The Murder Rate

 

 

 NY Post

The Cost Of Jail

There's been a significant state of alarm over the speedy release of violent arrestees without trial in many US locations. Prosecutors seem to be reluctant to charge all but the most violent offenders and judges release many of them on their own personal recognizance. In addition, in cases where bail is required, non-profit organizations supply that bail. Offenders frequently fail to show up for court and are not seen again until being arrested for another crime. If this is true, what is the cause? 

There might be many reasons for this trend but one that doesn't often enter the conversation is the expense of jailing offenders. That's jailing, not prison. According to Vera, a group concerned with the numbers of jailed in the country, at any given moment there are about 730,000 people in jails in the US. That's roughly equal to the population of Seattle, Washington. The bill for housing, feeding and monitoring the health of these prisoners is over $22 billion, more than $47,000 annually per inmate or about $130 a day, 47% of which is payroll.

It's impossible to listen to the conversations of city, county and state officials that oversee this industry but it's not hard to imagine that for a number of reasons they wish to see as few incarcerated in their facilities as possible. Expense would be number one. 

A police patrolman generates income, from fines, for the municipality that employs him. A jail employee is an expense. It's easy to see why the coercion complex prefers its subjects to be on the streets rather than behind bars. 

US Representative Rosa De Lauro and Female Crash-Test Dummies

US House Representative Rosa De Lauro (Dem. Connecticut) has praised Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg's federal budget request for $20 million that will include funds to research and develop gender specific female crash-test dummies to be used in the further development of automobile safety devices. 

 

 politico.com 

House member Rosa De Lauro

Eighty-years old, she's been elected to serve the Nutmeg State's 3rd Congressional District 17 times. A student at the London School of Economics and Columbia Univ., graduating with a degree in international politics, we're unaware of her background in automobile safety devices, gender-specific weaknesses in car crashes or studies that would apply to the issue.

Her first foray into electoral politics was as the campaign manager for senator Chris Dodd and a co-ordinator of the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign. During her successful 1990 US House campaign, state Republican chair Richard Foley referred to her as "Walter Mondale in drag".

Her husband is Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and political consultant credited with the electoral success of both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

 

 

  

Bull Escapes . . . .And Dies

An Associated Press offering from London, UK:  

 

LONDON — Police shot and killed a runaway bull that charged through an English village as children were being dropped off at school.

Paul Dalton was taking his grandchildren to class Wednesday morning in Haslington, northwestern England, when he said he heard a commotion behind them and turned to see a bull charging up the road.

The primary school went into lockdown and residents were warned to stay indoors as police and the bull's owner tried unsuccessfully to corral the agitated animal.

Because of the risk posed to residents if the rampage continued, Cheshire police said they decided to ''dispatch the animal before anyone was seriously hurt.''

Dalton said on Facebook that when he walked back to his car, he found the avenue blocked by two vans, two trailers and three police cars.

''Had to wait an hour to recover car,'' he wrote. "Luckily undamaged.''

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Who can imagine how many times in the by-gone days of rural England so wonderfully described by the likes of Thomas Hardy that a masculine bovine managed to evade its handlers and run amok for a short time before being captured and returned to its barnyard? Such an event was so little noticed that it probably wasn't mentioned in even local journals, much less news media on the other side of the world. The creature was simply herded back into its pen, where it no doubt wished to return anyway, by its owner and other available rustics. 

It's a sad commentary that even in the bucolic countryside where these animals have been a normal part of life for many centuries, the post-industrial world now considers them unusual and the majority of folk haven't a clue on how to handle them. Today the average child in the "developed" world has never touched a live chicken, cow, goose or duck.

 

Covid Lockdowns Improved Quality of Life Says Biden Official

You may not have noticed but your  life was much better during the Covid lockdowns according to outgoing  Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the Department of State, Monica Medina. 

 

youtube.com 

A Columbia U. law degree holder, the lady has been a career bureaucrat since the late 1980s until the present day. Her retirement from government service won't mean that her connections and expertise in environmental justice will be wasted. She has been named Wildlife Conservation Society president and chief executive officer, effective 1 June 2023.

Known generally only in the D.C. Beltway Ms. Medina is also the wife of former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain. Both have been fixtures in Democratic politics for decades. 

UK To Attack Cow Farts

According to The Telegraph the UK government, in an effort to meet the Net Zero climate requirement set for 2050, will require that feed for all dairy cows contain "methane suppressants" such as gaviscon to curtail the climate damage caused by their belching and farting. It's estimated that 14% of the methane released into the world atmosphere comes from the mouth or anus of domestic farm animals. Who measures this and how isn't described. 

  

aqdaily.com 

Black Pink White House Affair May Not Happen

 

getty images 

A proposed summit meeting at the White House between US President Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol was to include performances by American Lady GaGa and K-pop superstars Black Pink but it seems that the Hallyu girl group may not make the date. Rumored to have been the plan of Mrs. Biden, their appearance may have been scuttled by finances, a failed confab between the now unpopular Korean president and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a turnover at the highest levels of South Korean government and complications caused by the world tour of Black Pink. The April 26 meeting was meant to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the US-South Korean alliance. 

International relations just keep getting more complicated.

LA Cops Sue Over Exposure

Over 300 Los Angeles undercover policemen are suing the city and the police department over an incident that involved revealing their identities.

In most situations where an employee sues their employer they don't have a job anymore. Perhaps this doesn't apply in the case of public employees but in the private world a suit against the boss usually means good-bye.

One of the most prevalent criticisms of authoritarian regimes are their embrace of "secret police". The Nazis, Soviets and their Eastern Bloc satellites were noted for the Gestapo, the NKVD, the Stasi and others, none of whom were to be known to the general public. But, as a matter of fact, the US has battalions of secret police as well. These LAPD officers are just one group of many. All states have undercover operatives. The federal government has armed plain-clothes cops in practically all agencies. The rarest sight on earth is a table full of guys in a bar wearing IRS bowling shirts. 

More Climate Change Baloney

In an article from the Los Angeles Times explaining why there's a crush at the southern US border:

"More than half of Guatemalans — including much of the country’s Indigenous population — live in poverty.

It’s a country where even the poorest migrate, often taking out loans to pay smugglers or relying on the support of family and friends in long-established immigrant communities in the United States. A 2022 study by the Migration Policy Institute and the Indigenous rights group Asociación Pop No’j found that much of Guatemala’s migration comes from the Western Highlands, a mountainous, predominantly Maya region hard hit by climate change and one of the poorest in the country."

It would be interesting to know exactly the dimensions of climate change, increasingly the blame for every human misery, that have been manifested in the Guatemalan Western Highlands.

  

 

The Gershkovich Arrest

The Russian arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinberg on March 29 for espionage has created a furor in the U.S. The newspaper calls the incident an example of "hostage diplomacy", probably an accurate assessment. It's important, however, to look at this affair in its actual context.

A previous example of this tactic might have been the arrest and incarceration of American female basketball star Brittney Griner. That case involved the discovery of an illegal narcotic in her possession as she passed through customs upon entering the country. This could have happened anywhere, including the US, and would have been of little note had Griner been a  relatively anonymous ordinary citizen instead of a giant black professional female basketball player.

While the Wall Street Journal has been adamant that their employee is innocent of any espionage, neither we nor they can be entirely sure of that. After all, a highly-respected US FBI agent is now under arrest in the US for what amounts to espionage. And being a journalist is hardly a guarantee that espionage couldn't be part of one's resume.

The US regularly investigates, arrests, incarcerates and deports foreigners suspected of espionage both within and outside the country. One of the most dramatic examples of this is the case of Maria Butina, whose sad story is told here. An even greater cause celebre is Julian Assange, still in asylum or held prisoner in the UK for the last eleven years over openly revealing US classified information.

The point is that when the US engages in its own brand of hostage diplomacy it must expect its citizens to receive similar treatment in similar circumstances, especially from nations that it considers adversaries. It's a sad fact that Mr. Gershkovich is a pawn in international hostage diplomacy, something in which the US is a willing participant. In fact, the US has legitimized the practice in its conduct toward, Assange, Butina, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, Russian Victor Bout and medicine researcher Tang Juan among many.

 

 

 

Is This The Publishing Business?