It’s budget time at work. For the past twenty-six years and eight employers, it’s the same thing every damn year. “Find a way to spend it or we won’t get as much next year.”

I’m cheap. I’m frugal. I’ve also never been the manager in charge of a budget. I would have been the guy who was stupid enough to say, “We have too much every year. Just send it back and let’s use what we need.”

That’s me. The truth is the truth. The truth is not merely the narrative you can sustain.

I’m vehemently against revenue traffic cameras. Libertarian in me, yaknow? But I’m not against traffic cameras per se. Every year it’s the same story in the local paper and television news. Every year it’s the same idiots showing traffic camera videos of collisions and near-misses and saying, “SEE? This is why we need traffic cameras!”

Er…

Okay, so you obviously have a traffic camera there. We’re looking at the footage.

And that camera obviously didn’t stop that crash/near miss. Soooo… What am I missing here? How did the revenue camera change anything?

But the fact that the camera can bear witness to idiot drivers? I’m fine with that. The truth is the truth, even when the truth is that I might have been the one driving like an idiot.

Don’t take the damn revenue cameras down, for God’s sake. They paid for themselves. Now that they are deemed unconstitutional, don’t spend more money to take them down. Leave them. Let them bear witness. As a citizen I should be able to go to a web site and download the video from last hour of any given traffic camera. If I’m in an accident, I should have the option to get the video of the wreck and send it to my insurance adjuster. The truth is the truth. Period.

So…

Now my city is on fire. My first house was less than a mile from where Michael Brown died. Less than a mile from the looting and burning and protests.

He said/he said.  And no dashcam video or personal clip-on Muvi Pro camera on the officer.

The city is certainly  burning on a lie, but there’s no way to know exactly who is lying. (Apparently) there was no impartial CCD chip of light receptors and magnetic oxide to bear witness.

Last night I saw news footage of an LEA urban assault vehicle rumbling past my old house. Absolutely no doubt that the Humvee was purchased as a direct result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Stimulus money. Communities across the nation were handed a fat check and told “Spend it! Now!” And they did. Some reluctantly and some enthusiastically.

“Hey Chief, we’ve got about $330K of the stimulus money left. You need any capital expenses? New guns? New cars?”

“Naw, we don’t have a storage room big enough for three hundred grand worth of armaments. What’s everybody else buying with their stimulus cash?”

“Hmmm. Looks like armored Humvees.”

“Sure. I’ll take one of those.”

Great googelty-moogelty. You bought armored vehicles with your stimulus but you couldn’t buy dash cams?

If you had bought the dash cams, you probably wouldn’t need the frickin’ Humvee.

There. I said it. Invest in the truth first, and your narrative (of control) is rendered largely unnecessary.