Way back in the dark ages before today’s anti-stalking laws I was being harassed by an ex-bf.
He was caking me dozens of times a day, threatening to kill me. I had saved answering machine tapes full of his plans for torture for me. Even messages from his mother telling me I’d better run because he was on his way over to kill me.
I called the police, nothing they could do, it was my word against hie. Even the taped messages were no good because they couldn’t e used as evidence under MD wiretapping laws.
I had tried to file charges against him with the DA, once again it was my word against his.
I figured he would have to kill me before they would do anything.
Finally I got him through the phone company trace. He called me 17 times in 15 minutes and they filed charges for telephone harassment.
This just stepped up the harassment, now he was even more angry.
Once again the police and DA would do nothing, it was still my word against his
until I said those magic words…
He said he will kill me before we go to court
Now instead of being harassment it became obstruction of justice. A warrant was issued for his arrest, he was picked up and put in jail.
It no longer mattered it was my word against his and I had no proof, those 5 little words made all the difference in the world.
I wish I had known sooner.
Although one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that the left-on-red laws usually also make it legal to turn left onto a light-controlled highway on-ramp. I’d be surprised if there weren’t at least a couple of those in the state even back then.
Well, as far as government revenues go the actual royalties are a drop in the bucket compared to just the rapidly increasing income and property tax base due to the oil boom. Cutting the royalties to try to keep the oil companies actually operating as much as possible in the state when prices are low might (arguably) be a reasonable move from the state government’s point of view.
Sadly less important now, but when I was a young man, Bona Fide Travelers could be served alcholic drinks after hours. Bars which were outside the urban boundries obviously served bona fide travelers. But in the 70’s improved roads and cars made them easily accessable to a certain class of people – pretty much anyone who didn’t have to get up for work early the next morning.
More directly affecting my son than me: This year we’ve had a number of snow days, so the schools have to figure out how to meet the State requirement of a minimum of 180 days of instructional time. We just received the answer yesterday: The school system has added a Superintendent’s Conference Day on the Monday following the last day of school. This requires only that teachers report – the preceding Friday remains the last day of school for students.
Apparently, this satisfies the State requirements even though it doesn’t add directly to instructional time for the students. Clever on the school system’s part, but it really feels like cheating…
You’re not allowed to smoke in bus shelters in my city, so sometimes a smoker will have most of their body in the bus shelter while having their cigarette-holding arm outside of it.
You’re also not allowed to have a visible open container of alcohol, so people skirt around the law by hiding it in a bag and drinking out of their bagged drink, though I’m sure this is done pretty much everywhere.
My work around uses a 16 oz plastic bottle of Lipton diet green tea (citrus flavor). Drink 1/4 to 1/3 and add vodka to fill. Police don’t seem to care about Lipton diet green tea (citrus flavor) drinkers, especially white ones.
That’s a little misleading because the first page is just the revenue sources going into the general fund (which you’ll notice includes $300 million from O&G) whereas the second page is all the revenue collected from oil and gas, which mostly goes into various special funds. So it’s not quite apples-to-apples because there other revenue sources that also go into special funds.
If you look at the census department data here, it shows that about 45% of the revenue coming from “other sources” which I’ll assume is mostly the oil and gas revenue. Granted that is, er, quite a lot more than the “drop in the bucket” I said earlier* but it’s not utterly dependent on royalties like, say, Alaska is.
*My confusion there is that even though they’re collecting a lot of O&G revenues, they’re not actually spending that much of it. Most of it statutorily goes into those special funds and only that little $300 million allotment goes into the general fund that pays for most government services. At least as far as the state budget itself is concerned, the bonanza from the oil boom has mostly been in increased sales, income, and property tax collections.
I read an article not long ago about an investment contract sold by Aviva France (in the late '80s) that allows the investor to pick what funds to invest in retrospectively. Nowadays, with the benefit of the internet for price discovery, some people are using these contracts to rack up annual returns of 60% or more:
I totally get the cheating part, but the only other three fixes appear to be:
Building some flexibility into the state instructional time requirement–that is, in crazy weather years, offering waivers to schools.
Scrapping the stupid traditional school calendar, with summers off, in favor of a calendar with breaks scattered throughout the year. Such a calendar offers more flexibility for dealing with snow, since there are so many other little breaks that can be used for makeup days.
Extending the school year a very long way into the summer.
The first two solutions are long-term solutions and likely statewide decisions. The third one is going to be deeply unpopular. A little bit of clever bookkeeping might be the least bad of a set of lousy solutions.
When I was in school many years ago, it was common on bad winter weather days to hear the announcement that “buses will be leaving at 1:15pm to take students home”. It was obvious why – winter weather in western Minnesota can be bad. But why 1:15pm? Eventually a relative who worked for the school system explained that it could be counted as a full day (and collect the state funds for the school system) if classes were in session until at least 1pm. So there were several winter days that ended 2-1/4 hours early, but counted as full days.
Both options 2 & 3 could involve a lot of Capitol Expenditures for school systems: most of our school buildings are not air conditioned. And often don’t have openable windows, or other sources of ventilation. And installing air conditioning could be quite expensive, because often the heating system is hot water/steam radiators – no way to easily add air conditioning.
And realistically, you can’t expect students to learn in a stifling hot, unventilated classroom. Or even expect teachers to teach in them. We had a late heat wave, after schools had started recently, and they had to shut down the schools and send kids home.
The anti-abortion crowd points out that, since Roe v. Wade doesn’t specifically say that only a licensed medical doctor can do the procedure, apparently anyone can perform an abortion!!!
How about a loophole that’s a noose? I know I mentioned this in another thread once, but now I gotta cite.
Medicare covers hospice for those who are “certified by their attending physician (if any) and by the hospice physician as being terminally ill with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live, should the illness run its normal course.”
Sounds good, right? Except that it means you cannot get home hospice if you’re dying of nothing. Or dying of old age. They used to allow coding for "Debility, Not Otherwise Specified”, and “Adult Failure to Thrive”, which is medical speak for “dying of nothing we can name.” They put the kibosh on that effective Oct. 2014:
Wading gently through HIPAA here, I have a patient who is dying. Why? Because he’s nearly 100 years old and his body is worn out. He has a little high blood pressure, a history of cancer that his doctor says is not why he’s dying, and…not much else. They’ve been over him with a fine toothed comb and can’t find a terminal illness for a piece of documentation. And so his family is completely overwhelmed (logistically and financially) and I can’t transfer him to home hospice which would provide them with the resources they need. I have to work within home health benefits instead, which are woefully inadequate to the situation.
So, if you die, better hope you die of something with a label, or you’re dying broke and alone.
Absolutely agree that they found a good solution. I’m not complaining, more impressed by their cleverness (not something I expect to find in a school bureaucracy).
I think NY State has used or at least considered (1) in truly crazy weather years. Mostly, though, schools end up having to take back scheduled vacation days in really bad years, not a popular choice.
Regarding snow days and the school calendar: here in my little corner of southeast Missouri, the snow & ice was so bad for a period of time that the kids who attend Viburnum schools went to school just two days in three weeks. That means that Viburnum C-4 Schools are down 13 days, and looking at having school well into June.
Parents are pissed. Some have complained of having to re-schedule vacations, others have said that their kids won’t be in school after the original planned end-of-school date, extra days be damned, and if the school doesn’t like it they can send a truant officer.
Fortunately, I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that Missouri gives schools, particularly rural ones, more leeway when it comes to this sort of thing. I guess we’ll see how it pans out in the coming weeks.
Definitely, I did that first thing. And I’ve been speaking with hospice nurses and directors, because I just can’t believe this is real. So far, no luck. Not giving up.
Though this was more for parties and such.
Not giving up.