wrongologist – Page 226 – The Wrongologist

Ferguson Points to Our Real Problem

This is not a column about Ferguson, except by extension. In August, after Ferguson, the images of cops climbing out of armored vehicles with military-grade weapons caused some in both Houses of Congress to push for change in the program. Lawmakers vowed changes to the 1033 Pentagon program that provides military-grade equipment to local police. The Obama administration called for a policy review of the 1033 program, but on Monday, they backed away from substantive changes to the program.

There was a White House meeting on Monday to address the issues raised by military-style policing and Ferguson. Yet, the evidence shows that the meeting has changed nothing. This was The Guardian’s Monday headline:

Obama resists demands to curtail police militarization calling instead for improved officer training

Mr. Obama did call for a $263m, three-year spending which, if approved by Congress, could lead to the purchase of 50,000 lapel-mounted cameras to record police officers on the job.

Sounds good, but there are 765,000 state & local law enforcement officers in America, so you better hope that you are stopped by one of the 6.3% of local police officers that will have a federally-funded camera three years from now. Oh, and hope that the digital file of your brush with the law hasn’t been accidentally erased.

The Institute for Public Accuracy made comments from Peter Kraska available. Kraska is considered a leading expert on police militarization. He said yesterday: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

From my meeting at the White House, frankly, they — like most political players — were interested in a quick fix. They want to hear that by somehow tweaking the 1033 program (which transfers equipment from the Pentagon to local law enforcement) that they can have an impact. That program is important symbolically, but there’s an entire for-profit police militarization industry that wouldn’t be affected.

We also have to review the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program which provides far more to local police than does the DOD. DHS grants are lucrative enough that many defense contractors are now turning their attention to police agencies — and some new companies focus solely on selling military-grade weaponry to police agencies who get those grants.

That means we’re now building a new industry whose sole function is to militarize domestic police departments. Which means it won’t be long before we see pro-militarization lobbying and pressure groups with lots of (mostly taxpayer) money to spend to fight just the reforms the Obama administration and some in Congress say are necessary.

Say hello to the military/police/industrial complex.

And why have we entered a time of “shoot first” in our cities? It must be because our police feel that their lives are more in danger than ever. Sorry, that isn’t supported by the facts: The number of law enforcement officers killed as a result of criminal acts:

2004: 57
2009: 48
2012: 49
2013: 27

So, if there are 765k in local law enforcement that equates to a 2013 death rate from criminals of 3 per hundred thousand per year. Also, 2013 incidents are equal to the lowest level since 1887. Yet, nationwide, America’s police kill roughly one person a day:

The Economist, August 2014

And evidence exists that this number is dramatically understated. The FB page, Killed by Police says the number of deaths at the hands of police as reported to them since their launch in May 2013, is 1450. In 1994, Congress instructed the DOJ to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and “publish an annual summary”. They have yet to do that. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI.

Radley Balko in The WaPo concludes that militarization of police and their use of military-style force to suppress protests are bad mistakes. He quotes the Salt Lake City chief of police, Chris Burbank:

I just don’t like the riot gear…Some say not using it exposes my officers to a little bit more risk. That could be, but risk is part of the job. I’m just convinced that when we don riot gear, it says ‘throw rocks and bottles at us.’ It invites confrontation. Two-way communication and cooperation are what’s important. If one side overreacts, then it all falls apart.

We have bulked up America’s police. With DOD’s assistance, they developed units trained and equipped in military-style tactics. They demonstrate a consistent picture of organizations evolving from community-based law enforcement to security services whose primarily focus is maintaining public order. They see protests by minority or politically dissident elements as inherently illegitimate and potentially violent. The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.

Order, not justice is the new goal of our police, a significant shift in emphasis. As such, displays of overwhelming force are considered a logical way to prevent organized protests from happening. If demonstrations occur in spite of police presence, then massive use of force is a logical way to quell its impact and prevent its re-occurrence.

Many things demonstrate the evolution in America of police from “Protect and Serve” to a quasi-military force. This creates an emotional distance from the communities they patrol. We see this most clearly in their casual use of force, often disproportionate to the situation, and with a near-total lack of accountability.

That is an ugly symptom of our Republic’s weakness. The crushing of the Occupy Movement’s camps and the militarized response to the Ferguson protests are the natural outcome of our new policing.

When the country was founded, there were no organized police departments, and there wouldn’t be for about 50 years. Public order was maintained through private means, in worst cases by calling up the militia. The Founders were quite wary of standing armies and the threat they could pose to liberty, but they concluded (reluctantly) that the country needed an army for national defense.

They feared the idea of troops patrolling city streets — a justified fear colored by the antagonism between British troops and residents of Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

The Founders couldn’t have envisioned police as they exist today. It is probably safe to say they’d be appalled at the idea of police, dressed and armed like soldiers, breaking into private homes in the middle of the night, as happens on drug busts on most nights in America. Using militarized police to roust demonstrators would likely be appalling to them as well.

Let’s close with Radley Balko:

We got here by way of a number of political decisions and policies passed over 40 years. There was never a single law or policy that militarized our police departments — so there was never really a public debate over whether this was a good or bad thing.

It’s time to have that debate.

Who Gets the Dynamic Score?

No, it isn’t Kobe, it’s the corporations that backed the GOP in November. When Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, they won an important new power: They now can change how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores tax cuts and budget cuts. The changes they are planning can be used to make tax cuts appear less harmful to the deficit.

For years, the GOP has wanted to change the way that the (supposedly) nonpartisan CBO calculates — or, in Washington speak, “scores” — the budgetary impact of changes to the tax code. The methodology that the Republicans want to use is called “Dynamic Scoring”. Dynamic Scoring has been popular among conservatives since the 1970s. Instead of just figuring out how much more money a tax increase would produce for the Treasury, or how much a tax cut would cost in lost revenue, the GOP wants to use complex computer models to try to predict the long-term, and broader impact of hikes and cuts on the economy, since they are looking for proof of GDP and tax revenue growth.

Here’s how it would work. In January, Republicans will be in charge of the CBO, which produces official budget projections and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), which calculates how tax laws affect revenue.

Today, when the CBO and the JCT calculate the impact of tax laws on government income, they consider how Americans might alter their behavior in response to tax rate changes. But the two staff departments do not evaluate how tax legislation could affect economic growth—largely because those sorts of impacts are hard to predict.

Republicans have believed this as an article of faith since the days of St. Ronnie. Tax cuts lead to greater economic activity, which in turn produces greater tax revenues—a perpetual motion revenue machine that is the wet dream of most Republicans. Scott Walker used this kind of “math” in Wisconsin. The result? A $2.1 Billion budget shortfall. Oh, and there is Kansas, where another Republican governor, Sam Brownback, is staring at $1.3 billion in deficits after cutting taxes and hoping for economic growth.

Math can be much easier when the answer is whatever you want it to be. But, the new math is the first step toward passing the Republican version of tax reform.

A keystone of any successful tax reduction plan is that they ought to be revenue neutral, that is, tax receipts will not go down, despite tax cuts. Using this form of new Republican math, you can inflate the value of possible future revenues from today’s tax cuts. That can be sold to the American people as a new version of “revenue neutral” although it is really a new version of “take the nickel little boy, it’s bigger than the dime”. This is extremely appealing to Republicans, since it makes tax cuts appear to cost the government less than they actually do – it allows them to say that tax cuts mostly pay for themselves—and wave the JCT-CBO seal of approval to justify that claim.

Democratic leaders and progressive economists reject dynamic scoring as an accounting gimmick, pointing to the aftermath of the Bush tax cuts as evidence that tax breaks do not create tax revenue. The Washington Examiner reports that Kenneth Kies, a GOP-nominated former director of the JCT, says that this accounting device falls:

Somewhere between pure mathematics and theology.

The real dynamic score will be by America’s corporations and financial firms.

Think it won’t happen? Incoming Chair of the House Ways and Means committee (which has jurisdiction over tax reform), is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Last week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Ryan said he will push to make sure that the two congressional budget scorekeepers use dynamic scoring when evaluating GOP tax reform legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), incoming Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that he was open to implementing the change.

Ryan and Hatch can implement dynamic scoring by simply ordering the two budget scorekeepers to accept this budgeting method. If such direct intervention seems too heavy-handed, Republican legislators have another option: They can appoint directors at the CBO and JCT who will use the kind of assumptions the GOP favors. Democrats can do nothing to prevent that.

So, what will stop Congress from using politically motivated economic models that incorporate rosy assumptions? Absolutely nothing.

Behold the future − you voted in the Republicans.

In practice, Dynamic Scoring is just another way for Republicans to enact tax cuts and block tax increases. It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it’s about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.

Monday Wake Up – December 1, 2014

Today’s Wake Up is for entrenched power in America.

Inequality and political polarization has progressed to the point that the “The Hunger Games” trilogy is being taken seriously as literature with an important message for our time.

Its symbols are appearing in protests around the world and have made it into opinion columns:

Some protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, have adopted Katniss’s revolutionary slogan, “If we burn, you burn with us.” In Thailand, students flashing District 12’s three-fingered salute — a symbol of protest in the film — have recently been arrested. (The salute has apparently been outlawed since spring.) In a few short years, “The Hunger Games” and its symbology have become a part of the cultural commons.

America’s upper middle class thinks that inequality is an issue because it means low GDP growth, solely because people can’t buy enough consumer products to create good jobs. However, there could be an inflection point ahead when having more consumer goods ceases to be the goal of the middle class, or the people in poverty.

Look back at the French and Russian monarchies for a lesson about what that transition might look like, and how fast it can come about.

Today’s wake up music isn’t designed to get you dancing. It is the political anthem, “We Can’t Make It Here” by James McMurtry. McMurtry is the son of the novelist Larry McMurtry. The song won the 2005 Americana Music Award for song of the year. Music critic Robert Christgau has ranked “We Can’t Make It Here” as the best song of the 2000s. Bob Lefsetz said that “We Can’t Make It Here” has stood the test of time because of its unmitigated truth. Listen, while thinking that this was written in 2005, not this year:

Sample lyrics:
Will I work for food, will I die for oil,
Will kill for power and to us the spoils,
The billionaires get to pay less tax,
The working poor get to fall through the cracks

Monday’s Links:

Millennials are having to choose between affordable housing and jobs. It has always been true that there are fewer jobs where housing is affordable, but today, those two halves of the American Dream are living farther apart. Jobs with high wages are in unaffordable cities. The affordable homes cluster in the cities with lower wages and less upwardly mobile families.

Governor Christie (R-NJ) gives early sign that he is running for President. Christie vetoed a bill that would have banned crating pigs. New Jersey has few pig farms, but they are widespread in Iowa.

You can unknowingly lease a dog in San Diego CA. People who thought they purchased a dog using time payments actually leased the pet. After 27 months of payments, they could pay a $93.52 fee to end the lease, or $187.04 to purchase the pet. Why not just get a rescue animal? Read the paperwork, people! This is probably the next Wall Street securitization scheme.

Pope raises eyebrows by saying:

When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything — but that is not so…

His point was that Catholics should believe in evolution and the big bang theory. Next, Kansas and Texas will probably try to excommunicate him. Clearly, he’s been confused by those science-y people.

News from Russia:

Are the sanctions working? Russian firms that are under sanctions by the West must refinance $20 billion by April-sanctions are making that difficult.

There is a serious nuclear waste problem in the Arctic, brought to you by Russia. According to a joint Russian-Norwegian report issued in 2012, there are 17,000 containers of nuclear waste, 19 rusting Soviet nuclear ships and 14 nuclear reactors cut out of atomic vessels sitting on the bottom of the Kara Sea. The worst case scenario is described as “an Arctic underwater Chernobyl, played out in slow motion.” Oh, great, and I was worried about Crimea.

Water thievery is growing in California along with the drought. Thieves are cutting pipes and taking water from fire hydrants, storage tanks, creeks and rivers to get their hands on the precious commodity.

Thought for the week:

I always thought if you worked hard enough and tried hard enough, things would work out. I was wrong. –Katharine Graham (Owner of the Washington Post)

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 30, 2014

Thought for today: “We are what we repeatedly do.” Aristotle

And some things, we repeatedly do over and over. Take Ferguson, possibly becoming a new Selma. Or take our bad economy, or take Afghanistan.

This month, Americans got some news the media spun as good: The US unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since late 2007. The 5.8% unemployment rate has been seen as proof of economic recovery. But, the jobs created were mostly part-time work, often at low pay. Yes, these jobs provided employment, but did little to improve the overall economy.

As a result, an increasing number of Americans – 800,000 more than last year – have taken a second or third job, according to the BLS. This is Americans taking jobs they don’t really want, unable to pay their bills despite work, and relying on food banks and welfare to make up the difference.

And the problem is growing. In October, about 7 million Americans had part-time jobs but wanted to work full-time. Over 2.1 million Americans rely on two part-time jobs to see them through. Another 4 million have one full-time job and one part-time job, a number that increased by 444,000 since last year.

These workers earn minimum or near-minimum wage, bringing home less than $1,000 a month. In 2013, 468,000 retail workers earned minimum wage or lower. According to Pew Research Center, 1.4 million cashiers – the most common part-time job – earn less than $10.10 an hour. Part-time Walmart workers often bring home between $200 to $400 every two weeks. This is a weak contribution to our economy. These workers, despite being employed, end up relying on government assistance in the form of food stamps and housing subsidies. And when the food stamps run out, they turn to their communities and the local food banks. So, there were Black Friday demonstrations atWalmart stores all across America, and some cities had this response:

Part of your taxpayer dollars are paying Wal-Mart employees the money that the Walton’s refuse to pay them. This isn’t complicated. If you have a job at Wal-Mart and you still need Medicaid, food stamps and subsidized housing, then you aren’t just getting shafted by the Walton’s. You’re also being paid your missing wages by the federal government. Another piece of your tax dollars supported military-style protection at Walmart as a partial response to the Black Friday demonstrations.

As Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do. Americans aren’t deadbeats. The Walton’s are the deadbeats.

Black Friday means something radically different to the homeless:

New normal on Thanksgiving:

Life in the Billionaire’s bubble:

Who gets the benefit of the doubt?

No need to attack America:

Post-Thanksgiving Digestif

It is a tradition on Thanksgiving at the Mansion of Wrong to play “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie. It was on November 28, 1965 in Stockbridge, MA that Arlo was convicted of littering:

Sample lyric:

27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.

Here are your post-Thanksgiving links:

Buzzfeed asked Brits to fill in a map of the US. Here is good one:

Imagine trying to do that for the map of the UK.

Check out this Silicon Valley job title generator: The Wrongologist got ”Shareability Disruptor”

America can’t take any more bullshit: The Onion captures our current angst.

Milk is the new Coke: Why, yes, we are happy to pay twice as much for milk! If there’s one company you can trust to produce milk that is lower in sugar and higher in good things for you, it’s Coca-Cola.

It’s a doggy dog world:

Dog head-turning shows they do understand what you say. Naturally. How else could they play poker?

Dogs sloppy water bowl action is smart: Dogs extended more of their tongues to whack the water with a much wider surface area, then use their tongues to pull the water upward into a column at high speed, hitting an acceleration of roughly five to eight times that of gravity.

Court says that Michigan doesn’t need to provide quality public education: When education is not valued, society fails. Neither the people nor the country can thrive, much less survive without a good education.

Thought for Friday through Monday:

Some Americans who never trust their govt tend to be the ones who trust it completely whenever an unarmed black person is shot & killed.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) November 25, 2014

Reasons to be Thankful, Part II

The Wrongologist Blog passed 150,000 page views in the past year, up from 58k views a year ago. Many thanks to all of you who read, and especially to those of you who comment, or suggest that others check out the Wrongologist. The Wrongologist doesn’t publish this blog to make money, but because he wants people to make better decisions as part of our political process. We have an often stated antipathy for dissembling, mendacious politicians. We all know what is wrong in America, but we are paralyzed by ideology, and can’t (or won’t) do anything to solve our problems.

This blog hopes education and data will support arguments that help end our paralysis.

Hopefully more readers will leave comments. They help other readers understand the issues at hand. Anyway, 150,000 reads is a good time to take a moment and post thanks to those who follow the Wrongologist. If you enjoy the Wrongologist, please tell a friend about it.

I’d like to recognize Terry, Jimmy, Kevin, Monty, Fred and David for their continuing support of the blog, and thanks also to Ms. Oh So Right, its editor.

Here are some Thanksgiving cartoons to go along with the turkey.

Mr. Obama needs inspiration:

Some shop. Apparently, Black Friday was part of our early experience:

Some give thanks:

The love of thanksgiving dinner dies quickly:

The turkey wants to know about the future:

Monday Wake Up – November 24, 2014

Today’s wake-up is for the American people.

The NYT reported on Saturday that the Obama administration has changed the rules for American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. It means that our troops could have a more direct role in the fighting for at least another year. From the NYT:

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops, or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year…

The new orders clarify the rules of engagement before US forces engage in combat. They can go after terrorist organizations; they can protect themselves, and they can come to the assistance of Afghan forces in need. This last rule has the potential to bog us down, despite the fact that troop levels are coming down to about 10,000.

Then, on Sunday, came this from the NYT under the headline: “Hour’s Drive Outside Kabul, Taliban Reign”. From the article:

…southern Kapisa Province has quietly become one of the greatest challenges of the war for the new government…In the absence of international troops or their air support, the Taliban have eclipsed the legitimacy of government forces there and in several other parts of the country… the insurgents…already control a crucial stretch of a highway leading into Kabul, and some local officials believe the militants are trying to carve a large area of Taliban rule across the lower two-thirds of the province.

Apparently, our generals have been lobbying Mr. Obama for a more aggressive posture on the ground, which explains the new rules of engagement.

Why is it so hard for us to quit Afghanistan? It was super easy to decide to go in there, and we seem to be bent on playing in that sandbox forever. We have failed once again to leave well (bad) enough alone.

But it was not just the generals and politicians who failed, it was the American people. We were astonishingly easy to corrupt. We can point to any number of contributing factors for that, overly emotional after 9/11, improper education about the Middle East, out-of-control capitalism, rapid social change − you name it, we looked the other way rather than think about consequences. Now, we are where we are, and none of us as individuals are in a position to do much of anything about it. But as a nation and as a people, we didn’t rise to the occasion.

And when was the last time the American people and their politicians actually “rose to the occasion”? Watergate? At least then both parties seemed to understand that a response was needed to the “mistake”. The Church Commission hearings and legislation on the CIA’s abuses? The Savings and Loan clean-up of the late 80s?

Let’s just say it’s been a while. Maybe it’s time we did again.

The question is whether we have any better understanding of what we are doing today. We seem to just recycle the same failed ME strategy. And it seems to be dictated more by the Congressional politics than by some informed sense of how to deal with the multiple threats we have in front of us.

On that happy note, here is today’s wake-up tune, “Sorry I Stole Your Man” by The Detroit-based Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas. They were on Letterman last week doing the same song, but the Wrongologist prefers this live version performed at the Magic Bag in July, 2012:

Some think she sounds like Amy Winehouse, but not the Wrongologist. Like their sound, and you can get up and dance to it.

Monday’s Links:

Mistakes were made: California officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of fracking waste water into underground aquifers. They were supposed to be off-limits, protected by EPA, who calls them “non-exempt” aquifers. They are underground bodies of water that “contain high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.

Don’t say it can’t happen here: Last week, Germany’s left-leaning Green party won, ending six decades of conservative rule in one of Germany’s wealthiest states. The 30 year-old party that former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called “environmental idiots” have shaken up politics in their country.

Lower gas prices made gas stations more money: As gas stations cut the cost at the pump, they didn’t pass all of the savings along. The Labor Department reported that margins for fuel and lubricant retailers jumped by 26.1% in October, in a month when gasoline prices fell to an average of $3.12 a gallon from $3.46 in September.

Homeland Security is gathering in Ferguson MO: Facebook pictures of Homeland Security SUVs parked at a hotel cost a Navy veteran his job at the hotel.

Kill the robots: A vending machine that dispenses prescription drugs has been installed on Arizona State University’s campus, allowing any student or university employee to pick up their drugs from the dispenser.

RIP Mike Nichols. We remember you for films like: “The Graduate”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, “Silkwood”, “Catch-22”, and “Charlie Wilson’s War”.

Your thought for the week: (especially you Republicans)

“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.” – Ben Franklin

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 23, 2014

What to be thankful for this week? No Benghazi. Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee concluded the Benghazi affair by finding that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. So, there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

A few things that will come up this week: First, the Grand Jury in Ferguson will finally give us the slow “He didn’t kill Michael Brown” decision. Who knows what will happen then. Tory Russell, co-founder of resistance group Hands Up United, Ferguson, MO said:

How can I prepare kids for the world if I’m not preparing the world for the kids?

Next, we could have a decision on Iran’s nuclear program. If the P5+1 make a deal with Iran, it will transform the Middle East. Don’t hold your Thanksgiving dinner waiting for it to happen. Finally, the mud wrestling in Washington will continue.

Immigration has always involved executive orders:

Why are Republicans so upset about Immigration?

Here’s why: They now have a very safe majority in the House, and an unsafe, but possibly sustainable majority in the Senate. If they actually pass an immigration bill, they will be primaried from the right in many of their less-than-safe House districts. So, the posturing about Obama being a “king” and “shredding the Constitution”.

Calls for meeting in the middle are meaningless:

Keystone and Immigration may be intimately connected:

Manson family values meets Cosby family values:

Friday Music Break – November 21, 2014

This is the week in 1949 when Duane Allman was born. He died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident. He was best known as a founder of the Allman Brothers Band, but before he was an Allman Brother, Duane was a session musician at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals Alabama. While working there in 1968, he met Wilson Pickett and suggested that he cover “Hey Jude”, then starting up the charts for the Beatles. Pickett didn’t like the idea, neither did the owner of Fame, the great Rick Hall. But, Allman convinced both of them to record “Hey Jude“:

Many people cover the Beatles. The fact that so many can “take a sad song & make it better” only goes to show the songwriting ability of the lads from Liverpool. This brings us to “The Art of McCartney”, released this week, with a huge group of artists covering McCartney songs. Until a few days ago, you could stream the entire album, but now there are just a few official videos that are up on YouTube.

While covers can be great, they mostly disappoint the Wrongologist. Performers are often too self-conscious (or in less-than-great voice) to really deliver the goods on someone else’s great song. So, instead of more covers, let’s close with a live performance of McCartney and Bruce Springsteen in Hyde Park in London in 2012 doing “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout”.

This delivers the goods. It is about 9:40, so settle in:

See you on Sunday.

California Inmate Update – 3 pm EST

Further to today’s earlier post about California attempting to hold on to inmate firefighters who could otherwise be eligible for parole under a court order, BuzzFeed News reported: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[While] lawyers for California Attorney General Kamala Harris argued releasing non-violent inmates early would harm efforts to fight California wildfires, Harris told BuzzFeed News she first heard about this when she read it in the paper.

So, the inevitable question: What did she know, and when did she know it? BuzzFeed quotes Harris:

I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court…I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.

She’s reduced to arguing that she had no idea that her office went into court and argued that they could not comply with a court order to reduce the prison population because they needed the cheap labor to combat wildfires. Her argument defies believability. A legal department has a case list. It is reviewed with the higher-ups on a periodic basis. Her acknowledging that she knew nothing about it isn’t credible, we are talking about compliance with a Supreme Court decision. You would have to believe that her underlings didn’t let her know about, and weigh in on, what they were doing in a high profile case that had been ongoing since 2011.

What exactly does she pay attention to, if not issues like this? Who decided to appeal the order? It doesn’t speak very well of her management process if she didn’t know what was going on.

But, unless she fires those who she says hid the news, there is no reason to believe that she actually disapproves of the position the state took to hold on to as many as 4,400 inmate firefighters.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Author: wrongologist