New York State Trooper Indicted on Sexual Assault Charges

Sometimes "To Protect and to Serve" just isn't enough. A cop has to go a little further. This article shows just how far one of them went. Surveillance cameras are such an inconvenience.

New York state trooper in jail togs.

Double-Dipping Doesn't Always Work

This article from the New Brunswick Today website gives us a little bit of an inkle on how the fraternity of public employees, in this case cops, manages to make life a little more comfortable in their golden years. According to the local regs, these guys can't retire and go back to work for their public employer without waiting for 180 days. But even this b.s. wasn't enough. They walked outside for a smoke and a doughnut and then went right back into the police department with a new job while collecting retirement. And people wonder why cities can't balance their budgets.


Chuck Savoth, management specialist and retired cop, retirement benefit $79,719 annually. Not enough to survive on.

Bear Eats Dog in Glacier Park, Gets the Death Penalty

Some of the details of an unpleasant encounter for both dog and bear are recounted in this story from The Missoulian, a newspaper serving the area with some of the grimmest traffic problems in rural America. Mr. Bruin swaggers onto the dog owner's deck and scarfs up his Shih Tzu. No can make sandwich out of human pet.

The scene of the crime is located within Glacier Park, a place where  indigenous animals are supposedly allowed to freely roam much as they once did before the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad arrived. There is no record, however, of odd Chinese dogs being slated for preservation in the Montana demi-wilds.

We've mentioned before that predator wild animals have not been instructed on the rules for behavior that humans have unilaterally imposed on them. Giving them the death penalty for violating those rules seems a little extreme, don't you think, since they know nothing of them?
 
A black bear, perhaps 200lbs.

  A Shih Tzu, maybe 4 lbs.

Fighting Cocks in Wisconsin

The St. Paul Pioneer Press via Twin Cities.com has informed us of a multi-agency task force, together with the ASPCA, putting the collar on at least three cockfighting devotees in the bucolic regions of Polk County and St. Croix County, Wisconsin in this story.

While cockfighting is even now a popular pastime in many parts of the world and was once a regular entertainment in the UK and the US as well, some contemporary Americans are so disgusted by the idea that they've managed to create legislation making the sport illegal. While the basis for this is apparently cruelty to animals, the same idea doesn't extend to fish, as we noted earlier. Doesn't extend to baby boys, either, perhaps because circumcision isn't a sport and nobody bets on it.

Diversity, a liberal mantra, is encouraged in the US when people of other cultures make their home there as long as it's restricted to exotic foods, costumes, music and dance routines. Other cultural traits, like marrying several 13 year-old girls, chewing khat and betting on chicken fights aren't the kind of diversity the societal guardians are looking for.  America's toughest sheriff, the legendary Joe Arpaio, puts the hammer down on cockfighting also and has some serious help, as this story tells. After discovering a battalion of chicken warriors, Sheriff Joe arrests and charges the putative owner and euthanizes ( read that as "kills") over one hundred roosters. They're given the death penalty for unwittingly participating in an activity frowned on by the guys in the capitol.



Surplus military vehicle used by Sheriff Joe's posse to arrest shameless felon engaged in the husbandry of bad roosters.

The prohibition of cock fighting is supposedly because it's a cruel, inhuman activity, In reality cruelty is a major feature of human behavior, toward animals or one another. The actual reason for punishing cock fighting devotees is that the sport is a vehicle for gambling, just like NFL football. Neither of the two activities would have any significant level of participation without betting. The government encourages illegal betting on football by building new, huge television studios for their games but confiscates and kills fighting cocks. Something doesn't add up.  

Negligence Takes the Lives of Two K-9 Cops

It's not unusual for dogs to die when left in automobiles during hot weather. It's a little more unusual when the dogs are police K-9s. A Hialeah policeman left his two dogs in a locked SUV for over 5 hours and both animals expired. While the officer in question has been suspended without pay, no decision has as yet been made on what charges, if any, he will face for the dogs' deaths. This story Another take on the incident can be found here. An ordinary citizen is in big trouble if he harms or kills a police K-9. We'll see what happens to Officer Enriquez. Additionally, the dogs, being incapable of real thought or understanding, didn't volunteer to be Hialeah cops. There's a moral question here if humans have the right to expose dumb animals to the dangers of law enforcement.
 

Blue Collar vs White Collar Conditions

Nineteenth-century German intellectual fraud Karl Marx stipulated that there was an inherent conflict in the capitalist system between workers and their  bourgeoisie overlords. That's not now and never has been the case. The actual conflict is between the blue collar workers that deal with reality and their white collar counterparts that deal with abstractions, generally in a bureaucratic model. The owners of capital are bemused bystanders.

An example of the dichotomy between these two groups is plainly visible in the construction industry. The men and women that build the structures in which white collar workers later spend their time endure conditions that their bureaucrat brothers would refuse. It's not the work itself that's the issue, however. It's the workplace environment when no work is taking place.

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During the construction of a new hospital workers assemble in this room each morning. It is the assigned space for breaks and lunches. Light is provided by half a dozen 60 watt bulbs hanging far above the floor, which is cleaned perhaps weekly. If food were being sold in this room, state health authorities would close the facility for sanitary reasons.

This is the dining facility at an existing hospital nearby. It caters to employees, patients and visitors.

The construction workers' lounge. Construction management uses well-lighted trailers.

The lounge at the nearby hospital.

Typical toilet facilities provided for construction workers. If this is sufficient for them, why is it necessary to provide more sophisticated and sanitary ones for the later occupants?

Why is one toilet reserved for women? And why is it secured with a combination lock? Do the workers in the plant that builds the porta-potties also perform their body functions in them or do they have real toilets? If for some reason one's toilet no longer functioned could they put a porta-potty next to the driveway and use it on a permanent basis?

The men's room at the nearby hospital. Women have a similar facility adjoining. It isn't locked.

Construction workers expect and accept dangerous, difficult and dirty working conditions. That's always been the nature of the business.  At the same time, why should they accept unsanitary rest  rooms and filthy, uncomfortable, poorly lighted break rooms? It could be said that these conditions are temporary. While everything is pretty much temporary in the big scheme of things, for construction workers this is a permanent feature of daily existence. When this project is completed, the next one will have portable toilets and filthy break rooms as well.

There's been an international conversation over income inequality. When will there be one about addressing the disparities in conditions between white collar employees and the people that build their facilities?

In Singapore, future residents of an up-scale housing project have discovered the conditions under which the workers that are building their homes exist and are at least recognizing the situation as we see here. 

Virginia Camel Is Center of Law Enforcement Action

A camel owned by a Chesterfield County man has been confiscated by police and incarcerated at an animal shelter because it appears to be under-nourished, according to this story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

As usual, the beast in question is referred to by his "name", in this case, Jacob. Like dogs and cats, camels evidently receive only first names, but no surnames. Anyway, despite what the article describes as camels being relatively common animals, people were so curious to see it that it had to be hidden from view by the hanging of tarps over the fence of the camel jail.