Left In Lowell

{Cross posted on BMG and Dailykos (please recommend on each site if you can). This is by far the most important story in America this week.}

Buried deep, deep under the seriously unvetted veep choice of John McCain, under Gustav, and under the formless, content-free speechmaking at the Republican convention, is the real scary story of the week - the scene outside of the RNC convention in St. Paul.

By all accounts, fascism is here, and it is us. The scenes just from that one Greenwald post alone should cause you great worry for our democracy. (more…)

I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had as much time for blogging as I would like, this week. Or for being outraged. Or whatever. Or maybe not much is happening. So here’s an open thread.

Sharing the blog is the reason why I want to do the aforementioned LiL upgrade even more - on days or weeks where the news is going crazy but so are my clients, I’d like to have all that great content that I know many of you can produce. So far, I have about $350 in generous pledges (thank you guys!), but I need to reach $1500 in order to really get this software development going. So if you are still interested in throwing into the kitty (well, pledging to throw into the kitty) we still need you! I did want to clarify that in that post, I mentioned that user post status will not be given automatically, though priority will be given to those with a good comment posting history, those who are in other local towns we can’t cover, progressives (though it won’t be required), along with candidates and elected officials because we want to encourage them to interact with the public.

I’ll tell you what, though, this FISA thing scares the crap out of me. It’s like the House Dems can’t give away our civil rights fast enough. Last night on some show we were watching (Olbermann I think?) the conversation turned to this strange phenomenon of Dems wanting to give Bush everything he wants on FISA. They surmised that the Democratic leadership (Rep. Steny Hoyer for one) has their own you-know-what’s to cover, so they’re happy to sell out the American people and civil liberties to do it. By giving the telcos immunity, they in effect give it to Bush and his illegal spying programs (past, present and future) and give it to themselves since some of them knew about it.

Some Democrats in the Senate are already crying foul and stating that it will not pass in the Senate. I hope so. Russ, we never needed you more than now.

Information is a precious and precarious commodity these days. Many “trusted” companies you do business with are selling their data on you to other companies. Junk mail and spam attack you at all angles, scams abound, and the universe is getting smaller and smaller.

Conservatives and liberals alike ought to be very, very frightened of our Big Brother culture. Because Big Brother is doing it…again:

Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the National Security Agency has assembled what some intelligence officials admit is a driftnet for domestic and foreign communications.

Here’s the way the whole thing works, according to Gorman: into the NSA’s massive database goes data collected by the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Treasury. This information includes data about email (recipient and sender address, subject, time sent), internet searches (sites visited and searches conducted), phone calls (incoming and outgoing numbers, length of call, location), financial information (wire transfers, credit-card use, information about bank accounts), and information from the DHS about airline passengers.
[…]
Gorman describes the NSA’s effort (elements of which have been reported before) as basically a resurrection of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program, which of course was de-funded by Congress once the details became public.

OK, so the NSA figured out that naming a program Total Information Awareness sounded really Orwellian. So they changed the name and kept doing it - even after Congress said “No!”. Can someone tell me just where the due process is? Hello? Do we even have a Bill of Rights anymore?

And how important do you think it is to keep telecom immunity out of the FISA bill now?

Thank god the House Democrats have some balls. Just a skirmish in the war but it’s headed in the right direction.

Tonight prior to the regularly scheduled City Council meeting, the Public Safety Sub-Committee (CC J. Milinazzo, Chair; R. Elliott, A. Kazanjian) to discuss two motions that were passed by the CC and sent to that committee.

Both motions requested that Police Chief Ken Lavallee meet with them regarding the “recent crimes of burglaries/robberies” and the GRIP Program, a group home for teens with two facilities in Lowell, one on Wilder for girls and one on Varnum Ave. for boys. (I will post later on the Group Home issue at a later date; here also perception is not reality).

The Chief gave the crime statistics for the month of January, 2008 vs 2007. In spite of a number of high profile armed bank robberies, the overall crime rate in the month of January compared to last year, went down. I wish he would post tonight’s Power Point Presentations with all of that data and information on the Police Department’s web site

They were two major arrests in relations to these crimes and the Police Department has undertake some new measures to stop this rash of crimes that hit greater downtown.

Chief Lavallee also mentioned that he will be hiring an outside management/consulting firm that will do a comprehensive study of policing services. The funds will be used from the law enforcement trust fund and thanks to individuals who want to do drug deals in Lowell and get caught, the law enforcement fund keep growing. That money is also allowing the City to buy new guns as well as body armor for the Department.

In answering CC Elliott’s question on how many officers are out on medical leave, the Chief said about 20-24. That is close to 10% of the force.

In his closing remarks, the Chief promised that those individuals who come into this City to conduct illicit activities, such as the group of men who got caught in the prostitution sting last week, will be stopped and arrested. He indicated that there is another sting coming.

Interesting article on a discrimination suit against Sheriff DiPaola.

Tousignant, who claims he was an award-winning all-star in the department when he supported DiPaola politically, alleges his career stalled after he helped Lowell Police Acting Deputy Superintendent Robert DeMoura’s campaign, according to a lawsuit he filed yesterday.

…

A superintendent later told Tousignant that he better watch out because “Sheriff DiPaola was out to get him,” Powers wrote in the lawsuit.

Tousignant then faced roadblocks when it came to his requests for sick time and time off, and he had run-ins with DiPaola supporters in the following years, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also details a day-long surveillance of Tousignant’s Chelmsford home by two unmarked cruisers when Tousignant called in sick. The men in the cruisers allegedly videotaped Tousignant’s house.

Surveillance? If these allegations are true, not only does it show DiPaola as paranoid, among other things, but also that he’s using taxpayer money to assuage his paranoia.

I find this at the end interesting:

The lawsuit comes as DiPaola faces another discrimination lawsuit filed last year by John Shankhour, a Syrian corrections officer who claims he was taunted by racial slurs in the workplace. Powers also represents Shankhour.

I’m not a big fan of DiPaola’s to begin with (to put it mildly) but if he’s really behaving in this manner, I’m glad someone is standing up to him.

A relatively small kerfuffle has ensued around Deval Patrick’s proposed added criminal fee. The Globe says that this would be in addition to current fees charged to criminals, which right now are between $45 up to $90, with the money going to victim services. The new fees would go towards hiring police.

While I certainly don’t want to coddle criminals (despite what the “other side” *coughWCAPcough* says about liberals) it seems to me many perpetrators of crimes are themselves pretty damn poor. The Globe piece corroborates this: “Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which represents inmates, said about 85 percent of convicted criminals in Massachusetts earn less than $11,000 a year at the time of their convictions. In prison, only about 10 percent of inmates work, earning $1.50 a day.”

My husband and I were pretty “broke” once, without health insurance. Paying $70 to go to the dentist yearly was near impossible. And we were far above the poverty level, with degrees and computer skills and prospects for the future.

Criminals do cost the state a lot of money. Besides the jail and court time, public defenders and police, there’s a price paid by society in counseling the victims, recovering stolen properties, and cleaning up damage from a crime.

However, increasing criminal fees seems an awful lot like squeezing blood out of a stone…a stone which you are likely putting away for a mandatory minimum sentence to begin with (another band-aid which doesn’t address the root problem underlying most crime). If 50% of the fees levied against criminals are never paid because there’s no money to be found, or you further reduce a criminal’s slim income leaving them even more likely to commit another crime, are we really just putting that money into an endless circulation between criminal and state? Someone commits a crime, the state pays money to throw them into jail and levies a fairly hefty (for someone making $11K) fee on them to help pay for it, the criminal has even less money when he or she comes out, they commit another crime, the state pays money to throw them in jail and levies a fee…

I understand the very human reaction to make a criminal pay for his crimes. But wouldn’t it be in the interest of the state - both financially and to prevent further victimization - if we instead committed such monies to rehabilitation so that criminals would be more likely to break out of the very expensive cycle that landed them in jail in the first place?

To me, this is probably the biggest WTF moment so far in Deval’s (admittedly barely begun) governorship. He asked us citizens to tell him when we think he’s making a mistake. Well, Governor, this is one.

A note to the gleeful right-wing: I am still a Patrick supporter. One small disagreement does not constitute a circular firing squad. I do, however, think it’s very sad that I have to put this disclaimer in to preempt any Righties posting comments.