Thoughts Before Tonight’s SOTU

Mr. Obama will make the State of the Union (SOTU) speech tonight. Much of what he is likely to outline as his program for 2015 has been leaked, and pundits have focused on the tax cut for the middle class and tax increases for the 1%. Given that the Republicans control both houses of Congress, this is never going to happen, so why now, and not in 2009 and 2010?

On Sunday, the Wrongologist wrote about Mr. Obama’s appalling coattails. Among the reasons his party lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats and 11 Governorships since 2010 is that Dems think they can win as “Republican Lite”. In the case of Democrats, they became the “less taste, less filling” brand.

It’s a lot easier to propose these tax policies when there is absolutely no prospect that these policies will ever be enacted. So, the real significance of these proposals will be how it sets up the eventual Democratic nominee for the contest against Bush 3.0, or Romney 3.0, or whoever winds up with the Republican nomination in 2016. But, will the electorate care that the president proposed something that the Republicans laughed out of town over the weekend? Probably not.

Political scientists point out that the 2016 congressional elections will be more favorable to the Democrats than the 2010 or 2014 elections were, because of the higher turnout in the presidential elections and the makeup of Senate seats that will be contested in 2016.

So, why won’t Democrats turn out for off-year elections? Think about it: Voters seem to be perfectly capable of finding their way to the polls in certain years and are motivated enough to take the time to do so. Yet, these same people consistently lose either their motivation or sense of direction, two years later. Democratic pros say that turnout is all about how to “message” better, which for Democrats means how to say the same old things in new ways. But, Democratic candidates, and their messaging have lost credibility, or are no longer relevant to the day-to-day issues of average people. So voting for Democrats is no longer a priority.

Nor is election turnout the only answer. In 2006, Democrats did extremely well with a 37.1% turnout. Yet, Democrats did poorly in 2010 when turnout was 37.8%. Turnout was higher in 2008 than it had been in any Presidential election year since 1968, probably due to the Obama factor. But, turnout in 2002 when Republicans did well, was only slightly off from 2006 when they did badly, at 37.0%.

Strategically, Republicans may not have much left in the potential electorate to motivate, if demographics are now really tilting towards Democrats. Thus, the R’s have no choice but to repress (or suppress) unenthusiastic and unmotivated Democratic voters.

The R’s got a huge assist in 2014 from Democratic candidates that didn’t stand for much, except the meta-message of “we suck less.” Even if a majority of the electorate sort of agrees with that, a certain portion also says, “Yeah, but not enough to care who wins.”

The issue is what strategies will work politically. The bind can be explained simply: to be successful, Democrats must convince the electorate that Washington can and should do things to improve their lives, but the Republicans have enough firepower to ensure that the D’s premise is a loser. With Hillary, Dems won’t beat them badly enough in 2016 to change that.

It’s clear that electing Democrats (usually) leads to better outcomes than electing Republicans. Change came in bunches: in 1933-1945, 1961-1973, 2009-2010. Think about it, in that 35 year period, Dems passed financial regulation, FDIC, SEC, Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights Act, Equal Opportunity, Voting Rights Act and Obamacare.

If you doubt this, look at the 50 states. Each has its own set of policies. In many cases, states have adhered to a generally consistent policy for decades. So the economic conditions in the states is a strong indicator of the effects those policies. To see whether the economy performs better in red states or blue states, simply look these 2014 statistics for red vs. blue states. The differences in that regard are stark:

Median HH income by state

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or, you can look at poverty by red vs. blue state:

Poverty by state

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or, per student education spending by state:

Education Spending by state

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This may suggest a strategy on the state and local levels, based on: “Why can’t we have the success the blue states have?”

On the federal level, Democrats have not received credit from voters for proposing popular policies that never came to pass. In fact, the entire success of the Republicans in the 2014 elections was predicated on the idea that the president would receive more blame for gridlock and dysfunction in Washington than they would for causing it.

They were correct. And there are zero reasons to believe that the same playbook won’t work again. You can already hear Republicans decrying the “Obama/Clinton failed policies” of the past 8 years.

See what YOU think after the SOTU tonight.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 18, 2014

With the media and the political parties now shifting their focus to 2016, once again, the Democrats need to remember how badly they have been shellacked under the Obama presidency. The WaPo reports that Republicans have gained more than 900 state legislature seats since 2010. Here is the sorry record:
Control of State Legislatures

Mr. Obama now holds the record for “worst coattails” by a modern president, eclipsing even Nixon. There are more than 7,000 state legislative seats in the USA, so the Democratic losses between 2010 and 2014 amount to 12% of all state legislative seats nationwide.

Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats, their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely, and have full control of state governments (legislatures and governorship) in 23 states.

Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. This isn’t just Obama’s fault, Democrats have focused almost exclusively on the winning the Electoral College since Mr. Clinton left office. Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy is long dead. This loss of state legislatures owes much to the spectacular failure of Democrat’s leadership. Democrats should throw out their entire leadership team and start over. Why would any candidate want to brand themselves with the organizations run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and whoever it was that said Democratic candidates should run content-free campaigns in 2014?

How bad is this? Remember that policy is made first at the state level. With Republicans in control of so many state governments, the policy track record for their side will be vastly superior to what Democrats can do at the state and local levels. Also, State legislatures and governors redraw congressional lines. In most states, how the nation’s 435 House districts will look after the 2020 Census will be determined by governors and state legislators. Republican legislators are more likely to draw lines that are friendly to their side. Unless Democrats can reverse their state House and Senate losses before the 2021 redraw, Republicans will control the House for a very, very long time. Finally, State legislatures are the minor leagues of politics. Most politicians − President Obama included − who go on to great things, hone their craft in the state legislature of their home state. The Republicans’ farm system is now significantly larger than that of Democrats.

So begins the Republican’s discussion about 2016:

COW The Campaign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mitt’s lessons learned in 2012:

COW Mitt Lessons Learned

GOP opens the 114th Congress with an anti-immigration statement:
COW GOP Immigration

Mr. Obama should have bought a clue:

COW Clueless

 

The GOP has an impossible task ahead in certain states:

COW El Capitan
Tomorrow is MLK Jr. Day. There have been gains and losses since his death, but some things are unchanged:

COW MLK 1

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Transformative Ideas, Part II – Reestablish Compulsory Military Service

This is Part II of a continuing series in 2015, bringing forward for your review, ideas that have the potential to transform and end the ossification of our country. Part I was about ending our love affair with the unregulated free market.

In Part II, we argue for re-establishing compulsory military service. In response to the anti-military opinion during the Vietnam War, Nixon replaced the compulsory military draft with an all-volunteer force in 1973. This facilitated our ability to make decisions about conducting wars without worrying about who fights them.

Registering for the draft (as differentiated from compulsory service) is still the law for young men in America. If you were born in 1996 or earlier, that means you’re potentially on the hook if America runs out of professional military during wartime.

There are two problems that compulsory military service will help to ameliorate. First, the permanent state of war that our politicians and defense contractors have fostered in the past 40 years. Charles F. Wald, retired Air Force general who oversaw the start of the air war in Afghanistan in 2001 told the WaPo in September:

We’re not going to see an end to this in our lifetime.

Second, a professional military has dangerously skewed the demographics of our professional military compared to our society at large.

We have a permanent state of war because the price we pay is opaque, or meaningless to most citizens, despite some estimates that Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan cost more than $4.4 Trillion, including future obligations for the disabilities of American soldiers. Reinstating the draft would compel the American public to have “skin in the game” for the wars we fight. James Fallows in a very important article for The Atlantic gives us some perspective relative to when we had the draft and what goes on today: (brackets and parenthesis by the Wrongologist)

At the end of World War II, nearly 10% of the entire US population was on active military duty—which meant most able-bodied men of a certain age (plus the small number of women allowed to serve).

[Today] the US military has about 1.4 million people on active duty and another 850,000 in the reserves.

(Out of a population of 310 million, or about three-quarters of 1%, served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years, many, many of them more than once)

Since 1970, the population of the US has grown by about 50%, from roughly 200 million to 300 million. Over the same period, the number of active-duty armed forces has fallen approximately 50%, from 3 million to 1.4 million. Fallows quotes Admiral Mike Mullen, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush and Barack Obama: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

My concern is this growing disconnect between the American people and our military…I would sacrifice some of [our military’s] …excellence and readiness to make sure that we stay close to the American people. Fewer and fewer people know anyone in the military. It’s become just too easy to go to war.

Moving to the demographic differences between the professional military and American society at large, Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general who is at the Duke Law Schools says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think there is a strong sense in the military that it is indeed a better society than the one it serves…In the generation coming up, we’ve got lieutenants and majors who had been the warrior-kings in their little outposts…They were literally making life-or-death decisions. You can’t take that generation and say, ‘You can be seen and not heard.’

Dunlap told James Fallows: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[The military is] becoming increasingly tribal…in the sense that more and more people in the military are coming from smaller and smaller groups. It’s become a family tradition, in a way that’s at odds with how we want to think a democracy spreads the burden.

Making Dunlap’s point, Danielle Allen, of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Military Service wrote about the political implications of a professional military in the WaPo:

By the end of the draft in 1973, military service was distributed pretty evenly across regions. But that is no longer true.

Tellingly, changes to the map of military service since 1973 align closely with today’s red and blue states. Montana, Alaska, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Texas now send the largest number of people per capita to the military. The states with the lowest contribution rates? Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. What’s clear from the data is that a major national institution, the US military, now has tighter connections to some regions of the country than to others. The uneven pattern of military service is not an insignificant reflection of the cultural differences that characterize different regions of this diverse country. This has broad ramifications for our future.

Heidi A. Urben, a Lieutenant Colonel, studied the attitudes of the officer corps, and found that about 60% said they identify with the Republican Party, and that 70% had not changed their party affiliation, despite two long wars.

The Pentagon reports that bringing back conscription would be costly at a time when the US Army is drawing down its forces. It might cost billions to reinstate the draft, while maintaining the present quality of armed forces. But it may be the only way to wake up a detached and nonvoting public that has depersonalized military service. The additional cost of managing a draft and training all Americans for some kind of government service would pay dividends:

• A draft would ensure that government decision-making regarding military involvement would be undertaken only after the fullest debate — a debate today that seems to not be part of the national consciousness and hardly registers any interest by the public.
• A draft would narrow the gap between people in power in Washington and the men and women at peril in fighting our nation’s battles.
• A draft could re-balance the skewed demographics of the military.

A draft could mean that voting on Election Day would be more important in our now-fragile democracy. It could mean that going to war is worth having every citizen sacrifice, or it isn’t worth any soldier’s life.

 

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Democrats Have Lost America

Members of Congress will formally take their oaths of office on their respective chamber floors when the 114th Congress convenes at noon today.

But even as the new Congress gets sworn in, and Democrats dutifully take up their positions in the minority, It is important to realize that Democrats have taken their collective eye off the ball in the states for the past 6 years: Not only do Republicans control Congress, they control an overwhelming majority of state legislatures as well, including 100% control (legislative and executive) of 24 states.

Despite the Democrats’ obsessive focus on holding the Senate and winning the presidency, DC was not the only battlefield; there was a huge battle for control of the states. The WaPo reported this week that the battle is over. Republicans now control 31 governorships and 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers.

Before Election Day 2014, the GOP controlled 59 partisan legislative chambers (most states have two chambers, some only one) across the country. The increase to 68 gives Republicans six more chambers than their previous record, set twice after special elections in 2011 and 2012.

Republicans also reduced the number of states where Democrats control both the governor’s office and the legislatures from 13 to 7.

While pundits everywhere are talking about what is going to happen in Washington in 2015, we should spend a little time preparing for a new wave of conservative state laws. Republicans plan to launch fresh assault on:

• Common Core education standards, the national standards adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. Opposition on the right has led three states — Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — to drop out of the program. Some states will attempt to join those three in leaving the program altogether. Others will try to change testing requirements or prevent the sharing of education data with federal officials.
• Abortion regulations: Measures to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy will advance in Wisconsin, South Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri.
• Corporate and personal income taxes: Arkansas, Arizona, North Carolina, and North Dakota will prioritize cutting personal or corporate income tax rates.
• The power of labor unions: Republicans in nine states are planning to use their power to pass “right to work” legislation, which would allow employees to opt out of joining a labor union. 24 states already have such laws on the books, and new measures have been or will be proposed in Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, Kentucky, Montana, Pennsylvania and Missouri.
• Environmental Protection Agency: A dozen states have challenged proposed EPA regulations on power plants in federal court.
• Challenges to State Pension Programs: Many states will try to deal with underfunded pension plans, which threaten to swamp state budgets over the long term. In Illinois, where the state pension is funded at less than 40%, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner (R) made pension reform a cornerstone of his 2014 campaign, while fights are brewing in Kentucky and in New Jersey.

All of the above is partly the result of a sustained campaign by Republicans to reduce voting. It is also partly the result of Democrats deciding that Congressional and state political campaigns can be won even without addressing the real issues or the real record of the two parties.

Democrats are facing a long, brutal slog in the states and in the Congress. Mr. Obama gets elected twice, and by a greater margin the second time, yet his party loses control of almost everything else, now politically controlling just 7 states.

What does this say about 2016? Will Hillary have enough coattails to move some legislatures or Senate seats, or will she be the second coming (politically) of Mr. Obama?

Finally, the next time some moron tells you that both parties are the same, remind that person what is about to happen in the states, specifically, the undoing of the social contract that is about to take place. The next time somebody tells you one vote doesn’t count, tell them it doesn’t count unless you cast one.

Maybe Democrats need to get off their duffs and do something about this.

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Friday Music Break – December 12, 2014

Today is the birthday of both of the Wrongologist’s parents, born on the same day in different years. Dad was 2 years younger than Mom, they were married for more than 50 years, and both died at 85. They were born during WWI, were teenagers during the depression, and thus missed out on the education that today, we think of as necessary to get ahead.

They lived through WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and through the greatest expansion of the middle class in our country’s history. They went from horse-drawn vehicles on the streets of Brooklyn to owning cars and consumer electronics. They were Republicans who voted for Dewey and saw Nixon resign.

Their world view was that hard work brought continuous economic improvement. They didn’t feel tied to one job − there was another one out there that paid better, that held greater responsibility, which would pay off your house, send your kids to college and provide for your retirement. They were the last of the majority stay-at-home mom generation. Dad never made more than $40k per year, but they saved enough to buy a waterfront home in Florida, and to live there until just before the time when their money ran out.

Fast forward to 2014, and people have little reason to be so optimistic. On Thursday, the NYT released a poll that found that only 64% said they still believed in the American dream, the lowest result in 20 years. The American Dream for depression-era adults was not about becoming rich, it was about being able to move upwards, to reach a greater level of prosperity, something that, from the 1950s through the 1970s, everyone believed was possible.

Now, that optimistic vision is dying for Americans like my mom and dad, and Washington doesn’t care.

Onward to music. Today we feature Tom Waits, 2011 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Those who have heard Waits’s work know that he’ll never have to cancel a concert due to laryngitis. We start with a tune that shows how Americans were fools for the advertising of the 1970s. That’s probably an eternal condition in America, one that reflects the continuing (and wildly successful) effort on the part of corporations to sell us shit we don’t really need. Here is “Step Right Up”:

The key lyric is a thought for the ages:
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away”

We close with “Jersey Girl”. Most people think that this song is by Bruce Springsteen, but it was written by Waits. He wrote it with is soon-to-be wife, Kathleen Brennan. This is a long video for a short tune. You can go to 3:51 where Waits says “this is for Kathleen” and just hear his version of the song, or you can listen from the beginning to his extended shtick with the audience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAu-jdXd_c

See you Sunday.

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Is Our System More Like Huxley, or Orwell?

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Judge Learned Hand

Yesterday was Human Rights Day. Maybe, with all that has happened to our human rights in post-9/11 America, it is a good time to look very carefully at the current spate of bad outcomes for people who draw attention from our police. One question is, who still believes in our system? Below is one answer that points to where we are:

Trust the police Here is the poll question that produced the above response:

How much confidence do you have in police officers in your community to not use excessive force on suspects: A great deal, a fair amount, just some, or very little confidence?

Note that “no confidence” was not an option for your answer. One way to look at the poll is that it shows that our system is working exactly as it is intended to work. From Ian Welsh: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If a police officer tells you to do anything, you do it immediately. If you do not, anything that happens to you, up to and including death, is your problem. The legal system exists today to ensure compliance.

And if you fail to do what is asked, the police will say, “He/she was non-compliant.” That is a way that this part of the American system performs as designed. It rewards compliance, it identifies those who will not obey laws, or who will fight or organize against the system, and then it works to push them down.

In our system, the wolves and the sheep self-identify, they know which group they belong to. If an injustice is committed, if people protest, the most aggressive protestors, even if not violent, are arrested. Our oligarchy is built on the idea that we must keep people from effectively resisting. More from Ian Welsh:

Any part of the population which is inclined to resist, must be taught that it cannot resist. Get out millions to demonstrate against the Iraq war: it will not work. Protest against police killings of African Americans, it will not work.

Occupy Wall Street? That didn’t work either. The system operates in two ways to repress and control people. America’s system has been 80% Huxley and 20% Orwell for decades, but now, the ratios are approaching 50/50. Let’s unpack the Orwell vs. Huxley worldviews: (h/t highexistence.com)
huxley_orwell1

 • Orwell feared the government would ban books.
• Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban books, because no one would want to read them.
• Orwell feared the government would deprive us of information.
• Huxley feared they would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be invisible in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.
So, we became the trivial culture that Huxley feared. Now, the powers that be are tilting to Orwell to nudge us toward a captive culture.

Huxley’s vision of how human nature or human aspirations could be manipulated for the purposes of the controlling elite rings true in the US. But, Orwell’s depiction of the controlling/interlocking elites of allegedly opposed factions (R’s vs. D’s, government vs. private sector, Wall Street vs. Main Street) is truer than ever before.

So, both are right. Orwell’s fear is already a reality in the East (North Korea, China, Iran) and Huxley’s fear is reality in the West (US, Scandinavia, UK).

Look at how easily the citizenry acquiesced to militarized police in Boston a couple of years ago. Tanks rolled down the streets and officers dressed like they were in Afghanistan demanded that people go inside their houses, for their “safety”. This “army” then searched for the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. This took place over a huge area—whole towns. Was this just the police testing their new toys? Or was it also something darker… like a test of how far the government can go with the Security State? It didn’t hurt that the people got to say they were “Boston Strong” and got the rest of the country to buy in to that.

Power and information are continua. The Orwellian vision tends towards power, while the Huxleyian view tends toward information. However, they are neither separate, nor divisible. Human history has always used deceit as a tool, backed by power, while the biggest bullies have tried to control things since prehistory.

Both manifest legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, wherein the government becomes the largest organized crime syndicate, controlled by the best organized criminals. Welcome to America.

These “crime syndicates” are destroying the foundations of our society, creating the twin near-religions of the State and the Corporation.

The system will not change until the people who want change have enough power to force change. But first, they have to open their eyes to what is happening: Ordinary citizens cannot change the system if the elites don’t agree with the changes the plebes want to make. If they try, they will be arrested or killed at the scene. This must change first.

After that, we can begin working to restore the fundamental systemic change that we brought about during the times of FDR through LBJ.

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 7, 2014

Still thinking about the string of police cases, their very similar nature and outcomes. It isn’t a secret that America has a broad, diverse population and a terrible past trying to deal with our diversity.

Our past isn’t going away. Our diverse population isn’t going away either. It’s who we are. We occasionally celebrate it, boasting that we are a melting pot. But, we might be more accurately described as a smorgasbord, not a one pot dinner. That means you can avoid the pickled herring if you don’t like it.

But it’s always rude to ridicule people who like pickled herring. And many of us have moved way beyond rude to outright hostile, and the whole buffet table could be pulled down right in front of our eyes.

The food fight is already in progress, except it has real casualties. We are many kinds of American, and this is our home. Can we find a way to keep it?

It is all about your perspective:

COW About Race

 

More perspective:

COW Tom Tomorrow

Other perspectives:

COW Body Cams

 

Media explains how to spin the unspinable:

COW Trigger Happy Cops

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some kids’ Xmas lists are out of reach:

COW Xmas list

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Friday Music Break – December 5, 2014

Thinking today about the fact that the New York grand jury did not indict NYPD’s Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July 17 chokehold death of Eric Garner, who died gasping “I can’t breathe” while in the custody of police outside a Staten Island convenience store. Here, from the indispensable MuckRock, is a screen shot from NYPD’s use of force policy:

COW NYPD Policy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can read the entire policy at MuckRock.

So today’s question is: Are we having the oft-promised national conversation? Is there a fundamental contempt for the law among the people empowered to enforce it? And have we gone beyond just needing a discussion? We already have policies which should have prevented what happened to Amadou Diallo from happening to Michael Brown or to Eric Garner.

Police officers kill too many black people, and then too often, face little or no accountability, particularly when there’s no video to show America what went down.

To help you meditate over the weekend, here is Randy Newman’s “Jolly Coppers on Parade”. His music is a counterpoint to the images. Call it irony, call it disrespect by demonstrators or by the police, call it whatever you need. Obviously not all cops are like the ones we’re seeing in this video, but we all know they are out there:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke Wednesday onto the media about the matter, talking about his 16 year old biracial son Dante: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

This is profoundly personal to me…I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he [the president] said, ‘I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens.’ And I said to him, I did.

De Blasio went on to note that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is black, “have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face.” More from de Blasio:

Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.

This has been going on for centuries, folks. Throwing both hands up in the air signals either “Don’t shoot” or simply despair for changing the way things are.
It’s impossible to tell the difference anymore.

See you on Sunday.

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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:
Deaths from Police Shootings

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.

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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)

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