It’s somewhat a sad testament to the world’s leading Democracy that there’s a profit to be made in registering people to vote. Which is why nonprofit groups like ACORN run into trouble. ACORN although itself a nonprofit, hires people to register new voters in primarily low income areas. They pay low income people per person registered, which is where the profit part comes in. It is personally profitable to just make stuff up. Which is how ACORN found itself in voter registration scandals across the country.

Seattle

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So far, Norwalk has been lucky that surveillance cameras are merely observing traffic and not ticketing speeders. In Maryland however, the cop cam has proven to be a big moneymaker.

The leafy capital suburb of Chevy Chase Village is a great place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there.

At least not by car. Easy-to-miss automated speed cameras on its half-mile main drag, where the speed limit is 30 mph, caught 3,500 speeders on their first day of operation last fall. Before that, the norm was six tickets a day.

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I can’t remember the last time I used a phonebook. Each year several phone companies deliver thick books in plastic bags and each year I dutifully recycle the previous years books, still in the delivery bags and place the current set atop the fridge where they will sit unused. Clearly I am not the target audience for the phone book.

When I needed to find a plumber one year, I called a friend for recomendations. When I need a phone number and I’m not on wifi’d somewhere I call 1-800-free-411. They even have a website. Addresses? Google. In fact Google serves up pretty much any bit of info I need. Including how to stop the delivery of phonebooks.

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