Too tired and sleepy to comment on…but it doesn’t need any additional commenting by me anyway:

Despicable arrogance of self-satisfied culture of police brutality on cs’s “Classically Liberal” blog:

• Gang brags about beating crowd.

First, we have McCain wanting to suspend his debate and take the V.P. debate off the schedule in order to “work on this economic crisis.”

Huh. This is from the guy who has said on more than one occasion that he doesn’t know anything about economics. Plus, he’s not on any of the Senate committees investigating the issue. So, what exactly will he be working on? Sitting at his desk, all alone, playing with a calculator? (For the 5th time that day he turns it up and down and gives his creepy chuckle and nudges his aid who rolls his eyes, “Heh heh, look, it spells ‘80081E5′!”)

On a more serious note, here’s some significant info no one is talking about:

First, banks have already failed, gone under, closed doors, got bought out–like Lehman Brothers and AIG. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson does nothing.

Then Goldman Sachs is about to go under, and suddenly Paulson wants nearly a trillion taxpayer dollars (which doesn’t exist, by the way–it would have to be created out of imaginary numbers on paper and eventually owed to probably China) to bail out the banks.

Here’s the interesting part: Henry Paulson worked for Goldman Sachs for decades, was even their CEO up until he became Treasury Secretary! In 2006 his stock ownership in Goldman Sachs was estimated at half a billion dollars. Convenient that when their debt gets wiped off their books and transferred to the tax payers, their stock will rise again. Hmmm.

Anyone see a problem with this? Or is it just me?

An amazing article by David Rushkoff that briefly explains exactly how the capitalist system we work under was a contrived system to serve the royals and proto-capitalists (and is not a “natural” development as the hegemony would have you, the proletariat and the petite bourgeois, believe), and how what we are witnessing may be the beginning of the end of it:

• Print Your Own Money

. . . Unlike local currencies, centralized currencies were biased towards retaining their value over time. Capitalism (in addition to being a lot of other things) is the way people get rich simply for being rich. Capital becomes the most important component in the capital/labor/resources equation. Since the purpose of the Renaissance innovations was to keep the currently wealthy wealthy, the currency was biased to favor those who had it – and could mete it out at high interest rates to those who needed it for their transactions.

What we witnessed over the past decades has been the necessary endgame of the scenario.

. . .

The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale – as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many – but it’s better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you’re called up to “human resources.”) . . .

This reminds me of the post I wrote not too long ago in which I discuss, ad nauseum, the failures of conservativism and the corruption of capitalism, and the ideals of anarcho-socialism:

• The failure of conservatism.

And to a lesser although probably more readable degree:

• Viva la hypocrisy!

Warning: Extreme elitist misanthropic opinion follows.

I watched the latest “Real Time with Bill Maher” the other day, and he decried the intelligence of the American people as unable to do the right thing when voting, citing as one of his examples the fact that most people (according to USA Today) believe in angels, particularly interceding “guardian angels.” This news was immediately below the article on the economic collapse. He may also at one point mentioned the fact that Bush got 49 and 50% of the popular vote the last two elections as an example of the lack of intelligence in the U.S.

That stayed in the back of my mind for a while. Then the other day I had to sit in the emergency waiting room and had the privilege of sitting near an 18-year-old mother of what looked like a 1 year old, with her husband/boyfriend/whatever and his friend. She didn’t in general seem very bright, the boyfriend seemed a bit dim, and the friend was a dead ringer for “Larry the Cable Guy”. Including the god-awful voice. Next to them was another teen mom who was only slightly more with it. When we moved to the next waiting room, there was a, what I would peg as a 16-year-old, who wasn’t too shy about expressing her “embarrassment” (yeah) at being a “what’s it called, when someone has sex and, like, isn’t married or something? Oh, yeah, a for-ni-ca-tor. Now I bet they’re all thinking I’m a for-ni-ca-tor” she said as she patted her flat bare tummy. It was very surreal.

Now, let me stop for a second and correct what I’m sure is an understandable misreading of where I’m going with this. My story isn’t done, but it would look like I’m about to equate teen pregnancy with lack of intelligence. I’m not. Anyone old enough to be capable of sex with an IQ of 50 to 150 can get pregnant as a teen. Teens have sex, it’s what our bodies evolved to do regardless of intelligence. We may not like it (I’d prefer if my own daughter abstained until, say, 32…) but it’s a fact of life. Where intelligence would have any role in this is in how the adults in society approach the subject: Either pretend it won’t happen and teach abstinence only despite the facts, or accept it may happen and teach the realistic dangers of sex and appropriate birth control. But, this isn’t what this post is about, although it’s slightly related. I just wanted to clear up that my thoughts on American intelligence only coincidentally was sparked by being around pregnant or child-n-tow teens who happened to be dim bulbs irrespective of their state of parenthood.

So, this later girl and her mother are talking to another waiting room patient who I pegged as what this girl would likely be like in 40 years: not a very sharp tack but experienced, yet without having learned from it. And somehow they get to talking about the girl’s boyfriend sleeping in the same bed…but they don’t have sex. Of course the other woman commented, “Riiiight!” with the girl responding “It’s true! But, it wasn’t an “It’s true!” with the subtext of “You must believe my claim of chastity!” but rather “…and it sucks!” My read of her subtext was confirmed by the mom saying, “Oh, it’s true, they don’t…and she’s very frustrated about it.”

Buhwah?! Yep, you read right and I heard right. The mom was sympathetic to the 15, 16-year-old daughter’s pain at not having sex because of her boyfriend’s “respect issues.” This is obviously a woman who has no idea what a parent is supposed to do and evidently believes the best way to parent is to be your child’s “best friend.” Well, my droogs, I’m certainly not the first person to express “bullshit” at that idea and present as Exhibit A the f–ed up state of American culture as proof that we have way too many parents out there who are doing a piss-poor job of parenting. Why is it we’re one of the most modern, richest, advanced countries, and we have a higher drug addiction rate, higher crime, teen pregnancy, belief in Creationism and literal Biblical interpretation, lowest math and science scores than any other modern Western nation? We have a culture of intellectually retarded people raised by idiots who are now raising their own idiots in a tradition of pride in idiocy.

At risk of sounding like a curmudgeony stand-up comic, the “perfect America” never existed and “Leave it to Beaver” never existed, but there WAS a time when a kid got in trouble at school they got in equal or more trouble at home. A premium was placed on getting education. On learning. Today if a kid gets in trouble at school, the parent will be “all up in da principal’s face” defending their kid’s right to be a slacker delinquent.

We have a media culture that panders to mindless entertainment and shies away from anything challenging. “News” that believes all sides must get equal time, even if that means giving flat-earthers as much validity as legitimate scientists. “News” programs that encourage belief that a frakkin’ bug on a camera lens is a ghost or angel without a whisper of skepticism or encouraging people to actually think.

We have a society in which any sign of intelligence is derided as “elitism” and we make fun of it like the school bully who deals with his latent insecurity about being dumb by beating on the smart kids. We have a bully culture that thrives on war and violence, responds only to fear, and mistrusts intellectuals or education.

Well I for one am sick of it. I’m tired of “who would you rather have a beer with/watch football with?” as a poll question when discussing who to vote for. No one asks “Who would you rather have defining the scientific agenda for the country?” or “Who do you think has the ability to use statesmanship in the complex and delicate balances of world relations?” We seem to be a country of “American Idol” addicted weeble-wobbles with a media culture that has no interest in doing anything other than feed the demand for more idiots playing to the idiots and an education system that has no teeth or ability to make any significant difference. We live in a country in a world that demands intelligent, thoughtful, reasoned leadership and representation. Our very existence as a country depends on it.

I think it’s time we suspend the idea of “everyone has the right to vote” in favor of “you must be this intelligent to vote” criteria. It’s a somewhat fascist idea, but if we don’t stop voting on “values” and “beer buddy” benchmarks and start voting into offices people who are capable and bright, we’re doomed. The school bully tends to grow up and become an insurance or car salesman or real estate agent; the picked-on nerd runs the internet and controls the systems we all depend on. Well, it’s graduation time and America is becoming a car salesman and the smarter countries will before long own and control us. I don’t know, maybe we derve it. We get the President we deserve, they say. Maybe we’re getting the status in the world we deserve as well.

With the spiraling nose-dive of the economy due to deregulation and risk-free corporate greed in the news, I thought I’d start this short post with a reminder that banking and securities and lending industries aren’t the only areas that suffer from deregulation: the herbal/dietary suppliments are also completely unregulated (well, except that suppliments can’t claim to cure cancer…that’s about it).

But what harm can herbal supplements cause? They’re “all natural”! Well, a recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has reported that more than 20% of herbal supplements medicine that comes out of India have dangerous levels of (all natural) heavy metals like lead, mercury, and arsenic. In some cases 100 to 10,000 times more than the acceptable level of “all natural” heavy metals.

Back to financial deregulation, I guess I just have this comment someone made to an article on Phil Gramm (the McCain financial advisor and probable Sec. of Treasury if McCain wins who said we’re a nation of whiners and it’s “mental recession” earlier this year) on the subject to add:

82boat69: “Government is the problem.”I keep hearing that mantra over and over from free-marketeers.Yet the 19th century was NOT some “golden age” of capitalism, as if the economy was stable and the stock market was earning a decent return, year after year. Financial panics and depressions happened roughly once every 10 or 15 years. There was outright fraud much of the time, even counterfeit stock certificates being sold as the real thing (read about the “Big Four” in the railroads), because the Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t exist yet.And in the 19th century, the stock market was a playground only for the very wealthy. Ordinary workers couldn’t count on investing in the stock market for their retirement, because they didn’t have the financial cushion to ride through those wild shocks.In the 19th century, old age was a one-way ticket to poverty for many, because Social Security didn’t exist yet. And poverty could mean starvation for your children, because there was no significant social safety net. Failure to pay your rent on time meant the landlord would show up in your apartment and literally toss your belongings out into the street–and call the cops to throw you out. The slum conditions and factory conditions back then were terrible, because there were no regulations governing humane treatment. In medicine, quack cures, such as dangerous radium and opium, were common, because the FDA didn’t exist yet. Many innocent people got hooked on opium or radiation poisoning from radium.That was the “free market” before the Government reforms of the 20th century.Is that the free market “ideal society” you would like to live in?
rinoma Sep-20

You’ll recall my post during the Republican National Convention in which I relayed news that not only were legitimate criminals being rounded up before the RNC commenced, but so were peace activists and protestors, civil liberties activists, government watchdog groups…and evil journalists. Many were raided and harassed and intimidated into submission and property was seized (most without warrants), and many were arrested. I repeated the facts on how in 2004 the same thing happened before and during the GOP convention in New York and how the NYPD dropped charges on most of those arrests as well (most out of hand, some because one of those watchdog groups harassed this year had produced video evidence showing the state’s evidence was doctored!) And word is that the NYPD accepted the fact that they’d have to pay out millions in resulting civil cases in exchange for helping the federal overlords establish a police state bastion around the RNC.

Well, looks like the St. Paul authorities just released the journalists it had arrested this year, dropping all charges.

Good, I’m glad they’re released. But they shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place in a grossly transparent display of abusive police force as a tool of intimidation on behalf of a political agenda. But, maybe that’s just me. I’m sure it will happen yet again and even moreso in four years (although, I’m pretty certain that if McCain/Palin win this November, the U.S. will be under martial law this time in 2012. I’m taking bets on it.

Quick post: Apparently the presidential candidate who’s major platform is that he’s the experienced and knowledgeable foreign policy guy and Obama’s the young and inexperienced guy, doesn’t know what hemisphere Spain is in or at least who the Prime Minister of it is.

• Bizarre McCain Remarks Appear To Reject Spain As Ally

The Spanish journalist asks him three times if he’d meet with the Prime Minister of Spain, and each time McCain gives some canned statement about relations with Latin America and meeting with allies and “standing up” to those who aren’t. Three times the journalist gave him the opportunity to say “sure, I’d meet with our NATO ally whom we are friendly with” and each time McCain gave a rote memorized response about being tough on those who aren’t our friends…and how we’re friendly with Mexico.

When you read the transcript of the exchange it’s really like McCain’s brain is going:

• !Question received. Analyzing….
• Something about Spanish-something or other and meeting people.
• Keyword search: Spanish, meet people
• Response(s) found: Running archived file: “Meet with Latin American Friends–Hate Enemies”
• !Question received. Analyzing…
• Same question–something about Spanish and leaders
• Running archived file: “Drug War Going Well–Hate Enemies”

etc. This is the guy who early in the Iraq war wanted to shoot looters in the cities, and even the White House, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield White House, had to tell McCain “Uhm, no?” This is The Foreign Policy Guy?? Not to mention this stupid stance on meeting with friends and “standing up” to enemies. You want to meet with just leaders friendly to you? Ooh, congrats on your bravery and statesmanship! Isn’t it possible, just maybe, that if you were to meet with the leader of a country we’re not exactly friendly with, you have some kind of chance of improving relations? Isn’t that part of the job of the representative “leader” of a democratic country, to negotiate and create diplomacy with leaders unfriendly to the U.S.?

Oh wait, all the neo-cons and the war-mongers who have kissed the neo-con ring can think to do with any conflict is “shoot the bastards!”

And yet, while Obama may have taken back a slim lead, the polls still show a nearly dead heat with McCain in good shape to have an electorial win. What the hell is wrong with this country?!

…since Palin was basically whoring out her town to Washington lobbyists for tens of millions in earmarks. (No offense or disparagement meant to “working girls” by comparing them to sleazy politicians. I’d much rather have a beer with a prostitute than either Palin or McCain. Just a beer, though! Seriously.)

What am I talking about? It seems GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin spent $50K in redecorating her Mayoral office in Wasilla (despite running and winning on the platform that she’d cut spending and budget waste). To what effect?

According to [former Palin mentor] Carney, Palin’s office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. “It looked like a bordello.”

• Sarah Palin’s Wasteful Ways

He also had this to say:

“I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter,” said Carney. “It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council’s approval.”

What was her response to criticism that she was doing things without proper legal approval?

“I braced her about it,” he said. “I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’”

“I’ll never forget it — it’s one of the few times in my life I’ve been speechless,” Carney added. “It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That’s Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations.”

Complete and utter disregard for the rule of law and a belief that the “executive” is above the law and has the right to do whatever they want until someone stops them…who does that remind you of? Anyone?

While I was making a point that she’s a good Bush clone, she’s actually a lot more like The Penguin, er, Dick Cheney:

“Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy.”

“(I)nterviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.”

• Dr. Rovenstein’s Monster….

Despite her stated desire to fight “the Old Boy’s Network in Washington,” she’s part of the problem herself by removing qualified people in office and replacing them with friends who know nothing about the job they’re running (although that still sounds like someone else…)

“(W)hen there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.”

…

“The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. “

But back to acting like a lil Cheney, it seems secrecy and avoiding pesky laws and accountability is her bailiwick:

• Just Like Bush White House, Palin Uses Personal E-mail Accounts And Claims Executive Privilege

The lawyer filing the request pointed out that the point of government e-mail is to ensure “security and encryption.” “She’s running state business out of Yahoo?” he asked. Mother Jones reports that Palin’s refusal to hand over e-mails stands in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act.

If McCain/Palin win, it’ll be just like old times.

UPDATE:

• Palin’s Yahoo email account hacked, contents posted to Wikileaks

If only she’d just listened in time to that lawyer in the quote above. How ironic she used personal email accounts to hide her activities, only to have her activities “hacked” because she wasn’t using secured government accounts.

Maybe I’m over simplifying things, but I find this very interesting:

Nearly 150 years ago our country suffers through a horrific war that drastically alters the economy of the country from top to bottom. But once the war ends, the country starts to go through a period of invention and development, exploration and prosperity. New industries rise up and the industrial age booms.

At first the general populace, by and large, enjoy the benefits of the growing economy and increased jobs despite the massive shift from rural to urban manufacturing economy. But then corporations and conglomerates grow and merge and fight and corporate owners become richer and more powerful as the natural flow of wealth in corporate capitalism goes upward toward the top of the pyramids. The rich and powerful capitalists begin to literally buy laws from local, state, and even federal government which continue to favor the power of the corporation and protect the wealth of the owners while taking advantage of labor.

Thus began a Gilded Age in which the rich got richer and everyone else got poorer. Government was in the pocket of business and corporations and in entire concept of “free market” was undermined by the fact the government was simply a tool of the robber barons to get what they want at the expense of the worker–which was most of the country.

Then the economy collapses. Banks fail. Houses and small businesses are foreclosed on. Unemployment skyrockets. We imagine this as a time in which everyone, including the wealthy, suffer–but this is not true. The only people who lost their “fortunes” were that period’s middle and upper-middle class. They became poor while the poor became destitute. The rich and wealthy: the Rockefeller’s, the Morgan’s, The Bush’s, the Gates’, the DuPont’s–the capitalists of the country–remained largely unaffected.

To help return the government back to promoting life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness for all citizens, and not just the corporate owners, radical and progressive politicians are voted in by a citizenry disgusted by the corporate lackey and conservative public disinterest administrations of Coolidge and Hoover. These progressives start passing laws to regulate the markets, banking, loans and lending, housing, and creates social programs like Social Security and work aid programs, welfare programs, and supported union interests.

And guess what? People are back to work, the economy begins it very slow but palpable crawl back to recovery, and less people are sleeping in the streets and waiting in lines for basic foodstuffs. By the time we start making some equipment to help the British fight Germany, the United States is on its way out of the Depression and most Americans are at least earning living wages again.

The conservatives and capitalists have twisted the facts and promoted the message so that when we think of the end of the Depression we think nothing of the massive shift in policy from pro-corporate interests to pro-worker/people interests and simply credit war with economic recovery and the return of the middle class. While it’s true that the creation of the military industrial complex accelerated the rise of wealth (along with the imperialism) of America, the improvement was already begun before the war and the sustained power of the middle class through the 40s, 50s, and 60s was due to government policy which kept corporate greed and power brokerage in check.

And then Reagan and the proto-neo-cons happened. With his mantra of “small government” he eliminated and reduced some of the most significant regulations on corporate interests. Some of the immediate results include the Savings and Loan and junk bond scandals. He helped accelerate the growth of global market capitalism and the disempowerment of the workers by crafting policy which encouraged corporations to move labor and manufacturing to other countries in lower labor costs and raise profits at the expense of American employment stability, earnings, benefits, and bargaining power. Reagan was responsible for one of the greatest shifts in power from the worker to the CEO since Hoover.

And in the years since, further corporate deregulation and dismantling of social programs has created another Gilded Age in which the top 1% have gotten obscenely richer and the bottom 99% have gotten increasingly poorer as well as more politically disenfranchised and powerless. And what is happening today? Foreclosers on a scale not seen since the Depression. Massive national banks and lenders going under. The stock market plummeting on the bad days, shaky and unstable on the good. The middle class becoming poorer and poorer while the rich corporate owners enjoy bail outs and tax breaks and other help from a corporate owned and controled government. (“Free market” my ash!)

So, how far down will this eerie replay of history play out? How bad is it going to get before progressive politicians return government to the role it’s supposed to play to favor the rights and power of the people and not corporate interests? (If that’s even possible any more, and most Democrats and 3rd Party politicians aren’t even close to free of corporate butt-kissing.)

Here’s something of note, that may indicate how things could go the next four years: McCain recently picked William E. Timmons to head his transition team should he win. Who is Timmons? A former Reagan adviser who has made his considerable wealth by being a Washington lobbyist working for, among other corporations, oil companies.

“This word ‘Maverick’ you keep saying–I do not think it means what you think it means.” I think I heard that in a movie once.

(Top image (source unknown) : Photos of former employees of banking giant Lehman Brothers packing up and leaving after it filed for bankruptcy on Sunday. Side note: other banking giant, Merrill Lynch & Co., to be sold.)

Hat tip to Ellen Datlow for this.

One of the stories mentioned in yesterday’s blog post on the police unlawfully raiding peaceful protestor organizations, homes of liberal organizers not even planning to protest, and confiscating computers and cameras (the dangerous weapons of the press and free public who watch the watchers), was the arrest of Democracy Now! producers and reporter:

• Update: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

Some bits of information that I didn’t see included in that article but has been detailed by Amy Goodman and witnesses elsewhere: the so-called riot (peaceful protest) was quelled and Sharif and Nicole were already accosted, battered, and cuffed, by the time Amy Goodman (who was interviewing Alaskan delegates inside the convention) got word that her producers were arrested. She rushed to the location to find out what was going on, and when (with security pass and press credentials clearly displayed) she explained she was press and demanded that her producers (who also clearly had convention press credentials displayed) be released–she too was accosted and cuffed and arrested.

At some point Secret Service agents came around and confiscated the security credentials of the held press employees.

At the Republican convention in New York in 2004 the police arrested over 1800 people and subsequently dropped the charges on most of them. The word ’bout town is that they willingly sucked up the millions of dollars in wrongful arrest suits they ended up paying in order to silence and intimidate would-be protestors and evil trouble-makers. Word ’bout Minneapolis/St. Paul is that they too are willing to suck it up in order to establish police state control over democracy. (Although there are reports of grumblings among the police who take umbrage at the fact that, like in New York four years ago, they’re being directed in these raids and sweeping arrests of press by federal agents–the presence of which can be clearly seen in many photos and videos being taken of raids and arrests.)

One of the organizations in pre-conventions raid mentioned in yesterday’s blog, was I-Witness. I didn’t know it yesterday that they were responsible for many of the dropped charges in New York four years ago because their reporter’s video clearly showed New York evidence against “conspirators” and “rioters” having been doctored and edited!

I ranted too much on it yesterday, so I’ll be brief when I reiterate here that we’ve lost control of our government. We were never meant to be controlled by the government which was intended to BE us, we the people. The government was not supposed to watch us, corral us, intimidate us. It was always supposed to be the other way around as the government was government only by the will and consent of the governed.

“When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear their government, there is tyranny.”

Thomas Jefferson

Democracy has lost, the American experiment has failed. Is there any hope of the people regaining control?

There’s been something of a noticeable difference between how the police have been handling the two political party conventions.

At last week’s Democratic convention there was a little trouble noted at the site among protesters. Seems some got a little too physical and were summarily subdued and cordoned off by a questionably large force of cops in urban riot gear. (See photo left.)

We have the right to peaceably assemble and protest, and people were allowed to at the DNC–within a certain amount of guarded control. And when people go from peaceful to rushing riot cops, you pretty much deserve a baton to the side of the head (once, though–not a total beat down).

But then comes the Republican national convention, and something different takes place: various protest groups which are being watched and in some cases infiltrated, over the last week have been raided in warrantless police break-ins and seizures of property in what is being described a “preemptive strikes” against groups they believe are planning to incite riot. We’re not talking about the overtly criminal behavior of a small group of vandals who have indeed been breaking the law by committing damage to private and public property, but rather liberal activist groups and even liberal press in a blatant attempt to stifle protest.

One of these dangerous and vile commies that were accosted and had property siezed was a sustainable living education group’s traveling bus:

At approximately 6:25 pm on August 30, 2008 Minneapolis Police, Minnesota State Troopers, Ramsey County Sheriffs, Saint Paul Police, and University of Minnesota Police pulled over the Earth Activist Training Permaculture Demonstration Bus (Permibus) by exit 237 on Interstate 94. Initially the police told the people on the bus to exit. When the people on the bus asked if they were being detained they were told that they were but police wereunable to provide justification. When asked why they pulled the bus over they refused to answer. After repeated requests to explain why the bus had been stopped Officer Honican of the Minneapolis Police explained that this was just a routine traffic stop though he did not explain the reason for the traffic stop. The police then told Stan Wilson, the driver and registered owner of the Permibus, that they were going to impound the bus in case they wanted to execute a search warrant later. After more than an hour of being questioned by Stan and Delyla Wilson as to the legalities of their detainment and the impoundment of the Permibus, the police then informed Stan that the bus, which is legally registered as a passenger vehicle in the state of Montana, was being impounded for a commercial vehicle inspection. Shortly afterward Sergeant Paul Davis, a commercial vehicle inspector arrived on scene. Despite the polices insistence that the reason for impoundment was for a commercial vehicle inspection the Permibus crew were not allowed to remove anything from the bus including computers, toiletries, and 17-year-old Megan Wilson’s shoes. The police finally allowed the animals to be removed from the Permibus before it was towed, leaving the Permibus family standing beside their chickens and dogs, homeless on the highway. . . .

After the incident Stan Wilson said, “If the combined law enforcement of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Ramsey County, and the State of Minnesota can pull over and impound a vehicle and home used to teach organic gardening and sustainability, one has to wonder what it is our government really fears. After all, we seek to teach people that the real meaning of homeland security is local food, fuel and energy production. For that we have had our lives stolen by government men with guns.”

Damn hippies! I bet they were just waiting for the moment to undermine American values! Another warrantless raid was on a duplex housing journalists from the site LegalWatch, who routinely report on the violations on civil liberties the government commits:

“About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house,” Whelan said. “One of my roommates said ‘I want to see a warrant’ and she was immediately detained.”

Another group, I-Witness (which fights for protester rights and was able to get charges against 2004 RNC protestors dropped), was raided and people were handcuffed and searched before being let go in a clear show of police intimidation.

These are just a few of the confirmed stories of preemptive strikes against protestors before the GOP convention. And apparently it’s an ongoing issue as recent reports of journalists (who at one time were given wide berths by the police so long as they weren’t in or causing imminent threat of harm) being harassed and apprehended by police for no other reason than being around protestors: Radio news host among protesters arrested at RNC for “conspiracy to riot”, National Guard headed in?

Amy Goodman, host of the independent news program “Democracy Now!,” was among hundreds who were arrested in St. Paul Minnesota today. Also detained were Goodman’s producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. The three were covering the protests at the Republican National Convention, but the Minneapolis Police Department charged them with conspiracy to riot.

No one in the mainstream corporate media is covering any of this–the closest large media outlet is Salon magazine:

• Federal government involved in raids on protesters

Today’s Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

Why is there no outcry? Greewald suggests:

[T]here is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they’ve done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our “freedoms” in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic — but we’ve decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it’s therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

You know, just stop reading my blog post and just read his article. He deals with this issue coherently and completely, discussing the ramifications of federal involvement in silencing dissent from the people and what it means to live in a society where people just sit down, shut up, and do what they’re told. But then, that’s why Glenn is a paid journalist and I’m just a blogger.

But I’ll babble a bit more for you masochists. The fundamental problem is the people have allowed themselves to become subjects of rulership. It was written somewhere, I don’t recall where, maybe some Post-It note or something, that government–particularly the United States’ government–was to be by the people and for the people. That basically, WE THE PEOPLE ARE the government. The people we send to Washington are not our rulers! They are not our “leaders“! They are representatives of us, the many. We have allowed the government to control us like any medieval kingdom or tinpot dictatorship or soviet fascism. We sit idly by while right after right, freedom after freedom, is taken away from us in the name of our security and safety.

We’ve done this to ourselves through our complacency and credulity. We’ve turned into a nation in which people are harrased and accosted for not participating in the tribal groupthink of “God Bless America” at a ball game. In which dissent and speaking out against the actions of the government that is supposed to be by you and for you, is considered unpatriotic and you’re given the option to “love it or leave it” if your opinions differ from the jingoist status quo–when the very act of dissent and questioning the government was considered by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Paine, to be ideals of patriotism and an informed, involved citizenry! We can blame the politicians who act like rulers, like we’re their subjects, but it’s ultimately 100, 150 years social, political, civic layziness on the part of the People who are to blame.

In politics, we as a nation do what we’re told by those we anoint as more capable than us to take care of us; in religion, we as a nation do what we’re told by those we assume have direct lines to the god we believe will take care of us; in our daily lives, we as a nation have faith in the corporations and their marketing corporations to have our best interests at heart and will take care of our needs and wants; as parents, we as a nation shuffle responsibility for raising our kids unto the schools and television. We are a nation of unthinking, unreasoning, uncritical, non-thinkers who thrive on rumor and urban legend, on sensationalism and scandalous entertainment, abdicating personal responsibility for any and everything that we think will take care of us.

Goodness knows I don’t want anything terrible to happen to America, to people. The world can use a whole lot less suffering in it–but I’m afraid we’re the sleepy frog in the pot that’s about to boil us to death. I’m afraid it’s only going to be something horrible and massive to shock us out of complacency and make us realize for our own sake we HAVE to get back to a government that IS us! It’s not an issue of big government or small government, lots of taxes or no taxes, welfare or privatization–those are abstractions in the face of the fact that we no longer have a representational democracy. We no longer have a system of government by and for the people. We have a government by the capitalists and for the corporations. And we’re going to continue to complacently play Playstations and write blogs and attend feel-good churches of prosperity and be told how we can “live better, pay less” for the same products in different packaging, and we’ll continue to complain and gripe and moan about this or that. Meanwhile the state continues its unstoppable march toward complete control and power over the individual. Forcing us to be good, unquestioning, submissive consumers who don’t make waves or question that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

What sucks is I like my Playstation and blog writing….