By Kevin

Today all the news outlets were running silly little summaries of a new Pew Center report called One in 100 that addresses the prison population in the US. The report itself is well worth a read as it's very well written and there are excellent graphics and charts throughout. The (currently popular) outrage over civil rights abuses in China is put in some context by the knowledge that there are 50% more people incarcerated in the US, despite China's vastly larger population. One in 100 US adults is behind bars, one in fifteen black men.

Oh wait, did I mention that California spent $8.8 billion last year on corrections? Texas took a distant number two in that regard at $3.3 billion. Governor Schwarzenegger wants us to spend $10.3bn in 2008 according to his January budget Proposal. For those who've been following the news, this is the same budget proposal where he suggested that it would be a good idea to cut $4bn from education. I can't imagine a better recipe for disaster.

I've read reams of literature on the increased effectiveness (not to mention vastly lower cost) of community-based reform for non-violent criminals. 48.4% of our prison population is incarcerated for non-violent offenses. There's something terribly wrong with these statistics and nobody is doing anything about it.

Labels: politics

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By Kevin

I just found this interesting blog post by Swedish archaeologist and blogger, Dr Martin Rundkvist who thinks that our "entire bipartisan system maps onto the conservative half of European politics." Specific mention is made of the fact that all of the US candidates are pro death-penalty, none are strict gun control advocates, and all make frequent mention of their religious views in public. All of which would apparently be extremist views in Sweden.

In search of a more international view of the political spectrum I found The Political Compass. Apparently this is quite a popular test (even has a Facebook app!) but it was my first time coming across it. Six short pages of questions map your views onto separate economic and social axis. The four corresponding quadrants are liberal-left (Ghandi), liberal-right (Milton Friedman), authoritarian-left (Robert Mugabe), and authoritarian-right (Margaret Thatcher). Having gone through the survey and accompanying information I would tend to agree with Dr Rundkvist's assertion about our presidential hopefuls. Other than Ron Paul, who I would throw in the liberal-right quadrant, all of our candidates would seem to reside in the authoritarian-right.

High-minded political theory discussion aside, however, the real reason I loved his blog entry was this quote:

The Republican presidential candidates are really, really scary people in my view. So all of us in the world at large who live under the shadow of US political hegemony are holding our breaths, hoping that Clinton or Obama will make it into office. They're pretty bad, but the alternative would be unspeakably dreadful.

Fabulous.

On a slight tangent, does anybody know if the people working tables in the cosmetics/vitamins section at Costco are on commission? The lady handing out Ocean Mist Saline coupons got into a fight with me tonight over whether I had a cold or not!

authoritarian-right: mumble mumble mumble OCEAN MIST! mumble mumble.
me: No thanks.
authoritarian-right: I saw your red nose. It's allergies!
me: Actually I have a cold.
authoritarian-right: It's NOT a cold! It's ALLERGIES!
me: Uh... believe me, it's a cold.
authoritarian-right: No, it's allergies. mumble mumble (fades into the background noise)

Labels: meds, politics, shopping

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By Kevin

1. Where My Time Goes

The kind clerk in the jury room gave me some things to think about when she discussed the way Los Angeles County maintains its juror master list. Essentially, they merge the DMV and voter records for the county and the unique combination of your name and address is used to determine when someone is on the list twice. The problem is that if the DMV shows a John Q. Public at 123 Main St. and the voter roll lists a John Quincy Public at the same address, Jury Services considers this to be two different people. If you're on the list twice, you get called, on average, twice as often.

Thank you, kind Jury Services lady, for finally explaining to me why I had more jury experience than any of the 34 other potential jurors in the courtroom today. Seriously, some of these people are old enough that they could have witnessed the LA Superior Court system being founded in 1851 and they've only been called once before. I have been summoned no less than seven times to participate in the fine tradition of ensuring justice for my fellow man and have ended up on three juries. Now should I try to get my middle name added to my voter registration or get it removed from my driver's license?

2. I Speed, You Speed, We (don't) All Speed

My assigned court was a relatively small one for LA, but it's not like there's any empty space around here. There are probably around half-a-million people who would indicate that this courthouse is closer to them than any other. So why do all the people in line to deal with traffic citations know each other? I kid you not, I walked past this line six times over two days and three of those times I got to witness a mini reunion of long-lost pals. Hey Joe, they caught you?! Hah, they're always on me, it can't be stopped! Nothin' to do for it, eh?? Nah man, you know... so how's the wife?

3. The Shopping Factor

These days it's quite difficult to get excused from jury service altogether. What is relatively easy (for those of us who pick up the kids from childcare at least) is getting your service moved to a more convenient location. I got the courthouse with a shopping mall across the street. I wish I could say that I planned this, but fate can be a wonderful companion.

It turns out that the judge doesn't rearrange his schedule just because there are 34 people waiting around for a particular case so that they can find out which twenty get to go home and which fourteen don't. He spends a couple hours in the morning with his "normal case load" which is followed by a fifteen minute break. After the break he'll either finish up the last batch or just chill with the Deputy DA and the defense counsel for a while. We, the potential jurors, the mass of humanity clogging up the hallway for a couple hours, don't get invited in until, oh, about 40 minutes before the hour-and-a-half lunch break. After lunch it improves somewhat with a little over two hours of jury selection action peppered with breaks and a few leftover morning cases. Then the court closes at 4:15 and ends the milling around until the next day.

The major benefit of all this is that I finally caught up on some of my shopping, and the next time you get a summons, I expect you to do the same!

4. Why Our Government Shouldn't Meddle In The Market

Did you know that more or less the first time the up-and-coming industrialists of England stood up to the landed gents in Parliament it was over protective corn tariffs? 1813 or thereabouts, if my information is correct. Well, the landowners were a tad pissed because the whole war with Napoleon and some bad weather made for a pretty lousy harvest and some entrepreneurial chaps decided to run a little import business to take advantage of the high corn prices. The Parliament naturally went along with the idea of massive corn import tariffs because they'd rolled over for the landowners for hundreds of years (think feudalism) and it would have all gone swimmingly except for one thing. The price of corn directly impacted what the industrialists had to pay their labor - hard to run the cogs of industry when you're dead of starvation apparently. This cut into their bottom line and they weren't having it any more.

It would all sound remarkably like today except for the fact that now industry is in bed with the legislators and the land owners and the only bottom line suffering is mine and yours. ADM gets to buy subsidized fake sugar and ethanol that takes more fossil fuel to produce than it saves at the pump. Corn growers get fat subsidies. We The People pay for it, come April 15.

What does this have to do with Jury Duty you may well ask? Well, aside from shopping I got a chance to catch up on some of my long overdue reading. Any activity that carries the side benefit of hours of reading time is a good one.

5. They Aren't My Peers

I'm not sure who started this mis-quoting of the Sixth Amendment as a "jury of your peers" because I just looked it up and it doesn't say anything about your peers. It says you get an "impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed". This has been said before, and I'm not generally one to beat a dead horse (is that saying correct? why would anybody do that?) but these people are definitely not my peers.

When it was time for the defense council to have a chat with the first twenty potential jurors, he tried to get off to a good start by asking some leading questions. Questions which could only be answered in the affirmative by any US citizen. Or so he thought.

Defense: So, juror number... four. Would you say that it's a good idea that we have here in this country that the defendant doesn't have the burden of proof? Do you think that's a good thing?

Four: No.

Defense: ???

Four: I think that if he's arrested and all, he better have a pretty good excuse for why he shouldn't go to jail, right?

Defense: Okay, honest opinion. That's good. (maybe they didn't understand, lets go back to the start...) Juror number... eight. Do you think the way it is here, with the defendant assumed to be innocent, is a good system? Or do you think it would be better if we just believed what the arresting officer says and assume them to be guilty?

Eight: I trust police.

Defense: Okaaay. Right. But, isn't it plausible that an officer might make a mistake?

Eight: I guess that's possible.

Defense: Right. So we assume that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty so th

Eight: But I trust police more than criminals.

And so on.

Honestly I could write pages and pages of this crap except that by this point I was trying so damn hard not to laugh because I was right in front of the judge and he was looking all grim at the state of society and wondering why he bothered coming to work anyway and it wouldn't do to laugh and... well, I sort of tuned the rest out.

6. What You Absolutely Should Not Say If You Want To Serve

I really didn't have an opinion one way or the other about serving, honestly. The case was only expected to last a week at the outside and I already mentioned the shopping and reading benefits. That was until the lawyers and the judge made nice and agreed on The Twelve. I was number thirteen.

Allow me a short digression here on why thirteen is bad. I show up for a week. Pretend I'm a real juror. Listen to everything the boring people say. Take notes. Form opinions about the credibility of witnesses. Get all the information I need in order to decide the case. Then I sit in the hall for as long as it takes the real jurors to decide what to do with the guy. I'm against completely pointless effort on principle and this passed all obvious tests for qualification as such.

Even given all that, I wasn't exactly trying to sabotage my chances when they started questioning the group of eight potential alternate jurors. I was actually thinking about my (non) peers back in the previous point when he asked me the ridiculous question.

Defense: Juror number thirteen. How do you feel about the burden of proof?

Me: I'm sorry, what was the question?

Defense: Do you think it's good that [the Deputy DA] must prove my client's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before a guilty verdict can be returned?

Me: I'm in favor of The Constitution, yes.

That was his last question. Immediately afterwards I was excused by the Deputy DA.

Labels: books, politics, shopping

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By Kevin

Nobel Laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz writes about the economic consequences of this administration from a historical perspective. Oil and gold are at their highest prices in decades and the dollar is plummeting. Over two million adjustable rate mortgages are due to reset this year and next. What this country badly needs is a reining in of personal and governmental spending, even though it will almost certainly result in a recession. I hope our next president has the intelligence and the will to do what is needed.

"SimCity is entertainment that's unintentionally educational" says Steve Seabolt of EA Games. EA donated the original SimCity game to the One Laptop Per Child initiative which aims to provide inexpensive laptops to children worldwide. I'm glad more people are getting it - having fun is the best way for kids to learn. I learned basic boolean logic and circuit design when I was nine or ten playing Rocky's Boots on an Apple ][. The author of that software has links to emulators and disk images on his site. I'm downloading Rocky and the sequel, Robot Odyssey for Alex and Ana to play.

Labels: nablopomo, parenting, politics, toys

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