Being a news-junkie, I normally spend my Saturday mornings reading two newspapers, the Kansas City Star and the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal (I save the TFP for Sunday). There was an interesting news story in the latter this week about a bicyclist in San Francisco being charged with felony vehicular manslaughter for allegedly running a red light and striking a pedestrian. Having dodged a few of these two-wheeled felons over time myself (both on the roads and in the crosswalks), this story intrigued me long after I put the paper down.
Then it hit me! If you took a city like Toledo, whose City Council is considering putting a Recreation Levy that has to eventually include bike paths, tossed in potential breakthrough legislation prohibiting bicycle texting, added a dash Eco-friendly and Recreation-friendly City Council activity, if you then mixed in a healthy dose of those revenue enhancing red-light cameras along with a pinch of licensing fees for bicycles, sprinkled on a few senior citizens, and added a few tears from that golden oldie 'if just one life could be saved'; you might just have created the recipe for "The Perfect Issue" in politics. So that's what I wrote about for this week's TFP.
Countless studies, could be followed by endless debates (with politicians flip-flopping and holding logically inconsistent ideas); which in turn could be followed by a seemingly endless streams nauseating rhetoric and pages of useless legislation protecting seniors, bicyclists, and pedestrians (along with all of us in public not texting). This could be as close to a legislative Nirvana (the place, not the band) as many politicians experience.
Speaking of which, it's still early in the week, and those of you attempting to experience the best of what's going on in Toledo and Northwest Ohio this week would be well-advised to catch up, both in the mid-week 'Star' edition Toledo's largest Sunday circulation and Ohio's Best Weekly Newspaper for the last three years, the Toledo Free Press.
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