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Fighting fire with gasoline
What a clever idea. Let's make some more laws. Why not a protection of bloggers act, which would provide special protection against comments which assert the blogger's inanity? Or a protection of readers act, to provide protection against especially foolish or poorly written editorials or blogs published in the newspaper?
Regardless of the foolishness of the Violence Against Women Act, one whose true purpose was political, the remedy surely is not to install some absurd Violence Against Men act. Unless the object, as it appears to be with the Violence Against Women Act, is to sever relationships.
Or did you forget that your mother taught you that two wrongs do not make a right?
The overarching point of the blog: Gender specific laws, as well as hate crime laws, are to no point other than political posturing.
For years, money has been pumped into getting women into college and the workplace. Now women are the majority of students in U.S. higher education and are on track to become the majority of Americans with jobs.
You can bet there will be no program to balance the books by attracting more men to school or to the workplace.
As a matter of of logic, feminism contributed to unemployment be putting more workers in the job market. Right or wrong, more workers means more people vying for "x" number of jobs, therefore higher unemployment.
--Bullard
Sad story
Oops. The suburban politicians' platform should have read "of shunning Detroit", not "not shunning Detroit."
Sad story
Thanks for the link. We need a larger story.
I don't wish to excuse CAY. His basic position was "it's our turn, now." There is no excuse for the long term racism that was Detroit pre-1970, and it came back to bite the city in the butt when CAY brought in people who had no business operating anything more complex than a can opener and who hastened the decay of the infrastructure.
But the flight of the sixties also hurt. As did the suburban politicians who ran on the issue of not shunning Detroit. Brooks Patterson was nearly as much to blame as was CAY. Okrent's calling him exceptionally able stings; he is exceptionally able at getting votes. If he were truly exceptionally able, there would be conventions coming to SE Michigan still.
Nor did Dennis Archer help much, because he simply left the neighborhoods out of his plans. He banked all on the foolish notion of a casino district where the warehouse district was, and that was a catastrophe.
As for Kwame, well, what's left to say? Except that The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press could have devoted barrels of ink to keeping him out of office and not only did not, but sometimes editorialized for him. What fine judgment.
Detroit's last blood was wrung from her by her politicians. Warren Evans draws how many checks now? And his lieutenants (henchmen)? When Sheila Cockrel is the most admired on a City Council which once had such as Carl Levin, one can see how far things have fallen.
Are there no more Hazen Pingrees ("the idol of the people")?
Zeal isn't the word
Well done, George. Unfortunately, fear sells. And then there is the "children must be protected" mantra. Like from fathers who are university professors who don't know there is such a thing as alcoholic lemonade. Like from paddlings. Like from life.
Keep it up. Get Nolan to write some editorials about it.
Gates
One difference between Gates losing his temper and Crowley losing his temper is that Gates doesn't have the authority to arrest people who irritate him, and Crowley did. An issue for society to decide is whether law officers have the authority to use their offices to placate their own personal hurt feelings.
Remember former Judge Norene Redmond, who raised the bond on a misdemeanor defendant because that person's son said something outside the courtroom about the judge? Or Dave Gorcyca checking Judge Chabot's criminal records because he didn't like some rulings she made (misusing LEIN is specifically made a crime)? Neither was arrested, although both were scolded.
Yes, Gates was rude. Was he a criminal?
Bierce quote
Kudos, George, for the witty Bierce quotation. The foolish, though, not only don't recognize lack of understanding, they don't recognize who they are. Perhaps you and I are among them.
Amateur justices
My bad. Jackson was Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg, not the Chief Judge.
As for writing laws, staff people, and not elected reps, have the responsibility of the actual draftsmanship. Except now that lobbyists and their law firms draft bills. As for Kwame being a lawyer, his mom is a US Rep, as was Barbara Rose. And Michelle Bachmann. How glad are you that such as they "write laws?" \ As bad as many lawyers are, picking a non-lawyer as a Justice for the sheer sake of picking a non-lawyer is foolish. Bad enough we pick them for other characteristics, all of them political. The reason William Brennan was picked by Ike was that Ike wanted an Irish Catholic from the Northeast. More examples abound. Taft picked Justices who would advance his conservative views, and picked a Chief Justice who would retire or die to make space for Taft himself, which the gentleman did.Amateur justices
My first reaction to this blog item was that it was simply unthinking. Then I thought about it a second time.
While Mr. Bullard is hardly the most thoughtful and reflective of writers, he is somewhat brighter than a lot of the commentators appearing on detnews.com. And this shows just how much damage lawyers and judges have done to themselves and to the profession they claim to respect.
Mr. Bullard may point to a Robert Jackson, who never actually went to law school. He was from a time where one could "read law" instead of going to a law school, even a diploma mill like Cooley or DCL. And Jackson, by all accounts, was a brilliant person. He became Attorney General before the Supreme Court, and was the Chief Judge of the Nuremburg Tribunal. But Jacksons are rare things.
Somehow I doubt Mr. Bullard has any idea, though, just who Robert Jackson was.
But Supreme Court justices sometimes surprise. Hugo Black, Senator from Alabama and former Klansman, who became regarded as a great liberal on the Warren Court. Harry Blackmun, the Nixon appointee and Minnesota associate of Warren Burger, who wrote Roe v Wade. William Rehnquist, the consummate conservative, who was also a staunch defender of 1st Amendment rights to parody public figures, and who wrote the opinion reaffirming Miranda v Arizona, and, by all accounts, was one of the justices most liked on a personal level by his colleagues and by the court's staff persons, from the grandest to the most humble.
But Mr. Bullard probably has no idea of any of that. Yet he purposely wants to install someone with no clue.
Whatever.
You must be talking about that rascal Robert Houghwout Jackson.
Re clue. Just because a person is admitted to the bar doesn't mean he/she has a clue (Did I hear someone say Kwame?)
I didn't say I wanted to install someone with no clue. Quite the contrary, I want to open up the process to consider qualified non-attorneys.
Saying only lawyers should be justices is akin to saying only political scientists can run for office, or only professional artists get allowed to create art. We've let special interest groups, bar associations, ram through the idea that attorneys are the only citizens who can possible be a judge or justice.
Non attorneys in Congress write and pass laws. So shy do we shy from letting non-attorneys site in judgement based on those laws?
The founding fathers deliberately left the door open to non-lawyers as justices but we've let the self-serving legal profession push the door shut.
--Bullard
Smoking bans
George,
Thanks for using the word I have been looking for. Smoking bans are the stuff of religion, an unquestioning faith in the rightness of a revealed truth essential to avoiding perdition. And many of the adherents are in government.
Why couldn't the smoking zealots have taken up the cause of excessive noise? Roads today are clogged with pickup trucks with bad mufflers, motorcycles, and kids playing rap with bass systems which cause vibrations for yards.
Thanks.
No taxes at all, huh?
George,
Why do you repeat the canard that many Americans do not pay federal taxes? First, all workers pay FICA, without allowance for a standard deduction or personal exemptions. Second, do you really believe that taxes paid by those who make checks payable to "United States Treasury" do not impact the price of every commodity, service, and other element of life in these United States?
U S tax policy has always been a blend of ease of collection and political palatability, together with giving people the feeling they are contributing.
Further, vast differentials in wealth foment social upheaval. Few people object to the obvious success stories doing well, the Edisons and Fords. But people do object when faceless functionaries in the upper levels of banks and corporations are paid many multiples of the amounts of the typical person's total net worth. While the AIG bonuses are a tiny fraction of the total bailout, it grinds the person told UAW members are paid too much to hear of a salesman getting $1,000,000 bonus from a company which needed bailout money to pay back the investor whose purchases were the basis for the salesman's bonus.
One way of preserving the social fabric is for those who are richly rewarded to support the system which makes their incomes possible. How much would hedge fund managers earn without power lines, roads, airports, telecommunication networks, the world wide web, etc., etc.? How much if there were no courts or police? Or if the U S military could not project the nation's writ across the oceans?
And how rich would they be if those whose low taxes they bemoan were reduced to subsistence levels? Levels at which they purchased no services from the Masters of the Universe?
Sherman McCoy (The Bonfire of the Vanities) was not a heroic figure, or even a tragic one, but a pathetic one.
Actually, the post says that 43 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax (as opposed to no tax at all). Lord knows we pay all sorts of other taxes including state income tax, county, city, school, excise, sales tax and on and on.
No quarrel from me on your bailout commentary -- or on all the benefits government provides. But overall, I believe government at all level over-reaches, tries to do too much. Take local communities who use tax dollars to build recreation centers that drain city treasuries:
Does government really have a responsibility to amuse its citizens, as did ancient Rome?
Schools? Michigan pours more and more money into schools even though there's not a shred of credible evidence more money will improve student performance. In fact, districts with low per-pupil spending often outscore districts with higher per-pupil spending. And there's not enough money in the whole world for government to play parent for every kid who walks through a public-school door. Meanwhile, districts like Detroit have failed several generations of students, and apparently no one is accountable.
The feds: They ship huge wads of money to agriculture companies that would show profits without such subsidies. I don't see any reason why you and I should subsidize a profitable company. But we do.
And on and on...
--B.
Showboat Prosecutor
Thanks for turning me on to the articles. But you didn't provide links or specific directions.
Here are two:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/when-prosecutors-step-over-the-line/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03farmer.html?scp=1&sq=prosecutor%20PRESS%20CONFERENCE&st=cse
For whatever reason they don't translate into links on the comment boards
And we will continue to get this kind of behavior as long as we reward it.\
Thanks for the links.
Prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem -- if for no other reason than governments claim the right to jail you for life or kill you for transgressions.
Abusing such power is what spawns revolutions.
--Bullard
Not so nutty
Actually, being able to wangle a job for an ex-con shows me she has something on the ball. It may be an example of political corruption, but it surely is not nuts.
Maybe if more people would hire ex-cons, we would have less crime in this state.
Other than that, the only council member who are not absolute embarrassments are Kenyatta, Jones, and Cockrel, and Kenyatta is barely on the right side of the line.
Crusading Prosecutors
George,
Don't forget who brings cases to the attention of prosecutors. In the Perry case, a single Oak Park cop (obviously poorly supervised) brought apparently very selective info to the prosecutors. This is no excuse for them, but they surely don't want to get into fights with the cops by criticizing them.
And don't forget that a jury originally convicted Perry.
What would you expect in a country which elects what we elect?
Kwame did his time?
George, George, George.
1. Kwame has the best part of five years to go on his time. The 120 days (less 20 days good time and the 1 he did earlier) is 1/15 of that stretch. Just because Pete Karmanos finds it in his own interest to say Kwame's debt is paid, does not make it so.
2. A statement such as "if Kym Worthy is smart" is equivalent to "if dinosaurs still walk the land." Ms. Worthy is a political animal, with all the necessary instincts, craftiness, and lack of shame required, but with few "smarts" and virtually no wisdom. When will anyone learn otherwise? She will ride the Kwame horse at least until her high-ranked assistant Karen Plants's subornation of perjury and her own tax and mortgage defaults, are forgotten.
3. All evil needs to thrive is for good men to do nothing. Especially good men who have access to the outlets you do. Don't do nothing.
Brooks for Governor?
Gov. L. Brooks Patterson? Granted, after Jenny and Rod and the like having become Governors, our expectations have had to become lower, but, no, thank you, Brooks.
Brooks started his political career by taking on busing, and then became Oakland Prosecutor when Plunkett decided to go and make some money. In Brooks's prior stint in that office he was assigned to juvenile court, a pithy comment on his skills. He became a popular prosecutor by being stubborn, and bequeathed that stubbornness to his deputy, Dick Thompson, whose success is legend. He remains a hero to his present constituents by bashing Detroit. Granted, Detroit is nothing to sing about, but I haven't heard Brooks actually come up with any plan for Cobo or for the Water Dept beyond saying Oakland shouldn't pay for the former and should have a piece of the latter.
Besides, he has no interest in doing the work it will take to be a candidate. He just likes to bask in admiration from people who should know better.
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