The Police State: Defined

ICHC

We here at La Casa de Los Gatos have blogged repeatedly and at length upon the police state that has come into public (and unabashed) existence ever since one Gee Dumbya and his evil cohort Dick "Satan's Spuzzer" Cheney got their hands on this once-great nation.


Today, we have both heartening and disheartening news to impart to our friends and visitors. Times like these you don't know whether to laugh, cry, or take an increased dose of your psychoactive fucking meds, right, SGTG? The heartening news is that one Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County, Illinois, has decided he's had enough of using the state's power to forcibly evict people from their homes. Yup. He's not gonna do it no more. Says Sheriff Dart:

"These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. ... They've paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It's gotten insane," he said.[...]

"These mortgage companies ... don't care who's in the building," Dart said Wednesday. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets hurt along the way.

"On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today."

Dart said he wants the courts or the state Legislature to establish protections for those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

[...]

"When you're blindly sending me out to houses where I'm coming across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can't keep doing this and have a good conscience about it."

Wow. This is a human being, peoples. We have often wondered how cops can do their job, because a lot of it seems to involve protecting the person or property of the rich and brutalizing the poor and defenseless. Whether it's wearing a tee-shirt at the mall to which the hired dogs of the mall owners object, or making a joke that security guards at a hospital don't think is funny, we, the common people, are constantly in danger of having our ass busted because we said or did something someone rich or powerful didn't particularly care for.

Sometimes we follow every fucking rule in the book, and we still get our ass busted. They kick us out of our homes. They take away our kids. They beat us up and throw us in jail because we exercise our constitutional right peaceably to assemble as set forth in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guaranteed in the Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances".

They make being homeless an offense with their loitering laws. They arrest us for being the wrong color, or driving the wrong car, or dressing in a way of which they don't approve.

Then along comes someone like Sheriff Dart and says, "I'm a man with a conscience and it goes against my understanding of wrong and right to kick people out of their homes when they have done nothing wrong." And you wonder, what kind of world would we have if every cop and security guard and enforcer consulted their conscience before tasering a teenager with a broken back nineteen times; or shooting an innocent woman to death before her children; or breaking down the door of an elderly, blind, diabetic cancer survivor.

And you wonder, whose side are we on, really? Who's on our side? Who's on which side? Because the Illinois Bankers' Association responded to Sheriff Dart's statements thus:

The Illinois Bankers Association opposed the plan, saying that Dart "was elected to uphold the law and to fulfill the legal duties of his office, which include serving eviction notices."

The association said Dart could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court eviction orders.

"The reality is that by ignoring the law and his legal responsibilities, he is carrying out 'vigilantism' at the highest level of an elected official," it said. "The Illinois banking industry is working hard to help troubled homeowners in many ways, but Sheriff Dart's declaration of 'martial law' should not be tolerated

Martial law? The man whose conscience won't abide kicking tenants who are not guilty of any wrongdoing out of their homes is accused of imposing martial law? Of vigilantism?

Personally, we would rather see Sheriff Dart expend his (and his staff's) energies and monies apprehending murderers, thieves, rapists, burglars, child abusers, batterers, and disturbers of the peace. You bankers got everyone into this mess. You've already taken $700 BILLION of our dollars to help you out. Quit whining, as Phil Gramm, your good friend (and John McCain's) and deregulator of the banking industry stated recently. You're not fooling us with your gabble about trying to "help troubled homeowners in many ways." We know only too well that your "help" mostly consists of "helping" yourself to their assets and those of other taxpayers in general.

Video footage of Sheriff Dart giving Illinois bankers what-for available here.

The bankers are not on our side. John McCain't, who is good friends with many many bankers and lobbyists calling for further deregulation of the financial industry, is not on our side. John McCain't is, however, on the same side of these issues, apparently, as the White House, which today issued this unbelievably heartless statement. From the article:

During today’s press briefing, White House press secretary Dana Perino suggested the Bush administration would oppose any effort to extend jobless benefits — a stance the White House has taken before. She explained their position by saying, “we want people to be able to return to the workplace as soon as possible.” The suggestion was that extending benefits somehow prevents people from returning to work.

She concluded by saying that “the best way to help” the economy and unemployed people is for unemployed people to simply “get back to work.”

Where's OUR fucking bailout, George? You think it's so easy to "get a job" and "go back to work"? Not after you exported all our jobs, you fucking prick. Why didn't you tell your Wall Street friends that? They got $700 BILLION and we get the bum's rush. And our children's children will be paying for all those manicures and pedicures AIG executives were getting EVEN WHILE THEY WERE NEGOTIATING THEIR SHARE OF THE BAILOUT!!!



If you don't vote for Obama/Biden after reading this, it is your bounden duty to hie thee to the nearest area inhabited by large, hungry, dangerous animals (for example, sharks, lions, or tigers). Take no weapons nor any protective gear. Strip naked at the site and give the animal of your choice a passionate kiss. Hopefully we'll see no more of you in this life. With any luck, in the next you will reincarnate as a small, nasty-looking arthropodic life-form which will be instantly killed and eaten repeatedly until you have worked off all your truly crappy karma.

Stumble It!