Month: May 2012

How often does this have to happen?

by David Atkins

Via TPM:

On a Friday conference call with reporters, Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) criticized regulators for writing a major loophole into the so-called Volcker Rule — meant to prevent banks from betting with depositor funds — at the behest of financial interests.

“It is inconsistent to create this kind of a major loophole,” Levin said, noting that it goes against the intent of the reforms Congress passed.

The law was designed to restrict banks from gambling with customer funds under the guise of “hedging,” while still allowing banks to make proprietary trades as hedges against specific investments. But it tasked Obama administration regulators with writing the restrictions, and as drafted those regulations would allow banks to hedge against broad losses by placing bets, such as JP Morgan’s, on things like economic growth and inflation.

This exception, Merkley noted, will allow banks to hide a “vast amount of proprietary trading.”

“The draft rules at this point are way too lax,” Merkley added. “They do not have the bright lines that are needed.

This came as no surprise to either senator, both of whom identified this and similar loopholes in early versions of the rule months ago.

“Banks could easily use portfolio-based hedging to mask proprietary trading,” they wrote in a February letter to regulators.

This is exactly what happened at JP Morgan — and is likely the reason why the company’s CEO Jamie Dimon claimed that the losing bets wouldn’t have run afoul of the Volcker Rule if it had been operational. The rule is intended to take effect in July, though Wall Street execs, including Dimon, have been pushing hard to delay implementation.

It’s exhausting being a progressive. It’s like being a permanent Cassandra: right about almost everything (within the confines of social democracy on a capitalist substrate), all the time, but disrespected in one’s own time and consistently marginalized. And it’s not just bloggers. It’s Nobel Prize winners, too.

And yet nothing ever changes. Every new argument is determined as if both sides were on equally respectable footing. At some point, doesn’t one side have to get credit for consistently being right?

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No redemption required

by digby

This post by Mike Lux gets to the heart of what matters about the Mitt Romney bullying story:

[T]he American public should not be surprised by this story, because Romney and his Republican party’s entire philosophy is straight out of Lord of The Flies.

It’s not just that the Republicans oppose hate crime and anti-bullying legislation because it gives certain people they don’t like “special status”, or that they have been trying to defund the Violence Against Women Act or withdraw its help from immigrant women. It’s not only that they want the American government to be able to torture people in violation of our constitution, our treaties, and our oldest traditions as a country. In fact, the Lord of the Flies philosophy is at the very heart of their economic plans. The Ryan-Romney budget is all about giving the wealthy and powerful everything, and taking money and resources away from the elderly, people with disabilities, the poor, and the working class in this country. They want to let polluters go free to do what they will in poisoning our air and water and climate, and big oil to take unending subsidies and tax loopholes. They want the big insurance companies to be able to keep the sick from getting coverage. They want to leave the Wall Street titans free to speculate and cheat their customers and wreak ever more havoc with the economy. In short, Romney and Ryan want the strong to be set free to do what they will to the rest of us. Each of us would be on our own, the safety net and most basic consumer protections would be shredded, and the devil take the hindmost. It is the cruelty of Romney’s high school “pranks and hijinks” turned into an entire economic system.

The story about Romney’s merciless cruelty,which he says he doesn’t even remember and writes off as a harmless, boys-will-be-boys prank, is not an aberration, it is part of his whole life story. He went from being the big bully in his High School, to being the cavalier dad who made the family dog ride on top of the car even when it was making him sick, to being the “vulture capitalist” at Bain Capital loading up companies with debt for short term profit and doing mass layoffs before selling off the companies. Now he is the Presidential candidate advocating for the Ryan budget, the single cruelest policy document I have ever seen in 30+ years of politics.

I have no doubt that Mitt sees himself as being a very decent and kind person. Most of us do. But in truth, he is a person who represents the dark, predatory side of American culture — that aspect of our society that fetishizes ambition and avarice and believes that altruism is a form of weakness. It’s always there, but until recently we more or less had an agreement that it was well … un-Christian, at the very least, to be too obvious about it.

I don’t know if it’s Ayn Rand permeating the national consciousness or the application of “tough love” as an excuse for cruelty, but this Lord of the Flies psychology is becoming mainstream. Mitt Romney personifies it. No redemption necessary for this fellow. He’s always known who he was.

Update: Be sure to read BagNews’ analysis of Mitt on camera. Very interesting:

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Freedom

by David Atkins

I’m sure this will help:

The chronically unemployed in California will lose federal jobless extension benefits Saturday, and Steven Salinas is acutely aware of it.

“That’s going to force even more people to get out there and look for work,” he said, taking a minute to talk Thursday at the West Oxnard Job & Career Center.

Of the 93,000 Californians who will be affected, an estimated 2,011 are Ventura County residents, according to the state Employment Development Department. An estimated 22,372 of those affected live in Los Angeles County.

Since March 2009, up to 20 weeks of additional benefits have gone to 912,445 long-term unemployed Californians through the extension program that ends Saturday.

California’s unemployment rate, while still high at 11 percent, is not as extraordinarily and consistently high as it was three years ago, so the long-term unemployed no longer qualify for federal emergency unemployment benefits known as Fed-Ed.

“The Fed-Ed program is designed to end once a state’s economy starts to significantly improve,” said Employment Development Department Director Pam Harris. “Still, we know this is hard on our clients. We’re doing everything we can to get word out so they can plan accordingly.”

Salinas exhausted his extension benefits in October, so he’s already on his own and leans on family to stay afloat. He has spent the past three years searching for a job, having last worked full time for a cable TV company, where he ran public access stations in Oxnard, Ojai and Westlake.

The good news is he had a job interview Thursday with a communications and technology company, and he remains upbeat, despite his predicament. Still, the 54-year-old is not looking forward to more competition from people losing their extension benefits Saturday.

“I think my age kind of scares some employers,” he said.

Age can indeed hamper one’s ability to rapidly find work. Older workers are much more likely to remain unemployed long-term, according to a recent study by Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. While workers older than 55 are less likely to lose their jobs, if they do, they have a more difficult time re-entering the workforce.

Americans who have been out of work for a year or more made up about 29.5 percent of the nearly 13.3 million people out of work during the first quarter of the year, according to the study. That translates into 3.9 million workers, or slightly more than Oregon’s population. The percentage of jobless workers unemployed for more than a year peaked at 31.8 percent in the third quarter of 2011.

Not mentioned is the fact that adding 93,000 desperate people, most of whom can’t get work not because they’re lazy but because they haven’t been able to find a decent job, to the workforce creates an even stronger market for employers, which in turn increases job insecurity for the currently employed and depresses wages. In short, the entire workforce will be more constrained, more stressed out, lower paid and less free.

But it’s really important that we cut these “looters” off at the knees so that we don’t go further into debt. And heaven forbid we tax “productive” people like the geniuses at JPMorgan. For freedom.

Rainbow cover art

by digby

I like it:

But as great as that is, I still think that this was the more shocking cultural earthquake:

And naturally, the Republicans aren’t taking that attack on America sitting down:

Gay service members who want to marry often can’t have the ceremony on military bases in the United States. It’s not the Pentagon that has authority, but the states where the bases are located.

Many states that are home to some of the nation’s largest military bases have outlawed same-sex marriage, including North Carolina, Texas and California.
So if a gay military couple wants to get married in those states, they can’t, even on U.S. military property.

Said Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: “State law controls in that situation. So you know, where state law provides for that, then obviously that kind of marriage can take place. And if the law prohibits that, then it cannot take place on a military base.”

If Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have their way, no gay marriages will take place on any military bases. In a straight party-line vote, the GOP members of the HASC voted Thursday to include a provision in the new defense authorization bill outlawing any gay marriage ceremonies on military bases.

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The feminist makeover

by digby

As everyone who reads this blog knows, I am probably less sanguine about the outcome of the current assault on women’s rights than some, but that’s only because I’m old and I foolishly believed much of this was settled long ago when I was young. Maybe it’s just that when you reach a certain age you realize that change, both good and bad, happens over a longer time horizon than you were able to see when you were younger and I’m seeing that some things peaked and seem to be going the wrong way.

I am, however, very pleased to see this from Rebecca Traister this morning. I think she’s right about it and it’s a good sign. I don’t know how much influence it will have on policy, but the social implications are important:

Fighting funny may not be inherently more effective than fighting mad, but it does help to correct abiding misapprehensions about feminism as a cheerless vortex: anti-male, anti-sex, anti-porn, anti-fun. In 2012, the anti-everything platform was occupied not by feminist agitators, but the GOP politicians they were battling.

It was presidential candidate Santorum and not, say, feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who complained in March that pornography “contributes to misogyny and violence against women.” Santorum also could be seen, in a widely disseminated interview, barely able to bring himself to say S-E-X, opining instead about how contraception encouraged people to do things “in the sexual realm” that are not “how things are supposed to be.” Virginia Del. David Albo, who sponsored the mandatory-ultrasound bill, was too Victorian to utter the word “vaginal,” and spoke instead of “trans-V this” and “trans-V that” in a tale he told on the Virginia House floor . . . about his wife’s decision not to have sex with him after the ultrasound story became news.[…]

Images of ultrasound wands and all-male congressional hearings; social-media campaigns; these weapons of a rowdy feminist blogosphere goosed boycotts, donations to Planned Parenthood and state-house demonstrations nationwide. Youthful engagement zinged through mainstream popular culture; on “The View” in May, 20-year-old actress Eden Sher recommended Jessica Valenti’s “Full Frontal Feminism: a Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters,” raving that the book “makes it absolutely impossible for anyone, but specifically young females, to not want to take action.”

Women’s rights activism enlivened even small towns such as Dunkerton, Iowa, where residents protested an appearance by Bradlee Dean, a conservative Christian preacher whose band had recently told a group of high school girls that they would “have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins”; demonstrators included female students with signs that read, “This is what a feminist looks like.”

For too many years this ridiculously condescending image of feminists as man-hating losers who just “need to get laid” has made far too many otherwise sensible women recoil from claiming the label. It’s long past time for it to be put out to pasture.

The stereotype was never correct, by the way. Indeed,the most famous feminist of our time was Gloria Steinham and she was a very sexually attractive woman. So were most of the women who marched and protested and otherwise pushed the feminist agenda during the second wave. The image of the ugly, hairy “pie-wagon”, as Ann Coulter so memorably called them, was a figment of the right’s own insecure fever dreams and a throwback to the 60s complaints about hippie style, which were always pathetically crude and juvenile.

Feminism represents all women, young and old, pretty and plain, boisterous and shy, married and single, straight and gay. That’s the whole point. Instead of lumping al of us in with some generalized definition of womanhood, feminism seeks to allow each individual the freedom to define herself. One would have thought that would be a major plank of the allegedly liberty loving right, but that’s never been the case. The only thing they really think should be free is the benefits they get from the government.

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Gingrich’s real heir? Paul Ryan

by diogby

Can we all see what’s wrong with this picture? Take a good look at that screen shot. Click on it to enlarge if you have to. I’ll wait.

“The President and his party’s leaders are repeating Europe’s mistakes by calling for job-crushing tax increases, making empty promises to citizens, and ensuring harsh disruptions for beneficiaries of government programs. Time and again, their approach to budgeting has been the very definition of European-style austerity. House Republicans reject this shrunken vision of our future. Instead of broken promises and shared pain, we must advance pro-growth reforms that make good on America’s promise and put the country on a path to prosperity.”

I realize that Paul Ryan is a very serious fellow who should not be confused with your standard issue, right wing propagandist, but how are we supposed to interpret that outright Big Lie? Is he an idiot who has no clue what European Austerity is or is he a slimy political operative who is trying to further confuse his followers into thinking that up is down and black is white?

I’ve never thought he was an idiot. I realize he’s supposed to be the second coming of St Ronnie, but Ronnie never passed himself off as a policy wonk. This is more in the vein of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, the propaganda wonks of the modern conservative movement. They’re all hardcore ideologues posing as intellectuals. It’s long past time that the Villagers put him in the category with them where he belongs. I suspect it will clarify their thinking once they do it.

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Quote of the week

by digby

Jamie Dimon:

“Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

I don’t know about you, but this would indicate to me that the whole meritocratic belief system about the “job creators” being the smartest people on the planet who must be revered as the great sages of the age might just not be right.

In fact, it could be that they are just average, human fuck-ups who shouldn’t be trusted with so much power over the world economy with no oversight or regulation. You know, for their own good as much as ours. A little communal, hive mind activity in which people with different stakes in the system all have input might just be good for everyone. Even them.

Update: Here’s a good article explaining the big bet.

This makes me want to watch Margin Call again tonight.

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Well, at least they didn’t call them all sluts

by digby

So, the Catholic hierarchy is going after nuns and Girl Scouts. Seriously. And much of is apparently because they mention such heretical groups as Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam in their materials. Also seriously.

“A collision course is probably a good description of where things are headed,” she said. “The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

One of the long-running concerns is the Girl Scouts’ membership in the 145-nation World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The association, known as WAGGGS, is on record as saying girls and young women “need an environment where they can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality.” It also has called for increased access to condoms to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

Some critics want the Girl Scouts of the USA to pull out of the world group; the scouts aren’t budging.

“Our world is becoming smaller and our young people need to have those opportunities to engage with their peers from around the world,” said the Girl Scouts’ CEO, Anna Maria Chavez. “But simply being a member does not mean that we will always take the same positions or endorse the same programs as WAGGGS.”

To the Girl Scouts, some of the attacks seem to be a form of guilt by association. Critics contend that Girl Scouts materials shouldn’t contain links to groups such as Doctors without Borders, the Sierra Club and Oxfam because they support family planning or emergency contraception.

One repeated complaint, revived in February by the Catholic broadcasting network EWTN, involves an International Planned Parenthood brochure made available to girls attending a Girl Scout workshop at a 2010 United Nations event. The brochure — “Healthy, Happy and Hot” — advised young people with HIV on how to safely lead active sex lives.

The Girl Scouts say they had had no advance knowledge of the brochure and played no role in distributing it.

Another complaint involved a Girl Scout blog suggesting that girls read an article about Chavez — who is Catholic — in Marie Claire magazine. Critics said the blog’s link led to a Marie Claire home page promoting, among other items, a sex advice article.
[…]
One uneasy Catholic parent is Jody Geenen of West Bend, Wis., a troop leader for the past 14 years as her three daughters — now 18, 14 and 12 — became Girl Scouts.
She complains about some program materials adopted by the Girl Scouts in recent years. One example she gave: a patch honoring Hispanic labor organizer Dolores Huerta, whose shortcomings — in the eyes of some Catholics — include a 2007 award from Planned Parenthood.

Geenen hopes the Scouts will change their ways. “I love the Girl Scouts,” she said. “But it can’t remain the way it is.”

You read that right. Dolores Huerta is an organizer and advocate for workers and poor women. Why would anyone want their daughters to even know such a horrible person even exists?

Because some right winger doesn’t like feminists/Mexicans/unionists or all of the above, the Girl Scouts have to change? Why? Tell your little daughter that if she wants to grow up to be a good fascist she shouldn’t get that patch. Easey peasy.

And as it turns out, much of this conservative Catholic “movement” to stifle women’s rights is coming from Americans in Rome. Shocking, I know:

When the Vatican last month announced a doctrinal crackdown on the leadership organization representing most of the 57,000 nuns in the U.S., the sisters said they were “stunned” by the move. Many American Catholics, meanwhile, were angry at what they saw as Rome bullying women whose lives of service have endeared them to the public.

Vatican watchers also were perplexed since a broader, parallel investigation of women’s religious orders in the U.S. was resolved amicably after an initial clash. That seemed to augur a more diplomatic approach by the Vatican to concerns that American nuns were not sufficiently orthodox.

Now it turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome—including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law—were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.

Vatican observers in Rome and church sources in the U.S. say Law was “the person in Rome most forcefully supporting” the LCWR investigation, as Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote in The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. Law was the “prime instigator,” in the words of one American churchman, of the investigation that began in 2009 and ended in 2011. The actual crackdown was only launched in April.

Law was joined by a former archbishop of St. Louis, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was named to a top Vatican judicial post in 2008 – a move that was seen as a case of being “kicked upstairs” because Burke’s hard-line views made him so controversial in the U.S. Also reportedly backing the probe was Cardinal James Stafford, a former Denver archbishop who has held jobs in the Roman curia since 1996.

These are people who by temperament and practice go far beyond the Catholic faith and believe in the whole far-right ideology of the modern conservative movement. It fits in well with the arch conservative leanings of the hierarchy as a whole, but it adds a nice little chunk of American “exceptionalism” to the mix.

I don’t know how much these people can truly influence American life. But I do know that we have been rapidly developing an odd new doctrine over the past few years that says “religious liberty” means that no public policy can offend the most conservative religious factions in America, and it seems to be gaining traction. It is now infecting institutions outside the church and government.

You can see what they are really about with this quote:

The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

I don’t know why they chose to frame it as liberal vs catholic, but they did. A lot of liberal Catholics would disagree, preferring to cast these disagreements in theological terms. But for these people it’s a political argument. Same team, different uniforms.

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A double standard of self-determination

by David Atkins

I don’t like to pick on already discriminated-against tiny minority populations–even if they are intensely conservative–but this situation provides some food for thought:

The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.

Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”

By cooperating with the police, and speaking out about his son’s abuse, Mr. Jungreis, 38, found himself at the painful forefront of an issue roiling his insular Hasidic community. There have been glimmers of change as a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, taking on longstanding religious and cultural norms, have begun to report child sexual abuse accusations against members of their own communities. But those who come forward often encounter intense intimidation from their neighbors and from rabbinical authorities, aimed at pressuring them to drop their cases.

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.

First off, I’d like you to imagine for a moment that this were a Muslim community under discussion. How much freakout would we be seeing among the right-wing? After all, the only thing “Shari’a Law” means in the context of a Western society is that communities such as this be free to arbitrate their own business, especially when it comes to minor offenses.

But more importantly, this issue highlights the ever-present unbridgeable divide between liberalism and multiculturalism. There is a universal law of liberalism that says that children have a right to grow up free of sexual and physical abuse. What happens when that principle rubs up against communities that expressly wish to reserve the right to sexually and physically abuse children? What happens when that principle rubs up against communities that practice arranged marriage of children to far older people? What happens, for that matter, when any principle of liberalism rubs up against a culturally distinct minority community that doesn’t share those values?

The easy and simplistic answer is to look dogmatically at the law book. But most intelligent folks would point out that not all laws are remotely equally enforced. Where should prosecutorial discretion be applied, then, and on whom?

Should the U.S. government intervene in this Orthodox community to prevent this behavior? Did it do the right thing to intervene in David Koresh’s affairs, even though he wasn’t harming anyone outside his compound? What about the fundamentalist polygamist Mormons supposedly minding their own business in the Utah desert? What if a state were to secede in order to defend entrenched principles of discrimination? Should the U.S. government fight to keep that state in the fold and enforce non-discrimination and broadly liberal values? What if barbaric actions are happening just outside our borders? Should we not intervene to protect the principle of borders arbitrarily drawn centuries ago?

I don’t really have a big problem with these questions myself, as I champion ecumenical liberal values–enforced by state intervention if necessary–over multicultural self-determination. That philosophy has its own challenges, of course, and is often met with accusations of authoritarianism (I would counter, using very similar arguments to those gated community wealthy who demand to know by what right the fascist government imposes a punitive tax rate.) But for many others, these are far thornier questions.

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Psycho Sheriff Arpaio’s

by digby

I understand that people get upset when they are accused of bigotry when they express freustration about the “integrity of America’s borders.” But when laws like Arizona’s SB70 are passed in an environment that featured the sorts of behaviors exhibited by police that the Justice Department outlined in its lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, you cannot help but conclude that there is bigotry at work:

Forcing Women To Sleep In Their Own Menstrual Blood: In Arpaio’s jails, “female Latino LEP prisoners have been denied basic sanitary items. In some instances, female Latino LEP prisoners have been forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation because of MCSO’s failure to ensure that detention officers provide language assistance in such circumstances.”

Assaulting Pregnant Women: “[A]n MCSO officer stopped a Latina woman – a citizen of the United States and five months pregnant at the time – as she pulled into her driveway. After she exited her car, the officer then insisted that she sit on the hood of the car. When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times. He then dragged her to the patrol car and shoved her into the backseat. He left her in the patrol car for approximately 30 minutes without air conditioning. The MCSO officer ultimately issued a citation for failure to provide identification.”

Stalking Latino Women: “In another instance, during a crime suppression operation, two MCSO officers followed a Latina woman, a citizen of the United States, for a quarter of a mile to her home. The officers did not turn on their emergency lights, but insisted that the woman remain in her car when she attempted to exit the car and enter her home. The officers’ stated reasons for approaching the woman was a non-functioning license plate light. When the woman attempted to enter her home, the officers used force to take her to the ground, kneed her in the back, and handcuffed her. The woman was then taken to an MCSO substation, cited for ‘disorderly conduct,’ and returned home. The disorderly conduct citation was subsequently dismissed.”

Criminalizing Being A Latino: “During raids, [Arpaio’s Criminal Enforcement Squad] typically seizes all Latinos present, whether they are listed on the warrant or not. For example, in one raid CES had a search warrant for 67 people, yet 109 people were detained. Fifty-nine people were arrested and 50 held for several hours before they were released. Those detained, but not on the warrant, were seized because they were Latino and present at the time of the raid. No legal justification existed for their detention.”

Criminalizing Living Next To The Wrong People: “[D]uring a raid of a house suspected of containing human smugglers and their victims . . . officers went to an adjacent house, which was occupied by a Latino family. The officers entered the adjacent house and searched it, without a warrant and without the residents’ knowing consent. Although they found no evidence of criminal activity, after the search was over, the officers zip-tied the residents, a Latino man, a legal permanent resident of the United States, and his 12-year-old Latino son, a citizen of the United States, and required them to sit on the sidewalk for more than one hour, along with approximately 10 persons who had been seized from the target house, before being released”

Ignoring Rape: Because of Arpaio’s obsessive focus on “low-level immigration offenses” his officers failed “to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of girls.”

Widespread Use Of Racial Slurs: “MCSO personnel responsible for prisoners held in MCSO jails routinely direct racial slurs toward Latino prisoners, including calling Latino prisoners ‘paisas,’ ‘wetbacks,’ ‘Mexican bitches,’ ‘fucking Mexicans,’ and ‘stupid Mexicans.’”

Widespread Racial Profiling: “[I]n the southwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are almost four times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . In the northwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are over seven times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . Most strikingly, in the northeast portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are nearly nine times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct.”

Random, Unlawful Detention Of Latinos: “MCSO officers stopped a car carrying four Latino men, although the car was not violating any traffic laws. The MCSO officers ordered the men out of the car, zip-tied them, and made them sit on the curb for an hour before releasing all of them. The only reason given for the stop was that the men’s car ‘was a little low,’ which is not a criminal or traffic violation.”
Group Punishments For Latinos: “In some instances, when a Latino [Low English Proficiency] prisoner has been unable to understand commands given in English, MCSO detention officers have put an entire area of the jail in lockdown—effectively preventing all the prisoners in that area from accessing a number of privileges because of the Latino LEP prisoner’s inability to understand English, inciting hostility toward the LEP prisoner, and potentially placing MCSO officers and other prisoners in harm’s way.”

I remember reading for years about what an awesome tough guy Joe Arpaio was. This Nightline from 2007 tries to be balanced, but mostly it just shows old Joe being a hardcore lawman, certainly not clearly pointing out that his prison is nearly a torture chamber or exposing any of the above crimes. He’s been a folk hero for an awful lot of people. And yet, he’s a psychopath:

I’m sure it’s true that not everyone who backs SB1070 and Joe Arpaio is a bigot. But I’m also sure that every bigot backs SB 1070 and Joe Arpaio. It looks as though his reign of terror may finally be coming to an end. Here’s hoping it doesn’t just open the door for another one exactly like him.

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