NC Governor vetoes Death-Row Racial Bias Bill

I’m not real fond of Bev Perdue even though she’s a Democrat. She often acts like a Republican with her strong budget cuts digging into social services programs.

I was particularly annoyed when she proposed cutting teaching jobs, putting more work on the remaining teachers and reducing their salaries. Her response to their complaints was, “Well, they’ll just have to suck it up!”

I think ole Bev rode in on Obama’s coattails by people too lazy to split their ticket and she has the most grating, whiny voice on earth – or perhaps it’s just me. So, when I first read this headline I was apoplectic with rage – until I read the whole article.

The headline is misleading whether by poor grammar or journalistic design, I don’t know, but what the Governor has actually done is veto a REPEAL of the NC 2009 Racial Justice Act which enables judges to weigh all statistics related to racial bias when considering the merits of a defendant’s complaint that their death penalty sentence was racially biased.

Some of the disturbing facts that led to this 2009 law:

Michigan State University law school researchers findings show that defendants who killed a white person in North Carolina were two-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to death than those whose victims were black. The findings also show that juries were disproportionately white.

Defense attorneys who fought for the law say the statistics tell an alarming story: In North Carolina, African American jury pool members who were not rejected for cause — such as opposition to the death penalty — were rejected by prosecutors at about two times the rate as similarly situated whites. The disparity was even greater in Cumberland and Wake counties. In Wake County, qualified potential African American jurors were rejected at 2.5 times the rate of all other jurors; their Cumberland County counterparts were rejected at 2.6 times the rate, according to the Michigan State research.

Prosecutors who pushed the repeal said the act would clog up the court system with new appeals, creating a permanent moratorium on capital punishment. Gee, we wouldn’t want something as trivial as judicial oversight in cases that involve life or death to cut into their tee off time!

Some related articles are HERE and HERE.

I could rehash all the arguments against such a repeal but the readers here at the Swash Zone are perceptive and intelligent enough and do not need me to point out the obvious and glaring injustice of repeal.

I think I will leave Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville, N.C with the last eloquent word:

"I will not stand by as a member of the Bar and a minority leader and not allow this issue to be taken up by the court system," Nesbitt said. "I really hope all these cases are dismissed, and we find that racial bias did not occur. ... Nobody's trying to let any of these folks out of prison. We want to know, so we can sleep at night, that no one was put to death in North Carolina because of racial bias."

This will be going back to the state legslature after the new year to consider an override to her veto. Time to flood the phones and email boxes of NC state legislators.

Condolences to Shaw and Her Family

Latest update: Shaw's sister passed away last week after a sudden and devastating stroke. The burial will be tomorrow (Monday, December 12, 2011). Shaw thanks everyone at the Swash Zone for their friendship and support.

The World is the Battlefield

I find it remarkable that the proposed provision of the Defense Authorization act enabling a President to detain anyone suspected of belonging to a terrorist organization indefinitely and without trial, can be presented as one of those bits of "evidence" that Barack Obama is trashing the constitution. Obama's Indefinite Detention Powers is the title of more than one article. Remarkable indeed since he's threatening to veto the abomination if it passes.

I do recognize that since the Authorization for Use of Military forces (AUMF) that Congress approved after the September 11 terrorist attacks was used to bolster somewhat unfair arguments that Bush was trashing the revered document, an equal and more ridiculous counter charge has to be leveled against his Democratic successor. That is a principle we had beat into our consciousness when Bill Clinton had to face charges, some contrived and some with marginal merit that were so like unto those Nixon was glaringly guilty of.

But I digress. I'm not surprised to hear such things slithering in the murky Senatorial cistern, but I'm surprised at the bipartisan support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) bill and the astonishing lack of debate over this shocking redaction of the Bill of Rights. I was however surprised and pleased to hear Rand Paul declare opposition is heatedly as I would do, given the chance.

I was nauseated and enraged to hear our former Presidential contender, John McCain rail about how dangerous "these people" were without regard to how we determine fairly whether or not the accusations are true. I have been raised to think that justice demanded a fair trial and no decent civilization has failed to provide a process to determine the truth of an accusation, sometimes made under duress or torture or out of jealousy or greed or worse. A less stuffy writer might simply ask: how the hell do we know the charges are true without a trial?

Senator McCain doesn't seem to care, although with his history, he might just give the opposite position tomorrow and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seems proud of his shiny new black boots, claiming that now we can jail any American citizen because "it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland." Did he mean to say Vaterland?

"The FBI publishes characteristics of people you should report as possible terrorists. The list includes the possession of “Meals Ready to Eat,” weatherproofed ammunition, and high-capacity magazines; missing fingers; brightly colored stains on clothing; paying for products in cash; and changes in hair color. I fear that such suspicions might one day be used to imprison a U.S. citizen indefinitely without trial. Just this year, the vice president referred to the Tea Party as a bunch of terrorists. So, I think we should be cautious in granting the power to detain without trial."

writes Senator Paul in the National Review.

Yes, I think our legislators have earned their 8% approval rating and can only wonder why it isn't lower. John McCain, you're a goddamn terrorist yourself, attempting to make Americans afraid for political purposes. Rand Paul: you may be far right, but you're damn right too!

G.W. Obama

Does anyone have an issue with this? I know we Canadians do...

Save the Fed

Doomed to repeat history? Of course we are, but the fate I fear isn't the sort of doom that descends upon us from above unless you consider the cesspit of "Conservative" rhetoric to be a higher plane of thought. No, I'm not talking about the market bubble of the late 1920's that was brought about by slashing the top marginal tax rate or the deregulation of the markets that gave us the 1929 crash; I'm talking about where we were fourscore years ago in 1931 when the European banks began to fail and nobody was able or willing to do anything about it. Then as now, we had "Conservative" rhetoric attempting to blame the mess on the usual suspects, like lazy American workers and in Europe: the Jews. We had calls around the world for even more austerity, as if the world could save itself by saving money.

" Instead of easing monetary policy by cutting interest rates and buying bonds, the Fed tightened. The result was a catastrophic chain reaction of bank failures, which caused the money supply to contract by approximately a third, and economic output with it"

writes Niall Ferguson at the Daily Beast, lamenting the gross lack of knowledge of bankers, investors, fund managers, regulators, policymakers, and economists. Ferguson cites Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s Monetary History of the United States, which argues that

"the stock-market panic of 1929 turned into a depression because of avoidable errors by the Fed. Instead of easing monetary policy by cutting interest rates and buying bonds, the Fed tightened. The result was a catastrophic chain reaction of bank failures, which caused the money supply to contract by approximately a third, and economic output with it."

The Gold Standard, the massive debt from The Great War, the partisan inability to compromise brought on the disaster we know as the Great Depression and only those countries that dropped that standard and began hiring while gearing up for war, began to recover. Germany led the way and the US followed.

With some Republican spokesmen demanding the return of the gold standard, demanding an end to the Fed, demanding more austerity, demanding that more capital be tied up in the hands of a tiny minority, the money supply diminished and the demand for goods and services curtailed, the few who understand what needs to be done are being shouted down by politicians who insist that the only solution is a bigger cut in the marginal rate, and the angry mob they feed.

"We are indeed fortunate that at least the world’s leading central bankers have studied this history: not only Ben Bernanke but also the heads of the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the European Central Bank. The bad news is that so few politicians and voters understand what they are trying to do, or why. The even worse news is that central bankers by themselves may not be able to stop our depression from turning great."

Worse news even than that, is the fact that people like Dr. Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, a senior research fellow at Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University do not inform the Cains, Bachmanns, Palins or Gingrichs or the rabble who support them, nor would the public trust any "elitist" "Libtard" "pinhead" over the kind of small minded moral abomination now stumbling toward Washington.

Requiem for a candidate

Wow. It looks like the Cain Train left the rails, hit the siding, and slid about a hundred feet into a bus full of nuns and orphans.

And it really only took a couple of weeks.

I mean, the man declared himself a candidate back in May. And since then, it isn't like he's been hiding in the bushes. They wouldn't let him; having a black candidate in the lead proved that Republicans weren't all inbred bigots; they were willing to allow the man to do just about anything he wanted. Within reason.

Did he look completely ignorant on foreign policy? Who cares? Hell, there are still people who want Sarah Palin to enter the race!

Did he want to say openly insane shit? That's not a problem! After all, Michele Bachmann has made a whole career out of being the craziest bitch in the kennel! The self-important, elitist millionaire Newt Gingrich is currently the front runner, and he recently said that child labor laws were "truly stupid"!

(As it turns out, sanity is actually a detriment in today's Republican party - just ask Jon Huntsman.)

So, what does it take to hurt the Cain? A little sugar.



Now, this is the 21st Century. The GOP tried to be open-minded about things. At first.

A couple of women came forward and made unsubstantiated allegations about Herman Cain. So what? The man's famous! People say shit about celebrities all the time, right?

Then more women came forward. And more. But still, no proof.

Then came Ginger White.

She claimed to have had a thirteen-year affair with Cain. But, once again, there was no proof: circumstantial evidence, but no proof. Cain might have weathered this bump in the road, too.

Until he admitted that he gave her money.

He tried to claim that he'd just given her "financial assistance," but nobody believed him. Nobody who's seen Cain strut and fret his hour upon the stage really had a doubt about his motives: to Herman Cain, "charity" is a carefully-calculated amount determined by his accountant, to be paid at the end of the year. Nobody was willing to believe that the Black Walnut just wanted to help this poor girl in her decade-and-a-half of need.

So Herman Cain crashed and burned. A victim of his own arrogance. But here's the thing.

I have willingly taken on the moniker of "Cynic," because I am aware of an unpleasant tendency in my makeup: I think the worst of people. Thanks to a certain amount of self-awareness, I can admit that I sometimes take this too far; I see evil, even as the light of good begins to shine. I know this about myself.

So, given that I know that my judgement is almost surely clouded in this case, I understand that my interpretation of events must be incorrect. I know this.

But there's still this tiny, niggling doubt in the back of my mind.

Why is it that the GOP was willing to turn a blind eye to whatever Cain did, until it became apparent that the black candidate had gone to bed with a white woman?

Very Sad News

I just visited Shaw’s place and found this post:

LIFE INTERRUPTS BLOGGING

A message to my blogging friends:  Thank you, everyone, for your fine contributions to this comment forum.

Unfortunately, a catastrophic event has just engulfed my family, and I'll probably not be blogging for a while.

(O)CT(O)PUS take the reins!

My older sister suffered a stroke that will probably end her life. In the early summer of 2009, I lost another sister. I understand that life brings these awful events to us all, and that we have to find the strength to get through the pain and suffering as our loved ones slip away from us. That's what I'll be dealing with over the next few days.

(O)CT(O), you have the keys to the blog. Use them as you wish.

Please keep me and my family in your thoughts. I'm not a religious person, but I do need the comfort and the support of my blogging friends just now.

Thank you.
Peace.
Shaw/Joanne

I feel especially heartbroken for Shaw. Two years ago, she lost another sister at a time when she herself was suffering major health problems. This represents another devastating loss for Shaw. Please visit her blog and leave a kind message. Meanwhile, I will do my best to keep her blog active while she is away, although the place is never the same without her magic touch. With this post, I am asking all creatures above and below the waves to help with contributions of posts and messages.

Show me your papers!

" People are trying to use this to make the law look bad"

said the mayor of Leeds, Alabama, responding to the arrests of a Mercedes Benz director and a Honda manager for having only international drivers licenses rather than their German or Japanese cards in their pockets.

Well people won't have to try very hard, because Alabama looks bad enough without any help.
The demand that anyone looking or sounding 'foreign' carry papers and produce them upon demand looks to me too much like those "racial origin" cards the Third Reich made people carry, but even if you disagree or think I'm being hyperbolic, it still looks paranoid, it looks stupid, it stinks of a very ugly past and it surely isn't going to help the state of Alabama attract the kind of foreign investment and employment opportunities it needs.

"We are the Show Me State, not the Show Me Your Papers State," writes the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

"You've got two choices. Either ask your executives to carry their immigration papers at all times, or move to a state that understands gemütlichkeit."

" We’re going to enforce the laws of state of Alabama”

says the mayor of Leeds, like a character from a Victor Hugo novel. Well you go ahead Javert. Crops are already rotting in the fields of Alabama because if you're of a racial or ethnic minority, it just ain't worth it and the construction industry is falling apart too. Other states would be happy to have those billions of dollars and thousands of jobs pack up and move elsewhere in Free America.

Occupy the Constitution! (updated)

First off, I'd like to take a moment of silence for the Occupy Wall Street movement. They've gone disco.



Meanwhile, though, let’s consider a fascinating legal issue that has come up with the Occupy movement.

See, the problem with the 99% bringing the problem of economic disparity to light, is that, by the nature of the election process, in order to be a politician, you are all but required to be a member of the 1%.

This is the reason that it’s so difficult to get a tax increase for the rich through Congress: they are the rich!

This also means that many of them are predisposed to oppose discussion of income disparity or the economic realities of life in America today. Nobody likes talking about their own sins, when it’s easier to point at other people and scream “Heretic!” So, for example, Mayor Bloomberg of New York (net worth: $18.1 billion) isn’t particularly interested in stopping police brutality against protestors. (If anything, he’s enabling it.)

In Texas, they’ve decided that there is only a limited amount of free speech available in Austin at any one time.



Now, consider that for a minute. If one protest group starts yelling, and leaves after 2 hours and 55 minutes, and another group, unrelated to them and with no knowledge of the previous group, spontaneously showed up in the same neighborhood, they would not be allowed to speak without breaking the law.

It seems to me that this case would be a slam-dunk for any civil rights lawyer. Just take a video camera and show someone showing up after the time limit has expired and not being allowed to speak. Admittedly, the Texas Supreme Court would uphold the police actions, because that’s how Texas works; but it would continue up through the US Supreme Court, and nobody claiming to be a Constitutional scholar could let this pass.

(In a fascinating twist, the Trophy Wife, usually far more optimistic than I've ever been, is feeling more cynical than I do on the subject, and thinks that the Roberts Supreme Court – combined average net worth $47,272,584 – might not be interested in supporting free speech in this case.)

Funny how this issue never came up for the Tea Party protests...
_______________

(Update, 12/3/11)
And in a story broken yesterday by my second least-favorite news source, the Huffington Post (and wildly underreported by other news sources as I write this), the UN has noticed many of the same things:

The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."
...
In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.

"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.

Personally, I didn't know that "Frank" was a popular Guatemalan name, but considering Guatemala during the 80s and 90s (and for that matter, the previous decades, when they helped develop the term "banana republic"), they know something about the suppression of human rights.

Of course, who approves of the way the American police are dealing with protesters? Mostly tyrants with their own economic protesters, like Mubarak.

Proud of yourself yet, Washington?

There’s a Big Brother Inside Every Blogger

In her current post, Leslie asks a reasonable, provocative, and long overdue question: Are Bloggers "Citizen Journalists"?  It’s the kind of honest question that demands some honest soul-searching.

Are we citizen journalists in the same sense as an actual journalist?  Are we hired or self-appointed, amateurs or experts, investigators or merely camp followers?  Do we practice the same standards of journalistic integrity as we expect from a professional?  Or have we merely become part of a noisy rabble indistinguishable from those whom we criticize?

The Internet has been an empowering (some will say 'democratizing') force in the world. More than any medium in human history, the World Wide Web is truly the culmination of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village. It connects us to commentary, ideas, and newfound friends.  It shapes our perceptions and self-conceptions, enables saints and sinners, empowers reformers and terrorists alike. Have we let the Internet go to our heads? As McLuhan foresaw:

“[As] our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”

Does McLuhan refer to the internalization of a dreaded États-Unis Big Brother or the object formation of Big Brother within ourselves?

The Internet has certainly made us more opinionated.  It turns bloggers into instant subject matter experts, justified or not. It has transformed us into pundits, self-appointed guardians of the public trust, snoops and voyeurs, saboteurs and trolls.  It amplifies narcissism and reduces humility to obsolescence. As the Internet connects the Global Village, it has not necessarily homogenized and unified us.  Sometimes it leaves us more fractured than before.

I should talk. Your intrepid Octopus has been as opinionated and predatory as any creature above or below the waves.  Nevertheless, with a hat tip to Leslie, I think we owe ourselves an honest conversation.