Possible legal defenses for maldistribution of teen sexting images?

The classic reason for exempting distribution or even possession of child pornography from First Amendment protection is that a child must be harmed in the making of the porno (drawn or computer created child porn seems covered so far). But a teen who makes a nude image of herself is not harmed. And sexting the image to a boy she may have legal sex with hardly raises a compelling interest in favor of overriding her most basic constitutional right.

Unauthorized distribution to other teens; to adults? If grandma makes the most extreme pornographic images of herself and I sext grandma's images around (I am 65) against her wishes would that constitute sexual abuse of grandma under the law? Or could it at more logically be classified as invasion of privacy?

Ultimately it is constitutionally possible to criminalize unauthorized distribution of even adult self-made porn against the wishes of the self-image maker but that would come under a different category than pornography (ultimately not all that important by which category to a jailed offender).

But, if current law against distributing child abuse was based on – if the intention of the legislature was – to protect children from the sexual abuse during image making…

…then, law prohibiting distribution of sexted material may have to be written over from scratch to register the intention of the legislature on this entirely new question.

Could we constitutionally use the threat of jail to deter a child from the potential harm of making or sexting images of herself in the same manner that we jail drug users to deter harmful drug possession? Jailing a teen to prevent the possibility her image may be shared without her okay sounds more than a little too thin to pass First Amendment muster.

With a situation of millions of teens (some over 18) distributing sexting images without permission of the maker it may be better public policy to leave the responsibility on the maker and original distributor of the her own image – for creating something like an “attractive nuisance” – leaving the threat of a law suit her best protection -- rather than making millions of teens into "electronic prohibition" felons.

Until such constitutional and policy questions are settled, perhaps no prosecutions like that of the 18 year old in Florida, ought to take place.

Corporal punishment (paddling) in schools: violates equal protection

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?


Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.
******
******
MORE PROGRESS ON THE ISSUE:

Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]

Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (cannot help it; I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

Today's motivational (moral) equivalent argument against school corporal punishment

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?


Would our imaginary “humane” principal (see posts below) consider paddling to be a brutal beating* if a kid were paddled for nothing -- for instance, if a kid were paddled for being late for school because her car ran out of gas (instance reported on line of all 5 kids in a car being paddled for being late after they pushed the car the rest of the way).

If paddling is a brutal beating if done for no reason – guess what – it is a brutal beating for any reason. It is a brutal (if arguably needed) if done for absolute necessity with no alternative: if nothing else will stop a kid from seriously vandalizing school property, breaking into lockers, committing cold blooded assault. It is brutal if done for minor offenses: repeatedly tardy, missing homework assignments, talking back. Brutal is brutal.

See page after long page of prescribed paddling for what the schools themselves define as “minor offenses” at: http://www.corpun.com/usscr2.htm (click on “Edit”, click on “Find”, type in “minor offense” and hit down arrows for a quicker but still very long review).

No child deserves to be beaten brutally for minor offenses, no matter how many – like the otherwise normally behaving boy in the Booneville video getting flighty for one day and being tardy for five classes dallying, a minute over long with a girlfriend, or the girl (class president!) being repeatedly tardy because she takes too long making herself up in the morning: trading the inconsequential mis-steps of human nature for a brutal beating.

Fourteenth Amendment equal protection should require a compelling state interest and no alternative remedy before the legislature may override the law’s otherwise blanket protection against violent assault (paddle invented to get slaves back to work in a hurry, same physics delivering, same biology receiving – or a reasonable facsimile).

One online comment (13th) from a teacher related that only 3% of paddled girls (out of 411!) received office referrals again versus 25% of detained girls: 100 brutal beatings accomplishes as much as 125 Saturday detentions: doesn’t sound like a very compelling need there -- hardly can imagine the 411 committing intolerable offenses either.
******************************
* Talk about brutal: I just read online today why many schools prescribe the seemingly peculiar practice of the student to be paddled being told to spread their feet wide apart when they bend over: it is to prevent them bunching their butt cheek muscles together in middle in reflexive defense against the incoming missile; IOW so the shock wave can reach into the crack of their behinds and even reach their genital areas -- that's what I read. This fits with drilling holes to make paddles go faster, IOW to make blow more violent. But paddling does no equate with a brutal beating -- no; not much.

(This topic is upsetting to research and write on -- nasty.)


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGTHS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

******
******
MORE PROGRESS ON THE ISSUE:

Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]

Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (cannot help it; I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

Results hazardous for the paddler?

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

Just a few swats and it's over? Take your paddle to a local bowling alley, Mr. Principal, and sneak up behind a big bowler and give him the kind of really hard swat you dish out to school kids over and over -- you know the kind where everybody can hear the loud whack 50 yards away.

At the moment we hear the smack we will hit the start button on our stop watch -- we want to record exactly how many seconds you remain conscious.

Paddling is a violent assault -- which current law recognizes as such for all mammals (not sure about reptiles) with the exception of some school children who break "little kid" rules (e.g., smoking on campus!).

Online depictions tell of almost hysterical hatred on the part of a boy being paddled -- wouldn't our adult bowler feel that way if he had to take shot after shot -- and of girls who jump up and beg for a suspension instead because they cannot stand one more shot. Teens are often going through private hells of their own already and the last many need is to be subjected to is an environment where normal human foibles are punished by (often repeated) beatings. When you pick up a paddle you may be picking up psychological dynamite.

[Note: I thought the bowler argument would carry the whole "severe beating" weight all by itself -- but now I realize it must be combined with something like the slave whipping equivalent to be effective: same slave weight paddle = same physics sending = same biology receiving. For more musings see below.]

Family exception necessary, first, to keep government out of the family and, second, because kids in the emotionally dependent stage (all the way up to 18 1/2 for boys, earlier for girls) who are simply out of control of parents or guardians develop strong feelings that nobody cares for them -- every bit as much as the worst really neglected kids; leading them to not care about themselves which leaves them open to every street temptation: now we are talking robbery and burglary -- not talking back and missing homework assignment.

[Readers of my blog may think I am obsessing on school corporal punishment lately -- may wonder if I getting a bit "funny." What I am obsessing over is the mid-brain puzzle -- that is what I do: mid-brain stuff -- with the combination of my mother's actor's empathy and my fathers flood of mechanical associations (e.g., if you don't have to salute the flag, you shouldn't have to rise when the judge walks in). Took me 28 years to realize we don't respect a fetus because we cannot even imagine it having a personal identity of its own -- our mid-brains (A.K.A. limbic system, A.K.A. pea sized seat of human social instinct) are not pre-wired for that -- or we couldn't kill them.

[Big paddling question, once you get past the severe beating realization is how to get people to see kids as fully equal to adults in their right not to be severely beaten. Latest mid-brain concoction, from this afternoon: would a principal (say a humane one -- wants to be anyway -- like Halter) be capable of paddling an ADULT slave for the same infractions: smoking, repeated lateness or missed homework? I am very sure not -- but I can picture such a principal answering that somehow children are just different -- and indeed they must seem to be to our mid-brains or we wouldn't beat them. "Adult slave" example: one more emotional equivalent-step toward resolving this mid-brain puzzle.]


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

Join the "rebellion" -- and disband the US Senate

FOR A MORE SOPHISTICATED SOLUTION CLICK HERE: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2009/12/end-cheap-seats-in-us-senate-via.html

To rid ourselves of the US Senate (a concept I picked up reading Tom Geoghegan):
the 25 states with 82% of the population must secede from union with the 25 states that have 18% of the population -- temporarily -- just long enough to remove the Senate from the Constitution. The founders would never have instituted a Senate with the current unbalanced representation (same representation for Alaska as for California!) if for no other reason than it would have been heavily against the interests of the majority. When in the course of human events...no taxation without full representation...and all that.

Not sure what we would replace the Senate with -- my personal preference, a parliamentary system. ??? Have to all be prepared in advance. The empty 25 could be considered territories until 17 states pass the new constitution, at which point they will be fully restored. I don't think the National Guard of Utah is going to capture Sacramento and force California to rejoin the original union.

There is the caveat that the least populated of the 25 most populated states now have greater than 2% representation in the Senate. But states in the least populated 25 could join the "rebellion" for ideological reasons.

Ideological preferences make our first and most needed step to unionize the South at which point the South. Sector-wide labor agreements (my key to economic heaven :-]) can unionize the South by statute.

I am not kidding about any of this.

The REAL SOLUTION to paying for Medicare -- and almost everyting else

Missing from this and seemingly from every Medicare cost growth discussion is that medical costs are rising for one reason only: more and better treatments (physicians' incomes have not kept up with average income growth for 40 years).

I once figured that (if average income grows twice as fast as population but medical costs grow five times as fast as average income -- 15% GDP X 2 X 5) that 80 years out medical costs will be 300% of today's GDP but we should have 400% to pay for it with (flying cars and 3DTV should cost the same as today's primitive models -- tech advance not normally counted in inflation figures).

So we will stay ahead of medical costs for the foreseeable future (while 80 years out old people should never die and young people should be leaping tall buildings with a single bound).

The real issue is the same issue that lies at the heart of every American social malady from missing health to inadequate housing to street gangs: an unbalanced labor market leaves most American too poor to afford what they need: 25% of the labor force is earning less than the minimum wage under Lyndon Johnson.

REPEAT!!! 25% OF THE LABOR FORCE IS EARNING LESS THAN THE MINIMUM WAGE UNDER LYNDON JOHNSON ($10/hr adjusted in 1968!). The true poverty rate is probably double the 14.5% official figure (incongruously based on three times the price of an emergency diet: dried beans only please, no canned) -- if you figure $40,000/yr for a w/o medical coverage as the absolute minimum needs line for a family of three (and compare to Census family income stats).

Shift the 15% of overall income that moved mostly into the pockets of the top 1% back to the bottom 90% and we wont have any trouble ponying up a few more percent for Medicare, especially with our income growing -- INSTEAD OF SHRINKING!!! -- 15-20% every decade (along with the economy).

Double the minimum wage (for only 2 1/2% direct inflation) and mandate sector-wide labor agreements (ending Wal-Mart's reign of labor contract tear-up terror) and achieve labor market normalcy overnight -- that easy!

But don't expect out so-called progressive elite to get their much vaunted sensitivities in touch with bottom 50 percentile income folks.

I am going to take the gloves off here: anybody read about the 500 mourners who showed up for the crazy guy who killed 4 Oakland police Sargents? Where can you find the most alienated minorities in our nation? Right in the San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland area -- where the reputedly most liberal white people in the country (definitely the richest) do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for their small number of poor minority folks. I know about San Francisco's near 1968 minimum wage level -- they will vote for it but it will never occur to them left to themselves. When you see Berkeley's $600/wk minimum wage, you may see the tiny beginning of the end of most social maladies in this seemingly do-everything-ass-backwards country -- even a way to pay for Medicare.

New thought on Jessica Serafin case: old enough to drop out, old enough to vacate premises

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

New thought on Jessica Serafin case: old enough (18) to drop out of school legally; old enough to vacate premises at will. She never returned to that school in use of her right not to.

Her being held down to be paddled therefore may be seen at the state prosecution level as an unauthorized punishment -- the school was not operating "in loco parentis" from the moment she insisted on leaving. Anytime a student is corporeally punished without authority it should be prosecuted as an criminal assault under the normal statutes.

Being criminally detained to be physically assaulted raises the issue of kidnapping/illegal detainment (there are so many legal pitfalls once you cross the line of assaulting with a weapon).

LAST THOUGHT: the school had no more legal power to hold her down and beat her when she expressed desire to vacate the premises than it would have had to visit her home or grab her on the street and beat her. Whatever legal power the school has to beat students does not exist under these three circumstances.
******
Here in Chicago we have multiple incidents of teachers using corporal punishment after it has been banned in the state -- published widely in the media yet! -- and nobody thinks to prosecute every last instance.

We have to get over thinking of students as some kind of slaves to be whipped. Maybe what we need is a federal civil rights statute -- under the 14th Amendment's equal protection and enabling clauses -- to recognize that students may not be whipped without a compelling need (bringing chronic disorder to the point the institution permanently cannot function -- felony offenses -- the equivalent of self-defense). That is how far the parent's so-called "sovereignty" over children can be stretched to corporeally punish students and no more.

When I was in Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx our dean of discipline was thought the toughest in the city, Father Jablonski. But there was never any thought of corporal punishment. Priest, unlike nuns an brother, hear confessions. Priests are in charge of the Ten Commandments; they are concerned with drunkenness, pre-martial sex, stealing, dangerous violence, etc. -- the real moral struggles of Catholic school boys. Priests could care less about you being late for school -- be late every day. If you want to trade a minute in the morning for an hour after school that was your problem.


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

For a very comprehensive treatment of school corporal punishment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?

Some thoughts on corporal punishment in schools -- working on a comprehensive anti position

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?


If corporal punishment is "optional" as it is in many institutions, then, by definition there must be no COMPELLING need -- overriding equal protection rights (if not humane policy). If there is no compelling need in one constitution there is no compelling need in others.

Optional above was in quotes because (outside) circumstances can coerce a student into taking a beating they never would otherwise agree to. In a Tru video a girl reportedly asks for a break because she is sick and cannot do detention Friday afternoon and cannot do it Saturday or she will miss her Junior (I believe) prom -- and opts to take a beating she may never have been willing to otherwise. A boy needs to go to work and so takes a beating instead of Saturday detention.

Her reported "offense": being caught with a cigarette pack -- his: being barely late for class for the sixth time; on a large campus he took a little too long because he dallied to talk to a girl (notify Congress!). I read somewhere that she became class president the next year -- that doesn't sound like an infant terrible.

Don't believe that a beating does less damage than a suspension. Ten years from now, a three day suspension will not have any effect on your life. Spending four years in an institution in which you may be beaten for what amounts to "office management" purposes may plausibly permanently affect your outlook on life for the worse. Paddling supporters love to cite how it did permanently affect them -- usually amounting to adopting a more obsequious attitude towards authority; which can be read as being less confident and assertive about their place in the adult world, which is not where we want our precious children to go these days.


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

Medicare less worried about you than the IRS?

The maximum the IRS may legally garnishee Social Security benefits for owed taxes is 15% of everything over $750 a month. This recognizes basic survival needs -- if perhaps not even enough.

In this light how much sense does it make to allow Medicare Part B to deduct $96.40 a month out of retirements benefits no matter how low your monthly payments or how poor you are? Medicaid already covers the uncovered 20% of Medicare Part B doctor visit fees and all or almost all of Part D drug premiums for the very poor.

When it comes time to repair the "donut hole" in drug coverage (by permitting government back into the market to bargain for lowest prices), maybe it should also be time to look at the draconian Medicare deduction in the benefits of our poorest retirees.

My final reply on card check on Thoma

BG Feng,
Doubling the minimum wage would cause all of 2 1/2% increase in the cost of GDP output -- and presumably to direct inflation (not counting other wages going up) -- but would give 40% of American workers a raise to $500/wk. Such a small added cost to products and services compared to the (relatively) huge boost in income makes it a overall winner for the 40%. Worried? Fine, prudent; add a dollar an hour every six months and when the smoke clears add another: virtually no risk at all. We had $10/hr (adjusted) under LBJ, so the extreme is likely where we are now, not where we should go.

The next 50%-up can begin the process of "chain-shifting" back the 15% of overall income lost to the top 3% by instituting sector-wide labor agreements, etc. 90% win. 7% stay the same. 3% lose what they never should have gotten.

Since low wage workers tend to serve low wage customers (e.g., fast food), low wage business might actually benefit. My neighborhood Mac had an uptick in business -- all seemingly from the third world immigrant end -- when the Illinois minimum wage jumped from $5.15/hr to $8/hr -- and fast food uses by far the greatest ratio of labor and minimum wage labor.
*********************
Brian G.,
Under the Employee Free Choice Act workers retain the right to a secret ballot to DECERTIFY as well as certify their union. No record anywhere of an employer making it virtually impossible to decertify.

The current so-called "secret ballot" setup is setup to allow ownership to blockade a secret ballot so automatically that it is arguable that the whole set up violates the First Amendment right to (economic?) freedom of assembly -- by government forcing the (economic) assembly process through such a narrow strainer (should the opposite interest choose to make it so) that it is impossible to negotiate (no pun). If political assembly could be as easily blocked by gov specified conditions as easily placed in the path by the opposing interest, the First Amendment infringement would be too obvious.
**************
Icarus,
The WE who say they don't any longer need the US middle class are outnumbered at the polls by the US middle class who can use their political leverage to keep you from flooding OUR labor market with cheap competition. WE can also raise YOUR marginal tax rate if we don't like YOUR attitude. :-)--

Posted by: Denis Drew | Link to comment | March 02, 2009 at 10:01 AM

Fermi would have answered his own question -- "Where are they?" -- today

Fermi would have answered his own question -- " Where are they?" -- in the 21st century. Observing today's communications he would have understood that with the communications of the 22nd, when we might be capable of some form of interstellar flight, we would have absolutely no reason to travel.

We will be able to just "fax" the DNA of a Tyrannosaurus Rex to them and they will "fax" the DNA of one of their prehistoric species to us -- and right here on earth we will be able to set up fights to the death -- with legal parimutuel betting that could bring revenue for local governments of course. :-)

Should California's neediest shoulder an equal-equal deficit burden?

Should California's neediest shoulder an equal-equal deficit burden?

Cutting $1.3 billion from the personal budgets of California's 1.3 million neediest ($1000 apiece!) to cover a $41 billion hole in the state budget burdens the poorest citizens with an even-Steven share of deficit repair (perfectly even share: $1130 X 36 million Californians).

Does anybody think that SSI/SSP, etc., ever covered more than their bare minimum needs to begin with?

If the governor sees fit to plunk an almost average red ink load onto the shoulders of the very poorest, he can also see how the rest of his citizens could more easily shoulder a teeny bit more than an even up share to close the state's budget gap -- with a clean conscience to boot.

[http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=11085:"Together the cuts would eliminate $1.324 billion in grant payments to more than 1.3 million Californians between May2009 and June 2010."]

Could a 51-49 vote retire the Senate filibuster rule?

Tom Geoghegan stated on a local video interview that the Senate could retire the filibuster rule anytime it wished on a 51-49 vote (he didn't say if the vote might need to outlast a filibuster).

If so, shouldn't it be any Democratic administration's first priority?

If it would need to outlast a filibuster, couldn't Obama at some point in the legislative year do and "LBJ" -- who outlasted an 83 day filibuster to push through the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Act? I suppose there would be a lot less fanatic resistance now than in 1964 -- just need to tweak a vote or two.

******

The worst is, as Geoghegan pointed out in his book, that 16% of voters send 50 senators to Washington -- and 10% supply enough senators for a filibuster. He further laments in his book that getting rid of the Senate would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate -- making it impossible.

I would be willing to see the states with the other 82% of voters secede from the union -- make a new constitution without a Senate -- and then ("manifest destiny!") "conquer" the the states with the remaining 18%. "When in the course of human events... " :-)

http://www.geogheganforcongress.com/?p=734

How Hitler could have won -- What can Israel win?

Hitler (my candidate for the anti-Christ) could have won, if he had given France back -- and said: "You declared war on us [for invading Poland]; we did not want it" -- and forced France to sign a neutrality pact. That would have killed all public support for war in Britain and America. If he had not been crazy killing the Jews and had treated the Ukrainians well (they welcomed the invaders as liberators from Stalin), and if he played the West right we might have ended up sending him tanks to fight the Russians!

Then he could have come back for France and England.

Germany immorally took on the whole world at least in the hope of acquiring badly needed (anyway) farmland and access to mineral and fossil fuel resources. Israel (I thought Jews were smart) is taking on the whole world (the whole militant Islamic world at least) for what: living space, literal meaning; extra room to put up real estate developments?

The most militant Israeli settlers could not live happily in Israel "proper" if it were not an official Jewish state -- overwhelmingly Jewish population would not be enough to satisfy. In the West Bank, even if half of Israel's population unaccountably moved into the one-fifth more land that the West Bank represents, Palestinians would outnumber Jews two to one even even before their higher birth rates grows their advantage. In reality the settlers must always remain a very small minority. For this they are willing to take on eternal war?

[Oh, and if Israel ever gets around to using its nuclear weapons Israel may have a (Arab?) holocaust on its resume. Nice!]