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  • God Bless The Economist

    God Bless The Economist

    For their review:

    Imagine that you–or, if you prefer, a younger, more reckless version of you–committed a crime.
    …
    And say you were offered a choice: you could either spend those years behind bars, or you could get ten lashes.
    …
    You may think flogging is barbaric, but is there any question which you would choose if you could? According to Peter Moskos, a sociologist whose previous book, “Cop in the Hood”, detailed his year spent as a Baltimore beat cop: “If flogging were really worse than prison, nobody would choose it.”

    The modern American prison system evolved as an alternative to flogging: penitentiaries were designed to “cure” prisoners of their criminality—to render them penitent—rehabilitating them into productive members of society. On this score, as on most others, it has failed.
    …
    “We build prisons for people we’re afraid of and fill them with people we’re mad at.”
    …
    Brutal and archaic it may be, but Mr Moskos convincingly argues that America’s prison system is at least as inhumane.
    …
    Perhaps the most damning evidence of the broken American prison system is that it makes a proposal to reinstate flogging appear almost reasonable. Almost.

    Now will you buy my book?

  • Man Robs Bank of $1 and Waits for Police…

    In an attempt to get health care. What a country!

    I am curious to see how this will play out. He probably won’t be sentenced to the three years he wants. Will he then commit more crime?

    And he might disappointed about the quality of health care in prison. But it is better than nothing.

  • Buy my book, damnit!

    If you’re reading this, you’re in the good company of about 400 others.

    If you’re reading this, you probably have at least someinterest in what I write.

    But here’s the thing, if you’re reading this, you probably have not bought my book, In Defense of Flogging.

    Yeah, I’m calling you out. How, you may ask, do I knowyou haven’t bought my book? Because according to BookScan, my book hasn’t sold200 copies! Last week my book seems to have sold, get this, 30 actual physical copies. You know what makes it worse, I bought 20 of them!

    So do your part and buy my book. If not, I don’t know, you’ll have to read more posts like this.

    [p.s. If you’re in Canada or bought an electronic version, you’re off the hook. These don’t count in the total.]

  • Whitey Bulger nabbed!

    How about that? Maybe that guy in 1996 at the Abbey Lounge in Somerville wasn’t him after all.

    The Timesarticle leaves out the details regarding his relationship with his younger brother, who was a long time state representative and then President of of the University of Massachusetts.

    If my older brother was on the lam, I wouldn’t rat him out, either.

    And note this from the LA Times:

    Using a “ruse,” authorities lured the man out of the apartment, concluded it was Bulger and arrested him without incident. They arrested Greig inside the home. They provided no details about the ruse.

    Gosh, a “ruse”! What a novelway to apprehend a criminal suspect.

    I’m guessing it went something like this, “Hello… UPS… What?… No, I need your signature.”

    “Arrested without incident”? Whatever. Seems like they wasted a good opportunity to suit up, bust down some doors, and send in a SWAT team for no good reason.

    [p.s.: He lived a block or two from my mom in Santa Monica!]

  • Geert Wilders is a Prick

    But his acquittal in Dutch court is an important victory for free speech in the Netherlands.

    As a side note, the Dutch legal system has some peculiarities from an American perspective, and not just the fact that somebody can be tried for what they say:

    The verdict had been expected as prosecutors themselves had called for his acquittal, arguing that the statements were directed “against a religion as such and not against individual persons or a group of people.”

    Under the case law… it was not possible to convict him….But the Muslim organizations that brought the case won a Court of Appeal ruling that it should go ahead over the objections of the prosecution.
    …
    The complainants had little ground for appealing the case: “In our system, only the prosecution can appeal a judgment,” and that is “highly unlikely.”

  • These *were* a few of my favorite things

    These *were* a few of my favorite things

  • These are a few of my favorite things…

    These are a few of my favorite things…

    I stumbled across an Asian grocery store in The Bronx that had some of the feistiest crabs I’ve seen a while. Decent sized, too (for New York). I bought six. I was tempted to let one loose on the subway home, but I resisted. But a good eye would have seen some some of the claws poking through the bag.

    Come here, my pretties…

    [I have Old Bay… too bad I don’t have rock salt]

  • There’s a hole in your boat!

    There’s a hole in your boat!

    This is good news for Republicans, supply-siders, and those who like to stick their ideological economic heads in the sand: the rich are getting richer. The top 0.1 percent of the population (those making about $1.7 million or more) now have an average income of $5.6 million per year. This is a 385% increase since 1970 (inflation adjusted).
    Think of all the jobs the rich people must create! Think of the rising tide, which raises all boats! You do understand how the tide works, right? Except for the fact it’s a pretty shitty analogy when applied to the economy.

    The bottom 90%? The 137 million rest of us (my income happens to be in the 89th percentile–personally, I’m doing just fine)? Our income decreased1% since 1970. The average income for 90% of Americans: $31,244.

    You might think this is fair. Capitalism at its finest. But it’s not. You see, it’s easier to make money when you have money. Because then you can charge rent (literally and figuratively). Because then you can lobby (ie: bribe) politicians to have the system give you more money. Because you can create virtual monopolies. Just cause it’s (barely) legal doesn’t make it right.

    You see, the system? It ain’t on the level. I think of Paddy “Chicago Ain’t Ready For Reform” Bauler’s other line: “Them guys in the black suits and narrow ties, them Ivy-League types, them goo-goos – they think the whole thing is on the square.” Except these days it’s not the Ivy-League types who think that. It’s too many of the rest of us who have been deceived. It’s people who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, buy the crazy idea that tax breaks for the rich benefit the rest of us.

    It’s no surprise that the rich look out for their own self-interests. But the rest of us don’t have to help them! For starters, we have to put words and concepts like “income redistribution” are taboo. There is nothing “communist” about progressive taxation. And there is much evidence to support the idea higher taxes on the rich benefits all of society. And that even benefits the rich.

  • The Elusive Search for “Mr. Kingpin”

    The Elusive Search for “Mr. Kingpin”

    The LA Times reports that the ATF Director is expected to resign over the “Fast and Furious” gun program. It sure does seem a little strange for law enforcement to watch guns being sold to criminals and not acting.

    The operation marked a rare instance in which ATF agents allowed guns to “walk” into the hands of criminals, ostensibly with the goal of catching higher-ups in gun-trafficking organizations.

    But is this any more strange than watching drugs be sold and not acting in the name of gathering evidence, going up the ladder, and building a case?

    Ah, the illusive search for “Mr. Kingpin.” If only we could nab him, the whole criminal enterprise would tumble. Witness how we’re all safe from terrorism after the killing of Osama bin Laden. And notice how the drug war in Mexico has been won after the death or arrests of not one but at least six drug kingpins: one, two, three, four, five, and six!

    Update: This just in! Another kingpin has just been arrested! Seven is the charm.

    Mr Calderon described the capture as a great blow to organised crime…. Mexico’s security spokesman Alejandro Poire said the arrest had “destroyed the chain of command” of the cartel.

    This drives me to drink, but excuse me if I don’t break out the champagne!

  • “Not enough room to swing a cat”

    I just received an email with a subject line that baffled me: “Enough room to swing a cat.” I’ve actually heard that absurd expression, which as far as I knew, came (at least in print) from Mark Twain. I was introduced to the phrase by a Russian translator in Moscow circa 1991 who liked to show off his learned “colloquial” English skills. Once, standing in cramped quarters, he proudly said, “There is not enough room to swing a cat.”

    He was baffled that we had no clue what he was talking about. Ever since, I have chuckled at the image of a class of English-learning Russian students who repeat, in unison, and with thick Russian accents: “Not enough room to swing a cat.”

    Well Peter Dodenhoff, a colleague at John Jay College, was nice enough to school me (schooling is, after all, what what we professors like to do):

    In the days of Rule Britannia, as I suspect you’re familiar, discipline was maintained on board by the use of the cat o’ nine tails. When floggings were called for, they were carried out on deck, for two reasons: This way they would be public events that served as a warning to others, and also the cramped spaces below deck did not provide “enough room to swing a cat.” That cat, of course, was the cat o’ nine tails.

    Cool stuff, eh?

    That is cool stuff. And no, I never put two and two together to realize the link between the expression and flogging. I always pictured a real cat, which makes the expression all the more bizarre, especially when said with a thick Russian accent.

    I became aware of the the naval history of flogging only in response to my article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (which was kind of my book’s public “coming out”). So it didn’t make it into my book, which is a shame, as it would have fit in perfectly.

    The Navy also liked flogging because it didn’t take an essential seaman out of commission by throwing him in the brig. If you weren’t needed, you wouldn’t have been on the ship in the first place! I like to think there is a good analogy here vis-à-vis all of us and why we shouldn’t throw people in society’s brig.