Jill Lepore Taxes Patriotism Fairness Courage

Jill Lepore, is a professor of history at Harvard, but Mad Dog does not hold that against her, considering the edifying article she has written in The New Yorker about our nation's attitudes about taxes. Below is a link to this article, which given Mad Dog's record, affords no better than an even chance of working:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2012-11-26#folio=024


As New Yorker articles are wont to do, this one does go on for some pages (5) and as professors are wont to do, Professor Lepore strays into some pretty distant and currently less than relevant epochs of Amercian history, but what she does manage to do is to place our own confused, frothy and irrational attitudes toward taxes in perspective.

Her main messages, as far as Mad Dog is concerned, can be broken down as such:
1. Those who rail against taxes see only the tax and not the benefit. As Oscar Wilde once observed: The cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Or, to put it another way, the tax hater is a government services taker who is not willing to become a giver.  The most ardent New Hampshire anti tax man is very willing to accept his Medicare, his Social Security check, his free currency system courtesy of the federal government, the roads he drives on, the bridges he crosses, the internet he uses, the clean air he breathes, the fluoridated water he drinks, the vaccines he receives, the public health he enjoys, the university he went to on a GI bill and the mortgage assistance for his first home, all while complaining bitterly that the income tax is a socialist plot to confiscate his property and to redistribute his wealth.

2. Liberals have failed to vigorously defend taxation, particularly the income tax for not just decades, but for generations.

3.  Conservatives, whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan, howl about the dreaded deficit and national debt, conveniently forgetting that when Mr. Reagan lowered income tax rates for the upper 1%, the national debt rose from $930 billion to$ 2,600 billion. 

Those of you who are particularly masochistic, can browse through past blogs from Mad Dog about people like John Hunter of Greenland, who wrote the Portsmouth Herald complaining that he sees no justice in his having to pay more income tax than his poorer neighbor, who, after all, breathes the same air, uses the same roads and benefits just a much (in his mind, at least)  from the government as he does. 
This is the old argument about the "fairness" of a progressive vs a regressive tax, and Professor Lepore explores this with great clarity.
As Mad Dog has insisted, and still insists, we ought not argue for the virtues of progressive taxation on the basis of "fairness."  Tax discussion bursts into flames when such emotional arguments are allowed. We should only say, it is most practical to place the burden on those who are least injured and who can carry the load most easily. 
Dr. Lepore cites the study of Thomas Hungerford, which showed raising tax rates on the richest top percentages did not inhibit economic growth, but cutting those rates on the rich does correlate with concentrating the wealth in smaller in smaller percentages at the top of the food chain.  This study raised howls of protest from Mitch McConnell and other Republicans in the pocket of the rich Republican masters, understandably.
It is reassuring to see this argument has been with us since the founding of the country. 
It was thus ever so, and will continue to be. 
We just have to be sure we win the argument by facing it head on.
Here In New Hampshire, Jackie Ciley attempted to win the Democratic nomination for governor, and she refused to take "The Pledge" to never sign into law an income tax. Mad Dog, on reflection, thinks she might have been more successful had she been more willing to explore this issue more head on. At virtual every venue she appeared, the first and last questions were about whether or not she was for an income tax. She said she thought the option ought to be there, if only to use a leverage in discussions with the Republicans, but her phrase was "all options should be on the table," which meant to the old codger who seemed to show up at all her appearances, "Then, what you are saying, is you're for an income tax."
Mad Dog would then stand up and shout, "I think we do not pay enough in total taxes in New Hampshire! All we do is pay property tax, which hurts the elderly, who have paid off their homes, and we whine about how we pay too many taxes and too much. Well, if we paid more, maybe we could build more roads, improve our schools and hospitals and emerge from the 19th century in this backward state!"
Mad Dog is the most un-electable citizen in the Granite State.
Mad Dog has often recounted how his own father paid his income tax bill every April 15th, with a smile on his face, saying, "I never dreamed I'd make enough money to get me into the top brackets. I'm a closet patriotic. I served in the Army  during WWII, and I vote every four years, but this is real patriotism. This hurts. Real patriotism always does."

Right To Work States

Senator from Kentucky, which is, strangely, not a right to work state.

The following states are "right-to-work" states:

• Alabama
• Arizona †
• Arkansas †
• Florida †
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana^[29]
• Iowa
• Kansas †
• Louisiana
• Mississippi †
• Nebraska ††
• Nevada
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma †
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Anything strike you about this list?

Well, one thing it doesn't yet have Michigan on it, but it soon may.

A "right to work" state has a law or constitutional provision which says that a worker whose wages have been negotiated by a union does not have to pay union dues.  The unions, of course, say that worker has benefited from their services without paying for them. The workers say, we never asked for them. You negotiated for yourself, and if I benefited, well how does that hurt you?  The unions say, if you don't have to pay union dues, why should anyone else? Pretty soon, without our being able to collect for our services, we are out of business.

Actually, as sympathetic as I am to unions, and as important as unions are, I can see the argument that a person should not be forced to join any organization to work. On the other than, that same person is forced to sign a contract with an employer, often a very one sided contract, if he wants work. Why should the employer be the only force holding trump cards? Why not allow a countervailing force have some play?

But setting aside the fairness, the right or wrong--and I do not think for a moment this a matter of right and wrong--it is a simply matter of power and who is allowed to have power, employers, unions, individuals who want to work but who don't like feeling they are not in control.

Setting aside all those considerations, it is interesting how tightly these states match another map of the country: Virginia is the only state on this list which voted for Obama, and Virginia voted for Obama in the Washington, DC suburbs, mostly.  So the folks who are voting against union power are the Confederacy, the far West, mountain cowboy states.  They are the states with the poorest people, the most ignorant populations (or, to put it more gently, the least educated people) and the most reactionary politics. 

There is, of course, Florida, but that state is even more schizophrenic than Virginia, and is a Confederate state, at least until January and February, so we can forget about Florida. They don't even know how to count votes in Florida. I'm not sure who they really voted for in the last election.

But it is curious that these downtrodden, poor, low earning people should reject unions.  One would think they would have the most to gain. Why would these bottom feeders reject unions?

Perhaps it is because these people have an inferiority complex. They, on some level, know they are uneducated, un competitive and they are grateful for any job on any terms and they do not feel worthy. Instead of demeaning them, and calling them bottom feeders and saying they are all  ignorant and inbred and stupid, we should ask them why they reject unions. 

Maybe we'd learn something.

Maybe we'd hear something intelligent, like, well Honda would not have built their plant here, Boeing would not have built their plant here if they saw we had unions. So what they are saying is, we are so down trodden, we are just happy to have any job, on any terms,  and we do not want to seem too pushy, because we are selling humility, tractability and we are willing to take the jobs those pushy Blue state workers are arrogant enough to spurn. 

Of course, they are playing the game of not paying their union dues but reaping the benefit of union action. Let the unions fight the fight and we'll sit down here and look oh so attractive because we are not them.

I don't know. I'm not an economist or political scientist. I just look at that list and try to imagine what makes the workers in the Confederacy and those cowboy states look different from the workers in the Blue states.

Do you have an answer?

Obama Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens

History has much to teach us:  It allows us to step back from the fog of conflict and the mists of emotion to gain perspective, as if from a mountaintop, looking at a distant time when the very same issues beset the nation, and we can learn from the solutions our forebears created.

Mad Dog has, almost since the first months of his first election, criticized President Obama for being insufficiently combative, for being too willing to compromise, but not bringing down the heavy hand of government on those who so richly deserve it.  So when Mr. Obama did not move to punish the financial miscreants who in their greed almost sent this nation into another Great Depression, Mr. Obama said something to the effect of, "Oh, that's all history. Let us move forward."  And Mad Dog howled, "Are we to look at a robbery or a murder and say, 'Oh, that's in the past. Let us forgive and forget?'" 

When President Obama did not push harder for a single payer system as one of the alternatives within Obamacare, Mad Dog frothed.

But most of all, when Mr. Obama did not attack his Republican opponents with sufficient venom and vigor, Mad Dog became apoplectic. 

Having seen the movie Lincoln and having read about Thaddeus Stevens subsequently, Mad Dog can see the many pressures which pull and push at the Presidential coat.  Thaddeus Stevens pushed Lincoln to state forthrightly and to move boldly to free the slaves, but Lincoln looked at those who emancipation would offend, particularly the slave owners in the border states, and he demurred. Upon arriving in Washington to take office he said he had no will to free the slaves in any state. Lincoln supported shipping the slaves back to Africa, because he could not see the United States of America ever functioning as a multiracial society. When he freed the slaves, he freed only the slaves in states actively rebelling against the Union, leaving slaves in Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee untouched.  And once the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in Congress Lincoln did not advocate giving the freed men of color (never mind the women) the vote. He said only he hoped particularly "intelligent" Negroes and those who had served in the army might be granted the vote.

As the movie did make clear, Lincoln did abhor slavery, and he pressed reluctant Cabinet members and Congressmen to pass the 13th amendment before the Confederate states were readmitted to the union so they could not vote against it. 

As Lincoln is depicted as telling Stevens in a wonderful scene, after Stevens has accused him of having no moral compass:  "A compass only tells you true north. But it cannot get you where you want to go, if there is a swamp or a mountain between you and true north."  Thus, the argument for adjustment, compromise, going around obstacles rather than sinking in them, being concerned to play the game to win, not just being content with making the dramatic gesture and losing.

But Stevens, Mad Dog would argue, was just as important as Lincoln. Had Stevens not been so visibly and vocally hounding Lincoln, it would not have been clear that those who opposed Lincoln were better off dealing with Lincoln than with their more truculent radical opponents.  Or, at least, that's the argument of the moderate.

The fact is, those who opposed Lincoln were not persuaded to choose the lesser of two evils. They voted against Stevens and Lincoln on the 13th amendment, on slavery, on the idea of Negro citizenship and voting and for that matter on the idea of women voting.  The movie argues there was a middle ground, occupied by people who were wavering, but it is not clear there really was a middle ground, when it came to slavery. Lincoln wanted a gradual emancipation, which would have allowed slave states to keep slavery until 1900. But that was impossible in human terms.
And on this point, Stevens was more visionary: He could see a multiracial nation, and Lincoln was unable to see this. Just as Lincoln tended to forgive deserters, he could not bring himself to confront people and tell them they were wrong and had to change--at least that's the picture we see now. Lincoln did sign an order to hang 13 Indians in the Midwest for some act of rebellion. But he did not want to hang white Southerns once the war was over, not even "the worst of them."

Mad Dog would argue that it was pretty clear if Mr. Obama had cleaved to the Lincoln model, the inoffensive, jocular, unruffled approach he showed in the first Presidential Debate against Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama would not have been re elected. It was only when Mr. Obama began to look more like the truculent Mr. Stevens,  the tide began to turn in his favor.

Mad Dog is hoping we see a lot more Thaddeus Stevens and a lot less Lincoln in the coming months and years from Mr. Obama. 

Lincoln Our Contemporary

“If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

Oh, Maud.  I've just seen the movie. I cannot recall when two and one half hours passed so quickly.

I have sometimes fantasized about time travel, and how I'd like to meet Lincoln, (and Emily Dickinson, Thoreau, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan) but tonight I had to remind myself I was not watching the actual man.

I am guessing your second man was Secretary of State Seward.  I had not realized how important or righteous he was. He is depicted as even more--a man who could see the genius of what Lincoln was doing, and he could change to accommodate it.

Of course, Thaddeus Stevens is a wonderful character. He really did hate the aristocracy of the South, and all they stood for, and his remarks in the kitchen to Lincoln about what he had planned for the South, the way he would do Reconstruction, comported well with all I've read about him. He wanted to lay waste to the whole region, and rebuild it from the ashes as a totally new place, with new values, if not new people. He wanted to humble the arrogant slave owners.  But Lincoln, as he told Grant in the movie, wanted no such revenge.  He understood you could not change the hearts of men with guns.

I was most relieved that Spielberg did not ruin the movie with his hallmark sentimentality--he always has one scene which is so sentimental, emotionally overwrought and false and obviously pitched to the tear jerker crowd, he can spoil a movie with it. But in this case, he got done with it  in the first scene, with all the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg address, and somehow it worked and was over quickly enough.

But the hard headed decision to focus on the passage of the 13th amendment, and the politics,  was a great one.  I have not read A Team of Rivals, but I have read President Obama has.  If you look at what Mr. Obama has heard from his own supporters (myself included) that he has not been strong enough, not willing to fight for his convictions, not willing to vilify his opposition, as they so richly deserve, you realize Lincoln had to navigate the same waters. That wonderful scene where Lincoln tells Thaddeus Stevens, who has accused him of having no moral compass, "Well, a compass tells you true north, but it doesn't help you to get where you want to go, if there is a swamp in your way. You have to navigate around the swamp." 

In a previous post I said that by 1862 all meaningful opposition to slavery in Congress had left town, but obviously I did not know what I was talking about.  I assumed that without knowing that.  Clearly, the Congress was, like some of the rest of the country, willing to fight to preserve the union without embracing the idea of freedom for the slaves. 

Of course, one of the pleasures of the movie is listening to Lincoln's stories, trying to figure out where he is going, and in the end, the point is always to the point, even if the on screen characters (especially Secretary of War Stanton) cannot see the point. 

The George Washington in the outhouse story really is priceless.

I loved the decision to end the movie with that famous Second Inaugural address--although I wish they had included more of it, especially the part where Lincoln outlines the history of the war, how most people wanted a result less drastic, how, in the end, slavery turned out to be the cause of the war.  

I was also hoping to see in the party scene that wonderful encounter between Lincoln and Harriett Beecher Stowe, where Lincoln bends over to shake the hand of the diminutive author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and says, "So this is the little lady who wrote the book that started the great big war."  Of course, that might not have happened in 1865, and the film makers were cleaving to historical accuracy--except for the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg address. 

So here is a movie without any sex, no female love interest, no chases, no explosions, no shootings, no gun fights, (well, almost none, except for a brief battle scene) and yet it kept me enthralled for 150 minutes. That's quite a feat.

Fairness in Income Tax Rates

Grover Norquist, who wants to shrink your government down to the size he can drown  in  his bathtub

For many years, Mad Dog ran a small business with two employees and paid personal income tax, which Mad Dog loathed for many reasons. Because Mad Dog was self employed, he paid a "self employment tax" and he also paid an "Alternative Minimal Tax" and he paid state income tax and property taxes on his home and sales tax and all that, but the income tax was really loathsome because it forced Mad Dog to keep records, checks, files, so he could deduct the expenses of running his business, the phones, the rent, the various insurances. To take advantage of something called a Simplified Employee Pension ( SEP, a sort of 401 K pension plan) which allowed you to salt away money which got subtracted from your gross income, lowering your taxable income, Mad Dog wrote checks of $30,000 every April 15th.  He also paid "estimated income tax" quarterly and could never seem to find a tickler system to remind him to send in a check on the odd dates they were due, so Mad Dog awoke in a cold sweat many a night,  trying to remember if he had paid his estimated tax. 


Mad Dog felt invaded, having to show how he spent money, and always felt he was doing something wrong--either taking a deduction which might not be kosher or failing to identify a cost which he'd be foolish not to claim.

And every March, Mad Dog looked at a special bank account he had been accumulating all year, growing to healthy levels and he felt successful, until April when that account was nuked and he was back to zero, feeling a failure and impoverished.

On years when, after all the deductions for his business, for his mortgage interest payments, for his SEP retirement plans brought his income, his "Gross Adjusted Income," down to a level of $250,000, he paid $97,500, leaving him $152,500 to live on, and he felt impoverished.

Now, this was before Mad Dog moved to New Hampshire (and became an employee) and you might think, how spoiled was Mad Dog having to living on $150K?  But where mad dog was living, in an affluent suburb of Washington, DC, that put Mad Dog in the lower half of incomes of his neighbors.  Mad Dog's house was small, and his automobiles just as modest.

So Mad Dog can understand and sympathize with the letter from Mr. John Tucker of Greenland, New Hampshire, which appears in the Portsmouth Daily Herald complaining it is not fair to make people making more than $250,000 pay higher rates of income tax.  "Right now, the producers who earn the most pay the most in actual dollars and in percentage of income," Mr. Tucker points out.  "I breathe the same air as the man down the street, drive on the same roads, and enjoy the same protection from our military and police force. So it would seem to me that what would be "fair" would be I pay $100 and my neighbor pay $100."

We get the same benefits from our government; why should I pay more? What is "fair" about that?

Mr. Tucker has never understood or accepted the argument for a "progressive" vs a "regressive tax."

And he would be correct, if we really all did begin at the same starting line, played by the same rules and if life were really a baseball game.

Kings and royalty were asked the same questions in the 18th century: why should you be rich, have so much when the rest of us are so poor? 

It is God's Will, they replied, which shut everyone up. Nobody wanted to have lightning strike their homes and families, questioning God's Will.

But now, here in the USA, we've got this thing called "democracy" and a "republic." And we can say, look, nobody in this country, or in mammalian life makes it on his own. If you have worked very hard, and sacrificed heartily in this nation,  you will have realized benefits you can get in a country with an economy like this. You could have worked just as hard in Haiti, in Somalia, in Liberia,Laos, in Thailand,  in Bolivia and all that effort and sacrifice would have got you a leaky roof and a motorbike.  You have a great house, a nice car, good schools for your kids, enough money to travel, go on vacation,  because you live in the USA and there is a huge superstructure of economy, government and education working hand in hand to support your efforts and magnify and multiple your productivity.

Republicans like to portray themselves as the independent man, the cowboy, living off the grid, riding the range in Montana. But consider that cowboy on his horse, in his leather saddle, Winchester rifle at his side to ward off predators, human and bestial: Did he make that leather saddle? No, he bought it with greenbacks provided by his federal government, in an economy supported by that government. Did he make that rifle? No, it was made by the Winchester company, along with the bullets with their brass casings and gunpowder, in a factory in Connecticut, which had running water, access to roads and railroads and stores and greenbacks. 

You might make the argument the Comanche, on that cowboy's trail was the independent man, living off the grid. But even the Comanche was born helpless, suckled, nurtured, taught. Although he made his own arrows and captured his own horse, he was taught how to do that by a community and a family. The Comanche did not whine about having to support his tribe. He was proud to support his tribe. 

The fact is, living off the grid in this nation, on this continent, as a mammal, is something only a few whackos in Idaho or somewhere in the Dakotas even try to do. And when they do it, they take a lot of manufactured goods with them (including rifles) into the wilderness.

Mr. Tucker has not done this. He has chosen to live in Greenland, New Hampshire and if he is asked to pay income tax, he ought to stop whining about it.

It would be completely fair and appropriate for Mr. Tucker to spend time and effort looking at how the government spends the money he worked so hard to send their way. Why should some people get to shelter their income in the Cayman Islands or pay only 15%  because their income comes from non-ordinary income?  Why should a doctor who buys an $80,000 Excalibur Cadillac truck get to write off his payments because somebody got a law passed to give a sweet deal to people who buy such gas hogs?  

But one man's boondogle is another man's necessity:  Why should my sons, who are renting apartments in New York City, not be able to deduct 39% of the cost of that rent the way I can for my mortgage payment? Is there anything "fair" about 90% of the deductions and "loopholes" in the tax code?

Typically, these sweet deals have been passed into law because rich people had Congressmen in their pockets and paid for this special treatment which allowed them to subtract a great deal of their gross income and bring down what they actually paid taxes on--their Gross Adjusted Income-- to a mere $250,000. Then they are left with only $150K to spend, after they have spent at least that much on their big cars and their multiple homes, which the government has subsidized and in effect, paid for them. 

The reason the rich pay higher income tax rates is we all realize, on some level, the rich have bought themselves sweet deals throughout the the tax code and the tax rates are meant to balance out that advantage. Presumably the self employment tax was passed with the same idea--we know you are snookering us somewhere, and this will make up for that.

Is that fair, Mr. Tucker?

The Status Quo Election

Good Ol' boys in a Southern courtroom. They lynched a Nigra, and they know the jury is laughing with them. They fought for the status quo.

One Republican after another is trotting out the line, "This is a status quo election."
They must have decided they liked the sound of that during one of those meetings at the K Street office of Grover Norquist, where they sit around and try out phrases on one another, all smug faced and smirking.

Jim DeMint says, "The President says he as a mandate. He has no mandate, this was a status quo election." Of course Jim DeMint also said, "If someone is openly homosexual or if an unmarried woman sleeps with her boyfriend, then that person shouldn't be allowed in the classroom." That is a very status quo type remark. (Status quo for say, 1950.) 

Of course, from the point of view of the radical right Tea Party Republican party, this status quo thing is a good outcome: No change.  They might want to take us back to the eighteenth century, but no change will do.

As far as Mad Dog is concerned: Give me more status quo elections in which Democrats increase their numbers in the Senate and defeat most of the Tea Party candidates nation wide and put a wonderful Democrat in the White House. Mad Dog likes the status quo, too.

So let's just try that chorus from Grover's office one more time:  We have a deficit. We have to fix it. We have to fix it by cutting spending. We will not increase taxes on the job creators in the upper 2%. We must cut spending. Spending is bad. Spending on the undeserving poor and the feckless jobless is bad. Let us cut spending. Let us shrink government to the size we can drown it in our bathtub. Cutting spending means eliminating public education. Public schools are simply indoctrination camps which inculcate socialistic values in our impressionable youth.  Government is bad. Grover Norquist is good.

Jim Demint is good. He is smart, too. His idea of public service is to serve until he gets a better offer. He is leaving his Senate seat which pays $174,000 a year for a job with the Heritage Foundation which pays $1.7 million a year. He is very smart.

 Ayn Rand would approve.

Strip Searching: Baring the Kinky Side of Officialdom

(Adapted from The Phantom Speaks blog 12/5/12)

What is fascism?  Wikipedia, political science professors, may all have their definitions, but for the my money, it is a form of government which places the highest priority on authority, order and control. One might also mix in, it allows for a certain kinky variant of sadism, voyeurism and outright state sanctioned groping.

In the opinions written by the Supreme Court in Florence vs the Board of Freeholders, the four liberal justices  joined an opinion written by Justice Breyer, who noted that American citizens arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with a faulty headlight, failure to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, violation of dog leash law have been strip searched, not just by some wayward deviant police officer, but systematically, in jails.

What is a strip search?  You are required, if you are a male, to strip naked, to lift your scrotum, to squat down and cough, to expel the switchblade knife or dirty bomb you may have concealed in your rectum, all this after an officer has examined your ears nose mouth hair scalp fingers hands arms armpits and other body openings.  Then you get a shower with a delousing agent. If you are transferred to another jail, you undergo the whole process all over again. The ACLU shows a video of a strip search in prison, to which prisoners are subjected after every visit from a relative, after work details, for a wide variety of activities. Watching this is an odd experience, because the woman being searched is apparently some sort of police officer who is volunteering for this "instructional video." This adds a certain bizarre tinge to the viewing experience.

A quick google search under "strip searching in jails" or "strip searching in prisons" yields videos which expose the psychological underpinnings of strip searching.  You can see that the various probings, ogling, visualization of spread labia, spread fingers can add nothing of any value to security in the jail, but it clearly contains some sort of personal turn on for the jailer. Any physician who has done physical exams can look at any of these videos and see there is no diagnostic value to most of what these policemen or jailers are doing. They are, simply and baldly put, aroused by what they are doing to their prisoners, if only from the sense of power they have over their victims. It is a training video in the psychopathology of sadism. 

It all brings to mind that character from "Boardwalk Empire," a federal prohibition enforcement agent who self flagellates after he has sex with prostitutes and he ogles a photograph of a woman he says he wants to save from hell fire. He has that same officious, censorious expression these jailers have--I am mistreating you because you've been bad. I'm going to spank you.

Justifying all this,  Justice Kennedy noted "People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals." He noted newspaper articles about dangerous men who were stopped for minor traffic offenses; two turned out to be terrorists and one turned out to be a serial killer.

So now the Supreme Court of the United states justifies official abuse by an attitude of guilty and dangerous until proven innocent by rectal and vaginal exam. You never know when a serial killer is going to walk down the street with his dog off the leash, or ride a bicycle with an inaudible bell.

Justice Roberts, perhaps sensing this may be a slippery slope, goes off in another direction, saying that even if 99% of those arrested are not terrorists or serial killers, "Some detainees may have lice, which can easily spread to others in the facility, and some detainees may have diseases or injuries for which the jail is required to provide medical treatment."

So now Justice Roberts says the strip search is for the arrested citizen's own benefit, to diagnose and treat occult illness, infestation, infection and smelly armpits.

And never mind the point if you are going to force a delousing agent and a shower on a person, you don't need to examine that patient for lice: You have already decided to treat. Finding lice would not change your treatment. It might titillate you, however.

As Maud has noted, this is like saying the Inquisition's rack was just an archaic version of a Pilates exercise--a little stretch is good for you.

If patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels, then assertions of health benefits must be the refuge of the guilty conscience.

The fiscal cliff is a theoretical problem.  Working the kinks out of Obamacare is an important task.  But reasserting the primacy of freedom from abuse by own government has to be obvious to anyone who has the guts to confront this reality.

Every news conference with every public official from mayor to US Senator to President ought to begin with a question about what these officials are going to do to reverse this single decision to destroy the trust in government of the average citizen.

Remember, the first thing they did in the concentration camps in Poland and in Germany was to strip naked the people getting off the trains.   And then, they sent them to the "showers."  

I always asked, "How could these people have gone to the showers, like sheep?"
I might ask the same thing of Americans today.

Here is a link to a youtube video. I'm not sure whether or not this is a real policeman "examining" a real prisoner, or whether this is simply some youtuber's fantasy about what it might be like to be in the position of the policeman. Either way, it graphically illustrates the 800 pound gorilla in the room none of the justices or jailers are willing to talk about: These "searches," by their nature, have a sexual content and that over rides any security value they may offer. But looking at the policeman,  demanding the woman spread her fingers, one is struck by how uninformative this exam is--it is simply an exercise in "I am in total control of you."  I mean, what is he looking for between her fingers? 

Here are two links which might work.  If not, you can google your own.
The first is simply the jailer and his pouting prey, instructive for how obvious the charade is in his "examination."
The second is the ACLU clip, with what I think is a prison guard demonstrating the proper technique for a strip search as she spreads her own labia, squats, bends over.
The real question is: Would you want your daughter in the hands of either of these two characters?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvPf8cPitHc

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights-womens-rights/prison-strip-search-sexually-abusive