A thought that immediately comes to mind is the law against speeding when it was 55. I wonder how often that law was broken out in the Country along I-94 and I-35? Probably by more than one of us, wouldn't you think?
We do not have adequate police to keep people from not only "blowing" crack smoke on the corner, but also shooting each other, and not enough to arrest the drug dealers for sure. We do not have enough police to regularly investigate hit and runs when there is only damage to property. If that is true, and we know they say it is, then how in hell is there enough police to enforce meaningless laws such as blowing leaves? Of course this will probably become one of those laws that are arbitrarily enforced so much that it undermines any faith in the police through no fault of the police themselves. I can imagine some woman getting a ticket for a leaf blower when some gangbanging jerk is rattling her entire neighborhood with his rap blazing out the obscenities someone is doing to his "bitch" sitting at the corner in his ride. Sitting with what seems no fear of the police. Yeah, I guess that would be par for Minneapolis. All concentration on "Fluff" with no real substance.
It all reminds me of something that has been attributed to Walt Dedzic when there was the famous "don't cut the park grass" one summer. The City ticketed the residents around parks if their grass was more than 6 inches long in their yard, yet the park across the street was a hayfield with two-foot long grass. Walt supposedly said, " Some 'folks' need to stop smoking the grass and start cutting the damn grass!" We need some folks to stop smoking wacky long enough to stop with these wacky ideas and laws.
And would people stop attributing these silly things to Democrats and liberals. These are not "Democratic" ideas, and they sure as heck are not "liberal"; these are wacky ideas. The Republicans also have their lunatic fringe advocating for wacky ideas; they just never get elected in Minneapolis so we sometimes forget it.
We have very real life problems facing the City of Minneapolis and its people, and we have those who have been elected to solve those problems sitting around thinking of cool "fluff" instead. Just a suggestion for the politicos, when there are no longer any open drug dealing on corners, and kids are no longer being shot in the head, then ask us what "fluff" we might need. Until then stay the hell out of our yards, and our bedrooms.
Now I might be a little over the edge on this. Yesterday I received word that Marino, a kid that grew up in and around my house with my kids, was shot in the head in a grass selling deal gone bad. With such real life things going on and largely ignored in our City, I just have a real hard time listening seriously to the politicians who are supposed to be addressing those real problems, get heated up about someone's darn leaf blower.
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village, Phillips Community, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis
"The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?"
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