Tag: Superdickery

Jeff Sessions Is a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain

What should you do if you suffer from chronic pain? According to Jess Sessions, you should just toughen the fuck up:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week said that the solution for many people who suffer from chronic pain should be to “take aspirin and tough it out.”

Jeff Sessions reminds me of a villain from an old Saturday morning cartoon. If you remember such shows, the villains are often pure evil. Since they have no redeeming characteristics, the concept of moral grey area can be safely avoided by the show runners.

Jeff Sessions has no redeeming characteristics. He seems to be evil just for the sake of being evil. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wipes his ass with a puppy after taking a dump just because doing so would be evil. On the upside, since he reflects a Saturday morning cartoon villain, there’s a good chance that his evil schemes will be continuously thwarted by a group of mutated turtles with martial arts skills or giant robots that can transform into trucks.

Just More Heroes Doing Hero Things

For the life of me I can’t figure out why our heroes in blue have such a dismal reputation:

BALTIMORE — The officers’ job during some of the bloodiest years in Baltimore was to get guns off the streets.

Instead, they plundered money, jewelry, drugs and weapons and gouged the cash-strapped city for overtime and hours they never worked, according to their own admissions and testimony in ongoing criminal cases.

Over the past four years, some members of the Gun Trace Task Force stole more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians, according to officers’ plea agreements and statements in federal court.

They admit to putting illegal trackers on the cars of suspected dealers so they could rob their homes and sell off any drugs and guns they found.

This sounds an awful lot like the Minneapolis Gang Strike Force. In both cases officers were assigned to specific duties and used their newfound positions of authority to rob people left and right. Moreover, it appears as though the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force followed in the footsteps of the Minneapolis Gang Strike Force in that it committed so many crimes that they could no longer be effectively swept under the rug.

I’m sure Minneapolis and Baltimore aren’t unique. After all, what else could be expected of a group of officers given tremendous powers, in addition to the tremendous powers they already have, and almost no oversight? Such an environment is custom made for corrupt behavior.

Pretending to Do Something

There is never a shortage of government busybodies when something has to be done and people have been demanding that something be done in response to the Las Vegas shooting. So the law enforcers in Mesa, Arizona have answered those demands by arresting and charing an individual show the shooter purchased ammunition from:

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Authorities have charged Douglas Haig, 55, of Mesa Arizona with selling “armor-piercing ammunition” to Las Vegas killer Stephen Paddock according to court documents acquired by the Associated Press. Haig works full time as an aerospace engineer and part-time as a manufacturer of reloaded ammunition.

This would be like arresting the head of Ford in response to somebody using an F-150 to run down a group of people. Haig made a product and sold it. After that he ceased to have control over it and therefore ceased to be responsible for it. But that doesn’t matter because the government wants to show the world that it’s doing something in response to the shooting.

The lack of Haig’s involvement with the crime doesn’t matter as illustrated by the charges against him. He’s not be charged with anything relating to the shooting. Instead he’s being charged with violating an unrelated regulation against manufacturing “armor piercing” ammunition (which, itself, is a nonsensical legal definition) without a license. Since none of the Las Vegas shooter’s victims were wearing body armor, the ability for the ammunition he used to penetrate body armor is irrelevant (and that’s not what the legal definition of “armor piecing” is even based on). But the arrest gives the law enforcers something to show the public and that’s all that matters.

Just Another Hero Doing Hero Things

A Tennessee hero has made headlines for ordering a hero under his command to heroically execute an unarmed man:

A sheriff in rural Tennessee was inadvertently caught on police body cam footage ordering deputies to shoot an unarmed man engaged in a slow speed chase, NewsChannel 5/WTVF reported.

The body cam revealed Sheriff Oddie Shoupe’s conversation with a deputy after the fatal shooting of Michael Dial, who was struck in the head after refusing to pull over his 1976 pickup truck when officers attempted to pull him over for driving with a suspended license.

Of course this situation was tragic and the brave sheriff wishes it could have gone differently…

“If they don’t think I’ll give the d*mn order to kill that motherf*cker they’re full of sh*t,” Sheriff Shoupe added. “I love this sh*t. God I tell you what, I thrive on it.”

Or not.

I have my doubts that Sheriff Shoupe’s attitude is unique. I would actually bet money on the fact that a lot of people who share his attitude are drawn to law enforcement because it allows them to act on their urges without concerns for consequences. Granted, because this was actually caught on video the sheriff may end up having to step down. However, I doubt that he or the officer who was “just following orders” will face the criminal charges they so deserve.

War Is Good for Business

Yesterday I posted about my theory that the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan aren’t meant to be won, they’re meant to grind of perpetually in order to enrich the military-industrial complex. Less you think I’m a complete wonk I would like to take a moment to point out that war is good for business:

As Donald Trump might put it, major weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin cashed in “bigly” in his first year in office. They raked in tens of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, while posting sharp stock price increases and healthy profits driven by the continuation and expansion of Washington’s post-9/11 wars. But last year’s bonanza is likely to be no more than a down payment on even better days to come for the military-industrial complex.

The nice thing about being a policy maker is that you’re in a position to make a great deal of money when your policies are enacted. If, for example, you plan to wage a perpetual war, you can invest in military contractors before you announce your policy. After you announce your policy, you can enjoy significant profits at the stock prices of those companies skyrockets. Moreover, you can buy more stock if you plan to announce a policy of increasing the war effort.

This is one of the reason political offices are magnets to corrupt individuals. It’s also one of the reasons why political reform is impossible. Do you think somebody in a position to make significant profits is going to willingly curtail their own power and thus harm their profits? Of course not.

The War Is Not Meant to Be Won

Vietnam taught the United States that fighting an asymmetrical war against an enemy willing to suffer horrendous losses is foolish. It’s too bad that the student didn’t pay attention to the teach:

Despite waging nearly 17 consecutive years of war and spending up to $1 trillion, the U.S.-led attempt to defeat the Taliban has left the insurgents openly active in up to 70 percent of Afghanistan, according to a BBC study published Tuesday. The report also found that a rival ultraconservative Sunni Muslim organization, the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), controlled more territory than ever, further complicating the beleaguered effort to stabilize the country.

Or did it? Even the simplest of strategists would realized that this war isn’t winnable with the strategy being used and would decide to either change up their strategy or cut their losses and pull out. The fact that the United States has suffered through this kind of war before and is still waging this one using the same strategy indicates that the higher ups want this war to continue as it has been.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four Oceania took great care to ensure the war it was engaged in was perpetual. Oceania’s government’s goal was to use the war to destroy any surplus wealth that might otherwise empower the masses against it. I believe that the government of the United States has a slightly different goal. It is taking great care to wage a perpetual war to keep the military contractors enriched. The wars aren’t about fighting any specific enemy. There is no victory condition. Its purpose is purely economic. If the United States did manage to crush the Taliban or ISIS then it would have to find another enemy to fight just as it did once Saddam Hussein was toppled.

A Reasonable Response

I often refer to laws as arbitrary rules. This doesn’t sit well with statists because they believe that laws are more than arbitrary declarations by politicians. In their world laws are the result of a problem being recognized, intelligently discussed, and sensibly addressed through appropriate legislation. But when the “problems” being identified are as minuscule as disposable straws, any claim that the problems being addressed by politicians are actual problems at all gets tossed out of the window:

Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon’s law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

“We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans,” Calderon explained in a press release.

If this were being proposed anywhere besides California, I’d bet against it going anywhere. But since it is being proposed in California, I give it even odds. That state’s politicians are especially loathsome. But I digress.

Let’s consider the problem. Apparently Calderon is upset about disposable straws ending up in landfills. I highly doubt Mother Gaia is going to keel over on account of a pile of straws, especially when I consider all of the other major environmental issues, many of which are created by the government. So I think it’s safe to list disposable straws as a rather minor issue deserving no real attention at all. But since it’s being given attention the punishment should at least be minor. However, Calderon’s proposal is to destroy the lives of waiters who give unrequested straws.

Waiters aren’t known for raking in money. A $1,000 fine is a pretty significant chunk of change for somebody making waiter money. But the real icing on the cake is the jail sentence. If a waiter is forced to miss work for months, they will likely find themselves without a job when they return. Furthermore, that waiter will then have a criminal record, which will make finding another job difficult. For the “crime” of distributing a disposable straw a waiter would find their life completely destroyed by this legislation.

There is nothing reasonable about this proposal but it could be passed into law because laws are arbitrary decrees issued by politicians.

Drunk Driving Laws Are About Profit, Not Safety

The blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) for sober driving (as opposed to drunk driving) is 0.08 for most of the country. Utah, however, decided to lower its BAC for sober driving to 0.05 and now neoprohibitionists want that standard set throughout the entire country:

The U.S. government-commissioned report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine made multiple recommendations, including significantly lowering drunken driving thresholds. It calls for lowering the blood-alcohol concentration threshold from 0.08 to 0.05. All states have 0.08 thresholds.

But there’s a slight problem:

A Utah law passed last year that lowers the state’s threshold to 0.05 doesn’t go into effect until Dec. 30.

Utah’s arbitrary definition of drunk driving isn’t in effect yet so there’s no way an argument can be made that lowering the BAC to 0.05 reduces incidents of drunk driving. So if there’s no data indicating that Utah’s law is helping the situation, why is anybody arguing in favor of taking that law to the federal level? Money.

When somebody is charged with drunk driving they weren’t necessarily drunk. The dictionary definition of drunk is, “affected by alcohol to the extent of losing control of one’s faculties or behavior.” The legal definition of drunk is having a BAC over 0.08. Those two definitions are entirely unrelated. Alcohol affects different people in different ways. Some people are lightweights and a BAC of 0.08 impairs them while others aren’t impaired at all by a BAC of 0.08. If the real concern were dangerous driving, the law arbitrarily declaring drunkenness would be tossed out and the law against reckless driving would be used instead. But that would severely cut into government profits because it wouldn’t allow it to issue citations unless somebody was actually impaired.

Lowering the BAC for sober driving wouldn’t address the problem of dangerous drivers. It would increase government profits though, which is the actual reason such laws are sought after by politicians and the panels they commission.

Getting Away with Murder

Yesterday Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced that Officer Noor will be getting away with murder:

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman has convened a grand jury to compel testimony and gather evidence in the July 2017 officer involved shooting death of Justine Damond.

For those wondering why I’m so sure Officer Noor won’t be charged it’s because grand juries have an extremely strong tendency to side with officers and that’s because grand juries are designed to intimidate jurors into siding with officers. Grand juries are usually just officious rituals tacked onto the act of dismissing charges against an officer.

Another point of interest in this decision is that it goes against one of Freeman’s previously made promise:

In recent years, Freeman has said he would no longer use grand juries to decide whether officers would be charged in police shootings, saying he would make those decisions himself to provide more accountability and transparency.

I understand that Freeman is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand he’s an employee of Hennepin County. As a government employee he has a conflict of interest. Officer Noor, like himself, is also a government employee and government employees are supposed to have each other’s backs. But if Freeman just declared Noor innocent there would likely be civil unrest. By reneging on his promise he can effectively let Noor off while claiming he did the best that he could but the decision was in the hands of a grand jury.

Welcome to the United States of America, the freest country on Earth… if you have a badge.

Prosecutors are Scum

If one mindlessly accepts the bullshit fed to them by public schools and other government propaganda departments, they believe that governments exist to protect the people by ensuring justice is served. After even a minor amount of analysis though one is left realizing that the purpose of government is to rob wealth from the masses. A good example of this is how government approaches justice.

For justice to be served there must first be a crime. A crime necessarily involves a victim. The government gets around this by espousing a nonsense belief that society, a concept that exists solely in our imaginations, can be a victim. It uses this belief to charge people with victimless crimes such as being in possession of a plant or firearm that has been arbitrarily declared verboten. Another factor that must exist for justice to be served is that only a person guilty of a crime is punished for it. Prosectors, however, are primarily concerned with conviction rates, not justice:

Prosecutors are supposed to disclose any information they uncover that might help the defense. But enforcing that obligation — and punishing those who ignore it — has been no easy task. After Mr. Thompson was freed, he won a $14 million judgment, only to have the Supreme Court reverse the award in 2011, ruling that prosecutors can be held financially liable only if they are shown to have a pattern of unethical behavior. He received nothing.

[…]

This time, lawyers for Mr. Jones and experts at the Innocence Project have pored over court records to compile evidence of a pattern.

“This was a galling disregard for the constitutional rights of defendants,” said Michael L. Banks, a lawyer with the Philadelphia firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. “From the top of this office, there was a culture of winning. And winning meant getting convictions. And that’s why there’s such a striking pattern of wrongful convictions.”

Once again we see the redundancies built into the government to protect its power. Withholding evidence from the defense is supposed to be a crime itself but the Supreme Court ruled that it’s only a crime if there is a pattern of such behavior. What constitutes a pattern? Who knows. But it ensures that yet another barrier exists between corrupt prosecutors (a redundant term) and their victims so business can continue as usual. And that’s the way government works.