NYPD officers abuse teen-caught on audio

It is often instructive to look back at the history of white supremacy in this country and see how non-whites had to deal with openly racist whites who had no problem being violent. When we look at the pictures or video of peaceful civil rights protesters having dogs set on them or being beaten with tire irons or having things thrown at them it is hard, in 2012 not to at least occasionally question how people could allow that to happen or why didn't more people stand up and fight back or so on. Those are painful questions to be sure. At any given point in time most people are just trying to survive. By definition, most people are not heroes. Cemeteries are full of would be heroes. People did what they had to do to survive. There is no shame in that.

But although those days are thankfully gone, there are unfortunately quite a number of people who would have fit right in working for Bull Connor or Ross Barnett. Evidently many of these people are NYPD police officers. We've written before on the stop-and-frisk program that Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly have instituted that is primarily aimed at Black and Hispanic men, especially young men or boys. This program doesn't catch many people carrying either drugs or guns but it does put a lot of fear, anger and rage in many New York Black and Hispanic citizens. Unfortunately until very recently this has not received any attention in the mainstream press and what attention it has received has been cautiously positive or only mildly critical. Generally speaking the people that write or edit for the New York Times or the New Yorker or the Wall Street Journal or the American Enterprise Institute are not the people being stopped and frisked so they tend not to have the mad rush of killing rage I had when I saw the below video. This is a racial quota which doesn't seem to excite their delicate constitutional sensitivities.

One thing that it is really important to understand is that the stop-and-frisk program, which has been expanded to include public housing and some private rentals as well is NOT a program in which someone does something suspicious and only THEN receives police attention NOR it is a program in which Officer Friendly and Dudley DoRight stop you and politely ask you a few questions before apologizing and sending you on your way after some sports discussions.

No.

It is as the video shows, a program in which young men of color are criminalized just for existing. It is a program in which showing signs of manhood and citizenship like demanding to know why you were stopped, asking for badge numbers, looking in someone's eyes or refusing to answer questions causes insane and profane racist rage, insults to your family, threats of arrests or beating, and occasional actual beating. This is the kind of stuff that was supposed to have gone out of style in 1960s Mississippi but as we can see it is thriving in 2012 NYC, under a supposedly enlightened Mayor, a relatively liberal Governor and a President that claims to understand civil liberties.

This is why come what may, with no offence intended to anyone who is a police officer, or is related to or married to a police officer, I really really don't like cops. Period. Never have and never will. Fortunately I have never had an experience to the extent of the young man in the video but I've had a few run-ins in my time. This is also why I do not like NYC and have little desire to visit, though I have friends and family there. Imagine if Alvin was your son, brother, cousin or husband. What does that sort of physical and verbal abuse from so-called authority figures do to racial relations? This is why it is ridiculous to claim, as some do, that affirmative action is harming racial relations. No, the NYPD is harming racial relations!  

The NYPD has a serious problem and it needs to be fixed yesterday. I simply do not get why Black and Hispanic New Yorkers have not gone after Bloomberg the same way they went after Giuliani. Malcolm X once joked that anywhere south of Canada is Mississippi and this video shows the truth of that joke. Honestly if I were in that situation I would definitely be in fear of my life and have to act accordingly. I'd rather be judged by a jury than those two beasts. Listen to full audio of Alvin's stop here, courtesy of The Nation.

Questions

1) Ever been in a similar situation with police?

2) How can we fix the police department?

3) Is the teen a hero?

4) Should the police officers be fired?

5) Where are the Feds?

Wisconsin Sikh Shooting, Gun Control, Wade Michael Page and Profiling

When the shooting in Aurora occurred a lot of people (especially NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) ran to the nearest microphone or blog and spoke or wrote with heartfelt indignation of their beliefs that no one needed an "assault rifle" and such things were only good for killing mass numbers of people, only the military or police should have "assault rifles" or large capacity magazines, and that those people who supported the right to own "assault rifles" had blood on their hands and so forth and so on.

These people gingerly ignored the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicides carried out with guns are done with handguns, not rifles of any kind. These people also neglected to notice the inconvenient detail that the Founders did not want an unarmed populace and an armed to the teeth military and police.

Now we just had the neo-nazi nut in Wisconsin who appears to have used a legally acquired handgun with normal capacity magazines to kill six people and wound four. The man was being monitored by certain private groups that keep an eye on noticeable hateful individuals mostly of the right-wing variety.  There is of course a legitimate question, given how the right reacts to mass murders carried out by non-whites, if whiteness as a concept needs to have the same criticism directed at it as other nationalist or racially based identities. As the United States continues to change demographically will there be other such incidents? I don't think so but you never know...


There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the FBI or other government agencies were aware of Page and his views. The slaughter caused an increase in tension with the Indian government and Indian citizens who burned US flags and said that the US needed to do more to protect Sikhs.

The Indian government rushed its consul general from Chicago, N.J. Gangte, to Wisconsin. India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said the government was awaiting the results of the U.S. investigation and he criticized the gun culture in the United States.

‘‘The U.S. government will have to take a comprehensive look at this kind of tendency which certainly is not going to bring credit to the United States of America,’’ he said.

I'm not so sure that a country which regularly persecutes Muslims and Christians and has frequent mass outbursts of horrific violence directed at those groups has any room to lecture the United States about "culture" but whatever. India's murder rate is comparable to that of the United States and the actual number of people killed is about three times higher than in the United States. And for the most part missionaries in the US don't have to worry about being burned alive by people of different religions. People in the United States don't often become so livid that a Jehovah's Witness knocked on their door, that they gather a whole bunch of friends and start pogroms against Jehovah's Witnesses. But you know how it is, everybody thinks their own stuff doesn't stink. As a NYT column cogently pointed out we simply do not live in a society that allows punishment or incarceration for bad thoughts. With only a few exceptions, you can't incarcerate people for what they might do. Page had the freedom to be a Nazi and a white supremacist. He had the freedom to think that non-whites were inferior. He even had the freedom to call for unspecified action. It's only when you either take action or make a specific threat or plan of action that the authorities can legally intervene. There are of course many sting operations that the government carries out against groups it considers to be fringe or dangerous but one man's legally justified sting operation is another man's example of an out of control Leviathan government determined to criminalize political dissent and crush opposition by fair means or foul. And even in the sting operation you usually have to DO something illegal. As the NYT column points out, there are a lot of things to take into account when we start to consider ways to prevent crime. These aren't easy questions to address. No, not by any means.

The perfect prevention of crime asks us to consider exactly how far individual freedom extends. Does freedom include a “right” to drive drunk, for instance? It is hard to imagine that it does. But what if the government were to add a drug to the water supply that suppressed antisocial urges and thereby reduced the murder rate? This would seem like an obvious violation of our freedom. We need a clear method of distinguishing such cases.

One way is to keep in mind the distinction between thoughts and actions. A traditional rule in criminal law holds that there can be no crime unless the defendant committed some act: mere thoughts, no matter how horrific, are not sufficient. Thoughts cannot be regulated; everyone has a right to think what they wish without government intrusion.

As far as the gun, again it is important to point out that the gun was purchased legally. It is not illegal to be a tattooed Nazi and own guns. You can purchase hate literature and associate, date, marry or reproduce with someone who feels the same way that you do. You can teach your children racial hatred. You can spread racial hatred through your books, audio tapes, websites, speeches, music and radio or television shows. You can unabashedly call for expulsion and/or genocide of people who don't look like you.

That is what freedom means. It's not just about the Second Amendment. It's about the entire Bill of Rights, which taken in whole, effectively indicates that you have the right to think what you want, say what you want and must be left alone by government except under very particular circumstances. If you're comfortable with the idea of getting rid of the right to bear arms are you also comfortable with the idea of government prior restraint on "bad" ideas? Or is that an assault on your freedom? I may not think anyone "needs" to listen to hate music. Do you want me deciding what hate music is? What test to purchase a gun could you devise that Page would fail and that other people would pass? Ironically this racist garbage was a Stevie Ray Vaughn fan.  Stevie Ray Vaughn was a white man who openly admitted his love for black music, performed with black musicians and who created music that spoke of peace, love and brotherhood. How does a hate rock performer idolize such a man? Again, is there necessarily any music association test we could create that would be able to predict Page's actions?

The "cost" of this freedom, bluntly, is that some people will use it for evil. There is no way to prevent this without tearing up the entire Constitution and starting anew with a radically different understanding of the proper relationship between the state and the individual. Maybe we should do that. I don't think we should. Even a much more interventionist and restrictive government can not prevent people from doing ill. So you may not like to hear that but unless you want to live in a A Clockwork Orange type of society, in a very real way evil is the price of freedom. I'm willing to pay that price. We can't un-bite the apple. Our eldil is bent and that is that.

What's your take?

Was there any way this massacre could have been prevented?

Should hate speech be outlawed? Should the First Amendment be repealed?

Should preventive detention be widely used?

Should the federal government infiltrate and destroy fringe groups?

Should handguns be banned?

Chick-fil-A, Boycotts, Gay marriage and Common Sense

The President of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, made statements that expressed his opposition to gay marriage for religious reasons. He is a conservative Christian.

'I think we’re inviting God’s judgment when we shake our fist at him, you know, "We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage." And I pray on God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try and redefine what marriage is all about,' he said. 

This immediately started requests for retraction and calls for boycotts, accusations of discrimination and most ominously government officials telling him to stay out of their vicinity.
This really touches on something that I've noticed for a while now and I don't think it's healthy. Both right and left do it.

1. The turning of honest difference of opinion into heresy that must be zealously stamped out.
2. The attempt to hurt someone's business for political reasons.
3. The attempt to get around free speech protections by recasting ideas as hate speech or discrimination.
4. The attempt to use government to achieve the first three points.

Whether we think that Dan Cathy is a bigot or not, his position on marriage, that it's between one man and one woman, is one held by millions of Americans, including until quite recently, President Obama. Remember this quote?  "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix." Of course the President said that before he was elected but I know he was being honest with us.  Perhaps Mr. Cathy will also "evolve" when he runs for President. Do we really want to say that everyone who supports traditional marriage is a hateful individual?

Is it a good idea to mix politics and business? This is a trickier question because obviously there are some instances where I do think boycotts are useful but those tend to be cases where the company is engaging in illegal or unethical  behavior (i.e. discrimination or pollution). I understand why people might oppose a new strip club or liquor store opening up in their neighborhood. But those examples aside is it good for you as an individual to only engage in commerce with people that agree with you on everything? Do you for example, not shop at Whole Foods because the founder and CEO, John Mackey is a free market libertarian who opposes ObamaCare and unions and doesn't believe in climate change? Or maybe you do shop at Whole Foods because the founder and CEO, John Mackey is a vegan who has been extremely helpful in the battle to increase standards for humane animal treatment, promoted organic foods and sustainable farming, has donated his stock portfolio to charity and placed caps on executive pay. Is it good for the country as a whole if everyone starts to disengage from people who are not like them? I don't understand the urge to punish people you don't agree with until they change their tune. The world is full of people who think my views are just as silly as I think theirs are. That's life.


If you work in a large corporation as I do there's an excellent chance that you will run across people in positions of authority that will have rather different views than you do. Take it from me it's NOT a good idea to get into political discussions with your direct supervisors about affirmative action, the war in Afghanistan or feminism. But if you discover that your boss's boss's boss thinks that Glenn Beck has it right, do you continue to work there? Or if you are of more conservative bent and you learn that the company CIO thinks the problem with this country is that it needs a good dose of Euro-style social welfare and confiscation of guns, do you stand up and tell her off and then quit? Or in those situations do you say, hey I need this job and as long as I am treated fairly I will stay? Because after all, business is business and those idiots people have a right to their opinions.

There is not as far as I know any claim that Dan Cathy oversees a corporate culture of gay hatred. He has not as far as I know publicly used anti-gay slurs, called for beatings of gays, claimed that he would refuse to hire, promote or serve gays, made anti-gay jokes, or made snide comments about Broadway or West Hollywood. All he did was say he believes that marriage is between a man and woman and contribute money to organizations that feel the same. For that Boston's Mayor Tom Menino sends a letter to Chick-fil-A stating that they are not welcome while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Aldermen are also making noises about preventing the company from expanding in Chicago. 


Whatever you think about Dan Cathy or his views, do you really want a government star chamber deciding, for purely political reasons, to try to prevent a company from doing business? That is a pretty obvious, blatant and ugly violation of the First Amendment. If you support that because you happen to think that Dan Cathy is a twit, then would you also support a local government in a more conservative area trying to prevent a lesbian bookstore from opening or demanding to know if a Curves franchise owner believes in abortion rights or sending questionnaires to a dance club to find out the owner's stance on interracial dating?
I think that any new boycott of Chick-fil-A will peter out just like the previous ones did. Remember that NAACP boycott of South Carolina or Target stores? Exactly.

QUESTIONS

Is it automatically bigotry to support traditional marriage?

Do you occasionally do business with people who hold different political beliefs than you do? If so where do you draw the line?

Is it smart business to put your religious or political views out there for debate?

Should local governments try to prevent Chick-fil-A from expanding?

The Supreme Court, ObamaCare and Moral Claims of Freedom

The Supreme Court has spoken. The constitutional battle over ObamaCare is over. The President and his much derided solicitor general won on most of the legal merits and the policy implementation. Even as the Supreme Court (rightly in my view) rejected the Administration's argument that the Commerce Clause allowed a mandate to purchase health care coverage, it (wrongly in my view) allowed the individual mandate to stand by wrongly characterizing it as a tax. Very few people besides Lauryn Hill, Wesley Snipes or Irwin Schiff question the government's ability to tax and spend so the Supreme Court called the mandate a tax and allowed it to stand.


So that is that. Short of a (currently unlikely) Romney victory and (quite unlikely) total Republican November sweep of the House and Senate, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a settled issue. There are some Republican governors who are threatening, as is their right, to refuse to set up exchanges or expand Medicaid while for the 33rd time the House voted to repeal the law but those are die-hard responses that won't "pull up ObamaCare by its roots" as some desired.


One thing that I've noticed is that partisans on either side make the mistake of personalizing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hence the name ObamaCare). This explains the insane "I will break him" attitude of many Republicans and the joy of some PPACA supporters who didn't really look at the fine print.

Too many PPACA supporters make the mistake of assuming that all opposition must, by definition, be based in dislike for the President. This is not the case. There are two major objections to the PPACA, which are shared in different ways by principled dissidents on both the left and right as well as some libertarians across the board.
First, there has been a reduction in freedom. This is the critical issue to people who tend libertarian and/or are opposed to the mandate. 


Unfortunately many people on the left and/or supporters of PPACA miss this entirely. They assume that anyone who invokes this concern is either a useful idiot (if they're leftist) or a liar (if they're on the right). Well maybe. But remember we talked recently about how many people on the left place equality and compassion as the highest and in some cases only moral values. This is an excellent example of that. In order to supposedly move towards equality and compassion the people who support the mandate are perfectly willing to reduce your freedom to make choices about what sort of health care you want. Now think about some of the other power-mad people that are in executive office around the nation. Can you imagine what a President Bloomberg might do with such powers? What sort of nation do you want? Do you want an activist relatively unrestrained centralized government?

I live in Michigan which has a higher than normal amount of truly obese people of all races. It's especially bad for Hispanics and Blacks. All else equal, obese people cost the public and private sector more in medical coverage. They clog the health care system with their (preventable) diseases and conditions. The slender, underweight, normal sized or moderately overweight workers pay money into a system that transfers much of that money to obese care. Why should I pay money to subsidize some free-loading fattie? So OBVIOUSLY we need a mandate that obese people (BMI of 31 or greater, or body fat pct of 32% or higher) join a health club and maintain that membership until their BMI falls to 28 or lower. To make it nice and constitutional we'll just levy a tax on porcine people who refuse the new mandate or can't lose the weight. Sound good?? Well if I happened to own a health club I would love this idea. 
People that drive trucks use more gasoline, contribute more to global warming and damage roads more quickly. And those doggone people won't stop buying trucks even as gasoline stays above $3/gallon. So OBVIOUSLY we need a mandate that everyone purchase either a Volt, a Focus, a Leaf, or a Nano. So those of you who like your Rams or F-150s sorry pal. You're hurting the economy. But why stop there?

There's a doctor shortage, This affects health care. And that's commerce. Too many smart people are going into law or finance. This is an OBVIOUS resource misallocation. Don't these people know that they owe it to us all to make the right choice? We'll just mandate that certain people become doctors. After all chances are that they're receiving some form of government tuition assistance. And should they disagree well that's no problem, we'll just refuse them student loans and make them pay added penalties on any income earned outside of the medical field. We'll soon have more doctors to treat the expanded patient base.
Now that we've accepted that anything (including inactivity) that impacts commerce can be taxed and mandated why not just go for broke. Business hiring decisions have a much larger immediate economic impact than health care provision health care. Corporations are sitting on trillions in cash and refusing to hire people. This hurts the economy. In fact it's economic treason. So let's just mandate that corporations hire people until the unemployment rate is at 5% or lower. Those companies that refuse will have to pay a penalty tax. The Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Treasury will oversee this program.

And so on. You may think I am being ridiculous. Maybe I am. You may think there are political, legal or constitutional barriers. You may even think some of those are good ideas. But I don't think any of them are good ideas. And I think they are slightly more likely than they were a month ago. The government has unparalleled coercive powers. I don't think it's a coincidence that after the PPACA was upheld we see NYT editorials endorsing the idea of using eminent domain to seize homes that are underwater and give them to other investors for resale or using the power to draft to create a national service cadre of lower paid/unpaid young workers that would undercut unionized labor.


Secondly, the law doesn't solve the problem it was meant to solve. It does not bend the cost curve. How could it? Big pharma maintains protection from cheaper generic drugs. Hospitals have greater incentives to merge. There is no legal mechanism to limit or prevent premium increases. All else equal there will be greater demand for roughly the same supply of services. That means, premiums will increase, as mine already have. It makes it more difficult, if not impossible to push for a single payer program in the US and may increase medical costs abroad.

Who are the people who lack health insurance. Well some are the long-term unemployed. Others are illegal immigrants, who will still be uncovered under this plan and will still be seeking assistance in the ER. Others are people with conditions that are simply so expensive to treat that their insurer has kicked them off their plan and/or other insurers have refused to cover them. Others are employed people who either can't afford coverage or who work somewhere where coverage isn't offered. And finally there are people who, affordability aside, have made a rational choice they they don't currently need health care insurance. 
This last group (the smallest) has received much scorn and opprobrium for supposedly driving up insurance premiums. People speak of them with contempt. They tend to be younger and/or in better health so they are much desired as customers by insurers because they will tend to pay premiums but cost very little in coverage. I don't understand why it is okay to speak with disdain of people standing on their own two feet but if someone has an unkind word to say about a welfare recipient, who is taking from the system, then that's a bad thing. At the very least it's safe to say that this law will have some unintended consequences.


Obviously some people are not fans of the 9th amendment, the 10th amendment or of a Federal Government with limited enumerated powers. That's fine. Evidently portions of the Constitution don't mean what I thought they meant. Cool. Hey I'm no constitutional scholar. I'm just an IT guy.


But, if we did decide that we really really really wanted a Federal Government with limited and enumerated powers and that the 9th and 10th amendments were actually meaningful amendments rather than the redheaded ugly stepchildren of the Bill of Rights, what changes would we need to make to the Constitution since evidently some parts just aren't clear??? This is not a rhetorical question. My concept is that government should stick to its limited roles but otherwise leave me alone.

Now that the issue has been settled, at least in the courts:

What are your thoughts?

Do you at least understand the opposing side (whatever side that is)?

Do you think this will be an issue in the November election?

Do you want a limited federal government or a large unlimited federal government?

Carter: Obama's Cruel and Unusual Record

We have previously discussed the horrible civil liberties and foreign policy record of the Obama Administration. Generally speaking, many liberals or progressives have assiduously ignored these things or blindly bleated that the Republicans would be worse. Some have argued that the President has access to information that we don't so we must trust him. Well maybe. But President Carter isn't having it. In a NYT column in which he never mentions President Obama by name he tears apart the post-9/11 dismantling of human rights and rule of law, which as he sees it, President Obama has accelerated.

This a really good read and you should check it out. I don't have a lot to say about this mostly because I've said it all before and somewhat because I happen to be in a bit of a pickle on the day job.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.  

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

I will say that Carter's elegy for the US role as protector of human rights and guarantor of law is an excellent reminder that some values are above and beyond partisanship. There are greater goals for the republic than whether or not a Democrat or Republican is in the White House this time next year. Some things are just wrong no matter who is doing them. And the arc of the country does not seem to bending towards an appreciation of that fact or towards a limited executive branch power. Carter sounds quite close to Tariq Ali's analysis in a review we did some time ago.

You can read the entire piece here. There are good reasons why people who cherish civil liberties may not see either major party presidential candidate as worthy of their vote in the fall election. But ultimately I think both candidates reflect a spreading moral rot in the American body politic. Unfortunately, thanks to human nature, people only tend to see these dangers when it's the other party that is involved in making mincemeat out of constitutional and legal provisions. The Republicans who found new appreciation for Congress as an equal branch of government once Obama was elected are matched by Democrats who suddenly realized that the unitary executive theory wasn't a bad idea, so long as Obama was President that is. So it goes.

What's your take?
Is Carter right?
Do you think it is correct for him to criticize (implicitly) the previous two Presidents?

Bloomberg, Broccoli, Smoking and Health Care

As we wait for the US Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (popularly and derisively known as "Obamacare" ) it might be useful to remember the slippery slope/limiting principle argument against the mandate to purchase private health insurance.  This was often referred to as the Broccoli argument. Opponents invoked the spectre of an empowered and leviathan Federal government ordering everyone to eat their vegetables. The law's supporters thought that this argument was completely ridiculous, not worth a response, and prima facie evidence that the mandate's opponents either had damaged amygdalae or had spent too much time surfing libertarian websites looking for pictures of S.E. Cupp.

I am not a fan of NYC Mayor Lord Michael Bloomberg because I think his bland corporatist persona is the cover for a raging power mad nutter who seeks control over other people just because he knows what's best for everyone. He may not have Sauron's One Ring but he certainly acts as if he does. This is most evidenced by his out of control NYPD that on his orders has effectively disregarded the Fourth Amendment for Black and Hispanic citizens in Gotham, especially if they happen to be young and male. Bloomberg says it's for their own good of course. But his need for control over people is not just limited to continuously stopping and frisking every single black male within the city or spying on Muslim citizens in other states. No, Bloomberg is convinced that he knows what people should be eating and how they should be eating. So his health department is poised to ban 32oz sodas. Of course that didn't go far enough and his health department, no doubt emboldened by the impending soda ban as well as the current trans fat ban, publicly mused about the desirability of banning milkshakes and popcorn as well.
LINK

The 11-member health panel met on Tuesday in Queens and approved the plan. A public hearing on the issue on July 24, with a final vote is scheduled for Sept. 13. If approved, the new regulations would go in effect on March 2013.Certain members spoke up, however, saying that the proposal should include other items. Board member Bruce Vladeck questioned why large tubs of popcorn were not included in the ban, according to the New York Daily News. Another member, Dr. Joel Forman, pointed out that even 100 percent juice and milk-containing beverages have large amounts of calories and should not be excluded.While Dr. Kenneth Popler, board member and president of the Staten Island Mental Health Society, recognized that it would infringe on New Yorkers' rights, he felt that the health benefits were worth it, the Wall Street Journal reported. Obesity has led to 5,800 deaths a year in New York City and costs taxpayers $4 billion, according to statements presented at the meeting.

So, while the kommissars in NYC were deciding how next to extend their personal preferences under color of law, one of the largest employers in the Metro Detroit area decided that it would no longer hire people who smoke. Period. 

Job seekers who smoke aren’t welcome at the Detroit Medical Center. The health system on Wednesday joined a growing number of companies to require new applicants to be tested for smoking.The policy does not apply to current smokers, though they are encouraged to stop smoking and participate in cessation programs, the DMC said in an announcement. In Michigan, the DMC joins the Lansing-based Sparrow Health System, the Oakwood Health System in Dearborn and the Crittenton Hospital Medical Center in Rochester to adopt the no-smoking policy for applicants. “I think it’s becoming a pretty common practice across the country, especially in hospitals and (other) health care” employers, said Paula Rivera-Kerr, spokeswoman for Dearborn-based Oakwood Healthcare System, which adopted a similar policy Oct. 1. 

Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, a University of Michigan physician who is director of its Center for Value-Based Insurance Design, said that because businesses spend significantly more on health costs for smokers than for non-smokers “it’s no surprise to see various types of screening and benefit-design changes” to discourage smoking, among current and future employees. “Projections about increased health costs are a major concern to employers right now,” he said. While several states have passed laws banning such hiring policies, Michigan has not, leaving smokers without legal grounds to challenge such a hiring decision, said Tim Howlett, an attorney with Detroit-based Dickinson Wright law firm and acting chair of the State Bar of Michigan Association’s labor and employment law section.

LINK

Now just to get the obvious out of the way I don't smoke. I don't permit smoking around me. I try to eat right. I fully understand that if you don't eat well and exercise you're more likely to live a sub par existence. I have little patience for fat people that try to protect their ego by trying to pretend that fat people don't have health issues. I get that large agribusinesses and food interests often push poisonous products onto consumers.  I think that everyone should minimize or eliminate things like sugar, fat, salt, blah, blah, blah from their diet.  And I actually LIKE broccoli. But those things are individual choices. Should your employer be able to discriminate in hiring based on lifestyle? Well if your lifestyle is related to your job, I would say yes. You won't find too many overweight cheerleaders or bodybuilder jockeys. But if you're doing something that is unrelated to your job on your private time, what business is that of your employer's? And if we say well it's because of health costs, then how far do we want to go? You may have a family history of chronic diseases. Should your employer be able to not hire you because of that? And if we allow discrimination in hiring because of smoking why not obesity? But that's in the (semi)private marketplace so the rules may be different.

In NYC though we have the city government seizing the ability to tell you what you can eat and how much of it you can eat. Again, they claim to be doing so because of health costs. This health cost argument was the same reason the federal government claimed the right to be able to force you to purchase health insurance. Now if you don't bend the knee to Lord Bloomberg and accede to his latest caprice, then you, as a business owner will be fined. Of course if you decide to ignore the fines and tell Lord Bloomberg exactly what he can do with them, sooner or later large serious men with guns will magically appear to either shut your business down or take you away to some place unpleasant. But it's for the public good.

Now can someone tell me again why the broccoli argument was so outrageous?

What's your take?

Should private companies be able to refuse to hire smokers? Obese people?

Is Bloomberg out of control or is this (considering rising obesity rates) a necessary and good decision? Should the government be involved in determining portion sizes and food choices?

President Obama's Kill List: Murder Incorporated Drones

Obama kills children. I meant to write on this last week but due to work requirements I had to table it. Let's get back to some serious questions. You may not have noticed it what with all the media's fawning over the President at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the President's oh so brave announcement that he supports gay marriage that made some people fall out in Messianic ecstasy or the sudden Democratic "discovery" and "shocked outrage" (just in time for the November election) that the US income and wealth distributions have continued to ever more sharply tilt toward the well off but the undeclared war of worldwide drone attacks that the President has sanctioned and directed has continued. It's worse than I thought and probably worse than any of us know. 


No, while Democratic partisans were girding themselves for holy war over the pressing issue of forcing the Catholic Church to underwrite birth control for middle class women, hunting out homophobic heresies among comedians and preachers or stating with a straight face that a federal mandate to give money to huge corporate insurers without price controls was actually a progressive position, the Obama Administration was taking the so-called war on terror (a term it avoids because Bush used it) to a level of lawlessness and violence undreamed of by President Bush. The most striking aspect of Obama's first term has been not the ugliness with which some low-information racist voters oppose him, but the extent to which Obama's policies around war and civil liberties have been a continuation, well really a degradation, of Bush programs. 


That's right. There may be some mild debate among the elites on homosexual marriage or abortion but when it comes to killing or spying on people without warrant, judicial or congressional oversight, this Administration fits perfectly with the previous one. You can vote for a Republican and get war or vote for a Democrat and get war. Yummy. What great choices we have in our duopolistic plutocracy.
The New York Times, which is generally supportive of President Obama, recently did an expose of the Murder Incorporated campaign which the President is personally overseeing in contravention of law and morality. It is quite lengthy but I strongly urge you to take some time, okay a lot of time, and read it here.

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program. This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants. But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.

I am the law!

Did you get that? Everybody who looks like a terrorist is a terrorist so there haven't been many civilians killed because we only kill terrorists. The President said so. So it must be true. This is hogwash!!! The fact that a Black man is saying it doesn't change that fact. It shows how ridiculously premature and insane it was to give Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. But hey I'm sure that the families of those killed from afar by our brave philosopher warrior-king will take solace in knowing that their loved ones were either terrorists or up to no good. And it's not like the Third World is running out of people so what's the big deal, right? Every male we kill is a terrorist until someone can POSTHUMOUSLY prove otherwise. Hmm. Isn't that the EXACT same mentality of the NYPD supersized steroid gobbling thug who rousts, harasses or kills black men? You're black so you must be up to something. And even if you weren't doing anything wrong this time well let this arrest/insult/beatdown be an example to those who were. This is the mindset that is processing the Global War on Terror, uh excuse me Overseas Contingency Operation. 

But some State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official.  Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued. Now, in the wake of the bad first strike in Yemen, Mr. Obama overruled military and intelligence commanders who were pushing to use signature strikes there as well. “We are not going to war with Yemen,” he admonished in one meeting, according to participants. His guidance was formalized in a memo by General Jones, who called it a “governor, if you will, on the throttle,” intended to remind everyone that “one should not assume that it’s just O.K. to do these things because we spot a bad guy somewhere in the world.”Mr. Obama had drawn a line.  But within two years, he stepped across it. Signature strikes in Pakistan were killing a large number of terrorist suspects, even when C.I.A. analysts were not certain beforehand of their presence.  And in Yemen, roiled by the Arab Spring unrest, the Qaeda affiliate was seizing territory. Today, the Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. Officials say the criteria are tighter than those for signature strikes, requiring evidence of a threat to the United States, and they have even given them a new name — TADS, for Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes. But the details are a closely guarded secret — part of a pattern for a president who came into office promising transparency.

Future Terrorist Stopped!!!

Whoa Nelly... The Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. This is amazing. So we don't even need to know your name, what your alleged crime was or who you are. All we need is that some soft bureaucrat or politician without the stones to put his own life on the line gives an order, no doubt while munching on arugula salad or sipping decaf latte, and halfway around the world another human being is blown to bits. What a country we live in. How wonderful it is that a President's courage can be written down in the blood of other people's children. Historians will doubtless write admiring biographies detailing President's Obama's steadfast grim determination to stay the course in the face of absolutely no serious political opposition on this issue.


But hey he's a good guy because he's trying to get people to drive Volts and help women in their struggle for "reproductive justice". Perhaps this is just what President Obama had in mind when he said that after he was elected that this would be the moment when the planet began to heal. I think his idea of healing the planet and mine are somewhat different but what do I know. Maybe you really can bring peace to the world by dropping bombs on brown and black people you don't like. I had a much longer diatribe planned but this is long enough already. If you really think these actions are just fine there's not much I can write to convince you otherwise. I'll just make a few final points and stop since work beckons. 

• Drone attacks on countries with whom we have not declared war are a particularly odious and dare I say cowardly way of conducting foreign policy. The Constitution lays out a clear road map to declaring war. I don't care what other Presidents did in the past. You either do the right thing or you do not. 
• The US is setting a very very bad precedent here. Does the US think it's the only country with grudges to settle with so-called terrorists? Do you know the name Luis Posada Carriles? If you don't then you should. He is a terrorist with a very long history of violence against Cuban and Venezuelan people, including an airliner bombing. But as far as the US military and intelligence community is concerned, he was killing the right people so he is a popular fixture among the insane right-wing Miami Cuban-American community. Cuba and Venezuela would very much like to get their hands on him but the US has refused. Now what do you think would be the US response, what would be your response, if one or both of those countries started a series of drone attacks across south Florida, killing dozens or even hundreds of people until they got Carriles? And when the US protested, Cuba responded "Hey well, people knew who this guy was. The way we see it, anybody hanging around him was a terrorist so we won't lose sleep or apologize over what we did. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs so quit your crying."
• The US is making more enemies than it is killing with these drone attacks. Again, what would you do if someone starting shooting at your relative's wedding because they had information that your second cousin twice removed was there. And he was a bad guy. But let's say your cousin wasn't there and scores of your relatives and friends and their children were wounded and killed. Chances are you wouldn't be in a joyous mood. In fact you might be so angry and desperate that you and some other like minded people would get together to plan a little payback. It might take a while. It might happen two decades later and then just like with 9-11 naive and historically illiterate Americans would wonder why "they" hate us. It's already starting to happen. 
• It is of course I'm sure a mere coincidence that one of Obama's earliest big money contributors just happens to be the billionaire Lester Crown, a previous chairman of and primary stockholder in General Dynamics, which wouldn't you know, makes drones. How lucky Crown is then, that the politician he supported has increased demand for his company's product. 

The NYT story is only concerned with process and how this might play politically. The NYT is not that concerned with the number of children killed. If Bush or Cheney had been overseeing this program I suspect there might have been a different tone to the article. The ugly truth about this though is that the Times story not withstanding this system of extra-judicial murder and unsanctioned war is something that is deeply bi-partisan. Neither major party presidential candidate would stop this program. In my view, neither man is worthy of being President or has much use for either the Constitution or basic morality. Many people who got on their high horse and attacked President Bush over Guantanamo, torture, assassinations or cherry picked intelligence are quiet as church mice now that it's their guy sitting in the big seat. There are a few brave consistent souls, Ralph Nader for one or Jeremy Scahill, who have the integrity not to change their beliefs about murder, based on which party the President claims. Good for them. There's something rotten in America's soul when these actions pass without comment. Should we get a President Romney I don't want to hear a mumbling word from some snide slug of a delinquent Democrat who has, post-election, miraculously rediscovered his or her dedication to constitutional limitations on Presidential actions. Not. One. Word.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'" -Abraham Lincoln

What's your take?

Brooklyn False Rape Charges: Darrell Dula

Imagine that you (or a man you love) were wrongly accused of raping someone. You're arrested, fingerprinted and thrown into jail to await formal charges. Now in the 24 hours while you're familiarizing yourself with jailhouse protocol over telephone usage, how to avoid unwanted advances, which gang it would be proper for someone of your race and ethnicity to join, when not to look into another prisoner's eyes, the importance of responding promptly to guard commands and other important orientation action items, the victim admits to the police and prosecutors that she made it all up and actually signs a document stating so. 
Well that's lucky for you yes? You won't have to stay a minute more in jail and perhaps you can see about getting everything expunged from your record. No harm no foul. These things happen and maybe you and the arresting officers can have a beer summit at the White House some day.
But wait, now imagine that the prosecutor decides to go ahead with charges anyway because either they think the supposed victim is lying or because they don't like you very much or maybe they figure they need to keep their conviction rates high and you look like an easy win. And in addition they don't tell you or your attorney that the victim lied. And they keep you in jail for a year...
Such things couldn't happen in this country could they?

But sadly of course they do.

A Brooklyn man spent nearly a year behind bars on charges he raped an Orthodox Jewish woman — even though she recanted her accusation a day after making it.
Darrell Dula, 25, was released Tuesday and will likely have the case against him dropped after being in jail since June 28, 2011.
“I feel good. Thank God,” Dula told the Daily News Tuesday night as he played with his 3-year-old son for the first time in a year in front of his Crown Heights home.“I’m glad to be home with my family,” he said. “I’m still in shock. I’m traumatized. It wasn’t a good experience. They took me away on my son’s birthday. It was heartbreaking.”
The stunning turn of events came after Brooklyn prosecutors turned over a newly discovered statement that Dula’s 22-year-old accuser made to cops in which she says he never raped her. The alleged victim made a complaint to police on March 31, 2010, accusing Dula and his pal Damien Crooks, 32, of being part of a crew who raped, beat and pimped her out since age 13.
A day later, the woman told detectives she was a hooker for five years and made up the rape allegation, records show.
“I once again asked [her] if she was raped,” a detective wrote in a police report after the interview. “She told me ‘no’ and stated to me, ‘Can’t a ho change her ways?’ ”
The woman also signed a recantation, but the case proceeded and in spring 2011, a grand jury voted to indict Dula, Crooks and two others who were allegedly part of the crew.

LINK

And of course the prosecutor who directly handled the case, Abbie Greenberger,  is now blaming her bosses for the situation. I guess that makes sense. No one wants to be the scapegoat. I understand and feel the same way. Of course when I mess up no one spends a year in jail....

Greenberger said she found inconsistencies in the 22-year-old accuser’s account, but couldn’t convince her boss there was a problem.
“When I brought the inconsistencies to Lauren Hersh (chief of the sex-trafficking unit at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office), I was told that I didn’t do my job right and that I’m trying to dismiss the case and that I should work harder,” Greenberger told the Daily News.

See the problem here believe it or not isn't just that the victim lied, although that is bad enough and she ought to face the same criminal penalties that the man faced. No the REAL problem (and perhaps Old Guru and/or The Janitor can weigh in on this) is that the prosecutor did not disclose this information to the defense attorney and/or judge. I'm no lawyer but I kind of thought that the prosecutor had a duty to do justice, not just win a conviction. Maybe not.

Now why did the prosecutor continue with this farce? Could it have been that the District Attorney has gotten a little too cozy with certain elements within the local Orthodox Jewish community? Could the DA have believed the so-called victim was telling the truth before she recanted? Could the DA have believed this fellow was better off in jail, regardless of whether or not he actually committed this crime? Could the DA have been responding to a feminist constituency that doesn't always seem to understand that women are no more moral than men and are just as capable of mendacity?
I don't know. All I know is that I would like to have believed that if I were wrongfully accused and the police and prosecutors knew that then they would take the necessary steps to stop the machinery of justice from moving forward and throw that bad boy in reverse, to right before the time when they told me "You're under arrest". But honestly I knew that was an unreal expectation even before I read this story. All it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time and your life can suddenly change. I don't have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around for bail or attorneys.
How do we fix this?
My ideas are pretty simple. 

• Hold prosecutors and police personally and criminally responsible when they lie or hide evidence. They do a necessary if often unpleasant job. But they should not be above the law or get a free pass for this sort of thing.
• When someone lies about rape and it can be proven as a lie, send them to prison for the same amount of time that the assailant would have served. 
• Stop with the fiction that women never lie about things. They do. The entire point of the adversarial justice system is to hopefully let the truth come out and in such a way that someone is not convicted of a crime without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. This requires a defense attorney that is going to get after the accuser.
• Stop hiding the victim's (or in this case liar's) name from the public. Perhaps if more people had been aware of who this woman was someone might have come forward earlier. Rape is a horrible crime and should be punished most severely. But in order to do that we must ensure we're punishing the right people. That's why we need as much transparency as possible within the system.

What are your thoughts?