UPDATE: Looks like embedding isn’t working right now, video is here.
UPDATE 2: A happy ending to an ugly saga involving a local police officer who had the courage to speak out against the drug war.
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Troll will appreciate that video for sure. Better than an ep of 24 for sure to that troll.
Speaking of which, anyone catch 24 the other night?
Same old bullshit. Here’s what 24 teaches:
Torture is necessary sometimes. If the clock is ticking, don’t hesitate to use it.
Torture is effective. The good guys who “get results” from torture never kill the bad guy. The good guys just get the info they need and the bad guys suffers for a bit. Big whoop!
Torture entails no discernible consequences. So what if a few people associated with the “bad guys” get mad at the good guys for torture?
Best of all, torture is entertaining.
So stop worrying, relax and enjoy torture porn on 24.
Memo to Staff:
As employees of a public agency, you are not paid to think! That’s what the city hires managers for, and you’re not management. Independent thinking by line staff only leads to confusion. If the chief wanted you to have opinions, he would have issued them to you along with your badge and sidearm. Memorizing the Manual of Procedure evinces maturity and good judgment, and is your best assurance of job security. You are not authorized to modify the department’s established procedures in the field! If the chief wanted you to do make policy, he would have made you all assistant chiefs. This department has only one assistant chief, and it is not you. If you have any questions about what the policy is, ask your sergeant. He is there to help you.
Assistant Chief, for the Chief
P.S., Just a reminder, all press inquiries must go through the Public Information Officer, and speaking to the press without authorization is a terminating offense.
Here’s a real example from “The Real War” by British military historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart:
“Originally the French fortresses were not under the control of the field army, but Joffre used the examples of Liege and Namur as an excuse to persuade the French government to ‘declass’ Verdun as a fortress, and … drained it of its men and equipment. …
“For some time, rumors had percolated through to Paris about the inadequate state of the Verdun defenses, and in December Gallieni, as Minister of War, had written to Joffre asking for information and an assurance that they should be developed.
“Joffre’s reply might well be framed and hung up in all the bureaus of officialdom the world over …. Rebutting the suggestions, he added: ‘But since these apprehensions are founded on reports which allege defects in the state of the defenses, I request you to … specify their authors. I cannot be a party to soldiers under my command bringing before the Government, by channels other than the hierarchic channel, complaints or protests concerning the execution of my orders. … It is calculated to disturb profoundly the spirit of discipline in the Army.'”
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Needless to say, in any bureaucratic organization, the most grievous offense a maverick underling can commit is to be proven right. During 1914-1918, after calamities befell the French army, the first officers to get sacked were those who predicted the disasters. It is ever so, everywhere, timelessly.
As for Sergeant Wender, I’m not so sure this is such a happy ending. The article says he got his job back, but he won’t wear a Mountlake Terrace PD uniform again, and probably will never be a cop again.
Being a lawyer, I’ve seen this type of legal settlement before, and I know what it is.
This case did not end with the employer saying, “we made a mistake,” it ended with the employer saying, “we don’t want to fight anymore because it’s costing us too much.”
To the reporter and the general public, that may look like vindication, but to hiring managers it says, “we’re paying to make a toxic employee go away.”
It appears the settlement was structured to keep Wender on the payroll until he qualifies for retirement. Two years of paid leave is no endorsement of his work. In government, getting paid to not work is a death sentence for future employment.
The $812,500 settlement looks big, but according to the article, half went to restore retirement benefits, and some of the rest is future salary. Maybe there’ll be enough left after Wender’s attorneys get paid to make him whole on back pay, in which case he will have done better than most terminated employees who sue, but there’s little or no compensation for what he suffered.
For all the lip service paid to whistleblowers and reformers, neither society nor the legal system respects or rewards people for bucking the system. Most employees know this, or sense it, and that’s most turn their heads away from things they know are stupid, or wrong, or illegal. Most can’t afford to pay the price of speaking truth to power, which in the workplace, is suicide. There, what counts is power, not truth, and when employees challenge employer power, employer power protects itself. Yes, the employer may pay a settlement in the end. But in this case, the employer paid it with either insurance money or taxpayer money, and the employer is still in power and the employee is no longer employed in his profession and will not be employed in his profession again.
It is ever so.
Of course, if you don’t work, you don’t have any of these problems! I don’t work! There are no complexities to not working. No difficult moral decisions to make. No temptation to change policies or criticize boneheaded bosses. No hard choices about blowing the whistle on a crooked employer. All I have to do is sit on my fat rabbit ass getting paid for not working!
I don’t have to work because I own my pension. My pension is my money. None of it is taxpayer money. It came out of my paychecks and it is my personal property. Life sucks when you have to get income by being someone else’s employee. Owning your sources of income and not owing any debts is the only way to go. Owners are respected, employees are not. Owners have power, employees have none. Owners give orders, employees take orders. Only by owning can you think for yourself instead of being told how to think and what to do. That’s why I don’t work anymore. Work sucks. Nobody should work!
Our tax system disrespects work, too. Wages are taxed at higher rates than any other type of income. If you are a wage earner, you get about $10,000 of exemptions; if you are an heir, you get a $2 million exemption before you pay a cent of taxes on your inheritance income. If you are a big shareholder, chairman, president, and CEO, you can tax-deduct your private jet as a business expense; but if you are a worker on the shop floor, you can’t even deduct your gas to work. In my tax bracket, the money I make from dividends and capital gains is taxed 1/3rd as much as money I earn as wages for working. Clearly, Congress doesn’t want me to work, because the tax code punishes me for getting money by working. It couldn’t be plainer.
Well, I just keep my mouth shut and do what I’m told! Congress told me not to work, so I don’t.
I say, those who go along, get along! Okay, so maybe Wender has more moral fiber than I do. I’m just a fucking rabbit. But I have more natural fiber than he does. He doesn’t eat grass.
Roger- In the agency I manage, I expect adopted plans to be followed. This can be done two ways, do it as written, or rewrite the plan to adapt for conditions.
And I or a designee are always available should quick adaptation be needed.
Funny how some of the same people on this blog who justified our country nuking Nagasaki and Hiroshima, are outraged by this video where one woman is killed and a house is ransacked.
@8
The main difference (as has been explained to you several times) is that Nagasaki and Hiroshima hastened a surrender and quickly led to peace, while what Israel is doing only guarantees more conflict.
Got it yet?
@9
So if Israel dropped a nuclear bomb on Gaza City, and that in turn hastened a surrender and quickly led to peace, you would support that?
The big Ponzi.
Gaza is to Israel what the Warsaw ghetto was to the Nazis. The persecuted have become the persecutors.
Israeli belief in the rhetoric that the holy land is somehow inherently theirs coupled with denial, indifference, and defiance towards the real grievances of the other people in Palestine have all led away from a fair settlement of the Palestinian question and given root to militant groups like Hamas. Who they now are attempting to destroy.
10 – I wouldn’t but you would for sure.
RR @ 4: The Seargent in this case was fortunate to be working under civil service laws, which provide some protections against firing except “for cause”. The general rule in Washington State is that employment is “at will”, and an employee can be fired for cause, no cause, or just because the manager has a bad case of indigestion or a hangover and wants to take it out on someone. The exceptions to this general rule is that a person can’t be fired if the reason behind the firing is one which is prohibited as being against public policy. Some of the more well-known categories of such prohibited firings are those done as part of discrimination against a protected class (race, sex, etc.), as retaliation against filing a sexual harrassment complaint or a worker’s compensation claim, or if it’s prohibited by a collective-bargaining agreement (union contract) or any other written employment contract.
Of course, employers are always trying to get around those few exemptions. One of the more odious is to require the employee to sign an “arbitration agreement” as a condition of hiring or continued employment. Since such arbitration agreements are becoming so common, it’s unlikely that an employee can simply refuse to sign one and go to work elsewhere.
An arbitration agreement between two equally-balanced persons or businesses isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes private arbitration has some advantages over a court fight. A hearing can usually happen sooner, pre-trial discovery is less onerous, and since there is no appeal the decision is conclusive.
But when the parties aren’t “balanced”, it’s seldom a good thing. Most arbitration agreements simply state that the arbitration will be held under the rules of the American Arbitration Association, or some similar entity. Those rules usually provide for a three-arbitrator panel, and state that each party will name an arbitrator, and those two will name the third arbitrator. But then there’s the catch: both sides have to pony up their expected share of the expenses of arbitration, including the fees paid to the arbitrators, who are usually attorneys.
Now these expenses are not small change. Instead of a taxpayer-funded judge, you have three private lawyers all charging their regular hourly rates ($300 to $450 per hour, I would guess). This includes not only the time they actually spend hearing the case, but time spent in pre-trial motions, reading pre-trial briefs, and afterwards reviewing testimony notes, reading depositions, discussing the decision, and (for at least one of them) writing the decision.
In short, it’s not that unusual for a private arbitration with a three-day hearing to cost upwards of $100,000 in arbitration fees. And the plaintiff has to pay one-half of those fees – in advance. If they don’t have the money, the case doesn’t go forward. And this is ON TOP of whatever the employee has to pay their own attorney to pursue the case, either on an hourly or a contingent-fee basis.
Now, this isn’t so much a problem for the employer. They can pay the money. And the dirty secret is, they don’t expect to ever have to pay it. Because most of the time, the employee can’t raise their share, so the employer is off the hook. The employee’s claims will never be heard. Even if they were fired as a pattern of blatant racial discrimination, or because they dared to tell the hospital that they were injured on the job (resulting in an automatic workman’s compensation claim), their claim will never be heard.
@7 Oh yes, it must be so, for many reasons. That’s why Joffre was right on principle, and the fact his tactical stupidity cost half a million unwitting Frenchmen their lives is merely a side issue. After all, he wouldn’t have been put in charge if he wasn’t the smartest guy in the shop, would he? Er, would he … ?
@14 You think as a lawyer I don’t know this?
There is a common misperception that American law is about justice. It’s not.
@16 (continued*) It’s about expedient resolution of disputes for the benefit of those most able to pay for the process.
In short, American law, like the rest of American society, is utterly dominated by power and money. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
* Goldy’s edit function works so poorly on my computer that I sometimes have to post my comments in pieces. In this case, I had to continue comment #15 in a separate post because the edit function took so long to load it timed out before it finished loading.
I went to law school largely for altruistic reasons, and looking back on my 30-year law career, I’m largely disappointed. I went into government because I couldn’t see myself working for the selfish interests of corporations or individuals in ways that are often against the public interest and/or unfair to the parties on the other side of the dispute; but even in government, I found policies and outcomes ruled by power structures instead of concepts of justice or fairness. We live in an unfair world, and efforts to make the world fairer seem to consistently fail. OUr legal system, in particular, is more hindrance than help in that respect.
I really love this quote:
Libertarian said:
“Roger Rabbit, does it feel good to be a lying ideologue? What does it feel like to be an blind and arrogant liar?”
Must have missed your point and Krugman’s ‘analysis.’ Did you miss my point that FDR campaigned in 1932 for balanced budgets? For an end to Hoover’s extravagant spending? And that FDR cut spending 31% in 1933 before jacking up spending via off-budget creative accounting?
Did you miss Brookings’ point about the 1936 recovery? That it happened in spite of the New Deal, not because of it, during the prolonged period that most New Deal legislaiton was invalidated by the Supreme Court?
That there’s another possible explanation for the Depression of 1937? (Fiscal restraint is the explanation offered by Krugman Keynesians for the resurgence of manic recession in FDR’s second term. Perhaps a bigger and better explanation for New Deal immiseration was the advent of Social Security, which quickly pulled $2 billion in payroll taxes out of the economy long before returning a damn dime or dollar to taxpayers.)
Amity Shlaes: Read her Forgotten Man and was utterly baffled and bewildered by it. Don’t know what point she was trying to make about Wendel Wilkie, and he was the main point of her book.
Playing Republican: Hoover’s activism, intervention, and reckless spending were unprecedented. Perhaps you and Krugman mean that FDR was trying to play Grover-Cleveland Democrat in his 1937/1938 attempt to balance the budget during bad times.
I gave credit, right here on HA, to FDR for presiding during the period in which unemployment dropped from 25% to about 15% (although it was back up to almost 20% during the Roosevelt Recession.)
Some of the work created by New Deal alphabet agencies was good work; some was nonsense. But for several groups of Americans, there was no work at all. ‘Indian’ reservations were badly served by FDR. They didn’t get a new deal or square deal until Nixon.
Black sharecroppers through the South were demonstrably damaged by the New Deal, which wrote checks to comparitively rich landowners for not growing food while some Americans went hungry and while some agencies of FDR’s government were importing from abroad the foods and fibers that our farmers were paid to not grow. USA farmers paid not to grow or plant means that their sharecropper slaves were suddently superfluous. Not needed and not wanted.
It’s said that wild-spending Hoover, given credit by Moley and Tugwell for being the daddy of the New Deal, is reviled for handing out relief to banks while not handing out relief to hungry men and women. So imagine my surprise last week when I read that Senator Hugo Black gained prominence by his vicious denunciation of Hoover’s plan for equitable relief: equal payments to blacks (no pun) and whites. In 1937 Democrat Hugo Black was ready to launch a vicious denunciation of a Republican bill against lynching. Then FDR appointed Black to the Supreme Court. Then reporters learned that Black had been an Exalted Cyclops in the Alabama Klan, and that he held an honorary lifetime Klan membership.
Other than that, it was liberal historian Alan Brinkley, not I, who pronounced the New Deal a failure. My parents, married in 1932, also pronounced it a failure, but what did they know? They were living in a shack on the Crow Reservation. FDR may have put America to work, as Steve’s anecdote suggests, but FDR didn’t put the Crow Indians to work, or my dad, or the sharecroppers of Hugo Black’s sunny southland.
Knew it! Roger Rabbit, the fuckshit lawyer who is a self-hating goat in really bad drag, is a closet altruist.
Oh gawd. What part of Iron Triangle, which part of three, didn’t you understand? Did you believe that the regulatory state regulates not for the public interest, whatever that is, but for the interests of corporatist and bureaucratic power?
I mean, think about it. Why, for fifty years, did Big Business acquiesce to Big Government and the statist state? It’s because diseconomies of scale permit big businesses to absorb and pass along exorbitabnt costs of regulation while freezing out upstart competition that can’t absorb the cost of Big Politics bureaucracy.
Fairness! Justice! Hot air!
Well it looks like the libtard MSM is getting their just desserts.
“The press corps, most of us, don’t even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who’ve been advised they will be called upon that day”
This is too funny for the guy who was going to “change” Washington…
Looks like more CA peeps are leaving. Amazing what raising taxes on the populace does… Let alone the other described ills
Hey, Puddybud.
Another self identified Reagan Republican is running the show in CA and it’s financially ruined. Seems to be a pattern here doens’t it?
Let me ask you a question: How many times do you conservatives have to get hit over the head with a hammer before you realize it hurts????
Oh, and BTW, Happy New Years.
OM Goodness. Looks like Puddy was prescient on the auto bailout. GM did it. Too funny. Subprime car loans. Even re-run HAs clueless idiot and StillBentOVer can get a GM car loan now…
“Lesson learned? Don’t be silly. In December, GMAC got $5 billion from the government’s $17.9 billion bailout of the domestic auto industry, which Sen. Dodd supported, and immediately lowered its lending standards. No longer would buyers need a credit rating of 700 or higher. Now, people qualify with scores as low as 621, which is 2 points above “poor” and 102 points below America’s median. As columnist George Will put it, GMAC is using taxpayers’ dollars (more accurately, money borrowed against tax receipts far into the future) to issue subprime loans.”
Remember that commercial with the white dude with curly brown hair trying to get a car loan and his credit rating was 619? Well he would almost qualify with GMAC.
GBS Happy New Year to you. Hey I gots a hard head.
When you wanna do lunch? PacMan asked. Also you selling da Porsche? Which one?
I guess Puddy forgot to publish this last month. Oh well I did promise the wife less time on HA.
“Two months ago, as its funding sources began to run low, GMAC said it would not offer car loans to customers with credit scores below 700. After the move by Treasury, GMAC said it would lower its credit score limit to 621.”
The Auto Bail out.
Conservatives, especially you “free market” conservatives no longer get to lecture us about fiscal policies. Period.
Reaganism, like Marxism, sounds good in “theory” but fails in exectution.
I find it rather amusing that those Reagan Republicans got all worried about loaning the Big 3 a few billion dollars, but remained obidently silent when George W. Bush, As Commander-In-Chief, authorized $8.9 Billion dollars in American tax payer CASH to be flown into Iraq, and fucking lost after it arrived.
Where was the “outrage” then?
I’ll tell you: it you weren’t instructed to be outraged by FOX News, which we now know, thanks to Scotty McClellan, is nothing more than the propoganda machine of the Bush White House and the RNC.
Yeah, blow it yer ass.
GBS I googled “Schwarzenegger Reagan Republican” and he ain’t a Reagan Republican
GBS, if you go back and check the HA archives I agreed with you when you brought this missing money up. Have Goldy roll the tapes.
But unlike others here on the left. I ain’t stuck on stupid.
Puddybud,
Only selling the Porsche if my man needs a car to get to work.
It’s the one you saw when we had lunch at the taco bus.
Yeah, let’s do lunch soon, man. After, Obama is sworn in. You know, so we have something positive to talk about.
Peace. I’m out.
Treasury designee a tax dodger. Too funny.
Puddy finds them easily…
Puddy, you’re right. Ah-nold is a Nixon Republican. That’s his hero. Google THAT!
I don’t know what’s worse a Nixon Republican or A Reagan Republican.
Fuck, what am I saying???? It’s a tie!!!
yep, ol’ Timmy boy better get his shit together. And, Obama’s team needs to vet better.
That’s an easy one to ferret out. But, on the other hand, the Wall St. guys to like him, so this one may be over looked.
And this is too funny too. I’m surprised the re-run eye for porn didn’t comment on it.
So will they stone is ass? Or will he have a choice in his “death”?
He was one of those who had a girl killed in prison for holding hands in public with her boyfriend and her parents were told to shut up about it.
But GBS, Obama was gonna change Washington. Yet he placed many Clintonites back into power.
Hamadan Province is the same area where a young female doctor was arrested and later murdered for sitting with her fiancee alone in a public park in 2007.
Doctor Zahra Bani Yaghoob arrested by the head quarter of Basig’s Militia at a public park in Hamadan while she was walking with her fiancé. The couple was stopped by the militia and requested to show a legal marriage certificate. For the reason of not having that marriage certificate handy to show, she was arrested and 2 days latter she died suspiciously.”
marcus schrenker, another one.
who was it that swindled and tried to fake his death a few months ago, steve israel?
i hope some of you open your eyes.
He must mean this.
http://www.horsesass.org/?p=14.....ent-370196
Indeed he is as sick as the ugly, corrupt party he shills for.
and here comes the Aaron Dixon deflections.
Rerun@39: Glad you keep posting it. Must really strike a nerve! Conservative at home, clueless librul idiot on HA!
A house divided can’t stand. Maybe that explains the ramblings of re-run.
Meaghan Cheung – Securities and Exchange Commission Attorney gave to Barack Obama $250
136 W 24TH ST New York NY
So who is this person on the SEC?
Madoff, the gift that keeps giving…
Wow I guess we can blame global warming for 40 below.
@42: Only the truly ignorant think it doesn’t get cold in the winter and in the mountains. Citing a cold snap that happens every winter as any kind of evidence only shows ignorance of weather trends and real data. that is like citing a single data point among a trillion and saying – “see I told you so”. Anyone doing that would flunk logic 101.
40 – Glad? Ok. Here it is again.
http://www.horsesass.org/?p=14.....ent-370196
You’re a sick man. Get help..
Nope re-run@44. You’re an idiot. Remedial education is a waste on you!
Hey Nevercorrectnotbright: How are those Henry Paulsen facts treating you? Did you copy them down for your next worthless argument?