Genius at work
The Boston Globe metro columnist Brian McGrory thinks he has inspired a genius of a proposal. Some time go he wrote about a fast growing city in Arizona that can afford to spend any amount of money on anything it desires, just like most fast-growing cities out Southwest (don’t worry, their bill will come due, but more on that some other time). What struck him as particularly compelling was a tax earmarked for public-safety spending. After reading Mr. McGrory’s column, city councilor Sam Yoon called the columnist to tell him about a fantastic proposal inspired by it: A 0.5% sales tax in Boston for public-safety spending. Flattery gets you everywhere.
Here’s how Mr. McGrory introduces Councilor Yoon:
Yoon. Sam Yoon. I remember that name. Wasn’t he the wildly popular candidate for City Council a year or two ago? But whatever happened to him after the campaign?
Ends up, he won, according to some Globe clips.
One would think Mr. McGrory would have had a little bit better grasp of who Councillor Yoon is, because here’s what the Globe scribe wrote almost exactly three months ago:
And this from Councilor Sam Yoon: “Every decision we make about a dollar we spend is a dollar we don’t spend on something else.” Thank you, sir, for that analysis.
Back then he was trashing Councilor Yoon for not falling in love with the pricey but probably not particularly useful gadget ShotSpotter.
Now the two are fawning over each other. Writes Mr. McGrory:
“Let’s go to Downtown Crossing and ask people who come into work from out of the city, ‘How much is that lunch?’ ” Yoon said. ” ‘$10? Would you pay an extra nickel if you knew it would help fight violence?’ That would be a no-brainer.”
So much of a no-brainer that Mr. McGrory and Councilor Yoon decided against actually asking anybody, other than Councilor Yoon’s revenue-hungry fellow councilors. They all agreed that Mr. McGrory is a genius, if I understand his column correctly.
Gunfire erupted in two Rochester neighborhoods late Friday, leaving one man dead in an alley shortly before another was killed with a shot to the head at a house party, according to police reports.
As police began their investigation, the department’s “ShotSpotter” gunfire detection system registered shots fired several blocks from the scene of the house party killing, but there were no reports of injuries.
..
The killings bumped Rochester’s homicide toll to 18 so far this year and came despite stepped-up police deployments meant to curb violence in the state’s third largest city.
..
It was not immediately known whether the killings were related, no arrests had been made and police continued to investigate Saturday.
