Tag Archives: History

Police Them and Us, made worse by War on Drugs

David Rittgers wrote for The Politico 8 June 2011, How Police Are Turning Military

The sheriff’s office in Pima County, Ariz., raided the home of former Marine and Iraq combat veteran Jose Guerena, shooting 71 rounds at Guerena and hitting him with 22. The department is now facing a serious controversy over Guerena’s death.

But the raid isn’t the real tragedy. It’s a symptom of the real tragedy: the militarization of U.S. law enforcement.

Pima County released a video of the raid and supporting documents. The video isn’t anything new — a squad of police officers dressed up for combat. But the statement of the SWAT supervisor is worth reading. After the SWAT team entered Guerena’s home, the supervisor left one or two “operators” with the body while the rest searched the house.

What did he mean by operator? Well, a police officer. But the term connotes something entirely different.

“Operator” is a term of art in the special operations community. Green Berets, SEALs and other special operations personnel often refer to themselves as operators. It’s a recognition of both the elite standards of their units and the hybrid nature of their duties — part soldier, part spy, part diplomat. But importing operator terminology into domestic law enforcement is not a benign turn of the phrase.

Perceiving yourself as an operator plasters over the difference between a law enforcement officer serving a warrant and a commando in a war zone. The former Mirandizes, the latter vaporizes, as the saying goes…. Targeted killing is legal in a war zone but not on the streets of Anytown, USA.

Why is this happening?

The war on drugs has done incalculable damage to the character of law enforcement by encouraging police officers to forget they are civilians.

The police should be us. The War on Drugs has turned them into them against us.

-jsq

USA #1 in youth detention

The U.S. locks up far more juveniles per capita than any other country, and our country and our state cannot afford that any longer: not economically, and not in the cost of incarceration turning children into criminals.

Pete Brook wrote for Wired 11 April 2012, Uncompromising Photos Expose Juvenile Detention in America,

States have turned away from punishing acts such as truancy and delinquency with detention; acts that are not criminal for an adult but have in the past siphoned youths into the court system. Less detention has been accompanied by less violent crime among youth.

“It may seem counter intuitive, but if you look at the types of offenses for which we’re no longer detaining youth, it is not,” says Sarah Jane Forman, assistant professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and director of the Youth Justice Clinic which provides legal counsel to indigent youth. “The kids who have committed serious violent crimes; they remain locked up.”

Not only is being locked up ineffective as a deterrent in youths who have not reached full cognitive development and don’t understand the consequences of their actions, it can actually make a criminal out of a potentially law-abiding kid.

The U.S. has far more juveniles per capita locked up than any other country, according to Cross-national comparison of youth justice, by Neal Hazel, 2008, www.yjb.gov.uk.

And Georgia has a large proportion of those locked-up youth. On this map of prisons in Georgia, Continue reading →

Mars and Arizona Public Service flee ALEC: 10 and counting

Mars makes Skittles. Suddenly it doesn’t want to be associated with ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Ditto electric utility Arizona Public Service (APS). That makes 10 if you count the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, Intuit, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Reed-Elsevier. Keep ’em goin’!

Rebekah Wilce wrote for PRWatch Thursday, Mars and Arizona Public Service Dump ALEC,

Mars had been an exhibitor at ALEC’s 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans. Mars is the maker of Skittles, the snack Trayvon Martin had purchased before he was shot by George Zimmerman, whose arrest was delayed due to an NRA-backed gun law that became an ALEC “model” bill.

APS had been a member of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, which adopted such “model” bills as the “State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives Act” and the “State Data Quality Act.” News of its breaking ties with ALEC comes on the heels of a new updated report on ALEC in Arizona published by People for the American Way, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Common Cause, and ProgressNow.

There’s more about Mars saying it merely decided not to renew its ALEC membership, as part of a general review of memberships. Yeah, right.

Here’s another petition for companies to leave ALEC.

I’m still rooting for UPS, based in Atlanta, to escape ALEC.

-jsq

Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier flee ALEC: 8 and counting

Companies with customers care about “the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC”. Two more just left, making it eight and counting.

Reuters reported an hour ago: Reed Elsevier, Wendy’s drop conservative group,

Reed Elsevier is the latest company to drop out of a conservative national advocacy group in the United States that has been a lightning rod for gun laws.

The Anglo-Dutch professional information service provider said on Thursday it resigned its board seat and dropped its membership of the American Legislative Council (ALEC).

…

Hamburger chain Wendy’s Co said late on Wednesday that it decided in late 2011 not to renew its ALEC membership for 2012.

That’s Pepsi and Coca-Cola, followed by Kraft and Intuit, plus the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McDonald’s, and now Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier. Eight and counting. Pretty close to one a work day.

Why?

“We made the decision after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC,” said a Reed Elsevier spokesman.

The council has faced a push-back in recent weeks because of its involvement in voting laws and in “stand your ground” gun laws such as one under scrutiny in the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

Let’s not forget private prisons, such as the one CCA wanted to build in Lowndes County. Even though that one is “shelved” due to lack of customers, others are still sucking up tax dollars that could go to education.

I’m still rooting for next to leave ALEC to be UPS, based in Atlanta.

-jsq

McDonald’s maybe left ALEC last year or last month

McDonald’s doesn’t seem to know when exactly it left ALEC, if it ever did. They do know how to build a fast food store in a local neighborhood that doesn’t want it, though.

Ryan Grim wrote for HuffPost yesterday, and then updated, McDonald’s Says It Left ALEC In March 2012 [UPDATE],

Under pressure from a progressive campaign to abandon the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), McDonald’s is insisting that it left the controversial conservative organization in March.

Yes, but which March?

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Lowndes County and Valdosta history: origins of the old boys

If we want good clean industry for jobs for local people, we need good clean local government, too. Why do our local government bodies hide when they discuss public goods like waste disposal, try to avoid stating public positions on issues, and fail to publish minutes of elected bodies?

A little reading in local histories of the area or talking to people who were involved even a generation or two back indicates that Lowndes County has always been a cliquish sort of place, mostly run by old boys, for reasons that made some sense in the early days (lack of resources, mainly), but doesn’t so much anymore in these days of I-75 and I-10, airport, railroads that still go everywhere, Moody AFB, VSU as a regional university, technical and community colleges, two hospitals and medical industry, TitleTown, Grand Bay WMA, Wild Adventures, and south Georgia sunshine we can export to Atlanta and points north.

Here are a few books about the old days, all available in local libraries and possibly in local bookstores: Continue reading →

The socialized costs and privatized profits of waste disposal

In her response to my post about Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location, Barbara Stratton seems unfamiliar (like most people) with economic externalities. Here’s a definition:

A negative externality occurs when an individual or firm making a decision does not have to pay the full cost of the decision. If a good has a negative externality, then the cost to society is greater than the cost consumer is paying for it. Since consumers make a decision based on where their marginal cost equals their marginal benefit, and since they don’t take into account the cost of the negative externality, negative externalities result in market inefficiencies unless proper action is taken.

When a negative externality exists in an unregulated market, producers don’t take responsibility for external costs that exist—these are passed on to society.

Which is socializing the losses. A famous ongoing case of this is BP making record corporate profits while dumping huge amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, continuing to destroy shrimping, wetlands, wildlife, and local people’s health.

And that’s what the County Commission is doing: privatizing the profits of trash pickup and socializing the losses onto landowners (who have to pay for fences and gates), onto the general public (who have to pay for law enforcement to catch dumpers), and onto those who can’t afford to pay for private dump fees (who will get stuck with fines instead). That is indeed, as Barbara says, “redistribution of wealth”: redistribution from the rest of us to the private waste pickup companies.

The Commission is ducking its responsibility to find an equitable solution that everyone can afford. Funny how they can deal with special tax lighting districts for subdivisions but they claim they can’t come up with a way to publicly fund waste collection. Could it be because all the voting Commissioners are town-dwellers who don’t understand that rural people don’t have exactly the same needs or resources as city people?

Barbara advocates,

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Avoid crony capitalism or conflict of interest —Barbara Stratton

Received Monday on Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location. My response is in the next post. -jsq

There are many injustices of socialism and redistribution of wealth (or garbage) and I’m glad to see you recognize this in the shifting of illegal dumping costs to landowners. I am also glad to see that at least the county is talking about privatization and not public/private partnerships (so far). When Hahira almost succeeded in placing a regional waste transfer station on city owned property
REZ-2007-32 City of Hahira, 0028 027 6751 Union Road, 2 lots, R-21 to M-2, DRI
I was concerned that the county was complacent in this because the Lowndes Board of Commissioners November 2007 meeting minutes showed they agreed to rezone the property for the purpose of the transfer station against the recommendations of the county planner, Jason Davenport. That rezoning action replaced a DRI (Development of Regional Impact) request for waste transfer station rezoning so it was easy to assume the county and possibly the region had a mutual agenda for the transfer station. During a recent discussion on the dangers of regional government with Valdosta mayor, Larry Hanson, I asked if the transfer station was a regional interest. He assured me the City of Valdosta had no knowledge and no interest in that transfer station prior to articles in the Valdosta Daily Times. I’ve not had an opportunity to discuss the possibility of mutual agenda with the county and if it comes up again in the future I am assuming proper procedures will be followed which mandate public meetings and input into the planning before a third DRI is entered, not after.

I worked a contract for the IT of a Pensacola, FL software company that had waste management software contracts all over the US. It was my job to be

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Coke and Pepsi exit ALEC

Yesterday Coca-Cola announced it would no longer be a member of ALEC, the law-drafting pressure group American Legislative Exchange Council. Pepsi already decided that last year. Voting with your pocketbook works! There’s plenty more to do: ALEC pushed Georgia’s HB 87 that provides “customers” for CCA’s ICE prison yet is opposed by local farmers; ALEC backed the “Stand Your Ground” law that Trayvon Martin’s killer is hiding behind; ALEC is behind the charter school constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in November. ALEC is crony capitalism in our legislature, our neighborhoods, and our schools. Here’s one way to oppose ALEC that works.

Leon Stafford and Aaron Gould Sheinin wrote for the AJC yesteray, Coke cuts ties with ALEC,

“Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business,” Coke spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante said.

Here’s ALEC’s “model legislation”: A Resolution in Opposition to Deiscriminatory Food and Beverage Taxes,

…opposes all efforts — federally and on the state level — to impose discriminatory taxes on food and/or beverages.

Now I don’t like food taxes, either: they’re the very model of regressive taxes that affect the poor more than the rich. But beverage taxes? As in taxes on the sugar water Coca-Cola sells? Those might improve public health and increase state revenue.

So how much has Coke supported ALEC in this?

Ciarlante said the company would not disclose its financial support of ALEC but said it was restricted to yearly dues. She said it had been a member for approximately 10 years. The company had received some phone calls protesting its relationship with ALEC, she said, but declined to comment on the decision beyond the company’s statement.

I wonder how much other support Coke provided, as in for example introductions to power-brokers around Atlanta.

Coke’s rival Pepsi also declined to renew its ALEC membership when it expired at the end of 2011, spokeswoman Heather Gleason said. The company’s 10-year membership focused exclusively on tax issues related to the beverage industry, she said.

And Pepsi probably also didn’t want to talk about lobbying for tax breaks for sugar water while legislatures are cutting education budgets.

What does ALEC do, anyway?

Continue reading →

Good thing we didn’t buy a “jail to nowhere”

Still more evidence that private prisons are bad business. If the Industrial Authority won't do due diligence before buying into boondoggles like biomass and private prisons, we'll have to do it for them.

Kirsten Bokenkamp wrote for ACLU Texas 4 April 2012, Nobody wants a “Jail to Nowhere”,

…a number of Texas counties and towns ( the article points to Anson, Littlefield, and Angelina, Newton, Dickens and Falls Counties as a few examples) were sold on the idea that mass incarceration was in Texas to stay. According to the article, most of the privately operated county jails sit less than half full, and guess who is left holding the bill? (Hint – it is not the for-profit prison company).

Meanwhile, we can look askance at anything else that is pushed by ALEC, like private prisons and charter schools are.

-jsq