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Little Tax Collectors

Culture, History / By

Halloween Part I think.  But more and more, that’s only what Halloween was.  Why is what I just described a very real thing where I live, but not something that happens in a lot of other places?  Why are children flocking to my neighborhood to trick or treat instead of raiding their own neighbors for sweet treasures?  Why do many children trick or treat by car instead of walking from house to house?  And what does trick or treating (or the lack thereof) say about community (or the lack thereof)? I wouldn’t go so far as to call my Baltimore neighborhood a full-on community.  With a population approaching 20,000, most people here are strangers to each other.  And there is also an obvious lack of binding social institutions that connect people in meaningful ways.

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Christine O’Donnell and Jimmy McMillan Walk Into A Bar

History, Politics / By

of her flying around town on a witch’s broomstick, or imagining her desperately trying to stave off the perils of masturbation. I mean the recently departed Robert Byrd’s saliva stained grandstanding aside, I really do want all of our senators to have a reasonable familiarity with the Constitution. I don’t think that’s raising the bar of expectation too high. And then there is the new folk hero, born of last night’s NY gubernatorial debate: Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. The major candidates in that race are the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo (will Americans ever stop voting for famous families, be they Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushes or Clintons?) and O’Donnell’s fellow Tea Partier, Carl Paladino, who, and I’m not kidding here, left the stage early so he could take a wiz.

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The Public Professor

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