Judge Shira Scheindlin, Stop and Frisk, Strip Searching

Judge Sheila Scheindlin

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures , shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

--Fourth Amendment, Constitution of the United States of America. 

In lower Manhattan, Judge Shela Scheindlin is about to rule on two cases which will offer at least a first opinion about the limits the Constitution places on the practice of New York City police--and if it goes to the Supreme Court of the United States--on policing throughout the land.  

Many police chiefs aver the practice of stopping citizens who are walking down the street, throwing them up against a wall, emptying their pockets, searching them is "the most fundamental practice in American policing," according to The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin in the May 27th issue.

The argument from the police is that this practice is effective. The police contend it is this practice which detects guns, and prevents shooters from killing and it is this practice which has reduced the murder rates in big cities, like New York.

Sociologists, economists and others have argued the drop in the murder rate and in violence throughout the country has nothing to do with police tactics but is a result of the aging of the population.  Young men perpetrate the vast preponderance of violent crime and the reduction of the proportion of young men in the population has been the single most important factor in the falling crime rates, some contend. Others have pointed to a variety of other causes, but the police want to claim credit for the drop in crime, understandably.

If police executing a "Broken Windows" strategy, are responsible for the happy result of low crime rates, that makes the police important, justifies salaries, promotions, jobs, careers, esteem, prestige, budgets, pensions and all sort of goodies.

Broken Windows refers to the theory that if you jump out of your car and arrest a youth who is throwing bricks through windows, you put someone in jail whose next act would be to shoot somebody.  Round up the people who commit small violations--public urination, public drinking--and you remove the junk from the streets and put it in jail and you maintain order and discipline in society.

Judge Scheindlin says,  "Do not make that argument" about efficacy in her courtroom. If all we were concerned about were efficacy in the law as it applies to arresting people, nobody would be read their Miranda rights.  If efficacy were all we cared about we could round up all the 14 to 25 year old males in the South Bronx and cart them off to concentration camps until they were 40. We could erect walls around Bedford Stuyvesant and lock everyone in at night. 

But the reason we have a constitution is once upon a time in America we had these guys called Redcoats, and these Redcoats could break down doors, could stop and search and imprison citizens without reason, without charges, just because they had the power of the government and orders from the king saying, "Keep order, above all else."

And you can see in the words of the 4th Amendment exactly what got the American colonists so angry. When Jefferson writes of "a long train of abuses and usurpations" in the Declaration of Independence, he was talking about things like Stop and Search. And if those English soldiers had done strip searches on American citizens, especially women and girls, one can imagine the American Revolution would have occurred far sooner.

The Stop and Frisk cases are separate cases from the strip search cases, but they are of a whole when it comes to what we are becoming in this country, when it comes to the distance between a police state and a state of laws and rights. That the American public is not outraged by strip searching in American jails is worrisome in and of itself. That every day and any day in this country an American teenaged girl can be hauled from her automobile for running a stop sign or for driving around with a six pack of beer in the back of her car--or for any of a laundry list of misdemeanors--and she can be dragged into a station house and stripped naked and have her vagina probed, all in the name of law and order, and this does not provoke dismay or outrage among the apathetic, incurious citizens who are sitting at home in their recliners, munching on nachos, watching NASCAR races or the Red Sox on TV, that is an appalling indictment of what we have become. 

"Oh, she probably deserved it," the voice from the recliner says. And the hand reaches for another slice of pizza.

When the 4th amendment was written, there were still American citizens threatened with aboriginal natives (Indians) in the forests. We had militias and people who kept and bore arms to protect themselves against natives, brigands, a whole variety of threatening human beings.  Law and order were as or more imperative in 1780 as they are today, and yet the authors of the Constitution wrote with anger about what they did not want to empower agents of any American government, local or national, to be allowed to do.  They feared unbridled government power because they had felt its lash and it still stung.

Judge Schendlin has ruled police were not to be believed in the case of a man who was arrested and searched by police on a playground, where they discovered a small amount of marijuana and brought to the police station, where he was frisked again and a .38 caliber gun was discovered. "It is extremely difficult to believe that the same officer could have missed a bulky .38 caliber revolver hidden in Defendant's pants." Ya think?  The first frisk is careful enough to detect a teabag size marijuana packet but misses a .38 caliber revolver?

It is true,  Judge Schendlin describes herself as "gutsy"  which is not what Mad Dog would like to hear from the bench as a characterization of self. But her heart and mind appear to be in the right place.

Mad Dog has seen all this before, on The Wire.  Kima shakes her head at two male colleagues who have beaten up a suspect. "There you go, fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case at a time."

In the real world the only thing standing between brutality and strip searching and beat downs on the street are the judges. 

Let us hope enough lower court judges pass the test.  We have to hope, because once these cases get up to the four horseman of the Scalia-Roberts-Alito-Thomas court, there will be no sympathy for anyone but the ruling class and their hired men. 

Kelly Ayotte: The Company She Keeps

New Hampshire has sent to Washington, D.C. one of the most right wing Tea Party Republicans in the Senate, in the country, for that matter.

As a state, New Hampshire has sent Daniel Webster to the Senate, has sent regiments to fight for the Union and against slavery during the Civil War. New Hampshire has much to be proud of. Kelly Ayotte is a blight on the bright fabric of New Hampshire history.

She appears with Lindsey Graham and John McCain frequently because she is, philosophically, aligned with them. She has endorsed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the neo Nazi goon of Maricopa County, Arizona, who believes in humiliating and torturing anyone arrested in his county before, not after they have had the benefit of trial. He also believes in rounding up any darkies who look Mexican to his eyes and throwing them into jail until they can prove they are proper American citizens. And Kelly loves the guy. 

Listen to Kelly and you can hear the rhythms and melodies and phrases and concepts of Rush Limbaugh. She is of the same cloth.

She will run for re election in 2016. We must begin now to work toward expunging this stain from Washington.

Mad Dog developed a series of puppet skits based on what New Hampshire Republicans had said in the State House, which he had hoped to develop into videos posted on youtube. But, fun as this undertaking was, time ran out before they could hit the internet. The election was won without help from Mad Dog's puppets.

Once again, it is time to develop this program and Mad Dog needs help--technical help with the filming, performance help with the puppets and voices.  

Mad Dog wants you for the effort. Sign up now!  Either here or at the Hamptondems website. If we are  to be there in 2016, we need to be here now.

The Psychology of Being Wrong

Belief: If the Redskins lose their home game immediately prior to the Presidential election, the party in power loses the White House. Except in the case of President Obama last time, and in the case of Gore vs Bush. Despite the failure of the belief, some people still believe in the Redskin Rule.

Eduardo Porter writes in the New York Times an intriguing article about economists who have been shown by events and analysis to be wrong who cling to their wrong headed views and politicians who cleave to these same discredited views, despite all the evidence.

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it," is the Republican cry.

There are two Harvard economists (Reinhart and Rogoff) who  published a paper which said that economic growth stalls once government debt reaches 90% of GNP. When a graduate student took the time to comb through the numbers however, the professors were forced to recant and finally wound up saying, "Indebted nations grow more slowly." Not to admit wrong, just slide by the wrong as if we didn't really get anything wrong.

Beyond academia, the experiment in fiscal austerity playing out in Europe has convincingly demonstrated cutting back on government spending simply makes economies worse--as America surges ahead while Europe crashes and burns. 

Why do politicians stick with this intellectual garbage?  Why does David Cameron continue to say, "We will not be able to build a sustainable recovery with long term growth unless we fix this fundamental problem of excessive government spending and borrowing which undermines our whole economy"?

As Porter puts it:  "What explains the gap between theoretical victory and policy defeat?" The Keynesans demonstrate the correctness of their analysis time and again, but the politicians continue to ignore all that and press on with counter Keynesan claptrap about the dangers of government spending and debt.

One explanation, as Porter notes, goes back to the fabled grasshopper and the ants. We all learned it as kids. In the US, we all saw the Disney cartoon.  The ants work and save and do not spend without a thought about the future, and they are virtuous. The grasshopper is a wastrel, thinks not about tomorrow, only about today. "The world owes me a living," he sings in the Disney version, and he comes to grief for it, while the head down, don't live high ants are the virtuous ones who rescue everyone in the end. 
We think it morally repugnant to borrow and spend our way out of a recession.  

Another Harvard economist asks, "If the goal of government is to express the collective will of the citizenry, shouldn't it follow the lead of those it represents by tightening its own belt?"

The problem is the premise. The goal of even a representative republic is not primarily to express the will of its citizenry. The goal of a government is to provide for its people, to lead them to a better life and a more vigorous economy even if the citizenry is misinformed and wants to do the wrong things to get there.

Porter notes, "The other argument derives from a seemingly myopic conflation of the short and the long term: worried about the scary rise of Social Security and Medicare spending in future decades, voters demand budget cuts now."

The fact is our ability to predict economic future is demonstrably poor. If you are old enough, you remember all the talk about budget deficits in the past which evaporated with subsequent budget surpluses--especially during the Clinton years--and the cyclical nature of economics seems entirely forgotten whenever we find ourselves in a valley. The strange thing is even when we reach a peak, we seem incapable of looking back to all those valleys and remembering: Hey, next time we think we are stuck in the valley, just remember the view from up  here."

The fact is, the best solution to the long term viability of Social Security and Medicare is getting the economy rolling now, even if that means more government spending. 

The other fact is neither Social Security nor Medicare is really at risk. We have been borrowing from Social Security for years, it's been doing so well. These two programs are and have been strong for their entire history. The only time they are threatened is when Republicans start crying "The sky is falling" and causing financial panic.

Which in this country, does not take much.

Tim Cook Testifies: Apple Games the System, Or How The Rich Stay Rich

Let's talk about taxes.
No, not those taxes, not the taxes the Tea Party doesn't want to pay because it is an educational institution which spends only 49% of its time on politics.

Not the exemption to taxes.

Let's talk about the taxes Apple, Inc. did not pay.  
Apple did not pay taxes to either Ireland or the United States for its Irish subsidiary, a shell company it set up to evade taxes.  

Here's how the game is played: Ireland taxes corporations only if the the corporation is managed and controlled in Ireland. The USA taxes corporations based on where the company is incorporated.  So Apple incorporates (a subsidiary)  in Ireland (not taxed by the US) and controls that subsidiary by having board meetings in California (not taxed by Ireland) and thus avoids being taxed on earnings of billions (millions in taxes) in either country.

Oh, and it gets better: Apple sells it's subsidiary company in Ireland some products, like iTunes or whatever, and the Irish Apple sells that stuff abroad, so there is no profit in the USA to tax. Apple files to pay taxes in neither country. Apple is laundering money, legally. If a drug lord sends money abroad to a bank to spend it through that bank, that is a high crime. If Apple does it, it is a brilliant business strategy.

You've got a phantom company paying nobody taxes.

Now, it gets way better: Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, goes before a Senate committee and holds up a scolding finger and proclaims Apple has paid every dollar it was legally required to pay (which is to say, none) and that it also complied with not just the letter of the law but with the spirit of the law.

Mad Dog particularly liked that spirit of the law bit. He is still trying to figure out what exactly that spirit is. The spirit of not paying taxes? The spirit of gratitude to the country that provided you with skilled, educated employees, infrastructure and sustenance? Mad Dog likes that spirit thing.

And, oh, yes, Apple informed the Senators you don't want to tax Apple anyway, because if Apple gets to keep all the money it makes, it will make better decisions about what to do with that money than the government ever could. 

To which, Rand Paul swoons. 

You got to give Cook credit. The man has chutzpah. He tells the United States Senate Apple is not above the law, but outside it, and having managed to evade the law, he makes a virtue of that tax evasion.  You wouldn't want that money anyway. You wouldn't really know what to do with it. You want us to keep the money and spend it on things which we know are good to spend money on. 
 And Rand Paul says, "Amen."

Is this an amazing country?  Or what? 

Here's what Mad Dog wishes the chairman of the Senate committee, Mr. Levin, had said:  "Mr. Cook, thank you for your comments today.  I understand you feel very virtuous. I, on the other hand, think you belong in jail.  I will go back to my office now and I will consult with my staff to see if we can think of a way to tax Apple in the future in a way to recoup some of the millions of dollars you have evaded paying.  Until now, you have slipped through one loop hole or another, but we ought to be able to construct a net with mesh fine enough to catch even as slippery a worm as you."
 

Tar and Feather The Tax Man

Don't we all hate the tax man?
But we want our exemptions from the tax man, because we hate the tax.
 And Congress, having wrought an exemption to taxation based on the simple premise that if an organization does "education" 51% of the time and politics only 49% of the time, oh, Congress bears no blame at all for the mess which ensues.

Remember those shrimp fishermen along the Gulf of Mexico who faced the loss of an entire season's income when BP fouled the Gulf waters?  So President Obama sends a man down from Washington to hand out money to compensate the fishermen for their losses.  And the man from Washington says, "Okay, it's this simple. We will give you the same number of dollars you made last year. Just bring in your income tax forms so we can get the number of dollars from that record and we can cut you a check tomorrow.

Problem was, lot of these fisherman never paid any friggin income tax. Never filed. No records of what these guys made because everything they made was under the table, off the books, untaxed, unseen, unrecorded.  

Since they never paid the government a thing, they were in a pickle when it came time for the government to help them. 

They didn't want anything to do with the government, until it came time for the government to send money their way.

Well, all those thousands of  Tea Party groups were all anti tax and antigovernment, until it came time for claiming their exemptions, so they could keep their donor lists secret, so they could get foundation money, so they could suck on the teats of all those organizations tax exempt status would confer.

And now Michele Bachmann is saying conservatives will be targeted for death by the IRS operating through Obamacare.

Can the black helicopters be far behind?

Ah, Gail Collins and Charles M. Blow

Here's what Gail Collins had to say about the Congressional hearings on the IRS: 
"They were working at the Determinations Unit of the Rulings and Agreements Office of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Spending their lives trying to clarify the 501 (C) (4) status. You try that for a while and see how you like it.
   If Congress wanted to help, the members could simplify the law so IRS minions aren't trying to figure out which groups spend only 49% of their resources on politics as opposed to 51 percent...
   The IRS employees were stuck with a pile of 70,000 applications for the tax-exempt status that's awarded to organizations engaged in social welfare issues. Recently, political groups have been gaming the system, announcing they're just do-gooders with a minor political sideline in order to qualify. When they succeed, the get to keep their donors secret."


Charles M. Blow amplified:

"The Congressional Tea Party Caucus founder, Michele Bachmann, who never misses a chance to say something asinine, suggested to the conservative web site wnd.com that it was 'reasonable' to worry that the IRS might use Obamacare to kill conservatives...
'Reasonable and 'Bachmann' don't even belong in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence, and yet she remains one of the most visible spokes-women for the movement."

Ah, finally, some actual pith from the un Republicans.

Ye, Gads. Why are all the Congressional Democrats running for cover?  Where is Barney Frank when you need him?

 

Susan Collins: Airhead Republican

Today's Portsmouth Herald has an op ed by Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, about the IRS "scandal" over the IRS's Exempt Organizations Division, which "targeted" organizations with "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in their names for special examination to insure these organizations, which claimed their contributors should be able to claim their contributions as deductions to their own personal income taxes and which claimed their organizations should be exempt from paying taxes.

Ms. Collins is irate, irate, I tell you about the abuses of these patriotic citizens by "the most powerful and feared, federal agency in Washington." 

And she wants to tell you something else:  "The American people cannot, and will not, tolerate the abuse of power to erode their most fundamental rights."

And, she warns darkly, "Some believe that the abuses that are now making headlines appear to be part of a larger pattern of questionable activity by the administration that seems intended to hinder or chill the expression of views critical of the president's policies."

Oh, there it is, the paranoid style in American politics.
And all this from the prototypical "bipartisan" and "moderate" Republican.

Of course, this is not about the violation of free speech by organizations with "Tea Party" in their names. This is about money. 

These organizations came to government attention because they were, in essence, asking the government to subsidize their activities by tax write offs.

This same sort of argument comes up all the time with respect to churches which have a role as a religion but which also become involved in political speech and activity to influence elections, to advocate for candidates either by name or by clear implication, in the real world of policy and politics.

When it is a liberal church advocating for liberal causes the Republicans become irate, irate I tell you, about the government legitimizing their opinions by granting these churches tax exempt status.

In perhaps the most clear cut and egregious example of the trouncing of freedom of speech, Frederick v Morse, otherwise known as the  "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, Chief Justice Roberts dismissed arguments the case was about free speech because the plaintiff had asked for monetary compensation. "That means this case is not about freedom of speech. It is about money." 

But now that the right wing finds itself asked to pay for its own organizations, we have the bogey man, the IRS trampling on free speech.

Well, speech is anything but free in these 21st Century United States of America. It costs money. And what really appalls the Tea Party and its Republican mistresses and shills in Congress and the Senate is the idea any right winger should have to pay his fair share of taxes. 

It's not surprising a Republican like Senator Collins is in the pocket of the right wing party which paid for her election; but it is disappointing Democrats have allowed the Republicans to become the most outraged people in the room. Collins with her "cannot, and will not" blather and, of course, Michele Bachmann with her, "The power to tax is the power to destroy" quote. 

Yes, Chief Justice John Marshall did make that observation, Ms. Bachmann, in the 18th century when government did more taxing than spending and supporting.But it is also true, in the 21st century, exempting you from the burden of paying your fair share is a burden on every other taxpayer, and an exemption is a subsidy.