Good morning, City Desk readers. It’s Libertarian Friday, are you ready to rage against the system? Great! Here’s some news:
- Culture11, the conservative/libertarian Web magazine started by Conor Friedersdorf, Peter Suderman, Joe Carter, David Kuo, and James Poulos and based in Arlington, laid off its entire staff on Wednesday. According to Kuo: “We raised a certain amount of money last year predicated on the assumption we would raise more money…Then the fall’s fall occurred and we stretched money as long and far as we could without incurring any debts. With no new money in the door the board decided the most prudent thing to do was suspend business operations.” Andrew Sullivan’s eulogy for the magazine is especially touching.
- Pete Eyre, founder of the anti-statist social networking site Bureaucrash, has been trying to schedule a meeting with someone from the Arlington Police Department after he was intimidated by an Arlington police officer. (Background: Eyre called the APD after he found an officer had parked his cruiser in a no-parking zone while he went to the gym. The officer who responded to Eyre’s call politely refused to write a ticket and left the scene. The officer who had been working out, however, decided to exercise his authority by following Eyre around the neighborhood in his gym clothes, sometimes right up close, sometimes from a distance. Eyre walked nearly a mile away from his home and found the officer was still following him. Always ready to fight the system, Eyre recorded the incident on video.)
- But a little hassle is nothing compared to death by police shooting, the subject of Dave McKenna’s Cheap Seats story “Death by Wager.” McKenna’s lead says it all: “Sal Culosi was shot and killed by a Fairfax County cop three years ago last Saturday. He was about to be arrested for taking football bets, the quarry of a dubious sting operation that seemed timed to make a news splash ahead of the upcoming Super Bowl. (Why dubious? Well, the only major bettor was an undercover police officer, and the alleged bookie, Culosi, covered all the bets himself.)”
- WMATA is trying to cut $103 million from its 2009 budget. Michael Perkins at InfoSnack Headquarters breaks down the numbers. According to Perkins, “the largest increases in costs ($44 million) come from wage increases for unionized employees, which WMATA budgeting treats as sacrosanct.” And while union employees will get a pay raise, hundreds of non-union employees will lose their jobs. UPDATE: WMATA will trim the ranks of union employees as welll.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user fdecomite.