AMERICAN FORK, Utah - Four teenagers were cited by police in American Fork after they rapped their order at a McDonald's drive-thru. The boys said the drive-thru worker was not amused and asked them to leave. American Fork police found the teens at a parking lot during a high school volleyball game and issued them a citation for being disorderly in public. An officer said this means the teens created public fear or a public scene and that continuing to rap when they were asked to repeat their order was enough to issue a citation.
The teens said an employee got their plate number and must have called police as they were leaving. They also said they did not think they were breaking the law while rapping their order.
"It's just a joke. Honestly they didn't need to take it this far. It's not a big deal." said Gage Christensen, 17, one of the teens involved in the rap.
FOX 13 News called the McDonald's in American Fork and the night manager said the teens were cursing and disrupting business. The teens said that is not true and they were the only ones in the drive-thru.
"Who gives tickets to high school teenagers for rapping into a microphone at McDonalds? Who does this?" said a mother of one of the teens, Sharon Dauwalder. "I just don't understand why or how this could have been blown out of proportion."
Thousands nationwide have made their own drive-thru rap videos and posted them on YouTube.
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Utah Teens Cited For Rapping Order at McDonald's
Texas law on children seeing porn being challenged
DALLAS — A 1970s-era Texas law that allows parents to show "harmful material" to their children has come under fire after a prosecutor said he couldn't file charges against a man accused of forcing his 8- and 9-year-old daughters to watch hardcore online pornography.
Randall County District Attorney James Farren has asked the Texas attorney general's office to review his decision not to pursue charges in the case, which has prompted at least one lawmaker to vow to change the state's public indecency law.
"Our hands are tied. It's not our fault. I have to follow the law," Farren said Thursday. "The mother of the victims in this case was less than happy with this decision, which I understand. We were less than happy with the statute."
The law apparently was meant to protect the privacy of parents who wanted to teach children about sex education, but it states clearly that parents can't be prosecuted for showing "harmful material" to their children.
Farren said police reported the incident to his office after one of the girls told a counselor in June that her father made them watch adults having group sex and various other acts at his home in Amarillo. The parents of the girls, and their 7-year-old sister, are divorced and share custody.
The girls' mother, Crystal Buckner, wants her ex-husband to be jailed. She said she was stunned to hear from prosecutors and police that nothing can be done.
"I said, 'Are you kidding me?' There's no way. This can't be right," said Buckner, a 30-year-old stay-at-home mother.
The Associated Press typically does not publish the names of parents if it could identify children who might have been abused, but Buckner is seeking publicity about the case. She has printed out copies of the penal code, which she hands out to everyone she meets.
"I want people to know about this. I want parents to be mad and say, 'No!'" she said. "I understand in the '70s everybody wanted the government to stay out of their homes. I don't want to stop parents from having that right to teach sex education, but there's a big difference and there's a line you should not cross when teaching."
The case caught the attention of state Sen. Bob Deuell, a Republican from Greenville who said he's planning to push for a change in the law in the next legislative session in 2011.
The Texas attorney general's office said Thursday that it would be months before an opinion's issued and declined further comment.
Farren said he thinks the law is clear and that the attorney general will agree.
"I don't think that's what the legislators intended, but it's the result," he said. "If our interpretation is wrong, that'd be great. It's fine, we'd love to go ahead and prosecute."
Farren noted that the law does not mention intent. According to the Texas penal code passage, "harmful material" such as pornography is considered defensible from prosecution if "the sale, distribution, or exhibition to a minor who was accompanied by a consenting parent, adult, or spouse."
"It just says it's a defense. Period," said Farren, who also hopes the case will force the Legislature to revisit the issue.
As for the girls, they still go to their father's house once a month, but those visits now must be supervised.
A call placed to the home of the girls' father, who is not charged with a crime, was not immediately returned Thursday.
The Danger of Celebrating Halloween
Editor's Note: We realize that the article by Kimberly Daniels is controversial. It reflects her own personal views—based on her many years of ministering to people involved in the occult. We have chosen to post another column by Ken Eastburn which offers a different view of Halloween. We welcome our readers to post comments on that article as well. Click here to read Eastburn's article.
Halloween—October 31—is considered a holiday in the United States. In fact, it rivals Christmas with regard to how widely celebrated it is. Stores that sell only Halloween-related paraphernalia open up a few months before the day and close shortly after it ends. But is Halloween a holiday that Christians should be observing?
The word "holiday" means "holy day." But there is nothing holy about Halloween. The root word of Halloween is "hallow," which means "holy, consecrated and set apart for service." If this holiday is hallowed, whose service is it set apart for? The answer to that question is very easy—Lucifer's!
Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son).
The key word in discussing Halloween is "dedicated." It is dedicated to darkness and is an accursed season. During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.
You may ask, "Doesn't God have more power than the devil?" Yes, but He has given that power to us. If we do not walk in it, we will become the devil's prey. Witchcraft works through dirty hearts and wrong spirits.
During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.
I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.
Even the colors of Halloween (orange, brown and dark red) are dedicated. These colors are connected to the fall equinox, which is around the 20th or 21st of September each year and is sometimes called "Mabon." During this season witches are celebrating the changing of the seasons from summer to fall. They give praise to the gods for the demonic harvest. They pray to the gods of the elements (air, fire, water and earth).
Mother earth is highly celebrated during the fall demonic harvest. Witches praise mother earth by bringing her fruits, nuts and herbs. Demons are loosed during these acts of worship. When nice church folk lay out their pumpkins on the church lawn, fill their baskets with nuts and herbs, and fire up their bonfires, the demons get busy. They have no respect for the church grounds. They respect only the sacrifice and do not care if it comes from believers or non-believers.
Gathering around bonfires is a common practice in pagan worship. As I remember, the bonfires that I attended during homecoming week when I was in high school were always in the fall. I am amazed at how we ignorantly participate in pagan, occult rituals.
The gods of harvest that the witches worship during their fall festivals are the Corn King and the Harvest Lord. The devil is too stupid to understand that Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest 365 days a year. But we cannot be ignorant of the devices of the enemy. When we pray, we bind the powers of the strong men that people involved in the occult worship.
Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats. It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.
While the lukewarm and ignorant think of these customs as "just harmless fun," the vortexes of hell are releasing new assignments against souls. Witches take pride in laughing at the ignorance of natural men (those who ignore the spirit realm).
Decorating buildings with Halloween scenes, dressing up for parties, going door-to-door for candy, standing around bonfires and highlighting pumpkin patches are all acts rooted in entertaining familiar spirits. All these activities are demonic and have occult roots.
The word "occult" means "secret." The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:
- Sex with demons
- Orgies between animals and humans
- Animal and human sacrifices
- Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
- Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
- Revel nights
- Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
- Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.
Another abomination that goes on behind the scenes of Halloween is necromancy, or communication with the dead. Séances and contacting spirit guides are very popular on Halloween, so there is a lot of darkness lurking in the air.
However, Ephesians 1:19-21 speaks of the authority of the believer and the exceeding greatness of God's power in us (the same power that raised Christ from the dead). It goes on to say that that Jesus is seated in heavenly places far above all principalities, power, might, dominions and every name that is named. The good news is that because we are seated in heavenly places with Jesus, the same demonic activity that is under His feet is under our feet, too!
People who worship the devil continue to attempt to lift him up. But he has already been cast out and down! Many are blinded to this fact, but the day will come when all will know he has been defeated once and for all.
When we accept Jesus but refuse to renounce Satan and his practices, we are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm—and the Word says that God will spit us out of His mouth. The problem with lukewarm is that it attempts to mix the things of the devil with the things of God. It is God's desire that we serve Him alone.
Second Corinthians 6:15 asks the question, "And what agreement has Christ with Belial?" As believers, we need to answer that question in our hearts. We must avoid the very appearance of evil. I would not want a demon spirit to mistake me for an occult worshiper.
There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!"
About the author: Kimberly Daniels is a sought-after conference speaker and preacher. She is the founder of Kimberly Daniels Ministries International (kimberlydaniels.com), Spoken Word Ministries—the church she pastors in Jacksonville, Florida, with her husband, Ardell—A Child of the King Learning Center and Word Bible College. Kim is a recognized prophetic voice as well as the author of several books, including her most recent, Prayers that Bring Change (Charisma House).
Conservatives Are Rewriting the Bible to Free It From "Liberal Bias"
By Joseph Laycock and Thomas Fabisiak
The new version will sing the praises of the free market and call young women "floozies" and "bimbos."
In 2006, Andy Schlafly, best known as the son of notorious anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, launched a wiki site called Conservapedia as an alternative to Wikipedia. The nation’s sixth most frequently visited Web site had, he felt, become dominated by liberal and anti-Christian bias.
Now Schlafly has a new project: rewriting the Bible to free it from liberal bias. The new translation will be free of “emasculated” and “dumbed-down” language as well as “liberal wordiness.” So-called “later-inserted liberal passages” will be deleted entirely. All of these changes will be made by amending the King James Version of the Bible through an online wiki format.
While the Conservative Bible Project (CBP) has so far been regarded largely as a joke, it does raise some interesting questions. The idea of writing a sacred text through a wiki is largely unprecedented. The CPB also marks an escalation in what Robert S. McElvaine has called “Grand Theft Jesus”—the appropriation of the Christian tradition for political ends. Is Schlafly a profoundly cynical politician, attempting to manipulate religion in a way that would put Machiavelli and Karl Rove to shame? Or does he truly believe that the Bible has been tainted by “liberalism” for over a thousand years?
The Jefferson Bible as Precedent
Curiously, the CBP is reminiscent of The Jefferson Bible, written in 1820 by our nation’s third president. Thomas Jefferson felt that the teachings of Jesus had been abused and corrupted by Christians, but that the “genuine” teachings of Jesus were “as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dung-hill.” Jefferson removed passages referring to the supernatural, as well as what he considered to be misperceptions by the Gospel writers. Critics accused him of paraphrasing the Bible to suit his own ends. Is Schlafly simply a modern day Jefferson, seeking conservative diamonds in a liberal dung-hill?
Not exactly.
The CBP differs from The Jefferson Bible in at least three respects. First, although Jefferson used religious language in the Declaration of Independence and other writings, his revision of the Bible was a private pursuit: He never allowed The Jefferson Bible to be published during his lifetime. Second, Jefferson recognized that his views were highly unorthodox. By contrast, Schlafly identifies as a practicing Catholic and argues that his reading of the Bible is, in fact, orthodox. Finally, the nature of the revisions is fundamentally different. The Jefferson Bible rejects supernaturalism as well as the tenets of Calvinism.
However, Schlafly’s projects—Conservapedia and the CBP—do not seek to combat specific ideologies so much as a species called “liberals.” Conservapedia defines a “liberal” as “someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons.” In this world, liberals are incapable of understanding the Bible, or even logical thought. Where Jefferson excluded doctrines from his Bible, the CBP seeks to exclude words. “Accountability,” for instance, is a conservative word that enriches understanding of scripture. “Laborer,” on the other hand, is a liberal word and has no place in the Bible.
“Young girl”? How about “floozy,” “bimbo,” or “temptress”?
So how is the new translation proceeding? As of October 11, the completed “translations” on Conservapedia include Mark 1-8, Matthew 1-9, Luke 1-2, John 1-3, Philemon, and a few verses from Genesis, 1 John, Jude, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. As for the Hebrew Bible, only Genesis appears to be slated for translation. Calling the works in question “translations” may be a misnomer since work with Greek originals seems to be intermittent at best. For the most part, the changes are simply re-phrasings of passages from the King James Version.
Where commentary has been made on the Greek, it typically reflects a rudimentary and sometimes distorted understanding of the language. For example, the only mention of any Greek in the translation of the Gospel of Mark 1-8 comes in verse 6:22, where the “translators” have argued that korasion, which means “young girl” or “maiden,” should be translated as “floozy,” “bimbo,” or “temptress”—despite the fact that this translation has no historical, philological, or textual basis. In fact, Mark uses the same word in 5:41, in reference to a young girl whom Jesus raises from the dead.
Such an open approach to translation will likely offend conservative and fundamentalist proponents of “biblical inerrancy,” the theory that the Bible is God’s inspired word and that only the literal meaning of the text is valid. Some comments on the talk pages for the project already reflect a tension among conservative readers along these lines, with the critics referring, for example, to Revelation 22:19’s injunction not to “take away from the words of the book of this prophecy.” One comment from the blogosphere said of the CBP, “Let them rewrite the Bible. It is deemed a sin to add or take away from the Good Book, so those wanting to rewrite will find their own brimstone and hellfire soon enough.”
In their interpretive procedures and principles, however, participants in the CBP do not reject biblical inerrantist or originalist rhetoric. On the contrary, they see themselves as restoring the text to its original state. The project’s authors maintain, for example, that there are three “sources of error” in modern translations of the Bible. Along with bias in modern translations and the “lack of precision in the modern language,” they point to the inadequacy of the original language of the texts in rendering the “powerful new concepts” introduced by Christianity.
This can result in the somewhat paradoxical claim that the meaning of the text is insufficient to convey its clear meaning. Hence, for instance, the following conversation between a critical commentator, who takes issue with the historical and philological accuracy of the translation of “korasion,” and Andy Schlafly:
The trouble with that example is, we already know what “κορασιων” means—it means “little girl,” the diminutive of the bog-standard Greek word for girl, κοραι. And we know that because people used it on funerary inscriptions (among others) to describe their dead daughters, who they (presumably) didn’t want to call temptresses. Ancient Greek had a rich, complex vocabulary, including a complete vocabulary of sexual terms—they had words for temptress, slut, prostitute, dancer, etc. The author of the Gospel of Mark chose to use the word that unequivocally means “little girl” instead of one of the many less savory words he had available, and yet you think you know better what he meant to say? That’s not creating an unbiased translation, that’s shoehorning your own belief structure into the Bible. Does that honor God?
—Jere7my 20:41, 6 October 2009 (EDT)
Fine, κορασιων means “little girl,” but that obviously does not fit the context of the story. What is missing from your analysis is that Mark himself was a young boy at the time also. The underlying event was almost certainly a provocative dance by a young woman, and the best translation should reflect the obvious truth. Fisherman Mark may not have been familiar with the “rich, complex” Greek vocabulary to which you allude, and we’re not about to change the Greek term Mark used. But let the finest English be used to convey the likely meaning accurately.
—Andy Schlafly 22:33, 6 October 2009 (EDT)
Since the text does not say that the dance was provocative, Schlafly’s argument that the author’s intended meaning is “obvious” begs the question, “obvious to whom?” On the talk page, one contributor offers an answer, of sorts, to this question: “THE BIBLE IS CONSERVATIVE,” he writes, and, as such, “conservatives” will know what it originally meant.
Pharisee = Liberal
Whether or not Biblical inerrantists accept the idea that Andy Schlafly and other like-minded individuals are the true guardians of the original meaning, the CBP is sure to strike historically-minded scholars and readers as problematic. In addition to making unfounded claims about the author of the gospel of Mark’s feelings about young girls, the translators maintain that “unclean spirit” should be translated as “Satan,” that “cast lots,” should be translated as “gambling,” that “holy spirit,” should be translated “divine guide,” and that logos, or “word,” should be translated “truth.”
Some of the translators have even suggested that the title “Pharisee” should be translated as “elite,” “self-proclaimed elite,” “intellectual,” or “liberal.” On the main page of the project, the guidelines suggest that translations should insist on the “logic of Hell… as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell,” ignoring the fact that the modern concept of Hell is a post-biblical conflation of motifs from a number of sometimes conflicting biblical and apocryphal notions of sheol, gehenna, Hades, judgment in the end-times, etc.
More starkly anachronistic are claims that Jesus taught parables about the “free market” (a late-medieval concept at best), and that the Bible includes “later-inserted liberal passages.” In describing the project, Schlafly has repeatedly cited two such “liberal” passages: the story of Jesus saving an adulteress from being stoned in John 7:53-8:11, and Luke 23:34, where Jesus asks God to forgive his crucifiers, “for they know not what they do.”
Schlafly is right to point out that neither passage is unanimously attested by the earliest ancient manuscripts. Many people don’t realize that the New Testament that they can read today (in the NIV or KJV, for example) is actually based on a collation of diverse ancient texts. During the course of copying and transmitting the gospels, Acts, letters, and Revelations throughout antiquity, scribes made small errors and “corrections,” including additions to and subtractions from the texts that they copied, resulting in sometimes markedly different versions of what are now well-known passages.
In addition to Luke 23:34 and John 7:53-8:11, other famously disputed passages include the “only-begotten God” or “only-begotten son” of John 1:18, the “bloody sweat” of Luke 22:43-44, the number six hundred sixty-six in Revelation 13, and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (which enjoins women to be silent in church). One of the main reasons for differences between newer translations of the Bible and the KJV is that the latter does not consistently reflect what scholars now believe to be the earliest and best ancient manuscripts. Conservative Christian groups usually oppose text-critical analysis of the manuscripts that make up the New Testament, so it is somewhat surprising that the CBP has embraced it.
It's all Greek to Him
Still, Schlafly’s belief that “liberals” added John 7:53-8:11 and Luke 23:34 to the Bible is manifestly ludicrous from a historical point of view. Both texts are already attested by manuscripts in the fourth century, long before modern liberals—or conservatives—were around to pen them. A history of reception of either passage would undoubtedly show that, like every other Bible passage, they have been used by a variety of different groups with different interests in different times and places over the last seventeen centuries or so. Here, as elsewhere, Schlafly displays a remarkable lack of historical knowledge about the Bible for someone who has undertaken to oversee a Bible translation project. He does not appear to personally know any relevant ancient languages, or even what ancient languages make up the Bible. When one commentator on the talk page suggested that the translators should “go back to the Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic etc.,” in translating the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, for example, Schlafly retorted that the Bible was written in Greek, adding that the commentator seemed “unsure in identifying the original language.”
Even leaving aside the question of historical or linguistic accuracy, however, this project presents serious problems for those scholars, ministers, and lay-people concerned with the ethics of intepretation. One would have to question the grounds of understanding young girls to be “temptresses” or “bimbos,” for example, or of excising a passage in which Jesus defends a woman from being stoned to death for adultery because it is too “liberal.” The CBP’s approach stands in stark opposition to that of feminist and other exegetes who have sought to reconsider possible readings of the text on ethical grounds. Such interpreters have typically rejected the positivist search for a unique, original meaning while maintaining a strong degree of philological and historical-critical rigor in their development of ethical interpretations.
The members of the Conservative Bible project have moved precisely in the opposite direction, insisting that they are restoring the original, authentic meaning without having any historical, linguistic, or ethical justifications for their interpretive choices.
The Future of Wiki Translation
Nevertheless, the content of the translations may well change over time, due to the nature of a wiki project. It is conceivable that more knowledgeable readers of the Bible will ultimately contribute to the translation. Already, on the talk page for the project’s home page, certain critical, but sympathetic, commentators have questioned the CBP’s approach to “later inserted liberal texts” on text-critical grounds. In the translation of Mark, some critical contributors appear to have won out in arguing that Pharisee should be “translated” as Pharisee, rather than being changed to “intellectual,” “liberal,” or “elite.” Assuming the editors and contributors respond to such criticisms, the CBP’s transformation could prove interesting for tracing the evolution of a wiki “translation” project of the Bible; it might even wind up, in the far-off future, being the medium for a sophisticated, conservatively-oriented version of the Bible.
Whether it does or not, however, the use of wiki technology suggests a new, and potentially more democratic, medium for other translation projects. The CBP could act as a model for any of those communities, Christian or otherwise, who feel that their interests are not sufficiently represented by current editions of the Bible.
One could easily imagine anarchist or Satanist “translations” of the Bible, or sophisticated translations of the Bible by groups who have been marginalized by mainstream Christianity. It could also act as a model for forms of literary experimentation, for a “translation” of biblical texts into the genres of science fiction or fantasy, for instance. As it stands right now, the only other wiki Bible translation project of which we are aware (which preceded the CBP by a few years, and which follows the same practice of rephrasing modern, English editions of the Bible) is the LOLCAT Bible Translation Project, which aims to translate scripture into “lolspeak” or “Kitty Pidgin English.”
Ceiling Cat would no doubt approve.
16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?
By Liliana Segura
Two cases in the Supreme Court could alter the fates of over 2,500 people serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.
Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from Riverside, Calif., when she met a man -- he called himself GG -- who was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. "He was like a father figure," she recalls.
Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then, Kruzan was a good student, an "overachiever" in her words. But her mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in.
"GG was there -- sometimes," she said. "He would talk to me and take me out and give me all these lavish gifts and do all these things for me …" Before long, he started talking to her about sex, giving her his expert advice on what men were really like and telling her that she didn't "need to give it up for free."
Unbeknownst to her, GG was grooming Kruzan to be a prostitute. When she was 13, he raped her. "He uses his manhood to hurt," Kruzan recalls, "Like, break you in. I guess."
Kruzan worked for GG as a prostitute for three years. The hours were 6 p.m. until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. She and "the other girls" would come back and hand over their earnings to him. "He was, like, married to all of us I guess," she says. " … Everything was his."
After years of prostitution and sexual abuse, when she was 16, Kruzan snapped: She killed GG, was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder. Despite attempts by her lawyer to have her sentenced as a juvenile, the judge described her crime as "well thought-out" and sentenced her to life without parole.
"My judge told me that I lacked moral scruples," she recalls, a term she did not know the meaning of.
But the meaning of her sentence was all too clear. Life without parole, she says, "means I'm gonna die here."
'These Children Were Literally Lost In Adult Prison'
A few years ago, Sara Kruzan's story grabbed the attention of California State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who introduced legislation to abolish the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for youth offenders. The bill was no get-out-of-jail pass; under his legislation, a juvenile who committed a felony before the age of 18 would serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible to go before a parole board (also not a get-out-of-jail pass).
Yee is also a child psychologist. When it comes to judging the actions of teenagers versus those of adults, he argues, "the neuroscience is clear; brain maturation continues well through adolescence, and thus impulse control, planning and critical-thinking skills are still not yet fully developed."
Condemning teenagers to die in jail, then, means curtailing the lives of potentially productive members of society. "Children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults," Yee said. Anyway, didn't California's prison system rename itself the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?
In politics, however, punitive almost always wins out -- particularly in California, where "three strikes" laws have led to a prison crisis unparalleled anywhere else in the country. Yee's bill met intense political resistance and eventually died.
This past February, he introduced a new, watered-down bill that, instead of eliminating life without parole for juveniles would provide a review of a youth offender's sentence after 10 years.
In 2005, Human Rights Watch published an unprecedented study, "The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States," which found "at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children." Today, the number is even higher: 2,574.
It's only recently that the plight of juveniles serving life in adult prisons came across the national radar. Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch told AlterNet, "these children were literally lost in adult prison. Nobody paid attention to the fact that they were under 18 at the time of their offense."
But this could soon change. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases -- Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida -- that will decide whether life sentences for juveniles violate the Constitution's ban on cruel-and-unusual punishment.
These cases follow the Court's landmark ruling in Roper v. Simmons four years ago, which struck down the death penalty for juvenile defendants on Eighth Amendment grounds. Echoing the opinion of Yee, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that juveniles have an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" that leads to "impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions," as well as being "more susceptible to negative influences and peer pressure."
Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, the lead attorney in Sulliivan, argues that sentencing children to life without parole makes no more sense than sentencing them to death. In court filings for Sullivan, he writes, "The essential feature of a death sentence or a life-without-parole sentence is that it imposes a terminal, unchangeable, once-and-for-all judgment upon the whole life of a human being and declares that human being forever unfit to be a part of civil society."
Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners, including juveniles. According to EJI, out of the prisoners serving juvenile life without parole, more than half are first-time offenders. At least 74 involve defendants who were 14 years old or younger when they committed their crime.
"Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation, and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences has never been reviewed."
'Beyond Help'
Among these 74 is Joe Sullivan, the defendant in Sullivan v. Florida. Sullivan, who is reportedly mentally disabled, was 13 years old in 1989 when he was accused of raping an elderly woman after a burglary carried out by an older group of teenagers. The older teenagers confessed to the burglary but pinned the rape on Sullivan, a charge he denied.
The older boys did time in juvenile prison and were then freed. Sullivan became the youngest prisoner to be sentenced to die in prison for a crime other than murder. "I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can," his trial judge said. "He is beyond help."
At 14, Sullivan was sent to an adult prison, where he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. Sullivan now is 33 years old. Stricken with multiple sclerosis, he is confined to a wheelchair.
Sullivan's case is emblematic of a number of problems when it comes to juveniles sentenced as adults, not the least of which is the phenomenon of youths either being coerced or getting caught up in criminal situations orchestrated by older teenagers or adults.
Among juvenile offenders, many have participated in violent crimes as a result of their relationship with a grown-up. Incredibly, this can mean getting a harsher sentence than the adult in question.
"There is this tendency to point the finger towards the younger co-defendant, sometimes because of the perception that the younger person will get a lesser sentence," says Alison Parker. "There's still this perception out there that kids will be treated differently, but the reality is that kids are treated like adults."
Another major factor is race. During Sullivan's trial, "the prosecutor and witnesses made repeated, unnecessary reference to the fact that Joe is African American and the victim (was) white," according to EJI. "One witness repeatedly said the perpetrator of the assault was a 'colored boy' or 'a dark colored boy.' "
It is not news that the American criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color. But when it comes to juvenile offenders, Alison Parker calls the disparities "absolutely shocking." On a national level, "African American youth are serving the sentence at a rate of about 10 times that of white youth," Parker told AlterNet. "In some states, the rate is even higher."
In both cases before the Supreme Court, the defendants were sentenced to life for crimes that fell short of murder, a phenomenon that is especially prevalent In Florida, where the number of prisoners who will die in jail for non-homicide crimes hovers at 77.
Terrance Jamar Graham, the defendant in Graham v. Florida, was 17 years old and on probation for a crime he committed when he was 16, when he took part in an armed burglary. His co-defendants got minor sentences. He was slapped with life without parole.
"Mr. Graham, as I look back on your case, yours is really candidly a sad situation," the judge told him. "The only thing that I can rationalize is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and there is nothing that we can do for you."
This is classic "three strikes" logic, which, along with the conspiracy and felony murder statutes have led teens to be sentenced to life for crimes in which they played only a minor role.
Take Christine Lockhart, the first female juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole in Iowa. She was 17 years old and sitting in a car when her boyfriend killed someone during an armed robbery. Today, she has been in prison for more than half her life.
Lockhart, along with Sara Kruzan are a relative minority, two out of some 175 women serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. But their stories reveal how young people can get caught up in dangerous, harmful, and ultimately deadly, situations often simply by being with the wrong people at the wrong time.
"Sara's story is compelling," says Parker. "But it is really one that is shared across the country. There are many, many people with similar circumstances who are serving life sentences without any possibility of parole."
Kruzan, in fact, is one of the lucky ones. She now has attorneys who are working on appealing her sentence, pro bono. Most other prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles have no post-conviction representation at all.
Today, Kruzan is 32 years old and described as a "model inmate," despite any real lack of incentive. ("Who wants to excel in prison?" she says.) Asked what she would say if she had a chance to appear before a a parole board, she says that she believes she can now be of some value to society, perhaps even a "positive example."
Also, she says, "I've learned what moral scruples are."
What Were They Thinking?!?
Banning Tuxedos and Rainbows >>Watch this short video about the effort to ban rainbows at a school in Florida.
Earlier this month, the ACLU heard of a story about a young woman—a straight A student, goalie on the soccer team and a trumpet player—who was denied a photo in her school yearbook because she was wearing a tuxedo.
School officials told Ceara Sturgis, an openly gay senior at Wesson Attendance Center in Wesson, MS, that her photo would not appear in the yearbook because in it she is wearing a tuxedo, not the traditional drape worn by other female students. Assistant Superintendent Robert Holloway informed Ceara's mother that there was no policy in the student handbook requiring females to wear drapes.
The decision by school officials to require Ceara to wear a drape is arbitrary, discriminatory and unconstitutional. So, the ACLU of Mississippi sent a letter to Copiah County School District demanding school officials immediately cease violating the student's rights.
This reminds us of another ridiculous case in Florida where school officials tried to limit the self expression of students by banning rainbows—any kind of rainbow—including Reading Rainbow, the Apple logo and Pink Floyd t-shirts.
Thankfully, the case in Florida ended in a victory for First Amendment rights.
Check out the video to see the school board fight the insidious “Reading Rainbow” logo.
The ACLU is fighting for the First Amendment rights of students throughout the country. Trying to remove photos of women in tuxedos and rainbows at schools makes us really wonder: What were they thinking?!?
>>Learn more about the case in Mississippi.
20091030
20091028
French pedophile trial fuels castration debate
By Pascal Rossignol
DOUAI, France (Reuters) - A Frenchman with multiple pedophilia convictions went on trial on Monday over the kidnap and rape of a 5-year-old boy, a case that has prompted some in government to consider castration for repeat sex offenders.
Francis Evrard, 63, has spent half of his life behind bars for sexually abusing children. In August 2007, just days after his release from prison, he kidnapped a boy in the northern town of Roubaix, locked him in a garage, drugged him and raped him.
"The time has come for me to say that it's true, yes. I did it, but I can't explain why. I have impulses," Evrard told the court at the start of his trial in the northern town of Douai.
The case caused such outrage in French public opinion that the government rushed out new legislation in response in 2008 that allows authorities to keep criminals in jail after the end of their term, if they are deemed to remain a threat to society.
That was criticized by lawyers and human rights activists who said it challenged fundamental principles of justice, but Evrard is now being cited as a reason for the government to take new measures against repeat sex offenders.
Evrard wrote to President Nicolas Sarkozy this month asking for his testicles to be surgically removed to free him from his pedophile impulses. Surgical castration is illegal in France and the president has not commented publicly on the request.
Mustafa Kocacurt, the father of his 5-year-old victim denounced Evrard's letter as a stunt aimed at obtaining a more lenient sentence, pointing out that Evrard had made the request two years after his crime but days before his trial.
"The justice system should do what it has to do and make sure that this man never gets out of jail again. He has already caused too much pain," Kocacurt told reporters at the court.
CHEMICAL CASTRATION
France, along with a number of other European countries including Sweden and Denmark, already allows "chemical castration" or the use of drugs to lower the sex drive of offenders who agree to it.
But Evrard's letter and his trial, as well as a separate case in September in which a woman was abducted and strangled by a recently released rapist, have prompted senior ministers to advocate beefing up possible punishments against sex offenders.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the government was considering forcing some of them to undergo chemical castration, while Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said the option of physical castration should be debated, including in parliament.
Sarkozy, a former interior minister, rose to power on his "tough on crime" credentials. He and his government have been widely criticized for churning out ill-considered new laws as populist, knee-jerk reactions to public outrage over crimes.
Former Justice Minister Robert Badinter, the man behind the abolition of the death penalty in France, spoke out on Monday against the drive toward new castration rules.
"We don't mutilate human beings ... in our societies," Badinter said on Europe 1 radio, adding that it was not for Evrard to decide his own fate.
"He will answer for his crime and I think that at his age, he's not going to enjoy freedom again anytime soon, if at all."Ohio Utility Ships Customers Energy-Efficient Bulbs, Plus a Huge Bill
Call it greening run amok. Or, more likely, poor planning combined with petty penny pinching by a large corporation. FirstEnergy, an Ohio utility, sent two $3.50 energy-saving compact florescent light-bulbs (CFLs) to customers, and then charged them $21 for the bulbs — whether they wanted them or not.
According to news reports, the remaining $14 was to pay the utility back for the electricity customers would not be using because they had the new bulbs. But if customers don’t use the bulbs, or if they already have their own, they still have to pay the fee.
The scam program, which was set to begin October 12 but has been “postponed,” was FirstEnergy’s response to the state’s new energy law, which requires investor-owned electric utilities to reduce consumption by 22.2 percent by 2025. The bulb distribution was supposed to help FirstEnergy’s customers meet the new requirements.
FirstEnergy, which was a little startled by the outcry, pointed out that customers would save $60 over the life of the bulb. It was unclear if this figure was before or after the $21 fee.
Too Many Mandates, Too Few Lightbulbs?
This isn’t the first such maneuver by a utility: about two years ago, Allegheny Power sent energy-efficient bulbs to its 220,000 Maryland customers without letting them know they would be footing the bill, according to ONNtv.
Bulb brohahas may become more frequent, as states require utilities to reduce consumption and/or use more renewable energy sources, which are typically more expensive. Critics have argued that such sweeping initiatives will raise costs and/or lower profits for utilities, who will then turn to their customers to make up the difference — some more gracefully than others.
But if demand is reduced, should utilities really be repaid for the lost profits? Or should reduced consumption be seen as merely the cost of doing business in a more energy-conscious country? The issue is akin to Saudi Arabia’s demand that it be repaid for lost revenues, should oil consumption drop. In this country it’s called decoupling, and it’s a hotly debated topic.
FirstEnergy, headquartered in Akron, OH, is the nation’s fifth largest investor-owned electric system with 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If the company sounds familiar, it might be because FirstEnergy was fingered in a massive East coast blackout in 2003. Failure by the company to adequately maintain transmission lines led to a cascade of outages that left millions without power for days.
Halloween: Not For Everyone
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Authorities say a Baltimore city police officer pulled his gun on a chain-saw-wielding haunted house worker who was trying to get "one last scream" out of him. Baltimore County police said Sgt. Eric Janik has been charged with assault for pulling his service weapon on the worker, who was dressed up as the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Police say the employee approached Janik after the haunted house tour was over Sunday night. Police say Janik pulled his service weapon and pointed it at the man's chest. The man dropped the chain saw, which had no chain and was not dangerous.
Charging documents show that Janik smelled of alcohol and told different stories about what he did with the gun.
Janik has been suspended with pay, pending a formal suspension hearing.
20091027
Leviticus also says...
by Amadeus2490
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there "degrees" of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/13980.htm
The bible also states that if your son is unruly, you're supposed to take him to the center of town, inform everyone that he won't listen to you and you're supposed to stone him to death. There are Muslim families who, 'til this very day, murder their children in "honor killings." That's what god wanted, right?
UN body approves universal cell phone charger
GENEVA - The U.N. telecoms agency said Friday it has approved technology for a universal cell phone charger that aims to reduce the confusion, clutter and waste caused by today's proliferation of devices.
The new chargers will use a micro-USB plug, similar to that used for digital cameras, to enter the cell phone for charging, said Sarah Parkes, spokeswoman for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Some manufacturers may also allow the cable to be disconnected from the adapter at the plug-in end and inserted into a computer through a USB port instead. The power from the computer, however, would be smaller than from a wall socket and would take longer to charge a phone.
Some manufacturers already are using the new system, said Parkes. A number of companies have signed on to the new deal either with the ITU or earlier with the European Union.
Manufacturers won't legally be required to use the new standard, but in practice holdouts from ITU standards are rare, she said.
"Every mobile phone user will benefit from the new Universal Charging Solution," said the ITU, adding that the same charger could be used for all future handsets, regardless of make and model.
Parkes said it is likely to lead to a dramatic cut in the number of chargers produced, shipped and later discarded with each purchase of a new phone.
The new chargers also will reduce the energy consumed while charging, the ITU said.
It added that the new technology could lead to a 50 percent reduction in standby energy consumption and a cut of 13.6 million tons to greenhouse gas emissions each year.
Faith No More: What I've learned from debating religious people around the world
This week sees the opening on various cinema marquees of the film Collision: a buddy-and-road movie featuring last year's debates between Pastor Douglas Wilson, who is a senior fellow at New St. Andrew's College, and your humble servant. (If I may be forgiven, it's also available on DVD, and you can buy our little book of exchanges, Is Christianity Good for the World?)
Newsweek's reviewer beseeches you not to go and see the film, largely on the grounds that it features two middle-aged white men trying to establish which one is the dominant male. I would have thought that this would be reason enough to buy a ticket, but perhaps she would have preferred the debate held in London last week featuring me and Stephen Fry (two magnificent specimens of white mammalhood) versus a female member of Parliament who is a Tory Catholic convert and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria. It filled one of the largest halls in the city, and many people had to be turned away. For a combination of reasons, the subject of religion is back where it always ought to be—at the very center of any argument about the clash of world views.
Ever since I invited any champion of faith to debate with me in the spring of 2007, I have been very impressed by the willingness of the other side to take me, and my allies, up on the offer. A renowned scholar like Richard Dawkins, who is quite used to filling halls wherever he goes with his explanations of biology, is now finding himself on platforms with dedicated people who really, truly do not believe that evolution is anything more than "a theory." I have been all over the South, in front of capacity and overflow crowds, exchanging views with Protestants most of the time, but also with Catholics and, in New York and the West Coast and Canada, with—mostly Reform—Jews in large and well-attended synagogues. (So far no invitations from Orthodox Jews, Mormons, or Muslims.)
I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe. I haven't been asked to Bob Jones University yet, but I have been invited to Jerry Falwell's old Liberty University campus in Virginia, even though we haven't yet agreed on the terms.
Wilson isn't one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just "metaphors." He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God. He doesn't waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering—of course he "allows" it since it is the inescapable state of rebellious sinners. I much prefer this sincerity to the vague and Python-esque witterings of the interfaith and ecumenical groups who barely respect their own traditions and who look upon faith as just another word for community organizing. (Incidentally, just when is President Barack Obama going to decide which church he attends?)
Usually, when I ask some Calvinist whether he is really a Calvinist (in the sense, say, of believing that I will end up in hell), there is a slight reluctance to say yes, and a slight wince from his congregation. I have come to the conclusion that this has something to do with the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality: You can't very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he's marked for perdition. More to the point, though, you soon discover that many of those attending are not so sure about all the doctrines, either, just as you very swiftly find out that a vast number of Catholics don't truly believe more than about half of what their church instructs them to think. Every now and then I read reports of polls that tell me that more Americans believe in the virgin birth or the devil than believe in Darwinism: I'd be pretty sure that at least some of these are unwilling to confess their doubts to someone who calls them up on their kitchen phone. Meanwhile, by any measurement, the number of those who profess allegiance to no church (I am not claiming these as atheists, just skeptics) are the fastest-growing minority in America. And don't tell me that warfare increases faith and that there are no unbelievers in foxholes: Only recently I was invited to a very spirited meeting of the freethinkers' group at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., where there has been a revolt against on-campus proselytizing by biblical-literalist instructors.
Thanks to the foolishness of the "intelligent design" faction, which has tried with ignominious un-success to smuggle the teaching of creationism into our schools under a name that is plainly stupid rather than intelligent, and thanks to the ceaseless preaching of hatred and violence against our society by the fanatics of another faith, as well as other related behavior, such as the mad attempt by messianic Jews to steal the land of other people, the secular movement in the United States is acquiring a confidence that it has not known in years, while many of those who put their faith in revelation and prophecy and prayer are feeling the need to give an account of themselves. This is a wholly good development, and it is part of the pluralism and polycentrism that distinguish the sort of society that we have to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Tulsan burns himself to death
Johnnie Joe Hobbs: He was in a cargo van at his home when he doused the vehicle with gasoline and ignited it. Hobbs died at the scene. A sheriff's captain said Hobbs had spent time in prison and indicated that he would do anything to avoid capture.
Tulsa County sheriff's deputies and state Pardon and Parole Board officers were sent to a house in the 14100 block of East Apache Street to contact Johnnie Joe Hobbs, 47, Capt. John Bowman said.
After finding the house empty, the squad peered into a cargo van that sat in the cluttered yard about 3 p.m. Hobbs, who was in the van, reached out and slammed the door shut, Bowman said.
He then doused the van with gasoline and ignited it, Bowman said. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
Bowman said Hobbs had spent time in prison and had indicated that he would do anything to avoid capture.
"There are a lot of people that will do a lot of things to keep from going back to jail," he said. "To use a flammable liquid to ignite where they are, I have not seen that before."
Investigators from the Tulsa Fire Department searched through the charred van into the evening, working around piles of garbage that were scattered about the property on the northeastern edge of Tulsa County.
Bowman said that because of the volatile nature of the incident, firefighters didn't immediately enter the van to douse the flames. There were concerns that Hobbs might have been armed, but no weapons were found after a preliminary search.
About 30 minutes after Hobbs set the vehicle ablaze, authorities entered it and discovered his body in the cab, Bowman said.
The deputies had intended to serve three protective orders on Hobbs, and the parole officers were sent to revoke his suspended sentence for a Muskogee County conviction, Bowman said.
A relative of Hobbs' gave officials a key to the house, and two of his siblings were in the area as the van burned, Bowman said.
Hobbs was the subject of protective orders in both Tulsa and Rogers counties, court records indicate.
He also had been convicted of showing obscene material to a child, lewd molestation and making lewd proposals to a child.
20091025
New iWatch program urges citizens to be 'eyes and ears' against terror plots
iWatch is a community watch program endorsed by police chiefs across the U.S. that teaches people how to detect suspicious behavior and report it to police.
"We can and must work together to prevent terrorist attacks," reads an announcement from the Los Angeles Police Department on the iWatch Web site.
L.A. Police Chief William Bratton, who developed the program with Police Commander Joan McNamara, called it the 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch, a program that encourages local residents to stay alert and informed about their neighborhoods.
"A single observation, a single report can lead to actions that can stop a terrorist attack," warns a Public Safety Announcement video released by the LAPD.
When the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the U.S. and Canada met to endorse iWatch at a conference last Saturday, they cited the case of Najibullah Zazi — the Denver man suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda who has been accused of plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction within the U.S.
Federal authorities say Zazi, 24, sought to build a powerful bomb with ingredients he purchased from beauty supplies outlets at Denver-area stores.
When an inquisitive clerk asked why Zazi was purchasing such large amounts of cosmetic chemicals, Zazi is said to have answered that he had "lots of girlfriends."
The clerk's suspicion represents the type of citizen vigilance that can save American lives, law enforcement officials insist.
"The ability to make a chemical or biological device that could be so devastating or an actual explosive, it really does require policing law enforcement to try to find ways to work with the public to be our eyes and ears," Bratton told FOX News.
Two years ago, the LAPD created a system to help police report potential terrorist activity to the right federal agencies, an initiaitive that has led to dozens of substantive investigations. iWatch is a civilian version of the program.
"We want people to report and we want people to feel comfortable reporting, so let the experts decide, we know what we're looking for so never be shy about reporting. And the great thing now is we have a mechanism to report," McNamara said.
20091024
After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
By Mark Ames
Editor's Note: The shocking transfer of public wealth to Wall Street's pockets is illustrated vividly in Mark Ames' article below, which covers some very disturbing recent events in Alabama, where billionaires and banks are squeezing the locals so hard that they're literally going bankrupt just for flushing their toilets, where violence and the threat of violence are reaching a boiling point and where even the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat.
Earlier this week, a Goldman Sachs adviser made the mistake of publicly confirming what most of us already assumed: They believe that the shocking gap between their obscene wealth and the rest of America's declining incomes is actually a good thing.
Even though the facts prove the opposite. Average American incomes are lower today than in 1998 and have largely stagnated since 1979, while the top 1 percent saw its wealth soar to such bizarre heights that today, just the Walton family alone is worth more than the bottom 100 million Americans, and income inequality hasn't been this bad since 1928 -- the year before the last economic crash.
Our problem, according to the Goldman adviser, Brian Griffiths, is that we commoners just don't understand a good thing when we see it: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
What's really stunning is that Griffiths made that statement in St. Paul's Cathedral in New York. That's how arrogant our billionaire masters have become, now that they've gotten away with looting trillions from America -- they're equating their corruption and plunder with God's will. And I think they mean it, too. (God, on the other hand, could go a long way toward proving Griffiths wrong by, say, planting a few tumor cells in his pancreas. Just sayin'.)
Griffiths is wrong, of course; but he's right in the sense that America has been on a relentless path toward widening the gap between rich and the rest ever since the Reagan Revolution. And it's worked: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a report last year showing that America now has the third-worst level of income inequality and poverty among the OECD's 30 countries. Only Turkey and Mexico were worse off.
That's right, America is now in a class with corrupt Third World basket-case nations, or what are euphemistically called "developing nations." And that's exactly what the billionaires' goal has been, whether you want to believe it or not: to turn America into Mexico or Turkey.
Because Mexico and Turkey are the kinds of places where billionaires can plunder wealth and control the government without fear of too much resistance from an uppity middle class, disruptive unions and all those demands for "rights" that every other First World country's citizens besides America's (and Mexico's and Turkey's) expect -- like the right to universal health care, paid vacations, guaranteed pensions, fair business rules …
What our billionaire class wants is a broken Third World system it can manipulate and profit from, superimposed on a wealthy First World nation offering bottomless riches. So it has superimposed a corrupt Mexico structure on top of America and proceeded to suck it dry like King Leopold II in the Congo.
But of course, the two come into conflict: First World America and the expectations of its citizens, and Third World inequality.
We're at the point now where the zero-sum struggle between the billionaires and the rest of us is being decided, and so far, we -- the bottom 95 percent -- are getting our sorry asses kicked.
To show you what I mean, and how far we've gone toward becoming another Mexico, look at what's happening in Alabama, where billionaires and banks are squeezing the locals so hard that they're literally going bankrupt just for flushing their toilets, where violence and the threat of violence are reaching a boiling point and where even the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat.
One of this year's more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead.
As I wrote at the time, Michael McLendon, 27, went on a killing rampage following years of relentless corporate exploitation and harassment against him, his mother (whom he mercy-killed), and the entire rural Alabama region, which suffered like so many parts of rural America at the hands of billionaire goons like chicken oligarch Bo Pilgrim of Pilgrim's Pride notoriety.
One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American's worst nightmare.
And now, finally, the Army officially agrees that its occupation of the Alabama streets was illegal, according to an internal report the Associated Press got a hold of, following a Freedom of Information Act filing:
An Army investigation found that soldiers should not have been sent to man traffic stops in a small Alabama town after 11 people were killed in March during a shooting spree.An Army report released to the Associated Press on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request said the decision to dispatch military police to Samson from nearby Fort Rucker broke the law. But an Army spokesman said no charges have been filed following the Aug. 10 report.
The report from the Department of Army Inspector General found the use of military personnel in Samson violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal troops from performing law-enforcement actions. The names of those involved were redacted from the report.
According to the report, the officer's "intent was to be a good Army neighbor and help local civilian authorities facing a difficult, unique tragedy affecting the local community. There were no apparent adverse collateral effects to the support provided."
Indeed. For a lot of Americans, the sight of troops occupying their towns is their worst nightmare come true -- part of the reason that America came into existence was to create a country where this sort of thing would never happen, even if the Army's sole intent was to be a good neighbor and help old ladies cross the streets.
Strangely enough, there was almost no media coverage of the occupation -- you had to rely on various right-wing outlets like CNSNews.com, whose article I blogged at the time, or the left-wing Democratic Underground.
But what even the right-wing anti-government people won't report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain -- Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.
You see, thanks to a combination of corporate-tax holidays (which reduce local revenues), billionaire greed like the sort that bankrupted Pilgrim's Pride, and Wall Street investment-banking scams on places like Alabama that result in corrupted local officials and bankrupted municipalities, counties and states -- now, there's no money left to fund local police forces, as the U.S. Army report reveals:
The soldiers arrived in the hours after the shootings, which stretched the town's tiny police force and county officers to the limit with several different crime scenes. The report said troops were dispatched after the Geneva County Sheriff's Office and Samson Police requested assistance from Fort Rucker to relieve law enforcement at traffic checkpoints around the crime-scene area.
As I wrote earlier this year, Pilgrim's Pride hooked up with Wall Street to leverage itself into bankruptcy while enriching the executives' family and a handful of insiders at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans workers:
In 2006, Pilgrim's Pride, then the second-largest chicken processor in the world, made a huge gamble that will seem familiar to anyone who's been following the financial crash: the company borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars, leveraging itself well beyond its means, in order to acquire a rival company and become the nation's No. 1 chicken processor, slaughtering 45 million chickens per week.
That might have given the executives a nice, big hard-on, but it also meant they would have to come up with more money to pay for all that debt. So the company did do what every post-Reagan company has done and gotten away with: it made the workforce pay for the executives' bonuses.
That meant squeezing lower-middle-class workers for more work for less pay, or in Pilgrim's case, more work for no pay: In August 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Pilgrim's Pride accusing it of grossly undercompensating its employees. That same year, 10,000 Pilgrim's Pride employees launched a class-action lawsuit demanding compensation for their work.
The damage extended well beyond Pilgrim's Pride's plants. With bankruptcy came huge unpaid local tax bills, leading to further layoffs and reduced services for the already-beleaguered locals:
Suwannee County could be out about $2 million if Pilgrim's Pride doesn't pay its property-tax bill, according to property appraiser Lamar Jenkins.
The biggest taxpayer in the county filed for bankruptcy protection Dec. 1. Now it's not clear when -- or if -- the bill will be paid.
"It's certainly going to put a hurt on the budget of the county," Jenkins told the [Suwanee] Democrat by phone Thursday. Jenkins said the unpaid bill represents 7.4 percent of the money local schools get from property taxes; 5.3 percent of county funds from that source; and 8 percent of the money the Suwannee River Water Management District receives from local property-tax revenues.
A spokesman for Pilgrim's did not respond to a request for comment.
Bo Pilgrim, the head of Pilgrim's Pride, once told his Texas church that he was worth over $1 billion before the market crash, and he's still worth hundreds of millions. His rapacity was boundless, and in the end it was the undoing of Pilgrim's Pride -- not the Pilgrim family, mind you, which is still filthy disgusting rich, but the company is through.
Last month, 64 percent of Pilgrim's Pride was sold to JBS, a Brazilian beef giant, making it the largest meat company in the world, topping America's Tyson. The American cattle industry tried to block the deal, which it says could result in the destruction of the American beef industry, but the Justice Department already approved JBS' takeover.
In the billionaires' Third World model for America, it makes awful sense that a Brazilian meat company would take control of a bankrupt, corrupt American chicken company. For Wall Street and the billionaires, the more they destroy in America, the richer they get, consequences be damned. And anyway, it's not like Pilgrim's Pride was a model of corporate responsibility while under American ownership; just read some of the comments on this recent Reuters article:
Gilmer, Texas, Sep. 8, 2009 -- working as a supervisor in mt pleasant plant use to be injoyable, but lately they expect you to work 50/70 hours for no extra pay. pilgrims pride does not care about family life just their money. Everyone is afraid to say anything, because upper management may let you go with no warnning because you voiced your oppionrobert, Carrollton, Ga. -- i work carrollton,ga former goldkist plant we were goldkist 1 plant now we fill like we in pure hell working for pilgrim pride these people want you to kiss there ass and work three times hard for same money no rasied in two years old chicken farmer
Doddridge, Ark. -- While I was raising chickens for Pilgrim's Pride, I became friends with many lower management employees of the company. The manner in which they were terminated was just simply unmerciful. While the growers had the brunt of the financial devastion, many that were nearing retirement were left with no prospects of employment in the near future. I know some that have had to uproot their families and settle for a considerable more modest lifestyle with their retirement benefits in doubt after a number of years of employment. It is just a shame that Bo Pilgrim has pocketed the money of many hard working people. I still believe Bo needs to be in the jail cell next to Bernie Madoff.
The comments section is where you'll find the real, unvarnished, ungrammatical rage among America's cheated majority, because for the most part, people are too desperate and afraid to complain in public.
But here's the rub: Selling Pilgrim's Pride to a Brazilian meat monopoly doesn't mean things will get better for Alabamans. Just weeks after the buyout was announced, Pilgrim's Pride closed another plant, this one in northern Alabama. According to the AP:
A chicken-processing plant owned by Pilgrim's Pride Corp. is shutting down this week after almost six decades, putting more than 600 people out of work and creating ripples that will be felt all over town.
The city of almost 20,000 is preparing for the end of a relationship that began in 1952 when James Beasley founded Sweet Sue Poultry, which originally ran the plant. Owners included Beatrice Foods and ConAgra before Pilgrim's Pride purchased the business in 2003.
Which looks a lot like an even more depressing Pilgrim's Pride story from a few months earlier, this from rural Arkansas. The town of Clinton filed a lawsuit in June against Pilgrim's Pride, accusing it of turning the town into a "ghost town":
"With its largest and sole remaining employer, Pilgrim's, now evacuated, the city faces a crisis of revenue, bond payments and economic devastation, and as a result of the Pilgrim's evacuation is threatened with becoming a modern-day ghost town," the lawsuit filed by the city said. "This serious economic situation is, however, a direct consequence of Pilgrim's illegal purpose in shuttering the Clinton plant and operations."
This story is repeated all over the rural South. So guess who put together the deal that bankrupted Pilgrim's Pride? Lehman Bros., the king of bankruptcy.
On the other side of the deal, serving Gold Kist, was Merrill Lynch, which also collapsed last year. But Merrill's banker in the Pilgrim's Pride acquisition is still doing well, thank you very much. In fact, he was recently hired by JPMorgan Chase as vice chairman of mergers and acquisitions.
Which makes perfect sense, because JPMorgan Chase has been laying waste to Alabama on a level that makes Pilgrim's Pride's destruction look downright humanitarian. JP Morgan Chase has plundered so much wealth from one county in Alabama, using a complex derivatives scheme and old-fashioned bribery, that some locals are calling it "Armageddon." According to Bloomberg:
In its 190-year history, Jefferson County, Ala., has endured a cholera epidemic, a pounding in the Civil War, gunslingers, labor riots and terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan. Now this namesake of Thomas Jefferson, anchored by Birmingham, is staring at what one local politician calls financial "Armageddon."
The spectacle -- a tax struck down, about 1,000 county employees furloughed, a politician indicted over $3 billion in sewer debt that may lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in history -- has elbowed its way up the ladder of county lore.
"People want to kill somebody, but they don't know who to shoot at," says Russell Cunningham, past president of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Jefferson County's debacle is a parable for billions of dollars lost by state and local governments from Florida to California in transactions done behind closed doors. Selling debt without requiring competition made public officials vulnerable to bankers' sales pitches, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for borrowing gone awry.
[T]he county bet on interest-rate swaps, agreements that a representative of New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. told commissioners could reduce their interest costs. Instead, the swaps -- covering more than $5 billion in all -- blew up during the credit crisis after ratings for the county's bond insurers fell.
JPMorgan, through spokeswoman Christine Holevas, declined to comment for this story.
Yeah, why bother commenting to the public when you own the bastards? JPMorgan, which took $25 billion in direct bailout money and tens of billions more in backdoor subsidies and handouts, just posted a massive $3.6 billion quarterly profit, and has set aside at least $11.1 billion for management bonuses. Meanwhile, Alabamans can't afford to flush their toilets.
This is what inequality looks like. From Wall Street, it must look extremely appealing; for the rest of America, it's a nightmare that's only getting worse.
So far, it's clear that Birmingham and the entire Jefferson County are following the wretched script of a typical Third World scenario, where the Wall Street bankers corrupt the politicians and eventually bankrupt the place and then, while the corpse is still warm and the bankruptcy deals are cut, Wall Street makes sure it's first in line to profit off the chaos it created, while its corrupt local shill (in this case Birmingham's mayor) takes the fall for the crime of accepting the JP Morgan bribes … and the locals get screwed worst of all, paying off the bill for years or decades.
Just this week, it emerged that Goldman Sachs, employer of Brian "Inequality Is Good" Griffiths, bilked the state of New Jersey using a similar scheme involving interest-rate swaps on bonds that don't even exist. According to Bloomberg, New Jersey is considering raising its gasoline tax to pay the $1 million a month they have to pay out to Goldman for the scam -- a regressive tax that once again takes from the struggling middle class and poor, and puts in thepockets of the billionaires.
Meanwhile, over in Jefferson County, Ala., there's so little left to steal from the impoverished locals that Wall Street has been forced to come up with a new, grotesquely evil plan to line their pockets: taxing the local residents for taking a shit:
In August, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., as trustee for owners of about $3 billion in sewer warrants, filed suit in Jefferson County Circuit Court seeking an appointed receiver for the sewer system. The receiver should have authority to raise rates enough to meet the debt service, the bank said in the complaint, which is pending. The sewer system is already charging customers about 300 percent more to drain bathtubs or flush toilets than a dozen years ago.
By one county estimate, average annual bills are now about $750, compared with the national average of $331, according to a 2007 survey by the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Clean Water Agencies, a coalition of utilities.
It's impossible to boost them enough without putting them beyond the means of many residents, County CommissionerJim Carns says. "We're like a guy making $50,000 a year with a $1 million mortgage."
In Wall Street's eyes, Alabamans really do shit gold.
The thing now will be to convince the locals to use their toilets rather than, say, gas to heat their homes.
As I wrote a few months ago, Jefferson County residents have become so desperate that they're being forced to choose between water and heating, as this article shows:
As nighttime temperatures plunged in Birmingham, Ala., last October, Dora Bonner had a choice: either pay the gas bill so she could heat the home she shares with four grandchildren, or send the Birmingham Water Works a $250 check for her water and sewer bill.
Bonner, who is 73 and lives on Social Security, decided to keep the house from freezing.
"I couldn't afford the water, so they shut it off," she says.
Bonner's sewer bills have risen more than fourfold in the past decade. So have those of others in Jefferson County, which has 659,000 residents and includes Birmingham, the state's largest city.
The logical outcome of the billionaires' plundering of Alabama is the same thing that happens all over the Third World: violence, fear and calling in the troops, the only way to secure the billionaires' dirty profits:
In August and September … Jefferson County residents got a taste of what bankruptcy might look like. As the county began putting about 1,000 workers on leave without pay, one disgruntled employee allegedly e-mailed bomb threats to officials and was promptly arrested, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
Lines soon formed outside the courthouse as such tasks as renewing driver's licenses slowed.
A kind of legal civil war broke out when three county agencies -- the sheriff's department, an indigent-care hospital and the tax-assessor's office -- sued the county commission to stop the budget cuts on the grounds that they posed a danger to public safety.
Bettye Fine Collins, the commission president, declared the situation, "our Armageddon."
The state's response is right out of the Central America banana republic playbook: When there's no money left for the people, send in the troops.
The cuts in the sheriff's department budget were so severe that he was planning to call in the National Guard to keep order:
The sheriff in Alabama's most populous county may call for the National Guard to help maintain order, a spokesman said Tuesday, as a judge cleared the way for cuts in the sheriff's budget, and lawmakers reached a compromise they hope will end the budget crisis.
In light of all of this, the Army's brief, illegal occupation of a string of towns in Alabama this past spring no longer looks like a freak one-off, but rather a logical progression in the ongoing billionaire plunder of America.
It gives new meaning to what MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan is calling "corporate communism." Not only are banking billionaires on permanent state wealthfare, but even worse, as the wealth available becomes increasingly scarce and there isn't enough left to satisfy the billionaires' grotesque appetites and regular citizens' needs to flush their toilets or heat their homes, we're heading to the point that all Third World countries come to -- calling out the troops to ensure that the peasants pay their tithes to their absentee masters in New York and Connecticut and don't get all uppity like those Europeans.
Now you can see why Alabamans are loading up on so many weapons. That makes sense. Now they need to understand who the real enemy is. Not the make-believe liberal bogeymen of their nightmares. Rather, Alabamans should focus their anger on the real-world billionaires who are making this country a living hell.
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