House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman is investigating whether or not the travel done by the Drug Czar in 2006 was politically motivated. Throughout 2006, Drug Czar John Walters’ travel schedule was a roster of the some of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress.

In an email passing along thanks from Karl Rove for these visits, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) White House liaison Douglas Simon wrote:

Folks,

I just wanted to give you all a summary of a post November 7th update I received the other night. Presidential personnel pulled together a meeting of all of the Administration’s White House Liaison’s and the WH Political Affairs office. Karl Rove opened the meeting with a thank you for all of the work that went into the surrogate appearances by Cabinet members and for the 72 Hour deployment. He specifically thanked, for going above and beyond the call of duty, the Dept. of Commerce, Transportation, Agriculture, AND the WH Drug Policy Office.

This recognition is not something we hear everyday and we should feel confident that our hard work is noticed. All of this is due to our efforts preparing the Director and the Deputies for their trips and events. Director Walters and the Deputies covered thousands of miles to attend numerous official events all across the country. The Director and the Deputies deserve the most recognition because they actually had to give up time with their families for the god awful places we sent them. I attached the flnal list of all of the official events that the Director and Deputies attended.

One of those “god awful places” they sent Drug Czar Walters to was Kent, where he met with Dave Reichert in March of 2006. Granted, they talked about meth, which is certainly a valid concern to people in “god awful places” like Kent. But I’d imagine there’s more of a concern that their federal tax dollars were being spent on the Drug Czar being a Republican campaign prop for all of 2006 as well.

[emphasis mine in the email]

Dino Rossi’s idea man warns us in a new video that if we don’t tackle the gambling epidemic now, we could become another Nevada.

Enjoy

I was going to cross-post this, but it’s a bit long. Over at EffU, I’ve found a local hero who recently saved us all from impending peril.

I’ve gotta throw my 2 cents in on Lou Guzzo. Carl has already given us some of the highlights of his blogging, but even the great video below doesn’t truly reveal the full range of batshit crazy this man is capable of. Maybe my all time favorite Guzzo “idea” is his “Foster Nation program”, which he describes as such:

The proposal is that the United States would immediately cancel every aspect of its foreign-aid program, stop sending any funds to all nations, and create a new program called the Foster Nation Program. Instead of sending our taxpayers’ billions to Second and Third World nations, most of which winds up in the pockets of the overlords, politicians, and theocratic dictators anyway, we would adopt the underdeveloped and poorest countries as America’s foster nations.

We would select those nations one by one. Instead of sending them our foreign-aid dollars, we would send them our best minds in a variety of fields — industrial development, agriculture, the professions, education, development of natural resources, new housing, transportation, communications, and every other field. Our goal would be to raise the standard of living in each of the foster nations and improve their economy to match ours. When our team of experts, adequately paid by us, finished its ground-breaking effort in one country and made certain that every field of endeavor was in capable hands, it would move on to another needy country.

It would mean we would have to develop an outstanding cadre of experts in each field, with substitutes trained and ready to take over at any time. A Foster Nation program would, of course, require sufficient governmental funds to attract the best minds and to keep the program going.

As I noted at Effu at the time, considering that we’ve basically been trying to do this in Afghanistan and Iraq for years and have gotten nowhere, doing it for each third-world country on earth one by one would probably take between 1000 and 2000 years to complete.

Guzzo isn’t just a lunatic when it comes to foreign policy, though, he has some interesting “ideas” when it comes to the nanny state as well:

That brings me to the main point of this commentary: I believe Congress and all 50 legislatures should act to ban professional, organized gambling everywhere in the U.S. and to order heavy fines and even prison terms for those who break the law and set up high-stakes gambling,

Considering his animosity for the entire state of Nevada (“Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised about anything that happens in Nevada, properly designated as the nation’s cesspool”), I’m kind of hoping that Rossi keeps him around for more ideas. Before long, Guzzo may be advocating that Washington state should invade Nevada and send our brightest minds down there to clean that place up.

This post is not about Seattle’s police this time. What recently happened to a Kent family is beyond a disgrace. From the NWCN website:

It was supposed to be a special trip for a Montana man and his 8-year-old granddaughter. But their truck broke down on Snoqualmie Pass and the grandfather was killed.

If this wasn’t tragic enough for an 8-year-old girl to see her grandfather get killed and be left stranded on I-90, this is what happened when the police brought her home:

The story took a strange turn when troopers were re-uniting the child with her parents in Kent. Police say they found illegal drugs. But the parents say it’s medical marijuana prescribed by a doctor.

…

The Osmans acknowledge growing marijuana. They say it’s prescribed by their doctors to treat symptoms of hepatitis C, chronic pain and other ailments.

They say the police didn’t care about the medical authorization forms signed by their doctors.

Even with the most recent medical marijuana bill passed, there still aren’t enough protections for patients under this state’s medical marijuana law. Raids like these are still common in the state, and legitimate medical marijuana patients don’t have any real protection under the law. The state board of health has been tasked with establishing what an acceptable medical supply should be, but until then, cops still have free reign to go after the sick and ailing.

The job of police is to protect and serve the public. In this case, the police have done neither. In the process of reuniting a horrified child with her parents, the child told them that her parents grew marijuana. Instead of trying to figure out whether or not her parents were medical marijuana users, this is what they did when they arrived at the house in Kent:

“(They) opened the door, immediately she was shoved inside, turned around and cuffed. Same thing happened to me. Dragged us onto the front porch,” said Bruce.

Lt. Sass says the Osmans had too many plants for personal use, but if Bruce Osman is correct about what happened above, the police certainly could not have known that at the time they dragged them onto the front porch and started tearing their apartment to shreds. Thankfully, the Osmans have a lawyer:

The Osmans’ attorney says police broke the law by seizing the marijuana, initially entering without a warrant, and for ransacking the couple’s apartment.

How is it that we’ve come to accept that wearing a police officer’s uniform is a valid excuse for acting like a degenerate? We overwhelmingly passed a law in this state in 1998 to allow for people with certain medical conditions to use marijuana if they and their doctor found it to be beneficial. The Osmans, like many others in this state, have a doctor’s authorization to use marijuana. What the police did in this situation is absolutely unacceptable. If there is any justice in this goddamn authoritarian hellhole of a society we’ve created for ourselves, the prosecutor should be deciding right now whether or not to charge the police officers with a crime, rather than the Osmans.

And at the national level, the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment is going to be up for a vote in Congress next week. This bill would prohibit federal dollars from being spent to arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients in states where it’s legal. Please write your Congressman, especially if you live in the 2nd or the 8th, as Congressmen Larsen and Reichert have both voted against this bill (and against the will of Washington voters) in previous years.

UPDATE: I made a minor correction at the top and Dominic Holden writes much more at Slog.

Mental note: Stay on Goldy’s good side.

Turkey:

Around 5,000 flag-waving nationalist Turks held a rally Saturday to denounce escalating attacks by separatist Kurdish guerrillas, and the United States for not cracking down on rebel bases in northern Iraq.

Turkey has been pressuring the United States and Iraq to eradicate bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Iraq, saying it was ready to stage a cross-border offensive if necessary.

“Down with the U.S.A. and their collaborators,” the crowd chanted in Ankara’s Tandogan square.

Lebanon:

Fear that political deadlock may spill into violence is gripping Lebanon, a year after Israel and Shi’ite Hezbollah guerrillas jumped into a war that shattered trust between rival Lebanese camps.

Assassins have slain two anti-Syrian politicians in the past eight months. More than 200 people have died in battles between Lebanese troops and al Qaeda-inspired militants in a Palestinian refugee camp. And a car bomber killed six U.N. peacekeepers in the south last month. Many Lebanese expect worse to come.

Gaza:

About 30 armed men from a Hamas-led security force entered Gaza City’s Al-Azhar University on Saturday and seized 80 bags with chemicals from the agriculture college, the dean said.

It was not immediately clear why the chemicals were taken. The spokesman for Hamas’ Executive Force militia was not immediately available for comment.

Israel:

In a bid to bolster Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli cabinet on Sunday, approved the release of 250 Fatah security prisoners, even as rival Hamas accused Abbas of “collaborating” with Israel against them.

West Bank:

Routed in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is fractured and adrift at a moment when it is viewed by the outside world as the best hope for blunting the militant Hamas movement in the West Bank.

Once dominant in Palestinian affairs, the organization long led by the late Yasser Arafat is beset by a weak and aging leadership, internal schisms and a widespread reputation among Palestinians as corrupt, ineffectual and out of touch. Those troubles have some Palestinians wondering whether Fatah is more likely to lose the West Bank than to recapture the Gaza Strip from Hamas.

Syria and Jordan:

The UN refugee agency has urged the global community to step up assistance for Syria and Jordan, the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees, while regretting that they have recieved next to nothing despite the pledges of support.

It is unconscionable that generous host countries be left on their own to deal with such a huge crisis, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Ron Redmond said.

Iraq:

Suicide attacks across Iraq killed at least 144 people and injured scores in an 18-hour period, including a massive truck bombing in a northern Shiite village that ripped through a crowded market, burying dozens in the rubble of shops and mud houses, Iraqi officials said Saturday.

Shattering a relative lull in Iraq’s violence, the attacks raised questions about whether insurgents who have fled an ongoing military offensive in Baghdad and Diyala province are regrouping and assaulting soft targets elsewhere, in less-secure areas with fewer troops.

The violence came as the U.S. military on Saturday reported that eight American troops were killed over the past two days, all in combat or by roadside bombs in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.

Iraq (2):

For four years, Iraqis have been waiting in lines at gas stations in Baghdad, waiting for their lives to get better. But, as CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports, the situation has gotten worse and their government is now in crisis.

That has led senior Iraqi leaders to demand drastic change. CBS News has learned that on July 15, they plan to ask for a no-confidence vote in the Iraqi parliament as the first step to bringing down the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Saudi Arabia:

A religious edict by a prominent Saudi cleric suggesting liberals are not real Muslims has enflamed debate over reforms in the conservative Islamic state, with self-professed liberals fearing they will be attacked.

Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that rules by strict application of Islamic law, giving clerics a powerful position in society, but Islamists fear that liberal reformers are gaining ground under the rule of King Abdullah.

Responding to an online request for a religious edict, or fatwa, Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan said last month: “Calling oneself a liberal Muslim is a contradiction in terms … one should repent before God for such ideas in order to be a real Muslim.”

Iran:

Tehran on Sunday rejected the latest threats of further sanctions by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and said it would not be intimidated in the ongoing dispute over its nuclear programmes.

‘The latest stance by Rice was another sign of US hostility against Iran, but US officials should know that such threats would not intimidate Iran,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran.

Rice said on Friday that Iran was becoming ‘increasingly dangerous’ and that the US and its allies were considering new sanctions to limit further Tehran’s access to the international financial system.

Pakistan:

There are increasing signs, however, that the Bush administration’s decision to build so much of Washington’s Pakistan policy around one man, Musharraf, could backfire. Today, the Army general and self-installed president is facing sustained protests that are being led by the country’s educated middle class-America’s most natural allies in Pakistan. “If the Bush administration continues to support the dictatorial regime, which has completely lost the public confidence, it will further fan extremism and fundamentalism,” says Shameem Akhtar, the dean of management sciences at Balochistan University of Information Technology and Management Sciences in Quetta, Pakistan. “America should learn a lesson from Iran, where it has been paying the price for supporting an unpopular monarchy even after 28 years.”

Afghanistan:

Afghan elders yesterday said that 108 civilians were killed in a bombing campaign in western Afghanistan, while villagers in the northeast said 25 Afghans died in airstrikes, including some who were killed while burying dead relatives.

US and NATO leaders, however, said they have no information to substantiate the reports of civilian deaths, and a US official said Taliban fighters are forcing villagers to say civilians died in fighting — whether or not it is true.

Joel Connelly mounts his high horse today and launches some invective at anyone and everyone who’s been pointing fingers at Chief Kerlikowske over police oversight issues. Josh Feit has already responded, easily swatting down Connelly’s lazy accusation that The Stranger has been hypocritical when it comes to dealing with the accuracy of police reports. But the real hypocrite here is Connelly, who actually writes the following two paragraphs in succession:

The loudmouths should allow Hizzoner’s panel to do its work. Our 1960s-era activists should recognize that “this due process thing” (as a media colleague calls it) applies to police chiefs, even to police officers.

Overseers of our law enforcement agencies ought to appreciate the requirement that complaints get acted upon quickly, or dismissed. Our cops have a pretty tense job, filled with judgment calls. It makes no sense to leave a line officer, working under pressure, hung up in the city’s preoccupation with “process.”

So we should recognize that due process applies to police officers, but when dealing with police officers, we shouldn’t be preoccupied with “process?” Huh?

I caught a lot of grief for my post last week calling for Kerlikowske to resign. Since then, another group, the Minority Executive Director’s Coalition (MEDC), has also called for the chief to be replaced. And James Kelly of the Urban League, who was originally defending Kerlikowske, now also agrees that the chief should be explaining himself in writing when he fails to act on the recommendations of the existing police oversight panel.

The evidence that there’s a problem with oversight at SPD has been pretty substantial since the beginning of this story and has been well documented by both The Seattle Times and The Stranger. So when Connelly invokes the idea of this just being about “1960’s-era activists”, that’s when I tune him out. As someone who was born after the end of the Vietnam War, I don’t carry any of that baggage. Instead, I’ve seen a different set of civil rights issues – the Rodney King trial, “Driving While Black”, record numbers of African-Americans being hauled off to our prisons, many of them for doing things that well-off white kids get away with every day. In my lifetime, I haven’t seen the racial divide in this country disappear as much as I’ve seen it ignored. Progressives proclaim that affirmative action is saving the black community but then bury their heads in the sand about why we have 6 times the percentage of African-Americans in jail than South Africa ever had of their native population under Apartheid. And some of the worst states in this trend are blue states like California, Illinois, and New York.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, according to a survey from 2000-2001, Seattle’s racial disparity in drug arrests is higher than any other city of comparable size in the United States. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that this case is focused on two cops (one with a long history of problems with the black community) who made a drug arrest this January of a black man in a wheelchair who claims that the cops planted drugs on him and later roughed him up while in custody. After video of the arrest surfaced showing some inaccuracies with the officer’s report (and not showing any clear evidence that drugs were taken from the suspect), the charges against the man were dismissed. This case, and the way that both the chief and the mayor have been quick to defend the police involved, have been at the heart of the calls for Kerlikowske to resign. There simply isn’t an excuse for the mayor and the chief to be so incurious as to what really happened to George Patterson that night.

Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, a Rhodes’ Scholar who came into office determined to fix the endless violence that has plagued that city, is now pointing his finger at the drug war and calling it an economic genocide against black communities. But here in Seattle, where the black community has less clout, the mayor and the chief happily continue the war. This case obviously goes well beyond just drug law enforcement, as The Stranger continues to find new instances of general police brutality against people of color here. But the guise of keeping drugs out of the black community is the mandate that problem officers like Greg Neubert have in order to treat every person in the black community as a suspect. It’s a recipe that begs for situations to escalate.

Connelly ends his column by making a comparison to the oversight of road repair and wondering why people who are angry at the Department of Transportation can’t stir up the kind of shitstorms that people who are angry at the police can. I’ll explain that to him in more detail the next time I see him at DL, but it helps to look at the very last paragraph:

Leaving rubber behind on Second Avenue, a fiendish thought flashed across my mind: “If only I were a street drug dealer, protesting a bust, I could raise hell in this town.”

He’s referring to Patterson, the man arrested in January. There’s only one problem. Patterson insists he’s not a dealer, and the charges were dropped. And basic common sense tells you that a man in a wheelchair isn’t a very effective person to have as a street dealer in a business where people steal from and shoot each other. But for Joel Connelly and much of Seattle’s “progressive” community, due process may not be for everyone. And sometimes, the relationship between Democrats and the black community can be eerily similar to the relationship between Republicans and the military.

My latest at EffU. Bring it on, wingnuttia.

SeattleJew gave me the OK to post this up to the front. He wrote:

Crack and theft, not to mention more violent issues are commingled in the African American community, Can the cops be expected to separate these issues? I guess that would mean only arresting a suspected perp for jay walking? Am I being sarcastic? No. Capone was never charged with murder, etc. “We” the good guys got him for tax evasion. On a grander scale, Nixon was on the road to impeachment not for treason but largely for profanity. Libby, may he rot in jail, was caught for this cover up, How is this different than the cops arresting a pimp for possession of a few black crystals?

Ignoring the fact that I have no idea what drug he’s referring to with the term “black crystals”, is he lying when he later says this?

As for the word Pimp, I did not use it esp. for anyone of any race.

Discuss.

UPDATE: More fun with SeattleJew. He also writes to me:

You seem to have some sort of similar problem with seeing others as racist. Could I call it, “Blogging while disagreeing with Lee?” This is why I warned you of McCarthyism. Throwing words like racist around is too easy.

I agree. Here’s something fun everyone can do. Open up the post where this comment appears and do a Ctrl-F. Type in the word “racist” and click Find Next. Was it in my lengthy post calling for Chief Kerlikowske to resign? Nope, it’s in the first full sentence of the first comment. Written by who?

SeattleJew. Strange that.

It’s not a good week to be Mitt Romney. The story of how he once drove across New England with his dog on the roof of his car is getting some serious attention, but that’s actually pretty minor compared to what two of his close associates have been involved with:

As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

You can read more about the history of Mel Sembler’s “rehab” centers here and here. A compendium of links can be found here (a lot of the stories are not for the weak of stomach). When Romney says he wants to double Guantanamo, I believe him. He’ll need the extra room if he thinks we should be sending our kids there too.

The pressure on Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske continues to grow as he’s accused of failing to discipline officers in several troubling incidents. One of the incidents occurred in 2005 in Capitol Hill, when Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes was beaten by police after his friend tossed something on the ground as they left a club. According to witnesses, the altercation began when Alley-Barnes questioned why the officer detained his friend over something so trivial. The Seattle Times reports on the incident:

Barnes and a group of friends were leaving the War Room, a bar on Capitol Hill, shortly after midnight on April 13, 2005. Outside was Seattle Police Sgt. Greg Sackman, who was on patrol there. A bouncer said he seemed “agitated” and had positioned himself directly in front of the door so people would have to walk around him as they left.

The bouncer, Tim Rhodes, later said one of Alley-Barnes’ friends apparently threw a piece of paper or straw into the gutter. When the officer pointed it out to him, the friend picked it up and apologized, Rhodes said in a court deposition.

Sackman decided to detain the man, according to police reports and other court documents. It was then that Alley-Barnes went up to Sackman and complained that he was harassing his friend because the friend was black, according to several witnesses.

The rest of the details are pretty hard to stomach:

In the Alley-Barnes arrest on Capitol Hill, a patrol-car dashboard camera captured audio but not video. The audio revealed inconsistencies in the officers’ accounts, according to court records.

Blows can be heard. A woman can be heard saying, “Oh my God!”

At one point, the 29-year-old Alley-Barnes — an artist with no criminal record — pleads with the officers to “please stop kicking me!”

Another voice can be heard saying, “That’s way too much!”

The charges against Alley-Barnes were dismissed because the city failed to turn over the video to defense attorneys, according to court and police internal-affairs documents.

In dismissing the case, Municipal Court Judge Jean Rietschel found statements on the tape “impeach the officers’ statements” because “there’s nothing on the video about the alleged commands that each of the officers said were said to Mr. Alley-Barnes” — including telling him to put his hands behind his back.

What the tape does reveal, the judge said, are “a number of very inflammatory statements made by police” about “arresting a black” and about Alley-Barnes getting in trouble because of his big mouth.

I understand that the chief can’t be held responsible for every single incident by his officers, but the picture that’s emerging here is one where Kerlikowske feels that he doesn’t have to be responsive to community oversight on these matters.

Another incident that is raising questions is the January arrest of a wheelchair-bound man named George Patterson for drug dealing. Video of the arrest shows officer Greg Neubert putting Patterson (who is paralyzed from the waist down from a car accident five years ago) in a lengthy choke hold and later putting things in his hood. Patterson claims that he didn’t have any drugs on him that evening and certainly did not have crack cocaine in his lap as the officers alleged. Since the incident, Chief Kerlikowske has been very aggressive in shielding the two officers from any scrutiny over the arrest, even though the charges have been dropped and the video reveals inconsistencies in the officers’ stories.

As for Neubert, he already had a long history of complaints of inappropriate behavior. The Stranger wrote about him all the way back in 2001:

While the two dailies relied solely on the Seattle Police Department’s file on Neubert, we compiled our report by looking through court documents arising from Neubert’s arrest cases and by talking with Central District neighbors. (Neubert, 35, has worked the Central District beat for most of his nine-year career.)

Our reporting [“Court Documents Reveal Officer Greg Neubert’s Controversial History,” Amy Jenniges, June 28] found an alarming picture of an officer who physically and verbally bullied civilians, gave faulty court testimony, and–similar to Neubert’s current account about being dragged by Aaron Roberts’ car–complained that civilians were attacking him.

…

“I thought it was absurd to see how much he [Neubert] was praised here,” says Guy Thomas, weekend night manager at Philly’s Best Steaks & Hoagies at 23rd and Union, pointing to the Seattle Times write-up of the SPD’s records. Thomas, a tall 33-year-old black man, adds, “What I’ve heard from customers is not the same picture. It’s not a good picture.”

“I have friends that have been arrested by Neubert,” says Kisha McCraney, an 18-year-old black woman, as she gets into her car in the Philly’s parking lot. “One of my friends got pulled over by Neubert for no reason at all. He wasn’t speeding or anything. This was just a couple of months ago. He was on a back street, and when he saw Neubert he went onto a bigger residential street because he knows how Neubert is. Neubert came over, dragged my friend out of the car, and handcuffed him.”

Of course, this didn’t stop both Neubert and the other officer involved in the arrest of George Patterson, Michael Tietjen, from being given “officers of the year” awards in 2006.

When you consider the massive racial bias in drug arrests, it’s very clear that the SPD under Chief Kerlikowski disproportionately targets African-Americans. Occasionally, there can be justification for targeting certain neighborhoods because there are more complaints or a higher incidence of crime. But the numbers compiled by UW Professor Katherine Beckett are beyond what anyone can imagine as acceptable:

Though they account for less 9 percent of the city’s population, Beckett said yesterday, blacks make up 64 percent of those police arrest for dealing drugs. At the same time, her study found that the vast majority of drug users and dealers are white, not black.

Beckett’s findings also show that Seattle’s disparity is worse than any other similarly-sized American city. The idea of Seattle being a progressive city when it comes to dealing with issues of justice within the African-American community is largely a myth. And the picture of Chief Kerlikowske as someone unafraid to take on the problems within his department’s ranks appears to be mostly a myth as well. He’s had enough chances to deal with problem officers like Greg Neubert and to show that his department isn’t unfairly targeting African-Americans. He hasn’t.

And when you look at a case like Patterson’s, you also have to wonder how Kerlikowske can be aware of the details and not make the connection between how his officers acted that night and why African-Americans in this city are arrested for drugs at such disproportionately higher numbers. We’ll probably never know whether it’s cluelessness, apathy, or worse, but the NAACP is justified in calling for him to resign.

In the comments of my last post, commenter Russell Garrard wrote the following:

The Bush-haters will tell us that the supreme head of our government and his minions are supremely sinister and fiendish liars (albeit also moronic bumpkins). Then they turn around and tell us that only government can be trusted to vet what we put in our mouths and bodies. I don’t get it….

The larger argument that Russell is making (and we continued the back and forth in the comments over it) is that the government shouldn’t be trusted to do anything because free market forces will invariably do it better. I’m amazed at how often I hear this considering how much evidence there is that it’s not true in a number of circumstances (see: Larry Kudlow looking ridiculous on his own show when defending free market health care against Ezra Klein). The logic behind it is that companies will be so afraid of the financial ramifications of doing things against the public interest (secretly having bad things in their products or implementing cruel labor practices) that it’s pointless to have any kind of oversight by the government. This ignores a massive amount of history and common sense. Companies pursue profits and there have been many situations where that pursuit of profit has run counter to the general welfare of the citizens.

One of the more common ways in which this has happened is when it comes to addictive substances. From the tonics of the 19th century that secretly contained morphine to the cigarette industry of the 20th, companies have often put their pursuit of profit before the public good. These industries weren’t reformed because the corporations stopped seeing the profit potential of their actions, they were reformed because the government established rules (in the case of morphine, laws were created in the late 1800s that forced manufacturers to identify the ingredients of their tonics, causing many of them to immediately go out of business rather than admit their product contained morphine). Not all of the rules that our government has made over the years are perfect – in fact, some have been terrible – but a society is strongest when it allows for free enterprise, but also ensures that government can act as a corrective mechanism that can establish rules and safety nets for a system that, by design, ends up with winners and losers and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Part of the myth that government is useless and unnecessary is rooted in a belief that any time government spends money, it’s an inefficiency. If there were a real need to spend that money, some say (and please feel free to read through this Sound Politics post and the comments if you think I’m just inventing a ridiculous strawman) that it’s only worthwhile to do if an actual person or company sees a profit potential. In this mindset, no roads, schools, or scientific research should ever be funded unless a company saw profit potential in that investment. Otherwise, it’s a waste. I never imagined that I would encounter so many people believing in such oversimplifications, yet I manage to come across it all the time when looking for things on our local right-wing blogs to make fun of. For all of these people, the moon landing must be the greatest boondoggle of all time, especially since some people still aren’t convinced we really went there.

Like the moon landing, there are valuable things that government can do that don’t provide the kind of immediate direct profit potential that a corporation would be interested in. From building transit to improving park space, there are various things that would give a return on investment for an entire community or even the entire country, but wouldn’t make sense for a corporate bottom line. As a capitalist system grows and matures, I believe that it can eventually allow for more and more of these things to be done by private entities (and this often puts me at odds with many liberals), but a belief that there’s some truism that a corporate entity is always the superior option distorts the proper balance we need to have between having the things we need provided for us by those motivated by money and those motivated by the ballot box.

Going back to the Sound Politics post I linked to, the Edmonds School District administration building obtained an espresso machine. The price tag ($10,000) alarmed the Sound Politics peanut gallery and many wailed about how wasteful government spending has become. The only problem is that the espresso machine was bought so that faculty could purchase their morning brews for less money inside the administration building and the proceeds would go towards the district’s general fund and toward school lunches. The machine was expected to pay for itself in less than two years. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t, it was an intelligent use of school budget funds and government doing something smart.

But that’s not how it works among the faith-based capitalism crowd. Whenever government spends money, it’s an inherent inefficiency to them. To demonstrate how this can lead to pure silliness, let’s say there are two cities that each have a park that needs to be refurbished. The first city finds a coalition of business owners and private citizens who pony up the $50,000 for the refurbishing. The second city uses public funds. There’s an argument to be made that the second city is not wisely spending taxpayer money, just as it’s possible that the business owners in the first city might not get what they think they may get back from their investment (good publicity). But what I don’t agree with is the idea that the actual job of refurbishing the park will be done more or less efficiently depending upon which avenue is chosen. The idea that those being paid by a for-profit entity will work harder than those being paid the same rate by a government entity has no basis in any reality that I’m familiar with, yet it’s an article of faith for so many. The issue of accountability usually appears in that theory as well, but anyone who’s ever worked in the private sector can tell you that massive inefficiencies and beaurocracies exist in for-profit entities as well.

Leave it to our friend Stefan to take this idea and go careering over the hills with it.

Last weekend I asked readers to suggest a word to represent the opposite of “Statism”. Thanks to all who participated in the ensuing discussion. Among the best suggestions: classical liberalism, small-l libertarianism, objectivism, Americanism, capitalism. My personal favorite, suggested by Eric Earling, “civic entrepreneurialism”. That best captures the spirit of what I was looking for — civic engagement based on private enterprise, as opposed to state coercion. But I’d still prefer a single snazzy word to represent the concept.

Incidentally, the concept of private initiative in lieu of state coercion is, IMHO, the preferred alternative not only where it is traditionally proposed (e.g. education, social services), but also for traditionally social conservative issues. Take, for example, abortion. This merits a longer post, but if the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, wouldn’t it be more effective for private organizations to deliver positive messages to change people’s minds about the issue, than to expect government intervention to solve the problem?

After I read this post, I sat back in my chair, stroked my goatee, looked up at the ceiling, read it again, thought about driving down the coast this summer, paced around the room a few times, read it a third time, rubbed my temples for a minute and then just turned the computer off. After a few days, I think I’ve got it.

Going back to the example with the parks, Stefan has actually convinced himself that not only can private enterprise refurbish the park more efficiently than government can for that $50,000, but it can do a number of things that government is completely incapable of doing as well.

It’s true that there are a number of things that government can’t do. Following drug policy, I’m well aware of what the limits of government are. Whether it was alcohol prohibition of the 20s or the current drug prohibition, people in our government have been trying to do the impossible. It just can’t deter people from exhibiting irrational behavior, and drug addictions are irrational behaviors. If those irrational behaviors have been shown to be detrimental to others, we obviously demand the government deal with that person, but putting them in jail doesn’t “fix” their irrational behavior – even when the sentence they are given is justified. This is why government-run drug treatment programs have been shown to be very cost effective from a taxpayer standpoint.

But this is very different from establishing rules or openly participating in a marketplace, where people overwhelmingly display more rational behaviors. People may not always make the smartest decisions when it comes to their own finances or running a large corporation, but they tend to have a rational basis for their decisions. As a result, government can be much more effective at using prison or financial penalty as a deterrent and to get people to play by the rules. There will always be a small subset of people who will act irrationally out of greed, and just as those whose drug addictions cause them to violate the freedom of others, they should still be sent to jail (or fined), even it doesn’t deter their irrational behavior without counseling or other psychological help.

For Stefan, and the Sound Politics nut squad, government can’t do anything at all, and beyond that, who knows what things they’ve tried and failed at that the free market can do! People are still having abortions? Hell, we haven’t unleashed the grand power of capitalism at that scourge. A few Wal-Mart funded PSA’s and the abortions just disappear. Haven’t solved drug addiction? Give Bank of America the keys. Can’t defeat terrorism? Try Blackwater (oh wait, we already did that).

Even though government has no ability to make people act responsibly if their motivations are irrational, it does have the ability to be responsible in dealing with those who are acting rationally. In other words, government is mainly useless in changing behaviors done in the pursuit of pleasure, since those behaviors tend to be impulsive or irrational, but it can be useful in dealing with those done in pursuit of profit. The pursuit of profit is a major motivator in life, but it’s not the only one, and government can utilitize other motivators like patriotism, compassion, and scientific curiosity to accomplish things as well. It’s just imperative that we hold the people we put in government accountable for what they’re doing.

Glenn Greenwald’s new book is now available for pre-order. The book is called A Tragic Legacy – How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. Anyone who’s ever read Greenwald’s fantastic blog knows that he’s one of the sharpest critics of the Bush Administration, and this book appears to be aimed right at the heart of why this band of fools has done so much damage to the country. From his post today:

The central purpose of the book is to examine what has happened to the United States for the last six years under the Bush presidency. That is the “Bush legacy” — our national character and national identity have been fundamentally degraded, our moral standing and credibility in the world eroded to previously unthinkable depths, our government engaged in the very behavior which, for decades, we have collectively deplored, our trust in America’s governmental and journalistic institutions reduced virtually to zero, and our country placed on a plainly unsustainable course as a result of the militarized, imperial role we are choosing to play in the world.

At the heart of this process lies a binary moralistic view of the world, one which seeks to define every conflict and political challenge, both foreign and domestic, as a battle of Good versus Evil. The crux of this mindset is the continuous identification of an Enemy, one which embodies Evil and which must be stopped, typically destroyed, at all costs. No competing considerations, no rational arguments, no counter-balancing objectives, not even constraints of reality or resources, can compete with the moral imperative of this mission. The mission of destroying Evil trumps all.

In support of this ideology, they’ve been masters of using fear to rally support for their particular causes, regardless of whether that fear is valid. They used 9/11 to get us to fear Saddam and support the most boneheaded military excursion in U.S. history. They use the fear of drugs to fill our jails with minorities and strip away our 4th Amendment rights. They use a fear of “socialism” to try to dismantle government safety nets. They’ve won elections by using the fear of immigrants and gays to rally a nativist base that identifies with the Good vs. Evil mentality. But it’s finally backfiring as the administration is forced to deal with the nuances of the immigration problem and the high percentages of younger voters who are appalled by homophobia and sick of neverending wars. I’m looking forward to seeing how Greenwald put together this narrative.

Our favorite conservative blogger, Jesus’ General, took a little break this weekend and turned over the keys to some of us Frenchmen. Darryl and I have both sent out some letters.