Fool's Gold

In the year of the famine, When starvation and Black Death raged across the land, There were many driven by the Hunger To set sail for the Americas;

In search of a new life, and a new hope -- Oh, but there were some that couldn't cope; And they spent their lives in search of Fool's Gold.

Philip Parris Lynott, of blessed memory.

Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam*



As they staggered from the ships that had carried them across the Atlantic, many of the Irishmen driven to America by the Famine were immediately accosted by recruiters trolling for warm bodies to fill federal uniforms.

The "Irish Achilles": Legendary warrior Cu Chulain, also known as the "Hound of Ulster."



The native pugnacity of the Celts is legendary (it's been said that all Irish ballads are about some combination of fighting, drinking, and dying), and more than a few of the Patriot heroes of our War for Independence were sons of Eire. So there was little reason to doubt that Irish recruits would acquit themselves well on the battlefield, assuming that they were well trained and motivated by a worthy cause.


Neither of those conditions was met in Washington's war on Mexico, a vulgar exercise in naked imperial greed that provoked Henry David Thoreau's immortal tax protest and prompted a defiant campaign against the conflict by a freshman Whig Congressman from Illinois. That Whig, a chap named Lincoln, would be denied a second term when his own party refused to re-nominate him -- and he would ultimately have a rather dramatic change of heart regarding the morality of aggressive war.


The Irish who enlisted in the US Army offered their blood on behalf of a country they had not yet come to know, and a government that had done nothing to earn their allegiance. Most of them were simply desperate for work of any kind, and the soldier's wage of $7 a month was sufficient to keep their loved ones from succumbing to hunger, a predator with which they were quite familiar.


Then, as now, the Jingo press was indecently eager to shed foreign blood, but didn't know quite what to make of the un-assimilated foreigners flooding into the army. Historian Anne-Marie O'Connor recalls: "The US anti-immigrant press of the time caricatured the Irish with simian features, portraying them as unintelligent and drunk and charging that they were seditiously loyal to the Pope."


Attitudes of that sort coalesced within the Army as well. Irish recruits often found themselves on the receiving end of various kinds of abuse. In anticipation of the conflict with Mexico, most of the Irish were quickly southbound to the border, and it was common for those who attended Mass to be accused of "consorting with the enemy" -- since the Catholic Irish were seen as having a natural affinity with the Catholic Mexicans.


After President Polk and General Taylor succeeded in provoking the war, many of the Irish recruits were outraged by the cruelties inflicted on priests and nuns. General Taylor blithely admitted on one occasion that "there is scarcely a form of crime that has not been reported to me as committed by them [the troops under his command]."

US Troops lay siege to Monterrey.


Those atrocities, coupled with the commonplace bigotry and injustice they experienced, had the effect of watering down the allegiance of the Irish troops -- and that allegiance was already a pretty thin broth.


These men had seen their homeland ravaged by a catastrophe created, in large measure, through British mercantilism. As Mark Thornton of the Mises Institute points out, those who fled the Potato Famine were the victims of "conquest, theft, bondage, protectionism, government welfare, public works, and inflation." Those beguiled into enlisting found themselves being used as cannon fodder in a war against people for whom they bore no natural grudge, and with whom they had much in common.


Nothing but Fool's Gold could be found at the end of that particular rainbow. Accordingly, many of the Irish recruits sloughed off their supposed obligations to the US government and chose to enlist instead with the Mexicans who were fighting on their own soil against an invading foreign army.


The banner of the "San Patricios" Battalion -- Irish expatriates who fought on behalf of Mexico against the invading US Army.


Was this desertion, or treason? No: It was a species of secession. Neither honor nor morality dictated that Irishmen should take up arms against Mexicans on behalf of Washington, D.C. Accordingly, hundreds of Irishmen simply repaired to a banner -- a shamrock green flag (hand-embroidered by the nuns of San Luis Potosi) bearing a Celtic harp and the legend Erin go bragh (Ireland Forever) and a cause -- the defense of their fellow Catholics -- that actually commanded their loyalty.


The most notable of the "Red Guards" -- as they were called by the Mexicans because of the red hair and sunburned complexions that typified the displaced Irishmen -- was John Riley of Galway, who could have been called a "premature Wetback-in-reverse": Denied the opportunity to attend Mass, Riley swam across the Rio Grande to Mexico, fleeing Washington's jurisdiction in search of religious freedom. Other Irish refugees followed him, and Riley was eventually appointed captain of the 200-member "San Patricios" Battalion (taken from the Spanish name for St. Patrick), which would go on to fight five major engagements against the US Army.


Ah, but this is an Irish story, so you know it must have ended badly.


The August 1847 battle at Churubusco -- appropriately, a town named for an Aztec war god -- was the bloodiest engagement of the war. The San Patricios fought with doomed courage, losing more than half their number in combat with nearly all the rest falling into the hands of the enemy -- their former employer, the US Army.


Drumhead military tribunals quickly sentenced most of the San Patricios to hang as "deserters." John Riley -- by that time a Brevet Major -- was one of the few spared the noose, receiving instead fifty lashes of the whip and being branded with a two-inch letter "D." This was an ironically suitable punishment, inflicted as it was by an Army serving the political interests of the chattel slave lobby.

[As the first commenter below observes, we shouldn't forget that the Mexican government of the time, whose handiwork was visible at Goliad and the Alamo, was a foul and brutal outfit as well.]


The San Patricios are almost entirely unknown on this side of the Rio Grande (an earnest but indifferently produced 1999 film about them did nothing to rescue their story from undeserved obscurity). The Mexican government, a regime nearly as filthy and despicable as the one ruling us, periodically commemorates the San Patricios, trying to poach the credit for the courage and honor those men displayed on the battlefield.


There were American soldiers -- Robert E. Lee, to cite the most obvious example -- who distinguished themselves for valor and leadership on behalf of an ignoble cause. But the only US soldiers who actually fought for freedom in that entire conflict were the supposedly treasonous Irishmen who shed that uniform and took up arms against Washington's invasion of Mexico.


As someone of Mexican-Irish ancestry (I've occasionally advised people, "Don't make me angry, and don't get me drunk"**), I've long wondered about the natural affinity between people of those two very different countries. Catholicism obviously provides a strong bond, as does the fact that both Mexicans and Irish, from my experience and observations, seem to be prone to a fatalistic outlook on life.


What I find truly inspiring about the San Patricios, however, is the fact that those long-suffering men didn't simply surrender to the inevitable. Survivors of a famine and plague engineered by the Empire that occupied and mis-managed their homeland, disillusioned soldiers of a government that was becoming as rapacious as the one they had fled, they still had enough fight in them to do battle on behalf of what they honestly believed to be right in spite of prohibitive odds and the the long drop to the end of a rope that awaited them if they lost.


Chances are that we'll need more than a little of that indomitable pugnacity ourselves, pretty soon.




Obiter Dicta

Yes, this was supposed to be my St. Patrick's Day installment, but I was too busy panicking yesterday to publish it.

If you haven't done so already, I urge you to read Tom Eddlem's account of his experience as a federal juror -- that is, a "wrinkle" to be ironed out in the cause of "justice," as some tax-fed and promotion-hungry prosecutors pretend to understand it. Tom's piece is exquisitely written and terrifically thought-provoking. After you've read it you'll begin to understand why I consider it to be a blessing to have Tom as a professional associate, and an honor to have him as a friend.


On sale now!












Dum spiro, pugno!


_______
*"May God grant peace to his soul," in approximate translation.
** The former is good advice, the latter gratuitous, since I'm a teetotaler.

Why Aren't We Furious?

"Temperature -- rising; vision -- blurring; rage -- taking over!"


A few nights ago, at the end of a day devoted to productive and pacific pursuits, after you had surrendered to a few hours of well-earned sleep, the people who presume to rule us raided your bank accounts.


No, I'm not referring to the Regime's ability to monitor your financial transactions, a power displayed to dramatic effect in the prostitution sting that ended Eliot Spitzer's lamentable career. Yes, you've probably been subject to totalitarian scrutiny of that sort at some point as well, but that's a topic for another occasion.


Right now, I'm talking about the Federal Reserve's most recent wealth redistribution plan, through which hundreds of billions of "dollars" will be created in an effort to stave off bank failures -- an effort that will not succeed.


To create this so-called "money," the Fed has to steal the value of what each of us has earned, saved, or invested.


Imagine how outraged you would be to learn that a thief had stolen your identity and used it to siphon your savings in small, subtle increments, until you and your family are driven into destitution.
















The dollar's value vs. Swiss franc over the past six months: When the dollar's trend-line begins to look like an Alpine ski run, you know things are getting nasty.



This is exactly what the Fed and the Regime it serves are doing to you right now -- bleeding your wealth with silent implacability. Over the past six months alone, the "dollar" has shed one-fifth of its value (as measured against other currencies). Run the math, which is simple enough for even Sean Hannity to understand (assuming that we s-p-e-a-k r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y and illustrate our points with pretty pictures): At that rate, by mid-2010, the dollar would be entirely worthless.

But there's no reason to assume that the decline will continue at its present rate. None at all.


Things will only get worse from here.


Some analysts keep warning that the dollar may abdicate its role as the world's reserve currency, thus mimicking the trajectory of the last global imperial currency, the British pound.


These warnings were timely half a decade ago. They are badly out of date now: The dollar has already lost that status for merchants in Manhattan, investors and entrepreneurs in India, peasants in Bolivia, businessmen in Brazil ... that is, in the view of people who work, earn, save, and invest and have the option of conducting their affairs in currencies other than the Hegemon's increasingly worthless fiat scrip.

At least they burn: A German housewife finds a suitable use for her country's useless currency during the hyperinflation of 1923. Some have suggested at least one other possible use for fiat currency, but unfortunately it's neither soft nor absorbent enough.


James Howard Kunstler, whose blog is as indispensable as its tragically appropriate name is unpronounceable in polite company, dispels the booming, buzzing confusion and lays bare the stark reality of our predicament:


"The US faces a pretty stark choice right now: it can let the losers take their losses -- both the big institutions who created and traded in fraudulent securities, and all the "little guys" who borrowed too much money trying to get rich quick, or trying to live like the millionaires they see on TV. We can let them go down, and suffer the consequences of their bad choices (and maybe prosecute some of the culpable bankers and corporate executives); or, in an effort to let these losers off the hook we can wreck the whole machinery of capital by making our medium-of-exchange worthless."


"The people in charge -- both in and out of government -- can't face the losses, so for now they've apparently decided to wreck the currency," he concludes.



Those people know what they're doing, and they understand the inevitable result. Alan Greenspan, who deserves to taken to the Great Pit of Carkoon and there be fed to the Sarlacc,**
has admitted that the economy he manipulated for decades is headed "over a cliff" (which, if you'll forgive me for belaboring a point, is where Greenspan should be headed -- right over a cliff and into the remorseless beak of the all-powerful Sarlacc).


A few weeks ago Greenspan advised Arab investors to flee from the dollar he had debauched. The course being followed by his successor, Ben "Auto-Gyro" Benanke, is intended to insulate the wealthiest and best-connected members of the corporatist elite while exposing the rest of us to ruin.


















"I shall leave you as they left Weimar Germany: Marooned in a dead economy ... buried beneath inflated currency..."

"BERNANNNNNNNKEEE!"


Why aren't we incensed by this? Where are the rivulets of rage that would eventually coalesce into one mighty, cleansing flood of fury?


Sure, Americans get pissed whenever they see the price of gas vaulting to new highs, or find that their grocery bill has suddenly and dramatically put on weight. They get bent out of shape when they go to the local Big Box Mart and find that the promised "low prices" are suddenly steeper than they expected. They're increasingly anxious with each passing month, as the essentials of living become increasingly expensive, despite soothing assurances from our rulers that "inflation" is negligible.

















Sure, we're permitted --nay, encouraged -- to worry about stuff like this: A bomb disposal officer inspects a backpack accidentally abandoned near Wall Street. We have the Regime's permission to take alarm over "threats" of this kind, as it suffocates our liberties and obliterates our wealth.


And as the American middle class founders in debt, the ruling caste has never done better.


Consider the job performance of Congress since 2001. Through a combination of native corruption and emasculated deference to an overtly dictatorial Chief Executive, Congress has created the most imponderable government debt in history. It has permitted our nation to become mired in two distant wars of attrition, with a final estimated price tag of something in excess of $3 trillion. It has annihilated the Bill of Rights and common law due process protections while abetting the malignant growth of a militarized garrison state. It has institutionalized torture, the ne plus ultra of tyrannical depravity.


If job performance of this kind were subject to market discipline, practically everybody on Capitol Hill (with at least one noble exception) would be reduced to selling plasma. Instead, the incumbents who have wrought this disaster enjoy almost unassailable job security, making themselves wealthy while leaving productive people impecunious. Between 2004 and 2006, the net worth of the typical Congressbeing increased by 84 percent; the median net worth of senators was $1.7 million, that of the lowly tribunes of the masses in the House a mere $675,000.


Granted, politics has always been a lucrative profession, in the worst sense of that expression. Previous republics have degenerated into kleptocratic empires and succumbed to both financial and moral. But that historic perspective should whet our outrage, rather than blunting it.


"That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historic republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you."


With all due respect -- and much of it is due -- to the author of those words, there was nothing inevitable about our nation's descent into empire. And yet ... here we stand, at the brink of utter ruin.


Why aren't we furious about this?


On sale now!












Dum spiro, pugno!

_____
*I use the term "dollar" here in reference to Federal Reserve Notes for the sake of conversational convenience. Since being deprived of its connection to gold, the currency issued by the Federal Reserve has ceased to be a dollar in any authentic sense.

**Within the Sarlacc's digestive tract, Greenspan would "find a new definition of pain and suffering as [he is] slowly digested over a thousand years."

Who's Afraid of "Rate My Cop"?

Each week, if not every day, brings in its train another illustration of the fact that those who scrutinize us cannot abide reciprocal scrutiny. Witness the apparent demise of the "Rate My Cop" website.


Carly Kullman, a one-time police cadet, explains that Rate My Cop was to be a national database of police officers and agencies. Users would be able "to browse through their own local police department and see how their local police force stacks up" when compared to other agencies across the country. The site would deal only in publicly available information about agencies and individual officers. Each officer would be rated on the basis of three criteria: authority, fairness, and satisfaction.


Rebecca Costell, a creator of Rate My Cop, said that the objective was to combat an emerging stereotype of police as abusive, violence-prone revenue hogs: "Our website's purpose is to break that stereotype that people have that cops are all bad by having officers become responsible for their actions."


Of course, stereotypes don't materialize spontaneously, and the image Costell describes has been abundantly validated over the past couple of years with the emergence of YouTube and other forms of cyber-samizdat. The near-ubiquity of cell phones and other digital recording devices has made it possible to record episodes of police misconduct, and video sharing sites have made those recordings available to anybody with a high-speed internet connection.


Rate My Cop's very practical and commendable contribution to the necessary -- and overdue -- public conversation about police misconduct is to provide an incentive for internal police reform: The site would help burnish the reputations of genuinely professional, service-oriented departments and officers, while goading others to clean up their act.


Does anybody else remember "Officer Friendly" (left, and below)? "Rate My Cop" would enhance the reputation of good police officers.




Additionally, as Kullman points out in reviewing the site, "People who are potentially moving to another city might use Rate My Cop to check out the police force in the area that they are moving to, allowing them to see how the police perform...."


In these ways, Rate My Cop would have applied the logic of the free market to the practice of law enforcement. The problem here, of course, is that our current approach to law enforcement is entirely statist, which means that it's designed in a manner intended to insulate it from market discipline.


In unadorned terms, the last thing police want is to be accountable to the communities they're supposed to be serving. Accordingly, police unions immediately began to shriek and keen that Rate My Cop posed a threat to ...


... wait for it ...


... wait for it ...


... that's right: "Officer safety."


I've said it before: "officer safety," not protection of the law-abiding public, is the highest priority of every police department, and every effort to reform police conduct or hold police publicly accountable is condemned as a threat to the same by the professional whiners who represent police unions.


In this case, there was a legitimate threat, since Rate My Cop did imperil the job safety of bad, indifferent, or corrupt police officers. Of course, it also offered a way to reward and promote the conscientious, heroic officers we are constantly assured constitute the vast majority of police.


Apparently, it was that positive stereotype -- which is still the preponderant image in most media and entertainment depictions of police -- that would have suffered, or perished, because of Rate My Cop. So the "law enforcement community," as an appendage of the Leviathan State, did what such people always do when threatened with accountability: They used the threat of legislation and criminal sanctions to compel Rate My Cop's creators to shut down the site.


"Behold, and tremble before, the Mighty Scolding Finger of Authoritarian Righteousness!" Utah State Senator Chris Buttars, hero to corrupt police officers everywhere.



Interestingly, the first recorded objections to Rate My Cop come from a familiar source: Utah state senator Chris Buttars, sponsor of SB260, a measure intended to suppress reports of police misconduct. As Salt Lake City CBS affiliate KUTV reported on February 12: "A main concern of SB260 supporters is with the buisness `rate-my-cop,' which is a national company that has made requests for misconduct reports on every officer in every agency in the area. Buttars believes that `rate-my-cop' will put the information into a data base and sell it to defense attorneys."


Buttars, like other petit-authoritarian Republicans with a basically Cardassian* concept of how the justice system should operate, finds it unconscionable that defense attorneys might have the means to impeach the testimony of a police officer. Those of us who understand that the purpose of a trial should be to force the State to prove the guilt of a defendant have no problem, of course.


I recently mentioned Senator Buttars and his proposal in connection with the case of Kevin Buttars, an abusive Deputy Sheriff from Montpelier, Idaho who may be related to him. As noted previously, Buttars was recently convicted of battery and sexual assault against a prisoner, and given a sentence of surpassing triviality for that crime.


Before the March 2007 incident that led to Buttars' conviction, he had worked as a law enforcement officer in Bonneville County, where -- according to some -- he had a reputation for being short-tempered, foul-mouthed, and unprofessional. It's easy to see why Buttars might have disliked a system like Rate My Cop. It's possible that a system of that sort might have weeded him out before he beat, choked, and simulated sodomy on a suspect who dared return the favor when Buttars started treating him to profane verbal abuse.



The Teton County Sheriff's Department offers another illustration of the potential value of a Rate My Cop-type system. The exquisitely lovely and thinly populated region of southeastern Idaho was thrust into the national spotlight with news of the drug-related arrest of actress Dawn Wells, better known to men of a certain vintage as Ginger's better-looking friend on Gilligan's Island.

Wells was stopped by a Deputy Sheriff last October while she was returning from a birthday party. Her car was reportedly bobbing and weaving on the highway. A search of the vehicle turned up a small quantity of marijuana and related paraphernalia. Wells apparently didn't test positive for intoxicants, and several witnesses testified that the weed belonged to someone other than the 69-year-old film producer. She was spared a drug charge, escaping with a small fine, probation, and a short jail sentence. (I doubt a common Idaho resident in the same circumstances would be blessed with a similarly favorable outcome).


As I read about this case, my second reaction -- my first being, "Wait a second -- Mary Ann lives here in Idaho?" -- was a moment of disgusted recognition when I read the name of the officer involved in her arrest: Deputy Sheriff Joseph Gutierrez.


About a month after he collared Gilligan's girlfriend, Deputy Gutierrez committed a felony by illegally attempting to murder a Black Labrador Retriever mix named "Bobby," a dog owned by Leo Barboza of a small town called Felt. Leo and his family got Bobby as a puppy about five years ago, and everybody in their neighborhood seemed to find the dog friendly and agreeable -- except for one mentally handicapped lady, who filed several police reports claiming that the dog had attacked her. This troubled woman, significantly, was notorious for causing problems with dogs, rather than being the victim of canine misconduct.


On November 12, Deputy Gutierrez materialized on the front porch of the Barboza family's home and announced that he was there to kill their dog. Alarmed, Leo demanded to know what proof there was that Bobby had done any harm to anyone; Gutierrez arrogantly proclaimed that he didn't need any proof.


Yes, he may have had a steenkin' badge, but Deputy Gutierrez didn't need no steenkin' evidence.


Cowed by the presence of a bellicose bully in a State-issued costume, Leo obediently brought out Bobby and tied him up in the front yard. His wife, father-in-law, and three-year-old son all watched in a state of growing agitation as Gutierrez retrieved a rifle from his vehicle. Nearby, a bus deposited a group of curious schoolchildren -- who stood paralyzed in the street, their innocent eyes growing wide with incredulous alarm as they took in the spectacle coalescing in front of them.


In what could be described as a "life-imitates-Napoleon Dynamite" moment -- but worse -- Gutierrez shot Bobby in the head three times as the screams of terrified children rent the air.

(What follows is not a re-enactment; article continues after the jump)




At about 3:30 that afternoon, Gutierrez wrote in his incident report: "Shots fired. Dog is dead." Barboza's traumatized family had to endure another shock as Leo's aging father-in-law suffered a severe anxiety attack that left him hospitalized.

Survivor of lawless police violence: Leo Barboza shows Bobby's gunshot wounds (left and below).



When the family returned, they found, to their astonishment, that Bobby was alive -- albeit severely wounded and bleeding profusely. They called the local media to report the atrocity committed by Gutierrez, and shortly thereafter filed a lawsuit.


Although Gutierrez was suspended, Sheriff Kim Cooke insisted -- let's say it together, now -- that he had acted properly according to department policy. Cooke maintained that Gutierrez was authorized to kill the dog under Section 8.11.4 of County Ordinances, which permit "vicious" dogs to be destroyed if they are "found at large" and "cannot be safely taken up and impounded." He also simpered that his department had received numerous death threats because of the publicity Gutierrez's crime had received.


Oh, I see: It's a matter of officer safety again.


Only in this case, Gutierrez's criminal actions had created a threat to officer safety -- assuming that the comments reported by Cooke were actually made, and should be taken seriously.


Bobby was not at large; he was on Barboza's property. He was not a "vicious" animal, since he submitted to being tied up and shot without much difficulty (Gutierrez, by his own account, was on the Barboza's property a total of ten minutes.) County ordinances and Idaho law specify that a dog must be found to have committed two confirmed attacks before being regarded as vicious, and that its owner has ten days to challenge that designation before a judge.


In other words: A dog, being a form of personal property, cannot be destroyed without due process of law.


And -- note this well, Gutierrez -- "due process" doesn't automatically occur whenever some punk-ass tax-feeder in a State-issued costume makes a demand of innocent people.


Gutierrez, significantly, is a recent graduate of the Idaho Peace Officers Standards and Training academy (I-POST). He is also a former Marine, albeit one who apparently doesn't live up to the expectation that every Marine should be an expert marksman. However, he does exemplify the credo of last December's I-POST graduating class: Don't suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- go out and cause some. Of this, Barboza's family, which includes a traumatized senior citizen and a nearly murdered dog, can attest.

Sheriff Cooke couldn't resist a gratuitous dig at the Barbozas, claiming that the family's delay in getting medical help for Bobby demonstrated that they had been irresponsible in their maintenance of the dog.


Talk about a cluster-bomb of hypocrisy. If the arrogant, ignorant berserker Cooke had hired as a deputy had followed the rules, none of this would have happened. If he had killed the dog outright, it wouldn't have needed the medical care it didn't receive while the Barbozas were dealing with the more urgent matter of the father-in-law's anxiety attack.


Sheriff Cooke is not only a hypocrite and a cretin, he's also something of a criminal kingpin, since at least half of his department (three out of six deputies) have recently been under criminal investigation.


The Idaho Attorney General's office has considered criminal charges against Gutierrez (on previous performance, Gutierrez has little to fear from the AG's office). Two other deputies, Nate and Mat Froehlich, are also the subjects of official inquiries -- Nate for insurance fraud, and Matt for abuse of police power.









Reid Rogers, president of the Teton Valley Chamber of Commerce, probably wasn't exaggerating when he told the press that “There’s a growing discontent about the level of performance generally" with the Sheriff's Department. All three of the scandal-tainted deputies are in their twenties, fresh of the fascisti farm. If they're cashiered in Teton County, chances are they'll show up on some other force elsewhere in the country.


This situation is altogether too typical of what's happening in law enforcement nation-wide, and it illustrates both the desperate need for a Rate My Cop-style resource, and some of the reasons why the "law enforcement community" will do whatever it takes to keep us from getting one.




On sale now!











___
*The Cardassians were a fictional alien race -- militarist in disposition, and thoroughly statist in their culture -- featured in recent versions of Star Trek. Their "justice" system was designed for the sole purpose of vindicating the State and teaching subjects to submit to its all-encompassing wisdom. Guilty verdicts were preordained certainties in trials held on Cardassia Prime.

Dum spiro, pugno!