Wireless Brownsville

St. Cloud, Florida has provided a free wireless network to anyone in the city limits. http://www.stcloud.org/documents/Cyber%20Spot/Cyber%20Spot%20FAQ_1.pdf

This is a 15 square mile grid and cost $3 million to set up. Brownsville is more than 80 square miles so, the project would not be as simple.

Many big cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia had similar wireless plans, but the projects have run into trouble when the service provider EarthLink reneged on the deal.

Some areas such as NYC have aimed more at providing wireless parks and public buildings.

I don't know whether any of this is feasible for Brownsville, but it would seem the potential would be great.

Providing greater access to computers would be nice also. What would it cost to give a laptop to every 6th grader? I recall Newt Gingrich had a similar plan, so this is not just my personal weirdness. (Though it may be a shared weirdness--sort of a Folie a Deux for politicos.)

I have heard about the $100 laptop plan for poor areas. We should qualify. Even without that computers have gotten less and less expensive. I am typing this on a $300 computer called ASUS eee. It is cheap because it dodges Microsoft by using the Linux operating system (which I prefer).

I think of the flowering that Brownsville kids had when JJ Guajardo and others decided to teach them chess. All of a sudden, Russell Elementary kids being raised without the benefits of Suburbans, summer camps and math clinics were on a level with the top students in the most expensive schools in the country.

Hillary for VP

I was at my son's wedding reception in St. Louis this weekend when a rumor swept the hall that Hillary had been chosen as Vice President nominee by Obama. I think Randall (the one whose life, I argue, has not been a failure) got a call from his wife and started the rumor. I told several people myself. Later we all ran to the TV and the internet to confirm the story, but no one else seems to have heard of it.

Dr. K thought Obama would pick Caroline Kennedy or a Republican Chuck Hagel so he was surprised. I thought ultimately Obama would pick Hillary so I felt vindicated. But now it appears my gloating was premature. However, I still think she should be chosen.

I am not a big fan of Hillary's and did not vote for her in the primary, but I think she would be a good choice for several reasons. First, it would be the democratic thing to do. She did after all get the second most votes. The Constitution originally gave the Vice Presidency to the second place winner, regardless of party, so this is not exactly a new concept. Second, she appears to have a base of support different from Obama's. I don't know why this is, really, but if it is so, it would be ticket balancing. I assume Obama will carry New York without Hillary, but I do know my wife, mother and sister all supported Obama and they would be happier with her on the ticket. Third, my wife, sister and mother all supported Hillary and I don't want to have to hear about it if Obama picks someone else and loses.

In the primaries, just 1.3 million Texans voted Republican compared to almost 2.9 million who voted Democrat. The Nation magazine has an article this week that makes the argument that Texas could turn blue. The enthusiasm shown by Hillary supporters, especially on issues like health insurance and mortgage relief, at the county convention make me think a Texas upset might be possible.

Downtown Brownsville Without Cars

As I drove down Elizabeth Street this morning, I passed a man, about my age, driving his motorized wheel chair in the other direction.  He was holding a red and white umbrella to shelter him from a light rain.

Motorized wheelchairs are common in front of our house as well.  I assume many originate from the high rise nursing home I see through the cane out my window behind the computer screen.  Most are decorated with flags and bumper stickers.

Also, the HEB carts are common and I now from time to time add the adult tricycle to the mix.  We have always had a lot of people walking in groups or alone.  Cars seem to be increasingly rare as gas prices soar.  I can still afford to drive, but I don't think most of my neighbors really can.  Liability insurance costs have long since priced many Brownsville drivers out of the range of driving legally.  Now $4.00 a gallon gas is finishing this group off as well.  If it hits $6.00 by the end of the year as has been predicted I bet people start selling their cars.

Why not, City Fathers, just make this the way of life in downtown Brownsville.  I propose taking a rectangle from Fronton to Tyler, East 14th to Palm and closing it to private automobiles and most trucks.  If we are really bold, we can extend it to include UT Brownsville as well.

I suppose there would need to be a way for freight to be moved in and out so the merchants could get the ropa usada, Chinese knickknacks and  sacks of pinto beans in and out, but we can still make the whole area safe for motorized wheelchairs, HEB carts, walkers and bicyclers.  It works in other cities.

We would need some public transportation, of course.  Buses or trams or a train or a horse or mule drawn carriage or gondolas, to get to the edge of the rectangle.  Parking would need to be available somewhere outside the triangle.

Maybe certain merchants and craftsmen would get a boost.  The complaint about shopping in downtown Brownsville is there is no place to park.  Without cars, the streets that are too crowded for the cars would be abundantly adequate for the pedestrians and bicyclists.

Maybe it could be like a San Antonio Riverwalk, just not as stretched out.  My favorite European city has always been Venice.  I just now realize why:  no cars.  

Kennedy v. Louisiana: I Agree 2 -- More Thoughts

Justice Alito argues in his dissent that there is not a national consensus to prohibit child rape that could be reflected in the "evolving standards of decency."  He's probably right about that.  As he notes, the language in the Coker decision thirty years ago prohibiting the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was broad enough to allow most state legislatures to assume that a murder was required for death.  That was pretty well my assumption and I assumed the Texas legislature was doing its usual meaningless posturing when the death penalty was extended to the death penalty for child rapes.

I think judges are more reluctant than the communities "standards of decency" to impose the death penalty in rape.  The confidence level that a crime has been committed in a murder tends to be higher in a murder than with a rape.  With a murder there is usually a body and a murder weapon.  It is of course possible to confuse a murder with an accident or a suicide and it is possible to get mixed up about who did it.  With a rape, there are the issues of consent and even whether there has been a sexual act.   

So if rape can be worse than murder (and it can) why not forge ahead and kill rapists?  Well, its the Scottsboro Boys.  It was 1931 and the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train was filled with young hoboes, white and black, male and female.  There was an altercation that involved the white teenagers being tossed off the train.  They complained to the stationmaster who wired ahead and a posse Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train.  They unloaded all the blacks they can find, tied them up, threw them on a flatbed truck and hauled them to the jail in Scottsboro, Alabama.

They were brutalized legally and in the jail system.  They were given the death penalty without lawyers.  The racism was undisguised.  The case became a international scandal and new law was made trying to find a way to keep Alabama from lynching the young men.

Most likely from the examining doctor's testimony a rape was never committed.  The girls had been seized by the posse in Alabama and were under pressure to cooperate.  The doctor found sperm, but it was not motile and too old to be from the train ride.

As I remember the history I read years ago, had it not been for the American Communist Party the teenagers would most certainly have been hanged.  The NAACP was a afraid of the case because of the issue of rape.  Other normally activist groups were similarly passive.

A black on white rape was easy to allege, hard to deny and could serve as a great tool to control an under-class.  I think this is part of the reticence today to apply the death penalty to race cases.

However, I understand the reluctance of Mr. BB and others to rely on "evolving standards of decency."  I have written before here about the risk that evolution can give a bigger or a smaller product at the end of the process.  Little horses have evolved into big horses, but big armadillos have evolved into little armadillos.  Our sense of dignity historically allowed genocide against different Indian peoples and could well evolve into mass murder and internment camps again.

The confidence placed in the written word is misplaced though.  How much is the Article I, the Texas Bill of Rights honored?  Was has become of being secure in a persons, etc?  Where are those 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments when we need them?

Original intent is very logical, but are we willing to swallow the pill that comes with it.  Our evolving sense of dignity has rejected both banishment and punishment by hard labor.  Do we want these back?

The founders' sense of decency allowed slavery and prohibited women the vote.  Are we ready to return to those wise days?

And as Mr. WC notes, homosexual acts could bring the death penalty.  In fact one Joseph Ross was executed for "buggery" by the state of Pennsylvania in 1785.  That's not all, though.

 Blasphemy and idolatry were capital crimes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.  Adultery was capital in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.  Sodomy and bestiality were capital throughout the northern colonies, even for the animals involved.

Other capital crimes included robbery, burglary, arson, manslaughter, rape, highway robbery, maiming, burglary, arson, witchcraft, counterfeiting, squatting on Indian land, prison-breaking, piracy, perjury, embezzling tobacco, fraudulently delivering tobacco, forging inspectors' stamps for tobacco, smuggling tobacco, stealing hogs, receiving a stolen horse and concealing property to defraud creditors and burning timber intended for house frames.  

There were special capital statutes applicable only to blacks.  These included burning or destroying any grain, commodities, or manufactured goods, enticing other slaves to run away or "bruising" whites.  Virginia feared attempts at poisoning and made it an offense for blacks to prepare or administer medicine.

I hope an execution for most of these offenses would offend the sense of decency for most of us.  The colonial and state legislatures, though, gathered a majority to allow an execution for all of these laws.

Can't we acknowledge the sense of decency has and should change?  Or should go round up a black pharmacist and kill him to avoid the threat of poisoning?