Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty-(Guest Blogger)
The main stream media was full of stories in the last week concerning a judge’s decision in Michigan to allow the Bankruptcy of Detroit to go forward. What the media seems to have omitted from the discussion, is just how pensions in Detroit and across the country have come under attack.
“Now that a federal judge, Steven Rhodes, has ruled that the bankruptcy can proceed, a central issue will be whether the city can jettison up to $3.5 billion in accrued pension benefits owed city workers (which Orr claims are unfunded). With accrued state and municipal pension benefits protected by the Michigan constitution, Judge Rhodes’ ruling sets a chilling precedent for future municipal bankruptcies.” Truth-outContinue reading “Pension Busting”→
A family of three from Marshfield, Massachusetts, could face criminal charges. Their crime? Harassing duck hunters. Police Chief Phil Tavares said his department is seeking a clerk magistrate hearing in order “to determine whether there is probable cause to charge the family members with three counts of hunter interference and two counts of threatening to commit a crime.”
Julie Carreiro said that her family was awakened very early one October morning this fall by the sound of gunfire. She, her husband, and their son ran outside. They found hunters on conservation land that abuts their property. The hunters reportedly told police that the Carreiros had threatened them with physical harm if they didn’t leave. Chief Tavares said, “Members of the family began to use air horns to possibly attempt to scare away the water fowl, which is interference with a hunter.”
UPDATED: The recent case of Ethan Couch, 16, out of Burleson, Texas has been previously addressed on this blog (here and here) in general terms of the fundamental unfairness and apparent bias of the plea deal and in psychological terms concerning both the social isolation wealth can engender and the consequent lack of empathy that creates. Let’s look at this in a little more detail as relates to justice and the corrosive effect such rulings have on social order. The pattern of facts in this case are critical to examining whether or not Couch’s sentence was just and inform whether or not such rulings are corrosive to society as a whole. To summarize:
Hollie Boyles, 52, Shelby Boyles, 21, Brian Jennings, 41, and Breanna Mitchell, 24, are the primary victims.
From left: Brian Jennings, Breanna Mitchell, Hollie Boyles, Shelby Boyles.
Just before midnight on June 15, 2013, Mitchell was driving west on Burleson-Retta Road when she had a blowout, forcing her pickup truck into a roadside ditch. Living nearby, Hollie and Shelby Boyles heard the blowout and went to render assistance. Jennings, a Burleson youth minister, was returning from his son’s high school graduation party when he stopped to assist Mitchell as well. All four were on the roadside when they were struck by a pickup truck driven by Ethan Couch. The Ford F-350 pickup was going between 65 and 70 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour speed zone when it clipped Mitchell’s stranded truck before striking and killing the four bystanders. Couch’s truck then struck Jenning’s pickup truck (in which two young boys were waiting) sending it back into the roadway. There it collided with an eastbound Volkswagon carrying two Burleson girls before going off the south side of the road. Couch’s truck then flipped over, coming to rest against a tree on the north side of the road. Two other teenagers riding in the bed of Couch’s truck were thrown from the vehicle. One suffered broken bones and internal injuries. The other suffered a traumatic brain injury that left them unable to move or talk.
Author’s Note: Grace Under Pressure is an ongoing series of posts honoring everyday people who courageously make positive differences in their own lives and consequently in the lives of others. It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes live among us and that their service is quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours, too.
I think it was master poet John Keats who wrote “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.” Keats understood that life’s value is not truly measured in days or years but in the depth of feeling and magnanimity of spirit we demonstrate.
I thought a lot about that line when I read about 16-year-old Olivia Wise who died last week from inoperable brain cancer. There is always tragedy in the death of one so young and beautiful, but the loss was made double after learning about the sparkling spirit we lost. Olivia, despite her pain and despair, somehow found the courage to rail against her fate with a viral YouTube video portraying her version of pop star Katy Perry’s hit, Roar.
Megyn Kelly, on her Fox News show, declared: “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that.” While I grant that Jesus was a historical figure, Santa was only based on a historical figure, a monk named Nicholas. Nicholas was born around 260 A.D. in Patara, in present-day Turkey. Nicholas was probably Greek although little is known about his parents. While it make make Kelly uncomfortable, Nicolas certainly wouldn’t have looked as white as Santa appears in the Coca-Cola ads.
We have previously discussed CaptainDisillusion’s debunking of Miss Ping’s video. Look who gets hammered coming down the stairs at the end of this video.
I believe that it is impossible to deal with any problem until one understands the underlying nature of that problem. The analogy of a Physician treating the symptoms of a patient, but ignoring the cause of those symptoms, comes to mind. We have the medicine to deal with the specific manifestation of an illness like a headache and a fever, but in ameliorating the discomfort of the symptoms, we may miss the underlying pathology. This happened to me last March when shortly after being prescribed a change in the anti-rejection medicines that keep me alive after my heart transplant, I began to get so sick that I needed hospitalization in intensive care. I won’t bore you with the grimy details of this sudden downturn in health, but I must note that my most important bodily functions began to shut down. What is curious about this incident is that my wife, who is internet savvy, immediately began to suggest to my Doctors that I was having a bad reaction to the medicinal change. At first they ignored her as they had Department Heads in Cardiology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, Neurology, Proctology, Urology and even Dermatology come in to examine me and pore over my medical charts. Finally, in response to my wife’s unfailing advocacy, they returned me to my prior anti-rejection medication. To my Physician’s surprise and possible chagrin the symptoms almost immediately began to abate and within in days I was home from the hospital and on the mend. Continue reading “Our “Virtuous” Rich”→
It is with a great pleasure this evening to announce that decision of United States District Court judge Clarke Waddoups striking down key portions of the Utah polygamy law as unconstitutional. The Brown family and counsel have spent years in both the criminal phase of this case and then our challenge to the law itself in federal court. Despite the public statements of professors and experts that we could not prevail in this case, the court has shown that it is the rule of law that governs in this country. As I have previously written, plural families present the same privacy and due process concerns faced by gay and lesbian community over criminalization. With this decision, families like the Browns can now be both plural and legal in the state of Utah. The Court struck down the provision as violating both the free exercise clause of the first amendment as well as the due process clause. The court specifically struck down language criminalizing cohabitation — the provision that is used to prosecute polygamists. The opinion is over 90 pages and constitutes a major constitutional ruling in protection of individual rights.
I have previously written about the waste of billions of dollars by the government without any significant discipline for government officials. We have become accustomed to reports of unimaginable corruption and waste in Afghanistan from bags of money delivered to President Karzai to constructing huge buildings to be immediately torn down to buying aircraft that cannot be used. The common element to the stories is the absence of any reported prosecution or even discipline for those responsible. You can simply waste hundreds of millions of dollars and continue in your government position. This week’s outrage comes from a report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Thus, USAid can pay a $300,000 charge for 600 gallons of diesel fuel at $500/gallon but there is no punishment, let alone a prosecution. In the meantime, small programs for as little as $1 million domestically are being cut while we gush billions in waste. We can now add a half-billion dollars spent on refurbishing aircraft for the Afghan Air Force that have been left to rot unused in Kabul and Germany. Ironically, the aircraft are called Spartan but there was nothing Spartan about the wasteful spending of the Pentagon which may now seek to destroy the aircraft.
We have been discussing the alarming erosion of free speech principles in England in recent years. This trend includes both humorous and political speech. Now a sandwich shop owner has been arrested, his computer seized, and questioned for hours because he merely made a joke about Nelson Mandela. Neil Phillips, 44, was not charged but the message clear: even jokes are now subject to criminal investigation if deemed insulting by the police or sensitive public members.
Gay rights advocates faced a tough week with rulings from the high courts in Australia and India — both reaffirming bans on same-sex marriage. While the trend is happily moving in the opposite direction, the campaign for marriage equality faced two setbacks in these rulings. In Australia, the decision to allow same-sex marriage in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was struck down as exceeding the authority of the territory. In India, a long-standing criminalization of homosexuality was reinstated. Adding to this disappointing week is the national address given by Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirming the opposition to gay rights by his government as a stand for moral leadership.
There was an interesting and disturbing moment in a hearing this week on Afghanistan before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Appearing for the Administration to answer questions on the costs and status of the war were James F. Dobbins, State’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Donald Sampler, assistant to the administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides civilian foreign aid; and Michael Dumont, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia (right). In the middle of the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (left) asked what should have been a rather predictable question: how much are we continuing to spend on the war annually? None of the Administration witnesses could answer the question. He then asked how many Americans have died in battle? Again, a collective shrug from the witnesses. Even Democrats appeared stunned by the Administration’s inability or refusal to answer the questions. In the meantime, Hamid Karzai has shown the Administration a better way to dealing with pesky congressional questions: you bar them from entering the country.
There is a bizarre case out of Texas where Ethan Couch, 16, was facing 20 years for killing four people in a drunk driving incident. His wealthy family hired a top gun trial attorney and leading expert who invoked what could be called the Richie Rich defense — Couch’s long spoiled lifestyle in the top one percent left him uncaring and irresponsible . . . and left four people dead. It would seem the type of argument that would produce a lynching rather than a light sentence in front of most juries. However, Couch was in front of State District Judge Jean Boyd, who sentenced him to probation and therapy. Couch, it turns out, predicted the outcome. Described as non-cooperative at the accident scene, he reportedly said “I’m Outta here” and walked away.
The leading human rights organization Amnesty International has called on Saudi Arabia to end the persecution of lawyer Abd al-Rahman al-Lahem who was stripped of his license and put under investigation after telling the world of another abusive sentence of a rape victim by the medieval Sharia courts of Saudi Arabia. In the case, a court sentenced a 19-year-old rape victim to 90 lashes. When her attorney went public with the abusive sentence, her sentence was increased to 200 lashes plus six months in jail and her lawyer was stripped of his license. The victim was found guilty of violating the Sharia rule requiring strict segregation of the sexes.
