About Writing

Block style, unjustified and on a free page are the form and place where my thoughts are presented to a nearly non-existent readership. And who can question why there are few readers? They are haphazard wanderers of the Internet frontier or those who I have solicited to read, for feedback purposes only is what I present to them. But I know I need some justification, a sense of purpose, however small.

I don't write much, or well enough for broad publication, because I can't focus on a purpose, or a method, and I am unpolished. Who writes? Many of us, to different purposes; mine is to prove that I can do something better than the balance of people. I have ideas I want to share, and if I could translate exactly what was in my head and rely on it to be there at my request whenever I need it I wouldn't have to write this odd thing.

My job is not fulfilling. I hold this job because in the past I didn't apply myself to anything, because I didn't care much about anything for whatever reason you can imagine. I just didn't get why things were important in an apparently godless and circumstantial world, and so my commitment to any challenge, career or relationship was nearly nil. My job is very easy; I joke that with a bag of peanuts I could train a monkey to do it just as well - outsourcing.

At some point I realized the real importance of free will, and hope, and the manifestation of a positive stance in an often tough and challenging world. I can't explain exactly how this all came about but I know I was sick of the wallowing and the self-flagellation that comes with depression and I decided to defeat that. I found strength within myself, though its full depth is untested.

And maybe that's the nature of fear: What if we reach the limits of our strength and are defeated? What if we FAIL at something we really try, with all our faculties, to do? It must lead to despair, but so does doing nothing, and repeated failure molds success, with the variables being willingness to work, and the willingness to overcome the fear of failure.

I have many questions. I was reading a New York Times article about charity - the writer highlighted stories which were presented in the paper previously and reported on readers who responded with charitable acts, such as the purchasing of a computer for an artist with a scholarship but no money for equipment. Another reader paid rent for a gentleman who was injured at work and couldn't manage on his own.

But there was one instance in which I believe a young college student couldn't afford books for some reason that I can't remember, and a major book chain provided a $500 gift certificate. I thought it was interesting that the individuals who contributed to these strangers' lives in their various ways paid for those strangers' needs in full, in amounts which, in every case, surpassed in value the $500 that this well-off company provided. The book chain's charity is appreciated I'm sure, but is also surpassed in fact by the charity of each individual in response to his or her heart.

I read somewhere that when we receive tax cuts in this country on whatever level of income we direct more of our money toward charity. There is something reflected in the citizenry of this country that maintains the integrity of our ideals outside of any reason, and surpasses the same notions of any for-profit organization, although those organizations are certainly necessary. I find this interesting. I wonder why this is? And that is why I'm a very raw writer/idea person - I don't know. I think maybe the absence of any bureaucratic function fosters the ability to give specifically, unfettered by committee decision making in a profit-based environment. It's a lesson in purity.

So that's one thing I'm thinking about. The stellar performance of the president so far is another, the jaw-dropping lack of value in any cable television package is another. It's very random. Can it be interesting? Hard work, more writing, more focused thought can possibly make it so. I'll be thinking, reading, posting, and focusing on providing substance. The really is no telling what's going to happen with any of it, but it's worth an effort although I can't say exactly why. It's a lesson in faith.

Why Does The Tax Code Favor The Married?

Tax season has arrived with snowstorms and the dreaded Sunday drivers sent by dark forces to navigate the frozen streets, making me happy that I'm a pedestrian and a passenger. A vehicle-free life opens a person to sights and sounds and smells which the windowed carriage cannot provide. Driving is a dehumanizing experience, and sometimes the gas pedal gets stuck and the brakes fail.

Walking and riding the bus is meditative, and during this joyous season of filing and obtuse tax code gymnastics I have had time to think about a certain tax policy that seems unfair to me: Why do married people get tax breaks for simply finding another taxpayer to spend their lives with, and why does each child a person has enrich the pot?

Sometimes unfair policy is so ingrained that we seem to take it for granted, and this is a fine example of such a policy. People just accept these tax breaks, especially the married and aggressively child-bearing, for obvious financial reasons. The great tax god smiles upon the committed monogamist and the prolific.

My small voice in the darkness screams this: Why don't I, a single gentleman with no children, get some tax break for keeping future Social Security recipients at bay with an aggressive use of prophylactics whenever I have that certain twinkle in my eye? After all, I'm not affecting the bloated entitlement system in a negative way; my lack of enthusiasm for seeing my own offspring to fruition is keeping the population at bay in some small way. You, taxpayer, will never have to pay for children who don't exist, subsidizing lives that were brought about through no choice of your own.

One can understand how a single mother may benefit from tax breaks for her children, and what's left of our understanding of the social contract may lead us to accept this policy without question. However, I had a conversation recently with a single mother, five weeks after her second child was born, outside of the affordable and excellent sushi joint named Dancing Wasabi (I caught a ride). She mentioned a $10,000 tax refund based on the simple existence of her children. She mentioned a new Jeep. She mentioned the new and exciting Apple invention known as IPad. She did not mention the extensive training her children would be receiving to operate these complicated devices.

The point is, are people really using these bloated tax refunds to support their children? I'm sure some are, meanwhile others are wallowing in the manure laid by the great cash cow. I've heard many tales of child custody acrobatics performed to maximize the flow of tax money from my single, childless pockets to their surely healthy and happy families. I object to this, but this argument presented to said single mother could lead much shrieking and gnashing of teeth, so I just sighed and smoked and looked around the square while waiting to be let inside to eat raw fish that I could have more easily afforded with a robust refund.

The tax code may always provide for these children then, but what of a tax incentive for simply becoming married? It is basically unreasonable on principle alone, not to mention the fact that because most marriages end in divorce, marriage itself is simply another on the long list of failed government programs.

Sometimes there is something to be said for being a non-participant. I don't dump children into a society which is then billed for my meandering child's transgressions, lack of spirit, or embarrassingly long rap sheet. I don't disappoint my family by appearing a drunken waste in a chapel to hitch to the blurry figure to my right. I don't even drive, and yet I get nothing in return for leaving virtually no carbon footprint. My life as it relates to society is a study in the virtues of addition by subtraction, and for this all I ask is the following: Let's give the kid a break.

Streetcar Cincinnati

How does a concerned citizen of Greater Cincinnati approach the streetcar plan, an idea which is meant to generate tourist dollars in the chronically underdeveloped and often less-than-entertaining downtown Cincinnati area?

Judging from the many of the comments attached to an Enquirer editorial from last week, the idea is not being received well partially due to the typical knee-jerk conservative Cincinnati style ingrained in our Midwestern DNA: Don’t spend money, we don’t need it, everything is fine, let’s stay 10 years behind the rest of city-dwelling America.

For example, diligent Enquirer reader phrank proclaims:

“I can’t help but wonder how much it will cost me to park my car downtown so I can ride the streetcar. On second thought, I’ll just drive my car to where I need to go in Clifton.”
Either phrank does not understand the concept of public transportation, or phrank’s car rides on rails and picks up passengers for a fee. If this is the case, phrank is far ahead of the curve and should be studied by Mayor Mallory’s crew, the same group who recently blazed a trail to Oregon in order to assess the Portland streetcar system as a model for our very own streetcar line.

Delhidad chimes in:

“What problem is this trying to solve? What gaps do we have with the existing metro line? What’s the ROI/NPV? Who will pay ongoing operational costs year over year. These are real tax payer dollars…and must be spent wisely and bring real financial benefit to the city. Building something to be like 200 other cities, doesn’t make sense. You build it because it brings financial benefit based on the City of Cincinnati demographics and layout.”

I will use the Cincinnati Streetcar Feasibility Study from May 30, 2007 to attempt to address some of phrank and delhidad’s deeply felt concerns.

“What problem is this trying to solve/What gaps do we have with the existing metro line?” The study informs us:

There are two key reasons why adding more buses will not work as well as the streetcar for circulation: 1 – The number of buses required to equal the capacity of one streetcar makes buses more expensive to operate and maintain, 2 -Examples show that streetcars attract new riders, people who otherwise would not ride a bus, because of the convenience, comfort, attractiveness and reliability of the streetcar – thus, the streetcar increases the number of people who will use transit.

“What is the ROI/NPV?”

ROI (Return on Investment) is unknowable at this time, but according to the editorial $180 million is the cost estimate when the uptown (Clifton) routes are included, which they have been. Wikipedia claims that at the time of its closing in 1948, the Mt. Adams Incline was the most popular tourist attraction in Cincinnati. Wikipedia also states that around that time San Francisco’s streetcar system was threatened for many of the same reasons as ours, but that the people voted to keep the streetcars and the result has been a system which carries over 7 million passengers per year and generates $20 million in revenue over the same span. Cincinnati’s line would clearly operate on a smaller scale, but the successes of other streetcar lines suggests decent-to-good potential for economic stimulation. And that’s what it’s all about, right? The Enquirer piece suggests

…in the near term, the streetcar can’t be considered a major economic stimulus. It will add jobs for planning, architecture, construction of street cut-outs, environmental study and the like, but if it is to bring big benefits, they are down the road. Actual construction of the line wouldn’t begin until 2012, at which point an economic recovery likely will have taken place.

This suggestion ignores, at least partially, the Keynesian economic model which calls on the government to tax and spend in a countercyclical fashion in order to maintain growth. So when the economy is down, the government spends money on projects which are meant to create jobs and invest in local infrastructure while increasing revenue. The streetcar project is a prime example of a creative infrastructure project intended to spur intelligent investment and generate revenue by providing a desirable service. In fact, the Enquirer editorial presents this as well:

Indeed, government works best when it encourages smart development that creates wealth and increases tax revenues.

But of course, the timing is off, as always in Cincinnati (The Banks project). Wait until the economy recovers, which it surely(?) will. With no new projects to stimulate that recovery this seems an article of faith. The nameless Enquirer writer presents nothing else to replace the streetcar project and seems to desire to wait out these dark economic times. Not a proactive approach, when a proactive approach seems to be just what we need. In other words, we probably need to do something instead of waiting for Uncle Sam to reach into his wallet, the one that used to contain too many credit cards whose balances are owed to China, but now carries a great deal of printed paper called money, which is worth much less when a government prints a great deal of it as our government has.

Cincinnati is dealing with a near $30 million dollar budget shortfall. What hasn’t been accepted yet by the auto-objectors native to this area is that a) creative projects which spur economic growth and create new revenue streams alleviate stagnation, especially when federal government stimulus can be used for those projects (though the availability of this money for the streetcar project is not guaranteed), and b) waiting for the economy to recover while doing nothing is not an answer, because waiting achieves nothing more than prolonged stagnation. A stagnant economy can’t grow, generate new revenue, or put anyone to work. Yes, deficits will increase in the short term, but so will the availability of jobs and in the long term the streetcar system could represent the redefinition of Cincinnati’s downtown that the city so desperately needs.

Here’s what we need to encourage City Council to do: green light the streetcar project. At worst, no one will want to come to Cincinnati no matter what we build or how we market ourselves, which means we’re doomed anyway. At best, we can jumpstart our economy while laying the groundwork for Cincinnati to become the destination city that it deserves to be.

Passion 2: Alien Jew v. Predator Jesus ON ICE!

There is no such thing as clean coal. Eviscerate the black through the severed head of a mountain, down the hatch and all the coal is dirty. Mountaintop removal mining makes it all seem dirtier, especially to a kid from the Mountain State, who sees West Virginia failing in many ways, but at least we have pristine and beautiful mountains. Until they're decapitated in an effort to reach the dark kernels of dirty energy found inside.

What passes for a news cycle some weeks really makes me itch. George Will wrote in apparent advocacy for a "global cooling" cycle, and supported his columnistic efforts with a few discredited magazine covers from the 1970's. Now he has been taken behind the blogoshpere's virtual woodshed, and probably won't care and will write about something else, maybe Japanese terrorism or the overwhelming success of the Iraq War. Anyone who can't look at a simple graph and see a disturbing global warming trend is being willfully stupid. Those who seek to advance some debate are just being contrarians, and avoiding obvious facts on purpose in an effort to satisfy...what exactly? This "debate" has been ended by scientific fact, and any ideology involved with denial of global warming has no credit and no usefulness.

Afghanistan will probably fail to do what we think we want it to do, but will do what is has always done: not be centralized and be run by tribal warlords. The path to Taliban control of Afghanistan isn't hard to follow - what has the surge done in Iraq? It provided security, which was designed to allow for American political goals to be met in the new, more secure environment, but raise your hand if you can tell your brother or your sister what goals have been achieved. The elections went well, I guess, but Iraq is in limbo. That's the best we could expect from a surge that followed the inept execution of a tragically misguided war policy. We can hope that Afghanistan is different, but what would make it different? 17,000 more troops? The Soviet Union had far more than that total, and retreated in defeat not long before their state collapsed.

It's a lot easier to point out where the fuck-ups are than to offer solutions, but we are overwhelmed right now. Solutions come from necessity and ideas, but so much is necessary to fix and the ideas only manifest themselves through the will of a corruptible legislative body. And when corruption is absent, ideology and mistrust and careerism drive much behavior in Congress. So this is not an entry about solutions, but about a couple of problems that came to mind while I was sitting here. The news media should be ashamed of its non-coverage of anything this week - if you've trolled some news sites this week you know what I'm talking about. Fluff city, as if nothing is going on worth discussing. I declare otherwise.

I'm thinking about a different bloggish structure, one that would require me to move on from this rough draft-ready blog and probably the other one I do to one which I program myself. Because I don't go out much on the weekends any more, and I need something to do and I want to do it with a lot of pictures. I'm thinking about counting pawn shops and payday loan joints next weekend, in Covington, KY. I wonder how many people are served by these wonderful and useful establishments? You can see gallons of blood in the water.

Sailin' On

The Great Depression featured, among many things, a 25% unemployment rate. The economy was stagnant, didn't grow for years, a lot of people died as a result. Dust scarred a swath through the southwest, some bears made good and bulls didn't exist in reality.

So the New Deal was not some gigantic government expansion born of liberal ideology but necessarily pragmatic counter-cyclical spending. The Depression lasted a long time; a few decades after the Industrial Revolution it looked as if the great capitalist structure was perhaps a great failure. So we're lucky it WAS a cycle, if a long and desperate and brutal one. Roosevelt doesn't get credit from conservatives for his policies - a great deal like to credit the spending associated with WWII solely with bringing us out of the mire - but look at the ideological trench these conservative Republicans are in, and the validity of such ideas is minimized. They simply can't translate those ideas into policies that work. Tax cuts? That's about it - we see how this goes. Hoover did nothing in the face of impending doom and the result was a prolonged stagnation of the economy. I suppose that losing wars isn't very profitable, and the bedtime story of successful tax cut stimulus is a myth born in the ether.

Besides, a big reason for this burst bubble is the fact that we have been spending more than we've been saving. That's our fault. So why give tax cuts to people who will spend them on HDTVs and Wendy's and SUVs and pornography? We forgot how to save, and all the economists and the politicians do is tell us to spend. 9/11 - go shopping! Economy is up - buy a house! Economy is down - buy a house cheap! Housing prices forever rise, you see. The basic premise that people do better when they have more of their own money has been refuted. We clearly don't know what the fuck we're doing.

Conservative Republicans don't seem to think that military spending counts as government spending - defense is a massive expenditure, we have a military which is about 7X bigger than the next biggest. It isn't necessary; we should lead with our head and not our heart with respect to foreign policy, and if we could manage to do that, we would be in much better shape indeed, since we wouldn't have Republicans in power preaching tax cuts while expanding military spending, forcing us to borrow against the full faith and credit of a United States that is failing financially and simply has no clue when it comes to intelligent foreign policy. We're so SCARED all of the time - so we need this big, bad, very expensive military structure. Oh, and that structure is very profitable for a few very powerful people of course. What does this stimulate for the rest of us?

The government is spending money now because somebody has to. The worker/consumer/family doesn't have the extra money anymore and is cowed by failures of advice re: what to do with their incomes. Invest! But in what? We can't trust you sir, you may be running a Ponzi scheme. Well, we tried to buy a house but a lot of times you weren't as clear as you could have been regarding exactly what interest rate we'd be paying on this mortgage. We trusted you! And you sold us instruments, and said buy, and there you go. No one who advises investors to sell goes very far in an investment firm. That's not how money is made.

But then again, they only sold all of that because many, many of us weren't very smart. Really, we aren't so bright in this country. We don't know economics or civics very well, we treat evolution as a belief. We're very intellectually lazy sometimes. That is profitable for MSNBC and Fox News, and I understand that we work more hours than any other population on the globe, but maybe it's time to put down the tricked-out remote and cancel the DirecTV, eat some brain food and wean off of McDonald's and learn how the world works. We know what greases the axle, money, and yet we know very little about the application. The stock market once provided capital to industry - now it's a crapshoot that rewards the psychotic type-A personalities who are driven by this psychosis to succeed at all cost, fueled by trust funds and competitive insecurities and with no soul to provide drag. Nice penthouse, nice car, great party. Love ya.

I haven't made much money over the years and I have a job, so I'm not really affected or concerned. I'm sailing just like I always have, watching some abstract destruction of some peoples' lives, not much different than at any other time, observing the continuum of life and its successes for some and failures for others for all the reasons. I never invested or cared that much about money, and I don't care about retirement. I'm not scared the way I'm supposed to be - the system doesn't like me very much. I'll retire someday but I refuse to focus on it to some probable theory of my detriment. You might say that I'm going to crash and burn - I might say you're going to stagnate. Which is worse? I am a person without a profit scheme, and I'm fine with that. Life is good - I won an arts and crafts contest last week. The prize was a pound of Starbucks coffee. I left it at the bar. Now if I was really desperate, would I have done that? Sometimes it's good to learn to live small. That way you don't have trust the two dimensional figures on the TV, who are convinced of what you should do with your money. And then when it disappears down the rabbit hole, they do a lot of apologizing. But you're just as broke. Save your money.

The unemployment rate is just under 8% during the Great Correction. Good luck.

Self Immolation: Because You Care

I was reading about GM and solvency and it occurred to me: If consumers don't trust GM to honor warranties and contracts if they go bankrupt, why doesn't the government just guarantee them instead of throwing $17 billion at a failing giant? That would be a more specific and practical way to go about supporting GM, if that is indeed a sound idea.

I'm not sure it is though, and I keep hearing horror stories about auto parts. So many auto parts outlets would surely go out of business if GM failed because GM parts are such a cornerstone of their sales! This is what I read. This is silly: People wouldn't stop buying cars and therefore needing parts; other companies would move in and take over GM's share of the market, and the auto parts outlets would sell parts for those brands instead of the GM brand. Did we all eat bad peanuts that damaged the sections of our brains attached to reason? Or did we all move to huts located under power lines after the housing market collapsed? Maybe we're just not thinking enough about the information we're presented.

Why doesn't the UAW understand that it doesn't produce anything? No union produces anything; they are supported by union dues and Democratic handshakes, and because they don't do anything else they will fall on any sword to "protect" workers. In this case, according to Newsweek, GM pays employees an average of $71 an hour compared to $46 for Toyota. The pension and health care payouts to current retirees are astronomical - think of the future retirees and those on the cusp as similar to those who will be drawing social security, and you can see why huge future entitlements are such a problem. We can no longer afford them and must CUT THINGS. Raise the retirement age; people are living longer these days. The UAW should realize that the employees of GM are entirely dependent on the success of GM, and so is the UAW for their union dues. Auto companies fail, workers stop paying dues...well, this is elementary to anyone but the UAW. Everyone gets a little less, but everyone survives. The UAW seems to think that everyone who retires gets to go to laborer heaven by divine right.

Now let's talk about responsibility, as I was involved in a discussion about American responsibility as it relates to the drug war. I was presented with the notion that Americans are incredibly irresponsible and gluttonous and all the rest. My first response was that we are certainly free to be gluttonous. We clearly have the money and the resources, although I think most of us find gluttony disgusting and personally damaging.

But this continued to bug me. Why? Because this notion suggests that we have failed at something and can't change the policy that has failed so thoroughly (the drug war) simply because we can't handle legal drugs to due some sort of undefined irresponsibility. If we are so irresponsible, why do we work more hours and are more productive than any country on the planet? Yes, we beat Japan. Why do we STILL export more goods than any country on the planet? Yes, we beat China. It's mind boggling to me how much we focus on our failures to the point that the sky is always falling, and then when we have real problems that could be solved practically and MUST BE SOLVED for us to continue as a successful country we fall back on how awful everyone is and just give up. What the hell does that have to do with American ideals of hard work and the primacy of free society?



Adam Shepard, Scratch Beginnings:

"I am frustrated with the whining and complaining. Frustrated with the materialistic individualism that seems to be shaping every 13-year-old to be the next teen diva. Frustrated with the lethargy and lack of drive. Frustrated at always hearing how it “used to be” when people talk about the good ol' days in the same breath as their perceived demise of America.

I am really, really frustrated with the poor attitudes that seem to have swept over my peer group. Frustrated with hearing “I don’t have” rather than “Let’s see what I can do with what I do have.” So, I have decided to demonstrate that it doesn't have to be that way. Here’s my premise:

I am going to start – almost literally from scratch - with one 8' x 10' tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, $25, and the clothes on my back. Via train, I will be dropped at a random place somewhere in the southeastern United States that is not in my home state of North Carolina. I have 365 days to become free of the realities of homelessness and become a “regular” member of society. After one year, for my project to be considered successful, I have to possess an operable automobile, live in a furnished apartment (alone or with a roommate), have $2500 in cash, and, most importantly, I have to be in a position in which I can continue to improve my circumstances by either going to school or starting my own business."

Support this man: This is a young citizen who gets it. Not to kill the suspense, but he was successful in his venture. Of course it's hard to find a publisher for your book when you aren't whining about the falling sky and how Americans are destined to fail miserably, but I choose to believe what I always have: We are better than the sum of our parts and no problem is too big. WWII proved that, the civil rights movement proved that, hell - the last election proved that. I will be buying Adam Shepard's book to support him and to read about how he accomplished something that so many people forgot was possible, or worse, took for granted: Success, starting with nearly nothing, in the United States. What a novel concept.

The Sex Offender Shuffle

Myspace allows for transmogrification from pervert to fun Myspace user, and soon we're all an "Add A Friend" away from certain disaster.

I am alerted to this situation by my reliable friend Veda, who has posted an informative blog about Myspace sex offenders. Apparently 90,000 have been identified and booted from the service recently, up from the 40,000 or so previously reported. It got me thinking - are these the real sex offenders that your mother warned you about, those strangers that you are certainly not to talk to or take candy from, or are they the countless "others" who have been caught up in a wave of paranoia and the predictably failed, draconian response of law enforcement?

I ask this because pedophilia is a specific evil. Even the television show "To Catch A Predator," while disturbing, certainly blurred this line and did so in a questionable way. Because pedophilia is sex with children, and anything else isn't, we really, REALLY need to generalize less about this.

The sex offender list may be useful, but putting everyone on it certainly isn't. The first comment on Veda's blog goes something like this: "They should all be castrated!" Really? How would one castrate a woman teacher who had sex with a student? And why would one want to destroy her genitalia? Or anyone else's for that matter, seeing as we are trying to live in some form of civilized society and mutilation runs counter to that advanced ideal? Anyone who wants to mutilate people is suggesting a personal blood lust, similar to the death penalty blood lust that has killed innocent people, similar to the torture blood lust satisfied on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detainees (save America from those brown shepherds with the funny names!) It's amazing to me how so many "good Americans" are ready to destroy any remnant of this country's moral fiber by reducing us as a whole to the same level as the people we're attempting to punish. But give that commenter a knife and present them with the genitals of one of these "sex offenders" and see how sure it is wielded. Those with that particular bloodthirsty affliction would rather have the government do the dirty work, and that is beyond a reasonable doubt. You bring us down.

Oh, and leave your chemical castration musings at the doorstep along with your chemical lobotomy conjecture, Mr. or Mrs. Medical Expert. You sound like you might be from Nazi Germany.

The teacher thing: problem. A 21 year old male who has to register as a sex offender for having sex with a 16 year old girlfriend: problem. Is the 21 year old misguided? Sure, probably, but lumping this dumb guy in with a hardened criminal rapist or unrepentant pedophile waters down the list. I mean, how many times do have we have to hear that someone got in trouble for anything remotely related to sexual misconduct and then we read "and so-and-so had to register as a sex offender." What, did they have a Penthouse mag in the desk drawer at work when they got caught masturbating? Lewd and lascivious! Not constructive, especially when we realize that the list isn't set up to be punitive but to be informative to the community that the sex offender is released to. I don't need to know if Ms. Lefave is in my neighborhood. Psychologists and super-liberals can cry wolf all they want to about how the boy who has sex with the hot teacher can be as affected by that experience as the situation in which the male teacher gets his jollies with a student, but I will disagree here. The dynamic is different, and while I think that the female teacher/male student thing is a somewhat strange phenomenon, I also think that placing these women on a sex offender list is silly. Doesn't all of the publicity generally take care of that?

So what is the quality of this list of 90,000 Myspace sex offenders? How many are a threat, and how many are an annoyance? I would imagine that the real deal, felonious sexual predators are deeply in the minority. How many are pedophiles, attempting to lure kids through a social service, and how many are rapists? If a grown woman doesn't know to be careful before meeting one of these Myspace chaps at this point, then she may never learn. Kids are different, but private accounts and parental supervision go a long way.

The issue is that everyone is a sex offender now and on such a list despite the quality and severity of the crime and most importantly, the actual threat to the community. When did we forget that the safety of the community is the whole point of these lists, and not an opportunity for dimwits to moralize about "perverts" on one hand while advocating mutilation on the other? Which is worse?