Tea and Vitriol

The final hours of 2022 are upon us. Tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) of people are planning to go out to celebrate New Year's Eve after nearly two years of government-imposed isolation and restrictions across the globe to "combat" the Corona Virus. Bars and nightclubs will be offering tacky paper hats and noisemakers, as well as a plastic cup of cheap champagne at midnight to ring in the new year to customers, who will be drinking at regular prices throughout the evening. All the while, the patrons will be shrieking to each other at how much fun they're having. I hope they will be. They are the ones who weren't invited to anyone's parties. News Year's Eve is usually regarded as amateur night for drinkers, which is why the various law enforcement agencies will be out at full force. Hopefully those partiers will be up and about by January 3rd. For myself, I am not particularly nostalgic about the passing of 2022 nor particularly hopeful for 20

Some jokes are just too obvious to be funny. The ongoing "Opera Bouffe" of Rochester's "Police Accountability Board" is an excellent illustration of this statement. For those of you who have been following my blog, I have covered the antics of the Police Advisory Board extensively, so only a cursory glance is necessary here. The PAB was created nearly three years ago. Approved by the majority of the few people who voted that year, it was intended to investigate malfeasance by officers of the Rochester Police Department. All it has really done is to be a pretentious, expensive, demoralizing nuisance to local law enforcement and taxpayers. The PAB presumed that they had the power to discipline and fire police officers based on their findings, which is in violation both of the City Charter and New York State law. The PAB also presumed to be independent of and superior to Rochester's City Council, which City Council denies. In short, the egomaniacs of the PAB co