It's A Tough Job

DeKalb County Schools have engaged a firm to entice parents into bringing their kids back to public school. Seems the approach of right-sizing evaporated under the withering heat of parental resistance, In this case these parents already had their kids in public school placing them outside the target market for the PR firm. Thankfully, the PR firm gets paid for each student whose ass they can get back into class. For that one magic day where attendance counts for annual state funding. 

That should tell you pretty much everything. It isn't about learning. It's not about education. It's all about money. Based on the amount of state funding each little backpack toter represents and what the firm charges DeKalb may yet be able to fill that new admin building. All the while existing schools, of which there are arguably too many, will continue to deteriorate. But hey, you like your Vanderlyn, you can keep your Vanderlyn. Happy now?

For the casual observer this is going to be interesting.  Convincing parents who've decided on a better option than DCSD, to reconsider and possibly bring back the funding is formidable. Parents with children approaching school age may be no easier to convince. It just so happens these parents talk to other parents whose kids are already in school. These parents are more likely to be swayed by their neighbors than some out-of-town marketing firm. This summer should be fun.

EFF-ing Flock

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) focuses on privacy and liberty in the internet age and has taken aim at Flock and their ubiquitous cameras. In the first case, they saw, and reported on mission creep. This included a case directly contradicting Flock's statements that their technology "is not used to enforce traffic violations" even though a Georgia State Trooper ticketed a motorcyclist for holding a phone with the notation on the ticket that it was captured on a specific Flock camera. 

Obviously, Flock do nothing to actually ensure their system does not do what they say it cannot do. 

In a follow up a month later, EFF reports that due to lack of judicial supervision cops have expanded their [mis]use from specific violations to whatever the hell tickles their fancy. They suggest that lack of a warrant requirement has created a culture of off-label, unrestricted access to sensitive location information. PoPos' justification, provided by Flock, is to point out all the high-stakes crimes these cameras assist in, despite the facts proving the technology's more common use in very low-level investigations. Buford City Schools is using this technology for residency verification, which on the surface seems, well, lazy. BCS claims they are so good that they are subjected high levels of residency fraud but have failed to clearly explain how this happens and why Flock's technology is such a godsend. Lest you think the cesspool is restricted to Georgia, this is happening across the country. Governments, predominantly law enforcement agencies, are now doing searches as pre-employment background searches.  Now that these eyes now have ears, the technology is being brought to bear on noise complaints, including our very own DeKalb County PD. 

Across the board, the justifications range from cherry-picked examples to the downright silly, insulting the intelligence of any subjected to this blather. Like you. These are obfuscations deflecting attention from their end-around on due process. It may not be illegal (yet), maybe not even unethical, but it is clearly immoral, and this mission creep is only going to get creepier. 

Flock O' Worries

Flock, of ubiquitous camera fame, is an interesting phenomenon sitting at the intersection of technology, demographics and politics. Politics of the left, especially the "defund the police" movement, dramatically improved Flock's prospects allowing them to body-surf on the wave of political virtue signalling, a poorly understood, but virulent characteristic of the left. Flock gave the DtP pols cover. They could claim they support the police, but market Orwellian surveillance as a safety measure. All for the greater good, eh? Especially when you could watch PDs waste away due to attrition. A win-win for the left. 

The market is huge, and quite concentrated, as the left who embraced and marketed the technology tend to dominate urban areas with dense populations and lots o' crime. And Flock played the collaboration card, as their technology allowed bad guys to be tracked across geo-political borders. No criminal, nor anyone else for that matter, can escape Sauron's never-blinking eye. The technology was sold as "license plate readers" simply tracking plates that the "good guys" told them to watch out for. Then it was gun shot tracking. And next? Who knows.

But all was going well until... 

...along came Trump.

The left fled their Maid Cafés, where they had been gorging on the empty calories of their word salads, to enlist-in-resist. They all did. And that is all they had...all they have. That is their dilemma and our entertainment as it is always fun to see the haughty hoisted on their own petard. Locally, the left pivoted very quickly, very anti-Flock, and suddenly anti-surveillance-state, as if the U.S. Constitution is a new-found friend. A friendship that will not long endure. Or, we would not have Flock in the first place. 

The left does have a real issue, at least in their mind, and it isn't just that they hate Trump, or that the score is Bad Orange Man two, Pant Suits zero. About the only thing they've had as a real, non-knee-jerk, policy position in the last 20 years has been "open borders." That's the real issue, and they dare not say it out loud. They gag at the current administration's enforcement of federal law, and their possible access to Flock's capabilities to do that job. The left's sanctimonious idealization of any and all who "ain't from 'round here," lawfully or not, resulted in serious atrophy in the reasoning parts of the human brain, so they cannot see the logical contradictions of their words and actions. They are also ignorant of how cartels are now into migrant trafficking and their business relationship is not transactional, it is recurring. These migrants will do the cartels' bidding lest the family they've left back home should suffer. Many are not the saints of the left's imagination---they are cartel operatives embedded in our society. But they prefer that over having this administration gain access to Flock services they somehow feel is theirs. 

It will be amusing to see if the left embraces their surveillance state or maintains their "resist" posture. 

Vigilante Wars

Now that the primaries are over, perhaps it isn't too soon to point out some silliness. A week prior, around 0630-0700 a tall, thin man with a small dog, an ankle-biter-kick-dog, was seen on Chamblee Dunwoody near the Knoll. This man, and kick dog, scurried across C-D. Why did the kick-dog cross the street? Glad you asked: so the thin man could uproot a couple of political yard signs. It gets better. Then they scurry back across so the thin man could uproot a real estate sign. This was not in the Village Overlay but one must wonder if he's a diligent vigilante there as well.

Clearly the thin man never took a course even resembling Ethics 101, for if he had, he'd know that if it isn't yours you don't touch it. Unless he is a Dunwoody Slumlord and owns these two properties, it is far from believable that all these signs were his. It is hard to speculate on what was going thru the thin man's mind, why he thought he should do this, and why he thought he could. From outside his addlepated brain it only seems that he shouldn't. Perhaps that's the real problem with vigilantes. They are enforcing a law that exists only in their mind. It is a bit funny when you know that one of the signs was for a sitting judge known for respecting the constitution (state and US) and state laws, rather than an opponent who wanted to legislate from the bench. Now that is the signs of the times.

AJC: Do Better

Really? 85 Today?

Didn't You Report His Death A Couple Weeks Ago?

Red Light District

Started on 1 May.

Is DeKalb trying to tell us something?

Cleanup After Yourself

We shouldn't have to tell you.

Student Driver

Fob Off

'Shroom On Over

Save Our Schools?

You may have noticed some yard signs calling for support to "Save Dunwoody's Schools." Consider it done! As far as public schools go, these are not Dunwoody's schools, they are DeKalb County schools. Do we want to save those? If so, we have to save the system, and that means financially. You know, "the greater good" must prevail, and all that. Or must it? Well, if your children are zoned for Vandy, then the greater good begins with "Save Vandy!" Without that, there is no greater good, or perhaps no good at all. 

Will DCSD back down? 

No, they won't, because they can't. They are a stereotypical government. Spending only grows, so funding must as well. They are over the legal limit on millage rate so jacking that up is politically unpalatable. They're addicted to special sales taxes, already planning to spend the next round though it is yet to be voted into existence. The feds seem increasingly unlikely to up funding for this dumpster fire. The state is the remaining option but they have rules. Hard, fast rules. This means that schools like Vandy will not receive maximum state funding, so to acquire more revenue, Vandy, and others schools similarly sized, must go. And they will. 

And why should these schools in Dunwoody be retained, be supported, at the expense of others, and the system at large? These are minority voices in support of preserving this "neighborhood" school, without consideration of those who pay taxes and send their kids to compliant schools, or perhaps have no kids at all, maybe even ever, in public schools. Those folks have been lectured, ad nauseam, about their social obligation to pay taxes to support others' children because that creates a better society for all. Lots of take for very little give, so maybe it is time for an evening-up. 

How about you quit fighting only for your kids' school and fight for everyone's school system. 

Fifty Five Years Ago We Were Warned

1 In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of man created him.

2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord over all the earth when it was suited to Man. 

3 And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good.

4 And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground, and a host of others likened unto his kind. 

5 And these lesser men Man did cast into the void. And some were burned; and some were put apart from their kind.

6 And Man became the God that he had created and only his miracles did rule over all the earth.

7 But as all these things did come to pass, the Spirit that did cause man to create his God lived on within all men: even within Aqualung.

8 And man saw it not.

9 But for Christ's sake he'd better start looking.