Militarized Police – Page 3

Drones: A Big Bad Nightmare

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), better known as the drone, is revolutionizing military power around the world. Despite the Pentagon’s Sequester, certain programs, like drone procurement have emerged unscathed, in part because the last two US administrations have embraced use of drones in combat theaters overseas. Meanwhile, a “drone caucus” has emerged in Congress that fiercely protects UAV funding and touts them as a way to help save money on defense, protect the lives of US soldiers, better patrol America’s borders, and assist domestic law enforcement agencies in surveillance.

In 2013, President Obama made a high-profile speech announcing plans to curb US use of drones. But events in the Middle East and North Africa, especially the rise of ISIS, have forced the US to shelve those plans. Yesterday, the Wrongologist reported that China was selling drones to Saudi Arabia. Consider this:

• More than 70 countries have acquired UAVs of different types. Of these countries, the US holds the largest share of UAVs
• 23 countries are reportedly developing armed UAVs
• The Teal Group forecasts an increase in global spending on UAVs from $6.6 billion in 2013 to $11.4 billion in 2022
• The Diplomat reports that China will be the largest UAV manufacturer over the next decade

Many countries want drones, and many will turn to China with its lower manufacturing costs, and similar drone technology. A report last year by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated:

Chinese companies appear to be positioning themselves to become key suppliers of UAVs in the global market.

Chinese UAVs are especially attractive to countries in Africa and the Middle East given their low cost and China’s the lack of export restrictions compared with their Western competitors.

Even the new US drone export policy is not competitive with China, since it requires countries buying our armed drones to assure the US that they won’t use them to carry out illegal surveillance, that they will abide by international humanitarian laws, and that they use them for legal purposes. Just how will we enforce that? Will the US assign personnel to the control vans and centers to monitor each flight, or depend on self-reporting by foreign governments?

In the past year, drones have crashed onto the White House lawn, placed radioactive cesium on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo, and worked the battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq.

It is a formidable weapon that we are only beginning to understand. The concern is that they can be used against a nation’s homeland, since they are hard to detect and difficult to bring down. With drone proliferation, what will the impact be if large public gatherings become indefensible targets? Will sporting events like the Super Bowl be “protectable” by the city and state that hosts the event? Probably not. So, will they have to be protected by the US military? Images of US military patrolling the streets around the Super Bowl would provide an Orwellian cast to the big game.

The small quad-copter commercial drones that anyone can purchase (for between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars) signal the biggest problem for the future. They are equipped with GPS technology and high-resolution cameras. They could carry (small) loads of plastic explosive, or even chemical weapons to a precise location and cause havoc. Jamming GPS signals could be an effective solution, provided we had some idea about a targeted area. Universal GPS jamming probably would be impractical, since GPS is so important to our everyday lives.

We don’t seem to have much of a clue as to what to do about this emerging threat.

How will we adapt when drones (commercial or military) become ubiquitous? What would be the societal impact? Fear is already a great driver of our domestic politics. It is difficult to imagine how much more of our 4th Amendment rights could be sacrificed to protecting us from terrorist drones. Armed drones deployed against a densely-populated Western country is a terrorist dream!

Drone design of the future is receiving huge amounts of venture capital. The current new idea is swarming drones. The US Navy is currently testing a weapon that can fire 30+ small armed drones at once. The Navy calls the program “Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology”, or LOCUST. The Navy is also concerned about defending drone swarm attacks on its ships, since the vessels are relatively large targets.

Imagine if a terrorist could fire a “drone swarm” at Manhattan.

We won’t be putting this genie back in the bottle. Think of all the things that could possibly go (horribly) wrong by the US making drones the AK-47 of the future.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 3, 2015

Baltimore riots, Nepal earthquakes, same sex marriage in front of the Supremes, Bernie Sanders runs against Hillary. Quite the week.

Did the Baltimore riot result in a move towards justice for Freddie Gray? It is more than an exaggeration to say the rioting caused manslaughter indictments against 6 Baltimore police officers. With the city electing Marilyn Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers as the Maryland state’s attorney for Baltimore City over an incumbent white Democrat, maybe the indictments would have happened without the riots. Could the justice system now be working a bit better because people in Baltimore voted?

Seven months after Michael Brown, systematic failure to deliver justice in our cities is playing with fire, possibly, a little like 1965 all over again. The number of people in the streets in other cities in solidarity with Baltimore has been growing. And the hot spots are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta and poor suburban cities with police departments that grift with fines and court penalties.

Indictments notwithstanding, this is Baltimore and many other cities:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

If you watched mainstream media coverage, all of Baltimore was on fire:

Gay marriage discussion brought out the best in our politicians:

And ministers now have a new take on the old question:

Same Sex wasn’t the only type of marriage decided by the Supremes:

Bernie Sanders threw hat in the ring, and almost no media covered it:

Nepal was on everyone’s mind, including Christian bigots:

Ever hear of Tony Miano? He’s a former LA cop who seems to be a Christian. He should ask “What would Jesus tweet?” because what he did was an epic fail for a human, much less a Christian. Miano could be organizing a drive to collect donations, but instead, he’s tweeting about “pagan temples” and how the people of Nepal need to repent and receive Christ.

Onward, Christian soldiers!

Let’s Talk About Baltimore

Regarding Baltimore, the NYT says:

Hundreds of rifle-toting National Guard members began deploying here on Tuesday morning, lining one of the city’s main thoroughfares and taking up posts around a police station in western Baltimore that had been the scene of earlier protests.

From the start of the demonstration through Tuesday morning, 15 police officers were injured, 2 people were shot, both in the leg. And approximately 200 people were arrested. There is a night curfew. There are the predictable images of large groups of young black males, buildings on fire, up-armored cops and National Guard, and the shaking of jowls by media and politicians.

These stories are always depressingly similar: Police shoot a black guy. They obfuscate for several days. A protest turns violent, and some of those professing to be “victims” create victims of their own, mostly in their own neighborhoods. The police are happy to give them room to destroy property in black neighborhoods, but then draw the line when the crowd moves out of that prescribed area.

Something was bound to give in Baltimore. Check out this report from the Baltimore Sun, called “Undue Force“:

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations [by the Baltimore police department].

According to state law, Baltimore cops cannot be sued for more than $200,000 for each “offense”. That statutory cap can be exceeded when there are multiple claims in a lawsuit, and if there is malice the cap may not apply. The largest settlement has been $500k. In total, the city has paid $5.7 million since January 2011, and that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims against their police. Just a cost of doing business in Baltimore.

So, once the riot started the mayor and the governor called for calm. “Why can’t these people react non-violently?” Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic provides an answer:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

Here is a series of tweets by Billmon: (edited by the Wrongologist)

…but the cops did not destroy the black industrial working class, or finance the slumlords, or redline poor neighborhoods. Police brutality isn’t the only reason that #BlackLivesMatter.
… And not being unlawfully killed is a pretty minimal standard for “mattering.”
…And so the policy “debate” becomes limited to: “Black men: Should we let the cops kill them or not?” Which is fucking sick. Or: “Should America have an incarceration rate that’s 10 times higher than the rest of developed world? Or just 5 times higher.”

We are witnessing a continuing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. It brings a disproportionate response, whether it is the Occupy movement, Ferguson, or Baltimore.

“Urban riots” always conjure up bad images and bad responses, like the riots in 1964 in Harlem and Philadelphia, and in Newark in 1967, all of which were ignited by allegations of police brutality. In Newark, Governor Richard J. Hughes (R) called up the National Guard. When they arrived, reports were coming in of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark. The result was 26 deaths and 725 wounded in Newark, but no snipers or terrorists were found.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R), channeling his inner Spiro Agnew, vowed to quell rioting by sending in 1,000 National Guard troops. From the Baltimore Sun:

Hogan said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a political ally of the new Republican governor, would sent 150 troopers plus additional resources to Baltimore.

Christie will never let a good crisis go to waste.

The ultimate outcome of Baltimore will predictably be calls for more law and ordering by the right, and more calls for inconsequential band aids by the left. Perhaps the policy debate ought to be broader than: “what will it take for police to stop killing black guys?”, although that would be a good start.

Police need to remember that since they have the authority and the power, they also have the responsibility to use both properly. It’s not the responsibility of the person they pull over, the person they want to question, or the person who is standing nearby, it’s THEIR responsibility.

Let’s face it, Americans live in a soft police state. Whites may not sense its severity or doom like urban black males, since their threat is to privacy. But the freedoms of most Americans have never been more threatened and violated by governments at the federal, state and local levels.

Here is Randy Newman singing his composition, “Baltimore“:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Friday Music Break – April 10, 2015

Friday’s Music break is late, but worth your time. When Walter Scott was first pulled over in North Charleston SC, much of the initial traffic stop was caught on the dash-cam of Police Officer Michael T. Slager. These dash-cams capture video and audio from inside the police car in addition to what transpires in the traffic stop.

The dash-cam video was released by the South Carolina authorities on Thursday, showing Walter Scott getting out of his car and running away after a traffic stop moments before he was killed by Officer Slager. As Slager drives up behind the green Mercedes-Benz driven by Scott, there’s a song playing in the background inside the police car. That song is “What It’s Like,” by Everlast:

Sample Lyrics:
We’ve all seen a man at the liquor store beggin’ for your change
The hair on his face is dirty, dread-locked, and full of mange
He asks a man for what he could spare, with shame in his eyes
“Get a job, you f*** slob, ” is all he replies
God forbid, you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
‘Cause then you really might know what it’s like to sing the blues

It is the last song Walter Scott heard before being gunned down by a killer cop. For those of you who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see song on YouTube here.

Does this song playing in the background of the cop car tell us anything about patrolman Slager? Probably not. It was a #1 song in 1998 from an album that went double-platinum.

But the song’s message, of “Don’t Prejudge” means that it should be the anthem of an America that wants an end to police violence. We are a country where you are 55 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.

One reason is that many law enforcement officers consider failure to comply with the officers’ demands as an excuse for using lethal force. Police have become so militarized in modern America that we are gradually losing the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

Cops need to make quick judgements. Everyone accepts that.

But, “What it’s Like” should become a part of their training.

Friday Music Break – March 27, 2015

There are more words about music than music today. People are asking a persistent question: Given our endless Middle East wars, threats to our Constitutional rights, growing income inequality, and the continuing of violence against blacks by our police, “Where is the protest music?”

Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. There has been an avalanche of provocative hip-hop and R&B, known generally as “black liberation music” around for years. Recently, it has become more thoughtful, and for whites in America, more accessible. Gawker has an article that provides a discussion of what it is about, and which artists are leading the genre.

Today, let’s focus on three artists, D’Angelo, who, in January, released an album, “Black Messiah” 14 years after his last effort. The title song has these lyrics:

Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah,
For me the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt
And in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough,
And decides to make change happen.
It’s not about celebrating one charismatic leader, but celebrating thousands of them.

The New York Times Magazine’s Jay Caspian King features another Messiah of the moment, Kendrick Lamar. His new album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has just been released. The first video released is for the song, “i“, that speaks of his experience in Compton, CA:

They wanna say there’s a war outside and a bomb in the street
And a gun in the hood and a mob of police
And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends…

Finally, J Cole released a new album in December, “Forest Hills Drive”. Here is “Intro”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hh-gGb0Mvk

Sample Lyric:
I said do you wanna, do you wanna be, free
Free from pain, free from scars
Free to sing, free from bars
Free my dawgs, you’re free to go
Block gets shot, the streets is cold
Free to love, to each his own
Free from bills, free from pills
You roll it loud, the speakers blow
Life get hard, you eat your soul

This song asks questions that the all of us must answer for ourselves. We live in a very structured, high-stress, work hard or get left behind society.

Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be free?

The answers to these questions are clearly, “YES” for everybody. Cole makes listeners think about what they are doing with their lives, and what really matters.

The Gawker article quotes Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I don’t think it’s an accident that we have all these Black artists who were born around the same time and who are now making art that urges on liberation. America produced us. If there’s any clarity that we can derive from the different stories being told…it’s that a lot of people are fed up.

Kendrick might be one of the few Hip Hop artists who doesn’t want what whiteness affords white people:

And I will die knowing that this white racial supremacy shit has fucked with white folks psychologically, intellectually, and soulfully more than it’s fucked with any of us.

White supremacy is deeply ingrained, so deeply, that in fact, most aren’t even aware they’re infected.

Did Chicago Police Run a “Black Site”?

“At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact”. − George Orwell

The Guardian is reporting that the Chicago police have used a “Black Site” for years:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights…

Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian reported that alleged activities there included the following:

• Detainees were kept out of the official police booking system
• Persons in custody were often shackled for long periods of time
• Attorneys were denied access to their clients
• There were frequent beatings, causing head injuries

If this is happening in Chicago, then could other cities also be operating illegal detention sites?

A series of US Supreme Court cases over the past 100 years have codified the rights of suspects under our system, but they may not have protected many suspects in Chicago. The Atlantic interviewed Tracy Siska, executive director of the Chicago Justice Project and a criminologist who wrote a story for The Guardian on military interrogation tactics in the city. Siska spoke about the Homan Square abuses of Constitutional rights: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

What used to happen at Homan Square is that prior to a year ago, if you get arrested and you get brought down anywhere in any district, you would not pop up in the city computer as being arrested until they processed the police report, which could take anywhere from an hour to 15 hours.
If they “arrested” you, then they have to report it. But if they don’t “arrest you,” nefarious things could happen and they could interrogate you without a lawyer. And they would move you around from district to district. So [for example] if the family shows up or the lawyer shows up and they say you aren’t here but you are, they’ve denied you access. But if they say you’re at [district] 17, then move you to 15, and then 12, they can question you without counsel. At Homan Square they don’t process paperwork about your arrest. You’re just gone. No one knows.
At some point they have to do the paperwork and prosecute you. After they get your confession, you wind up back in the paperwork.

One implication of Siska’s interview is that the Constitution-shredding actions of the Chicago PD ended in 2014. Again, according to Siska: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

About a year ago, [the rule changed]…After arriving at a CPD facility, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you into the system, and you appear on the system city-wide. Any officer anywhere in the city can find where you are. And anywhere they move you to, every time you move, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you in so you show up on a computer. Each time you move, your right to phone calls and Miranda rights starts all over again.

Belated exposure of the possible Constitutional abuses at Homan Square proves once again − as if we need more proof − how deeply the police forces in the US have been corrupted by the military-industrial complex and by our political enablers. It shows the extent that policing has become more like an occupation army (as it has been perceived in minority communities for a very, very long time).

There is no evidence that any loss of Constitutional rights, no matter how appalling, will wake up a solid majority of people in this country anytime soon. Like the Orwell quote says, we have agreed not to discuss some very important things, like Constitutional rights in our cities.

Not just that. We had a $4 trillion war based on lies that we didn’t discuss. We had a $1 trillion dollar financial meltdown. Not discussed. We learned that the NSA “collects it all.” Ho-hum.

“Mistakes happen”, and we just move on, talking about “50 Shades of Gray”. Americans have made their screwed-up priorities quite clear. They’ve given up on reality and have decided to go with fantasy.

Friday Music Break – February 6, 2015

Today we have music, but first, here is our latest Police State Watch: Vox reported that NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton unveiled a new militarized police unit that will be trained and armed with heavy protective gear, long rifles, and machine guns to restrain terrorists and social justice protesters. Bratton explained the purpose of the unit, which will consist of 350 officers: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.

Our recent protests? He’s speaking of the reaction to the killing of Eric Garner, most of which was peaceful, if antagonistic to the NYPD. The nation watched in horror last August as police officers deployed tear gas, sound cannons, and armored vehicles against crowds that were peacefully marching and chanting on the streets of Ferguson Missouri. Many of these protests grew increasingly lawless, partly as a result of police responding with military-grade gear.

But there’s more. Here is what Mr. Bratton said at the time of Garner’s killing:

You must submit to arrest, you cannot resist…The place to argue your case is in the courts, not in the streets.

Now, it looks like he supports punishing people arguing a misdemeanor arrest or who are protesting a perceived injustice even more harshly for resisting arrest. Bratton told a hearing at the NY State Senate:

If you don’t want us to enforce something, don’t make it a law.

That’s just the opposite of how resisting-arrest cases work in NYC. Most cops bring in very few cases of people resisting arrest, while a few cops bring in most of them. New York’s Public Radio station, WNYC analyzed NYPD records and found 51,503 cases with resisting arrest charges since 2009. Just 5% of officers who made arrests during that period accounted for 40% of resisting arrest cases — and 15% account for 72% of such cases:

It seems that “resisting arrest” charges say more about the police than they do about the demonstrators or defendants, and making resisting arrest a felony won’t lower the number of arrests, it will just give more power to the police.

This means you take your life in your hands if you engage in public dissent in NYC. You could be facing a heavily armed small army. You are certainly facing possible prison time and a permanent criminal record for getting on the wrong side of the wrong cop.

Your freedoms, particularly your First Amendment right of assembly, is under attack by Mr. Bratton and others like him all across America. First, they say you cannot resist arrest. Second, they have a military-style army mobilized to make sure you are busted hard, and fast.

So, with all this talk about cops and arrests, here is Janis Joplin doing “Ball ‘n’ Chain” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This was Janis’ first large-scale public performance, and it was as a member of Big Brother and The Holding Company. At Monterey, she owned the song, the stage, the crowd, and the festival. Columbia Records signed Big Brother and The Holding Company on the basis of this performance. Here is a live performance for the ages of Big Momma Thornton’s song:

See you on Sunday.

Friday Music Break – January 30, 2015

“We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.” – Thomas Picketty

Today’s music has a populist message designed to help you fight the Plutocracy over the weekend. It is “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin”, written and performed by Leonard Cohen. The song was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes for her 1987 album, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Cohen recorded it a year later for his album, “I’m Your Man”. This version was recorded in London in 2009:

It has become an occasional anthem for Syriza, the Greek Populist Party that just won power on an anti-austerity, anti-European Union platform. In Greece, it was played with the words, “First we take Athens, then we take Madrid!”

Sample Lyrics:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

You loved me as a loser,
but now you’re worried that I just might win,
You knew the way you could have stopped me,
but you never had the discipline,
So many nights I prayed for this,
to let my work begin.

See you on Sunday

Is The Waze App Killing Cops?

You may not have heard of, much less used, the mobile phone GPS app Waze. Waze is a free social GPS app that has turn-by-turn navigation to help drivers avoid traffic. That makes it just like a lot of other smart phone navigation apps. But Waze is different, since it’s also a community-driven application that draws information from other drivers. And it even learns from users’ driving times to provide routing and real-time traffic updates.

Developed by an Israeli start-up, Waze has gained a strong following worldwide. Over 50 million users globally use it. In June 2013, Google acquired Waze for $966 million. The charm is that it makes the auto industry’s dashboard navigation systems obsolete. While auto navigation systems offer beautiful graphics and larger screens, they have their faults. Aside from expensive prices, most of these systems require updating via pre-made DVDs, instead of the Internet. This is far less competitive than real-time updates by apps like Waze. In the case of Waze, the updates are crowd-sourced in near-real time.

One Waze advantage is that it lets users know where police are located along the driver’s route. That feature means that ~~our whiniest~~ the police are far from pleased with that feature of the Waze app. Waze users mark police, who are generally working in public spaces, on maps without much distinction other than “visible” or “hidden.” Users see a police icon, but it’s not immediately clear whether police are there for a speed trap, a sobriety check or a lunch break:

(This screen shot is illustrative, the police could be more than .2 miles away)

That might make you want to download the app right now. But there is trouble in paradise. DailyTECH reports that the Los Angeles PD’s Chief, Charlie Beck, is among a growing contingent of police officers nationwide who claim Waze and its new owner Google, are endangering officer safety by warning people of the location of police. To some in law enforcement, this feature makes Waze a stalking app for people who want to harm police; and they want Google to disable the feature. In a letter sent on Dec. 30, Chief Beck warns Google that the app: (Brackets by DailyTECH)

[The service’s information could be] misused by those with criminal intent to endanger police officers and the community…I am confident your company did not intend the Waze app to be a means to allow those who wish to commit crimes to use the unwitting Waze community as their lookouts for the location of police officers.

There are no known connections between any attack on police and Waze, although the Associated Press reported that Chief Beck said in his letter to Google, that Waze was used in the killing of two New York Police Department officers on Dec. 20. The fact is that Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s (the gunman) Instagram account included a screenshot from Waze along with other messages threatening police.

But, it was impossible for Brinsley to have used Waze to ambush the NYPD officers, since he tossed his cellphone away more than two miles from where he shot the officers.

This is not the first time law enforcement has raised concerns with these types of apps. In 2011, four US Senators asked Apple to remove all applications that alerted users to drunk driving checkpoints. The effort to disable Waze’s police function reminds us of when police tried to give tickets to people who would flash their headlights to warn oncoming drivers of speed traps. Last year, a Missouri Federal Judge decided that it violated the 1st Amendment free speech rights of the people ticketed.

The cop killer argument is hilariously wrong. You could simply look up the address of your local police station and drive nearby if your plan is to kill cops. The honest reason the police are against Waze is because it helps people avoid speeding tickets. You can’t take something that was used once by Ismaaiyl Brinsley and label it a “cop killer” app.

Google isn’t “helping” people break the law. It’s not against the law to tell someone where an officer is. People just want to know where those nasty speed traps are – it doesn’t have to be so complicated! But, if you are caught by one, you can at least be comforted by the thought that there is legal help available to you, should you find yourself facing repercussions.

We already live in a police state. They monitor us dozens of different ways, some of them unconstitutional, like the Stingray devices. But the second someone makes a video recording of an interaction with a cop, or uses an app that indicates their whereabouts, they get all indignant about their privacy and security.

Waze isn’t increasing the exposure of the police force to “cop killers”.

The 1% Are Heading to Galt’s Gulch

(Galt’s Gulch was the sanctuary in Atlas Shrugged where Ayn Rand’s Real Men of Genius spurned American socialism for their own libertarian paradise.)

Welcome to the economy that has just turned the page. But not that page.

The World Economic Forum ended in Davos Switzerland. This is their 45th annual meeting at Davos. Who attends? 2,500 business leaders, politicians, diplomats and a few celebrities take part in the meeting. As in the past, 73% of the delegates are men, and almost 800 of the attendees are from the US.

According to CNN, most of the 1% flew in to Davos on private jets. Roughly 1,700 private flights landed in Switzerland, 5% more than last year. The Guardian reported that, for Davos insiders, the big story was the world economy, but this year, they weren’t concerned all that much about income inequality. From The Guardian’s live blogging at Davos: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A year ago, Davos attendees said income disparity was the top threat to world stability, as years of lobbying by the likes of Occupy Wall Street hit home. Today, though, the issue doesn’t appear in the top 10. The Ukraine conflict, and the turmoil in the Middle East, have elbowed it out.

However, another Guardian article described that many of the global oligarchs attending Davos are already planning their escape. These people know full well that the current game won’t last forever. Their response is to take as much money as possible, and flee before the pitchforks emerge. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were going to create an oasis of uber-wealth and then lock the doors:

I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.

They want to leave to live in a Galt’s Gulch of their own creation. And Hedge fund managers are just a small part of the Plutocracy. The concentration of wealth and ownership in very few hands is growing, and that process has reached epidemic proportions.

In fact, according to the anti-poverty charity Oxfam, the wealthiest 1% will soon own more than the rest of the world’s population. Oxfam’s research shows that the share of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% last year. Based on the current trend, Oxfam says it expects the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.

But, hasn’t our economy turned the page? Apparently, the Davos 1% types are way ahead of the Obama administration. From Monday’s NYT: (Brackets by the Wrongologist)

The middle class has shrunk consistently over the past half-century. Until 2000, the reason was primarily because more Americans moved up the income ladder. But since then, the reason has shifted: [Now] there is a greater share of households on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

The Times uses yearly income of $35,000 to $100,000 to define middle class. The $35k amount is about 50% higher than the official poverty level for a family of four.

Here is the NYT’s graph of the current breakdown by income:
(All numbers on the solid black lines in the chart are percentages of the US population and do not add to 100% due to rounding)

From the NYT:

Even as the American middle class has shrunk, it has gone through a transformation. The 53 million households that remain in the middle class — about 43% of all households — look considerably different from their middle-class predecessors of a previous generation…

Recently, the fastest-growing component of the middle class has been households headed by people 65 and older. Today’s seniors have better retirement benefits than previous generations. Also, older Americans are increasingly working past traditional retirement age. More than eight million were in the labor force in 2013, nearly twice as many as in 2000.

A December New York Times poll showed that 60% of people who self-identify as middle class think that if they work hard, they will get rich. But the income and census data suggest that goal is moving increasingly out of reach.

If 60% of the middle class still think they can get rich, despite clear evidence to the contrary, the Plutocrats and lobbyists have successfully brainwashed the American public. They are unable to see just how systematically and catastrophically they have been played.

We may be able to take back control from the Plutocrats and the Oligarchs. But they now have control of our militarized police, they control cyber spying programs aimed at American citizens, and they control a byzantine political system completely removed from the average person’s day-to-day.

Gone are the days when we could storm the castle with torches and pitchforks, demanding change, and win.

If we succeed in bringing about real change, and not the faux change marketed by politicians, it will not be a pretty affair. They will fight. And they have the means to do so.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Militarized Police