Domestic Policy – Page 59 – The Wrongologist

Friday Music Break – September 5, 2014

Labor Day is in the rear view mirror. November, and control of the Senate, should be our focus, not ISIS and Ukraine. In fact, the more we focus on foreign affairs, it is less likely it is that we will discuss domestic issues, and the more likely it is that voter turnout will be low in November.

So, let’s think a bit about food insecurity (and music). Economic times are tough for a great swath of our citizens. From the Wall Street Journal:

On Wednesday the Agriculture Department released the results of its annual Household Food Security in the United States survey for 2013. According to the USDA survey, 14.3% of U.S. households—some 49 million Americans—were “food insecure at least some time during the year in 2013.” The decrease from 14.5% of households in 2012 was “not statistically significant.”

This has been a familiar story for a long time in America. Today, we will listen to only one song, done three ways. The song is “Hard Times Come Again No More”. It was written in 1854 by Stephen C. Foster, America’s pioneer songwriter. Foster was born July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of US Independence. That is the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. There was a short, sharp recession in 1854 that saw an 18% drop in economic activity. As in all recessions and depressions, the poor got hit the hardest. Here are some of Foster’s lyrics from 160 years ago:

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times come again no more.
Chorus:
Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Even though it sounds as if it could have been written recently, this is a traditional piece of American music. Food insecurity has been around for a long, long time.

Here are James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma performing the song. It is from the CD “Appalachian Journey“. James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma are joined by Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor:

James Taylor and company do a lovely job. The sad part is that it demonstrates that not much has changed in the past century and a half: the poor still suffer in this land of plenty.

Next, Mavis Staples recorded the song in 2004 as part of the CD “Beautiful Dreamer – The Songs of Stephen Foster“:

Finally, a rousing version from Tommy Fleming, who has been called the “Voice of Ireland” and is one of Ireland’s top entertainers. This song is from the “Voice Of Hope” DVD Recorded at Knock Basilica, in County Mayo:

Steven Foster’s prayer, “Hard Times Come Again No More” has not been answered in 160 years.

We Have to do Something!

Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS: We have to do something! What’s the plan, Obama? In fact most Americans have heard that Mr. Obama said “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with ISIS.

WTF? In fact, Obama was speaking solely about ISIS in Syria. A reporter asked last Thursday:

Do you need Congress’s approval to go into Syria?

Obama replied:

We don’t have a strategy yet…We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress

This has led to the “We have to do something” chorus. Consider Fox Anchor Heather Childers:

https://twitter.com/HeatherChilders/status/506918798298198018

Ever hear of the “Politician’s Syllogism”? It is a logical fallacy that takes this form:
1. We have to do something
2. This is something
3. Therefore, we have to do this.

Sound familiar? We see and hear it every Sunday morning on “Bloviating with The Old Pundits”, also known as the network week in review shows. Here is what this can lead to: The Hill reports that House and the Senate are considering action to “do something”:

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement Wednesday he will introduce legislation when Congress reconvenes next week that would authorize the use of military force against ISIS and other terror groups around the world, including al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram

House Speaker Boehner said in an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that the president will need congressional authority if he wants to strike at ISIS in its Syrian strongholds:

…If he’s going after ISIS…I think he would have to provide a War Powers notification to the Congress…And then it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt with the issue or not

Are you feeling better? We saw the pitfalls of “We must do something” following 9/11. Initial reactions to the attacks on America were shock and confusion. Traditional ideological divides were blurred, but then the Right trotted out a line that resonated with all Americans and caused the antiwar left to dissolve: We have to do something!

In US political speak, the one thing we have to do “something” about always refers to a foreign policy concern. Politicans don’t feel that we “have to do something” about domestic problems. Poverty? No need to act. Corrupt bankers? Inaction is fine.

In foreign policy, when a crisis flares up overseas, and especially if it involves possible opponents that the War Hawks, the defense industry and the media can categorize as bad guys, “we have to do something” means military action.

But, there are always supplements to military action. Half-measures can come in both military (money and weapons, but no boots on the ground), quasi-military (military and political advisers) and geo-political or diplomatic forms (coalitions, sanctions or embargoes). We can employ some, or all of those options. Or, after careful consideration of our short and long term interests, we can do nothing.

Any and all of that is called “strategy”.

And that’s the problem. We need to do something effective that has long and short term benefits, and that doesn’t bankrupt the nation. We can drop some more bombs and send more advisers. To have a useful strategy, we have to come to grips with these facts:
• We’re going to have to give Assad a pass for killing his countrymen and doing mean things with chemical weapons, because we have to work together on eliminating ISIS
• We may need to ally with Iran, a non-democratic and anti-Sunni regime that most Americans think of as an enemy
• We may need to confront our allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who have, at best, been “soft” on ISIS
• We have to accept that we now bomb our own weapons that have been seized by ISIS. Are we OK with more of that down the road, if that is the outcome of arming the “moderates” in Iraq and Syria?

With two beheadings, American opinion is being whipped up by certain politicians and the media to get us to strike back, hard. Fine, but let’s spend a few seconds thinking about WHY ISIS is whacking the hornets’ nest that is America. We are told that it is to get America to stop the bombing in Iraq.

Could it be just the opposite, that it is their invitation to join in yet another Middle East quagmire?

Could it be that they want a chance to defeat the “sole superpower” on their way to creating their caliphate? The logic of this form of asymmetric terror is pretty straightforward. But our “tough on defense” politicians fall for it every time. They take another bite of the “counter-insurgency” apple.

It may just be that their strategy (emulating Osama bin Laden), is to:

…in any way possible, enmesh the US and NATO in unwinnable wars, and then watch as the imperial powers disintegrate

ISIS and Al Qaeda are playing a long game. By doing flashy terrorist actions they empower the War Hawks and American conservatives. War Hawks and conservatives thereafter use their rejuvenated mandate to insist on crude and violent actions in the Middle East. They push reluctant centrists and liberals to do the same.

America then completely messes up the campaign, and further weakens its economy and social contract.

Perhaps we should let ISIS terrify Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf States to the point where they will all work together to destroy ISIS and its sources of funding instead of begging us to waste American lives and money there.

That is a strategy that is not exactly a do-nothing strategy, but you can already hear the War Hawk chorus, telling America to expect beheadings on Main Street next week.

The Circle of Graft

Trenton, New Jersey is the political home of Republican Governor Chris Christie. The rest of America sees Mr. Christie as a tough-talking know-it-all, a moderate Republican who could be a real threat to win the presidency in 2016.

David Sirota in the International Business Times reports that Christie is sending state pension money to his buddies on Wall Street. The idea was to improve pension plan investment returns. From Sirota:

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration openly acknowledged that more New Jersey taxpayer dollars were going to land in the coffers of major financial institutions. It was 2010, and Christie had just installed a longtime private equity executive, Robert Grady, to manage the state’s pension money. Grady promoted a plan to put more of those funds into riskier investments managed by Wall Street firms. Though this would entail higher fees, Grady said the strategy would “maximize returns while appropriately managing risk”.

Some of the higher risk investments were in hedge funds. Ten years ago, public pension funds stayed away from hedge funds. Possibly hedge funds seemed too risky, or opaque, or exotic. After all, public pension funds invest money so they can afford to keep sending checks to retired schoolteachers, police officers and firefighters. Christie and Robert Grady went ahead.

Now, four years later, New Jersey has achieved about half of their promised results:

With the exception of the 2012 fiscal year, annual public pension return rates in New Jersey are significantly lower than the national median. Those differences add up when you are investing a pool of $80 billion. However, the fees NJ paid to its financial managers have more than tripled since Christie assumed office:

Mr. Christie took office in 2010. In all, New Jersey’s pension system has spent $939.8 million on financial fees between fiscal year 2010 and 2013. That’s just slightly less than the amount Christie cut from state education funding in 2010.

Half the results at triple the cost! Madison Avenue is so NOT stealing that claim.

The news gets worse: NJ’s pension fund is $47.2 billion short of what it needs to fulfill its promised benefits to retirees. The gap had narrowed to $36.3 billion in 2010 after Christie signed bills that boosted contributions from employees, raised the minimum retirement age for new workers and froze cost-of- living adjustments for retirees.

But, the gap grew again after Christie skipped a $3 billion pension payment in fiscal 2011. Christie also decided in May to skip this year’s $3.1 billion payment, again, in order to balance the state budget. As justification for the move, he argued that retirement benefits for NJ police officers, firefighters and teachers are unaffordable and therefore must be reduced.

Even more bad news: Many of the Wall Street firms NJ now pays management fees have been donors to Republican groups backing Christie’s election campaigns. Employees of those firms have also donated more than $11 million to the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. Now, not all of that money goes to support Mr. Christie, but the New York Times reports that both organizations spent big in support of his 2013 reelection campaign: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

A third of the $1.65 million the [National Governors] association raised in New Jersey [in 2013 by Christie] came from people and businesses who had significant contracts with the state, or from utilities, which are prohibited from making any contributions to candidates for governor.

As the IBTimes also reported, at the time many of these campaign contributions were made, Robert Grady was moving about 1/3 of New Jersey’s portfolio to some of the donor firms. Grady is a former managing director of the Carlyle Group, and Carlyle and a subsidiary have received $450 million in New Jersey pension investments since Christie took office.

NJ has a history of pension pratfalls. In 1997, Republican Gov. Christine Whitman issued $3 billion of state bonds and used the proceeds to make a leveraged stock market bet that failed when the Internet bubble popped. Ms. Whitman went on to withhold payments of $ billions to the public employee pension funds over the next few years, using the bulk of that money to balance the state budget.

Wait! There’s more: From 2006-2009, NJ also failed under Democrats: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Orin Kramer [was]…Chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council, which is tasked with oversight of the state’s public pension system. In 2006 he successfully pushed to shift a huge chunk of the state’s $72 billion pension fund to private money managers rather than [have them managed by] state employees.

Kramer was also the architect of the decision to invest $400 million in Citigroup and $300 million in Merrill Lynch as those firm tried to survive the sub-prime market crisis in 2008. Later in 2008, Kramer “invested” union pension money into Lehman Brothers shortly before the firm’s collapse.

That move lost $115 million.

Although “public officials” decide where to place pension funds, increasingly with hedge funds, the pension monies belong to state employees.

How ironic that these same public officials blame the employees for the failure of the pension funds to have sufficient funds to meet their obligations.

Why not blame the “public officials”?

Circle of Graft, indeed!

Why We Are Driving Less

The Driving Boom, a six decade-long period of increases in per-capita miles driven in the US appears to be over. There are still millions driving, which means there are millions taking part in the Geico vs Progressive battle for the best insurance prices, but the number of drivers is not rising like it used to. From the Frontier Group:

Americans drive fewer total miles today than we did nine years ago, and fewer per person than we did at the end of Bill Clinton’s first term. The unique combination of conditions that fueled the Driving Boom — from cheap gas prices to the rapid expansion of the workforce during the Baby Boom generation — no longer exists.

If you drive a truck then you may want to purchase an ELD Device online to make driving more safe, one of the electronic logs is a great investment.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) reported in July on data from May, 2014, showing that travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.9% (2.4 billion vehicle miles) for May 2014 as compared with May 2013.

Here is an annotated graph of the FHA data from DShort:

The only other time in history that we’ve seen a similarly long time between the peak and trough was following the 1982 recession, when it took 39 months for total vehicle miles traveled to recover to its previous peak. It’s now been more than twice that long since the all-time high in vehicle miles driven, and unlike the 1980s, we don’t have a gas-tax hike to blame for it.

The research firm Behind the Numbers argues that we’re entering a new era in which Americans simply prefer to drive less. They report that it is unlikely that miles driven will eventually return to its prior trend. Among the reasons they say a sharp reversal is unlikely:

• Boomers are getting older and driving less.
• Millennials are less interested in driving, and are now the largest generation in the US.
• The trend toward living near the urban core reduces the need for driving.
• Higher gas prices discourage driving.
• Mass transportation is winning over more consumers.

As a result, Behind the Numbers thinks that tire and auto companies won’t do well in the future, since their sales are directly related to American driving. While it’s true that Baby Boomers are aging and will continue to drive less throughout their lives, the rest of their argument warrants rebuttal.

Let’s look at the relationship of miles driven to the Labor Force Participation Rate. The participation rate is the number of people over the age of 16, who are either employed or are actively looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been tracking this since 1948. Here is the relationship:

Note that the left axis is the Labor Force Participation rate expressed as a % of our total population, while the Vehicle Miles Traveled is measured on the right axis, expressed in billions of miles. It is clear that once the Great Recession started, and a smaller percentage of the population had a job or were looking for work, the miles driven stopped growing and began to decline. Conversely, when the participation rate was growing briskly, America’s miles driven grew dramatically.

The long-term growth in the employment participation rate has been discussed by many, including the Wrongologist:

During the 1970s and 1980s, the labor force grew vigorously as women’s labor force participation rates surged and the baby-boom generation entered the labor market…The labor force participation rate hit an all-time peak in early 2000 of 67.3%…And labor force participation has since dropped to 63%.

So, when the number of people working declined starting in 2007, miles driven declined. THAT may explain what is happening more clearly than “Millennials don’t like cars”, or “Mass transportation is more popular” or “Online shopping equals fewer trips”, although those may also be contributing factors. For those that are still driving on the roads, it’s worth investing in a dash cam from somewhere like BlackBoxMyCar so if an accident were to ever happen, you would have video footage to protect yourself.

Fewer miles driven means lower revenues from gas taxes. Less revenue from gas taxes means less to spend on road and bridge repair. Less spending on roads and bridges leads us toward becoming a second-world economy.

This is just one of the truly poor outcomes caused by our inability to deal constructively with the economic fallout of the Great Recession.

What can we do to reverse our national losing streak?

We do not have what it takes to leave the dysfunction of our politics behind. We have a self-reinforcing system based on our politicians scuffling for money from corporations and therefore, performing as trained monkeys for their lobbyists.

You must get out and vote. You must work to drive turnout in November. We, the people, have to get back in the game, or our losing streak will continue.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 24, 2014

Here at Casa Wrong, we see the end of summer coming. It’s a sad time most years, but not now. Today, August HAS TO DIE! Here’s why:

• Foley was beheaded
• Instead of “back to school”, this August it is “back to Iraq”
• Russia invades Ukraine, says it’s for humanitarian reasons
• The Ebola epidemic continues to grow
• The reason why a teen in Ferguson is dead remains unresolved
• Hamas and Israel seem willing to fight to the death
• We still don’t know who shot down the MH17 over Ukraine
• Mitch McConnell says he’s willing to shut down the government again

August brought home that every pillar that has supported international order is tottering, if not yet collapsing. That means the UN, NATO and a strong, unified America. The “what’s wrong” list could be much longer, but what would be the point? August must die. On to humor.

ISIS or IS or ISIL, it’s a cancer:

James Foley is the most recent in a long line:

And in Ferguson news, don’t shoot is everyone’s mantra:

In domestic ~~warfare~~ policing, mindset should be first, not last:

Mayor Daley, 1968: “The police are here to preserve disorder”:

Don’t you feel safer knowing she’s off the streets?

https://twitter.com/stevenjhsieh/status/501492139197759488

You can read about this 90 year old Ferguson demonstrator here

Friday Music Break – August 22, 2014

Continuing our national meditation on Ferguson, MO, Here are three songs about guns and state power:

First, “Guns of Brixton”, written by The Clash bassist Paul Simonon. The song pre-dates the riots that took place in 1981 and again in 1985 in Brixton, but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent that were building due to the heavy-handedness of the police, and the recession at that time in England.

You can see The Clash perform this song all over the web. Here is the great Jimmy Cliff doing his take on their reggae-inflected song. Few remember that thirty years ago, the Clash were booed off the stage at Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica.

The line we like:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
or on the trigger of your gun?

Next, here is Green Day doing “21 Guns”, an anti-gun, anti-war anthem from their eighth album, 21st Century Breakdown. The line we like is up first:

Do you know what’s worth fighting for?
When it’s not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away and you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?

Finally, “Ohio” from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was released as a single in June of 1970, about a month after the May 4, 1970 shooting by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 and wounded 9 students. In thirteen seconds, the guardsmen fired 67 rounds. If it hadn’t only been 3 years after the Newark NJ riot where the Guard killed 26, and if the Guard hadn’t killed white students at Kent State, we might not remember it today. Indeed, few remember that eleven days later, 2 more students were killed under similar circumstances at what was then Jackson State College in Jackson, MS, a historically black school.

Eight of the Ohio guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense. In 1974, the Judge dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution’s case was too weak to warrant a trial. But we still remember: “4 dead in Ohio”.

Ferguson, Week Two

What we know: Two weeks ago, a police officer shot a man for jaywalking.

But, without any additional official information, we’ve learned a lot from Ferguson:

• The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.
• Police shoot African-American men with impunity.
• Most police forces in America have been militarized by the federal government.
• Militarized tactics and behavior by police has become accepted and normalized by local and state politicians, particularly since the Boston Marathon Bomber Manhunt.
• We’re way past “free-speech zones” now. Remember them? The Occupy Movement taught us that if you’re protesting, (peacefully or not) the police now bust you up without consequence.
• Reporters and journalists can and will be arbitrarily detained and/or tossed in jail. This began during the BP oil spill, increased with Occupy New York, and now is blatant in Ferguson. The police will shoot journalists with bean-bags and rubber bullets even if the journalists have complied with police demands.
• The airspace above an area where a dispute takes place can be completely closed to the media, even if there is no risk.

What you smell is the Constitution burning. All of the above should cause us to examine what is going on with police-involved killings in the US. Addicting Info reports:

According to data compiled by the FBI, in a seven year period ending in 2012 an average of nearly two black people were killed by police every week. Even more troublesome: Almost 20% of those killed were under the age of 21, more than double the rate of whites of the same age group. If you are black, being young doesn’t seem to protect you.

Deadspin reports that the US has no comprehensive database of police shootings. And there is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons, and why. There is no central infrastructure for compiling that information and making it public. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police.

USA TODAY quotes University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert:

I’ve looked at records in hundreds of departments…and it is very rare that you find someone saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.’ In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.

The Wrongologist reported that in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household. This means Ferguson is very reliant on revenue sourced from policing: From the Ferguson 2014 budget, here is a breakdown of The City of Ferguson’s revenues: in 2013, revenues from sales taxes were $5.8 million, while revenues from fines and public safety were $2.6 million (18% of total). In 2014, fines are expected to increase by $100k:

The increase in Fines and Public Safety revenues comes from both manned and un-manned traffic enforcement. Due to a more concentrated focus on traffic enforcement, municipal court revenues have risen about 44% or $623,000 from those in FY 2010-2011. Total court revenues are expected to reach $2,029,000 in FY 2013-2014. In the fall of 2011, the City implemented camera enforcement in three high traffic accident incidence intersections. Fines resulting from this implementation represent a portion of the increased revenues over the period, however, it should be noted that additional manned traffic enforcement also contributed to the increase.

We also learned from Ferguson that police officer safety is the number one issue on our streets today, even though officer fatalities are down. The Economist reports that in 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. And the primary cause for officer fatalities this year was traffic-related incidents, which claimed 46 lives. Firearms-related incidents are at the lowest level since 1887, when 27 officers were shot to death.

Sadly, the number one priority for the police used to be public safety, not police safety, and we are a coarser society because of the change.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time on what Ferguson has not yet delivered:

…a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

Could Ferguson MO become Newark NJ, 1967?

A little history:

A riot broke out in Newark in 1967, triggered by the police beating a black cab driver, who was falsely reported to have died. Five nights of rioting and looting followed in what the press in those days called the “ghetto”. Republican Governor Richard J. Hughes called up the New Jersey National Guard. When the National Guard arrived, reports began coming in of scores of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark with supplies for the uprising.

As a result, when the Police or the Guard saw people, or some shadow on far away windows, they began shooting. The results? 26 deaths and 725 wounded.

Were there truly black snipers? Here is some information from the report of The Kerner Commission: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the summer of 1967, after the riots in Newark, Detroit, and 125 other cities, President Lyndon Johnson convened an advisory commission to look into what happened and why. The report of the Kerner Commission, which warned of a nation moving toward a “system of apartheid” in its cities, concluded that the so-called snipers in Newark were actually members of the police, Troopers, and Guard, who, lacking any reliable communications and possessed by fear of the specter of armed black men, often ended up shooting at each other.

The most dangerous person in the world is a frightened person. If they are armed to the teeth, and they are frightened, really bad things can happen. It is very interesting to read contemporaneous reporting from the 1967 riot. The rioters are called “terrorists” by the New York Times:

Incensed by the slaying of a white fire captain by Negro snipers, Gov. Richard J. Hughes said he was considering an appeal for Federal help in capturing the terrorists.

What happened next was urban warfare. More from the NYT of July 16, 1967:

After midnight, Springfield Avenue, the main commercial street in the ghetto, was raked by machine gun fire from guardsmen and the police, who ducked behind cars and sprayed the roofs of buildings thought to contain terrorists…The Governor again said that the riots were not caused by a spontaneous uprising against unemployment, squalid housing and a general hopelessness – as negro leaders insist – but were an outbreak by a “vicious criminal element.” Thrusting out his jaw, he promised that the rioters would receive swift and retributive justice.

Ferguson hasn’t gotten to that point yet. But it has similar elements, all waiting for a spark.

The Kerner Commission Report concluded that the trigger for the Newark riots and those in 125 other US cities, were confrontations between the local police and members of local African-American communities. It also concluded that the residents’ held a perception (often justified) of the largely white police as an occupying force which was in the community to serve and protect the interests of the privileged white communities rather than to serve and protect the legitimate interests of the local minority residents, and that the police inherently harbored racist attitudes toward residents of minority communities that they were also charged to serve.

Compare that conclusion of 47 years ago to Ferguson MO today.

Newsweek reports that 22% of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7% receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3%, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

In the media commentary on Ferguson, there is little mention of the economic and social conditions that underlie both the current growth of police repression and the eruption of popular anger in response to it. We don’t hear that one out of four residents of St. Louis lives in poverty. Or that the wholesale closure of auto plants, breweries and other manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of two-thirds of St. Louis’s population since 1950.

Or, that 47% of the metropolitan area’s African American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.

What we are seeing in Ferguson is a disturbing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. And it is not just in miniority neighborhoods. Think about the excessive force used by police all across America to break up the Occupy movement’s civil disobedience.

This is why police departments across the US are being prepared and equipped to deal with mass unrest. That is what The Powers That Be are expecting.

Along with everybody else who has seen the writing on the wall.

Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience:

…Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest…

What America has Become

The world is talking about Ferguson MO. Yesterday, a group of SWAT forces in riot gear faced angry citizens who had gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown. After nightfall, police deployed tear gas against the crowd, warning the protest was “no longer peaceful”.

“This is no longer a peaceful assembly. Go home or be subject to arrest,” police warned through a loudspeaker, shortly before shooting tear gas at the protesters. Police were also shooting rubber bullets while smoke grenades and tear gas canisters fell into the crowd.

Meanwhile, some of the protesters reportedly threw rocks and bottles at the police. The police also arrested reporters, an alderman, and a state Senator. The two arrested reporters, Wesley Lowery of the WaPo and Ryan Reilly of the HuffPo, were in a McDonald’s recharging their devices and writing up reports. They had identified themselves as reporters to the arresting officers. The WaPo reported that for the past week in Ferguson, reporters have been using the McDonald’s a few blocks from the scene of Michael Brown’s shooting as a staging area. Demonstrations have blown up each night nearby. But inside there’s Wi-Fi and outlets, so it’s common for reporters to gather there. The Police closed the McDonald’s. Both reporters were released after a short time in a holding cell. Both say they were assaulted.

So, this is what America has become. SWAT teams in Ferguson, in daylight, facing unarmed civilians:

And here is a short video loop taken by HuffPo reporter Ryan Reilly on Wednesday. HuffPo, in a statement, said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Ryan, who has reported multiple times from Guantanamo Bay, said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers, and treated those inside the McDonald’s as “enemy combatants.” Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.

Police are no longer seen as members of the community dedicated to “Protect and Serve”. They are becoming domestic soldiers. Local police departments throughout have the equivalent of tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style boot camp training.

When it comes to the up-armoring and militarization of America’s police forces, this is completely run-of-the-mill stuff.

In June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. The Pentagon has handed out 600 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs to them for essentially no cost, with plenty more to come. They’re surplus equipment, mostly from our recent wars, and perhaps they will indeed prove handy for a sheriff fretting about insurgent IEDs (roadside bombs) in New Jersey or elsewhere in the country.

The worst part of outfitting and training police officers as soldiers will be psychological. Give a man access to drones, MRAPs, and body armor, and he’ll believe that his job isn’t simply to protect and serve, but to eliminate danger.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re deployed in battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy.

Let’s remember that this is America, not a war zone.

The militarization of police departments has been covered by the Wrongologist here. The New York Times has reported on all of the other free military gear – like machine guns, armored vehicles and aircraft – that police are receiving from the Pentagon. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many for the purchase of armored vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for military hardware.

From Greg Howard:

There are reasons why white gun rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children’s toys.

Do the police actions in Ferguson look similar to police actions during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? National Guard soldiers, tear gas, and fire hoses were the old way of keeping protestors in line, but now the police are the soldiers. They still use the tear gas, but MRAPs and stun grenades are the new methods of disorienting protestors.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to address why local police believe that it is appropriate to arrest reporters. The DOJ needs to address why local police can walk on the people’s right to peaceably assemble.

The DOJ needs to do more than “monitor” the local situation.

And the mainstream media can be complicit in this too. The people who showed up at Ted Bundy’s ranch were called “supporters” and the protestors in Ferguson are referred to as an “angry mob”, even before any looting or violence started.

And thanks a lot SCOTUS, for deciding that we didn’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore because America’s racial problems are behind us. They aren’t.

Let’s close with a quote from William O. Douglas about oppression:

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air–however slight–lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

What Happened to Our Free Press?

We have a free press, right? That freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state. With respect to government information, governments routinely distinguish between materials that are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on a classification process that protects some information from disclosure due to the information’s relevance to protecting the national interest.

Washington is making more and more information, including some that is decades-old, inaccessible except to journalists who are “trusted”. That is journalists who the Administration or an agency have invested time and effort to determine that they will put the best possible spin on whatever they are fed.

In the past, the term “access journalism” meant giving exclusive interviews (or leaks) to pet reporters who had established that they won’t bite the hand that feeds them good stories. From the perspective of the government, this is a virtuous circle: Not only can they reward reporters who play ball, but over time, these correspondents become influential, by virtue of having an inside information advantage.

But there are darker ways this game is played. Some agencies block information from journalists or historians who prefer to report rather than to take dictation. The American Historical Association has an article about government agencies using the courts to keep secrets secret:

In a two-to-one decision the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in May 2014, agreed with the CIA that a volume of its…history of the 53-year-old Bay of Pigs Invasion could “confuse the public” and should thus be kept secret.

Huh? What are we supposed to be confused about? That the invasion failed? That the CIA set it up? Or maybe that the Agency was flat-assed wrong about the popular anti-Castro uprising that was supposed to be triggered by the invasion?

To win the legal argument, the CIA successfully convinced the two Judges that any document the agency deems “predecisional” (dealing with file information developed prior to a decision to act) can be withheld permanently. To do this, they rely on the CIA Information Act of 1984. This bill was a deal made to speed the CIA’s processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests while protecting information unlikely to be released because of national security concerns. But today, the CIA doesn’t abide by Congress’s intent, it routinely refuses to search its operational files – in particular, files which have been subject to an investigation. As an example, Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations (JSOC) Commander who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, knew about this transparency black hole when he ordered the FOIA-complying Department of Defense to purge its computers of all files on the Navy SEALs raid on bin Laden and send them to the CIA, where the Operational Files Exemption would keep them “safe” from search and review for release.

If our society wants to maintain even a veneer of democracy, we have to change the CIA Information Act, which keeps important information from the public. It seems it is used to preserve the image of the CIA and shield it from criticism, as much as it is used to protect national security.

A second dark way in which the game is played is demonstrated by the Obama administration’s pursuit of more criminal leak investigations than all previous administrations combined. The Institute for Public Accuracy reported yesterday that 14 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have issued individual statements voicing support for New York Times reporter James Risen, who continues to refuse to name his source for information about a bungled CIA operation in Iran that appeared in his 2006 book State of War. The DOJ is considering whether to attempt to force Risen to testify against his sources.

Third, the White House occasionally threatens reporters about their methods of obtaining information. Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly lectured the WaPo after they reported that Obama aides had early warning of a potential border crisis, and for citing an anonymous sources. At the same time, other reporters present at the lecture pointed out a familiar email that had just arrived in their inboxes: an invitation to a phone call with anonymous White House officials:

.@PressSec condemns anonymous sources. Just arriving in email: White House invitation to reporters for call with anonymous admin officials.

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 21, 2014

All of this is designed by the Administration’s spinners to produce cover stories. Because there’s always a cover story, even if it’s “nothing happened.” Cover stories are built like onions, one layer behind another, a fallback story behind every cover story.

Anti-transparency is tantamount to anti-accountability. Criticism is the only known antidote for error.

By contrast, in a competitive arena like business (or sports), ruthless postmortems, particularly of failures, often happen in public. They are believed to be necessary for improving performance.

But in Ultimate Politics, Washington can’t tolerate critiques, so they plan to be even less transparent. Forget the Constitution, folks.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Domestic Policy