Why Not?

I keep hearing and reading that the Justice Department policy is that they can't (won't?) indict a sitting president.  If you Google the subject, you see articles on all sides of the issue.  NPR, on All Things Considered, did a nice dispassionate summary of the situation on August 22.  If I read the interview correctly, there's nothing in the Constitution, and there are no laws, which say this.  It's a very interesting discussion and I recommend you read it before going on.

Ailsa Chang interviewed Philip Lacovara, a lawyer who was counsel to the special prosecutors who investigated Watergate. Yes, this issue was discussed at that time, and they concluded that there was no constitutional bar to indicting a sitting president; they just didn't do it. I was delighted to read that Mr. Lacovara agrees with my totally instinctive reaction to this position:  this is a huge load of baloney.

To assume that the President can't be indicted says that the President is - above the law.  What really bothers me is that Brent Kavanaugh, the current SCOTUS nominee, agrees with this position, which is called the "unitary executive theory."  Here's how Mr. Lacovara summarized it:

It's the notion that all law enforcement resides in the president and that everybody else in the executive branch, including prosecutors, is essentially irrelevant. And the president, therefore, would in effect be prosecuting himself. And they think that that's a bizarre conundrum which the Constitution shouldn't allow.

This theory says the President isn't subject to the laws.  King George III would probably have agreed with that.  I'm sure Donald Trump agrees with that.  But I think the faint screams you hear in the background are the Founding Fathers, ranting and raving from whatever afterlife they are in.  I don't think they agree with that.

I thought we were a nation of laws. I thought we had 3 branches of government so that each branch could act as a check on the other two (Congress, are you listening to me?).  Congress doesn't want to know; the Republican leadership has been turning their collective eyes so far away from the emerging evidence about Trump that their necks are about to break.

As far as I'm concerned, the President is not above the law; and Mr. Lacovara agrees with me.  Here's how he concluded the interview:

The whole purpose of the Revolution and our Constitution was to treat officials of our government as different from the royal in England. And I think they would be astonished at the notion today that the president is somehow immune from criminal prosecution if he violates the norms that apply to everyone else.

If you haven't talked to your representative about opposing Kavanaugh's confirmation, do it now.  And remember all this when you vote in November.

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

Now that Thanksgiving is over:  I wrote this at the end of September and then put it aside.  I just read it again today, and I still think it's worth saying.  I did decide it was unsuitable to post it on Thanksgiving Day.

KALW's Your Call, once again, had a segment that got me thinking.  Today's program was a review of a new dance program, Grace and Delia are Gone, performed over this weekend at Fort Mason in S.F.  (Ed. note:  Sorry, this broadcast was aired on September 29, 2016, so you can't catch the dance program tomorrow.  Click the link to listen to the broadcast.)

I'm sure it's a great program, but what startled me was the earnest conviction - from the choreographer, from at least one caller, and in some sense from Rose Aguilar herself - that violence against women is a new, modern problem, aggravated by men who've spent 5 tours in Iraq/Afghanistan, and all the guns we now have around.

You folks all need to read more history - a problem I've noticed before.  For those horrified by multiple tours in Afghanistan, read the history of World Wars I and II, when soldiers spent months or years on the battlefield, or on a ship at sea, alternating between brief periods of extreme danger and weeks or months of total boredom.  You probably never heard this personally from your grandfather because the WWII vets didn't discuss what they went through.  Some of them beat up their wives; some of them killed themselves (I went to school with a young man whose WWII vet father killed himself); most of them just went on with life.  And never talked about the war.

Violence against women has gone on for centuries.  Medieval women weren't educated, and they couldn't choose whom they married.  Aristocratic women were married off to further the family's political connections.  Married women were chattel property to their husbands, and the husbands were allowed to do whatever they pleased to their property.  Moralists might object, but beating the crap out of your wife was NOT illegal through most of European and American history.  The Victorians take a lot of flack for their views on morality, but they did start the idea that maybe wife-beating was a bad idea.

The primary difference between history and now is that over the last 40 years or so, American society has concluded that it's a bad idea for one spouse to beat up on the other (and don't think it only happens to women, or for that matter only to straight people).  We actually have laws against it, and support groups for victims - this is a tremendous improvement. It hasn't stopped the practice, but don't assume this is the worst of times.  And if the situation in the U.S. disturbs you, Google "wife beating" and take a look at the headlines on current practices in Islamic countries.

There's something in the human race that makes certain members of it make themselves feel better by beating up on people, or creatures, they consider their "inferiors" - wives, pets, children.  (Also, people of other races or religions; but we're talking about family violence here).  People who do this are usually but not exclusively male.  Until and unless this changes, we're unlikely to get rid of spousal abuse entirely.

Footnote:  in the 2 months since I wrote this, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, to take office in January.  In a country as in an organization, the tone comes from the top.  Given Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail, and the fact that he's on his third wife, I can't judge right now whether his presence in the White House (assuming he stays in the White House) will enable spousal abuse or not.  He's enabled a lot of gratuitous violence, but I haven't heard much about Trump-caused domestic violence, so maybe not.

"Tape on, brother"

I needed a laugh after the last few days, and I got it this morning with a letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Since the Chron doesn't let you link individual letters, just the letters page, I'm taking the liberty of pasting the whole thing here, with full credit and thanks to the paper and Mr. Mark Knego of San Francisco:

Recording is reality

Get it on tape, man.
We live in a world filled with knuckleheads, on a planet called Earth. Knuckleheads like to enjoy other people's suffering.
Somebody gets shot on a BART platform, get it on tape.
Knuckleheads destroy public property, get it on tape.
Somebody beats up somebody else, get it on tape. Put it on the Net.
In an entirely related topic, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says that aliens are coming to colonize us.
No way, baby, not after they see the tapes.
We are safe.
Tape on, brother, tape on.
Mark Knego, San Francisco

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/10/ED481EBV7I.DTL#ixzz0tIXK1Q2o

Waiting for Mehserle

Oakland, California isn't a very comfortable place right now.  The city government is broke, or close to it, because of some Really Stupid decisions made by the City Council in previous years (most of them by the current elected council members).   They've just laid off 80 police officers, from a force that was already grossly understaffed.  Everyone (with the possible exception of Mayor Dellums, whose grasp of reality doesn't impress me) is convinced that more budget cuts are coming.  No one, starting with the Council, is making any attempt to estimate how much money might actually be coming in next year, and to budget the city government to live within that amount.  (They can't, actually; due to some of those Stupid Decisions, they've already committed to spend more than they can possibly take in, in this economy.)  The council wants to pass two property tax measures on the November ballot, to avoid laying off something like a quarter of the police force; I don't think they realize the extent to which their constituents wouldn't trust them with the contents of a child's piggy bank.

And on top of all that, the Mehserle trial went to the jury, the day before the July 4 weekend.

I'm not going to go over the whole mess again.  If you've been living in a cave for the last 18 months, open up a Google search and type in "Mehserle."  Or read this article from Wikipedia.

The good news is that the jury didn't rule before the long weekend.  The bad news is that they had to start deliberations over again, today, because somebody went on vacation and they had to put in an alternate. 

The really bad news is that a group of people here in Oakland have already decided that the verdict won't bring "justice for Oscar Grant" (Google the phrase if you want to see their call to arms; I won't dignify it by linking it), and are planning a "gathering" in front of city hall whenever the verdict is published. 

For gathering read:  riot.  We had two days of riots after the incident, even though the Oakland Police weren't involved in the Mehserle incident.  They're going to be involved in this, though - Chief Batts is appealing for calm (see his video at www.oaklandpolice.com) and bracing for the opposite.  The general feeling is that downtown Oakland is a bad place to be over the next few days.  I bet the merchants love that.

It escapes me how tearing up downtown Oakland will provide Oscar Grant with justice, or anything resembling it.  I understand that young black people feel anger toward the police.  But as others have asked, I have to ask:  where is all this anger, where is all this urge for justice, when young black people are killed by other young black people??  Is that OK? 

I volunteer downtown.  I know that at least some of the small businesses around Frank Ogawa Plaza are black-owned - and they'll be right in the middle of the violence.  Is it OK for a small business owned by an African-American to be torn up and maybe looted, as long as the rioters are black??

For that matter, it escapes me why people think violence ever solves anything.  All violence does is breed more violence.  The first thing we should always do is try to think of a non-violent way to handle a situation; Gandhi understood that, the civil rights demonstrators in the '60s understood that, and they changed their worlds with nonviolence.  Violence seems to make the rioters feel that they've "done something" to "show people" that "they won't put up with this."  But when the riot is over, nothing has changed, except that a lot of people who had nothing to do with Oscar Grant have a mess to clean up.

I wonder how they'll justify the riot if the jury actually convicts Mehserle of manslaughter (the worst verdict I personally would vote for) and he does some time.  But then, they're tearing the place up in a noble cause.  Aren't they?

Rest In Peace

Over the last few years, from my work on a Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council, I've gotten to know a number of Oakland cops. They're solid professionals: intelligent, polite, competent, dedicated. I'm absolutely appalled at the events of this weekend, in which two police officers died in a hail of bullets from a young man they pulled over on a routine traffic stop, and two more died later when he shot at them from a closet with an AK-47. I have several comments on this:

To the members of the Oakland Police Department: my heart breaks for you. You have my deepest sympathy and my unqualified support.

To the people who feel the police are rude to them when they pull them over for a traffic violation: if they seem a little harsh, they're wondering whether you might possibly be another Lovelle Mixon. These aren't the first police officers to be killed during a routine traffic stop, and they won't (unfortunately) be the last. If you get pulled over, be polite to the officer, and the officer will (probably) be polite to you. And yes, I do know about D.W.B. (driving while black) - but I firmly believe that's a minority of officers.

To the NRA: You've had your Supreme Court decision. You definitely have the right to own guns and keep them in your house. Can we now have a conversation about what weapons you can own? There's probably nothing we can do about the semi-automatic pistol that killed the two traffic officers; but the SWAT team died in a hail of bullets from an AK-47. An AK-47 - that's a military weapon. Why can civilians even buy this damn thing? What are you going to do with it - hunt deer? You'd cut the deer in half. At one point, in this country, civilians couldn't buy these weapons, then we elected the neocons and that was repealed; can we please discuss, again, restricting civilian access to guns normally used on the battlefield? Two good officers are dead because a civilian - no, a paroled felon - had access to a military assault rifle. Frankly, members of the NRA, I hold you at least partially responsible because of your mindless insistence that anybody, anywhere, any time, should be able to own any weapon.

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme

The more I hear about Bernie Madoff, the more I shake my head. The common stereotype of a criminal is that he steals because it's easier than working for a living. And yet, look at what Bernie Madoff did to support his Ponzi scheme. He had, I think, something like 4,000 clients; and he sent every one of them a brokerage statement, showing assets, stock trades, etc., every month for something like nineteen years; and every one of those statements was completely fictional. He had to invent a consistent stream of data for each one of those 4,000 or so clients, and maintain it month to month, at least enough to keep them from getting curious. (Not that any of his clients was distinguished by curiosity or critical thought.)

How did he keep track of all this? Did he have it in a computer? Did he type stuff by hand? His accountant too - the "strip-mall accountant" - did they sit together in the office, making up stuff to put in the SEC reports? I've never had a job in my life where I worked so hard with so much at stake. I think he turned himself in so he wouldn't have to deal with those statements any more.

Crime in Oakland

Since one of the things I do for the Greater Rockridge NCPC is monitor 3 different Yahoo email groups relating to crime in the north Oakland area where I live, I haven't posted much about it here - I spend quite enough time dealing with it already. But although it's an undeniably useful community service, I'm finding that it's very hard on me.

I'm continually reminded that I live in a city where crime is almost completely out of control. If you call the police they may or may not come; if you don't call the police, the crime in essence never happened, since the only crimes they deal with are the ones that are reported through the 911 dispatch center. People within blocks of my house have been robbed by armed assailants within the last few weeks; and we live in one of the safer neighborhoods. It's very hard not to conclude that everyone you pass on the sidewalk is a potential criminal assailant; I regularly have to do a reality check and remind myself that I have never been mugged. (Knock wood.)

On the other hand, I take precautions. I don't walk along plugged into an iPod, or a cell phone. I watch my surroundings. I lock my car, and don't leave stuff visible inside it. We have house lights on timers. If I weren't monitoring all those Yahoo groups, I'd tell myself this is just part of living in a city; but when the city you live in is officially the 4th most dangerous city in the U.S., and there's a good deal of evidence that the city government (not just the police department) is completely unable to deal with it, it feels a little different.

We've lived here a long time; we like the neighborhood and the neighbors. We have a lovely house, that we're considering remodeling to make it more comfortable to live in. And yet I keep wondering: what will this be like in another 10 years? Is this just a blip, which will go away when the Oakland mayor and city council finally fire the police chief (which, IMHO, he fully deserves) and hire someone competent? (Assuming they're capable of finding someone competent?) Or is this the start of a slide that will leave us, as we're getting older and frailer, locked into a house that we can't sell because the neighborhood has gone to the dogs, and can't live in without bars on all the ground floor windows? I don't know. There's a lot to like about Oakland; but there's a lot that's really scary too. I just don't know.