The Other

All of the health care bills offer their subsidies to those who need help affording coverage through tax credits. This is seen as completely normal and a cost-effective way to provide such subsidies, since it only requires a new line item on the tax form instead of some new structure for paying out credits. But it actually hurts people who have to lay out money for health insurance and then wait all year until April to get their money back. In addition, some groups, like nonprofits, don't pay taxes. But they also provide health care for their workers, which means they cannot benefit from any tax credits for small businesses to help with affordability in the plan.

The main bill in the House would award a tax credit to small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance — but nonprofits do not pay income taxes and thus would not benefit.

“Why should employees of nonprofits be treated worse than employees of for-profit businesses?” said Jonathan A. Small, government affairs consultant at the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York.

Nonprofit groups were hoping that the president would include them in his speech to Congress on Wednesday, but instead he mentioned only “families, businesses and government.”

“There was nothing in that much-repeated trilogy of those needing help that spoke to nonprofits,” said Lester M. Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

This sounds like a nitpicky point, except that nonprofits are collectively the fourth-largest employer in America.

And there are dozens of little inequities like this. We've heard about the canceling of all individual health insurance, essentially, for undocumented immigrants, even when they have the ability to pay with their own money. Then there's the issue of nurse home care for the children of the poor, a proven crime reduction strategy that has run aground amid shouts of "billions for babysitters" and the like.

It's part and parcel of a long-running strategy by the right to cry martyrdom for their tax dollars being given to the undefined "other." It doesn't matter if a government program reduces crime or saves money or just makes moral sense. This boils down to a largely homogenous Republican Party not wanting their money to go to people who don't look like them or don't act like them or don't work like them. "Illegals" or the undeserving poor or "do-gooders" in the nonprofit sector need not apply. It's been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon's Southern strategy.

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting [...]

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

Matt Taibbi called it the peasant mentality. The powers that be get the lower classes to fight amongst themselves and split along ideological or tribal or other identifying lines, leaving room for them to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting their opponents, who are less homogenous and are made up of so-called "outsiders" of society - the poor, the disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; and painting the leaders of that party - whether it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as the head of a movement to destroy American culture. That's really basically it. And sadly, considering that Democrats have over the last several decades abandoned their role as protectors of the weak, the poor and the voiceless, you can almost sympathize with the misled in the teabagging protests, who finds nobody standing up for them.

Except, their susceptibility to what is essentially a racial argument leaves me little room to share sympathy for their concerns.

The Stakes Of The Upcoming Prison Policy Fight

At the Netroots Nation panel (and a quick thanks to everyone who attended, and the panelists, and Dan Walters for noticing), I identified two short-term fights that are worth engaging. One consists of playing defense - stopping the Parsky Commission from instituting a Latvia-ization of California through eliminating business taxes and flattening the income tax. The other short-term fight concerns the $1.2 billion dollars in cuts to the prison budget, identified in the July budget agreement but not clarified on the specifics until the Legislature returns to work this week. We are starting to see some organizing around that, with human rights and civil liberties leaders massing on the Capitol Steps today to promote sound prison reform instead of just lopping off all rehabilitation and treatment programs for the overcrowded corrections system and calling it a day. Leland Yee, Nancy Skinner, Jim Beall and Tom Ammiano, who just replaced indie Juan Arambula as chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, will speak. So we have a sympathetic ear on one of the key committees.

About a week back, Laura Sullivan produced an NPR report describing the devolution of the corrections system in California, using Johnny Cash's historic concert at Folsom Prison as a launching pad:

The morning that Cash played may have been the high-water mark for Folsom — and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The men in the cafeteria lived alone in their own prison cells. Almost every one of them was in school or learning a professional trade. The cost of housing them barely registered on the state budget. And when these men walked out of Folsom free, the majority of them never returned to prison.

It was a record no other state could match.

Things have changed. California's prisons are all in a state of crisis. And nowhere is this more visible than at Folsom today.

Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.

It's once-vaunted education and work programs have been cut to just a few classes, with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long.

Officers are on furlough. Its medical facility is under federal receivership. And like every other prison in the state, 75 percent of the inmates who are released from Folsom today will be back behind bars within three years.

In addition to having a solid education, transportation and medical system in the early post-war period, California's prisons were once the envy of the nation, too. Then the Tough On Crime crowd got a hold of the levers of power, produced 1,000 laws expanding sentences over 30 years, pushed the public to do the same through ballot initiatives, increased parole sanctions, and the system just got swamped. In the early 1980s we had 20,000 prisoners. Now it's 170,000. The overcrowding decimates rehabilitation, sends nonviolent offenders into what amounts to a college for violent crime, violates prisoner rights by denying proper medical care, and increases costs at every point along the way. Sullivan argues that much of this goes back to the prison guard's union.

In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.

And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.

Sullivan uncovered a front group PAC called Crime Victims United of California that has received every one of their donations from the CCPOA. By seeding "victim's rights" groups and enabling more stringent sentencing laws, the CCPOA mainly benefits from the overtime needed for their officers to properly house 170,000 prisoners in cells designed for 100,000. 70% of the prison budget pays salaries. 5% goes to education and vocational programs. And that's the part of the budget being cut.

It only costs her about $100,000 to run these programs — not even a blip in a $10 billion-a-year prison budget. But, says Bracy, the programs are always the first to go. Sometimes she almost feels like giving up.

"It's just not cost-effective to throw men and women in prison and then do nothing with them," she said. "And shame on us for thinking that's safety. It's not public safety. You lock them up and do nothing with them. They go out not even equal to what they came in but worse."

The numbers bear that out, with 90,000 inmates returning to California's prisons every year.

But compare that to the Braille program here at Folsom. Inmates are learning to translate books for the blind. In 20 years, not a single inmate who has been part of the program has ever returned to prison. This year, the program has been cut back to 19 inmates.

Meanwhile, the Schwarzenegger Administration is about to use federal money to increase funding for anti-drug units, which will actually send more nonviolent drug offenders to prison at a time when federal judges have mandated the reduction of the population by 44,000.

This is insanity. But members of the political class, for the most part, still want to be seen as daddy protectors, and will gladly institute the exact same failed policies that have thrown the system into crisis.

We have a moment here, with $1.2 billion in mandated cuts, to create legitimate policies that can both cut costs and reduce the prison population while actually making the state safer. The recent Chino prison riot has led editorialists to come out for sensible prison policies, understanding the connection between stuffing hundreds of thousands of people into modified public storage units and the potential for unrest.

Jean Ross argued on our panel that lawmakers will probably pass the buck and let the judicial branch take the heat for any individual consequences to early release. That would be a mistake, particularly if in the process, they jettison the founding of an independent sentencing commission that would finally address the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the crisis. The clock is ticking on whether we will have any leadership on this issue, as a report is demanded by the federal judges in mid-September. This is an organizing opportunity, a chance to show an ossified political class that we care about more than just being Tough On Crime.

News Of Local Jerks

Two of the eight "Obama Republicans," that is, members of the GOP delegation in the House whose districts went for Barack Obama in November, are in the news of late, and I think we can draw some conclusions about their behavior.

First of all, Dan Lungren held a "town hall meeting" in his district last week. I put "town hall meeting" in quotes because unlike actual town hall meetings, attendees weren't allowed to ask questions:

After a brief introduction by Elk Grove Mayor Patrick Hume, Lungren made it clear that the format of this 'townhall' meeting would not include direct questioning from the audience. Rather constituents were to fill out a questionnaire and submit for indirect questioning by Hume.

Lungren's reasoning was that he had received several constituent complaints that other district meetings were "so rambunctious" that they were afraid to come. To make the meeting open, Lungren said questions would be answered only by those filling out the questionnaires.

During the course of the meeting there were 15 questionnaires read covering a variety of topics, none of them pointed or very relative, in our opinion, to the staggering recession we find ourselves in. Lungren talked about his favorite topics of immigration, deficit spending and judiciary matters.

Hume, who had a table full of submitted questionnaires in front of him, never seemed to ask the questions as written. Hume was either being overly polite, or didn't want to incur the wrath of a congressman [...]

"If this is a townhall meeting, we should be allowed to be allowed to make comments," said Elk Grove resident Mike Monasky. Immediately Monasky was loudly told by city charter commission member Christopher Orrock to be quiet.

Now there's someone who doesn't want to be held accountable by his constituents. That makes the Bush "town hall meetings" look like free-for-alls.

Then there's Buck McKeon. His home in Santa Clarita was burglarized. We're sorry for him and his wife. But we did not expect McKeon to push a political angle.

A thief, who has since been arrested, broke into the McKeons' home on the morning of March 4 and stole jewelry from the master bedroom, said Bob Haueter, McKeon's 2010 campaign manager. The rest of the home was not disturbed, he said [...]

The burglary was mentioned in a McKeon fundraising letter, dated March 25, that discussed McKeon's opposition to the Employee Free-Choice Act — a bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize. The legislation is backed by President Barack Obama, whose political roots are in Chicago.

The letter says the labor legislation is "right out of Stalin's playbook" and part of the president's "socialist agenda." A note at the bottom of the letter, written by Patricia McKeon, read:

"As if things couldn't get any worse, our home was just broken into while we were in D.C. Some observant neighbors were able to identify the thieves and get the license plate number of the car they used.

"You won't believe this; the car is registered to a person in Chicago! Just know this, no matter what happens to us, Buck and I won't back down."

Are you kidding me? Apparently we're to believe that President Obama has a cadre of thieves he's dispatching across the country to Republican homes. While I admit that would be a simply ingenious strategy (note to Patricia McKeon: I'm joking), I simply don't think he's concerning himself with an underworld network.

Can we conclude that these two are maybe just a little bit scared, as they see their stranglehold on their districts slipping away?

Link-Trolling For Sarah Palin Supporters

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity."

Todd Palin’s half-sister was arrested Thursday after police say she broke into a Wasilla home for the second time this week to steal money.

Palin is the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin. He declined comment.

Also too, Palin tried to replace a Democratic state Senator from Juneau with a "Democrat" who switched his party at the last minute to get the job. Davenoon has the details:

Meantime, Palin is engaged in a less nationally-visible effort to deny a state senate appointment to a highly popular and competent state house member -- Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula -- who happened to voice the uncontroversial view last August that Palin was "not ready" to be Vice President. When state Sen. Kim Elton resigned last month to take a job with the US Department of the Interior, Palin was obligated by state law to name a registered Democrat to replace him; the local party organization forwarded Kerttula's name to Palin as its sole recommendation -- a decision that was reasonable, given Kerttula's surpassing qualifications for the job and given the near-certainty that she'll win the seat outright next year during the fall elections. Palin, however, opted instead to nominate a conservative legislative aide, Tim Grussendorf, who had actually switched his party affiliation to qualify for the job. Palin wasn't required by law to accept the local party's recommendation; by the same token, the senate Democrats weren't required to accept her choice. And so yesterday, the senate Democrats rejected Grussendorf by a majority vote in closed session.

Palin, however, is now insisting that an obscure, 22-year-old legal memo requires legislators to follow a completely different process than the one laid out by the relevant statute, and she's rejecting the senate democrats' rejection -- a decision that not even her party colleagues in the legislature agree with. It's an unbelievably petty dispute, for which the governor deserves the blame. While the legislature is trying to get access to federal stimulus funds that the governor stupidly rejected, Sarah Palin seems determined to provoke a court battle to defend her ongoing, grudge-driven administrative style.

Palin probably hopes that more people criticize her, otherwise she'd have no legislative agenda. But I'm sure she'll be fine in that department...

Nixonland Is Alive And Well

This is just getting uglier and uglier. When Fox News has to admit that McCain rallies are taking on the character of a Mississippi lynch mob, you know something's wrong.

You’ll hear the booing behind me. In recent days, when Barack Obama’s name has been mentioned, it has gone from boos and hissing to actual chants and calls of traitor, criminal, and even terrorist.

The McCain campaign says they don’t condone it, they don’t want to see it happen, but it’s happening more and more every day.

They don't condone it, they just stoke it like a camper poking at a fire.

Today, the phrase "off with his head" made a cameo. And then there's the inevitable by-product of the incitement and hate:

After a week of McCain supporters being incited to shout "kill him!" and "terrorist!" and "treason!", a man in Louisiana was arrested for threatening to kill election officials. The Smoking Gun has his arrest report and mug shots. It seems his voter registration card was delayed, and he was insistent that he would bring his shotgun to their office and kill them if they didn't hurry up because he needed to "keep the n*gger out of office."

We're entering a dangerous time and the McCain campaign will have some measure of responsibility for this, though they won't take it. And America will have a "hoses in Montgomery" moment when forced to reckon with this.

Rolling Out The Smears

It's kind of comical to watch the right flailing about, trying to come up with some narrative that will stick to their opponent so they can carry the hulking corpse of John McCain across the finish line in November. On the one hand, you have the creator of the Willie Horton ads trying to paint Obama as soft on crime and responsible for gangland murders while in the State Senate in Illinois. On the other hand, you have a depiction of Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago, as some sort of free-love, terrorist-supporting freak show in the middle of the Second City (Milton Friedman, take note). And on the third hand, you have the royalists over at the National Review demanding that Obama release his birth certificate to prove wrong rumors that, among other things, his real middle name is Muhammad (I don't know, I would've changed it to something other than "Hussein" if I thought it'd be a political liability).

All of this, of course, is about Obama being less than American, part of the Marxist left, both scary black man and Muslim jihadist, and it's the direct descendant of those pesky email forwards. Fortunately, Obama is seeking to counteract those.

Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.

The unit is part of a huge expansion of Obama's campaign team as he shifts from the Democratic nomination race to the campaign for November's election.

As well as the rumour-mongering problem, units are being set up to deal with other perceived vulnerable points, including off-the-cuff remarks by his wife Michelle. McCain's wife, Cindy, questioned Michelle's patriotism in February after she said: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

Unfortunately, this is part of modern campaigning, but I'm glad to see Obama's team finally paying attention to it.

Meet The Face Of "Tough On Crime" California

I think the dictionary definition of "irony" just blew up.

Before Henry T. Nicholas III donated millions to rewrite California's crime laws, the Republican billionaire was entangled in his own netherworld of prostitution, drug peddling, bribery and death threats, federal prosecutors say.

The salacious charges against Nicholas – made public in two federal grand jury indictments unsealed last Thursday – allege a pattern of criminal behavior by one of the state's richest people and biggest political donors.

Nicholas, the 48-year-old co-founder of Broadcom, a computer chip-making company, has donated more than $9.4 million to various California candidates and causes in the past four years. He is a top donor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This year, the indicted Republican billionaire is the financial force behind two crime initiatives voters will consider in November – one to stiffen anti-gang statutes and another to bolster victims' rights. Combined, he has given the measures $5.9 million – critical seed money used to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Proponents are furiously backpedaling away from Nicholas' involvement – even though he is the largest donor to both campaigns.

This guy was backdating stock options to the tune of $2.2 billion, supplied all kinds of drugs to associates and LISTED THEM ON INVOICES as "refreshments" and "party favors," bribed a Broadcom employee a million dollars to get him to keep quiet about his drug use, and threatened physical violence to conceal the same.

He's the one telling California how to manage their crime laws?

The two he's funded for the November ballot are real doozies, considering that we're in the midst of a prison overcrowding crisis.

This year, Nicholas is most closely tied to "Marsy's Law," which would expand the rights of crime victims and make it harder for convicts to obtain parole.

Nicholas wrote the measure, named it after his sister, and contributed all but $100 of the measure's $4.85 million treasury [...]

The second Nicholas-backed initiative, the Safe Neighborhoods Act, would stiffen penalties for gang members and increase law enforcement funding in the state.

Nicholas donated $1 million to the campaign, sponsored by Sen. George Runner and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, two Lancaster Republicans.

Hypocrisy among Republicans is nothing new. But this drive for ever tougher crime laws is fueled by growing the prison-industrial complex and keeping residents scared enough to send "law 'n' order" Republicans back to Sacramento. It's an insidious game, and the fact that its chief sponsor has committed more crimes BY HIMSELF than any he would address in his initiatives, seemingly, makes it even more unseemly.

We still have a grace period to determine how the state will manage this crisis and avoid a federal mandate to cap the prison population. Hopefully there will be enough room for Henry Nicholas.

Prison Officials Worry About Overcrowding Due To Republican Presidential Staffers

This is a major worry. We will simply have to build an entire federal penitentiary just to house members of the Giuliani campaign:

A prominent Texas Republican has sued Rudy Giuliani’s law firm and a close friend and partner of Giuliani’s, Kenneth Caruso, alleging that Caruso, the firm and others “schemed and conspired to steal $10 million.”

J. Virgil Waggoner, a Houston businessman and philanthropist, filed the previously unreported suit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in July. He alleges that Caruso, his former lawyer, conspired with Waggoner’s investment adviser to cover up the disappearance of $10 million Waggoner invested through a Caribbean bank, the British Trade & Commerce Bank.

Waggoner claims Caruso “may have also been romantically involved” with the investment adviser.

The Caribbean bank was shut down after its handling of Waggoner’s investment came to light, and its president was later jailed for money laundering.

We toyed at some point with putting together a Right's Field police blotter, with a list of all the candidate advisors under investigation or indictment, but at this point, I actually don't think we have the server space.

On another note, should Giuliani be elected, it would be easier if all these officials were imprisoned somewhere close to the White House, making cabinet meetings more convenient. Honestly, some people like to talk about the Bush Administration running a criminal enterprise inside the Oval Office. Giuliani apparently runs one wherever he appears.

Team Giuliani

The state treasurer of South Carolina, a Republican, has a side gig.

South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, was indicted Tuesday on federal cocaine charges.

The millionaire is accused of buying less than 500 grams of the drug to share with other people in late 2005, U.S. Attorney Reggie Lloyd said. Ravenel, 44, is charged with distribution of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

(OK, maybe he doesn't make a LIVING selling coke, but that's the charge, so I'm running with it.)

And remember, the Bush Administration wants those mandatory minimum sentencing laws, so he'll be serving time.

The very last line of the story is this oh-by-the-way nugget:

Thomas Ravenel is also the state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

So Giuliani has one former business partner who's about to be indicted for wiretap fraud and tax evasion, and now a state chair who's a coke dealer. Good judgment. Are Jimmy Conway and Paul Cicero and Tommy DeVito senior staffers as well?

Who Didn't See This Coming?

The consequence of excessively politicizing the Justice Department of the United States is to open the justice system itself to attack, and to let potential criminals to be set free because the very notion of blind justice has been tainted.

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors.

Missouri lawyers have invoked the controversy in challenging last year's indictment of a company owned by a prominent Democrat, on suspicion of violating federal wage and hour laws. The indictment, which came two months after the owner announced that she was running for political office, was obtained by a Republican U.S. attorney who also has been criticized because he charged workers for a left-leaning political group on the eve of the 2006 midterm election.

A lawyer in a child pornography case recently defended his client at a federal trial in Minnesota in part by questioning the motives of the Republican U.S. attorney, who has come under scrutiny in the congressional investigation into the prosecutor purge.

Lawyers for a former county official in Delaware who has been accused of corruption asked a judge in early May to allow them to subpoena the Justice Department and White House for documents to see whether political motives factored into charges being brought against the official. They cited the brewing controversy inside the Beltway.

"Those revelations dramatically reinforce the reasons to believe that considerations beyond mere law enforcement are behind this prosecution," the lawyers wrote.

Whether or not these criticisms are founded is besides the point. It's another arrow in the quiver of defense lawyers across the country, and once the credibility of our federal justice system is questioned, it's nearly impossible to remove the stench. We have a cat urine Justice Department, in effect.

And the Attorney General is trying to fix this by politicizing the department even more.

Gonzales recently proposed tightening the leash on the men and women who prosecute federal crimes across the nation.

Gonzales described what he delicately calls "a more vigorous and a little bit more formal process" for annually evaluating prosecutors. What that means, as he explained it, is hauling in every U.S. attorney for a meeting to hear, among other things, politicians' beefs against the prosecutor.

If that should happen, expect the fair-mindedness and independence Americans still count on from their Justice Department to slip.

In testimony to Congress and comments at the National Press Club, Gonzales framed the meetings as a way of improving communications. But it also looks a lot like a way to remind recalcitrant U.S. attorneys what the home team expects.

This will simply lead to even more charges of politicization in courtrooms across the nation. And it will make it even more difficult to weed through the real criminal activity and the charges which was trumped up for political purposes.

California Trend-Setting

Draconian sentences have crippled the state corrections system so much that judges had to threaten mass releases and take over the prison hospitals, so why not take that model nationwide:

The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals.

Republicans are seizing the administration's crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue for 2008.

And yes, these are the the same Republicans that want to pardon federal criminal Scooter Libby and claim that his sentence is too harsh for such an upstanding individual.

But aside from the hypocrisy, it is a stunningly dumb idea to mimic the mandatory sentencing laws in California that have produced a prison crisis, the highest recidivism rate in the nation and the virtual elimination of all rehabilitation services due to overcrowding. This is the kind of bass-ackwards logic they're relying on here:

The Justice Department wants to return to the old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant leniency only in special cases. Without those required floors, Justice officials maintain that different judges could hand out widely varying penalties for the same crime.

Justice officials also point to a growing number of lighter sentences as possible proof that crime is rising because criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties.

If there's one thing I know about criminals, they always spend a lot of time checking Justice Department flowcharts to see if they'll get a couple less years for their crime before they go commit them. Actually, the only trend that seems to correlate with the recent rise in violent crime is the increase in income inequality, but nice try on that one.

The punishment should fit the crime, but the professionals who actually hear the cases should make that judgment. And this "tough on crime" pose to lock people up to rot simply makes this a more dangerous country as unequipped jails lose their sense of mission and become human waste dumps instead of rehabilitation and treatment facilities.

I'm little surprised that national Republicans are borrowing from the fearmongering used in California the past 30 years. What bothers me the most is how the Democrats are likely to go along with it.

Petty Theft

It certainly looks like someone stole the President's watch in Albania. Start watching at around :50 in.



OK, I looked at it again, and it might have fallen on the ground while someone was trying to steal it. Both Bush and a couple of the Secret Service agents look down at the ground at a moment where the watch seems to come off. But I certainly don't see anybody stooping over to pick the watch up. The AP has somebody saying that's what happened.

At least the metaphor only stayed at "The emperor has no watch" and not "The emperor has no clothes."

Of course, you can write 50 lines about "he can't even keep his own belongings safe, how can he keep us safe" and the like. This may be his Jimmy Carter-with-the-killer-rabbit moment.

Two Men Arrested for Doing Their Job

This is totally fucked up.

Several illuminated electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, were each charged Wednesday night with one count of placing a hoax device and one count of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

The two men worked together to place the devices, Coakley said in a news release announcing Stevens' arrest [...]

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. (funny deadpan, AP - ed.)

"The two men worked together to place the devices," like they were planning a bank heist or something. They were HIRED by Turner Broadcasting! You want to arrest someone, arrest the marketing manager? Or better yet, arrest yourselves for being dumb enough and so paralyzed by fear to think that a cartoon character giving you the finger was a FUCKING BOMB! This promotion was in a dozen cities over two weeks. Somehow NO OTHER CITY managed to whip themselves into a frenzy. Only Boston. And you're embarrassed, so you arrest the employees? THE EMPLOYEES?

This is a prime example of how the corporatocracy has completely changed America, to the extent that there isn't even a thought given to holding them responsible. They have fancy lawyers, and can apply corporate pressure. Time Warner Cable's in Pittsfield and Athol, MA (you can look it up). Since Time Warner hired a third-party company to put up the designs, they are once removed from the repsonsibility, I guess.

And the charge is ludicrous. These weren't HOAX DEVICES, they were advertising! There wasn't a deliberate attempt to scare the city of Boston, it was A CARTOON CHARACTER GIVING THE FINGER!

Because it's necessary to ratchet up fear to prove that you're protecting the homeland, two poor shlubs who did absolutely nothing but their jobs are going to sit in jail, victims of someone else's paranoia. This is a civil rights travesty.

(By the way, everyone involved in this is a Democrat, and they're all being completely stupid)