Earlier in the week Blaine Young penned an LTE that was published by the Effin P. It’s his second recently. The first was July 18th with him tooting his horn about picking up trash when he walks to work. He has made it clear that he intends to run for mayor on the innovative theme “Let’s clean up this town.” Improving things is never bad, and with the recent drunks with guns incidents that have occurred during bar fight hours downtown it’s a timely moment to call for better. Then you look at what he selling, judging by the comments on the article, no one is buying. This man is not your run-of-the-mill very stable genius.
First of all he suggests putting in the blue phones like they have on college campuses. Anyone else here “been on multiple campus tours recently” years old? These are regularly pointed at mockingly and referred to as “the old technology.” In order to install the old technology it would cost us boatloads of money. Everyone has a phone with them at all times! They have apps on it to allow someone to monitor your whereabouts, apps to call for help, apps to get a ride. Probably apps to get an…escort…but we digress…Also, with your cell phone you don’t have to stand there in a dangerous situation while making a phone call–oh that’s right you can even make a phone call to 911–which is a point that is made in this article from a higher education publication about how those phones are a waste of good money. One great quote from that piece: …campus police at Ohio University do not remember the last time the phones were used in emergency situations, the campus newspaper, The Post, reported last year.
The other “look at the big brain on Blaine” thing is his call for more police presence. Many people on the social media have observed that there don’t seem to be a lack of police around. You see them pretty much constantly monitoring what one has the impression is a group of people badly in need of mental healthcare and some sort of social safety net. That’s the thing about mental illness. You have the right to destroy your life even if you don’t have the competency to save yourself. It’s a tough issue to figure out (and a good reason that the mental health redirect is kind of a red herring when we stop talking about gun rights, because people have other rights, too). That there is no better way of supervising these individuals and keeping them and everyone safe and healthy than law enforcement attention is indeed problematic, but lack of presence is hardly the issue.
If we are looking for police presence to discourage the late night shooting, the problem is that if you are the kind of person who illegally carries a gun/are out drinking and have a gun/irrationally shooting at people on the street, you are already not making the best informed decisions. How much is it really going to influence the behavior of these people if the police are around? Not to argue that the police are not needed. They are needed to enforce the “you can’t carry that/you can’t shoot that” kinds of laws we have and arrest people who violate those laws. If the presence of police kept people from firing weapons, then the police would never be shot at. And as we are all aware, that happens from time to time. It’s almost like that’s the reason the criminals carry the guns around…because someone (whether police or other criminal) might shoot them if they don’t shoot first.
So, that’s all for this edition of Let Us Count the Ways in Which Blaine Young is an Idiot. But…we also want to point out that we read someone else’s intriguing theory. We hate that we are kind of helping him out by giving him attention, if this theory has any basis in reality. Remember when he ran for governor so that he could run for county executive? Maybe he’s just doing that again. Obviously the city is different from the county, and he couldn’t get elected in the county. But maybe he is running for mayor to run for CE. Maybe he has a pathological need for attention. There’s also the fundraising.
So, there’s that.
frederick local yokel 