A Question Of Power

Sometimes we all stand around wondering what the hell's wrong with the world, and why does it seem like so many people aren't willing to do what they need to do to make things work anymore.

Asking the right questions is kinda important.

Through the paradigm of broken windows policing (also known as quality of life policing), "We have come to identify certain acts - graffiti spraying, litter, panhandling, turnstile jumping, and prostitution - and not others - police brutality, accounting scams, and tax evasion - as disorderly and connected to broader patterns of serious crime," writes Bernard Harcourt in Policing Disorder. Harcourt is one of the few academics that has been shouting in the dark for 20 years, but now that broken windows is back in the headlines, his work seems more prescient than ever.

"Why does broken windows focus on the dollar-fifty turnstile jump," Harcourt writes, "rather than on the hundred-million dollar accounting scam?"

The literal-minded would answer that it's because of jurisdiction. Police don't handle massive accounting scams; that's the job of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Harcourt's question is rhetorical and speaks to a deeper issue of perception: Why are habits borne of material deprivation - begging for money, evading a train fare, dancing for tips on the subway, or selling untaxed cigarettes - more criminalized, in our laws and minds, then things that hurt more people and fundamentally undermine the institutions that make up an orderly society?

--and--

The hedge-fund industry oversaw a record $2.8 trillion in assets at the end of the second quarter, according to industry tracker HFR Inc. That marked the eighth consecutive quarterly record for industrywide assets under management, up from $2.7 trillion at the end of the first quarter.

--and--

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are both calling for Congress to investigate the New York Federal Reserve Bank after recently releasedsecret recordings show the central bank allegedly going light on firms it was supposed to regulate.

Warren and Brown, both members of the Senate Banking Committee, called for an investigation of the New York Fed after Carmen Segarra, a former examiner at the bank, released secretly recorded tapes that she claims show her superiors telling her to go easy on private banks. Segarra says that she was fired from her job in 2012 for refusing to overlook Goldman’s lack of a conflict of interest policy and other questionable practices that should have brought tougher regulatory scrutiny.

Unfortunately, the inoculation process has been successful - Gubmint is bad; investigations are just political theater (see Whitewater and Benghazi); politicians are all the same; both sides do it; all we need is for Congress to get out of the way; etc etc etc.

Generally, we act and react according to the examples we see every day.  If the people with all the power and money get to behave like they're not bound by the rules, and they can make money on the work of others, and they can use the money to buy the power they need to close the circle and make that big bamboozle go 'round again - then why should it be any different for everybody else?  

Unfortunately, on the political side of things, that translates to a widening refusal to participate, so we don't vote.  And it just gets a little worse.

But mostly, it seems to come down to the hostage metaphor.  We want somebody to do something, but the hostage-takers won't allow anybody to do the things that have helped in the past - infrastructure improvements, and education, and wage support; all that Keanesian stuff that actually works.  Unfortunately, we've got a pretty bad pathology going on that centers around self-loathing and punishment and austerity, and we're being conditioned to believe that if we can just get our minds right, we can be happy with our crappy little lives because at least the masters aren't beating us with sticks quite as often.

Stop wondering why so many people just wanna see it all burn.

What It Is

What I imagine it feels like for lotsa people sometimes.

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Today's Joke

Doctor: "The good news is that your lab results are back, and your crabs are dead."

Patient: "And is there bad news too?"

Doctor: "Yes - we don't know what killed them."

Gotta Love The Onion

Woman Worried Student Loans Could Prevent Her From One Day Owning Entirely Different Kind Of Crippling Debt

NEWS IN BRIEF • Local • Money • Finance • ISSUE 50•38 • Sep 24, 2014

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PHILADELPHIA—Lamenting that she will spend the foreseeable future paying off her college expenses, local 23-year-old digital marketing assistant Ashley Orlinsky expressed concern Wednesday that her student loans will prevent her from ever owning an entirely different type of utterly crippling debt. “Realistically, it’ll take years or even decades to fully repay $50,000 of loans, which makes me worried that I’ll never qualify for a backbreaking mortgage on a house that I can in no way afford,” said Orlinsky, adding that with $350 in monthly student loan payments, she will likely struggle to even borrow money to purchase a new car that will destroy her credit rating and may one day be repossessed by the bank. “I have dreams of starting my own company at some point in the future, but I just don’t see how I’ll have the opportunity to be saddled for my entire adult life with a suffocating high-interest small business loan if my student debt is following me wherever I go. It’s awful.” Orlinsky was reportedly encouraged, however, after coming to the mistaken conclusion that she could just default on her student loans and have them discharged in a bankruptcy filing.

Funky Friday

Bullets --Bob Schneider





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Tarantula --Bob Schneider

Today's Quote

"Guy calls me 'commie Jew hippie bastard', so I said, 'What, I look like Jesus to you?'" --John Fugelsang

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Narrowly Averted Eternal Sadness

hat tip = Addicting Info



Stopped for a seatbelt violation, the driver makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to cooperate and comply with the cop's instructions.  Of course, that near-fatal mistake followed the obvious mistake of having dark brown skin in South Carolina, and then the guy just makes it worse by raising his hands trying to demonstrate he was actually not a threat to the officer - all of which taken together tends to cause a lot of stress in the minds of some people (maybe like this cop) - people who've been over-trained to expect trouble, to the point where their brains will manufacture a threat even tho' all their sensory input indicates otherwise.  The cop did in fact shoot that guy at least once AFTER he put his hands up.

More simply - if we teach people to expect trouble, let's try not to be surprised when they find it even where it doesn't exist.

In this case, at least the Cop Shop Mgmt made the right calls in firing that officer, charging him with "Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature", with bail set at $75K.  But I do wonder how they plan to address a pretty obvious failure when it comes to training their officers, and in their reckless inability to identify and neutralize potential fuck-ups like this guy.

And BTW - with so many of these incidents coming to light, at what point do we stop considering these guys "Rogue Cops" and start to understand there's a big fucking problem here?  What dots can we connect between cops shooting unarmed citizens, and the proliferation of guns, and the headlong slide into authoritarian governance, and the trend toward militarized policing, and the post-trauma emotional time bombs ticking away in the brains of way too many veterans (many of whom are now cops), and and and?

We need to get this thing unfucked in a big fuckin' hurry.


(As of 10:24am EDT, I'm waiting to hear from Lt Kelly Hughes at SC State Patrol as to how long Groubert had been a trooper and whether he's a US Military Veteran)

Charlie Gets It

(My own 2¢: remember when Bond villains were the only guys who had private armies?)

Ripped entirely from Charlie Pierce:

BILL O'REILLY IS NOT A MILITARY -- OR ANY OTHER KIND OF -- GENIUS

By Charles P. Pierce on September 23, 2014

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Pining for the Hessians, are we?

On the September 22 edition of his show, [Fox News' Bill O'Reilly] claimed that the only credible plan to defeat the Islamic State had to include a mercenary force of 25,000 "English-speaking" fighters that would be recruited and trained by the United States. O'Reilly explained that his mercenary army would be comprised of "elite fighters who would be well-paid, well-trained to defeat terrorists all over the world." O'Reilly also detailed how the mercenary force would be trained, recruited, and funded.

As the "war" on terror has ground on, I have been waiting for years for a nuttier concept than Saddam's balsa-wood escadrille. Hold all calls. We have a winner, as O'Reilly's guest from the forgotten land of Knowing What The Fk You're Talking About pointed out to him.

"Well, Bill, I understand your frustration. I really do. But this is a terrible idea, a terrible idea not just as a practical matter but a moral matter. It's a morally corrosive idea to try to outsource our national security. This is something Americans are going to have to deal for themselves. We're not going to solve this problem by creating an army of Marvel Avengers or the Guardians of the Galaxy...There's nothing theoretical about it. It's the worst of both worlds. You're asking these forces to operate as though they're U.S. military forces and you're treating them as though they're mercenaries merely because you don't want to have to use American military forces. And I think that that undermines the whole notion of our own security. "

I would laugh even harder at this whole thing had not former Blackwater barbarian Erik Prince oozed up again earlier this week to pitch something of the same notion, albeit with an adorable nostalgic flavor to his proposal.

"It's a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could've solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don't have the argument of U.S. active duty going back in there," Prince said in an on-stage discussion featuring retired four-star Gen. James Conway. "[They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue."

Because, if there's one thing that Blackwater knew how to do, it knew how to go in there and do the job, without leaving a long, protracted political mess behind.

We are in the hands of the madmen now.

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One From Way Back

A little perspective from Michael Moore in The Guardian, 2002:

I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never had a meeting at a Hollywood studio with a black executive in charge, never had a black person deny my child the college of her choice, never been puked on by a black teenager at a Mötley Crüe concert, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, and I've never heard a black person say, "We're going to eliminate 10,000 jobs here - have a nice day!"

I don't think that I'm the only white guy who can make these claims. Every mean word, every cruel act, every bit of pain and suffering in my life has had a Caucasian face attached to it.

So, um, why is it exactly that I should be afraid of black people?

I look around at the world I live in - and, I hate to tell tales out of school, but it's not the African-Americans who have made this planet such a pitiful, scary place. Recently, a headline on the front of the Science section of the New York Times asked Who Built The H-Bomb? The article went on to discuss a dispute between the men who claim credit for making the first bomb. Frankly, I could have cared less - because I already know the only pertinent answer: "It was a white guy!" No black guy ever built or used a bomb designed to wipe out hordes of innocent people, whether in Oklahoma City, Columbine or Hiroshima.

hat tip = Crooks and Liars 

Today's Dots

Here's another guy with a dash cam and a fair understanding of his rights under the US Constitution:



The problem here tho' is that the driver didn't demand Probable Cause.  No matter what the cop says about roadblocks, the dragnet is extralegal.  The cops have no authority to presume everybody's guilty (IMHO just so they can sift thru the population looking to collect a few bucks in fines because their budget's pretty tight again this year)  None zero zip zilch nada.

The 2nd trooper yells about how driving's a privilege not a right, and that you're required to have your license and proof of insurance etc.  But that's a dodge on his part.  His in-your-face tactics are meant to intimidate in order to coerce your "voluntary" cooperation and deflect from the fact that his actions are outside the fucking lines.  Anyway, the cops couldn't demonstrate why they suspected that particular driver of violating the law.  Detention by law enforcement without probable cause is illegal.


OK, so how 'bout this one:



Somebody sees this guy walking down the street with his gun, and the cop shows up to "check him out".  The rationale is that the cop just needs to make sure the gun's not stolen, but again, there's no reasonable expectation on the part of anybody that any laws have been broken.  If Citizen Hung-Like-A-Hamster wants to press the issue, then he has no obligation to provide any information to the officer.  He could've refused to allow the cop to record the serial number of his weapon, and he didn't have to give his name.

Connecting the dots - suddenly, we have the hippie-dippy ACLU groupies making common cause with the Ammosexuals and the Peter Pan Libertarians.  Strange bedfellows indeed.

A Million Pounds Of Idiot

Dear "Conservatives",

Nobody's buying your shit anymore.

Also too - the Congress Critters in this video - the guys who're asking the dumbest of the dumb-fuck questions - they're your guys.  Maybe you've finally started to come around a bit on the Climate Disruption thing, but these idiots are your idiots.  Until you run these pricks outa your party, I can only conclude that they represent you, so they're giving voice to your views.

Here's the only question that matters now:  Are you really that fuckin' stoopid?

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Going Out In Style - Updated

She gets all the Style Points available.

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Be Afraid

...cuz it's really good for certain Coin-Operated Politicians.

A Sad Time For Me

I will absolutely admit that I'm a football guy.  It's my game.  It's been my game since about 3rd grade.  Seems a little silly to me now, but it's easy to see how you can get hooked once you strap on the armor and everybody seems to be really excited to watch you go crashing into people.

"Football is not a contact sport - it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport."  (Vince Lombardi and/or Duffy Daugherty)

--and let's not forget--

"All real Americans love the sting of battle." (George Patton)

I was hooked.  My game; my idea of fun.  Of course, eventually it morphs into "My ball; my territory; my team against the world; I will destroy you in pursuit of my goals"; and above all else, "football teaches a young man important lessons he'll carry with him throughout his life blah blah blah".  (accompaniment by a choir of angels optional on the last bit)

Gosh, it's almost as if it's perfect training for an authoritarian society being geared for industrialized perpetual warfare.  Solely in defense of all things wholesomely traditional and homespun of course - while conveniently co-opted (deliberately or otherwise) to accommodate ambitions of global hegemony.  "They" get us to do what "they" want us to do by convincing us we're actually doing something else.  And even when we know that what we're doing isn't particularly a good thing, we can be taught to rationalize our way into believing we're doing it for "all the right reasons".

So anyway, these things have been flowing thru my brain channels for a while and I've been trying to resolve some of the resultant dissonance, and then along comes Jerry Sandusky and Jameis Winston and Ray Rice.  And I have to wonder - just what the fuck is going on?Let's take a quick spin around the InterToobz.

Here's a piece in WSJ Market Watch:

Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer is facing aggravated assault charges in connection with alleged fights with his wife earlier this year. It’s the latest in a series of recent criminal cases involving NFL players.

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is facing child-abuse charges. Ray Rice was recently dropped by the Baltimore Ravens after video surfaced of him knocking out his then-fiance in an elevator last February. And Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers was arrested on domestic-violence charges in connection with an incident involving his fiance, who is pregnant.

USA Today maintains a database of NFL player arrests dating back to the year 2000.

According to the data, some 732 NFL player arrests have been reported in the past 14 years. Of those, 88 were on domestic violence charges, including some players who were arrested more than once.

(note on the WSJ piece: interesting how the bankers take notice of the problem once it begins to threaten their prospects for making money from other peoples efforts)

And here's something pretty interesting from Deadspin:

By my count, the three most common charges in the NFL database were DUI, assault/battery (including domestic violence), and drug possession, with 72 percent of all incidents including at least one of these charges. Below, we compare the NFL arrest rates for these offenses, plus weapons charges, to the arrest rates for the country as a whole in 2010.

At first glance, this looks not so great for the league. With 7.4 annual assault/battery/domestic charges per thousand players, the league saw 34 percent more arrests for these violent crimes than the general population; 8.3 annual DUI charges per thousand was 81 percent higher than the U.S. average; and 2.2 weapons charges per thousand was 324 percent (!) higher. NFL players faced only 4.2 drug charges per thousand, which was actually 20 percent lower than the U.S. as a whole.* (We can guess why: The NFL tests for recreational drugs during the season, so there's one good reason not to use them, and some drugs also make it awfully hard to compete at the highest athletic level.)

But comparing NFL players to the general population does us little good. NFL players are all adult men, and adult men are more likely to be arrested than the population at large. How do those numbers look?

Well now - that's better.  Whew!  Looked like trouble there for a minute.  But hey, NFL'ers
are just a buncha regular guys who, as it turns out, are actually a better buncha guys than the rest of you losers.

Yeah, but no.  Ya see, there's a fair bit of a huge fuckin' difference between any given NFL player and all the other adult Testicular-Americans.

The biggest factor "explaining" the difference in the crime rates is that high level footballers have high-powered organizations working really hard to make an awful lot of these pesky little legal problems magically disappear way before they have a chance to show up in the crime stats.

Every big school; every NFL franchise - they all have many many many millions of dollars that we pay them for shitty seats, flat beer and stale nachos at the local Taxpayer Subsidized Stadium, which doubles as a billion-dollar billboard for the local corporation that happens to own the most Coin-Operated Politicians in that particular media market. Anyway, they have this shitload of money they get to spend very freely to hire PR Fixers and Brand Polishers and .50-Caliber Lawyers who specialize in bleaching out the dirty laundry to make sure it's all neat and sparkly in time for the next kickoff.  Add the efforts of the NCAA and the NFLPA, and it means they can count on a significant percentage of us to be totally dismissive of anything that "distracts" from our feeling entitled to ignore the wrong-doing of our all-universe god-annointed heroes in order to enjoy USAmerica Inc's game, even as the coverup of all that wrong-doing rots the whole institution from the inside out.

It all starts to look way too much like Bread and Circuses, and it has the stench of a very bad abscess.

Check Your Bias

...and always assume your assumptions carry a Freshness Date, which means they are mostly pure shit after a while.

If there's really a Liberal Bias in the news media; a bias that's anywhere near as prominent as "conservatives" are so desperate to make us believe, then it seems to me we'd be able to see it a lot better.

Here's the thing:  It's not "Gay Rights", as if those rights exist outside the realm of everybody else's rights.  It's not "Gay Rights" now any more than it was "Black Rights" back in the 50s and 60s.

In god's USAmerica Inc, we're supposed to be talking about everybody's rights being the same; everybody having the same right to be treated as equals before the law.  Equal Rights.

So I go to the Google Machinery, and I type in something like "gay rights" and I get one number, and then I type in "equal rights", and I get another number.

(CAVEAT: I'm no scholar. I'm not schooled in statistics or sampling or much of anything else outside of what I can observe and figure out on my own)

gay marriage = 76,100 hits
same sex marriage = 44,600 hits
marriage equality = 10,400 hits

gay rights = 21,500 hits
equal rights = 6,240 hits

I went to some of the bigtime bastions of bias - NYTimes, LATimes, San Francisco Chronicle - and I picked a few articles at random, and I counted the number of times the phrase "gay marriage" appeared vs the number of times "marriage equality" appeared.  Gay Marriage wins by margins as high as 10-to-1.  As often as not, "marriage equality" never popped up at all.

Language matters.  Words have meaning.  When we say a certain thing in a certain way and over a certain period of time, it sticks.

So if "The Media" carries such a strong left-leaning bias, why is the use of "conservative phrasing" so dominant?

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