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?

Chris Rock, Melissa Harris-Perry, Conservatives, Racism and Patriotism

You may have missed it but Chris Rock had a tweet on the Fourth of July that sent some easily and perpetually outraged conservatives off the deep end.

Happy white peoples Independence Day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.

Additionally Professor Melissa Harris-Perry had a piece about what the Fourth of July meant to her. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This also sent many of the same (mostly white) conservatives into fits of rage. Actually the points made by Chris Rock and Professor Melissa Harris-Perry weren't really all that different from the points made by our very own Janitor in his Independence Day post.

One thing which is important to remember is that the people who define themselves as Black and/or are defined by others as Black in the American context generally have ancestors that arrived on these shores before 1820 and in many cases as early as the 1700's or before. And even if they don't have those particular ancestors, as long as they LOOK like they do, they will be treated as if they do. So even if you're a recent Somalian or Malian immigrant who just got off the boat or plane, even if you lack certain cultural heritages shared by other Black Americans you're gonna get the same treatment.

Now I just want you to imagine something. Let's say that Black people had deliberately and despite everyone begging them not to do so, started the bloodiest and most destructive war this country had ever seen, one that divided families and pitted fathers against their sons, brothers against brothers. Let's say that Black people specifically and proudly rejected the United States government and said they wanted a nation based on the age old principles of Black supremacy, which should be obvious to anyone who is intelligent, by which they primarily meant other Black people. Now imagine that even after Black people badly lost this war, they never really admitted to themselves that they lost or that their cause was wrong. Instead they worked overtime to alter the historical record so that the cause of the war was not actually their ownership of a despised minority and their eagerness to split the nation, but instead the war was all a tragic misunderstanding caused by among other things big government racial egalitarians.  And let's say that over time this attitude seeped into the Black media, which did all it could to portray the fighters as noble though tragically outnumbered warriors. And finally let's stipulate that far from reaching some sort of understanding that the revolt was wrong, Black people put up statues and monuments to those who led the revolt, spoke fondly of the revolt and every chance they could waved revolt battle flags. Do you think that if Black people had done and were doing this, that they would be accepted as patriots by conservatives or shunned as single minded bigots with dangerous revanchist fantasies?

Well we know the answers to that don't we?  Conservatism has many strains but since the sixties or so, conservatism has increasingly worn a Southern racist face. Think about this. The same people who are attempting to chastise Chris Rock or Professor Perry as insufficiently patriotic or horribly ungrateful never ever ever have an unkind word to say about Confederate memorials, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Daughters of the Confederacy, Southern Partisan, Secession Memorial balls and parties, and any other host of mainstream organizations, events, literature, parties, books and other media designed to remember and celebrate the people who started the ugliest and bloodiest war in American history, primarily because they believed in white supremacy and wanted to ensure their right to hold slaves and expand slavery. No that's all ok.

But let a Black person point out that prior to 1865 most Black people were slaves and those that weren't were often at a very real risk of becoming a slave and suddenly that's the crime of the century. No, apparently Black people, alone among humans, should have a memory that eliminates all the bad things. In fact some conservatives, such as Michael Medved, think that slavery wasn't that bad and Black Americans are better off for it  while others, such as Mark Krikorian argue that Haiti would have been better off with more, not less, colonialism and slavery.

Again, let's try this argument out in some different historical contexts. The modern state of Israel would probably not have come to exist without Hitler. His genocide of six million Jews and weakening of the British Empire gave the Jewish groups in Palestine both moral suasion over the Western powers as well an opportunity to create facts on the ground. Does anyone in their right mind really think that Israelis should weigh the lives of their ancestors against their modern state and say, "Yes, too bad about them but what the heck it was worth it?". Uh no.

Similarly does anyone go to the Lakota Sioux and say "Why don't you stop talking about Wounded Knee. After all some of you people got casinos out of it?" Probably not.

Finally if you went to Germany and everywhere you looked you saw Nazi flags, Iron Crosses, streets and monuments named after prominent Nazis and local "Nazi Veterans Day celebrations" wouldn't you think that some Germans had some issues on which they needed help?

People remember. They remember the good and the bad. And it is pointless to try to make them do otherwise. And frankly it is somewhat insulting. Many people on this planet organize their lives on what some people consider to be completely mythical events that happened 2000-4000 years ago. So it is rather silly to suggest that people forget about things that happened just a mere 200-300 years ago or in some cases in living memory.  America is a great country. But it also has committed multiple sins. America is the freedom to live as you want AND it is also the rubbing of salt into a slave's wounds after whipping for purely sadistic reasons.

Jackson begins his narrative with several instances of harsh treatment he received and witnessed during his time as a slave, including the role of women in the horrors of slavery.  He says of the slave owner’s wife, “The sight which most delighted her eyes was to see a slave whipped,” and one of her daughters grew up to murder Jackson’s sister by having her whipped to death.

If we intend to tell the truth and be honest we have to remember both sides. We should remember for example that some Black people fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War. Why? Because the British offered freedom and some of the would be Americans did not. Were they bad people? No they weren't. They were doing what it took to secure their freedom.

We have got to stop whitewashing things. Tell the truth and let people make up their own minds. The controversy over statements by Professor Perry and Rock show that history is not really about happened. It's more about how we intend to shape the story of what happened for current day political reasons. It's often propaganda.
h/t Harvey's Global Politics

Thoughts?
Should black people just forget the uglier parts of history?
Do conservatives secretly feel guilty about the American history of slavery? After all it wasn't conservatives who were agitating for abolition.

Why do conservatives freak out anytime someone mentions the bad parts of American history?

Book Reviews-For the Sins of My Father, Powernomics, The Warlord Chronicles, Battles that Changed History

For the Sins of My Father
by Albert DeMeo

I had a pretty idyllic childhood. I hope you did as well. Most children go through a growth stage in which they are convinced that their parent (and I can only speak of sons and fathers here) is the greatest, smartest, toughest, coolest most wonderful person that ever did exist. It is part of the bittersweet maturation process when children become older and start to substitute their own judgment for that of their parents that the child's perception shifts. 

Eventually the child will get more knowledge and learn some things that their parent did that might not have been completely kosher. Maybe there are some aspects to the parent's life with which the child can't agree. Perhaps the child decides that the parent did everything wrong and gets trapped in bitterness. Maybe he spends the next two decades feuding with the parent. Maybe. For most of us who grew up with, at the very least non-abusive parents, if you are fortunate enough to have an adult relationship with your parent(s), you will probably judge them lightly and just enjoy the time you have left with them. 

After all no one's perfect, they did the best they could and guess what there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny either. Get over your issues. Albert DeMeo didn't get to have an adult relationship with his father. His father was the feared Mafia soldier Roy DeMeo, top dog of the Gemini Crew and primary executioner and torturer for the Gambino Crime Family.  The elder DeMeo was murdered just around the time of Albert's seventeenth birthday. Albert had to identify his father's body, (Roy had been shot seven times, three in the head) make all the funeral arrangements and deal with arrogant suspicious law enforcement agents (The NYPD made fun of his father's death while the FBI tried to put microphones and camera in the casket) as well as the deadly members of his father's crew who had murdered Roy and were ominously watching to see if they needed to kill Albert as well. That's a lot for a teen to deal with but we all have crosses to bear. As an adult Albert DeMeo looks back to tell the story.

This book points out the banality of evil. People that are evil and Roy DeMeo was, don't all walk around kicking dogs and rubbing their hands together with glee. No, whatever evil DeMeo did he generally did as part of business and did not, from the story his son tells, bring it home. Of course, like blind men describing an elephant, we must remember that Albert DeMeo tells this story from the vantage point of a doting son and one who is far removed from those times. His mother's or sister's stories may have been different. We don't know. We do know that Roy DeMeo, while he didn't necessarily bring brutality or meanness home with him, certainly did not go out of his way to hide what he was from his son either.

At first Roy is showing a six year old how to clean and dismantle guns. Later it's taking an eight year old to social clubs where the elder DeMeo loans money and receives payments. Then, while teaching a fourteen year old how to lay tile and frame concrete, Roy takes the opportunity to teach him how to make homemade silencers. It's the small things that count. If Roy DeMeo had survived would he have overseen his son's official entry into the world of crime? It's hard to say. What I can say is that Roy's murder and events afterwards pushed Albert DeMeo away from the Mafia. Albert made the critical mistake of calling his father's previous boss to ask for help and telling him he thought he knew who killed his father. Albert was then beaten very badly. He knew then beyond a doubt who had killed his father. Can you imagine looking into the eyes of your parent's murderers as they ask you if there is anything that you need? This is a book with a limited but focused perspective. It's gripping reading. Roy DeMeo knew his time was approaching and one of the last things he told his son was forget about me, do not try to take revenge. Yes in some respects it's an apology for Roy DeMeo but as Albert DeMeo says some things he didn't know about his Dad sickened him. But he can only speak to the man he knew.




PowerNomics
by Dr. Claud Anderson

The subtitle for this book is "The National Plan to Empower Black America". And that is Anderson's burning passion. Anderson is an economic nationalist from the old school pro-black perspective. He is most definitely not a conservative and does not concede the pro-business language that conservatives have seized on. If there is one point that he beats the reader over the head with over and over again it is that the three primary reasons for black people's well known economic disadvantages are that black people (1) do not own businesses, (2) do not work together as a group and (3) tend to be over consumers instead of investors.
Much like Harold Cruse and his theory of "non-economic liberalism", Anderson points out that integration and desegregation while perhaps important as a floor, simply do not provide for equal opportunity or equality. If other groups own everything then blacks are constantly in a "begging mode". For Anderson, power comes from ownership. We live in a capitalistic society and full rights only accrue to those with capital. Reactionary integration, which is where our remaining "civil rights leaders" and indeed black people in general tend to remain,does simply not address economic issues.

Black conservatives who discuss these issues tend to elide racism. Anderson does not. He explains in his book exactly how wealth is built, maintained and transferred from generation to generation. As generally speaking black Americans weren't even full citizens until sometime in the mid to late sixties, opportunities to build wealth were limited.

This is a good book and should be read and understood. He's rough and does not pull any punches. His solutions are that Black people must understand what slavery, segregation and exclusion did to them and work together to reject the dominant post-slavery narrative that still sees whites disproportionately as owners and blacks as workers. As you might expect he is not a huge fan of alliances with other so-called minority groups, unless those can clearly be shown to help black interests. As he points out over and over again, many businesses which cater to black customers are owned by white citizens or new immigrants but it's exceedingly rare to find a black business that caters to a non-black clientele or is set up in a non-black community. Quiet as it's kept many of the points that Anderson makes were made by Malcolm and believe it or not MLK. Anderson overstates his case of course, not every non-black American is a business owner and not every black American is working for someone else. This is actually a shot across the bow of the black professional class. This is a book you should have.  Speech  Speech 2




Enemy of God and Excalibur
by Bernard Cornwell

These are books two and three in The Warlord Chronicles trilogy. To a degree each book stands alone I suppose but I read one immediately after the other. The story does not make radical changes in style or characterization from each book.
I wrote in the previous review of the Bernard Cornwell book, The Winter King, that to an extent the relation between King Arthur and Merlin is akin to what I thought the relationship  between Tecumseh and his brother would have been. This analogy to foreign invaders (Europeans to America, Saxons to Britain) holds up and goes even further in these books. I am also reminded of the scene in Steve Barnes' alternate history novel  Lion's Blood, in which an Irish boy is heartened and excited to see his father come to defend him from Viking slavers, because his father is incredibly skilled with his weapon (spear), only to watch in shock, horror and disbelief as his father is casually killed by the Vikings' unknown weapon (a rifle). This conflict between the reality of one's existence and the fleeting "reality" of what used to be in terms of your religion or how you saw the world is a bit more stark in Enemy of God and Excalibur than it was in The Winter King. When there is a difference between reality and your religion what do you do? If you can't count on your God(s) any more you might go insane or convert to a new god. Think about it. How many people on the Middle Passage or in Auschwitz could have belief in their God?

Arthur doesn't put much stock in gods or magic; at one point he angrily stabs his "magic" sword Excalibur into the ground and calls for help from the Otherworld. At this a God and his Army are supposed to come to Arthur's aid. As Arthur bitterly points out, no army arrives.
But others, to a certain extent Merlin and to a much greater and ultimately tragic extent, Nimue, do believe in the Gods and are sickened, threatened and angered not only by the increasing Saxon encroachment but more by the amazing and threatening Christian numerical increase. Some Christians are live and let live type of people but many of them, especially the recent converts like Arthur's sister Morgan, do their best to stamp out paganism. Merlin and Nimue believe that something big is needed to bring back the Old Gods, something akin to a Celtic Ghost Dance. This will have similar tragic results, just as it did for the Sioux.

Arthur and the Britons seem doomed to lose. There are simply too many Saxons. They are the illegal immigrants of the day. Their invasion is relentless. A few of them have even taken to calling themselves Kings of Britain. The peace between the warring British tribes that Arthur has enforced through blood, loyalty, bribery, marriage and appeals to the common good is falling apart through greed on the outside and the ugliest treachery on the inside. Arthur is VERY similar to Ned Stark. He simply can not understand treachery or that people might actually want power. Arthur is an excellent example of the D&D alignment lawful good (though he's a bit more lawful than good) and of the limitations inherent in that alignment. Although often Arthur has the might to do as he pleases he generally insists on doing the right thing and living by the law. This makes some people, including his wife Guinevere, assume that he's a weakling or a dunce. By the time it dawns on Arthur that he probably should have eliminated a few enemies earlier and not worried about whether it was morally good, it's almost too late. Once aroused though Arthur can be an implacable enemy. When he captures one of his traitorous sons (who has helped murder children) he calmly asks the son why he was fighting for Arthur's enemies. The son lies and says that he thought Arthur was already dead. Arthur then quietly asks that if the son thought his father was dead why didn't he seek vengeance upon his killers instead of allying with them. The son angrily says Arthur was no father to him. Arthur forces the son to put his right hand (that he raised against Arthur) on a oath stone and then tells him that a son who raises his hand against his father is no son of his and that Arthur renounces both the son and the hand. He then chops off his son's hand.

Cornwell did his research and it shows. He gives excellent descriptions of shield wall fighting. You almost think you were there. You can't be a bada$$ war leader without coming up with some bada$$ insults and Derfel has quite a few. The author is pretty hard on religion. The self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Christian converts is matched by some of the more repulsive practices of the pagans (a barren woman smearing newborn baby feces on her clothes to guarantee fertility, killing a newborn calf to ensure a healthy flock, and in certain circumstances, human sacrifice) The narrator, Derfel Cadarn, is revealed to be the son of a Saxon king, one of Arthur's enemies. Despite this Derfel remains, along with the Numidian Sagramor, one of Arthur's champions and a building block in Arthur's attempt to bring peace. But Arthur's story is a tragedy. Arthur's works fall, as much from treason and intransigence within as any Saxon threat from without. The trilogy is very good in total. These two books are worthwhile reading.



Battles That Changed History
Amber Books

If you are a history junkie and/or a military history buff or weapons guru you probably want to get this book. Although there are a few horrible exclusions (where is the Battle of Vertieres or the Battle of Isandlwana or the Battle of Bannockburn) it does list 47 battles from 1457 BC at Megiddo all the way up to operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 (which was really more of a campaign) Each battle is lavishly illustrated with prints and portraits of the typical soldiers and their commanders, as well as detailed maps showing each side's plans, weapons, tactics and what went wrong for one side or the other. There are some surprises here. For example the Battle of Agincourt is famous for supposedly showing the superiority of the English (Welsh) longbow. 5700 Englishmen defeated 25,000 French soldiers and Italian mercenaries. In point of fact though the longbow probably didn't easily get through the heavy plate armor of the French knights. But what it did do, with the aid of an aborted French charge through mud, was to kill the French men at arms without armor and break up the French charge enough to allow the English to run forward and finish them off with mauls and maces. Other battles described still rankled losers centuries afterward. For example the 1410 Prussian defeat at Tannenburg, Poland so bothered the Germans that in 1914, when the German general Paul Von Hindenburg, a Prussian, defeated a Russian army in the same region he named the battle Tannenburg.

Don't Mess With Texas: Prisons and Air Conditioning

If through an unfortunate series of events, I was unlucky enough to be convicted of a crime and sent to prison, I would have many concerns that I would want to address. Things like avoiding becoming someone's sexual surrogate, learning all the correct rituals around which tables to sit at, exactly when you should curse out the guards just to make people know you're not soft, how to make dangerous weaponry from plastic utensils, when it is permissible to talk to or befriend a prisoner of a different race, which territory belongs to which prison gang, staying alive, and above all getting OUT as soon as possible would be foremost on my mind.


Something that probably wouldn't be on the immediate concern list would be air conditioning. Of course I am not in prison and (knock on wood) not in a Texas prison so the issue lacks a little, shall we say, urgency for me.

But there are some people for whom this is not just an academic exercise. In fact they claim it is a matter of life and death. They are quite serious about this. It's not a joke to them. Not at all.

Inmates and their families have complained for years about the heat and lack of air-conditioning in the summertime, but the issue has taken on a new urgency. An appeal is pending in a lawsuit initially filed in 2008 by a former inmate claiming that 54 prisoners were exposed to Death Valley-like conditions at a South Texas prison where the heat index exceeded 126 degrees for 10 days indoors. And several inmates at other prisons died of heat-related causes last summer; a lawsuit was filed Tuesday in one of those deaths.A Texas law requires county jails to maintain temperature levels between 65 and 85 degrees, but the law does not apply to state prisons. The American Correctional Association recommends that temperature and humidity be mechanically raised or lowered to acceptable levels.

“The Constitution doesn’t require a comfortable prison, but it requires a safe and humane prison,” said Scott Medlock, director of the prisoners’ rights program at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which is representing the former South Texas inmate who sued prison officials. “Housing prisoners in these temperatures is brutal.”A prison agency spokesman, Jason Clark, said that many prison units were built before air-conditioning was commonly installed, and that many others built later in the 1980s and 1990s did not include air-conditioning because of the additional construction, maintenance and utility costs. Retrofitting prisons with air-conditioning would be extremely expensive, he said.

State Senator John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he was concerned about the inmate deaths but wanted to examine the circumstances of each. He said he was not sympathetic to complaints about a lack of air-conditioning, partly out of concern about the costs, but also out of principle.“Texans are not motivated to air-condition inmates,” he said. “These people are sex offenders, rapists, murderers. And we’re going to pay for their air-conditioning when I can’t go down the street and provide air-conditioning to hard-working, taxpaying citizens?”

LINK

Basically Whitmire hits upon something that I initially agreed with upon reading this story. If you're convicted of a felony and if you're in prison then you must have been, your comfort is not really going to be high on the state's priority list. There are special circumstances with aged or invalid prisoners where I think the state does have a special duty to ensure some level of cooling but that aside it's called prison for a reason. It's not supposed to be a comfortable pleasant environment!!! If you murdered or raped someone then really you should be thankful that you're still alive and being fed by the state instead of having a quicker and permanent solution imposed. But on the other hand the state does have a duty to ensure to the best of its ability that while you're under its control you don't do anything so final as die from heatstroke. And if you make conditions too unpleasant there's always the possibility of prison riots. And those cost money. So there's that. I would want to know more about the death stats in Texas prisons before air conditioning became widely available. Certainly in the 1920s-1940s no prisoner would have thought to sue over lack of air conditioning, would they? There are plenty of people today who lack air conditioning in their home. I don't think that someone in prison should have more comfort than someone out of prison. That messes up incentives fairly dramatically.

What's your take on this? 
Should air conditioning be made widely available in prison? 
Is it cruel and unusual punishment to live without air conditioning?

Movie Reviews-The Samaritan, The Vampire Lovers, Safe House

The Samaritan

I am trying to write shorter reviews and The Samaritan is an excellent source on which to practice that style. There's not a whole lot I can write without giving away some spoilers which are pretty essential to the plot.


This is a modern film noir starring Samuel L. Jackson as the con man and grifter Foley. Foley has just been released from prison after serving a twenty-five year sentence for murdering his former partner. This is shown in flashback. Now Foley finds that everyone he ever cared about is either dead, somewhere in prison, indifferent to his existence or lost in substance abuse. So Foley decides now would be as good a time as any to start going straight. His parole officer tells Foley that he can either be Foley's best friend or worst enemy and the choice is Foley's. Foley constantly tells himself and others that "nothing changes unless you make it change". And by constantly I mean every five minutes. I think after the third time or so I got the point. It was really reminiscent of A Bronx Tale's mantra of "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent". And you can sense that Foley has been wasting his talents.


Foley gets a job as a construction worker. He spends his nights in seedy bars trying to forget the past two and a half decades. Of course this wouldn't be a noir film if there weren't someone out there who didn't think Foley should forget and in The Samaritan, this person is Ethan (Luke Kirby), the son of Foley's former partner and a small time gangster with big plans for Foley. Foley's not interested, even when Ethan dangles the delectable but drugged out Iris (Ruth Negga) in front of him. 

Obviously things aren't as they seem. Foley finds it more and more difficult to refuse Ethan's increasingly insistent requests for assistance in making a move against Ethan's boss Xavier (Tom Wilkinson). The predominant emotion in this film is weariness and sadness. I really liked the characters, the cinematography and lighting. Nothing is as it seems. The film has its violent moments but this is far from a gangster shoot-em up. Jackson is quite restrained but powerful and shows again why he is one of the best actors working today. Give this one a look see. I liked Ruth Negga and will be on the look out for other films in which she's featured.  TRAILER

The Vampire Lovers

As I have mentioned before I am a big fan of Hammer Films, from the tasteful noirs of the early fifties, to the technicolor monster extravaganzas of the mid-fifties and sixties to the more sexually lurid horror films of the late sixties and early seventies. The Vampire Lovers falls into that last category. It was the first film in what became known as The Karnstein Trilogy. This film was one of the first Hammer Films to feature toplessness and nudity but if any film could be said to do so tastefully, it was probably this movie. Later entries definitely didn't do so (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) but here the storyline is not yet completely lost to cleavage, curves and plunging tops. But those things are all prominently featured nonetheless. For a short period of time those features co-existed with top line acting (well top line for horror anyway) and it makes for an exciting mix. As is usual with Hammer Films, the sets are lavish, costumes are great, the cinematography is top notch and the locations are mostly convincing.


Ok well what's it about? Well unless you are particularly dim which you're not because you're reading this blog you can likely guess. It's an adaptation of Sheridan LeFanu's vampire novella "Carmilla", which was written twenty five years before Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Here the vampire is female, independent, somewhat immune to daylight and with a very strong preference for female victims. The studio big shots as well as some of the (weakened) censors were concerned about the explicitness of the film both in terms of nudity and the apparent lesbian storyline but of course, much of that was in the book. 

In Styria, a Countess (Dawn Addams) leaves her daughter Marcilla (Ingrid Pitt) with General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing). While the Countess is away doing whatever, Marcilla befriends, seduces and kills the General's niece, Laura (Pippa Steele). Marcilla disappears and shows up in a nearby estate. The Countess fakes a carriage breakdown and once again Marcilla (now calling herself Carmilla) is left to befriend a young girl Emma Morton (Madeleine Smith-later seen in "Live and Let Die" and who became just as big of a cult siren as Pitt). Only this time, Carmilla not only attempts to seduce and vampirise Emma but also Emma's governess, Madame Perrodot (Kate O'Mara) and the estate butler Renton (Harvey Hall), each of whom have some hidden desires which the vampish Pitt is able to bring out. In the meantime some other local girls have been dying mysteriously. This comes to the attention of the local authorities, including the grieving General and the aged Baron Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) who's had run-ins with vampires before and knows what needs to be done.


This was Ingrid Pitt's breakout role. This movie works not just because of her good looks, strong Polish accent, and womanly figure, she actually acts. Her vampire is someone that actually seems to feel both guilt and annoyance over her actions. Pitt had a pretty striking backstory and list of accomplishments, having grown up in a Nazi concentration camp. She was also an accomplished author, pilot and martial arts expert. By current standards the movie may be somewhat cheesy but it remains a cult favorite. It also remains something that would be censored on American television.
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Safehouse

This was a satisfying if a bit predictable big budget thriller with Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Robert Patrick, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga,  and Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham. It has glimpses of past Reynolds movies such as Smokin' Aces and of past Washington films such as Training Day. It's shot in South Africa, which was a bit of a change from the normal locations for such films. However the movie really doesn't use this as much as it could have. Frankly it could have been in any country in the world without much changing the story or the action. As mentioned you've probably seen this story a million times before. I guess what makes it work is either the story touches some truth within ourselves so that we want to see it over and over again or the actors playing the roles are skilled enough to make us want to see them in whatever they do.The years are finally starting to catch up with Washington and Reynolds, albeit in different ways. Washington is a little long in the tooth for the action role but pulls it off with his characteristic aplomb and panache. As Frank from Blue Velvet might say to him, "Godd** ! You're one suave f*****!!". And at thirty-five it's a little hard to accept Reynolds as the lowest man on the totem pole, evidently fresh out of school but it is a movie.


What's it about?  Tobin Frost (Denzel Washingon) is a legendary rogue CIA agent who is in South Africa to close a deal with another intelligence agent, his friend Wade (Liam Cunningham). Wade has a file for Frost. But evidently someone else knows about this transaction because in short time Wade is murdered and people are after Frost in broad daylight. Chased down and surrounded he makes the only move he can by walking into the nearest American embassy. 

This sends off alarm bells throughout the American intelligence community, specifically the CIA. A trio of big shots (Gleeson, Farmiga and Shepard-the character names really aren't important-Shepard is the big boss while the other two are subordinate; Gleeson is Reynolds' supervisor) hit the roof and arrange for Frost to be transported to the nearest local CIA safehouse , which is being manned by Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), who before all the excitement was bored out of his mind, agitating to be sent home and wondering if he made the right career decision. But when Daniel Kiefer (Robert Patrick) and his goons bring Frost to the safe house for torture, Weston has to make some decisions about where his moral lines are. And then once the house is attacked both he and Frost go on a bit of a road trip in which each man will need to decide how much he can trust the other. Weston gets to learn how the world really works. This is an entertaining movie. I won't say it will stay with you or anything like that. And you will likely figure the twists out pretty quickly. Again, the question is not if you've driven the car before. The question is did you like the ride. I did...
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Game of Thrones Political Ads

As a brief respite from the real life political issues of the day I thought it would be fun to have a quick jaunt back over to Westeros. If there were political campaign ads in Westeros what would they look like?*

*Do not go to youtube and read comments on these videos as most contain spoilers. Just watch them here. And as always please do not share any spoiler material. Many people (i.e blog partners) have not read the books and would be very upset with you if you spoiled their enjoyment of what has yet to be told in the story. They might even demand your head on a spike or ask you to decide between keeping your tongue or your hands or something like that...

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?