This is me, ConnorP, and the contents of my brain when it doesn't belong anywhere else, or even if it does. Various topics, various thoughts, various degrees of seriousness, but all me.
For the first time, amid continuing controversy and lawsuits over use of Tasers, a scientific, peer-reviewed study released this week shows the electronic stun guns can cause cardiac arrest and death.
But some police agencies continue to stand by their use of the weapons, saying the devices provide officers with a valuable, less-lethal means of subduing unruly suspects.
About 16,000 agencies internationally use Tasers, and officials have credited it with helping to reduce fatal police incidents.
But the American Heart Association’s premier journal, Circulation, published an article online Monday that examined eight cases involving the TASER X26 ECD. Seven of the people died.
Dr. Douglas Zipes, of Indiana University’s Krannert Institute of Cardiology, found that a shock from the Taser “can cause cardiac electric capture and provoke cardiac arrest” as a result of an abnormally rapid heart rate and uncontrolled, fluttering contractions.
True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going.
Those who earn tens of millions of dollars a year but pay less than 14 percent of their incomes in taxes, and argue the rich should pay even less, are not true patriots.
Those who defend indefensible tax loopholes, such as the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains even if they risk no income of their own, are not true patriots.
Those who avoid taxes by putting huge amounts of their earnings into IRAs via foreign tax shelters are not true patriots.
Those who want to cut programs that benefit the poor — Food stamps, child nutrition, Pell grants, Medicaid — so that they can get a tax cut for themselves and their affluent friends— are not true patriots.
For a change, Americans should take note of what is happening across the quiet northern border. Canada used to seem a progressive and just neighbor, but the picture today looks less rosy. One of its provinces has gone rogue, trampling basic democratic rights in an effort to end student protests against the Quebec provincial government’s plan to raise tuition fees by 75 percent.
On May 18, Quebec’s legislative assembly, under the authority of the provincial premier, Jean Charest, passed a draconian law in a move to break the 15-week-long student strike. Bill 78, adopted last week, is an attack on Quebecers’ freedom of speech, association and assembly. Mr. Charest has refused to use the traditional means of mediation in a representative democracy, leading to even more polarization. His administration, one of the most right-wing governments Quebec has had in 40 years, now wants to shut down opposition.
The bill threatens to impose steep fines of 25,000 to 125,000 Canadian dollars against student associations and unions — which derive their financing from tuition fees — in a direct move to break the movement. For example, student associations will be found guilty if they do not stop their members from protesting within university and college grounds.
During a street demonstration, the organization that plans the protest will be penalized if individual protesters stray from the police-approved route or exceed the time limit imposed by authorities. Student associations and unions are also liable for any damage caused by a third party during a demonstration.
These absurd regulations mean that student organizations and unions will be held responsible for behavior they cannot possibly control. They do not bear civil responsibility for their members as parents do for their children.
Freedom of speech is also under attack because of an ambiguous — and Orwellian — article in Bill 78 that says, “Anyone who helps or induces a person to commit an offense under this Act is guilty of the same offense.” Is a student leader, or an ordinary citizen, who sends a Twitter message about civil disobedience therefore guilty? Quebec’s education minister says it depends on the context. The legislation is purposefully vague and leaves the door open to arbitrary decisions.
Since the beginning of the student strike, leaders have told protesters to avoid violence. Protesters even condemned the small minority of troublemakers who had infiltrated the demonstrations. During the past four months of protests, there has never been the kind of rioting the city has seen when the local National Hockey League team, the Canadiens, wins or loses during the Stanley Cup playoffs. The biggest demonstration, which organizers estimate drew 250,000 people on May 22, was remarkably peaceful. Mr. Charest’s objective is not so much to restore security and order as to weaken student and union organizations. This law also creates a climate of fear and insecurity, as ordinary citizens can also face heavy fines.
We can best honor those who have given their lives for this nation in combat by making sure our military might is proportional to what America needs.
The United States spends more on our military than do China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany put together.
With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the cost of fighting wars is projected to drop – but the “base” defense budget (the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships, and tanks – not including the costs of actually fighting wars) is scheduled to rise. The base budget is already about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.
One big reason: It’s almost impossible to terminate large defense contracts. Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others have made spending on national defense into America’s biggest jobs program.
So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of defense contractors but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat.
Really, Berkeley PD?
When Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan’s son’s cell phone was stolen in January, 10 police officers were sent to track it down, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense, police said Monday.
A police report about the theft of the teen’s iPhone from a school locker was never written and the Oakland Police Department was never notified that officers on the department’s drug task force were in North Oakland knocking on doors looking for the phone. Three detectives and a sergeant each logged two hours of overtime.
“If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don’t think any officer would be investigating it,” said Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. “They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets.”
The excessive use of resources comes at a time when Meehan, 50, is under intense scrutiny for his actions over the last several months. The city is spending $20,000 to make sure its police department’s media policies are up to speed after the chief was widely criticized for sending a sergeant to a reporter’s home about 1 a.m. on March 9 to ask for changes to an online story. The Berkeley police union criticized the move, saying Meehan’s actions “do not represent the will, spirit or sentiment of the membership of the Berkeley Police Association” and called for an independent investigation.
On Jan. 11, Meehan son, a freshman at Berkeley High School, found that his iPhone, equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, was gone from his unlocked gym locker. The boy alerted his father and Meehan pulled out his own cell phone and showed a property crimes detective sergeant the real time movement of the stolen phone.
Given the active signal of the stolen phone, the detective sergeant took his team to try to locate it. As the signal was moving into the city of Oakland, the detective sergeant called the drug task force to ask for some additional assistance and members of that team offered to help, said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, department spokeswoman.
Kids + Science = Awesome
Another amazing teen scientist is making headlines for developing advances in cancer research in his after-school hours. Fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka from Maryland, winner of the world’s largest high school science research competition, developed a test for pancreatic cancer that is not only 28 times cheaper and faster than current tests in place, but also 100 times more sensitive. Astoundingly, the urine and blood test that he developed can detect this type of cancer with 90 percent accuracy.
Jack received the Gordan E. Moore award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his groundbreaking research, earning a $75,000 prize. He beat out over 1,500 students from 70 countries to claim the award.
File this under I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported on new census data which showed, for the first time, that non-white births made up over 50 percent of all births in the United States last year.
It marked an important milestone, indicative of a changing United States that has long been considered the world’s melting pot. Or, if you’re the conservative, Phyllis Schlafly-backed Eagle Forum, it’s a clarion call that America is in grave danger of being overrun by uneducated, un-American brown people:
It is not a good thing. The immigrants do not share American values, so it is a good bet that they will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.
Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.
Setting aside for a minute the offensive way in which the Eagle Forum dismisses all of “the immigrants” as thoughtless criminals, it’s telling that The Eagle Forum views this as simply a political problem. The Eagle Forum’s political allies have long insisted on treating immigrants as second-class citizens, and rather than pivot their policy proposals to better accommodate the nation’s shifting demographics, the group seems instead to want to curb minorities’ procreation.
