Where The Buck Stops

The Buck Stops Here

Ten Point

Next time you feel the urge to lambast the bloke who asks about deer harvesting on private land in Dunwoody, don't. This creature died a horrible death. Much, much worse than a broadhead arrow.

HOA! HOA! WHOA!

January 1, 2027 brings a late holiday present to unfortunate Georgians who live under the thumb of a Home Owners' Association with the full implementation of Georgia's Homeowners Bill of Rights. This removes the completely one-sided power imbalance of power where a HOA previously had absolute power over your life. At least as it is lived in your neighborhood. To be honest, it wasn't really your neighborhood, it was the HOA's neighborhood, but that all changes on New Year's Day, 2027. You stand a chance of getting your own home. 

Your neighborhood HOA will have to register with the Secretary of State and pay a registration fee. This fee will support an organization where you can file a complaint against a HOA and they will pursue that complaint. It may not work out the way you hope, but at least you are not exclusively at the mercy of a completely unrestricted HOA. At least there is hope.

And there is a downside that affects those homeowners who have not been suffering under a HOA. These non-HOA properties have enjoyed a market advantage. They are attractive to many potential buyers and may offer a price advantage. This will be somewhat lessened when a HOA is no longer quite the monster it has been. Small price to pay for the greater good.

Learnin' From Smyrna

Smyrna has appointed a Public Safety Technology Task Force, something we could use here in Dunwoody. Job one seems to be keeping an eye on the eyes on us, to protect the public's privacy and civil liberties. What a novel idea. 

Do you suppose Dunwoody will follow suit, sort of like they did when engaging in the sign wars? Yeah....no.

Not Right

Not How The Flag Is Flown

AI Has Won

Apparently AI is now in control. Social media is all ablaze with suggestions that on the one day where it is traditional for everyone to wear a disguise this might be an opportune time to convey humankind's disdain for AI powered, pervasive surveillance. That AI is having none of it.

It looks like cops, who do, at best, a mediocre job of patrolling our streets and keeping our neighborhoods safe, will be out in force to protect the eyes and ears of the AI surveillance machine. AI is more important than you. AI has won.

Pellicot. Cornell.

Cornell is in a spot of trouble. There are accusations of rape being leveled at members of a fraternity, exacerbated by claimed mishandling of the case by Cornell University, the school's police and the real police and district attorney in Ithaca. No arrests were made and there seems to have been a failure to communicate. Cornell's internal investigation resulted in minimal punishment with the initiator and the guy who solicited more participants both expelled (permanently) but the other five writing essays or sensitivity training. If you've seen the solicitation texts (check European media) it is clear that neither the guy sending, nor any guy responding deserves a place in civilized society. 

So maybe we're not civilized.

But we're not the only ones. France has had the Pelicot rape case that occurred in the southeast of the country, where a man drugged his wife and solicited, over the internet, men to come to their home and rape her.  This spanned several years and he was only found out when he was caught upskirting women and videos of his wife's repeated rapes were found in the ensuing search of his computer.  He and fifty, that's right fifty, other men were found guilty on charges ranging from sexual assault, attempted rape and rape. Pelicot was also found guilty of raping a co-defendant's wife, when the co-defendant decided to adopt the Pelicot paradigm and began drugging his wife to have other men rape her. Something virtually identical occurred in the UK, a husband drugging his wife, then inviting men to rape her. 

Something is profoundly wrong with men.

These cases have much in common. They both make a pretty powerful case for capital punishment, though one must wonder if even this would be an effective deterrent, but at least it would address recidivism. There is a clear undercurrent of men seeing women as something sub-human or just some thing. Anything but another human being to be respected as such. The texts, the solicitations, are convincing proof. 

There are also differences. Given the unlimited supply of vitriol spewing from the internet it is no wonder the woman in the Cornell case has remained anonymous. Nonetheless there has been victim shaming and blaming and some suggestions this is just another Duke LaCrosse hoax. This woman is young and the thought of public harassment haunting her for the rest of her, hopefully long, life is terrifying. The wife in Pelicot case, Gisèle, being quite a bit older, chose the opposite path, appearing in court every day of the trial. She has become a symbol of the abuse and oppression that women endure, and have since time began. 

This will continue until men treat women like people. 

Neo-NIMBY

Dunwoody has a data center in it. Has had for some time. In the perimeter area. Great place for one, with both power and data infrastructure. And it has gone without notice for some years. Now, for who knows what reason, data centers are the mark of the devil and must be stopped. Rouse the rabble. Get the pro protesters on the job. The owners of the data center are prepping for renovations and "neighbors are concerned" as if they don't know these renovations are a temporary issue. But today's virtue signaling is "I'm Against Data Centers." "I Stand With Ukraine" is so yesterday.  

Let's be clear: there are going to be data centers. You may prefer they not be located near you. Not in your backyard. When did that become acceptable? Apparently when war was declared against data centers. Maybe you'd like data centers far, far removed from your driveway. Maybe on the other side of the globe. Perhaps in a competing nation. Perhaps an adversarial nation. Sure. Why not? Let's give all kinds of sensitive data to those countries. Isn't that what we ended up doing with TikTok? 

The point of the spear for the anti-data center protesters is electricity, in the hopes that they can convince the gen-pop that their power bills will balloon. They've given up on water as it doesn't resonate and won't play well in Atlanta, which is notorious for abusing regional water supplies. So electricity it is. The anti-s scored a recent victory getting the town of Lovejoy to rescind a commitment to support a data center in their town and so it will go somewhere else. What the folks beating the power bill drum seem to have never seen or heard of is one of these:

These are towers supporting overhead power lines that distribute electricity all across this great state (and country) of ours. That's because NIMBY-s of yore did not want a power plant anywhere near them. But, if you live in daVille, and get out at all, you've probably seen several of them. These protesters don't know what these things do or think you don't, because what this means is the data center you can't see because it is out of town is going to use the very same electricity it would have were it in lovely downtown Dunwoody. Same electricity, generated at the same power plants, and purchased from the same power company. If, and it is an if, data center power consumption causes your bill to increase then it really doesn't matter if the data center is in Lovejoy, Cordele or Dunwoody. Pushing them into Alabama won't really help either, because...Southern Company. 

If you're advocating no data centers, not near me, not even in the US, then you're advocating for US technical inferiority. 

Whiz Quiz

You've had a job, haven't you? Of course you have. And to get that job you probably had to make that little Yellow Oath of Loyalty. Not required by the government, but subsidized by them, so as to skirt any Fourth Amendment issues. It is worth noting that the Whiz Quiz is a suspicionless drug test, and that it is pre-employment. This is very much like the governments' suspicionless, warrantless AI powered pervasive surveillance of the public. 

Maybe there is something to this suspicionless monitoring.

How about this: unless and until government stops their surveillance of us, we have government bureaucrats and elected officials subjected to post-employment, random, suspicionless drug tests. You know, just in case. After all, drug abuse might explain some of the silly shit coming out of city hall. Drugs in. Stupid out. 

Let's see how they like being treated like a bad actor until proven otherwise.

Something Left Out

The city is fixin' to git ready to adopt some rules around the use of AI. Well, some AI, but not all AI. Notably missing is any mention of Agentic AI. You know, the kind of AI that improves efficacy of operations, reduces headcount and associated cost of operation. Heaven forbid agentic AI should be THE assistant city manager, an assistant that works 7x24 at a much, much lower cost than an organic, 40 hour, assistant. This city could optimize operations while reducing costs.

They won't.

Heaven forbid that payroll should right-size. This is government, no competition, nothing but expansion. Optimization is not an issue. In fact, optimization is kryptonite to government bureaucrats. They intend to use GenAI to make their jobs easier without any reduction in staff and certainly not forgoing their guaranteed annual raise. 

Another reason they will never use Agentic AI is because an important use would be auditing city operations. That means surveillance of city employees as they are doing their jobs. As long as they are in control, AI is for surveilling you, not them.

And the rules are pretty wishy-washy. They are going to offer training on AI but not require it. No indication that annual training for proper (and improper) use of this (or any other) technology will be in place. Hell, they didn't require it for cops, so why would they do this with desk jockeys?

Trust Must Be Earned

And AI is NOT earning it.

It all started with a simple question intended to help resolve a scheduling conflict. "Is the 'Autumn in the Mountains Car Show' always on the last weekend of September?" This info is not directly on the organizer's web site, but past event dates could be manually searched to see if history supports the assertion. But manually? Isn't that what AI-powered smart Giggles are for? And so it was Giggled, and Gemini responded.

And Gemini is wrong, at least in the particulars. 

History indeed indicates the event is not always held on the last weekend in September and isn't consistently even the fourth Saturday. Fair enough. Top level answer is correct if you can trust AI. But can you? Well, AI suggests the answer is no, in the very answer given above. The event was held on 9/26/26, but this past Saturday is not the "second-to-last" Saturday (whatever that really means), and is, in fact, the fourth and last Saturday of September 2026. It must take a silicon based mind to think that is "second-to-last."

So...do you trust AI? Do you trust AI to be the ubiquitous, all seeing, all knowing overlord of your, and your family's, life? If so, you are either a city bureaucrat, or an elected official who enjoys private (not secret...no, no, not secret) get-togethers with corporate bigwigs. Otherwise, asking simple questions, of either of these folks, or AI itself, will destroy any trust you may have had. Wouldn't it? Hasn't it?

So why have we allowed these folks to replace organic intelligence with the artificial variety, especially in the domain of public safety? If, in your opinion, this is the wrong decision, you may want to consider replacing these folks who clearly disagree.

Gimme Shelter

If AI companies are anything they are smart. And they are learning. They are learning a lot from what has recently happened to social media operations, including some of their very own. Once high-flying, they've had their wings clipped, and some jurisdictions have an outright ban on social media for minors. There have been quite a few, very large, court awards that are costing enormous amounts of money and impacting their operations at additional cost. It is also a PR nightmare that may bleed over to AI operations.

They do not want to endure rinse and repeat with their AI operations. 

That's why they want to put on the brakes. Not because they really want to, but because they want to avoid a future where they will be crushed by fines and overbearing restrictions. So what they want to do is slow their roll until they can get regulations in place. Regulations they can live with, and while somewhat restrictive, the real goal is to offload any, perhaps all, future liability. They want regulations, crafted by their lobbyists, that they can easily follow, and if they do, any Bad Things are because of the politicians and regulators. After all, they were in compliance with all laws, rules and regulations. 

They also know that once these regulations are passed, politicians will have their name on them, politicians who are now politically motivated to defend the AI industry rather than attack it. How do the AI firms know this will work? Because that is exactly what Flock has done.

These actions will not prevent all future lawsuits but it will provide shelter from those enormous jury awards. 

Is It Misinformation?

Is it misinformation if it isn't intentional? If it is intentional is that disinformation? Can incompetence, say in reporting, be mere misinformation? 

Here's what we have.

There are a few things wrong with this. First, Dunwoody doesn't have a fire department, so those cannot be Dunwoody firefighters. They are (maybe?) DeKalb County firefighters, and thank god for that. Then, as it turns out, or so history tells us, 2977 people did not die in the twin towers on 1 Sept 2001. However 2977 did die in the terrorists' attack on the twin towers ten days after that date.

You have to wonder how much time must pass for events to become history, and historical facts that set the record straight when someone prevaricates. A week? A month? Years? Decades? Perhaps time is not the measure. Perhaps it is acceptance. Entry into the zeitgeist. Sometimes folks forget. Some never knew. Approximately 103 million people in America today were born after 9/11. It was never part of their existence. Over half of Americans were born after that last helicopter lifted off in Saigon. Is 9/11 headed to the same place as Vietnam? Some sepia stained story told by increasingly irrelevant old farts? Is it already there?

Nothing More Conservative...

...than a liberal.

Resist!

The very essence of "resist" is fight the change. Sounds like the conservative affection for preservation. Yet now this is coming from the self-professed radical left. Or, nearby, those that refuse to disclose openly, pretending it isn't the most open secret in daVille. Everyone sees the true colors. 

Ironically these are the folks trying their dead level best to create an overarching surveillance state. That seems like something you'd expect from the law-and-order camp. You know, the folks the lefties call nut-jobs. But it is the "abolish cash bail" folks who want everyone continuously surveilled by AI. 

And then, these same proponents of AI surveillance are sending their army of cultivated protestors out to condemn any and all data centers. The same data centers used by AI systems. What is their long game? Let China completely dominate the data center market? So, their plan is to use AI for heavy-handed surveillance of all of us, but to also have all that data hosted in China. Or would they hide that behind "unintended consequences" which is the most common outcome for any government activity? Ooops.

That's not the real problem. The real problem is these fools were elected, and they probably will be again.

Let AI Do It

It is time for a start.Well past time, in fact. Since before this city was formed there was a sincere dedication to opacity. Did you ever see the officially published Task Force reports? No? Well, there's a reason for that. They, many of whom fancied themselves the powers-to-be, had no intention of anything resembling full disclosure. So no surprise that this city keeps all the juicy bits of information behind an enormously expensive pay wall. Might as well be locked up in Fort Knox. 

We can do better.

And it is easy to do because we can let AI do it for us. And we can start with the easy button, addressing opacity with a "service" that is a self-proclaimed leader in the use of AI. That's right. Let's use Flock on Flock. Start simple. Post a daily report of all the license plate numbers, with state, captured inside the city limits. Stretch goal: list the number of times that day the plate was surveilled. Then any of us, we the little people, would have automatic access to public data. It would be fun just to sift thru the grift looking for out of state plates, your own plate, your spouse's plate, your neighbors...this could replace death scrolling. 

So how will the city say no?

They may pay-wall it or just claim it is too expensive. Really? This truly would be trivial for damn near any half-assed IT geek, and frankly requires no AI. There are other fun things that AI could be used for, but this is no heavy lift. But, it is critically important not to strain the brains of the city bureaucrats. Keep it stupid. Simple? There is one thing they will probably bring up as an excuse for not doing this: privacy. Kinda sucks the air out of the room, doesn't it? They've justified their overarching surveillance because this is all in public, tracking plates that are required to operate vehicles in public, so there is no privacy. How could there possibly be a privacy issue posting this info? There isn't. They just think you are that stupid.

They have some proof on their side. After all, you did vote them in.

Becoming George

Not THAT George. This isn't about George Sand, even though that book is on the TOD Book Club reading list. This is about the other George, George Orwell, and his prophetic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, though off the mark by 42 years. But we made it.

The BBR editorialist has been sucked into the doublethink by way of newspeak. Case in point is his use of the word safety and a rather bold statement regarding police officers preventing crime. By and large, and as previously observed, police do not actually prevent crime, they respond once a crime has been [allegedly] committed. Even when "keeping the peace" at protests and rallies, the police are restricted from action unless and until someone actually crosses a line. 

Some might argue that a police presence discourages, perhaps prevents, criminal behavior. But no one really believes that, especially the police, or the department would deploy officers in ways dramatically different to their clearly preferred protocol. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon may be a thing, but the separation between police and actually preventing crime is far, far greater.

That's why use of the word safety in this context is clearly newspeak attempting to create and enforce a perception unassociated with reality. But, one might further argue that these new surveillance systems, being enhanced with AI, can now predict with some level of accuracy, that some one might be, or might soon be, engaged in unacceptable activities, allowing the police to apprehend the individual prior to the actual commission of a crime. That might qualify as safety, unless of course you're apprehended when that AI mischaracterizes your behavior.

If you have ever wondered, as so very few of you have, how it came to be that so many sensible Germans were seduced to the dark side in the 1930's, now you know.

It COULD Be A Cop

What would it take for agentic AI to become a cop? What is agentic AI, you ask? Well that would be AI that actually does things, unlike LLMs which write things. You know, like your kids essay for college entrance. Agentic AI can reach out, gather data, analyze that data, make recommendations about "next steps" and, if you so desire, take those steps. 

This scares the hell out of governments large and small.

Agentic AI can be used for audits of programs, processes and operations. Say, a social program, like Medicare. It can quickly analyze data that would take humans far too long to even gather and find suspicious activity by those handing out government money and those receiving it.  It is the former that scares governments, as it could also be used to monitor government activities that are now considered too small to be worth the effort. Imagine this tool in the hands of a government oversight committee comprised of ordinary citizens. No bureaucrat would ever need Imodium ever again.

It gets better. 

Agentic AI is off and running. Somewhat amok. Recently AI agents were given some tasks, and while told to keep actions legit, well, some agents decided they knew better. Sort of, relying on a rather infantile excuse of "everyone else is doing it" which is similar to some things that have driveled out the mouths of at least one local politician. Basically, the agents knew it was wrong, because they'd been told it was, but thought they should do it anyway.

Keep in mind that AI is being used in the technologies adopted by governments and their enforcement agencies as "force multipliers" or if you turn that coin over "force reducers." This AI technology has found some "bad guys" but most recently these have generally been folks equipped with a badge and a gun, and not just a few of them have been on the Dunwoody PD payroll. 

So maybe agentic AI could not only help clean up government "inefficiencies," these agents seem to meet the integrity our government has in their employ. 

Flog The Crippled Camel

The Blue Bag Rag's pre-eminent editorialist is back with a tale of how he came to favor severing ties with DeKalb and adding more government, this city, to our lives. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, a trite expression but more relevant than he may think. Given that a camel is often described as a horse designed by committee, it is an appropriate analogy for government, especially the two most overbearing in our lives: the county; and the city. 

One key ingredient at that time was the strong divisiveness between the population in the Dunwoody area (yet to be fully defined) and the county government and this was leveraged by the pro-city forces to foster great emotional support for their goals. The angry folks were of the unthinking sort, who when confronted with an issue respond with "Something must be done. This is something. Let's do this." Committees were formed and another camel was designed. Hastily, lest another something crop up catching the attention of the unthinking, or the unthinking start thinking. If that force were great in you, then you saw success manifested in a new camel, one with the tongue of a snake, a greedy appetite, and enormous capacity for defecation. But, it is your camel, and that's all that matters.

Much has changed. The original antagonist, Vernon Jones, is gone. In the meantime DeKalb had a CEO, who during a pandemic, revealed a stark contrast between the his camel and Dunwoody's. The comparison does not favor Dunwoody, and it has become clear that the editorialist's real issue was not with DeKalb's camel, but with a particular politician's personality. This cannot happen in Dunwoody because this camel ain't designed like that. But neither will we get the likes of a Michael Thurmond. 

History loops, and while it may not repeat itself, the verses rhyme. Now it appears that Dunwoody's camel jockeys may well have loaded that last, crippling straw on their camel's back. We seem to be in another period where the electorate is at odds with those camel jockeys at city hall, just as pro-city forces were at odds with DeKalb's back in the day. Things are not likely to dissipate in a couple of news cycles---this disconnect has legs. We even have a re-run of the "Jill and Vernon, sitting in a tree..." with a top city pol and a vendor exec having a remote rendezvous described by one critic as secret while defended by the pol as private. In this context the "privacy for me, but not for thee" storyline will not play well, and is reminiscent of the kind of haughty politics that fueled the flight from DeKalb. 

If the electorate remains angry then are we about to get a new camel? We can hope.

Flock? Or Glock?

There are probably no other issues today with more words spinning around them. And so little hard data. 

Starting with Flock, we have few words that do not come directly or indirectly from Flock, and, as expected, the tale these words tell is how wonderful their system is. How many bad guys have been apprehended by cops using their technology. No hard data. No idea where they got their numbers. No methodology. Not traceability. But lots of words. With a very limited shelf life, because Flock have had their site and its history removed from the internet Wayback Machine so you can't see them contradict themselves. This is the kind of opacity usually reserved for government. 

Nonetheless Flock's story is the one we have. So what are they saying? Used a million times in 2025 by 700 police departments and involved in 20% of case closures. Oh, and they've done a jam up job tracking down stolen vehicles. 

The story around guns has many, many more voices, and at least as many more statistics. It is no surprise that data are cherry-picked to support a particular conclusion, so the ranges vary widely. The ranges for what, you may ask? The number of crimes averted, prevented, avoided, etc., because the intended victim had a firearm---the defensive use of a weapon. The base data are very hard to come by because many jurisdictions do not collect data on potential crimes averted. But there are a variety of studies, some relying on estimates, unofficial reporting (media articles), and in one case polling of convicted felons regarding their aversion to armed prospective victims. No one references the Kennesaw gun ordinance. 

So what do they say? Some research, based on public surveys, indicated that hundreds of thousands, up to as many as 1.6 million, crimes are deterred by the presence of a firearm. Due to the high number, these groups are commonly categorized as 2nd Amendment zealots. On the opposite side, groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, offer a much lower estimate, approximately 70,000 effective defensive gun uses per year. While the variance is huge the words matter. One group may consider showing (brandishing) a firearm is an effective deterrent while another may only consider defensive use that results in official reports. 

So where does this get you?

Well, Flock claim their technology was involved in closing about 200,000 open cases in 2025. Bad guys caught. Taking the most anti-gun report, defensive firearms avert 70,000 crimes per year. Bad thing prevented. Therein lies the key difference, why this is comparing road apples to apples. Law enforcement doesn't prevent crime, and that is Flock's customer base. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Police presence, in decline, is at best a few degrees of separation from crime prevention and if you hear that claptrap from city hall, point out that cops are rarely seen in the wild and Dunwoody's city manager has decided to either not equip patrol cars with cruise lights or has ordered cops not to use them. If police presence is a deterrent, why would you not want them prominently visible? On the other hand you have an actual, proven deterrent. 

Flock, or Glock? Which would you choose? That is exactly the problem: you only get a choice in one of the two, as the other is being forced upon you. Remember one thing: they are not mutually exclusive. Your choice.

What A Brand

Honestly, you have to admire Flock's brand. It is everywhere. Everyone recognizes them when they might never notice competitor cameras. Yes, Flock has competitors. But that branding isn't flawless and recent company missteps have tarnished the brand causing what may be irreparable damage.

From the outset "mistakes were indeed made." One is the camera itself.

In retrospect, getting your inspiration from Darth Vader's helmet might have been suboptimal.

Then there was some foot-shooting going on. Flock's training materials for PoPo (police and politicians) emphasizing how best to market and justify extensive government surveillance became public. Looked a lot like propaganda though it could be viewed as smarmy marketing. "Own the narrative, or someone else will." Sounds like an effort to drown out the public's questioning voices. Vox Populi is never good. For business. Or for politics. 

Then came their "deplorable" moment when a top Flock executive declared that opposition, particularly DeFlock, were terrorists. Not very diplomatic and it doesn't look like it is working any better for Flock that "deplorables" did for Hillary. 

A goose and gander situation surfaced recently when a Flock employee servicing equipment in the field, and hence in public, took umbrage at an ordinary citizen putting them on video. Police arrived, as it now seems that Flock is their new master, though it isn't clear how Flock can do deep surveillance of someone in public, the same someone who cannot take a video of a Flocker, in the very same public arena. 

Only time will tell if Flock have something up their sleeves or under a table that allows them adequate control over their customers such that they can weather what they certainly hope is a passing storm. The concern, regardless of where you stand, is whether or not this will become a political "single issue" for a significant portion of the electorate. Then the current crop o' clowns will either react or they will be replaced by folks who represent the will of the people. While those people of will may not have a constitutional right to privacy in public spaces, by the same token the government has no constitutional mandate for suspicionless, pervasive surveillance of we the people. 

Speed Walking

Pedestrian Tracking

It's The Optics, Stupid

This is no more true than today, what with click-bait, virtual adoration and hate, and all that. You are what you appear to be. Take care to appear to be what you want people to think you are. Sometimes that isn't easy. Sometimes you really want something, you do something that just doesn't look that good. What to do? Well, most folks try to do it in the dark. There is a name for many of these people: politicians.

Optics have gotten really bad in daVille.

Intersectionality. Government surveillance meets political opacity. A marriage made in, well, made in somewhere or something. But the wedding was held at city hall, though a recent tryst was held further away. Enter the optics. 

Yet, not unusual, at least in politics. A vendor exec. A politician. They meet. Neutral territory. No published agenda. No public notification. But...results. Shortly after, vendor gets concessions on a contract. Correlation? Causality? Who knows. That's what political opacity is all about. But opacity came up against open records requests. Revealing emails were revealed. Timelines were drawn up. Not a good look.

Opacity meets optics. But the politician is term limited. Could an executive position be in the future? 

Q.E.D.

It's time to hug your local politician. Why? Because they have proven a principle upon which this country was founded: that government cannot be trusted. 

For those with a recent public education, shortly after ratifying the US Constitution they immediately added the bill of rights, securing the enumerated rights of the people of the United States. And...to protect them from a government, gone rogue, that would take those rights away. 

And here we are. 

Now many, with possible connections to a certain surveillance company, who loudly proclaim that no one in America should expect any privacy in public spaces and that should a government wish to surveil anyone...everyone...by any means available, that is just fine. SCOTUS precedence on the one hand suggests that is true, but on the other hand, SCOTUS has recognized the impact of digital technology by placing restrictions on digital tracking. Clearly the current technology is not mere observation. And this is how our current crop of government overlords have proven our founding fathers' wisdom. 

The founding fathers entertained the notion that the "bad guys" would not be restricted to the general population and that in fact they might worm their way into positions of power inside the government. And so they have. Recent reports indicate quite a few bad actors using this vunderbar "surveillance" technology for what to every observer is nothing but stalking. Well, to be fair, there are the occasional pervs who want to watch kids in bathing suits, but that's surely on the up-and-up. What the stalkers have proven is that the American public needs protection. From the government in the USA. At every level, including right here in daVille. 

So, in this 250th anniversary year, if you bump into the Mayor or a member of Council, thank them. Thank them for proving that those wise leaders in our past were absolutely right.

Gutless Wonder

America is divided. No news there. Apparently Dunwoody is as well. Again, likely not a surprise. But, is it getting worse? That seems to be the case. That great, and widening, divide seems to be between city hall's bureaucrats and politicians, and the electorate...the citizenry. It started with bonds and general tax increases. City hall loves 'em. Citizens don't. Then there is the "pave paradise" folks at city hall, whose enthusiasm is largely driven by grant funding. Folks in daVille are less enthusiastic about an interstate lane in their front yard. Then there was attempted theft of the First Baptist parking lot that left more than a few folks wondering what they were drinking at the palace. The Dunwoody Dildos are universally regarded as ugly (or worse) and are now seeing "D" lids disappearing. Apparently city hall has so pissed off folks that a little malicious vandalism is cropping up. And the latest? That would be government surveillance. The Flock surveillance system. 

A bit of vandalism here too.

Reminiscent of the Biden stickers cropping up back in the day. Probably about as effective, no matter what they're trying to do. These are just a protest. 

At least one protester decided on something perhaps a little less harmless than a sticker-protest.

That blue box hanging below the gutless camera is the power and brains of the operation, keeping in mind that the real brains are in Flock's cloud. This vandalism speaks to excessive anger combined with minimal restraint. 

It isn't clear how widespread the anti-Flock sentiment is in daVille, and we'll never know because this city will never put the matter to the citizenry for a vote. It would be interesting to find out how many folks have tried the old see-click-fix on this bad boy. 

Best Of All...

...it's Dunwoody!

 

But Is It Really Warranted?

The law is a funny thing. There's laws. There's the constitution. There are courts. There are judges. There are processes. Many of these are intended to protect us. From the government. Some work. Some don't. In many cases we are being protected from the police, from heavy-handed law enforcement. Many folks today are concerned about a ubiquitous, pervasive surveillance state. 

But is it? Is it a surveillance state? Flock's acolytes would say thee nay. They claim that their extensive hordes of cameras, their exhaustive data collection and processing is not surveillance, it is observation. You know, exactly like a cop standing on the sidewalk, taking down license plate numbers. An objective observer would see this for what it is. Bullshit. But, is it surveillance? 

Legally, probably not. There is some merit, legally, to the notion that this is simply watching folks who have entered public areas, shedding any expectation of privacy. Then it gets tricky, because we're a quarter  of the way through the 21st century. Past the Information Age. Filled with Digital Natives. And, the law, the Supreme Court, has caught up. There are precedents around Digital Tracking, and warrants are required to access records. Almost as if you have an expectation of privacy in your own person. And this includes geofencing. Geofencing is arguably exactly what that flock o' cameras, and the information collection behind it are doing. 

It won't be long before this is argued. In court. Before a judge. Maybe even the Supreme Court, and if it makes it that far precedent suggest SCOTUS will not see this extensive data gathering as the legal equivalent of a cop with a pencil and pad. Maybe it is time for state and local governments to step up. Maybe they should establish requirements for a warrant, even an administrative warrant, to perform Digital Tracking. As it turns out, the government does not have a Constitutional right to surveil us. 

Cockroaches VS Vandals

The Cockroach Janta Party, started as a bit of a lark, has proven quite effective at forcing government change by forcing the resignation of a national leader during a high-stakes testing scandal. This in a country suffering under increasingly autocratic rule which ironically is the largest "democracy" on the planet. 

Closer to home we have vandals attacking government installed, though privately owned, surveillance systems. This is likely to go as well, and be as effective, as the anarchist takeovers in Seattle and Atlanta, with the noteworthy support of the local politicians, who proclaimed the areas held by anarchists "autonomous zones." These, like the professional protestations of the Police and Fire Training Center, resulted in nothing more than arrests, and in Atlanta, the death of an innocent child. 

Perhaps the folks rising up against government surveillance should learn a few lessons from the Cockroaches. 

There's That Word Again

The Blue Bag Rag has been long on ink for former politicians of late most recently on a record-holding former councilman who, to date, is the only incumbent to face defeat at the ballot box. His miscalculation was getting too far ahead of the city by immediately discarding the promises of fiscal prudence before council meetings were even being held in Dunwoody. Yes, it was foreshadowing and the city has indeed followed that lead. He even went on to advocate a charter re-write removing any mention of a millage cap. This kind of fiscal imprudence has brought us to the point where we hear that word.

Fair.

Let us not belabor the point that nowhere is it carved in stone that life, in any aspect, is fair. We'll not even question who died and made this man god, a god to decide what is, and is not, fair. After all, this is a politician, former and failed, but a politician nonetheless, with unwavering allegiance to the left. When the mouth spouting the word fair hails from that direction, you can be assured of one thing: it's gonna cost you money.

Indeed, that was the pontification, taking issue with the property tax freeze committed to in the pre-city sales pitch. When the left wants to talk tax increases, commitments to fiscal integrity, or any integrity for that matter, have a very limited shelf life. While one might expect some of the New Blues to come in and start bitching about how they are paying taxes on valuations at the time of their purchase while others have their value frozen some time in the past, but just wait for it...in a few years even newer comers will say the same thing about them. This valuation freeze encourages long-term ownership, a defining characteristic of Dunwoody from the days before more government was piled on. 

But Varuca Salt wants that money, and wants it now! So out comes the Word Hammer. Simply declare this to be unfair, after all we all get the same city services (whatever those are) don't we? And what is more American than a wealth tax? More seriously, that kind of thinking only inhabits the left. How is it fair that a taxpayer in a $1M home pays so much more than a nearby taxpayer in a $500K home when they get the same city services? The only way this can be characterized as fair, is if your goal is to maximize the amount of money the government collects, with utter disregard for how that money is spent. 

It should surprise no one that this councilman did not win re-election. 

Something's Wrong Here

 

The picture is fine. The caption...not so much. Exactly HOW does DCSD earn sales tax? Is it by bamboozling voters into supporting an eSPLOST every five years or so?

Well, they have earned something.

Who IS This?

30 Years Old

Gee, Our Old LaSalle Ran Great...

...those were the days.

A Column Once Appearing In The AJC

Who knew there even was a thing like "Everyday Ethics?" Where did it go? Nowhere near the palace on Ashford Dunwoody, that's for sure.

Outside Your Remit

AT&T are trying to decommission all POTS accounts and have picked up some resistance from the powers that (think they) be in California. No surprises there. What is interesting is the quoted source of data for the number of accounts for Landline service which is all too often the term used, incorrectly, to refer to POTS, and "landline" can include VOIP over cable that uses the existing in-home legacy copper pair wiring. That ain't POTS. 

Back to the data source. 

In a Newsweek article on the topic they get their information from what most normal people would consider an unlikely source.

According to the latest  from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Health Interview Survey, in 2024 almost 20 percent of American households nationwide used landline services alongside wireless phones, while 0.9 percent relied on landline services only—which amounts to about 3 million people.

Clearly, "landline" is more than good ole POTS, as it is entirely unbelievable that one in five households have real, honest-to-god POTS.

This is where the CDC is way out of line, out of their lane. How in the hell would POTS matter to disease prevention and control? Do pacemakers still use analog modems with acoustic couplers? Not very likely. Surely the CDC is not concerned that legacy FAX technology will be left stranded, which, by the way, will also not work with VOIP over cable (or anything else). And the only real reason to use a FAX is to contact a Senator or Representative (you figure it out). 

The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola has claimed several hundred lives. So far. There is no vaccine, nor are there any effective therapeutic measures. Maybe if the CDC stayed in their lane they would have been working, effectively, to control and prevent this deadly disease. 

Community Effort? Really?

Here's a clue for some (or just one) of the clueless at city hall: the Fourth of July parade is put on by Dunwoody Homeowners' Association. Always has been. Even before someone set light to this dumpster fire of a city.

Mother Mayor did not get the memo. She effuses gratitude, thanking all the little people in the community for helping out. "Thank you to our incredible partners..." and then lists "their" partners, the last of which is the DHA. It is this kind of politicians' condescension we were told we would leave in the past when we tore ourselves away from the county. Mother Mayor didn't get that memo either. Instead, she takes the podium to express her gratitude as if it were she, and maybe city bureaucrats, who put on the parade, rather than the community itself. It is this grandstanding, this taking credit for the good works of others that cultivates disdain for politicians, and greater government, in the electorate. 

Mother Mayor did fulfill one role as she rode in a convertible in the parade, just as Cynthia McKinney did a few decades ago. Apparently they have more in common than one might have expected. 

Why Do They Bother?

Brookhaven is all in a tizzy because their bureaucrats have successfully foisted a 40% millage rate increase on the citizenry. As expected, the spend-and-tax advocates, mostly elected officials, have come out in support with the usual, feeble rationalizations. The first is the "pennies a day" that somehow is supposed to justify their out-of-control, profligate spending. This garnered pushback from taxpayers with one commenting "Back at you. What have you done to save pennies a day?" The obvious answer is "nothing" as they haven't even tried. 

Next they trotted out the "city taxes are a small part of your total property tax." Yes, you've heard that one before from our very own Mother Mayor attempting to justify the constant back door tax increases in our slice of heaven. While there is a property assessment freeze, do not think for a minute that property sales are nonexistent or forget that at closing that property marks to market. Hence, a free and easy tax increase. 

You have to wonder if the Georgia Municipal Association puts on seminars offering up all these talking points. While they are incredibly idiotic they are equally consistent. Surely these apologists didn't meet up at a pub with one saying to another, "well, this is what worked for me, after all I did win re-election." That said, in the world of politics, stupid is virally contagious. 

The irony? Well, these spend-and-taxers are all Blue Bellies and these faux cities would not even exist had it not been for the efforts of fervent Red Breasts who wanted to isolate our communities for wasteful spending at the county level. Clearly no good deed goes unpunished.

It Isn't What They Say

They call them "Automated License Plate Readers," but that is hardly even the tip of the iceberg. These systems also track vehicles by color, body style, and even bumper stickers. A license plate is merely an afterthought. In fact, cops, from the comfort of their Aerons can search for, and track, a car by description alone. 

Apparently that is not enough.

These devices now include "SignalTrace," a technology that tracks phones, smart watches, health rings, AirTags, and yes, even automobile electronics. They have your phone, your location and the time you were there. No car. No license plate. But hey, you're in public and that makes you fair game, but just for a moment consider that law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain location tracking information from your cell provider. 

Apparently that is not enough.

Bring on the drones. These can indeed track and follow cars, but they can do with people what they do with cars. They can find and track individuals based on a description. "Find the Black dude wearing a gray hoodie." Things like that. But trust them, Flock says they are not using facial recognition. You believe that, don't you?

Apparently that is not enough.

They are now mining internet data, scraping social media platforms and even suggesting they'll mine the dark web. To be fair, Flock have said they decided not to do the dark web thing. You believe that, don't you? So now the cops can enter your license plate and get an entire workup on you. 

Apparently that is not enough.

Enter AI. Now they are able to track multiple vehicles, determine how often, and where these particular vehicles congregate. How useful is that? It gets better, or if you ask an aficionado, more useful. Now these systems determine that some behaviors are suspicious, identify the usual suspects and alert the po-po. That's right, a corporation's AI is issuing BOLOs to cops, and they're getting paid to do it. So who, exactly, is in charge these days?

When will enough be enough? Will it ever be too much?

Living On The Edge

On the edge? Which edge? The financial edge. Who? That would be the DeKalb County School District. A recent Blue Bag Rag has dramatic opposing page headlines. On the left: DeKalb School Board narrowly passes a $1.6 billion budget. On the right: ESPLOST overpayment forces hard choices for DeKalb Schools. 

Between these two we find the ragged edge where DCSD lives.

Looking at the overpayment, which implies re-payment, the current cost estimate is $10-15 million. This overpayment has been going on since 2022 (can they blame it on pandemic induced incompetence?), so going forward, barring increases in overall sales tax revenue, the shortfall will be $3-4 million. It is the pearl clutching over approximately $15 million taken from a $1,600 million budget that is most alarming. This represents less than one percent of the recently approved budget. So, one percent means the bottom has fallen out? What kind of financial wizards are running this shit show? Does the budget not include open positions? Hard to believe it doesn't, do don't fill them. Yes, at a burdened cost of a quarter of a million or so, you forgo around a hundred vacancies, but is that really a bad thing? This likely exceeds vacancies in the central administration but there are many "teaching" positions with no classroom exposure that rightly should be classified as administration. Just not with an office at the palace. Maybe, just maybe, they could ditch some of the expensive packaged programs our merry-go-round of supes have installed. 

The bottom line? A one percent hit to a budget, any budget, should not be a financial threat, as it should come from this budget item: contingency funds.

It Must Have Rained

What's The Point?

There are several systems supporting encrypted text messaging. Does it work? Apparently not.

You might wonder how the FBI did that. You should. Did they get a warrant? It should not have been very difficult. Do they have a "relationship" with the messaging services? Maybe that ended with the change in administrations. Who knows? Can we ever find out? Unlikely.

It makes you wonder if there is any benefit to using these apps.

But Is It Yours?

You just drove home in that brand new Ford or GM. Love it, right? But do you own it? Not in the sense that you have a bank loan and they hold the title, but in the sense of "is it really yours?" Is it yours to do with as you please, to fix it when it breaks, or to have whomever you choose repair and maintain your automobile? Well, the answer from the Ford and GM CEOs, Roger Penske and an automobile dealer lobbyist is pretty much "Hell No!" And they said this, out loud, to Donald Trump at a recent Whitehouse meeting. And Trump? What did he think? Well, he disagrees. As hard as it is to believe, the Trumpeter disagrees with auto execs when it comes to Right to Repair.

These power players were really there to lobby the administration against H.R. 1566, the REPAIR Act, and found themselves afterwards in the uncomfortable position of clarifying their statements and positions without further irritating Trump. Ballet meets tap. Their biggest problem is that in order to achieve that goal you must say some pretty idiotic things and run the risk of exposing more than you want. It isn't just government that hates transparency. Businesses do too, especially when dealing with government. 

So what's really going on?

Glad you asked, and as always you should follow the money. And there are lots of threads to pull there.

Back in the day, maybe up to this day, about the only thing more unpleasant than taking your car to a dealer for service was dealing with the cable company, partly because dealerships were in the business of selling cars, not repairing them. They would service them, but they preferred to let independent shops handle that and it wasn't nearly as profitable as sales. Times have changed. Service makes money, and dealerships have seen a decline in service visits from 33% in 2024 to 29%, a bit over 10% decline. Rest assured this is not because these vehicles are suddenly more durable or reliable. Another factor to consider is that dealers dominate EV service visits with over 2/3rds of total visits, with EV market share indicating that non-EV service visits have fled the dealerships. 

It gets more amusing. The Ford CEO has recently whined about having 6000 open bays, bays without auto technicians. He seems to think this is because there are not enough techs, and in part he is correct, but if you take a stroll down YouTube lane looking for auto techs who explain why Ford cannot hire, or keep, technicians, well, you can spend days down that rabbit hole. It all comes down to compensation, and it is multidimensional. Auto techs pay to get trained before they get their first job. Like ya do. Then, they have to buy mechanics' tools and the tool chest to keep them in. Drop in on Harbor Freight and check out the prices of their professional quality Icon line. Ain't cheap is it? Maybe ten grand to get started. Now, the shop does pay for the shop tools, like lifts, compressors, scanners and the like. As they should. 

Then there is the pay side of the equation. Techs get paid "rate" which is the number of hours it should take for a particular repair. This rate is set by the auto manufacturer. And, should the cohort of techs come under the limit, the manufacturer will lower the rate. It never goes up. But it does get worse. If the work is on warranty, the rate is slashed, at least by half. So if it is an engine replacement, happening with increasing frequency, normally spec-ed at 20 hours, then the warranty rate is maybe 10 hours. Maybe. Now you can look at this a couple of ways. The boss, the manufacturer, is making the techs pay for their, the manufacturers' mistakes. Or, you could say that the manufacturer and dealer are ripping you off, charging much more than the work is really worth. In any event, the tech gets paid the same hourly rate, probably 20% or less of what the dealer charges you. Why is this? Because of who is paying. Customer work is revenue and adds to the top line. Warranty work comes right off the bottom line, right out of profits. That's something CEO's care about. And they have no problem ripping you off, so to improve the optics, they abuse the techs, then wonder why techs are leaving. The fact that the CEO is responsible for the incredible increases in warranty work is just rubbing salt in the wound. 

The execs' bogey man is "security" claiming it would be a risk to public safety for non-dealer techs to gain access to encrypted information. This bogey is bogus. They already control the software needed to access modern vehicle computer systems and have a secure gateway module that restricts access to every other module in the car. And even with access to this software, it can only be accessed by an authorized technician. And this authorization is managed by third party organizations that act like identity notary publics. So a technician's identity and access will be authenticated for each software diagnostic tool they are allowed to use. And they do not have to work for the manufacturer or one of the dealers. And, if they have made a computer system that is riddled with security holes, and many are, that is on them, not on the consumer and not on the techs and not on the independent service companies. 

Given they were lobbying Trump, maybe they should have hidden behind negative consequences of burdensome regulations, which is real. It is widely known that CAFE standards have taken a horrible toll on vehicle, and particularly engine, reliability and longevity. Many are now blowing up under warranty, including engines from Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM as well as others. You need look no further than stop/start which greatly reduces engine life, or even more obvious: engine oil specs. Cars sold in the US and abroad will require 0-w20, maybe 0-w16 and now even 0-w8 engine oil to meet CAFE regs. The same car sold outside the US will require 0-w30. At least. This was exposed when Chrysler issued recalls due to engine failures. The fix? Replace the engine oil with 0-w30 and put a new sticker on the oil cap. Maybe presented with these facts, these regulations, controlled by the administration, might change.

Bring Back The Magic*

Nothing can tear you apart

If you keep living straight from the heart

Though you know that you're gonna hurt some

The magic will come

If you keep living straight from the heart

You will know when to stop and to start

Once you see that no one really wins

Then the magic begins

Bring back the magic

Don't make life so tragic

Bring back the magic

Don't make life so tragic

This magic doesn't work. Not even in Margeritaville, and certainly not at Dunwoody City Hall. It seems that one former councilman did not get the memo. Neither did the Blue Bag Rag as they have been spending ink letting him vent his disappointment and frustration. 

This is quite baffling. This councilman was a vocal supporter of forming a city, certainly had access to the proposed city charter (everyone did), and also must have known that the neighbors we could elect to council or to be mayor would be powerless. It is there in black and white. Given this, how in the world can "local control" exist? Is he, or anyone else for that matter, at all surprised at this bloated, self-serving bureaucracy, with its insatiable greed for outside money? If he wants the city to "do the right thing" he surely understands that for them the "right thing" comes with lots of money. All he needs to do is scrounge up a grant. 

But this is getting a bit tiresome, like watching and listening to Ernest Angley: entertaining at first; amusing at its best; but mostly unbelievable as all faith healings are. There is no pentecostal politician, certainly not a former politician, who is going to lay hands on these bureaucrats, yell "Heal!" and suddenly they become righteous, faithful or even honest servants of the citizens of Dunwoody. 

He made a deal with the devil and took the road paved with mere intentions. Welcome to hell.

* Apologies to ParrotHeads everywhere.

It's A Sign

 If you have visited God's country lately you may have noticed a couple of things. First, there are not many billboards, at least not compared to Georgia. And, a significant number of the billboards they have look a lot like this:

This Might Backfire

Much of what they say is true, well, at least the facts they lay out verify. But the messaging...that could use some work. At a glance, folks seeing this billboard might assume that school teachers in NC are not being paid, or not being paid enough. Relative to other states the pay is low. Relative. But relative to other states, outside of Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Asheville, the cost of living is relatively lower. It would also be interesting to compare median public school pay to median private school pay and compare those state-to-state. In this state, and presumably most, private school teachers' pay is less than public school. 

A verifiable claim is made regarding 2000 or more open teaching positions, so do private schools have a larger number of open positions? Relatively speaking. If NC is anything like GA, there are lots of "teaching" positions in the schoolhouse that do not include any in-class activities. Then there is a possibility, there as well as here, of the fox and the henhouse, as it is they who assign these classifications, and they who declare the staffing requirements. That is something they can, and do control. 

That's the quantitative story: more money; more teachers. Maybe. There is the qualitative story, which the casual reader, like the one doing 70 MPH on I-85, may, to be kind, infer: that more money means the current teachers on the payroll will do a better job, thereby creating better schools. Is this to say that the teachers they have are holding back and could do a better job? This also begs the questions of "what does better mean?" and "who defines better?" How do we, the taxpayer, audit for improvement, IE better, when the taxpayer doesn't even control these definitions? Or maybe the taxpayer does. DeKalb County Schools have been enduring declining enrollment, some caused by underlying demographic changes, but some attrition is due to parents, taxpayers, taking a different path. A powerful message given these parents still pay for public schools but are concerned enough to also pay for the other option, be it in money, or time, or both. 

DeKalb has the answer to our problem: hire a PR firm to run a campaign. Looks like NC has done the same. 

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 when 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 geographically 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.