The Grammar police have retired

Criticism is an evil necessity that appears to be going by the wayside in today’s new and exciting world of social networking and the Internet in general. It is fairly easy to find all kinds of writing on the Internet: good, bad, and, well, just plain ugly.

Anyone who really wants to know about the state of communication within our, or for that matter any, society merely has to make a trek through the Internet, visit Facebook, or any other form of social networking (dare we say Twitter).  Aside from the long list of emoticons, new words, and various acronyms, the time’s they are a changing for sure.  It is almost impossible to visit a site, read a story, or communicate with someone without finding some egregious error of one sort or another.

Typos are rife on the Internet. Their very abundance smacks of people with horrible communication skills. The old adage for writers used to be “write as you speak.” But people today speak English so poorly, they would be better off writing how they don’t speak.

Subject-verb issues vibrate through my skeletal structure whenever I enter the Facebook realm. Unfortunately, such errors are compounded when they appear in other supposed authorities, such as local newspapers, advertising, and TV and Radio spots. Good golly miss molly!

It’s easy to fall into local lingo and let a few things slip. In a way, it makes you seem more approachable. And I have long since stopped worrying about how other people speak, since I don’t’ want to cast myself as a member of Grammar Cops. It doesn’t do much for likeability.

Still, it has to stop somewhere.

Back in the days when my kids were in school, they used to hand off their written papers with dear old dad, the writer, for review. Well, dear old dad quickly became not so dear, as he (see I) would go through their written pieces and ravage the language issues, as well as the logic issues, and the non-sequiturs and the gobbledygook. When I was finished, their prized document would look like a map of the Amazon delta (I always edit with blue pen, red looks too much like blood).

It didn’t take too long before they would start bringing their writing to dear old mom for editing. Perhaps it was the delivery, or some perceived lack of sensitivity on my part as editor, but things change and that aspect of my life changed, as well.

That’s not to say that my English is perfect. I certainly have places where I could use some refinement, but my basic skills, I think, are better than most. I do, however, know where my weaknesses are. Whether or not I make the effort to clean it up is another matter altogether.

Still, writing in general is so subjective that the rules are often shunt aside. In fact, nowadays I often go out of my way to speak in the vernacular and not concern myself so much with proper grammar. Speaking loosely presents a slightly different persona from the schoolmarmish prig, which I think goes with the territory of the grammar police.

Alas, I suppose it’s best to just keep your mouth shut and not say anything about other peoples’ English struggles. Smile, and go on about your business.  Inside, you’ll know the truth, and those who practice the inexact art will continue to go on their merry way, unaware of their grammar faux pas but perfectly happy.

Colonial Heights: Lean, mean, and grabbing my green

Colonial Heights City Council recently passed an ordinance to fund the new courthouse project that requires a one percent increase in the local meals tax rate and a four-cent hike to the current property tax rate.

While council has gone to extreme lengths to show that the net effect of the tax hike would in essence result in less taxes this year due to a drop in assessed home values, it isn’t so for everyone. There are indeed some houses in the city that are either unchanged by the reassessment or fall on the other side and actually have an increased assessment. Anyway you look at it it’s a tax hike, even if it means I will have, on average, an extra $39 in my pocket.

Council has been good in trying to deflect the cost of building the new courthouse, and it’s not really the fault of the current council that they are facing a lawsuit from the 12^th Judicial Circuit demanding better court facilities. Still, it stands to reason that something was going to happen. The Circuit Court has not been happy with our old courthouse for years, and who could blame them really?

If you have ever had an opportunity to sit in one of our court rooms, it wouldn’t take too long to figure out they have problems.  They are old, they are antiquated, and they really don’t get the job done.  They have been an issue for some time, and it’s somewhat surprising that it has taken the Circuit Court so long to file suit against the City.

It has to get a long way down the road before the courts move to filing a law suit. Usually, the mere threat of a law suit is enough for a community to react and take action toward building “adequate” court facilities. Locally, we just need to look at Hopewell, Prince George, and Chesterfield for prime examples of localities responding to circuit court complaints about court house needs to see what can happen.

Council would like to shift the blame for the tax increase squarely on the shoulders of the 12^th Judicial Court.  But the court building issue has been going on for some time. A lawsuit is probably the last thing the courts want to do, and they would much rather use a potential lawsuit as a club to get the municipality to do what they are supposed to do, provide “adequate” court space.

Now, the argument over what constitutes “adequate” court space is another matter altogether. And it’s a losing argument, since the 12^th Judicial Circuit actually has the right to say whether a certain facility is adequate or not.  It’s interesting that they get to move the issue into their home field or court so to speak, but all of that should have had the attention of the local officials.

While I don’t particularly care for the tax hike, and have a real hard time swallowing the whole “real estate assessments are going down” rationale for not being in my pocket any deeper than they are now, I still think the city needs to look at their own budget a bit more.

The city is doing its best to figure out a way to pay the costs incurred by the new courthouse.  But they don’t seem to be looking at all options. This year is the first year that the city budget shows a decrease in property taxes.  In 2008-09, property taxes increased by $1,130,454; in ’09-‘10 taxes grew by $262,678; in ’10-11, tack on an additional $229,117.  This year, the proposed budget shows $105,817 less than the last year, including the four cent increase.  The difference this year is the result of real estate reassessments, just as the city points out in the pamphlet they sent out explaining the tax hike.

This recession isn’t new. It’s not something that has just cropped up. A lot of other municipalities are scrambling to try to cover short falls in their budgets, and to that extent the city has done a good job of keeping us ahead of potentially bigger problems. But during that four year period of decline from 2007 to 2010, the city actually increased its property tax revenue. City Mayor C. Scott Davis, in a recent meeting, stated that local government has very limited taxing authority and really can only generate revenue through the meals and property tax rates. He is right.

There are, however, other ways the city can affect the budget’s bottom line.  It’s called a balanced budget because you have to balance income against expenses. It’s an equation; a two way street, not one way. Simply increasing the tax rate is one way to get there, the other way is to reduce expenses. The current solution only looks at one side of the equation.

Take the situation in Powhatan County, for instance, where the very same lower real estate assessments left a $6 million deficit in the county’s budget. Their response to covering that revenue loss was twofold: they upped the real estate tax rate by 14 cents, and looked into their own budget for additional ways to make it balance.

One way they opted for was to cut 10 positions, each position was worth an average of $50,000 per year.  The cuts include not filling open positions, and, unfortunately, laying some people off. How many will eventually be let go is still up in the air, but county officials have gone on record stating that the cuts have little or nothing to do with job performance. What they are looking at is areas in which the county is overstaffed.

In Colonial Heights, City Council has tried to weather the weakening economy without having to lay anyone off. They have done a great job of doing so, but maybe they should look at other contingencies in case the economy continues to falter, or if their changes to the meals tax rate keeps people from dining out in the community.  At this point, it would be difficult to come back to the community and try to hike taxes again.

New cruise excursion: Robbery

Now we have something more to think about before heading out on a nice relaxing cruise:  robbery.

It seems that a band of hooded banditos robbed 23 Carnival Splendor passengers at gunpoint as they traveled on a bus from a hiking trail back to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. They banditos took everything from the passengers, all their valuables, cameras, money, and identification. The upside? No one was physically injured during the robbery.

But it begs the question? Where are people safe anymore?  Carnival shut down the hike excursion, we assume at least until it can be deemed safe.  But how many incidents like that can an industry sustain before there are no stops?

It’s odd in a way, but several years ago when my family was going on a Carnival cruise along the Eastern Caribbean (think islands, like Puerto Rico, etc.). I gave a great deal of thought to insuring my camera and camera equipment.  If I only had a pocket camera, I would say who cares. But the camera I use for shooting sporting events carries a hefty price tag, and the lenses are even more expensive.  So what’s a shutterbug to do?

For me it was simple. After finding out that my homeowners policy probably wouldn’t cover the loss, since I use the camera to make money (say it ain’t so, you horrible capitalist), I tried to find an insurance company that would write a policy covering the items. They are not easy to find, and they are quite expensive. It ended up costing me $400 for a year to cover $5,000 worth of equipment.

But I was going on a cruise, and the thought of someone lifting $4,000 worth of camera equipment by simply cutting my neck strap weighed heavily, no pun intended. So I bit the bullet and bought the insurance. I didn’t like how much I paid for it, but I did feel secure in taking my camera around and shooting pictures all over the place.

As time has gone by, I have wondered about whether it was really worth purchasing the insurance, and now lo and behold we have this incident in Mexico that makes me think I had a good idea in purchasing the insurance, even if I did see the need ahead of time.

It’s beguiling to me how these kinds of things can happen. But the realist in me knows they go on all the time. When I lived in Italy, there were rampant stories of people whose cameras and purses and other items were stolen while they were still on a strap around their necks. What would happen is a thief would come up behind them, lift and slice the strap and pull hard on a loose end. More than likely, the object suspended by the strap ended up in the hands of the thief.

That kind of stuff was happening back in the late ‘70s, in an area that was pretty tame by today’s standard. With everything that has been going on in Mexico, I would be extremely wary about carry anything valuable with me on a hike or a tour.  But since my avocation is shooting pictures, it would be hard to do without my equipment. I guess, in the end, if I put myself into that kind of situation the only thing to do is to purchase the insurance.

In the latest incident, Carnival has stepped up and has said it will “make good” on the lost and missing items. But that still wouldn’t make me feel good while traipsing around the area with a big dollar sign hanging around my neck.

Guess I will have to figure in the price of insurance for any future cruises, or for that matter any vacations.  Just because this happened in Mexico doesn’t mean it can’t happen here. Right?

None of these guys are Jack Sparrow

There’s this old saying that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," that everyone in the world seems to attribute to whoever their favorite philosopher was.  Truth is, George Santayana, wrote it in his book, Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1.  But absolutely no one argues about its veracity.

Today we find ourselves, as a nation, faced with a very similar situation as it relates to the current state of affairs in Somalia, where pirates seem to be acting without fear of reprisal. They randomly take control of tankers or container ships that venture throughout the Arabian Sea from off the coast of Oman to the Seychelles and pretty much any and every point in between.

Every country seems to be annoyed with these rascals, and some have actually done a thing or two about them, including the US. But, more often than not, the companies or associated countries opt instead to just pay the ransom, often in the millions, to have the ships released.

All this may seem very diplomatic. But it is poor diplomacy; it’s like having Neville Chamberlain for Prime Minister. This is not the first time in the history of this country that pirates and piracy were an issue, and I am not talking about Internet piracy either. In fact, you can have all the “illegal downloads” you want, as far as I am concerned.  This piracy, however, could use a little old fashioned political emphasis.

A large number of people today don’t even know that the United States faced similar pirate issues in the past. Sure, it was a long time ago, but the incidents were memorialized in the Marine Theme song, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” It’s the shores of Tripoli that I am talking about, and it happened just after Thomas Jefferson took office.

Jefferson had to deal with the Barbary Pirates, based off the North African coast in Morocco, Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers.  Piracy was seriously hampering a fledgling United States from conducting business by capturing her merchant fleet and holding them for ransom, early Al Qaeda no doubt.

Even Jefferson, a person who was not so interested in getting the US involved in battles on foreign soil, was moved to take action. On August 1^st, the USS Enterprise defeated the Tripoli, a 14-gun ship. A year later, congress passed an act for the Protection of Commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers.  That effectively was the end of the Barbary pirates as the US sent six ships under the command of Commodore Edward Preble to bring an end to piracy off the coast of Africa.

Today we face a very similar situation in Somalia. While it seems that peaceful, if not expensive, acceptance is the way of most shipping firms today, we might want to keep in mind our not too distant past.

The piracy taking place right now needs to stop. It’s too costly, in both financial and human life, and the simple and most direct answer is to hunt them down and take direct action. After recent actions to save two people being held by the pirates, they have come out and moved another prisoner and stated that any other such action would be met with a stand to the death.

In my way of thinking, that’s an invitation. These pirates have not shown themselves to be tactical geniuses. True they have taken control of generally unarmed and unprotected merchant vessels, but tangling with the US Navy and in particular Seal Team 6 hasn’t exactly proved to be productive.

I think we need to feed them some more of the same. We should not be wasting time negotiating with this group of riff raff. Let’s take a page out of the 1803 book on how to handle pirates, follow TJ’s lead, and start going to work. I am sure we don’t need to allow this scourge to continue to thrive along the Somalia coast.