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POT-HEAD HYPOCRISY – PART THREE (END)

In Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 17, 2013 at 12:01 am

On November 6, 2012, Americans overwhelmingly re-elected Barack Obama as President of the United States.

And on the same date, Americans in Colorado and Washington state overwhelmingly voted to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21.

But at the Federal level, marijuana remains a prohibited, Schedule 1 drug.

And the Justice Department–seeing these initiatives as a direct challenge to its authority–are considering taking legal action against those states.

Among their weapons: Federal asset forfeiture laws which allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to facilitate violations of Federal anti-drug laws.

Prosecutors and case-agents view the seizing of drug-related properties as crucial to eliminating the financial clout of drug-dealing operations.

There is an additional incentive for the government to seize properties involved in drug-law violations: Local and State law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep some of the proceeds once the property has been sold.

Thus, financially-strapped police agencies have found that pursuing drug-law crimes is a great way to fill their own coffers.

Nonsmoking tenants in apartment buildings who do not wish to inhale the cancerous fumes of marijuana smokers will likely find their options limited.

In San Francisco, landlords can ban smoking from common areas of their apartment buildings–such as the lobby and hallways. But if a tenant wants to toak up in his unit and that stench enters another apartment, city laws do not provide for a remedy.

In most cities and states, apartment residents will face a bitter truth: The legal system has not yet caught up with the scientific realities of the carcinogenic properties of tobacco–or marijuana–smoke.

This is comparable to the situation existing 25 years ago, when people could openly smoke in Federal buildings across the nation.  And when restaurants offered “non-smoking” sections–which were often polluted with the smoke of cigarettes, pipes and even cigars.

Over time, the law finally caught up with the lethal realities of secondhand tobacco smoke.  Unfortunately, it has not yet caught up with the equally lethal realities of secondhand marijuana smoke.

But a two-step remedy does lie at hand–for both nonsmoking tenants and cash-strapped Federal agencies:

First: If the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration finds widespread drug-abuse occurring within an apartment complex, it should arrest the tenants involved.

Second, more importantly, the Justice Department should levy a punitively large fine against the landlord on whose property these violations occurred.

The results of such a policy would be as follows:

  1. The violators of Federal anti-narcotics laws will be immediately put out of business.
  2. The revenues from the fine(s) can be divided between (1) financing future law enforcement efforts; and (2) financing the workings of Federal agencies generally.
  3. Thus, the Government can generate untold and desperately-needed revenues—without making itself politically vulnerable to the charge of raising taxes. Only law-ignoring landlords and their drug-dealing tenants will protest the enforcement of such fines.
  4. In San Francisco alone, more than two-thirds of its residents are renters.  Multiply the number of apartment complexes that exist just in this small city by the number that exist in larger ones—such as Los Angeles and New York—and you can easily imagine the revenues to be generated.
  5. Landlords who are assessed such fines will be served unmistakable notice that passively tolerating violations of Federal narcotics laws is no longer in their best interests.
  6. They, in turn, will take a far more pro-active approach to combing known drug-dealers and –abusers from their rolls of tenants.
  7. This, in turn, will make their complexes far safer for their law-abiding tenants.
  8. The Federal Government need not burden itself with assuming custody of such properties. Since landlords live essentially for their wallets, the levying of massive fines against them will send a message they cannot/will not dare ignore in the future.
  9. If the Federal Government chooses to seize apartment complexes found in violation of Federal anti-drug laws, it can strip the current owners of those properties and re-sell the complexes—as it now sells other properties bought with drug-tainted monies.
  10. Presumably the new owners of those properties will take warning from the successful prosecution of the previous owners.

Conventional remedies are useless against unconventional law-breakers.

By simply putting the onus on landlords to police their own buildings, the Justice Department can, in one stroke, accomplish a series of worthwhile goals on behalf of:

  • law-abiding tenants;
  • itself;
  • the Federal Government generally; and
  • those Americans served by its agencies.

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POT-HEAD HYPOCRISY – PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2013 at 12:16 am

On November 6, 2012, Americans overwhelmingly re-elected Barack Obama as President of the United States.

And on the same date, Americans in Colorado and Washington state overwhelmingly voted to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21.

Both measures called for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores.

On December 6, hundreds of potheads gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year’s Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure took effect.

When the clock struck, they cheered and lit up in unison–as though inhaling cancerous fumes and a skunk-like stench was something to celebrate.

But at the Federal level, marijuana remains a prohibited, Schedule 1 drug.

And in a marijuana-related decision–King v. Kentucky–the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that police can force their way into a home without a warrant.

By an 8-1 vote, the Court upheld the warrantless search of an apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared that those inside were destroying incriminating evidence.

Prior to the November 6 marijuana-legalization votes, the Obama Justice Department had issued a policy for handling states that had legalized “medical marijuana.”

This said that Federal officials should generally not use their limited resources to go after small-time users, but should investigate and prosecute large-scale trafficking organizations.

The result was increased Federal raids on marijuana dispensaries–much to the outrage of potheads and liberals.

Marijuana leaf

Since the legalization of “recreational marijuana” in Colorado and Washington state, senior White House and Justice Department officials have considered taking legal action against those states to undermine their voter-approved initiatives.

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in particular sees the legalization of marijuana as a direct challenge to its authority to enforce Federal anti-drug laws.

The agency’s official position in marijuana is as follows:

Marijuana is properly categorized under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. S 801, et seq. 

The clear weight of the currently available evidence supports this classification, including evidence that smoked marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical value in treatment in the United States, and evidence that there is a general lack of accepted safety for its use even under medical supervision.

The campaign to legitimize what is called “medical” marijuana is based on two propositions: first, that science views marijuana as medicine; and, second, that the DEA targets sick and dying people using the drug.  Neither proposition is true. 

Specifically, smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science–it is not medicine, and it is not safe.  Moreover, the DEA targets criminals engaged in the cultivation and traficking of marijuana, not the sick and the dying.  This is true even in the 15 states that have approved the use of “medical” marijuana.

Click here: http://www.justice.gov/dea/docs/marijuana_position_2011.pdf

Among the DEA’s weapons: Federal asset forfeiture laws allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to facilitate violations of Federal anti-drug laws.

To increase the penalties for violating such laws, Congress amended the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.

Section 881(a)(7) authorizes the forfeiture of real property “which is used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part, to commit, or to facilitate the commission” of a felony violation of the Federal Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.

Congress intended that section to attack the economic power underwriting illegal drug operations.  As a result, the Justice Department can seize houses and/or land from a landowner owing to a tenant’s illegal drug activity.

This holds true even if the landlord didn’t participate in or claimed to be unaware of the drug-law violations.

Before civil forfeiture can proceed, two requirements must be met:

  • An exchange of a controlled substance; and
  • A substantial connection between the property and the illegal activity.

Once the government has proved the property was used to “facilitate” the violation of Federal anti-drug laws, seizure of the property can occur.

This usually means invoking the “innocent owner” defense: “I didn’t know or consent to what was going on.”

It’s up to the landowner to prove his innocence.  And proving a lack of knowledge and/or consent is extremely hard.

If an “affirmative” defense can’t be proved, forfeiture of the property is virtually inevitable.

The U.S. Attorney General then has the legal right to sell the forfeited property.  The profits from this sale can then be forwarded to various agencies of the United States Government.

Prosecutors and case agents think of this as a tax on criminality.

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POT-HEAD HYPOCRISY – PART ONE (OF THREE)

In History, Law, Law Enforcement on January 15, 2013 at 12:03 am

The American Lung Association has brilliantly put the dangers of tobacco smoking into vivid perspective:

“Three decades ago, public outrage killed an automobile model (Ford’s Pinto) whose design defects allegedly caused 59 deaths.

“Yet every year tobacco kills more Americans than did World War II — more than AIDS, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, vehicular accidents, homicide and suicide combined.

“Approximately 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 24,518 people died of alochol, 17,774 died of AIDS, 34,485 died of car accidents, 39,147 died of drug use — legal and illegal — 16,799 died of murder and 36,909 died of suicide in 2009.

“That brings us to a total of 169,632 deaths, far less than the 430,000 that die from smoking annually.

“As for the part about World War II, approximately  292,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in battle during World War II, according to a U.S. Census Bureau April 29, 2004, report in commemoration of the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.

“An additional 114,000 members of U.S. forces died of other causes during the war, bringing the total to 406,000 people.”

Click here: Tobacco – American Lung Association

Laws restricting where people may smoke have–in most parts of the country–caught up with the deadly realities of this habit.

No longer can smokers light up in restaurants, supermarkets, local, State and Federal buildings–and even hospitals.

The dangers of secondhand smoke are now almost universally accepted, even by smokers.  As a result, most smoking parents try to do it well out of range of their children.

The vast majority of employers ban smoking in the workplace–and, increasingly, are offering smoking-cessation programs as part of their medical insurance plans.

A growing number of apartment complexes now ban smoking by their residents–partly for the safety of tenants, and partly as a precaution against accidental fires.

So it comes as a shock to see how totally different are public attitudes toward the smoking of marijuana.

From a strictly health-related viewpoint, there is as much reason to restrict exposure to marijuana smoke as that from tobacco.

Consider the following from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment OEHHA) of the State’s Environmental Protection Agency:

“MARIJUANA SMOKE LISTED EFFECTIVE JUNE 19, 2009 AS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER [06/19/09]

“The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) of the California Environmental Protection Agency is adding marijuana smoke to the Proposition 65 list1, effective June 19, 2009.

“Marijuana smoke was considered by the Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) of the OEHHA Science “Advisory Board at a public meeting held on May 29, 2009.  The CIC determined that marijuana smoke was clearly shown, through scientifically valid testing according to generally accepted principles, to cause cancer.

“Consequently, marijuana smoke is being added to the Proposition 65 list, pursuant to Title 27, California Code of Regulations, section 25305(a)(1) (formerly Title 22, California Code of Regulations, section 12305(a)(1)).

“In summary, marijuana smoke is being listed under Proposition 65 as known to the State to cause cancer:”

Chemical

CAS No.

Toxicological Endpoint

Listing Mechanism

Marijuana smoke

—

Cancer

State’s Qualified Experts

Yet marijuana smoke is treated as something harmless, even as a subject for humor.

On “The Tonight Show,” Jay Leno often jokes about the growing number of “patients” who need “medical marijuana” as a remedy for glaucoma.

In San Francisco–long known as a bastion of tolerance for drug-abuse offenses of all types–police are cutting back on the enforcement of drug crimes.

This is especially true in the case of marijuana.

The SFPD claims this reflects a shift to focusing on violent crime,

The decline is also partly due to a 10% staff cut during the past two years, as well as a $600,000 reduction in state and federal grants for drug enforcement.

The president of a property management agency recently told me that if a tenant complains of marijuana smoke pollution from another unit, the police will not enter the unit from which the stench is coming.

Yet marijuana remains illegal under the Federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), classified as a Schedule 1 substance.

A Schedule 1 substance is defined as having the following characteristics:

  • It has a high potential for abuse.
  • It has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
  • There is a lack of accepted safety for its use under medical supervision.

And despite the unwillingness of the SFPD to enforce anti-drug laws, a 2011 Supreme Court decision allows police to force their way into a home without a warrant.

By an 8-1 vote, the Court upheld the warrantless search of an apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared that those inside were destroying incriminating evidence.

In addition, Federal asset forfeiture laws allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to facilitate violations of Federal anti-drug laws.

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THE HEIRS OF HITLER

In History, Politics, Social commentary on January 14, 2013 at 1:13 am

It seems so long ago now.

Seventy-one years ago–in December, 1941–America declared war on global Fascism.  And won.

In April, 1945, with Italy in ruins, Benito Mussolini–Il Duce–was shot by anti-Fascist partisans.

Benito Mussolini

In a ravaged Nazi Germany, its Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler shot himself in an underground bunker.

Adolf Hitler

But Hitler and Mussolini may be having the last laugh after all.  Their methods and goals are very much alive and flourishing–among the Americans who once drove them into the earth.

If you doubt it, consider the following from MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews” for August 15, 2012:

MATTHEWS:  Here is a group of less than average Joes.  Joe the Plumber [Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher], Sheriff Joe Arpaio of [Maricopa County] Arizona, and [Illinois Congressman] Joe Walsh all spew insanity.  But rarely do they go back to back to back.

Well, first up, you have Joe the plumber telling an Arizona Republican fund-raiser that he wasn’t worried about being politically correct.  He was going to tell it like it is.  The way to protect the border, he says, is to build a fence and then start shooting.

Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher

At that same fund-raiser, Sheriff Joe Arpaio…said his investigation [into] the president’s birth certificate is proceeding and [he] is convinced the document from Honolulu is a fraud.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

And a few days earlier, Tea Party favorite Joe Walsh told a town hall audience in Illinois there were radical Islamists in the Chicago suburbs trying to kill Americans every week.

Congressman Joe Walsh

What do these Joes have in common?  They [are] all trying to be as incendiary as possible and they all succeeded.

Turning to David Cantanese, a reporter for Politico, Matthews says:

MATTHEWS: These are heroes in the Republican culture.  These are people like Donald Trump, he knows how to make money as least.  They love these people, David.  They’re the heroes.

DAVID CATANESE, POLITICO: I would actually put Joe Walsh in a bit of a different category….I think he’s a true believer.

This is a guy who says things on the record that most politicians would never do off the record.  And again, he is an elected congressman in a very tough race.  When he says something, I think he believes it.

I think…the Plumber and the sheriff are more showmen.  They’ve got books to hawk.  Joe the Plumber was revealed that he gets paid sometimes to go into these congressional districts.

Remember, Joe the Plumber is a congressional candidate running in Ohio, what is he doing in Arizona if he really wants to win that race?  You know, it was revealed after her endorsed Herman Cain last year, Herman Cain campaign paid him $10,000.

MATTHEWS: We’ll skip ahead to Joe Walsh and what he’s been saying.  He’s an elected an official, a United States congressman.

Let’s hear what he has to say about the near threat of radical Islam in this country.

REP. JOE WALSH (R), ILLINOIS: In this country, it’s not just over there, trying to kill Americans every week.  It is a real threat.  And it is a threat that is much more at home now than it was right after 9/11.  It’s here. I’s in Elk Grove, it’s in Addison, it’s in Elgin. It’s here.

MATTHEWS: The specificity of this insanity, I guess it`s the old Joe McCarthy trick.  The more specific you sound, the more credible you are.  If you give a lot of details about the near threat of Islamic terrorism in this country plotting against us as a real threat — I guess it rings true to those people watching his pointer there as if he was the mad professor.

Well, there’s one common thing here.  There’s a common thread in this insanity and it’s racial and ethnic.  I mean, they go after people, Mexican-American, and other people who have come here to this country from Latin America, South America, they attack them.  That’s Joe the Plumber.

Arpaio does the same thing.  He’s going after the president because he’s African-American, go after his birth certificate.  Let’s face it, he wouldn’t do it to a white guy.

* * * * *

Candidates like Joe Walsh, Joe Arpaio and “Joe the Plumber” (who isn’t a licensed plumber) don’t get on the ballot by accident.

They do so through the support of men and women whose hates and resentments they share–and exploit.

These voters are seeking a representative who will inflict their hatreds onto those they despise.

Adolf Hitler, for example, did not create anti-Semitism in Germany.  He simply shared it–and exploited this poisonous hatred within his audiences to attain political power.

Postwar Germany, however, had an advantage that America now lacks.

The United States was determined to root out Nazism among the Germans.  And, to a large extent, it succeeded: Germany today is a far different country from the one Hitler ruled.

But who will exorcise America’s own Fascistic elements?

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RESTORING TRUST IN THE TREASURY – PART TWO (END)

In Business, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2013 at 12:10 am

All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it. 

If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself.  But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.

–Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses

The Treasury Department fears that widespread public anger at some of its major economic programs–such as the bank bailout–will deter government officials from intervening in future crises.

As a result, the Treasury Department hopes to regain the public’s trust by issuing a series of economic charts.

Unfortunately, the Treasury’s chart-topping effort will go for nothing.

Emotionally-charged matters–such as child molestation or government bailouts to the rich–don’t lend themselves to “appeals to reason.”

But a different approach might well salvage some public faith in the Treasury Department’s judgment: Greed-test CEOs for future government loans.

After all, drug-testing welfare recipients has become the new mantra for Republicans.

Some bills have even targeted people who seek unemployment insurance and food stamps, despite scanty evidence that the poor and jobless are disproportionately on drugs.

The concept of background screening is actually sound. But Republicans are aiming it at the wrong end of the economic spectrum.

Since 2008, the government has handed out billions of dollars in bailouts to CEOs of the wealthiest corporations in the country.

The reason: To rescue the economy from the calamity produced by the criminal greed and recklessness of those same corporations.

In 2008, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress about the origins of the Wall Street “meltdown.”

He admitted that he was “shocked” at the breakdown in U.S. credit markets and said he was “partially” wrong to resist regulation of some securities.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity–myself especially–are in a state of shocked disbelief,” said Greenspan, who had ruled the Fed from 1987 to 2006.

As a disciple of the right-wing philosopher, Ayan Rand, Greenspan had fiercely held to her belief that “The Market” was a divine institution. As such, “it” alone knew what was best for the nation’s economic prosperity.

“Enlightened self-interest,” he believed, would guarantee that those who dedicated their lives to making money would not allow mere greed to steer them–and the country–into disaster.

As he saw it, any attempt to regulate greed-based appetites could only harm that divine institution: The Market.

Greenspan was proved wrong. And the nation will be literally paying for such misguided confidence in profit-addicted men for decades to come.

So if Republicans want to protect the “poor, oppressed taxpayer,” they should demand background investigations for those whose addiction truly threatens the economic future of this country.

That means the men (and occasionally women) who run the nation’s most important financial institutions, such as banks, insurance and mortgage companies.

Thus, in the future, all CEOs–and their topmost executives–of financial institutions seeking Federal bailouts should be required to:

  • Undergo “full field investigations” by the FBI and IRS.
  • Submit full financial disclosure forms concerning not only themselves but all members of their immediate families.
  • Be subject to Federal prosecution for perjury if they provide false information or conceal evidence of criminal violations.
  • Periodically submit themselves for additional background investigation.
  • Be subject to arrest, indictment and prosecution if the background investigation turns up evidence of criminal activity.

In addition:

  • If a bailout-seeking financial institution refuses to comply with these criteria, it should be refused the loan.
  • If a CEO and/or other top officials are judged ineligible for a loan, the company should be asked to replace those executives with others who might qualify.
  • Those alternative executives should be subject to the same background investigation requirements as just outlined.
  • If the institution refuses to replace those executives found ineligible, the Government should refuse the loan.
  • If the Government is forced to take over a troubled financial institution, its CEO and top executives should be replaced with applicants who have passed the required security screening.

The United States has a long and embarrassing history of worshipping wealth for its own sake. Part of this can be traced to the old Calvinistic doctrine that wealth is a proof of salvation, since it shows evidence of God’s favor.

Another reason for this worship of mammon is the belief that someone who is wealthy is automatically endowed with wisdom and integrity.

By that criteria, the capos of the Mafia must be presumed to be saints and geniuses.

Following these beliefs to their ultimate conclusion will transform the United States into a plutocracy–a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

Every day we see fresh evidence of the destruction wrought by the unchecked greed of wealthy, powerful men.

When they–and their paid shills in Congress–demand, “De-regulate business,” it’s essential to remember what they really mean.

It means: “Let criminals be criminals.”

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RESTORING TRUST IN THE TREASURY – PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Business, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2013 at 12:10 am

The Treasury Department fears that widespread public anger at some of its major economic programs–such as the bank bailout–will deter government officials from intervening in future crises.

The public has fused the $700 billion Wall Street bailout with the $787 billion stimulus–and had fiercely attacked the latter.

As a result, the Treasury Department hopes to regain the public’s trust by issuing a series of economic charts.

The new Treasury charts are intended to underscore:

  • the severity of the economic dip;
  • the recovery has been happening faster than many people realize;
  • the lower-than-expected costs of the financial stability programs; and
  • the country has a long way to go to recover from the recession.

Alas, the Treasury’s chart-topping effort will go for nothing.

Emotionally-charged matters–such as child molestation or government bailouts to the rich–don’t lend themselves to appeals to reason.

It was the Wall Street bailout that ignited the Tea Party movement.  And Tea Partiers won’t stop demanding the firing of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner just because his agency draws up a few pie-charts.

Yet the Treaasury Department might yet salvage at least some part of the public trust.

The solution: Greed-testing for CEO’s.

Throughout 2012r Republican lawmakers pursued welfare drug-testing in Congress and more than 30 states.

Some bills even targeted people who claim unemployment insurance and food stamps, despite scanty evidence the poor and jobless are disproportionately on drugs.

The concept of background screening is actually sound.  But Republicans are aiming it at the wrong end of the economic spectrum.

Since 2008, the government has handed out billions of dollars in bailouts to the wealthiest corporations in the country.

The reason: To rescue the economy from the calamity produced by the criminal greed and recklessness of those same corporations.

For example:

  • The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has invested $118.5 billion in restoring liquidity to the financial markets.
  • Federal Reserve rescue efforts: $1.5 trillion invested.
  • Federal stimulus programs designed to save or create jobs and jumpstart the economy from recession. $577.8 billion invested.
  • American International Group: Multifaceted bailout to help insurers through restructuring, minimize the need to post collateral and get rid of toxic assets. $127.4 billion invested.
  • FDIC bank takeovers: Cost to FDIC fund that insures losses depositors suffer when a bank fails. $45.4 billion billion invested.
  • Other financial initiatives designed to rescue the financial sector. $366.4 billion invested.
  • Other housing initiatives designed to rescue the housing market and prevent foreclosures. $130.6 billion invested.

Total of federal monies invested: $3 trillion.

It’s important to note that these figures–supplied by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Congressional Budget Ooffice and the White House–date from November 16, 2009.

And it’s equally important to remember that welfare recipients did not

  • hold CEO positions at any of the banks so far bailed out;
  • run such insurance companies as American International Group (AIG);
  • administer the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as Freddie Mac;
  • command the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae.

The 2010 documentary “Inside Job” chronicles the events leading to the 2008 global financial crisis. One of its most insightful moments occurs at a party held by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

“We can’t control our greed,” the CEO of a large bank admits to his fellow guests.

“You should regulate us more.”

Greed is defined as an excessive desire for wealth or goods. At its worst, greed trumps rationality, judgment and concern about the damage it may cause.

Greed begins in the neurochemistry of the brain. A neurotransmitter called dopamine fuels our greed. The higher the dopamine levels in the brain, the greater the pleasure we experience.

Cocaine, for example, directly increases dopamine levels. So does money.

Harvard researcher Hans Breiter has found, via magnetic resonance imaging studies, that the craving for money activates the same regions of the brain as the lust for sex, cocaine or any other pleasure-inducer.

Dopamine is most reliably activated by an experience we haven’t had before. We crave recreating that experience.

But snorting the same amount of cocaine, or earning the same sum of money, does not cause dopamine levels to increase. So the pleasure-seeker must increase the amount of stimuli to keep enjoying the euphoria.

In time, this incessant craving for pleasure becomes an addiction. And feeding that addiction–with ever more money–becomes the overriding goal.

Thus, the infamous line–”Greed is good”–in the 1987 film, “Wall Street,” turns out to be both false and deadly for all concerned.

But the situation need not remain this way.

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“THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO”–TV AND REALITY

In Bureaucracy, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 9, 2013 at 12:03 am

Remember Mike Stone, the no-nonsense homicide detective of the San Francisco Police Department?

Each week, he and his partner, Inspector Steve Keller, selflessly risked their lives battling criminals of all types–all to clean up “The Streets of San Francisco.”

Of course, the actors who played these giants of law enforcement–Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, respectively–never risked so much as a strained trigger finger.

Which gave them something in common with many of the men and women who run the real-life San Francisco Police Department today.

Consider: A friend of mine named Tom was a tenant in a San Francisco apartment complex owned by a notorious slumlord.

One July 2, he was assaulted by the often drunk, drug-abusing cretin who served as the building manager of the complex.  So he walked into his neighborhood police station and filled out a detailed report of the assault.

A few days later, realizing he had forgotten to add certain details the police might find important, Tom returned to the station.

But when he asked permission to add to the report, he made a discovery that left him surprised and outraged: Over the course of the July 4 holiday, the police had lost the original report he had filed!

Determined to not go through this experience again, he went home and typed up an even more detailed report.  Then he got online and looked up “San Francisco Police Department” on google.

The website for this agency listed the fax numbers to various high-ranking police officials–including its then-chief, George Gascón.

So Tom jotted down this number, then visited his local Kinko’s office.  For a small price he faxed his request for assistance directly to Chief Gascón.

The next night, two visitors knocked at his apartment door.  They turned out to be Inspectors for the SFPD.

As one of them reached into a briefcase to pull out a document, Tom noticed a copy of his faxed letter to Chief Gascón protruding from the briefcase.

The Inspector asked Tom if he wanted to sign a complaint against the building manager for assault.  Tom said yes, and he quickly did so.

But even though he had finally gotten the attention of the police department, this did not win him any help from the local District Attorney’s office.

The agency decided that a mere assault on a mere tenant by a slumlord’s building manager was not worth holding the manager–and landlord–accountable.

At that time, Kamala Harris was the D.A.  Among her priorities had been creating a secret program to allow even convicted illegal aliens to stay out of prison.

The program, Back on Track, did so by training them for jobs they couldn’t legally hold.

Click here: San Francisco D.A.’s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn’t legally hold – Los Angeles Times

Certainly it was more important to Harris to prevent violence-committing illegal aliens from going to prison than protecting the lives of law-abiding San Franciscans.

Harris has since won election to California Attorney General.

One of the many crimes that Detectives Stone and Killer relentlessly attacked was that of drug-dealing.  But today’s SFPD has essentially sworn off enforcement of the anti-drug laws.

Today, whole apartment complexes are awash in drug-usage and -dealing.  One such complex, located in the Tenderloin, has enough activity going to give Walgreen’s a serious run for its money.

In 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a blistering series of investigative articles about the SFPD.  Among its findings:

  • Violent criminals in San Francisco have a better chance of getting away with their crimes than predators in any other large American city.
  • Someone who is shot, treated at a hospital and then released is not guaranteed an investigation. 
  • “Unless we have a named suspect, we’re not going to assign the case.  The solvability is too low,” said SFPD Lt. Henry Hunter, the supervisor then overseeing investigations of serious assaults.
  • The assault victim must visit the Hall of Justice for a follow-up interview by an inspector. 
  • “If a person is just shot and they don’t come in, that won’t be assigned necessarily,” Hunter said. “Even if a person comes in, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be assigned.”
  • The department’s inspectors investigate only the most egregious or easiest to solve violent crimes.
  • Most investigations are done by phone, with inspectors seldom leaving the office.
  • Under a formal agreement with the Police Officers Association–the police union–key investigative positions are filled on the basis of time that applicants spend on a signup list, not on demonstrated ability.
  • According to FBI criteria for clearance rates, police simply need to make an arrest to claim a crime as “solved” or “cleared.” It ­doesn’t matter what happens in court.

During the last 10 years, little has changed at the SFPD.  And little is likely to–for the better.

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STRIPPING DOWN FOR THE FBI – PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on January 8, 2013 at 12:07 am

So you want to report a crime to the FBI?  Then be ready to give up your most private information before you get to speak with an agent.

If you feel you’re an upstanding citizen with nothing to hide, then fine.

But many people who don’t have anything to hide will hesitate to surrender such personal information to a powerful law enforcement agency–simply to talk with one of its agents.

This is even more true in this age of right-wing crusades against the Federal Government–and especially its law enforcement agencies.

At a time when Federal law enforcement agencies need all the cooperation they can get, this is definitely not the way to go about getting it.

It’s analogous to the famous joke about an English-speaking reporter covering a civil war in a foreign country who enters the scene of a massacre and asks: “Is there anyone here who speaks English and has been raped?”

Good detectives know that if you want to establish a bond between yourself and a potential source, you must prove, over time, that you can be trusted.

People who get most of what they “know” about police work from TV crime shows know almost nothing about its realities.

Cases aren’t wrapped up in 45 minutes.  Oftentimes, cops make deals with hardened criminals to solve a case: “You have to use a smaller bum to get a bigger bum,” as a deputy U.S. marshal once said about protecting Mafia informants through the Witness Security Program.

And merely slapping handcuffs on an accused criminal and saying “Book ‘em, Danno” isn’t the same as ensuring his conviction and imprisonment.

As cops know better than anyone, today’s arrest is often followed by tomorrow’s release on bond.  And, still later, by a watered-down sentence under a plea bargain agreement–if not an acquittal by a judge or jury.

Shows like “Hawaii Five-O” and “Law and Order” have proven great hits with the public.  But they don’t reveal the highly mixed feelings that most people actually have about the men and women who enforce the nation’s laws at local, state and Federal levels.

On one hand, many children are taught to believe in Officer Friendly as their protector in times of peril.  They grow into adults who want to believe the best about those sworn to “protect and serve.”

But if someone breaks into your home and steals your TV set, chances are, that’s the last you’ll ever see of it.

The cops aren’t going to put out an APB (All Points Bulletin) for a missing TV set, even if you’ve inscribed your own driver’s licence number on it with an engraving pen for quick identification.

And while “the law is the law is the law,” the quality of the police response depends heavily on the status of the person who gets victimized.

Thtreaten to kill the President of the United States and you’ll instantly get a visit from the Secret Service.  You may be arrested, indicted, convicted and sent to prison.

Or you may simply be added to a “watch list” of those considered possibly dangerous to the President.  If he visits your city, you may be put under temporary house arrest until he’s passed through.

The same holds true–but to a lesser extent–for those who threaten the governor or mayor.  If the threat is deemed serious, you can be certain that official will have a full SWAT team assigned to his protection.

But suppose you’re just Mr. Average Citizen.  If your neighbor thinks you’re trying to horn in on his wife or girlfriend and threatens to blow your head off, the police will take an entirely different tack.

“If he does anything,” will be the standard police reply, “give us a call.”

Odds are that by the time the police arrive, there will be a warm body for them to draw a chalk circle around.

In San Francisco, calls to the regular police number–(415) 553-0123–will usually get you a recorded message (in English, Spanish and Chinese) letting you know what agency you’ve reached.

You’ll then be told that if this is an emergency, hang up and call 9-1-1.  So if it is an emergency, you’ve already lost valuable time calling a number that nobody is answering.

But even calling 9-1-1 isn’t a guaranteed way to get help.  At times you’ll get a recorded message saying that “all calls are answered as quickly as possible.”

That’s small consolation for the caller whose house is burning down or who’s threatened by someone pounding at the door.

Even reaching the police department offers no certainty of assistance.  In cash-strapped San Jose, short-handed police are no longer responding to home burglaries.

Meanwhile, police departments loudly complain they get no support from the public they’ve sworn to “protect and serve.”

Law enforcement agencies–at all levels–need to vastly improve their relations with those whose support they need–and who need their protection.  Until this happens, both the police and public will be the poorer for it.

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STRIPPING DOWN FOR THE FBI – PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on January 7, 2013 at 12:15 am

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has always encouraged Americans to report anything they consider a threat to national security or a violation of Federal law.

But recently the FBI has adopted a practice that is almost certain to sharply decrease the number of people willing to report knowledge of a crime.

A friend of mine named Jim recently visited the San Francisco field office of the FBI to report a violation of Federal computer fraud and harassment laws.

This meant visiting the San Francisco Federal Building (technically named the Phillip Burton Federal Building, in honor of the late San Francisco Congressman).

At 450 Golden Gate Avenue, located close to the Civic Center and City Hall, it serves as a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

It also lhouses offices for such Federal law enforcement agencies as the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshal’s Service.

To enter, you must first show a driver’s license or State ID card.  Then you must remove

  • Your belt
  • Your shoes
  • Your watch
  • Your wallet
  • All other objects from your pants pockets
  • Any jacket you’re wearing
  • Any cell phone you’re carrying

All of these must be placed in one or more large plastic containers, which are run through an x-ray scanner.

Then, assuming you avoid setting off any alarm system, you’re set for your next big screen test.

This comes when you enter the 13th floor office of the FBI.

According to Jim: You walk into a large room filled with several comfortable chairs that sit close to the floor.  Ahead is a window such as you find in a bank–made of thick, presumably bulletproof glass.

A secretary on the opposite side greets you, and asks why you’ve come.

You say that you want to speak with an agent about what you believe is a violation of Federal law.

If you’ve done your homework, you should know at least the general legal area this violation falls under.  And you’re even better-off if you know what division of the FBI is assigned to handle it.

For example: Jim knew the acts he wanted to report were a violation of Federal anti-computer hacking and harassment laws.  He also knew that these violations are handled by the FBI’s Cybercrime Division.

So he asked to speak with an agent from that division.

The secretary said she would see what she could do.  But before he could speak with an agent, he would have to show her his driver’s license or State ID card.

The secretary makes a xerox of this, and then hands the card back.

Then, as if that isn’t enough, you must fill out a single-page form.  In this, you’re required to provide your:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Phone number
  • Social Security Number
  • The reason you want to speak to an agent

Of course, you can refuse to fill out the form.  But then they will refuse to let you meet with an FBI agent to gain help in resolving your problem.

In Jim’s case, his request to speak with an agent specializing in Cybercrime was denied.   He would up speaking instead with the “duty agent”–whichever luckless person has been assigned to deal with the public that day.

Unofficially, the “duty agent” is the one who takes the “nut calls” from, among others, the mentally disabled who claim they’re picking up KGB transmissions in the fillings of their teeth.

In Jim’s case, the “duty agent” he drew specialized in Gang Violence.  While this is definitely a worthy subject for investigation, it had nothing to do with the matter Jim wanted to talk about.

The agent candidly said he knew nothing about cybercrime.  Which meant he couldn’t give Jim even the barest information about what he might expect to happen after submitting his report.

Fortunately, Jim had thought ahead enough to write up a detailed, three-page report of the cyber attacks he had recently experienced.  He now gave this to the agent.

The agent promised to forward it to the Cybercrime Division.

Jim asked when he might hear from someone there.  The agent said this was highly unlikely.

Jim was surprised.  The agent was in turn surprised that Jim would expect anyone to get back to him.

“I would think,” said Jim, “they would want to ask me a few questions.  And give me some idea as to what was going on in my case.”

The agent said that if the FBI wanted more information, they would contact him.  And, no, they wouldn’t give him any hints about what–if anything–was happening in his case.  (Assuming they chose to investigate it.)

All of which means that if you’re a citizen who wants to report a crime to the FBI, you had better be willing to give up a lot of your own privacy beforehand.

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WILD BILL HICKOK VS. THE N.R.A. – PART TWO (END)

In History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on January 4, 2013 at 4:52 pm

After being fired as town marshal of Abilene, Kansas, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok lived another five years. But they weren’t good ones.

Unlike William F. Cody, Hickok couldn’t adjust to the changing West.

It was becoming less wild. His scouting days were over—the Indian wars were rapidly coming to an end.

(In June, 1876, barely two months before his own death, the Sioux and Cheyanne would wipe out the other famous “Long Hair” of the plains–George Armstrong Custer–at the battle of Little Bighorn.)

And most towns, like Abilene, increasingly had little use for lead-slinging lawmen like Hickok.

James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok

Worst of all, he was going blind—either from a venereal disease he had contracted or from the glare of too many prairie sunrises.

In 1873, Hickok tried his hand as an actor in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. But he was a terrible performer—and knew it.

The fault, however, did not lie entirely with him.  Even Laurence Oliver would have rebelled at spouting lines like: “Fear not, fair maiden, for you are ever safe with Will Bill, who has sworn to defend to the death your maidenly virtue.”

Not that the audiences cared. They had come to see legendary plainsmen–such as Hickok and Cody–in the flesh, not great theater.

Hickok asked Cody to release him from his contract. Cody refused. So Hickok once again turned to his guns for a solution.

In this case, it meant shooting blanks into the legs and buttocks of “dead” Indians who suddenly sprang to life and rushed off the stage. And one night, Hickok put a real bullet through a stage light that was hurting his already sensitive eyes.

That, finally, convinced Cody that Hickok’s acting days were over.

In March, 1876, he married Agnes Lake Thatcher, a circus acrobat several years his senior.

In April, he told Agnes he was heading for the gold rush country of Deadwood, South Dakota. After he made his fortune, he would send for her.

But she never saw him again.

Deadwood was the sort of town the National Rifle Association wants to see replicated across modern-day America.  Everyone wore a gun, and there was no town ordinance against doing so.  Nor were there any law-enforcers like Hickok to protect the public from the kill-crazy antics of liquored-up gunmen.

Grave of “Wild Bill Hickok”

Worse for Hickok, he had two strikes against him: His reputation as a matchless gunfighter had preceeded him–and his failing vision put him at a disadvantage in backing it up.

Arriving in Deadwood, he quickly decided that the strenuous life of a gold-miner was not for him.  Instead, he would seek his fortune as he often had—in saloons as a gambler.

And, as he had so often, he spent more of his time losing money than making it.

On August 2, 1876, his long trail of bad luck finally ran out.

He had always sat with his back to a wall, as a precaution against ambush.  On this afternoon, he found his preferred seat taken by another gambler named Charles Rich.  Hickok asked Rich to trade places with him, but when the latter refused, Hickok didn’t press the matter.

Hickok paid no attention as a whiskey bum named Jack McCall walked around to the corner of the saloon to where the ex-lawman was playing.

Jack McCall

The previous night, Hickok had won considerable money from McCall in a poker game–and had generously given him back enough to buy something to eat.

(The 1995 movie, Wild Bill, depicted McCall as Hickok’s illegitimate son seeking vengeance on the father who had abandoned him.  But this was completely false.  The one saving grace to this otherwise absurd film was Jeff Bridges’ gritty performance as Hickok.)

Suddenly, McCall  pulled a double-action .45 from under his coat, shouted “Take that!” and shot Hickok in the back of the head.

Hickok died instantly.  He was 39.

As he slid from the table, he dropped the cards he had been holding—a pair of eights and another pair of Aces, which has ever since been known as “the dead man’s hand.”

McCall was “tried” by a mining court.  He claimed that Hickok had murdered his brother and he had sought revenge.  He was acquitted.

He headed for Wyoming, where he incessantly bragged that he had killed the famous “Wild Bill” Hickok.

McCall was arrested in Laramie and charged with murder.  The trial in Deadwood was found to have been invalid—owing to the town’s being in Indian territory and outside the reach of United States law.

Once again forced to stand trial, McCall found himself convicted.  On March 1, 1877, he was hanged.  Later, it was discovered that McCall had never had a brother.

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