If I was in his county, I would get burner phones and call in tips on the people who pissed me off on any given day.

Let's burn off the $1M with 0 results.

> Get off your iPhone and care, will ya?

Ahem.

Samsung, not Iphone.

I saw this on Drudge and was appalled. It may not be a big deal; the world is full of idiots. Some are in Sheriff's offices and some are outside Sheriff's offices.

Yet when I saw that story (headline only), my first impulse was to call the West Los Angeles police department [(310) 444-0702, 1663 Butler Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025, six blocks from my front door] to let them know that I fucking hate government. No qualifiers, no contextual details: I think "government" is a problem.

We're Americans. No masks. We're not Mexican wrestlers, pretending that we have too many responsibilities in a world of oppression to be seen as the heroes that really we are. (We're not even addled Argentine bass players, toying with the iconography of lawlessness.) If it's really going to be matter of picking teams, righteous Americans will happily surrender any advantage from surprise.... We have nothing better to do with our lives than fight about such things in public. We like our Negroes shouty, our bitches menstrual, our gays theatrically swish and our public servants humble. We know the legal and spiritual charter of our nation well enough to see that public-payroll fuckballs like Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw are far more powerful enemies of the Republic than are a couple of violent orphaned boys from the third world.

Anyway, Amy, I love disagreeing with you about stuff (because when I do, I'm always 100% right).

But for several days each week you're likely to read the tea leaves just as I do.

> supposed to report any conversations they have
> with, oh, people like me, who don't think of
> government as a nice big teat for us to nuzzle
> up to

"Every single incident, whether it's Newtown, that movie theater, or the guy who spouts off at work and then goes home and kills his wife and two kids -- in every single case, there were people who said they knew ahead of time that there was a problem," Bradshaw said. "If the neighbor of the mom in Newtown had called somebody, this might have saved 25 kids' lives."

The trouble is, you could find people who'd say this about anybody. Here's a nefarious sociology experiment that would be unethical to do, but possibly instructive: Go into a community, select a perfectly innocent family, and secretly pack them off somewhere on a nice vacation. Then send in the cops to flash their lights, string crime scene tape around the house, and canvass the neighborhood for insight on the "horrific crime" that just took place. I'll bet a dime you'll find somebody who'd say, "You know, I always thought there was something wrong with that Lester Smith in there!"

For every case that results in violence, there are thousands of people voicing displeasure with the attitude of their public servants, including this idiot Bradshaw, or Mayor Stop'nFrisk.

Let's just repeal the 13th Amendment and bring back slavery, so our self-anointed betters can run our lives for us.

Uhm, think on this a minute. A Sheriff already HAS a network of informants: the social contacts he and his deputies use every day.

This is just a feature of the fear-addicted state. The funding will go to six or so people, who will be gone shortly.

But I predict a public addled by distractions will renew this automatically, like they do Special Purpose Local Option Sales Taxes - the sign that someone is wasting money.

I bet the good Sheriff has to pay pensions rather than put gas in cruisers, too.

I live in in West Boca Raton in Palm Beach County. This NOT going over well. You can already hear the rumblings of like-minded folks, like me, who are readying themselves for all sorts of 4th ammendment violations. We already have a problem with power tripping cops in the county. We do have three really nice officers who live on our street who are probably not gonna get invited to a whole lot of block parties this year though due to fear that if one of us say the wrong thing, we'll be hauled in. A few of us are actually talking about planning a protest regarding this.

We already have a neighbor who uses the police non-emergency line and the cop neighbors like a personal security unit. I can't wait for her to get going on this one. I'll likely be the first one called on with all my railing against the government these days. I've already decided that if an officer comes knockin', I ain't lettin' 'em in.

We're all hoping that after enough false alarms, this will be reversed but that hasn't worked for the TSA so far soooooo.... not holding out much hope. Besides, once the "raids" begin, it's going to take a lot for the people to trust the local BSO again. You can't unring the bell.

Sabrina: I used to live in South Florida. I'm guessing here, but I'll guess that this idea is being promoted by some condo commando that lives in Palm Beach proper. When I lived in that area, my impression of Palm Beach was that it was the world's most expensive open-air asylum. (Well, that and maybe Lantana.)

Yet when I saw that story (headline only), my first impulse was to call the West Los Angeles police department [(310) 444-0702, 1663 Butler Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025, six blocks from my front door] to let them know that I fucking hate government. No qualifiers, no contextual details: I think "government" is a problem.

And I love you for that, Crid.

Cousin Dave,

Yyyyyyeep.

I love the area I live in but it's got it's 'characters'. I live in an HOA. They HOA folks are almost worst than the condo commandos.

It doesn't help that as many of us that are against this, there are just as many for it. It's the ol' "well, if you've got nothing to hide" attitude...

I think I am gonna have to supress the urge to punch a lot of people in the teeth in the coming year.

> And I love you for that

And it's fun to be loved... Especially in the middle of the night, after composing a piss-filled rant about saying truth to power, Man, and then realizing —75 microseconds after clicking the post button— that I'm posting on an (essentially) anonymous account.

Ah well, the bastards know where to find me. (If any of you ever decide to turn me in, that's OK, I forgive you... You have no comprehension of the American miracle, and your life was never going to amount to shit anyway.)

> there were people who said they knew ahead of
> time that there was a problem

This is so fucked up. So fucked up. YES, YOU BLITHERING BALDING IDIOT SHERIFF, IF WE KNEW EVERYTHING THAT OTHER PEOPLE KNEW AND THERE WERE NO SECRETS, WE'D BE SOMEWHAT SAFER... But life wouldn't have any meaning, either.

Christ, this guy Bradshaw's a doorknob. He says these things as if they were stunning new ideas from him, as if everyone else in his kindergarten class hadn't already well-internalized these truths long before he had his first milk-mustache.

Dear Blog Comment Readers: Were you ever a 12-year-old boy? Have I got a movie for you! In fact, you should see that movie even if you weren't ever a 12-year-old boy.

Action film: guys on a boat way out in the ocean trying to do stuff.

At two critical plot junctures, we see that absolutely pivotal, game-changing information is (silently) held by members of the crew. They don't know it's pivotal, and no one else would even think to ask for it.

M'kay? It's not an 18th-century problem. The contingencies of identity are with us always.

The whole world is like this. The two stupidest people on the streets of Queens, with their knowledge combined, are smarter than the brightest guy in Manhattan, whether he's a financier on Wall Street or a physicist at Columbia.

It's said that there are people who can, by skill and talent and sheer emotional proficiency, summon insight from crowds of others for application to common purposes. These people are called "leaders."

I've never met one, but I'm only 54. I've read about 'em in books and places.

The shit-skull Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw is certainly not one of them, whatever his fantasies of omniscience and control.

I hate that guy.

there were people who said they knew ahead of time that there was a problem

It's one thing to say about a guy "he's one lab accident away from being a super-villian" or to comment about someone's parenting with a throwaway line ("if they want to raise a serial killer"), but that's not knowing ahead of time there is a problem.

I joked about my neighbors' parenting methods being a recipe for producing a serial killer, yet their kid turned out, so far, to be a fine upstanding young man with a bright future and a healthy obsession with knives. If he goes on a killing spree, do I get to claim I "knew" there was a problem?

Besides, two Milwaukee police officers returned one of Dahmer's victims to him when the victim tried to signal them for help. So, now we're going to depend upon "trained" civil servants to determine who's the potential serial killer?

This is just another government boondoggle that's going to create another government bureaucracy and expand some petty bureaucrat's empire. And, like the TSA, the lack of any actual results will be used as evidence of the effectiveness of the new bureaucracy.

And, little by little, we'll have no freedom left to trade for security ... and no one to protect us from the security apparatus.