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Old 12-21-2007, 07:27 PM   #41 (permalink)
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*comes back in and reads everything since his last post all at once*

Wow.

dk, A few quick observations:

1. I'm sorry that "implied consent" gets in the way of your personal beliefs. However, there are options available to you in the form of what's called an Advanced Directive- a living will. In it, you may indicate as broadly or specifically as you desire exactly what sort of medical treatment you authorize or do not authorize to be performed on yourself.

Examples: You may say you authorize intravenous access for giving medication, but NOT for drawing blood. This would allow medical personnel to give you medicine, but would disallow a blood draw. You could have it say you don't wish any intravenous access whatsoever, though I wouldn't recommend that, because if you were ever in an accident and needed blood or fluids, you'd be screwed. You can even drill it down and say something like you will allow IV access ONLY for the administration of fluids, blood, or medicine, but not for any sedative/hypnotic drugs. This would prevent them from giving you any chemical restraints, or anything to "put you down".

Depending on your state, a living will (or "advanced directive") may or may not need to be arranged by a lawyer, and may or may not require the signature of your physician. Once that's obtained, it's a simple matter of keeping the document on you. That may sound a bit cumbersome, but lots of people do it. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, often have them because they are barred by religion from receiving any blood products, and must be able to indicate that on paper, should an emergency situation arise.

So you do have solutions to your concerns, regarding unwanted medical procedures. You DO have a right to say what is and isn't done to your body, you just need a *tiny* bit more patience to do the necessary research into it.

(Footnote: a court order can still override it, if let's say you were suspected of driving under the influence, a judge could issue a warrant for your blood to test for alcohol. But this would not be determined by a police officer, this would take a little time and come from a judge. If you don't drive, then this wouldn't really apply to you.)

Now that I'm done helping...

2. Sheeple? You, Mr. "I know my rights better than anyone and the gestapo is jack-booting them all into the stratosphere", don't know your rights when it comes to medical procedure. Don't fucking talk to me about violation of rights, you haven't a single goddamn clue what you're talking about and it pisses me off that you've translated your ignorance of this subject into a hatred. Ladies and gentlemen, a perfect example of ignorance breeding hate. You don't have anything to hate- as I've outlined above, there are ways to specify what medical care you give consent to when it's deemed you're unable to give consent.

You're too busy bitching, whining, complaining, and otherwise being a vocal nuisance to even look into your personal rights on this matter. Everything you've said about a lack of rights is misguided and lacking in education on the subject, because you're making wild claims about the government's ability to force things on you. You obviously have no education on the subject- so I recommend you get some, get an advanced directive so the big, bad nurses of the world can't "violate your rights" and draw some blood, and stop ranting about things on which you're totally clueless.

Plain and simple, you are wrong here. You were unaware of your own rights, which you DO have in the form of an Advanced Directive, and you took the ignorance of your rights in this matter and parlayed it into hatred. Nothing, not even blaming me for the Jewish holocaust, will change the fact that this time, you are totally and unquestionably wrong. I wish you luck on obtaining an Advanced Directive.
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Old 12-21-2007, 07:42 PM   #42 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: bedford, tx
you HAD rights, you gave them up. I'm NOT wrong, plain and simple. very few people i've ever come across have been able to realize just what it is that they've lost because they've let others dictate for them what rights they have and what rights don't exist. This is YOUR fault for not overlooking what you've been told and discovering for yourself, through the documents of our history, what it is you actually hold. I can't help you anymore in this. Many people have pointed you in the direction you need to go, if you refuse to acknowledge that, you're beyond the help you need.

I'll agree to disagree with you, but it's your loss.
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Old 12-21-2007, 08:00 PM   #43 (permalink)
warrior bodhisattva
 
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This isn't about DUI?

Sorry, if it isn't, you're going to have to recast this whole thread. Please, even if you need to bring in some Thomas Paine, do something to save this thread.
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Old 12-21-2007, 08:08 PM   #44 (permalink)
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Yeah, you're still wrong. You have rights, and don't know how to exercise them.

It's ok though. Pretty much every day in my line of work, there exists a handful of people whom I (indeed, all people in a medical field) attempt to educate, knowing full-well it will be totally ignored. They either don't want to hear it because they're set in their ways, or just want a "quick fix" and to be on their way. I'll be there when they want to get patched up, and I'll be there when those lines of thinking end up killing them earlier, and with less healthy years, than they could have lived.

And I'm fine with all that.

Helping people does not rely on them actually following your advice, just that the advice is imparted in good faith; that sometimes, people really think about it, and take positive steps towards their well-being, and live a longer, fuller life. People do it all the time, and you can never know who might turn their life around on any given day.

So, now you're armed with information- something a thousand times more powerful than anything in your personal armory.
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Old 12-21-2007, 08:10 PM   #45 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: bedford, tx
No BG, this isn't JUST ABOUT DUI. This is about people deciding that giving up their personal private rights to lower a crime rate is ok, as well as letting 'authority' abrogate their rights through judicial edict. It goes even further than that when people try to tell us that a right not specifically articulated in the constitution and bill of rights is a right that doesn't exist.

This is about becoming a virtual slave to the government, for thats where we are headed by simple virtue of people believing that we need to in order to lower crime.

Quote:
Originally Posted by analog
Yeah, you're still wrong. You have rights, and don't know how to exercise them.

It's ok though. Pretty much every day in my line of work, there exists a handful of people whom I (indeed, all people in a medical field) attempt to educate, knowing full-well it will be totally ignored. They either don't want to hear it because they're set in their ways, or just want a "quick fix" and to be on their way. I'll be there when they want to get patched up, and I'll be there when those lines of thinking end up killing them earlier, and with less healthy years, than they could have lived.

And I'm fine with all that.

Helping people does not rely on them actually following your advice, just that the advice is imparted in good faith; that sometimes, people really think about it, and take positive steps towards their well-being, and live a longer, fuller life. People do it all the time, and you can never know who might turn their life around on any given day.

So, now you're armed with information- something a thousand times more powerful than anything in your personal armory.
right, because i'm obviously a simpleton without a shred of intelligence, simply trained to do a highly complex job that any monkey could do just as easily.
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Last edited by dksuddeth; 12-21-2007 at 08:11 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 12-21-2007, 08:18 PM   #46 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
right, because i'm obviously a simpleton without a shred of intelligence, simply trained to do a highly complex job that any monkey could do just as easily.
I didn't say you were uneducated, or simple, or without intelligence.

In fact, I specifically went out of my way to follow every use of the word "ignorance" or "uneducated", or other form of indicating a lack of knowledge, with "on this subject", "in this matter", "on this topic", etc. to very clearly and specifically indicate I only meant regarding this exact topic.

So, my apologies if my efforts were not sufficient to head off misunderstanding- I do not think you're stupid. You do seem quite intelligent, regardless of what opinions we share or do not share. I simply meant your knowledge base, as it pertains solely to this topic, is insufficient. I hope restating that, in its own context, has assuaged your feelings of insult.
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Old 12-21-2007, 08:28 PM   #47 (permalink)
warrior bodhisattva
 
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Okay, so this isn't just about DUI, so I guess this isn't just about New Jersey, either. So, is it about the Fourth Amendment, then?

This could be interesting. Let's focus on this pre-revolutionary amendment within the context of post-9/11 America. There is a lot to discuss here. So, we have a topic of privacy and government intervention via policing and court orders. In this case, it is DUI and the issue of forced blood samples.

But even before these recent cases, we also have the issue of suspended rights to privacy with illegal wiretaps in the context of counter terrorism. Personally, I'd be more afraid of wiretaps and other forms of tech-based government surveillance than I would be about blood samples if I were to be caught while driving impaired. (Think mobile technology, the Internet, and ways of tracking things such as retail patterns and library usage, etc.)

Mandatory blood tests on suspected drunkards doesn't concern me. If they start doing that to other groups, then we just might have a problem.
__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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Old 12-21-2007, 11:05 PM   #48 (permalink)
... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
wow. I thought we had been told about the attacks and so I asked you a set of serious questions, expecting some serious answers and you come back with an attempted rip of my previous posts? Were you unable to answer my serious questions honestly?
Your question was about your perception. I proved your perception wrong. I'll try to put it more simply:
A slippery slope:

It's an idea that if one thing happens, it stands to reason that another more serious thing will happen. The problem, of course, is that you said people suspected of DUI will be forced to have a blood test, and it stands to reason that a holocaust will follow:

Everyone else in the world disagrees, and here's why. Blood being drawn forcefully from people suspected of a DUI could result in people suing the police department and losing. That could lead to more blood being drawn because some officers might abuse this. That's the worst case scenario in this, not the systematic killing of an entire race of people. Maybe you can give us a reasonable chain of events that starts with this DUI thing and leads directly to a holocaust?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
this only shows that you don't know how to read the constitution or the bill of rights.
You mean the 1,350th amendment that doesn't allow the government to take blood?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
Now, if you're unable to answer the questions that I posed to you, maybe you should posting other non-sensical crap and attacks?
Wow, so I'm attacking you by making you call people sheep? The questions you posed presupposed things that aren't true. The government has not been consistently becoming more Orwellian. It has over the past 7 years, but in a year or so things will slide back a bit (because libertarianism and authoritarianism work in cycles).

Having your blood not taken isn't a legal right (as I've said before). A "right" that's not supported by law isn't a right that the state has to recognize. Therefore, the state does not have to recognize the right to bodily fluids.
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Old 12-21-2007, 11:21 PM   #49 (permalink)
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Location: Everett, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
This shiat is totally farked up.

how many people think this is perfectly acceptable behavior for police to forcibly draw blood? and then have zero liability for any damages caused?

This is why more cops die. People are starting to get pushed to the limit.
The key here is "forcibly draw blood". None of this would've happened had the man simply consented to have his blood taken or been cooperative with the police in possibly another sobriety test. The fact of the matter is he didn't and the police shouldn't be punished for doing their jobs just as an NFL player shouldn't be punished for injuring another player.
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Old 12-21-2007, 11:35 PM   #50 (permalink)
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Rumor has it that the police use force against bank robbers, rapists, and murderers who don't drop their weapons.
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Old 12-21-2007, 11:44 PM   #51 (permalink)
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Location: Everett, WA
I dont see what that has to do with anything. Would you rather they didnt?
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Old 12-22-2007, 12:31 AM   #52 (permalink)
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Location: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by analog
Yeah, you're still wrong. You have rights, and don't know how to exercise them.
Eh... if you have to go through some paperwork and maybe secure a lawyer in order to protect such rights, then yeah, the rights aren't completely lost to you.

But then, the government isn't treating those rights like they are rights. The legal resemblance is closer to 'privileges'. Perhaps that is dk's gripe and the source of his insistence that he's not wrong. Or something like that, because I've the sneaking suspicion that you two are arguing different arguments.

(Then again, a default setting of "let nurses draw blood when you're incapacitated" kinda makes sense if you're of the mainstream, drawing-blood-isn't-evil, drawing-blood-won't-land-me-in-jail, yes-of-course-I'd-want-medical-diagnostics-done mindset. So I'm leaning toward your position anyway.)
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Old 12-22-2007, 12:35 AM   #53 (permalink)
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Location: Everett, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Eh... if you have to go through some paperwork and maybe secure a lawyer in order to protect such rights, then yeah, the rights aren't completely lost to you.

But then, the government isn't treating those rights like they are rights. The legal resemblance is closer to 'privileges'. Perhaps that is dk's gripe and the source of his insistence that he's not wrong. Or something like that, because I've the sneaking suspicion that you two are arguing different arguments.

(Then again, a default setting of "let nurses draw blood when you're incapacitated" kinda makes sense if you're of the mainstream, drawing-blood-isn't-evil, drawing-blood-won't-land-me-in-jail, yes-of-course-I'd-want-medical-diagnostics-done mindset. So I'm leaning toward your position anyway.)

Way to be completely neutral.
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Old 12-22-2007, 12:40 AM   #54 (permalink)
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Location: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheetahtank2
Way to be completely neutral.
If I don't make it, tell my wife I said hello.
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Old 12-22-2007, 12:44 AM   #55 (permalink)
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Location: Everett, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
If I don't make it, tell my wife I said hello.
HAHA! excellent form foolthemall excellent form.
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Old 12-22-2007, 04:58 AM   #56 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crompsin
Rumor has it that the police use force against bank robbers, rapists, and murderers who don't drop their weapons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheetahtank2
I dont see what that has to do with anything. Would you rather they didnt?
Crompsin may forgive me for speaking out of turn, but I believe he was being sarcastic.
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Old 12-22-2007, 05:10 AM   #57 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Okay, so this isn't just about DUI, so I guess this isn't just about New Jersey, either. So, is it about the Fourth Amendment, then?

This could be interesting. Let's focus on this pre-revolutionary amendment within the context of post-9/11 America. There is a lot to discuss here. So, we have a topic of privacy and government intervention via policing and court orders. In this case, it is DUI and the issue of forced blood samples.

But even before these recent cases, we also have the issue of suspended rights to privacy with illegal wiretaps in the context of counter terrorism. Personally, I'd be more afraid of wiretaps and other forms of tech-based government surveillance than I would be about blood samples if I were to be caught while driving impaired. (Think mobile technology, the Internet, and ways of tracking things such as retail patterns and library usage, etc.)

Mandatory blood tests on suspected drunkards doesn't concern me. If they start doing that to other groups, then we just might have a problem.
Contained in the following are 50 years old observations that there is no "left" in the US (1st quote box)

and, in the last quote box:
Quote:
....Although crime rates have been declining for 25 years, vast amounts of money pour into the criminal justice-industrial complex, diverting scarce resources from other social services such as education, social welfare, and health care. While in recent years downsizing has affected almost every segment of the public sector, the criminal justice bureaucracies have seen an unprecedented expansion.....
Quote:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...3E2.0.CO%3B2-6
Freedom is as Freedom Does; Civil Liberties Today. Corliss Lamont Horizon Press, 1956. 322 pp.

Lamont in this book, is obviously fighting a losing battle. Not only is the Civil Liberties Union in decline; freedom of speech and thougt have also lost ground....Whereained college and university libraries contain the classics of Socialist tradition (I might as
well have said pornography as an example), the material is usually too "hot" for the professors to touch. The result is freedom of speech and thought in form only.

<h3>Read in conjunction with C. Wright Mills</h3>, <i>Yhe Power Elite</i>, Lamont's book provides a concrete picture of the informal alliance existing in this country between the thought police and the military.

Radical opinions of any kind are no longer dismissed as merely infantile or pathological, they are considered a political, military, and industrial liability. The decline in cilil liberties, Lamont argues, is partly due to the increasing fear which individuals have of authority, and their increasing willingness to submit readily to it. In order to exist, freedom has to be exercised, and the average American is unwilling to defend either his own rights or those of others....
Quote:
"As the circle of those who decide is narrowed, as the means of decision are centralized and the consequences of decision become enormous, then the course of great events often rests upon the decisions of determinable circles" (The Power Elite, 1956, p. 21).

"There is nothing in 'the nature of history' in our epoch that rules out the pivotal function of small groups of decision-makers. On the contrary, the structure of the present is such as to make this not only a reasonable, but a rather compelling, view (The Power Elite, 1956, p. 27).

"There is nothing in 'the psychology of man,' or in the social manner by which men are shaped and selected for and by the command posts of modern society, that makes unreasonable the view that they do confront choices and that the choices they make--or their failure to confront them--are history-making in their consequences" (The Power Elite, 1956, p. 27).

"Accordingly, political men now have every reason to hold the American power elite accountable for a decisive range of the historical events that make up the history of the present" (The Power Elite, 1956, p. 27).
Authority in the US is sponsored (driven) by corporatism. In that sense, it is not OF AND BY THE PEOPLE.....It must be confronted, questioned and challenged at every turn, if we are to live in an "open society", with open government, the kind least likley to suffer from massive state sponsored corruption. IMO, that WON'T HAPPEN IF CENTRISTS and "LEFT LITE" are the "approved" political opposition to corporatism. THAT IS ALL I SEE EXPRESSED
on this thread, except by dksuddeth.
.
A treatise on C. Wright Mills:
Quote:
http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm
A Mills Revival?

by Stanley Aronowitz

...Consigned to a kind of academic purgatory for the last three decades of the twentieth century, at a time when social theory had migrated from the social sciences obsessed with case studies and social “problems” to literature and philosophy where he was rarely discussed and almost never cited., C. Wright Mills was an absent presence..
...   click to show 
In short, following the muckraking tradition, but also international sociological discourse on power, The Power Elite uses the evidentiary method first perfected by the independent scholars such as Ferdinand Lundberg of tracing interlocking networks of social and cultural association as much as business relationship to establish the boundaries and contour of power. Moreover, in this work we can see the movement of individuals among the leading institutional orders that constitute the nexus of power, so that their difference tends to blur.

Naming the power élite as the only “independent variable” in American society, Mills was obliged to revise his earlier estimation of the labor movement. Barely eight years after designating the labor leaders “new men of power” who had to choose whether to lead the entire society in the name of working people and other subordinate groups he designated them a “dependent variable” in the political economy. Accordingly, he lost hope that, in any possible practical eventuality, working people and their unions would enter the historical stage as autonomous actors, at least until a powerful new left of intellectuals and other oppressed groups emerged to push them.....
Quote:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesam...view_2006.html
"Mills's The Power Elite 50 Years Later."

...(Last paragraph) Finally, where do things stand in terms of Mills's major theoretical claims? At the most general level, the historical and cross-national evidence leaves me in agreement with Mills that the economic, political, and military sectors are potentially independent power bases, although I would add that power also can be generated from a religious organizational base, as seen in the civil rights movement, the rise of the Christian Right, and the Iranian Revolution. In terms of the United States, however, historical and sociological research leads me to place far more emphasis than Mills did on corporate capitalism and class conflict as the dominant factors in the power equation. Events and research in the United States since the 1960s also leave me with a belief that there are potential power bases for popular action that Mills overlooked, but with the proviso that these social movements are often in conflict with each other. Until organized labor, liberals, and leftists can forge a coalition of non-violent social movements and focus on Democratic Party primaries if and when they enter the electoral arena, </h3>the power elite will continue on its merry way whatever the consequences for everyone else....</h3>

The Society for the Study of Social Problems established the C. Wright Mills Award in 1964.
Quote:
http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/20
....Who should belong to the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP)?
SSSP members are an interdisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, advocates, and students interested in the application of critical, scientific, and humanistic perspectives to the study of vital social problems. If you are involved in scholarship or action in pursuit of a just society nationally or internationally, you belong in the SSSP. You will meet others engaged in research to find the causes and consequences of social problems, as well as others seeking to apply existing scholarship to the formulation of social policies. Many members are social scientists by training. Many teach in colleges and universities. Increasing numbers work in applied research and policy settings. Membership is open to anyone who supports SSSP's goals.

What does the SSSP have to offer?
Founded in 1951, the Society for the Study of Social Problems promotes research on and serious examination of problems of social life. The SSSP works to solve these problems and to develop informed social policy. As a member, you will find peers and colleagues working together to develop and apply research which makes a difference.

http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/209

....William Chambliss of The George Washington University is organizing a workshop on "State Organized Crime" for the May session of the Onati Center for Socio-Legal Studies. Participants presenting papers at the Workshop includes Ray Michalowski, Ronald Kramer, Nancy Wonders and Jeff Chambliss.
(Posted 10-11-07).....
Quote:
http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/02-...on.cgi.12.html
William J. Chambliss
State-Organized Crime Part 9
Sun Feb 20, 2005 00:19

....CONCLUSION

My concern here is to point out the importance of studying state-organized crime. Although I have suggested some theoretical notions that appear to me to be promising, the more important goal is to raise the issue for further study. The theoretical and empirical problems raised by advocating the study of state-organized crime are, however, formidable.

<h3>Data on contemporary examples of state-organized crime are difficult to obtain.</h3> The data I have been able to gather depend on sources that must be used cautiously. Government hearings, court trials, interviews, newspaper accounts, and historical documents are replete with problems of validity and reliability. In my view they are no more so than conventional research methods in the social sciences, but that does not alter the fact that there is room for error in interpreting the findings. It will require considerable imagination and diligence for others to pursue research on this topic and add to the empirical base from which theoretical propositions can be tested and elaborated.

We need to explore different political, economic, and social systems in varying historical periods to discover why some forms of social organization are more likely to produce state-organized crimes than others. We need to explore the possibility that some types of state agencies are more prone to engaging in criminality than others. It seems likely, for example, that state agencies whose activities can be hidden from scrutiny are more likely to engage in criminal acts than those whose record is public. This principle may also apply to whole nation-states: <h3>the more open the society, the less likely it is that state-organized crime will become institutionalized.</h3>

There are also important parallels between state-organized criminality and the criminality of police and law-enforcement agencies generally. <h3>Local police departments that find it more useful to cooperate with criminal syndicates than to combat them are responding to their own particular contradictions, conflicts, and dilemmas (Chambliss, 1988).</h3> An exploration of the theoretical implications of these similarities could yield some important findings.
Quote:
http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/wes...sbn=081333487X
Power, Politics And Crime
by William J Chambliss

Jan 11, 2001
Paperback

Description

In the United States today, we are on the verge of fulfilling a nightmare scenario. Parents are fearful of letting their children play in their own yards and elderly people are afraid to leave their homes. The bogeyman in this rampant panic about crime is the young black male, who, in the media and public image, is a “superpredator” lurking on every street corner ready to attack any prey that is vulnerable. But is crime in America really as bad as the public has been made to believe? Power, Politics, and Crime argues that the current panic over crime has been manufactured by the media, law enforcement bureaucracies, and the private prison industry. It shows how the definition of criminal behavior systematically singles out the inner-city African American. But urban minorities aren’t the only victims. Although crime rates have been declining for 25 years, vast amounts of money pour into the criminal justice-industrial complex, diverting scarce resources from other social services such as education, social welfare, and health care. While in recent years downsizing has affected almost every segment of the public sector, the criminal justice bureaucracies have seen an unprecedented expansion. Through ethnographic observations, analysis of census data, and historical research, William Chambliss describes what is happening, why it has come about, and what can be done about it. He explores the genesis of crime as a political issue, and the effect that crime policies have had on different segments of the population. The book is more than a statement about the politics of crime and punishment—it’s a powerful indictment of contemporary law enforcement practices in the United States. In addition to updating the data the author has added a discussion of the "declining crime rate." Contrary to presentations in the media and by law enforcement agencies, the rate has been declining for over 25 years and therefore cannot be attributed to any "get tough on crime" policies so dear to the hearts of prosecutors and politicians. Chapter Seven, "Crime Myths and Smokescreens" has been completely revised and updated. Updates include a discussion of the recent scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department which has resulted in criminal charges against police officers and the release of numerous convicted felons because of falsified evidence and testimony on the part of police officers. The attack on Louima in the police station in New York as well as the shooting of Diallo are discussed in some detail as well as other recent exposures of police brutality and corruption. The sections on white collar, corporate, and state crimes have been updated and recent examples added to the text.
Reviews

”…Chambliss offers a powerful critique of the consequences of contemporary penal practices.”
— Contemporary Sociology

”This concise, well-documented book systematically illustrates the development of the crime-control industrial process – that has led to the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in the world.”
— SAGE Race Relations

“An excellent guide that provides various tools and methods for thinking about how crime is perceived, defined and punished in American society.”
— Southland Prison News

”[D]elineates how shaky the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports can be, especially for year-to-year comparisons.”
— Orange County Register

”In a sweeping indictment of over forty years of crime policy, Chambliss marshals evidence to show that America’s war on crime has been a costly failure with terrible side effects. The work documents how, starting with Barry Goldwater’s campaign, conservative politicians consciously sought to link crime problems to the civil rights movement. By the 1990s, this cynical and racist campaign has been so successful that even Democrats have enthusiastically embraced justice policies that have replaced a third of young African American males under correctional supervision. The war on drugs is a special target of Chambliss’ analysis: not only has this war been a spectacular failure, it has spawned corruption while creating a correctional industrial complex. Casualties of the war on drugs are easy to find, Chambliss documents, with higher education leading the list. The most dramatic result, however, is that America now shares with the newly created state of Russia, the world’s highest incarceration rate.”
— Meda Chesney-Lind, University of Hawaii at Manoa

”Chambliss's lucid, incisive, and highly informative study leaves the reader with little doubt that crime is a very serious problem in the United States, though not in the manner that the population has been induced to believe by intensive and politically-motivated indoctrination that has had a dire effect on the society, helping to forge a virtual war against the poor. One basic problem is the manipulated perception of crime, uncorrelated with its actual course. A second is the vast category of harmful and dangerous crime that goes largely unpunished because of the power and privilege of the perpetrators. This is a wake-up call that is badly needed, offering insight and guidelines for people who care about their society, its serious flaws, and what it could become if citizens were to take the real issues into their own hands.”
— Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

”William Chambliss is upset, and based on the data he amasses, the rest of us ought to be. The crime industry is every bit as wasteful and destructive of American values as the military industrial complex of a generation ago. Together with increasingly pliant and self-interested politicians and media, they take us into the new millennium strapped for cash and burdened by fear and prejudice.”
— David Kairys, Temple University School of Law; editor, The Politics of Law, Third Edition
I think that coments in the "Conclusion" in the second to last quote box above, contradict this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
If anything the government is under more scrutiny than in the past. With easy video and being able to post about anything on the internet things which wouldn't have made ink 30 years ago are now mainstream stories....

Last edited by host; 12-22-2007 at 08:20 AM..
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Old 12-22-2007, 06:06 AM   #58 (permalink)
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host quit hating my mouse wheel, what has it ever done to YOU

Yes its all corporations now, things were much better in the past where the government respected our rights.

Now if you will excuse me my habeas corpus rights have been suspended by Grant, and I need to visit a friend of mine down at the internment camp for some sushi. I'm hoping the colored boy down the street caught some fresh fish for it, there have been some riots in his neighborhood but the nation guard has been called in and after a few shootings I'm sure things will calm down. I'm going to be paying the beat cop for some confiscated alcohol, and have a real party, after all I've been drafted.
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Old 12-22-2007, 06:32 AM   #59 (permalink)
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I've expended the time and effort to lay out what should be regarded as a thought provoking argument that the country is in the grip of authoritarian leaning special interests. I lean on the experience and research of Lamont, Mills, and the more contemporary Chambliss to support the ideas that there is no leftist counter influence to the military, corporatist, law n order penal systen driven conservative capitalism invested in permanent rearmament. I point out that in such a climate, dksuddeth is a reasonable voice.....e tu...Ustwo, what are you doing? Is it sincerely discussing, or is it your usual?
on edit...don't you find it the least bit odd that there isn't a REAL left reacting to what I've described? Is a country with the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, with 1/3 of all black males in the justice system, with a Gini # of 46.9, a foreign policy like ours, and treatment like Lamont and Black Panther party leaders received from authorities....does that seem like a place without a left? What other countries have politics devoid of a committed left faction? The names on a list them would be an eye opener.....

Last edited by host; 12-22-2007 at 07:27 AM..
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Old 12-22-2007, 08:11 AM   #60 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
host quit hating my mouse wheel, what has it ever done to YOU
This joke was never really funny.
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Old 12-22-2007, 09:26 AM   #61 (permalink)
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Would it be funnier if I said it?

No, wait... I can do trackball jokes!
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Old 12-22-2007, 01:29 PM   #62 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crompsin
Would it be funnier if I said it?

No, wait... I can do trackball jokes!
Time and again, it is evident that no discussion is possible. Why is that? Isn't this a "POLITICAL DISCUSSION" forum?

My research.... has unearthed this comparatively recent work. I think the crux of it is that "the right" is committed to the defense of the status quo to the point that it evolves into a police state, and when that happens, it crushes "the left", because it is the perceived threat to the status quo that "the left" evolves to deliver, that justifies the move to a repressive, "individual rights reducing", police state.

I think that this orientation motivated such a backlash against dksuddeth's OP, which compared to the burgeoning "penal colony" and "Power Elite" prioritized entrenchment that defines (overwhelms?) the US today, is but a fruit fly when compared to the "800 lbs. gorilla" that is American conservatism in late 2007. Two right oriented political parties and a bunched up "center" that, along with the right dominated parties, are ardent defenders of the "status quo".
Quote:
http://www.wam.umd.edu/%7Ehannahk/reply.pdf
Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 383–393 0033-2909/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.383

Exceptions That Prove the Rule—Using a Theory of Motivated Social
Cognition to Account for Ideological Incongruities and Political
Anomalies: Reply to Greenberg and Jonas (2003)

<i>A meta-analysis by J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A. W. Kruglanski, and F. J. Sulloway (2003) concluded that
political conservatism is partially motivated by the management of uncertainty and threat. In this reply
to J. Greenberg and E. Jonas (2003), conceptual issues are clarified, numerous political anomalies are
explained, and alleged counterexamples are incorporated with a dynamic model that takes into account
differences between “young” and “old” movements. Studies directly pitting the rigidity-of-the-right
hypothesis against the ideological extremity hypothesis demonstrate strong support for the former.
Medium to large effect sizes describe relations between political conservatism and dogmatism and
intolerance of ambiguity; lack of openness to experience; uncertainty avoidance; personal needs for
order, structure, and closure; fear of death; and system threat.</i>


387
Greenberg and Jonas (2003) claimed that Altemeyer’s definition
of right-wing authoritarianism “applies well to people supporting
left-wing communist ideology” (p. 379). However, Altemeyer’s
(1998) own meticulous research program led him to conclude that
in the general population <h3>“‘authoritarianism on the left’ has been
as scarce as hens’ teeth” (p. 71).</h3> They also insisted that “left-wing
ideologies serve these motives [i.e., to reduce fear, anxiety, and
uncertainty] just as well as right-wing ones” (Greenberg & Jonas,
2003, p. 378), but both reason and evidence are very much against
them. Breaking down existing hierarchies is inherently more unsettling
and necessarily raises uncertainty and ambiguity. And the
available evidence, which we highlight again here, strongly supports
the directional rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis as against
nondirectional alternatives such as the ideological extremity hypothesis.

390
....Accounting for Political Anomalies
In our original article (Jost et al., 2003), we argued that political
conservatism is associated with a specific constellation of epistemic
and existential motives pertaining to the management of
uncertainty and threat. In disputing this conclusion, Greenberg and
Jonas underestimated the strength of the available evidence and
generated a list of counterexamples that are readily accountable for
by our framework. They also offered a number of flattering self-

391
characterizations offered by contemporary conservatives to explain
the motivations for their opinions. For example, in elaborating
on their thesis that liberals are just as rigid as conservatives,
they noted that “conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh
and Michael Savage paint liberals as antifreedom advocates
of ‘political correctness’ and ‘big government’” (Greenberg &
Jonas, 2003, p. 377). There are several ironies here. First, Greenberg
and Jonas failed to consider why there are dozens of extreme
right-wing commentators occupying the American radio waves
and virtually no left-wing equivalents. This is at least one naturalistic
measure that suggests that right-wing dogmatism is generally
more prevalent. Second, their reference to the specter of political
correctness (PC) is telling. Has anyone ever defended PC norms
with as much vitriol as they have been attacked? And third, it is
true that conservatives often push for a smaller government (especially
shorter tax codes and less complicated market regulations),
but insofar as smaller is simpler, this is consistent with our
account.....

....Our theory of conservatism as the motivation to preserve the
status quo against various forms of threat and to rationalize inequality
helps to understand not only why conservatives generally
embrace capitalism but also why strong support for capitalism
would entail other, ostensibly unrelated right-wing attitudes. For
example, Sidanius and Pratto (1993) found that in both the United
States and Sweden, pro-capitalist attitudes were associated with
racism and social dominance orientation. Although Greenberg and
Jonas noted that political liberals in Eastern Europe have advocated
capitalist reforms, their account (in terms of the openmindedness
of free market ideology) would be hard-pressed to
explain how seamlessly some pro-capitalist political parties, such
as the FIDESZ party in Hungary, have embraced anti-Semitism,
nationalism, official Christianity, and a host of other traditional
right-wing causes.
We now take it for granted in the United States that political
conservatives tend to be for law and order but not gun control,
against welfare but generous to corporations, protective of cultural
traditions but antagonistic toward contemporary art and music, and
wary of government but eager to weaken the separation of church
and state. They are committed to freedom and individualism but
perennially opposed to extending rights and liberties to disadvantaged
minorities, especially gay men and lesbians and others who
blur traditional boundaries. <h3>There is no obvious political thread
that runs through these diverse positions (or through their liberal
counterparts) and no logical principle that renders them all consistent.
Their cooccurrence may be explained just as well with
psychological theory as with political theory. Conservative opinions
acquire coherence by virtue of the fact that they minimize
uncertainty and threat while pursuing continuity with the past (i.e.,
the status quo) and rationalizing inequality in society.</h3> Basic social,
cognitive, and motivational differences may also explain why
extreme right-wing movements are typically obsessed with purity,
cleanliness, hygiene, structure, and order—things that would otherwise
have little to do with political positions per se—and why
religious fundamentalism is so attractive to right-wing parties and
their followers in just about every nation stretching from North
America to the Middle East.
Permeating the commentary of Greenberg and Jonas (2003) was
the worry that we (Jost et al., 2003) were attaching value and
preference to one end of the psychological—ideological spectrum.
To be clear, we never argued that it is intrinsically good to be

392
tolerant of uncertainty or ambiguity, low on the need for cognitive
closure, or even high in cognitive complexity. In many cases,
including mass politics, “liberal” traits may be liabilities, and
being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low
in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally
valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering
loyalty. Furthermore, ruling large societies may be easier and more
successful to the extent that a leader uses simple and unambiguous
rhetoric, eschews equivocation, and generally acts in a clear and
decisive way. For a variety of psychological reasons, then, rightwing
populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing
populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability. The
psychological appeal of conservatism may add a practical as well
as theoretical justification for our asymmetrical focus on the motives
of right-wing conservatives: At a time when communism and
leftist extremism are disappearing from the planet, right-wing
extremism seems to be on the rise again....
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Old 12-22-2007, 08:38 PM   #63 (permalink)
Pissing in the cornflakes
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ubertuber
This joke was never really funny.
Yea yea but come on, you didn't read it either.

Being my mind is a bit addled by cold medications, I decided to read all that and it really added, well nothing to the discussion.

We have links about the semi-marxist C. Wright Mills, worried about the 'power elite' whoever the hell they really are, and wanting to join all the leftists in some grand movement to overthrow them. Typical socialist dream, but Mills can be forgiven as this was the 1950's, socialisms follies were not fully understood. This also has very little to do with 'your rights' unless you want to stretch a drunk getting hurt by cops when he refused to submit to a blood test with the 'power elites'.

Then it ties into corporations as the true 'power elites' so now the drunk guy getting hurt is due to McDonalds, great.

Then it all ties in declining crime rates and William J Chambliss's work to show that of course things are worse now than better, even though I don't see anything in Chambliss's work to support that. Noting a problem does not mean the problem is worse now than in the past.

So no, he didn't contradict me, he brought in a bunch of 6 degrees of separation related links, and got upset when he was called on it.

I mean does anyone think the cops would have been NICER to this guy in 1950 if he was acting the same way about something similar? That you would have even heard about it?
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Old 12-23-2007, 08:55 AM   #64 (permalink)
 
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ustwo--a debating tip--you aren't going to be in a position to call anyone on anything if your main tactic is to declare, before anything else, that you didn't read the post.

your case is not helped when you provide a totally incoherent flea=circus bit about c. wright mills.

knowing now that occasional agreement on something is a vague possibility, and that neither of our heads will explode if it happens...

==========================

there is a (methodo)logical problem with host's post above, but it mostly has to do with simply not explaining the linkage between the claim that the u.s. is an oligarchy, the militarization of police forces, the expansion of the notion of subversive speech, the "prison-industrial complex"----and procedural irregularities involving the meaning of implied consent in new jersey.

there is a way you could do it---say that a dimension of conservative tactics of social mobilization is the creation of a series of Enemies that operate at different social registers. these Enemies are drunk drivers, people who kidnap children, "terrorists" and other political adversaries....which are grouped as "social deviants", threats to the phantom integrity of the body politic of the Us--because the principle function of designating an Enemy is to designate a community that is threatened by this Enemy, which you do at the same time.

but this would require voyaging through the climate of social hysteria, its origins, its functions and uses. so on the one hand, you could connect stuff like "america's most wanted" the burgeoning hysteria of the 1980s-90s concerning children (remember all those milk cartons with images of lost children printed on the sides?)......to stuff like the construction of drunk drivers as bearers of chaos and potential death....to something of the notion of "terrorism" in that all are random threats, all are abstract threats, nothing to be done really...political dissent, processed through right revisionist pseudo-history of the vietnam period gets turned into another Persecuting Adversary, an Outside Element geared around Creating Danger and Disorder Amongst/Within the Right-Thinking Community of Perecuted Petit Bourgeois Types.

you'd have to track the fashioning and migration of these memes across differing registers of cultural production, show the linkages between, say, the image of the Phantom Other Who Waits to Steal Your Child, the clamp-down on dui as an expression of social deviance (and not as an expression of the workings of a kind of social safety valve generated in part by a paranoia-as-politics approach to solidarity building)---the migration of these memes from the stream of ordinary debris into elements of political narrative by way of any number of conservative institutions whose function was (still is?) to provide the illusion of constant updating of the Ideological Product that is populist conservatism...and the effects of this migration/reframing.

so you could maybe show a relation between the rise of fear of the "Abstract Figure Who May or May Not Exist But Who Will Maybe Kidnap Your Children If He Does Exist so you Better Watch Out" and the creation of a consituency willing and able to vote for Order uber alles and who cam maybe rationalize away this committment to order uber alles on the grounds of self-defense.

but you'd have to show how this process worked.

you can't simply say "there are procedural irregularities that test the limits of implied consent happening in new jersey" and then say "c. wright mills outlined a description of the united states as an oligarchy" then string together a series of features of the world the right has made and leave it at that.

this because without such work, you imply a conspiracy of some kind that in fact runs the show within which we live---you say "power elite" and then point to a sequence of more recent factors and don't fill in the middle term, and you say, basically, that nameless elements within this elite determine what is seen and how it is seen politically/media-wise.

i dont buy it, simply because the dominant economic class in the states is deeply divided, is not working with an understanding of its own class interests. so you have factions within the dominant economic class that align with the far right, and others that align with the moderate right (which includes most of the democrat "front-runners" of the moment)...
and i dont buy it because assuming such a conspiracy exists bypasses the need to think about the looser-less formalized circuitry of ideological adjustment that the conservatives had fashioned and which worked quite well until the overwhelming foulness of the bush administration effective junked the machinery....for now anyway....

a cynical fellow might be inclined to think that the origin of this Persecuting Other that conservative politics feeds on is the figure of the Poor or Dispossessed, which would be the imaginary cypher filled in my the consequences of neoliberal economic and social policies, which at one time "expressed itself" through political dissent from the left (as an imaginary construction)....so you can maybe connect conservative revisionist narratives of the vietnam period to the figure of Political Opposition as Persecution to the series of other Persecuting Others that have been floated into the hysteria mill of american "culture" since the reagan period.

but you'd have to make this kind of argument, it seems to me.

o yeah--and i wouldn't count on much agreement from the right about mill's basic idea. just as it is possible to shear off consideration of the poor from the ideological mill, only to have them resurfacing in displaced form as a Persecuting Other, so it is possible to have the actually existing class fractions that back and which stand to benefit from conservtive politics be sheared off, only to reappear in as the Happy Face Other of the Entrepreneur, Hero of Markets, Genius of Linguistics, Conqueror of Happiness and Friend of the Children, the Embodiment of Rationality in Chaotic Times.
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