Interaction with Salt Lake City police after officer shot dog

Police State Insanity! Cops Assault and Arrest This Man for Saying ‘Fuck’

Matt Agorist

 

(Wakeforest, N.C.) — A video uploaded to youtube Wednesday by Janell Gill, shows a man being arrested and tasered by the Wake Forest Police Department for allegedly saying the word “fuck.”
At the beginning of the video we can see that police are tasering him and claiming that he is ‘resisting.’



He is face down on the pavement, with 3 cops on top of him, with taser prongs in his back, while cops are twisting his arms into painful positions, and because he is not completely limp, they are calling it ‘resisting.’

Since the video doesn’t begin until after the man is on the ground, it could lead the viewer to assert that he could have done something else to be in this position, other than say ‘fuck.’ However, at the 2:00 mark, one of the arresting officers explains why he is arresting this man.

“Right now he’s being arrested for disorderly conduct…he’s cursing in the street…”

When the onlookers begin voicing their complaints to the officers, they are threatened with arrest as well.

“Stop cussing in the street or you’re going to jail too!”

Apparently Wake Forest Cops think that the First Amendment does is not applicable in this neighborhood.

Kudos to Mr. Gill for filming this incident and using such professionalism with the police.
If the Wake Forest Police Department is so concerned with the language of an individual  they should send a SWAT team south into Dalton, Georgia to arrest Officer John Gurrieri, who dropped the f-bomb several times, on a school bus, full of children.

Theater of the absurd in the American police state grows more tragic and incomprehensible

By John W. Whitehead

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Whether it’s the working mother arrested for letting her 9-year-old play unsupervised at a playground, the teenager forced to have his genitals photographed by police, the underage burglar sentenced to 23 years for shooting a retired police dog, or the 43-year-old man who died of a heart attack after being put in a chokehold by NYPD officers allegedly over the sale of untaxed cigarettes, the theater of the absurd that passes for life in the American police state grows more tragic and incomprehensible by the day.

Debra Harrell, a 46-year-old South Carolina working mother, was arrested, charged with abandonment and had her child placed in state custody after allowing the 9-year-old to spend unsupervised time at a neighborhood playground while the mom worked a shift at McDonald’s. Mind you, the child asked to play outside, was given a cell phone in case she needed to reach someone, and the park—a stone’s throw from the mom’s place of work—was overrun with kids enjoying its swings, splash pad, and shade.

A Connecticut mother was charged with leaving her 11-year-old daughter in the car unsupervised while she ran inside a store—despite the fact that the child asked to stay in the car and was not overheated or in distress. A few states away, a New Jersey man was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of his children after leaving them in a car parked in a police station parking lot, windows rolled down, while he ran inside to pay a ticket.

A Virginia teenager was charged with violating the state’s sexting law after exchanging sexually provocative videos with his girlfriend. Instead of insisting that the matter be dealt with as a matter of parental concern, police charged the boy with manufacturing and distributing child pornography and issued a search warrant to “medically induce an erection” in the 17-year-old boy in order to photograph his erect penis and compare it to the images sent in the sexting exchange. The police had already taken an initial photograph of the boy’s penis against his will, upon his arrest.

In Georgia, a toddler had his face severely burned when a flash bang grenade, launched by a SWAT team during the course of a no-knock warrant, landed in his portable crib, detonating on his pillow. Also in Georgia, a police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old boy who answered the door, reportedly with a Nintendo Wii controller in his hands. The cop claimed the teenager pointed a gun at her, thereby justifying the use of deadly force. Then there was the incident wherein a police officer, responding to a complaint that some children were “chopping off tree limbs” creating “tripping hazards,”pulled a gun on a group of 11-year-old boys who were playing in a wooded area, attempting to build a tree fort.

While the growing phenomenon of cops shooting family pets only adds to the insanity (it is estimated that a family pet is killed by law enforcement every 98 minutes in America), it’s worse for those who dare to shoot a police dog. Ivins Rosier was 16 when he broke into the home of a Florida highway patrol officer and shot (although he didn’t kill) the man’s retired police dog. For his crime, the teenager was sentenced to 23 years in prison, all the while police officers who shoot family pets are rarely reprimanded.

Meanwhile if you’re one of those hoping to live off the grid, independent of city resources, you might want to think again. Florida resident Robin Speronis was threatened with eviction for living without utilities. Speronis was accused of violating the International Property Maintenance Code by relying on rain water instead of the city water system and solar panels instead of the electric grid.

Now we can shrug these incidents off as isolated injustices happening to “other” people. We can rationalize them away by suggesting that these people “must” have done something to warrant such treatment. Or we can acknowledge that this slide into totalitarianism—helped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similarities—is tracking very closely with what we saw happening in Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

When all is said and done, what these incidents reflect is a society that has become so bureaucratic, so legalistic, so politically correct, so militaristic, so locked down, so self righteous, and so willing to march in lockstep with the corporate-minded police state that any deviations from the norm—especially those that offend the sensibilities of the “government-knows-best” nanny state or challenge the powers that be—become grist for prosecution, persecution and endless tribulations for the poor souls who are caught in the crosshairs.

Then there are the incidents, less colorful perhaps but no less offensive to the sensibilities of any freedom-loving individual, which should arouse outrage among the populace but often slip under the radar of a sleeping nation.

For instance, not only is the NSA spying on and collecting the content of your communications, but it’s also going to extreme lengths to label as “extremists” anyone who attempts to protect their emails from the government’s prying eyes. Adding insult to injury, those same government employees and contractors spying on Americans’ private electronic communications are also ogling their private photos. Recent revelations indicate that NSA employees routinely pass around intercepted nude photos, considered a “fringe benefit” of surveillance positions.

A trove of leaked documents reveals the government’s unmitigated gall in labeling Americans as terrorists for little more than being suspected of committing “any act that is ‘dangerous’ to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.” As The Intercept reports: “This combination—a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets.” All the while, the TSA, despite the billions of dollars we spend on the agency annually and the liberties to which its agents subject travelers, has yet to catch a single terrorist.

No less disconcerting are the rash of incidents in which undercover government agents encourage individuals to commit crimes they might not have engaged in otherwise. This “make work” entrapment scheme runs the gamut from terrorism to drugs. In fact, a recent report released by Human Rights Watch reveals that “nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the ‘direct involvement’ of government agents or informants.”

Most outrageous of all are the asset forfeiture laws that empower law enforcement to rake in huge sums of money by confiscating cash, cars, and even homes based on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing. In this way, Americans who haven’t been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of wrongdoing, are literally being subjected to highway robbery by government agents offering profit-driven, cash-for-freedom deals.

So who or what is to blame for this bureaucratic nightmare delivered by way of the police state? Is it the White House? Is it Congress? Is it the Department of Homeland Security, with its mobster mindset? Is it some shadowy, power-hungry entity operating off a nefarious plan?

Or is it, as Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt suggests, the sheepish masses who mindlessly march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—expressing no outrage, demanding no reform, and issuing no challenge to the status quo—who are to blame for the prison walls being erected around us? The author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt warned that “the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

This is where democracy falls to ruin, and bureaucracy and tyranny prevail.

As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we have only ourselves to blame for this bureaucratic hell that has grown up around us. Too many of us willingly, knowingly and deliberately comprise what Arendt refers to as “cogs in the mass-murder machine.”

These cogs are none other than those of us who have turned a blind eye to the government corruption, or shrugged dismissively at the ongoing injustices, or tuned out the mayhem in favor of entertainment distractions. Just as guilty are those who have traded in their freedoms for a phantom promise of security, not to mention those who feed the machine unquestioningly with their tax dollars and partisan politics.

And then there are those who work for the government, federal, state, local or contractor. These government employees—the soldiers, the cops, the technicians, the social workers, etc.—are neither evil nor sadistic. They’re simply minions being paid to do a job, whether that job is to arrest you, spy on you, investigate you, crash through your door, etc. However, we would do well to remember that those who worked at the concentration camps and ferried the victims to the gas chambers were also just “doing their jobs.”

Then again, if we must blame anyone, blame the faceless, nameless, bureaucratic government machine—which having been erected and set into motion is nearly impossible to shut down—for the relentless erosion of our freedoms through a million laws, statutes, and prohibitions.

If there is any glimmer of hope to be found, it will be at the local level, but we cannot wait for things to get completely out of control. If you wait to act until the SWAT team is crashing through your door, until your name is placed on a terror watch list, until you are reported for such outlawed activities as collecting rainwater or letting your children play outside unsupervised, then it will be too late.

Obedience is the precondition to totalitarianism, and the precondition to obedience is fear. Regimes of the past and present understand this. “The very first essential for success,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” Is this not what we are seeing now with the SWAT teams and the security checkpoints and the endless wars?

This much I know: we are not faceless numbers. We are not cogs in the machine. We are not slaves. We are people, and free people at that. As the Founders understood, our freedoms do not flow from the government. They were not given to us, to be taken away at the will of the State; they are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.

Until we can get back to this way of thinking, until we can remind Americans what it really means to be a free American, and learn to stand our ground in the face of threats to those freedoms, and encourage our fellow citizens to stop being cogs in the machine, we will continue as slaves in thrall to the bureaucratic police state.

Constable Shoots and Paralyzes Man While Serving Warrant Over Unpaid Parking Tickets

Ed Krayewski

Imagine a company hiring a debt collector that sends armed representatives to customers’ homes and threatens to put them in cages if they don’t pay up. That’s not allowed in America, unless your company is the government. NBC Philadelphia reports on the latest instance of police brutality during petty law enforcement to make the news:

The [Pennsylvania state] constable [in Lehigh County] told the District Attorney he felt his life was in danger as he tried to serve 38-year-old Kevin McCullers.

McCullers, who had 31 outstanding parking tickets, was shot as he tried to back out of his driveway along the 3400 block of Portland Drive in Whitehall Township around 7:30 a.m. Thursday. His girlfriend says McCullers was on his way to Dunkin' Donuts and was surprised by the constable.

"They never knocked on the door! No nothing! I just heard the gunshots! He pulled the car out of the garage and all I heard were gunshots," said Hafeezah Muhammad, who added that McCullers, who was hit in the back, may not walk again. "For parking tickets?! It's insane."

Does Lehigh County or Pennsylvania need to hire constables to serve warrants over parking tickets?* Setting aside for a moment the ethical questions arising from government fining regimes, couldn’t local cops flag vehicles with an excessive number of parking tickets for towing? A lot of cops spend a lot of time running plates on shift anyway.

As to the ethical questions, Brian Doherty has written about how the fines attached to petty violations like jaywalking, suspended licenses, or marijuana in public view, and the fines attached to paying the initial fines late, helps the government trap lower income and marginalized people in a cycle of indebtedness and imprisonment. It happens on a daily basis, usually without the use of lethal force. So long as the policing priorities (like using the police as a revenue generator) that create situations where people are shot and paralyzed over their government debts remain unquestioned, incidents like this will keep happening.

*Pennsylvania State Constables are elected, per our unmatched commentariat.

Satanists want Hobby Lobby-style religious exemption from abortion counseling laws

The Satanic Temple wants the government to respect the Dark Lord when it comes to accessing abortion care

Katie McDonough

Remember how satanists are building a statue of a 19th century goat-man occult symbol to place outside the Oklahoma State Capitol because there is already a Ten Commandments monument on display? Well, those same satanists are now using the Supreme Court’s sweeping Hobby Lobby decision to challenge coercive mandatory counseling laws by requesting a religious exemption for satanists (and non-satanists).

“While we feel we have a strong case for an exemption regardless of the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can even trump scientific fact,” Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucian Greaves said in a Monday statement. ”This was made clear when they allowed Hobby Lobby to claim certain contraceptives were abortifacients, when in fact they are not. Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state­ mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them.”

The claim here is not quite as apples-to-apples as the Ten Commandments/goat-man hybrid statue, but you can easily follow their thinking. The Hobby Lobby decision granted 90 percent of the corporations in the United States a kind of religious personhood under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So now the government can’t require Hobby Lobby or any corporation to include comprehensive contraceptive coverage in its employer health plan if that coverage violates the corporation’s religious beliefs.

Because medicine and scientific fact are the tenets of satanists’ faith, then medically inaccurate and coercive counseling laws present a substantial burden, according to Greaves. This is pretty much what Ruth Bader Ginsburg was talking about in her dissent when she said the justices had “ventured into a minefield.” It just so happens that these are satanists making a faith claim under the legal precedent, and not, you know, a company that produces soy milk and hates birth control. But it’s the same idea.

According to data from the Guttmacher Institute, 35 states require people seeking abortion care to undergo counseling before they can have the procedure. In South Dakota, a state-mandated script forces doctors to tell patients that having an abortion will lead to an “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide,” based on a refuted but often-cited study linking abortion care to mental health problems. According to the same script, the procedure “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.” (In addition to providing patients with inaccurate information, the mandatory counseling session is another way states can force people seeking care to make multiple trips to the clinic, adding a time and cost burden to the procedure that can make it harder to access. But since “don’t waste my time” is not yet a tenet of any religious faith, those burdens may not apply in the satanists’ claim.)

As Greaves notes, the Satanic Temple isn’t the first organization to challenge the mandatory counseling laws, but it is the first to do so as a matter of faith. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights groups challenged much of the South Dakota “informed consent” script, and succeeded in getting certain portions of it — including false medical claims — invalidated. But other parts of the script that doctors must read, like the line about “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” and the suicide ideation stand because other courts — including the Supreme Court – have made it clear that states are allowed to restrict access to abortion based on really dubious claims.

The Satanic Temple has provided a pre-written letter that people can present to their doctors in an attempt to be exempted from mandatory counseling. So while doctors in South Dakota and elsewhere in the country read patients their state-mandated script, patients can now come back with a satan-mandated rebuttal:

I regard any information required by state statute to be communicated or offered to me as a precondition for an abortion (separate and apart from any other medical procedure) is based on politics and not science (“Political Information”). I regard Political Information as a state sanctioned attempt to discourage abortion by compelling my consideration of the current and future condition of my fetal or embryonic tissue separate and apart from my body. I do not regard Political Information to be scientifically true or accurate or even relevant to my medical decisions. The communication of Political Information to me imposes an unwanted and substantial burden on my religious beliefs.

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

By NICK HANAUER

Memo: From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you’ve probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff—Bezos—called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren’t yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don’t vary in quality—Bezos’ great insight). Cybershop didn’t make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I’ve had many of you tell me to my face I’m completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.

Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.

***

The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer.

The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren’t only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they’d be able to afford his Model Ts.

What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too.

It’s when I realized this that I decided I had to leave my insulated world of the super-rich and get involved in politics. Not directly, by running for office or becoming one of the big-money billionaires who back candidates in an election. Instead, I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas—by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call “middle-out” economics. It’s the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines—and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally. Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.

Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

On June 19, 2013, Bloomberg published an article I wrote called “The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage.” Forbes labeled it “Nick Hanauer’s near insane” proposal. And yet, just weeks after it was published, my friend David Rolf, a Service Employees International Union organizer, roused fast-food workers to go on strike around the country for a $15 living wage. Nearly a year later, the city of Seattle passed a $15 minimum wage. And just 350 days after my article was published, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray signed that ordinance into law. How could this happen, you ask?

It happened because we reminded the masses that they are the source of growth and prosperity, not us rich guys. We reminded them that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers—and need more employees. We reminded them that if businesses paid workers a living wage rather than poverty wages, taxpayers wouldn’t have to make up the difference. And when we got done, 74 percent of likely Seattle voters in a recent poll agreed that a $15 minimum wage was a swell idea.

The standard response in the minimum-wage debate, made by Republicans and their business backers and plenty of Democrats as well, is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Businesses will have to lay off workers. This argument reflects the orthodox economics that most people had in college. If you took Econ 101, then you literally were taught that if wages go up, employment must go down. The law of supply and demand and all that. That’s why you’ve got John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress insisting that if you price employment higher, you get less of it. Really?

Because here’s an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages. We’ve had 75 years of complaints from big business—when the minimum wage was instituted, when women had to be paid equitable amounts, when child labor laws were created. Every time the capitalists said exactly the same thing in the same way: We’re all going to go bankrupt. I’ll have to close. I’ll have to lay everyone off. It hasn’t happened. In fact, the data show that when workers are better treated, business gets better. The naysayers are just wrong.

Most of you probably think that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is an insane departure from rational policy that puts our economy at great risk. But in Seattle, our current minimum wage of $9.32 is already nearly 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage. And has it ruined our economy yet? Well, trickle-downers, look at the data here: The two cities in the nation with the highest rate of job growth by small businesses are San Francisco and Seattle. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? San Francisco and Seattle. The fastest-growing big city in America? Seattle. Fifteen dollars isn’t a risky untried policy for us. It’s doubling down on the strategy that’s already allowing our city to kick your city’s ass.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it: If a worker earns $7.25 an hour, which is now the national minimum wage, what proportion of that person’s income do you think ends up in the cash registers of local small businesses? Hardly any. That person is paying rent, ideally going out to get subsistence groceries at Safeway, and, if really lucky, has a bus pass. But she’s not going out to eat at restaurants. Not browsing for new clothes. Not buying flowers on Mother’s Day.

Is this issue more complicated than I’m making out? Of course. Are there many factors at play determining the dynamics of employment? Yup. But please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It’s utter nonsense. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.

I know that virtually all of you feel that compelling our businesses to pay workers more is somehow unfair, or is too much government interference. Most of you think that we should just let good examples like Costco or Gap lead the way. Or let the market set the price. But here’s the thing. When those who set bad examples, like the owners of Wal-Mart or McDonald’s, pay their workers close to the minimum wage, what they’re really saying is that they’d pay even less if it weren’t illegal. (Thankfully both companies have recently said they would not oppose a hike in the minimum wage.) In any large group, some people absolutely will not do the right thing. That’s why our economy can only be safe and effective if it is governed by the same kinds of rules as, say, the transportation system, with its speed limits and stop signs.

Wal-Mart is our nation’s largest employer with some 1.4 million employees in the United States and more than $25 billion in pre-tax profit. So why are Wal-Mart employees the largest group of Medicaid recipients in many states? Wal-Mart could, say, pay each of its 1 million lowest-paid workers an extra $10,000 per year, raise them all out of poverty and enable them to, of all things, afford to shop at Wal-Mart. Not only would this also save us all the expense of the food stamps, Medicaid and rent assistance that they currently require, but Wal-Mart would still earn more than $15 billion pre-tax per year. Wal-Mart won’t (and shouldn’t) volunteer to pay its workers more than their competitors. In order for us to have an economy that works for everyone, we should compel all retailers to pay living wages—not just ask politely.

We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It’s simply not true. There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my “manager pants.” I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn’t do the country much good.

So forget all that rhetoric about how America is great because of people like you and me and Steve Jobs. You know the truth even if you won’t admit it: If any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we’d be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit. It’s not that Somalia and Congo don’t have good entrepreneurs. It’s just that the best ones are selling their wares off crates by the side of the road because that’s all their customers can afford.

So why not talk about a different kind of New Deal for the American people, one that could appeal to the right as well as left—to libertarians as well as liberals? First, I’d ask my Republican friends to get real about reducing the size of government. Yes, yes and yes, you guys are all correct: The federal government is too big in some ways. But no way can you cut government substantially, not the way things are now. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each had eight years to do it, and they failed miserably.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.

This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress.

***

One thing we can agree on—I’m sure of this—is that the change isn’t going to start in Washington. Thinking is stale, arguments even more so. On both sides.

But the way I see it, that’s all right. Most major social movements have seen their earliest victories at the state and municipal levels. The fight over the eight-hour workday, which ended in Washington, D.C., in 1938, began in places like Illinois and Massachusetts in the late 1800s. The movement for social security began in California in the 1930s. Even the Affordable Health Care Act—Obamacare—would have been hard to imagine without Mitt Romney’s model in Massachusetts to lead the way.

Sadly, no Republicans and few Democrats get this. President Obama doesn’t seem to either, though his heart is in the right place. In his State of the Union speech this year, he mentioned the need for a higher minimum wage but failed to make the case that less inequality and a renewed middle class would promote faster economic growth. Instead, the arguments we hear from most Democrats are the same old social-justice claims. The only reason to help workers is because we feel sorry for them. These fairness arguments feed right into every stereotype of Obama and the Democrats as bleeding hearts. Republicans say growth. Democrats say fairness—and lose every time.

But just because the two parties in Washington haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean we rich folks can just keep going. The conversation is already changing, even if the billionaires aren’t onto it. I know what you think: You think that Occupy Wall Street and all the other capitalism-is-the-problem protesters disappeared without a trace. But that’s not true. Of course, it’s hard to get people to sleep in a park in the cause of social justice. But the protests we had in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis really did help to change the debate in this country from death panels and debt ceilings to inequality.

It’s just that so many of you plutocrats didn’t get the message.

Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

Hobby Lobby: Latest in Evolution of Corporate Consitutional Rights

by Jeff Reifman

The History of Corporate Constitutional Rights

In light of this week’s Hobby Lobby ruling that corporations are persons under the law which can hold religious beliefs, I thought it would be good to revisit the origin and evolution of corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights.

While the word corporation never appears in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has been slowly expanding rights for corporations since the early 19th century. These are judge-made “Constitutional” rights granted to corporations through misguided interpretations of the law; some might call these activist judges. The modern Roberts Court has been the most radical.

The model brief (pdf) by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) describes how Supreme Court judges have gradually found rights for corporations in the Constitution:

1819: Beginning with Dartmouth College v. Woodard, the Supreme Courted granted Constitutional Contracts clause protections to Corporations for the first time. This right is historically used by corporations holding property rights to sue communities and states to overturn regulations on harmful environmental practices such as fracking.

1886: Then, with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the Court granted Constitutional rights for the first time to Corporations and created the concept of corporate personhood.

The Courts found personhood for corporations by abominably leveraging the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, building power on the successful work of abolitionists who fought against slavery:

“For much of the nation’s first century, corporations were seen as a means to an end, not unlike associations. They were ‘chartered,’ or called into existence, by the states, and their charters could be revoked at any time; they were not considered ‘persons’ until after the Civil War, when business magnates began to avail themselves of the 14th Amendment’s antidiscrimination protections.” – When is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave (Mother Jones)

1889: Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Company v. Beckwith - the Court granted Due Process protections to corporations.

1893: Noble v. Union River Logging the court grants Corporations Fifth Amendment protections of double jeopardy.

1906: Hale v. Henkel - the court grants Corporations Fourth Amendment protections for unreasonable search and seizure.

1978: First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti - the Court Grants First Amendment protections to corporations.

2010: Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission - the Court significantly expands the First Amendment rights of Corporations ruling that they can spend unlimited amounts on elections.

2014: This week, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby - the Court holds that for profit corporations are persons under the law which can hold religious beliefs.

You may also be interested in Seattle’s Stand Against Treating Corporations as People, which highlights how these laws confer Constitutional rights upon the foreign investors holding interest in many corporations as they sue American communities.

My personal view is that the long term impact of money on the makeup of government at all levels in the United States has now fundamentally corrupted our democracy, a view recently backed up by a Princeton research study. You can read more about this and my theory of change here: It’s Time for a Populist Culture War on Corruption.

The Constitution Initially Expanded Rights for People

This trend of increasing corporate power reverses the early evolution of the Constitution which historically expanded rights for people, beginning with its first ten amendments (The Bill of Rights). But these rights did not apply to slaves or women at the time. More amendments were needed over time to include these groups:

1865: The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.

1868: The Fourteenth Amendment extended Due Process and Equal Protection for all persons.

1870: The Fifteenth Amendment provides the right to vote to former slaves and minorities (but not women).

1920: The Nineteenth Amendment provided the right to vote for women.

1971: The Twenty-Sixth Amendment provided the right to vote for 18 year olds, reversing Oregon v. Mitchell (1970)

The question of whether corporations are persons is not one of perception. It is not clouded by whether corporations come to life at some moment of conception. In fact, the rule of corporate personhood is best ridiculed by dissenting Montana State Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson:

“Corporations are artificial creatures of law. As such, they should enjoy only those powers—not constitutional rights, but legislatively-conferred powers—that are concomitant with their legitimate function, that being limited-liability investment vehicles for business. Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creations of government. Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons.”

It is past time that the application of human rights to corporate legal entities be eliminated.

The Supreme Court Trails Culture

Supreme Court decisions tend to trail cultural sentiment by many years. But I believe that cultural change is occurring with regards to corporate “constitutional rights” and corporate speech. Supreme Court approval ratings remain near 25 year lows and 65 percent of citizens of both parties disapprove of Citizens United. Congress’ approval rating recently dropped to its lowest ever, 16%.

The makeup of the Supreme Court and the impact of cultural changes does deliver change over time. Whether changed by the adoption of new amendments or the Supreme Court’s own decisions and reversals, there is ample evidence of Constitutional law as a living, breathing, ever-changing entity.

• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) – Rules that blacks do not have the right to sue in Federal Court, reversed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – Rules for segregation saying it does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, reversed by Brown v. Board of Education Topeka (1954)
• The Eighteenth Amendment enacts the prohibition of alcohol and the Twenty-First Amendment repeals it.
• West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) upholds minimum wage legislation passed by the State of Washington
• Mapp v. Ohio (1961) required courts exclude evidence seized illegally from trial clarifying and expanding the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, reversing earlier decisions such as Wolf v. Colorado (1949)
• Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967) prohibits employment discrimination based on political affiliation, reverses Adler v. Board of Education (1952)
• Roe v. Wade (1973) - Rules that the right to abortion in the first trimester is protected by right of privacy.
• Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (1990) validated campaign finance restrictions before later being reversed by Citizens United (2010)
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003) invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen states, overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986).
• United States v. Windsor (2013) struck down bans on same sex marriage.

Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records laws

By Radley Balko

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

From the ACLU of Massachusetts’s report on police militarization in that state:

Approximately 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts belong to an LEC. While set up as “corporations,” LECs are funded by local and federal taxpayer money, are composed exclusively of public police officers and sheriffs, and carry out traditional law enforcement functions through specialized units such as SWAT teams . . .

Due to the weakness of Massachusetts public records law and the culture of secrecy that has infected local police departments and Law Enforcement Councils, procuring empirical records from police departments and regional SWAT teams in Massachusetts about police militarization was universally difficult and, in most instances, impossible . . .

Police departments and regional SWAT teams are public institutions, working with public money, meant to protect and serve the public’s interest. If these institutions do not maintain and make public comprehensive and comprehensible documents pertaining to their operations and tactics, the people cannot judge whether officials are acting appropriately or make needed policy changes when problems arise . . .

Hiding behind the argument that they are private corporations not subject to the public records laws, the LECs have refused to provide documents regarding their SWAT team policies and procedures. They have also failed to disclose anything about their operations, including how many raids they have executed or for what purpose . . .

METROLEC, one of the largest of the law enforcement councils covering the metropolitan Boston area, operates a range of specialized resources, including a Canine Unit, Computer Crimes Unit, Crisis Negotiation Team, Mobile Operations Motorcycle Unit, and Regional Response Team, in addition to its SWAT force. The organization maintains its own BearCat armored vehicle, as well as a $700,000 state of the art command and control post. In 2012, METROLEC reportedly used its BearCat 26 times, mostly for drug busts, and applied to the Federal Aviation Administration to obtain a drone license.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC) similarly operates a SWAT team, as well as a Computer Crime Unit, Motorcycle Unit, School Threat Assessment & Response System, and Regional Communications and Incident Management Assistance Team. Its SWAT team members are trained and equipped to “deal with active shooters, armed barricaded subjects, hostage takers and terrorists,” and they dress in military-style gear with the words “NEMLEC SWAT” emblazoned on their uniforms. Given this training, it is not surprising that the NEMLEC SWAT team has over the past decade led numerous operations that involved armored vehicles, flash-bang devices, and automatic weapons.

(Note: In addition to the LEC SWAT teams, the ACLU notes that at least 25 other Massachusetts cities and towns have their own SWAT-like units, along with the state police and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.)

Massachusetts also has a long history of accountability and excessive force problems with SWAT teams. A few examples:

• In 1988, Boston Det. Sherman Griffiths was killed in a botched drug raid later revealed to have been conducted based on information from an informant a subsequent investigation revealed that the police had simply made up.
• Six years later, the Rev. Accelyne Williams died of a heart attack during a mistaken drug raid on his home. The Boston Globe found that three of the officers involved in that raid had been accused in a 1989 civil rights suit of using fictional informants to obtain warrants for drug raids. In testimony for that suit, one witness testified that after realizing they’d just raided the wrong home, a Boston police officer shrugged, apologized and said, “This happens all the time.” The city settled with the plaintiffs.
• In 1996, the Fitchburg SWAT team was already facing a lawsuit for harassing a group of loiterers when it burned down an apartment complex during a botched drug raid. The SWAT team subsequently faced a number of other allegations of recklessness and misconduct.
• In January 2011, a SWAT team raided the Framingham, Mass., home of 68-year-old Eurie Stamps at around midnight on a drug warrant. Oddly, it had already arrested the subject of the warrant — Stamps’s 20-year-old stepson — outside the house. But because he lived in Stamps’s home, the team went ahead with the raid anyway. When the team encountered Stamps, it instructed him to lie on the floor. He complied. According to the police account, as one officer then moved toward Stamps to check for weapons, he lost his balance and fell. As he fell, his weapon discharged, sending a bullet directly into Stamps’s chest, killing him.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Jessie Rossman, a staff attorney for the Massachusetts ACLU, told me in a phone interview. “The same government authority that allows them to carry weapons, make arrests, and break down the doors of Massachusetts residents during dangerous raids also makes them a government agency that is subject to the open records law.”

In some states, police agencies can claim exemptions from open records legislation for certain types of requests, such as for internal personnel files, or investigation documents that could reveal the identities of witnesses or informants. In some parts of the country, like the Virginia suburbs of Washington, police agencies have broadly interpreted open records laws to allow them to turn down just about every request. But this claim in Massachusetts is on a whole different scale.

“They didn’t even attempt to claim an exception,” Rossman says. “They’re simply asserting that they’re private corporations.”

The ACLU is now suing NEMLEC. It’s worth noting that in addition to receiving taxpayer funding from its 51 member police agencies, NEMLEC has also received significant federal funding over the years, particularly from the Byrne Grant program. In fact, just last April, NEMLEC made a series of drug busts across the state in an investigation funded at least in part with Byrne Grants. (NEMLEC seems to be involved in a lot of drug raids.) In 2010, NEMLEC received an $800,000 Byrne Grant earmarked by then-Sen. John F. Kerry.

Interestingly, in 2009, NEMLEC had to pay out $200,000 “to settle allegations that it made false claims related to the use of Justice Department grant funds” — specifically, funds obtained through the Byrne Grant program. That sounds like an agency that could use a little oversight.

The argument that the LECs in Massachusetts are private corporations and therefore immune to the state open records law was made by Jack Collins, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. I have contacted his office to request an interview but haven’t yet heard back.

Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet

Jennifer Mayerle

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man is upset about the way his family was treated on a Southwest Airlines flight because of a tweet.

Duff Watson says he was asked to de-board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis with his two kids on Sunday after an agent didn’t like a tweet he wrote about her service.

Watson and the agent had a disagreement before boarding initially.

“I was left, you know, very upset, very embarrassed, very humiliated,” Watson said.

He’s an “A-List” passenger, which means he gets priority boarding. But a gate agent wouldn’t let his 6-year-old and 9-year-old board with him — so they’d all have to wait to board later.

“In leaving I said, you know, ‘Real nice way to treat an A-list. I’ll be sure to tweet about it,’” he said.

And that’s just what Watson did.

“Something to the effect of, ‘Wow, rudest agent in Denver. Kimberly S, gate C39, not happy @SWA,’” he said.

Soon after getting to their seats, the family of three was asked to leave the plane.

“[She said] her safety feels threatened at this point because of what I tweeted,” Watson said.

Watson’s daughter, Lucy, said she feared for her father.

“She said ‘I’m going to call the cops,’” Lucy said. “I like thought something bad was going to happen, like my dad being in jail.”

Watson says at that point, his children started to cry. He doesn’t understand why his family was targeted.

“There was no use of profanity, there were no threats made. There was nothing other than, you know, a terse exchange between a customer service agent and a customer,” he said.

Watson says he was forced to delete the tweet.

“She said, ‘You can’t board the plane unless you delete that tweet,’” Watson said.

Southwest Airlines sent a statement which confirmed that a customer was removed for a short time and continued on to Minneapolis. They also said the incident is under review.

In an email to Watson, Southwest apologized for the incident. Because of confidentiality concerns, they could not disclose any disciplinary actions taken.

Watson says he’s not satisfied with their response. All three received $50 vouchers, but Watson says he won’t fly Southwest Airlines again.

Colombian Student Faces Prison Charges for Sharing an Academic Article Online

In many parts of the developing world, students face barriers to access academic materials. Libraries are often inadequate, and schools and universities are often unable to pay dues for expensive, specialized databases. For these students, the Internet is a vital tool and resource to access materials that are otherwise unavailable to them. Yet despite the opportunities enabled by the Internet, there are still major risks to accessing and sharing academic resources online.

A current situation in Colombia exemplifies this problem: a graduate student is facing four to eight years in prison for sharing an academic article on the Internet. He wasn't making a personal profit from sharing the article—he simply intended for other scientists like him to be able to access and cite this scientific research.

Diego Gomez, 26, is a Master's student who has been researching biodiversity and working on the conservation of reptiles and amphibians for several years in the South American region. Throughout his young career, the biggest obstacle he faced was in accessing academic resources that existed on global research databases. As a student at a small university in Armenia, the availability of research papers was so limited that he often had to save money to make trips to Bogotá to access biological collections, articles, and databases only available to him at natural history museums and libraries at the capital city.

Over time, he increasingly came to depend on the Internet. It enabled him to read relevant research, share documents, and communicate with others in his field. Despite the online resources that were available, there were still major barriers that prevented him from accessing the plethora of research that existed. So when he and others came across papers that were crucial to their work, they often shared it online for other researchers to access. Gomez says:

The important thing is to make a correct citation, attributing researchers’ work by indicating their name and year of publication and, of course, not claiming the work of another researcher, but to recognize it and value it. Therefore, what we usually do is to reference the findings and make them available to those who need them.

One day a couple of years ago, he came across a paper that was especially useful to his field work. He then later shared the research online on the site, Scribd. The author of the paper then filed a lawsuit over the “violation of [his] economic and related rights.” Under the allegations of this lawsuit, Gomez could be sent to prison for up to eight years and face crippling monetary fines.

The Criminal Charges

He is being sued under a criminal law that was reformed in 2006, following the conclusion of a free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States. The new law was meant to fulfill the trade agreement's restrictive copyright standards, and it expanded criminal penalties for copyright infringement, increasing possible prison sentences and monetary fines.

Colombian digital rights organization, Fundación Karisma, is supporting Gomez in his case to fight against these excessive criminal charges. Carolina Botero, staff attorney at Fundación Karisma writes (translated from Spanish):

The rationale is the potential damage that "piracy" in the industry generates. Without prejudice to the pending debate on the subject, it should be clear that the actions of users, non-profit activities, and sharing, are not crimes. […] In a society that has a disruptive technology like the Internet, the exercise of the rights to education, access to science and culture, and respect for freedom of expression must be respected.

Colombia does not have flexible fair use system like in the United States. It has a closed list of exceptions and limitations to the rights of authors (derecho de autor). This list was issued more than 20 years ago and are narrowly tailored to some specific situations that are not at all applicable to the digital age. Therefore none of these will apply directly to his case even if it was done for educational purposes.

Fortunately, Gomez still has a strong legal defense against these exorbitant penalties. Under Colombian criminal law, there are two main issues that the court will also need to consider. The first is mens rea, which weighs the malicious intent behind the action. Clearly, Gomez had no intention of violating copyright for personal gain. Which gets us to the second important legal consideration, called antijurídica: whether there was actual harm against the economic rights of the author. Initially the article was posted on Scribd and was available for download without a fee. But at some point afterwards, the website changed its terms of use to require unregistered users to pay five dollars to download documents. When Gomez realized this, he took down the article immediately. The author of the paper may have believed that Gomez was attempting to profit in light of Scribd's new fee system, but Gomez did not make anything off of the work nor did he intend to do so.

There is a Supreme Court ruling that further weighs this legal consideration in his favor. In 2008, the highest Colombian court ruled that an infringing activity can only be criminal if there was intention to profit from the copyrighted work. The decision was partially based on international law—the Berne Convention, which carries an exceptions and limitations framework called the three-step test. This test is a way of determining whether a certain use is legal as long as it doesn't conflict with the “normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.” Since Gomez was clearly not sharing academic articles for personal profit, there is firm ground to assert that his actions were not criminal. Botero of Fundación Karisma comments on this point:

In 2011, Diego published on the Internet a thesis that was defended in 2006. The fact that a scholar author believes that after 5 years someone who spreads his scientific findings is harming his economic interests totally ignores the importance of science in development, in this case, in the conservation of the biodiversity in Colombia, the second most biologically diverse country in the world.

This case exemplifies the real life harm of overreaching restrictions due to excessive laws that protect the “economic rights” of authors. Gomez only wanted to share these articles to further his life mission to protect native wildlife and to allow others with a similar passion to access this research. He is only one of countless thousands who risk themselves every day to push against the prohibitive restraints of copyright. We need major reform of our laws, both internationally and domestically, to ensure that people are not made criminals for promoting scientific progress and exercising their creative expression. In other words, for doing exactly what authors' rights laws are allegedly intended to do.

9/11 Commission's '10 Years Later' Report: The Only Problem With US Counterterrorism Efforts Is The General Public

by Tim Cushing

The 9/11 Commission has released a followup to its original report, detailing the government's activity in response over the past decade. Unfortunately, those who feel the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new era of government overreach and diminished civil liberties will be hard-pressed to see anything encouraging in this report's concerns and recommendations.

Some of the Commission's findings are unsurprising. Yes, terrorist groups and tactics have evolved since 9/11 and yes, the government's counterterrorism efforts seem largely focused on preventing stuff that already happened (this being the TSA's particular area of "expertise"). But the report also warns that our efforts to prevent terrorist attacks are in danger of faltering due to "fatigue" and a "waning sense of urgency," while failing to point out that the government itself is largely to blame.

Many Americans think that the terrorist threat is waning—that, as a country, we can begin turning back to other concerns. They are wrong. The absence of another major attack on the homeland is a success in itself but does not mean that the terrorist threat has diminished. The threat remains grave, and the trend lines in many parts of the world are pointing in the wrong direction. We cannot afford to be complacent—vigorous counterterrorism efforts are as important as ever. Without public support, the government will not be able to sustain the robust capabilities and policies needed to keep Americans safe.

The government has repeatedly attempted to portray the nation as being under the constant threat of attack. While there are certainly threats out there, the danger posed has been overstated -- and the Commission echoing this only makes it worse. This "fatigue" will only intensify if the Commission's suggestions are acted on. To date, the NSA has been unable to point to much evidence that its broad collection efforts have actually reduced the terrorist threat, much less prevented any attacks. The FBI, whose main focus shifted to counterterrorism shortly after 2001, has been even worse. The terrorist plots "disrupted" by the investigative agency have almost exclusively been handcrafted by the FBI itself.

The Commission's "one page summary" (which in true bureaucratic fashion is actually two pages) is a good place to start to get some idea of how many bad ideas are espoused in the 40+ page report, like calling for CISPA/CISA-esque legislation, giving the government even more access to private companies' data in the name of fighting cyberterrorism.

Congress should enact cybersecurity legislation to enable private companies to collaborate with the government in countering cyber threats. Companies should be able to share cyber threat information with the government without fear of liability. Congress should also consider granting private companies legal authority to take direct action in response to attacks on their networks.

Other suggestions aren't nearly as bad. For one, the Commission suggests an overhaul of DHS oversight, something that is currently handled (in one way or another) by 92 committees and subcommittees. It also encourages more transparency, something the two administrations involved in the post-9/11 "War on Terror" have thoroughly avoided.

The National Archives and the administration should work expeditiously to make all remaining 9/11 Commission records available to the public.

National security leaders must communicate to the public—in specific terms—what the state of the threat is, how the threat is evolving, and what measures are being taken to address it.

But when the Commission begins discussing what it finds the US has handled well post 9/11, the wheels start to come off. Dubious statistics are deployed to portray the terrorist threat as constant and growing. The number of people currently on the government's "no-fly list" is presented without the faintest trace of incredulity, as if "20k+" splashed in bold, colorful text actually means the TSA is keeping 20,000 dangerous individuals from entering US airspace.

The report also cites the State Dept.'s statistics showing that terrorist attacks around the world increased 43% from 2012 to 2013. While it acknowledges this increase was almost completely relegated to regions where terrorist attacks have always been common (Pakistan, Iraq, etc.), the Commission goes on to claim this doesn't indicate a decreased threat to the US and cites in support… attacks in Libya and Kenya. While there's no doubt certain terrorists still harbor plenty of enmity towards the US, the likelihood of them succeeding in an attack on American soil still remains where it was on Sept. 10, 2011, Sept. 11, 2001 and every day since then: exceedingly minimal.

The report takes a turn for the ridiculous when discussing cyberattacks, going from warning against complacency and inadequate national security measures to praising the US for its highly symbolic, hypocritical and politically dangerous indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking US companies' computers.

The Department of Justice’s May 2014 indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the systems of large American companies has helped bring attention to this problem, but the American people remain largely unaware of the magnitude of the cyber threat. That needs to change. Senior leaders in the executive branch and Congress must describe to the American people, in terms as specific as possible, the nature of the threat and the tools they need to combat it.

Things go to completely absurd in the next sentence, which attempts to bring the cyberwar home by quoting copyright industry talking points.

Former NSA Director General Keith Alexander has described the ongoing cyber theft of American companies’ intellectual property (IP) as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” According to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, the annual losses from IP theft are over $300 billion—approximately the amount of U.S. exports to Asia. This ongoing plunder will harm American competitiveness, depress job creation, and ultimately reduce the U.S. standard of living.

Elsewhere, the Commission congratulates the TSA on a job well done, never acknowledging the fact that the agency's efforts are largely useless and mainly focused on reacting to the last threat that escaped their pre-boarding processes. (Shoe bomber, eh? Everyone start taking your shoes off!, etc.)

Senior leaders agree that America’s layered approach to homeland defense, which recognizes that no single security measure is foolproof, has improved our security. Each layer is effective in its own right, and each is supported by other layers of security. The system begins with intelligence gathered overseas and at home about individuals and organizations who may intend to do us harm. It includes screening systems that prevent suspects from boarding planes or entering the country via other means. At its best, a layered system integrates the capabilities of federal, state, and local government agencies.

More bizarrely, the same Commission that pointed out that the failure to share data between agencies allowed the 9/11 terrorists to reenter the country undetected now praises the "response" to the Boston Bombing as an example of "learning the lessons" of 9/11. The Commission glosses over the fact that the same sort of mistakes were made (info not passed along to other agencies, certain intel ignored) that could have prevented the attack.

America’s resilience has improved as well. Federal, state, and local authorities have absorbed and applied the lessons of 9/11 over the last decade. For example, joint federal, state, and local exercises staged in Boston over the last several years paid dividends in the well-executed response to the Boston Marathon bombings. Years of investment and planning helped ensure that the consequences of a terrible tragedy were dealt with in a controlled and systematic way.

The Commission also plays directly into the intelligence/national security narrative in its choice of language. While pressing for greater transparency and a larger emphasis on safeguarding civil liberties (in hopes of bringing Americans "back on board" with expensive, invasive counterterrorism efforts), the Commission poisons the well with these sentences.

Since 2004, when we issued the report, the public has become markedly more engaged in the debate over the balance between civil liberties and national security. In the mid-2000s, news reports about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs caused only a slight public stir. That changed with last year’s leaks by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who stole 1.7 million pages of classified material. Documents taken by Snowden and given to the media revealed NSA data collection far more widespread than had been popularly understood. Some reports exaggerated the scale of the programs. While the government explained that the NSA’s programs were overseen by Congress and the courts, the scale of the data collection has alarmed the public.

With this tone established, the Commission calls for greater oversight of the NSA, which it does need. But its brief nod towards protecting civil liberties doesn't even rise to the level of lip service. The Commission seems to feel that if the NSA/administration just talk about surveillance programs more openly, the American public will be more receptive. In summary: Americans just need to be told why their civil liberties are being violated and they'll be cool with it.

Senior leaders must now make this case to the public. The President must lead the government in an ongoing effort to explain to the American people—in specific terms, not generalities—why these programs are critical to the nation’s security. If the American people hear what we have heard in recent months, about the urgent threat and the ways in which data collection is used to counter it, we believe that they will be supportive. If these programs are as important as we believe they are, it is worth making the effort to build a more solid foundation in public opinion to ensure their preservation.

More transparency and specificity would be appreciated, but a "discussion" on national security isn't one small but powerful group telling everyone else how it's going to be, no matter how many details are included.

There are many more troubling assertions and suggestions scattered throughout the report. The Commission revisits the TSA, again praising the no-fly list and making a blatantly false statement in its defense.

Before September 11, there were only 16 names on the no-fly list. Today, there are more than 1,000 times that many, along with a redress process to correct mistakes.

Bigger isn't always better and the redress process is such a joke that a judge has declared it to be unconstitutional. The Commission also calls for faster implementation of REAL ID and biometric databases. So much for the civil liberties concerns, apparently.

With the REAL ID Act gradually being implemented by the states, the country is poised to fulfill our recommendation that the federal government “set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses.” But another key recommendation, a biometric exit-tracking system, has still not been implemented, and there is no end in sight.

In total, the Commission's report is everything the DHS/NSA/FBI, etc. could have hoped for. It calls for more of the same, only faster, harder and with bigger budgets. Very little of what has sprung in place as the result of hasty post-attack legislation is questioned. The ongoing farce that is the TSA is given a solid thumbs-up. The only problem with the DHS is that it answers to too many masters. The major problem, it seems, is that the American public isn't nearly as comfortable with a no-rules, by-any-means-necessary "War on Terror" as it was in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The Commission believes the only thing really missing is a governmental voice persuasive enough to talk the public out of its civil liberties in exchange for some shiny "safety" baubles.

El Paso Releases Video of Cop Executing Handcuffed Man — Where’s the Anger?

By Natasha Lennard

An execution video has become a morbid feature of this week’s news cycle. On screens across the country, click after click, a “graphic” warning gives way to grim curiosity. Viewers see a man whose arms are cuffed behind him. He struggles with officers and squirms on the floor. The executioner draws his gun and shoots. The body bleeds, convulses, and eventually lies still.

In Iraq and Syria, ISIS militants are masters of execution and know the value of a viral death video. But I’m not referring to Iraq or Syria — I’m referring to El Paso, Texas. This week, in compliance with an open records request order, the El Paso police released video of what can only be described as a summary execution. Officer Jose Flores shot Daniel Saenz, a 37-year-old bodybuilder, while Saenz was on the ground and in police custody.


The video released by the El Paso Police Department. The sequence ahead of the shooting begins around 18:00.

Saenz had been arrested for reportedly assaulting an off-duty officer and staff at a local medical center on March 8, 2013. Flores and a prison guard were transporting Saenz — shirtless, handcuffed, and struggling — from the city jail to a hospital to treat a self-inflicted injury. Flores fired the fatal shot with a Glock semiautomatic handgun as he and the prison guard wrestled with Saenz outside of the jail.

The bullet went through Saenz’s left shoulder and into his chest, piercing his heart. The authorities called it an accident. They said that the guard knocked Flores as he pointed his drawn weapon, causing it to fire. They said that Saenz could have moved his cuffs to the front of his body and, with his strength, use them as a weapon. They said a taser would not suffice to subdue him.

But the video speaks for itself. The bodybuilder was executed.

When BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant dead as he lay face down on the platform at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station in 2009, he was also caught on video (by the camera phones of onlookers). As the footage spread, the streets erupted. Protesters and rioters left smashed windows and burning cars in their wake.

The video released by the city of El Paso, however, has provoked no such response. The streets are quiet. Of course, the differences in context between the two shootings are vast and multifaceted. It is merely my humble opinion that seeing a cop shoot an unarmed man dead should produce a collective rage so strong that the police can feel it, see it, and smell it.

Officer Flores was not indicted. A New York Daily News report said that “it was not clear whether Flores was still on the force.” It went on to note that “Flores is also the El Paso cop who became the focus of national attention after giving a pair of boots and socks to a homeless man in January 2013.” The Daily News story ends with this reference to the cop’s good deed. The indeterminacy over whether he is or is not on active duty after killing a handcuffed detainee is tucked between paragraphs.

I am reminded of the 2012 story of an NYPD officer pictured giving boots and socks to a barefoot homeless man on a wintery New York tonight. Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users “liked” the image posted online by the police department.

“The NYPD has been on a warpath against the homeless, going back decades,” Jean Rice, a long-time civil rights campaigner and homeless advocate with the nonprofit organization Picture the Homeless, told me at the time. “The kindness of one individual officer is a drop in the ocean of the NYPD’s pattern and practice of violating homeless people’s civil rights.”

In the case of Flores we are confronted with the fact that a kind cop can be a killer cop too. It might appear inconsistent of me to urge a distrust of cops based on incidents of brutality but not urge an appreciation of them based on incidents of charity and kindness. If this is bias, it is empirically grounded in response to a structure of criminal justice in which a cop can shoot dead a handcuffed, unarmed man and not even face an indictment. A cop can kill a young black man prone on a train platform and face little more than a year in prison for involuntary manslaughter. A cop can kill an unarmed Bronx teen after he runs into his grandmother’s bathroom and have his indictment thrown out by a judge.

“That’s how they work,” said the weeping mother of this slain teen, Ramarley Graham, as fellow cops cheered for their colleague in court. “You see it every day.”

The mother’s use of “they” was appropriate. Anti-police sentiment is regularly met with ripostes like, “But they are people too,” or, “What if that officer has a family?” To such comments I respond that whenever we talk about a cop we’re not dealing with an individual but an institution — the uniform and weaponry indicate as much. Not all cops give warm socks and boots to homeless citizens. Not all cops shoot unarmed detainees. But all cops are part of a violent system of policing, colored by harassment and drenched in impunity. Yes, all cops.