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  • We are the addicts

    Thomas Friedman in the Times:

    Saudi donors today still constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide — not to mention the fundamentalist mosques, charities and schools that spawn the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So basically our oil payments are cycled through Saudi Arabia and end up funding the very militants whom our soldiers are fighting.
    …
    America lacks leverage in the Middle East because we are addicted to oil. We are the addicts and they are the pushers, and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers

  • Viva Cinco de Diciembre!

    Viva Cinco de Diciembre!

    Happy Repeal Anniversary!

    I just learned through a friend on Facebook that it’s Prohibition Repeal Day. No better time to think about vice and the virtues of individual freedom. But remember that the end of Prohibition brought despair, crime, more drinking, and criminals. Oh no, wait, that’s the wrong press release. That’s what prohibitionists saidwould happen after we legalized a popular and dangerous drug. When we did regulated alcohol in 1933, murders went down, the mob lost a lot of power, people stopped violating drinking laws, and the government stopped wasting time and money arresting people for selling a drink.

    If you support the war on drugs, at least be consistent and advocate for the return of alcohol prohibition, too. Think of the children. Prohibition isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the alcohol free-for-all we have now! Think of how much safer they’ll be after we crack down on those grog shops and foreign liquor peddlers. Here’s to an alcohol-free America!

    But seriously, remember that ending drug war is not an answer to our drug problems. Ending the drug war is an answer to our prohibitionproblems. And with that out of the way, we could begin to focus on the actual drug problems.


    ¡Viva Cinco de Diciembre!

  • Drugged Driving! Lock the doors! Hide the Kids! Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

    Drug Czar Kerlikowske said, “drugged driving is a much bigger public health threat than most Americans realize and unfortunately, it may be getting worse.”

    [Cue evil music!]

    Except, of course, it’s not.

    Kerlikowske is talking about this, which estimates that one-third of those who die in motor vehicle fatalities test positive for drugs.

    The problem, at least in context of the war on drugs, is how they define “drugs.” Alcohol, nicotine, and aspirin are excluded. That’s nice. But what about Acetominophen plus codeine? Ambien? Vicodin? Yep. Yep. And Yep. Ambien may be the ninth most prescribed drug in the US.

    You might also test positive for the joint you smoked last month, which covers at least six percent of all Americans. And no, they don’t break down which drugs people had in their system. Nor can they know if you’re actually high or impaired on whatever drug you’re taking.

    You can see the complete list drugs tested for starting on page 547 of this big file.

    Seeing how from 1999 to 2009, the number of prescriptions purchased in the United States increased 39%–we’re talking more than 3 billion prescriptions a year (not all of these are tested for)–how could you notfind more drugs in people’s systems?

    In truth, it’s amazing that onlyone-third of drivers tested positive for one of these drugs. It’s not amazing that drug prohibitionists twist, misuse, and sometimes just make up the numbers. They can’t handle the truth.

  • Police Office Saves Life

    This is a headline you don’t see enough and should see more.

    Here’s a BBC video from Madrid that is pretty great.

    Sure, everybody can wave all they want. But it takes a cop, an off-duty cop in this case, to jump on the tracks and actually do the right thing.

    [p.s. Why do trains in Madrid drive on the left?]

  • Lacking Bail Money, NYC Petty Cons Average 15 Days In Jail

    Mosi Secret of the Times reports on nonfelony defendants arrested in the city in 2008:

    In more than three-quarters of the 117,064 cases, defendants were released on their own recognizance.

    In 19,137 cases from that year, bail was set at $1,000 or less. The report found that 87 percent of the defendants in those cases did not post bail and went to jail to await trial. They remained for an average of 15.7 days.

    “Here we are locking people up for want of a couple of hundred dollars,” said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel with the domestic program of the advocacy group.

    “Pretrial liberty should not be conditioned on the size of your bank account,” Ms. Fellner said.

    The report raised the possibility that many of the poorer defendants pleaded guilty at arraignment for sentences with no jail time, simply to avoid being behind bars while awaiting trial.

    A fifteen day stay on Rikers costs the city about $3,000 per person.

  • Don’t ask, don’t tell

    Moskos on Moskos. The old man would have loved this one!

  • Felon Who Fought 3-Strikes Law Kills

    Well this is going to set back sentencing reformfor a while!

    I suspect this seventh strike will put him away for life.

    A multiple felon who campaigned against California’s three-strikes law and was free after managing four times to escape its harsh sentencing guidelines has been charged with murdering four people in home-invasion robberies here this year.
    …
    Mr. Ewell was in courtrooms again this summer after three arrests, accused of switching price tags on a vacuum cleaner and other items at Home Depot stores. The judge postponed his 32-month prison sentence so Mr. Ewell could undergo “prescheduled eye and stomach surgery,” said Jacquelyn Lacey, an assistant district attorney in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said Mr. Ewell spent a month of that grace period — from late September to late October — robbing a string of homes in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County and killing four people he either strangled or beat to the point of a heart attack.

  • How we roll…

    How we roll…


    I know it’s not in the spirit of Thanskgiving to brag, but I’ll be damned if five hours later this bird wasn’t deee-licious. And besides, “it ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

  • The Boys of Summer

    Or, more accurately, “The Baltimore City police men and women of late Fall 2009,” but nobody ever wrote a book with that name.

    I’ve also always wondered just how many of my class are still with the Baltimore Police Department. This seems a rather simple question, but such data, especially if it’s police related, can be surprisingly hard to come by. I hear stories about this person leaving by choice and that person being asked to leave, but I really had no idea. I guessed about half of us were still there.

    Today the Suncame out with with their searchable pay database for every city employee. Boo-ya!

    And since I can can select for police department and sort by date of entry, it’s very easy to get my academy class (and it’s nice to see some of these names after all these years!).

    So, after 11 years, how is the glorious class of 99-5 doing? I’d say fair to middling. When I was in the academy class, most of my fellow trainees assumed that our class was, how do I put this delicately, just slightly sub-par (hey, we can’t all be above average). But who could say for sure?

    There are 30 of the original 51 still left. That’s a 59% retention rate (and similar for men and women). I’m not certain how that compares to other academy classes or police departments (that data is surprisingly hard to get), but I suspect it’s a bit low.

    More revealing is that just 2 of the 31 officers (6.5%) have been promoted (I hear a third is now number 10 on the list).

    So I also looked at every other police officer hired in 2009 (excluding my class, n = 93). The overall promotion rate is 25% (including three lieutenants). Ouch.

    And of course, here’s what every police officer cares about: money. Are we making bank? I don’t think so. I think police (and teachers) should make about $100,000 a year. The average base salary for those in my academy class (11 years experience) is $60,200 (and the city wants to cut it 10%). Those at the rank of officer are making $59,400. Overtime brings the average pre-tax take home up to $71,400. Three guys in my class pulled in more than $40,000 in overtime last year (about 20 hours/week).

    [It seems only fair to tell my salary. As an assistant professor at CUNY with a PhD and 6 years I make $74,133. Plus I made about $2,500 in “overtime,” a.k.a. book royalties. Best of all, nobody shot at me.]

  • It doesn’t matter how tight you tie them

    It doesn’t matter how tight you tie them

    I see pictures like this from the Daily Newsand I notice one thing: the shoes.

    If you’re hit by a car going too fast, the shoes will fly off your feet and be left basically where you are hit. Think of how much pressure you can apply and not get your shoes off your feet. It’s impossible if you don’t untie them, right? It freaks me out.

    “The car was going really fast down 93rd St., much faster than normal.” So what’s the moral? Not don’t jaywalk… don’t friggin speed!