Thorn: How’s Your No-Tax Vote Working Now, Clown Council?
Louisville is entering the Age of Austerity. The Metro Council is poised to vote on a budget that would fill a $25 million hole left open because it did not want to pass a tax that would cost the average person $12 a month. Expect to feel this in palpable ways — such as slower repair of potholes, fewer public pools — but also less visible ways: $1 million cut from the Office for Safe & Healthy Neighborhoods and its violence interrupters, even as city homicides bump to 47, compared to 39 at the same time last year. And, then, more money will need to be cut in the next budget. And again and again, but the damage will have been done.
Thorn: Ends Do Not Justify Means
The police continue to ingratiate themselves with the community. When a motorist refused to permit a search last year, a detective told him: “There are two types of people” who refuse, “people who are just assholes and people who have something to hide,” the Courier Journal reported. He also said: “I don’t care if you have weed. I don’t care if you have heroin. I don’t care if you have meth … don’t care if you have a dead body back there. We are not homicide; we are not narcotics ... We are gun cops. All we care about is guns.” A search was conducted, and a handgun was found, but the judge threw out the evidence, and felony charges were dropped. The judge noted that a third kind of person refuses to allow a search: “citizens exercising their constitutional rights.”
Thorn: What’s The E-Rush?
Just as Louisville allows in five more e-scooter companies, Nashville’s mayor wants them off the streets and to rethink the rules after a scooter-related death. How many scooters are too many? Some say they jam sidewalks and endanger users and pedestrians. Others hail them as “transportation disrupters,” getting people out of cars with low-cost transport. The city is rarely in a rush to do anything, so we say: Slow down on this.
Thorn: At Least Mitch Is Consistent
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell opposes reparations. “We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African American president,” said the man who once stood before a Confederate flag and smiled.
