Wannabe cops and profiling

When I was a child of around 12 or 13, my younger brother and I had a paper route that covered several NYC apartment buildings. As this was the early 80s several of the buildings had evening neighborhood watches that hung out in the lobby observing. Also, as this was the early 80s, no one thought it strange that two young children would be able to go after dark to collect money for their little business without adult supervision -- except one person.

One evening we were buzzed into one of the buildings on our route by one of our customers to make our weekly collections. This building had some residents in the lobby keeping an eye on things and, as we approached the elevator, we were questioned by the watch as to what we were doing there. We showed them our collection book, what floors we'd be going to etc (no ID at that time, it was a simpler day) and were cleared to proceed. As usual we took the elevator to the top and walked down floor by floor. Collecting the money could be time consuming, depending on the floor, as we had to go door to door. Somewhere in the middle the local gestapo decided we were taking too long and kicked us out of the building.

When we arrived home early my dad asked why we were back so early. When we told him, he got up (a big deal, once he was on the couch for the night that was it), had us go back to the building and started telling the lead watcher off as he told us to finish collecting. When we were finished our dad was still telling the guy off and had us wait while he finished, basically accusing the dude of being a bully and making up for a small penis. Then, when he was finished, he told the guy - by the way, your fly is open. On the walk home he commented that certain people, who are otherwise weak, abuse power once they get it and that was one of those people.

From the little bits I've heard from news clips of his trial, neighborhood watch person George Zimmerman allegedly seems more and more like that wannabe cop with delusions of grandeur that my brother and I encountered all those years ago. Ignoring whatever prior bad acts that Trevor Martin may have done before his encounter with Zimmerman, the basis of  the confrontation seems to be that Zimmerman allegedly just assumed a teenager with a hoodie (in the rain) was up to no good just as our neighbor did with us. Maybe Zimmerman felt he was doing the right thing, maybe he was just profiling, probably this whole mess has become political, but maybe he thought he was more important than he actually was -- a man who wanted to be something that he couldn't be and forgot that in the heat of the moment. Real officers are trained to not allow an encounter such as what occurred between Martin and Zimmerman to escalate (and that is true even if they are undercover). Neighborhood watchers are there to watch and report.

I guess I should be relieved that the apartment building's watch wasn't armed. I guess I should also be relieved we were allowed to quietly leave the building and go home (which probably would not have happened if we were a minority race in our neighborhood). Sad that Martin didn't get the chance to go home and get his dad to defend him like my brother and I were able to do because he was determined not worthy of standing his ground.

The delusions of the new conservatives

A recent article in American Thinker, a very conservative blog, almost made me laugh out loud. To prove their point that America is one step away from destroying themselves as usual they point to a quote by Rush Limbaugh who is complaining that "America as founded is slipping away daily." He's kidding right? That America is long gone and for the better. Keep in mind the vote was generally limited to white male landowners when the country was founded. Laws of the time permitted child labor in modern factories (which didn't exist yet), blacks to be slaved, women forced to obey their man. I could go on, but you get my drift. And though I lean more conservative these days, at least on economical and freedom issues, I don't vote Republican because I find that party to be too far away from my inner core.

The conservatives of today are not those I could never wrap my arms around. I find they have been hijacked by a backwards looking people who refuse to evolve into what should be a robust 21st century movement. Why aren't they leading the charge on over government involvement in everyday lives? Why are they not working to educate anti-gun citizens on what gun ownership means and how gun safety and care by manufacturers and owners can go a long way to resolving illegal guns (not all the way of course, but you need to start somewhere)? Why aren't they pointing out the slippery slope that all these feel good laws take away our freedoms while admitting that some are good for us (clean water and clean air are kind of nice, higher gas mileage cars is also a nice way for us to tell OPEC where to go once we are free of them)? Instead they focus on abortion, Jesus and other issues that were settled over a half century ago. You can be conservative and still move forward with the times.

Perhaps it is because I am not Christian and do not care if gays want to marry or am appalled that my children, already tempted by all the commercial excitement of Christmas, would be forced to pray to Jesus. Maybe it is because I don't look at a book written 2,000 years ago and was probably the best knowledge of the day, written as stories for a simpler people to understand, to take precedence over what science has discovered over the centuries.

Out of touch

I have to laugh at how out of touch the GOP still seems. The only reason I don't is because I realize how bad this is for the country. We are headed towards a one party system and that is good for non one.

The GOP thinks all their problems with the younger generation will go away with just better marketing. Are they for real? I have to wonder what they are thinking if the following quote is the root to solving their identity crisis: "Fortunately, our ideas are already grounded in concepts that appeal across generations: the notion of a free market, where effort is connected with reward and equality is discussed in terms of opportunity, not outcome." I don't necessarily disagree with that last statement, but they don't put their money where there mouth is. How about applying those ideas so our children can get an affordable education that will allow them to use their skills to achieve the available opportunities and rewards GOP? [sound of crickets]

How many times has the GOP been behind cutting spending of education over the decades? They see the rich getting richer and everybody else left behind as the 1% has pulled up the ladder. Sure some can jump and still catch that ladder but fewer and fewer are able to.

In any event, the GOP is doomed to dwindle to nothingness as long as they allow the religious right to control their policies. The young see the GOP's hypocrisy over small government  -- no government involvement unless it concerns what consenting adults are doing in their beds. Most young people don't want to be dictated by a religious morality that they increasingly see as behind the times, especially when you allow political leaders to ignore science etc because a book written a few thousand years ago, that was probably based on the best knowledge of the day, says something else. They don't care what God says about gays and who can marry who.They are tired of leaders who deny and mock modern science and ideals because it doesn't match the leaders' out of date ideological religious teachings

They are concerned about what climate change will mean to them and their children (long after most of us dead). They worry about the increasing costs of health care and how it still seems that the main beneficiaries of Obamacare are private insurance companies and not the People because the GOP refused to allow the government and its economic might strike a better deal for the People.

The young have seen the enemy GOP and it is you. Your small government ideals are fine, but they are not absolute. Yes, there is a danger of government getting too big, but no government is not the solution when the scars of a deregulated financial community is still fresh in our psyche. When you wake up to all this you will have mine and the youth vote.

American citizen to be tried as an American citizen

Today the Justice Department announced that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be tried in civilian court for his alleged acts of terror at last week's marathon that left three dead (four if you count the police officer he and his brother murdered a few days later) and almost 200 injured. This has angered some on the right who wanted him to be charged as an enemy combatant terrorist. This should not be an issue. Sadly, in 2013, some elected officials who have taken oaths to protect and serve have a problem with an American citizen being treated like an American citizen.

He's a US citizen, protected by the Constitution. End of story. He wasn't a combatant in the theater of war, he is accused of committing a single violent act of terrorism on the streets of Boston (again, excluding the shootout with police as the brothers tried to make their escape). There are many rights in the US Constitution, including the right to a jury trial in front of your peers. While we may decide what actions or crimes are worthy of a jury trial or just trial by a judge, we don not have the right to strip American citizens of their rights because we don't like what they have done. We are America. We don't stick up for the principles the terrorists supposedly hate by abandoning them the millisecond our own personal safety is threatened.

We start down the slippery slope of deciding citizens are not protected by the rule of law because the are accused of doing something especially heinous we open Pandora's box. When we start calling citizens "enemy combatants" we start to give up everything that the Bill of Rights were written for. It may seem harmless now, only using a reduced justice system, outside our legal system, where the right to defend yourself is minimized, on enemy combatants or terrorists as we know them now, but it is not hard to see some future administration come in with different or varied criteria as to what is a terrorist act and possibly strip anyone who does not agree with the government of their due process rights.

Terrorists need to be treated as the common criminals that they are.  Don't elevate them to some special kind of special super special enemy warrior status. "Terror networks" aren't that much different that the criminal enterprises that are and prosecuted under RICO (except perhaps for more civilian deaths). If the civil justice system is good enough for the mafia, it is good enough for Tsarnaev.

As to the questioning without Miranda for intelligence, all it means, at worse, is that prosecutors may be prevented from using whatever he may tell them against him when his trial starts (fruit of the poisonous tree). There already is plenty of other evidence to lock him up for three lifetimes. A fourth lifetime won't make much of a difference.

Education is not one size fits all

Attached is the retirement letter of a 40 year teacher who laments how the education system is failing our children with reforms that demean teachers. Coming from a family of teachers, I can see his point. While the current reforms may be great for burnt out teachers who mail it in, and can excel in the reform system of teaching to the test now in place, it must be maddening for those who went into teaching for the love of sharing what they have learned with younger generations.

I had some wonderful teachers when I went to school in the 1970s and 80s (and more than a few duds). For the ones that simply phoned it and taught to the test there were others who conveyed their love of the materials they were teaching us to get us interested in the discussion. Almost 30 years after high school, many of the details are long gone, but I still remember the hobbit English teacher, explaining the Hobbit trilogy and Mice and Men (that may have been for a different class) or the social studies teachers who used drawings on the blackboard to bring life to the industrial revolution. I recall classes that let us wander with reports, classes that would be so much better now with much easier access to information that can be obtained almost instantly.

I used to believe "No Child Left Behind" was enacted with good intentions and what we see now, such as teaching to the test, are unforeseen consequences. Now I wonder if what we are seeing today WAS foreseen and is exactly what the proponents of this law wanted. Already we are seeing our college graduating students chained to jobs because they need to pay back soul crushing college debt unable to speak out for fear of losing that necessary job. However, they realize they have been wronged. The next generation won't.  

My children are in school now and while I believe their teachers are dedicated and creative, I have seen them teaching to the test. And while they are still at an age where they don't really question what they learn, I fear they never will. Worse, I feel they will not let them learn the basics that will allow them to do followup reading when they are older. I may never have read, for example, a series of books about Theodore Roosevelt as an adult if I wasn't entranced by stories of him as a child battling asthma and boxing in the White House when I was in school. We can only hope that true reformers step in to teach our children how ideas are developed and tested and aren't dissuaded  by those who profit from the status quo before it is too late. 

And before you get the wrong idea, standardized testing isn't the problem - teachers should be held to some level of accountability and a simple basement standard may only be found through standardized tests. It is taking the concept of standardized testing too far that has created an inflexible system that doesn't really accomplish anything, aside from giving corporations,  such as the standardized testing companies, looking to make money over making sure our children are educated, a nice pay day. And we can't lay all the blame on the test companies without first looking at ourselves. After all we wanted this, didn't we? Oh we may have had good intentions, making sure all our children were equally educated, but this has devolved into something more, as things usually do when money is involved.

We spend our time cramming students with testing strategies and other efforts to improve a child’s ability to do well on a standardized test. We all want to see our town with a high score; that means we have  a ”good school system.” Not only will our housing values go up, but so will our property taxes, which coincidentally finance the schools, thereby providing them with more money - a vicious circle that benefits homeowners, municipalities, bankers and realtors, but not necessarily our children.   if you’re in a “good system.” It means that others will want to move to your area because of your “good school system.”

More troubling though, is the the though that this inflexibility is what the powers that be want -- a citizenship without the ability to question what they are told, without the ability to think of alternatives, to not even know how to question which is what this inflexibility is leading to. We are willingly and silently indoctrinating and conditioning our children to think there is nothing better than America.  Shame on us all for simply selling off what was the greatest experiment in human history to the highest bidder.

Gun safety

I guess it is a step in the right direction that in the wake of Aurora and Newton, the Senate has finally come to an agreement requiring background checks of gun buyers. However this is a feel good, not really do anything solution. Sure it will help keep felons from getting guns, but what good are those laws when the lawful owners then leave their weapons unsecured? In addition to background checks, maybe gun buyers should also pass a safety check.

Driving a car, a potential deadly weapon, requires a written test AND a driving test to demonstrate you know enough to earn a license to drive. A rifle, also a potential deadly weapon and whose sole purpose is to fire a bullet at something, does not. Am I the only one who thinks that is nuts?

Gay marriage debate

Now the social conservatives who want to take away our freedoms are looking at other religions to justify their opinion that homosexual marriage should be illegal. First, let us take every religious reference to marriage out of the discussion (you can argue that churches perform weddings and the state performs the marriage or whatever gets you through the night or at least this blog). Then tell me how this is any different then laws preventing blacks and whites from getting married a half century ago? It is not. It is bigotry no matter how you want to slice it and it is disgusting (the article also wanders into a discussion that says women belong back in the kitchen but I will skip that for now).

 

I don't care what the Koran says. I don't care what the Bible says. They aren't the laws of this land. I don't care how people want to live in their own private lives (and if that includes multiple wives then God bless that poor soul, one is enough for me). And I am tired of the red herring about procreation; widowed elderly couples marrying, for example, aren't going to have a baby at 65.Why are people so worried about what other people are doing with their bodies in their personal lives. Be a true conservative and get the government out of peoples' bedrooms. Life is too short to deny somebody else happiness.

The definition of marriage has constantly been evolving. The idea of marrying for love is relatively new, marriage used to be more political, with matchmakers (or whatever) pairing couples up based on dowries or other needs of the communities. My mother's parents met each other through friends in the very late 1920s, instead of through the Jewish community they lived in via their parents approval as was expected in those days (those darn trolleys that could take kids out of the 'hood). They eloped for love instead of entering relationships with people other people, such as their families, chose for them in 1933. That was almost as radical as gay marriage is today according to the stories I heard as a child.

You want to live like a social conservative? Go ahead. I'm not stopping you. However if your views infringe on the liberties of others that is YOUR problem, not theirs. You don't like abortion? Don't get an abortion. You don't like same sex marriages? Don't get married to a person of your own sex. How hard is that?

To much time is being taken over worrying about what other people in their private lives.This country has REAL problems, such as a run away deficit, infrastructure problems, an education system that is preventing talent from reaching their full potential due to cost or lack of funding and many others. Stop with this nonsense already.