recovered are successfully traced back to dealers and buyers…

Of the leading stores with Mexican traces, Lone Wolf, eighth on the nationwide list, is No. 1 on the Mexico list. Over the past two years, it had 185 of its guns recovered and traced south of the border. Geography is a prime factor in those traces…

Everyone has the same excuses. Given the laws and the gun lobby that maintains “reasonable” excuses for guns used in crimes – there are no surprises.

Transparency doesn’t apply to the gun industry and their retailers as far as our politicians are concerned.

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With one in four U.S. public school students dropping out of high school before graduation, America continues to face a dropout epidemic. Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic…shows that we can end the dropout epidemic, even in schools from lower-income, urban and rural districts that many previously thought were hopeless…

The U.S. graduation rate increased from 72 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2008. The report reveals that the number of “dropout factory” high schools fell by 13 percent – from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,746 in 2008. While these schools represent a small fraction of all public high schools in America, they account for about half of all high school dropouts each year. Experts say targeting these high schools for improvement is a critical part of turning around the nation’s dropout rate.

More than half of all states – 29 in total – increased their statewide graduation rate from 2002 to 2008.

The state of Tennessee and New York City led the nation by boosting graduation rates 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Most of the decline in dropout factories – 216 of the 261 – occurred in the South.

Just as Secretary of State George C. Marshall launched a plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, we must rebuild our broken school system. We are launching a “Civic Marshall Plan,” comprising policymakers, educators, business leaders, community allies, parents and students to address the dropout epidemic by focusing on the dropout factory high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools. In tune with the call from President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan earlier this year to increase the U.S. graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020, we are working to mobilize Americans to quicken the pace. To reach these national goals, the graduation rate must rise by an average of 1.5 percentage points per year over the next decade. The Civic Marshall Plan outlines the benchmarks to ensure the attainment of those goals, and focuses on the strategic deployment of human resources to help school districts and states accelerate improvement.

Please, please read the report [.pdf]. There is little hope for improvement in any and all aspects of life in this land without leadership from an educated citizenry.

Time to get off your rusty dusties, folks.

Hirokazu and supporters celebrate re-election
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The governor of Japan’s Okinawa has been re-elected, in a poll which was closely tied to the future of a controversial US base on the island.

Hirokazu Nakaima, who has fiercely opposed the relocation of the Futenma base, repeated his call that it be removed from the island.

Mr Nakaima had faced tough opposition from Mayor Yoichi Iha. But he will now have the power to veto the plan, which has severely strained ties between Tokyo and Washington…

“I am demanding the base be removed off the island and the Japan-US agreement be reviewed,” the Jiji news agency quoted him as saying…

The unpopular Futenma base is located in the densely populated south of the island.

Both the US and Japan want to relocate it to a new offshore facility in the less populated north.

But residents and law makers in Henoko oppose the plan, as do environmentalists who say it will devastate marine life in the area. Many residents also say that Futenma should be moved off Okinawa altogether – they say Okinawa hosts more than its fair share of bases, leading to disruption, noise and crime.

Most of the treaty has been kept secret from both American and Japanese citizens. Even politicians who win the national election and are voted in as Prime Minister by the Parliament don’t get to see it until afterwards.

With damned few exceptions, we should bring all our troops home. Now.

Texting – old school

In a bid to bring the life-saving emergency service 911 into the 21st century, the FCC is looking at letting citizens report crimes through text messages and even stream video from their mobile phones to emergency centers.

Established as a national standard in 1968, 911 handles more than 230 million calls a year — 70 percent of which now come from mobile phones.

The last real overhaul of 911 by the FCC came in 2001, when mobile carriers were required to allow 911 to identify the location of callers either through GPS or cell-tower data…

But the 911 system still can’t handle text messages, multimedia messages or streaming video, all of which could be very helpful to first responders.

A system that could handle those messages would also allow people to report crimes without being overheard, which could be useful in situations ranging from kidnapping to seeing someone being robbed on the street…

It’s not clear yet where the money will come from for the upgrades, whether they will be federal requirements states and cities must carry out or if they will simply be suggestions.

Perish the thought our politicians adopt useful, constructive protocols like this without giving every local hack a chance to get in on an opportunity to be “lobbied” by equipment vendors.

Push comes to shove, the Federalist rationale supports small-time graft as well as it does the Congressional flavors.

Twitter users angered by the conviction of a man who threatened to blow up an airport in a Twitter joke showed support for him in their thousands today, thumbing their noses at the law by republishing the words that landed him in trouble.

Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old accountant, yesterday lost his appeal against his conviction and £1,000 fine for a comment he made in jest when he was concerned that he might miss a flight to Belfast.

“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” he wrote in January.

Chambers was controversially prosecuted under a law aimed at nuisance calls – originally to protect “female telephonists at the Post Office” in the 1930s – rather than specific bomb hoax legislation, which requires stronger evidence of intent.

Civil liberties lawyers criticised his conviction, as did the Twitter community, which reacted with a vengeance to his failed appeal today.

Under the hashtag #IAmSpartacus – a reference to the film in which Spartacus’s fellow gladiators show their solidarity with him by each proclaiming “I am Spartacus” – thousands of people have copied Chambers’s original message.

As a result of the show of support for him, #IAmSpartacus was the most popular worldwide subject being referred to on Twitter at the time of this posting.

And I am repeating Chambers Tweet at my own Twitter site.

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!

Immigration officials now have access to the fingerprints of every inmate booked into jail in all 25 U.S. counties along the Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced, touting the program as a way of identifying and deporting “criminal aliens.”

Napolitano’s announcement came as immigrant rights activists criticized the fingerprinting program, known as Secure Communities, after obtaining documents showing that more than a quarter of those deported under its auspices had no criminal records…

That charge is baseless, DHS officials said. Secure Communities gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement the ability to check the fingerprints of those arrested against a database that will show whether they have ever been deported or otherwise had contact with immigration agents…

By some estimates, as many as a million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. have committed crimes, Morton has said. ICE often is unaware of them, even when they are in jail or prison…

Secure Communities makes such notifications automatic. ICE says the program has identified more than 262,900 illegal immigrants in jails and prisons who have been charged with or convicted of criminal offenses, including more than 39,000 charged with or convicted of violent offenses or major drug crimes says…

In the first 10 months of fiscal year 2010, 142,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records were deported, ICE says, one-third more than in the same period of the prior year. About 50,000 non-criminals were removed.

I live in a county where the best guesstimate is that 15% of the population is undocumentados.

The way Secure Communities is implemented in the largest city in New Mexico – is that the only fingerprints regularly checked by ICE are of folks under arrest, booked into jail.