Policing For Profit in Pagedale, MO: Kafka Lives

If ever there were a American dystopian story of sinister corruption embedded into government it is not a story involving the President or Congress but of local government and local police:  It is that vicious  little town of Pagedale, Missouri.

An editorial in today's New York Times describes a little hell hole of a place, at least for Black citizens, in which the town sends out its police as cynical tax agents, issuing tickets for not having a screen on your front door, for crossing on the wrong side of a crosswalk, for having a front yard barbecue except on specific holidays, for driving while Black, for any number of gottcha infractions, some not even written into the actual code of city law, and then when the ticket is issued, to be sure the fine is not paid on time, they hold court only twice a month at 6 PM, just when hard working men and women are headed off to their second jobs. 

Is it any wonder the local Black population is seething?  They are the cash cows for the Pagedale police and courts. 

Why this travesty? Because little towns like Pagedale are so small they cannot support a police department with a tax base--so the solution is to make the poor and the struggling provide that tax base through fines for you-name-it and to create Kangaroo courts which engender nothing but rage and resentment from the local citizenry. If King George III had conjured up anything this egregious, the American Revolution would have happened much sooner and with no loyalists left to speak for him.

Once again, our free press has shown a spotlight on a festering wound. Police, judges, city officials all in on the game, as the Times notes. 

And the most appalling thing is these local police, local judges and mayors probably don't even see themselves as evil.  One can only imagine them shrugging and smiling and excusing this Kafkaesque poor excuse for local government as business. Just playing the game and trying to get by best we can. If we ruin the lives of a few score of local Blacks, well, all they had to do was to obey the law as we wrote it and disguised it and promulgated it and they'd have stayed out of trouble, until, that is, we could figure out a way to put them back into trouble, so we could collect our pound of flesh.

We may have to add Missouri to that hallowed pantheon of Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.  Nice group, that.

How Stupid Are Americans: The Donald Wants to Know

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
--H.L. Menken

"Because he wrote a book and in the book he said terrible things about himself. He said that he's pathological and that he's got basically pathological disease. Now he wrote this, I guess before he was running for office or thought that he was running for office, and I don't want a person that's got pathological disease. I don't want it." 
--The Donald


So the Donald went on a 90 minute rant in which he expressed incredulity that Ben Carson could be beating him in the polls, sounding for all the world like Jon Lovett of past Saturday Night Live looking in the camera, playing Michael Dukakis saying of George H.W. Bush, "I can't believe this guy is beating me."

The Donald frothed on about Dr. Carson's "pathological disease."  The Donald reminds us, "That's a serious statement when you say you have a 'pathological disease.' Because, as I understand it, you can't really cure it. But he said he has a pathological disease." 

The problem, of course is, the Donald really does not understand it.  The Donald has never bothered to look up the definition of "pathological" which simply means "not normal, of or pertaining to a disease process."  You would think he'd have staff for this.

Then he goes on to elucidate how he investigates facts and what he thinks constitutes a process of gaining understanding:  "I mean, he wrote it. I didn't write it...But those are pretty tough charges. And they were written by him himself, you know? The pathological stuff was written. That's very serious, pathological disease. I didn't read the book, but he wrote it."

So now the Donald is making reference to something very disturbing and significant which is contained in a book he admits he has never read. One might think, if it is something important you might want to open the covers of the book and actually, perhaps read it yourself. But then, it's not really clear the Donald knows how to read, which could be a problem for a President who gets lots of briefing books to read, although, I suppose they could do them as illustrated books with lots of drawings and big print and maybe audio DVDs.

Mr. Carson, of course, is trying to defend himself against questions about a close and long term friend of his, who was convicted of defrauding medical insurance. Apparently, in the past, Dr. Carson has said people and company executives who defraud insurance companies over bogus claims should be in jail, but when his friend plead guilty to just that crime Dr. Carson said his friend did not deserve to be sent to jail and when his surrogate tried to explain why it was necessary to jail people unless they happened to be friends of Dr. Carson, the answer was: Well, when you have a personal relationship, you can see things more deeply and draw on your Christian instincts to forgive, or words to that effect.  

One does wonder how stupid Dr. Carson thinks the American public is, but it is the height of irony that Donald Trump, is complaining about American politicians soaring in the polls after saying stupid things.

But best of all is Chris Christie, who I heard this morning say that President Obama is responsible for deteriorating race relations since he took office. As if race relations have actually deteriorated. As if racial tensions because of the actions of  local white police being videoed shooting Black citizens in cold blood is Mr. Obama's fault. 

Well, actually, Mr. Christie says, the police are shooting because they don't think the President has their back so, well, what would you do? If you are out there all alone, well you pull your gun and start shooting at anything Black that moves. That's only reasonable. 
 The thing about Chris Christie is he is manifestly not stupid.  But here is a guy who was not responsible for backing up traffic from the George Washington Bridge to Tea Neck,New Jersey as payback to the mayor of Tea Neck for not endorsing him, but of course, Mr. Christie said you cannot lay that at my door because, I'm only governor, I can't control everything that happens in my state.  
Mr. Obama, of course, should bear full responsibility for racist frat boys smearing feces in the shape of a Swastika in a college dorm. But I can tell you, if any of those motorists trapped on the New Jersey roads got all road ragey and leaped out of their cars, the New Jersey State troopers would have known I'd have their backs and they could have pulled out their Glock 9's and shot any Black people. 
 But they would never have shot any Italian Americans. And you know, I'm still bummed they canceled "The Sopranos" 'cause I learned so much from that show about leadership. Really, Tony was a model. 

It must be a sign of age, but as I run on my treadmill and watch Morning Joe and Morning Express--not even Fox--and as I drive to work listening to NPR listening to "experts" I find myself thinking: 90% of everything I'm hearing is bogus, wrong, or simply stupid.  I mean they have this brother and sister act on Morning Joe, and the sister, whose primary qualification for being on morning TV seems to be her great hair, which is blonde and really cut well, is asking some former general or CIA official about a conversation he's had with Ben Carson about foreign policy and this expert says he thinks Ben Carson has a lot to learn about ISIS and terrorist threats and the blonde sister host raises an eyebrow as if she's just heard Ben Carson himself admit to having been an axe murderer when he was 19 and again during medical school and she says, "Wow, well I didn't expect that!" 

The other thing is they never play more than a few seconds of sound bites or video clips of exactly what anyone said, Donald Trump or anyone else, because, of course what is important is not what the politician actually said but what is important is what the star of the news broadcast says about what he said or what the expert guest says about that clip.  So, how stupid do the guys running these shows think the American public is?  You be the judge.

Maybe the Donald is on to something.

Republican Shtick

A shtick is a comedy routine often assoicated with a particular comedian, so Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, Joanne Rivers all had a shtick. Stand up comedians, like Chris Rock, Jay Leno perfect their lines at local clubs before taking them national or to big venues.

Last night, the most prepared practitioner was Ted Cruz, who was ready to try out his line that the IRS code has more words in it than the Bible, pause, wait for applause, and none of them (the IRS words) are as good as what's in the Bible.

This was clearly crafted to appeal to the evangelicals who are currently enthralled by Ben Carson. See, I can play that Jesus card, the Bible thumping thing, too!

It worked well in Milwaukee. The crowd loved it. Take that to Iowa. Or maybe, it came from Iowa where he tried it out first.


Then there was the Donald who was confronted by Ohio governor Kasich (can't spell that name.) The governor said the idea of rounding up and deporting 11 million immigrants while their children sobbed was ridiculous and not an adult proposal. To which the Donald replied he had built a corporation worth billions of dollars and he didn't need to take that from that guy at the end of the stage, who doesn't have enough poll numbers to rate being placed at the center. 

Which got thunderous applause. Give it to him Donald. You are winning. There will be so much winning when the Donald gets to the Oval Office.  And anyone who criticizes the Donald, I'll have you know, had better had established his street cred by having a corporation which makes billions or he can just shut up. 

I really love Republican debates. They just know how to not be whimps, to play to the better angels of our national character. The better angels--that phrase was made famous by that first Republican. You remember that guy: Abraham Lincoln.

What would Honest Abe think to see his nominative heirs performing today?

Bibi and the Power of Parable

Happened to catch Bibi Netanyahu on CNN this morning and he told a wonderful, revealing story about trying to explain the virtues of a "free market" capitalist economy to the Israeli people, who had grown up in a semi-socialist state. Of course, Jews have a reputation in America and Europe as shrewd businessmen, but here the Prime Minister of Israel was faced with a Jewish population isolated from the business world, or so he claimed.

His story concerned his first day of training in the Israeli paratroopers (thus reminding his audience of his military creds) and the captain lined up all the recruits facing him and he said, "We will do a race, but this race is going to be made more interesting. Look to your right. Lift the man to your right on your back."  Bibi is not a big man, and the man to his right was a third again his side. The next man was even smaller than Bibi and he had to heft a man twice his side and the next man was a huge guy and he lifted a small man on is back. Then the whistle blew. Bibi staggered forward, barely able to cross the finish line. The small man with the huge burden collapsed at the starting line but the big man with the small man on his back took off like a rocket and streaked across the finish line.

Now, I'm thinking, oh, I know where this is going: It says that some of us have a heavier burden than others, in life. Some are born into poverty, some into poverty and ignorance, while others are relatively advantaged, unburdened and they are likely to streak ahead of others, and likely these guys will believe they deserve their winning because they are so superior, the Donald Trumps.

But n I had forgotten Bibi is, at heart, a Republican. The burden turned out to be, you guessed it: the government and taxes. So the big man unburdened by a heavy tax load soars ahead, while the little guy, carrying big government on his back collapses. 

Of course, his audience, an affluent Republican American audience, loved it. Just unburden us from the government and we'll all roar ahead, unleash the animal energies of a free market economy by lowering taxes.

Nobody mentioned the experience in Kansas, where the governor made just that argument and cut income taxes and Kansas has been in trouble ever since, sinking beneath a sea of red ink, unable to provide even the most basic government services. No animal energies surfaced to save the day.  The economy in Kansas has plummeted into recession where its more heavily taxed neighbors have made steady recoveries. 

Like all the privileged, advantaged set, Bibi argues we'd all be just fine if it weren't for the burden of carrying the government on our backs, when the truth is just the opposite is true: When the government provides stimulus, as Paul Krugman keeps reminding us, everyone does better, including the rich who so decry government spending. 

And, of course, the bigger lie is the myth of "free market capitalist economy."  We have capitalist markets in America but we do not have anything close to a  "free market" as the government subsidies big farming, big oil, big coal and big every business. It's just the little guy who isn't subsidized and who is told he ought to be working harder and then, once he mobilizes his animal energies, he'll be as rich as Donald Trump.

Thomas Nast: The Real Burden 

The game is rigged, as Bernie Sanders has pointed out. Banks too big to fail can charge ahead full of animal energies, never fearing  a fall because they are too big to fail and they know it and the government will bail them out. That's not free markets. That's crony capitalism, which the Republican party has recently decided is a bad thing, and they decry this, all the while taking the money which flows from crony capitalism, all the way to the bank.

Ted Cruz: No Atheist Is Fit To Serve

Start Every Day with a Prayer

You Want to Be Lied To?  Ask the man about his religion.

And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there, if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes. So, every day until the end of this campaign, I'll answer any question anyone has on government, But if you have a question on religion, please go to church."
--Arnold Vinick, West Wing


In one of it's typically prescient moments, in the the West Wing's sixth season is a confrontation at the end of an episode called, "In God We Trust" where the Republican presidential nominee, Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) responds to a question about whether or not he will attend a church meeting to which he's been invited and this Republican, who knows where his base is, but who can no longer tolerate the hypocrisy, finally commits a "gaffe" which is to say he tells the truth as he sees it, that when politicians start talking about religious faith, they lie.

This episode aired 10 years ago, but like so much of West Wing, it is eerily current.

Yesterday, Ted Cruz said that no atheist is qualified to be President and furthermore every President ought to begin his day with prayer.

There are other little examples of God being imposed on our secular state:  our pledge of allegiance contains the phrase "Under God"  which it did not have originally.  The "under God" part was added at the height of the McCarthy Red Scare, when everyone was eager to be fighting Godless Communism.

The whole pledge of allegiance thing started in the 1870's as "patriotism" following the Civil War started to fade and school kids were in control of adults so it was in school kids learned a pledge.  Things really got rolling in the early 1940's, during World War II when WASP America distrusted Orientals who might prefer Imperial Japan or German Americans, so we had kids doing the American "Zeig! Heil!" in their classrooms.

Zeig! Heil! America! USA! USA! Oh, puke.

Easy patriotism, learned in school. Later, with all the Hitler youth holding out their arms straight, we went to putting the hand over the heart, as Herr Hitler had pre-empted the straight arm salute.

With all the examples of religion causing havoc in the world, of irrational, rabid belief causing people to kill and destroy, one would think the dangers of introducing religion into our putatively secular society would be obvious, but no, not in the Bible Belt where people cling to their guns and their religion, as Obama was honest enough to observe, and he rued the day he was that honest. 

The only politician I can imagine with the guts to say what Arnold Vinick said is Bernie Sanders, who is just irascible enough to sputter in his best Lewis Black tone, "You want to be lied to? You want to really be played?  Just demand your political leaders profess their undying love of God, and you'll get just exactly what you deserve!"

The Donald: The New Yogi

"If you would listen to Sara Murray, you would think there were three people standing in the atrium of Trump Tower. Either she's a very unemotional person or she's not a very good reporter."
--Donald Trump from Politico

I loved Yogi Berra.  He said things which resonated with me:  "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical."  I knew exactly what he was talking about.

But The Donald may eventually rise to that level as well. Just consider his take on a reporter, Sara Murray, who was present at a book signing and apparently, in The Donald's estimation she underestimated the number of people present for this important event. 

"She's either a very unemotional person or she's not a very good reporter."
So if she were more emotional she would have got closer to the correct number?
Now this is a revelation, for me at least. I always thought of numbers as the essence of objectivity over emotion. You can think a crowd is big because you react emotionally to the image of its size, but if you want to hew to accuracy, you simply report a number. 

Thinking more deeply, perhaps she said it was a small crowd but she missed the emotional vibe of a very enthusiastic crowd. I'll have to find exactly what she said, but that two sentences taken as they are presented present a wonderful opportunity to look into the mind of someone who wants to be our next President.

Here is the conversation I imagine could have been, if only Yogi were still alive: I can just see the two of them sitting on Yogi's porch in New Jersey, beers in hand, feet up,  thinking big thoughts about the world and just sharing wisdom and insights:

Yogi:  You can observe a lot by just watching
Donald: They [ISIS] just built a hotel in Syria. Can you believe this?  They built a hotel. When I have to build a hotel, I pay interest. They don't have to pay interest, because they took the oil that, when we left Iraq, I said we should've taken."


Yogi: You wouldn't have won, if we'd beaten you.
Donald:  Hillary Clinton was the worst Secretary of State in the history of the United States. There's never been a Secretary of State so bad as Hillary. The world blew up around us. We lost everything, including all relationships. There wasn't one good thing that came out of that administration or her being Secretary of State.
You don't even have to like Hillary to know that's not true. 


[Editor's note:  Who knew the Secretary of State controlled world events?]


Yogi:  Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
Donald: When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

[Editor's note: Well, that last sentence--now I feel much better.]

Yogi:  I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.
Donald: The U.S. will invite El Chapo, the Mexcan drug lord who just escaped prison, to become a U.S. citizen because our "leaders" can't say no.!

Wow! El Chapo a U.S. citizen! Maybe he'll run for President on the Republican ticket! Wouldn't you like to see him on the stage with The Donald. 
The Donald would give him such a dressing down! The Donald would beat him, and make it look easy. It would be such a winning for the The Donald. 
I know he'll make America great again, and we'll all be winners. 

Republican Debate: Who Knew? We Don't Need No Friggin Government!

It wasn't as entertaining as prior debates, even with Becky Quick moderating, and she's both cute and bright, so you figure it should have been a winner, but it was pretty tame, comparatively speaking.

I had forgotten Chris Christie was still running. He got off one good shot, telling a questioner that "Even in New Jersey, that's rude." Which was cute because it said that he was aware most people not from New Jersey think people from New Jersey are crass, like the housewives of New Jersey and the Sopranos.  I forget what the question was, or the answer for that matter, but every answer tonight was actually the same answer: Government is BAD! Federal government anyway. If you are a governor (Christie, Bush, Kasich) then state government is good, but Washington, D.C. is bad. 

This means, according to Dr. Carson,  Medicare is bad, because it's federal government and you could do much better with $12,000 than give it to Medicare, because, after all, that $12,000 could cover maybe three days in the hospital. Didn't quite follow that, or anything else he said, except, Washington,DC and government is BAD.

Carly Fiorino also thinks government is bad and has no business in the retirement funding business. In fact, government is bad business, or bad for business or just BAD. She doesn't like Washington, DC much, which hardly distinguishes her from the other candidate, but she is the woman and was wearing a bright dress, red or blue, I forget. But government is BAD. I remember her saying that.

Mike Huckabee had a swell idea: All we have to do to fix Medicare and Healthcare in this country is simply cure four diseases--and here he holds up his hand and counts them off on his fingers- 1. Alzheimer's (thumb), 2. cancer (index finger) , 3. diabetes (middle finger) and 4. heart disease (fourth finger)  and our medical costs evaporate. 

Like what we did with polio. Know how much we spent on polio this year in America? Zero. Well, if you don't count the vaccines, but that's a quibble, and Donald Trump will be the first to say vaccines cause autism. (Or maybe that was Michele Bachmann who was the first to say that, or the woman from the parking lot who told her,  but Mr. Trump was no worse than number 3.) 

But I digress. I really liked Mr. Huckabee's idea. Just cure those four diseases, well those four families of diseases, and we are on easy street as far as Medicare is concerned.  

Now, if I can just get Dr. Tony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health on the phone and ask him why he never thought of that.  Such a simple plan. And nobody denied it, not a single man or woman on that stage or among the moderators. Great idea! So glad I tuned in tonight.

Rand Paul says we don't really need or want Medicare or Social Security, which are BAD because they are federal government programs, but for those who currently depend on these programs (those slackers), we can continue them, as long as we raise the ages of participation and make people with comfortable incomes ineligible. 

He wants a government so small he cannot see it, he says. Didn't he used to say he wanted a government so small he could drown it in his bathtub?  Must have thought that sounded too hostile, which is okay to be in a Republican debate, but they were all working on sounding less truculent  tonight.

Marco Rubio said Hillary was caught in a lie in those 11 hours of testimony. She told her family the attack at Benghazi was an Al Qaeda attack but then said something else later, or something. I didn't quite follow. Are we still talking about Benghazi? Oh, actually, no, I got that wrong. Mr. Rubio was using that as an example of how "the media" conspires against noble Republicans to misrepresent the truth, and the media said Hillary had performed well at the hearings, when in fact she had been caught in a lie. About Benghazi. Benghazi? Really?

But my favorite was Mr. Trump. He is so blissfully vague. How would he solve the impending Medicare and Social Security apocalypse?  He would just grow the economy, and make everything better and start winning again, and get people rich, everyone, without the government, and he'd hire all the Hispanics to work for him or other private companies would, and everything will be just so great again, America, that is.  Immigration is an easy thing to fix: Everyone will just have to be legal and we will make the system so fair and successful that we will be winning again.  

I especially liked his idea about building a 1000 mile wall along the Mexican border and the best part is he'll get the Mexicans to pay for it. Why hasn't anybody else thought of that? He said if the Chinese could build a 32,000 mile wall, then we could build a 1,000 mile wall. He did not say that if he had been around when the Chinese were building that wall, he'd have got Genghis Khan to pay for it. He didn't have to say that because we all know that's true.

I think I'm quoting him accurately. 

And Ted Cruz spoke up about Washington, DC and how bad it is. I'd almost forgotten he was running. But you know, of all the candidates, he struck me as being the most Halloween appropriate. Something about his face. Just really scary.  The other guys you can look at and sort of laugh, but that Ted Cruz, yikes. 

I feel much better after the Republicans explain things.  Before the debate things like the economy, big banks, the role of the Federal Reserve, ideas about protecting the finances of social security, what to do about education loans, how to correct income inequality and the skewed distribution of wealth, climate change, the need for energy,  what to do about the coal miners, threats to the environment all seem so complex.  But after two hours,  I realized how very simple it all is: Just kill government, the federal government and all those problems disappear. It's like Ronald Reagan used to say: Government is not the solution; It's the problem.

I really miss the Gipper. He made things so simple. And Heaven knows, the national debt and the budget deficits and the economy did so well under him. 

But think of what happened with Clinton, Bill Clinton. Sure he balanced the budget and cleaned up welfare but he also got Don't Ask Don't Tell, passed the Defense of Marriage act and he had very poor taste in young women. 

It wasn't his fault though. He thought Don't Ask Don't Tell was supposed to apply to White House interns.  He got confused. 

Actually, I think I may be confused. Tonight is Wednesday, right? If it were Saturday, then I'd know why I found myself laughing and thinking, "Oh, this can't be for real," because then I'd know I had been watching Saturday Night Live all along. 

But it's  not Saturday and anyway not even Saturday Night Live could lampoon the folks on that stage tonight.