Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
- Pete Eckert, blind photographer.
- U.S. government finds Toyota accelerations were driver error. It would be interesting for someone to do a study to see if this story gets a tenth of the coverage the initial accusations against the company received.
- Somehow, I don’t think this line would work as well for me.
- There’s so much real investigative journalism conservatives could be doing on government waste, incompetence, accountability, and transparency. It’s pathetic that donors on the right keep handing over money for these moronic “stings”. The right needs 10 more Tim Carneys. Instead, they keep churning out James O’Keefes.
- Virginia legislators can’t bring themselves to vote for a bill that would have banned the state from shackling female prisoners during labor.
- The most lightening-y place on the planet.
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on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 10:35 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Reading the comments on the shackled prisoners story is enlightening and I think the first person to post hits the nail on the head. Its not about public safety its about making yourself feel better and more powerful by making someone else feel worse. Much of the government and society can be said to operate on the same basis.
Re: Lack of Investigative Journalism:
It sort of recently occurred to me that there’s no longer any kind of mass market for investigative journalism that actually uncovers waste, fraud, and abuse. A few people are outraged, and the offending institution either covers its tracks better, or dials back its transressions just enough to not be worth investigating any more, when compared to other organizations/departments.
Look at the Pentagon’s “$600 for a hammer” fiasco from the 80s. They’re still channeling money into black ops, they’re just a lot more crafty about it now. They’re still overpaying contractors, they’re just a lot more crafty about it now, or in the case of some of those buildings-that-cost-millions-but-were-faulty-as-hell in Iraq, no one really… cares.
Collectively our nation just doesn’t care about the really important stuff any more. Civil rights? We already saw that movie in the 60s, and besides, *I’ve* never been pepper sprayed for asking a question.
I used to blame the journalists for the sorry state of news in this country, but it was uncomfortable. I realized it’s because in a free market (or even a pretend-to-be-free market like this one) you pretty much have to blame the market, not the purveyor.
I love my Tundra.
We need better journalism for sure. But the James O’Keefe stings on ACORN worked, mostly because ACORN was that corrupt and contemptable.
I recently replaced my old Camry with…another Camry. I remembered the Audi fiasco in the 80s and figured that I’d get a good deal on a car that had nothing wrong with it.
Toyota has acknowledged that some of their accelerator pedals suffered from stickiness. That was my experience, although the Toyota vehicle I drove years ago isn’t on their recall list. It was unsettling at first, but I soon learned I could unlock the pedal by pressing down a bit farther.
I’ve never understood how a floor mat could possibly hold down a pedal, but my Honda was recalled for just that reason. The “fix” was to punch a hole in the mat and install a peg on the floor to hold it in place.
Regarding the Toyota acceleration issue, the question of engine management is close to irrelevant. Even if the engine went full throttle, the brakes would overcome the engine.
Gasoline engines and brake systems are both heat engines, one converting heat to rotary motion, and the other converting rotary motion into heat. Expressed in the same units, the brakes are several times more powerful than the engine. Full throttle, the brake will stop the car almost as fast as engine off.
You may recall that after all the hoopla about the Audi unintended acceleration, the feds concluded that the problem could be traced to “pedal misapplication”, which translates to operator stupidity. They were pressing on the wrong pedal.
There were also claims that the engines developed “huge horsepower.” Also stupid–any mode that allowed an engine to develop high horsepower would be the design, not the flaw.
I remember one of the car buff magazines doing tests, and an Audi stopped within 10% of the same distance whether the engine was in full throttle or at idle.
Today, engines make more horsepower, so maybe the ratio is only two to one in favor of the brakes. Still, only human stupidity can cause the phenomenon described in the Toyota and Audi reports.
Of course CFI’s like Ralph Nader will jump on these reports, but anyone who actually knows anything about cars will know these are media storms from the beginning.
Pete,
Good points. The public market is efficient, but it is not immediate. Investigative journalism will enjoy a resurgence even if it at a low right now. Guys like O’Keefe won’t last and the public will move on after they learn the scam. Not everyone, but enough will move on.
Don’t forget that a contributing factor in the press and government coverage of Toyota was the failing US automobile makers at the time. Toyota was a shiny object to wave with one hand while the other was picking up GM from a pile of shit.
US manufacturing plants for Toyota doesn’t matter. Release the hounds.
I’m going to use that line.
“I’m Picasso!”
But do it in a Jon Lovitz voice.
http://www.hark.com/clips/jsqmxtcfpq-im-picasso
If Picasso had lived in our “modern” times, he may have found himself on a sex offender registry. His most famous painting might have been “The Underside of a Bridge.”
In the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k43XjuhInkU"immortal words of Jonathan Richman: “Some people try to pick up girls and get called assholes / This never happened to Pablo Picasso / He could walk down your street and girls could not resist his stare and so / Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.”
Ugh, URL fail. Let me try that again:
In the immortal words of Jonathan Richman: “Some people try to pick up girls and get called assholes / This never happened to Pablo Picasso / He could walk down your street and girls could not resist his stare and so / Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.”
healthcare for female prisoners is atrocious, in general. women require more care than men, but the companies contracting to do the healthcare refuse to provide the care. 2 ibuprofens will be given to women complaining of headaches vs doing a basic stroke evaluation. I’ve seen women fully incapacitated (due to anesthesia or severe sickness/injury) chained and padlocked to a hospital bed.
there are lots of women who’ll exploit pregnancy to try to escape from jail. they’ll fake seizures, asthma attacks, heart attacks, etc to get out. The guards and health staff become jaded and treat them all like ‘fakers’.
to me, the solution is simple- dramatically reduce the prison population. this can be done by not criminalizing drugs and consensual crimes. the second part of the equation is to make the healthcare providers liable for their negligence when they mistreat prisoners. This is very difficult because of the ‘credible’ testimony from guards and nurses and doctors vs the ‘unsavory’ prisoner- but, the current system makes it even harder to hold them accountable.
It’s unbelievable the amount of abuse women are subjected to in jails and prisons- from guards and each other. If people knew how conditions are in these prisons, reform would be immediate. Plus, there’d be lots of guards hanging from the gallows. Guards are the absolute slimiest humans I’ve ever bumped into… prison healthcare workers aren’t real far behind, though.
You should stop linking Adam Serwer. His post calls undercover journalism “lying,” quotes the execrable Amanda Marcotte, furthers the bogus claim that the videos were doctored, and ignores the fact that the PP employee got canned for misconduct. I was going to leave a comment until I saw the plethora of comments already there, that were mostly about the Duke lacrosse team rape-that-wasn’t fiasco, for some reason.
Joe: we may not like ACORN’s policy objectives, but there is no evidence that it was anywhere near as corrupt as portrayed by OKeefe, Brietbart, etc.
For example, as soon as the “sting” left the San Diego office of ACORN, the ACORN staffer called police to report human trafficking. However, he has been smeared as “going along” with human trafficking despite all the phone records etc to the contrary.
Brietbart et al have never apologized nor sought to correct the record. That is not investigative journalism, it is a media circus/lynch mob in search of a story, not the facts.
SJE–give me a break.
Even giving you the benefit of doubt the SD office did that, the other ACORN offices did not react that way. Not at all. I am not defending O’Keefe, he is a strange cat and should not be the model of “investigative journalism” but he managed to stumble into some low hanging
fruitnuts when it came to ACORN.How exactly did the O’Keefe videos show that ACORN as an organization was corrupt or contemptible? The videos purported to show front line workers helping a pimp get fraudulent tax deductions for underage prostitutes. I don’t believe that can reasonably be imputed to the organization as a whole even if it were true. Furthermore, ACORN made fairly credible claims that the videos were edited in a misleading manner.
Yeah, that’s what really draws people in and gets things changed, multi-article series on government waste that won’t even get a Pulitzer because it goes against the dominant narrative of “yay government”. Look, politicians may be stupid at most things, but ginning up votes is their only core competency.
Sure, SJE, here’s the on-topic video:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/3940318/acorn-san-diego
Were those phone records among the many other records ACORN San Diego threw into the dumpster?
You’re right. “I’m Balko. You and I are going to kick great balls together” would not work at all.
“CFI’s like Ralph Nader”
Gaunilo, I can take a guess, but what do you mean by CFI? I’m not familiar with that one.
#2 I think a good part of it has to do with the nature of corruption in this age as well. As far as the legislature goes, neither side wants to investigate real abuse of public funds because they want to make the millions of bucks off of that corruption when they leave office as lobbyists or board members on those companies. If they did anything to actually combat the corruption, they would be marking themselves as unreliable and hurting their prospects for future wealth. Journalism is in a similar state; most journalists work for corporations that, due to lax regulation and intensive consolidation, are usually military industrial complex members themselves. Having your pet ‘journalists’ rat out other people in the ‘club’ is bad for business. At the very least it would make the cocktail party uncomfortable, and you can’t have that!
I know I’m kicking a hornets nest here, but I think that the real source of all of this corruption is the whole Randian “Greed is Good” mythos. Regardless of how some pure form of Objectivism might operate, it is undeniable that the modern American version can be summarized by those three words. And since there is no real moral hazard to making your money through dishonest means, backstabbing, and corruption, then why not? If you are going to be judged by the number of zeros after your name rather than by any moral or ethical standard, there is no reason _not_ to act as, well, most of our monied classes act today.
As Pete (#2) points out, the simple fact seems to be that the sort of video stings that O’Keefe and others have done is far more effective than traditional investigative journalism. Given such a situation, why shouldn’t they continue to use that sort of methodology?
Li- If your argument is that journalism sucks because of corporate greed, then you need to also consider that old media is failing while new media (often times divorced from said corporations) are flourishing. And that’s the beauty of capitalism: unlike the government, corporations can’t jam crap down our throats. Well, they may be able to for a short period but eventually it catches up to them.
I don’t understand why people insist on believing the nonsense they do about ACORN. Like SJE I don’t agree with their politics but every investigation about that incident has consistently vindicated them. The fact is O’Keefe put out several heavily edited videos of conversations with low level employees who in most cases appear to have notified the authorities about what O’Keefe claimed he wanted to do.
The only scandal is that the vast Fox News-Talk Radio echo chamber of madness ran an organization into the ground, not by besting it in the marketplace of ideas but by spreading misinformation. It’s the same thing that nearly happened to Shirley Sherrod and what O’Keefe may have been trying to do to that CNN reporter he tried to seduce.
Think about the bizarre characterizations of libertarianism Radley finds in the establishment media and refutes on this site. What O’Keefe does is precisely the same sort of thing albeit done in the guise of reality TV or extreme “documentary” journalism. Disagreeing with someone, even passionately, is not an excuse to do the kinds of things O’Keefe does. Anyone who gives people like that an audience or bestows credibility upon them is being complicit.
If you really believe ACORN is corrupt because of O’Keefe’s video, I challenge you to name an organization and I’ll troll them and eventually get an incriminating video. Hell, I’ll get video of Reason showing they admit to burying Hoffa.
ACORN may or may not be corrupt, but O’Keefe just video’d what 4Chan does on a daily basis for LOLs.
Can we quit pretending the ACORN isn’t a criminal organization? Seriously – they’re far left-wing. They stand against absolutely everything that a libertarian stands for.
You might not like O’Keefe, but the enemy of your enemy might not be your friend…
And, Boyd, ACORN’s problems started before O’Keefe. There are numerous convictions of their employees in numerous states due to rampant voter fraud.
Michael Chaney,
Is your evidence that ACORN is a criminal organization that they’re far left wing, or that they stand against absolutely everything that a libertarian stands for?
And since there are numerous convictions in numerous states, how about you give me a list of just 5 states with at least two convictions in each one?
@27
And, Boyd, ACORN’s problems started before O’Keefe. There are numerous convictions of their employees in numerous states due to rampant voter fraud.
can you cite your sources? I don’t believe that for a sec mainly because voter fraud requires a vote to occur. You might mean voter registration fraud but they (like every agency that registers voters) is required by law to submit every voter registration application (even the ones signed by mickey mouse).
Can we quit pretending the ACORN isn’t a criminal organization? Seriously – they’re far left-wing. They stand against absolutely everything that a libertarian stands for.
So what if they’re far left? I disagree with acorn on a great many things but just because we disagree with them doesn’t mean they’re criminals.
cite incidents of actual wrong doing/criminal behavior and then call them that.
I cannot see how fear mongering and playing to the crowd helps individual liberty, especially since that tactic is usually used to punish and marginalize those with who we disagree when we cannot find another good reason.
We can disagree about the amount of corruption at ACORN. Whatever, it seems to me that Brietbart picked an easy target. I would have more respect for Brietbart when he (a) doesnt throw innocent people under the bus and (b) holds more powerful and more corrupt institutions to account in the same way, and is consistent in doing so.
Collin
I am not sure if I can spell it out here, but the first and last words are Complete and Idiot
I think the O’Keefe/Breitbart “gotcha” journalism reflects everything that’s wrong with the Right these days: it goes for the sensational-yet-irrelevant at the expense of legitimate, substantive criticism. Instead of wasting our time arguing about how edited O’Keefe’s videos were, we should be offering substantive evidence of ACORN’s hypocrisy like its lawsuit seeking to exempt itself from the very minimum wage law it fought to pass in California.
Re the Toyota investigation, it’s worth noting that the “black box” recording what’s happening in the car is connected to the same sensors controlling the pedals. If the sensors or pedal construction is at fault, the black box won’t tell you anything useful.
It’s not just the pedals to worry about. Cars these days with software-controlled ignitions and gearshifts give the driver absolutely no failsafe mechanism. If the car is out of control, but it won’t let you turn it off or take it out of gear because of a computer error, that’s a major problem.
Maybe you trust computer software more than mechanical apparatus. Myself, working with computers my whole life, I’m scared to death of turning my car over to them.
Chaney,
As I stated, ACORN may or may not be corrupt. However; people who base their opinion off O’Keefe’s video are being duped. I tried to be very specific about that.
I stand by my post…and what ClubMedSux posted.
Marty – If you think public awareness would stop the abuse that goes on in female prisons, I have to say you don’t know our public very well. Nothing goes on in the female prisons that is significantly different from what goes on in the male prisons. Everyone knows that rape and murder attempts are a natural part of prison life in America, and our society considers it a fucking joke. Granted the joke is more on the male rape, because even fascists feel squeamish supporting female rape. But the support of male rape and complete silence on female rape shows that most law and order types have no problem with either when done to prisoners.
Read the articles on the death penalty cases Radley links to. There is a segment of the American public that can only be described as barbaric. They don’t care about the crime or even guilt and innocence; they want prisoners beaten, tortured, raped, and murdered by the state. Then there is the silent majority, the large portion of the population that just doesn’t care. They don’t know or care about how prisoners are treated because no one they care about is a prisoner. If you try to inform these people of prison abuse a funny thing happens. They get mad at you. You showed them bad things are happening and they can’t do anything about it, but instead of blaming the government who actually perpetrates the abuse they get mad at you for telling them about it and making them feel bad.
The unfortunate thing about supporting liberty is that you always wind up defending scoundrels (or at least people the government and media paint as scoundrels). It’s always an uphill battle.
“U.S. government finds Toyota accelerations were driver error.”
Not so! The report only says it was not the electronics that were at fault. One fix was installing a shim inside the physical accelerator pedal apparatus. “Misapplication of the pedal” is one theory proposed and discussed in the link, but it was not a conclusion of the report as far as I can tell.
Also, for situations where the floor mat bunches up and jams the pedal (happens to the brake pedal in my wife’s ’96 Caravan), is that a design problem or a driver mistake?
Just need to call out that link summary, it’s inaccurate. :)
ClubMedSux: I agree 100%. There is a lot of corruption and double standards that can be targeted, but it doesnt always make for “gotcha” journalism. The last time I saw a union or advocacy group being pwnd for its double standards was on the Daily Show (union was using underpaid, no-benefit contract workers to picket Wal Mart for not providing benefits to its employees).
@#38 SJE: That was an amazing piece. It’s really sad when I think that a fake news show should win an award for investigative journalism.
Here is the report in question:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-20-2010/working-stiffed
ACORN employees were convicted of engaging in voter registration fraud in a number of states – http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/acorn_accusations.html (listing Missouri, Colarado and Washington). Following the stories, it seemed pretty clear that ACORN’s incentives encouraged numerous instances of people turning in invalid or duplicate voter registration forms. As far as I know, the only voter fraud that was confirmed to have occurred in 2008 consisted of ineligible felons voting – not people voting based off of fraudulent registrations.
#40: The ACORN employees guilty of voter registration fraud were, by and large, low level people who were paid to sign people up. Many, IIRC, were temporary hires. Not surprisingly, they cooked the books, to make their productivity seem better. Moreover, many of those people who cooked the books were turned into the authorities BY ACORN. I really cannot see how this is corruption…if only our military, police departments, politicians etc were as “corrupt.”
Again, I am not defending ACORNs politics, but only that the evidence against ACORN is more smoke than fire. To those who want to see ACORN go down in flames because it is leftist, how is that different from the Mississipi prosecutors who have no problems in fudging facts to send innocent people to jail because they need to look good in the eyes of the public?
Len: the phone records of the San Diego employee, and the cops who investigated, have been made public and he has asked for a formal retraction. Brietbart has not responded. I call that cowardly: he should have the balls to apologize.
I put “acorn employee convictions” and came up with 5 states on the first page. Are we going for low-hanging fruit here, Boyd?
Regardless of Acorn’s politics or how un-libertarian they are or whether O’keefe is a semi literate douche. You guys seem to be forgetting this little thing about how Breitbart told everyone he wanted to take down the left. He never promised honesty.
http://www.outloudopinion.com/2010/07/28/stewart-fox-snookered-no-one-breitbart-most-honest-person-in-sherrod-affair/
In Google, that is.
Michael Chaney: Still waiting for those “numerous” citations.
sje: I see your point. he only waited two days to call… his cousin? I’m totally with you. Not.
If he’d picked up the phone at the time and called the FBI, I’d credit him with some balls and refer to him as a true American.
my google search was: acorn san diego phone records. If you have a better one, I’m all eyes.
The shackles law was nothing but political showboating, here is the existing policy which would is 100 percent compliant with the law that wasn’t taken up.
“Restraints
All offenders leaving the institution will have full restraints including, handcuffs, waist chains, black box and leg irons except for pregnant offenders or those deemed medically challenged with Warden’s approval.
Handcuffs applied in the front of the pregnant offenders – are the only authorized restraints approved for use when a pregnant offender is transported outside the secure perimeter. Restraints will not be utilized if the Health Services Administrator determines that even handcuffs might jeopardize the health and well being of the pregnant woman and/or the fetus.
Note: If the Administrative Duty Officer deems that the use of handcuffs or no restraints will not adequately address an offender’s escape potential, then additional security personnel will be assigned for transport rather than the utilization of restraints.”
Given the association between human trafficking and the nastiest elements of the Mexican drug syndicates, and their willingness to use extreme brutality, I will cut him some slack in not immediately picking up the phone, and only calling his cousin (who handled that sort of thing). Check out the murders and decapitations of those who are involved in human trafficking, especially involving prostitution.
Anyway, the Brietbart narrative is not that he was “slow” or called the wrong person, it is that some ACORN employee is completely fine with human trafficking, and this is evidence of rampant corruption in ACORN. Sorry, but I don’t see that, at least on the evidence. What I see is a powerful person squashing someone because it fits his narrative and advances his agenda of crushing the left, without concern for the facts or the person. The fact that its done by a private individual, and not the cops or a prosecutor, makes it only slightly less worse. The fact that its done by the right, on the left, is irrelevant.
#36 | random guy
sadly, you’re probably right. I feel such outrage over the costs of housing prisoners, the abuse many receive, the asshole guards, the scandalous Correctional Medical Services company, etc that I can’t fathom others not being outraged.
I guess the Russians look at gulags as a fact of life, not something to be ashamed of… that’s probably how it will be here when we look back on this era.
So, will the (obviously wealthy) American buyer of the Picasso be prosecuted for possession of child pornography? I’m not saying they necessarily should be (it’s just a painting, after all, a representation, whereas photos are evidence of a criminal violation), but never underestimate the zealousness of the prosecutorial class.
(The fact that Picasso was married offends me far more than the age gap or the fact that his mistress was 17. Twelve? That’s a very different story, but a 17 year old is, in most cases, fully capable of granting sexual consent. My mother began her 42 year marriage at 17 and had her first pregnancy (my older brother) at 20–in other words, she got married because she wanted to be with my dad and for no other reason.)
Oh yeah: began her 42 year marriage to a man 10 years older.
Chaney,
As my doxin walks by, lOw hanging fruit means something to me that doesn’t seem to apply. WTF are you talking about?
Oh, I don’t know Radley
“I am Balko. I’m a libertarian and I’m going to leave you alone!”
has a nice ring to it…
EH – You’re not getting this. Go to Google and put “acorn employee convictions” in. There are *plenty*. The left has used this strategy for years.
[...] Artist’s Website via The Agitator [...]
I Googled “Walmart employee conviction” and found plenty. Does ths mean Walmart is corrupt?
The issue is credibility. The ACORN sting videos were heavily and misleadingly edited, and we’ve never seen the originals. Several state AGs investigated the case, and all came to the conclusion that the evidence had been tampered with and there wasn’t evidence of a crime. The result of this is that when the same guys come out with some future video alleging a scandal of their ideological enemies, I’m going to start out being massively skeptical. Sure, it’s possible that these guys have honestly represented reality in this case, just as it’s possible that the conman who ripped you off last time really does have a sure-thing investment that will make you rich this time. But that’s not the way to bet.
As an aside, Wikileaks got a great deal of outrage for publishing a heavily edited and commented video (the collateral murder video), at the same time as an unedited version. For some utterly inexplicable reason defying all the laws of chance and logic, the set of people outraged by the editing of the collateral murder video is almost entirely distinct from the set of people outraged by the editing of the ACORN videos. It’s hard to imagine what could explain such a pattern of outrage.
The Picasso story reminded me of Rules of Life.
1. Be attractive
2. Don’t be unattractive
If unattractive, be rich or famous.
———————–
To Michael Chaney’s point, the left loves to call companies evil. While this can be true for the actions of some (Haliburton, Bank of America, GoldmanSachs), it is usually unfair (WalMart, Starbucks, Microsoft). Ignoring the whole “can a company be evil and WTF is evil anyway?” question. BTW, my wife worked at BoA and she’s only semi-evil. Most of the evil was above her pay grade.
I’d love to get some hardcore, gangsta lefties in a room and ask them to rate the evil practices of some companies. Include under a phony name all the shittacular evilness the USG. They tend to excuse the actions of the USG…for some reason.
Boyd: I’ve done that, and it can be fun. The problem is that as soon as they realize its the government, its OK, because when the government does it, it must be OK. (The same happens on the right too)
Albatross: good point re Wikileaks v ACORN. At the same time, Wikileaks did release the unedited version and, even if it had not, the government still had the entire unedited video that it could release in whatever edited or unedited form it chose. Also, when its little guy against big guy or government, I’m going to cut the little guy a little slack.
As an electronics geek and a long time mechanic I have to say I’m still unsure about the accelerator issue. The gas pedal has to be connected to the computer somehow so that mechanical system is vulnerable to wear tear and abuse. The actual throttle mechanism itself is also vulnerable to wear and tear and abuse. I have also seen quite a few ECUs act in very bizarre manners. Something as simple as having voltage issues can cause an ECU to begin bugging out. One could wire could theoretically cause the whole system to become unusable or stuck.
Disclaimer : I prefer older cars (90s or pre-72) for their simplicity and cheapness..
TLDR : New engine systems have far more possibilities for “oops” moments then old mechanical or mechanically assisted systems.
On the Toyota thing…
My father swears his Camry just took off on him. He ended up hitting another car in a parking lot (minor damage, no injuries, yay).
Now, he’s my dad so I believe him. He is, however, 85 years old. I know him to be a very active/healthy 85 and he’s been an excellent driver all his life. I’m sure, however, that if he wasn’t my dad and I didn’t know these things about him, I’d be skeptical of his story. Old guy gets confused in parking lot, hits wrong pedal & boom.
*One wire could theoretically…
As a number of people said, ACORN was not nearly so corrupt as certain numbskulls think it was. As a libertarian (which I still stubbornly insist isn’t right-wing. How the left sees us is irrelevant), I have trouble seeing the morality of such sting operations. I don’t care about effectiveness; what about ethics? What about whether or not what one says is true?