(interesting insights… 3 am – promoted by notlightnessofbeing)
If you think that the world works any other way than this, that people do business with their friends or other people they have relationships with, you are doomed to disappointment.
Still, one thing I have a very hard thing tolerating is abuses of power relationships. Call it bullying or harassment or what ever kind of coercive threat you care to, I find it fundamentally offensive.
I’m going to present 3 cases of what I think are abuses of power and I’d be curious to see how you react to them.
Alycia Lane is accused of assaulting a NYC police woman.
Smith said that Lane was “accosted” by “several” plainclothes police officers as she was photographing an “altercation” between an individual in her party and the plainclothes officers at the corner of West 17th Street and Ninth Avenue.
David Smith, a New York lawyer
So, she made the mistake of interfering when the police are questioning your friend (always a very bad move, who’s going to post bail?) AND she punched a cop in the face.
Ow. Bad luck.
If I did that I’d be lucky to get through it with a couple of years of probation and as a Gilmore I’m lucky enough to have a few lawyers who owe my family favors and a pool house to sulk in.
Alycia though knows people, important people like Ed Rendell and she’s famous enough to have her own people who tell us one of her first calls was to him because “he is an opinion maker and runs around in influential circles.” (note: it was her spokesperson who said that, not her.)
Atrios calls it the Political-Media Industrial Complex and like skippy’s blogtopia it deserves to be credited.
David Huckabee is accused of killing a dog.
(Miller County, Arkansas) Two boy scout counselors, 17 year old Clayton Frady and 18 year old David litickabee, the son of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, have admitted to catching a stray dog during their summer session at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, AR, and hanging the dog by his neck, slitting his throat and stoning him to death.
As digby notes-
Update II: The site that hosts that story is the “old site” of the animal rights group run by Kinky Friedman which is called Utopia Animal Rescue. It’s quite well known and entirely legitimate. I don’t know where they got the details about dog, but I believe they are a credible source on this subject.
Yes. This one.
digby does update herself with this question-
Newsweek was evidently working on the story and they have published it today, here. It certainly does appear that Huck tried to shut down an investigation into the thing.
And what does Newsweek say?
… But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired. “I’ve lost confidence in your ability to do your job,” Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason Huckabee cited was “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had that problem,” according to Bailey. “Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son,” says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a “courageous” and “very solid” professional.
Hmm…
(note: Avenging Angel has a diary that touches on this- The Republican War on Dogs)
And speaking of dogs, what about Michael Vick?
Well, he got 23 months.
“I carried a dog over to Quanis Phillips, who tied a rope around its neck… I dropped the dog.”
…
Hudson said Vick had lied about the extent of his role in the dogfighting operation, which had lasted six years. The judge and prosecutors said Vick had an active role in the killing of pit bulls housed on his 15-acre property in rural southeastern Virginia.
…
“You were instrumental in facilitating, putting together, organizing and funding this cruel and inhumane sporting activity,” Hudson told Vick in a courtroom packed with animal-rights activists and Vick’s family and fans. “While you have acknowledged guilt and apologized, I’m convinced it was not a momentary lapse of judgment on your part. You were a full partner.”
In this–
Purses ranged into thousands of dollars for a fight that would last until the death or surrender of a dog. Sometimes the losing dog was put to death by drowning, hanging, gunshot or electrocution, court papers said.
Strangling dogs.
Despicable.
Now the ironies can pop out at you in many ways. What ways strike you?
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“Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”— Mark Twain
and she should have gotten the same as you or I but we all know that isnt the reality of things, connections make all the difference. In this case the damage was not irreperable or conscious cruelty.
David Huckabee, disgusting, revolting and unforgivable. Mike Huckabe taking revenge on an officer for not bailing his son out of a jam is also reprehensable (sp). He fired a man who probably has a family to support.
What does one have to do with the other? Covering his son’s ass relates to his ability to do his job?
Vick, long term, conscious, cruel infliction of brutal torture. What can one say? Horrible human being.
Enough for the vent hole?? Tom.
great way to state it.
children, elderly, animals… those are the most vulnerable to abuse imo and it pushes me past the tipping point. i could just explode when they are exploited in any way. no. i do NOT like bullies of any kind.
as for the lady taking pictures of the plainclothes police… if the cops jumped her for taking pictures (i’m still hanging onto the mindset this is NOT a police state), then clearly, from my POV, the cops were wrong. but maybe you’re saying the lady is in the power position and exploiting “knowing people” to bully the cops doing their job? but then we’d part ways at cops accosting her… if that, in fact, is what happened.
unfortunately, i don’t know if we all see bullying the same. but your statement helps to codify it a bit more… really very good: abuses of power relationships…
you’re at least going to end up in the hospital. I also live near a small town where the cops have an overbearing rep, they killed a guy who was creating a disturbance at a local business. He was probably mentally ill.
I make it a policy not to talk trash to people with guns. That was stupid and probably motivated by some arrogance and a sense that the cops only arrest the “little people”.
Huckabee’s kid? He is a creep and that probably wasn’t the first time he got caught torturing animals, Dad has probably covered for him before. Huckabee senior… likes his power, likes to use it and has an imperial sense of himself. Typical right wing Christian. The rules apply to “other people”. Not surprising at all. And in the south politicians routinely interfere in things like this.
as well until their wives find out seems to have some boundary issues 😉 Life in the long run isn’t likely to turn out well for her in my opine, if her behavior doesn’t get checked soon it will check her out.
Abusing animals can be indicative of attachment and empathy disorders of personality so I feel very sorry for Huckabee’s child. He needs some help. He needs someone who cares about him to sit down with him and go over the dog incident line by line. We already know that torture can be stimulating, exciting, and addictive. We’ve had to face that where Abu Ghraib comes into play. Huckabee’s son needs guidance and perhaps he harbors a personality disorder that will not be addressed now due to cover up. This situation isn’t likely to play out well for him. Even if this goes down as an atrocity of his youth he will feel like hell about it because of the coverup.
We had a kennel club meeting two Tuesday’s ago where I learned that a Cottonwood AL man was found guilty of nine counts of animal cruelty for fighting Pitts. He got 11 yrs for each count and was sentence to 99 years. Most of the kennel club members were very happy but many mentioned that Michael Vick got off light. I tend to stick emotionally within the realms of “we are nation of laws” and if you do the crime you do the time. I have empathy for both men in that this dog fighting thing is also a social problem down here in the South. Only last month two Escalades were parked on the outskirts of the Walmart parking lot selling Pitts……very obviously fighting Pitts because I’m snoopy and unable to develop a blind eye, when I noticed them I drove over but of course the signs don’t say FIGHTING PITTS. The parents were onsite though and in my opinion the pups were bred for fighting and if you are looking for fighting Pitts you know what you are looking at for sale here. All the passengers of the two Escalades were dressed in top dollar clothing and the vehicles were polished to a high sheen and Pitt fighting is a social problem here in the South that some people are getting caught doing but as a culture down here we are refusing to call it what it is…..just don’t get caught kay?
glance as the animal stories are so horrifying and the news woman such a bimbo twit. All three assumed that they are not subject to any laws either external or of human decency or respect of life other then their own power circle. A news celebrity, a religious nut pol, and a gladiator type athlete all three are front and center in our culture and all are despicable. They all represent the cultural icons of a society that on one hand blasts ‘values’ and yet is controlled by these sickos who’s combined understanding of ordinary human decency is nil. To make matters worse they cover each others asses.
One wonders why torture is debated, why killing wholesale for oil and profit, shock and awe? I notice that all these factions when discussing torture never mention the inhumanity of it just how inefficient it is on a practical level or how bad it makes us look. The psycho’s are running the show and the spectators now see this as the norm. Dog eat Dog is taking on a whole other aspect, one that would do the Romans proud.