COMRADE PUTIN CONQUERS CRIME?

How does anyone of President Putin's vision even have time to tackle something as profoundly elaborate and significant as crime? Because in The New York Times, Tuesday, June 25th's Putin Rules Out Extradition for Snowden in Russia Airport, it sounded a bit as if he's been in the gym. In addition, four days earlier, last Friday, June 21st, The New York Times ran Putin Puts Pensions at Risk in $43 Billion Bid to Jolt Economy, which stunned me with what could have just been lines of parody. Except what if President Putin's announcement is true in scope, this plan could begin changing the criminal enterprise system all over the world? 

Quoting The New York Times. President Vladimir V. Putin announced a risky stimulus program, along with an amnesty plan for white-collar criminals intended to improve investor confidence.

Wow! Amnesty, technically for arbitrarily supervised white collar crime is absolutely fabulous. Then Russia's justice system may seem less the result of darts thrown at targets with no civil rights? 

Russia's Government can't possibly expect to compensate all unjust fraud so the plan could just devolve into legalese that The State is kind to let anyone free. Victims may remain desirable statistics by reviving their business careers. While some entrepreneurs will disappear sloppily, unable to regain traction over tasks they'd conquered. Otherwise why bother confiscating their property at all? 

Why not wipe the full slate clean and forgive judges leveraged by  ruthless competition? Think about how deep forgiveness must reach for everyone to forgive? About how if this is just to calm investors, innocent Russians are once again betrayed by the absurdness of purity being a reason not to try. Not being a lawyer, I myself can only advise something unrealistically foolish. Buy out the corruption, President Putin. Early retirement for everybody. Because no court system in the world is large enough to alter the financing of corruption all by themselves.  

As President Putin can capably guess. Corruption won't be faced from behind a podium in front of cameras. Facing corruption is perhaps unrealistic, but still not a reason for half-hard-hearted zealous enforcement of law that should be altering crime's incentives rather than just perfecting the feeding at the trough.

So? Who will Boris Titov's miracle lawyer be, whose staff starts the untangling of the Great Stalinist Scapegoat, Opportunism? Or is this breakthrough a Patronage Feast too?

Ваш ход, сэр?

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Key Part of Voting Rights Act in The New York Times by Adam Liptak, June 25, 2013

Three Cheers For Summer Vacation

This decision could be thought of as nitpicking minutiae and hardly a political score. Because just because country clubs include all the right people now, doesn't mean the complete culture is included. So, no matter how cold this decision could be made to seem towards racial equality now, I hope the whole country takes the Supreme Court's challenge to prove them right when they're not completely wrong.

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Anthology Film Archives 32 2nd Ave at 2nd St

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The Soapbox View

PROGRESS DEVOURED THE NEWS?

Two 2012 Soapbox Views on George Zimmerman's Sanford, Fl. Trial 

May 23, Trayvon Martin Case July 18, Molded Opinion 

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Flying Bicycle - In Flight

Congratulations 2013 Inductee, Tim Raines
My First Interview, 1976

Does A Mexican Trip And Invitation To Moscow Make A Difference Surrounded By Handlers, ALL THE TIME?

  Heads of state follow protocol by meeting on neutral ground or exchanging home bases. Retinues transport and place leaders where safest for pictures at some particular time. Could Hawaii have loosened up Presidents Putin and Obama? Then next time take in the Black Sea if the muscle and might of Moscow weren’t so important to please. Point being, travel, even for work, is usually a form of vacation. Why else have this pretext of exotic summit locations lending issues a level of (self-)importance? How necessary is this expensive carting around of such flamboyant roadshows other than to stimulate local economies? Oops, never mind, maybe they could tour the world’s ghettos? Or how about their having a TED TALK to iron things out in front of a crowd rather than just threading together agreements practically walked away from while being signed?

  So, Putin and Obama travelled and saw the G20 Summit‘s sights and everything is hunky-dory now that Reuters reported agreement on Monday that violence in Syria must end while offering no new solutions or sign of a healed rift over tougher sanctions against Syria. Ba dump bump. President Assad’s jam was noted here Jun 1, 2012. 

  While professor of government and politics at George Mason University, Mark N. Katz wrote the following on Tuesday for CNN. "Moscow doesn’t see itself as willfully and wrongly defying 'the broad international community.' They genuinely believe America and its Western allies are pursuing misguided policies toward Syria and Iran. For Obama to think he can get Moscow to adopt the American approach without compensation is simply an insult to Putin. If it wants Russia’s cooperation on Syria and Iran, it is going to have to make significant concessions to Moscow on other issues. Washington must now decide whether the cooperation it wants from Russia is really worth that. The Obama administration needs to understand America cannot have its borscht and eat it, too." – Mr. Katz’s CNN essay also includes the concessions President Putin might need to do the right thing as far as Assad is concerned.

  So with the public excluded, the Press was reduced to commentary on the two pitchers, Putin and Obama, and how they looked and what that meant for the game. Except there’s no reason for leaders to tell anyone anything and they’re never alone. There’s probably a table vote for this week’s designated loud mouth to reveal tidbits to the public(s) as inevitably politics is a circus performance and Press this time upset the acrobats didn’t jump higher. Even though Obama told reporters afterwards, “We agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war.” Plus President Putin said, “From my point of view, we have found many common points on this issue,” adding they’d continue discussions.

  Diplomatic. However reporters cited attitude, pointing out U.S. and Russian officials described the meeting as positive and business-like while both leaders were seen as cool and detached. A personal dynamic that sharply contrasted chummy Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush. Journalists entering the cramped hotel ballroom, saw neither smile while leaning toward each other in discussion. Then remaining seated, President Obama initiated a handshake for the cameras. It was reported Obama sometimes gestured while Putin sat stiff through the joint appearance, and both glumly watched reporters leave and made no move to re-engage with each other.

  The Press is kidding too, right? Thinking this confrontation should be more like J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon establishing a humbling rapport before Congress? Why would Obama and Putin not display tension over what probably can’t be reconciled to everyone’s satisfaction? For them to portray anything beyond grim is just putting a face on things, don’t you think? But sometimes its hard to tell. Wouldn’t it be great if all that mattered to have a fantastically happy day was All The Presidents Smiled?

  USA TODAY covered a joint statement issued at the conclusion of the meeting that symbolically, if not in fact, repeated an at least year-old mantra: In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of all violence and express full support for the efforts of UN/League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, including moving forward on political transition to a democratic, pluralistic political system that would be implemented by the Syrians themselves in the framework of Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity. We are united in the belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own future.

  Uh huh. Who’s cleaning the mess up if not the suit taking credit?

  Smile, everyone’s watching. Politicians?

  Yeah, I’ve never seen two men colder toward each other my entire life.

While this masterpiece was faked.

  This was a presumably valid, MSNBC, American television discourse on the presidents’ meeting.

До свидания

Dosvedonya

bye

  First you try and try and try again …

6/20/2012

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Does A Mexican Trip And Invitation To Moscow Make A Difference Surrounded By Handlers, ALL THE TIME?

6/20/2012 Uh huh. Who’s cleaning the mess up if not the suit taking credit? Smile, everyone’s watching. Politicians? Yeah, I’ve never seen two men colder toward each other my entire life. While this masterpiece was faked. This was a presumably valid, MSNBC, American television discourse on the presidents’ meeting.

До свидания

Dosvedonya

bye

 First you try and try and try again …

September 29 - October 11, 2016

Uh Huh

  The original essay's first paragraph could have been written today in light of September 9th's cease-fire treaty over Aleppo that was shredded past mulching the documents themselves. 
  Try again, 6/20/2012? Been here before. Where it doesn't matter what doesn't change when the same is the change being called for. Unleashed discipline worked up to feverish devout proportions that already cultivated what's foolish about us. How the vast schemes civilization spawns, viciously inflate politics to resemble a country's peoples' framed reference that's the real game personalities, heading pyramids, rule. Go team. Ah machinations. Really we're all just sitting back, shaking our heads, baffling over what political professionals want understood when there's not an issue jargon can't undermine and beat? 

  Go forth and diversify, my eye, since capitalism's supposed to prove it's socialist. But besides that. What if the resources that make the world so hospitable are necessary to the planet's health? Science can't prove otherwise. Hell yeah the atmosphere's screwier. But I could feel better if the planet were more solid-ish. So what?  

  The future will manufacture oxygen and this generation scapegoated for their inconvenience. How every era's remembered, when faced, for tragedies passed from the past. Useless not to forgive generations that naively developed modernity's fossilized culture. Complicated sentence. Complicated formula? Bottom line. Mass transportation should have been subsidized to the level the automobile was and still is. Safety? We're so d___ smart the reality is we can't finance solutions. Too expensive or cheap. Not enough moola flying around to replace coal with solar. Earthlings could imagine burning our souls. Money making decisions people do, because what should a mechanic do? Collect buggy whips? So transportation's song remains the same. Where the mentality is bikes are in the way and meant to be the pedestrians' bane. Because cars can't be safer. So custom adapts and makes it all our faults the entire transportation system isn't already designed safer. Bridges, trestles and tunnels should be everywhere trains and the rest of us cross. How could we expect people to accept room for bikes when so much more room than necessary was used to explore congestion? Going in one direction doesn't mean losing the other entirely, because, as I understood decades back, people aren't giving up mobile thrones. 

  But this generation's so smart and why responsible for all the blame now. Sure China copied the United States. A crystal ball wasn't necessary to see that coming. It was important to sell more cars to a culture that already knew how to ride a bike. Ethics have nothing to do with law is probably why the law's most sought after as a means for revenge than the promotion of lifestyles that would thwart bad things happening. Poverty? Doesn't have to be that difficult to be poor. Yet capital remains so hog wild pretending to chase inflation, ignoring the penny's value reduced to relative meaninglessness. 

  That's where the poor are cheated. The lack of vision that's brought about the categorical positioning of economic classes, that, based on cultural advancements, should have been matured past if our supposed intelligence could be factored in. Huh. Yeah the point. Well. The point's the future's blaming this generation as the one that could have made the difference, except for the broad incapacity to pivot economically. Politicians of every stripe throw around the accusation of corruption that pales in recognition of the refusal to face our overly greased consciences. 

  So the entire Congressional  apparatus, bureaucrats, head-in-ground citizenry, dinosaur-ish commercial interests, all are responsible for September 29th's New Jersey train slamming into a wall killing a woman and injuring 108 people because better technology to prevent mistakes, termed accidents, are on hold because SAFE TRANSPORTATION was never affordable for a country that irresponsibly over-indulged the loving of our mobile thrones. 

  No accountants worth their fees would undermine a client, or former client, disputing that said client weren't the one who genius-ly figured their way through the tax code to profitability after a substantial business loss. But not all of us wedge access to that great wealth provider, falsely attributed to P. T. Barnum, described as "a sucker born every minute."

  No reason for comfortable children to do no less than support every stance their parent might take when addressing the public on the national stage. Chelsea Clinton for instance. 

  When coaxing the American public,  integrity ...

  Some credence to the idea civilization is in full ironic mode. Maybe turned up to 11. Where everything said before turns out exactly as ironically expected. Trade and treaties last as long as militarily feasible, whereby contestants are comfortable with either dependent strategy. Uh uh. Doesn't make exact sense to me either, but let's look for what shapes up next. Anyway ...

The title - 

Does A Mexican Trip And Invitation To Moscow Make A Difference Surrounded By Handlers, ALL THE TIME?

- is apparently accurate.

  So choose your conspiracies wisely shouldn't be good advice, yet. Everything working up nicely for the Vegas presidential debate. What better place to bury the remaining hatchets? The only question, will the roulette wheel ever stop so we can get off? 

  From 6/20/2012: Obama told reporters afterwards, “We agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war.” 

Uh huh.

  Cut to the chase. The perpetual spiral needs relooping.

George W. Bush Should Apologize

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Moral Totems Should Be Risen To, Not Fallen From?

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Soapbox View 

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

The Water Commissioner tapped his pipe against his hand and looked at the Police Commissioner. “No sir," he said. "You may know better than I. But if a water tunnel is clogged, unclog it. Perpetual crime is wrong. This incessant violence over bad human habits being pure criminal behavior is useless debris. Plugging the gutter instead of the civic responsibility to unplug it. What overruns cities is playing war with the Criminal Enterprise System."

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

The New York Times

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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. 

How Much World Achievement

Is Aspirational Veneer?

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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.

Also timely packaged and covered by The New York Times 

in Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows is the new book

The Burglary by Betty Medsger

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.

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Oh, and President Putin? It would be nice if you polished your perspective on this link - 

Democratic Independence Overview 

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 Soapbox View Satirical Twist pursuing the 

Twin Legacies Andy Rooney and I.F. Stone?

Everyone Has Real Choices?

Fictionalized Biography