Despite the almost instant drawing of the gun and firing, the Police One commenter harbors doubts that the officer didn’t, in fact, fear for his life, saying, “If any part of that officer was attached to that motor vehicle — then he can clearly articulate his life was in fear.” He adds,”this officer will pay- – solely based on the current political climate in America. Sad.”
Actually, the current political climate in America is finally forcing some authorities to question this belief that being able to “clearly articulate” that you felt your life was in danger in a situation like this automatically means it was a reasonable fear. The tape shows it clearly was not. And if it weren’t for that tape, we wouldn’t know that, showing clearly that body cams and dash cams are a necessity in law enforcement. But body cams are only part of the solution to this problem. This “fear factor” mindset stems from the same fundamental philosophy that Stand Your Ground and castle doctrine laws come from: If you feel afraid, you have no obligation to retreat if possible; you may legitimately shoot and kill someone.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder made the following comment about this recent legal movement, which is backed by conservative groups like ALEC and the NRA, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing:
“There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely.
“By allowing — and perhaps encouraging — violent situations to escalate in public — such laws undermine public safety. The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has victimized too many who are innocent.
“It is our collective obligation. We must ‘stand our ground’ to ensure that our laws reduce violence and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent.”
That logic applies to police as well as civilians. In fact, it applies more to police than civilians, because police are charged with protecting the public, and act in our name…
There are many unanswered questions about this latest killing. But one thing we know for sure: If there had not been any video, the officer’s account would have closed the books on this incident immediately. Obviously, that happens with some frequency. Making body cams mandatory will help as it did in the DuBose case. But to truly fix this problem our society must confront the root causes — racism, police militarization and rampant abuse of authority.
I watched this CNN Trump interview yesterday and was struck by the honesty with which Trump answered the question about what to do with undocumented immigrants:
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential hopeful who shot up to the head of the pack over his controversial comments about illegal immigrants, is finally starting to lay out an immigration policy.
Trump said Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that as president he would deport all undocumented immigrants and then allow the “good ones” to reenter the country through an “expedited process” and live in the U.S. legally, though not as citizens….
Trump would not say how he would locate, round up and deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants he says must go. Instead, he deflected, saying that while it may be a task too tall for politicians, it isn’t for a business mogul like himself.
“Politicians aren’t going to find them because they have no clue. We will find them, we will get them out,” Trump said. “It’s feasible if you know how to manage. Politicians don’t know how to manage.”
He said over and over again that all “illegals” had to go and then he’d let some of the “good ones” back in temporarily to pick our lettuce and clean up after us but they can never become citizens. Ever.
It’s important that he said this and important the people understand that is what his supporters want to hear.
John Heielman conducted a focus group of Trump supporters in New Hampshire. They had some reservations about Trump’s ability to win the election but weren’t in the least bit bothered by his demeaning comments about immigrants.
Here’s how they describe him:
“Classy,” said Cheryl, a real estate agent.
“I think it would be exciting,” Roger said. “I really do. I look forward to it. It’ll be an interesting thing every day.”
“I think he’d be calling out everybody,” John, a construction worker, said. “I think it’d be pretty good.”
Some even foresaw that day in terms familiar to many Democrats.
“He would surround himself with the best and the brightest,” retired school teacher Don said. “To the American people it would be a presidency of hope.”
Estimates of the cost of mass deportation of the undocumented start at about $265 billion and range on up from there; one key variable is whether a sufficiently terroristic atmosphere would encourage some of these people to “self-deport,” as Mitt Romney surmised. Trump might even claim some of these folk will self-deport to get a prime place in the line to reenter the country as a permanent helot class if they pass muster. In any event, it would indeed make this country a very different place.
Now that Trump’s forced this issue right out in the open, it’s time for us all to ask him and other Republicans who won’t endorse a path to legalization exactly how much they are willing to spend in money and in lost civil liberties to implement their plans. No sense weaseling around and dog-whistling this issue any more.
What are the odds that Fox News will open that can of worms in the August 6th debate?
Asked whether Trump’s comments questioning Arizona Sen. John McCain’s heroism offended them, some said they were actually more offended by McCain’s comments when he called those who showed up for Trump’s rally “crazies.”
“Don’t forget McCain insulted the ‘crazies,’ which is a blanket insult,” Susan DeLemus said.
And Paula Johnson pointed out that some of Trump’s supporters are also, veterans.
“Mr . Trump did say four times that McCain was a war hero and again,” Sean Van Anglen, a Republican, said, adding that “the media and everyone is only playing that one clip.”
And Jerry DeLemus, a veteran, said that Trump has an issue with McCain as a “sitting senator,” not as a veteran.
“As a Marine … we like guys who don’t get captured, too,” he said. “I don’t think that he meant that as an insult to POWs or the military at all.”
“I like that he’s not a politician. I’m tired of politicians,” Johnson, a Republican said. “I’m tired of the sugar-coating that they tell us that they’re going to fix this economy. I believe Mr. Trump really wants to make America great again.”
“Our country is in terrible economic condition and middle class America has been decimated over the last 30 years. Donald Trump has taken businesses and companies and turned them around, made them profitable again,” DeLemus said.
“He says what he means. I honestly believe he’s telling the truth,” Susan DeLemus said, echoing a sentiment shared by all six supporters.
When Camerota asked the group whether Trump’s tone is presidential, Johnson said “Well, what’s presidential anymore?”
“I mean we have a president sitting in the white house right now. He’s taking so many vacations its costing the tax payers dollars,” Johnson said. “What has he done for America?”
Trump, Johnson said, “will take us above that” and make “America the way we once were.”
Some said that the issue of immigration would not have risen to the national spotlight had Trump not highlighted it.
“I think that immigration is the most important issue facing our country today,” said Ryan Girdusky, a Republican.
“What do you think is Donald Trump’s immigration policy?” Camerota asked.
“Certainly, to crack down on sanctuary cities,” Girdusky said. “I don’t think that Katherine Steinle’s death would have gotten the coverage it did had Donald Trump not been speaking about this.”
Donald Trump heads to the border
And none of the six Trump supporters were bothered by his comments that Mexican immigrants are “rapists” and drug dealers.
“He didn’t say Mexicans, he said Mexico,” Jerry DeLemus said, which is also a distinction that Trump has repeatedly made. “His point was that Mexico is outmaneuvering America and they are out maneuvering us. What other country in the world would allow that type of illegal immigration to come across the border?”
This is a very useful piece by Brendan Nyhan at The Upshot which basically says that people should chill a little bit about polling, gaffes and pay closer attention to endorsements and the natural rhythm of polling as the campaign wears on. All of this is based on political science observations over other campaigns, which is a limited data set. But it’s still worth thinking about as we fully launch into the presidential campaign.
Here is his conclusion:
Polls play an important role in presidential primaries, influencing the strategies of the candidates, the coverage they receive from the media and the choices of voters who want to avoid wasting their vote. For political mavens they’re also often an amusing way to follow the horse race.
So go ahead and pay attention to the polls if you want, but do it smartly. Don’t overreact to individual polls or fall for weak pundit analysis. Instead, remember that campaigns have predictable rhythms and that endorsements may be a better predictor of who will ultimately prevail than who’s up or who’s down right now.
One Way to Ease the Worldwide Water Crisis — End Water Privatization
by Gaius Publius
Silicon life forms declare war on “ugly giant bags of mostly water” — in other words, us.
by Gaius Publius
Water is literally the stuff of life for living beings. All life began as single-celled organisms floating in water. In their earliest and simplest form, living things are organized bags of water capable of reproduction, whose “inside” water is held together by a permeable or semi-permeable membrane (“sack” or “skin”) through which nutrients borne by the “outside” water (the environment) pass in, and through which waste passes out.
The simplest organisms live like that today. Bags of water, floating in water, taking what they need from water, passing what they don’t need back to water.
What one organism doesn’t need, another does. Water is the soup, each life takes from other lives via the medium. Without water the planet is barren, a Moon, a Pluto.
Later, living things developed mouths — so much for the peaceful passing of nutrients through the outer membrane — and skin and shells. With skin and shells, the inner water could be retained even in non-water environments. With mouths, the nutrients didn’t need to be water-borne. To sustain itself, a being could simply ingest the nutrients and water in other “sacks of water” by ingesting the sacks themselves. So armed, life would eventually roam and inhabit the non-watery parts of the world.
But the basis of our life starts with our ability to contain and maintain our inner water environment. We began in water. We must remain in water — retain and maintain our inner water — or we die. In the physical world, water is the god that gave us birth and keeps us living.
So why, in a drought, are we allowing water to be ring-fenced by the few, “appropriately priced,” marketed and sold back to us by the only people capable of buying it in quantity? Or does “promote the general welfare” have no meaning?
I want to explore two aspects of the water discussion here. First, the drought itself — it’s not ending anytime soon. Second, the way to end one of the great squeezes on our remaining water supply — end the death grip of privatizers.
The Bad News for Western Drought: ‘Monster’ Hot El Nino on the Way
This report is from western Canada, but it applies to the western U.S. as well, especially California and the Southwest (my emphasis throughout):
In the dead of a Prairie winter, when cars won’t start and exposed skin freezes in 30 seconds, people pray for a searing hot summer. But across Western Canada this season, many may be recalling the old adage, “be careful what you wish for” as forest fires, drought and pestilence invite biblical comparisons.
More worrisome, though, than the sight of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia wilting under 30 degree [Celsius; 86°F] temperatures in June and July — and rationing scarce water supplies in some areas — is that this might just be the start of an even bigger problem.
Many meteorologists are chalking up today’s weird and wacky weather in the West to the fact that this is an El Nino year, referring to the cyclical Pacific Ocean phenomenon that disrupts global weather patterns.
The problem with that, according to Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips: “It’s not even arrived in Canada yet.”
“We don’t see the effects of El Nino until late fall, winter and early spring,” he says.
What that likely means is at least three more consecutive seasons of warmer, drier weather when farmers are already, quite literally, tapped out in the moisture department.
As for what that could mean for drought conditions next summer and beyond, Phillips says it’s “not looking good.”
So the drought will likely continue through next year at least. Again, not good. “Game over” for ranchers:
Canada’s Prairies have just experienced their driest winter and spring in 68 years of record keeping. “So they were behind the eight-ball before the summer season ever came,” says Phillips.
That, coupled with a record low snow pack in North America, and few of the traditional June rains needed to grow crops, has had a cumulative effect that’s hit some producers harder than others.
Says Phillips: “For ranchers it’s pretty much game over.”
The tinder dry land has kept pastures for grazing cattle from turning green and producing feed, forcing cattle ranchers to sell down their herds or ship the animals around looking for alternative feed sources.
And farmers:
“Our cereal fields, our oats, our wheat, our barley essentially baked in the field,” says Garett Broadbent, agricultural services director for Alberta’s Leduc County, just south of Edmonton.
The municipality voted unanimously this week to declare a local state of agricultural disaster as soil moisture and crop conditions continue to decline to the worst levels in half a century.
And here’s a NOAA scientist saying that there is a trend, and it will continue “as long as greenhouse gas levels continue to rise year after year”:
NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden says, in addition to the dwindling snow pack, “glaciers are melting, sea ice is melting, sea levels reached record highs last year, the ocean heat was record high last year, sea surface temperatures were record highs last year, so you put it all together and there’s a definite trend.”
It’s a trend Blunden expects to continue into 2015 and beyond as long as, she says, greenhouse gas levels continue to rise year after year.
I’m feeling more than a little confirmed for disagreeing with other NOAA scientists quoted in the ProPublica Colorado River report. It’s going to take at least a decade or more of better-than-normal rain and snowfall to bring us back to where we were before the drought began.
“We have 15 years to avert a full-blown water crisis; by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent”
There’s also an excellent piece in The Nation that gets to this issue, but also offers solutions. First, the drought analysis. The writer is Maude Barlow:
The California Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our National Water Emergency
For years, Americans dismissed dire water shortages as a problem of the Global South. Now the crisis is coming home.
The United Nations reports that we have 15 years to avert a full-blown water crisis and that, by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. Five hundred renowned scientists brought together by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that our collective abuse of water has caused the earth to enter a “new geologic age,” a “planetary transformation” akin to the retreat of the glaciers more than 11,000 years ago. Already, they reported, a majority of the world’s population lives within a 30-mile radius of water sources that are badly stressed or running out.
For a long time, we in the Global North, especially North America and Europe, have seen the growing water crisis as an issue of the Global South. Certainly, the grim UN statistics on those without access to water and sanitation have referred mostly to poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and large parts of Asia. Heartbreaking images of children dying of waterborne disease have always seemed to come from the slums of Nairobi, Kolkata, or La Paz. Similarly, the worst stories of water pollution and shortages have originated in the densely populated areas of the South.
But as this issue of The Nation shows us, the global water crisis is just that—global—in every sense of the word. A deadly combination of growing inequality, climate change, rising water prices, and mismanagement of water sources in the North has suddenly put the world on a more even footing.
There is now a Third World in the First World. Growing poverty in rich countries has created an underclass that cannot pay rising water rates. As reported by Circle of Blue, the price of water in 30 major US cities is rising faster than most other household staples—41 percent since 2010, with no end in sight. As a result, increasing numbers cannot pay their water bills, and cutoffs are growing across the country. Inner-city Detroit reminds me more of the slums of Bogotá than the North American cities of my childhood.
Historic poverty and unemployment in Europe have also put millions at risk. Caught between unaffordable rising water rates and the imposition of European-wide austerity measures, thousands of families in Spain, Portugal, and Greece have had their water service cut off. An employee of the water utility Veolia Eau was fired for refusing to cut supplies to 1,000 families in Avignon, France.
As in the Global South, the trend of privatizing water services has placed an added burden on the poor of the North. Food and Water Watch and other organizations have clearly documented that the rates for water and sewer services rise dramatically with privatization. Unlike government water agencies, corporate-run water services must make a profit for their involvement.
Talk about heartless — “An employee of the water utility Veolia Eau [“Veolia Water”] was fired for refusing to cut supplies to 1,000 families in Avignon, France.” Veolia is the largest privatized water company in the world according to this list.
World’s ten largest privatized-water companies (source; referenced here; click to enlarge)
Veolia had $50 billion in revenue in 2009. No doubt they’ve grown since then. The writer clearly notices that this is predatory behavior. (In fact, it’s behavior that kills for profit, so we’re in psychological territory here. If Veolia were human, they’d be diagnosed as psychopathic and put away forever.)
The story of over-stressed water resources is the same everywhere in the world. Barlow discusses China (“more than half the rivers in China have disappeared since 1990”), Africa, Brazil and ends in the U.S.:
The story repeats itself in the North. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the Ogallala Aquifer is so overburdened that it “is going to run out…beyond reasonable argument.” The use of bore-well technology to draw precious groundwater for the production of water-intensive corn ethanol is a large part of this story. For decades, California has massively engineered its water systems through pipelines, canals, and aqueducts so that a small number of powerful farmers in places like the Central Valley can produce water-intensive crops for export. Over-extraction is also putting huge pressure on the Great Lakes, whose receding shorelines tell the story.
I’ll say now there will be no “Chinese Century” or “American Century” or “Basque Century,” for that matter. A century of chaos is coming if we don’t get a grip and end carbon emissions fast. (I’ve been told by renewable-energy industry professionals that the only barrier to fully transforming the U.S. to renewables in ten years is political — we have the money and the physical and technical ability. We just have to want to use them.)
A critical-mass cry to do that — end emissions fast — could be coming, by the way, as the climate screws turn tighter and tighter. What governments do when that cry comes will determine how we fare as a species. Will governments remain wealth-captured, or will they take up the cause of the people they claim to represent?
The Growing Water Justice Movement
In that vein, Barlow writes the following:
There is some good news along with these distressing reports. An organized international movement has come together to fight for water justice, both globally and at the grassroots level. It has fought fiercely against privatization, with extraordinary results: Europe’s Transnational Institute reports that in the last 15 years, 235 municipalities in 37 countries have brought their water services back under public control after having tried various forms of privatization. In the United States alone, activists have reversed 58 water-privatization schemes.
This movement has also successfully fought for UN recognition that water and sanitation are human rights. The General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing these rights on July 28, 2010, and the Human Rights Council adopted a further resolution outlining the obligations of governments two months later.
Working with communities in the Global South, where water tables are being destroyed to provide boutique water for export, North American water-justice activists have set up bottled-water-free campuses across the United States and Canada. They have also joined hands to fight water-destructive industries such as fracking here and open-pit mining in Latin America and Africa.
And the global goal:
Water must be much more equitably shared, and governments must guarantee access by making it a public service provided on a not-for-profit basis. The human right to water must become a reality everywhere. Likewise, water plunder must end: Governments need to stand up to the powerful industries, private interests, and bad practices destroying water all over the world. Water everywhere must be declared a public trust, to be protected and managed for the public good. This includes placing priorities on access to limited supplies, especially groundwater, and banning private industry from owning or controlling it. Water, in short, must be recognized as the common heritage of humanity and of future generations.
Saying it should be so doesn’t make it so, Captain Picard to the contrary. But an organized force pushing back against the “plunder” is both needed and welcome.
Pickpockets on board the Titanic; they would be comic if death-for-dollars weren’t part of the plan.
Donald Trump continues to wow the GOP’s nativist base. Jeff Tiedrich explained why yesterday in a Tweet:
.@realDonaldTrump is a dumb white male's idea of what a rich person sounds like.— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich) July 29, 2015
Michael Savage interviewed Donald Trump on his radio show yesterday, declaring, “I’m for Trump. Point-blank. Best choice we have.” The two discussed voter identification laws, immigration and the Iran nuclear agreement.
A mirror of conflicts tearing up regions of the world
by digby
It’s only going to get worse folks. When one part of the world is in chaos (which, by the way, the west helped cause) people vote with their feet. They have no choice.
Migrants rushed the tunnel linking France and England repeatedly for a second night on Wednesday and one man was crushed to death by a truck in the chaos, deepening tensions surrounding the thousands of people camped in this northern French port city.
To get to the tunnel, migrants must cross a busy highway, scale or cut through barricades and fences, and pry open cargo doors or crouch in the freight cars that cradle the tractor-trailers. It’s not clear how many have successfully made the 35-minute journey to Britain, but Eurotunnel said it had blocked more than 37,000 attempts since January. Nine people have died trying since June.
There were wildly conflicting totals of people involved Wednesday, ranging from 150 to as many as 1,200. But French authorities and the company agreed there had been about 2,000 attempts on each of two successive nights. British Home Secretary Theresa May said “a number” of migrants made it through overnight.
Attempts have been increasing exponentially as has the sense of crisis in recent weeks, spurred by new barriers around the Eurotunnel site, lack of access to the Calais port, labor strife that turned the rails into protest sites for striking workers, and an influx of desperate migrants.
Many British officials are alarmed at what they see as a potential influx of foreigners, while French officials are concerned about the makeshift Calais tent camps derisively called “the Jungle.”
“This exceptional migrant situation has dramatic human consequences,” said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. “Calais is a mirror of conflicts tearing up regions of the world.”
America’s “border problems” are nothing like this, by the way. People have been migrating back and forth over the invisible line we call “the border” for centuries. It’s always been part of America. It’s just that a certain group of white Americans are being focused on them at the moment for the political benefit of some very rich people who need their votes.
But that does not mean that immigration isn’t a very real problem in other parts of the world due to chaos caused by war and that it won’t be an even bigger problem going forward due to chaos caused by climate change. This is going to be the new normal and I don’t think western leaders have even begun to think through a rational policy to deal with it.
Correctional officers at an Alabama jail used giant snakes as a “means of torture, harassment, control and intimidation against the inmates,” according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.
Plaintiff Trawick Redding Jr. says he was heading to the Dale County Jail kitchen when he saw two jail staffers, Zeneth Glenn and Ryan Mittelbach, bring a 6- or 7-foot-long yellow Burmese python into the jail and told them he was afraid of snakes. When he went back to his bunk and fell asleep, Glenn allegedly snuck in with the snake and held it within an inch of his face. Redding woke up, screamed, and hit his head. Afterward, he was reportedly treated for depression and post-traumatic stress and remained in the jail for a year.
Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson told WFSA that Glenn and Mittelbach were fired less than half an hour after he learned about the snake incident. But Redding says he still gets nightmares and experiences intense anxiety after his stint in jail. He is seeking $3 million in damages against the two officers, the sheriff, the jailer, and Dale County.
The complaint also alleges that the jail ignored his mental distress after being confronted with a snake, and refused to give him the proper psychiatric care. Redding says his heart issues and diabetes became worse since leaving the jail.
Jail and prison guards frequently take advantage of the power they hold over inmates, and Alabama jails are among the most notorious in the nation. Last month, correctional offers at Pickens County Jail were indicted for forcing female inmates to dance naked for them in exchange for doughnuts. Madison County Jail, meanwhile, is facing three federal lawsuits over the deaths of inmates from treatable conditions: a broken bone, gangrene, and constipation. And federal investigators recently turned their sights to Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham, where teenage inmates say they are being kept in solitary confinement for long stretches of time.
The good news is that Americans are not barbaric like those other people. We only torture people who deserve it.
I wrote a little piece about Trump’s “special counsel’s” tirade the other day for Salon this morning:
[N]one of Cohen’s comments are likely to hurt the Donald with his fans. Even if they think Ivana Trump was telling the truth in her original deposition, they would tend to think she had no right to deny him his marital prerogatives. This is why they like Trump — he takes what he wants.
Trump’s key lieutenants tend to fit the same consumer profile as his discount luxury-brand targets: They are men with middle- and working-class roots; lacking in elite credentials; mesmerized by made-for-TV displays of lavish wealth. They are impressed with brashness and bored by subtlety. They are amused by dirty jokes and averse to irony. They are likely to buy a Trump-branded necktie sometime this year, and if they feel like splurging they’ll get the matching cufflinks, too.
This isn’t a caricature I came up with; it is central to the ethos of Trump’s political operation. On the day after the 2012 election, one of Trump’s advisers described for me the billionaire’s appeal to blue-collar voters: “If you have no education, and you work with your hands, you like him. It’s like, ‘Wow, if I was rich, that’s how I would live!’ The girls, the cars, the fancy suits. His ostentatiousness is appealing to them.” That may be crass, but it didn’t strike me as elitist: Trump’s political advisers see themselves as descendants of this same tribe.
That description is very reminiscent of another tribe with which one might be familiar if you watched “The Sopranos.” The swagger, the ostentatious show of wealth — and the threats.
But if you recall Henry Hill’s narration in “Goodfellas,” you might also see the rather ugly subtext to that up-from-the-working class identification:
“To us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again…”
That’s what Donald Trump’s candidacy really promises. Goodfellas only look out for themselves.
Phil Gramm, a former three-term Republican senator from Texas who once ran the Senate Banking Committee, told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that “it was an outrage” that his friend Edward Whitacre, the CEO of AT&T, only got “$75 million” when he retired in 2007.
“If there’s ever been an exploited worker” it was Whitacre, said Gramm, testifying on the 5th anniversary of passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Gramm appeared genuinely aggrieved by Whitacre’s shabby treatment and literally pounded the table while speaking.
Whitacre actually received a retirement package totaling $158 million.
Gramm attributed public anger at CEOs like Whitacre to “the one form of bigotry that is still allowed in America,” which is “bigotry against the successful.”
This is a clearly a long-standing belief of Gramm’s, who said almost the same thing, word for word, in 2001.
Why the next thing you know, these rich people are going to be forced to retreat to their estates and spend all their time counting their money and ordering the servants around.
