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Wiggers… Life Imitating Art… Imitating Thuglife

By: Billy Beerslugger

As I am transitioning from the suburbs back to Philadelphia after almost a year, one thing I’m not going to miss is the fake ass Wiggers that have popped up in the neighborhood i grew up in.  It’s like the student body of  my old high school (and apparently 90% of the bar crowd), who are Caucasian mind you, dress in Sean John, Fubu, hoodies, hat’s tilted to the side with a straight brim and solid color or airbrushed t-shirt that’s 3 sizes too big.

wigger-42888So take these guys above for instance.  Flashing signs of some sort, maybe trying to convey they are from the West Coast, maybe Westmont High School, maybe W was the letter of the day on Sesame Street, I don’t know.  What I do know is that these are the types of harmless hooligans I see on the streets of the neighborhoods I patrol at night while working as a freelance vigilante. They’re up on the “urban” dialect that they hear in movies and the latest song featuring T-Pain.  Spouting out words and phrases such as “crunk”, “bling” and “supaman dat hoe”.  Listening to Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter 14 in the car their mom and dad got them for their 17th birthday.  For this car they got fake rims and a speaker system that makes the trunk rattle like when you rip a fart on a leather couch.

Quick to talk shit and challenge someone to a fight while their boys are there but ultimately back down and end up talking shit from behind their biggest friend.  Because they’re “Gangsta”, “I’m a Thug”. They’re in the “game” cause they sell weed to their friends and know a guy who can get Percocets.  Probably got a karaoke machine in the basement they’re making a demo tape on with some recycled beats thinking they’re gonna be tha next Eminem.

What I’d really like to do is scoop up all these wannabees I can find, put them on a bus, take their cell phones and wallets and drop them off in the middle of North Philly.  We’ll see how gangster you are then.  Shit done changed then, walking out of North Philly with no shirt on cause a group of real thugs approached you and said they didn’t have a Ed Hardy shirt from Macy’s but wanted one real bad.

It makes me laugh.  Acting like a thug while being raised and currently residing in the suburbs is oxymoronic.  You get ZERO street cred for that.  Have one of your friends shoot you in the leg and say it was over a drug deal.  Then maybe people will take you seriously.

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Internet Service Providers Raising Prices?

By: Billy Beerslugger

So I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while now.  I believe this is the beginning of the end of “Unlimited Bandwidth” through Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) in the United States.

Like a lot of my generation, I get a good portion of my news online.  Actually, I get pretty much all my news online.  It’s much more convenient, I can read it when I want to and I can read what I want to as opposed to Network TV news who are at the mercy of Advertisers and their own networks shows (i really don’t need to know who got kicked off of American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Survivor, Amazing Race or Big Brother).  I recently read an extremely interesting article from the NY Times.  It makes some really good points including the issue over Bandwidth Consumption, Internet Prices and Government regulation.

First, the article states that most ISP’s in the U.S. want to end the unlimited bandwidth option from their subscription services.  As long as I’ve been using Cable internet it has been browse as much as you want, download as much as you want.  Now they want to measure usage and bill accordingly just like the electric or water company.  On the surface this may seem fair to you, especially if you don’t watch movies and television online or don’t do a lot of downloading or youtube viewing.  If someone else is using the Internet more than you maybe they should pay more and you should pay less.

However, just because a person uses more bandwidth than someone else doesn’t effect the ISP’s profits or the availability/speed of the internet.  The ISP makes just as much money when no one uses the internet as when everyone is glued to the internet checking out the latest Brittany Spears upskirt shot.  Think of Internet use the same way you would think of Cable TV usage (Both use the same technology and have about the same costs).  Does the person who is at work all day and not watching TV pay the same as the person who is at home watching TV all day? Yes, they do.  Each pay for a service and can use as much or as little as they want for a flat fee.

The main costs in running the ISP are investment in network equipment and expanding the networks but just like everything else computer related, costs continue to fall as technology advances.  Most if not all of the Major ISP’s profit margins are stable.  So why change to a consumption based business model?  I’d say to make more money.  ISP’s like Comcast, Time Warner etc pretty much have a monopoly on providing Internet service.  Much like before the phone companies prices were regulated by the U.S. government, ISP’s can charge pretty much whatever they want because there’s not that much else out there.

As some ISP’s are beginning to offer higher Megabits per second than are currently offered, they are also raising prices disproportionately than countries like Japan who offer this higher MBit/s for about $5 more than their regular plan.  In the U.S. prices for this service would increase your bill sometimes twofold and more.  There is a lot more competition in Japan in terms of ISP’s.

There’s other theories out there that suggest Cable Company’s that also supply Internet want to increase prices to Internet Service because online video etc is eating a hole in their Cable TV revenue.  This could also be a reason.

Overall, I would say don’t let an ISP, government or whomever else limit your access to the Internet.  It is essential to free speech and will continue to play a more integral part in our daily lives as the years progress.  As computers, cell phones and Televisions seemingly stay on a path to converge continue to look for ways of how the Corporations that control access to these services may try to screw you and speak out and fight against it.

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Jim Cramer backlash… Main St. Vs. Wall St.

cramer125By: Billy Beerslugger

First of all Jim Cramer is a born and bred Philadelphian.  This guys first job was selling ice cream at the Vet during Phillies Games.  He’s taken a lot of heat lately from people like Jon Stewart and others and has essentially become the face of Wall Street’s economic meltdown.  I realize he’s pretty heavily touted on CNBC.  “In Cramer We Trust” is what they say over there.  I recently saw a video on the Huffington Post and some dude was touting some other dude’s way of investing and saying we need, “less of In Cramer we trust”.  To a certain extent, he deserves some blame.  Apparently he was wrong about the collapse of certain companies before the recession started and told people to buy instead of sell, though in other instances he told people to sell resulting in a good call.

To be fair, there is some debate as to whether Cramer’s stock picks even beat the market over the last two years.  However, from what I understand he has made himself and others a shit ton of money over the last 4 or so years with his Mad Money show.

So I have news for you,  he’s not going to get every call right.  While he’s reporting on the state of Economic America and picking stocks I don’t think for one second he did anything malicious to try and kill people’s 401k’s overnight.  I just can’t see that happening even though he may have some inside tricks for driving up stock prices etc from when he was a Hedge fund manager.

So why is he singled out and not everyone who reports on Economics of America?  Why is he the scapegoat?  Because he says things like “Booya” and punches sound effects while commentating? I don’t know.  One thing I do know is that no one is infallible.  No one is perfect.  There’s no hero’s out there.  There’s “here’s what I think” and you can either choose to take my advice or not.  He’s not holding a gun to your head and making you buy stocks.

Where’s the backlash for the thousands of brokers out there.  Where was all the phone calls telling people who had their faith for X amount of years to get out of AIG and all those other stocks before they tanked.  Why didn’t they see this coming?  Are they not professionals too?
bob-ross
If you are serious about the Stock Market why not take some time to learn about it and not just listen to guys like Cramer and your stock broker and make some choices for yourself.  Or use these stock pundits recommendations as a basis for stocks you should consider doing research on for possible purchase.

I’m not going to pretend I’m some big time Stock Guy.  I’m not and I wouldn’t take my advice.  Most of my vast fortune lies in a collection of Authentic Bob Ross oil paintings and the VHS tapes of him making them from PBS.  My art dealer has told me these are going to appreciate like gangbusters so I decided in 2004 that I would take all my money out of Teldar Paper and Blue Star Airlines and invest in these classics from the man that made painting fun.  That’s my retirement fund. And as long as Bob Ross resides in the hearts and minds of America my retirement fund is recession proof.

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The “Rooney Rule” – Minority Coaches in The NFL

By: Billy Beerslugger

There has been pressure recently on professional sports teams, by their leagues and other organizations, to hire more minority coaches.  “The Rooney Rule” in the NFL focuses on the requirement of interviewing a minority candidate for any vacant head coaching position unless the position was already promised to an assistant head coach in their contract.

The “Rooney Rule” was one of the contributing factors to having African American head coaches in the NFL jump from 6% in 2005 to 22% in 2006.  The Detroit Lions were fined $200,000 in 2003 for not interviewing minority candidates for the team’s vacant head coaching job.  The Eagles current O-Coordinator, Marty Mornhinweg was fired and Steve Mariucci was hired without interviewing any other candidate (although the Lions dispute this).

I guess my problem with the “Rooney Rule” and how it is enforced is that it seems only African America candidates have to be interviewed. When the NFL uses the term “diversity” or “minority” does it really mean “black” or “African-American”?  It seems to me that if you were going to institute a form of affirmative action it should apply to all minorities and not just one.  I’d like to see how many Latino or Asian candidates were interviewed since the inception of the rule.  As far as I can tell the NFL has no Latino or Asian head coaches. And what about Women?  Women are a minority.  Why do they not get an equal share in the “Rooney Rule” (if you want to get technical).

The NFL players are comprised of 70% African American and nearly 30% white with a small percentage of Hispanic and negligible quantities of other races.  So in this scenario maybe it does make sense that you would consider hiring more African American coaches.  However, don’t call yourself being diverse when you only deal in black and white.

Dealing in sheer population, Latino’s (14.8%) out-number African Americans(13.4%) in the United States, and that’s not even dealing with bi-racial people, a large number of which happen to share Latino descent.  While Hispanic’s  do not make up a great deal of the NFL players they do make up a greater portion of the general population than African Americans.  Shouldn’t that count for something?

The Rooney Rule is now talked about being instituted into NCAA football and possibly other sports.  Did the NFL get this correct enough to warrant it being discussed in other leagues?  Will they move to include more types of minorities in the hiring process? Should this the Rooney Rule even exist?  I guess that’s for you to decide.  I know I wouldn’t be a big fan of being made to interview people (regardless of race/religion/sexual preference) that I didn’t consider a serious contender for the position.  I would just want the best person available.

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Pirates

pirate-flag

By: Billy Beerslugger

So a U.S. freighter ship was boarded by pirates last week somewhere off the coast of Somalia.  I’m not really sure what happened to the rest of the crew but the Captain was taken hostage.  The news stations made a huge deal of this.  If you watched CNN, Fox, MSNBC over the last couple of days this was the main story.

The story ends with 3 pirates being snipered by the Navy Seals and the U.S. captain being freed.  Somehow though, I was rooting for the Pirates.  What if the main Pirate was in the same league as Jack Sparrow or One Eyed Willy from Goonies?

While I certainly wanted no one to die, it’s got to take a lot of balls to board a freighter ship, take hostages and demand a ransom.  You’ve got to be a little crazy.  ARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

These pirates differ from their Hollywood cousins in that the “booty” they desire is citizens who will pay a ransom for safe return instead of gold, silver or other precious cargo.  A cargo freighter isn’t something you’re going to steal and take to the high seas as your new pirate ship. Exchanging the new cars or other booty on board for the the vast amount of gas it takes to run one of these things just doesn’t make sense.

Somalia is a war ravaged country.  It’s government was overthrown in 1991 and for nearly 20 years has been ruled by rival clans.  Whomever has more pickup trucks, guns and men in that area is who the people listen to.  Some Somali people call these pirates heroes.  In reality, these men are just your ordinary fisherman, paid by the overlords to assault the some 25,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden each year.  In 2008 piracy incidents in the area jumped to 111 from 41 in 2007.

It’s big business over there.  On average the Pirates earn between 1 million and 2 million per boat.  But all that money does not go to the pirates.  The pirates themselves make only about 30% of that while twenty percent goes to group bosses,  another 30 percent is spent on bribing local officials, and 20 percent goes for capital investment like guns, ammunition, fuel, food, cigarettes.  And these pirates are getting more sophisticated because increasing night time attacks suggest the use of Night Vision Goggles.

Love them or hate them, the Pirates do not seem to be going anywhere soon in that area.  And this brings me to another point, don’t work anywhere where there’s pirates.  This ship captain obviously knew of the pirate activity in the area. He chose to take the job anyway.  Just like if you go over to Iraq as some sort of contractor, the pay is higher but you run the risk of getting killed.

My advice,don’t work anywhere but the U.S., Europe, the British Isles and maybe Australia.  Anywhere else you’re fucking crazy.

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Magic and Russell Simmons – Taking it to the Little Guy

By: Billy Beerslugger

Recently I’ve seen both Magic Johnson and Russell Simmons promoting various products and companies on commercials.  Magic Johnson is promoting a “Money Now Loan” for tax service Jackson Hewitt which is essentially a loan against your tax refund.  Russell Simmons (founder of Def Jam) is promoting the “Rush Card” which is billed as a pre-paid credit card but actually amounts to a debit card.

Whats is surprising in both instances is that both services/products are either unnecessary or detrimental to the communities that they champion, lower income people of color.

Where the Magic Happens: There is coming legislation in the government on so called “Predatory Loans” which are short-term and high-cost.  In this category are “Payday Loans” which is an advance on your paycheck and these tax-refund loans.  In Magic Johnson’ s case he is advocating to get an advance on your tax refund.  Seems harmless enough, I mean it’s Magic Johnson, one of the most stand up black guys of all time, he’s got HIV for Christ Sakes why would he be giving you a raw deal?  What the people who use this service fail to recognize is that annual interest rates on these types of loans can range from 50% to nearly 500% (Jackson Hewitt charges Jackson Hewitt charges fees with an APR of either 134% or 140%.).  This scam is even better than the “Payday Loans” because they are backed by the Federal Tax refund they just did for the victim client.  Basically Jackson Hewitt is going to get their money.  And you will never guess who these loans are targeted to.  Yep upper class white people.  Nah, (JK : just kidding),   Magic Johnson appears in television ads, radio spots on urban stations and billboards in lower income communities.

I think the best part about the whole thing is that Jackson Hewitt’s website offers a 20 percent discount for customers who order Johnson’s book, 32 Ways to be a Champion in Business.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Chapter 3: Use your reputation as a person of high moral fiber to take advantage of people who don’t know any better.  The more you pretend to be helping these people the more they will believe you and the more money you will get.  In addition to taking advantage of them, get them to buy your book about how you’re such a good business person.  To increase book sales couple the purchase of the book with a discount on one of the unscrupulous services you endorse.

(Yea I went there, unscrupulous,  look it up bitches.  And no a Thesaurus is not a Dinosaur as I recently found out.)

I digress, back to the story.  The IRS states that about 8.7 million people took out these tax refund loans last year resulting in about 1 billion dollars in fees.  Around 5.8 million of these people are recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which helps people with low incomes and is the govenments most effective anti-poverty program. Consumer advocates estimate that about $523 million was drained from the EITC program by refund anticipation loan fees in 2007.

Jackson Hewitt  has been the target of several government lawsuits for its abusive practices. In 2007, the California Attorney General won a $5 million settlement from the company for violating state and federal laws in marketing its tax refund loans to low income customers.

So not only are Magic and Jackson Hewitt fucking these low income people in the ass, they are fucking the American taxpayers who are supplementing these low income people in the ass.  I just hope Magic is wearing a condom.

Russell Simmons, Entreponinja:

Russell Simmons makes money on everything.  He’s a true mogul in every sense of the word.  Def Jam, Phat Farm Clothing line among other ventures.  Russell in the past couple years has been touting the “Rush Card”.  It’s a prepaid debit card for people with bad credit touted as a tool to financial empowerment.  These cards have an activation fee of $19.95 and a $1.95 ATM withdraw fee (in addition to the actual ATM fees) among other fees.  As far as I can tell there is no interest applied to purchases which is better than other prepaid credit cards. I guess one selling point is that it is free to cash checks which most people without checking account will have to pay to get their checks cashed at a check cashing place.

What I don’t get is that people can just go to the bank and get a debit card for free.  Just because you have bad credit does not mean you will be denied a checking account.  Having delinquent checks may preclude you from acquiring a checking account though.  If that’s the case I would suggest Russell Simmons go on TV and tell people to make good on those bounced checks instead of making money off of them.  If you’re really trying to empower the low income and African American community tell them the truth.  The truth is they don’t need this card.   They need to get a checking account and a debit card that’s free.

However, I guess you can’t really hate on these guys, America was built on screwing over the little people.  They’re just two more in a long line that has sold out for a buck.

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Polygamy and The Girls Next Door

By: Billy Beerslugger

You gotta give it up to Hugh Hefner. Dude is like 80+ years old and pretty much has had any girl he ever wanted.  He’s the founder of Playboy magazine and has been male whoring it up ever since.  He lives in a mansion with a several “girlfriends” and given the show “The Girls Next Door”, you have to assume he takes heaping doses of Viagra and lays down so these young gold diggers can ride him until satisfaction.  And who knows maybe he bangs other girls too besides his girlfriends.

Recently he got 3 brand new girlfriends (video below) as the old ones (one of whom got married to Eagles receiver Hank Basket) moved on.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and besides the moral implications of glamorizing the life of a playboy bunny to 11 year old girls on the E network, what about the fact that he lives with 3 “girlfriends”.  I like the show Big Love, Bill Paxton has 3 fictitious wives in this show, all of whom live in the 3 houses right next door to one another.  This 3 wife, multi-child family depicted in the show is considered Polygamist.

Polygamy is the practice of being married to more than one spouse at a time.  You may remember the April 2008 raid on a polygamist compound in Texas which was carried by every major news network and talk show for a good period of time last year.

That compound was raided because there was alleged child abuse occurring there and in general on these types of compounds it seems as if girls are forced to marry early into Polygamist families.

Obviously I’m not saying Hugh Hefner is raping little girls, but what is the fundamental difference between the actors pretending to live together in Big Love and Hefner and partners actually living together in The Girls Next Door?  In both instances 3 women share one man and engage in co-habitation.

In the Big Love scenario the extended family must try and hide their situation from the community for fear of being ostracized.  In the girls next door this scenario is championed.  It’s great the girls get naked, take pictures, go on trips together and generally have a worry free life.  The obvious difference is that Hef is not married to the “girlfriends” but if you are living with, banging and providing for 3 women that’s about as close as you can come to marriage without a certificate.

Now I’m not telling people how to live their life.  Hef wants to live with and be intimate with 3 women who want the same so be it.  A woman wants to live with and get rocked by 10 men who want the same, I’m all for that too.  All I’m saying is don’t glamorize one scenario in the media and shun the other.

And to elaborate further on my “Kids have it easy nowadays” rant, why couldn’t the E channel and the Girls Next Door be on when I was in my mid teens.  I was stuck spanking it to scrambled porn on cable and fake nudie pics of Sandra Bullock I found on CompuServe.  Every show these chicks get butt naked and E just blurs out the nipple and ass crack.  Then you got whorebag Kim Kardashian doing the same thing the next half hour.  But shit what teenage male today is watching TV when there’s free streaming video porn on the internet?

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The Lost City of the Incas – Machu Picchu

By: Luan Zuccarello

Machu Picchu is an ancient Inca site located in the mountains of Peru and is definitely one of the first things to do on my Bucket List.  It was built around 1460 AD but was abandoned 100 years later due mostly to smallpox.  The architectural and agricultural techniques put forth by Incas were revolutionary and are the basis for these industries today.  Machu Picchu was built by using polished dry-stone walls.  These walls were put together using the technique “ashlar”, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly WITHOUT MORTAR!  The Incas were the best stone masons in the world and is said that a blade of grass could not even fit between the stones.  I don’t know about you but I can’t even buy a TV stand from IKEA and put it together, not to mention make it last for over 500 years!

Machu Picchu is said to be a holy site with most of their structures pointed to important Incan astrological signs.  One structure the Intihuatana Stone was said to hold the sun in place and is arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstice.  Along with being a spiritual place, Machu Picchu was well fortified atop a high mountain plateau.  The city sits in a saddle between two mountains, with a commanding view down into two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back. It has a water supply from springs that cannot be blocked easily, and enough land to grow food for about four times as many people as ever lived there.  The city was built on levels or platforms that allowed rain fall to pour down and collect at the lower levels.  The Incas planted their crops this way.  The crops that needed more rain fall and water at the bottom and the ones that needed less were planted at the top.  This led to fertile ground, less land erosion, and less work to maintain their food.

In 2007 Machu Picchu was voted as one of the new 7 Wonders of the World.  There is also a legend that Incan women were the ones who made the beer or “chica”.  The women were bigger drunks then the men, often hosting wild parties.  Not any woman could brew beer, she had to be chosen for this task based on beauty and nobility.  The brewery used to get so hot that most of the time these “brew-masters” had to remove their clothing and work in the nude.  Damn….What I wouldn’t give to have been an Inca.

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Ethanol – Drink it or put it in your car?

corn

By: Billy Beerslugger

A couple of weeks ago i was talking to some random person at a bar.  Somehow we got into talking about the environment and in particular gasoline prices, U.S. natural gas reserves and Ethanol.

If everyone switched to using Ethanol instead of gasoline she said would reduce greenhouse gasses by a shit ton.  With Ethanol and those crazy incandescent  light bulbs we could basically forget about global warming.

I’ll admit I fell for this myth as well in the early to mid 2000’s.  I was thinking if I threw some money into one of these Midwest cornfield turned ethanol plant I could make some real money when this whole going green thing really took off.

What I didn’t know is that it takes more energy to make a gallon of Ethanol than the gallon of Ethanol actually provides.  You see Ethanol is made (primarily) from Corn.  This corn has to be  harvested by huge farm equipment which runs on diesel fuel.  The harvested corn then goes through a process including Fermentation, Distillation and Dehydration.  This cumulative process consumes a lot of energy.

The resulting product, “Ethanol” holds approximately 34% less energy by volume than regular gasoline.  Couple that with it’s general higher price (on the East and West Coast) and treehuggers are not only paying more for less Miles Per Gallon but are also producing a whole bunch of Greenhouse Gasses in the process.

“Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley recently examined six major studies of ethanol production and concluded that using ethanol made from corn instead of gasoline would lead to a moderate 13 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions.” (cite).

However, using a significant portion of the U.S. corn crop for energy production drives up corn based food products.  Supply and Demand, Action and Reaction.

Now I’m all for anything that lowers our dependence on foreign oil and if technology advances sufficiently this may be a viable option in the future.  Sadly though, right now, it may be doing more harm than good.

That’s not to say that Ethanol is not useful.  Far from it.  Back in my halcyon collegiate days we took a 40 gallon trashcan, put a fresh trashbag in there, filled it up with water from the shower, threw about a billion packets of Kool Aid in there and dumped a couple of handles of Ethanol (commonly sold in Liquor stores as Grain Alcohol) and you got yourself a kick ass party. Freshman girls were amazed at how great it tasted and Grain Alcohol is a great at lowering inhibitions.

I remember one time when I was dared to do a Gator Bomb.  A shot of Grain Alcohol dropped in to a larger Gatorade bottle and chugged.  While this did cause temporary blindness, when I got my sight back and picked myself off the ground I gotta say I was really fucked up.

In summary, Ethanol may be a feasible fuel in the future.  Today, however, I suggest drinking it rather than putting it in your car.

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Big Brother… No not the TV show.

obamahopeprogressNot all news is good news coming from the Obama administration. While the American media focuses on the economy and Cramer vs. Stewart, lost is what is going on with some of our civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Obama administration voted for Immunity for the Telephone Companies from lawsuits for participating in the Bush administration’s domestic spy program and included new and broad warrant-less surveillance powers in the bill.

However, that isn’t the only infringement the administration has made in it’s first 100 days in office.  They have also decided that the Constitution does not protect cell-site records.  A cell site record is essentially information about what cell phone tower your cell phone is connected to.  Effectively giving away your approximate location at all times that your phone is on.

Now I’m all for using creative ways like approximating a persons location at a certain day/time to put them at the place of some sort of crime.  I’m with that.  I loved the HBO show “The Wire” and can appreciate law enforcement doing everything they can to catch the bad guys.  It has to be within reason though.  If you need this cell-site record to help solve a crime get a warrant and you get the records on that phone.  What is the point of having everyone’s cell-site records available to the government though?  Why does the government need this info so readily available without a warrant?

Jennifer Granick, the civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated, “Almost everybody in the United States carries or will carry a cell phone… This tracking ability is a means where the government can find out the location of pretty much everybody without much effort or expense.” (from a wired article)

I realize we are in slightly different times.  No president wants another 9/11 under their watch.  Why keep tabs on everyone though?  Why not just the bad guys (or potential bad guys).  And then if they do the tracking just for the bad guys, who’s to say who’s a bad guy?  Under what criteria are you categorized as a security risk or terrorist?  The US Terror Watch list currently holds over 900,000 names and bio’s and adds about 20,000 names to the list every month.

Obviously I’m not the president and am not in charge of protecting millions of American’s.  I am not trying to trivialize “the big picture” in terms of keeping America safe.  Be that as it may, I still like to adhere to what the founding fathers had in mind.  One of my favorite persons of all time, Ben Franklin, was quoted to say, “He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.”.  I think that quote really sums up the point of this post.

Note: Next time I kill a hooker I’m definitely turning my phone off so Big Brother cannot place me at the scene of the crime.