Father of the Year

I understand the impulse to call the cops on your teenage kid.  It's an urge a father should resist, and I predict a bad outcome for a family down in Everly.

The head of the household was rooting around in his 17-year-old's bedroom. He found a little pot and some drug paraphernalia, so he called the sheriff and invited Officer Friendly to search the rest of the house. More contraband was discovered, and Pops waved bye-bye to Junior as the forces of law and order hauled him off to  the clink.

Family values, eh?

Better alternatives suggest themselves. You might have been able to talk to the kid. If not, a boxing lesson was in order, from you if you're fit enough or otherwise  from a well-muscled uncle, maybe. Choosing to invite the po-po to handle your family dysfunction leads to problems you weren't smart enough to think of. Among them:

1. Sooner or later the cops are going to send him back, and Father's Day at your house is likely to be a restrained celebration.

2. You're probably stuck with him for longer than you planned. The arrest makes him a good deal less employable. Even the Army won't be anxious to take him off your hands.

3. If your motive was to teach the lad a good lesson, you undoubtedly did: "My Old Man is a Treacherous Bastard."  

Yep, we're broke

All New York City needs to rise to the economic level of Yap is a new manhole cover policy. Drill a hole in the center.

It a tough way to make a living, but enterprising thieves have been stealing the 300-pound covers lately -- here in the years of our Obama recovery from the Bush  et (most definitely) al. financial debacle. The chunk of Con Ed cast iron is worth about 30 bucks at the scrap yard.

It probably isn't a good idea to consider a long-term investment in Manhole Heist, Inc.   When Ben Bernanke gets wind of this new store of value, he'll probably seize control and figure out a way to create manhole covers by the trillions.  They'll depreciate, and pretty soon it will take a wheel barrow load of them to buy  a pair of socks.

And while I'm feeling pastoral...

Welcome to the blog roll, Jake.

He's another of the folks willing to dirty his hands up a bit in order to put some prime rib on our citifed tables.

Kill the government

Good idea, but it's like trying to stomp a hog snake with your sneakers. Derned thing just keeps on squiggling. Ask any of the 44 souls who populate Mount Sterling, Iowa, down along the Missouri border.

Mount Sterling is an official city with an ambition to be an official nonentity. Even the city council agrees it has nothing much to offer and has voted itself and its town into oblivion except as a "populated place" to the cartographers. They can live with that level of recognition and organization. Couldn't we all?

Not so fast says Higher Authority. The vote was 2-0. The third council person was absent . Never mind her presence would have made no difference. Everyone down there wants to disband.

The confusion comes from a decision some years ago -- no one seems sure just when and no one much gives a damn -- to pare the council from five to three. The official red tape got tangled, so maybe two members didn't really constitute a legal quorum. Now the lawyers and state bureaucrats are involved, and Mount Sterling remains alive as a taxing, law-enforcing, zoning-law capable bureaucracy with authority to  borrow money it couldn't possibly repay. Sort of like the government that lives in Washington.

If it's that hard for 44 good folks to behead their government, we libertarian/ancap fanciers may have a longer row to hoe than we thought.  Just have to keep on stompin' I guess.