Drunken Sheriff Wrecks County Car

Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson has been sentenced after pleading guilty to a fourth-degree DWI last week. The charge is connected with a rollover crash Hutchinson got into near Alexandria on Dec. 8. 

According to court documents, Hutchinson received a 90 day stayed sentence to Douglas County Jail, a $610 fine and two years of probation. As part of his probation, Hutchinson must complete a chemical assessment, have no driver license or alcohol violations and must abstain alcohol and controlled substance use, with the exception of prescribed medications. 

Hutchinson released a statement after pleading guilty to one count of operating a vehicle under the influence, saying in part that he is enrolled in an outpatient treatment program to address his "issues with alcohol" and his "overall health."

"This is the first step in the road toward recovery and regaining the trust of the people I work with and the residents of Hennepin County whom I serve," the statement went on to say. "I have returned to work and will focus on my duties as Sheriff."

The single car rollover crash took place around 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 8 five miles east of Alexandria on I-94. Douglas County Sheriff's deputies said Hutchinson suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken by ambulance to Alomere Hospital in Alexandria. 

Hutchinson was attending the Minnesota Sheriff's Association 2021 winter conference at the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria on Dec. 8.

At the time of the crash, Hutchinson was the only person in the vehicle, which was owned by Hennepin County.

Hutchinson was originally three additional charges, including driving while impaired, operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content of .08 within two hours and carrying a pistol under the influence of alcohol. The first two were dismissed because he can only be convicted of one DWI charge per incident, and prosecutors agreed to a continuance for the fourth.

KARE TV Minneapolis-St. Paul

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No word if Sheriff Hutchinson's driver's license will be suspended, as it would be under similar circumstances for an ordinary citizen. Normally those convicted of DUI in Minnesota are required to replace their standard issue license plates with ones bearing a "W" prefix which allows law enforcement to stop them without probable cause but the account doesn't indicate if that will be a requirement for Hennepin County's top cop. No doubt there was some form of insurance to cover the destruction of the city-owned squad car but it seems reasonable that the company providing the policy would have  doubts about being responsible for future damages caused by an intoxicated sheriff, as they would for a badgeless driver. 

Interestingly enough, other accounts of this accident, and Sheriff Hutchinson's own narrative, frame the issue in terms of his "health", painting driving while intoxicated as a health issue rather than being a criminal act that is one of the most condemned violations of the social contract. We, and Sheriff Hutchinson, should be very thankful that no innocent person came to harm from his illegal and immoral behavior, rather than a symptom of a hypothetical disease. 

It's obvious that no licensed law enforcement officer should be allowed to ingest drugs or alcohol at any time during their employment. Random 24/7 testing by independent laboratories should be required in all employment contracts. Positive tests should result in dismissal.  Professional cycling racers live by this regimen but don't legally have access to high-powered automobiles and firearms. 

The supposed downside to such a policy is that few would wish to become a cop under those circumstances. That idea would seem to indicate that the country is overwhelmingly populated by drunken dope addicts and that a certain proportion of them are needed to enforce laws that they violate themselves. Maybe that's true.  

Collective Punishment

 

Speaking to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland explored possible ways that Washington could punish Moscow for any military incursion.

“What we are talking about would amount to essentially isolating Russia completely from the global financial system, with all the fallout that would entail for Russian businesses, for the Russian people, for their ability to work and travel and trade,” Nuland said. 

So the Russian population is to pay the price for its government's disagreements with that of its US counterpart.

 

The electric automobile

 How many US police departments have ordered electric vehicles for use as squad cars?

The Mayo Clinic Recommends Masks

A Mayo Clinic study of the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus was announced on July 29, 2021.

 

 Do face masks work at preventing COVID-19 transmission?

"Masks don't work unless we wear them," says Dr. Elie Berbari, a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases physician.

That's what Mayo Clinic researchers say they proved in a recent study.

"We found objectively that masks are critically important. They're very effective at protecting the people around you. If you're wearing a mask, you're protecting others. If they're wearing masks, they're protecting you," says Dr. Matthew Callstrom, a Mayo Clinic radiologist and one of the study's authors.

The experiments used masked and unmasked mannequins that simulated the spread of respiratory droplets and measured it at various distances.

 

Evidently this study assumes that inanimate mannequins can effectively simulate human behavior, probably through pumping out some identifiable aerosols from one mannequin to another masked or unmasked dummy and determining if the intake of the aerosols can penetrate a mask. This experiment probably isn't as exciting as the famous crash test dummies that proved wearing seat belts in the car helps prevent injuries in  accidents, as if that wasn't obvious.

 

  The study showed that disposable paper medical masks and two-layer cloth masks reduced droplet transmission.

 

OK, we're also assuming that in the real world the masks are being worn properly, as they no doubt are in the study. Furthermore, what does the word reduced signify? Is transmissibility greatly reduced or reduced just a little? What distances are involved? And, as always, there's no mention of used mask disposal in the prevention of the spread of a highly contagious disease. 

Keys To Taliban Success Ignored By The Media

This article from Aussie Arts and Letters shows how the Taliban managed to sweep over Afghanistan and depose its government. 

First, and foremost, was the Taliban's embrace of the smart phone, which has also played a primary role in illegal immigration throughout the world. The Muslim jihadis used the ubiquitous mobiles to both coordinate their own movements and also to gather information about government positions and activities. Smart phone records were used to obtain useful information from all over the country. It's obvious that any government wishing to maintain its primacy needs to be able to control cell phone use. In fact, in areas of the country the Taliban itself controlled phone usage. Smart phones played a huge role in the riots after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and in other cities as well. 

 nbcnews

The New Taco Bell

The New York Post has published an article describing the soon-to-built store in Brooklyn Park, Mn. The money quote in the article is:

 The goal of the new Taco Bell Defy concept is to get diners-on-the-go back on the road quickly — and without any interpersonal interaction.

Evidently there will be no cash involved. Diners will pay for their tacos using smart phones and QR codes. 

Left unsaid is what happens after the diners-on-the-go get back on the road. The most important aspect of fast food, this version included, is getting it quickly. Since almost all fast food choices are eaten with the hands, no silverware involved, when diners-on-the-go get out of the parking lot, they begin to eat. 

It's generally the case that when photos are taken of fatal car wrecks it's mandatory for those photos to include any beer or whiskey bottles in the car. Statistically, there must be a significant number of traffic fatalities that include a driver stained with mayonnaise, ketchup or salsa. But we don't know what that number might be because, unlike impaired driving, no records are kept of accidents where driver food consumption may have been a factor. In most jurisdictions it's now illegal to use a cell phone while driving but it's OK to wolf down a double cheese burger traveling 70 mph on two-lane blacktop.

Perhaps it's too late to arrest the insane fixation with time in modern American society. 

 

Public Libaries and the Pandemic

Of all the institutions, public and private, that have been forced to deal with the Sino-flu none has been as obnoxious the various public libraries. 

In the beginning, libraries were completely closed. Some have opened with reduced hours, all have required those entering to wear face diapers. 

The reason that this should be an issue at all is that libraries, even during the internet age, are the repositories of information, if not of knowledge. Whatever information is available about any particular subject, including infectious diseases and their treatment, should be available in any large library. The personnel in libraries, all of whom are directed by librarians with masters degrees, at the very least should be aware of how to find that information, as well as keep track of DVDs, music CDs and computer access. 

Sadly, the people that work in libraries, pleasant and helpful as they try to be, really aren't much different than supermarket employees. They keep the shelves stocked and organized with product, replenishing it as it leaves, perform the rites needed for the customer to take the product home and fulfill other duties like answering the phone and responding to customers' questions and complaints as needed. The jobs are quite similar. 

So perhaps there's no reason why library people should know more about epidemics, their history, and the responses to them that have succeeded or failed. Maybe some of us think that by merely working in a library some important information would just rub off. Evidently not.

We can't actually know what library people know. But we can see how libraries operate and come to some conclusions.

 This is the DVD section of a library. As you can see, the DVDs are arranged in two different ways. Those that have been put in alphabetical order and are ready for customers to pick up are placed with the front covers exposed. In a given row only the title of the front DVD is visible. Someone searching for a particular video must dig through each row in hopes of finding the latest Adam Sandler offering or Marvel hero sequel. If this makes any sense, wouldn't all the books in the library be stored in the same fashion? Of course, it doesn't make any sense. 

The point is that even though the library is the graphical storehouse of the collected information of most of human history, the people in charge haven't figured out how to use that information to effectively present their product. They are unable to showcase their wares as well as a hardware store or supermarket. 

 

Mandated Masks

The Sino-pandemic appears to have entered a new stage, at least as far as the government and media are concerned. There is much authoritarian concern over Covid-19 variants expressed with words like "surge" and "raging" but few actual numbers of deaths and infections. The main focus is that masks must once again save the world from imminent death. Even "social distancing" has come to be ignored in favor of universal masks. 

In a situation where "following the science" has been the recipe it's important to remember that no scientific study has ever confirmed the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. 

Even more important is the fact that the authorities never describe the entire mask procedure. If, indeed, masks of any kind prevent the spread of viral particles from one individual to another, they must intercept and contain those viruses. In order for a mask to work, to achieve its goal, there must be viruses trapped in the mask after it has been worn. 

Every person wearing a mask must assume that when that mask is no longer worn it is contaminated with Covid-19 virus, among other things, and is now a locus of infection. In view of this, what procedure should be followed when a mask is abandoned? We never read or hear anything about this.

If we're to believe that Covid-19 is the highly communicable and dangerous disease that the CDC and Dr. Fauci tell us it is and that we should wear masks to prevent its spread, there must be some  requirements for mask disposal, other than leaving them in the shopping center parking lot. Teeming with viruses, discarded masks are far more dangerous than the dog poop on lawns next to fire hydrants that so enrage suburban homeowners. At a minimum, mask wearers should be instructed on the proper way to remove the mask and then place it in some kind of bio-hazard container so it can be deposited in a facility where it will be destroyed. Then there should be a de-contamination procedure for the mask wearer. If mask wearers are to include virtually all of the population everyone must know and follow the correct procedure for mask disposal. 

The lack of public information on mask disposal indicates a couple of things. First, the virus that surrounds each and every one of us, can't possibly be as communicable as it's said to be if there's so little concern over discarded masks. Secondly, if it is that communicable, health authorities are being incredibly negligent in not pointing out that fact and instructing the unwashed masses in ways to properly destroy the entrapped viruses. This shows that the health Nazis are more concerned with the outward appearances of battling the raging pandemic than in making genuine progress against it. If a truely scientific effort is being made in this area it must also include a study, the results of which are made public, on how often a viral infection is the result of an incorrectly worn or disposed mask.   

Transgender Athletes

For many years there have been athletes that are in some ways transgender. These are thoroughbred race horses. An entire male horse is a "horse", a stud, or a ridgling, a male with one or both testicles undescended. A horse that has been castrated, whose testicles have been removed, is a gelding. A female horse younger than five years is a filly, older than that a mare. 

Horses that have personality issues are the one's that are gelded. These animals are sometimes too vicious to handle safely and dangerous to other horses. They may be so interested in mating that they are unable to concentrate on their work, winning races. Gelding usually has a tendency to pacify a horse and make it more tractable although if it's a success at racing it won't be able to reproduce more like itself. On the other hand, left entire it may not be able to show the talent that breeders want to see in a stud. Gelding is a tough decision to make with a well-bred horse.

Since gelding is always done to enable a horse to race, it must be entered in races. There are only two gender divisions in horse racing, horses and fillies and mares. Geldings, regardless of their testosterone level or self-image must compete with other horses. They are not allowed to enter races carded for fillies and mares. Fillies and mares are allowed to compete in races for males.

This has been the case for centuries and it seems likely to be the case for many more to come.

   

Vote For Whom?

 To whom, exactly, is your vote supposed to go? Is there a particular candidate in some election identified as "climate"? If not, what is the message here? Evidently, "climate" is the focus of this sign rather than any candidate and if that's so what should the vote be, since our future depends upon it? 

By taking the time to go to the vote-climate. org website one discovers the organizations to which they recommend that you direct money but no individuals are mentioned or really any form of activity that might effect climate, should such a thing even be possible. There is, however, an appeal to emotion:

The Most Evil of Symbols

The most reliable of sources for unmitigated nonsense is at it once again. The New York Times has published an article concerning the appearance of "hangman's nooses" at the site of the construction of a new Amazon facility in Connecticut.

A police investigation hasn't determined that all of the supposed nooses were indeed that form of knot but nevertheless black people in the area are outraged that someone has tied these knots and left them as some sort of message. This isn't a new thing. Pulverized Concepts has commented on it before.

Recently the knot was supposedly found in the garage of a NASCAR team whose driver was an African-American. A similar element of outrage exploded with attendant publicity.

What does this all mean? Evidently the response is anguish that a knot that may have been used at some time in the unjust murder of African-Americans in the post-bellum South can still be seen as some kind of threat. While hanging has been used as an instrument of justice by the state since soon after ropes were devised, this use has hardly been used exclusively on blacks. It can be the form of capital punishment even now in Delaware and Washington. And if representations of knots can cause unease in some persons, what about that of firearms, which have been used far more often to dispatch people of all hues? 

An interesting and undiscussed aspect of the symbolic knot concerns another even more prevalent symbol, the cross. For Christians, the cross is the ultimate symbol of Christianity itself. It represents the structure on which Christ died to redeem all who believed in him. In spite of the genuine pain and torture that Christ endured in his time on the cross, Christians have used it as a symbol of their faith for centuries in all denominations. Of course, crucifixion wasn't used only on Christ but on many criminals during that era and later, including the two thieves crucified along with Christ.

Images of Christ's crucifixion have been among the most frequently produced by artists for over 2000 years. The cross itself stands above the steeples and towers of churches over much of the world, in stained glass windows and behind altars. It hangs on chains about the necks of millions. Why should this be? Shouldn't Christians be outraged by seeing a cross? Or will the descendants of slaves eventually come to see the hangman's noose as evidence of some relationship between themselves and their creator?

    

National Sports Center Velodrome 2021

 Well, there it is. For those of you who made the weekly Thursday Night Lights races and you who crossed the fruited plain for the Fixed Gear Classic each summer this is what the NSC Velodrome looks like today. There's been a drought so the lush grass that once surrounded the facility has turned brown, something of a final touch to what was the pride of the local track cycling community. 

Killing of 8 at FedEx Site Not Hate Crime

From the Wall Street Journal, Thursday, 7/29/2021

 

  The gunman who killed eight people at a FedEx Corp. facility in Indianapolis in April was likely not motivated by bias or racism, investigators said.

  Investigators interviewed more than a hundred people, executed more than 20 search warrants and combed through 175,00 computer files belonging to the shooter for months before determining the shooting wasn't a hate crime. "The shooter did not appear to have been motivated by bias or a desire to advance and ideology," said Paul Keenan, the Indianapolis FBI's special agent in charge at a Wednesday press conference.

  Nineteen-year-old Brandon Scott Hole, who was white, killed eight people, including at least four members of the Sikh community.

  The Indianapolis shooter sought to prove his masculinity to himself by experiencing what it was like to kill other people and then die by suicide, investigators determined. He targeted the FedEx facility because he had been employed there and knew the location and work patterns.

                                               --------Ben Kesling

Is this for real? The nation's most high profile law enforcement agency spent months interviewing over a hundred people, using search warrants and peering through thousands of computer files to see if a wacko was under the influence of hatred or racism when he "went postal" at his former place of employment and committed suicide? But hatred and racism hadn't been a part of the mass murder, they say. We can rest easy.

But what if it had? Would Hole have been dug up and buried deeper? Or re-cremated at a higher temperature?

Historically, in fact and in fiction, determining a motive for a serious crime, especially murder, has been a part of the investigative process, to find the murderer. It's a major part of practically all crime novels. But that's the case when the perpetrator is unknown. When he's dead at the scene, what's the point, if there can even be one?

Well, O.K., one of the deceased may have refused to repay a loan or made a serious pass at Hole's girlfriend. Maybe that drove him to multiple murder and suicide. Or is this an instance of the usual legal quest for "closure" that allows the survivors to move on with their lives. 

Even more likely is that a long, drawn-out investigation of a dead murderer is a good way to occupy under-worked FBI personnel with zero chance of failure. Their conclusions about the motive for the crime are actually only opinions, after all, and won't be refuted in a courtroom. It's a win-win for the G-Men.

 

Brandon Scott Hole                        nydailynews.com

 

  

Be On The Lookout

 

© AP Photo / John Minchillo

In this Thursday, July 2, 2020, file photo, Audrey Strauss, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, gestures as she speaks during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her alleged role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein, in New York

Cyclist Dies Weeks After Being Struck By Driver

 

Shawn Michael Chock

From the Flagstaff Daily Sun, Flagstaff, AZ

 
By FELICIA FONSECA and TERRY TANG Associated Press

 

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A cyclist has died after he was struck last month by an Arizona man who plowed his pickup truck into a group of people participating in a bike race, authorities said Monday.

Jeremy Barrett, 58, died of his injuries Saturday, said Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves.

Barrett, who spent parts of his life in Zimbabwe and Australia, was well-known in the cycling community for welcoming new riders and hosting bicyclists who were training in southern Arizona, friends said.

“He was very selfless,” said Joey Iuliano, president of the Arizona Bicycle Racing Association. “I was told that while the paramedics were working on him, he was asking how his friends were and if they were OK.”

The accused driver, Shawn Michael Chock, 36, was indicted last week on nine counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count each of fleeing an accident and unlawful flight. He pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday in Navajo County Superior Court.

Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon said he is expecting more charges to be filed in the wake of Barrett’s death.

“Once we have received all the law enforcement reports, we will review to determine if any new charges are appropriate to bring,” Carlyon said.

 

Several cyclists were injured June 19 when Chock sped into a crowd gathered for the annual 58-mile (93-kilometer) Bike the Buff race in Show Low, a mountain city about three hours northeast of Phoenix, authorities said.

Chock then hit a telephone pole, and backed out of the crowd as cyclists pounded on the truck’s windows, screaming for him to get out, witnesses said. He then drove down the road, turned around and headed back toward the cyclists before driving away, witnesses said.

Police shot Chock at a nearby hardware store. He was charged after being released from the hospital earlier this month and remains jailed on a $500,000 bond.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety is overseeing the investigation. Graves, the agency's spokesman, said other injured cyclists have a long road to recovery.

Barrett's condition had been improving with surgery, and doctors in Flagstaff planned to transport him to Tucson. But he suffered another setback as he was fighting to survive, said fellow cyclist and friend Kathryn Bertine.

She said Barrett was loved and respected in the tight-knit cycling community in the U.S. and beyond. Outside of cycling, he worked for a company that manufactured ammonium nitrate-based products used in mining and agriculture.

 

“It's so important that people know it wasn't (only) a cyclist who died,” Bertine said.

“It was a human being, it was a friend, a father, a boyfriend, somebody who was a real-life living soul, an asset to our community,” she said. “And, sometimes, we don't remember that.”

 

The Police Retirement Problem

A significant portion of the public response to the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, MN while under arrest by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin has been highly critical of that police force and others across the country. This criticism has been blamed for much higher than normal retirements and leaves of absence in many police departments, leaving them critically understaffed and unable to maintain public order, as explained here. 

Oddly, no one has advanced a solution to this problem that currently exists in another context.

According to Title 10. Subtitle A. Part II. Chapter 39. Section 688 of U.S. Code,  Under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense, a member described in subsection (b) may be ordered to active duty by the Secretary of the military department concerned at any time.

This means that retired officers are subject to return to active duty status if the Defense Department so requires. The US Air Force has been considering the recall of retired pilots to fill their own requirements. 

Most public employee contracts allow retirement after 20 years service. A college graduate working as a police officer could theoretically retire at age 44 or younger. Since these retirees are already trained and experienced in law enforcement, it only makes sense that the union contracts they work under include stipulations that they can be recalled to service in the event of an emergency, just as the law applies to military officers and Navy enlisted men.   

Rally Cycling's Heidi Franz Bullied At the Giro Donne

Women's pro peloton member Heidi Franz of the Rally Cycling team posted on Twitter that she was "mocked and bullied" during the latter portion of stage 9 of the Giro Donne on July 10. Cycling News linked to Franz's Twitter post.

 

What exactly, in this case at least, is being "mocked and bullied"? At all levels of every sport trash talk and verbal humiliation are everyday occurrences. If some sort of physical abuse took place it's another matter but she doesn't mention if any fellow competitors spit on her or pushed her off the road. 

Lately we've been hearing a lot about "bullying" and sports. A world-class Korean girl was banished from the country's national volleyball team for past "bullying". She then managed to secure a position on a foreign team and people are outraged about that. She must be made to suffer.

It looks like an Ohio hockey player will be denied the opportunity to play in the NHL because he bullied a classmate with developmental disabilities when he was in the eighth grade. The details, if true, are disgusting but anyone that's ever gone to public school knows that there's nothing especially unusual about bullying in that environment. It does, after all, have its resemblances to a prison situation. The major difference in this situation is that it took place outside the parameters of the sport itself.

Rather than commiserate with Franz's complaint we should encourage her to respond in kind. Her competitors will show her more respect.

 

Truth and Politics

Politics, after all, is the art of persuasion; the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe in them. The problem is that in order to play the game effectively, one can never acknowledge this: it may be true that, if I could convince everyone in the world that I was the King of France, I would in fact become the King of France; but it would never work if I were to admit that this was the only basis of my claim. In this sense, politics is very similar to magic--one reason both politics and magic tend, just about everywhere, to be surrounded by a certain halo of fraud.

 

Graeber, David, Debt, The First Five Thousand Years, Melville House Publishing, Brooklyn, London, 2014, pg. 342 

The Immigration Issue

Inevitably, the immigration issue is framed in the same terms as expressed in this article. Central Americans, and Mexicans, move to the US for greater economic opportunities, really a higher income. But this is nothing new. For many decades those from south of the Rio Grande have obtained work north of the border and sent that money home. It's different now.

In the past, men left their families and temporarily worked in the US. As time has gone by, many of these men have taken up with women from the north and never returned to their original homes. This has been a serious problem in Mexico. Latinas now realize that what has happened to others could happen to them and their children as well. 

There is more to the situation than that as well. Latin America is in general a very socially conservative, Catholic patriarchy. The Latinas, one half of this male-dominated society, have been able to observe that things are very much different in the feminist north. The legal system and employment opportunities are far more favorable to women than they are in Mexico and Central America. They are more reluctant to wave good-bye to a husband that might never return from Los Angeles or Phoenix.

So they join their spouses, bring their children along, and make the move as a family, perhaps thinking temporarily but keeping the option of a permanent residency open. 

No change in the legal climate allowed or encouraged this. It was the result of a change in US culture, where, in many ways, US women have obtained enormous advantages over their male counterparts. Latinas aren't ignorant of this. That's why they too are moving north with their men.   

Millions in Bit Coin Recovered From Colonial Pipeline Hack

 The Justice Department on Monday is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI with the cooperation of the Colonial Pipeline operator, the people briefed on the matter said. The ransom recovery is a rare outcome for a company that has fallen victim to a debilitating cyberattack in the booming criminal business of ransomware. Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal In an interview published last month that the company complied with the $4.4 million ransom demand because officials didn’t know the extent of the intrusion by hackers and how long it would take to restore operations.

 

As they say, "Show us the money". The man in the cul de sac can't possibly know if any ephemeral BitCoin was actually "paid" to any Russian hackers, if indeed such people even exist. Nor can this gullible goof be confident that this mythological pixel money was returned to the cloud coffers of the Colonial enterprise.

It would seem that if the pipeline operator was required to fork over the untraceable digital funds that it would either have to manufacture them or obtain them from someone else. It seems unlikely that Colonial would be able to mint $4.4 million in BitCoins quickly through its own operations, instead getting these coins from someone who already possesses them.

In other words, BitCoins aren't real money but merely a newer example of financial shenanigans, an accounting device designed to screen the ownership of invisible digital assets.    

Measuring Bad Behavior

 In July 2020, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, was arrested on sex trafficking charges. Prosecutors allege that she participated in Epstein’s sex crimes by recruiting girls for Epstein to assault. She is also charged with sexually abusing at least one underage victim.

She is being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Her trial is set for November.

 

***************************************************************************

 

 A driver with a revoked license who ran a red light that resulted in two pedestrians being thrown through a plate-glass window last week, killing one of them, has a history of convictions but has faced few consequences.

 

Neologism Needed

The fabulously inventive American culture that has come up with new words like crowdsourcing, metrosexual and chilax, has yet to devise a word to describe a fairly modern problem.

 What does this sign mean? Does it state that it's illegal for someone to pretend that they are a dog trained to assist a human in some way? Probably not. What is meant is that it's illegal to walk around in a business pretending that the dog on the leash is needed to assist the bearer in some way.

There doesn't seem to be a word that can clearly convey this idea so "impersonate" is used. Of course service animals, be they dogs or hamsters, aren't persons so they can't be impersonated. Would "inanimalate" do? Not for me.

For the immediate future let's go with "K-fake". The sign could read "K-faking is illegal". That makes more sense than using the term "impersonate" in this context.

 

The World's Second Most Hyped Event And It's Demise

The historically scandal-plagued jingoistic non-event that is the Olympic Games has moved from ridiculous to insane, as this article describing the preliminaries used for team selection points out. 

Perhaps there's a kind of warped normality that drives athletes to devote a major portion of their lives to the pursuit of global success in some little known or contested "sport" like sailing, sport climbing and trampoline. Go ahead, without touching the mouse or key board tell me who was the last trampoline gold medalist. Nevertheless, these are Olympic events and people diligently train for them. Having a medal awarded by the IOC hanging in the cubical or den certainly beats a picture of the dog or cat.

In this particular Olympic Games, to be held in Japan, the festival encounters three different forms of weirdness, the Olympic committee itself, a kind of internationally endorsed criminal enterprise, the official government responses to the pandemic and the unique culture that is Japan.

These three factors have made this edition of the games so warped that any athlete willing to accept the conditions for competition must be regarded as mentally ill. As for the international horde of television spectators, pull the plug and engage in some athletics personally.

 

The Student Loan Debacle

Or is it, in typical political terms, a "crisis"? In any case, the Wall Street Journal examines the situation and provides some enlightening information on how these kinds of disasters occur. 

From the Friday, April 30, 2021 edition:

"One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, which removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was part of a law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit. A key motive was to use projected profits to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the bill.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education the Obama administration."

It turns out that elected officials either don't have the knowledge and expertise to draft legislation or that they're time is being monopolized by the electioneering efforts needed to retain their seats, most of which is either media grandstanding or private conclaves with donors and election advisors. So unelected and generally unknown staffers like Mr. Shireman are the ones who attempt to legislatively keep the promises made by their bosses. Simply having a tenure in such a position is a gateway to bureaucratic advancement, even if their work ultimately results in failure.

The failure in this case is that federal student loan programs could cost taxpayers as much as half a billion dollars as borrowers continue to default, according to the WSJ article, which also states that this fiasco could exceed the dimensions of the S&L melt down of thirty years ago.

There is an even deeper dimension to this problem. Where does the money being borrowed in these programs go? Of course, it goes to the educational institutions themselves, organizations top-heavy with expensive administration that have become gate-keepers to the social/economic futures of modern Americans. Students at exclusive schools like Amherst and Bentley are being subsidized by janitors and truck drivers.

While private universities are at liberty to charge whatever the market will bear, tax-payer subsidized public schools are even more profligate in being homes for over-paid, tenured professors that don't teach many classes because they're devoted to research and writing papers that few ever read.

There's a strong possibility that the Covid-19 pandemic, or actually the government response to it, will provide an impetus for change in an academic environment that has been substantially the same as it was in 18th century Germany, where it was born. We can only hope that this will be the case. 

Black Hawk Speaks

 Here, for the first time I touched the goose quill to the treaty---not knowing, however, that, by that act, I consented to give away my village. Had that been explained to me, I should have opposed it, and never would have signed their treaty, as my recent conduct will clearly prove.

What do we know of the manner of the laws and customs of the white people? They might buy our bodies for dissection, and we would touch the goose quill to confirm it, without knowing what we are doing. This was the case with myself and people touching the goose quill the first time.

We can only judge of what is proper and right by our standard of right and wrong, which differs widely from the whites, if I have been correctly informed. The whites may do bad all their lives, and then, if they are sorry for it when about to die, all is well! But with us it is different: we must continue throughout our lives to do what we conceive to be good. If we have corn and meat, and know of a family that have none, we divide with them.If we have more blankets than sufficient, and others have not enough, we must give to them that want. 

Life of Black Hawk or Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, Dictated By Himself, Penguin Books, New York, 2008, Pgs. 44-45.

Dog Food

This article describes what can happen if your dietary ideas differ from that of elements of your community.

 The action took place in South Korea, perhaps the most Americanized locale anywhere in Asia, so it isn't unusual for US ideas to have found a home there. 

Americans, who ridicule the veneration for cows of the Hindus of India, hold a perhaps greater esteem for canines. After all, dogs are actually considered to be the legal equivalent of some humans, namely policemen. Hindu cows don't become agents of law enforcement.

At any rate, what does this mean, if anything? Should a culture be able to employ the legal system to determine the dietary habits of its members? If Sharia law becomes the norm somewhere in the West will pork in the form of bacon, ham, chops and sausage be forbidden? In the US the consumption of horse meat is already prohibited, perhaps because bygone military leaders of the northern-most section of the country are frequently portrayed in paintings and sculpture mounted on horses. Not long ago horse meat was routinely eaten, by the Harvard faculty as one example, and still is in many other parts of the world. 

One question might be, "Why should anyone care what others eat?" Do-gooders, always worried about the health of others and the economic externalities of crappy diets, can't be too worried about horse meat or even dog meat, neither of which have the long-term fatal effects found in ice cream and cotton candy. So it must be some ethical or even religious thing. It's just wrong to kill and eat an animal that can be trained to fetch sticks.

What about other animals? Lambs are cute and cuddly but don't seem to have an effective lobbying organization. Both domestic and wild ducks and geese aren't idolized, maybe because they poop on golf courses and occasionally hold up traffic.

This is not to say that an individual can't try to discourage others from engaging in eating habits he deplores. He's probably within his rights to forbid his children from eating live frogs or other amphibians. But is it right for him to use the governmental power to enforce his own food ideas?

This is actually the crux of the matter. If a kind of behavior is "good" or "better" or whatever, its proponents should be able to convince others of that fact and their behavior would change to voluntary acceptance. That's not how it works when government is involved. "You can't do it because we said so." 

How Language Works

Language carries many messages beyond the simple definitions of the words we use. Words have denotations and connotations. The denotation of a word is it's basic dictionary definition. The connotation of a word might include attitudes that give that word positive or negative qualities in the mind of the listener. For instance freedom fighter has a positive connotation but war lord has a negative one, even though both terms could often be used to describe the same individual.

There's daily evidence in the world of advertising of this kind of thing. General Motors calls one of their auto models the Impala, an athletic, graceful antelope native to Africa that's never tipped over an American garbage can or pooped in the yard. The response to the name is generally a positive. On the other hand, no cars are named Skunk or Raccoon, animals that regarded as varmints and pests by suburban homeowners. These animals are simply animals. They aren't inherently good or evil.

This newspaper item regarding a recent incident demonstrates how denotation and connotation work: 

The hateful messages received last week by Black students at White Bear Lake Area High School were a “hoax,” sent by a female student who was trying to raise awareness of problems at the school, according to school and city officials.

The FBI helped identify the student who created the anonymous Instagram account, and she took responsibility Monday afternoon, Superintendent Wayne Kazmierczak wrote Tuesday in a letter to families.

 

There's a lot of interesting verbiage in these two paragraphs but the most interesting is the phrase took responsibility. The writer of this article, Josh Verges of the Twin City Pioneer Press, had some options available in composing this sentence. If the actions of the individual involved some kind of criminal or even anti-social behavior, and the individual involved acknowledged that action, it would ordinarily be described as an admission. The person admitted guilt. Admission in this case has a distinctly negative connotation. It's a close cousin to confession, which would also have negative connotations in this context.

Instead, Verges called the individual's response to the discovery of something so heinous that the FBI was called in to assist the local gendarmie in an investigation as took responsibility. In ordinary circumstances taking responsibility is regarded as an act of virtue. It has  very positive connotations. The  flip side of taking responsibility, being irresponsible, has hugely negative connotations.

Perhaps one could make the case that the incident was, in itself, a case of irresponsibility. Or criminal mischief. Or, since the messages were purported to be from another, identity theft or maybe digital fraud. It's possible that the rapid development of electronic communication has left behind some legal consequences for digital wrong-doing.

However, that's not the issue. The real issue here is in what light a media figure cares to present the actions of a certain individual. If there had been no hoax, or it had not been discovered, the person deemed responsible for it would likely have been expelled from school and tarred  forever with the disgrace of racist behavior. The actions of the anonymous Instagram commenter are magnitudes worse. If taking responsibility, also anonymously, is the sum of her punishment, it's another example of true cultural corruption and, in terms of this article at least, the continuing debasement of the English language in North America. It's more "mostly peaceful demonstrations" and "no widespread voter fraud".   

Police and Citizen Interactions

   

Police and citizen interactions occasionally produce violence and death, followed, in some cases, with community outrage, rioting and looting. Assuming that eliminating these occurrences would be a good thing, it's time to adopt a technique used in other parts of society to achieve that goal, namely education.

At some point long before a youth is even able to get a driver's license, the educational system should begin instruction on how an individual should respond to an encounter with law enforcement. Of course American children are witnesses during their lives to many thousands of hours of television news and drama based upon cop/criminal interactions but these generally focus on behavior that leads to disaster. A different approach is needed.

Junior and senior high school law enforcement safety programs would be much like other areas of instruction, typing and industrial arts, for instance. Student driver education would be a particularly relevant course. 

But the use of lectures and media techniques isn't enough. There must be more realistic presentations. A special classroom should be constructed with a typical SUV parked in front of a squad car. The student should be seated at the wheel and with the lights of the room extinguished a siren would sound, lights would flash and two policemen would emerge from the squad car and go to each front door of the car. The student would receive the normal instructions in a real event of this kind, "Let me see your hands", "Get out of the car", shouted at the driver. The point is that this sort of an encounter isn't a daily feature of anyone's life. It's rarity means that it's the kind of an emergency that an individual should be prepared for, like learning the basics of artificial respiration to save a drowning victim or the use of the Heimlich maneuver if a friend gags on a hot dog.

Instruction of this kind should be a part of getting a driver's license.

 

How The Chinese Communist Party Works

According to the Hong Kong paper, The South China Morning Post, the Communist Party in China operates like this.

Justice For Brandon Elliot

This article from the South China Morning Post describes a violent incident that may be considered a hate crime and the response to it by some members of the Asian community in the US, specifically Filipinos. 

 There's a lot to digest in this entire episode. First of all, the accused in the case, burly 38 year-old Brandon Elliot, is on lifetime parole, whatever that is, convicted for the murder of his mother in 2002. He was incarcerated until 2019 and living in a nearby homeless shelter before his arrest. Elliot is also an African-American, a victim of systemic racism. 

The other victim, diminutive 65 year-old Filipina immigrant Vilma Kari, was walking to church when Elliot kicked her in the chest, knocking her down and then stamping on her head three times while berating her as an Asian that should  go back to wherever she came from. Elliot then sauntered across the street. Several observers, including one employed as a security guard in the building where the attack occurred, did nothing during the episode. These individuals appeared to African-American as well. The lady was reported to have suffered a fractured pelvis.

The focus of the SCMP article is not the incident itself but instead the response of Filipinos in the US to it and other attacks on Asians. 

   Leon Villavicencio, a Filipino-American researcher, says 

“I grew up in a place where the only other Filipinos I knew were my cousins, and other Asians were few,” he said. “You would always feel you’re the other. You’re different.”

He said he used to laugh along when he encountered racist jokes in high school in an attempt to fit in better. “I think it’s part of being Filipino to not take offensive jokes seriously, but looking back at them now you realise it’s wrong,” he said. 

Well, yes. While Filipinos are the fourth largest group of foreign-born immigrants in the US they still number only 2 million. They're bound to be "the other" in all but the tightest Filipino communities. A similar status would be held by Americans in the Philippines. Historically, Chinese have been the primary recipients of discrimination there. In fact, the Philippines has had a reputation as a dangerous, violent place since the Cebuanos killed Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 during his attempted circumnavigation of the globe. The US experience in attempting to colonize the islands after the Spanish-American war resulted in a 13 year battle with the Muslim chiefs in the surrounding islands, headed by Black Jack Pershing who would have remained there for years longer if he hadn't been moved to Europe to help settle some dynastic issues in 1917. The activity in the Philippines was the longest military engagement in US history until Americans occupied Afghanistan.

Statistics seem to indicate that racist attacks by black Americans on Asians are on the increase. Is the Brandon Elliot affair a disgusting example of this? Or is the sociopath just an example of what can happen when a mentally ill individual with violent tendencies is allowed to roam the streets? We'll probably never know. The event doesn't fit the narrative. 

Racism vs. Hierarchies

Racism: The inability or refusal to recognize the rights, needs, dignity, or value of people of particular races or geographical origins. More widely, the devaluation of various traits of character or intelligence as 'typical' of particular peoples.

 

In the US racism has been an issue for many, many years and calling someone a racist is a common derogation. But is racism actually the problem that it is painted to be? Certainly there are differences in cultures and value systems that divide what are rightly or wrongly considered to be different groups of people even though the members of a supposed group are hardly identical.  

For one thing, members of a group are likely to wish to remain members of that group, which includes their relatives and friends. In order to do so  they must adhere to the cultural factors and system of values of that group. One can't be a member of a particular group without visibly accepting many of the things that distinguish that group from others. Not only do those things demonstrate group membership but they also indicate to other groups that the same person, perhaps embracing alien or seemingly obnoxious values, is not a member of their group.

None of any of the group members wants to adopt many of the defining characteristics of other groups. They wish to maintain their own group characteristics but in a multi-racial society that can lead to conflicts. Some cultural practices that are deeply rooted in one group are despised and unacceptable to another. Some people enjoy cockfights, others are horrified by them. Teen-age brides are common among some groups but considered child abuse by others. The dominant culture will attempt, often successfully, to eliminate practices that they find abhorrent through the educational and legal process. They will look down on those that refuse to "assimilate" and since these outliers are likely to share not only cultural dimensions but also physical appearances what is called racism is a result.

Unlike in many other cultures, where the dominant one is by definition the correct one, parts of US society have taken up the quest for a situation where all are equal in some form. In legal terms this may well now be the case. In social terms it may not. That's because the real problem isn't in race or culture. The problem is hierarchies. In the economically mobile US it's the goal of every sentient being to have access to more wealth and more stuff. This is a new dimension in the human experience. 

European peasants remained peasants for their entire lives. So did their offspring. None of them received any sort of meaningful higher education. None of them were going to climb a social ladder, advance in hierarchy. Only when they left Europe for the Americas, Australia, South Africa, India, were they able to join an hierarchy that led to social advancement and wealth they could have never enjoyed in Europe. Of course they did this by eliminating or subjugating the native populations. 

The issue at hand isn't racism, it's being relegated to a lower level of the social hierarchy. This couldn't be more obvious. In the US, individuals of minority races or ethnicities are scattered all over the upper levels of the social hierarchy. They hold high elected political office, lucrative positions in business and industry, dominant places in entertainment. Of course this isn't true of all of them. In the US scheme of things, those at the top have climbed over those below them. For leaders to exist there must be followers. Being born to a leader and member of the upper level of the social hierarchy is the best ticket to success, now as it has always been, in the US and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, those with talent and drive can climb the hierarchical ladder regardless of their genetic makeup, just as we all must if that happens to be our goal. 

   

NIall Ferguson On Money

 

What the Spaniards had failed to understand is that the value of precious metal is not absolute. Money is worh only what someone else is willing to give you for it. An increase in its supply will not make a society richer, though it may enrich  the government that monopolizes the production of money. Other things being equal, monetary expansion will merely make prices higher.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"In God We Trust" it says on the back of the ten-dollar bill, but the person you are really trusting when you accept one of these in payment is the successor to the man on the front (Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the US Treasury) who at the time of writing happens to be Lloyd Blankfein's predecessor as the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Henry M. Paulson, Jr. When an American exchanges his goods or his labour for a fistful of dollars, he is essentially trusting "Hank" Paulson (and by implication the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke) not to repeat Spain's error and manufacture so many of these things that they end up being worth no more than the paper they are printed on.

 

The Ascent of Money, A Financial History of the World, Niall Ferguson, Penguin Books, 2009, pgs 27-29 

Support Your Local Thought Police

 

Really Big Numbers

It isn't easy to grasp the magnitude of the numbers floating around today. For instance, the bill that intellectually hobbled US president Biden is soon going to sign for "covid relief" is supposed to total $1.9 trillion dollars. How much is that?

Written in numbers it looks like this: $1,900,000,000,000. There's an estimated 7 billion homo sapiens wandering about the planet's surface. Simple arithmetic indicates that if distributed equally among all living earthlings, each would receive $271. If the recipients were all US citizens, each Yankee would get $5,758.

This is new territory. For all of human history, except for the most recent years, the term "million" served to enumerate a round, almost impossible to visualize, number. A "millionaire" was a person with a stupendous amount of wealth. Not anymore. Billionaires now exist. 

Oddly, the application of large numbers hasn't changed in any other field but money and finance. It's still roughly 93 million miles from the earth to the sun, just as it has been for billions of years and likely billions more. A light year, the distance that a beam of light will travel in one earth year, is a little less than 6 trillion miles and should remain so for the foreseeable future. The number of cells in the body of the average human male is estimated to be between 35 and 40 trillion, unlikely to grow or shrink if humans remain in their current configuration.

Big numbers are needed to quantify the changes in the amounts of real goods, however. For instance, the US produces about 12,108,000 barrels of oil per day. Prior to Drake's discovery in 1859 the amount recovered was a little more than zero. 

In the case of fiat money, the US Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank can enpixelate any amount of money since that money is an abstraction, no mints or printing presses needed. The money itself is tied to no concrete substance, like gold, silver or wampum. All that's necessary is for society to accept that the digital money in their accounts represents real value. Who knows what the upper limit on digital US money might be? Or is there even such a limit? 

    

K-9 Cop Arraigned On Assault Charge In Arrest Incident In Michigan

A Michigan state trooper has been arraigned with felony charges of assault for allowing a police K-9 to feast on a suspect last September according to this story and this one. Michigan State Police Director Joe Gasper said that trooper Parker Surbrook's actions during the arrest were "totally unacceptable". The supervisor who initiated the investigation of the incident "immediately recognized multiple policy violations" and filed a complaint.

Once again, failure to follow police policies were initially the central issue in the affair, not a violation of the law. 

 

 

BIGOT

Bigot,  n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

 

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911. 

Geriatric Leaders

The majority of Americans happily cast their ballots in 2020 for the position of US president for a man that was soon to be 78 years of age.  This man was running against the incumbent, who was 74 years old.

 During the frightening years of the Soviet Union pundits in the free world ridiculed the Russian Commies for selecting aged, withered fossils as their supreme leaders.

That may well have been true in some sense.

Nikita Krushchev became first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1953 at age 59.

Leonid Breznev replaced Krushchev in 1964 aged 58.

The next Communist in line for the top spot, Yuri Andropov, assumed office at age 68.

Konstantin Chernenko, a real Methuselah, took over the position in 1984 at age 73 and died in office 13 months later.

Mikhail Gorbachev took over for Chernenko in 1985 as a 54 year old youngster and is still alive today, having outlived the USSR political entity.

The Communist Party no longer rules Russia but instead is led by Vladimir Putin, who first held national office in 1999 at age 47.   

The Only Two Words You Need To Know: Asset Forfeiture

The celebrated freedom and liberty of the US democracy can be summed up in two words: Asset Forfeiture. This article from the on-line Reason describes but one example of another vestige of medieval society where authorities are allowed to simply confiscate the property of people uninvolved in criminal activity. The historical figure Hans Kohlhase has been celebrated in fiction and motion pictures for his reaction to his own brush with forfeiture to state authorities, circa 1532 Saxony.

 

The Reason article points out that states that allow asset forfeiture also have mechanisms that permit the owners of the disputed property to retrieve it through the legal process. In the case of Melinda Harris, her efforts to recover her automobile could not begin until the state of Massachusetts had begun legal proceedings to acquire ownership, which they did not do for 68 months, a period of time during which she was not only unable to use the vehicle but also saw it greatly diminish in value as it sat in statutory purgatory. 

 

While it might be so important that trans-sexual athletes be allowed to compete in scholastic sports that the Biden administration produced an executive order as one of the earliest in its existence, it still seems that the asset forfeiture scam, means that law enforcement in America, in 2014, stole $600,000,000 more from Americans than actual criminal burglars.

Minnesota Covid Death Trip

There are reputed to be 10,000 lakes in the state of Minnesota. If the name of each one of these lakes was changed to that of a supposed Covid-19 victim there would be at this moment 3,514 bodies of water named Long Lake or Mud Lake or Round Lake or Big Lake available to be renamed to honor someone who has fallen to the insidious virus. 

The University of Minnesota could, if it wished, provide a free ticket to a Gopher hockey game for an heir of each Covid-19 victim. In that case there would be 4,101 spots available for others, perhaps those in the early stages of the disease or in the process of recovery.

Examined in a different manner, for each Gopher stater that has succumbed to the respiratory illness, 818 remain in action. The deaths attributed to it make up a little more than .1% of the state's population.

 

A Contested Election

This story from the archives of the New York Times describes some of the aspects of the 1993 state senate election in north Philadelphia. Further details of this episode are included in John Paulos' book "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper".

The China Strategy Group

Some executives and thinkers from the US "high-tech" business segment have formed a group to influence US policy in the technological competition with China, as described here. 

 

China plays by a different set of rules that allow it to benefit from corporate espionage, illiberal surveillance, and a blurry line between its public and private sector, the report says.

No chance of that in the USA, of course.

From a list of changes these wizards desire are two that have been on the list for years: 

The US needs to build an "education system that prepares researchers for industry roles", such as investing more in science and technology education and "addressing the current bottlenecks in immigration policy" to cope with the declining stay rates of foreign talent. 

Yes, the most profitable businesses in world history want the general public, through their taxes and public education system, to supply the raw material for their generally abstract business model. And they also want the freedom to import new employees that can displace or compete in terms of compensation in the US marketplace.

One of the great mysteries of the current state of affairs is that giant corporations expect to see lines of highly qualified STEM grads knocking at their doors, select the best for their operation and insert them directly into their work force. In an alternate reality, these businesses would attempt to identify possible research stars as early as possible, enroll them in their own schools and universities and then put them to work later. They would actually get what they wanted. Unfortunately, they'd also have to pay for it.

 

 

 

 

 

“Female genital mutilation is child abuse,” said Ryan Patrick, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.

A federal indictment has charged a Houston, Texas woman with female genital mutilation for bringing an unnamed girl to a foreign country for the operation, a social/religious one that occurs in parts of Africa and Asia, according to this account.

Unpleasant and gruesome as this procedure seems to be, it happens all over the West many times daily. Of course, I'm referring to the barbaric practice of male circumcision. Since it's performed on newly-born boys, who are expected to scream for any old reason, little attention is paid to their discomfort and the victims are unlikely to sue their parents upon attaining majority. Nobody calls it child abuse. 

Federal Executions Are Expensive

This Newsweek article describes the problems and expenses involved with the execution of those given the death penalty for federal crimes.

Sure, anything that involves the federal government is going to be expensive. But the main objection is that the Trump administration has, after an hiatus of 17 years, resumed federal executions, especially in the Covid panic era, even putting female offenders to death.

Having a personal opinion on the death penalty in any circumstance isn't germane to this topic. In 1994 the Biden Crime Bill was passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It added the possible death penalty to over 60 federal offenses. Those convicted of them were sentenced to death by federal judges. While there are always appeals processes attached to these sentences, at some point, usually in the distant future, the gallows, gas chamber or lethal injection has to come into play. However, an inmate's sentence can be commuted by the head of the US Justice Department, the President. 

Perhaps not so oddly, while the Trump administration, and Trump personally, are being castigated for a lack of mercy and a disregard for the expenses involved in capital punishment, zero attention is being paid to both the Democrat 1994 Crime Bill and the federal judges who impose the death penalty. Saddling Trump  with the obligation to overturn the death penalties decreed by members of the federal judiciary doesn't make any sense. In fact, in the stories of the various murderers and their crimes, the identity of those who decide their punishment is seldom discussed. 

If the federal death penalty is something to which a significant portion of the population is opposed, they should take their objections to their congressmen and to the new administration and its head, who worked hard to legislate the very punishment they abhor. 

Another Cop Canine Runs Amok

On May 28, 2018 a Duluth, Minnesota, police K-9 staying at a motel in Warroad, MN, seriously chewed up a maid. Nine hundred and fifty-eight days later the City of Duluth voted to settle a suit brought by the victim for $50,000, as explained here. 

 

Duluth Police Dept. photo

Maybe paying for dog bites is just one of the incidental expenses of city government.

Who Needs To Know This?

An outdoor advertisement that serves exactly what purpose? The airport is local monopoly and public institution. It's not in competition for customers. No traveler in the Twin City area weighs the advantages and disadvantages of a flight from MSP to ORD or LAX to those destinations from St. Cloud, Rochester, Sioux Falls or Des Moines. In fact, most air travelers simply go to the closest airport regardless of inferior fast food or skimpy newstands. 

Billboards are one of the more expensive methods of advertising. Maybe MSP could have taken the money spent on this silly sign and used it to improve rest room conditions or speed up the check-in process. Or perhaps the airport is so awash in cash that it needs to get rid of some of it.