Hey Fran? You're Welcome

Once again, SCC readers write Fran Spielman's columns for her. First up...:

• It's one thing for motorists to vandalize Chicago parking meters to vent their anger over the steep schedule of rate hikes tied to the 75-year, $1.15 billion deal that privatized the city's 36,000 meters.

  It's quite another to abscond with the entire pay-and-display box.

  The Chicago Police Department is investigating a rash of recent thefts of the 200-pound pay-and-display boxes installed across the city to replace individual meters and make it unnecessary for motorists to stuff their pockets with quarters.

Fran's dateline? 12 October. SCC's readers broke it in our comment sections on 06 or 07 October, and we had the actual AdMin Fax posted by 08 October.

Then we asked a simple question:

• Here's a question though - some people pay with credit cards. It that info stored somewhere in the meter box and can it be recovered by someone with some no-so-pure motives?

Fran got an entire second article out of that one:

• Motorists who used credit cards to pay for parking at 20 pay-and-display boxes later yanked out of the ground and stolen should not lose sleep about credit card fraud, Chicago’s embattled parking meter contractor said Tuesday.

  One day after the Chicago Sun-Times disclosed the rash of thefts, Chicago Parking Meters LLC moved to reassure motorists concerned that their credit card information might have been stolen along with the boxes.

So Fran once again demonstrates herself to be an intellectual thief of the lowest caliber.

Hey Fran? How about throwing $250 or so at the Police Memorial Foundation as a gesture of thanks seeing as how you troll here constantly for ideas?