Month: September 2014

Does Your Police Department have a Tank? by Spocko

To follow up on Digby’s post on the Militarized Police Industrial Complex.

This is an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protection Vehicle)

Warren County Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree poses in front the department’s mine resistant ambush protected vehicle, or MRAP, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013, in Queensbury, N.Y. The hulking vehicles, built for about $500,000 each at the height of the war, are among the biggest pieces of equipment that the Defense Department is giving to law enforcement agencies under a national military surplus program. (AP Photo/Mike Groll) (Yahoo News)

The military wants to give out 13,000 of these to police departments around the country, for free.  Maybe your county already has one.

Check out this handy spreadsheet here to see if your police have one.

I’m sure if your county has one it’s for a good purpose. But what?

I found this nice article from April 2014 Rural Wis. Sheriffs Get Armored Ex-Military Vehicles

Nice line from the piece with some interesting stats:

 Just why two mostly rural sheriff’s departments would need such massive war machines is not clear. St. Croix County has only 79 full-time deputies and 16 part-time deputies, and Juneau County has only 48 full-time deputies and 8 part-time deputies.

According to FBI-compiled crime statistics, St. Croix County had 30 violent crimes in 2012, 24 of which were aggravated assaults. That same year, Juneau County had 29 violent crimes, none of which were murders or robberies. 

While the vehicles were given to local agencies for free, the cost of maintaining them is entirely the burden of the department’s budget.

 Juneau County is one of the smaller Wisconsin counties with 26,664 residents.

So what are they buying at the Urban Shield Militarized COP Gear Trade Show?

To quote from the movie Air Force One:

President Harrison Ford:  Kathryn, if you give a mouse a cookie…
Vice President Kathryn “Glenn Close” Bennett: It’s gonna want a glass of milk. 

Free tanks need accessories! And matching gear. And sonic cannons, and drones…  Now where is my checkbook?

Let’s hear it for the Militarized Police Industrial Complex

by digby

Shane Bauer at Mother Jones is attending the Urban Shield Militarized COP Gear Trade Show in Oakland.

Lookee here:

Here are the corporate sponsors of Urban Shield. pic.twitter.com/bX3EKhgzRw
— Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) September 5, 2014

Keep in mind that much of this war-making equipment is bought by police forces with grants from the Department of Homeland Security! Is this a great country or what?

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Weird ad watch

by digby

Uhm, what?

I had no idea who the candidate was until the end. At first,  I assumed it must be the handsome Marine bathed in golden light in a field of amber waves of grain but then realized that he was armed and dangerous and was obviously stalking someone through the back woods of Arkansas. Then I thought it must be the other fellow who had been holding out on his wife for 40 years about his war experiences and had decided to reveal it all as part of his campaign. But it turns out that it was actually  the nerdy guy who stares dumbly into space and says nothing at all.  I suppose that’s probably a smart move …

H/t to Howie

More good guys with guns

by digby

I wrote about this incident the other day. It looks as though the fine upstanding militiaman — a quintessential good guy with a gun — was a convicted felon:

An armed militia member who came under fire last week by border patrol agents is a convicted felon who is not legally permitted to carry a gun.

John Frederick Forester was not injured in the Aug. 29 incident, when a U.S. Border Patrol agent was chasing suspects through thick brush near the Rio Grande when he encountered the militia member holding a shotgun or rifle.

The agent fired several shots, and Forester immediately dropped the firearm.

Records show Forester has two misdemeanor convictions in 1999 and 2001 for theft and trespassing and a felony conviction for burglary of a building, reported KRGV-TV, and he served time in prison.

Texas law prohibits convicted felons from using guns before the fifth anniversary of their release from prison, but federal law bans felons from ever owning firearms.

The Cameron County sheriff turned over the investigation to the FBI, and it’s not clear whether Forester will be charged in the incident.

The commander of the militia group, which was not identified, told reporters that he checked if applicants were on probation or parole but did not perform a full background check.

He said the border patrol did not identify himself before shooting, and he accused the sheriff of mishandling the investigation.

My assumption is that these fine upstanding militia members would like to overturn those unconstitutional laws about ex-felons being allowed to own guns. But so far, people haven’t risen up in defense of convicted criminals’ constitutional right to bear arms. (Guessing that has a little something to do with certain racially different convicted criminals bearing arms. They don’t even want those folks to vote much less carry a gun…)

Cops and militia members and street gangs and God knows who else are all dressed up in camo-costume and packing heat these days. We’re even seeing little girls kill gun instructors with semi-automatic weapons over burgers and fries and calling it an “unfortunate tragedy” sort of like a tsunami or a freeway pile-up in a blizzard.

At what point does a culture recognize that this juvenile love affair with playing soldier with lethal weapons has to stop?

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Hot, hot, hot

by digby

From the LA Times. (click the link to see this change from year to year.)

The good news is that climate change is a hoax so we don’t have to worry too much about this sort of thing.

But boy am I getting thirsty.

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Another pain in the neck in a complicated world

by digby

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that people are really going to hate this about Obamacare:

Even people who receive federal financial help may face large premium increases if they simply re-enroll in the same plan in 2015, since in many cases the lower-cost plans in 2015 will no longer be among the low-cost offerings next year. This is because people receiving tax credits must pay the full difference in premium between the plan they choose and the second-lowest-cost silver plan in their area. In 12 of the 16 cities, at least one of the insurers that had offered one of the two lowest-cost silver plans in 2014 is no longer offering a low-cost silver plan in 2015.

“Consumers should go into the open enrollment period prepared to shop for the best deal all over again,” said Kaiser Senior Vice President Larry Levitt, co-executive director of the Foundation’s Program for the Study of Health Reform and Private Insurance. “You could end up paying more if your insurer is no longer offering one of the low-cost plans, so you should look carefully at your options.”

For bronze-level plans, which cover about 60 percent of enrollees’ health expenses on average, the analysis finds that the premium for the lowest-cost bronze option across the marketplaces is increasing an average of 3.3 percent in 2015. Here again changes vary across areas, from a decline of 15.7 percent in the premium (to $196 per month) for the lowest-cost bronze plan available in Hartford, Conn., to a premium increase of 13.3 percent (to $165 per month) for such a plan in Baltimore. Bronze plans are the least expensive option someone can choose to satisfy the ACA’s requirement to have coverage.

So apparently, people in the private insurance market are probably going to have to “shop” every year for new insurance and in all likelihood change doctors and all the rest over and over again if they hope to keep their costs down.

It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

And we haven’t even begun to deal with the problem of people estimating their subsidies based on last year’s income only to discover they made more money than they realized and having to pay back some huge amount to the government at the end of the year.

I guess we’ll all adjust. But man, it’s a pain in the ass.

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Been down so long, it looks like up to me

by digby

Dean Baker on the weak job numbers:

While the slower pace of job growth in this report is a surprise to many analysts, the stronger rate in the first half of this year really was not consistent with the rate of GDP growth that we have seen recently or is generally forecast for the near future. If the economy is growing in a 2.5 percent range, then we should expect to see job growth of around 1.0 percent, or 1.4 million a year. Unless the economy grows far more rapidly than is general expected, we should expect to see job growth well under 200,000 a month.

On the other hand, as tepid as that is, it’s still better than this:

The latest GDP report for the euro area is in, and GDP was flat compared to Q1 and up only 0.7 percent compared to last year. This comes on top of news from a few days ago that euro-area inflation is down to 0.3 percent, which is dangerously close to deflation territory. The basic GDP chart is below.

(Yes, I know that one chart is GDP and one is employment, but you get the drift.)

But hey, we got some good news yesterday! That’s right. It’s not just the 99% that’s seeing huge gains at the expense of everyone else. Now the 97 and 98 percenters are getting a piece of that action! The super rich are trickling down some of their excess pocket change to the upper classes! Happy days are here again.

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Still bloggy to the core

by digby

Just shows to go you:

People are talking about blogs. Again! And not just random nameless “people” cited in some clueless trend story. Specific people are talking about reviving their actual blogs. In some cases, they are even following through.

Michael Sippey, who was so early into blogging it wasn’t even called “weblogging” back then, is doing something like what he used to do in his Obvious Filter over on Medium. Elizabeth Spiers, the original Gawker (and author, most recently, of this superb profile), promises to “write mostly badly and more often” on her personal blog. Vox Media’s Lockhart Steele, declaring that “the web ecosystem will always be bloggy at its core,” announced that he is returning to personal blogging. Susannah Breslin, whose work I first encountered in the days of the original Salon Blogs program, is back at her personal blog with some reflections on “autonomy and freedom.” Christian Crumlish, too. These are people in my universe who I know or whose work I know; look around your world and you may spot similar stirrings.

Jason Kottke noticed some of these developments, and, of course, linked. Fred Wilson, the VC blogger par excellence, noticed them, too, and wrote:

There is something about the personal blog, yourname.com, where you control everything and get to do whatever the hell pleases you. There is something about linking to one of those blogs and then saying something. It’s like having a conversation in public with each other. This is how blogging was in the early days. And this is how blogging is today, if you want it to be.

I probably suffer from the “how can we miss you if you won’t go away” syndrome. But still, I’m not surprised. Blogging is a very specific form of writing that’s lots of fun for the writer. It stands to reason that some would gravitate back to it.

RIP Joan Rivers


by digby

Over the years whenever some jerk would say to me “chicks aren’t funny” I always said, don’t tell Joan Rivers.

She lived to be 81 and died at the very height of her fame.  I don’t think it gets any better than that for a showbiz icon.

Here’s the trailer for her wonderful 2010 documentary called “Joan Rivers, A Piece of Work”.  It’s streaming on Netflix if you haven’t seen it. This too.

QOTD: a very strange book critic

by digby

From a review of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism:

Unlike Mr Thomas, Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. This is not history; it is advocacy.

Imagine that.

h/t to Yglesias

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