brainiac conspiracy

Yes, It Was The Drugs

Pace Atrios, I still think this post is better amended to read, "enjoyed a loyal cult audience." As someone who came of edge back then, and who listened to more than his share of prog-tunes, it's fair to say their fans were passionate and dedicated, but their LPs, by and large, we not huge volume leaders. Yes, Jethro Tull charted some hits, and Pink Floyd more-or-less straddled the divide between Top 40 and avant-garde progressivism, but most of the other prog-bands were more likely to be heard on late-night FM radio than, say, seen as the marquee act on Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special.

But even if you want to dismiss album sales as a pointless benchmark to score artistic merit (which I'd agree with), most white teenagers and 20-somethings back in the day preferred to get stoned to big-ticket metal and 12-bar rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Steve Miller than listen to a band with greater artistic aspirations like King Crimson or Genesis. I mean, dude, that music was complicated---it actually forces you to pay attention to it! Which is, like, a major inconvenience when you're devoting all your concentration to optimizing the water-airflow ratio of bong hits. But that's another post for another time.

---Vitelius

More Nice Things We'll Likely Never Have

Namely, things that yield socially desirable outcomes:

On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin [...]

The resulting effect: a drastic reduction in addicts, with Portuguese officials and reports highlighting that this number, at 100,000 before the new policy was enacted, has been halved in the following ten years. Portugal's drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states, according to the same report.

One more outcome: a lot less sick people. Drug related diseases including STDs and overdoses have been reduced even more than usage rates, which experts believe is the result of the government offering treatment with no threat of legal ramifications to addicts.

Wow. Lower health-care costs and lower incarceration rates. That sure would save taxpayers a lot of money. Needless to say, that's the problem.

---Vitelius

Light Blogging Afternoon

Because it's Saturday! Go get yourself needlessly roughed up by the police while I'm away.

---Vitelius

Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

Because persons who are smarter and a lot more serious than Professional Left Bloggers™ thought it would be an awesome idea to spread the blessings of democratic governance around the world while reminding us at home that we can no longer afford our massively bloated entitlement system because it would bury our children and grandchildren under a crushing burden of debt.

Meanwhile, people who will never get to see their children and grandchildren:

In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare, and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people---equal to the combined population of Connecticut and Kentucky---have been displaced.

---Vitelius

The Audacity of Dope

Why do our leaders and our media watchdogs both hate us so much?

A review of court and law enforcement records, along with interviews of industry insiders, police and federal agents, shows that many marijuana dispensaries have been making big money, sometimes extraordinary money, even as they claim to be nonprofit. The Times found a cash-infused retail world bearing little resemblance to the one pitched to voters before they passed the Compassionate Use Act for "seriously ill Californians" in 1996.

To be sure, the huge stashes of cash do not represent the entire industry.

But let's slime the whole industry, anyway. And how does the Times, or anyone else, know what voters were thinking when they voted to legalize medical weed? Speaking for myself, and I'll bet I'm not alone in this, I voted for it because I knew it was the only feasible way we could a legalization bill enacted that might survive a constitutional challenge. Also too, increasing the tax base.

I'm not sure what the Times finds so shocking about all of this: The fact the some of these dispensaries are successfully run businesses, or that they have a substantial customer base that's loyal to their brands:

Records from a Granada Hills dispensary showed sales revenue topping $10,000 on many days.

Spreadsheets from a Long Beach operation indicated the owners bought $247,040 worth of marijuana and sold it in the next five months for $776,589. A state board of equalization investigator testified that the pair sold a total of $1,672,206 that year and reported only $206,980 to the tax agency.

A Venice-area dispensary's bookkeeping revealed it did about $5.1 million in sales in just over a year. One month's total was $468,331---with $154,493 in "total profit." Another's was $116,625, after a $25,382 payment to the owner.

So fucking what? What, we only celebrate hard work and entrepreneurship when bankers are peddling toxic mortgages to poor people? Meanwhile:

The state Bureau of Equalization gives a very rough estimate that it collects up to $105 million a year in sales tax from stores that are doing up to $1.3 billion a year in sales.

Now, why in the world would we want that money flowing to Sacramento, anyway? Besides that, I mean.

I've got a better idea. Let's shut down all these illicit pot shops, even though a majority of our citizens have said they want them, and force all the AIDS and cancer patients who patronize them to purchase their meds from these people instead. That will solve everything, now, won't it.

I mean, Jesus, it's easier to buy a fucking gun than it is to buy a stick of weed for pain relief in most places. And contrary to the tone of this article, there are plenty of people with legitimate medical reasons who patronize these pot shops. I know because I've met and talked with some of them, many of them are severely ill, and these community dispensaries are a tremendous convenience to them. So there are a few profiteers and shady dealers in the medical weed business. So what of it? There are bad actors in every industry, and I don't see our leaders or our media watchdogs running them down, day after day, in our daily news reports.

Put it another way: I'm all for government intervention to improve the lot of poor people, the elderly, the homeless, etc., but harassing otherwise law-abiding people for consuming a product you personally disapprove of while requiring people (ahem) to consume another product that they personally detest . . . and you wonder why so many people no longer have any faith in their government to get shit right anymore. Sometimes I wonder myself, though I know the root of the problem doesn't lie with government but with the vindictive and shortsighted people who are running it.

---Vitelius

Good Argument for Tort Reform

You won't find many states' rights arguments on this blog, but honestly, this is just inexcusable:

Federal prosecutors across California launched a coordinated enforcement campaign in October 2011, stating that California is the top marijuana-producing state in the country and that it exports the drug to other states.

Under the leadership of U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr, the Central District of California, based in Los Angeles, has been particularly aggressive. Federal prosecutors there said last week they have brought a dozen civil lawsuits seeking to forfeit properties housing marijuana businesses.

"Three of those actions have been resolved with the closure of the marijuana stores and court-approved consent decrees in which property owners agreed that they would no longer rent to people associated with illegal marijuana operations, or the property would be subject to an immediate forfeiture to the government," the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The Justice Department's Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, told Reuters that it requires less manpower to combat marijuana businesses by mail and civil actions than it does to bring criminal prosecutions.

"We can get on the Internet, identify a store and have someone drive by and find out if it is operating. That is a whole lot different from conducting a criminal investigation, going out and making buys and conducting surveillance. These are two very different balls of wax," he said.

The letters and lawsuits have "so far been extremely effective in securing the closure of about 200 illegal marijuana storefronts in our district," Mrozek said.

How can this be considered anything other than simple harassment, using the police power of the state to threaten citizens who, under their own state laws, are behaving in a perfectly legal fashion, with asset seizures and/or bankruptcy? Come to think of it, do you think there might be some other law-enforcement initiatives the Justice Department could undertake if they need something to keep their deputy attorneys busy?

Fire Eric Holder. Fire him now.

---Vitelius

Maybe They Should Threaten to Withhold Their Money

Since threatening not to vote isn't doing the trick:

The nation’s rapidly growing Latino population is one of the most powerful forces working in President Obama’s favor in many of the states that will determine his contest with Mitt Romney. But Latinos are not registering or voting in numbers that fully reflect their potential strength, leaving Hispanic leaders frustrated and Democrats worried as they increase efforts to rally Latino support.

Interviews with Latino voters across the country suggested a range of reasons for what has become, over a decade, an entrenched pattern of nonparticipation, ranging from a distrust of government to a fear of what many see as an intimidating effort by law enforcement and political leaders to crack down on immigrants, legal or not.

Can't imagine what could be bothering them:

[I]t was an uncomfortable moment when Bhargava looked in Obama’s eyes and told him that he was presiding over a “moral catastrophe” in immigrant communities. He asked Obama to use executive powers to stop many deportations, said it was time to “lean in” on revamping the country’s immigration system and listed a number of Republican senators he should lobby

The president grew visibly frustrated as each successive advocate spoke. He said that the advocates, too, should be pressing Republican lawmakers, that he sympathized with their concerns but that he did not have the legal authority to stop deportations.

Tensions mounted when Obama argued that his administration’s policy was to focus on deporting criminals and others deemed to be security threats.

“No, Mr. President, that’s not what’s happening,” interjected Angelica Salas, the head of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. She was seated directly across the table from Obama and leaned toward him as she spoke, her hands trembling and her voice rising. “You’re deporting heads of households, mothers and fathers.” She said that “young people are sitting in detention centers when they should be sitting in the best universities in the country,” according to meeting participants.

Obama looked taken aback by the direct confrontation from Salas and then turned to aides seated against the wall, according to several participants. The aides affirmed that, yes, criminals were the priority.

Turning back to Salas, Obama asked: “What do you want me to do, not enforce the law?” He explained that he could not just ignore laws he didn’t like. *

The president spoke sternly. Several participants described him as defensive. One person said that, at times, Obama was “pissy" [...]

Since 2009, the Obama administration had been removing immigrants at a rate of nearly 400,000 a year---more than under any previous president.

What's really maddening about this, of course, is obvious:

Standing in the parking lot outside a Family Dollar store in Manassas, Virginia, Vicki Tucker agrees. Asked how the last few years have been for her family, Tucker spits out a one-word answer: “Struggling.”

Tucker, a school bus driver, and her husband, who works in construction, scrimp to keep their son in college. She resents what she sees as the president’s support for “the illegals” at the expense of working Americans.

“I’m voting for Romney,” Tucker says, loading groceries into her white Jeep. “It’s not what I like about him. It’s what I don’t like about Obama.” (Emphasis added.)

I hope that, one day, the President and his supporters will wake up and realize that their myriad "get tough" policies---against the unwashed hordes of wogs, wetbacks and whistleblowers---is never going to achieve its desired effect, i.e., as a means of appealing to working-class whites who've been conditioned for decades to regard his political party as "soft" on crime and terrorism. The people who've come to believe that nonsense mostly get their information from the usual (Fox/CNN) sources, and they will almost never vote for a Democrat---and certain not for a black one---unless perhaps that Democrat can offer them a job and put some money in their pockets. And even that offer might not be good enough.

This isn't 1996. The electorate is more politically polarized than it has likely been since the Civil War, and no amount of triangulation and co-opting of Republican talking points is going to win over so-called "swing" voters, of whom I'm predicting---based on what happened in Wisconsin last week---there will be very, very few this time around. I just hope the administration comes to its senses before November 6, and realizes that it's a losing strategy to alienate the base to placate people who are never going to vote for them, no matter how hard the President tries to please. It hasn't worked up to now, and that's because it never will.

---Vitelius

* Exempting the Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution as they pertain to the powers of the Unitary Executive to preempt alleged terror-related program activities.

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is . . .

Attention John Kerry: Here's why we need to know:

Johnson consulted with Walt Rostow, Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford in a Nov. 4 conference call. Those three pillars of the Washington Establishment were unanimous in advising Johnson against going public, mostly out of fear that the scandalous information might reflect badly on the U.S. government.

“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,” Clifford said. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

Though sounding reluctant to go along, Johnson concurred with the judgment. An administration spokesman told Davis, “Obviously I’m not going to get into this kind of thing in any way, shape or form,” according to another “eyes only” cable that Rostow sent Johnson. The cable added:

“Saville Davis volunteered that his newspaper would certainly not print the story in the form in which it was filed; but they might print a story which said Thieu, on his own, decided to hold out until after the election. Incidentally, the story as filed is stated to be based on Vietnamese sources, and not U.S., in Saigon.”

Rostow’s cable also summed up the consensus from him, Rusk and Clifford: “The information sources [an apparent reference to the FBI wiretaps] must be protected and not introduced into domestic politics; even with these sources, the case is not open and shut.

“On the question of the ‘public’s right to know,’ Sec. Rusk was very strong on the following position: We get information like this every day, some of it very damaging to American political figures. We have always taken the view that with respect to such sources there is no public ‘right to know.’ Such information is collected simply for the purposes of national security."

Amazing how no one states the obvious, i.e., that Nixon's actions were against the law.

Also too, liberal media bias.

To anyone who has read Seymour Hersh's The Price of Power, the gist of this story is fairly old news, but it helps to explain in an obvious way why nearly every Republican presidential administration since then has behaved like an organized crime family, and why Democratic administrations have been so easily depicted as "weak" or "soft" on law and order: Because, when it comes to lawbreaking by Republican administrations, Democrats have been weak, soft and willfully accommodating. This hands-off approach doesn't stop the lawbreaking from occurring, as history has clearly shown, and it works against Democrats' own interests. Put another way: if you keep enabling people whose overarching strategy is to undermine your legitimacy to govern, eventually your legitimacy to govern will be, well, undermined.

Unfortunately, our post-millennial Democrats have learned nothing from their own moral failings in this regard, except perhaps to answer Republican lawlessness with outlaw behavior of their own. For some reason, this outcome doesn't make me think of a moral arch of justice that's bending ever upward.

---Vitelius

At Least We Know We're Free

Sure would like to know what useful purpose this serves:

At 5:30 a.m. on May 10, armed men broke into the bedroom of Kirk Kyle Farrar’s 12 year-old daughter and shook her awake. The men led her downstairs at gunpoint and forced her to lie on the floor next to her mother and father, with her hands behind her head. Another armed man took Farrar’s two-year-old son from his crib, and would not let his parents hold him. “My son screamed for his mother for what seemed like an eternity,” Farrar wrote in an email to friends, obtained by Reason. “I will never forget the hopeless feeling of not being able to comfort my son or daughter.”

The armed men who broke into Farrar’s home were officers with the Meridian, Idaho, Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They were executing a federal warrant for Farrar’s arrest for the crime of selling bongs.

Farrar’s wasn’t the only family traumatized that morning. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Idaho National Guard, and four Idaho police departments raided the homes of 13 other headshop owners and employees on May 10. All of the headshops had their inventory seized. One shop lost more than $80,000 worth of merchandise (bongs and pipes marketed as “tobacco water pipes”). Another headshop owner had his and and his employees' vehicles seized.

The investigation into these 13 shops and their employees (two of which are still at large) for selling drug paraphernalia was led by U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson, a Barack Obama appointee.

When it comes to law enforcement, it's assuring to know we've gor our priorities straight.

You know, sometimes it's easy to understand how the Ron Paul people and all the other Unserious Persons who don't deserve to be taken seriously could form the worldview that our entire Democratic-Republican duopolistic system of government is just an elaborately bedecked Punch-and-Judy show designed to distract us from our rulers' true intentions, which are to gradually strip away what's left of our civil liberties and make us servile slaves to a police-state enforcement arm of multinational capital. Because, well, it sure seems like that to me sometimes too. Sure would be nice if our leaders would prove me wrong every once in a while.

---Vitelius

American Exceptionalism

It manifests itself in myriad wondrous ways, whether we are purging the globe of millitant-related program activities or merely impoverishing an entire generation of our own people:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) charges Mirella Tovar as much as 10.25 percent annual interest on her student loans---a rate as high as a credit card.

The 24-year-old aspiring graphic designer, the first in her family to go to college, is among millions of former students paying off high-interest loans to private lenders, among them JPMorgan, SLM Corp. (SLM) and Discover Financial Services. In a good month, Tovar earns $730 as a part-time hostess in a pizza parlor, and most of that money goes toward her debt of $98,000.

Unlike the federal student-loan program, which lets consumers borrow at fixed rates directly from the government, these loans from at least 30 banks and other private lenders feature mostly variable rates that can be more than twice what some people pay in the U.S. program. With college costs spiraling, the marketing and interest rates of these loans are drawing increasing complaints from borrowers and regulators, who say teenage consumers often don’t understand their terms.

“It was like signing up for iTunes,” said Austin Bousley, 25, who applied on the Internet for a private loan from SLM, known as Sallie Mae, as a student at Suffolk University in Boston. Some of his loans, which he began taking out in 2006, carried rates as high as 9.25 percent. “The interest is accruing and accruing. I have a feeling I’ll be making payments forever.”

---Vitelius

Better Late Than Never, But

No shit, Sherlock:

Paraphrasing Herbert Hoover's famous line about the business of the American people being business, Obama said: "Everybody understood that the market was the best generator of wealth and opportunity that we'd ever seen. It was understood that America's business was business and government was not the ultimate source of our wealth."

"But over the last 15 years, the last 20 years, that consensus has broken down," Obama said. "If you look at what the Republican Party today represents -- we haven't moved that much ... Our basic policies haven't shifted."

"What has changed is the Republican Party. They have run from a preference for market-based solutions to an absolutism when it comes to the marketplace. A belief that all regulations are bad. That government has no role to play," Obama said.

First, Politico presidential history FAIL: That quote is attributed to Calvin Coolidge, not Hoover.

That said, well, yeah, the postwar consensus has broken down to a noticeable extent, though this is clearly not the case in the realm of foreign policy, where Serious Persons on both sides of the aisle agree that America's right to invade other people's countries, bomb their villages and kill their civilians is sacrosanct and inviolable, so at least there's that.

Also too, not sure of the wisdom of framing a debate over economic policy by invoking the philosophy of a President who presided over a renegade financial system that was completely out of control and which destroyed the fortunes of millions of Americans before it had run its course. Wouldn't want the people to draw the wrong parallels to the present day or anything like that.

---Vitelius

Of Course He's Wrong

That's how you get taken seriously in Official Washington.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why this truly awful and abusive person was chosen by our Kenyan-in-Chief to bring his perpetual wrongness to our equally wrongheaded budget debate.

---Vitelius

The Undeserving Poor

They're always undeserving because, well, because they're morally deficient:

In later research, Ron Haskins and I learned that if individuals do just three things---finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children---their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent. Mitt Romney has cited this research on the campaign trail, but these issues transcend presidential politics. Stronger public support for single-parent families---such as subsidies or tax credits for child care, and the earned-income tax credit---is needed, but no government program is likely to reduce child poverty as much as bringing back marriage as the preferable way of raising children.

Boy, and to think that liberals are the ones who always being accused of wanting to engage in social engineering.

Either way, though, now that gay marriage has gained much broader public acceptance, we're creating the conditions where more people than ever in our country have the opportunity to form two-parent households and raise children to be non-poor productive members of society. I am wondering why this positive development wasn't mentioned. Any guesses?

---Vitelius

Winning Hearts and Minds

Honestly, people, this is not how it's done:

Bill Clinton had his Sista Souljah Moment during the '92 primary season, and by showing our media watchdogs that he could be tough on uppity colored people and other Democrat interest groups, he was able to claim the mantle of sensible centrist going into the convention. The Obama administration, by contrast, has already staked out the political center and has done so for years. Why they still feel the need to stage a Sista Soujah Moment at least once every month, I have no idea. But they do seem to be quite adept at it. I'm still not sure how pissing off your most ardent supporters translates into a winning electoral strategy, though.

---Vitelius

Two to Tango

Riffing off the previous post, I suppose it's good to remember that while Goldman, JPMorgan et al may indeed be bad actors on the financial stage, they wouldn't be able to act as badly as they have, and as often as they have, without an assist from their many dear friends, not all of whom are right-wing conservatives.

---Vitelius

What They Mean

When the Friedmans and Brookses talk about the need for our government to enact big, bold ideas to spur structural economic reforms, it's code for our government giving them more of the things that benefit them (e.g., lowering their top marginal income tax rate) and giving other people less of what doesn't (Medicare, Social Security). Of course they realize that if they actually said what they really meant, most people would hurl them down the stairs, so they resort to speaking elliptically, if at all, about some vague and ill-defined need for "entitlement reform" that some sensible centrist like Mike Bloomberg could deliver to a nation in need of good governanace. But it's just a variation on the time-honored mantra that's recited regularly by our privileged classes: Give us more of your money because we're entitled to it.

---Vitelius

Awful Human Beings

No matter who wins in November, we're hosed:

Mr. Gregory: Chairman Ryan, let me start with you. This question of austerity in Europe. They had failing economies, nearly depressed economies, the answer throughout the region was to slash their budgets. Has it failed?

Rep. Ryan: Well, no, David, I would say they've also raised taxes, they have--this is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians who make a lot of empty promises end up running out of the ability to borrow money at cheap rates and now they're broken promises. It's a cautionary tale of what will happen to us if we stay on the path we are on. What we're saying is let's get on growth and prevent austerity. The whole premise of our budget is to pre-empt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth, and preventing Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That pre-empts austerity. The president, his budget, the fact the Senate hasn't done a budget in three years, puts us on a path towards Europeanlike austerity. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening in the first place.

Mr. Gregory: So this is the problem, Senator, whether if the president's message to European leaders is your approach hasn't worked. He wants a pro-growth agenda. What does that mean? More taxes? More spending? More stimulus? Is that his answer for the U.S. economy as well?

Sen. Durbin: No, Paul, David, I can tell you that Paul and I agree on the basic premise. We are facing serious deficit and debt challenge in this country. Our approaches are different. President Obama, and I agree with his position, thinks that we ought to make certain that we're strong coming out of this recession, that we are creating good jobs and growing businesses. Secondly, focusing on the working people, middle-class Americans, who have been struggling, falling behind when it comes to their income. And making certain that the programs that we preserve as we cut spending are critical programs like education and innovation and infrastructure. When I take a look at Paul Ryan's budget and see $150,000 in income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that is not consistent with those goals. If we really want to bring this deficit down, stick to the Simpson-Bowles Commission approach. Put everything on the table, but first get this economy on its feet and moving forward.

Now, you'd think the natural follow-up question would fall along the lines of, "Well, Senator, if we really do have a serious deficit problem, as you and Representative Ryan say you agree is the case, why are interest rates still falling? Why are investors still flocking to buy up U.S. sovereign debt? Why aren't we seeing the kind of capital flight like they're experiencing in Greece?" But you would not be living in official Washington if you thought that way, because:

Mr. Gregory: But I just want to go back to this point about what Europe is going through and the lessons from Europe because they seem to be very much be part of our political debate, as well, which is can you cut government spending and create economic growth or not?

Sen. Durbin: Well, I think you have to do some cuts in spending, that's part of it, for sure.

The only thing that is really going to be settled in November is how much punishment the unwashed masses will be forced to endure for the next four years. Is it too early to start drinking yet?

---Vitelius

Worked For a Few People Like Him in The Past

And they were all, without exception, insufferable assholes:

A renowned cost-cutter, Mr Dimon recently expressed alarm that fancy potato chips in clear cellophane tied with a ribbon were available in the JPMorgan dining room. His colleague Frank Bisignano launched an investigation, triumphantly reporting back that the chips were cheaper than alternatives bought from local stores.

Mr Dimon still prowls the corridors with a sheet of paper in his pocket---an “owe me” list of people who need to provide a report. “I used to have nightmares that my name would be on the list,” says one former employee.

Good thing he runs a tight ship. Wouldn't want to squander company resources that are best plowed back into the business.

---Vitelius

Killing Fields

People get Pulitzers for writing stuff like this. Or at least they should:

[A] branch of the federal Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services, has long specialized in killing animals that are deemed a threat to agriculture, the public and---more recently---the environment.

Since 2000, its employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West. They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves.

And in most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures were killed, or why. But a Bee investigation has found the agency's practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.

Granted, sometimes animals need to be exterminated---sometimes in large numbers---to prevent overpopulation, overgrazing of habitat, threats to nearby humans, etc., but the scope of this slaughter sure seems to border on the gratuitous:

In all, more than 150 species have been killed by mistake by Wildlife Services traps, snares and cyanide poison since 2000, records show. A list could fill a field guide. Here are some examples:

Armadillos, badgers, great-horned owls, hog-nosed skunks, javelina, pronghorn antelope, porcupines, great blue herons, ruddy ducks, snapping turtles, turkey vultures, long-tailed weasels, marmots, mourning doves, red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes and ringtails.

Many are off-limits to hunters and trappers. And some species, including swift foxes, kit foxes and river otter, are the focus of conservation and restoration efforts.

"The irony is state governments and the federal government are spending millions of dollars to preserve species and then . . . (you have) Wildlife Services out there killing the same animals," said Michael Mares, president of the American Society of Mammalogists. "It boggles the mind."

Yes, you read that right: "cyanide poison" = the same sodium cyanide pellets they used to use on condemned felons in the gas chamber at San Quentin. Hey, dynamite works pretty well too, from what I've been told.

Read the whole thing. Besides making your blood boil, it probably confirms the notion that creating whole government agencies specifically to serve a narrow corporate interest is a generally lousy idea, especially when that corporate interest has largely run its course. That's what Wildlife Services was intended to be---a service to ranchers at a time when livestock farming was spread across tens of thousands of sites throughout the Western states---but now that ranching has become consolidated in fewer but larger and well-guarded industrial facilities, it seems more like an agency that has lost track of its mission, its mandate, and even its reason for existing anymore. I generally don't pull "states' rights" arguments on this blog, but it sure seems to me that state and county animal-control/fish-and-game agencies could handle most if not all of these problems, and in a manner more sensitive to local environmental and political concerns. Maybe I'm missing something here, but why is this agency still around?

---Vitelius

Boys Will be Boys

Normally wouldn't spend much time examining our political leaders' boyhood hijinks---we're speaking, after all, of things that happened decades ago and which might not, and probably don't, reflect the ways they've changed as adults. I can think of a few incidents from my own childhood that in retrospect were, well, childish and embarrassing and that I wish I hadn't done, but even so, there's something kinda creepy about this:

Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, [Romney] spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors [...]

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Considering that the victim was later expelled for the offense of smoking a cigarette, one can only wonder how the course of American history might have changed if the governor's son had gotten himself kicked out of prep school.

I'll leave it to others to psychoanalyze Mitt's adolescence----though what we see here is, obviously, the violent enforcement of a culture of conformity via ritual humiliation that is completely in sync with the modern conservative id---but I found the article to be really kind of fascinating, not so much for what's in it, but for what isn't. For all the time that Mitt and his pals spent with the Blue Key Club and the Glee Club and the Spectator's Club, and holding formal dances with the Kingswood girls and cruising Woodward Avenue, you'd never know that there was an outside world beckoning them---you know, the '60s world of civil-rights marches and free-speech protests and race riots and an escalating war in Vietnam. A suffocating air seems to run through the entire piece, one which I think is reflective of the cultural atmosphere in a place like Cranbrook and which helps to explain to a great degree why people like Mitt Romney---and others who hail from backgrounds like his---just can't seem to relate to all those little people who attended public schools and who went to work in assembly plants building cars for Mitt's father after they graduated, or who got drafted on their 18th birthday and then shipped off to some southeast Asian rice paddy: Because in the rarified air of Cranbrook America, the little people simply don't exist---except, perhaps, as the butt of a crude joke.

Put another way: it's hard to feel empathy for a class of people if you rarely interact with them.

It would certainly take an exceptional personality, one capable of a great deal of honest introspection, to rise above the confines of such a cloistered upbringing and forge lasting psychological bonds with ordinary blue-collar Americans---I am thinking of certain Kennedys and maybe a Roosevelt or two here---but I think it's equally obvious that for all his intellectual and organizational skills, Mitt Romney was not, and is still not, possessed of the gift of self-examination. If he had, he'd never have made it in the world of private equity, and it's why he shouldn't be trusted with the office of the Presidency.

---Vitelius