The Supremes
I had almost given up on the Supreme Court after Citizens' United, but shifting majorities of the Justices seem to have decided that some other appalling and dishonest things will NOT happen on their watch. My lead article is on the Affordable Care Act decision, but even as I was reading it, the Court handed down another momentous decision on same sex marriage (which I hope to cover next month). A few weeks ago, it decided a much lower profile case, Elonis v. United States, in which it protected free speech by holding that legal prosecution for threats must be based on the intent of the speaker, not the perception of the listener. Otherwise (at the extremes of possible absurdity) a prosecution could ensue for my radically unwelcome invitation to readers of a right wing blog to reason together about health care--words they found intensely threatening (see the lead article for more information).
The Confederate flag
After the mass murders at the Charleston church, I was surprised by how quickly the right, and even Southerners, backed away from the Confederate flag, which they fought so hard for fifty years to protect. All this proves, though, is a combination of bad optics and billionaire lack of interest. Nobody is backing away from the easy access the murderer had to the gun (when the billionaires care, they spend millions to overcome the optics, or at least to bully politicians into doing nothing). It would be easy to construe the flag decision as compassion, but lets not forget its being made by the same people standing up for voter ID's, gerrymandering, stop and frisk, and mortgage backed securities, all of which have contributed to kicking the crap out of the African American community. Not to mention defending and even manipulating grand juries to protect the cops who shoot unarmed black men.
As far as the flag is concerned, its an interesting contradiction in American history that, though the North was not primarily fighting to end slavery, the South was absolutely fighting to preserve it; in the South it really was a one issue war. You can barely research Confederate (and Southern pre-war) rhetoric for five minutes without finding clear, non-ironic explanations that Southern liberty is founded irrevocably on human slavery. Much of this material is easily available on the Internet. A sad irony is that many of the citizens of Dixie who got indignant, fought and died didn't own slaves; some aspired to, and the rest had more liberty in their own lives because slaves existed to serve the masters who otherwise would have transformed their poorer white countrymen into a Northern-style working class. In short, the Confederate flag has always stood for slavery, and all attempts to reposition it as a matter of Southern pride or state's rights have always been atrocious nonsense.
Metro cards
New York City metro cards are designed to take round numbers of dollars which don't add up to a multiple of the cost of a ride. And then they expire. So there is always money left on expired cards, which the Metrocard machines won't credit or reimburse. Why design a system that way?
The kayak case
Some district attorney's offices won't pursue cases with many, even all necessary facts to support a simple prosecution. For example, someone forged a check and stole $50,000 from a company where I worked, and opened a bank account into which they deposited it in another city. Seems simple enough to ask for a copy of the ID shown by the fraudster to that other bank, no? The Manhattan authorities had no interest. Two clients of mine approached DA's offices with proof they had been tricked out of the deeds to their homes, under circumstances where the con man had used his own name and was still in the environment, easy to find and arrest. No interest. (One of the con artists was eventually prosecuted by federal authorities, but for cheating the bank, not the homeowners.)
The flip side of this appalling lack of interest in normal cases, are those brought by ambitious prosecutors which require an imaginative, and usually unconstitutional, rejiggering of existing law. Years ago, I highlighted two unrelated Texas cases in each of which imaginative prosecutors had obtained the conviction of two people for firing one bullet. The prosecution of Mr. Elonis, which I reference in my first para above, for rap lyrics on the theory that they frightened readers, regardless of what he intended, is another example. This kind of thing probably is happening in some courtroom in every city every day.
The prosecution of a woman for killing her boyfriend during a kayak excursion on a cold New York river seems like another example. The facts asserted by the prosecution completely fail to add up to a plan where she had any reason to expect either that her boyfriend would drown--or that she wouldn't. The plug in his kayak was missing (which wouldn't actually cause it to sink),they had a few beers, and she didn't try to rescue him (but there is no legal obligation, ever, for a private citizen to go into cold water to try to save anyone). As the plot of a novel, it would be completely improbable, and earn bad reviews. In the end, she is probably being prosecuted, like Camus' "Stranger", more for her complete lack of remorse after, than for whatever happened that day on the river.
Soccer and torture
The prosecution here of the soccer officials and of Al Qaeda or ISIS terrorists for acts committed abroad against non-American victims stands in clear contradiction to the Supreme Court decision a year or two ago ending American law suits for foreign murders and tortures under the Foreign Tort Claims Act. There is no way to explain this except by stating the truth: ambitious prosecutors who want to earn political credit and further official government goals can hale people into American courts for acts having nothing to do with us. But don't try to use our courts to sue a multinational oil company for paying thugs to kill your spouse and children in Latin America.
Abortion and stand your ground
Am I the only one to see a contradiction between banning abortion and supporting stand your ground laws? The same people are behind both, with no sense of irony. The concept is this. If someone confronts you violently, you are not required to retreat but may shoot the assailant. But if someone inserts an unwanted organism in your body that is going to use your heart and lungs for nine months and then burst violently out of your vagina, possibly killing you, you are required to be meek and submissive and allow it to do so. Someone please explain.
Phone battery
The battery on my Verizon Samsung phone dies in a few hours. If I unplug it from the charger at 7 a.m., its in the red by noon and shuts itself off an hour or so later, even if I haven't been using it much. This is a bad design/ company negligence/ lack of care for customers issue, but becomes an even higher ethical issue because a lot of the crap the phone does to use up the charge consists of stuff I never asked for, don't want it to do and don't know how to turn off, such as keeping track of my location and actions for Google marketing purposes. Shame on everybody involved. There is no reason why a phone battery shouldn't last a whole day, until I plug it in again.
Sixty million refugees
A report last week estimated that about sixty million people worldwide have fled their homes to avoid war, famine and extreme poverty. This is only the beginning. Apply the Malthusian math of geometric progression and within a foreseeable future, half the population of earth will be walking or riding to try to live with the other half. There's the ultimate consequence of Adam Smith's invisible hand and the triumph of capitalism unalloyed by any kind of sensible planet wide political checks and balances. Welcome to the Thunderdome.