Lock 'em Up?

wikipedia

A picture of ex-congressman Robert Menendez about to begin his eleven-year imprisonment got me thinking again about the desired and actual value of incarceration.  I'm sure such penalties do make politicians more careful in how they subvert the law, but it seems pretty clear the threat is not really effective as a deterrent.

Our local DA has been harping lately on the need for accountability to discourage criminal activity, including gun violence committed by teenagers.  I would suggest that locking up children is of no use whatsoever.  The issue with teenagers and a lot of immature adults is largely one of impulse control.  That kind of personality deficit is immune to anything short of immediate consequences. Publicizing the idea that violent acts might result in getting caught and suffering legal retribution has all the deterrent impact of a mosquito bite.

Meanwhile, the eleven-year sentence handed down to Menendez is going the have the primary result of costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands.  It seems to me that a more effective strategy would be to put the congressman to work doing useful tasks in the community like street cleaning, perhaps in a striped uniform.  (And, just a year or two of that might suffice.) Of course, there would still be a cost in regard to compliance and security, but at least taxpayers would be getting something tangible for their money.

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Ex-Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner given house arrest (Aljazera)

Prison abolition movement in the United States (wikipedia)

The June 14 Protests

 A very good analysis of the extent and significance of the No Kings protests is at Jacobin.

Getty Images

I think that one thing the demonstrations point to is that, in a country where a rather small percentage of the eligible voters bother to cast a ballot, the winner will be the candidate that turns out the most voters, regardless of majority sentiments.

Trump is certainly providing a lot of motivation.  We'll see if that motivation is maintained among the democracy defenders.  The mid-terms will be a good test in terms of both the voter turnout, as well as the extent to which members of Congress are paying attention.

Mantis

 I found this little Praying Mantis on my desk this evening.

I thought at first that it had a bit of lint caught on its tail.  On looking at a closer shot it seemed he had just crawled out of his skin as he grew too big for it.

Nice to see this little guy.  I thought maybe they had all been poisoned by the neighborhood exterminator.  I'm hoping he has a taste for ants.

My New Trike

 When I first tried out this three-wheeler I was surprised to find I could not seem to steer it.  When I put pressure on the peddles the thing just wanted to turn sharply.  It baffled me as I had been riding bicycles all my life until I started falling off because of weakness due to tendon injuries.

I found a youtube video of a fellow demonstrating how to ride.  I saw that he had a very upright posture and he was steering with just two fingers.  That encouraged me to try again following his example.  I also found that pushing the handlebar on the side opposite the desired turn direction was a better technique.  Once I was able to get myself up and down the street, the process began to seem more natural and intuitive.

 The Old Trike

I played around with 3D drawing programs about twenty years ago and one of my first efforts was to reconstruct my memory of my first trike in the mid-1940s.  I don't recall any difficulty in learning to ride this one.  Kids seem to take to the task with no problem.

Happy trails!

Déjà vu

 In rhe 1930s in Germany immigrants from eastern Europe, mostly Jews, were seen as economic and criminal threats.  They were rounded up and confined to detention camps.  Some brave souls sheltered and hid a few, but in the end millions were murdered.

It surprises me that so many people seem to fail to see the parallel.

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We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state

Robert Reich in The Guardian

Green

 We took the dog for a walk at the river this morning.  The riverside forest is bursting with growth, due in part to some unusually heavy rains for this time of year.

There are mulberries ready to eat,  I'm sure I'll find plenty of blooming yerba mansa, and maybe some wolfberries, next time I walk further south along the river.

It seems that a similar pattern of storms have appeared all across the country.  We have experienced only brief and localized flooding, along with one death in a flood control arroyo.

I don't think the current weather pattern indicates any respite from climate change.  It seems more likely that we are just seeing examples of increasing frequency of weather extremes.

Trump is methodically dismantling any efforts to control the production of greenhouse gases and even destroying the key resources for monitoring weather and climate.  There is some pushback even among Republicans to defunding sustainable energy projects, but it seems quite possible that adverse climate change could be irreversible by the time we have put Trump behind us.

A Long Journey to Fajitas

 

The Immigrant Experience

Something to Declare by Julia Alvarez is a series of articles and essays about adapting to a new culture and a new language after fleeing to the U.S.  to escape an imminent threat in the Dominican Republic which was then ruled by a dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo.  As I wrote here before, I have long been a enthusiastic follower of Alvarez's writing. It has always seemed amazing to me that someone could arrive here as a child with only a rudimentary grasp of English and end up being recognized as one of the greats among contemporary authors writing in English.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is a novel about the flight from horrific violence which has driven so many Mexicans to seek refuge in the United States.  The author spent four years researching and writing the story of how a mother and her young son traverse the length of Mexico overland while under constant threat from cartel gangsters and the often corrupt and equally violent police. Much of the vertiginous journey is on top of railcars of north-bound trains referred to as La Bestia. The final leg is under the guidance of human traffickers through the unforgiving Sonoran Desert which has claimed countless migrant lives.

Dreaming of Home by Cristina Jimenez tells the story of being brought to the U.S. as a child by her parents who were fleeing violence and a chaotic economy in Ecuador.  Jimenez recounts the trauma of growing up in a country in which she felt unwanted and in constant fear of deportation due to a lack of documentation.  Eventually, fellow students and teachers helped her toward the courage to speak out about the fundamental human rights due to her and her generation of young immigrants.  She is Co-Founder and former Executive Director of  United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, and she is currently a Distinguished Lecturer with the City College of New York’s Colin Powell School and a co-instructor with Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice. Jimenez was instrumental in United We Dream’s successful campaign for President Obama to sign Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) into law.

Growing Up

 During my first two years at the University of Washington  Dwight Eisenhower was still President.  He had led the defeat of Fascism in Europe, presided over a booming post-war economy during his two terms,  and fired MacArthur before the General could drop an A-bomb on North Korea.  My stepfather, who had served in the Pacific, supported Eisenhower's candidacy, as did my mother, whose first husband had perished in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. I recall wearing an "I Like Ike" button, but I really only had a sketchy view of the issues then.

Being a Land Grant College, the UW was required to offer mandatory R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) courses which were mandatory for the first two years in school for every male student. We learned some elementary military procedures including map reading, and we marched in a gym building once weekly wearing WWII-era uniforms and shouldering M1 rifles.  I was conflicted about the experience.  The uniform was the same my father had worn and I respected his sacrifice. At the same time I disliked having to walk around the campus wearing the uniform and I resented the requirement to submit to the authority of the military drill instructors.

The end of the school year was marked by a brief R.O.T.C. parade and an assembly of the uniformed students in the Quad. As we lined up in for the final speeches, a loudspeaker smuggled into the top floor of one of the nearby buildings began blaring out the lyrics of the Mickey Mouse theme song: M-I-C-K-E-Y...  It was only mildly humiliating as I was faceless in the uniformed crowd.  I vaguely understood and appreciated the anti-authoritarian message.  I remember thinking that the protestors had shown some courage in challenging the event.  I don't recall hearing anything about penalties being exacted against them.

In spite of some innate skepticism about the wielding of political and military power, I bought into much of the country's foreign policies over the next five years. That loyalty eroded as the war effort started by Eisenhower and intensified by Kennedy against the Vietnamese people heated up.  In the end, I joined the marches against the war and I cheered when Lyndon Johnson resigned as the country became ungovernable.

It seemed for a time under Kennedy, and more so under Obama, that there was reason for some optimism that the country was outgrowing racism, misogyny and  xenophobia. That was clearly delusional, so it seems now that we really need MICKEY again. *

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* Jacinda Ardern might do.