Alternate Headline: David Simon Ought To Sue Somebody!
A David Simon, HBO, BBC 4 Production
I don’t even know where to begin. Should I start with the tens of thousands stolen from taxpayers in bogus overtime? The drug dealing? The $200,000 stolen from a safe in one incident? The cop that has killed two people in the line of duty in the last decade, with one of them resulting in a six-figure settlement? There are so many choices, I just can’t decide.
U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein
Well, neither could Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, so he charged the seven officers with racketeering.
The accusations portray officers who stole from taxpayers through time fraud and from citizens they stopped or searched, with at least 10 victims robbed including some who had not committed crimes, officials said.
The overtime abuses alleged include one from an officer who claimed it while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and another who was in the poker room of a casino and not on the job, according to details released by prosecutors.
That’s jacked up, right? But it probably passes for petty in a city whose police department is known for corruption. Alas, the story continues:
The alleged robberies included stealing $1,500 from a maintenance man who planned to use the cash for rent and a theft of about $200,000 from a safe and from bags seized at a search location, authorities said.
In another instance, one officer is accused of helping an associate in a drug conspiracy remove a GPS tracking device placed on the person’s car by the DEA.
Police Chief Kevin Davis
And there we are. Fortunately the new Police Chief seems to be as disgusted as you are, calling them “heinous” and the acts of “1930’s gangsters.” Not only that, but their actions have corrupted multiple federal cases, although the U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t say what exactly they were.
Now, this is probably the last thing Balmer needs in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing and riotous aftermath. Erosion of confidence in police has already reached a critical mass once. Something like this could set any progress they’ve made back quite a bit. Fortunately, the Chief seems to grasp some of the systemic problems, acknowledging that the overtime abuse “represents a pattern and practice that has undoubtedly existed in this department for many years.” Perhaps a conviction will make other time-stealing cops think twice before continuing. Only time, and a positive outcome in the case, will tell. But he also said something else that gives me a little hope:
Davis addressed the troubled department, saying, “Reform isn’t always a pretty thing to watch unfold, but it’s necessary in our journey toward a police department the city deserves.”
Encouraging.
The officers named in the indictment:
The seven officers charged under the racketeering statute all live in suburban Baltimore. They were identified as Momodu Bondeva Kenton Gondo, 34, of Owings Mills; Evodio Calles Hendrix, 32, of Randallstown; Daniel Thomas Hersl, 47, of Joppa; Wayne Earl Jenkins, 36, of Middle River; Jemell Lamar Rayam, 36, of Owings Mills; Marcus Roosevelt Taylor, 30, of Glen Burnie; and Maurice Kilpatrick Ward, 36, of Middle River.
Authorities said that Gondo, known as “GMoney,” also has been charged with joining a drug conspiracy. Five alleged members of that conspiracy were also charged Monday with drug offenses for allegedly selling heroin at a shopping center in Northeast Baltimore.
Good luck, Mr. Rosenstein and Mr. Davis. I know you’ve got your work cut out for you as you try to root out corruption and help the citizens of Baltimore get a police department they can not only be proud of, but that they can trust to not rob them blind.
Here’s a pic of Baltimore’s finest:
https://cbsbaltimore.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/officersarrested.jpg
Jesus, that guy at the top-left looks like he could be in high school.
top-right looks photoshopped. or he was struck in the face by a shovel.
It’s best for society when you take the worst thugs and make them cops. Duh!
+1 Dim
There must be a mistake. Most of those people are black.
It’s systemic. They got immersed in white hate culture.
Chief Kevin Davis even looks like Major Stan Valchek.
I was thinking the same thing.
Listen up you weak mammals, these enforcer class know how to run a racket. You should be proud that some of your species at least attempts to emulate Your Future Reptilian Overlords
Shit, this pales in comparison to the prison scandal when O’Malley and gang were running the joint.
They weren’t some smartass pawns.
i remember the wire harping on careerism and incompetence more than corruption. this sounds more like the shield.
Reminds me of that season when Barney Miller got really dark.
Govt employees to be paid in these from now on.
ot. Speed might be a factor?
Nice. A kid who fucks his buddies and those who provide service to his buddies. What a tribute to the human race.
Who was it who said that job attracts a certain type of individual?
I hate the drinking busters. They caused us far more problems in my HS. People who had been busted before would run off into the woods and get lost. I had a call at 130 from a freind who was lost after they all busted a campfire going on at the edge of some state forest land. There’s nothing the way they went. I had to guide them back by telling them to walk towards the moon.
People would jump out of barns onto piles of logs, one kid broke his leg. I wasn’t drinking at that party, and they forced take a breathalyzer before I could leave. I then pushed a cop car out of the ditch, because he couldn’t fucking reverse.
And all over a law that shouldn’t be a law.
The party in that barn was so dumb. We had DD’s for everyone. We were being quiet. The mom was even “aware” of what was up. It was about to be over, we were gearing down, and then we hear a knock on the door to the barn.
We should have alcohol education like sex education, predicated on the idea that the teens are gonna drink anyway, so teach them how to do it responsibly.
(That is, show them The Thin Man.)
I’d be willing to bet that teen drinking wouldn’t even be a thing if there were no laws against it. I did it to be rebellious. Telling a teenager they can’t is a surefire way to get him to do something. (Or at least it was when I was a kid.)
AND if it were legal, they’d do it (or at least a larger percentage of it) at home, under more adult supervision, rather than everybody driving to meet up in some abandoned barn or farmer’s field.
See: Germany. Its so normalized there, people just don’t worry about it.
`
Damn.
When we lived there I’d send our 8-year-old to the market with my empties and a note to the grocer to replace the beer and give the kid the deposit money and the small change. I’d hang out with the young German troops I worked with and never saw them drunk – apple juice was a common beverage choice. Drinking was just no big deal.
This is also why binge drinking is such an issue in college as well.
Precisely. And a little P.G. Wodehouse would be worthwhile as well.
It’s Baltimore. That’s what I always tell everyone when they ask.
file under: elephant in the room
But remember: anyone who criticizes Islam is clearly just an ignorant bigot who ought to be shunned and shouted down.
Georgetown students protested a speech by Nonie Darwish, a Muslim woman who grew up in Egypt but fled for the U.S. and Christianity, becoming an outspoken critic of Sharia.
Calling Darwish “Islamophobic,” students demanded that her “hate speech” be censored, including the secretary of the GU College Republicans, who resigned in protest.
That resignation letter gave me severe facepalm. He says “I hope that through this post, I can give hope and show that not all conservatives are bigots.”
There are no Republicans at GU. That has to be some type of joke.
IGNORANT BIGOT
Sounds like you hate these people. At least that’s what I gather from your speech.
Bring the troops home, send the nation’s college lefties to make peace in the Middle East.
I for one Stand by our heros in blue!!!!
One of those guys must be the bad apple ive been hearing about.
So I’m doodling some deigns for a logo.
Glibertarians.com
We could go on
My only request is that it have some orange in it. The color, not the fruit.
I almost thought a slate blue. Maybe it should be red for YOKEL.
An image of glibertarians rape mining the TRAPPIST-1 system, forever?
Gold, for the monetary standard.
Gold? Bah, for the peasants! Glibertarianite, or GTFO!
I knew you were a Broncos fan at heart Hyp
How about an orange g on a white background?
Black background, you racist!
It’s like you’re in my head!!!
I hope you guys all submit something.
working on it.
what programs are you guys using for this?
I have photoshop, but I’m not very good at it. It’s what I used to do my PIZZ OFF avatar. I’d like to have Corel Draw again, is that still a thing? I used to play around with after someone gave me a copy, but it started refusing to work with the newer OS.
Check out Inkscape and GIMP, they are freeware? opensource? software? things? that mimic much of the photoshop/corel draw illustrator stuff. I’ve been using Inkscape ever since my MircoGrafx 6 stopped working, and I don’t know why anyone would pay for a drawing program unless you really needed to be in some industry loop.
GIMP has a steep learning curve.
All drawing programs have a pretty steep learning curve.
YouTube tutorials can be helpful. Some godawful background music sometimes, though
This guy has some good Inkscape tutorials and just started adding GIMP ones.
Well, it takes awhile to get used to living in a crate.
I’d rather have stuff I can read than have to watch a video.
Relevant
Well, CorelDraw was fucking awesome. But fuck yeah, I remember Micrografx, that was another awesome drawing program I remember, that stopped working. Not familiar with Inkscape, will give that a look.
I will second the motion on GIMP and Inkscape. To my novice eye, they are both very powerful programs. And they are free. I used them both quite a bit a few years back. I thought Inkscape especially was pretty damn cool once you got the hang of it. Like Ted says below, GIMP (and Inkscape) have steep learning curves. But I can’t imagine any more steep that Photoshop, etc.
Another good one in Paint.net. It’s like MSPaint on ‘roids.
GIMP is definitely free; it came with the version of Linux I installed.
Which guys? The glib crew for hosting, or those of us who submitted something?
I assumed he meant for doing gifs, jpgs, etc.
Yeah. I was wondering for a open /free one. I figured photoshop was still #1
Photoshop is sort of expensive. You could get Elements as BP mentioned above. I think I paid like $90 for it on sale for home and then got a free full version from a client. You can do almost everything you can do with the full version, with Elements. Well not really, but for doing avatar gifs, yeah. But there are probably some decent free ones out there also, I just don’t know what they are.
Crayola crayon on white paper, and taking a photo of it with my smartphone.
Thats my software right now.
Depending on how artistic you are, that may be all the software you need, if you have a scanner.
Yeah, Photoshop Elements.
Lower case g with a top hat and a monocle
Orphan slave in lower right corner?
Two tiny ones..straining to hold up the T and the M in the trademark
What Slammer said.
Orange G, black top hat of course, gold monocle, white background. Starting to come together.
+
I’d submit something, but I’m afraid it would all be concept art derived strictly from the Confederate battle flag.
I can only draw penises, so I am out.
Well, you’ve got the ass-sex part down then.
You may be onto something. What about a Mexican cutie smoking a joint?
Hmmm? perhaps doodle, wood have been a better word.
I have a skill where i can write names like a penis.
That is a very useful skill. Do you list it on your resume?
you know, I don’t. It usually comes up fairly quickly once I’m there.
Ha…Nice
I do designy shit for a living, but I’m not sure what the project is.
See here
file under: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Nonsense. NPR told me that suicide attacks only happen because of occupation.
I invite you to check out the guy’s database, particularly the Group tab. Here are some of the groups listed:
Islamic Army in Iraq
Islamic Front (Syria)
Islamic Jihadist Union
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Islamic Pride Brigades in the Land of the Nile
Islamic Resistance
Huh. Seems to be a pattern.
Islamic Pride Brigades in the Land of the Nile
Gay Egyptians?
::golf clap::
Huh. Sixteen wanted to get married… just give him some porn and an hour alone.
Pr0n or blow people up? Which is worse for society. You decide.
He could have just blown people instead of blowing them up.
Well, now you’ve went and angered the invisible sky gods.
“Gone”.
Relevant.
MILO IS TEH DEVIL!!!!
I just want that bumper sticker.
This is an article I’ve been working on for submission:
The Origin of Prosperity and Poverty
Poverty is the default state. It requires no explanation for its origin.
Prosperity comes from improvements to the means of production. Those improvements require capital, which come from savings. Savings are the result
of underconsumption. To put it another way, if nobody saves, there is nothing to borrow or spend on improvements.
When people are able to save, produce, and trade freely, prosperity tends to come automatically. Unfortunately, the free market has many opponents. There are two main groups. One is groups seeking to stifle competition, such as established businesses, cartels, and labor unions. The other is control freaks upset that people are buying what they want instead of what the control freaks want. The amount of power these groups have set the limit on how prosperous a community can be.
Instead of letting the market create prosperity automatically, these groups stall the process with their silly rules and then demand that the government step in to fix it. This usually results in the creation of a central bank and periodic attempts to “jumpstart” the economy, usually by expanding credit artificially and/or increasing government spending. These credit expansions create a temporary boom followed by an inevitable bust.
The best way to understand this is to imagine a restaurant owner in a small town. One week, the circus comes and he has many new customers. For some reason, he doesn’t notice they are all clowns and lion tamers. He decides to open another restaurant to handle all the new business. But soon the circus leaves town, and he is forced close the second restaurant.
In this example, it is all the fault of the restaurant owner’s poor judgement.
In another case, bad weather can cause farmers to lose money. But in a recession when thousands of businesses of all kinds lose money at the same time, the question becomes: why did all these different businesses make the same mistake at the same time? Why did so many people choose to start or expand businesses doomed to fail? The answer is that credit was expanded artificially by a central bank.
Poverty and economic crises are man-made. When the Roman emperors wanted more money without raising taxes or cutting spending, they issued coins with less silver. But since the new coins were worth less, prices rose. The emperor Diocletian tried to stop inflation by fixing prices. A Roman historian at the time observed he might as well have commanded the wind not to blow.
Just as inflation has been blamed on everything except an increase in the amount of money, economic crises have blamed on everything except credit expansions by central banks. The worst economic crisis in history happened a mere 13 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank.
The idea that printing money, expanding credit by fiat, or increasing government spending will somehow magically lead to prosperity is no different than trying to drink yourself sober or put out a fire with gasoline.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
You do know there’s a submit button, yeah? You should have sent it in.
I thought I would post it here first for feedback so I can improve it.
It needs more titties.
I was going to say that I typically like what DerpPh.D usually writes, but yeah, more titties wouldn’t go amiss.
Seriously though, my only interjection would be to avoid the word “silly,” or expound upon why and what the aforementioned groups desired rules are silly. ( I assume this is not just for us, who would obviously understand why and that, yes, they are silly.)
Pretty good, but it needs some refinement. The farmer line is currently a throwaway bit, but it deserves expansion so that you address the core fault of your article: glossing over the fact that there are, on occasion, natural causes to economic downturns (droughts, natural disasters, and even the collective folly of man). You have a good thesis, that anti-competitive forces (big government, but sometimes big business as well) and monetary manipulation (big government, again) are the source of a great deal of unnecessary economic pain, but a strong argument must address obvious counter-points. I like where you are going with it, though.
Encourage you to expand upon that. The Glib needs submissions. Remember, we don’t have paid staff, professional writers, etc.
“a mundane paradise wrought with our own strong hands” -Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Just leaving this here in case any of you other nerds are about this eve. Apparently, Nvidia just released the 1080ti. Reportedly available March 10 at $700! Wooohooo, this $700 is burning a hole in my pocket, ouch, take my money already!!!
hey if you want to get rid of your now obviously terrible 1080, I could use an upgrade…
Don’t have, but I am wanting to get rid of my 2 MSI GTX 970 OCs.
I should have remembered. I have a single 970, which does me pretty well. Runs BF1/4 just fine!
Well, they seem to have been pretty productive. Assholes.
Local TV news just had a propaganda story about how a 9-year-old found a gun, and how good it was that he called the cops. (Or had his parents call the cops; I wasn’t quite paying attention.)
And every time piece of shit governor Cuomo proposes a new risky spending scheme, the local news has on people commenting who say it doesn’t go far enough.
I’m sorry for your Governor, Ted.
People elected an AG to the governor’s mansion in Eliot Spitzer and he turned out to be an evil monster, so they figured the answer was to elect another AG.
Who is raising that kid? Find a gun and you don’t want it, you take that thing to the pawn shop.
This is the story.
Looking at one of the sidebarred stories, I have to ask if it’s really possible to become addicted to oxycontin in two weeks.
Our commenters and staff the best! #1 all time
Vintage Daytona Beach race
I like the use of sledge hammers at the pit stop.
Thanks.
This year NASCAR only gives you 5ms to fix your car in the pits before you’re disqualified.
I saw a few baseball bats Sunday.
They can have a bumper car bumping
This amusement never ends.
Song about Peter Gabriel’s penis FTW.
Boy…those non- Democrats really have fucked up Baltimore over the decades, haven’t they?
Look, the Democrats who have been in total control for the last 60 years are doing fine. They just have to prog harder.
Were they connected to these guys?
Jail gangs are nothing new. But the gang known as Black Guerrilla Family, which got started inside jails around the country in the 1970s, evolved into something of extraordinary power over the last decade, particularly in Maryland.
At BCDC, heroin, crack cocaine and cellphones flowed in freely from the outside. Tavon White, the gang’s kingpin in the jail, fathered five children with four corrections officers. His powerful influence reached the streets, where he coordinated drug deals and proclaimed he could order a hit on any former inmate or employee who didn’t join the BGF gang. Recorded on a wire tap, he proclaimed, “This is my jail” and “I am the law.”
I especially like the part where White sired five children on the prison brood mares.
show them The Thin Man
A two-fer! Teach them marksmanship by letting them shoot the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
I hope you guys all submit something.
Dogs. Eating other dogs. With
DEATH TO THE WEAK.
I’ll let you know where to send the check.
Crayola crayon on white paper, and taking a photo of it with my smartphone.
For a couple of my shirt designs I have used pretty much this exact method. Only with charcoal pencil, for the pronounced grainy line drawing effect.
Another article I’ve been working on:
The Limits of Law
Many people fail to understand that laws do not stop crime. They can’t. They merely define what crime is.
A law is merely the written form of a desire by a group of people, often a tiny minority, to force everyone else to do something
or forbid them from doing something. More than that, this desire is not a suggestion or piece of advice. It is threat backed up
by force.
Most laws are not meant to protect life and property, but instead to advance the interests of one group at the expense of another.
For example, when margarine was invented, dairy produced complained to lawmakers about “unfair” competition. The result was
a law which banned the sale of margarine dyed to look like butter. Instead, consumers had to use an attached dye pack and mash it
into the margarine if they wanted it to look like butter.
Another thing many people fail to understand is that laws are not magic spells which alter behavior. Laws only work to deter crime
when the vast majority of people obey it the vast majority of the time. If even a small percent of people habitually break a law, it might
as well not exist. Take the speed limit for example. It would be impossible to strictly enforce the speed limit because almost every driver
habitually exceeds it by a little.
The people and money available for law enforcement are limited, and the more laws there are, the less well any of them will be enforced.
In Chicago, where I used to live, the homicide clearance rate is about 30%. That means in any given year, if you kill someone in Chicago, you
have a 70% chance of getting away with it. And of the other 30%, that merely means the police have issued arrest warrant. The suspect many never
be captured. The clearance rates for other crimes are even worse.
I’ve often heard that without laws, there would be anarchy. Let’s think about that for a minute.
Imagine if there were no police or courts or laws. How would you protect yourself? You’d probably lock your house and car, avoid dangerous places,
be careful with who you hang out with, and get a weapon and learn how to use it. Does that sound familiar? It should because it’s probably what
you’re doing already.
“Well, why not just legalize murder then?”
This is usually response I get when I say some law is useless and should be repealed. I wish the people who say this would just say no law should ever
be repealed, no matter how stupid it is. That would at least be honest.
As it is now, even if you wanted to follow all the laws, you can’t. No one has enough time to learn them all and it is impossible to live normally while following them all.
Laws are necessary and useful, but only when they are clear, simple, and few.
So instead of demanding more laws, which is the natural inclination, laws should be kept to an absolute minimum. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson,
if something doesn’t break your leg or pick your pocket, there is no need for a law against it.
+ 3 felonies a day.
So late to reply. I’m bringing my habits from The Auld Syte with me.
I love the legalism argument that without laws mandating behavior X people would always do the opposite. As you say, laws affirm social norms and empower the state to use force in order to punish people who break those laws. A friend who has read more Dune than I have (and who ironically is as progressive as they come) always quotes a line from Dune that says something to the effect that the moment a laws are made because they are broken.
People take turns. There are no laws mandating that you should take turns in general, but people do. Some people don’t, and they’re shunned, chastised, etc. People typically hold doors open for people behind them. There aren’t laws mandating this, but if you don’t do it you’re going to look like an asshole and probably be treated as one. There are no laws mandating that you stand in line to be waited on in a retail store, but people do. In fact, people instinctively form lines even when they don’t need to; see any brunch buffet as an example.
Social pressure and cultural norms are far, far stronger than law. They’re organically-created order and structure, and they’re tremendously effective even without the threat of state-sanctioned violence. This is the difference between chaos and anarchy.
Wow. Replace the garbage bit in the second para with “the moment a law is made it is broken”.
Another thing many people fail to understand is that laws are not magic spells which alter behavior.
Laws have a lot more to do with establishing penalties than preventing crimes.
beautiful, Hyp