Gatesgate

  

            So I am not talking about discrediting the police report.  I am talking about how reports are written to put the writer in the best light possible and the subject in the worst light.  If we could take police reports as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we could do away with criminal courts altogether.

            All the reporting person has to do is use vague terms such as 

"tumultuous manner" to muddy the waters.

            The Daily Howler evaluates how the media is doing its job.  (Actually, how it is not doing its job!)  It doesn't report on the facts per se, but it shows how the media gets things wrong, and how they make up stories instead of gathering information, and how they pick up each other's misinformation and repeat it without ever checking for veracity. 

            People that are related to policeman or are personal friends of policemen are excused from jury duty because they tend to take the word of  a police officer over the testimony of anyone else.

            That being said, the police report says a witness described two black men with backpacks.  The woman that called 911 says she didn't say black men or backpacks, and the tapes back her up.

            The second reporting officer does not mention the woman telling the color of the men or the backpacks. 

            Again, all this is irrelevant to what the press is doing.  They are creating stories about the incident based on what they think happened, or what they want to have happened.  It is the media that has turned this into an issue of racial profiling.  Any judgment about what really happened cannot come from the scant information the news media has at hand.

            Police and judges both know that eyewitness testimony is the least reliable of all evidence.

            It is the media and Obama haters that have made this a national issue.

            Think about this.  How many times daily in America does a white cop talk to a Black man through his front door? I would guess several times a day in New York City alone.  Multiply this by all the Black communities in the country and you have a lot of incidents that never made news anywhere.

           

            This is national news only because Obama aired his opinion, which was almost as dumb as when Nixon claimed that [Charles] "Manson is guilty".  Obama should have stopped when he said he didn't know the details of the incident.  If he had, the story would be over.

               My opinion is that white men in America don't know how sensitive Black men are about the way police talk to them because they have never experienced it themselves.  Regardless of what actually happened, and what words were actually said, we should keep this in mind.

         The other side of the coin is the charge of “disorderly conduct”.  This has been a tool of officers at the scene for over a century.  The courts have given police leeway to break up or prevent riots using disorderly conduct as a misdemeanor charge, allowing them to arrest people that could conceivably incite or touch off a riot.

         The officer must consider if the disturbance is drawing a crowd, and if the crowd is becoming alarmed by what they are witnessing.

         The officer at the scene makes the judgment, the desk officer or judge make the call as to whether or not to press charges.  Just because the police release the arrestee without charging him does not indicate that the arrest was improper, but it also doesn’t indicate that is was proper.

         Do police abuse this power because of racial bias?  Of course they do.

         Do police use this power to stifle dissent?  Yes they do, and many times they infringe on 1^st Amendment rights. 

         What we do know in the Henry Gates episode is the crowd was seven  “unidentified passersby”. What we don’t know is was that too many people for safety and was how alarmed were they?
These are both judgment calls. Remember, the police don’t have to wait for a riot to start. They have been allowed to arrest someone before things get out of hand if they feel the situation warrants it.

         Did Professor Gates overreact? Probably.  Did Sergeant Crowley overreact?  Maybe.  Did President Obama overreact? Yes, as a sitting President he did, as a Black American, probably not.  Did the media overreact?  Absolutely!

        

         What bothers me is that Gates told his daughter in an interview that the police report was untrue. “Well, the police report was an act of pure fiction. One designed to protect him, Sgt. Crowley, from unethical behavior. I was astonished at the audacity of the lies in the police report, and almost the whole thing from start to finish was just pure fabrication. So yes, I felt violated all over again.”

         Now, it is not a serious abuse of police power to arrest and release someone on a disorderly conduct charge.  It is understandable that Gates could forgive Sgt. Crowley for that, and sit down and have a beer with him.  After all, most people would agree that it is bad public policy to allow citizens to shout at and insult police officers in public, and it is proper for police to demand respect, especially if that disrespect may escalate into unruly conduct.  Maybe having a beer in the White House compensates for having his constitutional rights violated.  Or maybe he exaggerated just a teensy bit, and so did Sgt. Crowley, and they are both willing to forgive and forget.        

         But writing a police report that is an act of pure fiction is a serious abuse of police power, and a serious crime, as well.  Why hasn’t Gates pursued this? More importantly, why haven’t the media pursued this?  Why haven’t reporters even attempted to find out what happened on the porch?  Why have reporters picked one side over the other and made up justifications to support their guy?  Why hasn’t someone other than Gate’s daughter asked him that question?

          This answer is easy.  It’s because the entire system of journalism in America is broken, that’s why.  It is broken because newspapers, TV networks, TV and radio stations, are no longer independent entities.  They are owned by large corporations run by powerful CEOS, and they obey the orders of their masters.

Gravymeister Aug. 3, 2009

           

Stimulus


         Referring to the “famous” first two questions of the Republican caucus/conference, they reflect two central questions concerning government involvement in economic recovery.    

 

         I am not an economist, but there are a few things about Keynesian theory that I do understand.  Briefly, in a recession, when banks are not lending, entrepreneurs are not funding start ups, and consumers are not spending, the government can stimulate the economy by using deficit spending to put money directly into the economy as a whole.  Of course, it matters how they inject the money.   Deficit spending multiplies the effect of each dollar added to the economy.  Across the board tax cuts are not the most effective stimulus.

         Across the board tax cuts for the rich, as envisioned by Chris Matthews, are another thing altogether, whatever that phrase might mean.

         Bear in mind that Herbert Hoover in 1932 raised taxes (after he had cut them), and attempted to balance the federal budget, two policies that are considered to be the worst things one can do in a recession. 

 

        

         In congressional testimony given in July 2008, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, provided estimates of the one year multiplier effect for several fiscal policy options. The multipliers showed that increased government spending would have more of a multiplier effect than tax cuts. The most effective policy, a temporary increase in food stamps, had an estimated multiplier of 1.73. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent, had the second lowest multiplier, 0.23. A payroll tax holiday had the largest multiplier for tax cuts, 1.29. Refundable lump-sum tax rebates, the policy used in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, had the second largest multiplier for a tax cut, 1.26.[2]

 

         It seems clear from this example that the high multiplier effect from food stamps is because food stamps can be used only for consumption.  They can’t be invested or hoarded.  On the other hand, people that are already consuming as much as they want could use huge tax cuts for investing, which may encourage long term growth, but will not result in an immediate stimulus.  They could also send tax cuts to offshore bank accounts, where they will have no effect on our economy.

 

         A payroll tax holiday has an immediate stimulus effect because it puts the money into worker’s paychecks immediately.  The effects of tax reductions or credits are delayed because they come into effect the next year.  Early filers of refunds can get their money in January, for instance, but not sooner.

         One of the biggest criticisms from the tea partiers is that Obama hasn’t done anything to create  private sector jobs now.  There is little the President, or Congress for that matter, can do to stimulate job growth quickly.  The government can authorize large-scale public works, but it takes time to get the contracts written, the companies organized, and workers hired.

         The right wing is engaging in doublethink when they accuse Obama of trying to create socialism by hiring more government employees instead of creating private business.  I am sick and tired of Republicans claiming they are in favor of small business.  Would all Democrats who oppose small businesses please raise their hands?

 

         After watching the Republican-Obama conference I was pretty sure Obama knows about the multiplier effect.  The way he answered the questions seemed to indicate that he is aware of current economic theory. However, I think this talk about a spending freeze is pure propaganda. Freezing spending at a defecit level is what you want to do.  As noted above, you don’t try to balance the budget during a recession, and you have to engage in deficit spending to gain the multiplier effect.  I have no idea if Mike Pence or Paul Ryan know that much about economic theory.  Pence seems to dabble in foreign trade for the most part.  Ryan, on the other hand, is involved in Ways and Means and Budget.  This doesn’t mean he knows diddly about economics, although he should.  In fact, all politicians should know these basics and more.  It does mean Pence is very influential, however.

 

         In perusing the daily newspaper letters to the editor, it is clear that Americans are abysmally ignorant of how their economy (or their government) works.  It’s not their fault.  The above concepts are not gibberish to me because I was an econ major, and worked in consumer finance and even on Wall Street.  I don’t know if Obama or Olbermann or Maddow could educate people about these theories, but it is difficult for voters to make intelligent political decisions when they don’t have a clear grasp of the issues or the mechanisms involved.  Every week I read a letters to the editor explaining that a government budgets are exactly like a household or business budgets, and therefore the government can’t spend more than it takes in.  I don’t know about your household budget, but mine lacks the power to tax others, and does not have the right to print money.

        

         That said, I would like an immediate tax credit of $1500.00 for my 2009 taxes, and I am sure most Americans would like the same.  We did get the two $250.00 stimulus checks, and an additional $300.00 tax credit, but it wasn’t enough. (Married couples on Social Security got $800.00, $400.00 each).

 

         Should politicians and reporters start talking about the multiplier in public discourse?

         I think they should.  Hopefully, it would encourage the public to ask relevant questions of their lawmakers, possibly even look up things for themselves, and dispel some of the outright lies we are being fed daily.  Of course, our lawmakers and news media prefer the situation the way it is now, where they can lie and mislead with virtually no risk of discovery.  Like the radio and TV hosts, they can continue to push our hot buttons to keep us off balance.

Rush has 400,000,000 good reasons to keep up his antics.

        

Gravymeister, Feb. 4, 2010