No wonder they don't want to be filmed on duty

From the Injustice Everywhere Blog:

September 4th, 2010

Since I was unable to scan for reports for extended periods of time today the number of reports for this Friday are lower than normal. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick the ones I missed up over the weekend.

With that in mind, here are the 15 reports of police misconduct tracked in our National Police Misconduct News Feed for this Friday, September 3, 2010:

• Seven Burkburnett Texas police officers are the subject of a federal civil rights pattern and practice lawsuit that was filed by four different people who joined their various excessive force and false arrest complaints into a single suit.

• A now-former Ravenna Nebraska police officer has been sentenced to 30-60 years in prison after convicted on five counts of 1st degree sexual assault and one count of sexual assault on a child involving a girl who was 15 when he began a sexual relationship with her that lasted about two years. This was the officer’s third trial in this case after the first two trials ended with hung juries. [0]

• A now-former Norwalk Connecticut police lieutenant has been sentenced to 30 days in jail in a plea deal for misdemeanor interfering with an investigation, coercion, and reckless endangerment charges related to allegations that he had sex with two 15-year-old boys and attempted to lure a third boy to his apartment in order to have sex. The deal came after the sexual assault case fell apart when questions about whether one of the boys was 16 at the time of the incident arose while another boy backed out of testifying, saying that he was worried about the effect it would have on his family. [1]

• Officials in Middletown Connecticut are allegedly reviewing their policies after two police officers tasered a 17-year-old student while attempting to arrest him on allegations that he stole a “Jamaican pattie” from the school cafeteria during lunch. [2]

• In an update to a story we covered yesterday, another Arvada Colorado police officer has resigned in association with an investigation into an alleged excessive force incident. This brings the total resignations associated with this case up to four officers with a fifth officer still on paid leave while under investigation. While officials are apparently refusing to release any specific details involving the case it appears as though only one of the officers engaged in excessive force but the others attempted to cover it up by failing to report it or even lying on their reports about the incident. Incidentally, two other officers have also resigned from the department recently as well but officials say those two were unrelated to this case, but refuse to say what those were about. [3]

• A Will County Illinois deputy has resigned while under investigation on allegations that sexually harassed a woman, forcibly kissing her on the mouth at one point, after she called police for help in handling problems she was having with her ex-husband. The same deputy faced similar allegations in 2007 when a woman who had shown him some apartments 15 days after he was hired complained that he attempted to kiss and grope her inside the woman’s office. No charges were filed and the sheriff refused to discipline the deputy since the conduct occurred while he was off-duty. [0]

• A Riverside County California deputy is on paid leave after being arrested for suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and spousal battery after an alleged brawl he had with a fellow deputy that left that man seriously injured with a broken jaw and several broken teeth. The spousal battery charge allegedly stems from the deputy shoving his own wife when she tried to intervene and stop the argument when it started becoming physical. [1]

• A Michigan State trooper is facing a felony assault and battery charge on allegations that he attacked a fellow trooper while both were on-duty attending a training session. No specifics about the incident have been released though. [1]

• The police chief of Quincy Illinois is accused of targeting a reporter after he wrote an article that was critical of how the police there handled a murder investigation. Public records requests appear to have yielded information that backs his claims in that the chief of police was recorded looking up DMV information on the reporter days before he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation and police radio traffic on that day appears to indicate that the officer who stopped and arrested him was actually waiting for him to get into his car and drive. [4]

• Police in Romeoville Illinois are accused of sexually harassing a former stripper who claims that officers asked her if her breasts were real when they arrested her on allegations that she made threats via text messages to someone. She further alleges that officers looked at nude pictures she had of herself on her cell phone and that she wants it back out of fear that those images might make their way onto the Internet. While the chief insists nobody looked at any images on her phone, she claims she heard the officers laugh and comment about the photos while she was being booked. [2]

• A Washington County Virginia deputy is on paid leave after a juvenile female relative filed assault and battery along with destruction of property charges against him saying that he ripped a bag that she had packed and threw her to the ground during a domestic dispute. The alleged incident is under investigation by the Department of Social Services while an internal investigation is also underway. [0]

• A Monroe County New York deputy who had previously lost a brother to a drunk driver has been charged with a misdemeanor count of driving while intoxicated himself after he allegedly sent his car airborne and crashed into a clump of trees while drunk, injuring a female passenger. [0]

• A Catoosa County Georgia deputy has been placed on paid leave after being arrested on drunk driving charges when he crashed into a utility pole while off-duty. [0]

• A New Brunswick New Jersey police officer has been charged with election law violations for voting in four general elections when he lived in a different town and on theft by deception charges on allegations that he defrauded an insurance company out of $500 by failing to report his divorce while continuing to list his former wife as his spouse for about two years. [0]

• And finally, a New Haven Connecticut police officer has turned himself in on a warrant for a 2nd degree harassment charge over allegations that he placed over 70 hang-up calls to a fellow officer’s cell phone over a period of several weeks. Officials are refusing to identify the alleged victim or give out any other details in the case. [1]

That's all for today, stay safe out there !

But how are we going to pay for the tax cuts?

From Townhall.com:

In recent American history three presidents, Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush—and Democrat icon John Fitzgerald Kennedy—all lowered taxes in response to economic recessions. In all three cases, more money flowed into federal coffers than expected, and all three recessions ended.

But, in the words of David Gregory of Meet The Press, how are we going to pay for a tax cut? 

In 2003, President Bush lowered income, capital gains and dividend tax rates. As a result of the Bush tax cuts, the amount of revenue flowing into the federal Treasury over the next four years surged by over 40%, or $743 billion. To illustrate how the tax cuts boosted the economy, Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of just 1.7% in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the six quarters following the tax cuts, the growth rate was a robust 4.1%. While some of that growth was naturally occurring, the sudden and dramatic turnaround in the economy began at the exact moment those pro-growth policies were enacted.

But David Gregory of Meet The Press has a good point, and he makes it every freakin' Sunday morning....How are these tax cut going to be paid for? 

Yet, despite compelling evidence, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats intend to raise taxes beginning in 2011 by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. The top marginal tax rate will increase from 35% to 39.6%, capital gains rates will increase from 15% to 20%, and dividend rates will increase from 15% to as high as 39.6%.

Good for them !  We can't have tax cuts that favor the rich unless the tax cuts are paid for. 
Be sure to watch David Gregory on Meet The Press this Sunday.  I hope the talking points that The White House gives him haven't changed. 

The picture of the David Gregory puppet came from here. 

Happy Labor Day ! ! !

I made this Labor Day demotivational poster two years ago.
For some reason, this year is the first time that it's been passed around a lot. 
Please send it to everyone you know.  Or get an employee to do it for you. 

Hurricane Earl is about to SAVE AND CREATE SOME JOBS ! ! ! (Thank you for your continued support)

Hurricane Earl is headed toward The Carolina coast. 
Let's all hope that everyone is ok, and that property damage is minimal. 

A brief digression....  My family used to own a little shotgun house/shack/cabin on Beulah lake near the Mississippi river.  For the benefit of the Brits, Aussies, and occasional Canadians who frequent these pages, this is a shotgun house:

They're called shotgun shacks because you can fire a shotgun into the front door, and the pellets will go through all three rooms and all doorways of the house without hitting anything.  You can look in the front door and see out the back door. 

We couldn't get insurance on our shotgun shack.  Guess why.  Go ahead, take a few seconds and guess. 
No one in his right mind would have insured our lakeside cabin because it was built inside the Mississippi river levee. 
It flooded every three or four years. 
Every time water got into the cabin, my father and I would go in with a high pressure hose, wash out the mud and snakes, put down some new linoleum, nail up some new wall paneling, and declare the house "repaired".

That was then, this is now.

Hurricanes have a tendency to hit the east coast, doing a spectacular amount of damage every few years.  But that doesn't stop people from building mega-beach houses in the middle of hurricane alley.

Here's Donald Trump's beach house, courtesy of a site called NoBeachHouseBailouts.org  (Yeah, another bailout effort is underway.)

 I bet you could fire a shotgun in the front door, and hit at least 3 reality show contestants. 

Here's a photo one of Beyonce's family homes in Galveston.  Right there in the path of Hurricane Ike. 

Here's the Business Insider, reporting on what you did for Beyonce shortly after Hurricane Ike. 

Unlike say, Nic Cage or Lindsay Lohan, Beyonce Knowles is living the life. She and her husband Jay-Z are worth a reported $265 million and she's still the hottest singer on radio.
But did you know Beyonce's father Matthew Knowles owns a block of property in Galveston, Texas that was devastated by Hurricane Ike?

And did you know that FEMA is going to pay Beyonce and her father a cool $425,000 to reimburse them for close to the original value of the house? Yep, it's true, according to an excellent report from Mother Jones.

The house is one of 68 that will receive a FEMA-sponsored buyout according to KHOU.

Hell, I'd be willing to go in with a high-pressure hose and clear out the mud and snakes for much less than $425,000.00  

Here's the Frum Forum, on an effort to require you to subsidize the insurance of people who want to build McShacks in Hurricane Alley....

For the past several years, Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) has been on a mission to add wind damage coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is already swimming in red ink.

His legislation, called the “Multiple Peril Insurance Act,” was slated to be voted on by the House of Representatives twice in the weeks before Congress left town for its August recess. The Democrats’ Daily Whipline announcing the floor schedule urged a yes vote on Taylor’s bill, but luckily for taxpayers, both times the leadership decided to pull the bill for lack of support.

Taylor and the Democrat leadership are concerned that it is hard for folks living in storm-prone coastal areas to get reasonably-priced wind insurance from private insurance companies.

Well, there is a very well understood reason for this. It is called RISK. Homes built in hurricane country are at high risk of exposure to wind damage.

.....A recent Houston Chronicle story revealed that between 1977 and 1995, NFIP paid out $806,591 for repeated storm damage to a suburban Houston home that was valued at $114,480.

Hurricane Earl is probably going to do a lot of damage to the Beach Houses along the Carolina coast. 
It will do much less damage to the less spectacular homes built further inland.
The beach is a foolish place for a McShotgun Mansion.
The people who built homes further inland are probably responsible for 100% of their own insurance. 

Guess who is about to get a huge FEMA payday?

Check out the aftermath, paying particular attention to who is going to pay for rebuilding. 

The Trumps and Beyonces of the Carolinas appreciate your continued support.

In which an anti-population growth nutcase gets his wish....

Go here.

Suggestion for an October political ad

Here's an idea for a great Libertarian political ad for October. 
The text is from The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, on the Cash For Clunkers travesty. 

IN THE market for a used car? Good luck finding a bargain: The price of “pre-owned’’ vehicles has climbed considerably over the past year. According to Edmunds.com, a website for car buyers, a three-year-old automobile today will set you back, on average, close to $20,000 — a spike of more than 10 percent since last summer. For some popular models, the increase has been much steeper. In July, a used Cadillac Escalade was going for around $35,000, or nearly 36 percent over last July’s price.



Hit the video.  Seriously.  Hit the video of these guys pumping Sodium Silicate into the engine of a Volvo, under orders from our President.  You don't have to watch, just listen while you read the rest. 
Now, back to our commentary from Mr. Jacoby. 

....Part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. That was the program under which the government paid consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in an old car and bought a new one with better gas mileage. The traded-in cars — which had to be in drivable condition to qualify for the rebate — were then demolished: Dealers were required to chemically wreck each car’s engine, and send the car to be crushed or shredded.


Crank up the volume on the video.  Hear the whine?  Does it sound like vandals destroying a car?  Destroying the economy?  Destroying employment?  DO YOU HEAR THE NOISE OF BARACKAGANDAN LUNACY?????
Congress and the Obama administration trumpeted Cash for Clunkers as a triumph — the president pronounced it “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.’’ Which it was, if you define success as getting people to take “free’’ money to make a purchase most of them are going to make anyway, while simultaneously wiping out productive assets that could provide value to many other consumers for years to come. By any rational standard, however, this program was sheer folly.

Briefly cut away to a clip of some obviously low-income people wandering through a used car lot.  Then go back to the shrieking Volvo. 

Of the 700,000 cars purchased during the clunkers frenzy, the estimated net increase in sales was only 125,000. Each incremental sale thus ended up costing the taxpayers a profligate $24,000.

Show a Cash For Clunkers-era clip of some Yuppies driving a new Prius out of a parking lot.  Be sure they've transferred their Obama bumpersticker from the Clunker to the Prius.  Then go back to the whining Volvo. 

Even on environmental grounds, Cash for Clunkers was an exorbitant dud. Researchers at the University of California-Davis calculated that the reduction of carbon dioxide attributable to the program cost no less than $237 per ton. In contrast, carbon emissions credits cost about $20 per ton in international markets.


The whole carbon credits scam is environmentalist bullshit, but some people believe in it.  Kinda like Catholics used to believe in purchasing Indulgences.  Let it stay in the ad. 

Using Department of Transportation figures, the Associated Press calculated that replacing inefficient clunkers with new cars getting higher mileage would reduce CO2 emissions by around 700,000 tons a year — less than Americans emit in a single hour. Likewise, the projected reduction in gasoline use amounted to about as much as Americans go through in 4 hours. (And that’s only if you assume — contrary to historical experience — that fuel consumption decreases when fuel efficiency rises.)

When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.

Cut to the 3:55 mark on the video.  Watch the guy with the fire extinguisher.  Listen to the vandals giggle.  Cut to a graph of declining employment.  Cut to a quick graph of declining home sales.  Cut to a quick graph of increased automobile prices.  Then go to one more voiceover.

Do you really want to send the people who did this back to Washington? 
My name is The Whited Sepulchre, and I approved this message. 

Dutch government to close 8 prisons - Not enough criminals

From Race Hochdorf's Facebook page, comes a link to the MPP Blog:

Netherlands To Close Prisons; Not Enough Criminals

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

If marijuana did not exist, the Prison Guards Union, the Prison Construction Lobby, the Parole Officers, and the SEIU would have to invent it.  God, what a waste of lives, money, and taxes, all in the name of "saving and creating jobs". 

Pass it so we can see what's in it, Write it so the author can read it, Re-educate us so we will swallow it.

Here's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on ObamaCare® explaining that we had to pass the ObamaCare® bill to see what is in it. 


But wait....Here's Senator Max Baucus affirming that he wrote the Healthcare bill, but hasn't really, like, read it:

Baucus replied that if Libby residents (his townhall meeting audience) assembled an economic development plan, he would do what he could to help, and he took credit for “essentially” writing the health care bill that passed the Senate.

“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language,” Baucus said. “We hire experts.”

Yep.  Politicians don't write laws.  Lobbyists do.  And they have never, ever had such a flock of sheep just waiting to be trimmed. 

Finally, here's Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, talking to ABC News Radio:

“Unfortunately, there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in [the reform law] and what isn’t,” Sebelius told ABC News Radio in an interview Monday.
With several vulnerable House Democrats touting their votes against the bill, and Republicans running on repeal, Sebelius said “misinformation given on a 24/7 basis” has led to the enduring opposition nearly six months after the lengthy debate ended in Congress.
“So, we have a lot of reeducation to do,” Sebelius said.

No, no, no....you guys are doing just fine.  Keep talking, keep talking.  We were supposed to pass the bill to see what was in it, but they guy who "wrote" the bill says that it isn't done yet because it's still being massaged by lobbyists and lawyers, but one day soon, ObamaCare® will be revealed in all its glory. 

Finally, here is one last video.  If you're an American taxpayer, you paid for it, and it features a cross-section of America promoting some ultra-wholesome Big Brotherism.  I didn't spot an Apache Bricklayer or a Transvestite Blacksmith, but all other categories of folks are covered. 
This thing will live forever. 
As long as people like to laugh, they will play this video.  In my retirement, I want to set up a theatre to play "An Inconvenient Truth", "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", and this government video, every weekend at midnight, for the edification of the young. 
Lord have mercy, historians and economists are going to have fun with this thing:

Let's regulate Barney Frank's pay

From David Boaz at The Cato Institute:

“Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Tuesday that he will hold a hearing this fall to examine whether regulators are being tough enough in curbing pay practices at Wall Street firms that can lead to excessively risky practices,” writes Zachary Goldfarb in the Washington Post.


Hmmm. “Pay practices that can lead to excessively risky practices.” Since Barney Frank entered Congress, federal spending has risen from $590 billion in 1980 to $3.7 trillion this year. (U.S. Budget, Historical Tables, Table 1.1) The annual deficit has risen from $74 billion to $1.5 trillion. Gross federal debt rose from $909 billion to $13.8 trillion — and to over $15 trillion next year. (Table 7.1) And all this without a major war or depression during those 30 years.

Maybe we should adjust pay practices for members of Congress to give them an incentive to avoid risky, unaffordable, out-of-control borrowing and spending.

Reason TV on the Glenn Beck rally

Here's Reason TV on yesterday's Glenn Beck rally:



Beck occasionally flirts with small "l" libertarianism. Some people think this is scary. I'd rather have him inside our tent and pissing out, than outside our tent and pissing in.