Scientists sometimes introduce a predator into an ecosystem in order to take care of a pest that is threatening say, the potato crop. These experiments often go wrong - the predator turns out to be more dangerous than the pest. Social engineers do the same thing as scientists, except with human beings. One example is China’s one child policy to control overpopulation. The jury is still out on whether or not that policy will benefit the world or China in the long term. It certainly doesn’t benefit human freedom.
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law.
But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out to be a big mistake. After reviewing the case, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey acknowledged that the Calvos were victims of a multistate drug ring that used innocent people’s names and addresses to hide shipments of contraband drugs. But the mayor and his family were also victims of a home invasion by the SWAT team, based entirely on what turned out to be a false premise.
Some of you who read these words may want to argue with me. The police are here to help us you’ll say. Yes, some of them help some people some of the time. Unfortunately the helping is on the decline and the abuse is on the uptick. Survey 100,000 random citizens of the United States before the so called drug war began on their level of trust in the police. That would probably be a pretty high number. Survey 100,000 random citizens now. Most likely the numbers will be pretty low. Chances are that a lot of these people know someone who has been locked up for a consensual non-violent crime. You only have to be beaten up once by uniformed authorities to develop a lifelong distrust of all authorities. You only have to be locked up for a few months to learn to lie to the cops when they come around. After all, they are not your friends. They protect and serve only themselves. That is the lesson many have learned.
Public servants do not shoot family dogs. Peace officers do not initiate violence, they are supposed to prevent it. SWAT teams should be used so sparingly that when they are used, people are amazed. Instead, they are used so frequently it is almost like a car alarm going off - no one pays any attention. We’ve learned to ignore the sights and sounds of our freedom going away.
When the men in masks come to your neighborhood with concrete barriers and rolls of concertina wire just remember that they are there to protect you from yourself. If your family dog gets shot or you get beaten while trying to stop them from raping your daughter or your wife it is your own fault for questioning the authorities. They are just here to deal with pesky drug addicts and you got in the way.
Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so willing to give away the Constitutional rights of others. Maybe it is time to stand up and let your government know that you aren’t going to tolerate this sort of behavior.
In announcing the discipline at a news conference Monday, Mayor Michael Nutter choked up while noting his own daughter is just a year younger than Danieal was when she died.
“I am fully, thoroughly and completely pissed off,” the normally reserved Nutter said angrily. If any city employee neglected his child the way Danieal was, he added, “I would kick their ass myself.”
An ass kicking seems kind of after the fact. The kid is already dead and buried.
“The fact that so many workers failed Danieal, however, speaks to a larger problem than some profoundly negligent DHS employees: it reveals an agency that is broken,” the report said.
One of the now-suspended employees was even promoted to head the agency committee that reviews child fatalities.
“We’re establishing a new culture of accountability,” said Nutter, who was out of the state when the 258-page grand jury report was released last week. “There’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind that this department will turn around.”
A culture of accountability huh? Let’s see where that promise goes. More dead welfare cases is my guess. Government can’t solve apathy because government creates apathy.
Nine people have been charged in Danieal’s death, including her parents, three family friends, two private employees and two city social workers. The city employees, who face charges of child endangerment, were suspended last week and face disciplinary hearings this week that may result in their dismissals.
Culture is the problem. That’s for sure. But the culture is a culture of big government. It’s a culture where personal responsibility is not taught and we’re not willing to talk about that fact.
Those of you excited about the idea of “free” health care would do well to remember that government programs tend to promote mediocrity and indifference, not hope and transcendence. Unless of course, you count death as transcendence.
PHILADELPHIA - Four social workers were among nine people charged Thursday in the death of a disabled 14-year-old girl who authorities say wasted away from neglect before dying at 42 pounds.
Danieal Kelly’s mother was charged with murder; counts against other defendants range from involuntary manslaughter to perjury. District Attorney Lynne Abraham said any of the nine could have foreseen the horrific fate of Danieal, whose emaciated body was found in her mother’s squalid house covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores in August 2006.
Abraham had scathing words for the city’s Department of Human Services, calling its handling of the case “callous, indifferent, unconscionable” — and all too familiar.
Starving to death is a horrible way to go. I realize that children in state care do not all starve to death. However, the common theme among those in state care seems to be mediocrity at best and callous indifference and worse seem to be omnipresent. My wife is the product of the state foster care system of New York and was abused by her foster parents.
Danieal had the misfortune to be born to a mother unfit to care for her, or so indifferent and depraved that she didn’t have enough humanity in her to give a shit.
A 258-page grand jury report recommending the charges said not only that Andrea Kelly refused to get her daughter food, water and medical treatment, but that she repeatedly prevented one of her other children from calling an ambulance “for his obviously dying sister.”
A listing for Andrea Kelly’s attorney, Vincent Giusini, rang unanswered Thursday. It was not immediately clear if Daniel Kelly, 37, of Darby, had an attorney; two phone numbers listed in his name were disconnected.
Two employees of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health, a now-defunct company that DHS hired to provide social services to Danieal, falsified documents to cover up the fact they rarely, if ever, checked on her, the grand jury said.
Julius Murray and Mickal Kamuvaka were charged with involuntary manslaughter and tampering with public records.
Under Obamacare, we should expect more stories like this one. Think of all the horror stories you’ve read recently in relation to the Veteran’s Administration - the giant bureaucracy entrusted with caring for our wounded troops. Our wounded troops receive mediocre care precisely because the Veteran’s Administration is a giant state run monopoly. While there are undoubtedly many humane and motivated caregivers within the organization there is no motivation to excel at providing wounded troops with the care they need because there is no competition. You get whoever you get. The level of care is decided not by common sense and your need. It is decided by bureaucrats with rule books.
State run child care services follow the exact same bureaucratic structure, albeit on a smaller scale. And children die because of the arbitrary nature of the organization.
DHS social worker Dana Poindexter was charged with child endangerment for what the grand jury said were his “less than meager” efforts to look into several reports over three years that Danieal, who had cerebral palsy, was not receiving medical care, social services or schooling.
“He did not complete a single investigation or risk assessment,” the report said. “Indeed, his file on the family was buried at the bottom of a filing-cabinet-sized box, beneath food wrappers and unopened envelopes relating to other children’s cases.”
In a bureaucracy, it is hard to fire an employee. In a bureaucracy, you are promoted primarily based on how long you hang around, not on merit. In a bureaucracy, problem employees are shuffled around into dark corners where they can thrive like a fungus, causing problems for untold numbers of citizens with little fear of repercussions. Only blatant and horrible outcomes will draw enough attention to the nature of their existence for anything to be done.
Unfortunately, the typical reaction is to put in place more bureaucrats and more arbitrary rules. This costs money. Arbitrary rules rob the people forced to follow them of creativity, motivation and hope. The problem self-perpetuates until almost everything coming out of the giant bureaucracy is completely mediocre and homogenous. More little girls are burned with cigarettes, starved to death, and abused in myriad ways.
People with a conscience complain and vote for more government. Eventually, the system collapses under the weight of its own inefficiency. In the mean time, expect more of this:
Also charged were Andrea Miles, Marie Moses and Diamond Brantley, all of Philadelphia, who were friends with Andrea Kelly. The report accuses them of perjury for telling grand jurors that Danieal had been fine on Aug. 3, 2006, the day before her festering corpse was taken from the house.
It was not immediately clear if they had attorneys. A message left for Moses was not immediately returned; phone numbers could not found for Miles and Brantley.
The report should “outrage the entire Philadelphia community” and bring about “earth-shattering, cataclysmic changes” at the Department of Human Services, Abraham said.
Abraham said that although at least 55 children have died under the agency’s watch, it has given only “lip service to halfhearted corrective action.
Monopolies by government agencies will never solve our social ills. They only make them worse in the long run. Remember Danieal when you are voting for more government.
As horrified travelers watched, a Greyhound Canada bus passenger repeatedly stabbed and then decapitated the young man sitting beside him, who was sleeping with his head leaning against the window, a witness said Thursday.
While not all the details of this horrific knife wielding incident are yet available, I would rather be shot than be stabbed and decapitated.
This sort of tale reinforces my viewpoint that society should be investing resources in mental health improvements instead of implementing bans on various weapons. In Canada, Mr. Crazy McStab doesn’t have access to a pistol but needs him some killing. So he gets a big butcher knife, sits quietly on the bus for a while and then chops up the guy next to him. Maybe it was planned. Maybe he knew the guy and wanted revenge. Who knows?
The point is this - if you really, really want to kill someone horrifically you will find a way. If you want to kill a large group of people, you will find a way. There are, in fact, thousands of ways to kill a large group of people with readily available means that are not projectile based. They can all be researched on the Internet or found elsewhere. Think of the guy in China who poisoned 30-plus of his competitor’s customers.
That’s why we should be focused on what makes people mentally ill in the first place instead of on the inanimate tools these people use to go on rampages when their sicknesses take control of them. No one in Canada is calling for a knife ban but some idiot will. And it won’t fix anything.
WINNFIELD, Louisiana (CNN) — A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron “Scooter” Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.
Baron Pikes, 21, was Tasered nine times by a police officer in January in Winnfield, Louisiana.
He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner’s report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.
Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes’ January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide.
Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.
Nine times for what? The man was not actively in the process of committing a violent crime when he was arrested. Nine times. He was handcuffed. Even if he was struggling and spitting, cursing and biting, or acting out violently I cannot imagine he was moving after nine taser shocks.
Nothing really shocks me anymore - I’ve seen too much of what humans are capable of. The longer I study our legal system though, the more I realize it is not designed to help citizens and protect us from one another. The legal system enables and encourages an us against them mentality between the bureaucrats who support the system and the segments of society who have decided that our system of rules is not for them.
While some of the lawbreakers are violent people who need to be put down like dogs that is the exception to the rule. In the case of Baron “Scooter” Pikes we have the typical legal authoritarianism against criminal anarchist scenario. The legalcrats tell us that Pikes got what was coming to him because he was being uncooperative. Death seems like a pretty harsh penalty for being uncooperative.
Williams, who ruled Pikes’ death a homicide in June after extensive study, said Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes — shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon’s handle. Then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station — where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes’ chest.
Folks, if you support this kind of behavior by your peace officers, then damn you to hell. No one needs to be tasered seven times in a row. If this guy was resisting after being tasered six times then he was superhuman, which I don’t believe for a second.
You think this could never happen to you? Just keep supporting the growth of the police state and roll the dice. In the mean time, I hope Mr. Pikes family sues the hell out of Winnfield. I hope the town goes bankrupt and the officers involved are convicted of felonies so they can never “serve and protect” anyone like this again.
Perhaps the most important statement Mike has made on the topic of Iraq is:
One of the main reasons we made so many mistakes in Iraq was that high officials in the Bush Administration were often afraid of the truth and viewed a serious foreign policy question with ideological blinders. Instead of honestly appraising the facts on the ground, they saw only what they wanted to see. And instead of encouraging candor and even dissent, they ignored or attacked those who disagreed with them.
How many have died needlessly because of arrogance? It is criminal. Absolutely criminal. And the immense suffering of Iraqis was prolonged and enhanced needlessly because of a few bureaucrats and their immense ignorance and stubborn insistence that they were the only ones who knew what was right for the people who live in the birthplace of civilization.
Mike’s article contains some very important thoughts, and as usual, is honest and well worth the read. Please take the time.
There is no way to know how many American lives were lost in Iraq due to the tortures we inflicted upon Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and other places. This is no argument of moral equivalence. I have seen the atrocities committed by al Qaeda and other terrorists, and I am not saying that Americans have ever come close to those acts. New Yorkers saw the atrocities of al Qaeda, as did many others.
Yet, when we tortured detainees, we lost something very important, something that America and its allies need in order to prevail against terrorists, not just in Iraq, but all over the world. We scarred our honor.
Whatever you think of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I will not judge you for your opinion. What I am interested in doing is making the best of a bad situation. I think that Michael Yon has the same goal. Torture, in any form, is a moral abomination that is not justifiable. Using torture to win is actually losing. Go read the article and see if you don’t agree. The Bush Administration has been wrong from day one on this issue.
If you don’t like your dog, just shoot it in the head. I guess that is what ignorant people are taught by their parents because my wife found this dog on the side of the road today. It had been shot in the head with a small caliber weapon and left to die. Instead of having the common sense to do so, she decided to keep living.
Now she is in a safe place. Luckily, the bullet didn’t get into the brain cavity as far as we can tell. This poor little girl was covered in ticks and her skin was falling off from the acid in the pus draining from the wound. She was literally starving to death.
Someone who thought of himself as a human being brought this dog out in the middle of nowhere, shot her in the back of the head and then drove off. She found us. Now we’ll try and help her heal. If providence smiles on that process we’ll work on finding her a good home.
If you would like to donate to her medical care, please feel free to do so. Unfortunately the donation is not tax deductible as we are not a registered 501(c). We currently have 17 rescue dogs.
I will post updates on this loving Black Lab’s condition as she tries to heal and get back to a healthy weight. Her wounds could heal or she could die. She is chronically malnourished. My wife will do her best to nurse this poor little canine back to health. She is a very smart dog, and has already adjusted from a fearful, skittish animal back into a doting, loving typical Black Labrador. The breed tends to be very smart, and Beauty (my wife’s new name for her) is no exception. She wants human attention which is typical of her breed.
This morning I was playing a video game in my hooch (I was awoken early by a boom) when another thunderous BOOOOOOM shook the walls of my trailer. My bed is against the wall so I moved an inch or so with the concussion blast.
A car bomb detonated outside a bank in the Karada district just across the river. At last report, we’re told, 12 Iraqis died and 18 more were seriously wounded. The victims were Iraqi government employees who were waiting to be paid. Of course, civilians just passing by were also killed. The terrorists here make no attempt whatsoever to limit what military mrn term collateral damage.
I immediately suited up in full combat gear (which I would have done anyhow in a few minutes) and headed toward the armored humvee we use to get to work. There was no sense continuing to play my video game because immediately after the bomb detonated I heard the distinct crack of AK-47 fire in the nearby area and the thumping vibration of Apache attack helicopters headed for the scene of the carnage. One never knows what will follow the immediate aftermath of such an explosion. Sometimes there are more explosions. Sometimes there are firefights. Always there is chaos. Chaos and I do not get along. I’d rather be moving when the shit hits the fan than sitting still.
As I walked to my vehicle, more small arms fire from very close by emphasized the violence festering in this place where I have made my home for almost a year. A huge cloud of black smoke drifted across the river towards us from the scene of the blast. The area was swarmed with Blackhawks and Apaches. I’m sure our hospital will be busy today.
I’ve been through so many indirect fire attacks and car bombings now that I’ve completely lost count. My body’s reaction though, has always been the same. I get a huge rush of adrenaline followed by a few minutes of shaky hands and then I feel exultant because it wasn’t me who got blown up. I like being alive. I bet the victims of this morning’s attack liked being alive too. I’m sure they had hopes and dreams. Now those have been extinguished. For what? They were fighting for their country, trying to protect their fellow citizens and make a living. They were trying to make Iraq a decent place to live. They died for it.
Two young soldiers are gone from us - apparently tortured before they died.
Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. died much too young, but they both knew where they were and at least one of them (and I would assume both), Menchaca, was proud of what he did, according to his cousin Sylvia Grice.
“He wanted to go out and visit his friends,” she said. “He wanted to eat a hamburger. He didn’t want to sit down and talk about what was going on. But he was very proud of serving his country and he believed in what he was doing.”
The barbarians who do things like this simply harden my resolve to fight. I am proud of my service and proud of my admittedly small contribution to the larger effort to help Iraq become a place where individuals can choose their own path in life, instead of being toys for a murdering dictator or unwilling conscripts for the murdering priests of religious fanaticism.
To my readers: debate all you want about the right and wrong of being in Iraq. Today, I’ll observe a moment of silence for my dead brothers-in-arms and steel my heart against those cretins who would torture their fellow human beings. May they all burn in hell. The path those foul apes have chosen has caused them to lose their own humanity. I hope their testicles develop dry rot so that they cannot pass on the corrupt genes that allow them to practice such heinous acts.
Some are saying the death of these two soldiers was personal, and maybe it was for these twisted, cancerous minds. Not for me. Iraq has a disease, and it has to be treated impartially. The treatment must be applied clinically if we want the patient to survive. This is no time for shamans, snake oil salesmen, vendettas or reprisals. What we need is practical men and women with strong resolve who are willing to stand up and face these thuggish religious murderers. The “insurgents” aren’t just targeting soldiers - they’re targeting anyone and everyone who happens to be from a different school of thought or religous sect. They are killing anyone and everyone with no compunctions.
In the bombing of the home for the elderly, an 18-year-old Sunni wearing an explosives belt blew himself up as senior citizens were lined up to collect monthly pensions. Two elderly women were killed and three people were wounded.
What possible gain did a young man hope for from simultaneously blowing up himself and a group of elderly people? What did he think the end result was going to be? Paradise? The young man was suffering from an artificially induced mental disease; a disease he caught from living in a cesspool of corruption, ignorance and intolerance fostered and nurtured by power hungry men with rotten souls who masquerade as holy warrior priests and gather their worldly influence by offering up false promises of eternal glory.
If we don’t deal with this murderous cult of religious fanaticism right here and right now it will continue to spread - cheapening and corrupting all of us.
Iraq has many problems to deal with. The biggest of these is sectarianism, not the actions of a few U.S. troops last November. The Sunnis used to be in charge under Saddam and not they aren’t. Now, they have to share the power, and that doesn’t sit well with some. When Iraqis were dragged off buses and shot, they were first seperated into Sunni and non-Sunni. The Sunnis were released.
The new Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has his work cut out for him. If he cannot stem the sectarian violence, both Shia and Sunni incited, his government is doomed.
t with human beings. One example is China’s one child policy to control overpopulation. The jury is still out on whether or not that policy will benefit the world or China in the long term. It certainly doesn’t benefit human freedom.
