I recently posted a blog column about the increasing appearance of graffiti in national and state parks — and the need to ramp up punishments to deter this defacing of our natural wonders and wilderness. The last story concerned Andre Saraiva, an internationally known graffiti artist, who “tagged” and bragged about his own defacing of nature. He spray painted a boulder at the Joshua Tree National Park. Now authorities are looking for a teen who spray painted a rock face in Idaho to impress a girl and get her to go with him to the school prom. It should not be too different to investigate this particular crime, but the question remains the punishment that should be meted out.
The teenager painted the message “Destiny, Prom?” on the side of the Black Cliffs, in a popular rock climbing spot in Boise. Such acts remain misdemeanors, though that can result in up to six months in jail and a fine of $1,000.
As I noted earlier, there is a need to increase punishment to overcome a lower detection rate for these crimes — the relationship between punishment and detection is at the heart of deterrence theory. In my view, people have to go to jail more regularly to deter this crime. I feel the same way about the two Americans who recently defaced the Roman Colosseum. I also strongly believe that the Italians and other government need to release the names of such people.
However, the fact that this is a teenager would weigh in the balance. I still believe that a short jail time might be instructive but I draw a difference between a stupid, love-struck kid and a vanity-driven adult like Saraiva. Even for the teen, there should be a sanction (at least a long community service at the park in cleaning up areas) and a heavy fine if we are going to deter this crime. The victim is not simply the public but the ultimately voiceless victim in nature itself. Absent a serious deterring punishment, this type of defacement will continue — fueled by adolescent carelessness and, in the case of Saraiva, all-consuming narcissistic vanity.
By the way, Destiny, this guy is a total loser. You have better options, even if it means taking your Dad.
Kudos: Professor Roger Schechter
Source: NY Post
Wadebaby – everyone one of those cities went Democratic in 2012.
anonym
I trust you were able to escape the clutches of all those commies. Do keep checking under your bed, however. Now that Obama has nationalized all the police, it’s going to be up to you to extract them before they grab your naked foot in the middle of the night.
all ivy league schools are commie. probably 70-80% of all colleges are commie to varying degrees.
Schulte
Here’s an article from the Pittsburgh paper. Yet more communists, I guess.
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/03/12/Pittsburgh-named-pilot-site-for-federal-initiatve-to-build-trust-with-law-enforcement-police/stories/201503120195
And Birmingham has been taken over, too!
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2015/03
/birmingham_1_of_6_pilot_sites.html
Woe is me! Why oh why aren’t the police, the mayors, the citizens raising holy hell?
Could it be that zombies are eating their brains? Yes, it must be that. Well either that or some really stupid Americans believe that this is a plan to nationalize the nation’s police forces.
Schulte
The initiative is in conjunction with that well-known communist institution – Yale University..
National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice
Justice Collaboratory staff are working with other members of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice to design intervention programs that aim to improve police-community relations in six pilot cities around the country. The interventions will be developed based on existing research concerning procedural justice, implicit bias, and race and reconciliation. In addition to supporting the efforts of the National Initiative generally, the Collaboratory has primary responsibility for designing metrics to measure and demonstrate the effect of these interventions and comparing the results with six untreated comparison communities. The Collaboratory is taking a leading role in producing reports and scholarly articles to disseminate the results of these interventions and their effects on building community trust and justice in the six pilot sites.
http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/tjc_nationalinitiative.htm
Here’s an article from the Ft. Worth paper about the program. Obviously they are all communists, too.
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article13787969.html
Schulte
Fine. If you do not know the difference between a federal program and nationalizing a city’s police force – then the fault lies in your comprehension and I can’t do anything about that kind of stupidity. Your time would be better spent countingr all those FEMA camps under the Wall Marts in Texas.
Once again you are always wrong.
Wadewilliams – I know that you are throwing up all these strawmen, but it is an effort to nationalize the police force. Obama has said so. BTW, it is nice of you to post all those links, but you and I know that this administration could not tell the truth if it said it was taking a p*iss.
anonym – Harvard faculty donated 98% of their funds to the Democratic Party. Doesn’t that seem unbalanced politically?
Darren
Please unblock me from your posts.
It appears that weekends are not my friend…
Spread the punk out on the rocks on his back and nail each wrist and each ankle to the stone so that he is stretched out bleeding. Leave him there to rot for eternity. Take photos and put them in his school yearbook. The mob should do this not the government.
Schulte
Name the four cities.
Wadewilliams – my bad, there were 6 cities not 4 for the first trial run of the federal police.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/20501-obama-chooses-six-cities-to-test-federal-police-scheme
Paul
Research the government lending to Germany and the private banking lending to Germany and you see two very different models. The private lenders went on well into 1942. A good lawyer, lots of complicit members in the government, and you get away with murder, or funding it.
issac – send me links. I cannot find anything that fits with what you are saying.
Darren
Can you unblock me from your thread?
http://ig.bestpsychologydegrees.com/conspiracy.jpg
Wadewilliams
Unfortunately this typically goes straight through one ear and out the other, no stopping on the way, no reason to. Ya needs your conspiracy theories. Oh the horror.
Dusty
You need to get off the 2008 crazy wagon…
Q: Is Obama planning a Gestapo-like “civilian national security force”?
A: This false claim is a badly distorted version of Obama’s call for doubling the Peace Corps, creating volunteer networks and increasing the size of the Foreign Service.
FULL QUESTION
I read a quote from Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia which stated that Obama wants to set up a civilian national security force that was similar to the “Gestapo” or the Nazi Brownshirts.
What is the truth behind Obama’s statements that he wants to create a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the military]”?
FULL ANSWER
This question stems from an interview that Republican Rep. Broun of Georgia gave to The Associated Press Nov. 10. The story carried a headline, “Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship.” It said that Broun “fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.” And it quoted him this way:
Rep. Paul Broun, Nov. 10: It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s [Obama’s] the one who proposed this national security force. … That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did.
Similar claims have been circulating in right-leaning blogs and conservative Web sites ever since July, when Obama made a single reference to a “civilian national security force” in a campaign speech in Colorado. Obama’s detractors make much of his expansive (and exaggerated) description of such a force as being “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military. They also ignore the context.
Obama was not talking about a “security force” with guns or police powers. He was talking specifically about expanding AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps and the USA Freedom Corps, which is the volunteer initiative launched by the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, and about increasing the number of trained Foreign Service officers who populate U.S. embassies overseas.
Here is the relevant portion of what Obama actually said, with the sentences quoted selectively by Broun and others in bold.
Obama, July 2, Colorado Springs, CO: [As] president I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots [from 75,000] and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals, like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their effort connected to a common purpose.
People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve. Because when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem – they are the answer. So we are going to send more college graduates to teach and mentor our young people. We’ll call on Americans to join an energy corps, to conduct renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.
We will enlist our veterans to find jobs and support for other vets, and to be there for our military families. And we’re going to grow our Foreign Service, open consulates that have been shuttered and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.
We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. We need to use technology to connect people to service. We’ll expand USA Freedom Corps to create online networks where American can browse opportunities to volunteer. You’ll be able to search by category, time commitment and skill sets. You’ll be able to rate service opportunities, build service networks, and create your own service pages to track your hours and activities.
This will empower more Americans to craft their own service agenda and make their own change from the bottom up.
Does that sound like a force that could kick down your door in the middle of the night and haul you off to a Gulag or concentration camp? You decide.
– Brooks Jackson
Sources
Evans, Ben. “Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship.” The Associated Press, 10 Nov. 2008.
“Sen. Barack Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event, Colorado Springs, CO.” CQ Transcriptions, 2 July 2008.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/11/obamas-national-security-force/
Wadewilliams – the Obama administration is trying out a national police force in four cities, using federal funds.
Paul
I have lived in the West of Canada, Alberta and have travelled extensively in the ‘American West’. The people are much the same except that the American cowboy is linked to a wilder time of a more brutal incursion into those wild and open spaces. There is not much difference in the desire to be left alone and view the world in a comfortably simplistic way. Canadian cowboys don’t have the same patina, accent, and of course guns. Regarding cows and rodeos, the Calgary Stampede is still the pinnacle of rodeos.
issac – Calgary maybe all is for cows but for horses you have to do the Bucking Horse Sale in Miles City, MT.
Paul
There was smoke and fire. If you read up on it, British, French, and American financiers were funding Germany’s recovery. Early on it can be argued that the smoke was a result of having been part of a financial system and left a residue on those involved. Closer to 1940, not so much. 1942, the banks that Prescott Bush was associated with at high enough levels to be part of policy were laundering Nazi money through Switzerland to the US to finance the German war machine. Think about where the gold came from. Also, think about these titans of industry and finance and if they really moved along without knowing everything. I realize that Sweden and other countries were also doing this, but there is a certain coldness to the Bush family that might have its origins with Prescott. One wants a leader that can read the writing on the wall and go with the winners but by 1942 it was evident just who the Nazis were and who the winners would be. Not much different between Prescott and Cheney.
I suppose the real issue is the contradiction of America standing for all that is right, just, fair, and good when it elects leaders such as these.
issac – America funded the German government before Hitler came to power. It was actually the calling in of the loans from the US that brought the Nazis their highest vote total.
Paul
‘Bigot’! That’s pretty bold talk for a one eyed fat man.
issac – would be if I were either fat or one-eyed.
BDS.
Isaac, I have come to see our differences are in large part because of the limitations of this form of communication. If we were to sit down to a nice meal much of our misunderstandings would be resolved. You have a caricature of me, and Americans in your mind. Now, some Americans do fir that “You’re not from here” stereotype. By the end of the first course you would clearly see that does not fit me.
Paul
Google Prescott Bush and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
There’s a lot of ‘nothing was proved’ and this and that, however, the guy along with a lot of oligarchs not only facilitated Hitler’s rise to power, cuz he was good for business, he only stopped banking Nazi gold teeth because he was forced to.
As far as the reference to the midget cowboy, we refer to them as ‘little people’ nowadays and anyone who is used to that would see ‘midget’ as it is used to illustrate something like a midge, or a small sneaky submarine, or some one of limited or challenged mental capacity. I stand by my adjective.
Regarding Canadians and cowboys, visit the Calgary Stampede someday for two weeks of pure cowboy, the largest rodeo in the world. Canadian cowboys don’t wannabe anything other than Canadian cowboys, second to none. Unless of course you are referring to John Wayne or Ronald Reagan. Now there are two of the quintessential wannabes. And one made President, twice. Reflect on that. You can either take it as disrespect or as the ultimate compliment. The US is so great a country that it can weather sixteen years of the likes of Reagan and Bush. Now that’s power.
issac – 3 things: 1) there is very little smoke and no fire regarding Bush and the Nazis. 2) I stand by my comment that you are a bigot 3) anyone who thinks that the Calgary Stampede is the epitome of the ‘way of the cowboy’ just hasn’t lived in the West.