Quotulatiousness

June 20, 2011

Radley Balko dispels a few myths about the justice system

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

In his new column at the Huffington Post, Radley Balko discusses some common myths in US criminal justice:

Myth 1: You Can’t Be Tried More Than Once For The Same Crime

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that no person shall “be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” This protection against “double jeopardy” is intended to prevent the government from retrying the same defendant over and over until prosecutors can get a conviction.

But there are some exceptions. First, the protection only comes into play once a jury has convicted or acquitted a defendant. So in trials that end with a hung jury or a mistrial, the prosecution can usually bring the same charges again. One particularly egregious example is Curtis Flowers of Mississippi, who has been tried an incredible six times for the murder of four people in 1996.

Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government can charge a defendant with both a crime and the conspiracy to commit that crime without violating the constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy. This gives the government two opportunities to convict for is essentially the same offense. Conspiracy is often easier to prove than the underlying crime. It also gives prosecutors a way to rope in alleged offenses they can no longer charge separately due to statutes of limitations.

Finally, there is the “separate sovereigns” exception to double jeopardy. This allows a defendant to be tried, convicted and sentenced for the same crime in both state and federal court. The most well-known example of the separate sovereigns exception is when the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in state court, then convicted in federal court of violating King’s civil rights.

Operation Gunrunner

Filed under: Americas, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:26

Also from the latest Libertarian Enterprise:

BATFE started Operation Fast and Furious, now better known as Gunrunner, as a sting to catch people smuggling weapons to the narcotraficantes in Mexico. They ran into a problem. Gun dealers in the area involved “made” the straw men buyers and called the BATFE to report these types. ATFE told the gun dealers not to worry and sell the guns. Not ten or twenty times, not a couple of hundred times like a reasonable person would expect. The lowest figure I’ve seen is about 2,500, enough weapons for a small brigade.

Let us clearly summarize this idea, the ATFE ordered law abiding American merchants to arm a brigade of criminals.

In effect ATFE armed an army of murderers, rapists, extortionists, and slavers who financed their actions by smuggling drugs into the US. This has helped destabilize the government of Mexico and led to the terrorizing of the honest working people of that nation. The last time I checked such behavior constitutes an act of war. Either it is the policy of the United States to destabilize the government of friendly nations ( given some of the stunts we’ve pulled this is less unreasonable than it ought to be) or elements of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abused their police authority in the United States to conduct a filibuster (look up original meeting) against Mexico. Not only that, they did so with the approval and support of Attorney General Eric Holder.

L. Neil Smith on what defines a libertarian

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

From the most recent Libertarian Enterprise where L. Neil is discussing Ann Coulter’s dislike of Ron Paul:

In the column in question, she accuses Dr. Paul of hypocrisy, of being a libertarian who wants to get rid of government (both of which are untrue) while at the same time wanting people to elect him President.

There are two (and only two) fundamental tenets that an individual must accept wholeheartedly and without reservation in order to call him- or herself a libertarian. As decent and likable a fellow as Dr. Paul happens to be, I have never heard him specifically endorse either one.

If I am wrong, please correct me; it would be good news.

First of all, you have to regard yourself — as well as each and every individual around you — as the sole proprietor of his or her own life and, for better or worse, all of the products of that life, including the fruits of your labor and, equally, the smoke from your chimney. The concept is called “absolute self-ownership” — accept no substitutes.

Second — and this is the social and political manifestation of absolute self-ownership — you have to agree never to initiate physical force against another human being for any reason whatever, nor to advocate this initiation, or delegate it to someone else. This concept is called the “Zero Aggression Principle” and it is the absolutely indispensable bedrock on which political libertarianism rests.

If anyone argues with you about that, it’s because he (or she) wishes to reserve some right that he (or she) falsely imagines he (or she) has, to employ force against you whenever he (or she) feels it necessary or convenient. For the sake of national security. Or for the children.

Whatever you think of these ideas, they are unquestionably central to everything that is truly libertarian, and all proposed libertarian policies spring from them. Regrettably, the general freedom movement, as well as the Libertarian Party itself, are cluttered today with counterfeit libertarians — Nerfs and LINOs — who can’t make the moral cut. Coulter claims she has one libertarian friend who is “not crazy”, but if she regards him or her as “not crazy”, it’s certain that whoever she’s talking about is not a libertarian at all. This is among the best reasons I can think of for defining libertarianism properly.

Where map collections and railway fans intersect

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, History, Railways, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:37

An interview with the author of Railway Maps of the World:

At its peak, there were 92,449 kilometres of rail lines criss-crossing Canada from coast to coast. That was in 1976. Today, almost half the lines have been destroyed, dug-up, or abandoned — only 49,422 km remain in operation. Worldwide, the numbers are just as grim: from a high of 2,500,000 km in 1920, the Golden Age of rail travel, to 1,370,782 km now. Yet, there are still those who prefer the charm of the train to its air or auto brethren. Mark Ovenden is one such man. Ovenden, who enjoyed unexpected success with his 2007 book Transit Maps of the World, has recently released Railway Maps of the World. It is a celebration of beautiful maps, he says, but also a reminder of what we’ve lost. He spoke to the Post’s Mark Medley from his home in Paris.

Although the absolute reduction in rail lines in Canada is quite true, the railway companies could not earn a profit today if they’d kept all of those lines in operation. Some of the lines were abandoned as sources of traffic declined, either through depletion of the resource or improvements to road transportation. Some of the lines were abandoned once passenger traffic dropped below operating costs. Technological improvements in both locomotives and in control and signalling equipment allowed better use of the tracks, allowing redundant lines to be taken out of service.

Railways have to pay taxes on their right-of-way, so once a length of track becomes uneconomic, it will very quickly be taken out of service so that the railway doesn’t pay for maintenance of unused routes and can sell the land. For all the “romance of the rails”, railways are businesses which have to earn profits to continue operating.

Q: What does it say, then, that we were able to turn our back on railways so easily?

A: It’s a very complex and a very sad picture on many levels, from which luckily only in the last five, 10, 15 years we’re beginning to turn the corner. When you look at the influence and the power of the oil companies, and the whole automotive industry, they really were responsible — they saw it as a very deliberate policy to run down the railway services, and buy up things like streetcars and run them down again. The oil companies have blood on their hands, really. They were the ones who forced the railways to shut. They were the ones that had the tracks torn up. Under their influence people were forced to buy cars.

*cough*Bullshit*cough*

This is a lively combination of wishful thinking and conspiracy theorizing. It also nicely conflates the real business of the railways in North America — massive amounts of freight traffic — with a much smaller and unprofitable side-line — passenger service. Few railways ever earned much of their revenues from passenger traffic, which is why most modern subways, streetcars, and light rail systems are in the public sector. The railways can be built to maximize freight traffic (and therefore profit) or they can be built to maximize passenger traffic. Only organizations that do not have to earn a profit can justify concentrating on passenger service.

In the 1920s, automobiles changed from being super-expensive, finicky toys for the rich to being affordable to middle class and even some working class famlies and far more reliable (so you didn’t need to have a dedicated driver/mechanic for each vehicle). Unlike trains, where you could only go where the rails went and only when the train was going in that direction, a car allowed you to go anywhere there was a road, whenever you wanted.

It is difficult for us to grasp just how liberating this was for millions of Americans and Canadians — we’re so used to being able to go where we want at any time that we rarely even think about what it was like before the heyday of the car. Passenger trains had that kind of transformative effect in Europe, but less so in North America, where moving freight was always the primary purpose for building railways (setting aside the Union Pacific and the Canadian Pacific, as the construction of both were more influenced by government policy than profit-seeking).

Stephen Gordon: Don’t lose any sleep over “foreign control” of the Canadian economy

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:22

You can always find someone to get upset about the degree of foreign investment in a given industry or in the economy as a whole. Stephen Gordon explains why you shouldn’t worry so much about it:

If you’re the sort of person who is suspicious of foreigners’ controlling assets located in Canada, and if you equate ownership with control, then you can reach the conclusion that foreign ownership = foreign control = bad without much effort. And since net international investment positions are zero-sum, this sort of analysis would lead you to conclude that Canada is ‘losing’ this game of ‘control’.

Much as I enjoy stomping on the second part of that syllogism, this post is going to take a closer look at the first part: the link between ownership and control is not the same for all forms of foreign ownership. In the case of FDI, decisions are made by the head office in the home country. But FDI is only one mechanism by which foreigners can send their saving to Canada; they can also buy shares in Canadian-registered corporations, or buy bonds issued by Canadian firms or governments.

SpaceX and the rogue consultant

Filed under: Law, Space — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:48

SpaceX is going to court over a would-be consultant’s claims that their rockets are unsafe:

According to SpaceX’s filing with the Fairfax County circuit court in Virginia, Joseph Fragola, veep at tech consulting firm Valador, tried to obtain a hefty deal from SpaceX at the beginning of June:

     Fragola attempted to obtain a consulting contract from SpaceX worth as much as $1 million. He claimed that SpaceX needed an “independent” analysis of its rocket to bolster its reputation with NASA based on what he called an unfair “perception” about SpaceX. SpaceX did not respond favorably to Fragola’s offer.

The rocket company — which as everyone knows is helmed, CTO’d and in part bankrolled by famous nerdwealth kingpin Elon Musk — says it then found out that Fragola had subsequently done his level best to create such a perception:

     SpaceX subsequently leamed that Fragola has been contacting officials in the United States Government to make disparaging remarks about SpaceX, which have created the very “perception” that he claimed SpaceX needed his help to rectify.

     For instance, in an email he wrote on June 8, 2011, to Bryan O’Connor, a NASA official at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, Fragola falsely stated: “I have just heard a rumor, and I am trying now to check its veracity, that the Falcon 9 experienced a double engine failure in the first stage and that the entire stage blew up just after the first stage separated. I also heard that this information was being held from NASA until SpaceX can ‘verify’ it.”

SpaceX for its part says that this rumour is “blatantly false… as a purported ‘expert’ in the industry, he should have known that the statements were false.”

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