Police Use Battering Ram, Tasers During Raid On 'Young Looking People With Beer'

A birthday party turns into a nightmare when beverage cops violently show up to a private residence.

DAMASCUS, MD ? Police performed a violent raid on a birthday party based on a suspicion of ?young looking people with beer,? then dubiously confiscated guests? cell phones when they were used to record the police.

The incident occurred on January 4th,? 2014, at the home of George and Cathy Magas.? The couple?s son, Nicholas, was turning twenty-one years old, and he was allowed to invite a number of his friends to the home for a party.? Both his parents were present.

During the party, the crowd opted to order pizza.? Things went downhill when the delivery driver took it upon himself to pass a tip about the party to a friend ? Officer Finch of the Montgomery County Police Department.

?Hey man not sure if you're working but if you're not busy there I just delivered a pizza to a party at 9*** Damascus rd and saw some young looking people with beer,? the pizza-delivering snitch wrote in a text message.

Officer Finch then relayed the information to members of the county?s ?Alcohol Initiatives Section? to investigate.? Subsequently, MCPD Officer Jeremy Smalley and Montgomery County Sheriff?s Deputy John Durham arrived together to scope out the party.

Having no other information besides the text message tip, the two beverage cops drove past the residence and ?observed numerous vehicles? and could ?hear the sounds of a party,? according to charging documents.? They claimed to witness some males urinate behind a detached garage.? Having no evidence to stand on, the officers assumed that the party contained underage drinking and called for reinforcements.

THE PROBLEM WITH ASSUMING

The investigation was flimsy from the start.? Officer Smalley and Deputy Durham made multiple unsubstantiated assumptions and fabrications of fact.? Just by observing individuals carrying ?red Solo style cups,? they surmised that the party-goers (1) were consuming alcohol and (2) ?appeared to be under the age of 21.?

These assumptions were used as probable cause that a crime was being committed ? underage consumption of alcohol.

An excerpt of the police report from the investigation of George and Cathy Magas in Damascus, Maryland.

The police were challenged on their remarkable ability to verify the ages of the guests just by looking at them.? This was not an insignificant detail, because anyone above the age of 21 would not have been breaking any laws.

When asked how he could tell the difference between a 20-year-old and a 21-year-old, Deputy Durham later testified, ?The loudness, just the way they presented themselves, was consistent with being under 21? They kind of exaggerate their movements, like ?hey look at me?"? rather than adults standing around drinking.?? Durham conceded that ?It's not 100 percent.?

DISPERSING THE PARTY

Filled with assumptions, Officer Smalley and Deputy Durham approached the basement stairwell and were met by one of the younger residents of the home, Marc Magas.? According to the police report, Marc was ?very cooperative? and inclined to grant them access to the inside of the home.? However, that idea was nixed when his mother, Cathy Magas, allegedly said, ?We have dealt with you guys before, and I don?t want you coming in the house.?

At that point, police were close enough to see cases of beer and a keg.? Despite having no verified proof of anyone?s age, police entered and began to pick up cases of beer and haul them to the top of the steps outside the home.? This confiscation of property was met with angry shouts from homeowner George Magas.? Backup units had arrived and helped to seize the beverages.

According to the police report, 21-year-old Nicholas Magas exited the basement door and attempted to retrieve his property by picking up a case of beer.? The report says that Officer Smalley grabbed him, but Nicholas ?attempted to pull away.?

The events that followed were chaotic and have been described through conflicting reports.

Police reported that Officer Smalley was ?pulled? into the doorway and residents slammed his arms in the door.? A struggle ensued, and police alleged that homeowner George Magas assaulted three officers, and that he even tried to take Deputy Durham?s weapon from its holster.? Eric Magas became involved, and police claimed that he too assaulted an officer.

?Deputy Durham then struck Eric Magas in an attempt to change his behavior,? the report states.? Eric was tased by police on the steps.? Cathy Magas attempted to render aid to her son, and in doing so, police claimed she elbowed a deputy.

Meanwhile, George Magas was outside being forcefully subdued by police with tasers, as his guests filmed with their cell phone cameras.

The footage ?shows police dragging the homeowner out of his house, handcuffing him and repeatedly tasing him while he offers little to no resistance,? according to Montgomery County Sentinel editorialist Brian Karem, who was allowed to see the video.

George, Cathy, Nicholas, and Eric Magas were arrested.? George and Eric had to be transported to the hospital for their injuries.

BATTERING RAM

Some time after the Magas family was arrested, there were reportedly a number of guests still inside the house, which the ?Alcohol Initiatives Section? intended to search and arrest.

Police deployed a battering ram and broke down the basement door, then rounded up the remaining terrified guests, ranging in age from 18 to 21.

Records showed that the police did obtain a search warrant to enter the home. However, it was not obtained until 5 hours after the initial contact with the Magas family, and did not bear any mention to the multiple assaults that the police officers had supposedly sustained in the course of the initial arrests.

According to the officers, their stated goal this dramatic use of force was to ?stop the party and make sure everyone gets home safely.?

AFTERMATH

The four family members were nailed with a multitude of charges which could have resulted prison time for each of them.
George Magas, 55, was charged with attempting to remove a firearm from the possession of a deputy sheriff, attempting to incite a riot, three counts of second degree assault, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Cathy Magas was charged with second degree assault, obstructing and hindering a police officer and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Nicholas Magas, 21, was charged with attempting to incite a riot, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and 22 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor.Eric Magas, 18, was charged with second degree assault, attempting to incite a riot, obstructing and hindering a police officer, 22 counts of furnishing alcohol a minor, possession of a fake ID, possessing more than one driver's license, knowingly and fraudulently obtaining a license by misrepresentation, and three counts of possessing a fictitious license.An additional twenty-two adults were cited for underage consumption of alcohol, despite evidence that some of those cited did not even have anything to drink. Several guests had their cell phones confiscated after videoing the police getting physical with members of the Magas family.

?I don't know why the police acted in the manner in which they did, including taking the phones of those who were in the home,? family attorney Rene Sandler told The Montgomery County Sentinel.

After having their family name dragged through the mud and forced to hire attorneys to defend themselves, the Magas family caught a break when their case came before Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Steven Salant.? The Magas family contested that their Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, and that police had no lawful justification to be on their curtilage, snooping around in the rear of the house.?? The judge agreed.

?I do find an unlawful invasion of the defendants? property? the defendants were entitled to an expectation of privacy in the area officers went in the back of the house,? Judge Salant said following a suppression hearing. He cast doubts on the officers? probable cause statement and called some of the police testimony ?not true.?

Judge Salant was incredulous that the raid was performed legally.? The search warrant wasn?t obtained until five hours after police arrived on scene, and left out key details which the police later used as the basis of criminal charges against the family. Critics have doubted that the warrant was obtained prior to entering the home.

In November 2014, Judge Salant threw out most of the prosecution?s evidence obtained during the raid ? including several guests? cell phones ? and said the police had violated the Magus's civil rights.

FOLLOW-UP:

As of late 2014, the state was still considering ?a myriad of options, including appeal,? according to Maryland state?s attorney's office spokesperson Ramon Korionoff.

Officer Jeremy Smalley, nor Deputy John Durham, nor any other officer who participated in the sloppy investigation and dubious search have received any form of public discipline or legal consequences as of this writing.

A truly free society would never tolerate this form of harassment on private citizens for drinking beverages of their choice. Americans need to stir up a demand for repealing draconian alcohol laws and pressure law enforcers to stop wasting tax resources on such oppressive endeavors.

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Cops On A Power Trip Arresting People For No ID and Videotaping

by Michael Suede

From the video notes:

We were 4 bikers on our way back from Flight 93 Memorial in Stoystown, PA. My friend and I get pulled over for crossing on double yellow.After waiting for citations for 10-15 minutes the other 2 bikers (my brother and other friend) walk up to see whats going on and just to wait with us. They stand off to side as instructed by the officer outside the vehicle. After another 5 minutes or so of casual conversation among ourselves and the officer outside. He asks for ID from Ryan, who asks, ?I am required to show you ID?? The officer responds, ?I am a police officer.? Ryan says, ?I understand that but whats the reason.? He responds by saying, ?You came on my scene?. He asks for his name which he gives. At this point the other officer gets out of the squad car and asks whats going on. The original officer says that Ryan isn?t showing ID and immediately the new and older officer says, If you don?t show us ID right now we can arrest you, tow your bike, and then have to pay bail. This is when my brother says, ?someone get this on video?. So I pull out my phone and the following occurs.

After the Video: They seize my phone and play the video, which has audio obviously. I am then arrested for audio taping them without their consent (Wiretapping Law), which according to the ACLU does not apply to officers doing their regular duties in public. So I?m arrested as well. Eventually my friend calls his police officer friend who talks with the arresting officer. Then we are both released as long as we give them the video and delete it. So they continue to seize my phone and make us follow them back to the station to transfer the file. After not being able to transfer it due to software issues the original officer takes a video of my video with his iPhone. I am then told to delete the video so I stealthy slide to the next video, which the arresting officer created while seizing my phone (he had no idea how to use a smartphone) and deleted that one. Now I?m sharing this ridiculous video of a cop on a power trip arresting innocent civilians after they visited a 9/11 memorial.

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Why People Tolerate a Total State

by Wendy McElroy

?Why do so many people not realize America has become a total state??

Anyone who points out the politically obvious and is accused of panic-mongering has considered this question. The NSA's massive spying, the TSA frisking their children, the IRS targeting people politically, the longest war in American history, the militarization of law enforcement, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Gitmo...nothing, nothing seems to budge some people from the belief that the US is the freest, grandest nation on earth. It is an article of faith as deeply held as any belief in God.

But why?

Libertarian Class Analysis

There is no one answer but a good place to start is with a libertarian theory of class analysis. Karl Marx is usually credited with originating class analysis and the Marxist version is the one that most commonly comes to mind. Namely, people are classified based on their relationship to the means of production. Are you a worker or a capitalist?

But class analysis as an analytic tool did not originate with Marx. It was produced by 19th century radical liberal (that is, libertarian) historians who wrote in post-Napoleonic France: Charles Comte, Augustin Thierry and Charles Dunoyer. Their mentor was the great classical liberal economist J.B. Say. Perhaps the best presentation of this version of class analysis occurs in Franz Oppenheimer's book The State. Here he presents the two antagonistic principles upon which most societies operate: the economic and the political means. Or Society and the State.

Oppenheimer wrote, ?I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man.? It consists collectively of all voluntary exchanges of labor and goods, including intangible 'goods' like culture. It is a productive and peaceful means that brings mutual benefit to all involved or no exchange would occur.

Oppenheimer wrote, ?I mean by it [the State] that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power.? It consists of the systematic appropriation of labor and goods, including intangible ones like freedom of speech. It is a non-productive and violent means that benefits the thieves and harms the productive.

This one insight is the basis of libertarian class analysis: Society and the State were in basic and constant conflict with each other. The analysis classifies people based on their relationship to productivity. Are you part of an industrious Society or do you belong to the parasitic State?

Oppenheimer explained the social dynamics set in motion by the political means. Parasites naturally multiply and drain ever more resources. As the political means comes to dominate, however those who produce means see an ever diminishing return from their productivity and, so, they have little incentive to labor beyond subsistence. Society stagnates, which means there is less for the parasite to drain. And, yet, the State is now bloated and it needs an increasing amount of resources. Since it no longer has the consent and cooperation of the productive section, it must use conquest. The American State is at the stage of attempting to conquer American Society.

The Political Means Dominates America

The State is not merely the politicians and officials who run the visible structure of government. It includes every civil servant and bureaucrat. The largest employer in America is the federal government. According to the Office of Personnel Management, there were approximately 2.79 million civil servants as of December 2011. But this number is for ?civilian? personnel only and does not include uniformed civil servants, such as law enforcement. Of course, every state, county and city ratchets up the civil servant count with their own employees.

The State also includes the people whose political support is purchased by the stolen labor and goods, such as disability recipients. The ranks of these recipients is swelling as the individual states aggressively encourage the unemployed to pursue disability (a federal expense). For example, in New Mexico, the number of disability recipients jumped 58.7% in nine years. NPR recently (03/22/13) ran an in-depth analysis that estimated the total number of people on disability to be ?about 14 million Americans who don't have jobs and who don't show up in any of the unemployment measures we use.? Disability is only one 'welfare' program among dozens and dozens.

The State includes people ostensibly in the private sector whose job is to facilitate the theft of labor and goods ? for example, lawyers who hit productive businesses with dubious suits based on Nanny State laws. Employees in the military-industrial complex, suppliers to the military, subsidized banks and corporations, the list of those who survive on tax money goes on and on.

This is the first reason why so many people will never recognize that America is deteriorating; it is not deteriorating for them because they are the beneficiaries of the political means, and the police state works to their advantage. They benefit through money and pensions but many also benefit through acquiring status or power over others. A vast number of government employees could never earn these advantages based on merit in the private sector. They have a deep vested interest in not seeing themselves as the enemies of Society. Nor are their families likely to turn against the source of food on their tables.

The Tipping Point Theory

But why are people who are not tax consumers seemingly blind to the danger of the present State? Among the many explanations, I think three are commonplace.

They may not be blind but merely silent.

Or they may not be discontented. The Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once told me how his parents lived far better during the Great Depression than they had before it. They both held onto decent jobs and prices were very low. Such people are not fertile for a discussion about the economic calamity being inflicted by a State under which they prospered.

Equally, people who have never experienced the direct violence of the state are inclined to dismiss disturbing reports from those who have. As long as they live in relative comfort, these people allow the State to process their lives. They go about the business of living instead of focusing on matters they do not control. For many, it will take a tipping within their own lives or within society at large for the business of living to include a recognition of how dangerous the State can be.

A tipping point is the critical point at which an accumulation of minor changes triggers a major and often irreversible one. The build up to a social tipping point occurs on an individual basis. The Arab Spring is an example. Enough people became individually dissatisfied to form a mass protest movement. And it happened with sudden ease. The key is ?enough individuals? need to become dissatisfied for a tipping point to occur. Before it happens, however, the people who simply want to live will tend to ignore political problems out of a feeling of isolation or helplessness. Afterward, some will awaken. Perhaps they will be appalled at the brutality the State heaps upon those who challenge it, perhaps a family member will become involved in a protest, perhaps they will simply cease to feel helpless..

Conclusion

I suspect America is close to a social tipping point. If so, it will be caused by a bloated State consuming more and more from a Society that is already half on its knees.

How many individuals need to feel the tipping point within themselves for it occur in a general manner? The nineteenth century libertarian Benjamin Tucker estimated the figure at 10%. If 10% of society said ?no? to a law, then the law would become unenforceable. The number or percentage is impossible to measure, of course, but it is almost certain to be far, far less than 50%. Fortunately, history has rarely required a majority for social change to occur.

Whether or not the outcome of such a tip would be Society or more of the State depends as much upon how many people become reluctant to say ?yes? as much as it does upon the 10% who say ?no.?
_
Wendy McElroy is a frequent Dollar Vigilante contributor and renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982, and is the author/editor of twelve books, the latest of which is "The Art of Being Free". Follow her work at http://www.wendymcelroy.com.

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Cleveland Police Run Fake Drug Checkpoints on Interstate, Arrest People Who Seek to Evade

From Cleveland.com:

MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Police are not allowed to use checkpoints to search motorists and their vehicles for drugs. So, in Mayfield Heights, officers are trying the next-best thing -- fake drug checkpoints.

Police gathered in the express lanes of Interstate 271 on Monday after placing signs along the freeway warning motorists that a drug checkpoint lay ahead.

There was no checkpoint, only police waiting for motorists to react suspiciously after seeing the signs. A Mayfield Heights assistant prosecutor says it's a lawful and legitimate tactic in his city's war on drugs.

"We should be applauded for doing this," Dominic Vitantonio said. "It's a good thing."

Civil libertarians and one of the people who was stopped and searched are skeptical. They wonder if officers were profiling motorists and whether anyone's Fourth Amendment right against unlawful searches and seizures was violated.

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Wasn't there a court decision (last year, I think, in Oklahoma) that said that avoiding a checkpoint is not justification for a traffic stop? That may not apply to Ohio, but I think it would make a compelling case.

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The Will Of The People Doesn't Mean Jack To Drug Warriors

by Dave Hummels

The Associated Press reports that eight former DEA administrators are urging the Obama administration to sue Washington and Colorado over their voter-approved moves toward ?marijuana legalization.

One former chief, Peter Bensinger, fears that successful legalization efforts will lead to ?a domino effect? in the US.? Where have we heard that phrase before?? Bensinger continues breathlessly, ?My fear is that the Justice Department will do what they are doing now: do nothing and say nothing ? If they don?t act now, these laws will be fully implemented in a matter of months.?

So drug warriors are losing their minds over Colorado and Washington.? Good!? We can only hope that Bensinger?s dire predictions come true and that more Americans are indeed waking up to the absurdity of marijuana prohibition.

The former DEA bureaucrats argue, accurately, that marijuana remains illegal under the Controlled Substances Act.? Even in cases involving medical marijuana, the federal government may abuse the commerce clause as a rationale to criminalize users, growers and sellers of marijuana (per?Gonzales v. Raich).? The commerce clause has become the federal government?s drug war equivalent of ?catch-all disorderly conduct statutes in the states.

Unfortunately, these goons have a solid case to present to US Attorney General Holder.? In New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932), US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, ?It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.?? But today?s political class views federalism as archaic.

Hopefully the administration will choose to ignore this thuggish recommendation.? But if they do decide to litigate, this will be another sign that the feds don?t give a damn about the? will of the people.? Liberty-loving Americans should respond to this federal intrusion with a massive wave of civil disobedience.

Let?s start by publicly shaming the DEA heads mentioned by the AP: ?Bensinger, John Bartels, Robert Bonner, Thomas Constantine, Asa Hutchinson, John Lawn, Donnie Marshall and Francis Mullen.?? Get to know their names, libertarians.? They are your enemies!

Then, let?s publicize the efforts of these authoritarians to undermine the voters of Colorado and Washington.? Ask them why they continue to support a policy with openly racist origins which has resulted in mass incarceration.? Publicly reveal the motives? of the police agencies that enforce these laws .? When drug warriors drone on about ?protecting the children,? confront them with the horrific reality of wrong door raids, slaughtered family pets and children terrorized with flash-bangs.? Wherever an apologist for prohibition gives a speech or attends a meeting, he or she should be met by throngs of boisterous picketers.

As we expose these petty tyrants, we should also seek opportunities to throw a wrench into the machinery of prohibition.? A mass movement of jury nullification in drug cases may be a promising tactic. ?Prosecutors can use voir dire to remove one or two questionable jurors, but what if nullification becomes widespread?? They can?t remove all of us. ?In the future,? we should view jury duty as a chance to liberate non-violent people from the state?s clutches.

In Tao Te Ching, the Chinese sage Lao Tzu writes, ?The more laws are posted, the more robbers and thieves there are.? ?Time and time again, this observation has been proven correct. The violence of the drug war is perpetuated by government, yet officials insist they must keep fighting.? In their vile attempt to protect their old turf, former DEA bosses show their true colors.? They are gangsters with federal pensions.? They will do anything to ensure that they and their ilk continue to get their cut of drug war booty.? It is up to us to expose their racket and to finish the job sensible voters in Colorado and Washington started in November.
_
C4SS Fellow Dave Hummels is a Left-libertarian writer from Central Illinois. He earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from the University of Illinois-Springfield. Dave has over a decade of experience in the field of healthcare security and is also a licensed emergency medical technician.

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How Corrupt Prosecutors Get Away With Sending Innocent People to Jail

Prosecutors are arguably the most powerful figures in the American criminal justice system, a system that is not equipped or willing to punish their crimes.
By Phillip Smith

Prosecutors are arguably the most powerful figures in the American criminal justice system. They decide which charges to bring, what plea bargains to offer, and what sentences to request. Given their role in the system and the broad powers they exercise, it is critical that they discharge those duties responsibly and ethically.

But according to attorneys and criminal justice reform advocates, prosecutors across the country are misbehaving -- and getting away with it. While the most common forms of prosecutorial misconduct are hiding exculpatory evidence and engaging in improper examination and argumentation, another form of intentional misconduct is the knowing use of false testimony to win convictions.

"Perjury can easily undermine a defendant's right to a fair trial," said Chicago criminal defense attorney Leonard Goodman.

He ought to know.

In 2009, Goodman represented Brian Wilbourn in a federal narcotics case in which prosecutors knowingly allowed an informant to testify that Wilbourn sold crack cocaine out of a penthouse apartment over a three-year period when he was in fact nowhere near the scene at any time.

"Mr. Wilbourn was safely locked away in prison when the informant testified that Wilbourn was selling drugs at the penthouse between 2002 and 2005," Goodman explained.

The US 7th District Court of Appeals overturned Wilbourn's conviction because of the perjured testimony.

"When the government obtains a conviction through the knowing use of false testimony, it violates a defendant's due process rights," wrote Judge Daniel Manion as he ordered the reversal.

And when a prosecutor knowingly allows perjured testimony to be heard, that's prosecutorial misconduct. In the Wilbourn case, Assistant US Attorney Rachel Cannon knew that her informant's testimony was false -- because Goodman told her so before the trial -- yet she has not been sanctioned in any way. That's not unusual.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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5 New Lies That The Federal Reserve Is Telling The American People

by Michael Snyder

The Federal Reserve says that everything is going to be okay.? The Fed says that unemployment is going to go down, inflation is going to remain low and economic growth is going to steadily increase.? Do you believe them this time?? As you will see later in this article, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been dead wrong about the economy over and over again.? But the mainstream media and many Americans still seem to have a lot of faith in the Federal Reserve.? It doesn't seem to matter that Bernanke and other Fed officials have been telling the American people lies for years.? As I always say, most people believe what they want to believe, and many people seem to want to have blind faith in the Federal Reserve even when logic and reason would dictate otherwise.? The truth is that things are not going to be getting much better than they are right now.? When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, the U.S. economy is going to fall back into recession, financial markets are going to crash and unemployment is going to absolutely skyrocket.? But you will never hear any of that from the Federal Reserve.

The following are 5 new lies that the Federal Reserve is telling the American people.? After each lie I have posted what The Economic Collapse Blog thinks is actually going to happen....

#1 The Federal Reserve says that the labor market has improved and that unemployment is going to decline significantly over the next few years.

The following is a quote from the FOMC press release that was released on Wednesday....

Labor market conditions have improved in recent months; the unemployment rate has declined but remains elevated.

The Federal Reserve is projecting that the unemployment rate will fall within the range of 7.8 percent and 8.0 percent by the end of 2012.

The Federal Reserve is also projecting that the unemployment rate will fall within the range of 6.7 percent and 7.4 percent by the end of 2014.

The Economic Collapse Blog says that the labor market has not improved.? In March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job.? Exactly two years later in March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job.? If the labor market was improving, the percentage of working age Americans with a job should have gone up.

The Economic Collapse Blog also says that while there is a chance the official unemployment rate may go down slightly in the short-term, the truth is that it is going to go up into double digits once the next wave of the financial crisis hits us.

#2 The Federal Reserve says that that U.S. economy is going to experience solid GDP growth over the next couple of years.

In fact, the Federal Reserve is projecting that U.S. GDP will be rising at an annual rate that falls between 3.1 percent and 3.6 percent by the end of 2014.

The Economic Collapse Blog says that a great economic cataclysm is coming....

"When the European banking system crashes (and it will) it is going to reverberate around the globe.? The epicenter of the next great financial crisis is going to be in Europe, and it is getting closer with each passing day."

#3 The Federal Reserve says that we can expect low inflation for an extended period of time.

The Federal Reserve is officially projecting that the annual rate of inflation will not be higher than 2.0 percent by the end of 2012.? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reinforced this projection during his press conference on Wednesday....

"But we expect that to pass through the system, and assuming no new shocks in the oil sector, inflation ought to moderate to about 2 percent later this year."

The Economic Collapse Blog says that the Fed is being tremendously dishonest and that if inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent right now.

The truth is that most middle class families know that we do not have low inflation right now.? This is hammered home millions of times a day when average Americans visit the gas station or the grocery store.

At the beginning of the next recession inflation will likely subside, but that will only be because economic activity will be slowing down dramatically.

#4 The Federal Reserve says that it has built up a 30 year reputation for keeping inflation low.

Ben Bernanke actually had the gall to make the following claim during his press conference on Wednesday....

"We, the Federal Reserve, have spent 30 years building up credibility for low and stable inflation, which has proved extremely valuable in that we've been able to take strong accommodative actions in the last four, five years to support the economy."

Oh really?

The Economic Collapse Blog says that the Federal Reserve has nearly a 100 year reputation for destroying the value of the U.S. dollar.? Even using the Fed's doctored numbers, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 95 percent since 1913.

To get a really good idea of just how much the dollar has been destroyed by the Fed over the years, just check out this chart.

#5 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that we should trust him because the Federal Reserve stands ready to do whatever is necessary to support the U.S. economy.

"If appropriate... we remain entirely prepared to take additional action"

The Economic Collapse Blog says that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is doing a great disservice by not warning the American people about the tremendous crisis that is coming.? In a recent article I stated that this next crisis will blindside most Americans just like the last one did....

"Sadly, just like back in 2008, most people will never even see this next crisis coming."

So who should you trust - the Federal Reserve or all of the half-crazed bloggers out there that are warning about the "serious doom" that is coming.

Well, come back to this article in a year or two and compare how accurate the predictions were.

In the end, time will tell who is telling lies and who is not.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

For example, let's take a quick look at Ben Bernanke's track record over the past several years.

The following are statements that Bernanke actually made to the public....

#1 (July, 2005) "We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don't think it's gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though."

#2 (October 20, 2005) "House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals."

#3 (November 15, 2005) "With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly."

#4 (February 15, 2006) "Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise."

#5 (February 15, 2007) "Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low."

#6 (March 28, 2007) "At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency."

#7 (May 17, 2007) "All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.? The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well.? Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable."

#8 (January 10, 2008) "The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."

#9 (June 10, 2008) "The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so."

But don't worry, Ben Bernanke insists that he knows exactly what is going on this time.

So do you believe him?

A lot of Americans don't.? In fact, an "economic collapse" is the number one catastrophic event that Americans worry about according to one recent survey.

Perhaps that is one reason why so many Americans are preparing for doomsday these days.

The central planners over at the Federal Reserve are not going to solve our economic problems.

The truth is that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems.

We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that debt bubble has been facilitated by the Fed.

Over the past three decades, the total amount of debt in America has increased by about 50 trillion dollars.? By stealing from future generations, we have been able to live like kings and queens, but there is going to be a great price to pay for our foolishness.

Ben Bernanke and the other folks running the Federal Reserve are just going to keep insisting that everything is going to be okay for as long as they possibly can.? They are going to tell you that they know exactly how to fix things and that the economy will be back on track very soon.

Don't be stupid and believe them this time.

View the original article here

New Poll: Almost Everyone Thinks It's Wrong to Jail People for Pot

by Scott Morgan

Via NORML, check out this new data from an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll.

Majorities of respondents in the three countries (Britain 56%, Canada 68%, United States 74%) welcome the concept of using alternative penalties?such as fines, probation or community service?rather than prison for non-violent offenders. At least seven-in-ten Britons (70%), Americans (74%) and Canadians (78%) believe personal marijuana use should be dealt with through alternative penalties.

?And yet I keep hearing people justifying Obama's medical marijuana crackdown on the grounds that voters will be impressed by his toughness. How much more evidence do we need that huge majorities support less punitive marijuana policies? It's time to bury the antiquated, idiotic myth that the public supports tough drug laws. It's false and it's been false for a very long time.

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While at the Nashville Fair I saw 2 police officers catch a kid smoking a joint behind a truck... they gave him a lecture about the legality of the act... took his bag of weed and ground it into a mud puddle and let him go. I thought that was better than flooding the courts with what I considered a non crime.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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Occupy Denver: Denver Police Pick A Fight With The People

by Gary D. Fielder

[The following is a report from Occupy Denver sent to us by Colorado attorney Gary D. Fielder detailing police abuse at the protest. - InfoLib]

Disgraceful. That?s the only way to describe the provocative conduct of the Denver Police Department, at an otherwise peaceful gathering over the weekend in Denver?s Civic Center Park.

No one called the cops.

No one complained.

There was no victim. No crime. No weapons. No harm. Nothing, but beautiful weather?equaled only by the spirit of over 2,000 people from all walks of life: All guilty of one mistake.

They cared.

They cared about the millions of people being wrongfully foreclosed upon by banks that don?t own the photocopied, commercial paper they claim to ?hold.? They cared about the multitude of unemployed. They cared about the odious debt we?re passing on to our children.

They dared care about the Constitution.

And sure, they were mad. We?re all mad. We live in a mad world, ruled by the Red Queen in a surreal drama, based upon a true story.

In this sad chapter, a ground swell of people gathered in a public park between the Denver County Courthouse and State Capital. The common area in front of the Capital is controlled by the State. Civic Center Park falls under the jurisdiction of the City and County of Denver.

The people of the state of Colorado own them both.

But just two days before, Governor Hickenlooper had ordered his State Troopers to forcibly remove over 600 ?campers? in front of the Capital, who had occupied Lincoln Park in solidarity with the other outdoorsy types, worldwide. None of them had a permit. Instead, their tents, chairs, equipment and other belongings were confiscated and placed in a 5000 sq. ft. warehouse for destruction.

The Governor said he did it for their own good, out of concern for their health and safety.

Funny, no one in Denver had complained, except for maybe a couple of talk-show hosts. So, when thousands gathered on a sunny, Saturday afternoon in Civic Center Park, everything was cool. Cars honked in support while driving by on Broadway. Lincoln Park was empty and the normal number of tourist visiting the Capital seemed happy. Surely, some wondered why thirty troopers surrounded the majestic building. But everyone knows Colorado is a law and order State. Just ask Bob Segar.

However, the ?protesters? were fine. There were families with small kids, and people of all ages, political persuasions and philosophical beliefs. Everybody got along and the themes were clear: Get the moneyed interest under control; Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act; buy local; and, above all, take back the money creation powers specifically delegated to Congress under the Constitution.

The chant was: We are the 99%.

Ironically, it?s been 99 years since Congress delegated its greatest responsibility to a small cartel called the Federal Reserve. As most know, the FED is not part of our federal government and has no reserves. None of the money it creates is backed by gold, silver or platinum. No, it?s only backed by our promise to repay with interest. That?s it. It?s all debt. Every dollar. That?s why they?re called Federal Reserve Notes.

Why did Congress do it? Why doesn?t the US Treasury just issue its own currency based upon the full faith and credit of the United States, thereby relieving the people of the obligation to pay it back in the form of income tax? Well, just ask any one from the group that gathered yesterday at Civic Center Park. They?ll tell, ya.

That was the whole point of the demonstration: To meet at the park and march to the Federal Reserve in Denver on the 16th Street Mall about a half a mile away.

The Denver Police knew the plan. It didn?t take a genius. 50 people had marched three weeks, before. 500 met the week after that. 1000 made the trek, last week.

Unbeknownst to the crowd this time, however, over 100 police officers in riot gear were setting up in four different staging locations around the park. With this show of muscle, one might have thought the Democrats were in town to nominate a presidential candidate.

Then something strange happened during the march.

Right after everyone left, a small group of police officers blocked off Broadway where it runs between Civic Center and Lincoln Park. When the mass of people returned, they were ecstatic. They had the run of the place. They thought the police were on their side and were thankful for the cooperation. Hundreds mingled everywhere, including the middle of the street, taking turns on a bullhorn, speaking their minds and sharing ideas.

The trap had been laid and bait taken?hook, line and sinker. Don?t you know it?s illegal to be in the street? That?s when an army of cops showed up and removed the barriers. No joke.

They had Suburbans with side panels that carried five a side. Many wore sophisticated headgear with wireless microphones. Most of them were dressed in black and had shin guards, long batons, automatic weapons, mace and ziplock handcuffs. None wore ID badges, but each one of them had a scowl on his face that forecasted his intent.

The only issue, then, was how to instigate the crowd. That was easy. Anytime a big group gets together, the anarchists show up. Of course, ever since the Denver P.D. was busted at the DNC for dressing up like rebels with red bandannas, it?s been impossible to tell the misguided youth from a paid provocateur.

Either does the trick.

Additionally, over on the far side of the park, a 12? x 12? awning had been set up for food distribution. Under the evil veil, six young women sat handing out water, bananas, bagels and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

They didn?t have a permit. It?s doubtful anyone would have called the police, but no one had to. They showed up on their own in full military regalia.

In an obvious move to rile up the rabble, a couple of officers went over to the food stand to shake the posts and yell something about an illegal ?structure? in the park.

Immediately, the speeches stopped. Then literally hundreds of people came running from every direction to aid the panicked gals in the tent. The cops were run off. And oh, how quickly they retreated in defeat.

Game over. Just like the police had planned, the peaceful protest had now turned into a riotous mob.

Well, not really. But all those officers were there for something. It would have been a shame for them to just turn around and go home?particularly since they had gone to all the trouble of getting dressed up.

And so the battle line was drawn. The chow tent had to go. To protect it (as predicted by the police), a seasoned group stayed in the street, sat down and locked arms.

And the standoff ensued.

A perimeter line of police was drawn along the same block that the same cops had closed just two hours before. For effect, every fifteen minutes or so, the armed line took one step forward. This further incited the crowd, and some went right up and confronted the individual officers.

?Who do you work for, anyways??

?Don?t you remember swearing an oath to the Constitution??

?Have you ever heard of the 1st Amendment,? they screamed.

No response. No emotion. Just a blank stare and tighter grip on the nightstick.

Behind the line, older and out-of-shape supervisors scurried around, looking very important while talking to each other on expensive walkie-talkies. Mapping out the game plan, for sure.

Finally, it was time to move. One by one, the seated picketers where pealed away and placed in the awaiting paddy wagon. 24 in all. Soon the line of armed police had reached the curb of the park. Nobody resisted. By this time, all the little kids had gone home. The street was clear, but not all the bagels had been eaten. Consequently, dozens of fearless activist stood firm between the police and the free food hut.

Still, the canopy had to come down. There was no compromise, despite hours of negotiations and the promise to get a permit, first thing Monday morning.

No deal. It was for their own good.

Nonetheless, the timing wasn?t right. Not yet. The drama had to build. The spotlight from the police helicopter wouldn?t have the same effect if the sun were up. Besides, the 6 o?clock News was about ready to start. So, they waited.

Directly behind the line, 20 more cops huddled in green fatigues, preparing to bum rush the scrawny lean-to, at sundown. These were Denver?s finest. Special Forces, no doubt.

And then it happened. With choppers hovering, women screaming and the smell of pepper stray in the evening air, the wall of human flesh was penetrated and the bagel tent was torn down with great force.

Then everybody went home and the hardcore dissidents moved back to the Mall and shouted slogans in front of the Federal Reserve.

Five minutes later in an empty park, a hundred cops stood over a smoldering heap of twisted aluminum posts, a crumpled canvas, and a dozen, half-empty jars of peanut butter, a hundred bagels and some bread. No bananas were left.

HOOAH!!!

Across town, a small business broke down their annual picnic at a local park, which included a volleyball net and small awning. Lucky for them, the cops were busy that day.

Get out of Denver, baby. Get out of Denver, baby, go go.

Disgraceful.

Gary D. Fielder
Attorney-at-Law

Image: Occupydenver.org

View the original article here

We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies

BY John Marzulli

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

[...]Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny's bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn't limited to a single squad.

"Did you observe with some frequency this ... practice which is taking someone who was seemingly not guilty of a crime and laying the drugs on them?" Justice Gustin Reichbach asked Anderson.

"Yes, multiple times," he replied.

Read More

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what ever happened to public executions? This is exactly what you get when you the insane right wing pushes performance based policing. People are prevented from filing charges in order to make it seem like reduced crimes against persons, people are falsely arrested in order to maintain arrest rates, corrupt police are protected to make the police force look better and cops for hire private to attack your enemies ie exactly how you typical corporation runs, lie cheat and steal and use public relations to gloss over everything.
Hmm, stinks like Bloomberg, well guess what, it's exactly what right wing idiots voted for. RTB61 nailed it. right wing scum has (surprise!) destroyed this country. and the fucking ghouls are STILL getting fat feasting off its corpse. it's time to stomp these loathsome fascist cockroaches deep into the pavement once and for all. although i suppose i should look at the bright side: at least some billionaire asshole just got richer...

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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The War on Drugs Has Become the War on the American People

By John W. Whitehead

"On July 29, 2008, my family and I were terrorized by an errant Prince George's County SWAT team. This unit forced entry into my home without a proper warrant, executed our beloved black Labradors, Payton and Chase, and bound and interrogated my mother-in-law and me for hours as they ransacked our belongings? As I was forced to kneel, bound at gun point on my living room floor, I recall thinking that there had been a terrible mistake. However, as I have learned more, I have to understand that what my family and I experience is part of a growing and troubling trend where law enforcement is relying on SWAT teams to perform duties once handled by ordinary police officers."?Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo in testimony before the Maryland Senate

Insisting that the "damage done by drugs is felt far beyond the millions of Americans with diagnosable substance abuse or dependence problems," President Obama has declared October 2011 to be National Substance Abuse Prevention Month. However, while drug abuse and drug-related crimes have unquestionably taken a toll on American families and communities, the government's own War on Drugs has left indelible scars on the population.

Indeed, although the Obama administration has shied away from using the phrase "War on Drugs," its efforts to crack down on illicit drug use?especially marijuana use?have not abated. Just consider?every 19 seconds, someone in the U.S. is arrested for violating a drug law. Every 30 seconds, someone in the U.S. is arrested for violating a marijuana law, making it the fourth most common cause of arrest in the United States.

So far this year, approximately 1,313,673 individuals have been arrested for drug-related offenses. Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for marijuana violations in 2009. Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only. Moreover, since December 31, 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year, with about 25 percent sentenced for drug law violations.

The foot soldiers in the government's increasingly fanatical war on drugs, particularly marijuana, are state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear and armed to the hilt. These SWAT teams carry out roughly 50,000 no-knock raids every year in search of illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia. As author and journalist Radley Balko reports, "The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana... Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.)"

Take the case of Philip Cobbs, an unassuming 53-year-old African-American man who cares for his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother and lives on a 39-acre tract of land that's been in his family since the 1860s. Cobbs is the latest in a long line of Americans to find themselves swept up in the government's zealous pursuit of marijuana. On July 26, 2011, while spraying the blueberry bushes near his Virginia house, Cobbs noticed a black helicopter circling overhead. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his mother. By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police in flak jackets, carrying rifles and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him.

Although the officers insisted they had sighted marijuana plants growing on Cobbs' property (they claimed to find two spindly plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree), their real objective was clear?to search Cobbs' little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers. Incredibly, police had not even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs' property?part of a routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very least.

Thankfully for Cobbs, no one was hurt during the warrantless raid on his property. However, that is not the case for many Americans who find themselves on the wrong end of a SWAT team raid in search of marijuana. For example, on May 5, 2011, a SWAT team kicked open the door of ex-Marine Jose Guerena's home during a drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena?23 of those bullets made contact. Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

Tragically, Jose Guerena is far from the only innocent casualty in the government's War on Drugs. Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs. As Balko reports:

When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times. Filgo himself was never charged. Last October [2005] police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana, equal in weight to a ketchup packet. In January [2006] a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor's two pooches on his way. And last May [2005], an officer in Syracuse, New York, squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was handcuffed at gunpoint at the time.

Clearly, something must be done. There was a time when communities would have been up in arms over a botched SWAT team raid resulting in the loss of innocent lives. Unfortunately, today, we are increasingly coming to accept the use of SWAT teams by law enforcement agencies for routine drug policing and the high incidence of error-related casualties that accompanies these raids.

What's more, the government is providing incentives to the SWAT teams carrying out these raids through federal grants such as the Edward Byrne memorial grants and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. As David Borden, the Executive Director of Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet), pointed out, "The exact details on how Byrne and COPS grants are distributed has not been studied, at least not to my knowledge, but an examination of grant applications by one of my colleagues found that they overwhelmingly focus on the number of arrests made, particularly drug arrests. Byrne grants also fund the purchase of equipment for SWAT teams."

Unfortunately, while few of these raids even make the news, they are happening more and more frequently. As Borden notes, "In 1980 there were fewer than 3,000 reported SWAT raids. Now, the number is believed to be over 50,000 per year?About 3/4 of these are drug raids, perhaps more by now, the vast majority of them low-level." Balko's research reinforces this phenomenon. Based on more than a year's worth of research and culled only from documented SWAT team incidents, Balko cites "40 cases in which a completely innocent person was killed. There are dozens more in which nonviolent offenders (recreational pot smokers, for example?) or police officers were needlessly killed. There are nearly 150 cases in which innocent families, sometimes with children, were roused from their beds at gunpoint, and subjected to the fright of being apprehended and thoroughly searched at gunpoint. There are other cases in which a SWAT team seems wholly inappropriate, such as the apprehension of medical marijuana patients, many of whom are bedridden."

Despite the government's current fanaticism about marijuana, America has not always been at war over the cannabis plant. In fact, in 1619, all farmers of the Jamestown colony were required to grow cannabis for rope and other military purposes. Over the next 200 years, a variety of laws required hemp harvesting. In some cases, landowners could be imprisoned for neglecting their duty to grow hemp. Oftentimes, a surplus of hemp could be used as legal tender, even for paying taxes. In 1850, there were 8,327 hemp plantations in the U.S.

It was only later, during the early 20th century, that the government embarked on an all-out assault on marijuana, largely due to corporate business considerations that favored the production of cotton over hemp and racist policies that tied Hispanics and blacks to marijuana use. For example, even though blacks only account for 15% of the drug using population (with whites making up a growing part of the market), the vast majority of drug arrests and convictions affect black drug users. Incredibly, more than 70% of prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug offenses are black or Latino.

The time has come to put an end to the government's racially-weighted, militant war on marijuana. It is a failed, costly and misguided program that has cost the country billions. As critics rightly point out, the war on marijuana has also resulted in a massive increase in incarceration rates. According to Joe Klein, writing for Time, "We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related."

Worse, the government's War on Drugs seems to have actually exacerbated the drug problems in this country, funding criminal syndicates and failing to restrict its availability or discourage its use. Indeed, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that as recently as 2005, 58% of the public found marijuana readily available, with 50% of 12 to 17 year olds declaring it easy to get.

A growing number of legal scholars, including Bruce Fein, who served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, are calling to end the prohibition on marijuana and treat it like alcohol by regulating and taxing it at the state level. Their rationale is that instead of allowing marijuana to flourish as a profitable black market crop, it should be taxed and regulated in a manner similar to tobacco and alcohol, which many in the medical community believe to be far more harmful than marijuana. Not only would that lessen violent criminal activity associated with the manufacture and sale of marijuana, but it would also provide an economic boost to ailing state and federal coffers. As it now stands, marijuana is the United States' largest cash crop (it brought in an estimated $35 billion in 2005), with a third of this production coming from California where it is the state's largest cash crop.

Recently, over 500 economists led by Nobel Laureate George Akerlof, Daron Acemoglu of MIT, and Howard Margolis of the University of Chicago, signed an open letter to the President, Congress, State Governors, and State Legislatures expounding the immense economic benefits of legalization. They pointed out that if marijuana sales were taxed at the same level as cigarettes and alcohol, the government would make up to $6.2 billion annually. Additionally, a repeal of the prohibition of marijuana would save federal, state, and local governments an estimated $7.7 billion annually by ending the need for enforcement of drug laws.

Acknowledging the medical benefits of marijuana, especially for those who suffer from Alzheimer's, HIV/AIDS, and multiple sclerosis, 16 states as well as the District of Columbia have also legalized it for medicinal purposes. Most recently, the California Medical Association, which represents more than 35,000 physicians statewide, called for the legalization and regulation of the plant.

As always, the special interests have a lot to say in these matters, and it's particularly telling that those lobbying hard to keep the prohibition on marijuana include law enforcement officials and alcoholic beverage producers. However, when the war on drugs?a.k.a. the war on the American people?becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it's time to revisit our drug policies and laws. As Professors Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilson recognize:

During the 25 years of its existence, the "War on Drugs" has transformed the criminal justice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement now drive many of the broader legislative, law enforcement, and corrections policies in counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this transformation has been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agencies to keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets they seize. Another has been the federal law enforcement aid program, revised a decade ago to focus on assisting state anti-drug efforts. Collectively these financial incentives have left many law enforcement agencies dependent on drug law enforcement to meet their budgetary requirements, at the expense of alternative goals such as the investigation and prosecution of non-drug crimes, crime prevention strategies, and drug education and treatment.

__
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com.

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How Mathematics Can Make Smart People Dumb

by Ben O'Neill

Mathematics can sometimes make smart people dumb. Let me explain what I mean by this. I don't mean that it is dumb not to be good at mathematics. After all, mathematics is a highly abstract and challenging discipline requiring many years (decades even) of study, and there are plenty of very smart people who have little understanding of it, and little ability to use it. What I mean is that mathematics quite often bamboozles people into accepting very silly arguments ? arguments that are so silly that if you stated them without draping them in mathematical negligee, you would instantly become an object of ridicule to all those people who flunked out at basic algebra back in high school.

The danger of mathematical arguments is that a person can sometimes follow an absurd path of reasoning without being alerted to its absurdity, due to the fact that their mind is so lost in the verbiage of mathematical equations that their common sense fails to penetrate it. As a statistics teacher, I have to guard against this problem constantly in my students.[1] One of the main difficulties in teaching applied mathematics is that students can become bamboozled by the mathematical machinery they are using, to the detriment of their ability to reason sensibly about the nature of the problem that the mathematics is designed to describe.

One of the most common errors in applied mathematical analysis is to fail to notice when a mathematical argument proves too much. This occurs when the same argument can be deployed more generally than in the particular case being considered, and in other cases where it can be deployed it leads to conclusions that are clearly absurd.[2] Though this can occur more generally ? in nonmathematical reasoning ? it is a particularly acute danger in applied mathematics, due to the fact that understanding mathematical arguments generally requires a high level of training and intellectual effort. It is very easy to get lost in equations and theorems and fail to see the forest for the trees.

An Example of Applied Mathematics Going Horribly Wrong

Let me give you an example of this phenomenon in action. The Australian government recently announced that it will attempt to enact legislation to impose a tax on industrial carbon-dioxide emissions, with some of the revenue being earmarked as compensation for affected consumers. At a pro-government political rally in Sydney, a young activist proudly displayed what he clearly thought to be a devastating economic argument in favor of this "carbon-pricing" scheme. See for yourself:

The "Say Yes" rally to support a proposed carbon-dioxide-emissions tax (June 5, 2011, Sydney, Australia)[3]

To those readers who have not studied neoclassical microeconomics, this is probably just a big bunch of gibberish. But to those who have, it should look quite familiar. The graph is a "utility analysis," which purports to show that imposing a tax on polluting products (which increases their price) and simultaneously giving compensation back to consumers would make them better off than they were initially ? in other words, it purports to show that the Australian government's proposed scheme, or something like it, would make people better off.

This is a classic example of a mathematical analysis that proves too much. Notice, in the graph in the sign, that the two products are labeled "C" (for clean products) and "P" (for polluting products). Although they are labeled in this way, the fact that the horizontal axis represents the consumption of polluting products plays absolutely no part in the analysis. There is nothing in the graph representing the pollution that these products cause, and so the label is merely a name. The letter "P" is nothing more than an algebraic symbol, one that could just as easily stand for pies, pastries, printers, pizzas, polka lessons, picture frames, pole dancing, ponies, popcorn, pool tables, poppy-seed muffins, pornography, postcards, potatoes, potpourri, poultry, pumpkins, puppies, pudding, or any other good or service (including goods and services that don't start with the letter "P").

Thus, by the exact same mathematical argument, the graph implicitly purports to show that a government can make people better off by taxing any good and then compensating the consumers of that good. Though the government taxes the polluting products in the graph, the sign maker could just as easily have switched the labels on the axes so that the government taxes the clean products, and the result, according to the same analysis, would still be a consumer who is better off.

In fact, the analysis in the graph could be taken further than this. Why stop taxing there? Repeating the same analysis, the government could increase the happiness of their subject population further still by imposing a tax-and-compensation scheme on the polluting goods, and then the clean goods. But why even stop there? They could then impose another tax-and-compensation scheme on the polluting goods, then on the clean goods, then on the polluting goods, and so on. Each time, the same analysis would purport to show that the consumer would become better off. In fact, the analysis could be repeated ad infinitum, allowing the government to completely transcend the problem of scarcity by boundlessly increasing the possible consumptions sets of the consumer.[4] How wonderful!

But wait a minute. You don't need to be a mathematician, or an economist, to figure out that there is something funny going on here. Either some step in the analysis or some starting assumption must be faulty. In a moment I will explain what this is, but really, this exercise is largely academic. The point here is that the conclusion from the analysis is so absurd that something in the analysis must obviously be wrong, even if we are unable to pinpoint exactly what it is. It proves far too much.

Suppose that this young fellow had eschewed mathematical explanation in this instance, and instead simply stated his argument verbally: "If you have two types of goods (let's call them C and P) and the government taxes one of those goods (say, good P) and then pays consumers of that good compensation, then those consumers will be better off than they were to start with." A question would immediately spring to the listener's mind: How much compensation is needed for this to happen? And in particular, is the revenue from the tax enough to cover it? Isn't this important in deciding whether this argument is a valid reason to support the tax? In verbal form, these questions would present a serious challenge to the analyst, and an opportunity for him to discover a serious flaw in his assumptions.

The Error with This Analysis

In fact, these questions are the key to the flaw in the analysis. Notice that in the second step listed on the sign, the consumer is given compensation that allows him to afford the same bundle of goods that he initially started with. Since the price of the polluting products has increased, this means that the cost of the compensation being paid in the analysis is equal to the amount of polluting products initially being consumed, multiplied by the increase in price from the tax. (In mathematical parlance, this is t ? P0, where 0 < t < 1 is the price increase due to the tax.)

Can the government afford this, using the revenue it extracts indirectly from these consumers? Well, let's start by being as generous as we possibly can to the argument, by invoking some fanciful assumptions in its favor. Let's assume ? contrary to every sensible understanding of government ? that the tax-and-compensation scheme can be enacted and administered without any costs at all. In this case, the net revenue taken from the consumers would be equal to the gross takings, which is equal to the amount of polluting products being consumed after the imposition of the tax, multiplied by the increase in price. (In mathematical parlance, this is t ? P1, where 0 < t < 1 is the price increase due to the tax.)

See a problem? The gross revenue taken from consumers uses the actual consumption level after the imposition of the tax, but the compensation payment given to consumers is based on the amount of revenue that would have been raised based on the consumption of polluting products before the imposition of the tax. Since the analysis shows that the consumer is consuming less of the polluting products after the imposition of the tax than before, this means that the revenue taken from consumers cannot possibly cover the compensation payments being made. (Since P0 > P1 we have t ? P0 > t ? P1.)

In fact, using the exact kind of mathematical model being used in the sign, it can actually be shown that the amount of compensation required to fully compensate a consumer for a price rise (called the "compensating variation"), just to make them as well off as they started, is larger than the gross revenue extracted from the price rise.[5] That is, there is always some loss in consumer "utility" in this kind of scheme, even if we ignore any administrative costs to impose and run it, and devote the entire gross revenue from the price increase to compensation. Thus, the only possible argument that could be made along these lines is that giving consumers more money than they are paying in and shifting these excess costs onto others (e.g., producers) could potentially make them better off. But even then, an honest economic analysis of this situation would also need to look at the costs to others from this scheme, rather than obscuring the loss of revenue.

Obviously, the situation becomes much worse if we make more realistic assumptions about the administrative costs of the scheme, since this reduces the net revenue available for payment as compensation. In reality, a taxation scheme of this kind would require very large amounts of money for the government to create and administer, and would also impose compliance costs on the taxpayers. The situation also becomes worse for the consumer if he receives only part of the tax revenue in compensation, rather than the full amount. There would also be disparities in the compensation between consumers, so that some would be worse off, even if others got a large amount. Possible rent-seeking behavior and other economic issues could make the situation worse still, until a very grim picture of the scheme starts to emerge.

In the sign in the picture, the compensation required to get to the blue utility curve (making the consumer better off) would cost more than the gross revenue from the tax. In fact, even the compensation required to get back up to the black utility curve (making the consumer as well off as they were before the tax) would cost more than the gross revenue from the tax. Add administration costs for the scheme to this, and other realistic issues, and now you need to come up with an awful lot of extra money that is nowhere to be seen.

In fact, regardless of the findings of a utility analysis of this kind, there is one overriding economic argument against a coercive scheme such as the one being proposed. If it were possible to increase consumer satisfaction by taking people's money and then giving it back to them in a revenue-neutral fashion in this way, then presumably consumers would be able to do this themselves ? they could make voluntarily contractual arrangements for a scheme like this without any coercion being applied. The fact that they do not, and that they need to be coerced into compliance, demonstrates, by virtue of the principle of revealed preference, that they are not better off under such an arrangement, regardless of the purported findings of any economic models.

Using Mathematics to Make the Dumbest Argument Possible

If one were a supporter of a carbon-dioxide-emissions tax (I am not) then I doubt one would be too pleased with the above argument being presented in its favor if it were expressed in verbal form. Yet, add some mathematical bells and whistles to this absurdity, and you get a sign that was described by one sympathetic observer as the "Best Sign" at the rally.[6] In fact, not only is the analysis in the sign flawed, but when it is done properly, it actually leads to the exact opposite conclusion from the one asserted to be true; it alerts us to the fact that the tax-and-compensation scheme will leave the consumer worse off, unless they are given additional money, plucked like manna from heaven.

Aside from the above instance where this argument is made in mathematical form, I do not recall ever hearing a single advocate of a carbon-dioxide-emissions tax make the asinine assertion that tax-and-compensation schemes of this kind would increase the happiness of consumers regardless of the good being taxed. They are not quite that silly. Almost all arguments in favor of taxation schemes of this kind are based on completely different reasoning from this, usually using "negative externality" arguments that assert actual pollution problems. These arguments cannot really be captured in a single consumer-utility graph, since they involve assertions of interactions between the actions of one consumer and the preferences of another. The mathematical argument presented in the picture above is therefore not an advancement of the pro-tax position. It actually does a serious disservice to this position by presenting an incorrect and very ill-considered justification for it.

This shows the particular danger of getting bamboozled by applied mathematical analysis, to the extent that absurd premises slip through the net undetected. It allows a person to make the dumbest argument possible for a particular proposition, while maintaining a supreme measure of confidence, and indeed cockiness, in his own position.

When doing applied mathematical analysis we need to be careful not to fall into this trap. Though mathematics is a specialized discipline, beyond the understanding of many people, a sound analysis in applied mathematics should generally be translatable into a sound verbal argument, at least in a heuristic form. Its arguments are progressions from premises to conclusions based on logic, and hence, if you cannot explain the structure of your argument and its premises (at least in heuristic terms) to people without much mathematical training, you probably do not have a broad enough understanding of the structure of the argument to warrant reliance on it.

The Purpose and Value of Mathematical Arguments

I have not shown this example simply to demonstrate the dangers of having inept economics students present their ham-fisted policy analysis in public. It is actually demonstrative of a wider point regarding the use and abuse of mathematical arguments: mathematics cannot do scientific problems for you. All that mathematics can do is to allow you to state problems in quantitative form and find the logical consequences of various assumptions about the problem you are trying to solve. A mathematical argument shows that certain premises lead logically to certain conclusions. But it does not guarantee that those premises bear any resemblance to reality. Whether or not they do is an important matter, deserving the utmost consideration.

Mathematics is meant to augment logical argument, by providing the ability to clearly define a problem, and to ensure that all necessary assumptions are made explicit in the analysis. Its advantage over "literary" argumentative methods (when used properly) is that it ensures that the analyst is not making assumptions that he is unaware of, and is not making leaps in argument that are illogical. However, when mathematical arguments are used to obscure, rather than enlighten, the result is that they tend to hide assumptions that are being made.

The argument presented in the sign above hinges on the fact that it hides any discussion of the amount of revenue needed for the compensation payment that is assumed to be made. It does not compare this amount to the actual amount of revenue taken from consumers due to the price rise, and as soon as this issue is considered, we see that the argument presented in the sign is either wrong or at the very least highly misleading. Actually, the real purpose of the sign above is not to convince but to obscure. The purpose is to prevent rational debate on the subject by warding off the approaches of anyone who has not studied mathematical economics and is unable to penetrate the meanings of the various lines on the graph. Like so many purported scientific justifications of government power and intervention, the argument in the sign needn't be remotely sensible so long as it is arcane enough to keep the riffraff from understanding the argument that is being made ? and the premises of that argument.

It is an appeal to authority, with the authority in this case being a bunch of fancy graphical work. Like so many purported scientific justifications of government power, it is based on false premises and/or shoddy logic, masquerading as bona fide scientific analysis. It is the voice of a pretentious elite saying, We couldn't possibly explain our reasoning to you in a way that you could understand, so just defer to our clearly superior intelligence, bitches. (Note: mathematics can sometimes make smart people dumb, but it cannot make them pretentious mediocrities; they do that on their own.)

When mathematical arguments prove too much, it is often as a result of faulty assumptions. If an applied mathematical argument leads to a conclusion that is highly counterintuitive, or if the form of argument can be deployed just as effectively to prove other conclusions that are highly counterintuitive, then this is good reason to further scrutinize the assumptions made in the argument.

Mathematics is a fascinating and powerful discipline, and one that I love a great deal. Enjoy it to the extent that you are able. But, as Ayn Rand used to say, check your premises!
__
Ben O'Neill is a lecturer in statistics at the University of New South Wales (ADFA) in Canberra, Australia. He has formerly practiced as a lawyer and as a political adviser in Canberra. He is a Templeton Fellow at the Independent Institute, where he won first prize in the 2009 Sir John Templeton Fellowship essay contest. Send him mail. See Ben O'Neill's article archives.

Notes

[1] In my own teaching, I like to keep students on their toes by occasionally presenting them with a flawed statistical argument that leads to a conclusion that is quite obviously absurd. My favorite practice is to give them statistical questions that invite them to conflate correlation and cause ? leading to some obviously absurd conclusions ? and then see if they notice the absurdity of the conclusion they are getting, rather than plowing ahead blindly with their equations.

[2] A warning against acceptance of this kind of argument is captured in the Latin maxim, quod nimis probat, nihil probat, which means, "What proves too much proves nothing."

[3] Picture taken from http://twitpic.com/57awlj. I have cropped out the young man's face, since it is not my intention to embarrass him. Scrutiny of his sign is mainly for the purposes of showing a more general problem pertaining to attempts at applied mathematical analysis, though it is certainly worthy of criticism, especially for its rude and pretentious demeanor.

[4] Assuming that the utility function in the analysis is strictly quasi-concave (a common assumption in neoclassical microeconomic analysis), infinite repetition of the scheme in the graph would lead to an infinite series of strictly positive utility changes. Some further assumptions about the utility function would then be needed to ensure that this series diverges to infinity, so that utility (and the budget constraint and consumptions sets) can be boundlessly increased. In particular, a homothetic utility function is a sufficient but not necessary condition for this result.

[5] For a demonstration of this, using standard neoclassical utility analysis (as is used in the sign), see Example 3.I.1 of Mas-Colell, A., Whinston, M.D. and Green, J.R. (1995) Microeconomic Theory. Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 84-85. Discussion of the same kind of example can be found in Jehle, G.A. and Reny, P.J. (2001) Advanced Microeconomic Theory (2nd Edition). Addison-Wesley Longman: Boston. pp. 53, 166?171. Such an analysis uses standard neoclassical microeconomic assumptions; it assumes that the preference relation of the consumer is complete, transitive, continuous, strictly monotonic, and strictly convex (the last two assumptions ensure a strict loss of revenue to the government, but these can be relaxed to still yield a nonstrict loss).

[6] See picture caption at http://twitpic.com/57awlj

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