The Truth is Dying Slowly…Honor is Probably Already Dead

“I, (state your name), swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

This is the oath many people take under all sorts of circumstances.  We see it all the time in court; notaries administer oaths when we sign documents from affidavits to mortgages loan applications.  We even sign an oath when we are issued a traffic ticket and promise to appear in court without posting a bond to make sure we show up.  Literally, our word is our bond.  In days gone by taking an oath was important.  It was a way in which a man or woman gave his or her word that everything they were saying was the absolute, unvarnished truth.  However, it is my contention that the oath has become meaningless in the minds of many and honor is in terminal condition.  Lying has become the norm.  This has had an incredible impact on our society.

In court, we have long known, and pretty much accept, that criminal defendants lie; not all the time, but often enough that the sworn testimony of a defendant, absent some sort of corroboration, is automatically presumed to be a lie.  Hey, they have a fairly good reason to lie, even under oath.  They are facing jail or prison time.  That does not excuse it, but it is at least understandable.  Would I lie to keep a loved one from going to prison or death row?  Yes, probably.

Interestingly, there has been a response to this situation beyond juries just not believing those accused of crimes.  The response has been that some, not all, police now hedge the truth and sometimes just downright lie to make sure the defendant’s lies are countered.  It stems from the guys in the white hats (the forces of good) doing whatever is necessary to make sure the guys in the black hats (the forces of evil) do not triumph with their lies. 

The defense attorneys know their clients lie and with a wink and a nod allow them to do so.  Fortunately, the defendant is not required to testify, so he does not necessarily have to get up on the witness stand, take the oath and lie.  This does not prevent the defense attorney from representing the “facts” he knows not to be true to the jury.  Prosecutors, in response, also with a wink and a nod, watch as police officers testify falsely in an effort to convict the bad guy.  In the most egregious situations, prosecutors and defense attorneys suggest to their respective clients and/or witnesses exactly what needs to be said in the form of leading question interviews before trial.  You know, the questions like, “If it happened this way, it would be a lot better for our case.  Are you sure it didn’t happen this way?”  The wink and the nod are simultaneous or immediately follow.  The client/witness gets the hint and the testimony (sometimes only half-jokingly referred to as “testiphony”) follows.  Again, I understand the motive, but the hackneyed expression “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions applies here.

Years ago I learned something from a sage member of the bar.  He said, “Bill there is an incredibly important difference between what goes on out in the street and what happens in the courtroom.  On the street, people look you in the eye and lie to you.  In the courtroom it is completely different; they take an oath, look you in the eye and lie to you.”  While the remark was thick with sarcasm, it was nonetheless proven to be true in my experience.  There is another logical fact, at least in the criminal justice system, "All defendants lie.  All police, prosecutors, Judges and defense attorneys are aware of this fact.  All police lie.  All defendants, prosecutors, Judges and defense attorneys are aware of this fact.  From all of this lying, somehow justice is done."

In civil and criminal trials, everyone has accepted as pretty much fact that some expert witnesses are nothing more than paid liars who sell their opinions to the highest bidder.  I don’t care what side of the fence you are on, no matter what the issue, criminal or civil; I can find you a very qualified individual with lots of degrees and experience that will testify for either side of the issue, given the appropriate application of enough cold, hard cash.  So how do we rely on expert witnesses who can be bought?

I cannot help but wonder; how a system that is intended to find the truth manages to somehow accomplish the goal when everyone in it is lying.  I consider those lying under oath, especially when a man or woman’s liberty, and possibly their life, is at stake to be particularly abominable and for whom there is reserved a special level of Dante’s Hell, but there are so many other instances where lying has become almost an accepted norm.

Do any of us believe a politician anymore?  An entire internet business has been born as a result of lying politicians, and it makes no difference who it is, what party they  belong to nor what office they hold or seek.  Political fact checking is done by politifact.com and factcheck.org.  They purport to be non-partisan and non-profit organizations with only an interest in establishing the truth of what politicians say.  I use the term purport only because I have not researched each one individually.  Opensecrets.org is a group that established itself to try to figure out what politicians have been bought, to what extent and by whom.  This would seem to be a daunting task.  The mere fact that these organizations exist at all is bad enough, but it actually gets far worse.

Each one of these organizations that is dedicated to telling us whether politicians are lying or telling the truth have had to subdivide their determinations into degrees.  Politifact divides statements by politicians into “true”,” mostly true”, “half true”, “false” and” pants on fire!”.    I applaud the fact that groups have been created to check on statements made by politicians.  I also find it appalling that they are not only necessary, but they need to have different degrees of lies from none, through little white to full blown, liar, liar pants on fire.  Is it any wonder that the former joke, “How can you tell a politician is lying?  His lips are moving.” is no longer really a joke?  Am I the only one bothered that the leaders of our country are believed to be a bunch of liars?  Is it any wonder people do not flock to the polls at election time?  Their only choice is the lesser of all evils, and the lesser is still pretty evil.

So that takes care of the courts and politics, but as they say on TV, “Wait, there’s more!”  The internet is now full of emails being forwarded that have nothing to do with reality.  They can spread like wildfire and linger for, well, decades.  Not a day goes by that I do not get an email that purports to be some disaster or allegation against someone or some organization or warns us of a computer virus that will destroy our hard drives or turn our brains to a gelatinous substance.  We have snopes.com to check on these falsehoods.  I have no idea what it is that causes people to start, much less spread, this B.S., but they do it nonetheless.   I guess it is just the online equivalent of getting 15 minutes of fame.

Speaking of 15 minutes of fame, a number of years ago I recall that there was a very young girl reported missing.  At some point during the search an individual came forward and represented that he had witnessed the missing girl getting kidnapped.  He described how she was placed, as I recall, in a [ubiquitous] white van (I still don’t understand why everyone is always looking for a white van.).  After several days, the police started to notice inconsistencies in his story and, after some rather pointed questioning; the man admitted that he lied.  I cannot recall any explanation, never mind a good explanation, as to why he did this, but it is yet another example of someone lying, “because they can.”

My last example is the forms we fill out in everyday life.  Many of these forms are "sworn to."  Take a look at a mortgage application, not only is there a place where you sign, but there is also a statement that everything on the application is true and correct.  Occasionally, there are what I call "weasel words" like to the best of my belief or to the best of my recollection.  You will probably note that the statement you sign also includes certain provisions of federal law that makes it a felony to provide a bank with false information.  The same is true on an application for insurance.  Yep, you can go to jail for lying and not just when you are in court.

Look at many of the loan applications that were made during the mid 2000's.  A lot of mortgages were issued to people that were never going to be able to afford them, often because unscrupulous mortgage brokers had them sign applications on which their income, and other information was falsified to qualify for the loan.  The idea was, housing prices will rise and you can refinance when the mortgage becomes burdensome.  Unfortunately, the bubble burst.  Housing prices stopped rising and people that had already made false statements on loan applications lost their jobs.  The spiral downward was steep and swift.  Many of these people are lucky they are not facing criminal charges, quite frankly.

How do we deal with a society in which lying has seemingly become the norm?  Criminals lie. Police lie. Prosecutors lie (see the disbarred Duke Lacrosse Team prosecutor for an example).  Politicians lie and people in general lie, often for the sole reason that they can.  I shall endeavor to maintain my own personal honor and try my best in spite of it all and hope that people will recommit themselves to personal honor.

The Death Penalty - The Economics of Execution

In a previous blog post I outlined my objection to the death penalty based on the fact that it is an absolute penalty imposed by an imperfect system.  Now allow me to make a slightly more mercenary argument.  It is far cheaper to keep a person in jail for his or her natural life without the possibility of parole than it is to execute him.

Most Americans refuse to believe this, but the facts are incontrovertible.  The cost of sentencing and ultimately executing a person is, without exception, in every state with a death penalty, 10’s of millions of dollars per year more than keeping them in prison for their entire life! 

While the figures are hard to compare on a state-to-state basis, there are some examples to illustrate my point.  The State of Florida, where I live, would save approximately $51 million dollars per year if it stopped executing people; California, $90 million; North Carolina, $11 million and the list goes on and on.  Google it sometime and see what you get.  New Jersey and Illinois have both abolished the death penalty; New Jersey for the sole purpose of saving money, Illinois because the administration of the death penalty had become so flawed.   They were afraid they had already executed, or soon would execute, an innocent person, but they also figured out what it was costing them to impose the death penalty, and it was way too much, so they did away with it.

In this day and age of economic hardship, the math makes the decision.  Lock ‘em up, throw away the key and spend the difference on things like: more cops on the street, better crime detection techniques and building more jails and prisons to house prisoners that otherwise have to be released due to overcrowding.  You might want to try some drug treatment programs and some education programs aimed at preventing recidivism while you’re at it, but I recognize that is not popular among the true believers of an-eye-for-an eye justice.

In this country, 139 men have been released from death rows on the grounds of innocence.  Do we really want to make it easier to execute people?  Do we really want to make it just a little easier to execute an innocent person in a system that we is absolutely, positively proven to be imperfect? 

I have heard the arguments and the jokes about the death penalty.  One of my favorite comedians, Ron White, describes how many states are abolishing the death penalty while his state, Texas,  “is putting in an express lane”, limiting appeals to reduce the amount of time people spend on death row before being executed.   It is far too serious a matter to be joked about.  The point is, how can any thinking, feeling human being propose that we reduce the protections already in place in a system that would have resulted in the death of 139 innocent men had those protections not been in place?  We managed to convict those men in spite of their innocence and, but for the appellate process (and at times in spite of its already flawed nature), these innocent men would be dead.

If none of the moral, ethical or legal arguments work for you, no problem; how about the fact that it just plain old costs less to keep them in prison until they die than kill them?   I propose to abolish the death penalty because it could result in innocent people being killed and there is a cheaper alternative.  Not good enough; next blog entry on the death penalty, even more reasons.

A Comment on Voodoo Economics by DLW

What follows is a comment made by follower "DLW" regarding my post on "Voodoo Economics."  It is not posted as a comment as a result of it being over the 5,000-character limit imposed by the blog site.  Please note that it is posted in its entirety and without editing of any kind.  DLW comments as follows:

Ah, the myth lives on.   Voodoo  economics is too polite for the  SUPPLY side (build it and they will come) theory of economics,  not only because it does not work, but because  Capitalism is a demand driven economic system.  The failure of your business depends not on the amount of  money you have to create the business or even  how many businesses you can create, but rather on who is available to buy your product.  Without buyers for your product  your business will surely  fail.  Don’t believe it, try building a McDonald’s in the Sahara desert.   Hell,  you are the entrepreneurial elite who should pay no taxes because you make jobs,  build ten (10) Mc Burgers in the desert and watch your sales go wild... but wait, you will have no sales because there are no customers (DEMAND).

                                                                                                           

Take this silly SUPPLY side theory one step further;  is anyone really going to build a business when there is no one willing to purchase the product being sold?  When businesses are cutting back, routinely closing, and recording dismal, if any, profits,  are  we to believe that new businesses will enter the market to lose money also?  I think not, they will wait until the market improves and appears to be growing or open only where the market evidences a demand for a product.

Also please remember that DEMAND is based not only on what you want (as in  I want a new black Corvette), but also you must have the ability to pay for the item you desire (as in I can only  afford a new scooter).

So, when your work force is dramatically under and unemployed (a major symptom of an economic downturn) they (the workforce) have no money to purchase any items in the economy and your economy worsens with every layoff and closed business.  This of course is the downward spiral of a recession.  The less demand the more businesses cut back by laying off the workforce, which of course results in even less DEMAND for products and services.  

Hence, the next problem.  How do you create  DEMAND.    While businesses cut back and attempt to hold their own, who is going to enter the marketplace and hire workers?  History has taught us that the private sector will not affect the market  until the economy begins to again grow and evidences a DEMAND (and therefore a need) for either more of existing products or the production of new products.  

If not the private sector, can  government produce jobs which are necessary to create DEMAND for products.   Directly no, but it can indirectly through our  vibrant use of our nations fiscal policy.  Again relying on that pesky thing called history, do you not recall the WPA (works progress administration) the CCC (civilian conservation corp), the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and other government programs that provided funds to private enterprise and governments to fund construction projects and revitalization programs throughout the Great Depression.   

Do you really think it is coincidence that so many bridges, damns, and infrastructure  projects for our country were created during the Great Depression.  Deficit spending in economic downturn periods is essential as the Federal Government is the only entity available to fund the projects.    While the opponents of deficit spending are maniacal in their zeal to oppose further federal spending, none of them offer a solution for stirring demand other than claiming the private sector will.  The  question of course  is  why in the course of our economic history has the private sector  never pulled us out of a depression?   This is why the idea of reducing taxes on the rich is ridiculous (unless of course you are rich).  The rich already buy what the need and merely retain tax relief for future investment, while the working middle class spends its income on durable goods and services they need  which create DEMAND  and leads to  the expansion of the economy.

Addressing the problem a little more broadly,  when we  speak  of Capitalism we must address the mantra that has developed concerning Government intrusion and regulation into our economic system.  The  complaint is made as if Government has no role in Capitalism and should take a hands off approach to business, as the market is the only true arbiter of the strength of a business.   This is the LASSIEZ  FAIRE  Capitalists dream.   The idea that  our economy should be free from government intrusion, taxes, restrictions, regulations, or other dictates  is actually quite ridiculous and in fact antithetical to Capitalism.   Think not?

If we  consider that Capitalism is little more than a Darwinian economic system where the strong survive and multiply and the weak die, we must realize the strength and essence of Capitalism is competition.  If you can compete with quality, service, and price then  your product or service will succeed, and if not your new  Bible will contain only Chapters 7 and 11.

Is it  not then indeed strange that the very nature of  all businesses is to seek  a larger and larger share of the market which naturally diminishes  competition.  The determined, if unstated,  goal of business is actually to  eventually create either a monopoly (one supplier)  or oligopoly (a few suppliers), both which minimalize competition.  Nothing could be more destructive to Capitalism. 

Think not, well evaluate the price competitiveness of big oil,  big pharma, or big banks.  Simply, the fewer providers of a product means  that there will be  less flexibility in pricing, less responsiveness to consumer concerns, and usually more political power.   The trend in  the last forty years is to reduce competition by gobbling up the competition in mergers, acquisitions and takeovers.   Do a Google search for the number of oil companies of forty years ago and you will find more than ten national oil companies and more than twenty five regional oil companies.   Today we have five conglomerates servicing our needs (no pun intended).  They are oh so responsive aren’t they?  Find much price competition;  find much actual rationalization between price and  supply?

Noting the self destructive nature of the businesses in a Capitalist economy it becomes an absolute requirement of Government (as the only non market actor) to play the crucial role in maintaining competition.   A very conservative U.S. Congress  in 1890 enacted anti-trust litigation known as the Sherman Anti Trust Act, followed in 1914 by the Clayton Anti Trust Act.   The Governments role in our economy is not only important, it is preeminent as without the maintenance of competition we do not have Capitalism.

The rationale  for business  mergers and acquisitions is that the dominant company will be stronger, possibly more efficient, and certainly more profitable.  However, the question in a Capitalist economy is never whether the individual business will be stronger, better, or more efficient, (as we can conclude it would or there would be no acquisition),  but rather  will the  market be more  competitive.  This is why the Government has the duty to review and approve major acquisitions that have the potential to affect the competitive nature of the market.

The attacks on the Governments stringent requirement for the maintenance of competition has lead to an impotence of our anti-trust enforcement that has allowed for the consolidation of  the oil industry, the banking/stock industry, and far too many others.   How do you think that has worked out for us as a nation?

This LASSIEZ  FAIRE  dream also forgets that  Government involvement (a blasphemy per se) includes whenever  a Government  provides a tax incentive, a loan, a guarantee, a price support, an import restriction, or any other device that assists or protects a business.  Every law, whether criminal, civil, affecting rights, liberties or taxes is discriminatory,  as laws are designed to allow someone to do something they want to do and to discourage or prohibit someone  else from taking other actions.  Therefore, if a Government provides a tax incentive, a loan, a guarantee, a price support, an import restriction, or any other device it necessarily discriminates against other businesses which do not get such assistance and resultantly affects the marketplace.

Government involvement is necessary for a strong and vibrant Capitalist economy, system dependant on a monetary and fiscal policy to even out the down turns in  economic cycles and to monitor and require competition which is the soul of our Capitalistic system.  

In short, when someone tells me that the Government has no role or place in affecting our economy,  I smile  realizing the selection pool for Mensa just got smaller.

Neo-Voodoo Economics...If You Build It They Will Buy?

We are seeing the rise of an old and ugly economic term; “Supply-Side Economics”.  It is ugly because it has a much better image than any economic substance to it.  Ronald Reagan, “The Great Communicator”, managed to sell it to the public back in the late 70’s and 80’s.  “Voodoo Economics”, “Reaganomics”, “Supply-Side Economics”; call it what you will, it is pretty much all the same thing and it just doesn’t work.  While it does have sort of a nice, logical, warm fuzzy feel because it provides corporations and the rich with tax breaks that will allegedly give us all jobs and fix our broken economy, that does not make it any more effective.  It will never work.  Allow me to explain.

The theory goes like this in very simple terms; if the government gives tax breaks to the corporations that make stuff, let’s call them widgets, they will have more money and will hire more people to make more widgets to sell to people.  They will sell more widgets and will make even more money, thus, the economy miraculously turns around.  If this worked, it would be a warm, fuzzy answer, but it doesn’t work.  Let us look at why.

Let us make a few assumptions that most of us can relate to in our current economic situation.  Consumers, the people that buy widgets, have seen the economy go down the toilet over the last three or four years.  Many people do not have jobs and therefore, no income.  Other people are scared they may be laid off and are saving for the anticipated rainy day.  Many people owe more money on their homes than they are worth; some are going into foreclosure due to the fact that they do not have jobs or the fact that they are just not going to make payments on a house they can never get their money out of, ever.  Many have no idea what is going to become of them in the near and long-term future. 

Credit has tightened up and, in a very short period of time, people in our society went from spending 6% more than they made, using credit cards and home refinancing, to spending 6% less than they make.  This is a 12% shift in spending, a huge change and shrinking of the economy.  Consumers had been slapped in the face by the rainy day for which they had not saved, they learned their lesson and are now hoarding cash because they think it is going to rain harder in the future.  This is a lack of consumer confidence. 

If you boil all the above down to basics, people do not have any money and they can’t get any with which to buy widgets.  If they are unemployed and cannot find a job, they certainly can’t buy widgets they don’t absolutely need.  If they are working, they are not increasing their wages because companies are not making any money. They cannot borrow on their homes because they are underwater on them and they can’t use credit cards because they can’t get them and won’t use them anyway.  Simply put, no one has any money and can’t get any.

Corporations are rational and make decisions based on simple considerations.  They want to make money, plain and simple.  Corporations are not going to make widgets for which there is no demand.  You can give them all the tax breaks and deregulate them all you want, if there is no one to buy widgets, they are not going to make more widgets, period.  The neo-supply-siders somehow think that if you build it, they will buy.  This made a really nice plot line of sorts in “Field of Dreams” but that was a movie and old, dead baseball players are not going to come out of the corn field and thousands of consumers are not going drive in to buy widgets when they have no money.  If they build them, all there will be is an inventory of widgets the corporation/manufacturer cannot sell.

People mistakenly credit Supply-Side Economics with the economic recovery during the Reagan years.  It was coincidence and there are other, better reasons for the recovery.  The credit can still go to Reagan, but for completely different reasons.  In what statisticians refer to as a “correlation” we became convinced that Supply-Side Economics succeeded in getting us out of a recession, when the two events were not “cause and effect”.  In a correlation, two events may just coincidentally happen at the same time, one may not make [cause] the other to happen.  A causal relationship will produce correlations; but many correlations do not indicate cause and effect.  Let us look at an example of the falsity of the correlation logic.

“The more firemen fighting a fire, the bigger the fire is observed to be.  Therefore firemen cause fire.”  In this example, the correlation between the number of firemen at a scene and the size of the fire does not imply that the firemen cause the fire. Firemen are sent according to the severity of the fire and if there is a large fire, a greater number of firemen are sent; therefore it is rather that fire causes firemen to arrive at the scene. So the above previous conclusion is false.

During the Reagan years there were a lot of things that were going on at the time that contributed to the economic recovery.  The Reagan Administration and Congress, engaged in massive deficit spending.  This was, in part to out-spend the Soviet Union on The Strategic Defense Initiative; SDI or “Star Wars” as it became known.  What Ronald Reagan did was put this country on an economic war-time footing, spending money in order to break the economic back of the Soviet Union.  It worked, but it also had a side effect.  It poured money into the economy and into people’s pockets.  They had money and they could buy stuff.  This created demand and manufacturing boomed because people buy the products being produced.

If you recall from your history, it was really the onset of World War II that ended “The Great Depression”.  The United States had to enter the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor and, pardon the pun, did so with a vengeance.  We opened up the National Treasury, sold War Bonds (government borrowing) and generally said to hell with future debt problems, we have a war to win.  Every able-bodied man, woman and child was put to work making stuff for the war.  It got sent off to the war, got shot down, blown up or otherwise destroyed and had to be replaced.  Demand, on an immense scale, ended the Great Depression.  World War II was the largest government public works project this country has ever known.

Another thing happened as well in the 1980’s.  The personal computer and other new technologies began to come of age and people found reasons to buy the new technology.  This, in combination with the fact that people had money, created jobs in the technology industry and thus matured “Silicon Valley”, a brand new area where people could get jobs.  So it helped the upward spiral.  People wanted the new, different and exciting technologies, and they had the money to be able to afford them; again, a demand-driven recovery.

The long and the short of all this is that you can give as many tax breaks and cut as many regulations as you want and the fact is that if consumers don’t have any money with which to buy the products that are being made, the economy just stagnates.  Corporations increase their profits garnered from the tax breaks and lessened costs of regulation, make their books look really good, but don’t engage in any activity that helps the economy as a whole.

Voodoo Economics; it didn’t work then, it won’t work now and it will never work.  We live in a demand-based economy and no matter how much you make, if consumers cannot afford to buy it, there is not reason to make it.  I invite your comments.

Soon, a blog on what just might work, but it will hurt….a lot.

The Death Penalty...an Absolute Punishment in an Imperfect System

Last Week Troy Anthony Davis died or, more accurately, was killed, as a result of being convicted of First Degree Premeditated Murder.  I am not a supporter of the death penalty.  This is a rather odd position to have given the fact that I have been a police officer and detective in the past, but it is my position nonetheless.  I have a few very specific reasons for my opposition to the death penalty, each of which I will outline in separate posts.  The first is absolute punishments in imperfect systems.

In this country, to date, we have released approximately 139 men from death rows due to their being proven innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death.  The reasons for these erroneous convictions run the gambit, from bad eyewitness identifications to deliberate and willful prosecutorial misconduct; the latter being particularly heinous, for which has been reserved a special level of Dante’s Hell, in my opinion.  Let me be very clear, I am not talking about individuals whose convictions have been overturned on so-called “technicalities.”  No, I am talking about people that did not, could not and never did commit the crime for which they were sentenced to die.  Though there are some that consider innocence a technicality, like Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Regardless of the reason for a wrongful conviction, it points out one glaring reality; the criminal justice system in this country is not perfect.  Occasionally, we do get it wrong, and for a number of different reasons.  What I cannot understand is how we justify this imperfect system applying an absolute punishment.

The perfect example of convicting the innocent is the rape-murder case in which the witnesses identify the suspect, pick him out of the line-up and testify in trial that he is the guy that did it.  He gets convicted and sentenced to death.  Years later, the DNA evidence gets analyzed and there is no way that he did it.  The victim was the victim of one assailant, one perpetrator, and the guy our system convicted is not, could not and never has been the guy.

Using the most conservative numbers, the math says that 4.2% of the death row population in this country has been released on grounds of innocence.  People, that is 4 innocent persons for every 100 convictions!!  Hell, let us give the benefit of the doubt to the system and say it is only 1 of 100; who gets to be the one who “takes one for the team” so we can feel safer as a society?  If the cops knock on your door and arrest you and you are the statistical “one” how do you feel about it now?  Let me change it slightly and ask, if your son or daughter becomes the statistical “one”; how do you feel?  Oh, and the response, “That would ever happen to me.” is a wrong answer.  Remember, the people who got released from death row likely thought that right up until they realized what was happening to them.

We are not talking about statistical errors here; we are talking about human beings that would be irrevocably, irretrievably and absolutely dead, having been killed for crimes they did not commit.  If this does not bother you or make you squirm at least a little, I suggest you seek professional help. You are quite likely a sociopath with no ability to feel empathy, and you need help.  If you are like a lot of people who justify it on the grounds, “Well, he deserved it for some crime he never got caught for.”  Again, you need professional help, for you are morally bankrupt.  We should punish people for crimes that we have no way of knowing they occurred, what the crime was and whether or not this person did it?  This logic is evil and you should be ashamed of yourself, but are probably too incredibly stupid.  I welcome the insults I anticipate for that one.

I know there are those that believe the fact that we have discovered the fact that people who are innocent were convicted and sentenced to death is an indication that the system is working.  Well, it ain’t.  How many people did we execute before we even had the technology of DNA to prove people innocent?  What will be the next technology that is used to prove people did not commit a crime and will it prove that we have executed innocent people?  Interesting question, isn’t it?

It has long been said that if we can prove that we have executed an innocent person that would spell the end of the death penalty in this country.  So, what has been the reaction of the system in this regard?  The system zealously prevents the likelihood that we will ever be able to prove we have, in fact, put an innocent man to death.  Even before the convicted person is executed, the prosecutor of the case prepares a Motion to destroy all the evidence in the case.  Within days, or even hours, of the execution, the prosecutors present this Motion to the Court, which is always granted and the Court issues an Order that all the evidence be destroyed.  The hypocrisy of this act is incredible and serves only one purpose, to make sure that we never are able to prove, posthumously, that an innocent person has been killed by the system.  It is the ultimate act of self-protection.

Allow me to put things in some perspective regarding how our system views “justice”.  Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, in a dissenting opinion, thank God, “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent”.  In other words, it is pretty much okey dokey to execute an innocent man according to Scalia.  Allow me to parse words regarding his use of the term “convince” which is designed to deliberately imply that a later finding that the system might have made a mistake is, per se, erroneous.  Justice Scalia engages in a kind of abhorrent intellectual dishonesty that is designed to uphold the system, regardless of flaws and imperfections, to allow the imposition of absolute punishments with an imperfect system.

We have the means in our system to guarantee the protection of society that does not involve executing people.  It is called “Life Imprisonment Without Parole.”  We throw people in jail and figuratively throw away the key.  If, years down the road, the technology is developed to determine they are innocent, we can let them go free.  If we are feeling particularly guilty, we can even give them money for the time they spent in prison for a crime they did not commit, but we have yet to figure out how to raise the dead.  If someone is in prison and they did it, they stay there and society is safe.  You have to then reduce the rationale for it to what it is, revenge, anger and retribution and I am not sure this is a morally acceptable reason to kill people.  Would it work for an individual?  Not that I can figure.  So let’s just lock ‘em up as opposed to killin’ ‘em. It’s cheaper too.

In future posts, I shall expound on the economics of execution, and the morality and hypocrisy of the death penalty.

Update......

My devoted fans, all four of you, have noted I have been missing from the blogosphere for a while.  I have fallen into that dreaded writer’s block that has me with no motivation.  Normally, when people like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry are running for President, I am invigorated, but the idea of any of the neo-fascist, Right-wing, Conservative faction of the Republican Party actually getting elected has been too depressing for words.  In what sane world are any of these wing nuts viable candidates for the Presidency?

Having monitored the various complaints regarding them, I have noted their replies to these various complaints.  Mostly, it is them saying, "Well Obama...(fill in the blank with some sort Conservative obfuscation)."  I abhor the idea that when confronted with a negative statement about you, your position or a statement, instead of defending it, these morons prefer to attack the opposition.  The really sad thing is people are buying into it.  In what world is the correct response to "You are a bad person!" "Well, I am not as bad as him!"  Have we been reduced to choosing the lesser of the evils?  The idea has just depressed me beyond belief.

My response to this lowering of expectations has been to throw myself into reading books on economic theory. Yes, economic theory.  I have managed to lay my hands on the collected works of Paul Krugman, economist, blogger, NY Times columnist and liberal.  He is a Professor of Economics at Princeton (the alma mater of my Father and Uncle, so I may be biased).  Oh, and he received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008.  Not too shabby, really...I should have this kind of cred.

I shall return to the blogosphere, hopefully knowing the different views of John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer and William Phillips and my new hero, Paul Krugman.  Stand-by to be bored out of your gourds with my views and insights on the economy, and why I believe we are probably headed into another recession...and yes, I blame it on the Conservatives in Congress.

Casey Anthony...It Could Have Been Worse...She Could Have Gone Home!!!

Okay, I guess, since I have been listening to it in my office for days now, I shall weigh in on the Casey Anthony Case.  God help me!  Allow me to address the issues of how she was prejudged first, and then describe how she could have been even better off (like she would have walked out of the courtroom when they said “not guilty” better) had she followed a couple of basic rules.

Casey Anthony got a fair trial by all accounts that I have read and seen.  Twelve jurors heard every shred of legally admissible evidence presented by the prosecution and found her not guilty.  Clearly she was tried in the press and by the public well before any evidence was presented.  Not surprisingly, an almost mob mentality started to take over.  She was presumed guilty from the outset for any number of reasons not relevant to whether she did or did not kill her daughter.  Among these is the fact that she did not behave “appropriately” during the period that her daughter was “missing” and presumably dead.  She partied until the wee hours of the morning with friends.  Prior to Caylee going missing Casey is alleged to have brought her toddler daughter to nightclubs with her.  Caylee slept in the car while her mother danced the night away.

Casey Anthony is alleged to have practiced bisexuality, engaging in lesbian affairs and been indiscriminant in her sexual liaisons with both men and women and combinations of the two.  How much more titillating can you get?  By the same token, what in the world does it have to do with her guilt or innocence?  I will acknowledge and admit to having had a pretty wild past.  I shall not titillate you with the details, but let us say has a certain X-rated quality to it.  Does this make me a killer or a premeditated murderer?  I would like to think not, but who am I?

No one will ever describe Casey Anthony as a nominee for Mother of the Year, for the above reasons, but the fact that that you suck as a mom does not make you a killer either, in most cases.  In this case the prosecution failed in their duty to prove, beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, whether Casey Anthony killed her daughter.  In fact, they failed on even a more basic level. 

Given as true every single fact brought out at the trial, the prosecution failed to prove that the theory presented by the defense could not have been true.  In other words, the prosecution was not able to prove the death could not have occurred in a way consistent with Casey Anthony’s innocence.  The way the laws of the United States are designed to be interpreted, if you can come up with a scenario that is consistent with all the facts and is also consistent with the Defendant being not guilty, you have to find her not guilty, because it could have happened that way.  It is hard to put into words, but if a man comes in from outside and he is soaking wet, there are many ways he could have gotten that way.  It could be raining, he could have walked through the sprinkler, or he could have been in the shower with the woman next door.  Until you can rule out all the other explanations, in a court, you have to go with the explanation that is consistent with not guilty.

Quite frankly, I am rather proud that the jury did not succumb to what was incredible public and media pressure to convict the woman.  They have said, since the verdict, that they did not say she did not do it, but that the prosecution did not prove the case sufficiently to find her guilty, much less make a sentencing decision.  The jury system is specifically designed to act as a check on the prosecutor and, in combination with the burden of proof and the limitations placed on the prosecution as the representative of the government, they hold the government to a very high standard of proof, and so they should. 

We come from a history of abuses by a tyrannical government.  Each and every day we see other governments abuse the human rights of their citizens in kangaroo courts in which the deck is clearly stacked in favor of the government.  We live in a country that tries to make it as difficult as possible to convict an innocent person.  In spite of this fact, since 1973, 138 men have been released from death rows in 26 states based on the grounds that they did not commit the crime for which they were sentenced. 

Unfortunately, we no longer live in a society that believes that it is better to let ten guilty persons go free than convict one innocent person.  We now believe that the one innocent person needs to take one for the team so those ten go to prison and we feel safer.  I would argue that you will feel perfectly fine with this until it is you or your son or daughter that randomly gets selected to be the one that takes one for the team.   It is much easier to allow some other not guilty person go to prison than you and yours.

The other thing that could have made a bunch of people just roll their eyes is if Casey Anthony had walked out of the courtroom a free woman on Tuesday.  This could have happened and let me tell you how.

In my wallet, I carry a card on which is written the following:

Dear Law Enforcement Officer:

Several years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that law enforcement agents were justified and authorized to lie to suspects and potential suspects during questioning.  As a result, nothing the police say can be relied upon as correct or accurate.  Accordingly, I have made the decision not to provide any information to, nor communicate with any law enforcement officer or agent without my attorney present.  Please consider this an invocation of my rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.  I refuse to discuss any matter of any kind or nature with you.   Further, the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the right of citizens of the United States not to be required to produce identification upon the demand of a law enforcement officer.  My named is William A Miller and my date of birth is MM/DD/YYYY.  This is sufficient information to adequately identify me.  The name of my attorney is XXXXXX X. XXXXXX and his phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.  Please contact him regarding any request for information.

I have done nothing wrong and do not wish to engage in any conversation of any kind with you for any reason.  This is a formal request that I not be detained any further, that I be allowed to leave immediately and that any and all property, papers and/or possessions be returned to me immediately.  Should you refuse to allow me to go about my business, I consider myself to be under arrest and reiterate my invocation of my Constitutional Rights.  I request that you allow me to immediately contact my attorney.  Should I answer any questions, I do so only as a result of acquiescence to and fear of your authority as an armed law enforcement officer.

If you are on my property without a Warrant, I request that you leave immediately, as I consider you to be committing the crime of Trespass after Warning in violation of Chapter 810, F.S.  This document constitutes an official notification which is required to be retained in your law enforcement records in this case.  DESTRUCTION OF THIS NOTICE IS A THIRD DEGREE FELONY UNDER FLORIDA STATUTE 918.13(a).

PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.

/s/

May 5, 2002

When Casey Anthony was initially questioned regarding the whereabouts of her daughter, she merely had to invoke her right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment and let her attorney do the talking for her.  She would not have been in a position to give the police false information as she would not have spoken to them, except, presumably, through her attorney.  Thus, no felony counts of providing the police with false information.  She would have walked out of the courtroom when she was found not guilty of the murder.

The police read you your rights when you are questioned, after you have been taken into custody.  In part they will tell you, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”  The ONLY thing that cannot be used against you is your invocation of your right against self-incrimination or right to counsel.  So, the government, in this case, was in the position of “if we can’t get you one way, we’ll get you anther.”  As my friend and Attorney Dean L. Willbur, Jr. says (and has on t-shirts, as a matter of fact), “Keep your mouth shut and you won’t get caught!”  This is true for both criminals and fish.

Faith and Politics....A Dangerous Mix

Faith, as I was taught, is having no rational, provable, empirical proof or reason for believing in something.  The myriad of religions in the world are the example of believing based on faith alone. 

There is no empirical way to prove the existence of God.  Yes, we occasionally have the individual that sees the Virgin Mary in a taco shell or Dorito™ or something, and believes it to be some sort of Devine intervention, but if you boil it down, it is all faith.  It is also a matter of faith as to the Divinity of known persons, like the Prophet Mohammed or the belief that God speaks through anyone specific, like the Pope.  

I happen to believe in God, but I also recognize that it is faith and not an empirical fact.  I believe what I believe because I believe it and take God as a matter of faith.  While I believe in the Bible, I do not have absolute faith in it as some do.  I do have faith that the Bible provides us with some accurate accounts, in the Old and New Testaments, on which we can base our belief in God and Jesus Christ, but I am not one to be absolutely certain.  There are things that I question.  I also recognize that others are clearly more devout believers in their versions of faith than I, and I accept that one of us might be wrong, and this is where things can get a bit sticky.

There was a great scene that in the television series “West Wing” in which fictional President, Jebediah Bartlett spots a radio call-in show host called “Dr. Laura Jacobs” (I suspect she was a fictionalized version of the Conservative radio talk-show host “Dr. Laura Schlessinger”).  The President asks her for her qualifications to offer advice to listeners that call in to her show and she informs the President that she has a PhD in English Literature.  He also asks her to answer several questions after she confirms that the [Christian] Bible holds that homosexuality is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22).  The soliloquy by the President goes as follows:

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?”

The point is that Christian faith follows the teaching of the Bible and the Bible must be read with, for lack of a better term, some discretion, as indicated by the questions asked by the fictional President of the United States.  I think most documents of faith must be read with discretion.  The Koran, The Torah, even the different versions of the Christian Bible must be read with an understanding that they are historical and come from a different time.  While it may once have been acceptable to sell one’s daughter into slavery, or stone a man for planting two different crop side-by-side, not so much anymore, and it must be adapted to modern times.  You kinda have to cherry pick for the applicable stuff.

Documents like the Bible must be viewed from the perspective that they are books of faith and, if you believe in them, fine, but there are those that have opposing viewpoints and do not have the faith in them that some do.  I do not expect to ever change the beliefs of a person that says, “The Bible says it.  I believe it, and that’s it.”  It is faith and you can’t really argue about someone’s faith, especially with such a strongly held belief.  However, when someone starts to use faith as a logical argument for passing laws that affect everyone, whether they have the same beliefs or not, that is a serious problem. 

There are those among us that use their faith as a basis for all of their decisions.  This is a wonderful thing for them, but please note, I said for them.  If they wish to practice their faith in a manner that guides everything they think, say or do, I will defend their right in our country to practice that faith, to a point.  However, when their faith begins to impact me, my rights, my freedoms or my actions, or is illegal, we are going to have a problem.  We are going to have a problem if there is an impact on the rights of others as well.   There is even a problem with the “illegal” part of my argument.

 There are those, contrary to what they would tell you, or have you believe, that think this is an almost purely Christian nation and, while I agree this country is a predominantly Christian nation.  They want to adopt Christianity as a defacto official religion in this country.  They want to make sure that it is Christian Law that has the power in this country and that all decisions are made based on Christian morality and ethics.  The most extreme example of this is ever-increasing number of Conservatives and Conservative Politicians who have stated that they openly disapprove and would fight against Sharia Law becoming a basis for any law in this land and even view it as unacceptable as a code of personal conduct as well.  Like most religious laws, there are good points and bad points, just like the Bible and Christian Law.  I do not believe that either should be the basis for the law of this secular society, as all religion and religious law has its problems.  The Conservatives of this country are now engaged in a latter-day Holy Crusade by other (political) means, and that scares the Hell out of me.

People have lost sight of the fact that the United States in not, in fact, a country of only majority rule alone.  We are country of minority rights as well.  Conservatives are incredible in their ability to drone on about what the Founding Fathers wrote in the Constitution.  The strict constructionists and literalists would have us believe that anything not written, word-for-word, within the four corners of The Constitution does not and should not exist in law.  However, The Founding Fathers wrote the first ten amendments to The Constitution which was referred to as a “Bill of Rights” by no less than Thomas Jefferson.  He was, in fact, extremely surprised that The Constitution was originally adopted by The First Constitutional Convention with no Bill of Rights.  Interestingly, the proscription against the establishment of religion and the exercise thereof, is the very first line of the First Amendment.  It is, in fact, the very beginning of the Bill of Rights.

There are Conservatives that are quick to point out that Thomas Jefferson was not present at The First Constitutional Convention (He was Minister to France from 1885 to 1789).  However, the fact that he was not present actually works out better for us students of history, as Jefferson’s input to the content of The Constitution is all in writing.  In his correspondence to members of the convention he was vehement in his belief that there be a “wall of separation” between church and state, and this belief was maintained after the ratification of The Constitution.  Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper on February 10, 1814, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”  He went into greater detail in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 in which he said,

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorized (sic) only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.]* Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

*The bracketed section is not contained in the letter as posted, but is contained in the original draft kept by Jefferson and contained in the National Archives.

We are a secular nation, not a religious nation.  Those who profess the belief that we are a Christian nation, conveniently ignore those parts of The Constitution, the Bible and history that are inconsistent with those beliefs.  This kind of intellectual dishonesty makes them true believers and that kind of faith makes them very dangerous.

Conservative vs Liberal...Force vs Argument...

Today, on Twitter, a woman who is an acknowledged Conservative Republican tweeted that she was in an elevator and a Liberal called her “the enemy”.  Her response was to remind the person offering this description that many Conservatives “pack heat” in what can only be characterized as a not-so-veiled threat.

 I consider this interaction between a Liberal and Conservative to be quite enlightening of the different ways in which the two groups think, or don’t think, as the case may be.  Liberals have gotten to the point where they no longer perceive Conservatives as "loyal opposition".  They perceive them as "The Enemy."  I will not necessarily condone this, but it does point out that our polarized politics has reduced many of us to the perception of the us vs. them mentality, Liberal and Conservative alike.  It is a view by both sides that the system is a zero-sum game, that is for every victory, there must be a corresponding defeat by the "other side". If you have it, you must have taken it from me.  My objection to Conservatives however is the length to which they have taken this way of thinking.

Conservatives are forever citing the Second Amendment as one of the freedoms that they hold near and dear.  Unfortunately, they apparently do not hold the First Amendment in the same high regard, especially when it is someone offering a difference of opinion with their particular viewpoint.  It is seemingly all right for them to cite their own First Amendment protections whenever someone exercises it, but when a Liberal does, not so much.

 Now before someone gets all technical on me, I know that the First Amendment only protects a person’s speech against government infringement.  If it protected us against infringement by anyone, then an employee of Coca Cola could not be fired for going on television for endorsing Pepsi.  Let me assure you that Coke can and probably will terminate the employment of their employee for doing such a thing, and they are within their rights to do so.  However, the government cannot make a law that infringes  any citizen’s right to endorse Coke over Pepsi or Pepsi over Coke.  The Constitution is intended to protect us from our government, not each other.  Okay, civics class is over, now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

 Conservatives seem to have this predisposition to the use of force and/or violence as a mechanism to achieve their wants, needs, goals and desires a lot quicker than Liberals.  In the thinking of the Right, might really does make right and to the victor go the spoils.  Thus, they have a tendency to go to the force option faster.  This is true in many different circumstances.  In the example at hand, a woman, identified as the enemy, immediately raises the specter that those that identify her as such had better watch out.  Because, as a Conservative, she might be exercising her Second Amendment Right and be carrying a gun; she implies she might be willing to use it against someone that disagrees with her point of view in a manner objectionable to her.  Personally, having seen my share of death, destruction, violence and mayhem by my fellow man against my fellow man, I tend to go with the sticks and stones option first, possibly followed by a stern sticking out of my tongue or raspberry.  To go directly to the “be careful, I might have a gun” option first is, pardon the pun, overkill.

 As I said, there are many different examples of this kind of behavior within the ranks of Conservatism.  Sharron Anlge, of Nevada called for “Second Amendment remedies” to what she perceived as the takeover of the U.S. Senate by the Left.  While discussing these so-called Second Amendment remedies, she said, “I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”  While I may think she is a complete nutball; folks she was an elected member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007 and a Teapublican candidate for Harry Reid’s Senate seat in 2010.  If you can’t beat ‘em, kill ‘em?”  Sarah Palin, the darling of the Right Wing said, “Don’t retreat, reload.”  Uh, she was a candidate for Vice President of the United States.

The other thinking that runs through Conservative America is the concept of picking up their ball and going home.  When a state does this, it is called secession.  The Governor of Texas jumped on board this bandwagon and called for secession based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The Supreme Court in, coincidentally, Texas vs. White (1868) declared secession to be impossible and illegal.  Thus, the only way to do it would be armed insurrection.  Now the last time I checked, armed insurrection against the government of the United States was treason, but because of the way they think, the Conservatives don’t seem to have a problem with resorting to “the nuclear option” right off the bat.

 The Conservatives have become the bullies of politics.  They use force to get what they want and to stop anyone that has the temerity to disagree with them.  Much like the school yard bully, they make you afraid to disagree because you might get beaten up, or, in the case of our elevator woman, might get shot.