Red-Light Cameras...How To Steal Money Legally

I’ve always had a problem with the whole traffic violation-fines regime. Technically, when we speed, fail to buckle-up, or forget to signal when we turn, we are breaking the law—that set of rules meant to maintain social order, and which separates us from the lower species we share the planet with. However, if we give a little money to the city, county, or state, the authorities will forget all about our breaking the law.
I know it sounds cynical, but aside from making the collection of money the goal of “enforcement” rather than a punishment to reinforce the importance of following the law, the problem with this regime is that takes advantage of our need to be time-conscious in a society where we all know that “time is money.” We have to be certain places by certain times. We all have deadlines. We all have goals and productivity targets. We have tests to take. All of these goals have time-constraints attached to them. Speeding and trying to cut corners are just reflections of our time-conscious society, which socially programs us to recognize and make time the recognition the center of our lives.
When we are “punished” by way of tickets for speeding or illegally turning on a red light, we are being penalized for going with the flow of society. Yes, there have to be rules in for the greater good of public safety, but what I speak of are the innocent “violations” which are made almost subconsciously in our hurried society. No, we should not be speeding through buses stopping to unload/load children for school, nor should we be weaving in and out of traffic. However, we should not be victimized by policing for profit by questionable means, by local municipalities looking to fatten their coffers. Case in point—red light traffic cameras.
A few months ago, I wrote a piece on my sister blog offering suggestions on how to avoid losing money to red light city cameras ("Public Service Announcement - Beware of Red Light Traffic Cameras!"). This morning, NBC’s The Today Show did a piece on these questionable revenue-generating rackets. For many reasons, some that I outlined on the piece I did at my sister blog, The Today Show’s segment revealed much of what is wrong with these gadgets—including the corruption tied to their use by municipalities. Watch the segment below to get a better understanding of the problem with red-light cameras, then take our poll afterwards...

Red-Light Cameras...
	A Legitimate Way To Ensure Public Safety?
	A Shakedown In Order To Siphon Money From The Pockets of Drivers?
pollcode.com free polls

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Issues In The News (For Dummies!)

As a first for Beyond The Political Spectrum, I recently got the inspiration to start posting exceptionally insightful political satire (via political cartoons) about various social and political issues currently in the news.
For my first such posting, I thought I post some very sharp political commentary, courtesy of The Houston Chronicles' Nick Anderson (disclaimer: don't shoot the messenger!)

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The Real Health Insurance Industry -- An Insider Speaks

For anyone who has vehemently defended the status quo when it comes attempts to address the lack of universal affordable health care in coverage in America, BTPS invites you to listen to a podcast featuring former health insurance industry insider Wendell Potter.
Potter, who spent years as the head of corporate communications (Public Relations) for both Humana and CIGNA, left his successful career after witnessing first-hand how his former employers' unethical tactics worked against the interests of their policy holders...and by extension, potentially endangering policy holders' health. He subsequently turned his disenchantment into a public crusade against abuses within the insurance industry, even testifying before Congress.
According to Potter, "insurers have every incentive to deny coverage — every dollar they don't pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year."
I invite you to listen to listen to the words of this whistle blower and determine for yourself if the current system of health care coverage is worth defending.

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/Deadly_Spin.mp3
(download the mp3 of this podcast here)

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Change We Can Set Our Watches By (Or…”Let’s Do It Again Like We Did Last Election!)

The American electorate is a marvel to behold at times. It has just the right combination of (the) occasional public weariness with incumbent political officials, collective short-term memory/selective memory, and often misplaced optimism which leads it to every couple of election cycles, vote in political party representatives who seem to offer a better alternative to the party in power. This is especially true if the representatives if of the political party in power fall out of public favor due to corruption of some other type of malfeasance. It’s a sad cycle that has unfortunately become of how our democracy operates and governs.
During the 2006 election season, Democrats were swept into control of Congress in nearly unprecedented numbers due in part to the various scandals which plagued the Republican Party prior to those elections. Given the current growing—some say unfair—discontentment with the Obama Administration’s economic (and social) policies as well as events in Congress within the past couple of weeks, it looks as if the see-saw of Congressional representation will soon start to tilt in back in favor of the Republicans.
A couple of weeks ago, three Democrat members of Congress, Maxine Waters of California, and Charles Rangel of New York found themselves facing ethics charges by the Office of Congressional Ethics in Congress (on a side note, 2 Republican members of Congress are also under the ethics probe gun. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/08/congress-ethics-fundraising/1)

The fact that such alleged ethics violations/accusations occur with sad regularity among elected representatives such as Waters and Rangel should not be fully faulted with those facing the legal process of accountability or even Congress itself…the fault lies with us, the American people. Americans proudly—and rightfully—boast about the advantages and joys of having free and fair elections in a democracy. But what good is electing representatives at the federal (or even local) levels if we are forced to choose between the lesser of 2 evils every time voter disenchantment reaches critical mass every other election cycle? The cycle we tolerate—become “fed-up” with one party representative, vote in another party’s representative, vote back in the party which peed us off in the first place—only proves how much we should just sit back and take our lumps by representatives who violate the public’s trust.
Congressional perks that smack of entitlement, ethics charges on an annual basis, influence peddling (i.e., “lobbying”), and our own collective short-term memories are what we deserve. Why? Because we have forgotten that Congress works for us, and are not meant to be an autonomous political class.
If the conservative-leaning Tea Party and liberal-leaning organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union can mobilize and help crank out support and successfully put into public office candidates who support their ideological beliefs, then why can’t the rest of us follow their examples and shake off our apathetic fatalism and take more of an active role in a government which is supposed to represent us?
As someone who has spent inordinate amounts of hours volunteering in various political causes, I can find no viable excuse for any American not to become more involved in a process which affects us on a daily basis on a myriad of levels. So get off your collective butts and hold to the fire the feet of those who violate the trust of we who send them to represent us!

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The Financial Crisis, Bankers, And What To Do (Or, “Go Directly To Jail, Do Not Collect Any Money!”)

When it comes to the economy in general, and the economic crisis of last year in particular—and the jury’s still out on whether or not the crisis over—there are two schools of thought, one favoring (and/or blaming) the lack of government regulation of the marketplace economy, and the other favoring (and yes, blaming) more government regulation. To be sure, ebbs and flows within the marketplace are a part of the cycle which gives it life, although it’s a little hard to appreciate this fact abstractly when one considers that real people, real families are often affected adversely by these cycles. But to the credit of each argument, common sense rather than economic ideology tells us that there are times when government regulation can increase the intensity of these ebbs and flows, to the greater detriment or benefit of the economy. Still, the loyalists to the government-need-to-interfere and the laissez-faire beliefs remain unwavering to their respective ideological beliefs.
So it should come as no surprise that there will still be some who disagree with one way the government of Iceland is dealing with the economic crisis within its banking community…a crisis whose effect has been infinitely worse in terms of profound damage to its overall economy. This week, it was reported in the news ("Top Economists: Iceland Did It Right … And Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong" as an example) that the government of Iceland has begun to initiate both civil and criminal proceedings against banking executives related to the collapses of the country’s 3 largest banks, Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir. After the findings of a government inquiry concluded that the banks collapsed due mostly to former banking heads taking "inappropriate loans from the banks," the government of government agencies initiated a $2 billion lawsuit in a New York court against former shareholders and executives for alleged fraud. In addition to the lawsuit(s), Iceland has taken the further step of freezing the assets of other banking executives both in the US and in Europe (such as in the United Kingdom and Luxemburg) where many have fled and live lavish lifestyles. Finally, the police have begun rounding up still some other former bankers while issuing arrest warrants for others.
With respect to the outcomes of the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International criminal trials of earlier this decade, the Icelanders seem to have mastered not only certain Olympic sports, but how to properly deal with those most responsible for the economic crisis in its country. In America, the financial community makes no bones about justifying big bonuses to “retain the best and most talented” within the lending community, extravagant lifestyles that are were/are “earned,” and asking for and receiving government loans with no sense of shame…all despite the “best and brightest” causing the near-economic collapse of the American economy due to questionable lending practices. While many banking executives and leaders have made off like (pardon the pun) bandits, many Americans have seen the values of their retirement packages plummet to levels that will force many to work well past the age where age has reduce their physical limitations to do so. But as I have often said before, there is a great many things that Americans can learn from other countries about how to deal with socioeconomic problems. Instead of rewarding willful ineptitude, risk taking, and out-and-out greed with bonuses and an implied Its ok to engage in questionable lending practices…we’ll subsidize you both socially and economically, we should be taking a page out of the government of Iceland’s book and start a criminal (and civil) roundup and prosecution of those most responsible for nearly doing what terrorists couldn’t do…bring the country to its economic knees. The government of the United States should the seizure of assets, the initiation of lawsuits, and bringing of charges against those who put potential of personal advancement ahead of the welfare of their institutions, investors, and of the average American who has been invested in many aspects of the lending industry due to changing trends in funding potential retirements.
Stealing a line from the now-classic 1983 Eddie Murphy-Dan Aykroyd movie Trading Places, “The best way to hurt rich people is to turn them into poor people.”

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Big Money + “Free Speech” = Less Democracy

One of the great ironies in an otherwise unfathomable universe is that events often occur in a way that serendipitously substantiates truth. Take for example yesterday’s US Supreme Court decision. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court in all but perspective rewrote campaign finance law, striking down a federal law that prohibited Big Money contribution to political candidates either directly or by [the] financial backing of campaign ads.
In the equating of such practices by the high court in terms free speech, proponents cheered the decision, hailing it as a victory which promotes the free exchange of opposing thoughts in the free market of ideas. The funny thing though is that most times, political partisans are rarely ever interested in anything in the way of “opposing ideas,” unless such ideas give them a Boogey Man to oppose during election cycles.
However, such “free speech” is yet another stab in the heart of the democratic process as we, the unconnected citizens, are forced to sit back and watch as Big Money contributions influence public policy through the innuendo of [the] reciprocity for donations to, and support of candidates for public office.
In yesterday’s posting (“Why the Republican Party is Better than the Democratic Party”), I lauded the Republicans for their ability to ostensibly take the moral high ground in politics by defining and framing political arguments—especially in political campaigns—which is why they are so successful in winning elections (but they are only as good at governing as the Democrats). If yesterday’s ruling has done anything, it has proven this point in spades. Without batting an eye, the conservative wing of the high court eloquently stated the logic of its position, totally ignoring the fact that they engaged in the same “judicial activism”—making law from the bench—they often accuse liberals of engaging in whenever one is nominated for a potential position, especially within the federal judiciary. And predictably, the ideologically impotent Democrats have failed to shine a light on this double-standard.
Outside of political partisanship, it’s a little difficult to understand the math behind the high court’s thinking; the everyday average citizen is supposed to benefit from giving Big Money donors more of a “say” in the political process? You’ll pardon me if I get up from my desk and walk out of class right about now.

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It's Good To Be The King...Or Maybe A Congressman: Conclusion

As Christmas Day nears, those of you who have been following this recent topic of Congressional perks are already aware that for our federal legislators, the spirit of giving and receiving is a year 'round reality..
Even beyond the availability of [the] many Congressional perks such as paid daycare for legislators’ children and deep discounts for health club memberships (did I fail to mention those before?), perhaps the greatest amount of personal benefits that come from being a member of Congress are those that are derived from the traditional of lobbying. How much can and do Congressmen/women benefit from the system of legalized influence peddling we euphemistically call “lobbying?” Consider recent examples of the business-as-usual way special interests and/or big business gains access to our federal legislators:

*Republican Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. toured the vineyard & castle of Liechtenstein royalty, as well as spent the better part of a day at an Alpine ski resort—all on the dime of a group of European companies.

*Illinois Democrat Danny K. Davis received “the dignitary treatment” when a political donor flew him to Inner Mongolia to lobby for a new medical supplies factory in China.
Almost annually, university and local government lobbyists—who are exempt from the rule which limits gifts by lobbyists to Congressmen to a $50 value maximum—bestow on many Democratic legislators (and their staff) college basketball tournament tickets in a ritual that has come to be called by some critics the “March Madness” loophole (http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/us/politics/07trips.html)

*A Political Action Committee (PAC) run by Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss hosted a $48,000 combination golf outing-fund-raiser in Palm Beach, Florida. The PAC also routinely “picks up the tab for fancy dinners and parties,” including $6,300 at a Washington steakhouse earlier this year. Money for these events is usually donated by lobbying and special interests groups (PACs are the chief means by which Congressmen are able to skirt rules outlining the limits by which legislators are ostensibly mandated to adhere to in order to give the public the impression of self-governing)

In any given recent year, more than 2.5 billion (that’s “billion” with a “b”) dollars have been spent on direct lobbying by various interest special groups. Such benefits, despite rules adopted in 2007 meant to limit corporate influence in Congress, routinely bend and/or breaks these rules and exploits loopholes…to the wink-and-nods of these elected officials. Needless to say, businesses and other interest groups are routinely opposed to more substantive proposal changes.
In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with a citizen’s right to petition the legislature of the government (at any level)—in fact, it’s a Constitutional guarantee. The problem arises when Big Business, private organizations, and special interests groups—most of which have resources far and away more abundant than the average American—interject their influence into the legislative process to pervert the process democracy, especially in light of the observation that most of these influential entities tend to promote interests that are contrary to the general electorate. Surely, it shouldn’t take Einsteinian-level intellect for our biggest (or maybe our not-so-biggest) brains to devise a way to safeguard the Constitutional guarantee of access to our highest-elected law-makers by both the people (that’s you and I) and business. In a perfect (or even better) world, the voices of the more enlightened among Congressmen would become loud enough to rise above the din of gift-chatter to prick the consciouses—assuming they have them—of every member and guilt them into adopting the interests of the people who elect them to office as a priority, and not the monied interests who pervert the political process. The lack of such a necessary solution can only be attributed to a lack of will among Congress and business both.
As for the spirit of regal entitlement which seems to have possessed members of the House and the Senate, one can only guess at what it would take to exorcise this particular demon from the Hill. Outside of a divine intervention, the only possible solution is for Americans to grow the testicular fortitude to collectively act on the sentiment we have heard uttered time and again during moments of outrage at our legislators’ incompetence and corruption: “Throw the bums out!”


Watch CBS News Videos Online

(Better late than never CBS! From last night's CBS Evening News broadcast)

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The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

With all the hubbub about potential financial meltdowns, skyrocketing unemployment numbers, and questionable wars taking up space front and center in the daily headlines, many of the news stories pushed into our peripheral vision are those which speak about who we are as a society…about where our individual and collective priorities lay. The following points represent what I call, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of our modern times.


The Good - For those of you who regularly watch any of the daily network news programs, or who pay a visit to Beyond The Spectrum’s sister page on You Tube, you have undoubtedly noticed what a black eye Wall Street and other financial institutions have given themselves of late. With hat-in-hand, many of these institutions came begging to the federal government for an infusion of taxpayer money meant to provide stabilize as a result of their bad business investments, chief among them loaning money to risky borrowers en masse. At the same time, the CEO’s and other high ranking employees of these financially teetering institutions were giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses and other perks of excess.
However, flying under the radar of cloud of bad news was the very good deed of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A self-made millionaire, Bloomberg, according to the most recent release of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the donated some $235 million dollars of his own money to over 1,200 different charities in 2008, making him the most single charitable donor in the United States. So we tip our hats off to His Honor. It’s nice to see that there is still some humanity left among America’s financially blessed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/nyregion/27bloomberg.html?_r=1&sq=philanthropy&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

The Bad – Actually, two stories tied notoriety for this category, both coming from Michigan. The first is the death of a 93-year-old man; not an unusual expectation given his advanced age. However, it is the manner of death that is most telling about what our priorities as a society. Mr. Marvin Schur (I prefers to use his full name and title, at least to preserve some dignity in the face of his ignominious passing), according the Oakland County Medical Examiner, froze to death in his Bay City, Michigan home a few days after having his home’s electrical consumption limited by the local power utility for $1,000 in unpaid bills, not totally unexpected (again) due to his advanced age and limited income.
According to the neighbor who found Schur’s body, “his furnace was not running, the insides of his windows ere full of ice the morning we found him.” I guess America consumes not just it’s young.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090126/ap_on_re_us/frozen_indoors

The second piece of bad news from the state which currently has the highest unemployment rate (and as if it could tolerate more bad news) was the idiotic ruling by the state’s Court of Appeals. In a case brought by Lansing School District middle school teachers, the court ruled that disciplinary actions taken against students are [exclusively] within the school local school board. The case is based on the actions of the local board who failed to expel students for assaulting teachers by throwing chairs at them; they were simply suspended and allowed to return some time afterwards. For those who criticize the effectiveness of our public schools for preparing our children academically to compete in a globally-integrated and competitive economy, consider the conditions they are forced to work under.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990128052

The Ugly-Finally, the soap opera that has become Illinois politics is finally over. Late yesterday, the Illinois House voted to impeach now ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich. Days before yesterday’s action, the disgraced Blagojevich had gone on a Hail Mary PR blitz in an effort to save his job. Accused of attempting to sell now President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat, he had hired a Tampa-based PR firm—the same one contracted by social pariah and suspected wife murderer, former police sergeant Drew Peterson—to create a campaign designed to win over American sympathy in the face of then-mounting calls for him to step down. Perhaps what made his ill-conceived media blitz to alter his public image ugly was his protestation that his “persecution” put him in the same company as “Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Ghandi.” Furthermore, there was the “revelation” that he was going to offer the seat to talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, which even Stevie Wonder could see she was never going to accept, but opted to select another high-profile African-American, Roland Burris to replace Obama). But upon looking at the debacle objectively, unseen was the apparent pattern of invoking high profiles African-American names in his attempt to gain public favor. I submit the reason for this was due to African-Americans’ sense of undying loyalty to the Democratic Party as well as their sense of forgiving and [re-] embracing unsavory types.
After his acquittal in the mid 1990’s former football great O.J Simpson was cheered and embraced by the black community; he even traveled around the country, speaking at predominantly black churches. Michael Jackson was given the same treatment after his acquittal of molestation charges, and, in like fashion, was well-received at black churches. In a more related example, ex-Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry was re-elected and re-embraced by the people of the overwhelmingly black and Democratic nation’s capital, despite having been convicted of federal charges related to his often-seen video tape of his smoking crack in a hotel room with an undercover informant. Clearly, Blagojevich has not only been watched over the past couple months, but he has been watching as well.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=6723687&page=1

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