Please forgive my tardiness with new Soapbox Views. Sometime in April the essays should become weekly again. Ukraine deserves comment but the essays' quality are my first concern. I am aware the issues surrounding Ukraine/Crimea are a fiesta for the world's Chesters pounding their chests for support. And as always your reading The Soapbox View is extremely cherished. - Also this week New York City's Chief of Police publicly voiced his long time support of medical marijuana while expressing a tolerance for this particular facet of the Criminal Enterprise System. Harry Anslinger's Dependents! Society should be ashamed of feelings of superiority not maturing. A sycophantic opinion was also delivered on Meet The Press by California's Governor Jerry Brown who apparently can't live down the shame that his father was defeated for governor by the future President Ronald Reagan whose War on Drugs facilitated the quashing of marijuana smuggling only to be replaced by the more wicked enticements of more expensive but cheaper to smuggle dehumanizing chemicals. Way to pander to the moral rectitude vote, Governor. Also not to jump all over the New York City Police Chief, he's from Boston where the Boston Herald is making a concentrated effort to appear righteous on this issue. In a city where I'd venture to guess crime on alcohol might be regarded as a sacred tradition.
In Addition, of Consideration
Sunday, April 6, 2014, The New York Times Despite Support in Party, Democratic Governors Resist Legalizing Marijuana, by ADAM NAGOURNEY notes that in her state of the state address this year, New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan invoked, "Legalizing marijuana won't help us address our substance use (heroin) challenge," and "Experience and data suggests it will do the opposite."
Except the challenge is being civilized rather than at senseless war with ourselves as prey begun by Harry Anslinger's allies and carried out by the Criminal Enterprise System's dependents. A facet of which was discussed, Saturday, April 5th, on CUNY-TV's Criminal Justice Matters with host Stephen Handelman questioning journalist, Mike Power and the Drug Policy Alliance's Stephanie Jones citing the problem where marijuana is clamped down on tighter, substitute chemicals are more pervasive. Like beating inflation, war won't be over until it's stopped. Or imagine emphasizing the drug war's tragedy through a nationwide boycott on alcohol that would probably just prove getting blasted out of our minds is what the country's addicted to though there are people aware drugs don't mix?
And here's a tune for this occasion.
Because falling short of virtuous still seems the case for civilization's over-enforcement of morality?
With sin and vice the fuzzy lines between socially fostered criminality - and a justice that's more than the concept of a day in court that means so many different things all over the world. For example President Putin's recent symbolic Russian pardons that can only be wished meant an even more dynamic solution to corruption's affordability is coming. Sure, justice prevails. And, if nothing else, Russia proves criminal persecution is too much of a game. Okay? Maybe a more moral generation supplants a corrupt one? Except injustice was already done for that purpose by the Soviet Union. So, scapegoats aside, actually solving corruption requires imagination, huh President Putin? Let the lawyers win may be the best chance Earth has?
Uncorking Political Reality
Adjusting his seat cushion the Chief of Police nodded at the Mayor. Then snapped his rod planting his baited hook exactly where the shade of the big oak touches the river when the sun crosses. Satisfied with his cast, the chief relaxed and said, "You want me to admit it's uncomfortable making personal arrests? No. Fact is it's an honor to protect and serve and that simple. Yep. Crime is money and just so you know, I'm just a Police Chief and you're Water Commissioner. There's a whole wide world of moral indignation to pacify before the righteous shed their shields and armor. A game? Yes. Sometimes clearcut and foggy as you suggest. None the less, the high cost of living requires laying off police. The very public servants whose duty is supervising the broken. The last duty we need pressured and understaffed. It's as if no one's ever read a crime novel. Solving desperation is still the solution to face yet all over the world the job pressure of arrest performance causes great anxiety when the last thing the public needs is adversaries. Thankfully the Justice System regards individual rights but is reluctant to curtail the system's survival taxing the criminal class you define as the Criminal Enterprise System. Yes. Everything can be blamed on Congress. The Political Science of Public Opinion. Enforcing morality is immorally excusing criminal opportunity when the point should really be we're smarter than this. Justice for everyone should be more than just similar to a trip to the casino."
The mayor reeled his line in a bit unconcerned with the façade of western decadence. He said, "I'm just a mayor."
So the Water Commissioner said, "Defusing crime is moral. It's time criminal conspiracy was more than a question of profit. Something solved."
"Uh huh," agreed the chief and the mayor knew he'd been teamed.
"Otherwise," the Water Commissioner said. "Politics is a toy. Politicians and journalists pretending the petty bitterness of the political trade just pops up from time to time instead of every back-stabbing day. Symptoms. That's all journalists get. It's a media circus up north with that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Bridge-gate Scandal. May as well have been his own Public Relations crew. President or next Mike Huckabee? What's the difference? The world is corrupted? Please? What's the difference? Unless tolerance is the point this world's adaptation to circumstances is circumspect at best. Because face it. There's no question the world's success can't be disguised. There's too much progress for just the veneer of wealth. Except the least among us are still thought better off than they ever were. So what? Custom and culture must mature because technology already exists for civilization's perfection. Heck. Bill Gates and friends are plugging up some holes in economic discrepancy. It's just the business of charity hasn't fulfilled capitalism's ultimate aim yet re-making Earth as if this were any rich person's home, basement or boat."
The Police Chief smiled at his line and Mayor wiped his brow and Water Commissioner went ahead. "Except we have this great noble scapegoat solution for the world's inequities and poverty. Education will save the next generation from second-rate citizenship. How dare anyone not be numbed into believing the best of all possible worlds shouldn't be outright Utopia for a specific some? Especially since the best of all possible world's gets what? 62 per cent in a Marist Poll? 58% Harris? CNN?"
"Ah," the Mayor spat warning bass away. "Poor people were once commonly thought to get by. Going back to when the whole world was either ruthless or poor. People got by. Plus it's still not thought that bad for the American poor. Even now when we're worried out of our skulls whether the moderately successful can ever survive at these prices?"
Then of course the Police Chief reeled in a six pounder and their prestige allowed them to call it a good day?
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Oh where oh where have the economics of scale gone?
Soapbox View Economic crises? Soapbox View
Thomas Friedman If I Had a Hammer
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An unnecessary elitist attitude is being dismissive of rescuing animals from pet shelters and preferring factory pedigrees. They're animals civilization domesticated. Not jewelry. It should be better than a law. A custom where owners of bred animals have shelter pets too.
The New York Times, January 5, 2014
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Everything Is Finance?
The miracles of this age would appear to people from the 1st or 8th centuries as something called Heaven on Earth. Yet people treat this place like hell?
It's all imagery? Soapbox View noted moderation had been applied to the stop and frisk policy by the outgoing administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But politics found it necessary to rub the issue in. (Yesterday, when this page was published, the New York City Mayor and Police Commissioner announced stop and frisk has been reduced even lower and acknowledged the previous year's reduction.) The fact is there needs to be a lot more nuance to politicians than their politics require they portray.
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A nice coincidence is author Thomas Pynchon, in his current novel, Bleeding Edge, and I in The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service, both wrote the same New York perception meant for readers. Though his specific sentence uses one curse word, I spent time deciding not to use, his use of slang emphasizes the idea's point. Dag gum it.
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Popularity Requires Sycophants?
The New York Times, January 5, 2014, published Senators Differ Sharply on Penalty for Snowden, by Brian Knowlton. A concise profile of this great secrecy debate's posturing that's hard for people to come down from their principles on. Of course be patriotic. But condemning Edward J. Snowden really does mean the competitively condemned have less recourse against power for its own sake as it exists all over the world. For example: The martyrdoms of the executions of Ken Saro-Wiwa and now Kim Jong-un's uncle, Jang Song-taek haunt the world. Executing our way to whose better world? Teaching injustice is terrorism and proving it is one suggestion. Either this planet develops more examples of objective magnanimity or those samples will become less and less till there are none. Then all jurisprudence rubber stamps whatever the most powerful want done.
Amnesty because the country needs to move on even while this issue's momentum keeps it serious business for quite a few lawyers a very long time. Perhaps forever? When the last thing the world needs is to be more paranoid. When a world safe even and especially for the cops is the right thing to do. No? The weaponry can always be picked up. It's the grudges that must be laid down.
in Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows is the new book
for a generation that's outgrown J. Edgar Hoover's prejudices, or not? That's one question and power's a bitch isn't an answer.
Oh, and President Putin? It would be nice if you polished your perspective on this link -
More than likely in your spheres of influence someone has a subscription to The New York Times. Not that anyone should subscribe to what critics think, but objectivity is more than just thinking what you want.
The problem is, as President Putin probably perceives, is it's an impossible fortune to finance an uncorrupt system. The ruthlessness of law enforcement notwithstanding. America lays off police it can't afford after the great leap forward in the nineteen-seventies spawned the competitive less-corrupt 6-figure bureaucrat salary that today's still just a bucket-spit compared to the free market packages government influence assures. Because the absense of real reform isn't just something in President Putin's lap? Or do we really know how this money gets spread around?
The problem is, as President Putin probably perceives, is it's an impossible fortune to finance an uncorrupt system. The ruthlessness of law enforcement notwithstanding. America lays off police it can't afford after the great leap forward in the nineteen-seventies spawned the competitive less-corrupt 6-figure bureaucrat salary that today's still just a bucket-spit compared to the free market packages government influence assures. Because the absense of real reform isn't just something in President Putin's lap? Or do we really know how this money gets spread around?
