THE GUARDIAN PRESENTS "KERN COUNTY: THE STORY OF AMERICA'S DEADLIEST POLICE"

Yet another less than impressive story of the county and city I call home ...

The British news organization, The Guardian, is in the process of releasing a five-part series outlining the recent history of law enforcement in Kern County, California. According to the first part of the series - "The County: the story of America's deadliest police" - law enforcement throughout Kern County "have killed more people per capita than in any other American county in 2015." 

The story behind the death of Bakersfield Police Department (BPD) confidential informant, Jorge Ramirez, is especially noteworthy. Ramirez was shot and killed while he was actively working with the BPD as an informant. 

According the BPD Ramirez, who was unarmed, caused his own death because he was in the same vehicle as the person they were tracking, and (1) according to one officer, he was reaching for his waistband, (2) they weren't sure Ramirez was a reliable informant, and (3) Ramirez could have "moved his hands above his head" while the BPD was shooting at the suspect and the car he and Ramirez were riding in at the time.

Apart from the live interviews, flowing pictures, and the easy to follow prose The Guardian presents several interactive charts that lay out the numbers that drive part of their story.

In Part II of the series - "The County: where deputies dole out rough justice" - The Guardian takes a look at the practices and history of the Kern County Sheriff Office. 

After going through several stories that establish Kern County's "'law and order','lock them up' type of county" credentials The Guardian reports that Kern County's police state culture has had little, if any, positive effect in the region. 

According to The Guardian's report, Kern County's "violent crime rate in 2014 was 517 offences per 100,000 residents, compared with 390 in the whole of California." In addition Kern County ranks 7th when it comes to violent crime in the state, its homicide rate is 50% higher than the California average - which means only 5 of California's 58 counties have a higher homicide rate than Kern. 

The Guardian makes it clear that a contributing factor to these statistics is poverty, where per capita income in the county is 50% lower than the California average ($29,527). Still, it's also clear The Guardian is focused on highlighting what they see as a culture of law enforcement abuses (Part III, forthcoming) that's been historically tolerated and encouraged in Kern County. 

Stay tuned.

- Mark 

PART III: "Sexual Assault and the Price of Silence"

PART IV: "Partners in Crime"

* Click here to find The Guardians Twitter page on the entire series, The Counted.  

* Again, for those unfamiliar with Kern County, keep in mind that it was here that the United Farm Workers challenged growers, which brought then Senator Robert R. Kennedy to the region to square off with Kern County Sheriff Roy F. Galyen in 1966. The Kennedy-Galyen exchange in the clip below was over the Kern County Sheriff's policy of arresting lawful protesters who had not violated the law. It has become one of the iconic moments in America's civil rights history.

WEEKEND READING (Dec. 5, 2015)

The injuries that kill the most people around the world (Tech Insider).

It's happening in the United Kingdom too ... Pay inequality between bosses & workers 'widening' every year (RT).

31 long-forgotten Native-American medicinal cures (Realfarmacy).

Monsanto to face 'tribunal' in The Hague for 'damage to human health and environment' (RT).


AFTER SAN BERNARDINO ...
New York Times to run editorial on Page 1, which they haven't done since 1929 (Politico)

Here it is ... "End the Gun Epidemic in America" (NY Times Editorial).

The links on this make it worth the read ... "I'm sick and tired of this" (Upworthy / Eric March).

Sandy Hook Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) just summed up the pathetic reality of sending "thoughts and prayers" after San Bernardino (NewsMic).


GUNS ... THE DATA
Gun violence and gun ownership across the world - let's look at the data (Tewksbury Lab).

The common thread in America's unacceptable carnage: Access to guns (Washington Post).

Here's how Britain responded after a mass school shooting. They haven't had one since (Addicting Info).

[Added after originally posted.] Instead of arguing about guns on Twitter, Neil de Grasse Tyson just laid out the numbers (Upworthy). 

HAS THE NRA BECOME A CANCER ON AMERICA?
NRA board member Ted Nugent calls for 'cleansing' the country of liberals (Crook and Liars).

Doing the NRA's bidding, Senate Republicans vote down legislation that would block suspected terrorists, felons, and mentally ill from buying guns (Daily News).

Why the GOP and NRA are on the threshold of treason following San Bernardino shooting (Reverb Press).

This is just sick, and even more asinine than the nuclear bomb drills we did as kids in the 1960s ... Now you can buy a bulletproof blanket specifically made for kids to use during school shootings (Business Insider).


SPEAKING OF CANCERS ... THE WAR ON TERROR 
Anti-Muslim rhetoric isn't brave (Washington Post).

U.S. wants to revive terror scare in order to keep up the terror war industry (RT).

Pictures of Afghanistan before the wars (Business Insider).


ISIS NEWS
Anonymous has begun publishing personal details of suspected ISIS extremists (Business Insider).

ISIS response to Anonymous threatening its 'biggest operation ever' (Business Insider).

There are concerns that Anonymous' war on ISIS is doing more harm than good (Business Insider).

Taste of their own medicine: Syrian rebels execute ISIS terrorists, mimicking jihadists' tactics (RT).


MISCELLANEOUS
You don't protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy (Salon).

Death by coconut: A story of food obsession gone too far (NPR).

Technology and the law ... number of police charged with murder, manslaughter triples in 2015 (Huffington Post).

The Lady in Red ... Turkey cop sentenced to plant 600 trees for teargassing 'Lady in Red' during Gazi Park protests (RT).

- Mark 

THE REAL GENERATION GAP

Housing and meals have climbed as well. So has the cost of tuition at public universities and community colleges.

So, yeah, soaring college debt loads are no accident, or a sign that today's college students are simply too lazy to get a job.

- Mark 

TRUMP'S NOT JUST A BANKRUPTCY JUNKIE, HE'S ACTUALLY A FAILED INVESTOR TOO

A few years back I explained that with a steady succession of bailouts, favorable legislation, and artificially cheap money that anyone with a little cash could have made a boat load of money in the stock market over the past 35 years. All they they had to do was invest it and simply leave their money alone.

I even told the Wall Street Journal inspired story of how "a monkey with darts" could have made money in the market simply by randomly throwing darts at the financial pages and then using those "picks" to make investments.

The monkey with darts story is pretty funny (and true). But the larger point is that it didn't take much effort to make a lot of money in our artificially inflated market since 1980. If you had a little cash, you just needed to invest it and leave it alone. The bailouts and political favors would do the rest.

This is what makes Donald Trump's claims about becoming a multi-billionaire (and the meme below) so funny. If Trump had just taken the hundreds of millions he inherited and dumped it in, say, a mutual fund that tracked the S&P 500 he would have made even more money than he claims to have now. When we consider his company's four bankruptcies, what becomes clear is that Trump is actually a terrible - if not a failed - investor ...

The LRB article by Deborah Friedell (which you can find here) does a pretty good job of showing other elements about Donald Trump. Specifically, it helps us see that Trump's really a terrible businessman, and more probably a delusional megalomaniac.

While Friedell is actually using figures put together by The National Journal (which you can find here), one thing is clear: When we look at Trump's financial and business history, calling Donald Trump a clown might be giving him too much credit.

Donald Trump's actual peers - or his evolutionary superiors - just might be a couple of primates with darts.

- Mark

PFIZER JOINS THE TAX AVOIDANCE GAME ... JUMPS TO IRELAND AND WILL SAVE $21 BILLION IMMEDIATELY

I've been writing about U.S. corporations legally relocating to another nation to avoid paying taxes here in the United States for some time now (which you can read about here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Well, guess what? U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has effectively fled from the U.S. to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. They've done this through a complex corporate inversion-merger deal. From Nation of Change we get "Drug Makers Add Insult to Injury" ...

It’s one thing for Pfizer to renounce its U.S. citizenship, moving its official residence to Dublin, Ireland, as a tax dodge — all the while continuing to run the business in the United States. That disgusting tactic happens to be disgustingly legal, thanks to our indolent Congress and its failure to fix the corporate tax laws. 

It’s quite another to insult the public with blatant phoniness that avoiding billions in U.S. taxes gives the company “the strength to research, discover and deliver more medicines and therapies to more people around the world.” Those are the words of Pfizer’s chief executive, Ian Read, an accountant by training. 

The Pfizer deal involves a merger with a much smaller Allergan, an Ireland-based company that happens to do its business in New Jersey. Wall Street analysts scoffed at the notion that the deal had any purpose other than to let the company avoid billions in U.S. taxes --billions that other American taxpayers will have to replace. 

Since Read took the helm in 2010, Pfizer has slashed its research and development budget. 

We assume the company will expect the United States to continue subsidizing research through the taxpayer-supported National Institutes of Health. We assume it wants the U.S. government to continue defending its intellectual property rights. 

Pfizer made headlines more than a decade ago when it persuaded the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize a working-class neighborhood around its shiny new headquarters — and replace it with an upscale shopping, hotel and office complex more to the company’s liking.
The Supreme Court gave the controversial plan a green light in 2005. Four years later, Pfizer abandoned New London. 

Yes, the drugmakers know how to make government work for them. 

The drugmakers’ crowning achievement was getting a Republican-controlled Congress to write a Medicare drug benefit law to their specifications. While funneling billions in taxpayer subsidies toward helping the elderly buy drugs, it forbade the U.S. government to negotiate the prices on behalf of said taxpayers. 

No other Western country lets drug companies charge whatever they think they can get away with. 

These conversations always circle back to the drugmakers’ argument that Americans must pay their price to cover the high expense of developing wonderful life-enhancing products.

The drugmakers don’t talk much about that publicly for a very simple reason. It is not in the interests of their executives and investors to stop Americans from playing the chump. If they can get the job done by writing checks to obedient U.S. politicians and the chumps keep re-electing them, why make trouble for themselves?

Read may have reason to take the American public for easily deceived children.

Basic decency, however, demands that he limit such thoughts to private dinner parties.

Pfizer's move will probably save the company about $21 billion in taxes. The move will also help reduce the company's reported effective tax rate from 26 percent to as little as 17 percent. 

- Mark 

Kudos to John for the Pfizer tip.

TERRORISM 101 AND SAN BERNARDINO... IF IT WAS TERRORISM THERE SO WERE THE OTHERS

Heads of French aristocrats on pikes.

OK, let's get this out of the way.

When you fly airplanes into building because you want to make a point and scare lots of people in the process you're a terrorist.

When you're running around killing people in white sheets and hooded masks because you want to make a point and scare lots of people in the process you're a terrorist.

And, yes, when you're shooting up an area and kill numerous people because you want to make a point and scare lots of people in the process you're a terrorist.

Conversely ...

The person in the Wild West who shot someone because they cheated him at cards is not a terrorist.

The person who walks in on a cheating spouse and kills the idiot who's there is not a terrorist.

The person who shoots and kills someone during a bank robbery is also not a terrorist.

Not many people are familiar with the history of the term, but the word terrorism is derived from the French terrorisme. It was first popularly used to describe state policy during the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" (from March 1793 through July 1794). This period was famous for the rise of Maximilien Robespierre, the invention of the guillotine, and the mass murder of "enemies of the revolution."

While the term was originally used to describe state sponsored terror, it's now used to describe the killing of many innocent people simply because someone has an ideology or wants to make a point and - for numerous reasons - get their jollies scaring or terrorizing large groups of people in the process.

What's critical here is not so much the result of the act - killing lots of people because you're annoyed or disagree with someone - as much as the response to the result: Killing lots of people, and then getting a large number of innocent people to cower or live in fear. Getting people to cower and fear is the real goal.

This is what terrorism is about.

This is why we need to start thinking about how the media - and especially cable TV - has been callously manipulating the term "terrorist" for some time now in the United States.

What's at issue today is how pundits and assorted media hacks made it clear how they wanted to describe what happened in San Bernardino versus how they described the Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado.

Simply put, because the names sounded like they were from the Middle East we were told almost immediately that the San Bernardino shootings were done by possible terrorists. You and I know why. It doesn't matter that the issues surrounding the attack may have been work related.

The guy in Colorado, however, was clearly labeled a disturbed lone wolf - as were "lone wolves" Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh (who wasn't actually alone).

Worse, when guns are involved with the "lone wolves" they are referred to as a "lone gunmen" - as was the case with the shooting in Seattle Pacific University. Then there was the "mass shooting" performed by the "lone gunman" at UC Santa Barbara. No terror there, right?

And what are we to make of Cliven Bundy's "armed standoff" against the BLM? It was patriotically taken up by "Sovereign Citizens" because, you know, that's what patriots do when they're defending the rights of someone who's been mooching off of federal land for pennies on the dollar for years.

And let's not forget the attacks and murders perpetrated by extreme Christians and others that weren't labeled terrorism, but could have been if we used the medias current slippery slope in San Bernardino.

There's more. But you get the point.

If we're going to use the term, we should get it right, for everyone.

- Mark 

THE UNITED SYRIAN REPUBLIC ... THIS IS HILARIOUS

This clip is pretty clever ...

- Mark

Hat tip to John for the clip.

CORPORATE AMERICA NOW OWES MORE THAN IT DID IN 2008 ... HERE'S HOW IT HAPPENED

With record profits one might be inclined to think that corporate America and the economy are doing fine, right? Think again. Corporate America is in no position to lead the economic "recovery," and now owes more than it did before 2008.

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This happened because corporate America has spent years playing accounting tricks with their bailout-sourced money. As economist Joseph Schumpeter might have put it, corporate America has effectively been playing monopoly rather than building them. And they've gone wildly into debt in the process.

This is how it happened.

The Federal Reserve's post-2008 decision to bailout Wall Street and corporate America with a seemingly endless stream of cash has put a flood of money into our markets. Banks and pseudo banks around the world have been able to borrow lots of money at record low interest rates because of the Federal Reserve's bailout policy. Here's a useful, if not stunning, visual of the trillions made available to corporate America.

All of this money was supposed to lead to renewed investment, higher incomes, and more profits after the market collapse of 2008. Instead, dumping a boatload of money in to the laps of an already greedy and rich class of people has only exacerbated a trend that's been going strong for the better part of 30 years now: Wages are stagnating while profits, especially in the financial sector, have soared.

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How has this been happening, you ask? This is a good question, and takes us to the primary reason for this post.

While we can blame globalization (shifting jobs overseas) and new technology (replacing jobs with machines) for stagnating wages, the reality is favorable legislation (especially pro-globalization, anti-union, and low tax legislation) and regular bailouts (again, trillions of dollars) have allowed the financial sector to gobble up the vast majority of money made (i.e. profits).

The chart below, courtesy of Zero Hedge, shows us how regular bailouts and favorable legislation have made access to money so easy that corporate America effectively decided borrowing money to make bets in bond markets was easier than making real investments. So they got lazy and borrowed lots of money to make these bets. Today corporate America now owes 15% more than it did before the market collapsed in 2008.

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"Gross Leverage" = Borrowed Money / Investment Grade Bonds = IG / High Yield Bonds = HY

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What's happened is corporate America decided to focus on smoke and mirror accounting tricks to boost their numbers. Specifically, corporate America:

* SMOKE: Used borrowed and low interest money (courtesy of the Fed) to pay dividends to impress and keep impatient shareholders.
* MIRRORS: Used borrowed money to buy back stocks, which artificially boosted popularity and pumped up prices.
* MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Used borrowed money to pursue costly mergers that may boost revenues and lower costs in the short term but - as Carly Fiorina's history of merger fiascos at Hewlett Packard demonstrate - often cause more problems than they're worth. 

In a few words, in spite of record profits, corporate America has not been investing in brick and mortar (or aps and software) projects. They've used favorable legislation and cheap money to borrow and play accounting tricks. Unfortunately, they've now borrowed more than they did before the 2008 market collapse. Once interest rates begin to move upward this debt and bond driven business model will begin to unravel.

Here's the real problem: While they will have no one to blame but themselves for choosing to play monopoly rather than build them, corporate America will no doubt blame others when the going gets rough.

And Wall Street will be at the front of the bailout line that, incredibly enough, is already forming.

- Mark 

YOUR THANKSGIVING TURKEY ... SOME THOUGHTS

Not many people know that I once spent a good deal of time studying the poultry industry in Mexico. In fact, I published several specialized reports and a book chapter with one of my research colleagues from the Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro several years ago. My experiences with the poultry industry in Mexico is just one of the reasons why I found this article on the increasing size of Thanksgiving turkeys so interesting.

In a few words, the super birds we see on our Thanksgiving table today have been artificially "engineered" to satisfy market demand. Today's stoop framed and debeaked frankenbirds are no accident, as this Mother Jones article makes clear.

I encourage you to read the article because it helps us understand two things about the modern poultry family (which include chicken, turkey, and quail among others). First, the size of our poultry "products" have been supercharged in unnatural ways. Second, the time needed to grow poultry has been sped up.

In our 2009 book chapter, for example, my colleague and I explain how chicken producers have employed new farming techniques to reduce the amount of time necessary to grow a four-pound chicken. A four-pound chicken no longer needs nine-and-one-half weeks to grow, as was the case in the late 1960s. Today you need just six weeks to grow a four-pound chicken.

What this means is that four production cycles per year (1960s) have been increased to 5.7 cycles per year because of improvements in technology, environment, and management.

A modern poultry farm, with two hatcheries.

In human terms this is the functional equivalent of engineering and modifying our environments so that children become full-sized "adults" (i.e. reach their 18-year-old size) by the time they're a 13-year-old.

There's more, but you get the point. Your Thanksgiving turkey is a frankenbird.

- Mark 

REFUGEE THURSDAY ... OUR THANKSGIVING?

- Mark