Racism and the Law: Spirit of the Law for Most and Equality for None

The overwhelming belief that racism can be cured through regulations and statutory cures is a liberal/progressive ideal, while the opposing worldview that regulations and overbearing laws are contrary to liberty and are intrinsically tyrannical. It could very well be that both perspectives are wrong. Racism may not have a cure available in the law, no matter how ingenious and wise the law is crafted to be, while the freedom to being racist carries with it the tyranny that that perspective actually despises.

The following is a quote from a book review that proposes the liberal white agenda of civil rights being partially responsible with the current Prison-Industrial-Complex:

This is the fundamental thesis of Murakawa’s book: legal civil rights and the American carceral state are built on the same conceptions of race, the state and their relationship. As liberals believe that racism is first and foremost a question of individual bias, they imagine racism can be overcome by removing the discretion of (potentially racist) individuals within government through a set of well-crafted laws and rules. If obviously discriminatory laws can be struck down, and judges, statesmen or administrators aren’t allowed to give reign to their racism, then the system should achieve racially just outcomes. But even putting aside the fact that a removal of individual discretion is impossible, such a conception of “fairness” applies just as easily to producing sentencing minimums as school desegregation.How White Liberals Used Civil Rights Create More Prisons thenation.com

This is an article from the New Republic that profiles the current NYPD work slow down in response to #BlackLivesMatter protests and the killing of two police officers in Brooklyn back on December 20th:

Many of the offenses police have tacitly declared legal are considered quality-of-life (QOL) infractions. Those follow the broken window strategy, a policing philosophy that has been widely discredited since its heyday in Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty. QOL meets small transgressions with arrests and fines—a way, it's thought, to nip more substantial crimes in the bud. Perhaps because QOL policing grants cops near-unlimited discretion in determining whom to sanction, its penalties fall disproportionately on people of color. Between 2001 and 2013, the New York Daily News found, more than 80 percent of the 7.3 million people penalized for these infractions were black or Latino. The vast majority of African Americans and Latinos in all walks of life feel like they're treated unfairly by law enforcement, and consider police discrimination the most endemic form of societal mistreatment. It's unfair, brutal, racist, and financially burdensome, and it often follows such small transgressions as jaywalking, skipping $2.50 subway fares or merely irritating police.  NYPD Work Slowdown Being Celebrated New Yorkers of Color newrepublic.com

Comparing the two different implementations of criminal justice, one that removes discretion under guises of making it impossible to have one set of laws for people of color and another for whites and the other that provides absolute discretion to the beat cop, provides an anecdotal example how neither is a step closer to alleviating racism from the criminal justice system. No matter how impartial the law may be the individuals that are the cogs within the criminal justice system all get to do their bit to tip the scale towards their own bias. On the other hand, letting the wisdom of the individual rule supreme will lead to confirmation bias where any citizen that for whatever reason is not relate-able to those cogs of the criminal justice system get harsher treatments. This isn't merely a racial prejudice being played out in both scenarios, but a powerless versus powerful prejudice as the NYPD officers are now more likely than not non-white. Though it may very well be a demonstration of how flexible the classification of 'white' is in contemporary America as the term begins to become inclusive to 2nd generation (and further) South Americans, Caribbean-Americans, East and South Asians. We may even forgo the nomenclature of 'white' and replace it with 'middle class' or some other term that won't be so exclusive to race; this is a problem that the term 'white' didn't have when it excluded Irish, Southern Europeans, and Slavs in the first half of the last century and second half of the 19th century.

But I digress, to return to concept of racial prejudice or racial indifference being codified in the law or race being overtly absent from the law entirely, it is quite impossible to eliminate what is in the hearts of individuals through legislation. Either setting the terms of racial tolerance in stone or intentionally ignoring race and hoping that it would resolve it self, would do little to progressing what the society as a whole knows to be their Truth. It may be that their Truth is that they do not interact more than tacitly on a daily basis with someone of another culture, race, religion, etc, so they can only base their reality of what the people that they never interact with on a substantial level, on media representations or the most memorable (and likely worst) interaction with a member of that demographic. Since the most innocuous actions are neither memorable nor dramatic, no matter what the law says, we as human beings will revert to our tribalistic caveman minds and feel uncomfortable to whatever we are not regularly exposed to. So as much as those that wish it would all work itself out, the criminal justice system actually reimposes much of the racial prejudices on the society as a whole and all the cogs of the criminal justice system participating in the system. Simply saying "If it was purely a market based society, we wouldn't have segregation because there wouldn't be a government to enforce Jim Crow Laws" are deluding themselves, just as much as those that say "If we struck just the right balance in law and police regulations, we would eliminate racism altogether from society." It will take a cultural shift and a transformation of the human heart throughout society that will weaken racism to the point of insignificance, this has already begun but not in earnest. Those of white or middle-class privilege still play the 'good block/bad block' within metropolises, or denoting shared entitlement towards individuals of color with a toothless decree of "well, you are basically white anyway" blissfully unaware that their black-friend will not get to skate by police harassment because they are "one of the good ones," but that is by definition the white privilege. To be privileged to lead a life that is blissfully unaware of the dangers that exist in parallel to the swaths of society not already in receipt of an universal pass to be assumed innocent; presumed guilty with legal statutory so thick that it could choke a horse means that we are all acting outside of the law at some point or another and yet only those of color get slapped with the book for those misdemeanors.

In the TV series The Wire, Deputy of Operations Rawls (the series' go to hardass for everything) demands of one of his intradepartmental snitches to find something that the protagonist cop is doing against policy. The snitch replies, "But he's not doing anything wrong." Which riles up Rawls to respond with "With this big book of regs, and you can't find anything that he has done wrong?!? If you can't find something that he has done wrong then you shouldn't even call yourself real police!" In this vein, communities of color are held to the 'letter of the law', where the law is written in such a way that it is impossible to lead a life without some minor offense and the majority of those with middle-class privilege receives the 'spirit of the law' treatment and then turns around with genuine incredulity that if cops are arresting these people of color they must have been doing something wrong.

So what is the solution to this paradox that can't be ignored and worked out on itself nor legislated away?

Anti-Government Militia Will Support Nahshon Shelton and His Anti-Tax Stand... {cricket chirps, cricket chirps}

Refusal to pay taxes while brandishing guns only works when owing over $300,000, not for 22 cents which gets you jail time without bail.

Income Tax is viewed by many within the anti-government movement as theft through  coercion, since if you do not pay it then the government will seize your person and imprison those who refuse to pay their income taxes. Sales tax being transactional in nature, is just as coercive since it is not at all voluntary, even if one wishes to actively avoid it one could not without the retailer participating in a tax avoidance scheme. Fees for service are the least coercive since they can be avoided outright, though an extremist may take the outlook that any government is too much government.

This past weekend Chicago resident, Nahshon Shelton, claimed that since he lived in the neighborhood he was exempt from sales tax, in response the retailer informed him that he was not and refused to let him purchase a bottle of diet pepsi without the 22 cent sales taxes being paid. Mr. Shelton went home and took a strategy straight out of the Bundy Ranch Playbook and returned brandishing firearms believing that would alter the outcome (as it altered the outcome in Clark County and the return of trespassing cattle), but instead resulted in Mr. Shelton being held without bail.

Ammon Bundy when presented with Federal Court order for the confiscation of the trespassing (for the prior 20 years) cattle on federal land, part of the herd was eventually confiscated up until firearms brandishing anti-government supporters of the renegade ranchers confronted BLM agents with Cliven Bundy demanding that Clark County Sherrif's department confiscate all of Federal agents' firearms and brought to him. BLM stated that due to fear for the physical safety of the agency's employees as well as the general public decided to back down and release the trespassing cattle back to the Bundy Ranch.

What started Bundy Ranch from being law abiding to law breaking? In 1993 Cliven Bundy chose to ignore the existence of the Federal Government, therefore began to withhold fee for service that he and his family had been paying his entire life. At no point has the 600,000 acres been owned by anyother landowner other than the Federal government, so the claim that Bundy Ranch has ownership to the land is wholly without merit. The defense of the Bundy Ranch usurping NOT HIS LAND, is an amalgamation of a longtime history of grazing on that land (ignoring the fact that they paid for such service) and the federal government is overreaching in other segments of the American society. The same individuals that prioritize property rights over rights to life and life sustaining resources can not acknowledge the inconsistency that housing stock far out strips the homeless households-- but that banks that own vacant houses have a right to withhold their property from those that are homeless people. Then turn around and say that the Federal government doesn't have a right to withhold access to it's land for non-payment of grazing fees.

To avoid paying Federal grazing fees has a very simple solution-- keep your cattle on your land otherwise join the 16,000 of ranchers that pay agreed upon grazing fees. So just remember, if you don't want to pay your rent or mortgage just simply take the stance that you don't believe in your landlord's or bank's existence and roll up with your buddies while strapped implicitly threatening violence to anyone that dares to challenge your delusion... and don't be black.

Proprietary Liberty Vs. Open-Source Security

Within the world of computers there is a significant sectarian divide of software being either proprietary or closed-sourced software versus open-source software. Examples of proprietary software is the vast majority of consumer purchased and freely available software such as Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat, Rosetta Stone, along with most games. Open-source software includes Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin messenger, Linux operating system, Libre Office suite, and GIMP photo editor. The difference between these two camps is access to the source code; proprietary software retains source code (instructions written in programming languages that can be read by human eyes before compiled and translated into 0s and 1s that are used by computers) a company secret akin to Coca-Cola's recipe. While open-source software free makes the source-code available to the user those who are initiated and know computer programming language can peruse and alter the code to one's heart content.

The division between proprietary and open-source software is a near perfect analogy for national security versus transparency debate. The national security apparatus presumes that they can not provide any semblance security or tranquillity without ad nauseam amounts of secrecy and opaqueness. Software publishers, being private companies can make the business decision to provide the source code or not, our government on the other hand are obligated to include the people's representatives on how security is exactly implemented while remaining within confines and restrictions of legal statutes (that can be plainly read by all citizens) and our Constitution; if such implementation can not be executed within legal restraint that are placed upon law enforcement and national security agencies while making the process available for public scrutiny then those demanding secrecy need to get moving to pass an amendment to the Constitution. The false argument that secrecy is absolutely needed to provide security need only to look at programming. Proprietary software may very well have impenetrable security measures when used, but the only means of knowing that is trusting the software publisher's word. Open-source ensures the usage of the software to be both rock solid stable and security not through blind trust but scrutiny of a community that revenue and test the code. Open-source being peer reviewed is a direct descendant of the Age of Enlightenment, just as scientific method and the rationale that our founding fathers borne this nation with, if public policy could not be defended in the light of day to the common person but relied on blind faith the policy was not worth implemented no matter how good the intentions are.

American national security is currently provided under a mentality straight out of the Dark Ages, with a dependence on the public to remain ignorant of both innocuous and heinous activity being done in the American public's name. The impenetrable vale of secrecy is actually detrimental to the cause of security. Arbitrary usage of indefensible actions such as torture (enhanced interrogation), indiscriminate remotely administered executions (signature drone strikes), and government intrusion into 300 million Americans' privacy (bulk domestic surveillance), all have two things in common that they are ineffective in providing security and they are not actions the American public ever wilfully consented to. It can be characterized that these actions are indefensible even by those that currently practitioners of these acts, merely by having these same actions being perpetrated by any other nation, local government, or group of individuals or these actions  done to those the elite could relate to on a personal level. I believe that Barack Obama genuinely stopped surveillance on Angela Merkel, not because it was ineffective (which it was) for American national security purposes, but because he has met her and knows her (even if they had not met face to face, Barack Obama could easily relate to fellow head of state of a Western power).

Without widespread scrutiny, national security can only be provided with as much certainty as alchemists can transform base materials into precious metals; the alphabet soup that makes up national security apparatus (NSA, CIA, DIA, DoD, FBI, DHS, etc) are never to be challenged or questioned about the effectiveness of their activity, just as royalty of old were never to be questioned no matter how ridiculous their beliefs and actions were (Von Ludwig's castle, Marquis de Sade, or the parable of the emperor's new clothes). Individuals are free to believe whatever they want, even if they are to believe the world is flat and not round, until those beliefs harm others, such as using over-classification of the inner workings of our own government while professing a false sense of security leaves the American people ready to be blind-sided by those who want to carry off mass casualty events. That is harm that is unacceptable, no matter what the intentions are.

I propose an alternative in providing security, absolute transparency of the process and means which security is provided, that even those who wish to do the public harm would be aware of the defences (not the particular investigative targets or operational details, but what the law enforcement/national security is allowed and restricted from doing) which is exactly is done within the world of open-source software development. Despite black-hat hackers and other ne'er-do-wells have the same access to source codes that the developers have, and the open-source software through this transparent scrutiny is all the more reliable and secure entirely due to being put through the gauntlet. Proprietary software may have a lot more coders on the payroll, that are able to create and edit the code but like the Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia is liable for significant flaws such as proprietary iOS devices to the GoTo Fail when handling SSL connections. It wasn't prevented by Apple because it wasn't big enough catch it, but due to it's size Apple had the hubris of assuming that an error that egregious would never occur under the watchful eye of the thousands of coders they had on payroll. PGP encryption being the creation of Phil Zimmerman, has made improvements over the 20 years in existence with help of a plethora of coders from all over the world.

Those interested in securing America would be able to audit protocols and procedures carried out by the national security apparatus and improve and innovate to ensure best practices are carried out. If there are things that are practices that are initially deemed unseemly, then effectiveness of usage can be weighed against perceived barbarism. As the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered only a couple of weeks ago, CIA use of "enhanced interrogation" was utterly ineffective and that practice should have been ended immediately if not never attempted (as our armed service men and women are trained in resistance to such torture, even though we already understood it to be ineffective except to get coerced apologies and political speeches for the benefit of North Korean or North Vietnamese audiences). But such abandonment of American principles could only happen under the vale of secrecy that occurs when national security apparatus classifies everything embarrassing, hiding their mistakes from public scrutiny.

This openness, is not a vector which can be utilized to carry out mass casualty events since the operational details would still remain secret, it would have the additional advantage that being so open we couldn't be characterized as "the Great Satan" or the "Evil Empire" any longer (this term originally used against the USSR, but American foreign policy since 9/11 certainly a case can be made that we have usurped the derogatory title); though we would have to take years to rebuild global trust, stopping our descent into moral darkness is a great first step.

We can remain under the rubric that not knowing what is being done is what is best for democracy, but that type of thinking is delusional, dangerous, and undemocratic. As President Kennedy said:

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

We are a nation of the brave, and a people that does not merely deserve to be trusted but entitled to be trusted by our government, anything else from our government is a treasonous act by our government.

Profit Motive: Enemy Of Liberty

The profit motive has been restrictive of human freedom, as more and more of day-to-day activity for most of the global population has been determined or affected by profit motive the less choices are made available to the individual. The "free" enterprise and the corporate paradigm seeks out the the most profitable activity available regardless of outcome and ill effects. Losses that can't be entered into ledgers are referred to as externalities, so if there's a buck to be made to pollute, exploit individuals, corrupt decisions, or prostitute morality-- a buck will be made. If a problem can be solved wholly with less profit or continuing  the problem at a lower grade but with sizable return on an investment; the results will most certainly be whatever is the most profitable. The range decisions that can be made available to the individual shrinks with the possibility of the choices having a profit. If there is no profit in an individual's choice, that choice unsurprisingly becomes unavailable. For example, there will always be more profit in scarcity rather than abundance, so in the case of the food supply there is enough arable land in the U.S. alone to feed the world several times over but due to the profit motive it will always more profitable to keep starving a certain segment of the world's population. If the market decides between scarcity or abundance, the choice will always be scarcity for with abundance comes out goes the profit.

Potable water is the most abundant and necessary resource on the planet (with possible breathable air being the only thing of greater abundance). So with it being so abundant there certainly couldn't be a profit motive to potable water, right? Except again and again throughout the world private companies like Bechtel attempt to corner the market on resources create scarcity. Cochabamba is the 3rd largest city of Bolivia, and through under handed dealings of the IMF and World Bank the Bolivian government was forced to privatized their water systems as a condition of continued financing of their national debt. Bechtel, as the primary benefactor of the previous Bolivian development projects, was in the envious position to own the water company and set the prices for water that the people of Cochabamba needed to live. If the profit motive is really the best means to the most efficient process of bringing services and goods to market, why would the cost quadruple over night for Cochabamba's residents when Bechtel entered the market? It's because profit motive is the means to find more profit not efficiency nor solutions. But "free" marketeers (or more aptly named privateers) could never acknowledge failings in the unconditional love of higher rates of return.

The profit motive detrimentally even when in the guise of providing abundance, genetically modified organisms  (GMO) from the labs are pest repellent and more tolerant of adverse growing environments, certainly the more food grown in more places can't be bad? And so the agra-businesses reinvest their profits to provide higher yielding seeds, the manufactured scarcity comes from the fact the seeds have been neutered and do not yield next season's crop. Even if they did have cross pollination of GMO crops and non-patented natural crops, the manufacturers of the GMO seeds go after farmers for intellectual property infringement because they hold the patents on the living flora they created in a lab!

But you say to yourself that you are not a farmer, and the price of your water isn't exponentially rising in price (yet), all of these happy and profitable corporations are so eager to provide me with cheap disposable products, and what does it all have to do with liberty? With the array of solutions to any problem have is cleaved to let the only the profitable solutions remain, it limits the available choices to the individual. It is akin to telling a child you can have milk out of the red sippy cup or the blue sippy cup, while creating an illusion of "free" choice and individual liberty when in fact the parent makes the decision that the child will be drinking the milk. Within the profit scheme, we provided all the choices that are the most profitable, even if the best choice for us sustainable but not profitable enough. The "free" marketeers (privateers) with claims that mixed economy where both government and for profit enterprise compete in supplying goods and services is some how unfair, that the only citizen/customer "free" choice should be between the red sippy cup and the blue sippy cup that profits them.

The culling of the choices to only those that are for profit, isn't the most nefarious aspect of the profit motive. The most nefarious part of the profit motive is that instead bringing solutions to preexisting problems it's the creation of new problems with ready-to-purchase solutions. Healthcare in America is an animal that was created by committee, one member says it should have horns, another one says it should have wings, and yet another says it should swim-- the end results an abomination that no one person would ever have intentionally created. Any attempt to simplify it, and possibly follow our neighbors to the North with straight forward single payer for-profit healthcare will be lambasted for seeking out a solution that smacks of Socialism (and thereby cuts the profit taking middlemen). As if getting nickeled-and-dimed as one comes to the less healthy side of a lifetime of living is as American as Mom, apple pie, and baseball. Richard Stengal after writing the Time article "The Cost of Care" with conclusions that include decreasing Medicare age of eligibility to save money, since the operating expenses of Medicare is so much lower than that of the private market. The only reason this choice is unavailable to solve America's problem is that the fanatical privateers can't see past the possibility of anything but the profitable solution. So liberty is denied to the citizen that wants to chose the lower costing and less profitable solution. All of the obfuscation that prevents the most freedom to America in regards is the decisions made by committee (all committee members are profit seekers and not solution seekers) but it is a stretch on my part to claim that the healthcare is problem that was created by the profit motive.

For profit prisons and campaign contributions to legislators to propose mandatory minimums are exactly a problem created whole clothe for profit. Non-violent drug criminals choke our prison system, and are carted off to the correctional facilities operated at a profit by the likes of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO group that have no interest in rehabilitation since recidivism is counter-profitable to having their prisons filled. Beginning in the late 70's and early 80's private prisons to turn a profit on the burgeoning war on drugs. But the Federal government's decision to tough on recreational drug use wasn't what allowed for-profit prisons, but the Powell Memorandum that called corporate America to arms in the political debate, along with U.S. Supreme court decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo expanding corporate power and influence over elections. This encroachment on human liberty by non-corporeal legal  entities, both blots out choices for the individual person (the breathing type of person not the LLC type) when voting but waters down the humanity that makes up the government initially intended to be of, for, and by the people. And if you are to believe I exaggerate the amoral nature and corrupting affects that the profit motive has then please consider this: two Pennsylvania judges Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan were convicted (February 9th, 2009) of defrauding the people of honest services due to the $2.6 million that was provided to the judges by the for-profit juvenile correction center they, as juvenile court judges, were sentencing minor crimes (such as defamation of school principal on a MySpace page and shoplifting) for extraordinary long prison sentences.

So whether the profit motive corrupts the water we drink, food we drink, or air we breath, it will remain an enemy to our life. As long as it is profitable to keep a significant portion of our population in jail, it will remain an enemy to our liberty. As long as it continues to predicate the addiction of consumable goods and false hope that is hyper-materialism, the profit motive will remain an enemy of our pursuit of happiness.




http://web.archive.org/web/20080607071734/http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/percy-schmeiser.aspx

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136867,00.html

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_National_Bank_of_Boston_v._Bellotti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo