Friday, February 23, 2007

the dumbening continues

day two:

There's been a bit of a virtual dust up over homeless people hanging out at the Sonoma County Library main branch. My suspicion is that the complainers are a loud small group with an axe to grind about both the visable poor and libraries. Leave it to a librarian to understand that homelessness is a complex social, political and economic problem, that won't be solved by criminalizing poverty; and leave it to the desk jockeys to appease whiney NIMBY's.

In all the paranoia about sex offenders almost no one checks facts. I searched for the accused in the linked article in both the national database and the state that he is supposedly registered in. Guess what... no hits. Remember cops lie, reporters are lazy. Other fun facts about sex offenders: urinating in public is a sex offense, in CA if a 19 year old has consensual sex with a 16 year old the 19 year old has committed a sex offense (guilty, btw). The best part about the current hysteria in CA is that new laws have ensured the creation of remote ghettos populated by at least a higher proportion of, if not entirely, sex offenders... it'll be like Village of the Damned, but with baby fucking, or at least a lot of peeing on the exterior walls.

With flat standardized test scores, reporters are still unable to question the official line. Maybe standardized tests measure a standardized skill in a standardized group, and maybe human learning is a multifaceted complex phenomenon effected by culture, personal interest, and other social factors. But what the fuck do I know I picked punk rock and malt liquor over skool.

Does everyone remember the shit storm that the Argus-Courier (unfortunately their website has been gutted and turned it a giant ad for Petaluma's new boutique couture) and Press Democrat brought down on the People's Revolutionary Organization last fall? Funny how a homeowner who actually committed thousands of acts of vandalism is held up as a folk hero. Then the piece ends with an admonishment to not do what he did. Fact is what the "pot-hole animal" did worked, and it worked because of how public consciousness works; political, social, and cultural campaigns use propaganda, stark images, and loud interruptions of the complacent because that's what it takes to get people to examine their lives. What the "pot hole animal" shows us is that once the public mind has been changed things like "the law" don't matter anymore.

2 comments:

Miles said...

Regarding the sex offender panhandler guy, he actually was convicted of Sodomy 1st in missouri search by name and state here

-ch Ben said...

yep that site will find someone with that name who was convicted of "Sodomy 1st" in Alabama. Check the "about us" section and you get a rant about how 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused, no mention that the vast majority of that abuse will be perpetrated by family and people known to the victims, just a lot of fear mongering about "strangers" which is useful when wanting to justify surveilence, criminalization of the poor, etc. Without a date attached to his conviction it is possible that he was convicted under the Alabama sodomy law that was struck down by the US supreme court. Even if he was convicted of a standing Sodomy law in Alabama, it maybe that he was butt-fucking a consenting adult. Regardless, that name and state combination are not in the Missouri state registry or the Dept. of Justice registry, which is what I'd expect a newspaper to confirm with.

BTW a who is search for "FAMILYWATCHDOG.US" yields a whole lot of B.S., beware the anonymous fact giving entity.