Your Call Is Important to Us

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate
“An earlier version of this article misstated the job title of Philip P. Pan. He is the new Beijing bureau chief of The New York Times, not the China bureau chief.”–New York Times, Jan. 4

Your Call Is Important to Us
“This is a city that’s been to heck and back,” Barack Obama said in Detroit in September 2011. “And while there are still a lot of challenges here, I see a city that’s coming back.” To judge by this story from WWJ-TV, maybe he meant going back to heck:

Detroiter Rachelle Guyton said she called 911 around 6:30 a.m. Saturday to report that her 2003 Chrysler Town & Country minivan had been stolen from an apartment building in Palmer Park–but it wasn’t the van she was worried about.

“I have a gun under my car seat, and when I called the police department to explain this to them and try to have them help . . . they didn’t give me any attention. They told me I had to wait until 8 o’clock to call back. What if someone gets shot with this? What if a child gets this in his hand? I’m responsible, and I just can’t have that on my conscience,” Guyton told WWJ’s Terri Lee.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that La Jolla, a ritzy coastal San Diego community (Mitt Romney has a house there), is having trouble dealing with the problem of waste from birds and marine mammals, which is stinking up the rocky shore:

The La Jolla Village Merchants Assn. gathered more than 1,000 signatures demanding an immediate solution. But immediate is not in the governmental lexicon when it comes to issues involving the ocean and wildlife.

To wash down the rocks would require a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. The city, probably the full City Council, would need to endorse a specific wash-down proposal–but that, according to [local councilman Sherri] Lightner’s staff, would mean submitting the issue to an application process that could take at least two years, given the backlog at the water board.

And even if the water board approved the application, the issue would then proceed to the [California] Coastal Commission, an agency not known for its speed.

There are those who insist that what America needs is more government. They’d have a more compelling case if the government we have were capable of providing basic services.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”