Rad Geek People's Daily

(Via a private correspondent.)

A couple weeks ago, a government gang in Youngstown, Ohio were chasing some freelance competitors. The suspect young men got out of their car and ran away on foot. One of them ran into Moses and Darcel Gilmore’s house (not, actually, his house, or his family’s; just a nearby house he could get into) and then he ran down into the basement. Three cops charged into the house after him without knocking and without a warrant. When they tried to charge down into basement after him, a 42 pound Akita puppy named Diva, who belonged to the owners of the house, came on up the stairs. (It was trained to expect to be let outside when the basement door opened.) Officer Ryan Laatsch decided to take this as being approached … in an aggressive manner. You might think, especially given that the teenager they were chasing was trapped in a basement and not going anywhere, that three heavily armed, professionally-trained grown-ass men might figure out a way to get around or to calm or to restrain or just to back away from a 42 pound 7 month old puppy so that nobody gets hurt. But, well, Officer Ryan Laatsch was already waving his gun around at the time, so instead he fired off 12 shots into the dog’s body. Then, apparently, he got up close and fired a 13^th shot into the dog’s head at point blank range, in order to confirm the kill.

The teenager ran down the basement stairs to hide. When officers opened the basement door from the kitchen, the dog approached Officer [Ryan] Laatsch in an aggressive manner, the police report states.

There were three officers in the house.

Officer Laatsch, who already had service weapon drawn due to the circumstances of the situation, shot approximately five to six times striking the dog … then shot the dog approximately five to six more times …then shot the dog one more time directly in the top of his head from only a few inches away, the report stated.

— Katie Seminara, The Vindicator (2009-04-14): Youngstown police shoot aggressive dog 13 times

Police Chief Jimmy Hughes has defended this on the grounds that Officer Ryan Laatsch fired until the dog ceased to attack (it never started) and in fear for his life and the lives of the other officers (apparently not so afraid that it kept him from getting up close enough to shoot the puppy in the head at point-blank range after he’d already emptied 12 rounds into her body). Police Chief Jimmy Hughes also [doesn’t] know if restitution is in order at this time, because, after all, if the Servants and Protectors were busy saving their own skins from a 7 month old puppy, expecting even an Oops, our bad would really be a bit much.

See also:

• GT 2007-11-30: Oops. Our bad.
• GT 2009-02-23: The Metro Police Beat

From the inside cover of this year’s I.R.S. Form 1040 forms & instructions booklet:

A Message from the Commissioner

Dear Taxpayer,

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. notably said Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. We should be proud that the vast majority of American citizens pay their taxes honestly and of their own free will. In an ever more complex and global world, we cannot take for granted this cornerstone principle of our democracy.

For the IRS’s part, we owe it to all taxpayers to make the process of paying taxes as easy as possible. IRS employees are dedicated to helping taxpayers to quickly get their questions answered, complete their forms, pay their taxes, and get back to their lives. From the telephone representative who answers tax law questions, to the walk-in site employees who help low-income taxpayers, to the technicians that design and build our website — www.irs.gov — we are committed to providing top quality service.

Unfortunately, there will always be some that cheat their fellow citizens by avoiding the payment of their fair share of taxes. The IRS owes it to the millions of you who promptly pay your taxes in fll to pursue these people through strong enforcement programs. I believe this is a basic matter of fairness.

If you need more information about taxes, I hope you’ll visit us online at www.irs.gov, or call us toll free at 1-800-829-1040. Your government works for you, so please do not hesitate to contact us if you need help.

Sincerely,
Douglas H. Shulman

See also:

• GT 2008-01-25: Sprachkritik (im Sinne Krauses)
• GT 2008-04-21: Sprachkritik (im Sinne Krauses) #2
• GT 2004-06-12: Outrage Fatigue
• GT 2003-10-17: Who has the better argument? We Report, You Decide

From a recent Al Jazeera report on remarks by Said Jawad — the ambassador from the government ruling Afghanistan to the government ruling the United States — about the death of five Afghan civilians, killed by the United States government’s military:

Said Jawad said that the deaths were a tragedy, but could be necessary if fighters were to be defeated in Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond.

This is a price that we have to pay if we want security and stability in Afghanistan, the region and the world, he said in Washington on Friday.

Jawad’s remarks come after the US military apologised for killing four civilians, including a child, in a raid earlier this week.

. . . A 13-year-old boy who survived the US raid on his home overnight on Wednesday told Al Jazeera that his mother, brother, uncle and another female family member were killed.

A woman who was nine months pregnant was wounded and lost her baby.

— Al-Jazeera English (2009-04-13): Afghan envoy defends US raids

He wants the political stability in Afghanistan, the region, and the world. They pay the price for what he wants.

If there is a proper apology, and there is a good explanation, and that’s exactly what we have been asking from our American friends in the past … then I think the people understand, he said.

He has American friends. He gets the apologies. He gets the explanations. They get the tragedy that he understands.

He ought to speak for his own damn self.

Here as elsewhere, half of human decency in political thinking is just learning to keep your personal pronouns straight.

See also:

• GT 2006-12-21: In ten words or fewer (personal pronouns edition): George W. Bush on the next year of the Iraq War
• GT 2007-05-13: Cry havoc! and let slip the pronouns of war …
• GT 2008-09-17: The statist We don’t
• GT 2009-01-25: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

(Quote thanks to Sheldon Richman 2009-04-10: Bad Regulation Drives Out Good.)

Here is Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) — who informs us that in conflicts between Wall Street and Main Street, he sides with Main Street and always has — expounding on the governing party’s new notion of transparency in hyperregulatory bailout capitalism:

We are working on major financial reform…. You're gonna find a different system of regulation. The real problem—and this is government's fault ...—when the financial world changed, the system of regulation didn't.... That will change. There will be a strong, quiet, hopefully more unified federal regulator.... And he's gonna be tough–or she. But they're gonna be quiet. So like when Bear Stearns began to run into trouble, they're gonna call the heads of Bear Stearns in and say, All right fellas, you're getting rid of those two hedge funds; you're gonna raise more capital—even if means you have lower profitability. We're not gonna tell anyone you're doing this, but you do it or we're gonna take sanctions against you. ... You don’t need a lot of voices, yelling, because that just weakens the institution. You need a tough, strong regulator, unified—no holes in the system— ... who ... sees the problem ahead of time, so they have complete transparency, they know exactly what's going on ... and they come in and say straighten up even if your ... profitability is lower and your stock has to go down.

— Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), Morning Joe (2009-04-06), MSNBC. Transcript available.

Normally, in politics, transparency is used to refer to norms and processes that allow ordinary people to find out what government or other large institutions are doing with their money or how those institutions are making the decisions that affect their lives. For Charles Schumer, transparency in government regulatory agencies apparently means that government regulators will have complete access to information about everybody else’s business — and will call in the heads of large financial institutions to a secret meeting, behind closed doors, where they will make secret decisions, behind closed doors, which they will force on institutions whose decisions affect millions of people, which will be forced to comply with special requirements and subsidized with special government deals, which both the government and those institutions will deliberately conceal from the public, with the explicit purpose of preserving the economic status quo, and frustrating any effort by ordinary folks to find out what the hell the government is doing on their dime and supposedly in their names. Under Schumerian transparency, government regulators will know everything about what’s going on, and they will conspire with big bankers to make sure that you know nothing.

For Schumer, transparency is a one-way mirror — like the kind you see on TV cop shows. Guess which side the prisoner is on.

See also:

• GT 2008-09-14: Omerta

A happy Pascua Florida and a shameless Sunday to you all.

What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.