Category: Justice

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Little Piggies

At the end of the celebrated novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, the farm animals look from their revolutionary leaders, the pigs, to their former oppressors, the farmers, and begin to see that they are both essentially alike. Orwell’s point was eloquently made: under the enticing delusion of liberation, the animals replaced one set of thugs with another.

Orwell has been widely interpreted as inferring that capitalism is okay, because he so obviously illustrates how communism betrayed humanity. Most people miss a very important point: the farmers (capitalists) are as bad as the pigs.

George Orwell died in 1950. The CIA’s Howard Hunt (who later helped burgle the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee on behalf of Richard Nixon’s Re-election Committee) dispatched some agents to Britain to buy the film rights of the book from Orwell’s widow. In the subsequent animated version of the movie, the farmer-capitalists in the conclusion were deleted.

And here, of course, the wonderful incidence of enemies ending up behaving like each other.  The U.S. government lied to encourage Americans to believe that the Communists are liars.

[When you think about it, that’s quite an admission. It’s as if the CIA was admitting that the “good” capitalists it was defending were intent upon slaughtering and eating the “workers”. But that was okay, because the Communists were going to do the same thing anyway. 2011-03-04]

The Animal Farm revisionism was only part of a concerted campaign by the CIA to try to discredit communism by sponsoring a steady stream of propaganda against it through cultural agencies, exhibitions, writers, and academics.

Obviously, the very means by which the CIA tried to prove that the capitalist west was “free” powerfully undermined the very notion that the U.S. and it’s allies were substantively more honest, truthful, or ethical than their communist enemies.

Among those who were compromised by this campaign: Nicholas Nabokov (the writer’s cousin), Stephen Spender, Isaiah Berlin, Encounter Magazine, James Mitchener, and Mary McCarthy.

I recall a piece in Reader’s Digest by James Mitchener in which he essentially argued that the students at Kent State deserved to be shot by the National Guard because some of the female protestors used obscenities, and this was an extreme provocation to the National Guardsmen who were largely effete southern gentlemen who were shocked that ladies would use obscenities. I wonder if that particular piece was subsidized. Perhaps it should have been.

These and other gems are recounted in a book by British writer Frances Stonor Saunders, in “The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters”

Trust no one.

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Robin Sharpe and the Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court Handles a Tough One

Is it possible to consider this issue, soberly, and intelligently?

You are probably familiar now with the Robin Sharpe case that is now before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Nobody is saying that Robin Sharpe is a nice man. Sharpe was arrested by the police in Vancouver for possession of child pornography, an offense punishable under the Criminal Code of Canada– Federal Law. Newspaper accounts are rather sketchy about the details of the arrest, but we know what it is that the law said was illegal: he had, in his possession, images and texts describing sexual acts involving children.

Sharpe did not argue that people should be allowed to create child pornography and sell and distribute it. Most people don’t care about the distinction, but I do. He did argue, in court, that the law as worded was too broad. He argued that the law appeared to make it a criminal offense to even think about having sex with children. The law certainly made it a criminal offense to record such thoughts on paper, even if nobody else ever reads them, or sees them. Robin Sharpe, and his lawyers, and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Union, believe that this part of the law restricts his freedom to think and imagine. It infringes on an individual’s right to have an unfettered imagination. It opens a Pandora’s box of interpretation and analysis that cannot possibly result in just actions by the police. It is not the business of the government, or anyone, to make thoughts illegal.

You have to think carefully about what the law is trying to prohibit here. It prohibits the expression, in any form, of specific imaginary experiences (as well as real experiences). In this case, we are talking about a man who likes to fantasize about having sex with very young boys. But the law is never specific. It doesn’t tell you in advance what kind of person to arrest. Conceivably, a girl having dreams about being molested by a teacher could be arrested for writing them down. Well, we know that we would never arrest such a person, would we? For one thing, in practice, we always assume that the girl, in this instance, is the victim, even if they are her fantasies.

The law, however, should never make assumptions. And the law doesn’t help us make the kind of distinctions that might be required: what is imagination? Who is the victim? What is a dream? What is poetry? What is documentation? What is fiction? What if the girl imagined herself as the teacher that was molesting her? There is a raft of issues that could complicate the process of deciding if possession of this particular document or image is a crime. Is there a way to ensure that all of these issues are addressed in a consistent, convincing manner, to ensure that the right person is always punished? In a society that can’t even agree on what the rules are for political secession?

Two lower British Columbia courts have ruled in favor of Sharpe. They have ruled that the law goes too far. They have argued that if the principle is allowed to stand, then it will also be legal to arrest people for thinking and writing other things. It is a bedrock principle of our legal system that all of our citizens have the right to hold personal opinions no matter how unpopular they are. You cannot disobey most laws, but you can criticize them all you want, and advocate for changes to them.

The problem with discussing the issue with anyone is that people find the very idea of child pornography so repugnant that they react very emotionally to the issue and quickly pronounce themselves in favor of any law, no matter how ill-considered, that makes child pornography illegal. The courts, of course, cannot afford to be so cavalier.

Ironically, some of the groups most enthusiastic about keeping the law are the ones who also constantly rant about getting the government off our backs. They claim the government plays an excessive role in our society, when they advocate for the poor, or homosexuals, or other minorities. In this instance, however, they want to give the government extraordinary latitude in dealing with a particular type of activity.

You may recall the hysteria surrounding allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 1980’s. Similar emotions were at play. The result was a massive “witch-hunt” of mind-boggling proportions, in which dozens of innocent men and women were imprisoned, and hundreds of innocent lives were destroyed. After a few years of sober, second thoughts, and a re-analysis of the way the investigations were conducted, almost all of these cases were tossed out of court. Just a few months ago, charges against Bob Kelly, who was at the centre of one of the most infamous of these cases (the Edenton “Little Rascals” case) were finally dropped. (In spite of the fact that superior courts consistently ruled that these investigations were almost criminally sloppy and ill-conceived, no one, to my knowledge, has apologized for destroying the lives of the innocent men and women caught up in these events.)

Why did these cases go forward in the first place? For the same reason many people wish to see the Supreme Court uphold the child pornography laws: because they hate child pornography and they are willing to make compromises in order to believe that we are actually doing something about it. These people, including the Reform Party, believe that if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court appeal decisions, then Parliament should invoke the “notwithstanding” clause of the Bill of Rights and enforce the law anyway.

But if the Supreme Court rules that it can be made illegal to possess images and texts that describe illegal acts, it will have established that, in principle, the government can arrest people for what they think and say, instead of only for what they do.

In fact, that principle is already at play in Canada in our hate laws. A person can be arrested for publishing documents that promote hatred or contempt for people based on their race, nationality, religious beliefs, or ethnic origin. Many people think that these are good laws too. I don’t. I despise racism, but I believe that freedom of expression is the very foundation of freedom and democracy and should never be compromised for any other principle. Without freedom of expression, we cannot even guarantee that discussions about the law, including the pornography laws, will be allowed to take place.

For the same reason, I abhor the language laws in Quebec. Yes, it would be a tragedy to see the French language in North America die. But it is a greater tragedy that people can be arrested for saying something in the wrong words. It is absurd. If French deserves to survive, it will survive for the right reasons. If not, we should mourn it’s passing.

Right now, most of us think we have a reasonably fair and just government. But if we didn’t, the government could use this case as a precedent to justify arresting people who disagree with them on other things.

It is always a challenge to persuade people that it is important to fight for the rights of people we don’t like. We’d rather, often, just bash them in the teeth. We are short-sighted and stupid sometimes. We forget that every time we chisel away at these rights even a little, we establish the conditions under which our own freedoms can eventually be suppressed.

The Supreme Court should uphold the appeals courts and invalidate the child pornography laws. Then Parliament should enact a new law that omits the offending portions. It’s really no big deal. The law can continue to make it illegal to create or sell or distribute child pornography. The police can still arrest molesters and abusers. No stores will be allowed to display, for sale, the forbidden items. We will still be able to read the Bible (which, under certain circumstances, could fit the definition of “pornography” that some would like to see enacted into law).

I don’t know if people imagine that this one particular part of the child pornography law goes very far in terms of prevention anyway. It doesn’t.

It merely allows the police to arrest people for thought crimes.

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Attica

I just read that about 400 of the 800 victims of the ultra-violent repression of inmates at Attica State Prison in New York in 1971 will receive an $8 million settlement.

Well…. maybe $4 million.

I am not kidding: lawyers will take the other $4 million.

Bastards.

This is the American way of justice, circa 1970. A disproportionate number of blacks are sent to jail. They are allowed one shower a week and one roll of toilet paper a month. The prison is vastly over-crowded because the governor, Nelson Rockefeller, believes it would be unpopular, politically, to raise taxes to pay for more prisons (sound familiar?). The prisoners, driven to frustration, seize hostages and start a riot. The police, fortified with state troopers, attempt to regain control, killing 45 of the prisoners and seriously wounding 89.

Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller gave the orders. Mr. Rockefeller, who ignored all the demands that the deep corruption among the prison guards and administration of Attica be addressed. For years, he did nothing. He sat on his hands. Then the prison exploded and he approved aggressive counter-measures.

After the tear gas had cleared, the police reported to the complicit media that the prisoners had killed 10 hostages by slitting their throats, and that they had even castrated a man. The public was outraged. Of course the police are right to use the most brutal methods available. Of course the police were right to kill 30 prisoners.

Then the autopsies and the coroner’s reports came back. None of the victims had their throats slit. No one was castrated. All of the victims, including the hostages, died from bullets fired by State Troopers.

Yes, every single one of them.

Did you read this at the time it happened, if you can remember that long ago? I remember that long ago. I don’t remember reading about the coroner’s report back then. It was not something the media thought the public wanted to read.

The inmates were forced to strip and crawl, naked, through fields filled with broken glass. They were assaulted, beaten, abused, and terrorized by the angry police and guards. Why were the police angry? Possibly because they knew that their assault had been badly managed and messy and brutal. Because they had been shown to be incompetent and stupid.

It took 30 years— 30 years!– for the real victims of this outrage, the prisoners, to get compensation. And then what happens? Their lawyers walk off with half of the settlement.

I know a few lawyers. They get upset when they hear lawyer jokes. They say it’s not fair to tar everyone with the same brush. I suppose you could argue that not all professional athletes are greedy and not all television evangelists are liars and not all Amway distributors are suckers. In each case, though, it seems like the exception proves the rule.

On the other hand, you could simply argue that there are serious structural flaws in a legal system that essentially provides two version of “justice”: one for those with money, and quite another for those without. Why do lawyers always seem to walk away with the money in lawsuits like the Attica case? Because the only way the poor can afford a good lawyer is to sign an outrageous “contingency” agreement that gives most of the settlement money to the lawyers. Why? Because lawyers cost too much. The system needs to be drastically changed.

The police brutally violate the civil rights of 800 prisoners in Attica State Prison– who were protesting the inhumane living conditions in the prison– and the slug-like legal system takes 30 years to make a judgment, and then the lawyers jump in and grab all the money. The victims get almost nothing. The police pay no penalty. Nobody is fired. Nobody goes to jail. Just hand the money over to the lawyers.

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Our Moral Decline

A number of things happened in the 1940’s and 50’s that created many of the social problems we have today.

Firstly, people started to do pretty well for themselves. They made money. And, thanks to the huge government subsidy of the auto industry (especially the Interstate system in the U.S.), many people could afford cars.

Secondly, developers began to build a new type of residential community: the suburb, which was designed around the principle that everyone would have a car. The suburb was located away from the downtown (cheap land), which meant a lot of people had to drive their cars around in order to get to work. Public transit doesn’t work very well in the suburbs because of all the winding streets and the low density of population.

Thirdly, effective birth control allowed families to reduce the number of children they would have. This, in turn, allowed women to re-enter the work-force more quickly. It allowed numerous families to send their children to college who otherwise couldn’t have afforded it. It changed the character of the family.

Fourth, the tax base shifted away from the inner city and out to the suburbs. As a result, city governments lost their ability to pay for the upkeep of downtown areas. These areas decayed, housing prices plummeted, the poor moved in with even more social problems, unemployment among the inner city poor soared, drug and alcohol addiction increased, and so on and so on.

In the 1960’s, this was all no secret. Sociologists and social scientists understood very well the negative effects of urbanization. Lewis Mumford wrote some sensational, amazing books on the development of cities. We studied them in high school as late as the early 1970’s. Too many people living too close together tended to develop strange behavior patterns. Most of us have heard about the girl who was raped and murdered while dozens of her neighbors leaned out of their high-rise windows and listened, and not a single one of them decided to call the police and go to help her.

The suburbs are no better. Instead of communities, where people know each other and interact with each other at local businesses, and operate schools together, and build playgrounds together, and help each other out, people barely know their own neighbors, because they can travel to see their friends, in their cars, and you don’t want to get too friendly with a person who lives just 30 feet away from your lawnmower.

But nobody could do anything about urbanization. Or was it just that we were all complicit in urbanization? We all wanted our own homes with a back yard and a driveway. And we never blame ourselves for society’s ills, so we blame hippies or blacks or other minorities, or a decline in “family values”, or softness on crime. That way, you can elect fascist leaders, give more money to the police, sentence people to thirty years in jail for possessing marijuana, and execute developmentally delayed adults for murder. This, apparently, is more satisfying to some people than reconsidering the huge subsidy to the auto industry.

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The Prison Franchise

Mike Harris wants to close down Ontario’s prisons. They are expensive and inefficient.

Whenever someone from a conservative political party says “expensive and inefficient” you know he has friends waiting to make a lot of money with a backroom deal– and he is about to announce a new privatization scheme. Sure enough, Harris wants to privatize Ontario’s prisons. He wants to pay private companies to incarcerate Ontario’s criminals.

Don’t we all believe that private companies are more efficient and effective than government? There’s something to the idea. Most private companies exist in a competitive environment. If they are inefficient or lazy or slow, they get squashed by those powerful rivals. In theory, this means that most private companies are smarter, quicker, and more responsive to changes in the marketplace than governments are.

Unless you happen to be Microsoft.

This is the simple myth that America lives by. It’s partly true. It’s also partly untrue. The U.S. has a private health care system in which hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors all compete for your business. Canada has a government-run monopoly on health services. Which system is more competitive, efficient, and cheap? Surprise! The Canadian system is at least three times more efficient than the U.S. system. Why? Because there are some advantages to a government-run monopoly. First of all, the government is able to control costs by negotiating the rates for medical procedures with the doctors. In the U.S., the market is supposed to keep doctors prices low. Right. Like you’re going to go shop around for a cancer treatment and see if you can get a discount from that “big box” medical centre out near the highway. Yes.

Secondly, there is much less duplication of services. Some U.S. cities have five or more Magnetic Image Resonance machines, each of which cost millions, and each of which sits idle most of the time.

Thirdly, the Canadian system is actually run quite well, thank you, by people who know their jobs.

Fourthly, the Canadian system doesn’t have to skim off a certain percentage of profits for greedy corporations.

Anyway, back to the prisons…

Privatizing prisons is quite popular in the U.S. there are thousands of them, run by several companies. Unfortunately, they haven’t reduced costs quite as much as expected. In fact, some studies show that they haven’t reduced costs at all. And when you think about it, why would they? A privately run prison must provide all of the same functions that a state run prison provides, plus, it must provide a profit for the owners. Now there is only one way for the owners to create that profit: and that is to run the prison more cheaply than the state does. That means less staff, less training, less programs for the incarcerated, and less medical care. Less food. Cheaper food. Smaller cells. More over-crowding. Less control.

In fact, this is what is happening to the publicly owned prisons as well. State after state is going to court to try to reclaim control of their prisons. Wait a minute… reclaim control? That’s right. They no longer control their own prisons. Why not? Because about 20 years ago, lawyers for the inmates began filing lawsuits against various state governments alleging that the prisons were so badly run, so decrepit and vermin-infested and dominated by sadistic long-term convicts that sentencing any person to spend time in them constituted “cruel and unusual punishment”. The courts investigated and agreed and seized control of the prisons. Many states still did nothing about the horrendous conditions.

Now, not only do state governments want to treat criminals like animals, they want to contract out the service of treating criminals like animals.

Unless you really believe that these corporations that own these prisons are seriously interested in rehabilitation and whatever.

The truth is this. Governments find it unpopular to treat prisoners too, too badly. Sooner or later, some muckraking journalist comes along and uncovers the dirt and then those liberals will demand reform. Or, as we have seen, the courts will step in and order expensive improvements. Some idiots actually think that prisons should have some rehabilitation programs. Some real idiots actually think that prisoners should be treated with some kind of dignity and respect, even though they have committed awful crimes.

You have to remember that when rich people commit crimes, they don’t go to prison. So when rich people privatize prisons, they know very well that no matter what, they themselves are never going to end up in one of those prisons.

So the goal of privatization is to append a flattering objective to a contemptible practice.

Now, wait a minute. If a private citizen or company locks me up in a room and threatens me and forces me to eat disgusting food and prevents from leaving…. isn’t that kidnapping? You bet. So why is not kidnapping when a private company does the same thing, even if it’s with permission from the state? How can the legal government assign rights that are normally only given to duly-constituted civil authorities to private individuals employed by a for-profit corporation?

Would it be legal for a state government to allow the mother of a murder victim to decide on and execute the punishment of the offender? It certainly would not be. But then again, never over-estimate the intelligence or ethics of twelve years of Republican-appointed judges. The Republicans have shown, over and over again, that they are willing to appoint relatively unqualified people to the position of judge if they share the “correct” ideology. Clarence Thomas, a manifestly undistinguished jurist, immediately comes to mind. And these judges, who were appointed too late to have an influence on the earlier court-ordered prison reforms, have been trying to undue their effects piece by piece. And they have ruled it is legal for a private company to hold people prisoner on behalf of the state.

I’m lazy so I don’t want to write a hundred pages about why this is a stupid idea. It just is. Sorry. I’d love to spend a week in the library so I can refer to you specific documents that show what a stupid, sorry mess the U.S. prison system is, but I have a job, so I can’t. But there’s one thing readily apparent to everyone: the Americans love to punish criminals. They love to see them suffer. They love capital punishment. They love long, long prison terms. For everyone who commits serious crimes, except the rich.

The Americans are on this vindictive schtick and it’s pure barbarism. It makes me wonder if you can even call the U.S. a civilized society. It certainly calls into question the intelligence of the average American voter. For about 30 years now, the U.S. has been throwing scores of people into prison and lengthening prison terms all in the name of being “tough on crime”. I would like just one of these people to give me an objective measure that will show us if and when this program is succeeding. When does the crime rate go down? When can you show me that it is having some positive effect? Can you show me that the benefits outweigh the costs? When will we finally see the slightest indication that we are winning the war on drugs?

They can’t and won’t because they are wrong. Longer, tougher prison sentences do not reduce crime. If they did, the U.S. would be the most crime-free nation on earth, and Canada and Europe would be infested with criminals. Instead, it is quite the opposite.

Privatizing prisons is a very bad idea. Mike Harris thinks it will save money and provide more “efficient” services to Canada’s justice system. I think it will result in scandals and abuses as these private companies try to cut costs to make bigger profits. Harris thinks, so, who cares? They’re criminals. They don’t deserve to be treated with respect or dignity.

The net result will be an increase in man’s inhumanity to man.

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Just Say No

Universities in Canada got 60% of their funding from the government in the 1960’s. Now they get 40%. The rest comes from tuition and corporate donations.

The Corporate sponsorship is disturbing.

Apparently, according to the Canadian Association of University Professors, many of these agreements are secret, especially in regard to intellectual property rights. It was this kind of agreement that led to the University of Toronto trying to silence researcher Nancy Oliveri when her research showed that there might be harmful side effects of a drug produced by Apotex.

In a related story, a professor at McMaster University imposed a new policy on all researchers at that facility: no meetings with representatives of drug companies. Why? Because he felt that medical research was becoming compromised by the intermingling of the interests of the drug companies with those of the universities and the medical profession itself.

Perhaps the most laughable slogan of the entire 1980’s was pet phrase of Nancy Reagan’s: “Just say no to drugs”. Just say no to drugs? Ritalin! Valium! Prozac! Viagra! Lithium! Etc. Etc. Etc. We are the most drug-addled society on earth! Say “no”? And bring the stock market crashing down?!

Our society loves drugs. Institutions love them because violent patients can be sedated into harmless mindless sacks of inert flesh. Doctors love them because they provide convenient and speedy personality modifications to persistently annoying patients, and spare them the aggravating ordeal of actually trying to find a real remedy. Drug companies love them—naturally—because they provide incredible profits, since they can charge far in excess of the actual cost of the chemicals in the prescription, to cover—ha ha—research and development. Research scientists love them because drug companies provide them with millions of dollars to conduct research to arrive at just that conclusion (and if they don’t reach that conclusion—see above—the money is withdrawn).

So what’s with this “just say no” campaign? Well, you see, those poor inner city blacks don’t play by the rules. First of all, their drugs don’t include a healthy royalty to some large pharmaceutical firm (just imagine their apoplexy had Nancy Reagan added—”and let’s all try to do with a little less Prozac and Valium ourselves, shall we?”). Secondly, they haven’t developed this wonderful rationale of how stressed out they all are and how they’ve all seen so many psychiatrists and been to all the doctors and just can’t get over this severe depression that’s been limiting their ability to work, you know… The truth is this: in the U.S., blacks constitute 14% of the drug-using population, but they constitute 58% of those convicted for drug use. Look at those numbers carefully. Think of all the movies and tv shows you see about drugs and crime. Think about the reality. The war on drugs is the war on black America. And this war cost $18 billion a year (Harpers Magazine, November 1999). And it is the most one-sided debacle in U.S. history. It has been lost over and over again but America continues to fight it because it’s a winner as an election issue.

It is at moments like this I feel somewhat pessimistic about the human race.

There is a pretty good argument to be made that marijuana, especially, is illegal today because it provides the same sort of hit that Prozac and Valium provide, but at much, much less cost. In fact, you could grow it yourself in your backyard, if the police would let you. A similar argument could be made for cocaine. So, even though I feel pessimistic, I must admit that there are signs of hope. In seven states, voters have indicated, by substantial margins, that they approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Representative Bob Barr, in fact– he of impeachment fame– used some nefarious and obscure loopholes to prevent the results of the vote in the District of Columbia from becoming known. When it was finally released, 70% of the voters supported medical use of marijuana. But Mr. Democracy, Bob Barr, has blocked the implementation of the law on a technicality.

It might strike you as surprising that it is only recently in human history that drugs like Cocaine and marijuana have been made illegal. The prohibition of these and other “recreational” drugs coincides perfectly with the rise of the large pharmaceutical companies (who also tried to ban or hobble sales of herbal remedies).

Ah, you say—but aren’t those evil, illegal drugs addictive? Precisely. Why some of them are almost as addictive as, say, lithium. In fact, many of the heavy duty, most frequently-prescribed pharmaceuticals are at least equally addictive.

So what am I saying?

First of all, I am not saying that drug use is good. Get that clear. I don’t drink more than two or three beers a YEAR myself. I dislike anything that messes with your mind. And I certainly don’t use any prescription drugs and whenever I hear of someone who is depressed or disturbed, I hope they find some way to deal with problems that does not involve pharmaceuticals.

However, just as Prohibition of alcohol failed, the war on drugs has failed. And just as most people came to realize that Prohibition did more damage than good, people should come to realize that the war on drugs does more harm than good. The war on alcohol produced powerful criminal organizations that branched out into prostitution, gambling, and murder. Does that sound familiar?

As shocking as the idea sounds, the fact is that some countries have already tried legalizing drugs. In Holland, marijuana and hashish are freely available. And surprise, surprise, more adolescents try marijuana in the U.S. than they do in Holland!

That drugs like cocaine and marijuana should be legal? Well, think about it. Alcohol, in terms of sheer quantity, does far more damage to our society than marijuana. Yet it’s perfectly legal. In fact, it is downright easy for any teenager to get a six pack or a bottle of wine.

We did try banning alcohol once too. Of course, we all know how disastrous that was, and how it led to the development of powerful criminal organizations in North America that branched out into other forms of crime and plagued our society for years afterwards. Does that sound familiar?

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court, featuring embarrassingly second-rate minds like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, appointed during the twelve years of Republican Administrations between Carter and Clinton, have been steadily eroding constitutional rights protecting citizens from “unreasonable search and seizure”. Police in helicopters can now peer inside your windows, and officers can search your car just because they feel like it. What does this mean? In California, according to Harper’s, an elderly grandfather was shot twice and killed by police who burst into his house in a hail of gunfire searching for a suspect who had lived next door fifteen years earlier. In New York, a mentally retarded, menstruating young girl was dragged naked from the shower and hand-cuffed while police searched the house. Again, no drugs were found.

Nor were any apologies offered. Why should we apologize? We’re the police! We’re in a war on drugs! You don’t apologize to civilian casualties during a war!

And those two cases are just the tip of the ice berg. Under the Supreme Court’s relaxed rules on search and seizure, it has become very profitable for police to pull suspects over the side of the road, seize their cars and property, and leave it to the hapless citizen to “prove” that the property was not used for the purpose of drug-dealing. Not every citizen is smart enough to respond within the 10 days allowed, or rich enough to afford a lawyer, or patient enough to challenge the constipated U.S. criminal court systems. It’s easier, quicker, and safer to please guilty to a reduced charge and turn snitch, thereby providing the police with fresh leads on new property to seize.

It’s utterly incredible, contemptible, and outrageous. Why isn’t this on the front pages of the newspapers, the lead story on television?

Because there’s no sex.

Hollywood stars can afford lawyers.

Everyone has been convinced by successive administrations that drugs is the number one problem in our society and nobody– not Al Gore, not George Bush Jr., not Bill Bradley, not even John McCain– has the guts to stand up to his juggernaut of imbecilic brutality.

 

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Abraham Lincoln and the Evangelicals

According to biographer Allen Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln might have believed in a divine maker, but he certainly did not believe in Jesus Christ–in a personal savior. He did not belong to a church. He believed that people were generally in charge of their own destiny and had the capacity to build a better society together.

In short, Abraham Lincoln was one of those evil, secular humanists that people in the Christian right in the U.S. constantly badger us about.

Lincoln?

Thomas Jefferson? Benjamin Franklin? Thomas Paine? How convenient that they are dead and unable to speak for themselves. These “heroes” of the American Revolution have their names invoked time and time again by Republicans, homophobes, militant evangelicals, and tv preachers, as paragons of Christian virtue and “traditional” values.

Do you believe me? Or do you want to believe Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson?

You know, it’s not very difficult to find the truth in this matter. There really isn’t a controversy, like there is, say, over the efficacy of gun control or feminism or the Equal Rights Amendment. You can read the original works by these guys in any library. They were NOT—I repeat, NOT—Christians. They did not base the constitution on scripture. They did not base the Bill of Rights on scripture. They based their work on the ideas of people like John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

So when someone tells you that America needs to return to the moral virtues of the past, and to the examples of stalwart men like Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine – I say, “Amen, brother!”

Well, no, I don’t, exactly. You see Jefferson owned slaves and he sired children by one of them. Benjamin Franklin had quite a reputation in Paris, when he was American ambassador. And George Washington certainly didn’t think Martha should be entitled to equal pay for work of equal value.

So there you go. You see the danger of trying to read the past into the present or, even worse, the future.

The truth is, we are here and now and we have to try to find the best answer to our various social and economic and moral problems all by ourselves. We can learn from the past, but you can’t go back, and America can’t go back.

The Founding Fathers, fearful of invasion by Britain, believed that every man should keep a gun handy. Today, 40,000 people a year a murdered at least partly because it is easier to get a gun in the U.S. than it is to get a firecracker.

Time to move on, I say.

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The MP3

How complex are the moral and ethical issues surrounding copyright nowadays, with all the advances in computer technology? Consider MP3.

MP3 (Media Player 3) is a new format for digital music recording. The MP3 system allows you to make very good digital copies from any CD or “wav” file and copy the file onto your computer, a personal MP3 “player” (similar to a walkman), or… the Internet. A typical three minute pop song, which would take up to 20 megabytes of disk space as a “wav” file, can be condensed into a 3 megabyte MP3 file. There are already thousands of sites on the Internet offering MP3 files for downloading, most of them illegal copies of copyrighted material. There are also a growing number of sites offering original MP3 files, with the consent of the artist.

Many of the users of MP3 offer a thin rationalization for their activities: they would have more respect for copyright if CDs were priced more fairly. They are aware of the fact that CDs are cheaper to produce than vinyl records, yet they cost twice as much. Very little of the difference in cost, if any, actually goes to the artist.

The music industry is absolutely frantic about MP3 and has tried their best to stamp it out. Having failed to convince the courts that it should be banned, they are now attempting to hi-jack it by presenting their own variation of the technology, but with built-in protocols to prevent successive or second generation copies from being made. If history is an indicator, their efforts are not likely to succeed. IBM, Microsoft, Compuserve, and AOL have all fought these battles before and lost.

One is tempted to sympathize with the music industry. After all, don’t they have a right to protect their music? What about the poor musicians, struggling to make a living in his noble profession? Music industry representatives are careful to present themselves as defenders of the poor artists and composers who will be denied their just royalties because of this new form of piracy. Aren’t these workers entitled to a just wage?

To be absolutely blunt about it, I don’t believe that the music industry cares very much about their “poor” artists and composers at all. The truth is that music industry exploits artists and consumers alike. What the music industry is really frightened of is the possibility that artists and composers will no longer need them at all.

Consider the rap group Public Enemy (you’ve probably heard their biggest hit, “Fight the Power”, somewhere). Public Enemy recently attempted to post their own songs in MP3 format on their website. However, lawyers for their record company, DefJam, obtained injunctions and shut them down immediately. So much for the rights of the “poor” composer.

Why did Public Enemy defy their own record company?

The dispute centres on the bookkeeping procedures commonly used by large record companies in their management of artists and repertoire. When an artist is signed, he (or they) is given a large advance, and access to a recording studio. The artist is thrilled. He probably doesn’t understand much of the language in the contracts he signs. He probably doesn’t even have a lawyer, or an agent. He thinks that if he has a hit record, he is going to be rich.

The record company, on behalf of the artist, hires public relations consultants, photographers, legal representatives, arrangers, session musicians, and so on. All of these people may in fact work for the record company, but their services are billed separately to the artist, as if they were independent consultants. Many of these charges can quickly become grossly inflated. A manicurist earning $8.95 an hour suddenly becomes an “image consultant” for a shadow company at rates of $125.00 an hour. The manicurist doesn’t see that money, of course. On paper, it looks like the record company has incurred horrendous expenses, and may even be taking a loss on the artist. In reality, if the artist is successful, everybody except the artist—and the real manicurist—will make piles of money.

This system is so pervasive that, according to Billboard Magazine, the average artist who sells 500,000 CDs will realize a net profit of about $20,000, after all the “expenses” have been deducted from his royalties!

Back to Public Enemy, this rap group woke up one day and found out that, after selling $72 million in merchandise, they were completely broke. Like any reasonable person, they wondered how that was possible. Well, their record company, Defjam, explained that, according to their accounting methods, it cost them well over $71 million to sell that $72 million worth of merchandise.

It is not surprising, then, to discover that many successful musicians follow a strategy first employed by Tom Petty and declare bankruptcy after a few short years of “success”. The reason they do so is because it is the only legal way they can extricate themselves from the preposterous contracts they naively signed. And it will be no surprise to learn that the music industry is lobbying hard for Congress to pass a new law making it even more difficult for musicians to escape their contracts by declaring bankruptcy. [update: they succeeded, the law was passed]

So, what the music industry really fears is that more and more artists will do what Ani DiFranco did and bypass the music industry entirely. DiFranco records, prints, and markets all of her own CDs, and is doing quite well, artistically and financially, thank you. Once she achieved notable success on her own, including a major story in Time Magazine, the record companies came calling, but she was not foolish enough to succumb to their offers of glittering promotional pieces in Vanity Fair and guest slots on David Letterman.

With MP3, and the explosion of inexpensive recording equipment, it has become quite practical for a new artist to create his own music in the comfort of his own home, put samples out on the Internet, and sell CDs for less than half what the music chains charge, and still make a reasonable profit. You can understand why the music industry is deeply concerned about this new technology, and why the film industry has also taken notice. Without a chokehold on the distribution of music, the major labels would quickly be forced to compete with more and more independent artists and labels.

Where does this leave the ethical listener? Certainly, the basic principle of copyright should be respected. But I believe we should oppose the attempts by the music industry to outlaw or restrict new technologies that threaten their control of music recording and distribution. We should also support balancing legislation that begins to reassert the rights of the consumer, to make copies of music for personal use, to freely copy and distribute non-copyrighted material, and to make “fair use” of copyrighted material in the classroom, library, and for research and study. Above all, artists need far greater protection from the sometimes devious and dishonest practices of the recording industry.

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Bankers and Other Vampires

The next time you go to a bank or a lawyer for anything, I’d consider wearing an armored turtle-neck sweater if I were you.

It is no coincidence that most of the lawmakers in our civilization are lawyers and that many of laws unduly favor the lawyers with opportunities to sink their fangs into you.

Case in point: have you ever bought a house? Buying a house is a big, complex action that requires inordinate legal expertise and wisdom and mountains of documentation. Does it have to? No. Then why does it? Well, the mountains of incoherent legalese and mumbo-jumbo is like a stun gun: it’s designed to immobilize you until various interested parties can sink their fangs into your neck.

First of all, there is the Real Estate Agent. The Real Estate Agent receives a percentage of the value of your house as his pay. This system is not without its advantages. If the agent doesn’t sell your house, he doesn’t get a penny. But if he does sell your house, he gets 5% of the value. This doesn’t entirely make sense. If your house is worth $50,000, the agent gets a reasonable $2,500. How much time does he invest in selling your house? A week of full-time hours? So he gets about $62.50 an hour. Excessive, but not absurd.

But if your house is worth $150,000, the agent gets three times as much, or $7,500. Does it take three times as much work to sell a $150,000 house? No. It takes about the same amount of time, if not less, because there are buyers for every segment of the market place. Even if it took the agent the equivalent of two weeks full-time work to sell this house, he would earn $93.75 an hour. Not bad. No wonder the lawyers want to get in on the action.

Unlike lawyers, however, Real Estate Agents only get paid if they are successful in helping you sell your house. That’s admirable. But why don’t people sell their own houses and keep that money for themselves? Oddly enough, it might because some people confuse the function of the Real Estate Agent with the function of the lawyer. They trust the Real Estate Agent. They feel the Real Estate Agent will keep them from making a foolish mistake, like accidentally buying a trailer in a swamp, instead of a nice bungalow on a crescent. Or selling your house to one of those crazy people who go around looking at houses and making offers on them but don’t actually have any money with which to buy one. But, actually, it’s the lawyer who makes sure that you don’t make a big mistake. Like sign a professional major league baseball contract instead of a mortgage.

It is pretty outrageous that the Real Estate Agent holds on to the $1,000 deposit on the purchase of your house. What’s he doing with it? It’s your house, not his. Why didn’t he turn it over to you immediately, like he should have? Why not? Because the check was given to another Real Estate Agent by the purchaser. So the two Real Estate Agents get together: “I know—let’s keep the money.”

Just imagine how your boss would react if you went out to deliver one of your company’s products to a customer and decided to keep the payment in your pocket for a few months. You’d be arrested. You’d be fired.

The lawyer handles the legal mumbo jumbo of buying a home. What exactly does he do? Well, a lawyer’s time is very valuable. You don’t want to call up a lawyer and burp on the phone or anything—you’ll get a bill. Lawyers are very good at keeping track of their valuable time. And the first thing a good lawyer does is make sure that he doesn’t have to waste a lot of his valuable time by actually doing any work. He hires a law clerk to do that. And you will probably discover that almost all of the work done on your purchase or sale is actually done by the law clerk, who probably makes about $8.75 an hour. The law clerk is happy to work for $8.75 an hour. You see, one day, a law clerk is going to be a lawyer. But the only way the other lawyers will let him become a lawyer is if he first agrees to work for $8.75 an hour for a lawyer for a few years, gaining valuable “experience”. His function is similar to that of a hospital intern: we can ruthlessly exploit you, so we will. But you will have your turn…

When we sold our house, the lawyer’s fee was $450. Add to that about $45 in “disbursements”, including $12 for photocopying and $9.33 for postage. Then there is $50.00 for the registration of discharge. I think he calls the bank and says, “Is the mortgage discharged?” The bank says “yes”. Done. Kaa-chink. $50.00. The fee for buying the house we moved to was $500. But wait! Would a lawyer be satisfied with a paltry $500, when he’s got his hands on your $173,000? There is the “Title Searcher’s Fee”– $75.00. What’s that? I thought that’s what the law clerk did for the lawyer’s fee? There’s no business like show business: charge people for a particular service and then surcharge them for everything that actually costs you money to provide. See “Shipping and Handling” (Amazon.com).

There is an “executions certificate – $77.00”. What’s that? I have no idea. Do I want to make a fool of myself by asking the lawyer what it is and why I should pay for it? He’s already got my money.

There is “subsearch of title – $5.00”. Why, that seems very reasonable. You charge the client $500 for a service that doesn’t include “subsearch of title”. What am I paying $500 for, then?

There is “paid for letter searches: tax certificate – $20.00, Planning/Zone Certificate: $75.00”. Looks like every city department wants their fangs in you too.

There is “conveyance costs”. Oh please…. What is a “conveyance”? $8.50.

There is Courier, Postage, Fax, Photocopies: about $60.00. Here again we have a smart businessman surcharging a customer for services that should be included in the given price for a specific service. It’s like your mechanic charging you $5 for “rag wipe”.

Then the mysterious “levy surcharge”—another $50.00. We go from a $500 lawyers fee to a total of $931.05. Altogether, selling the old house and buying the new, the lawyer gets about $1600.

And finally, after all those exotic little quaint and mysterious charges: “Paid Registration Costs: $100”. After all the subsearches and conveyances and courier and levy surcharges and executions— what! Still not “registered”? What’s the point of registering it when we’ve already paid a fortune for conveyances and subsearches and levies? After all that, registration still matters?

Then the government, of course, bares its fangs: Land Transfer Tax: $1464.00.

Then there is something called the “Levy Surcharge” for $50. There is no explanation of what a “Levy Surcharge” is. If you look up the words in the dictionary, you have, essentially, a phrase that means “charge extra bill”. Maybe the lawyer just wanted another $50, so he added a bill for the bill.

What is even more infuriating is that if I sold this house tomorrow to somebody else, his lawyer would charge him just as much for all the same services my lawyer just provided, and the city would charge him just as much as well, even though the facts of which these various certificates testify have not changed one whit.

As I check over the other documents associated with selling and buying a home, I notice this one: “Inspection and Appraisal: $187.25”. This little gem is something that the bank does to make sure that you’re not taking a mortgage out on an outhouse instead of a four-room bungalow. Well, why should I pay for them to do that? They are the ones that are in the business of lending money for profit. Why don’t they send one of their clerks out to the house to have a look at it, on the bank’s time? How long does it take to ascertain that a house exists and that it is selling at, roughly, current market values?

About a month after the purchase, I received my bank statement. It showed that $498.78 had been charged to my account as a “check posted by branch”. This was not a check posted by branch. This was piece of paper initialed by several people at Scotia Express that said: “give us some money out of this person’s account”. Did my bank say, “Wait—you can’t take money without permission, or without a signed authorization by the owner of the account.”? Are you kidding? Like the Real Estate Agents and the Lawyers, the bankers know how to scratch each others’ backs. They just said: “you’re a bank? Here. Take it. Take as much as you want.”

This amount is supposedly an “interest adjustment”. They probably thought I’d be so totally confused by now that I would just kind of nod and smile and let this one slip pass me. Well, they’re right. However, I do happen to have a document that says that the “interest adjustment” is $216.46. Do I want to spend all day on the phone trying to get through to people at the bank who can talk coherently about my mortgage? You bet.

This kind of wheeling and dealing is what really bugs me. It was our house that we sold, not the lawyer’s. Why does he take his fee right out of the transaction, instead of sending us a bill and waiting to get paid like everyone else does? Maybe he’s worried that if he screwed up, (as a lawyer on one of our previous home purchases did), he wouldn’t get his money.

What a strange world it would be, in which lawyers don’t get paid if they screw up.

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Whistling Dixie

Does anyone care that the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court likes to lead singalongs of “Dixie” (“I wish I was in the land of cotton…”) at public conferences?

I suppose we shouldn’t be too, too shocked. This is the same guy who sometimes quotes Gilbert & Sullivan in memos to other Supreme Court justices, and who designed a robe for himself that looks like it belongs in Brigadoon.

The guy is a lunatic. And he is in charge of seeing that the Constitution of the United States of America is properly enforced. This is a man who regularly makes final decisions about matters of race and religion and civil rights in America.

You have to think hard to imagine that you are black lawyer, fighting a case that involves racial prejudice, the results of which may determine whether your client lives or dies. And the Chief Justice sits up there behind his ridiculous robes and smiles at you and you can almost hear him whistling Dixie.

It could be worse.

It could be Robert Bork up there instead.