TheAgitator.com
Late Morning Links
Friday, June 11th, 2010- Feds arrest 2,200 in massive drug sweep. Better get your drugs soon, there may soon be none left! Also, here’s Eric Holder: “…it was just one battle in what is an ongoing war.” Weren’t we supposed to stop calling it that?
- Citizen journalism meets microfinance. I love this idea.
- Scott Greenfield questions the outrage over a pending Utah execution by firing squad. I agree. The death penalty process should concern us a hell of a lot more than the method of execution.
- Denver police department considering new policies after paying settlement to man whose dog was shot by a cop responding to a music complaint.
- Immigration and intellectual laziness.
- Someone sent me this story with a snide comment about how cruel the free market can be. But who created the niche this guy is exploiting?
- Here’s a fun blog focusing on self-delusion.
I agree with you 100% on the death penalty thing, Radley. That having been said, I think firing squad is more humane and guaranteed effective than the alternatives.
The answer to your question in bullet #6, from the article: “It was the result of Senate Bill 1770, which changed notification requirements counties must make on tax delinquent properties and lessened property owners’ protection from the unnotified sale of such properties.”
It’s clearly a protection of property rights issue, not a “market” issue. Either way, they won’t put up with that Edwards guy for very long in Oklahoma.
Feds arrest 2,200 in massive drug sweep.
I’m sure this will put a massive dent in the drug supply.
Just like the imprisonment of ~1,000,000 other “drug criminals” did.
‘Feds arrest 2,200 in massive drug sweep.’
that explains the odd emptiness of the park when we skated this morning… THANK YOU, DRUG WARRIORS! (said with Peter Brady puberty voice).
Microfinance is the coolest thing- we’ve done 20+ kiva loans (thanks Radley!) and support a couple blogs. This is gonna grow- it’s a superb example of how to fix things without a bureaucracy.
But who created the niche this guy is exploiting?
Pff, yeah, like people respond to incentives or something Radley. Spew your hateful big-oil conservative teabagging anti-equality garbage over at Cato or something.
I wonder that the laws in Guthrie have to say about “right of ways”? I belong to a club in Pennsylvania that was going to put a deck on our building. When we went to get a permit, we found that there was a right of way for a garage that was torn down twenty years ago. We were told that if we could get the owner of the property that had the right of way to release it, we could build our deck. The guy said “sure, for $20,000″. Not a damn thing we can do.
If I was up for execution, I would prefer a couple bullets to the head over any other form. Simple, instantaneous, no question of pain or suffering, of being burned alive or any other complications. I’m not so sure about the bullet to the heart but hey, if the guy wants it, what’s the big deal?
Yes, seeing a mans head splattered over a wall and blood leaking everwhere will be gruesome and messy but I’m old fashioned enough to think that since it’s the prisoner’s life, his preferences should come first.
In the drug war article, they call the arrestees parts of various “cells”. Not every criminal is a part of a cell. They aren’t all self contained groups which don’t interact with the world aside from accomplishing their mission that will operate in a leadership void. It’s a loaded word that is attempting to paint people as terrorists in people’s minds.
People always use that eye for an eye excuse to support their and God’s belief in the death penalty. Bah humbug.
If we adhered to the Old Testament or Biblical sayings at all, then ALL adulterers would be stoned to death.
I’ll bet 99.9% of the people would change their warped way of thinking.
Jesus rescinded the death penalty in the New Testament by telling us to forgive and turn the other cheek.
But people, for whatever reason, cannot conceive that concept.
My question to them is ‘since when is killing someone proved that killing is wrong?’
The death penalty is nothing short of pre-mediated murder…period.
Then people talk about the victim’s family getting some sort of ‘closure’.
BS!
I’d hate to think that the death of another would bring me comfort or that my faith and relationship with God wasn’t strong enough to do the job or that the GOD I believe in wasn’t powerful enough. Guess some people need to find another ‘God’.
And show me ONE time, just ONCE, where capital punishment EVER prevented crime?
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. ~ Albert Camus
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. ~ Albert Camus
People are executed by firing squad all of the time. Normally there’s no judge and jury involved though.
Tyro, I understand what you are saying but let’s clarify something here.
As a former paramedic (for 8 yrs), I was unfortunately privy to vicitms of gunshot wounds to the head and/or heart. Some were self-inflicted and other inflicted by someone else.
Of course some were already DOA upon our arrival but there were some who suffered horribly. I know because I witnessed this.
Of course this too, depends on the calibur of the weapon as well as the part of the brain or heart was struck.
Some even pulled through while others eventually died.
But in the ones I witnessed struggling, they suffered. They felt pain.
I think the condemned should definitely get to choose their method of execution. If it were me, I’d ask to have a 16 ton weight dropped on my head.
After reading the original article about the shooting of the dog, Jake, and what the cops did after that was, Geez, what a bunch of fucking cowardly assholes. And of course, the cop was “cleared” of any wrongdoing. Cleared by who? Who else, more cops. I’m sick of reading this shit.
Chuchundra @ 12:19
OK. Attack me with a banana.
While not constitutional, there are federal laws regulating the tax sale of properties such as this. As I recall it allows the property owner up to 2 years to enter a statement and reclaim the property. I looked into this because the owner of the house my daughter rents have afailed to pay taxes for the past 6 years. Instead I pay the taxes to keep the state from taking the house and reduce the rent payment to the owner.
I like the last comment in the article about the guy buying up property. The tax scofflaw wants to sue the guy who isn’t breaking the law. I don’t think he’d like how that lawsuit turned out.
Im not a fan of the death penalty . . . but I cant stand that they want to do it in a humane way and behind closed doors.
Id rather the accused be “drawn and quartered” in the public park and head displayed on a pike.
I would like to think that the more people saw the barbarity of the death sentence, the more people would want to see it abolished. Right now its out of sight, out of mind.
it seems like we’d eliminate a lot of nonsense if we just banned the death penalty… it doesn’t fix a thing.
Those who favor immigration amnesty for those who cross illegally need to face a few hundred of the descendants of people who were denied entrance during WW II. My friend’s grandfather, an MD, was denied entrance in 1939. He was coming from Germany. He was a Jew. He was murdered by the Nazis. Where were you when this happened?
For those who do not live near the border, why don’t you come down here and spend some time? I’ve lived here nearly 60 yrs. I know factually what happens because I have had direct contact with these immigrants. AND I know many persons who were themselves illegals who want this new wave stopped. These are no professors or doctors or lawyers or other folks who would be beneficial to us. Some come to work but along the border most come to take.
Studies always have an agenda. Those performing the study always infuse their feelings abou the subject into the information they present. I’ve watched the disintetration of integrity at universities over my 35+ years of working in many of them. Lying, cheating, and otherwise dialing for dollars haves replaced honor and integrity among researchers. Follow the bucks.
@8, Judi,
As a former resident of Texas, my take on the death penalty, from listening to knuckle dragging Texans, is that it’s purely revenge. There’s no “justice” to it. It’s just revenge. And Texans are a vicious and vengeful bunch.
The reason there are five and not one, or rather why there’s more than one (don’t know why 5 exactly is the magic number) is because one guy is given blanks without knowing, so every shooter involved can retain the thought afterwards that maybe they weren’t the one to kill the condemned person. At least, that’s what I’ve read. More shooters also means if one or two is slightly of the mark, the guy is still likely to die quickly from a well aimed shot, rather than bleed out in pain from a bunch of bullets to the shoulder or whatever, so it’s in a way to make it “more humane.”
As to the dog story, I guess I shouldn’t be amazed that Ash guy has kept his job, but after reading his history of crimes…WTF?!
Aresen “OK. Attack me with a banana.”
lol was that a Monty Python reference?
“Studies always have an agenda.”
In other words, I can simply cover my ears and continue to believe that my prejudices are correct despite any evidence.
Judi – “Jesus rescinded the death penalty in the New Testament by telling us to forgive and turn the other cheek”
You could interpret that to say that Jesus rescinded the concept of crime with victims simply turning the other cheek everytime crimes are committed.
I seriously doubt that Jesus was saying that criminals should not be punished.
But I don’t trust the government with the power of death so I’m against the death penalty
fwb: “Where were you when this happened?”
Oops, sorry, my bad. I forgot to fix my time machine.
Studies may have an agenda, but somehow individuals don’t? Studies are certainly more capable of objective conclusions than an indivudual’s based on nothing but anecdotal evidence, which is patently unreliable.
So, a guy buys property from the county/state because the owners failed to pay taxes. The county/state has relaxed laws to allow for less notification of said sales to help increase revenues.
Um, why is no one mad at the government for passing such relaxed notification laws in the first place?
My preferred execution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtIdqwfoyPU
Have we done passionfruit?
2,200 arrested?
Well praise the Lord and pass the bong, we’re winning the war on drugs!
I don’t see how anyone could really blame the free market for this story in Oklahoma. How can you be pissed at this guy the state rewrote the laws allowing this shit to happen?
This guy is a giant asshole. But the OK state legislature is a cornucopia of assholes. They need an influx of dicks to fuck those assholes. To quote the greatest puppetry film of all times…Dicks fuck assholes.
The immigration article sets up a strawman by tackling only the weakest anti-immigration positions, and caricatures of them.
There is a legitimate case to be made that illegal immigration disproportionately burdens local communities in high-immigration areas, such as along the border, because their benefits (cheap labor) are diffused across the entire economy in lower prices whereas their costs are concentrated to the area where they live.
These costs are not simply “increased police” under the mistaken notion that immigrants commit more crime – they are costs associated with ANY rapid influx of population in a short period of time – the need for more roads, more infrastructure, more schools, more firefighters, more hospitals and emergency room clinics. The costs are all paid for at the local level and they do strain local budgets disproportionate to the benefits they provide, which are spread out nationally (IOW, a resident of Maine enjoys cheaper vegetables from south Texas but doesn’t have to pay a dime toward south Texas’ sudden shortage of schools and hospitals).
The argument “well, illegal immigrants pay taxes too” is also an invalid one for the obvious reason that our entire tax burden is notoriously progressive toward the wealthiest members of society, and most illegal immigrants come from lower income levels. Let’s not be mistaken – illegal immigrants do indeed pay taxes, mostly through retail sales taxes. But think of the taxes they are less to pay: (1) property taxes, which disproportionately burden homeowners and business owners by definition, (2) federal income taxes, which are so horrendously progressive that almost half of all Americans – the lower half of wage earners – don’t even have to pay them, (3) Social Security taxes, which don’t get paid for cash-under-the-table employment, which is common among illegal immigrants, and (4) local and state licensing fees on cars and businesses, which again illegals are less likely to pay in order to fly under the radar of the immigration system.
Combine these two things with the unmistakable fact that we have a massive welfare state where government is expected to provide anything and everything, and it becomes clear how illegal immigration may disproportionately burden border state communities at the local level for reasons wholly unconnected to the assertion that “illegals commit more crime.”
And that goes without mentioning the unrealized costs of mass illegal immigration for private property owners and the public land “commons” along the border, e.g. litter cleanup, vandalism and destruction of fences, and – yes – crime, which is far more likely to happen among immigrants in the human smuggler-attracting, drug cartel-infested no man’s land of the border crossing, than after those immigrants have arrived and become working members of a regular society.
If libertarians want to win the immigration argument and justify the case for opening the borders (and it is a strong case), they need to address these very real issues first and not just flippantly dismiss them as they would the knuckle-dragging “immigrants rape and steal and murder” crowd.
So let me get this straight:
Some guy tried to immigrate legally, was told to fuck off, and was murdered as a result. Therefore, illegal immigration must be stopped.
Guillotine for me, please!
As an old man, I’d like to say two things:
A. Get of my lawn!
2. Where’s my reefer!
Who created this niche?
The government, through the creation of private property.
You are getting dangerously close to the fundamental, irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of libertarianism Radley.
Also, thanks for the link to the self-delusion blog. I was already rather interested in the topic, and that blog was very interesting and informative.
Yeah, if I were on death row, I would certainly be praying that they didn’t use violence when they forcefully restrain me and impose a process designed to prevent the normal physical functioning of my body in such a way as to eventually end all brain activity. It’s bad enough that they want to execute me without adding violence to the equation.
#34 | la Rana-
‘Who created this niche?
The government, through the creation of private property.
You are getting dangerously close to the fundamental, irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of libertarianism Radley.’
govt didn’t ‘create’ private property. Please explain how anyone could possibly come to this conclusion.
re: Immigration
Oddly, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s enforcement plan includes an amnesty provision.
If you want to see compelling evidence why the “war” on drugs is unwinnable, just have a look at these photos. They illustrate the lifestyle our war has provided for Mexican drug lords.
http://www.activeboard.com/forum.sparkaBID=133200&p=3&topicID=35778276
Hmm link didn’t seem to work so I’m trying this:
http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=133200&p=3&topicID=35778276
You are getting dangerously close to the fundamental, irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of libertarianism Radley.
And you’re getting further and further from actually understanding my point.
I personally would want to die from an overdose of LSD. I mean if I get to choose…
Heart attack from too much sex might work too. If the first time they try doesn’t work, then try again until it does.
“More shooters also means if one or two is slightly of the mark, the guy is still likely to die quickly from a well aimed shot, rather than bleed out in pain from a bunch of bullets to the shoulder or whatever, so it’s in a way to make it “more humane.””
By that logic it would be more humane to do it from 2 feet away. It ensures that no one will miss their mark. Not slamming you, as you’re just stating what your research has found.
My previous observation must lead someone to then ask, “if being humane is the goal, yet the firing squad distance to their target isn’t point blank, then the goal must NOT be to be humane, therefore what IS the goal?” I answer that with, “to make a game out of killing someone, yet pronounce that it is done because of X Y and Z, to distract you from the real questions.”
The so called business man who buys and then resells tax sale properties is a fool. He claims to only expect a 10% profit. But then wants $80,000 for a property he bought for $1,584. If he had asked $1,742 for the property and realized his 10 % profit no one would complain. But no, after his extortion fails, he blocks the driveway which had to cost far more than the $1,584 the property cost and fights a legal action (more money). I hope the greedy fool gets burned on the deal.
Private property existed before the existence of government.
Government did, however, create a framework whereby the rights of the holders of property (among other rights) could be maintained and enforced.
It is one of the few legitimate reasons for the existence of government, and why am a minarchist, not an anarchist.
Property Rights- I hope the condo owners find a free lawyer. This is a slam dunk. There is something called an easement. I’m sure one of the following applies in Oklahoma (the proof is easily accessible), and it doesn’t need to be part of a contract, deed, etc.: Easement by Necessity (please trolls, don’t bring up the “They can still walk to their house”, it won’t fly), Easement by Prior Use, Prescriptive Easements (this is very obvious). This turd of a human being thinks he is being slick. It figures he is a funeral director. I’m gonna bet his ONLY “friends” are politicians. Jus’ sayin’…
Just trying to ward off the trolls. Many rural areas have “private” roads that eventually branche off into other “private” roads. (I’ve dealt with these issues in northern Wisconsin.) If you buy a piece of property that includes one of these roads you can’t just willy-nilly put up a gate. There are unscrupulous people that actually do it, hoping to make a few dollars off the unsuspecting newbies. They know it is illegal. They try to figure out how much they can get without these newbies finding out. (If they become friends, they’ll eventually own up to it and it becomes a “gotcha moment”). I hope this slimy funeral director stubs his toe on one of those rails and hits his head on one of those concrete slabs. Just sayin…
“Government did, however, create a framework whereby the rights of the holders of property (among other rights) could be maintained and enforced.
It is one of the few legitimate reasons for the existence of government, and why am a minarchist, not an anarchist.”
Per Bill Maher, “Isn’t the point of government to stop people from beating us up and taking our stuff?”
Off topic: WLS in Chicago has video of “cop getting pummelled during Stanley Cup parade”
Out of control riots? No.
Another cop on an ATV was RUNNING PEOPLE OVER and also ran over a cop.
Yes, a cop was RUNNING PEOPLE OVER as a way of crowd control and almost killed a cop…and about a dozen other people.
WTF.
Further evidence that humanity is a failed experiment.
Damn Freegrazers…
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/440466.html?nc=118
Running a few numbers about what it would cost to prevent illegal immigration.
Wow, so I presume the drug war is over, with drugs having been dispatched after being soundly thrashed? But I can still get hammered on booze right? Will the new absence of drug addiction allow us law abiding guys to get desoxyn and oxycodone prescribed by our doctors and filled at the CVS?
“Another cop on an ATV was RUNNING PEOPLE OVER and also ran over a cop.”
LOLOL
I figure the cop driving the ATV was a Star Trek fan… the red shirts were SUPPOSED to get run over.
It wasn’t being pushed, the guy has both hands on the controls… he was TRYING to run people over.
I can think of a few good lines he cound use in his defense:
1) “What, you mean I’m not supposed to run people over? I thought that’s what Less Lethal vehicles were for!”
2) “Sorry, I was wonked out from the sugar in all those donuts.”
3) “Yes, I know I didn’t meet my quota, but that other cop got in my way and I had to stop. It’s her fault!”
#13 | Aresen | June 11th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Chuchundra @ 12:19
OK. Attack me with a banana.
But, what about pointed sticks?
I’m against the death penalty for baby humans a few months, weeks, or days from being born.
“There’s just some people,” he says, “we need to kick off the planet.”
@#55,
Oh, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. You see, when it is just peasants getting run over it was the POS cop effectively managing the crowd after being threatened. When a POS cop gets run over, it becomes a faulty ATV or the crowd pushing. Time to maximize damage lawsuits!
Cops = lethal situation. Every. Time.
“He was coming from Germany. He was a Jew. He was murdered by the Nazis. Where were you when this happened?”
Dude. It was 1939. I was the same place you were; nowhere at all.
But yeah see #31.
“Lt. Jeff Martinez says that the department is reviewing its current training video on aggressive animal procedure to see if it meets present-day standards….”
Yes, it meets present-day standards. F’en duh.
“But who created the niche this guy is exploiting?”
Why, the State did of course. They always get their cut.
Funny how people criticize the free market, something that is rarer than a unicorn. I guess it’s battered spouse syndrome writ large, who can blame them when their abusive spouse has military hardware.
#46 | Aresen — “It is one of the few legitimate reasons for the existence of government, and why am a minarchist, not an anarchist.”
Pish posh. How, praytell, does one prevent the inevitable slide from minarchy to full-blown statism? I’ll tell you how — anarchy. It’s the only solution.