[Mpls] Blowers Unite!

[gemgram]

Remember we are a revolutionary country and people founded on the principal 
of not bowing to laws we do not agree with. I believe it is the OBLIGATION 
of citizens to defy those laws that are unjust.  Smoking and leaf blowing 
may be a couple of those.



A thought that immediately comes to mind is the law against speeding when it 
was 55.  I wonder how often that law was broken out in the Country along 
I-94 and I-35?  Probably by more than one of us, wouldn't you think?



We do not have adequate police to keep people from not only "blowing" crack 
smoke on the corner, but also shooting each other, and not enough to arrest 
the drug dealers for sure.  We do not have enough police to regularly 
investigate hit and runs when there is only damage to property.  If that is 
true, and we know they say it is, then how in hell is there enough police to 
enforce meaningless laws such as blowing leaves?  Of course this will 
probably become one of those laws that are arbitrarily enforced so much that 
it undermines any faith in the police through no fault of the police 
themselves. I can imagine some woman getting a ticket for a leaf blower when 
some gangbanging jerk is rattling her entire neighborhood with his rap 
blazing out the obscenities someone is doing to his "bitch" sitting at the 
corner in his ride.  Sitting with what seems no fear of the police. Yeah, I 
guess that would be par for Minneapolis.  All concentration on "Fluff" with 
no real substance.



It all reminds me of something that has been attributed to Walt Dedzic when 
there was the famous "don't cut the park grass" one summer.  The City 
ticketed the residents around parks if their grass was more than 6 inches 
long in their yard, yet the park across the street was a hayfield with 
two-foot long grass.  Walt supposedly said, " Some 'folks' need to stop 
smoking the grass and start cutting the damn grass!"  We need some folks to 
stop smoking wacky long enough to stop with these wacky ideas and laws.



And would people stop attributing these silly things to Democrats and 
liberals.  These are not "Democratic" ideas, and they sure as heck are not 
"liberal"; these are wacky ideas.  The Republicans also have their lunatic 
fringe advocating for wacky ideas; they just never get elected in 
Minneapolis so we sometimes forget it.



We have very real life problems facing the City of Minneapolis and its 
people, and we have those who have been elected to solve those problems 
sitting around thinking of cool "fluff" instead.  Just a suggestion for the 
politicos, when there are no longer any open drug dealing on corners, and 
kids are no longer being shot in the head, then ask us what "fluff" we might 
need.  Until then stay the hell out of our yards, and our bedrooms.



Now I might be a little over the edge on this.  Yesterday I received word 
that Marino, a kid that grew up in and around my house with my kids, was 
shot in the head in a grass selling deal gone bad.  With such real life 
things going on and largely ignored in our City, I just have a real hard 
time listening seriously to the politicians who are supposed to be 
addressing those real problems, get heated up about someone's darn leaf 
blower.



Jim Graham,

Ventura Village, Phillips Community, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis



>"The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our 
> liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson



>"Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us 
>against the Mongols?"