Angry!
Two things that make me angry:
One, prosecutorial immunity. I mean, yes, I understand the point of protecting professional public adversaries from punishment for doing their jobs; but when we’re seriously asking "Should prosecutors be allowed to knowingly frame people for murder and get away with it?" — something’s effing broken.
And two, people who kick people while they’re down. In an economic crisis, why is it always social services, libraries, and education programs that get the knife? Oh, right — because those programs affect people who can’t fight back.
*sigh*
Lord, please give strength to the Internet during this difficult time — it’s one of very few ways the underrepresented might be able to make their voices heard [that's a PDF, but awesome; if nothing else, read the Introduction], by each other as well as by those in power, in a world dominated by corporate media and upper-class-funded politicians.
As it was in that now, is in this now, and will be in future nows, Make It So*.
*Ever since a professor showed me how the best translation of "Amen" really is "Make It So", I love substituting, and listening to Jean Luc Picard close all the prayers in my mind! ;)
4 comments
Cutting social services during a recession is like seeing somebody bleeding from one jugular vein and slashing the other one for good measure. Back when they were talking about whether there were enough “shovel-ready” job-creating projects for what was supposed to be adequate stimulus to reverse a short recession, I asked, “What’s more shovel-ready than a student’s mind?” It’s ridiculous that there’d be teacher layoffs and college professor hiring freezes at a time like this, not least because education lays the groundwork for future careers when the economy turns up again. Plus, salary continuity, new hiring, and student loans/grants help maintain consumer demand, which dampens the downswing and accelerates the upswing. As it is, it seems we got only about half as much stimulus spending as Obama’s own CEA chair recommended, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll get more, and at current economic growth rates, it’ll take the better part of a decade to get back to full employment.
Thanks for the link to that internetspeech.com white paper. I’ve been following the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) developments for a while, now, but found the whole concept woefully overengineered. If there’s a Base of the Pyramid computer for the masses, it’ll be something more like a cellular phone (especially because that makes it cheaper), and be more speech-oriented (especially since a lot of BoP is marginally literate), and be multi-lingual in some way (especially since BoP people might speak any of a dozen languages or more used in their home countries, not just the “official” ones — Nigeria has about 200 languages.)
“In 1976, the Supreme Court held in Imbler v. Pachtman that prosecutors have absolute immunity from liability for their official actions during trial. That conclusion rested largely on policy reasons: the Court emphasized that prosecutors must be able to pursue criminals with “courage and independence,” and without worrying about the threat of lawsuits. Thus, the parties agree that prosecutors such as petitioners enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial.”
…what the hell? It’s considered acceptable for prosecutors to knowingly introduce false testimony??
Holy shit.
Another iteration of the word “amen” is “let it be.” To me, it has a more humble tone (and one that doesn’t remind me of Star Trek) while keeping the same feel as “make it so”
Your observation about schools and libraries getting cut BECAUSE they cannot fight back is interesting. I’d never heard it said before, but it is so obviously the case!
Anyway, yeah, I love your page. Keep it up :)