Crime & Federalism

While Honest Signals itself was not a very enlightening book, it did lead to some helpful reminders. Here's a good tip from me.

Fluency is an honest signal.  Get a guy talking about something he knows. Notice the pace he’ll use. Each person has her own style of speaking. Most of us, though, talk in a free-flowing manner when discussing something we know. If it’s something we know really well and are passionate about, we’ll talk quickly and excitedly about that. That fluency is an honest signal. So now what?

You wanna know if your associate really understands the legal issues? Or if he’s been slacking, but reviewed just enough to give a bullshit answer? Let him start giving his bullshit answer. Note the tone and pace of the conversation. Then start asking questions.

Establish a pace. Observe. This means you can’t be a phuckhead who keeps interrupting. Just listen.

Aha! How the tone will change! The pace will slow down.  Long pauses.  Now you know that your associate is ill-prepared.  

Even if you don’t want to interrogate people, it’s a great way to see where the weaknesses are in your arguments. Let’s say you have a huge brief. The guy who wrote the brief wants to talk about the stuff he knows cold. It’s the stuff he doesn’t know cold that will kill you.  How do you know what you don't know?

You can determine how much (or how little) a person knows by noting the change in tempo of the conversation. It works really well.

It even works on yourself.  If you're avoiding an issue, or getting frustrated when questioned about an issue: You don't know the issue. 

You can lie to yourself.  But fluency is an honest signal.  If you lack fluency, you lack mastery.

Always look for fluency.

We really should start keeping track of unethical prosecutors.  I identify unethical prosecutors in the subject title of Crime & Federalism whenever I see names, e.g., Juliet Sorensen; Suzanne Sullivan; Brenda Morris; William Sullivan; Greg Damm; Kimberly Frayn; Sean Cronin; Andrea Hoffman; etc.  We should start a wiki that allows people to anonymously contribute the names of prosecutors who engage in unethical conduct.

How would we even do this?  I will pay the hosting fees.

Does anyone have any ideas? 

Perhaps start a blog entitled "Prosecutorial Misconduct."  Then list the name of every unethical prosecutor, along with supporting documentation? 

Again, I'll host the thing and assume the risks associated therewith.  I don't care.  I will be dead soon.  Making people like me; building a reputation as a glad-hander; and being afraid of being sued all rate below: Buy cat food.  (Hint: I don't have a cat.)

Prosecutorial misconduct is out of control.  Even judges are getting sick of it.  The only way to reform prosecutors is to make them afraid. 

Plus, there is more to this than venting one's spleen.  If you are going against a prosecutor who pulls some shit: Wouldn't it be nice to be able to cite a prior record of prosecutorial misconduct? 

Little Brother is watching.

Oh my God.  It's happening.  Judges are finally doing something about prosecutorial misconduct.  Years from now, the Ted Stevens prosecution might be seen as the tipping point:

Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently issued an order requiring the Boston U.S. Attorney's Office to hold a training program focused on discovery in criminal cases this fall.

The May 18 order also gives the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts until Nov. 20 to submit additional affidavits explaining why Wolf shouldn't issue sanctions against the office and Assistant U.S. Attorney Suzanne Sullivan for prosecutorial misconduct in a criminal case. U.S. v. Jones, No. 1:07-cr-10289 (D. Mass.).

"The persistent recurrence of inadvertent violations of defendants' constitutional right to discovery in the District of Massachusetts persuades this court that it is insufficient to rely on Department of Justice training programs for prosecutors alone to assure that the government's obligation to produce certain information to defendants is understood and properly discharged," Wolf wrote.

Read the rest of the report here.

The Los Angeles Times is getting more embarrassing every day.  I'll celebrate when they are bankrupt.  Being biased is bad enough.  But to publish outright lies?  That is what Michael Hiltzik's latest column is full of.

As a warm-up, Hiltzik starts with a little spin:

The most onerous lie is that Californians are burdened by the highest state taxes in the nation. The truth, according to 2006 figures derived from the U.S. census, is that, as a percentage of all personal income, California's tax and fee schedule ranks 18th in the country.

Whenever you see terms like, "percentage of all personal income," you know that someone is playing with numbers to make a large number look small.  That's what the Urban Institute did.  Saying that Californians pay x% of all personal income isn't probabtive.  It's like saying: "Yeah, you guys pay a lot in taxes.  You make a lot of money, too.  So it even outs."

Think of it this way.  Who pays more in taxes: A person who pays 10% of 1,000,000; or a person who pays 20% of $100,000?  That's pretty easy, right?  The person with the lower tax rate and greater income pays $100,000 in taxes; the person paying the higher tax rate pays $20,000 - a fivefold difference.  It is thus not an "onerous lie that Californians are burdened by the highest state taxes."  In fact, it's true.

Now, you might say that a rich person should not just pay more in absolute tax dollars.  She should pay a higher relative tax rate, too.  We could go back-and-forth on the progressive/regressive income tax discussion.  We could have an honest debate.  Finger fornicating the numbers, though, is as unethical as when credit card companies put, "We can steal your first born" in the fine print.

As ethical, honest people: Let's disclose the facts.  Let's then have a vigorous if not vicious argument.  Honest men and women can disagree.  You are not a liar is you don't agree with me.  I do not seek clones or followers - only honest men and women who are unafraid of truthfully debating the facts.  Why are people afraid of honestly stating the facts?  Is it because their positions are too weak?

Still, we should allow op-ed writers to spin the facts.  It's not my style, but it's not an outright lie.  After a warm-up, though, Hiltzik does lie:

The dirty little secret, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit group, is that California's wealthiest residents shoulder the lightest burden of any income group in the state. The top 1% of California income-earners (average 2007 income: $2.3 million) paid 7.4% of their income in state taxes last year, counting the federal deduction for state taxes. The highest rate was paid by the poorest residents: Those earning $20,000 or less, with average income of $12,600, forked over 10.2% of their earnings.

I thought to myself: This cannot be true.  It makes no sense.  The top California state income tax rate is 10.5%.  You need to make over $40,000 to pay the highest state income tax rate.  So how does a person earning $12,600 pay 10.2% in state income tax?

I have no clue.  What I do know is this.  If you go to the State of California Franchise Tax Board's website, you can find the "2008 Tax Calculator."  Click it.  According to that helpful calculator, a person earning $12,200 would owe $172 in state income taxes.  Maybe I'm mistake, but that seems closer to 1.2% than to 10.2%. 

Spin is bad enough.  Outright lies are intolerable.  Michael Hiltzik's column should be corrected immediately.  The L.A. Times should never allow him to publish another column.

When will so-called God-fearing members of the Catholic Church put an end to this? 

A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades - and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.

It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.

Read the rest of the sickening report here.

Vanity is the unnecessary obsession with what strangers think of you.  A vain person seeks the approval of strangers.  In the past, the approval of members of the public may have kept you alive.  In modern society, social approval is valuable only instrumentally.

If you walk out in public, and strangers admire you: So what?  Unless you are seeking sex or money from strangers, what does this approval get you?  If it gives you a buzz, that is only because your brain has evolved to seek that buzz.

Therein lies the problem.  Vanity has an evolutionary basis.  Part of transcending our beastly origins is recognizing the needlessness of vanity.

Unless you need something from a stranger, what does their approval get you?  Yet people seek the approval of strangers at great cost.  How much money do people spend on clothing designed to impress strangers?  How much time do people spend preparing to "go out in public"?  As if it should matter!

"FIRST YEAR ASSOCIATE'S" writing is terrible.  He suffers from, "Every thought that enters my head is worthy of being read" syndrome.  He's also a bore.  Fire him.

An interesting article on how millions get lost.  Some are spendthrifts, but most lost their money in business investments.  Everyone wants to be a businessperson.  Most businesses fail.  Take the money, put it in tax-free muni bonds, and chill out.  But, no.  Everyone is going to beat the odds.  Everyone needs to be "in business."  How many people go into "business," simply so they can say they are "in business"?  Signaling is the most expensive business of all.

Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior is getting a lot of rave reviews from people I consider smart.  That's enough of an endorsement for me to buy it.  The New York Times reviews the book here.  Much of Spent won't surprise people who have studied sociobiology (which has since been given the more politically correct name, "evolutionary psychology").  Even those familiar with the issues have approved of the book, though.  Check it out.

This fine young man depicted in this video was shot in the upscale Beverly Center. What a tragedy:

Most hilarious comment? From the L.A. Times article's comment section: "hmph! well, you know, there's a recession on. i guess a dolla doesn't go as far as it used to."