ואל-תמכר » police

social breakdown, part 3

mitchell b powell — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:12:30 +0000

Some cursing:

the mixed blessing of the taser

mitchell b powell — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:02:01 +0000

To tell the truth, I was first overjoyed back when I was a little kid and I first heard about police departments using tasers. I pictured life-threatening standoffs being swiftly ended by means of a non-harmful electrical device. Then the bad guys could be carted off to court and the justice system rather than the police could choose who was deserving of death and who ought to live. Anything that would stop unnecessary deaths seemed like it would be a great idea. With a childish and implicit trust in the goodwill of government, it never occurred to me that the taser would ever be used other than to prevent suffering. I’ve since learned different, and the latest taser outrage concerns an 86-year-old bedridden woman named Lona Vernon. Lona Vernon’s granddaughter called 911 because she thought a mistake in her mother’s medication was endangering her mother’s life. Instead of medical personnel, ten armed police filed into the room. At some point, they say, the old bedridden woman “took an aggressive posture.” And so they tased her. Now, you can call me untrusting, but I suspect that an irritated and bed-ridden octogenarian was not a genuine threat to the ten armed men standing in the room. I’m willing to bet that the tasering wasn’t a great idea. Or maybe my little kid instincts were right, and we should be thankful the taser was there. Maybe the ten armed men would have been forced to shoot the bedridden granny if it hadn’t been for the handy and humanitarian taser.

developing story–police tear gas party at osu

mitchell b powell — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:32:00 +0000

So the story’s developing and some details may change, but here’s things as I understand them:

Police showed up at a party and tear gassed a bunch of students. That’ll teach ‘em not to drink. As far as I’ve heard, there was no provocation and no violent behavior on the part of the students involved. I’ve also posted this on facebook and the facebook group “Young Americans for Liberty: The Ohio State University Chapter.”

If you’ve got any information, feel free to post it in the comments. I’ll try to keep up with the story as it develops.

UPDATE (11/20/2010). In case you hadn’t guessed, that story didn’t develop any more. I heard nothing further.

on child labor laws and the blues

mitchell b powell — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:38:12 +0000

Child labor laws have taken this poor kids blues away. He lives in Wisconsin, and is an 8-year-old with a shocking musical ability. He will from time to time go play at blues venues, and the money from that is all put toward his college education. It’s sort of the opposite of child exploitation. But the state of Wisconsin fails to see the difference (in Wisconsin a kid can go into a bar with his Dad and drink beer, but heaven forbid he play guitar. That’s child endangerment.):

Child labor laws are interesting to me because I was an illegal undocumented worker once, back when I was fifteen. I’d work two or three hours at a time, after school. Little did I know till I’d been doing this for some time that a minor has to go to his school and fill out forms and ask for permission from the school to work. That’s right–a school bureaucrat named Mrs. Yingling was, according to the government, better qualified than my parents to know whether this job would be in my best interests, even though I had never met her before. Of course, no insult is intended to Mrs. Yingling, who was helpful and understanding of my legal predicament and helped me get my papers in order. My two younger brothers have also had similar problems finding perfectly reasonable work, because the legal situation is so biased against the 15-17 year old.

I was talking to a local police officer about this several months later, and he replied, “You have to get permission after school to work? That’s ridiculous. More kids should be getting themselves jobs, not less.”

I agree.