In Season

Lofton To Head Dunwoody PD

Kenny Lofton, having proven creds, will be taking over the Top Cop job at the Dunwoody PD. While Truth Botcher has no comment because hiring is a personnel matter the word has hit the streets. Looks like he will fit right in.

Going Postal

The USPS has a spot of a problem. Seems checks have gone missing and some have been cashed...just not by the intended recipient.  And this is a localized issue. All these checks have gone through the Dunwoody Post Office. 

One explanation, a very weak one, is that the blue bins out front had been compromised. One might argue, some do, that outside forces have pulled mail out of the bins. Problem with that is some of these missing checks were headed to local residences. These never see the inside of those blue bins. The only thing these missing checks have in common is that they spent some time inside the Post Office itself.

But rest assured the USPS is on top of things and investigations will continue until the public quits asking questions.

Adult Supervision

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The city has done it again. Implicitly acknowledging that city hall is lacking in core competencies council has unanimously voted to spend $117,500 on consultants to tell the city manager what to do about dysfunctional police command. Seems the city's army of bureaucrats can't get their heads around this so hiring someone with the sense god gave a pigeon to "sit" on a statue makes a silly, Dunwoody kinda sense. 

But the real kick in the crotch is where they got the money. Turns out unassigned monies from the general fund. WTF! Is this a bucket of mad money? And if they have money lying around why, why, did they have up the millage rate on top of the never ending tax increases? WTF are we really paying for? Bureaucrats who self-assess their abilities at levels that require expensive outside help? And they told us this city was going to be fiscally prudent and well managed. What. A. Whopper.

Blink And You've Missed It

But...they're back at it again. It seems a never-ending pas de deux between Grubb[ers] and the city with Grubb always in the lead. First it was a 1200 unit MDU then after DHA pushback all the apartments went poof. Suddenly nothing but condos. But all those parking spaces, lots and decks stayed, because, well, the brief era of Transit Oriented Development is dead. Must not have been enough Federal subsidies pouring down that rat hole.

Now Grubb[er] is back and so are those apartments. Somehow this is not seen by the city as a clear indication of untrustworthiness-perhaps the eye does not see itself. Perhaps it does. In any event, about all the city has issue with is sidewalk and buffer reductions. And what gives the developer hope? Well if past behavior is any indicator the city will rubber stamp the request just as they did for the condo development on Dunwoody Village Parkway. 

Looks like we're going to be getting some new, but soon to be trashy, apartments. Dunwoody Yes!

Common Sense Gun Control

When have you heard that before? Well you hear right after any mass shooting. And you hear it from the left and their media toadies. What they propose is neither common nor sensible. Nor effective. And usually not constitutional. But none of that matters to them. They have their agenda. Take guns away from law abiding folks; defend the criminals; de-fund the police. They have their narrative. Guns kill. They have their media megaphones. You know the ones. And they do pretty well. Until they don't.

Fairly recently the left have been confounded by two cases of lunatic shootings. First was the Robb Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Normally school shootings get them fired up but this one came with some baggage: the less than responsive first responders. The are the government employees the left are saying, by disarming everyone else but the lunatic shooters, will be there to protect us. Unless they've been de-funded or maybe just demoralized. By the left. Looking for the common sense in this? Look real hard. Take your time. It isn't there.

Things went pear-shaped with the Greenwood Park Mall Shooting in Indiana. Not a good day for gun-grabbers who consistently bleat that Good Guys with Guns are a really, really Bad Idea. Since the Bruen decision the left have exploded every time a state adopts Constitutional Carry as Indiana had a couple of weeks before the Mall Shooting. And guess what? Some folks were carrying. At the mall. At the time of the shooting. One, a young Mr. Elisjsha Dicken, took action. He engaged and advanced on the lunatic shooter while directing other shoppers to flee in the opposite direction. He fired ten shots, landing eight, starting from thirty to forty yards out. So who is this guy? Former military, right? No, not at all. Well then he must be on a police force. Again, no. Alec Baldwin's nephew? Too soon? Turns out he's a regular bloke who defended his girlfriend, himself and those around them. With a gun. A Good Guy with a gun. The man the left hates more than any other.

For the leftist agenda the Mall Shooting is far, far worse than the school shooting. Dicken pulled this off without any formal training. He did not have to please faceless bureaucrats to justify his own protection. No a priori, recurring fines to exercise that right. Absolutely everything the left has done to redact the Second Amendment was confronted head on and the left lost. They ended up with nothing but blathering about proper use of "Good Samaritan."

Full disclosure: there were (at least) two Good Guys with a gun at the mall that day but one was shot and killed before he could take action. Were there not two (or more) Good Guys with guns the carnage could have been horrific. Common Sense demands more Good Guys with guns, not fewer.

Call A Cop

Reports are indicating a shortage of badge-wielders in the North Atlanta suburbs (it doesn't matter what they say to get their hands on grant money, Dunwoody is a suburb) and Dunwoody is in direct competition with some, well, shall we say, better managed  cities. The irony of The Smart City being out-smarted is lost on few and surprises no one.

Explanations and excuses abound but as is governments' wont it becomes just another excuse to raise taxes. As you're probably aware Dunwoody has never seen a year without a tax increase and has recently rubbed salt with a millage increase justified by, you guessed it, police un-de-funding. While some funds are directed towards salary increases (for the entire army of bureaucrats) they did not do the right thing: dedicate all revenue garnered by this millage increase towards PD spending. Even if they did they would simply claw back any, perhaps all, of the revenue currently supporting public safety. 

Earlier this year Billy-Bob Grogan trotted on-trend accusations against the de-fund the police movement and there is some merit to that. But he's also revealed what is likely the primary reason: they are leaving for other jobs, other careers. And why wouldn't they? Billy-Bob, with the unwavering support of his boss, has created a toxic work environment, a captive porno den that would make Larry Flynt jealous. The kind of work environment that spawns award-winning whistle-blowers. 

Honestly, the problem is not difficult unless you make it unnecessarily so with lack of honesty. The city should have asked and answered, directly, completely and truthfully, a very simple question: what problem are you trying to solve? If the problem is under achievement of the primary commitment made when the city was formed, public safety, then more money may be in order. Determine exactly what that number is and figure where to get that money. The next step is to calculate, in the current budget, how many mils are dedicated to public safety. That number is the baseline and any further millage increase would be added to that to bring public safety spending to the level necessary to meet the original commitment. Obviously an enhancement would be to cut the enormous fat from the bloated bureaucracy, freeing funds for rank and file members of the police force because they really should be paid a living wage.

Pretty Sneaky

The local Developers' Authority recently pulled a fast one. According to the latest Blue Bag Rag they cancelled their regular meeting only to call a "special" meeting within a week. Lot of notice, that. 

You know...by the time you smell something fishy it IS time to throw the whole thing out.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

...with uncontrolled growth of government?

We're already seeing metastatic growth of government on the local scale with Dunwoody devouring all available resources. But if we want to know where this is headed we need but look a mere 600 miles north and see what the end-game of out of control growth in an administrative state looks like. And how it works. And how it self-corrupts.

Just one example of DC rot: incestuous corruption at the National Institutes of Health. That's right. Administrative bureaucrats totally out of control. We have a minor role-player on a research paper, a paper now probably fraudulent, intentionally, who is now a bureaucrat handing out millions of our dollars to a primary author of this paper. And this paper, a result of previous government funding has resulted in enormous public harm--exactly not what this alphabet-bureaucracy was supposed to do--and now this out of control aristocracy of bureaucrats is totally open-loop, continuing, growing this human cancer. 

This same cancer runs throughout any government that is left unchecked by those it is supposed to serve. Including Dunwoody. Do your job voters.