Keene, New Hampshire's annual Pumpkin Fest, reportedly always a booze-infused, college-aged affair, blew up in riots last weekend, with dozens injured and 84 arrested after the police shut it down with a military-style show of force. The Guardians' coverage of the event is out today, providing thoughtful explorations of a regular theme in American policing these days: overly armed cops treating citizens as enemies, with tragic results. The Cato Institute's Walter Olson's comments in the article invoke Baltimore, saying that "it's shocking for people to consider Keene, New Hampshire, having militarised police in the first place—this is not Baltimore, not Los Angeles, this is a quiet college town," and that "if police dress up like the public are their enemy; if they were trained in military tactics to treat the public as their enemy, it is easy for them to make a mistake and treat the public as their enemy when they get on the street." (Van Smith)
It's one thing to appropriate someone's building or billboard for your art, or to spray up a subway car. But when you paint on a mountain in a national park, sorry, it's a felony in every sense of that word. Here's a thread at Hiker.com documenting one New York-based would-be artist's odyssey though our national treasures out west. Casey Nocket apparently posted them herself on Instagram, making the National Park Police's work somewhat easier. Her handle is, apparently, "creepytings." (Edward Ericson Jr.)
Last week's quarterly counts of foreclosures by RealtyTrac had some troubling trends. Nationwide, foreclosures were up for the first time in three years. As Mandelman Matters at implode.com notes, "The report also showed the five states with the highest foreclosure rates during the third quarter included Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, Nevada, and Illinois. Some were up and therefore worsening, like Maryland and New Jersey, where 'filings in the third quarter increased in Maryland on a year-over-year basis for the ninth consecutive quarter and in New Jersey for the 10th.'" The Sun noted the trend back in the spring and reported that "officials hope foreclosures will taper off." Hasn't happened. Hmm. (Edward Ericson Jr.)
