That strange feeling when you see your lawyer celebrated in a Ben Garrison cartoon

It’s true. The lawyer defending us is Marc Randazza.

The wall that protects the First Amendment is not manned with pretty, happy smiling thoughts and easy-to-love characters. That rampart is manned by ugly people, disturbing images, and thoughts that you could swallow no easier than if they were made from cat shit mixed with broken glass. The picture of them is a picture of ugly, scowling faces; burning crosses; images of mothers having sex with goats in outhouses; lies about winning medals of honor; and protests at soldier funerals. They’re dirty. They’re ugly. They’re mean. But when they all sing together, that collection of voices that most decent people among us hate, are collectively a beautiful chorus because when you weave them all together they sound like the same 45 words, the same five freedoms, the same First Amendment.

So, umm, that’s a description of me? Dirty, ugly, and mean? OK, it’s a fair cop.

Anyway, he’s our lawyer, and he’s not cheap. We still need contributions to our legal defense fund. Don’t hold that loon Garrison against us.

The best explanation for the death of Epstein

Jamie Bernstein explains the most likely explanation for Epstein’s suicide: neglect, terrible conditions, and America’s prison system.

The truth is that the Metropolitan Correction Center where Epstein was being held, like other federal jails, has suffered from decades of budget shortfalls and understaffing. The night that Epstein died, the two corrections officers that were on staff were both working overtime hours, and for one of the officers, it was his fifth night in a row working overtime. In terms of conditions at the jail, Slate writes that “in the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was held, the fluorescent lights are kept on 23 or 24 hours a day, prisoners are prohibited from calling out to each other, and the cell windows are frosted to prevent any glimpse of the outside world,” conditions that can often lead to mental illness and suicidal tendencies. They also point out that even though mental illness and suicide is extremely common in jails, at MCC there was only one psychiatrist on staff for both MCC and another local jail, a population of 2000 prisoners.

In a way, I think I want to believe Epstein was murdered because it’s a tidy end to the story of Epstein. It’s easy to believe that Epstein, by dealing with experts at crimes and coverups, ended up as the victim of one of those crimes and coverups. I want to believe it was murder, but the truth is much scarier.

The truth is that the MCC already had a reputation as an extremely dangerous place that was often mismanaged, creating situations that put their inmates at risk. Slate writes this about the MCC

We know that MCC, the federal prison in Manhattan that also recently housed Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was deemed “worse than Guantanamo” by someone who spent time in both facilities. We know that cells are infested with bugs and rats so big they’re “more like roommates” and that the temperature swings from unbearable heat to frigid cold. We know that inmates have not received adequate medical care, that a corrections officers was found guilty of raping an inmate, and that officials allegedly tried to cover up the fatal beating of another prisoner.

It seems likely that Epstein was taken off suicide watch early because suicide watch is expensive and they need to conserve their budget. It seems likely that the inmate who was staying with Epstein was transferred out because he needed to be moved and the jail didn’t have the resources or manpower to quickly find a replacement cellmate. It seems likely that the corrections officers who were working the night of Epstein’s death were not checking on him every 30 minutes because they were overworked and tired and likely had many other inmates to check-in on every 30 minutes, along with a lot of other work to do, so doing those bi-hourly checks just fell by the wayside.

We don’t need a vast conspiracy among powerful people to explain why Epstein died. We already have the information we need to know what happened, but we don’t want to face it because it means we might have to do something about it. Epstein likely died due to suicide in a jail that didn’t have the budget or wherewithal to be able to fully protect him and provide him with mental health resources when he showed suicidal tendencies. He died because federal jails in the US are terrifying hell-holes with conditions that exacerbate mental illness then do not provide inmates the medical care they need to manage their conditions. It’s not a conspiracy so much as a total lack of regard from politicians and the taxpaying public who vote for them.

If you want a conspiracy theory, you can have one…but it should revolve around the right-wing demonization of drugs and mental illness, the proliferation of for-profit prisons, and the awful people who run prisons as punitive pits for the unwanted. I’ll believe in that before I believe in shadowy assassins staging murders as suicides in prisons.

Next question: why aren’t we doing something about our national hell-holes? A billionaire was driven to suicide in one, shouldn’t that be enough to motivate Republicans to change policies? I know they’re only about self-interest, but the odds are improving that they’ll eventually end up in one, you know. Trump himself could end up in the Metropolitan Correction Center, and I don’t believe his pampered ass would last long “with bugs and rats so big they’re ‘more like roommates'”, although his Cabinet might be preparing him for that situation.

Oh, dear. Daniel Povey has been fired.

Earlier this spring, there was a major protest at Johns Hopkins University — students actually occupied the administration building to protest the formation of a private police force on campus. It warmed my heart to see such classic action.

Some professors didn’t like it at all. Daniel Povey gathered a group of like-minded conservative thinkers who weren’t affiliated with the university, grabbed some big ol’ boltcutters, and assaulted the protesters late one night. Punches were thrown. Povey and his friends were thrown back. He’s calling it a “counter-protest”, but protest movements don’t involve planned violence, and usually involve peaceful non-violence training, rather than angry mobs.

Daniel Povey has now been fired from his non-tenured position at Johns Hopkins. I find that interesting in itself, in that the institution he pretended to have been defending wants nothing to do with him.

According to Povey’s termination letter, he was suspended and banned from campus in May over allegations that he “engaged in violent and aggressive behavior when attempting forcibly to enter Garland Hall,” and his conduct “was motivated by racially discriminatory animus and created a hostile environment.”

Povey has admitted leading a group of people to the campus building around midnight on May 8, carrying bolt cutters. “You believed the group of nonaffiliates you brought with you could become violent,” the termination letter also says. As a faculty member, “you created a dangerous situation that could have ended in serious harm to our students, yourself and others in the community.”

Povey was repeatedly told not enter Garland Hall prior to the exchange, despite his requests to enter the building to access computer servers there, according to the letter.

“These actions by a member of our faculty are entirely unacceptable. The safety, security and protection of our students and others are of paramount importance to the university,” wrote Andrew S. Douglas, vice dean for faculty. While the university will continue its investigation until it reaches its conclusion, “your own account of events based on your oral and written statements provides more than sufficient grounds for immediate termination, and we are hereby terminating your appointment with the university.”

Even more fascinating, though, is his rant about his firing. It’s as if he felt compelled to provide independent verification of everything he was accused of in the administration’s letter.

“My feeling is that this mostly has to do with underrepresented minorities, specifically black people (and trans people). There seems to be nothing that Americans, or American institutions, fear more than being accused of racism (or similar isms), which leads to ridiculous spectacles like what we’re seeing here, where such a huge organization can be paralyzed by a handful of deluded kids.”

If Povey had known in advance “that everyone inside the building was black (that was what I saw; although from media coverage it seems that there may have been a white trans person in the core group) — I wouldn’t have gone ahead with the counterprotest,” he said. “I’m not an idiot; I know that as a person who demographically ticks all the ‘oppressor boxes,’ I would have to be severely punished for opposing such a group.”

White men in “this environment seem to be expected to constantly atone for their existence by telegraphing their exclusive concern for every demographic group but their own, like a neutered puppy dog or some Justin Trudeau man child,” he said. “It’s pathetic, in my opinion, and I don’t accept it at all. I am not prepared to apologize for being who I am. I don’t think that empathy should preclude critical thinking or basic self-respect.”

Povey goes on to criticize critiques of “toxic masculinity,” compare current discourses on gender and race to Animal Farm and Nazism, discusses animus toward market-dominant minorities, and ends with some Bob Dylan: “I ain’t sorry for nothing I’ve done/I’m glad I fought, I only wish we’d won.” He at one point uses the word — widely considered a slur — “retarded.”

I’ll spare you all the long defense of Nazi Germany in which he argues that Hitler might have been “a little bit triggered” by all those rich Jews. You can read it if you want. You probably don’t want to, not recommended.

As you might have guessed, Povey is a white man, and he thinks he was fired because he is a white man, rather than for being an insensitive bigot who used violence to attack students.

He deserved to be fired, although as you might expect, he’s failing upwards. He brags about getting a better job in industry, in Seattle. Sorry, Seattle. I won’t be surprised if he gets enlisted in the Intellectual Dork Web, since he fits the bigoted profile perfectly, or gets a writing gig for Quillette.

All right, Daniel. You know what we say.

The curse of having Wisconsin as a neighbor

I had a terrible dream last night. I had to buy a gun, and not just any gun, but a high-powered assault rifle, to defend myself. I’d been browsing the interwebs before bed, and last thing I’d seen was this map.

How awful, I thought, that those irresponsible Wisconsonites next door are so slack in regulating their kangaroos.

So of course I dreamed of wanton kangaroos hopping across the border…wearing cheese hats and smuggling cases of LaCroix into my neighborhood. I had to shoot them.

Tonight I’m going to make a point of reading something less traumatic before bed — I’m about halfway through Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade, so that should be soothing. So far, there aren’t any kangaroos in it at all. Or LaCroix.

D’Souza must really be an embarrassment to his alma mater

We learn a great deal from this tweet.

  • Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t understand the difference between weather and climate.

  • Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t understand the difference between anecdote and data.

  • Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t understand the that the planet is spherical, and the Southern hemisphere has seasons out of phase with the Northern.

Dinesh D’Souza is a goddamn idiot. But we already knew that.

It’s the Spider Purge!

Oh, no. My daughter and granddaughter are coming to visit for a week on Friday, and my wife has decided we have to make a more baby-friendly home. Which means…THE SPIDERS MUST GO. I tell her that the spiders were here first, so maybe it’s the baby who should make accommodations. That didn’t work. The baby will need to learn to love spiders eventually, so why not start early? No go. Maybe the baby would like to learn spider-catching technique, so you’re depriving her of a learning opportunity. Nope. So Mary’s been out in the sun room, destroying a happy, loving community by scooping up spiders and their many egg sacs, and has brought them to me. At least I’ve got a nice home for them in the lab.

[Read more…]

Yes, I’m home from #Skepticon

My sense of time is also totally scrambled. I didn’t get home until 2am, and then slept the sleep of the undead, striving to ignore the existence of sunrise. I woke up late and had to scramble to meet my students for our Monday feeding.

It was the best Skepticon ever, though. I caught a half dozen Missouri p tep, and best of all, a half dozen large egg sacs that I smuggled through the airport and brought to the lab. One of the reasons I had to get into the lab this morning was to get these spiders sorted and labeled, so that I could set up a distinct line of Missouri-born spiders separate from our Minnesota natives. We are going to have a lot of spiders to track for the school year. So yes, best conference ever.

Oh, yeah, and the conference itself…that was pretty good, too. I very much liked the organization, with multiple tracks of ‘workshops’ during the day, with a couple of featured talks in the evening. You could just explore and sample various events, and then later get blown away by the excellent speakers before retiring to the bar. They really were most fabulous speakers, too. Ashton Woods was fierce, Rose Eveleth made me think even at 8pm, Juhem Navarro-Rivera gave a surprising statistical analysis of nones (Guess what? Separation of church & state isn’t the most important issue on their minds, it’s social justice), Indre Viskontas talked about music and minds (good timing, since my granddaughter is coming to visit this week), and Cora Harrington was a total surprise. She’s a lingerie blogger, which I didn’t even know was a thing, but she took a skeptical look at myths about women’s underwear. On Sunday, Miri Mogilevsky talked about ritual as a way of coping with grief, something on my mind this year as several of my colleagues here struggled with cancer. Also unexpectedly, the most ferociously anti-clerical, pro-atheism rage-talk of the weekend came from Marissa McCool. Who says social justice activists are too soft to do a barn-burner?

But most of you missed it. It’ll be back August 14-16 2020, in the same place, so mark your calendars now so you don’t forget. There will be a completely different slate of speakers, but the spiders will also still be there.

Eat Less Chikin — it’s made from the blood of labor

In one accounting, Joseph Grendys is worth $2.9 billion. In a more accurate accounting, he ain’t worth shit.

He’s the underserving owner of big chicken processing plants, an enterprise desperate for cheap labor and loaded with terrible working conditions. One of the reasons they hire undocumented workers is because they can be paid little and compelled to work under inhumane, dangerous connections, so that people like Grendys can make more money; because this country is caught up in anti-immigrant fervor, ICE can carry out massive raids on his plants and arrest workers, not bosses, and no one complains…at least no one with any influence.

You might be wondering, though…doesn’t this disrupt the work, costing Mr Grandys money? Sure, but he’d rather pay it out as a little loss in output than to, for instance, pay workers a living wage, or upgrade the processing plant to be cleaner and safer. And, as it turns out, this raid occurred after the plant was penalized for harrassment, and after efforts to unionize. We here in America have a fine tradition of brutal union-busting, how convenient that the federal government provides thugs at no cost to the owner.

The unusually large size of the raids is unheard of, but in this instance, there were extenuating circumstances. A raid that took in an estimated 680 immigrants of various statuses was allegedly planned 11 months in advance. In this case, the circumstances include a $3.75-million-dollar lawsuit settlement. This lawsuit, brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in a Morton, Mississippi, plant included accusations of physical and sexual assaults against its workers. There were also accusations of intimidation, labor violations, exploitation, and harassment of its labor force, with immigrants making up a huge portion of that labor. Some people believe that the raids may be part of a larger intimidation. According to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, “ICE field office’s actions will fuel labor abuses, human trafficking, and a race to the bottom for workers’ rights.”

It’s not just brown-skinned people who feel the hammer, though. Have you ever heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery, also called “The Chicken Farm”? It’s a program operating in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Missouri which purports to provide an alternative to prison for anyone convicted of drug crimes, although they’re apparently willing to accept anyone, whether they’re addicted to anything or not. You can sort of guess where this is going by the word “Christian” in the name.

About 280 men are sent to CAAIR each year by courts throughout Oklahoma, as well as Arkansas, Texas and Missouri. Instead of paychecks, the men get bunk beds, meals and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. If there’s time between work shifts, they can meet with a counselor or attend classes on anger management and parenting. Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church. Most days revolve around the work.

“Money is an obstacle for so many of these men,” said Janet Wilkerson, CAAIR’s founder and CEO. “We’re not going to charge them to come here, but they’re going to have to work. That’s a part of recovery, getting up like you and I do every day and going to a job.”

The program has become an invaluable labor source. Over the years, Simmons Foods repeatedly has laid off paid employees while expanding its use of CAAIR. Simmons now is so reliant on the program for some shifts that the plants likely would shut down if the men didn’t show up, according to former staff members and plant supervisors.

Translate “Money is an obstacle for so many of these men” to “We make them work for free.”

Jim Lovell, CAAIR’s vice president of program management, said there’s dignity in work.

“If working 40 hours a week is a slave camp, then all of America is a slave camp,” he said.

“Dignity in work”. There’s also dignity in earning a just and fair return on one’s labor. Is there dignity in being a parasite who lives on the dangerous, back-breaking work of others?

I’m going to have to agree with that last statement, though. The rich are doing their best to turn the country into a slave camp, to their benefit.

Just to put more frosting on the grift, here’s a cute trick the parasites can pull. Chicken processing is dangerous work — all kinds of machines that shred birds can also do terrible things to worker’s limbs. And when someone’s hands are shattered in a machine? CHA-CHING, CAAIR gets the benefits.

Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.

Wait! There’s more! Remember, CAAIR is advertising itself as a tool for therapy and recovery of addicted individuals. So why don’t they employ therapists and experts in drug treatment?

In addition to injuries, some men at CAAIR experience serious drug withdrawal, seizures and mental health crises, according to former employees. But the program doesn’t employ trained medical staff and prohibits psychiatric medicine.

Poultry processing has become a sinkhole of unfair, criminal labor practices. All I can say is…stop eating chicken. It’s cheap protein where the filthy rich can degrade worker’s lives in its production, because it is poorly regulated.

Maybe you can start eating KFC again when the profits of their labor is shifted to the pockets of the workers someday.

I reject conspiracy theories

A rich abuser was put in prison. He was the subject of massive contempt from the general public. He knew he was screwed and wasn’t going to get out of this; he was going to get dragged through a grueling trial. He was never going to get out again, was never going to be able to molest young girls again, and that, apparently, was a part of his life that was extremely important to him. He tried to kill himself once before.

He finally successfully committed suicide. The cops didn’t interfere, they aren’t as competent as you might think from TV cop shows.

I find everything in my description above sufficient explanation of the event. If you want to claim something more nefarious at play, you’ll have to bring additional evidence to bear, and most of us do not have access to any deeper evidence than what we see reported in the news, and if you want to claim that there was an assassin hired to silence him, or that a body double was killed and the man is now getting plastic surgery and living in Uzbekistan, that’s called a conspiracy theory. It’s garbage.

If you want to claim there’s more to this than a despondent man outsmarting a penal system that doesn’t give a damn about the people under its responsibility, I’m going to roll my eyes at the absurdity, unless you bring new evidence.

By the way, plausibility is not evidence, nor is your conviction that someone is a villain.