Sheriffs in North Carolina are demanding access to state computer records identifying anyone in the state with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances. The obvious intrusion into the privacy of citizens is being justified as potentially allowing police to make more drug arrests.
The dragnet would pull in thirty percent of the citizens who have at least one prescription for a controlled substance. That is nearly 2.5 million people.
Such a proposal should result in public outcry and recrimination. However, the legislature is considering the request.
It is astonishing that we have come to a point where such a demand is considered plausible. We are quickly turning into a fishbowl society where every aspect of our lives remain under government surveillance and monitoring. This is a change in our country, which is based, as stated by Louis Brandeis, “the right to be left alone.” There are any number of things that can make it easier for the government including total access to financial and medical records as well as discretionary searches and seizures. Privacy often loses when “balanced” against claims of crime fighting. As citizens become more accustomed to government intrusion, it makes further intrusions possible. The Katz test premises the right of the government to engage in warrantless surveillance on the “reasonable expectation of privacy of citizens.” As those expectations fall, the power of the government increases — creating a downward spiral.
Privacy remains an abstraction that fades away in the presence of “tough on crime” rhetoric. What concerns me is that an association of sheriffs would have so little appreciation for core privacy values and traditions. As Brandeis observed in his dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928):
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Source: News Observer
Jonathan Turley
Buddha:
could it be that the income increase is because they have/had a bunch of money invested in the stock market and that income is not from labor but from increase in stock prices and dividends?
But are they parasites? They provided, by virtue of their wealth, funds for many companies to increase their wealth by virtue of capital improvements. Thus increasing dividends and stock prices so the rest of us could also enjoy larger returns.
AY,
DuPont is a good add. If we allowed the economic exploitation of hemp and its potential products the US may return to our former position as a viable economic entity.
“Are we being manipulated by something beyond left and right?”
Byron,
I know you to be intelligent. If you would only ponder the truth of this question, without the distractions of your pre-suppositions of economics, politics and morality, you would have the ability to see the world as it really is and thus move beyond the manipulations you’ve so easily fallen into.
amn…..my D is quitting on me…..
why are people surprised?
why is the news this morning touting an ‘expanding’ economy?
It sounds like the same tricks use to report the jobless benefits/job loss statistics. Once people drop off the rolls
they are no longer reflecte in these types of self-serving statistics. It is insanity using anything but the total beginning base-line inclusive if you want a true statistical reflection….. What oes that say about the current ‘expansion’?
I think what the poverty numbers show…expansion of poverty…and more trickonomics…
And now?
More poor people.
Poverty Rate In U.S. Saw Record Increase In 2009: 1 In 7 Americans Are Poor
“WASHINGTON — The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
Census figures for 2009 – the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency – are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.
It’s unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase – from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent – would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.
“The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there,” Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, “If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle.”
Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.
Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.”
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Again, those numbers were top 400 wealthiest households income up by 399%.
The bottom 90% incomes up by only 13%.
It’s rare I find a number or set of numbers that makes me feel physically ill.
The Constitution under direct attack by the military.
“Pentagon aims to buy up book
By Peter Finn and Greg Miller
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing – 10,000 copies – of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources.”
“The problem with the World is it is not a true free market. People should be able to take as much graft as humanly possible and never be prosecuted. This is the definition of a really free market.”
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I’d say we’re there.
Byron….what Buddha said. I couldn’t say it better. But here is a thought…(from Monica K.)
“The US Census Bureau’s latest report has determined that from the years 2000-2008, corporations have spent over 3 Trillion dollars [up from the previous $1T] oversees to build factories and put to work people not in the USA. …It is in our country’s best interest for you to stand with President Obama and not let your ethics be manipulated by republicans who do not care about 95% of the working class nor the middle-class; whom they seem to ignore! Tell me, how are the republicans going to “create jobs” for Americans; Americans who live in America, by allowing tax cuts to huge corporations and their billionaire CEO’s who build their companies oversees? ”
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and Byron you say; “To blame the rich or anyone else for that matter is to absolve people of responsibility for improper decisions they have made in the course of their lives. ”
I would agree with you except that implies a level playing field. I remember my attempt at investing in Krispy Kreme…I knew it would fly, I did the ‘homework’ I knew the demographic, I knew the numbers…it was a good opening stock. I was not allowed to buy! All the ‘front row seaters’ got first dibs and bottom prices….I suppose I could have bought AFTER they ran the stock up…this is 1 example of our current ‘market’ and the ‘superior knowlege’ at play….which looks a whole lot like who you know, and not what you know…which is more like power perverte than simple sexy power 😉
now, gotta go…LOTR’s is on and that is truly sacrosanct…
The problem with the World is it is not a true free market. People should be able to take as much graft as humanly possible and never be prosecuted. This is the definition of a really free market. How much can I take and not give back. I have mine screw you and yours’ Free Market.
There are costs to every transaction.
Every transaction has a function that can be modeled.
Profits don’t magically appear.
They are siphoned away from a market.
A market is a populace bound to an area as defined by the limits of the chain of distribution.
The rest should be evident.
Since populations are people, those in the 1% making the most profits are taking most from the populace and the latest data shows by a significantly disproportionate figure than since the Depression.
“‘The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low.’
Between 2006 and 2007, according to the IRS, the average income of the country’s 400 top taxpayers rose 31%, from $263.3 million to $344.8 million. At the same time, their effective income tax rate declined more than half a percentage point, from 17.17% in 2006 to 16.62% in 2007.
That’s all of a piece with trends documented by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, whose research into global income patterns shows that between 1992 and 2007, America’s 400 richest households increased their average income by 399%, while the bottom 90% of the country’s households gained just 13%. (Those percentages, by the way, reflect inflation-adjusted dollars.)” (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/24/opinion/la-oe-rutten24-2010feb24)
Let’s look at that, shall we?
399%.
13%.
The rest should be self-evident.
Any light dawning on the fundamental nature of the relationship between capitol and labor yet, Byron?
The perfect analog model is found in the animal kingdom in the for of semi-beneficial parasites: Organisms that in an appropriate proportion and/or location provide benefit to the host organism, but in the wrong proportion and/or location can kill the host organism and thus the environment that sustains them.
Byron,
I’d like to respond but can’t at the moment. I will later. You are correct….it isn’t just the poor that get screwed 😉
And it isn’t just the ‘rich’ that do the screwing….we sure can talk about ‘power’ … I don’t believe it is knowledge that is the great divider at the moment…
Dredd:
and we will all get one big unconstitutional enema.
Big Brother and Big Bother get together and become Big Doctor.
Whoopie … Rush Limbaugh is goin’ down … 😉
Woosty:
I don’t understand how the rich ride on the backs of the poor? Aren’t the poor usually poor for a reason? I understand that some people just have bad luck but to say the rich ride on the backs of the working poor is not what happens in reality.
Maybe it happened in the 1840’s when Marx developed his philosophy but I don’t know how you can say it today. Most skilled labor makes a decent wage and most unskilled labor works at menial jobs because that is all they are qualified to do. The rich do not prevent the poor from obtaining a skill set that is marketable or doing other things to better their lives.
To blame the rich or anyone else for that matter is to absolve people of responsibility for improper decisions they have made in the course of their lives. I could have gone to medical school or veterinary college had I studied harder, did wealthy doctors make me go party when I should have been studying?
Even educated people get taken advantage of by people who have superior knowledge. “Knowledge is power” is a powerful concept, the rich typically have superior knowledge and/or people who they pay to have whatever knowledge is necessary for success. The poor have access to that knowledge as well in the form of books and the Internet.
Did Bill Gates become rich on the backs of poor people? I don’t think so, he also made a good many people wealthy and made it possible for people like me to run small businesses very efficiently.
Fortunately or unfortunately society needs people who are able to create wealth. If it was easy everyone would be doing it but it isn’t and people like you and me and poor people need rich people who can afford our services and pay taxes to run government.
“The people are in a vice grip of opposing ideologies, both ultimately totalitarian in nature. It appears that the idea of political and economic freedom being corollaries is correct. Both are necessary for a free society, either one or the other is insufficient for liberty.”
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I don’t disagree w/this Byron. There certainly is an internal struggle but I don’t think it is necessarily ‘totalitarian’when the fundamentalists are out of the equation. It could be creative. There is no doubt in my mind that it has a lot to do with progressiveness vrs. stagnation. Moving forward or degenerating to n old feudal or fascist state. We have plumbed to death the ‘old ways’ and the new infrastructure has to be reflective of ways that are inclusive and work for everyone…not just the wealthy few on the backs of the working poor. And I personally don’t think we have to give up our Democracy or or Freedoms to acheive it.
lottakatz:
I have a question. the right thinks the left is to blame and the left thinks the right is to blame. If that is the case who the f*ck is actually doing this sh*t? If you listen to one side at a time it is the other side that is the cause and cases can be made by each for each as the cause.
Are we being manipulated by something beyond left and right? Or is it that the right wants to control morality and the left wants to control economics and so in a way each side is correct in their assessment of the other?
The people are in a vice grip of opposing ideologies, both ultimately totalitarian in nature. It appears that the idea of political and economic freedom being corollaries is correct. Both are necessary for a free society, either one or the other is insufficient for liberty.
“On topic, I’m in favor of transparency in everything. I’d make all records and data public, I wouldn’t care if it were issues of universal security.”
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Dude, that would be so irresponsible.
Courts and cops and ‘controlling’ forces are motivated by fear and thereby need to impose that on others…most citizens, are motivated by a different factor that is expressed in behaviors and expectations of trust. While there are mitigating factors…instability in a society will elevate the fear, which gets ‘communicated’ to those who trust, who then fear, which comforts the controllers…it is a cycle of abuse…and it is not healthy for children and other living things…..
Buddha, Blouise et al,
This is a contradiction in its greatest sense…It makes just no logical sense….
On topic, I’m in favor of transparency in everything. I’d make all records and data public, I wouldn’t care if it were issues of universal security.
I bet many sheriffs and cops would indeed appear quite high up the list for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances, nobody is that slow and apathic.
On the other hand I know that many of ’em could really use some Prozac when on the job too, as evidenced daily by JT. Short tempered wise-asses and power don’t mix.
even people who wear the costumes are not allowed facial hair. go figure. this is amerika, only porn stars and hippies have facial hair.