A woman was mugged in the River Street Garage (the one on Second; no idea why they chose to name it after the small alley that runs behind it rather than the major thoroughfare that runs in front of it, but I digress), a c-store clerk was robbed, a guy was mugged with a brick, a dude was assaulted in a park near Italian Lake, a teen’s laptop was stolen while he was using it, some dude kicked a woman in the face and stole her purse, and a guy was stabbed while walking around.  The “and a half” comes from a Harrisburg guy who was charged with breaking into an apartment in Carlisle.  And again, this was all reported in a 24-hour period.

Naturally, the PennLive West Shore Trolls did not hesitate to blame this on Linda Thompson / Barack Obama / the Democrats / the Liberals / “those people” / people who don’t listen to Glenn Beck.  But the real question remains unanswered — what just happened?

Was this a statistical fluke?  It’s possible, but unlikely.  True flukes don’t happen often, even with as broad a subject as “crime”.  And when they do, they’re often small blips on the radar.  More often than not, there exists an underlying foundation of causes (important distinction:  ”causes”, not “justifications”).  Each cause may only be small — an employer notifying its employees of layoffs, a local bank deciding it can no longer delay foreclosures, perfect weather, a speech, a song, and so on.  If you imagine a scale weighing people’s conscious, moral decision to behave well on the left, and all the factors contributing to bad behavior on the right, and the causes as weights of varying sizes, you can see how a combination of seemingly-unrelated occurrences can impact our daily lives.

Does this represent an editorial shift at the Patriot-News or PennLive?  There have been accusations in the past that the Patriot News and/or PennLive and/or the Mayor’s office fail to report on a lot of significant crimes in the city.  Without only hearsay and anecdotal evidence, I can’t speak to the veracity of those claims.  But if they were true, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a media outlet or political figure has been ensnared in a egregious conflict of interest.  In the old days of print media, there used to be a reasonable explanation for limited crime reporting:  the amount of space on the paper.  Today, you can look at the Harrisburg Police Department’s preliminary reports and see for yourself.

Is regional crime really accelerating this quickly?  Or, more importantly, is Harrisburg accelerating any faster than the surrounding municipalities?  Probably.  It’s a city; comparing it to Camp Hill or Wormleysburg or Linglestown is laughable at best.  Looking at the big picture, violent crime dipped about 5.5% nationwide in 2009, though it’s still a little to early to get a clear picture.  Statistics being what they are, however, we’re still left without any real insight into what — if anything — is happening.

The actual answer lies somewhere in a combination of the above.  Economic and social factors play significant roles in molding the crime rate, while the reporting policies of our media outlets and elected officials deeply affect how much we’re made aware of.  All of this, of course, is a fancy way of saying “I don’t get paid enough to figure this out.”  The only definitive statement I can make is that this is why I went back to renting, rather than purchasing another home in midtown.  The city’s finances — those economic reasons we were just talking about — are going to play a massive role in how the coming years play out.  And until we get those in order, there is absolutely no way I am going to stake a mortgage to any municipality in Dauphin County.

Is Harrisburg a bad place to live?  Not at all.  We have a collection of vibrant neighborhoods in midtown, decent employment opportunities, a location central to larger metropolitan areas AND rural countryside, and enough infrastructure to weather any storm that comes our way.  I will continue to rent in the city until the bullets start flying through my balcony door.  The one true question, then, is as follows:

Is Harrisburg entering the 1970s again?

Take the Twitter users @JessiBelle91, @BecksBecky, and @RedBloodBruce.  They’re just some good ol’ fashioned, hard-workin’, red-blooded Americans with genuine political interests, right?  I’m sure they’d each be outraged — OUTRAGED — if you suggested that they’re shill accounts set up by an ill-informed Republican Internet Strategist.

It’s just that for three people who claim to be from New York City, New York, and Kalamazoo, TN, they sure do seem to have an awful lot of ideas crop up at the exact same times.  And hey, look at this — they’re posting using APIs, too.  I guess using copy / paste via the website is too time-consuming.  You’d have to keep logging in and out over and over, and, I’m sure they have alien conspiracy theories to scurry back to.

The thing is, Twitter is by far the easiest platform on which to fake the appearance of support for your given position or company.  Create an account with a clever-but-relevant name, purchase a few thousand followers, and post away.  Repeat four or five times, throw in a script to bounce your propaganda around via RT, and you’re in business.  Spammers — whoops, I mean “affiliate marketers” — have been doing it for years.

It is almost impossible to screw this up.  And yet, here we are.  So without reflecting on the validity (or lack thereof) of the underlying political astroturfing, this stands as a basic message to all who seek to manipulate the social media crowd:  In order to succeed, you first must try.  Because whoever is responsible for this certainly did not.

Next week, we’ll discuss how lobbyists are applying “new” marketing techniques like concern trolling, link farming, and email.

* – I guess I shouldn’t use the word “fake”.  Just because a parade is well-choreographed doesn’t make it fake.

It definitely wasn’t hacked.

NOTE:  I am not a lawyer.  Nothing in this post constitutes legal advice.  Assume that everything you read in here is wrong.  Consult a legal professional if you have any questions.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is an incredibly powerful tool with far-reaching consequences.  We hear the phrase “First Amendment rights” thrown around a lot, and it’s easy to take it for granted.  Thanks to the Internet, we’re in a sort of micro-renaissance for the First Amendment, with its guaranteed rights being tested in ways never before seen.  Our founding fathers never fathomed inventions like WordPress or Twitter, but they knew that the unhindered expression of ideas, beliefs, and news was critical to the success of our nation.  And it’s a philosophy that, despite what you see in the news, is still fiercely upheld by our modern courts.

“Against the backdrop of First Amendment protection for anonymous speech, courts have held that civil subpoenas seeking information regarding anonymous individuals raise First Amendment concerns.” Sony Music Entertainment v. Does, 326 F.Supp.2d 556, 565 (S.D.N.Y. 2004)

“…[T]he constitutional rights of Internet users, including the First Amendment right to speak anonymously, must be carefully safeguarded.” Doe v. 2themart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088, 1097 (W.D. Wash. 2001)

Challenges to our First Amendment rights have grown in recent years, but advocacy groups and courts alike have been constantly waging huge battles to ensure that our rights remain not only in-tact, but are able to be fully asserted in the face of legal challenges.  This is good, because hardly a day goes by where the offended are unable to find new, innovative ways to attack our right to self-expression.

The most relevant challenge in this context is that of defamation.  Defamation is a constantly-evolving concept that requires a great deal of scrutiny and research to bring forth. EFF has a very good, concise explanation of defamation on their website, and Wikipedia’s entry ain’t bad either.  I’m not going to define the concept here because doing so would require more time and space than I have at my disposal.

But at the end of the day, the First Amendment does not protect against defamation.

And yet, the list of exemptions to and defenses against defamation is nearly as long and as complicated as the case law definition of the tort itself.

For example, truth is almost always an affirmative defense against defamation.  You can’t sue someone for publishing a fact about you, no matter how embarrassing or offensive it might be (well, you can; anyone can sue anyone at any time for any reason, but that’s getting beyond the scope of my blog).  And yet, even this exception has exceptions.  You can not, for example, publish medically-sensitive information about another person without that person’s knowledge and consent.  Doing so wouldn’t necessarily be defamation, but it also wouldn’t be protected speech.

See how quickly this can spiral out of control?

I’ve been threatened with a few defamation lawsuits over the years, but somehow none have ever made it to the county clerk’s office.  Threatening a lawsuit is one cheap and sadly-effective way of oppressing free speech.  As a result of those threats, however, I casually follow case law on defamation, and I know how to choose my words carefully.  And I also keep a savings account stashed away in case I ever have to go defend myself in court (note to would-be litigants:  you will lose, and you will reimburse me for my legal fees and lost time.  Just sayin’).

So anyway, back to Fake Mayor Linda Thompson.  (note to self:  Back to Fake Mayor Linda would be a great name for an indie band)

Politicians have an extremely difficult time bringing forth successful defamation claims.  By the very nature of their career choice, they have voluntarily subjected themselves to the public spotlight.  And in the eyes of the courts, they have chosen to become the very subjects against whom the overwhelming majority of First-Amendment-protected speech is directed.  It’s not that they can’t bring a defamation claim, it’s just that, with limited exception, the courts more or less shrug and say “so?”.

For example, I can easily say that I don’t like Mayor Linda Thompson.  I can publish my opinion that her confrontational style has alienated her from the city and has brought additional struggles to what is already a dark period in Harrisburg’s history.  The First Amendment goes so far as to even guarantee that satire and parody, absent any valid claim of defamation or any similar tort, are protected under the First Amendment (without this, we’d have no The Daily Show).

So if I wanted to, say, create an account parodying Linda Thompson, doing so would be an act protected by the United States Constitution.

At this week’s Harrisburg Tweetup (third Wednesday of every month, 7pm at Abbey Bar), lots of fingers were pointing (all in good fun) about who was responsible for the @MayorLThompson account.  Between the good-natured finger-pointing and comments on Twitter, I am apparently one of the top contenders for being the culprit.  So I wanted to put this post together to make everything absolutely clear.

The following quote seems particularly relevant within the context of an anonymous Twitterer using social media to express political criticism.  Although I am admittedly taking it slightly out of context, the spirit of the quote rings louder now than ever before:

“[T]he First Amendment . . . presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.” United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372 (S.D.N.Y. 1943) (opinion of the court by Judge Learned Hand), aff’d, 326 U.S. 1 (1945)

Weighed against the backdrop of massive case law asserting First Amendment protection to anonymous criticism of political entities, I am only able to point out that I, like you and everyone else in this nation who has ever held an opinion, am Spartacus.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If you don’t already know, Centralia is a tiny town about an hour north of Harrisburg.  In the 1960s, a trash fire ignited a coal vein and started an underground mine fire that has been burning ever since.  During the winter months, the ground can be hot to the touch.  Smoke escapes from vents and cracks in the ground year-round.  Trees are bleached white and the entire valley reeks of sulfur.  A four-lane highway — PA Route 61 — was abandoned in the mid-90s after a land subsidence destroyed the road.  Several years ago I flew a Cessna 172 up there, and from the air the “town” is an eerie patchwork of long-abandoned paved streets.

Concrete City is, in a word, depressing.  It is a series of concrete homes built in 1911 for use by management of a Nanticoke coal mine.  And when I say “concrete homes”, I mean that they used poured-in-place concrete.  Not cinderblocks, not just concrete foundations, not just concrete shells, but the entire house — literally every square inch of every wall, floor, and ceiling — is cast-in-place concrete.  Local lore states that the city of Nanticoke tried to demolish the buildings for safety reasons, but generous use of TNT only succeeded in lightly damaging one building.  As such, they were deemed too expensive to demolish and left alone for nearly a century.

Both of these locations provide ample, unique photo opportunities for documenting severe urban decay and a tiny fragment of some of the more unusual history of Pennsylvania.  If nothing else, they both just look cool.

I don’t have an exact date yet, but I’m thinking it will be a Saturday in late September with an alternate date in early October.  As with the Turnpike Hike, both of these locations carry some risk of serious injury.  Concrete City itself is especially dangerous; those buildings haven’t seen maintenance in well over half a century, and a number of them are leaning badly.  Because of the nature of both of these places, this probably isn’t a good trip on which to bring small children.

Centralia is about an hour up I-81.  Concrete City is about another hour past that.  And the return trip is just over 90 minutes.  Driving will be about 85% Interstate, and we’ll obviously be carpooling.  The plan is to leave Harrisburg early in the morning, spend some time in Centralia, stop in Hazleton or Wilkes-Barre somewhere for lunch, visit Concrete City, and then head home.  This will be an all-day, 8-to-5-ish trip.

Further details as events warrant…

First, being the IT Professional ™ that I am, I’m going to offer the city some complimentary advice on securing their website:

• Stop using “lindasucksLOL” as your root password.  It’s really not that secure, though kudos for use on the mixed capitalization.  (IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR THE SARCASM-IMPAIRED AND/OR HARRISBURG MAYOR LINDA THOMPSON (MAYOR, HARRISBURG (MAYOR)):  I don’t really know the root password)
• No matter how much she cries, no matter how much she begs — never, never give Mayor Thompson (Mayor (Harrisburg (Mayor))) the password after midnight.
• For Christ’s sake stop replying to those emails from “legal@yourwebmaster dot com.ru”.  They aren’t really from your webmaster and you don’t really need to send him your password “or face account deleshon (sic)”!

In all seriousness, however, there is one option the city should consider.  And it would only cost taxpayers about three cents a day.

According to PennLive’s article, the webmaster does his work on a volunteer basis.  I’m curious to see what the council pays for hosting and domain registration fees.  Unless the server and bandwidth are donated to the city, we’re paying too much.

There’s no reason the city council couldn’t host its site on WordPress.com.  It would cost $10 per year (and even this is optional), be fully managed 24×7, and could be updated by anyone capable of writing a letter using Microsoft Word.  Updates and backups would be completely automatic and behind-the-scenes, meaning absolutely zero technical knowledge would be required to run the site.  And in the event of a “hack”, odds are outstanding that a backup would be automatically restored before anyone even noticed.

Unless of course you keep using “lindaLOL” as your password.  Then I can’t help you.

The building will occupy the entire block from 6th & Reily to 5th & Boyd.  Presently, this lot is vacant aside from a solitary duplex. It’s easily within walking distance of everything midtown has to offer, and its proximity to the forthcoming courthouse helps cement thoughts of further redevelopment in the area.  Underground parking will be available for residents.  It looks like the parking / storage area will empty onto Fifth Street (hooray!), which will help shunt some of the residents towards midtown.

No ETA on opening and absolutely no pricing information, but you can see the floorplans on their Facebook page.

The construction of dense residential development near midtown has been a long time coming.  Midtown’s redevelopment has really picked up steam in the last few years, and this will help draw a professional, single crowd to the area in ways the existing low-rise blocks can not.  The Lofts at 909 does a good job drawing a professional crowd, but it’s not well suited for those of us with furniture and/or who aren’t looking to put down that kind of monthly payment without building equity.  1500 especially appeals to me because it combines the proximity to midtown with the community of mid- / hi-rise living.

The question is, will it work?  In 20 years, what will the rest of the northward community be like?  Will it still be boarded-up hotels and condemned townhomes?  Or will we see further development, more shops, and beautification without gentrification?

* – There’s a catch.

It’s as if Peter Falk, dressed in full Columbo attire, reached down from above, tapped Rendell on the shoulder as he was walking away from his congratulatory speech, and said “Oh!  Er uh, there’s just one more thing.”

Because it would be asinine for our legislature to do things like sane people would, this year’s budget was passed with the assumption that Pennsylvania will receive $850 million in federal funding.  Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look like we won’t.

I don’t know how you do your own personal budget, but I’m willing to make a fairly safe bet that at some point in the process, you add up all your assets and distribute them among your liabilities.  Your paycheck gets carved up between rent, mortgage, car payments, student loans, day care, food, taxes, retirement, healthcare, credit cards, and whatever other obligations you have.  Simple enough, right?

Naturally, that’s not how they do things over in the legislature.

The 2010-2011 budget clocked in at $28.04 billion.  Of that, $850 million is anticipated — but not guaranteed — to come from the federal government.  At just over 3% of the total budget, it appears to be a fairly small slice.  If your personal paychecks totaled $5000 in a given month, this would be like allocating $150 of your budget.

The problem is, that’s not entirely accurate.  Sure, it’s 3% of the total budget.  But $850 million — $850,000,000.00 — is a lot of money.  I mean, a LOT.  If you put that in a savings account today (yes, I know, you wouldn’t put that much money in a single account; bear with me), then even today’s paltry 1.25% interest rates would earn you a whopping $10.6 million in interest annually.

If you divide $850 million by a salary of $45,000 (a number I’ve admittedly pulled out of nowhere to represent the annual salary of a state employee, from the most entry-level grade-1 employee to the highest executives), it would pay a full year’s salary for 18,667 employees — or a lifetime 35-year salary for 533 employees.  In fact, those numbers are actually higher, as this doesn’t account for the state income and sales taxes paid by those employees.

$850 million is enough to a school district the size of Central Dauphin for the next half-century.  For that matter, it’s enough to give 50+ schools the size of Central Dauphin one year of taxpayer-free operation.

$850 million would be enough to pay off the remaining debt on the Harrisburg incinerator, AND pay the city’s entire operating budget for the next eight years, AND hand out a generous $4.75 million refund to all 47,500 (estimated) city residents (that’s $100 per person, to clarify), AND devote nearly $30 million to city beautification (actual dogparks, anyone?).

$850 million would give every Pennsylvanian six cases of “Pennsylvania Style Lager” (you know that $9.99 30-case of beer you see at the distributor?  The stuff you buy when Keystone Light is “too high-brow” for your function?  The stuff you get when you “ain’t servin’ none o’ that there fancy elitist Bud Light stuff”?  Yeah … it’s like spilling a can of Coors Light into a puddle along Front Street, then lapping it up three days later).  Or, one case of the really good stuff.

$850 million would buy every Pennsylvanian a pet monkey.  (edit: Sorry, we already have a legislature)

$850 million would fund major progress towards eliminating the homeless problem in Pennsylvania.  While exact numbers are difficult to come by — largely because homelessness is such a fluid problem — it would go a long way towards building or enhancing shelters that provide 24-hour access to showers (try getting a job when you haven’t showered in two weeks), food (free groceries help, but not when you can’t refrigerate them), means of contact (try applying for even a temp labor job without an address), basic medical treatment (you and I already foot the bill when someone without insurance visits the ER), and basic counselling.

$850 million would revitalize the dead zone near the intersection of Market & Cameron Streets in Harrisburg — and then some.  Imagine that row of vacant warehouses converted into loft condos, boutique shops (think a St. Thomas Roasters satellite instead of Starbucks), restaurants, and office space.

$850 million may only be 3% of our state’s annual budget, but it’s still a massive amount of cash.

And yet to our legislature, $850 million is throwaway amount.  Because it represents only a fraction of the Pennsylvania’s budget, they aren’t interested in its implications.  They don’t even have a contingency plan if it gets denied.  They passed the budget assuming — and knowing the risk — that the $850 million would make it through.

Now that it’s looking like it won’t, what do we do?

I largely ignored all the complaining about the event’s name change.  I think the name change was silly, sure — but it’s still an event.  It’s still an excuse to get outside.  It’s still free, it’s still accessible to everyone, it’s still festive, and we still have fireworks.  In theory, it should be exactly the same as last year but with different letters on the banners.  Right?

Yeah.  The thing about theories is that they aren’t always right.

Put simply, the place was deserted.  I’m being generous when I say it had about one-fifth the crowd of ArtsFest, and if you told me it was actually only one-tenth, I’d believe you.  Where ArtsFest was mostly shoulder-to-shoulder just about everywhere, the Harrisburg Jazz & Multicultural Festival had wide-open spaces.

Food vendors were standing around idle.  This is really unfortunate when you consider each vendor’s cost (fuel, registration, time, staffing, supplies, and product).  If you wanted a $6 slice of pizza or a basked of “FRIED VEGIES”, you could slip right in without any wait.

The vendors weren’t the only ones to get the shaft.  Of all the bands I saw across two days, none drew a substantial crowd.  It’s not because the bands were bad (they weren’t) or because the weather was bad (it wasn’t) or any other indirect cause.  It’s just that the people weren’t there.

So why did the event flop?  It’s pretty unlikely that the name change had anything to do with it.  Most of us don’t care what it’s called.  Even with this year’s ridiculous mouthful of a name, it’s still our city’s Independence Day celebration.  Combined with perfect weather and a saved-at-the-last-second fireworks display — not to mention remaining completely free while more people are finding themselves unemployed or out of money — it really should have been a decent event.

My own personal theory — and you don’t even have to buy into it — is that Linda Thompson has, since day one, behaved in such an arrogant and confrontational manner that nobody wants to be associated with her anymore.  And even though she pulled her name off the event at the last second, the damage was done.  She got what she wanted.  People saw this as “her” celebration.

Linda Thompson takes a lot of flak for things that aren’t her fault.  She didn’t build the incinerator with her own two hands, nor is she personally responsible for our finances being where they are today.  But this one is all her.

Thanks, Linda.