Month: January 2021

Impeach ……… Again

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Let’s be clear, inciting sedition, even if it might be protected by the 1st amendment, and I am not sure, I am an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,* but it can still be a legitimate charge for an impeachment.

So I do approve of the new impeachment charges that the House just delivered to the Senate.

If he is convicted, he loses his pension, and his secret service protection, and it would likely result in his being forbidden from holding office ever again.

I will note that impeachment is, and has always been intended to be, a political process in addition to being a quasi-judicial process, and the Democrats must jam up the Republicans as much as is humanly possible.

Make them pay for their obsequious prevarication with regard to Trump:

Nine House managers walked across the Capitol to inform the Senate that they were ready to prosecute the former president for “incitement of insurrection.” And the Justice Department opens inquiry into an “improper attempt” by officials to overturn the presidential election.

At this point, even many members of the “Q Collective” have realized that Trump screwed them, and in the still quite spaces the Republican establishment wants him gone too.

Making this establishment go to the mat for an inverted traffic cone is just desserts.

 *I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!†
†Yes, I know, it’s kind of a stretch, but I cannot resist going all Dr. McCoy.

Linkage

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What crimes were committed when the Capitol was stormed?  A lawyer has the answers:

Today in Schadenfreude

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The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Alex Jones can be sued for libel by parents of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims.  (Also various other sundry people that he accused of being false flag actors)

It was enough of a slam dunk that they did not even bother to write an opinion:

An empire built on conjecture, conspiracy and a series of fake homeopathic cures for various ailments stands to be sued into oblivion after a Friday ruling by the Supreme Court of Texas.

Without comment, the Lone Star State’s highest civil court found that America’s foremost conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his flagship media outlet, InfoWars, are subject to liability in four separate defamation lawsuits filed over the past two-plus years. Those lawsuits were filed by parents of children who were killed during the Sandy Hook massacre and by a man Jones and his network falsely identified as the perpetrator of the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

………

Immediately after the 2012 shooting that left 20 children and six teachers dead in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones used his by-then vast platform to spread the idea that the murders were part of a “false flag” operation meant to scare the population into giving up their guns and Second Amendment rights. Jones also smeared the parents of the dead children, calling them “crisis actors.” None of those claims were true but the pernicious ideas gained traction among the easily-influenced.

………

“Our clients have been tormented for five years by Mr. Jones’ ghoulish accusations that they are actors who faked their children’s deaths as part of a fraud on the American people,” Bankston said in a statement at the time, “Enough is enough.”

………

Marcel Fontane, a Massachusetts resident who has never been to Florida, also sued Jones and InfoWars during the spring of 2018 after being singled out by Jones and InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels–falsely accusing him of being the Parkland shooter in a vain attempt to link the massacre to the political far-left. The outlet also published a photograph of Fontaine wearing a satirical t-shirt depicting several former Communist historical figures.

Here’s hoping that they take him for all he has.

To quote Billie Ray Velentine from the movie Trading Places, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”

H/t Ecop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Fuck Me, I Agree With Pat Buchanan’s Rag

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At the American Conservative, they write, “Don’t Let the Riots Legitimize Facial Recognition Tech,” and they are correct.

Law enforcement has an endless appetite for expansion of their powers, and will always do so.

Letting the Capitol insurrection to give additional powers to the US State Security Apparatus is a bad idea, particularly given the predilection of law enforcement to ignore right wing terrorists to go after left wing protesters.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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In response to the Supreme Court ruling Carpenter v. United States in 2018, whcih stated that law enforcement had to get a warrant to track people via their cell phones, elements of the US State Security Apparatus are purchasing exactly the same data from commercial suppliers without a warrant.

We need to make it illegal for US law enforcement to get private data from commercial suppliers that would otherwise require a warrant, if just because it would knock the pins out from underneath literal vampire* capitalist Peter Thiel’s business plan for Palantir.

Purchasing commercial information should not be allowed to be an excuse for using commercial vendor as a cut-out to the 4th amendment:

A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times.

Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so.

“D.I.A. does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency memo said.

Mr. Wyden has made clear that he intends to propose legislation to add safeguards for Americans’ privacy in connection with commercially available location data. In a Senate speech this week, he denounced circumstances “in which the government, instead of getting an order, just goes out and purchases the private records of Americans from these sleazy and unregulated commercial data brokers who are simply above the law.”

………

It has been known that the government sometimes uses such data for law enforcement purposes on domestic soil.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year about law enforcement agencies using such data. In particular, it found, two agencies in the Department of Homeland Security — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection — have used the data in patrolling the border and investigating immigrants who were later arrested.

………

The military has also been known to sometimes use location data for intelligence purposes.

In November, Vice’s Motherboard tech blog reported that Muslim Pro, a Muslim prayer and Quran app, had sent its users’ location data to a broker called X-Mode that in turn sold it to defense contractors and the U.S. military. Muslim Pro then said it would stop sharing data with X-Mode, and Apple and Google said they would ban apps that use the company’s tracking software from phones running their mobile operating systems.

………

Mr. Wyden’s coming legislation on the topic appears likely to be swept into a larger surveillance debate that flared in Congress last year before it temporarily ran aground after erratic statements by President Donald J. Trump, as he stoked his grievances over the Russia investigation, threatening to veto the bill and not making clear what would satisfy him.

The the 4th amendment should never be for sale.

*I do mean this characterization of Thiel literally.  He is literally a vampire who wants to use the blood of the young to extend his lifespan.

A Real Vote of Confidence in the F-35

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Following the decision to acquire new-build F-15s for the USAF for the first time in 16 years, the news that the U.S. Air Force is discussing additional purchases of the F-16 as well must be seen as evidence that the force is less than enamored of the performance of the F-35 at this point:

U.S. Air Force officials are talking about ordering new Lockheed Martin F-16s two decades after signing the last production contract.

A review of the tactical aircraft portfolio now underway is set to deliver another Air Force acquisition shake-up in the fiscal 2023 budget request, with F-16s, Boeing F-15EXs, a new breed of so-called attritable aircraft and a next-generation fighter competing for a pool of production funding once monopolized by Lockheed’s F-35A.

………

U.S. Air Force officials are talking about ordering new Lockheed Martin F-16s two decades after signing the last production contract.

A review of the tactical aircraft portfolio now underway is set to deliver another Air Force acquisition shake-up in the fiscal 2023 budget request, with F-16s, Boeing F-15EXs, a new breed of so-called attritable aircraft and a next-generation fighter competing for a pool of production funding once monopolized by Lockheed’s F-35A.

Call me a cynic, but my guess is that the Air Force took a look at the costs of maintaining and operating an all F-35 fleet, and realized that it was simply not possible.

The reasons for the shift in resources has evolved in public statements over time. When Air Force officials requested funding in 2019 to order the first eight of up to 144 new F-15EXs, they justified the unexpected move as a response to an urgent need. Recent inspections had determined that an aging fleet of F-15Cs require new wings to remain airworthy, and the existing training pipeline and infrastructure made F-15EXs a more expedient option than the F-35A.

But the tactical aircraft fleet review could establish a permanent combat role for nonstealthy fighters for decades to come. The F-15EX not only represents a convenient option for an urgent F-15C replacement, but its centerline weapon station with a 7,500-lb. load capacity also may fill a gap in the Air Force’s force structure for a tactical aircraft that can carry a rocket-boosted hypersonic glide vehicle.

………

Roper also put Lockheed on notice about the Air Force’s frustration with the F-35A’s sustainment costs. Lockheed has committed to reducing the average hourly cost to operate the F-35A to $25,000 by 2025, a roughly 25% reduction compared to 2018 levels. But as his resignation approached, Roper was not satisfied with the pace of the reduction, as the Air Force seeks to add new F-35s to the fleet at an annual rate of 48-60 jets a year.

I believe that the technical term for this is overpriced and under-performing.

Yeah, Me Too

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A throw away tweet


My throw away response

I agree with Mike Caulfield statement on Twitter’s take-down and appeals process,  that it is arbitrary, opaque, and the subject has no inkling as to the process.

I would not be writing about this, except that this happened to me.

About a week ago, I got locked out of Twitter for a post I made in June.

Someone posted a sign a McDonald’s which appears to state that they are out of happy meals, though they use the term “Boy Toys.”

The poster suggested that he was sad, because he wanted his “twinks”, a slang term for young, and young appearing, gay men.

My response was that he was being “Homonormative, (a play on the term “Heteronormative”) and that “Wymyn” (An 80s radical feminist spelling for “Woman”) might want their “Boy Toys” as well.

It was pretty anodyne, though every 2 weeks of so, it showed up in someone’s feed, and they would ask, “What the heck is Wymyn?”

When I got the ban, I appealed the decision, which was likely automated, and was probably driven by someone flagging it.  (No accounting for humor, I guess)

That I got a Twitter Timeout™ was actually kind of  a thrill, I have been in a bit of a competition with my son Charlie after Twitter flagged him for suggesting that Meghan McCain do something anatomically dubious with a cactus.

I submitted an appeal, and then nothing happened.

After 4 days of not being able to access twitter, I deleted the tweet.

But just before I deleted the tweet, I came across Mr. Caulfield’s essay, and I agree with his assessment of the appeals process:

So that would be my recommendation to Twitter. Either cancel the appeals process, apply it narrowly to suspensions, or speed it up. At the very least, inform people engaging in it what the average time for resolution is. And while my suspension probably won’t derail national or international efforts against COVID-19, I can’t help but think of all the medical researchers and public policy people out there using Twitter to communicate and collaborate. So as much as Twitter seems to think any deference to academic culture is a thumb on the scale, I really hope they can have someone write up a list of experts more important than me and take a bit more care before they ban them. I assume what I was hit with was based on a programmatic scan, not trolls gaming reporting. But the anti-vaccine trolls are out there and I know they are reporting the heck out of anyone that gets in their way. If Twitter doesn’t make a nominal effort to protect those researchers, there will be much more high-profile (and damaging) bannings to come.

(Incidentally the fact that the report does not actually tell me if I have been banned by a programmatic scan –having 5g and vaccines in the same tweet — or via a report is very bad in terms of both transparency and utility. I actually need to know whether it is a troll report or algorithm. If it’s an algorithm, it’s a lightning strike, and I go on the way I have. If the trolls have found me, that’s a different problem, and one I need to be alerted to.)

When we talk about the size of the online giants, what is frequently ignored is the generally poor quality of user* services. 

Terms and services are poorly written, arbitrarily enforced, and completely lacking in any measurable human involvement.

It would not be at all unreasonable to require that the large online service sites to provide clearer processes, along with the ability to contact an actual human being.

The quality of the services would improve, at least from the end user perspective, and it would make the enormous scale that entities like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have achieved more expensive, which might aid smaller challengers and mitigate against further growth.

*They not customers, the advertisers are the customers, the users are the product.

Without Racism, the Right is Nothing

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WaPo writer Phillip Bump defends Joe Biden from accusations that targeting racism is in fact an attack on the whole right wing movement in an essay titled, “Biden’s targeting of racist extremism is being portrayed as an attack on the right itself.”

The ever-racist Rand Paul has accused Biden’s of, “Calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book.”

Paul is saying that, “Biden thinks Republicans are racist liars.”

I think that Joe Biden’s entire political career shows that he is willing to work with Republicans, and he does not think that they are [all] racists liars.

This is complete bullshit.  It is clear that Biden’s efforts and  pronouncements are a NOT apart of deliberate effort to demonize and perhaps prosecute the his political opposition.

His entire career mitigates against this accusation.  Biden has always gone along to get along with the most contemptible people in politics.

However, there is a way that Rand Paul’s accusation IS accurate.

Specifically, it should be noted that the modern conservative movement, at least back to the days of William F. Buckley’s endorsements of segregation (And arguably as far back as the founding of the Republic), racism has been inseparable from the political right in the United States.

It is transparently obvious that meaningful sustained efforts to fight racism in will necessarily target the right wing.

Short version of this argument:  If Rand Paul is concerned that Joe Biden’s fighting racism is an attack on him, then Rand Paul needs to stop being a racist dirt-bag.

A Question for My Older Brother

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When I describe East Coast vs West Coast culture to my friends I often say “The East Coast is kind but not nice, the West Coast is nice but not kind,” and East Coasters immediately get it. West Coasters get mad. 😂😂😂

— Jordan Green (@jordonaut) January 21, 2021

Niceness is saying “I’m so sorry you’re cold,” while kindness may be “Ugh, you’ve said that five times, here’s a sweater!” Kindness is addressing the need, regardless of tone.

— Jordan Green (@jordonaut) January 21, 2021

Do you find this characterization, that “The East Coast is kind but not nice, the West Coast is nice but not kind,” to be accurate?

I do know that you have been less than enamored of the culture of the West Coast at times.

I Do Not Approve

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The 7 year interval between leaving the service and being able to become Secretary of Defense is there for a reason, to ensure that the Department of Defense is under civilian controls.

It has only been waived twice before, for George Marshall in 1950, and James Mathis in 2017, and now Lloyd Austin has been confirmed as SecDef less than 5 years after leaving the service.

I do not approve.

This limit was put in place for a good reason, that you do not want the inmates running the asylum, but not it appears that this is likely to become a common state of affairs:

The Senate on Friday confirmed Lloyd J. Austin III as defense secretary, filling a critical national security position in President Biden’s cabinet and elevating him as the first Black Pentagon chief.

The 93-2 vote came a day after Congress granted Mr. Austin, a retired four-star Army general, a special waiver to hold the post, which is required for any defense secretary who has been out of active-duty military service for less than seven years. It reflected a bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill that it was urgent for Mr. Biden to have his defense pick rapidly installed, a step normally taken on a new president’s first day.

That Mr. Austin is not the first black SecDef not matter.

This is corrosive of civilian control of the military.

You Cannot Blog Without Memes

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The Original


The Final Frontier


Meme2

Bernie Sanders showed up at the inaugeration as ……… well ……… Bernie Sanders, in a coat and mittens that he has worn for quite some time and a high order meme detonation occurred:

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a fierce advocate of fair wages and a former presidential candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to now-President Biden. And thanks to his practical clothing choices he is also now the center of a seemingly endless flood of altered pictures that dominated some corners of the internet in the hours after Mr. Biden’s socially distanced inauguration on Wednesday.

Amid the dark suits and bright coats dotting the Capitol steps, Mr. Sanders was photographed sitting masked, cross-legged and bundled up in a bulky coat and mittens against the frigid weather in Washington, D.C. Soon after, the image, taken by the photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images, began to circulate on social media inserted into a wide array of photographs and scenes from movies and artworks.

On a day all about Mr. Biden, it was in some ways appropriate that Mr. Sanders, whose strongest political support in the presidential race came from young voters, would nonetheless be the star of the day’s biggest meme by doing nothing but sitting and crossing his arms. In their primary competition, Mr. Sanders enjoyed a significantly larger online following than Mr. Biden, especially among those who often communicate through memes.

Though other memes starring Mr. Sanders were often used to say something — he wore what appears to be the same coat in a 2019 fund-raising video in which he is “once again asking for your financial support,” a line that has been repurposed in a litany of ways — there was no such deeper meaning to the newest meme. Instead of using his image to make an argument, he was simply placed into new contexts, with his pose, outfit and expression themselves serving as the joke.

Just a quick note, if you think that those mittens are fabulous, and they are, don’t contact the teacher who made them as a gift asking for some, she has a day job.

BuzzFeed News reported that Mr. Sanders got his mittens from Jen Ellis, a second-grade teacher in Essex Junction, Vt., who made gloves on the side. She said she sent him a pair after he lost a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Ms. Ellis tweeted that the mittens were made from repurposed wool and lined with fleece.

In an interview with CBS, Mr. Sanders laughed off the attention.

“In Vermont, we dress, we know something about the cold,” he told Gayle King. “And we’re not so concerned about good fashion. We just want to keep warm. And that’s what I did today.”

The reason that  this meme has exploded is because, as Bradley Whitford notes, “They know he would have worn exactly the same thing if he had won the presidency. “

It’s Jobless Thursday

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US initial unemployment claims fell by 26,000 to 900,000 last week, and the4-week moving average rose to 848,000 from 824500.

These are not good numbers by any measure:

About 900,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market struggles to recover this winter.

The number of jobless claims last week was down slightly from the week ended Jan. 9, when applications jumped by more than 100,000 to 926,000. The Labor Department said the increase for the Jan. 9 week—initially estimated as the largest weekly increase since March—was smaller than previously thought.

Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, remain above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000 and are higher than in any previous recession for records tracing back to 1967.

“Covid hasn’t let up, and it’s still creating massive amounts of economic havoc,” AnnElizabeth Konkel, economist at jobs site Indeed, said.

As Covid-19 infections increased into the winter, states and localities imposed new capacity restrictions on businesses such as restaurants. Further, some consumers remain hesitant to eat indoors, travel or go to a movie theater, reducing demand at places that remain open.

Delayed filings by workers over the Christmas and New Year holidays, as well as $300 a week in extra jobless benefits included in a coronavirus-relief package signed into law last month, also could have factored into the large claims increase for the week ended Jan. 9. Still, the four-week moving average for claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, rose in the week ended Jan. 9.

Things are not going to get better until a larger stimulus is passed, and the pandemic recedes.

In Case You Were Wondering Just How Toxic the BJP Is………

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It appears that the veneration of Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, is now a thing in India.

I would argue that India is further down the road to Fascism and genocide that Trump ever got, and that the opposition, though careerism and incompetence, cannot seem to do anything to stop it:

Last Sunday, in a nondescript building in the India city of Gwalior, 200 miles south of Delhi, a large crowd of men gathered. Most wore bright saffron hats and scarves, a colour evoking Hindu nationalism, and many held strands of flowers as devotional offerings.

They were there to attend the inauguration of the Godse Gyan Shala, a memorial library and “knowledge centre” dedicated to Nathuram Godse, the man who shot Mahatma Gandhi. The devotional yellow and pink flowers were laid around a black and white photograph of Godse, the centrepiece of the room.

On 30 January 1948, Godse stepped out in front of Gandhi and shot him three times at point-blank range. A fervent believer in Hindu nationalism, Godse thought Gandhi had betrayed India’s Hindus by agreeing to partition, leading to the creation of Pakistan, and by championing the rights of Muslims. In 1949, Godse was hanged for Gandhi’s murder.

In the following decades, Godse was widely decried as a terrorist and traitor, the murderer of the “father of India”. Yet, in recent years, as Hindu nationalism has moved from an extremist fringe to mainstream Indian politics – the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has a Hindu nationalist agenda at their core – Godse’s public reputation has steadily shifted from being condemned as traitor to being venerated as a misunderstood Indian patriot.

Meanwhile, Gandhi’s vision of a secular India with equal rights for all religions has been eroded and subjugated since the BJP came to power in 2014.

“Godse did the right thing by killing Gandhi,” said Devendra Pandey, 53, national secretary of Hindu Mahasabha, the Hindu nationalist organisation behind the memorial library. He was vocal in his belief that India should be declared “a country rightfully for Hindus” and that its 200 million Muslims should move to Pakistan.

“Godse considered Gandhi as his father, so to kill him must have caused him great pain but he had a very real reason,” he said. “Godse took action because Gandhi betrayed India – this library will teach the next generation how Godse was a true nationalist martyr.”

At some point there will be a reckoning in India over the country’s embrace of bigotry and its increasingly aggressive attempts to expel and subjugate Muslim Indians.

Tweet of the Day

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Here’s how this is gonna go, Klan of Green Gables.
Your little stunt is going to get you all sorts of praise from the stupid, racist cult zombie horde folks who attacked the Capitol two weeks ago.
It’s also going to get you laughed out of Congress, because you’re a joke.
So stop.

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) January 21, 2021

The QAnon Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, submitted articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, because ……… OK, I have no desire to figure out what is going on in that head, thank you very much. 

In response, Jo from Jersey, who has been, “Blocked by Chachi,” tagged her as “Klan of Green Gables.”

I wish that I had thought of that slam.

OK, This Promise was Kept

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Joe Biden has shutdown the Keystone XL pipeline:

One of President Biden’s first acts upon taking office was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, the long-debated project to transport crude from Canada’s oil sands to the United States.

But Canadian officials, notably in Alberta, the province where the pipeline originates, are not giving up so fast.

The nearly 1,200-mile Keystone XL was intended to carry crude oil from Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing network to deliver the crude to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

In canceling the pipeline, Mr. Biden took some of his first steps toward reversing the legacy of the Trump administration, which revived the project after it was rejected by President Barack Obama in 2015.

Good.

Elections have consequences.

As He Was Leaving

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On his way out the door, Donald Trump issued about 70 pardons and a similar number of commutations.

Along with the usual suspects, people who might testify against him and Jared’s dad, we do have some mild surprises:

  • Randall “Duke” Cunningham, whose corruption was legendary. (He literally had a menu of bribes)
  • Steve Bannon. probably because he knows where the bodies are buried.
  • Kwame Kilpatrick,(D) who got 28 years for rampant corruption as Mayor of Detroit. 
  • A bunch of entertainers.
  • Aviem Sella, Jonathan Pollard’s handler for Israel.

None of these are much of a surprise, except perhaps Kilpatrick.

Trump has now slithered out of the White House, so that should be the end of it.

Meanwhile, in DC

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Republicans in Congress are using the right-wing insurrection on January 6 as an excuse for bills targeted primarily at peaceful protesters like Black Lives Matter.

Republicans never miss an opportunity to use a crisis to rat-fuck the country, do they?

In September, Florida governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis proposed a bill dubbed the Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act to create new criminal penalties for offenses commonly committed during protests. He said it was needed to stop the “professional agitators bent on sowing disorder and causing mayhem in our cities” following months of largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.

Hours after a far-right mob stormed the Capitol at the behest of the president, Florida Republicans introduced a version of the bill. That night, DeSantis said the violence in Washington shows that lawmakers “have no time to waste to uphold public safety” and must “swiftly pass this bill.”

DeSantis isn’t alone. Within the past year, lawmakers in 24 states have introduced at least 45 bills to create new penalties or increase criminal penalties for offenses related to protesting, discourage cuts to police funding, and provide protections to people who drive their cars into protesters or shoot protesters in an alleged act of self defense. Six of those bills—one in Utah, one in Mississippi, one in West Virginia, one in Tennessee and two in South Dakota—have been signed into law.

But the bills aren’t aimed at reining in the kind of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, and federal prosecutors already have a litany of charges at their disposal to hold the perpetrators accountable. The bills seek to criminalize conduct typically associated with Black Lives Matter protests, like blocking streets or highways and camping out at state capitols. Provisions of DeSantis’s bill seek to discourage local governments from cutting police budgets, but what happened on Jan. 6 can’t be pinned on a lack of police funding or intelligence—the FBI knew extremists were planning to commit violence in Washington days before, and Capitol Police rejected offers for additional manpower from the National Guard. While some police officers were brutally attacked or took action to protect the lives of others, others shook hands with a member of the mob. One police officer even took a selfie with the insurrectionists.

This is why I oppose changes to the current laws in response to the January 6 insurrection.

The people who will be enforcing these laws, cops, prosecutors, etc.  are objectively pro-fascist and institutionally, if not necessarily personally, racist.

All that more laws get you is more opportunities for abuse.

Illinois Takes Steps to Fix Policing in the State

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It’s not as extensive as it could be, there were some last minute bad cop favoring amendments, but the Illinois police reform bill has made it to the Governor’s desk, who has announced his support for the bill.

The way that we know that this is a good bill is that the police unions are completely losing their shit over this, as well they should.

The high points of the bill are:

  • Expanding a database of police misconduct and requiring that those records be kept.
  • The elimination of cash bail.
  • Reduces the scope unions to negotiate disciplinary and certification issues.
  • Resisting arrest citations must include the predicate charge for the original arrest.
  • Expanded reporting on killings and applications of force.
  • Whistleblower protections.
  • Bans the use of military equipment.
  • Requires that redistricting on the state level be based on permanent locations, and not where someone is incarcerated.
  • Applies tighter standards to the use of force.
  • Narrows the felony murder statute.
  • Expands the list of crimes that would result in an officer being decertified.
  • Adds a duty to intervene for officers who witness police misconduct.

Unfortunagely, two of the best portions got dropped at the last minute:

  • Eliminating qualified immunity for police officers, which means that bad cops with bad records (see the NYPD’s David “Bullethead” Grieco) are going to have to spend lots of money for liability insurance.
  • Completely eliminating the right to collective bargaining for the police on discipline matters. 

All in all, a very good bill, but I still want qualified immunity gone.