Category Archives: Current Affairs

Balancing Public Safety and Liberty

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In preparation for the Democrats' convention the city council in Charlotte has passed a few ordinances that have some questioning if, in an effort to promote public safety, they've trampled on peoples' liberties:

People won't be allowed to carry items such as helmets and body armor; noxious substances; barricades, locks; pipes; mace or pepper spray; or other weapons.

In addition, the new ordinance prohibits people from carrying backpacks, satchels or coolers if police believe they are being used to carry weapons.

"They are frequently used to carry rocks and weapons," said CMPD Deputy Chief Harold Medlock, who is coordinating the police department's DNC response.

Medlock said during the 2008 DNC in Denver, some protesters would enter portable toilets and fill backpacks with feces, which were thrown at police.

The ACLU and others have been concerned that innocent people could be swept up in a police dragnet, such as people with bike helmets or people walking to work on Tryon Street with a briefcase. The ACLU has said the police can already stop someone if they have probable cause that a crime is taking place, and the group said it believes the ordinances are unnecessary…

(h/t to Ed Cone for the link)


 

Your Friendly Neighborhood White Nationalists

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You ever wish you hadn't learned something because you were way more comfortable with your ignorance?  That happened to me this week when I learned that Clemmons is the HQ for the North Carolina chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens which is considered a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Thanks Fec). With one quick Google search I learned that Clemmons had hosted the Council of Conservative Citizens' national conference last June.

I couldn't believe that I'd missed media coverage of the event – after all the media would love nothing more than a story about a controversial organization hosting its national conference in the area – so I went to the Winston-Salem Journal website to search for a story about it.  I came up empty but did find an article from February, 2011 about the slight decline in North Carolina hate groups, and that article featured an interview with the CCC's North Carolina executive director, a Mr. A.J. Barker of Clemmons.  Here's what Mr. Barker had to say:

A.J. Barker of Clemmons, the organization's executive director in North Carolina, said calling the council a hate group is unfair.

"That's totally ridiculous," Barker said.

He said there are good and bad people among both races, and he doesn't consider blacks worse than whites.

Barker said the council has been criticized by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center because of the council's stand on such issues as affirmative action and illegal immigration.

"When you take a stand like that, you're automatically stigmatized by groups like that," he said.

Okay, let's see what representatives from the Eastern Pennsylvania/New Jersey chapter of CCC had to say about the conference held in Clemmons in June, 2011:

Following up Mr. Taylor on the topic of being ‘victims of our virtues’ Louis March, a former aide to Senator Jesse Helms, gave a passionate speech and echoed the call for all White men and women to do whatever they can to save Western Civilization from impending destruction.  He emphasized that we need work together for our group interests and not fall victim to what he referred to as “suicidal altruism”, which is essentially a term for how we as a race do every imaginable to lend aid and assistance to every other race at our own expense, even if it means heading down the path of our own extinction.

Mr. March went on to say that even though we must always seek to educate our people with regards to our histories and cultures, it is not enough.  He stated that we need to do more than offer up intellectual arguments for people to ponder.  We must inspire our people to be noble and charitable with regards to our own.  We must inspire people to be heroes and take a stand as our ancestors in Europe did in repelling the invading colored hordes from Africa and Asia…

Sam Dickson, also a CofCC Director, began his presentation with the statement that he quite pessimistic and no linger hopefully in a political or “democratic” solution to our dilemma since we are no longer in control of our society in any area whether it be the government, educational institutions, or the media.  He quoted George Orwell, “Who controls the past, controls the future.   Who controls the present, controls the past”…

Mr. Dickson then went on to say that our only viable option, due to our socio-political dilemma and the demographic disaster we face due the sheer volume of nonwhite immigrants in the country, is to separate from this society and form a White entho-state where we can look out for our own self-interests without interference from others.  He pointed that the success of such a drastic move is achievable by putting forth Israel as an example.

Yeah, I really don't know how someone could mistake them for a hate group.  I mean their roots certainly wouldn't lead you to that conclusion would they?

Founded in 1985 by Gordon Baum, a worker's compensation attorney and longtime racist activist, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) rose from the ashes of the Citizens Councils of America (CCA), commonly called "White Citizens Councils," a coalition of white-supremacist groups and individuals formed throughout the South to defend school segregation after the Supreme Court outlawed the policy in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education. 

Unlike the KKK, the CCA groups had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the "uptown Klan." While there were plenty of bare-knuckle racists attracted to the councils' anti-integration slogan, "Never!," the members also included bankers, merchants, judges, newspaper editors and politicians — folks given more to wearing suits and ties than hoods and robes. During the White Citizens Councils' heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members. Although they weren't immune to violence — Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member — the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of "forced integration." 

Once the segregation battle was lost, the air went out of the White Citizens Councils. The councils steadily lost members throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Sensing the need for a new direction, Baum, formerly the CCA's Midwest field director, called together a group of 30 white men, including former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and future Louisiana Congressman John Rarick, for a meeting in Atlanta in 1985. Together, they cooked up a successor organization: the Council of Conservative Citizens. 

Oy. Like I said, my ignorance of this was certainly bliss. I truly am astonished that this event was staged within a 45 minute drive of the Civil Rights Museum and no one seemed to have picked it up.  In this day and age if four guys in hoods and sheets decide to have a "protest" at least 20 cameras will be there to cover it, yet a known white nationalist group holds its national conference here and no one even blinks?  That's just amazing to me. (BTW, if it was covered and I just can't find it please feel free to let me know.) I don't know what's more sad – that the media are stretched thin enough that they didn't pick up on this, or that we've become so inured to this kind of bile that we just don't pay attention any more.

I guess the one bright spot is they didn't get any attention outside of their own small circle of twisted minds. 

PIPA/SOPA Explained

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As you might have guessed I love staying on top of current events, especially as it relates to politics, the economy and just about anything not related to Justin Bieber or Dancing with the Stars. So you can imagine my frustration when I just don't have the time to get up to speed on an issue that I'm pretty sure is important.  That's what has happened with the current PIPA/SOPA issue in Congress which is why I was so pleased to come across this explanation of the issue by Clay Shirky:

That Vintage Sears Catalog Is Gonna Get Vintagier

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After reading Fec's Sears Death Watch I'm wishing I'd saved an old Sears catalog.  It might be a valuable relic in the near future.

The last time I set foot in a Sears was five years ago when Celeste and I bought a stove and a dishwasher.  Let's just say our experience directly led to me being highly motivated to never return.

Ken Snowden, UNCG Econ Professor, On the Mortgage Mess

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UNCG Econ Professor Ken Snowden is a co-author of an upcoming book about lessons to be learned from the Great Depression that might be applied to our current mortgage mess.  An excerpt can be found at the Freakonomics blog:

For the past four years, the U.S. has faced a housing crisis that shows no signs of ending.  The situation was similar in June 1933 when the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was created to address the nation’s last severe mortgage crisis.  Some have suggested that a new HOLC could help resolve the current crisis, but their characterizations of the HOLC have been incomplete.  Our goal here is to summarize recent research that provides a fuller picture of the HOLC and its impact on housing markets in the 1930s.        

Between 1933 and 1936 the HOLC bought and then refinanced one million severely delinquent mortgages, representing roughly one-tenth of the nation’s nonfarm owner-occupied homes.  The total amount refinanced was $3 billion, or about 20 percent of the outstanding mortgage debt on one- to four-family homes in 1933.  A program of similar proportions in 2011 would refinance 7.6 million loans worth $2 trillion. 

Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow

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I catch The Colbert Report every once in a while, but after reading this article about Colbert's (real) Super PAC and the way he's using it as a kind of grand performance art experiment/exploration of our current political environment, I think I need to add him to the old DVR list.  This is just brilliant:

In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC — a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the presidential candidacy of Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, and almost succeeded in hijacking and renaming the Republican primary in South Carolina. “Basically, the F.E.C. gave me the license to create a killer robot,” Colbert said to me in October, and there are times now when the robot seems to be running the television show instead of the other way around.

“It’s bizarre,” remarked an admiring Jon Stewart, whose own program, “The Daily Show,” immediately precedes “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central and is where the Colbert character got his start. “Here is this fictional character who is now suddenly interacting in the real world. It’s so far up its own rear end,” he said, or words to that effect, “that you don’t know what to do except get high and sit in a room with a black light and a poster.”

In August, during the run-up to the Ames straw poll, some Iowans were baffled to turn on their TVs and see a commercial that featured shots of ruddy-cheeked farm families, an astronaut on the moon and an ear of hot buttered corn. It urged viewers to cast write-in votes for Rick Perry by spelling his name with an “a” — “for America.” A voice-over at the end announced that the commercial had been paid for by an organization called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which is the name of Colbert’s super PAC, an entity that, like any other super PAC, is entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t “coordinate” with them, whatever that means. Of such super-PAC efforts, Colbert said, “This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”

 

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

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Below is a video of a speech Elizabeth Warren gave at the University of California about the stress on today's middle class families.  She provides lots of interesting data, but what I found most compelling was her comparison of a middle class family of four (two parents, two kids) in 1970 and 2003:

  • In 1970 most families had a single earner, in 2003 the vast majority were two-income families.
  • Average incomes were up in 2003 compared to 1970 due to the second worker, but fixed expenses (mortgage, health care, taxes, child care, cars) were 50% in 1970 and rose to 75% in 2003.
  • Discretionary expenses for items like clothes and food actually went down significantly between 1970 and 2003.  

It's a long video (almost an hour), but it really is worth a look to see how much pressure is on the middle class these days.  Even if you aren't a fan of Warren's it is still worth watching to get a sense of how things have changed in just one generation.

Last point I'll make is that this speech was given in 2007, before the economy tanked. I wonder how some of these numbers would look now.

Did a Bear Raid on Citigroup in 2007 Crash the Economy?

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A paper (PDF) from a group called New England Complex Systems Institute seems to make the assertion that a "bear raid" on Citigroup in 2007 may have triggered the economic meltdown that led to the Great Recession:

A paper from the New England Complex Systems Institute claims that they have found evidence that traders executed a "bear raid" on Citigroup in 2007, precipitating the financial collapse. A "bear raid" is a market manipulation technique in which short sellers conspire to dump huge quantities of borrowed shares into the market all at once, driving the price down (short selling is a stock-trading technique in which shares are borrowed for sale; the short seller makes money when the value of the borrowed shares declines).

"Bear raids" have been considered a risk to markets since the Great Depression, and a financial regulation called the "uptick rule" was instituted in 1938 to prevent the tactic. The uptick rule was repealed in in July, 2007, and the alleged bear raid took place in November, 2007.

The paper's authors offered these comments about deregulation in their conclusions:

Within the resulting deregulated environment, it is still widely believed that the crisis was caused by mortgage-related financial instruments and credit conditions, and that individual traders did not play a role [32{35]. Our analysis demonstrates that manipulation may have played a key role. Methods for detecting manipulation and its eff ects are necessary to both inform and enforce policy.

When the SEC repealed the uptick rule on July 6, 2007, one of its main claims was that the market was transparent, and that such regulations were not needed to prevent market manipulation [6]. Our results suggest that, not long after the uptick rule was repealed, a bear raid may have occurred and remained undetected and unprosecuted. Our analysis reinforces claims that lax regulation was an integral part of the financial crisis [30].

In response to requests for reinstatement of the uptick rule after the fi nancial crash,the SEC underwent extended deliberations and fi nally implemented an alternative uptick rule, which allows a stock to fall by 10% in a single day before limitations on short selling apply [36]. This weaker rule would not have a ffected trading of Citigroup on November 1, 2007, as its minimum price was just 9% lower than the close on October 31. Subsequent day declines until November 7 were also smaller than 10%.

The authors go on to recommend some policy changes (adopting preventive measures instead of current retroactive penalties, regulatory agencies investigating individual events like this one, improve access to data, etc.) but given our government's reluctance to go after these folks I'm not confident that their advice will be heeded.

Christmas and Flying Spaghetti Monsters

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Remember our little local dust-up about flying the Christian flag at the veteran's memorial in King?  Imagine how nutty folks around here would get if, like Leesburg, VA, we had the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster vying for space with the traditional manger scene.

For the better part of 50 years, a creche and a Christmas tree were the only holiday displays on theLoudoun County Courthouse grounds.

Then came the atheists. And the Jedis. And the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – each with its own decorations. A skeleton Santa Claus was mounted on a cross, intended by its creator to portray society's obsession with consumerism. Nearby, a pine tree stood adorned with atheist testimonials.

Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees are scheduled to put up their contribution this weekend. It's a banner portraying a Nativity-style scene, but Jesus is nowhere to be found. Instead, the Virgin Mary cradles a stalk-eyed noodle-and-meatball creature, its manger surrounded by an army of pirates, a solemn gnome and barnyard animals. The message proclaims: "Touched by an Angelhair."

Given our recent debates about the Christian flag and the controversy over the right (or not) to carry concealed weapons in local parks, there's a little part of my brain that would love to see what would happen around here if we had a similar setup to Leesburg's.  In that juvenile little part of my head I picture this scene:

Bible-quoting sharpshooters taking aim at spaghetti-eating atheists and agnostics who dive for cover, sending sauce and meatballs skyward during their panic, asking Mama Celeste for help since God's out of the picture until their own contingent of pistol packers can get their firearms unholstered and de-trigger locked to return fire.  Thankfully no one's hurt since none of the participants ever served in the military and thus never received truly effective arms training, although two bullets do somehow hit something – one Christian is saved by the lucky (divine?) presence of a condensed pocket-sized King James and one innocent bystander who picked a wildly inopportune time to squat for a meditation is spared when his tattered copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes a direct hit. Eventually cooler heads prevail when the Occupy Wall Streeters, who were minding their own business in their designated protest box, step across their chalk line to broker a truce in which the atheists and agnostics provide a spaghetti supper for everyone at the park free of charge, the Christians put on their Christmas production, collection plates are passed and everyone splits the proceeds.

I'd pay to see it.