Outlaw Tasers

Brutalization of the DOJ

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ately, it seems that if local police all across America are not shooting and killing innocent citizens, then they are tasering harmless old folks and pregnant women.   Then, when they are brought to court to account for their crime, they invariably claim to have been in fear for their lives. This alarming and relatively new trend points to poor training at the Police Academies. And this abusive stance is not confined to big cities.  I do not know what the trainers are saying to these men and women, but by the time they get out onto the streets they have become brutally aggressive, when they are not being brutally defensive, and at other times simply brutal.

This civilization is not about that.

We are not yet a Third World or Emerging Nation where civil servants work for pittance and consider themselves lucky to be working at all.  As far as I know, they are well paid, and given early retirement with good livable retirement pay packages.  Nevertheless, look at the types of people who are hired.  There is a famous case in Hartford Connecticut,  where a man was not hired because he was deemed too smart.  So the policy is to hire only the low mentals.  And that is why these guys are so quick on the draw.  They are ten times more likely to be emotionally and psychologically underdeveloped, and the complaint is not merely the much too quickness of trigger-happy and all too frequently, racist cops, too concerned about citizens obeying their every little command immediately and far too lax about dealing sensitively, with troubled people in complex situations. We have heard cops complain that we are asking too much of them, by asking them to be heroic and aggressive when necessary, and then sensitive, when needed, and to immediately know the difference.  Instead we have far too many instances of thugs in uniform beating up and shooting children, and tasering pregnant women.  And always, the local mayor must side with the officer in question or else invite the threat of rancor and insurrection among the ranks of the police themselves, and their union.  What we have here is a good argument for hiring more intelligent and well-adjusted men and women to urban police departments.  Send the low mentals who can't restrain themselves from tasering innocent old ladies and the very young.

In the video below, we see the extreme example of police officers invading a law abiding citizen's home, and brutalizing him because they were too frightened of a 64 year old man who was obviously unarmed, and merely rising out of his chair after asking the police officers to leave his property.

They tasered him for no good reason!

In fact, it appears that they tasered him because he didn't beg for a taste of their boot leather.

If these goons are not found guilty and fired from the department dishonorably--- and made an example of by imprisonment for the maximum sentence, it will be just another instance of corruption at City Hall.  The detective in Washington DC, whom you will see in the video, is obviously on the side of police brutality.  He dances all around the issue, all the while making excuses for the cops' cowardice.  Brutalizing an injured 64 year old, unarmed man in his own home!  This was all a matter of police arrogance. This is a serious issue which demands much more discussion by civilians in dialogue with the City Halls leadership of most cities and towns across America, and upper level police officials. ♦    

Ben Bernanke Translated

"Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort." : Marshall McLuhan - (1911-1980)

"...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich." : Noam Chomsky

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"I Was Wrong Again!" What Ben Bernanke meant to say

The Fed chairman delivers a big, but boring, speech on the economy at Jackson Hole. Here's a translation

By Andrew Leonard

August 30, 2010 "Salon" --

s a man, Ben Bernanke is prone to understatement, a tendency that was reinforced very early in his term as chairman of the Federal Reserve when a dinner-party comment he made to CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo sent financial markets into a tizzy the next day. Therefore, any speech he gives -- in particular, major speeches on the state of the economy at a time of high national anxiety -- must be read through a special filter. I call this filter the Bernanke-Hype-ometer, and I have applied it to the address he gave at Jackson Hole, Wyo., Friday morning. (Bernanke comments in bold, followed by Hype-ometer translations.)
The annual meeting at Jackson Hole always provides a valuable opportunity to reflect on the economic and financial developments of the preceding year, and recently we have had a great deal on which to reflect.
Hey, just this morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis downgraded the second quarter GDP growth rate to a miserable 1.6 percent! So, even after juicing the economy every which way but loose the last two years, we're headed in completely the wrong direction. Congress won't do anything to help, so now everyone wants me to stop the bleeding.

However, although private final demand, output and employment have indeed been growing for more than a year, the pace of that growth recently appears somewhat less vigorous than we expected.
Remember how I was the wrongest person on the planet when I said the subprime mortgage bust was "contained" and wouldn't cause a worldwide financial crisis? Haha, man that was dumb. Well, guess what, I was wrong again earlier this year, when I decided the time was ripe for the Fed to stop bailing out the economy.
Incoming data on the labor market have remained disappointing.
The working class is unbelievably screwed. This is kind of bumming me out.

Overall, the incoming data suggest that the recovery of output and employment in the United States has slowed in recent months, to a pace somewhat weaker than most FOMC participants projected earlier this year.
Double-dip recession, here we come!

Despite the weaker data seen recently, the preconditions for a pickup in growth in 2011 appear to remain in place.
At this juncture, the risk of either an undesirable rise in inflation or of significant further disinflation seems low.
OK, sure, unemployment is in the toilet, but don't expect us to do too much about it, because the only thing we really care about is inflation, and as far as we are concerned, everything's fine on that front.


The FOMC has also acted to improve market functioning and to push longer-term interest rates lower through its large-scale purchases of agency debt, agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and longer-term Treasury securities, of which the Federal Reserve currently holds more than $2 trillion. The channels through which the Fed's purchases affect longer-term interest rates and financial conditions more generally have been subject to debate.

OK, let me lay it out for you. The one thing the Fed is really prepared to do to help the economy is to keep purchasing debt, such as Treasury securities. By keeping our unbelievably monster huge portfolio of debt high, we theoretically lower the cost of borrowing throughout the economy. That should spur faster growth. We stopped doing this a while back, but so many people started refinancing their mortgages that our holdings of mortgage-backed securities began to disappear, which, ironically, meant that by not acting, we were actually contributing to a tightening of the money supply. That's a big no-no when economic growth is flat-lining. So when the economy started to go downhill again, we changed our strategy -- but not until after a big fight with members of the conservative faction of the Federal Reserve Bank's Board of Governors who believe that even such a cautious step was far too aggressive. These guys just don't care about unemployment. Some of them even think it's time to start raising interest rates! Hahahahaha.

By agreeing to keep constant the size of the Federal Reserve's securities portfolio, the Committee avoided an undesirable passive tightening of policy that might otherwise have occurred. The decision also underscored the Committee's intent to maintain accommodative financial conditions as needed to support the recovery. We will continue to monitor economic developments closely and to evaluate whether additional monetary easing would be beneficial. In particular, the Committee is prepared to provide additional monetary accommodation through unconventional measures if it proves necessary, especially if the outlook were to deteriorate significantly.
I am not going to be responsible for yet another market crash. So I stomped all over the reactionaries, because even a blind man can see investor sentiment is as fragile as a 2-year-old on a sugar crash. I really don't want to be remembered as the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over TWO recessions. So let me tell you plainly: If the shit really hits the fan, we're going to open the taps wide open, buy every Treasury bond in sight, drop money from helicopters, and keep the U.S. economy on life support.

This is why, incidentally, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is back over 10,000 points. Yay me!

A rather different type of policy option, which has been proposed by a number of economists, would have the Committee increase its medium-term inflation goals above levels consistent with price stability. I see no support for this option on the FOMC.
Paul Krugman, who is one hell of a pain in the ass, believes that the Fed is far too concerned with keeping inflation low. He keeps whining about unemployment, and thinks that if we just did so much as announce that we are prepared to accept higher inflation, and then pursued monetary policy along those lines, the economy would get a steroid boost that would finally shake it out of its doldrums. Sorry, but that is completely nuts and it is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Ever! Please shut up, Paul.

Inflation expectations appear reasonably well-anchored, and both inflation expectations and actual inflation remain within a range consistent with price stability.
I know, I know, the Federal Reserve is entrusted by Congress with two mandates -- promoting full employment and keeping inflation low. But everyone knows that we only really care about price stability, so never mind what I said before about the shit hitting the fan. As long as inflation is fine, we're only going to take baby steps.

Despite this recent slowing, however, it is reasonable to expect some pickup in growth in 2011 and in subsequent years.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue. ◊

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.  

Another Swing And A Miss for Congress

Congress Misses the Ball


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Photo/Wikimedia

federal grand jury last week indicted retired pitcher Roger Clemens on charges he lied to Congress.

In February 2008, Clemens, a seven time Cy Young winner, voluntarily met with a House committee and testified he didn’t knowingly use steroids or human growth hormones. The only evidence against Clemens appears to be the testimony of his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who claims to have injected Clemens with the drugs about 40 times between 1998 and 2001. Clemens says he was led to believe the injections were Vitamin B-12 and an anesthetic, Lidocaine, both legal under Major League Baseball guidelines. McNamee cut a deal with the Department of Justice to avoid prosecution. Clemens could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Probably half the country thinks Clemens took illegal drugs. Probably half the country thinks he didn’t take the drugs and was set up by his trainer. But that’s not the important issue.

First of all, does anyone know why the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform even held a hearing about steroid usage among baseball players? Was there a dry spell and the Committee couldn’t find anything in the government that needed to be reformed?

If the committee thought public figures taking illegal drugs was bad, why didn’t it look inside itself first? If it did, there would be a high probability it could easily have found members of Congress and their staffs who also took steroids, snorted coke, or mainlined harder drugs. Stoned and wasted Congressional staffers pose a greater danger to society than any athlete.

This is the same body of legislators who created the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the early 1950s to strip Americans of their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association. It also ordered contempt of Congress charges and perjury against witnesses who told the truth—but not what Congress wanted to hear.

This is the Congress that in 1994 didn’t ask for convictions for perjury for any of the seven CEOs of major tobacco companies who testified under oath that nicotine wasn’t addictive. But that, and much more, is history. The present 21st century Congress has much more to answer about its actions.

This is the Congress that ran in fearful circles, put its tail between its legs and in 2001 passed the PATRIOT Act, which stripped Americans of six Constitutional amendments and the constitutional right of habeas corpus. Four years later, Congress reauthorized the Act to prevent several sections from automatically expiring. The terrorists had done their job well—they put so much fear into Americans that the Americans created their own terrorism.

This is the Congress that failed to question the Bush–Cheney administration’s claims of why it needed to spend about a trillion dollars and invade Iraq.

This is a Congress that was slow to respond to well-documented evidence that the U.S. was committing torture—and which, against the professional advice of the CIA and FBI, housed large numbers of elected legislators who saw nothing wrong with torturing those who may or may not have been terrorists, the election year “buzzword.”

This is a Congress that had provided negligent oversight of companies that provided billions of dollars worth of service in the war zone—and fraudulently overbilled the taxpayers.

This is the same Congress that allowed the banking and investment industries to make billions by scamming Americans, gave multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses to its senior management, and helped bring about the greatest recession since the 1920s.

This is the Congress that by negligence allowed lax oversight of environmental regulations.

This is the same Congress that was blind to the Bush–Cheney administration’s failure to properly regulate the oil industry, and probably should be considered to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the BP oil spill.

This is the same Congress that has allowed a Republican minority to become the street bully and block needed legislation, including legislation to assist small business. But because of a weak Democratic response and archaic procedures, the entire Congress must suffer a black eye.

This is the same Congress that did pass health reform, but allowed itself to be sunk by the fear of a Republican filibuster that what was passed was a watered-down version of what was necessary.

There are so much more important issues than investigating steroid usage among millionaire athletes that it is easy to believe that Congress muffed its responsibility to the American people by its righteous political gesturing to make voters believe their elected officials actually cared about health.

If Congress is so upset that others lied to them and the American people, maybe it could ask the FBI to investigate and the Department of Justice to bring indictments against not only some of its own members but also some members of the Bush–Cheney administration.♦

Walter Brasch is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His most recent book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He can be reached at brasch@bloomu.edu.

The Corporation

The Corporation is Insane

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accine for cows which are toxic to humans but nevertheless approved by the FDA.  A designer clothing line which pays workers .74¢ an hour and sells shirts and other clothing for   $59.99 retail and more.  The ruthless corruption of the Monsanto corporation and the corruption of the FDA and the Patent Office.  If you have never seen this documentary before, it will blister your brain.  At least it will stun you if you have a conscience, and a sense of right and wrong.  The cases explored herein provide excellent argument as to why we, as a nation, or perhaps all of world culture, must now consider dismantling the entire structure of capitalism in the world.  To discover the horror stories of FOX NEWS and Monsanto concerning Monsanto's anti-biotic additives in cow's milk, which are now causing such terrible problems for American children, from cancer to premature onset of secondary sexual characteristics in very young girls.  And the appalling miscarriage of justice meted out to two honest journalists at the corrupt hands of a Federal Courts of Appeals.  The same courts, by the way, which have given monstrous corporations license to do as they wish in the market.  When you see how you have been groomed as a mindless consumer, you will, I hope, get very angry.  But more than that, much of this material is so horrifying that your mind will wipe it out, totally erase the impact of the film within a half an hour. But here is an excerpt from the movie where it is shown how the corporation is now and has been for quite a long time, insane. This not an exaggeration; the charge of psychopathology is deadly serious. Watch the check list carefully.


 

The Stone In Obama's Shoe

White House Wants Assange Dead

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atest news from the the other side of the pond, via the Irish Online Magazine PressTV is that the Obama Administration has contacted its European Allies trying to smooth talk them into hunting down Wikileaks founder and director, Julian Assange. For anyone who's missed the brouhaha, the online website Wikileaks, published some ten thousand highly classified papers many of which were extremely embarrassing to the United States military and, indeed, the Department of Defense.

Adding insult to injury, the Irish news blog polled its readers asking 3 questions which garnered these results:

The release of sensitive US military documents by the Wikileaks website is…‎

• necessary because the public should be informed (16%)


• an unwise move that will endanger Afghan lives (5%)


• just the tip of an iceberg of US crimes in Afghanistan‎ (79%)

Looks like the administration's fears are justified. You can only fool all of the people some of the time.

Given the crushing disappointment with the Obama Administration, the cynicism and anger at the USA, due to Obama turning out to be a continuation of Bush/Cheney, only more so, chances are good that it will be a cold day in Hell before most of the European allies will put this request at the top of their to do lists.

Julian Assange has become a folk hero! Just when we needed one. Like Cindy Sheehan, who disobeyed everyone and ended up not only a hero, but shaming the Bush Administration in a way they never recovered from, Julian Assange has earned his applause from a grateful world.

And the military, the Republicans, the conservatives, and the White House are ready to spit bullets. They've arrested one young soldier, who, though nobody can prove it, is apparently the connection who was in a position to put his hands on the most sensitive material and found his way to Julian Assange. In particular, he smuggled out a film documenting the murder of 8 civilians, including an American journalist, by American soldiers in Iraq. The assault was especially chilling as it showed the cavalier way American soldiers kill, gratuitously, for the sheer sport of the thing.

I don't know about y'all, but I remember when during WWII, the GI's were famous for giving kids candy bars.

But we are much changed as a nation in this Third Millennium, on the way to the Age of Aquarius. Not only have we become mindless consumers, programmed by the giant multinational corporations, but the transformation from human being to Robot, seems to have numbed our hearts and our ethics. In an earlier age, when Americans had some sense of decency, Bush and Cheney would have been tarred and feathered for their violations of the US Constitution, not to mention the War Crimes and the Crimes Against Humanity. Now, the same people who once were decent, law abiding folk, shout Hallelujah! at the TV screen while watching the insanity that is Glenn Beck, and swallow whole the verbal swill of a Rush Limbaugh.

This war of aggression has killed, so far, more than 1,341,350 civilians.

And make no mistake, the Blackwater contractors are even worse than the soldiers. And Dick Cheney arranged with Blackwater that the mercenaries would not and could not be prosecuted for their crimes. These are the guys who think nothing of murdering entire families on the whisper that one of them might have known a terrorist at some point.

No wonder the Army people don't want to let go of DADT, (Don't Ask Don't Tell). Hell, who wants a bunch of gays hanging around while we're killing children.

Obama's only words on the subject of torture suspects, war criminals, the mercenary criminals, are, he wants to move on. Attorney General, Eric Holder, was ready to go. He wanted to bring these Bush Administration criminals to justice. But Obama, quite mysteriously said, "No."

What it really looked like, and still does, for that matter, is that Obama wants to hang on to the illegitimately expanded presidential powers which Bush claimed for himself.

Everything about this war, and these last ten years in Washington, has been so corrupt, the rest of the world is grateful for the small bit of clarity brought by the publication of these classified documents.


The Obama administration has continued to attack and harrass the left. Hostile statements from Chief of Staff, Rahm Immanuel, and most recently, Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs' tirade against the very lefties who put Obama in the White House. I have little doubt their remarks reflect the real purview of the President and his entire White House. This is frustrating; I did vote for Obama, though he was not my first choice. And I, along with other liberals, have been defending him from the bigotry of the right. All the unjust barbs and obstructionism from Republicans--- and now it appears they were right all along.

We were wrong!

As far as I am concerned, now, unless the Republicans really do put up Sara Palin for president and some Frankenstein monster as her running mate, Obama is a one term president. ◊

Some thoughts...

Who Is Serving Whom and Why Is That?

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ntil yesterday, I had never called the Federal Communications Commission on the telephone, or, as it is better known, the FCC. I learned in my college level Communications courses that the FCC is a very powerful agency which holds the airwaves in public trust. But then, during the Bush administration, the chairmanship of the FCC was held by Michael Powell, yes, the son of Colin Powell. Funny, how the FCC seemed to lose all its clout and quick as a wink, the FCC was snugly ensconced in corporate pockets, granting outrageous favors to corporate media. Whereas previously, one corporation was not allowed to control all the media venues in one town regardless of size, suddenly just one or two corporations were given rights to own all the media in one town, regardless of size. Make that all across the nation and we, the citizenry, no longer have access to objective information. Then, before we know it, we are no longer a nation with an educated citizenry.

The Founders of America were adamant that each and every citizen must have a good education; otherwise, Freedom and Democracy are lost. And once lost, they will never be recovered. More than a few philosophers have been very clear about that. Nobody possessed of a little bit of power would ever willingly give up their empire, however small.

What the giant corporations really want is a dumbed-down worker public which hears only corporate messages, and works for slave wages. Aldous Huxley, in his prophetic novel, Brave New World, envisioned a rigid class system with what he called, Alphas, the ruling class. Betas, middle management, and Deltas, workers, and on the very bottom, the happiest of all, the Delta Minuses. And everyone is born into their class and raised with little or no encouragement concerning the possibility of moving up. David Rockefeller has been very upfront about his own tampering with the process of education in America. Rockefeller is all for engineering the dumbing down of the working class and the eradication of a middle class. After all, corporations need workers who won't make intolerable demands; like a living wage, safe working conditions, and pension. And apparently the only people listening to Mister Rockefeller are the giant corporations. The corporations have a policy called Worker Productivity. In order to fulfill the expectations of Worker Productivity, one is required to work overtime without pay, and on a fairly regular basis, and to come in on Saturday and perhaps half a day on Sunday.

Only three basic things can help in the fight against such negative social engineering

• the free flow of real information
• the kind of education which creates strong critical thinking
• Diversity and competing sources of media which feature legitimate investigative journalism.
  

Some new developments threaten to destroy the possibility of these points.

1. The news that Rupert Murdock is no longer content to own FOX, his own personal extreme right wing tool. Murdock has now announced plans to buy up all the local media broadcasting stations in America.
2. Together, media giants Google and Verizon met behind closed doors with the chairman of the FCC, which resulted in the announcement of their plans to seize control of the Internet and eradicate the what is known as Net Neutrality, or the free and open Internet. They propose to destroy the Net as we know it, so that they will become the Gatekeepers. Thus the giant corporations will have control all information on the Internet.
3. This last is in direct opposition to a massive outpouring of protest from the public. You can find a video on YouTube.com, of Tim Berners Lee, the genius who actually created the Internet. In the video, Berners-Lee strongly condemns the privatization of the Net which he created specifically with the intention of Net Neutrality.
4. The ruling by the Federal judge, an obvious Bush appointee, who claimed that the FCC had no jurisdiction in this matter
5. The deafening silence on the part of the FCC on the above issues.

Move-On.org sent an email asking members and anyone who is interested, to call the White House about the Net Neutrality issue. So I was thinking about that, and suddenly the thought crossed my mind, that government, from the Congress, and that includes the House and the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the entire Department of Defense, and yes, the White House, have their fingers in their ears when it comes to hearing not only my voice, but the voices of many Americans. We are being routinely ignored.

The task of government, as I see it, is to respond, quickly, to the voices of the majority of Americans. This has not happened in many years. Instead what we have is the people living in fear of the government, instead of government in fear of the people. It seems to me that the Federal government has it all backwards. And I want something done about it.

But if we had a net worth of bazillions you bet they couldn't move fast enough to lick our private parts with more than the usual fondness, care and skill. In fact, I would say with little fear of credible rebuttal, that there are now, as Shirley Sherrod has seen with great clarity, 2 kinds of justice in America. There is Justice for the rich upper 2% power elite, who seem to get away with murder all the time. And I do mean murder. For which they never seem to be brought to trial.

And then there is the justice for you and me: Best characterized by the Red Queen's most famous pronouncement of justice: "Off with his head!" No matter who it may be or what the offense. Or at least 20 twenty years in jail for smoking marijuana. Mere possession of less than a couple of ounces, got how many years for one former Harvard Professor named Timothy Leary. And would somebody like to tell me exactly who are these so called gatekeepers. We now know that that marijuana as a plant is perhaps one of the most prodigiously useful plants of all. It produces hemp which has innumerable uses. And then the buds produce the drug which happens to be medicinal as a non-addictive pain killer. More than seventy percent of Americans now actively want marijuana legalized, at the very least, decriminalized. But the States legislatures and the Federal government do not seem at all disposed to carry out the wishes of the people.

The stance, here, loudly proclaims that we, citizens, are children, and they, the government, are grownups. And we may not have marijuana because the grownups say it isn't good for us. If that is the view they stand on dangerous ground. Certainly as far as the US Constitution goes they go more than one step beyond the Social Compact. We, the governed, give the power to those who govern. But am I the only one who sees that those who govern seem to take power and give nothing back. So they have violated the Social Compact.

That speaks of trouble.

If I recall rightly, the Tenth Amendment says that all rights not enumerated herein, belong to the people. And yet I have yet to meet anyone who is willing to fight for marijuana. Perhaps because it has a shady reputation. There is something too sexy about it. What if I were to smoke it and lost control?

What if, indeed!

Then, too, there is the man languishing in jail on Death Row in an Arizona prison for about 30 years, and new DNA tests have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that he is innocent of all the charges. But Governor Jan Brewer, you know, the jerk who signed the unconstitutional immigration law, will not allow him to be released nor will she allow the press or anyone else to speak to him. And conservative Arizonians seem quite happy with her way of doing things.

Clinton's reply to Coulter

She called him, gasp, Gay

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verybody relax for a minute: frightening as the world has become, what with the New World Order conspiracy turning out to be more truth than fiction, the 9/11 Truthers, the neocon PNAC conspirators, Bechtel and Halliburton trying to buy up every drop of water on the planet; even so, every now and again, it's good to slow down for a minute. With what the Evil Empire, the oil companies and multinational corporations are doing to us and the entire planet, certainly we need to fight back the forces of evil. But some of us are more graceful about it than others.

This video is an oldie, 2006, I think it is, but it just hits the target for me. On the third and fourth viewing it still holds up.