Strip Searches: The Republican State of Mind

Nothing draws a brighter line between the Republican Party and the Democrats than the issue of strip searching prisoners.

This is not something that your government will do to you only if you are captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan or if you are caught with a bloody knife outside the home of a murder victim.

This happens to nuns arrested for protesting against a war in Washington, DC or to a man who was stopped by police because his taillight was out and the police computer said (incorrectly) there was a warrant for his arrest. It can happen to your daughter if she is arrested fro speeding and taken to a station house. It can happen if your wife is stopped and she doesn't have her driver's license with her.

The Republican majority just voted again to deny the complaint against unreasonable search and seizure made by the man who was stripped searched after having been arrested, erroneously, because the computer had got it wrong.

The Republican majority on the Court reasoned it was just fine to do a strip search on this innocent man because when you first bring into a police station any person, you have no way of knowing whether he is a mass murderer.

That was Justice Kennedy's argument. Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building was arrested on a traffic violation and brought to the station house and think what a monster he was! Of course, nowhere is it suggested that strip searching this Hannibal the Cannibal in any way protected or could have protected the police who arrested him. He did not have a bomb stowed up his rectum.

And remember, we are talking about people arrested on the street by police, and these people have not been convicted of anything.

As Kayla Williams noted in her memoir, Love My Rifle More than You, the Army stripped anyone they arrested in Iraq simply to humiliate them and to assert control over them.

She was part of that process--they wanted a female present to really humiliate their prisoners.

Sherrif Arpaio in Arizona, another Republican rising star, marches prisoners through the streets in their underwear, before their trials.

For all their talk about liberty and freedom, from the Tea Party to the Free Stater wing of the Republican party, to the main stream justices of the Supreme Court, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy, the Republicans are only indignant about a loss of freedom when it means regulators from the government may impose regulations about how industry can despoil the environment. When it comes to governmental police laying the heavy wood on some powerless citizen--go right ahead. As Rush Limbaugh said of Abu Gharib, well that was only boys blowing off steam, just a fraternity stunt.

Justice Scalia declaims he is only following the original intent of the framers of the constitution. Nowhere were these eighteenth century gentlemen more clear than when they talked about cruel and unusual punishments or unreasonable search and seizure. This is something that goes back to their time. They were very familiar with sadistic police, with bullies in uniforms.

This should be a gift horse to the Democratic party.

Every Republican ought to be asked:

1/ Do you support strip searching arrested citizens?

2/ Would you support a law in New Hampshire to forbid or severely limit the circumstances under which prisoners could be stripped in police stations?

This is a liberty litmus test and Democrats ought to rub the Republican faces in it.

Mr. Obama Predicts

Okay, President Obama said today he thought the Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act.

He said they would look at the role of the court, and the role of the Congress, and they would say, well the elected representatives of the people voted for this, so who are we to over turn it? If voting means anything, then we cannot dismiss that.

Another reason the Court would not overturn the law, he says, is that would mean reversing things which have already gone into place, like forbidding pre existing conditions as a basis for rejecting issuing policies and allowing kids just out of college to remain in their parent's policies.

And the third reason the President thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the law is precedent: other courts have upheld the law as constitutional.

Mad Dog would love to be wrong on this and would love the President to be correct.

Unfortunately, Mad Dog knows the President is wrong: The Court will reverse the individual mandate and will argue it's not their fault if the rest of the law falls apart. All they are talking about is the mandate. Whatever happens after that is up to Congress.

Why?

Well, the simple answer is the court is nothing special, just a collection of nine political appointees doing what they were appointed to do.

In a review of The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, William Saletan noted that authors from George Lakoff to Drew Westen have said that "people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments." David Hume observed reason was the slave of the passions, and you can certainly see that in Justice Scalia. People "reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they've decided," says Saletan. "Reason justifies our acts and judgments to others."

This blog and others have shown how the justices have done this, case after case.

They will say the Constitution is about what you cannot vote on, so the voting the President insists they respect matters not at all. They will say the function of the court is to be sure the other branches do not violate "Original Intent," i.e. the idea of right governance as conceived by the founding fathers, who in Scalia's mind have the same holy status as the twelve apostles.

They will say the argument we'd have to dismantle what has already been put into place, and that lives will be changed by it could have been used in Brown vs. The Board of Education--after all, had the segregated Southern schools not already been built and occupied and did the Supreme Court not cause all those schools and all those children to be disrupted, in the name of principle?

As far as precedent, well several courts on the way to the Supreme Court found the ACA unconstitutional, so there are some opinions concurring.

The really sad thing here is watching the President explain, once again, that his opponents are reasonable people, and he expects they will act in a kind and thoughtful way, not because they like him, but because these are men who want the best for the country, men who will use their faculties of reason to see things the right way.

He just does not seem to be able to learn from experience.

Memo to President Obama: These Republican Justices, these Republicant Congressmen and Senators and radio talk show hosts--they are not nice people. They are not "folks." They are bitter and they are selfish and they are determined to protect their own wealth and power, and damn the rest of the country. And, as they have said so often, Mitch McConnell being the clearest about this, the only thing which matters to him as a Republican or to any true Republican is that you fail, no matter what the price to the country. In fact, the bigger the price to the country, the deeper the hurt, the better, so the country will never again be tempted to vote for another radical socialist like you. That'll learn 'em, your big failure.

Much as I like the guy, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not anyone so starry eyed can actually lead this nation.

The Income Tax as Zen Patriotism

How do I hate the income tax?

Let me count the ways.

When I ran a small business, as I did for 27 years, it took me about 20 years to get organized collecting, keeping track of the multiplicity of sources of income. I had no training as an accountant, and for many of those years there was no software, so I had a system of envelops and I tried to keep tract of 1099 forms, but I was forever chasing down various bank account statements, trying not to miss an interest payment which would mean I'd failed to report income, the big crime in the eyes of the IRS.

I needed several bank accounts: One for the income from my primary business, one for keeping money set aside to pay estimated income taxes, another for my wife's job's income, another for my personal expenses which were unrelated to business expenses. A junior CPA at my accountant's office told me, "Oh, the IRS is going to hang you. It looks like you are shuffling money between accounts to avoid reporting income." But I get statements on all the accounts and they are all in the same bank," I objected. Oh, it looks bad, she said.

Sure enough I got audited many times.

Usually, I got audited because the IRS didn't understand that the 1099 forms were part of what I was reporting as business income, not separate earnings.

I had other sources of income than from my primary business, like from writing articles for magazines or book advances, and I didn't want to mix that income with the income from the primary business income, so there was a separate bank account for that.

The other interesting thing about being self employed is you pay a self employment tax.What is that all about? What it felt like is the IRS and the government saying, "If you are self employed you must be cheating."

I also paid something called the Minimal Alternative Tax.
Ultimately, I got a good accountant, who helped me keep things straight and things settled down.

But every year, I reached April 15th feeling pretty good only to see my accounts wiped clean: Paying estimated income taxes, 1040 taxes and retirement (SEP contributions.)

Decision after decision was based on what it did to my taxes.

Every scrap of receipt got kept, filed to prove I had spent a particular dollar on a legitimate business expense.

And no matter how scrupulously I tried to play the game, I was felt guilty, like some sort of involuntary criminal. I could never keep up with all the rules and with all the changes in the rules.

And I believe paying my taxes is the only meaningful patriotic act left to me as an average citizen.

I hate the income tax.

It feels intrusive. The government looks at all my expenses, all my sources of income. What else is there I can hold private? And they strip all that away.

They know what I pay for my car, what I paid for the hotel at the convention.

Of course, I tell them this because I want them to give me credit for all that as a business expense. I don't have to tell them.

I hate the income tax and all the reporting, and all the record keeping.

I'd much rather pay a big tax when I buy something.

That way, I feel as if I want that new car, well I have to pay for it. I don't have to buy that car. But I have to earn a living.

Rationally, I know a progressive income tax is better social policy. The poor, who are less able to pay, pay way less than the rich.

But I hate the income tax.

Actually, I hate it a lot less now that I'm an employee. I love the W-2. With deductions taken out automatically, the pain is gone.

Having said all this, I still think it's an anathema to allow the Repulbicants blackmail every candidate into pledging never to allow an income tax.

Because it never stops with the income tax. Why not have them pledge to not allow abortions, contraception, gay marriage, increases in property tax? Pretty soon you have a robo candidate, who has signed up for all the pledges, and can only sign ten sorts of bills into law.

And, once you have signed enough pledges, you have given away your ability to negotiate with the legislature, if you are running for governor.

Well, she has signed off on the income tax, and she can't increase property taxes this year. So now we've got her.

Bad idea.

Balls: That's What I'm Talking About

(Double click on cartoon)

A previous post suggested the only Democrat, beyond Elizabeth Warren, who seems to have any real balls is Jackie Cilley.

Mad Dog realizes he offends the delicate sensibilities of the New Hampshire electorate by referring to the a part of the anatomy intimately connected with the male reproductive organs, but the Republicants have been saying for years the basic failing in every Democrat is the absence of same.

Democrats, of course, have done nothing to disabuse the public of this perception--witness their chose leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, who is a cartoon character of wimpiness--whispery voice, narrow shouldered, an apology personified.

President Obama, for all his virtues, is not much better. He refers to his frothing, vituperative adversaries, people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh, people who wish to castrate him and to throw him off a cliff, as "Folks."

Not an accurate or useful image. When Martin Luther King referred to the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, he said the governor had hate dripping from his lips--a more accurate and useful image.

Now, Jackie Cilley has had the temerity to suggest it's not brave or smart or good policy or good for the state of New Hampshire to "take the pledge" to never ask for a state income tax. The granite headed part of the electorate takes this as, "Oh, then she's for an income tax." Which is to say, if she doesn't promise not to ask for an income tax, well then she intends to ask for one. Or, another way of viewing this, "If she's not against it then she might allow it and I don't want anyone who might even consider it."

The third rail of New Hampshire politics, if New Hampshire had public rail transport, which of course, for an agrarian state, is another thing we would never even want to think about.

One of the hallmarks of a parochial, closed mind is the unwillingness to even think about things which might be frightening or distasteful.

Oh, the earth might be round, don't want to think about what that might mean.

So, we have candidates asked to shout, "Zeig, Heil," whenever the question no income tax arises.

Fact is, if the people of New Hampshire don't want one, fine.

But refusing to even consider that as one of a hundred approaches is diagnostic of paralyzing fear. If you are really afraid of something, the best thing is to examine it, dissect it, look at it under the microscope, understand its machinery, its power, its infectious potential and then you can be really protected against it.

But no, not here in the granite state. Here, like so many medieval wretches, we refuse to even look at something we fear and loathe.

What Democrats with real courage and leadership will say is: I'm not afraid to talk about any form of "revenue enhancement," if only to understand why we don't want something. We'll be safer against an income tax, ultimately, if we look at it, and look at all the preferable alternatives and examine why each one is dangerous and each one might be useful.

We sometimes find good uses for snake venom. We sometimes learn how to inoculate ourselves against a dangerous organism by examining it.

The Courage of Their Own Convictions

When the Democrats had a majority in Congress, the did not vote through a bill which included a government option for health insurance; i.e., they did not extend Medicare to everyone.

Presumably, they had counted heads and found not enough Democrats were brave enough to risk the wrath of the insurance companies and the voters back home. Most people believed if you offered Medicare for all, the vast numbers of citizens would vote with their feet and go for Medicare, rather than for commercial, profit-first, listed on the stock exchange insurance companies who don't care about anyone's health but care only about the bottom line: profit. So if you offered the people all the attractions of that bogeyman, government run health insurance, the people would leap at the chance to take it and would forsake the insurance companies which have been screwing them for years.

Actually, it was the insurance companies, those bastions of free enterprise the Republicans love so, which argued, look, if you want us to offer insurance to people with pre existing conditions and to the 24 year old, just out of college who wants to remain on his parents' health insurance, you will bankrupt us, becauase then we'll be paying out more than we take in, with all those sick people with pre existing conditions we can no longer ignore and reject. So give us some people who will do what every insurance company depends upon: Pay in for years and get nothing back, other than peace of mind.

And the Democrats counted up how many people make their living selling health insurance, administering health insurance, and they counted how many dollars those companies contribute to political campaigns and they wilted. They caved. They didn't have the balls to do the right thing.

So now, the Republicans on the Supreme Court can argue they are all for insuring people who want health insurance ,but you cannot force people to buy something they don't want to buy, you cannot take away the liberty of a 25 year old who wants to ride a motorcycle and who will wind up on the ER and on life support and then in the neurology ward, you cannot make a young person, who is, as Justice Scalia noted with great sympathy, "just starting out" pay for health insurance or make him pay a penalty if he refuses to help society assume his risk for him.

Of course, your concern for liberty does not make you liberate the hospitals from the responsibility of taking care of the irresponsible. The kid who loses that bet cannot be turned away from the hospital door, not morally, not even legally. Federal and state law requires the uninsured be treated.

Fair enough.

The Democrats were wimps and fail to pass a single payor plan, did not have the courage of their own convictions.

And now, once again, the Republicans have out maneuvered the whimps, by making the hapless Dems pass a plan which will provide care through commercial providers. Then the Republicans say, but you cannot force a person to engage in commerce!

Gottcha.

Kayla Williams Loves Her Rifle More than You

This is a very good memoir, with quite a lot to say about the Army we now have, the trap America has fallen into by engaging in eternal war, as the world's policeman, the nature of who Americans are and what we have become.

It is well worth reading.

There are some things which you have to get past: Ms. Williams complains about some things I would think few men would complain about: She is a Vegan and she discovered the Army does have vegetarian MRE's (prepackaged meals) but her sergeant would make no effort to supply her with these. (She finally found a cache on her own, and was miffed he would not make the effort for her.) He was likely being passive aggressive, not liking a soldier who had "special needs" on the front lines.

On the other hand, she details the incompetence of many of those who out rank her in convincing detail: One who orders her to stay in her Humvee rather than taking cover in a building during a mortar attack, when commanders had radioed everyone get out of the Humvees and into better protected stone buildings and another (a woman) who retorted that as the sergeant in charge of William's outfit she had no interest in learning the technology or the details of what the unit was doing, so it was up to Williams to know that. This jaw dropper, fortunately was flounced before a lieutenant, so Williams was saved.

There is a wonderful chapter about a woman attached to her company who had been in Iraq only a month and committed suicide, shot herself in the head, and Williams reaction was anger at the dead woman, anger at herself for not seeing it coming and fury at the commander who made the whole company sit through a maudlin, absurd memorial service for this dead woman who nobody knew and who had caused everyone else a lot of trouble by shooting herself, had let down the unit. This sounded completely real and honest to me: It reminded me of how angry interns used to get at alcoholics who would drink themselves into ulcers, come in vomiting blood all over everyone and keeping us up all night. We had lost all capacity for sympathy. We were the ones who dealt with the consequences of their misbehavior.

But most of all, there is the picture of the "mission" in a war where you are trying to win the "hearts and minds" of a people whose language you do not speak, culture you do not respect and who harbor people who are trying to kill you.

We have not studies the history of Vietnam and we are doomed to repeat it.

The sociology of what the Army has become is also clearly presented: As Bob Dylan once said, "Join the Army ,if you fail." The Army is populated by people for whom the Army is the best or only financial option. They are all hired Hessian's now.

Sure, after 9-11, there was an NFL football player who gave up his millions to fight--only to be shot to death by his own troops, but the army now is comprised of people who feel they have no better options, or no other options.

In Vietnam, we were sold the lie we were fighting the relentless march of world communism, when in fact, we were intervening in a local nationalist movement which had no implications beyond that small, agrarian nation, but oh, if we didn't fight them in the Mekong Delta, we'd be fighting them in the streets of San Francisco.

Now we are fighting them in Afghanistan rather than fighting them in the streets of New York. We are fighting the world war on terrorism. We are engaged in endless war. As Carver says, in The Wire, when Kima shakes her head at his war on drugs, "You sad ass losers, fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case after another." And Carver retorts, "Girl, you can't even call this a war." And Kima asks, "Why not?" Carver says simply, "Wars end." That is, wars have defined objectives, you capture the flag, burn the capital city. But these "wars" of occupation never end, and the "War on Terrorism," is so nebuluous we would not even know if we'd "Won." No objectives, no mission.

So we fight to "deny terrorists their training camps."

As if terrorists can only be trained in Afghanistan rather than Somolia or in an apartment in Berlin.

I like Kayla Williams. I might not like her, if I had to live in her neighborhood, but reading the book, she passes the test of Holden Caufield: You know it's a really good book when you finish it and you put it down and you want to call up the author, on the phone, right away.

Finally, A Democrat with Balls

Tonight, I had a glimpse into history. I felt the way I imagine Abraham Lincoln felt when he finally discovered a general who actually could fight.

After years of watching his generals fail through disorganization, incompetence, and mostly, through simple failure of nerve, generals who consistently grasped defeat from the jaws of victory, he found Ulysses S. Grant, a real fighter.

He was told Grant was a risk, a drinker who was often drunk at the height of battle.

"Then I would like to find out what it is he drinks," Lincoln said, "And give it to my other generals. He fights!"

And so it was tonight, when Jackie Cilley, Democratic candidate for Governor of New Hampshire came to a meeting of Hampton Democrats.

She had spoken here before, but she was one of a half dozen Democratic hopefuls, and she was not given much time.

Tonight, she spoke alone.

She began by saying she would not take "The Pledge," to never seek a New Hampshire state income tax. She won't do it on principle, because she says her first priority is not avoiding an income tax for New Hampshire, though she would try her damndest to avoid it. But her first priority is to get New Hampshire the government it needs, and the Pledge is a Republican ruse to divert attention from what they are trying to do, to change the subject from governance and values to taxes.

She spoke for about twenty minutes and the first question came from some old codger up front who said, "So, if I heard you right, you're for a state income tax?"

She took a deep breath. This was obvious not new for her. She likely had been through this before dozens of time. She talks about what the Republicans are doing to dismantle public education, to legalize guns in the state legislature and in school yards, to shut down every government service except for those which protect private property, and all some people hear is, she's going to bring in an income tax for me to pay.

She said she would not apologize for wanting the state to spend money on education. The Republicans and their Tea Party allies and their wacko Free State Project Utopian off the grid crazies want all children, ideally, to be home schooled or sent to private schools, but no public money for schools.

She would not apologize for wanting contraception to be available to New Hampshire women, because it's cheaper to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to deal with all its consequences and because it right for women to have contraception. She noted the Republicans are now saying there is no difference between contraception and abortion and oppose both and clearly oppose spending public money on either.

She would not apologize for wanting to protect collective bargaining and she would not apologize for supporting the unions which help build a middle class, while the Republicans canonize the Republican governor of Wisconsin who has tried to destroy every union in Wisconsin.

She would not apologize for wanting to protect the lakes and seashore which are the basis for the biggest industry in New Hampshire, not to mention the great joy of its citizens, while the Republicans make environmental protection into a public enemy.

She came out swinging because she knew where she came from. Her father worked in a factory, and carried a lunch pail to work and never drove a car. He had too many kids to afford to send any of them to college, but Jackie went to the state university and flourished there and saw the good a public education could do, saw how it could help kids from working class families take a step up in economic status, helped grow the human resources of a nation.

And she talked about the Republicans and their co conspirators, the New Hampshire Free State Project, as pernicious and scary a lunatic fringe as has ever invaded the Granite State. And the Tea Party paranoid schizophrenics who believe the only good government is a dead government.

She is one tough cookie.

She made me believe.

If only we can expose the Republicans, just let everyone know what they are actually saying, what they actually believe in. The worst thing for a really bad product--good advertising.

So there is hope for New Hampshire Democrats.

If we can just figure out how to pin those stars on her collar.