America, Land of the Freely Arrested

From an article in the NY Times:

By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice system in everyday life.

The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest histories of a national sample of adolescents and young adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds who participated reported having been arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation.

...

The study did not look at racial or regional differences, but other research has found higher arrest rates for black men and for youths living in poor urban areas.

I have to laugh. Americans love to beat their chest and proclaim their "love of liberty" but they arrest and incarcerate at a rate far beyond almost every other country in the world except for the handful of despot dictatorships. You would think this report would force Americans to look in the mirror. Their myth of "freedom loving" doesn't match up with their eagerness to jail. It is much like the Founding Fathers prating on about "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. while being one of the worse slavery-based societies on the face of the earth.

Americans Love Their "Freedom"

Here's what happens in America is you try to promote democracy by registering voters in "Freedom" Plaza...



There is something deeply wrong about a people that label everything "freedom" and "liberty" and then go about arresting people for seemingly innocuous acts. If anything, trying to enfranchise the populace should be a "protected" activity, not something subject to arrest and imprisonment. This is especially disturbing because the fellow arrested was Ray Lutz, a 2010 Congressional candidate for the Democratic Party.

More details here...

The World Still Turns

Fanatics think that when they perceive an on-coming "doomsday" that they should have the right to pass laws to make everybody march to their beat. The "global warming" crowd feels they should dictate who gets to burn fossil fuel, by how much, and where. But the real world views that as fanatics imposing their wild-eyed craziness on the rest of the world. So the push by the fanatics to legislate morality (pass IPCC restrictions and quotas) has failed.

So how are we doing in the real world? Surprise! The real world is quickly moving toward renewable energy without the use of the Spanish Inquisition or the Iron Maiden of quotas and restrictions. Here is a bit from an article in the Los Angeles Times:

Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks.

Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.

"The progress of renewables has been nothing short of remarkable," United Nations Environment Program Executive Secretary Achim Steiner said in an interview. "You have record investment in the midst of an economic and financial crisis."

The findings indicate the world is shifting toward consuming more renewable energy even without a global agreement on limiting greenhouse gases.

...

As well as renewables spending exceeding that on new fossil plants, last year also was the first time expenditure in developing countries, mainly China, exceeded that in the industrialized world, Sawyer said, predicting both trends will continue.

The New Energy Finance figures exclude investment that merely replaces existing plants, and its renewables tally excludes money spent on building large hydropower projects.

Wind operators are likely to install 43 gigawatts of generating capacity this year and 48 gigawatts next year, up from 36 gigawatts in 2010, GWEC estimates.

I know this disappoints the doomsters selling the snake oil of catastrophic "global warming". But in the real world, technology improves and people make choices that make their world a better place. You don't have to beat them with whips or force them into chains. The ideologues prefer to reduce people to mindless soulless automata who simply follow orders from the politically correct. But in the real world, people like the idea that they get to choose their future and that they get credit for making intelligent choices.

The Ultimate Putdown for Libertarian Ideologues

This is the relevant quote that you need to hit libertarians with:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

John Rogers is the author of the above devastating putdown. And here's his own carefully crafted profile of himself from his blog:

John Rogers started doing stand-up in 1988, got his Physics degree in 1990, began writing television in 1995, writing movies in 1999, writing comics in 2005 and writing for RPG's in 2007. He plainly needs to focus.

Sounds like a truly interesting character. Oh... and I bet he sleeps with a copy of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings under his pillow every night!

My problem with libertarians is that they live in fantasy world.

• Ayn Rand argued for self sufficiency and spewed poisonous verbiage about social programs, but when she became sick with cancer, she maximized her use of every social program available to her to cover her costs. But she carefully kept this "character flaw" hidden from her followers.


• Friedrich von Hayek was induced to come back to the US and join a right wing think tank where his job would be to rant about FDR's entitlement progams and to do everything possible to destroy that "socialist" program. But before he would agree to come back he had to make sure that he would qualify for Medicare. Of course he never advertised this inconsistency between the social philsophy he espoused and his own personal standards of looking after No. 1 at the expense of those he could fleece.

These "individualists" are only too eager to convince you to take on the heroic pose and rage against the world, but they were cowards who took advantage of every penny of entitlement money they could get. They were utter hypocrites.

What really, really drives me crazy is that they espouse a "social philosophy" which is a pure fantasy. They deny any social relationships and declare that the only "glue" holding a society together are freely entered "contracts". But how many families negotiate a contract with their newborn? Nobody lives in the fantasy world of absolute independent self-made "individualist" that these crazies espouse.

Your Friend, Mr. Policeman

Funny. When I was a kid I was taught that Mr. Policeman was my friend. I've since learned to give them wide berth because you can't predict how they will behave and you essentially have no rights unless you have lots of money and powerful friends to help you buy/bribe the appropriate "justice".

Here is a case of an adolescent who was beaten and arrested "because he had a suspicious bulge in his pants". That was a colostomy bag. And the guy suffered Down's symdrome so when the police got pushy and aggressive, the poor kid did what any normal person (or animal) would do. He tried to flee. That simply enraged the cop who was too stupid to recognize mental impairment or be acquainted with the need for colostomy bags.

And here is the case of a physically disabled woman sitting in front of her house who didn't jump when a cop ordered her to "jump". She mistakenly believed that she had a right to sit on her property and wait for the ice cream truck to drive by so she could get some ice cream. The cop "subdued" her so violently during her arrest she had to be taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries during the "arrest".

It is good to see that the "land of the free" has police to make sure that freedom is properly respected. It is so heart-warming to read that "the best country in the world" is protected by diligent police who aren't confused or impeded by mental retardation or physical disability. They believe in dishing out "justice" to any and all with an "even hand".

When you read the above, you can understand why the US is busy killing thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are simply doing "police work" on an international scale bringing the fruits of American "freedom" and "love of liberty" to everyone.

I wish I lived in a world where the police were in fact "working for the people" and respected citizen's rights. But sadly, I live in an alternate universe where the police feel they are employed by the top 1% to enforce a system where the job of the bottom 99% is to help enrich to top 1%. In this alternate universe, the laws are written to give tax cuts to the rich while providing the "benefits" of fees and hidden taxes to the bottom 99%. The judicial system is a pompous, expensive, ridiculous system that delivers "justice" that is tangential to real justice. The rich get their wrists slapped no matter how many victims and how seriously harmed those victims are. The poor get manhandled and long prison terms for their "crimes" no matter how little real harm (if any) was done because "everybody knows" the poor are dangerous and must be watched closely and severely punished for the least intimation that they might step out of line.

Ignoring the Obvious

Problems go begging for solutions because those with power in a society are very comfy with the established socio-economic structure. They mouth words about charity and concern, but the reality is they aren't looking for real, effective solutions. From a post by economist Tim Harford:

A recent survey by the economist Michael Clemens, of the Center for Global Development, points out that although the question is largely ignored, any reasonable estimate of the economic gains from freer migration would dwarf that of the gains from, say, freer trade – if we include the welfare of the migrants themselves. Clemens points out that allowing some migration from disaster-hit countries such as Haiti or Somalia would be a far more effective way to alleviate poverty than many conventional aid programs.

I advocate free migration between countries for a different reason: it is the most effective way to undercut dictators and bad government. It is nice to have a ballot to vote, but sometimes you need something more effective, the ability to leave a bad country and go to a better country. But those with power don't like "losing control" so this option will never be. But it would be the most direct path to a better world.

Here is a bit more from Harford's post:

Clemens has, alas, attracted the attention of white supremacists, but even people with impeccable bleeding-heart-liberal credentials worry about emigration because of the “brain drain” – the harm assumed to be done to poor countries as their doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs abandon them for cushy careers in the west. It is for this reason that the NHS has its recruitment ban.

I am not convinced. Should we seek to keep the citizens of poor nations trapped in their countries of birth for the good of their fellow citizens? Nobody would, for a moment, consider banning ambitious Mancunians or Glaswegians from working in London, purely on the principle that they might do more good in their back home. Outrageous infringements of liberty seem to be acceptable only when applied to foreigners. (Another analogy, inspired by Clemens: would we happily discuss working mothers under the heading of “the love drain”? I hope not.)

The real effects of the brain drain have also been poorly thought through by most of us. The economist Oded Stark points out that if western countries assiduously recruit doctors and engineers from poor countries on comparatively vast salaries, that is a strong incentive to train as a doctor or engineer. The result may be more doctors and engineers in poor countries, even after the migrants have left. And there is some evidence that this is indeed the case.

Funny how people can think it is a "right" to move from neightborhood to neighborhood in a city, or within a state/province, or between states/provinces. But to cross a national border suddenly is considered a "whole other thing" where rights and liberties are suddenly not the issue but "sovereignty", "race purity", "brain drain" and other mystical ideas.

America, Land of the Free

Your friendly police understand your role as a citizen. It is to "go away". You have no rights to observe police in action no matter where you stand. The police want do be able to "do their thing" in the dark without the public having any oversight. This is of course for "your protection" because everybody knows that corruption only happens in the bright sunlight with an active press. So this policeman is a shining example of modern American police at work:



Sadly, the post 9/11 world is one that the framers of the American Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights, simply wouldn't recognize. And this noble achievement was done to make Americans "safe". Safe from knowledge of everything. Now you can only "trust" that public officials are doing the right thing and keeping the public good uppermost in their mind. You no longer have the right to observe or question authority. Your job is simply to ask "how high" when they say "jump!".

From the annotation attached to this YouTube video:

This was the end of a police chase and the Sgt. doesn't want video coverage from a credentialed member of the press. The photog asks how far to move back but the sgt. says no you can't shoot it at all. Notice the road is open to traffic, there are people without a camera that are standing there and even some kids walk straight through the scene. The photog moves a block away and shoots from the next street over and that's when he's arrested and charged with Obstruction of Governmental Administration....how can you obstruct from a block away.

Update 2011aug31: And here is a fellow who faces 75 years in jail for using a camera to observe the public servants, the police, in action...



Clearly, the only reason for such draconian punishment is because the police want the cloak of "security" to hide their crimes.

Update 2011sep09: Here is technology to enable police recording while disguising the fact that you are recording and hiding your identity when you upload. It is part of a citizen-based initiative, OpenWatch, to enable transparency in government:



For a discussion of your rights to record the police, go read this article in the Washington Examiner written by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, and is best known for his weblog, Instapundit, one of the most widely read American political weblogs.

The Death of the "Live Free or Die" America

Funny. Americans claim to hate big government. They rage at Washington. They elect right wing conservative governors, and what happens. The state governments become "big brother" and crush the little people.

Here's an example from Gov. Swartzenegger's California:



I love the quote from the video at 1:40 where the state government tells him:

You can't live here. You can keep the land, but won't be allowed to live on it.

So much for "property rights". The above is a lot like the famous quote by Anatole France on the glory of French law:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

At 5:00 into the video, the real villain is named as Mike Antonovich, Republican head of the Board of Supervisors for Los Angeles county.

Why do Americans vote in right wing governors (and county supervisors) who trample on their rights? Why do Americans mouth a "love of freedom" and allow right wing governments to trample on their rights? Why don't Americans understand that a left wing government would actually protect their rights rather than the property rights of the rich and powerful?

The Truth about Income in America

Most American's can't recognize their own face in a mirror. Pay attention at 1:50 in the video:



I love the fact that Dan Ariely designed the chart testing people's knowledge of their own society. He is a psychologist who looks at how you can use your understanding of your own irrational inner nature to help you be more rational. His books Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality are well worth reading.

The problem is that almost everybody has drunk the Kool-Aid of the right wing ideologues:

• government is the problem, not the solution


• work hard and you get ahead


• the problem with America is the welfare moms driving around in Cadillacs not the Wall Street Banks that got a $700 billion gift (bailout) from the taxpayers


• deregulate, deregulate, deregulate (which is exactly while the Wall Street banks blew up, why there was corruption in the dot.com era (Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing), why the Savings & Loans blew up in the late 1980s, etc.


• the rich are "job creators" and you don't want to tax them


• trickle down economics is how you grow wealth (just wait for those rich to let the crumbs off their table shower down on your head)


• America is great because it is free, the land of opportunity (in fact it has less social mobility than almost any other country except the undeveloped dregs of the world)

The Magic Elixir of Democracy and Free Markets

Here is a wonderful attack by Yves Smith in her blog Naked Capitalist on the confusion between political freedom (democracy) and market freedom (free trade). I've bolded the key bits:

Probably the most wicked intellectual subterfuge of the last three decades — and goodness knows there have been many — has been the pretence that democracy and markets are two sides of the same coin. Both have been extolled under the banner of “liberty”. “Free markets” are somehow the hallmark of democracy and they should be allowed to roam free, untrammeled by evil governments who never doing anything right. Any number of commentators, coincidentally funded by right wing think tanks, warned us that constraining markets represents an attack on basic freedoms. Such elision is, of course, rubbish; and in many cases deliberate deceit. In a market one dollar equals one vote. The more money you have, the more votes you get. In a democracy it is one person, one vote. You can only be one person at a time (except in Florida, it seems). With this in mind, I was intrigued to see a response from Rob Windt mid week about the aftermath of the Icelandic bankruptcy:

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents.

The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

This, I would suggest, is real liberty at work. And it is probably an early example of what I expect will become an increasingly political debate, rather than a managerialist debate, about the direction of developed economies. As Jeremy Grantham in his fine piece pointed out mid-week, there has been an unholy alliance between corporate profits and government spending, something he said he “never saw as a faint possibility”. It turns out that business is not in a virtuous war with government; the only victim in America is the ordinary worker. One only has to see the film Inside Job to see how government and the financial system have worked in tandem, in large part because it is the same people playing both sides of the fence.

I keep hoping to see evidence that the electorate is waking up to the horrors around us. But as I watch the "buzz" in Iowa around the ship of fools that pass for Republican presidential hopefuls, I despair. These people are all sellouts. If you listen to their message they are making gestures and empty promises because their real loyalty is to corporations and billionaires.

Here's her grim outlook for the future:

The Icelandic move is where we are heading. The rule makers in the financial system, who think they can make up rules as they go, are on a collision course with those who have to assent to the rules — the people and the governments they appoint. So far, it is mostly presented as a management problem — how can governments manage their fiscal and monetary levers — but it will become more than that. It will become a question about who has the right to set rules and possess power.

The outcome is not a foregone conclusion, even in democracies. Grantham argues that there needs to be more income distribution, a reversal of the money grab of the rich in the United States, in order to return to a more balanced form of economic growth. But that is by no means inevitable, indeed it is not even the norm. More normal is what happened in South America in the 60s, 70s and 80s where the middle classes were gutted and the rich ruled with increasing violence. As Grantham shows, America is heading the same way — its middle class has been progressively eviscerated for about 40 years, while corporations and the rich have thrived. The history of human behaviour tells us that, unless stopped, the powerful will enslave the weak and America is heading in that direction.

American's love to glory in their revolutionary past with Paul Revere's famous ride calling citizens to arms. But today needs it own Paul Revere and sadly I don't see one. I sure wish I could say that there is one on the horizon charging in like the Hollywood cavalry that gave me great comfort as a youth, but in reality there is no saviour on the horizon. The sad joke is that Obama presented himself as "the one", the "hope" for the people, but his a completely sold out tool of the corporate class. Obama and the Republicans are the problem not the solution. Most of the Democratic legislators are part of the problem not the solution. There needs to be a radical overhaul of American politics of the Latin American future that Grantham foresees is coming. (Remember the bloody secret war where the generals "disappeared" people, where pregnant women were kept in jails until they gave birth and their babies were given to right wing families as "their own" while the woman was taken to a firing squad or dropped out of a helicopter over the south Atlantic. That is the future unless Americans wake up.

You really must read the whole post by Yves Smith. It is well worth your time.

How to Be a Successful American Business

The secret is the "org chart", i.e. how you organize your workforce. Luckily we have an insight into how the top companies structure their staff:

Click to Enlarge
I prefer the Microsoft approach. It has more resonance with the American "Wild West" spirit since it captures their love of weapons and their deep respect for the Second Amendment to their Constitution (which any reasonable foreigner reads as the right of states to raise and arm militias but which the idiotic US legal system reads as the right of American individuals to arm themselves to the teeth and go on shooting rampages commonly known as "going postal").

Terrorism Fears Invokes Police State Mentality

I find it odd that Americans celebrate their "love of liberty" but have been one of the fastest peoples on the face of the earth to give up basic freedoms and personal dignity in the name of "security". It is tragic and laughable.

Here is a report from the Northwest Florida Daily News -- which is ironically owned by "Freedom Communications" -- reporting this indignity:

Elderly woman asked to remove adult diaper during TSA search

Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.

...

She said her mother was first pulled aside into a glass-partitioned area and patted down. Then she was taken to another room to protect her privacy during a more extensive search, Weber said.

Weber said she sat outside the room during the search.

She said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.

Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.

Weber said she wished there were less invasive search methods for an elderly person who is unable to walk through security gates.

“I don’t understand why they have to put them through that kind of procedure,” she said.

Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.

I always find it hysterically funny with bureaucrats cover their ass with a claim that they can't talk about an issue because "they are concerned about the privacy of those involved". But they weren't concerned enough to not impose this indignity on a dying 95 year old woman. Who are they kidding with their "concern".

By the way, it is the very same government which says that dying 95 year olds must be brutalized for "security" which also decided that an Al Qaeda double agent, Balawi, didn't need any "pat down" when he met with high CIA agents and killed 7 of them with a suicide vest (more in the UK's Guardian newspaper). On the one hand you have American "security" policy degrading a 95 year old dying woman "because of security policy" but you have the leading lights of the "war on terrorism" deciding they didn't need to pat down a known terrorist who they thought they had "turned" against Al Qaeda and were "surprised" when he blew them to kingdom come because of their stupid gullibility. This is madness.

What this shows it that Americans would rather have a police state with all the trappings of "security theatre" rather than have a society in which the dignity and freedom of individuals are upheld.

I find it funny that it is the Republican party that waves the flag most vigorously over "freedom" and "family values" but it was specifically the Republican party under George Bush who threw aside all rights and allow an intrusive police state to grow and swell into its current behemoth state. The US is spending $664 billion on its military and a poorly disclosed amount of spying and intelligence. This is over $2000/person in order to have 95 year old terminally ill women forced to get out of wheelchairs and strip off their adult diaper in public so that a bureaucrat can run his hands over her body to assure "safety" to the American people. What a joke!

A truly "freedom-loving people" does not live on its knees with security goons feeling them up while ordering them around. The American people needs to open its eyes and realize they made a pact with the devil when they bought the "war on terror" sold to them by Bush and continued by Obama. Since there will always be "terror", this is a proscription for eternally living on their knees while mumbling about the "love of liberty".

Update 2011jun27: I don't buy into Rand Paul's crazy right wing politics, but I fully agree with his tongue-lashing of the TSA for their failure to respect the rigths of Americans and their absolutely idiotic "security theatre" pat downs...



Rand Paul asks the right questions about the kind of investigative background and risk assessment that should be done and the need to target the searching to real suspects. It is mind-boggling that Americans put up with the complete destruction of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" on the part of the TSA bureaucracy. This TSA "testimony" is absolute idiocy.

The right wing Rand Paul politics I don't buy into: turning over security to "private enterprise" is idiotic. There is nothing about a private company that implies that it can be more intelligent in providing security. In fact, there are good arguments that private companies by their very nature, i.e. primary goal is profit-seeking, owners can be world-wide, limited liability means they can walk away if something absolutely reprehensible is done, cannot provide the same kind of honest, diligent security that a government agency can provide. So I don't go for the right wing Kool-aid that Paul is selling. But his points about TSA being brain dead and wasting resources of "security theatre" are right on the mark.

Woman Arrested for Standing in Her Front Yard Filming a Police Arrest

So much for "liberty loving" Americans...

In the police state friendly democracy known as the US, if you are "observing" the police, that makes them feel "unsafe" and therefore they arrest you.

If you don't believe that, watch this...



I guess all that stuff about "basic freedoms" and "the Bill of Rights" is window dressing. The only rights you have in the US when the police order you to jump is to ask "how high?" or if they say you are making them feel "unsafe" you need to flee for the hills.

Update 2011jun24: The police in Rochester continue to prove that they can put their boot to the throat of the innocent especially anyone who refuses to kowtow to the august "authority" of the police. These are thugs in uniform. Here is their latest outrage:

Police Harass Community Members Attending Meeting in Support of Emily Good

During a public meeting to discuss support for Emily Good and issues on police accountability, the Rochester Police Department appeared at the Flying Squirrel Community Space to harass and intimidate attendees. Click to see the video of this police harassment.

Obviously the police sheriff is either an idiot or asleep. As well, the mayor of Rochester should intervene and call off the police "attack dogs". This city is now the butt of jokes about police wearing their caps so tight they can't get blood to their brains.

Update 2011jun28:Charges have now been dropped against the woman for videotaping from her front yard. From the Democrat and Chronicle:

The District Attorney’s Office today agreed to dismissal of the criminal charge against Emily Good, who was arrested in May while videotaping police making a traffic stop.

The video of Good’s arrest has gone viral, attracting nationwide news coverage, including a live interview with Good on CNN. Though the criminal charge against Good was a lone misdemeanor count, her arrest became the centerpiece of a community debate over the police response.

Good supporters maintain that the Rochester officer was peeved at Good’s videotaping and arrested her without legal cause. Others claimed the police response was justified, the proper answer to a meddling woman who could have put the officers’ and others’ lives as risk.

For prosecutors, however, the question was much more narrow: Did Good illegally impede police as defined by the state’s criminal laws?

In court papers, Good’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Stephanie Stare, had requested that the charge be dismissed for lack of evidence.

Stare noted that, under the law, Good would have needed to use intimidation, force or “interference” to disrupt the police traffic stop. Good was 10 to 15 feet from the police and doing nothing to interfere with them, Stare argued in court papers.

...

The dismissal of the criminal charge, however, may not bring an immediate end to the controversy. Police say they have started an internal investigation into whether Good’s arrest by Officer Mario Masic was justified.

A statement issued today by Mayor Thomas S. Richards, City Council President Lovely A. Warren and Police Chief James Sheppard supported the dismissal of the charge by the District Attorney’s Office. They also said there would be an investigation into both the Good incident and subsequent parking tickets issued to some of her supporters.

Also, Good is considering a civil lawsuit, she and local lawyer Donald Thompson both said.

That action could challenge the training programs for Rochester police, Thompson said.

Good, in her pajamas, was videotaping a police traffic stop in front of her Aldine Street home on May 12 when Masic asked her to return to inside her house. He said he felt threatened by her presence; Good refused, saying she was in her right to be in her yard.

Masic then arrested her, which also was filmed.

This is such a blatantly trumped up case that the Rochester authorities had to back down. They had no case. In fact, if Emily Good was a wealthy person, she could pursue harassment and intimidation charges against the police... and win! But "the little people" are lucky enough to get out from under the oppressive thumb of overweening power that they normally are grateful to get back to their ordinary lives. It isn't clear to me that the police have learned a lesson. Heads should roll in the police department. You don't intimidate citizens for acting on their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. That is the path to a police state. It is not just the right of citizens to monitor police actions, it is a duty. Citizens have to ensure that police conduct remains legal and within bounds so that corrupt police departments or civic "government" don't become petty tyrannies using state power to run roughshod over citizens.

Human "Rights" in Saudia Arabia

Here are some bits from a good op-ed by Maureen Dowd in the NY Times:

In the ’50s, at the height of the American mania for jokes and TV skits about ditzy women behind the wheel, there was a saying: “Women drivers, no survivors.”

That takes on an ominous new meaning as Saudi women agonize over whether to join in a drive-in Friday — a national protest where women will take the wheel to see if they get thrown in the clink en masse. In 1990, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia were so inspired by American troops — and female soldiers — gathering in the kingdom for the first President Bush’s war against Saddam that they went for a joy ride to protest Saudi Arabia being the only country where women can’t drive.

The fundamentalist clerics went into overdrive, branding the women “whores” and “harlots.” They lost their jobs and were harassed. Their passports were revoked and they had to sign papers agreeing not to talk about the drive. When I interviewed some of them 12 years later, they were only beginning to shake off the vengeful backlash.

For all the highfalutin talk of George and Laura Bush about how W.’s wars would help expand the rights of women in the Middle East, there’s only so much pressure America can put on Saudi Arabia about letting women drive without jeopardizing the flow of oil that lets people drive here. President Obama did not even mention Saudi Arabia in his big speech about the Middle East last month.

Driving may not be as important an issue as the end of male guardianship, but it is the high-octane nexus where our hypocrisies interlock.

...

But then a 32-year-old single mother named Manal al-Sharif, an Internet consultant for the state-run oil company Aramco, posted a video of herself on YouTube, driving in a black abaya in the Eastern Province city of Al-Khobar.

She told CNN that the last straw was one night when she was trying to get home to her 5-year-old son and she couldn’t catch a cab or find her brother to pick her up or get away from male drivers harassing her as she walked alone.

“I’m a grown-up woman,” she said, adding: “And I was crying like a kid in the street because I couldn’t find someone to pick me up to take me back home.”

She was put in jail for a week and forced to sign a document agreeing not to talk to the press or continue her calls for reform. This had a chilling effect on women.

But, this week, Reem al-Faisal, a princess, activist and Jidda photographer who is the granddaughter of the late King Faisal and the niece of the Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, spoke out, writing in The Arab News that “it is truly tragic that we have to fight for such an essential yet mediocre right” and be treated as “eternal minors.”

Notice how Barack "Change you can believe in!" Obama is absolutely invisible on this issue. Obama knows how his masters are. He pretends to be a liberal and progressive, but he is a centrist and conservative interested mostly in making sure that the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful.

Krugman Spots the Real Rand Paul

I love it when the wing-nut wing of the Republican party gets caught out. Here is a post by Paul Krugman on his NY Times blog pointing out that "libertarian" Rand Paul isn't so big on "liberty":

Think Progress listens to Rand Paul, self-proclaimed defender of individual liberty, who believes that Americans should be imprisoned for listening to speeches:

PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

He’s not unusual. There are genuine libertarians out there. But political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.

I guess Rand Paul hasn't heard of the freedom of thought, i.e. you can have any thought you please so long as it doesn't hurt others. Since the US Bill of Rights presumed such a right as so basic that it didn't bother to include it while it included rights to speech, press, assembly, religion, etc. But if the state can jail you because you heard something and it is still rattling around in your head, but you haven't acted on it, then that is the essence of a "police state". Rand Paul shows his "libertarian" credentials by endorsing a police state of the US. Go team Tea Party!

US Freedoms

Funny, the US "celebrates" the fact that some political hooligans had a "tea party" in Boston harbour and destroyed a year's worth of tea because they didn't like the taxes under the Townshend Acts. That bit of public disturbance is put in the pantheon of "patriotic acts".

But here is a flash mob at the Jefferson memorial who are engaged in "dancing" and they get roughed up and jailed because in America that kind of "behaviour" is unacceptable. What?



Personally I think it is stupid to "dance" at the memorial (just as I see the Boston "tea party" as stupid destructive behaviour), but this behaviour doesn't merit the rough handling and the hauling off to jail. This demonstration shows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what is unacceptable public behaviour to one person is considered an essential and protected right by another. Such arbitrary enforcement of "public order" brings the police to ridicule. If they had simply ignored the "demonstration" I'm pretty sure the whole thing would have passed unremarked by the wider public. But by taking people down -- literally throwing them to the ground -- gives an importance to the demonstration that wouldn't have been there in a more tolerant and free society.

It is ironic that this police "action" took place in a memorial to a man, Thomas Jefferson, who felt that demonstrations and disorder was a necessary part of a vibrant democracy.

Political Rights in America

The US loves to flaunt its "freedoms" that are Constitutionally "protected". Here is an example of "freedom in action"...



I love it when the cop says "I can do whatever I want" as he arrested a CBC camera man covering a peaceful protest by citizens in Newark, New Jersey about street shootings that have left innocent people dead. The "law" in the US says you have the right to assemble peacefully, but apparently the police are unaware of this "fact". They obviously haven't heard of the US Constitution and its 1st Amendement:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Under the Newark N.J. police interpretation of citizen "rights", you have a right to try to peacefully assemble for redress of grievances, but if you actually get onto the street, then the police can "do whatever they want" and arrest you, manhandle you, throw you into jail, etc. So much for "freedoms" and "rights" in America.

The Right Not to be Groped Goes Down in Flames

I'm no fan of the right wing fanatics in the US, but I was a fan of the Texas attempt to tell the US government that they should abide by the US Constitution's 4th Amendement which prohibits:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But under the "war on terror" (a war which by very definition can never end because there will always be some "terrorist" somewhere), the US government has told Texas it can have its law or it can have its airports, but it can't have both.

From the Texas Tribune:

A threat from the federal government to shut down Texas airports or cancel flights may have killed legislation by Tea Party conservatives in the Texas Capitol to prohibit federal Transportation Security Administration agents from conducting "invasive searches."

“I don’t cave in to heavy handed threats by the federal government,” said an angry Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, the Senate sponsor of the bill, who ultimately withdrew the bill.

House Bill 1937, which was passed by the House earlier this month, would make it a misdemeanor offense for a federal security agent to “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly [touch] the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of the other person, including touching through clothing, or touching the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person.”

Two TSA officials visited Patrick at the Capitol earlier today to discuss the legislation. They warned him that the legislation “could close down all the airports in Texas,” he said. After their departure, U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy sent a letter to Speaker of the House Joe Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst saying the bill would “conflict directly with federal law” and that if it became law, “TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew” until the agency could seek a court order stopping the measure from being carried out.

It looks like Texans have chosen to keep their airports while giving up their freedoms. Chalk up another victory for Al Qaeda.

Obama Attacks a Free Press

Not only has the Obama administration been brutal with the not-yet-guilty-until-judged-in-a-court-of-law Bradley Manning. They are now going after the press to stop journalists from printing news. Funny, the Constitution is very clear that the press must be free of undue control by the government. The press must be free so that a "free" people can make judgements about their representatives so that the democracy is real and not fake. The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Even Richard Nixon didn't go so far as to jail Daniel Ellsberg over releasing the secret Pentagon Papers, documents that proved that the US government had been systematically lying to the American people about its policies, intentions, and actions in Vietnam. Sadly, the Obama administration appears not to favour a free press. As well it does not appear to believe in "due process" of the law, i.e. you are innocent until proven guilty. Otherwise it would not be torturing Bradley Manning.

From BoingBoing:

Federal prosecutors, with the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., are trying to force the author of a book on the C.I.A. to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked information to him about an effort by the agency to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program at the end of the Clinton administration.

What if 90% of the population thinks it should be illegal for agents of the US Government to be trying to assassinate the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? If the press isn't allowed to report the leak that the government is pursuing such a heinous plot, then the people will not have the requisite knowledge to protest and urge their legislators to stop the executive before it commits this crime on "behalf" of the American people. But Obama doesn't believe the US people should know about crimes its agents are doing in other countries. Otherwise it wouldn't be forcing a reporter to break the confidentiality of sources and undermine a free press.

We do know that when Obama says "capture" Osama Bin Laden, that mean "shoot to kill" and don't bother capturing him because we don't want the messy business of having to interrogate, try, and imprison him. We just want him dead. Gosh. I bet police forces all around the US would like to take up that policy when it comes to dealing with violent criminals. Why bother trying to capture them, going through the messy and expensive details of a trial, and then the long and expensive incarceration. Just shoot to kill and then "no fuss, no muss". So you kill a few innocent people. This will "expedite" justice and lower the cost of delivering "justice".

Despite what the rabid right wing Republicans think. Having an effective, lawful government is expensive and messy. It is important that goverment servants don't just short cut "red tape" and deliver what they perceive as "justice" or "services" without any oversight or measure of efficiency, utility, or justice. By its very nature, government is slow and expensive.

Update 2011may24: I watched the PBS Frontline program entitled WikiSecrets. They studiously avoided what I consider the key facts:

1. The US military used "top secret" as a technique to deny facts about a crime to Reuters that wanted an explanation of why their reporter was murdered in cold blood. There was no "secret" here other than ass-covering by the military. If the American public can't find out how badly the war is run, how will the public ever decide that it is doing more harm than good? How can the electorate be "informed" if the US government uses secrecy claims to keep critical information out of the hands of voters?


2. Bradley Manning is being tortured before he is convicted. That is criminal. The Obama administration is allowing the military to torture somebody who is presumed innocent, because he has not yet been tried and found guilty. This is a crime. But Frontline doesn't think that is a significant fact.

My opinion is that Frontline wasted most of an hour. It was fine that they give some background on Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, but they focused on sensationalism and spent little time of facts and they ignored very important issues. That is a disservice to their viewers.

They mentioned the sex charges against Assange, but they didn't bother to point out that it was consensual sex or look at the strange behaviour of these women. They didn't complain until the police got involved. I'm guessing the US twisted arms behind the scenes because they see these charges as their ticket to get Assange extradicted. The fact that the charges are bogus is obvious, but Frontline didn't bother.

The one truthful moment in the Frontline documentary was when they showed the hacker conference in May 2010 when Assange was supposed to show up to speak. The chair of the meeting asked people whether they believed that Assange would walk into the room. The fact that many said "no way!" was the most truthful moment in the documentary. They knew that the US had laid a trap and was hoping desperately that Assange would walk into it. But Frontline didn't talk about the entrapment. They didn't wonder why such a large audience would have a majority that were cynical about their own government and its motives and actions.

I watched three administrations lie about Vietnam. They put every effort into vilifying anybody who opposed that war. But the truth came out. The war was bogus and built on lies. All that money was wasted. All those lives lost for nothing. Today the US is "good buddies" with the Communist regime in Vietnam. But the lie that was fed by the government and the media was that if the youth of America didn't go over and die in some god forsaken jungle, then under the "Domino Theory" the commies would next be in San Diego and take over the US. It was a lie. The government knew it was a lie. But they spread that lie. The government knowingly ruined the lives of many good people who conscientiously opposed the madness of the Vietnam war.

This Frontline "documentary" is just one more bit of government propaganda that willingly smears somebody who does no immediately "buy" the government line that secrecy is sacrosanct and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are noble missions that will "save the world". They aren't. They won't. And all that money and all those lives are wasted for nothing. It is out-of-control militarism now as it was in the 1960s.

Hero Worship

The political right is deeply infected by libertarianism which tells the tale of "heroic individualism", i.e. nobody needs a government. Their myth is that people are by nature "free traders" and free markets will bloom if only governments keep their hands off the people.

Here is Dani Rodrik, a Harvard economist, to correct this political misconception with this article on Project Syndicate:

My discussant found it self-evident that allowing politicians greater room for maneuver was a cockamamie idea – and he assumed that the audience would concur. Remove constraints on what politicians can do, he implied, and all you will get are silly interventions that throttle markets and stall the engine of economic growth.

This criticism reflects a serious misunderstanding of how markets really function. Raised on textbooks that obscure the role of institutions, economists often imagine that markets arise on their own, with no help from purposeful, collective action. Adam Smith may have been right that “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” is innate to humans, but a panoply of non-market institutions is needed to realize this propensity.

Consider all that is required. Modern markets need an infrastructure of transport, logistics, and communication, much of it the result of public investments. They need systems of contract enforcement and property-rights protection. They need regulations to ensure that consumers make informed decisions, externalities are internalized, and market power is not abused. They need central banks and fiscal institutions to avert financial panics and moderate business cycles. They need social protections and safety nets to legitimize distributional outcomes.

Well-functioning markets are always embedded within broader mechanisms of collective governance. That is why the world’s wealthier economies, those with the most productive market systems, also have large public sectors.

Once we recognize that markets require rules, we must next ask who writes those rules. Economists who denigrate the value of democracy sometimes talk as if the alternative to democratic governance is decision-making by high-minded Platonic philosopher-kings – ideally economists!

But this scenario is neither relevant nor desirable. For one thing, the lower the political system’s transparency, representativeness, and accountability, the more likely it is that special interests will hijack the rules. Of course, democracies can be captured too. But they are still our best safeguard against arbitrary rule.

Moreover, rule-making is rarely about efficiency alone; it may entail trading off competing social objectives – stability versus innovation, for example – or making distributional choices. These are not tasks that we would want to entrust to economists, who might know the price of a lot of things, but not necessarily their value.

There is much more useful info. Go read the whole article.

I remember how Jeffrey Sachs rushed off to post-Communist Russia full of ideas for a "cold turkey" changeover from communism to a fundamentalist absolutist "free market". What Russia got was a huge depression and the ascendancy of crony capitalism and the Russian mafia.

The problem with libertarians is that they have a simplistic worldview. They see individuals as self sufficient islands unto themselves and the only social relationship to be a contract. The idea that familes don't run on contracts as a business, that social institutions are generally non-capitalist, that most of man's history was pre-Capitalist doesn't cross their minds. They have "Truth" by the tail and don't won't be be bothered by messy details. You know, silly things like "facts". When you have "Truth" you don't need to understand human nature, history, the arc of civilization, and even the real history of commerce and business. Nope. All you need is a dumbed down Adam Smith, a version that Adam Smith wouldn't recognize.