Wednesday, December 03, 2014

AND THEN LET'S REPEAL THAT STATIST CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS.

Mad about the Eric Garner verdict? Think it's another case of cops killing a black man with impunity? Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds wants to set you straight. The Perfesser says it has nothing to do with race -- in fact, he wonders what all these black people are upset about:
Listening to NPR on the way back from the UT Studio — I taped a segment on this for The Independents on Fox Business tonight — they kept stressing that it was a WHITE officer who had killed a BLACK MAN. You could pretty much hear the capitals in their voices. They’d never stress race that way in other circumstances. And it’s not clear that excessive force by police is especially a racial problem. In Alabama, we had the shooting of a unarmed white 18-year old by a black cop; in Utah, we had the Dillan Taylor shooting, also unarmed, also not prosecuted. Racializing the issue makes it more divisive and less likely to be addressed.
I'll see the Perfesser's two cases and raise him four unarmed black guys and that was in one month -- and there's plenty more where that came from.

Of course, if you've been living in the United States of America for a while and paying attention, you probably don't need the explanation.

The Perfesser also has a solution:
If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.
Because privatization worked so well with prisons. Jesus, these people are so reliably wrong that when they finally object to a cop killing a black guy, it's for crackpot reasons.

UPDATE. Reynolds is just one of the conservatives who are outraged by Garner not because of this "black lives matter" thing you hippies think is important, but because free enterprise:
Whereas many conservatives said Wilson was simply doing his job, some on Wednesday said Pantaleo was enforcing a punitive big government policy. And while Brown was nothing more than a "thug," Garner was the victim of the dreaded nanny state. 
"A man is killed for selling *unlicensed* drugs by a cop who walks even though it's all on video: Putting the 'police' in pink police state," tweeted New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on Wednesday. 
Douthat was one of several conservative media personalities to seize on New York's law against selling single, untaxed cigarettes.
Whereas if they'd killed him for walking in the middle of the street, well, no big whoop.

UPDATE 2. CNN:
Rand Paul blames Eric Garner's death on high NYC cigarette tax
The still-alive white guy selling you smokes out of the trunk of his car is laughing his ass off.

UPDATE 3. In comments, Kevin Berger reminds us that Ferguson is already sort of a libertarian privatizer's paradise, as it makes its poorest citizens fund the city with user fees masquerading as criminal justice. New York, on the other hand, is in the usage of Robert Tracinski a "nanny state" that taxes regular people, which is why he and every other asshole is rushing to declare that the first dead black guy they ever troubled over is really all about taxes and race has nothing to do with it, except insofar as liberals are (I swear to God he said this) "hoping for a new series of contentious, racially charged killings."

It's the new wingnut fad, alright, and here's proof: Look at the change in that ancient authoritarian John Podhoretz. When de Blasio was elected, Podhoretz was telling us that the ooga-booga barricades had broken down and it would be Crown Heights Riots every day from now on -- why, just last week he was telling New York Post readers that we were "Turning on the cops: Forgetting what crime was like," and blubbering over the end of stop-and-frisk. Now he's telling us that we don't need Broken Windows policing anymore! Man, they're good at message discipline -- what a pity that their message sucks.

UPDATE 4. OFFS:


Yeah -- Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, and Eric Garner; I can see the connection. Hey, I wonder what tax Rumain Brisbon was resisting?

260 comments:

  1. sharculese10:26 PM

    Glenn Reynolds demands simple solutions to complex problems


    Glenn Reynolds is a libertarian.


    But I repeat myself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Because privatization worked so well with prisons.


    Not to mention "security contracting." It worked so very well in Iraq, I don't see why we shouldn't have whatever Blackwater is calling itself now running around in all our cities.


    There's a point that's come up a few times in the debate over the various education privatization schemes, and I feel it's valid here, too: When you argue for privatization in areas that are subject to civilian oversight, what you're really saying is that democracy has failed and we need to reconsider feudalism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.


    Perhaps every community can organize a "neighborhood watch", appointing
    "watch captains" who would be responsible for apprehending suspicious persons moving through said neighborhoods.


    What could possibly go wrong with that?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think you're being unfair to the cronies and kleptocrats who would stand to benefit from privatization schemes. Why do you hate America so much?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Racializing the issue makes it more divisive and less likely to be addressed."Yeah, you know those other cases of unaccountable police violence that none of us gave a flying fuck about until all the conservative outlets started shrieking about them in unison a few days ago, for some mysterious reason? Yeah, well, you haven't seen white people riot over those cases we previously didn't give two shits about before we could use it as a club against President Blackety-black and all those Negro subhuman filth being whipped into 'Obama Riots' by the 'corrupt black leadership,' have you? So stop bringing race into it."

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not enough armbands to go around?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not enough hearses to cart off the resultant casualties.

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  8. AGoodQuestion10:59 PM

    The War on Drugs and the War on Terror have made police departments throughout the country more militarized and predisposed to excessive force, which had never gone away to begin with. This issue is, in fact, distinct from the racial one. However, Reynolds' conclusion that the issue of police racism must therefore not exist makes him... the ideal contributor to Diapers Media, really.

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  9. AGoodQuestion11:01 PM

    Side note: Not to alienate this blog's sponsors, but it seems like Rant, Inc could rename itself "Assholes Mouthing Off."

    ReplyDelete
  10. AGoodQuestion11:04 PM

    "Suspicious", nudge nudge, a nod's as good as a wink to a blind man.

    ReplyDelete
  11. edroso11:04 PM

    I give you Charles C.W. Cooke, militia enthusiast:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/393729/defense-antigovernment-militias-charles-c-w-cooke

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  12. Shorter Phlegm Reynolds: Since any single miscarriage of justice proves that the entire system is a failure the only solution is to have no laws whatsoever so the police won't have any excuse to kill people. Did I mention that by happy coincidence this just happens to align with my slavering utopian fantasies?

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  13. StringOnAStick11:14 PM

    In the world Reynolds imagines, the police won't have any excuse to kill people, primarily because they won't need one in order to kill whomever they choose, entirely free of consequences. The sad fact that this is a difference only of degree to today is left to the reader to mourn.

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  14. Ellis_Weiner11:14 PM

    "If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize."


    Right on, brother. And if gas companies can't control fracking enough to prevent earthquakes, flaming water from the tap, and pollution of aquifers, then we shouldn't have private companies. Expropriate 'em all and nationalize.

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  15. Megalon11:19 PM

    Didn't the Black Panthers try something like that once? I seem to recall the Reynolds of this country, for SOME REASON, weren't very happy about it.

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  16. Charles C. Wanker Cooke:"If the Huey P. Newton gun club wants to march around Dallas protecting black citizens, so be it."

    When you hear about my black friends and I camped out on Cooke's lawn day and night with our AR-15's "protecting him" - remember this moment.

    ReplyDelete
  17. KatWillow11:26 PM

    Cliven Bundy.

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  18. KatWillow11:28 PM

    Those same feudalistic people who have very heavy personal security, and live in constant fear that the Poors (and Blahs and Hispaniks etc) will start shooting at them. One reason feudalism worked as long as it did: NO guns! And for sure no smartphone cameras.

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  19. DocAmazing11:31 PM

    Serfs up!

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  20. Charles C. W. Cooke:"If the Huey P. Newton gun club wants to march around Dallas protecting black citizens, so be it."

    When you hear about my black friends and I camped out on Cooke's lawn day and night with our AR-15's "protecting him" - remember this moment.

    ReplyDelete
  21. KatWillow11:33 PM

    The Black Death made a big dent in feudalism... maybe that's why Murdoch's "Fox" folk are so frightened of EBOLA, another type of "black death".

    ReplyDelete
  22. John Wesley Hardin12:16 AM

    Bad cops a problem? Just fire 'em all and privatize! You can then choose whichever private police force you can afford, or none at all if you want. Of course, you -could- choose to just have tighter public oversight of the police, or address the problem though other legislative means, but that's that statist way out. You don't want to be one of them commies, do ya?

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  23. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:19 AM

    A Pink Po-leece State. Mmmmkay. Googlegooglegoogle. Seriously, all I can think of is that, ala Newt Gingrich, this guy sounds like a Phillistine's idea of what a philosopher sounds like. Although, being no philostipher myself, I could be wrong, and I offer apologies to either the Phillistines or the philosophers, whoever's got the best case...

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  24. Another Kiwi12:22 AM

    One can hear The Old Perfessor's brain cog graunching around. "It's not gonna be me that gets shot. It's gonna be bad black people. Where do I sign up?"

    ReplyDelete
  25. hellslittlestangel12:31 AM

    If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.

    We could hire some of those nice accountable Pinkerton fellows.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Another Kiwi12:33 AM

    This one of those things where we should force our children to go out into the wilderness so that they can experience the wonders of an ER

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  27. That's a feature, not a bug!

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  28. If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.

    This is so dangerously stupid, it just might catch on.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Socialist Cubone12:55 AM

    Would love to see how many people complaining about people injecting race into the Garner/Rice/Brown/etc. controversies, were totally freaking out about the knockout game.

    ReplyDelete
  30. If we're willing to privatize the police, why not privatize the courts?


    What do you think arbitrators are?

    ReplyDelete
  31. Rand Paul blames...

    Did it never occur to the framers of the cigarette tax how it would turn otherwise peaceful police officers into violent animals??

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  32. You know how it is: If he would have used the phrase "bread and circuses," he would have sounded like every other freshman poli-sci major complaining about consumerism. "Pink police state" sounds a lot more cerebral even though it's really dumb if you think about it at all.

    ReplyDelete
  33. montag21:32 AM

    Oh, certainly. In fact, in all of those instances I cite, that's pretty much the way things work, except that they aren't branded and marketed so obviously (and ludicrously). Aspects of the courts are already privatized, with predictable results.

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  34. sigyn2:12 AM

    Nestle would be all over that. "Sam, I'm told the executioner is having trouble finding a good vein. While he's digging around, let's pause for a word from our sponsor: Purina Dog Chow, tastier than a condemned man's last meal!"

    ReplyDelete
  35. Another Kiwi2:20 AM

    Hold ma beer, Imma privatise the police.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Tehanu2:49 AM

    "The J.P.Morgan Chase Bank and Police Force offers a premium account that
    will protect the lucky individual able to pay not only from harm, but
    from arrest, as well..."

    Ever read Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books? There's a whole planet (Jackson's Whole, in fact) run exactly like that. Arrest orders are sold on the stock exchange there.

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  37. ken_lov3:05 AM

    "The Independents on Fox Business"


    Winner of this year's oxymoron award.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Jaime Oria4:08 AM

    "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be philosophers..."

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  39. Gromet4:55 AM

    Yeah, these libs, always bringing race into things -- Mike Brown was an unarmed teen who refused to pay for a box of cigars, so naturally he got shot dead by the authorities, whereas Bundy refused to pay for hundreds of acres and waved a gun around, so the authorities backed down. See? The law treated them equally, and color never entered into it.

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  40. Gromet5:02 AM

    If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.


    Well, yeah. It's well established that privatization increases accountability. Just ask anyone who had a mortgage at Countrywide, or who has cable, or who has a job at a corporation.

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  41. Maybe Walmarts is out of brown shirts....

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  42. sharculese6:02 AM

    He's trying to sound flip but you can tell he really thinks he's being magnanimous by saying black people get private armies too.

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  43. Hardly "utopian". There are far more accurate adjective ... and none so complimentary.

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  44. smut clyde6:26 AM

    I wonder how this "privatized" police force would operate
    Pohl and Kornbluth covered that a LONG time ago.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Chutney DiSalle6:31 AM

    Government places 1,000% tax on cigarettes.

    Man sells individual smokes.

    Government kills man for it.

    Progressives demand more government.

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  46. Chutney DiSalle6:34 AM

    !!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  47. Gabriel Ratchet6:35 AM

    How about shorts, then?

    ReplyDelete
  48. Robert William Alexander Jr.7:10 AM

    Georgia (and some other states) have privatized their Probation system, with predictable results: poor folks are being jailed for being unable to meet the inflated payments (read 'profits for the probation companies') and charged even higher fees for doing so..and then jailed. It's Debtor's prisons squared,or cubed. And, of course, these companies got the contracts in one of odious Gov. Nathan "Shitty" Deal's no bid situations, to prominent contributors..Of course, he was just reelected.

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  49. Robert William Alexander Jr.7:11 AM

    And back then the NRA thought gun licensing and mandatory arms training for owner a good idea...

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  50. Robert William Alexander Jr.7:12 AM

    See above re: Privatized Probation..

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  51. Bizarro Mike7:14 AM

    You could argue that this is already the case with property crime. There isn't much enforcement because you are expected to secure your own relief through insurance.

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  52. No, progressives demand less police murder of people violating misdemeanor tax laws.

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  53. Sure there's accountability in privatized organizations. It just ain't to us.

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  54. Kevin Berger7:24 AM

    Mark Ames on how the Ferguson law enforcement is already for-profit :

    Ferguson is our “libertarian moment,” but not in the way some libertarians want you to believe | PandoDaily
    http://pando.com/2014/09/25/ferguson-is-our-libertarian-moment-but-not-in-the-way-some-libertarians-want-you-to-believe/

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  55. Chutney DiLove7:36 AM

    You guys created this big government monster, bill. You can't say you weren't warned. Be careful what you wish for.

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  56. Well, the most obvious thing that could go wrong is....


    ...SKITTLES!

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  57. Reynolds and the rest tut-tutting yet another instances of fatal police force being used against an unarmed Black really showcases a number of things. First, of course, is the willful deafness to racism--these killings CAN'T be racists because (list any number of completely unrelated things from Black-on-Black crime to auto accidents).

    Second is the complete lack of empathy, whether for the victims, their families, or the impact on the Black community/ies.

    Finally, there's the creation of yet another rip on the fabric of society as Blacks are forcefully told (yet again) that America really has no place for them. Every Black person in this country knows that brushing up against law enforcement when Black leads to no end of unwarranted trouble. Black kids growing up today now have the extra-crunchy topping of knowing the cops can kill you with impunity for any reason at all--or for no reason at all.

    You might think that the mighty brain trusts of the right--VDH, Prof Corncob, Althouse and the rest--would have at least some inkling of history or social science in their craniums: Real-live actual blood-letting revolutions don't being with pasty White folks rising up against paperwork at the DMV. Actual civil wars begin when you take a large class of people and disenfranchise them, crush them economically, deny them justice, and remove hope from their existence. It's this last that Reynolds and the Right are working toward, with Blacks as the primary target, and Hispanics being dragged along as well.

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  58. Our country needs an intervention. Sometimes that's a major war (see: Reich, Third), but in the nuclear age that's, as they used to say, unthinkable, though maybe not so much anymore. In any event, we did have a major war over "the race problem" and as we see, it didn't come close to closing out the issue.


    The feudalistic, authoritarian mindset apparently will always be with us. The hope of liberal self-government is that "the people" will have wisdom enough to recognize this and to use the machinery of self-government to quell its own worst impulse: democracy being in the hands of people who don't believe in democracy. It looks like we're at such a point right now.

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  59. tigrismus8:09 AM

    And it’s not clear that excessive force by police is especially a racial problem.

    Yeah, it is, it's just also clear that it's not ONLY a racial problem.

    ReplyDelete
  60. tigrismus8:14 AM

    Just fire 'em all and privatize!

    And just where does he think the private entities will get employees? After all, all those bad cops are now out of work and looking for employment for which they're qualified and have experience.

    ReplyDelete
  61. The magic ponies would be setting up private corporations to perform the police function. These would be paid with a combination of tax dollars and whatever money the Police Corp. could squeeze from the general populace through fines and property seizures. (Police unions would, of course, be banned, so the actual men and women doing the front-line work would do so for minimum wage plus a small cut of what they bring in. Magic Market incentives!) Overall, it would raise the cost of policing because Police Corp. would have to add a 20% per year profit growth on top of expenses in order for the CEO's stock options to keep quintupling every year.

    The unicorn would be passing legislation that completely indemnifies Police Corp. from all responsibility for any actions it might take in any manner--as well as releasing it from any and all constraints that the Constitution might impose. Being a private corporation and NOT a government entity, Roberts and the Supremes would back that up in a heartbeat--especially is Police Corp. decided to use its power to beat the Jesus both out of and into the people.

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  62. It's not a problem until the children of white upper-middle-class people are getting killed and maimed with the same per-100,000 frequency as the children of minorities. Try having the cops kill a couple thousand White kids every day (which is what it would work out to) and see what the reaction is among White folks.

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  63. I want to hang ten (poachers from the king's lands) with this comment.

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  64. Sadly, this is an actual argument out there in Rightworld. Bundy's Bunch did it right by stiffing the taxpayer for grazing fees and then threatening armed insurrection AND actually shooting at BLM agents. The Bundy Bunch's virtue is proven by how little collateral damage there was.

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  65. Helmut Monotreme8:47 AM

    *gasp*

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  66. They’d never stress race that way in other circumstances.

    Yeah, odd how they would stress the racial component in the case, since there's obviously an equally long history of oppression of both blacks and whites, especially by police.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Atrios9:19 AM

    privatize state law schools

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  68. Real-live actual blood-letting revolutions don't being with pasty White folks rising up against paperwork at the DMV.

    The scary fact is that the people talking loudest these days about that revolution are, indeed, pasty white folks butthurt at the indignities of gay marriage, Hispanic signs in the shops, and limited capacities on gun magazines.

    ReplyDelete
  69. Good thing NYC didn't tax tea!

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  70. Just look at their history of non-violent intervention in labor disputes!

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  71. We are talking about Mr. Reynolds, Dr. Robot Fucker, after all.

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  72. Nobody's laughing in Utah.

    No, really, I think it's against the law there.

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  73. Jackson's Whole always sounded to me like someplace the gLibertarians would get a big stiffy over; too bad we can't ship them all there for real.

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  74. Frances DiChutney9:36 AM

    Government places 1,000% tax on cigarettes.

    Man sells individual smokes.

    Government kills man for it.

    Progressives demand more government.

    This is who they are.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Dystopian.

    Which Glenn would see as positive, god help us.

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  76. There's probably a good sweatshop in Vietnam that can whip some out cheap if they need them.

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  77. mgmonklewis9:51 AM

    My God. As impossible as it sounds, there's nothing so awful that Reynolds, Douthat, and Paul can't somehow make it worse.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Thanks for making this account just to set us straight, Chutney.

    Here's an avatar for you:

    http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/sites/bbcgoodfood.com/files/recipe_images/recipe-image-legacy-id--1067602_11.jpg
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  79. Halloween_Jack9:53 AM

    Ol' Heh-Indeedy thinks that Snow Crash is the best-case scenario, if not an actual blueprint.

    ReplyDelete
  80. mgmonklewis9:55 AM

    Perhaps some kind of "Sturmabteilung." No, no, too hard to say. We need a new name. And some sharp-looking Hugo Boss unies.

    ReplyDelete
  81. mgmonklewis9:57 AM

    Oh, you with your logic. Everybody knows the Libertarian Fairy will sprinkle Rand Dust over everything and solve the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  82. mgmonklewis10:00 AM

    Mr. Kurtz and I would like to join this comment on an excursion up the Congo River. The horror... the horror...

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  83. This is your brains on conservatism.

    Any questions?

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  84. . . . the Libertarian Fairy will sprinkle Rand Dust over everything . . .

    Despite the fact that it contains an ego the size of Jupiter and a sense of entitlement more vast than the known universe, I don't think Rand's head is large enough to supply that much dandruff.

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  85. But . . . but the magic of the market would lead people to simply not buy natural gas from the "bad" companies. And if we pass tort reform so nobody can sue the bad companies, and if we get serious about corporations' right to privacy so they can legally conceal all they're doing, well, that just fixes all the problems, doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  86. glennisw10:08 AM

    I'm sure they'd defend him if he was shot selling crack.Right?

    ReplyDelete
  87. It was a great book, but I wouldn't want to live there.

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  88. Deputy Dan has no friends.

    So he shot a unarmed black kid.

    Now he's a commentator on FAUX, has his own column at TownHall, and is in negotiations for a book deal with Regnery! Who needs friends?

    ReplyDelete
  89. gocart mozart10:16 AM

    This is in line with there views on the economic collapse. The problem was TOO much government regulation of the financial system. Also, deficits are caused by not enough tax cuts. Hey, why not privatize congress or has that already effectively been done?

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  90. John Wesley Hardin10:16 AM

    I think "Rand Dust" was Rand Paul's college dorm code for "cocaine."

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  91. John Wesley Hardin10:21 AM

    And thus the Libertarian mission: "That government of the money, by the money, for the money, shall not perish from the earth."

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  92. John Wesley Hardin10:22 AM

    Oh, very effectively.

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  93. gocart mozart10:24 AM

    (Opens copy of constitution) Show me where it says "black people" in the text of the 2nd amendment? You liberals and your living constitution judicial activist horseshit!

    ReplyDelete
  94. liberals are (I swear to God he said this) "hoping for a new series of contentious, racially charged killings."

    Well, these are the same people who told us we were cheering for a massive slaughter of American soldiers in Iraq, regardless of how many crosses we put up to remind people of the needless sacrifice, so at least they're staying consistent.

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  95. gocart mozart10:26 AM

    Obviously, the solution is to outlaw skittles, toy guns and cigarette taxes.

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  96. gocart mozart10:28 AM

    I suppose he thinks the Civil War was overly racialized also.

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  97. Just look a Enron.

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  98. TGuerrant10:30 AM

    'Zactly. And as when the KGB was disbanded, bad out-of-work cops that don't get hired by Blackwater-Xe-Academi-USA become Walt-White-Plus criminals. (A Walt Whiter shade of pale?)

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  99. Frankie DiChutney10:33 AM

    Government places 1,000% tax on cigarettes.

    Man sells individual smokes.

    Government kills man for it.

    Progressives demand more government.

    Depressingly, this is who they are.

    ReplyDelete
  100. gocart mozart10:33 AM

    Dude, don't give them any ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  101. And of course it was the hated Federals who exercised restraint and backed off. Local police were pissed that they weren't allowed to arrest everybody. It basically cost the sheriff his job.

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  102. FedSec10:38 AM

    Shorter GOP: Everyone else is to blame for Eric Garner's death except the actual officer who killed him.

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  103. Pant oleo didn't kill him, Lucy did!

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  104. FlipYrWhig10:43 AM

    A fine line between "private police force" and "warlordism," n'est-ce pas?

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  105. DN Nation10:44 AM

    Heh indoodle!

    (fires up IE, watches robot pr0n, gets paid handsomely by Tennessee taxpayers)

    ReplyDelete
  106. One of the great moments in internet history was Reason magazine's interview with Neil Stephenson. They asked him what he thought of the libertarian embrace of Snow Crash and he ever so gently and politely reminded them that it was intended to be a distopian vision.

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  107. Bloomberg tried. Motherfucking iced tea!!!

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  108. It must be so hard to live in a world where people point out the fact that men who look like you do can get away with murdering men who don't look like you. I know I'd hate that.



    And rebRAND Paul's outreach to African-Americans remains peachy-keen.

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  109. montag211:02 AM

    Unfortunately, that is an unintended corollary of Poe's Law.

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  110. The penny finally dropped after Charcoal Tuesday.

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  111. DN Nation11:12 AM

    And Deal, in this day and age, is actually a *reasonable* wingnut about this stuff: http://www.georgiapolicy.org/second-adult-criminal-justice-reform-bill-becomes-law/#fQ8Rr

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  112. montag211:17 AM

    And, if further proof of that is necessary, the guy who filmed the police killing Garner, Ramsey Orta, was indicted on weapons charges. Orta claimed that the charges were trumped up by the police as retaliation for filming the incident, but, the grand jury just didn't believe his statements. After all, I mean, who can you trust? The police, or some criminal, or your lyin' eyes?

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  113. Let's compromise: A Black person can own 3/5 of a gun.

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  114. DN Nation11:22 AM

    If space law were a concept worth a shit to actual students, the free market would decide it, no?

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  115. Ever more rapidly, we move toward becoming the conservative paradise of Somalia. Soon, it will all be home schooling, local warlord control, and pirates exercising true liberty.

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  116. Helmut Monotreme11:28 AM

    Can they have 3/5 of a gun?

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  117. For conservatives, dead soldiers are the best kind. You can idolize them for the sacrifice, wrap yourself in the flag from their casket, and even put all kinds of words in their mouths to turn them into socket puppets for your political gain. And best of all, you don't even have to pay them those pesky VA benefits! (And, if you're really lucky, they'll get killed in such a way that you can label their death "non-combat" and thus avoin even paying their family the death benefit they were promised. Sweet!)

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  118. All of them, Katie.

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  119. Helmut Monotreme11:32 AM

    Ahat are the odds, that Glen Reynolds death certificate will have the words "shop vac" and "de-sleeving"?

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  120. And for those states that bring back firing squads, just think of all the sponsorships and underwriting! The condemned would die of old age and exposure before they got through reading all of the "Brought to you by . . "

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  121. BigHank5311:46 AM

    That may be the most succinct explanation for the invasion of Iraq that I've ever seen.

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  122. Halloween_Jack11:46 AM

    My only complaint with it is that I don't have a copy with larger margins so that I can annotate it whenever something in it comes true, a la that Onion article about W declaring that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity was over.

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  123. DocAmazing11:48 AM

    Hurts to laugh while my teeth are on edge...

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  124. Well, Reynolds doesn't really think the cops involved in most of these cases are bad, and post-privatization they will be non-union and desperate. So the problem solves itself.

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  125. glennisw12:00 PM

    Sure! And if the private force isn't any good, just fire them and hire another! There may be a little collateral damage along the way, but, hey, it's the free market! And what's better to trust to the free market than public safety?

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  126. glennisw12:01 PM

    Has been for years, actually. They ought to be tattooed with corporate logos.

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  127. Kindasorta OT, but I remember back in the misty past, shortly after I'd retired from the USAF, wandering out into the real world for the first time, sitting down next to a guy who was home-schooling his seven kids and thinking "How is this even legal?" Suffice to say my home-schooler believed the Earth was 20,000 years old, and he had the fossils to prove it.

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  128. (Raises hand timidly in the OP's class)

    "Excuse me, Professor, but hasn't history shown that privatizing government services invariably leads to those services becoming more costly due to the introduction of the need to make a profit, or leads to them being eventually discontinued altogether?"

    OP:

    "Son, I'll see you in my office after class. Bring your copy of Atlas Shrugged and your Ayn Rand autographed whip and we'll see if we can't... umm... "reorient" your thinking

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  129. Fucking CNN weighs in:

    Before he became an assistant director with the FBI and, now, a CNN law enforcement analyst, Tom Fuentes was a police officer. He was never taught the hold that Pantaleo used, but he was instructed how to "to put pressure on both sides of the carotid artery to cut off blood flow to the brain or reduce it until the person fainted."

    "It supposedly did no permanent damage," Fuentes said.

    But many police departments, like in New York, decided to prohibit such chokeholds "because it was so easy to misapply it and put pressure directly on the throat, directly choking the person cutting off air as opposed to making them faint."

    As Fuentes explained, "It was just too easy to have an accident."

    Yet this doesn't mean the former FBI assistant director or other law enforcement experts believe Pantaleo should be charged or even disciplined for what he did to Garner.

    Fuentes says, from the video, it looks to him that the officer "is trying to bring him down and, in the process of holding him, he does have his forearm across his throat and is choking him. And that is unfortunate."

    The CNN analyst also says people should put themselves in the police officers' shoes. How long can they wait to arrest someone, whether they are accused of murder or something relatively minor? And, if a person does not comply, what can they do -- let him go or step in, perhaps using force?

    "At a certain point, they've got to touch him," Fuentes said. "That's just the way it goes. And when you resist arrest -- physically resist -- bad things can happen."

    Yes. A human being (I assume) actually said that.

    Oh, and:

    Watching the video, a few things stand out. For one, Garner is clearly the biggest man in the shot.

    Fuck you with a rusty chainsaw, Greg Botelho and CNN.

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  130. mgmonklewis12:24 PM

    I would like to purchase this comment for a dollar.

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  131. tigrismus12:24 PM

    So they'll still get the jobs, just with crappier pay. Huzzah!

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  132. TGuerrant12:25 PM

    Miscarriage of justice? There are no miscarriages of justice, only covert abortions of justice. Justice is a slut who must be shamed and beaten into being a goode wyfe of the Rev. Mr. Reynolds. Oh, ummm, I guess that's what you were saying originally.

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  133. "If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize."


    WTF??? Jeez... it was the grand jury that failed to hold the police accountable, not any internal policing procedures, even after the authorities agreed, after seeing the video, that yep... that really WAS an illegal choke hold. Was Reynolds sick the day they taught law at law school*?




    *line borrowed from A Few Good Men

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  134. Don't forget the conflation of religious and secular authority.

    Ted Cruz for Priest-King 2016!

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  135. gocart mozart12:34 PM

    Only toy guns, wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.

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  136. Hopefully he'll feel so secure in his house, he'll refuse to leave it for any reason.

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  137. Of course they exercised restraint... because the Bundy Bunch was white.

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  138. XeckyGilchrist12:38 PM

    I think they're all just warming up for next year's centennial celebrations around Birth of a Nation.

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  139. TGuerrant12:39 PM

    We are a Poe-faced nation.

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  140. gocart mozart12:40 PM

    Today in the history of killing black people.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/the-fbi-cointelpro-progra_b_4375527.html

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  141. TGuerrant12:49 PM

    And hoodies. Don't leave out the hoodies.

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  142. KatWillow12:52 PM

    So was the original 'Utopia', wasn't it?

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  143. KatWillow12:55 PM

    Or WAS he (reelected)? More and more stories of vote fraud by repugs are popping up. If the election was a landslide, it may likely be an artificially created one.

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  144. Jay B.12:56 PM

    "A man is killed for selling *unlicensed* drugs by a cop who walks even though it's all on video: Putting the 'police' in pink police state," tweeted New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on Wednesday.


    What?


    Cigarettes are heavily licensed. That he was illegally selling them doesn't matter at all. And he wasn't caught on tape selling them either. He had just broken up a fight or something to that effect, and the fucking pigs knew him from selling illegal singles, so they hassled him for being an eyewitness to some other incident that had nothing to do with his 'business'. Plus he wasn't doing anything or resisting arrest. Plus Douhat is a fucking dink. And "pink"? What the fuck does that even mean?

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  145. KatWillow1:00 PM

    I'd like to binge-eat this comment.

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  146. KatWillow1:01 PM

    "If police can't use force as a first rather than last resort then we shouldn't have police?

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  147. The meaning of the title in Latin is no place or nowhere. The kicker is that it's a homophone to the related word Eutopia, which means good place, or in Modern English, California.😀

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  148. KatWillow1:11 PM

    They'd probably support a tort reform law where One could sue if One were the 'right' sort of person.

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  149. KatWillow1:17 PM

    Yeah, but once their 'shields' (wimmin and chirrin) have been killed, they'll suddenly remember a very important appointment in the far desert, or high mountains...


    It fascinates me that these "manly" BundyMen were quite open and proud to use women for their shields.

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  150. KatWillow1:23 PM

    I know many of the intelligentsia pooh-poohed 'Democracy' ever working because the common people would "vote themselves bread and circuses". I guess, to wingers, Social Security and Medicare ARE 'Bread & Circuses"

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  151. Listen to what some people say today, about poor people just voting themselves benefits--as if anybody with a fucking brain doesn't vote themselves benefits.

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  152. If you took seriously the argument that Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes and that the solution to police brutality was private corporate armies wouldn't the end result just have been that Garner would have been killed by RJ Reynold's private corporate army for failing to pay whatever liscencing fee they demanded for retail sale of loosies? I don't even know why they bother to make these incoherent arguments. Privatizing the power to kill people doesn't make it any less the power to kill people. Its just a different set of managers with a different set of priorities.

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  153. "Besides, my child: Human beings are no longer the predators that millennia of evolution made them to be. At least, not since we outlawed teaching evolution and declared the Earth to only be 6,000 years old!"

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  154. How do you know they're NOT tattooed with corporate logos? Or at least herd ID tags?

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  155. And yet the FBI still exists today and Hoover's name is still on the fucking building. You get a taste of the hopelessness that black people feel in the wake of the latest shit going down and wonder, What do you have to do?

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  156. Well, Social Security certainly does allow the purchase of bread. And most conservatives believe that people LOVE going to the doctor for entertainment purposes (that's why we use so much healthcare, after all!), so there's your circus part.

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  157. And, of course, RJR could bill the victim's family for all costs associated with the death. That's how we roll in the land of the free market!

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  158. redoubtagain2:05 PM

    Well, someone's got to pick the crops. Oh wait. . .

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  159. DN Nation2:10 PM

    "Boy, I wonder what Ross Douchehat thinks of this racially motivated tragedy!" - No one.

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  160. redoubtagain2:16 PM

    indicted on weapons charges
    Section 35mmHD, viz: Use of mechanical means to record police committing a murder

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  161. bekabot2:19 PM

    "Man, they're good at message discipline -- what a pity that their message sucks."

    Their message would suck if they had one, but they're situational rhetoricians. Circumstances dictate what they say. Conservatives are disdainful about politics because the politics they practice are so cheap. Their messaging, what there is of it, is intended to extract nods from numbskulls — it's like ringing a gong in front of a monkey who's been trained to associate the gong with dinner — when the monkey starts to salivate, the righties count that as a win. Right-wing politics these days is all about reflexes — every word they let drop is timed to the jerk of a knee.

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  162. mortimer20002:36 PM

    After all, all those bad cops are now out of work and looking for employment for which they're qualified and have experience.

    See De-Ba'athification by Paul Bremer. Has all the lessons never learned.

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  163. "The Drug War, Prohibition, and bad immigration laws create circumstances in which people needlessly die. But cigarette taxes can't?"Does the Queen's English lack the word 'disproportionate?' As it turns out, Charlie, cigarette taxes in fact almost never cause people to needlessly die ... in part because cigarettes aren't illegal.

    I mean, let's continue in this vein:
    "The Drug War, Prohibition, and bad immigration laws create circumstances in which people needlessly die. But sales taxes can't?"and so on.
    Now let's head up to Greenwich:

    "Stop that white businessman! He didn't report out-of-state purchases on his Connecticut income tax form!" *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*

    "Hey! You! Yeah, you! Where's the W-2 for your nanny?" *ILLEGAL CHOKEHOLD*

    Or, I dunno, as Edroso already pointed out, let's head to basically anywhere: "Hold it, white boy! Did you pay taxes on those cigarettes?" *CORPSE LEFT LYING IN STREET*

    Really, Chuck, when your argument boils down to "These people are getting murdered by the police because laws exist," you might want to consider shutting your goddamned willfully ignorant piehole, you self-felching cockwomble.

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  164. satch3:31 PM

    "Brought to you by..."

    Savage Arms.

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  165. smut clyde3:48 PM

    I wonder how this "privatized" police force would operate
    Privatised police orificers will be more accountable. Though I am not sure who is going to arrest them when they kill passers-by.

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  166. Rugosa3:51 PM

    Isn't that actually a meme on the right - that it was about "states' rights", not slavery?

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  167. mgmonklewis3:52 PM

    Per Roy's OFFS update, we need to add Charles C. W. Cooke to the list.

    Some glibertarians are born to awfulness; others have awfulness thrust upon them.

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  168. The Drug War, Prohibition, and bad immigration laws create circumstances in which people needlessly die. But cigarette taxes can't? Absurd.

    He's certainly right--what he wrote is indeed absurd.

    ReplyDelete
  169. And the obligatory musical accompaniment to this entire thread:


    http://youtu.be/p_PxgSQ9Vf4

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  170. For most libertarians, the Gettysburg Address is a post office box.

    ReplyDelete
  171. "Today on How It's Made . . ."

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  172. GeniusLemur4:03 PM

    So how does "replace with a private company that does the same job" constitute getting rid of police? God almighty, right-wingers can't get ANYTHING right.

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  173. And still other glibertarians simply emanate awfulness the way stench rises from a fresh dog dropping.

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  174. smut clyde4:05 PM

    If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize.

    In the Libertarian utopia of 10th-century Iceland, the private-police option was to hire a berserker. Who would supposedly defend you from the other berserkers.
    I love me some Sagas but am I ever glad not to be living in 10th-century Iceland.

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  175. It gets rid of police UNIONS and turns something we pay for into something we pay even more for.

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  176. I'd like to buy this comment some fermented shark.

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  177. smut clyde4:07 PM

    I have seen glove injuries. TRIGGER ALERT.

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  178. "You're right, Bob. And speaking of dogs, lots of people are wondering why we don't just put down our prisoners like we do our pets. No muss, no fuss, just a kiss goodbye and off to the big sleep. Let's open the phones and hear what our listeners have to say."

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  179. I love me some Sagas but am I ever glad not to be living in 10th-century Iceland.Yeah, you wouldn't keep a two-wheeled vehicle upright over that terrain no matter how good its gyroscopes were.

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  180. Yeah, even the Glam lifestyle left something to be desired back then.

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  181. No, he means Stigs:
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S0DUJpWbU-w/T0GvsWvZQNI/AAAAAAAAAeE/hJddXgCYUN4/s1600/Stig+O%27Tracy.png

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  182. Helmut Monotreme4:39 PM

    Rather than the weak "emanation" I'd say "spray awfulness on everything around them like a high pressure fire hose spewing sewage".

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  183. smut clyde4:39 PM

    It's always about a bicycle.
    (Why is there yet no Saga þriðja Policeman er??

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  184. smut clyde4:41 PM

    Not that Saga ya pervs.

    http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02203/thebridgedeacon_2203898b.jpg

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  185. Barkeep! A round of feces for everyone!

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  186. Oh, hey.

    I clicked over to that article, and what's the first thing I see?

    John Yoo - Why Eric Holder Will Regret His Recklessness

    FUCK ME AGNES.

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  187. Hmmmm....Cute blond with a gun? I'm sure there's plenty of lonely Righties who would find this to be fine fapping material.

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  188. There was destruction of property and looting though. Bundy and his family had been destroting and modifying public lands for years.

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  189. Robert M.5:17 PM

    Upvoted for "self-felching cockwomble". That one's going in the special Rolodex.

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  190. John Wesley Hardin5:30 PM

    I never edda saga I didn't like.

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  191. whetstone6:19 PM

    And it’s not clear that excessive force by police is especially a racial
    problem. In Alabama, we had the shooting of a unarmed white 18-year old
    by a black cop; in Utah, we had the Dillan Taylor shooting, also
    unarmed, also not prosecuted.


    Even if you buy Ol'Perf's first sentence, giving a shit about excessive force seems to be pretty divided along racial lines (weird, I know!).

    Unarmed white dude gets killed by a cop? Maybe get mad about it instead of using it as a soporific. You're a libertarian, maybe you've heard about this "Radley Balko" dude.

    Racializing the issue makes it more
    divisive and less likely to be addressed.


    What do we want? SMASH THE POLICE STATE! What do we not want? TO HURT WHITE PEOPLE'S FEELINGS!

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  192. Tehanu6:24 PM

    There's a (not-very-good, in my memory) sf book by somebody about how electricity and guns stop working (because, um, handwave) and society is thrown back into the Middle Ages. A college professor sets himself up as a feudal lord, builds a castle, along the same lines as the first Norman castles in Britain, and starts oppressing the peasants ... until the peasants successfully fight back because they're modern, educated people instead of ignorant medieval peasants. Like I said, it's not a very good book, but it does point out that we could stop these assholes if we could just get our act together.

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  193. Tehanu6:32 PM

    "Like the old ... fire brigades that would only protect those that paid their fees..."

    Remember Crassus, one of the Roman triumvirs with Big Julie Caesar? One of the reasons he was the richest man in Rome was that he sent firefighters to burning buildings, but they wouldn't put the fire out unless the owner sold Crassus the building first.

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  194. reynard616:35 PM

    Actually, it's been tried. Unfortunately, as the article describes, it did not go well -- or end well for Wild himself -- and I can't imagine it going well now if you remember that any privatized police force would be operating under the same basic motivations.

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  195. Gromet6:59 PM

    Good point. A goon like CWCooke gnashes his teeth over how Prohibition kills, but where was his outrage every time it killed some drug dealer the past 30 years? These same nimrods tripped over themselves to tell us Trayvon Martin had it coming -- why, just look, the little demonseed had marijuana in his blood!


    Yes, I am back to thinking it is just unadulterated racism with all these assholes.

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  196. Downvoted for possibly missing my oh-so-brilliant wordplay, but upvoted twice for using "þ" and "ð".

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  197. The Emberverse series by S.M. Stirling. It never looked particularly promising to me, though for some reason I'm amused by the notion of the prosperous city-state of Corvallis, OR, run by the Oregon State faculty senate.

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  198. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:51 PM

    The Blah Death...

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  199. Tehanu8:37 PM

    Oh thanks, I'd forgotten the author. I did like his other series -- "Island in the Sea of Time" etc.

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