By now most of the world is familiar with the picture taken during the May 7^th Russian protests.  The stark contrast of innocence facing down riot police has touched the world.  At the same time the rest of the world is slowly coming to terms with the fact that democracy is a lie and doesn’t work, Russians are protesting hoping to make a change within their system.

On May 7^th as Vladamir Putin was sworn into office, he was not met with the types crowds he had in the past.  In their stead, there were hundreds of protesters outside being corralled by thousands of police.  Putin has been at the helm of Russia since 2000, first as President and Now as Prime Minister.  With this election, he will likely remain there until 2018 with the option to run again.

It is this long-term rule that people in Russia are tired of.

The demonstrators, separated into several groups, were met by helmeted riot police. A total of 120 were detained, including opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

The day before, protests had turned violent when some demonstrators tried to march toward the Kremlin and riot police beat back the crowds with batons and detained more than 400 people.

While Putin has dismissed the Moscow protesters as ungrateful, pampered urbanites and agents of the West, others are taking them more seriously. “The government must understand that the split in society is getting wider, and the anger over unfair elections and the lack of normal dialogue is growing. In this situation, radicalism is inevitable,” Zyuganov said. “Any attempts to shut people’s mouths with the help of a police baton are senseless and extremely dangerous.” (Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/07/putin-sworn-in-as-russia-president-after-day-protests/#ixzz1uPDRz700)

This dismissiveness that characterizes Putin is most likely going to be his downfall.  Putin won nearly 64% of the vote. Opposition leaders have denounced the result as “illegitimate”.  It was in response to this supposed discrepancy, that the protests were formed.  Their anger has been fuelled by widespread reports of fraud, including evidence of ballot-stuffing and “carousel voting”, when voters are employed to cast their votes several times at various polling sites.

While OSCE states in their report: “The conditions for the campaign were clearly skewed in favour of one candidate. Also, overly restrictive candidate registration requirements limited genuine competition.” The rest of the report outlines a pretty straight forward election.

Certainly, most countries cannot hope to be any better, it has become an accepted fact that media will pick sides and money will out in such elections.

There is no denying that Putin in the last few years has moved away from the progressive policies of the 1990’s.  He has been more restrictive in response to protest and criticism, both within his country and internationally.  Even recently allowing the statement that Russia will launch pre-emptive strikes if NATO and the U.S.  continues its plans to implement the European Shield.

However, many Russians still believe Putin to be good for Russia, siting his unwillingness to support or excuse the U.S. her meddling in foreign affairs as well as the business he has lately brought to Russia.  Namely huge oil contracts with ExxonMobil for research and development in the Arctic Oil Fields.

But like so many political maneuvers, there is the cost of this deal.  Some believe Mikhail Khodorkovsky is paying that cost.  Khodorkovsky, once head of oil giant Yukos and Russia’s richest man, is now in jail for tax evasion, clearing the way for other oil deals to be made. Putin has also been accused of abusing his hold on energy, allegedly punishing fellow ex-Soviet states like Ukraine with price hikes when they leant towards the West.

It may be Russia’s improved economy that is allowing for protest where before it was impossible.  The cities of Russia are full of work.  With companies and corporations in need of qualified workers at a higher rate than seen in maybe 50 years, as well as supportive services, more people are comfortable.

Comfortable people have more time to think, intellectualize, discuss and ultimately protest.  As it is the city dwellers who are showing up for protests analysts feel it is their increased economic stability that makes them feel they should have more of a say in government.

Perhaps this makes Putin’s “Spoiled” statement make a little more sense.  After all it has been under his leadership that Russia has seen stability and growth.

Political analyst Masha Lipman points out however, “The turning point was the “trading places” trick in that occurred in late September. That was when Medvedev declared he would not run and that Putin would run instead. For his part, Putin said, if elected, he would make Medvedev his prime minister. Medvedev added that they had made this decision several years earlier. It was this contempt of the people that triggered change: the mood became a movement. Elections suddenly mattered: lots of young Muscovites volunteered as election observers and gained first-hand experience with blatant fraud. They changed their electoral behavior and voted for anyone to ensure that the United Russia (the party of Putin’s loyalists) would lose support and seats in the Russian parliament. This activism evolved into mass protests after the December 4 election. It was broadly seen as fraudulent, especially in Moscow where the rigging was especially blatant and the constituency was already more critical of Putin.”

Are protests likely to do any good in a system where one man effectively has control of the government?  The people seem to think so. The opposition leader and member of the Solidarity movement political council, Boris Nemtsov seems to think so stating in an interview, “Russia’s future depends entirely on the level of protest, not Putin. Protests cannot constantly grow. They are not a linear process. The current protests do not amount to a revolution that would lead to explosive changes but the revival of civil activities and development of civil society. This is why there are always ups and downs. Indeed, now the protests are weakening, but this does not mean that they have exhausted themselves.” (Source: http://valdaiclub.com/politics/41601.html )

When asked if he thinks “The screws will be tightened.” (on the protestors) Nemtsov answers, “This depends only on us. If we sit in a kitchen, Lukashization is inevitable. If we take the initiative and protest, things will change. We are witnessing a decline of the Putin regime with all its convulsions, idiotic escapades and provocations. Clearly, it does not have the energy and strength to oppose the nation. But if the people sit quiet, the government will be able to tighten the screws with ease and Putin will turn into a 100% Lukashenko clone. He is 50/50 now.”

In agreement is Alexei Navalny, a crusading anti-corruption blogger and new-wave folk hero. He says: “A revolution is inevitable, and that it won’t be something plotted out ahead of time. It will start with an incident — an arrest, maybe, or a protest — and then snowball unexpectedly and unrelentingly. It will happen,” he told Esquire, “just because most people understand that this system is wrong.”

You hear it all of the time. “We ARE the ninety-nine percent!” At least in Los Angeles you do. It’s written all over billboards, scrawled on walls, depicted on stickers stuck to lamp posts. It’s everywhere! But has anyone figured out exactly who qualifies as the 99%?

Define 99%

Most people who back the Occupy Movement seem to have a grasp of who the 99% are and what that means; but in case some are confused, let’s go over this.

99% of the Occupy Movement gets it. They know we are all in this together and as a movement they are, for the most part, a very peaceful movement.

The rock behind this movement lies in the stories of people. The stories of struggling as 1% of society uses policy to enrich themselves, avoid paying their fair share of taxes, dictate civil and human rights, and practices corrupt banking and business practices to bilk the rest of us.

Its stories like:

“I am 20K in debt and am paying out of pocket for my current tuition while I start paying back loans with two part time jobs.”

“I am a 28 year old female with debt that had to give up her apartment + pet because I have no money and I owe over $30,000.”

“Married mother of 3. Lost my job in 2009. My family lost our health insurance, our savings, our home, and our good credit. After 16 months, I found a job — with a 90 mile commute and a 25 percent pay cut. After gas, tolls, daycare, and the cost of health insurance, I was paying so my kids had access to health care.”

I am young. I am educated and hard working. I am not able to pay my bills. I am afraid of what the future holds.”

“I am a 19 year old student with 18 credit hours and 2 part time jobs. I am over 4000 dollars in debt but my paychecks are just enough to get me to school and back. next year my plan was to attend a 4 year college and get my bfa, but now I am afraid that without a co-signer I will have no shot at a loan and even if I can get a loan I am afraid that I will leave college with no future and a crippling debt.”

“I went to graduate school believing that there might be some financial security afforded by a higher degree, and that with that security I could finally buy my mom her own house and take care of her. Instead, I have wasted six years of my life.”

“I am a 27 year old with a bachelor degree. I ran out of my student loans while trying to find a job. I am ‘living’ with my mother again to get back on my feet. So far, the best I can do is a part time retail job paying $8 an hour. I am hearing impaired with cochlear implant. My cochlear implant warranty expired. I do not have the money to renew it. How can I work at my new minimum wage job when my implant is broken? I need it to HEAR.”

(Source: Who are the 99 percent?

So, does this include workers in all jobs? For instance, are the police officers of this nation part of the 99% too?


Police Brutality

Let’s examine police behavior. It’s a shame that so many officers in cities like Los Angeles condone illegal violent and excessive force against citizens. Because this creates a feeling of disgust among the very people they need to back them up when they are attempting to defend these people during crowd control.

But in many cities, police forces have well-earned reputations for using their authority inappropriately.

I know this for a fact, because of my dealings with the Long Beach Police Department and one of its officers who used excessive force on me in 2009.

No matter how many bruises I had; or, how many photos they took while investigating the attack on me by one of their “finest;” in the end the LBPD investigated themselves and determined that beating the crap out of a 55-year old woman trying to get on the ground after being ordered to do so, was justifiable. Even though a camera showed I complied with the officer’s command, the police officer created a story, a lie, a bunch of b.s. that he had reason to leave bruises up and down my arms and legs, breaking my finger and toenails by leaping on me and sending me crashing to the pavement. Even though at 55 I was not so nimble, I was trying my best to get on the ground in my not-so-limber way.

And in spite of the fact that they dropped the charges against me when they realized how ridiculous they were and that they had arrested a member of the neighborhood watch committee — a woman who had no arrest record in a lifetime of over fifty years, and who had film evidence that the cop was lying, they still found the abusive jerk innocent for abusing me.

During my incident, I had a female jailer named Hernandez at the Long Beach Jail tell me should would “fuck me up if I didn’t shut up” when I asked a simple question. Yeah…SHE was a real class act, like so many there. I was threatened many times during that weekend I was held. Why? Because I was pressing excessive force charges against an officer. I was even told I’d “never make my way to court,” by some of the most gutless minority jailers there, who used their authority and the power of many against one to try to intimidate me.

Certainly, the case of Perry Grays, who was brutalized by Long Beach police on Super Bowl Sunday 2011, duplicates a bit of what I went through. I wasn’t tased; but the elements of this case and mine are similar. In the following interview, Mr. Grays tells a familiar story to many arrested needlessly in places like Long Beach:

“Can I get your badge number,” and he says, “No, I’m not giving you anything,” and I said, “Isn’t it illegal to deny me your badge number?” and he says, “I’m not giving you anything.”
So then his partner asked, “What is your name?” and I said, “Sir, I didn’t come down here to give you my name, I came down here to get your partner’s badge number and he’s being unprofessional.” So he asks my friend what’s his name and my friend says, “Sir I don’t even live here”. So the officer who hit my window with the flashlight pulls out his taser and I said, “Okay, are you going to tase me?” He says, “Are you going to give me a reason to?” I said, “No, I didn’t say that, you’re putting words in my mouth” and he says, “Well you’re putting words in my mouth”.

I know the following paragraph is identical! I was arrested for resisting arrest and being drunk in public, no matter that I was behind a gate in my own yard and had barely taken a sip of a Mojito while barbecuing with friends, when the incident happened. Fortunately, a camera recorded the entire event and proved my point. But this man’s experience mirrors mine in many ways:

And they charged me with threatening a police officer, resisting arrest, and having a loud party. They released me after two days. I guess the charges were dropped because after their investigation they couldn’t prove any of those things, so they let me go.

So I understand very well that there are cops out there who should be held accountable for using excessive force. I’ve heard the stories of inmates in Los Angeles County Jail being told to, “turn and face the wall and don’t look, or they would get some too” as a team of jailers beat the crap out of some guy arrested for something like fighting a police officer.

Mayday Incident

But what I’m asking is, do police qualify as the 99% too? If so, then how do we include them in the 99%? And if so, how does this happen?

Los Angeles police arrested a man they say hit a female officer on the head with a snare drum during May Day protests.

He walked behind the policewoman on a skirmish line and out of the blue, struck her in the back of the head with a drum, nearly knocking off her helmet. She was treated for a minor concussion.

Police say 6’1″ 280 pound Brian Mendoza of Los Angeles was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assault on a peace officer who stood about 5’1″ and weighed about 100 pounds. He remains jailed Thursday without bail.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/05/03/state/n105547D24.DTL#ixzz1tzrHwHzD)

Look, I don’t believe in all of the rash of security officers that have been hired by Homeland Security to protect us against ourselves:

• I don’t believe the hype about warnings of terrorist      plots happening potentially in every government building.
• I certainly don’t believe in the new laws stating that      saying something intimidating now amounts to a terrorist threat.
• I think this country has gone WAYYYY overboard on the      police state.

And if anyone has a reason to hate police, then, it would be me after dealing with the corruption of San Diego’s Homeland Security agents at the border and in Correction Corporation of America’s Immigration Detention Center in Otay and the Long Beach Police Department. I saw firsthand how unscrupulous people can be during my dealings with them.

But part of me also wonders if in placing this, me-against-them attitude against police simply maintaining crowd control at an event like the Mayday demonstrations isn’t taking this 99% thing to an extreme.

Why do we need to brutalize a person who is simply doing their job? Are we claiming after the L.A. riots 20 years ago that we don’t need police? If so, I disagree. And as a person who was a victim of police brutality, I’ll also be the first to admit that I believe there are good police officers out there. They are family men and women and they work hard. To me, they deserve respect, just like any other hard working employee.

After all, don’t these people worry about their mortgages too? Don’t police officers have kids struggling to attend school? What financial stories can they tell that might classify them as part of the 99% too?

And realizing this, why do we allow protesters to assault the police when they aren’t doing anything but maintaining crowd control.

I will be the first to admit that I have a hard time stomaching police when they overstep their boundaries. Simply, I think it takes a great deal more strength to be a cop who respects their community, than a spineless wimp who abuses it.

And I won’t lie and say that when I hear stories (like yesterday) of ICE agents being murdered by anyone, including their own sons, that I have much compassion. I don’t.

Simply, after knowing how corrupt they are and how so many of them treat others, I can’t affect a caring attitude about something horrible happening to them.

• I know what pain and human rights violations they      inflict on others.
• I know that Homeland Security refuses to hold them      accountable.
• I have no respect for them for that reason.
• And until we demand that Homeland Security investigate      these abuses, I will continue to feel that way.

But with all of that said, I still view them as part of the 99%. Not the part I want to associate with; but part of the problems we all suffer. And because of that, as much as I hate them, I don’t feel they should be needlessly assaulted during protests. I would hope others would agree.

On the Inside Looking Out

Highland is the Hilton of Alaskan correctional facilities.  Of this I have no doubt.  The grounds are wide, the buildings scattered with pleasant, inter-connecting walk-ways.  Beside the pleasant cafeteria, it has a modest library with admittedly very few classics, and a despairingly small sci-fi collection for an avid science fiction reader, but it does have nearly every paperback best-seller a mainstream reader likes to collect.  The newspaper section was abominable.  Most of the newspapers were at least two weeks old and often had articles cut away from the selection, and magazines were apparently out of the question.

It has a wonderful music room.  This, I suspect, was due to the enormous efforts of a woman named Natalie Brooks, who spent the last thirty years of her life voluntarily giving music lessons to the inmates.  There is a wooden placard with her photo commemorating her selfless devotion, and whenever I’d pass it I’d kiss two fingers and touch it, as though paying homage to a shrine.  Natalie had been my music teacher when I was growing up and I can’t think of a kinder, gentler soul.  Her influence could still be felt in this minimum security prison.

It has an uninteresting gym.  The only equipment in it was a sagging net for volleyball; no basketball hoops, no tumbling mats, no rubber balls, rings, balance beam or wooden horse for gymnastics.  There were nearly always two long tables where you could buy hot coffee if you had money on the books, and an assortment of colored paper and drawings you could put together to make cards.  Since the rules were, you could not stand in one spot to talk while in the gym, the girls mainly walked around it in circles if they wanted to converse with a friend from one of the other houses.

It has an incredible crafts room, with looms, bolts of cloth, sewing machines, beads, buttons, thread, quilting frames.  Some of the Native work that came out of it was absolutely gorgeous, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the crafts woman received the price her work deserved.  These crafts women were long-term residents, slipped in and out quietly, so I never learned the mysterious ticket for being part of their crowd.

It has greenhouses with wonderful plants inside, flower beds nestled comfortably in long, wooden boxes, pleasant gazebos, and even playground equipment for the visiting children of long term inmates.

It has dogs of all shapes and sizes.  Inmates took care of these dogs, running or walking them through the yards on leashes, teaching them to heel, to sit, to come, to socialize with other dogs and be polite to strangers.  When the dogs were trained, having completed their sentences, they were put up for adoption to the outside world.

One of the houses even had a pool table.  None of these activities were allowed for people who were going to be there a few weeks, or even a few months.  You had to work your way up to them, and that work took at least a year.  If they only allowed Internet use, I felt I would have been ambitious enough to stay.

I found out quickly enough the pod I was in was considered “the hole”.  The only girls who stayed there were either those waiting to get out on bail, were not expected to be kept long, or who were regimented back as punishment.

The rules were strictest in the first house.  We had “count” four times a day at set hours.  We had to be in our house by then and answer roll call.  We were restricted in where we could go.  We could not visit the other houses, we had limited access to the yard, and could not watch the Saturday night movies on the big screen.  We were locked in our houses by 5:30 in the evening until 6:30 in the morning.  The other houses didn’t lock up until 9:30 p.m., and had much more freedom to roam.

When a girl got busted back to the hole, she did everything she could to be pleasant and entertaining so she could work her way out again.  Laughter was free, and laughter was abundant.  One girl who had been busted back delighted in telling us how she got there.  She said she had gotten tired of being strip searched.  When the guard asked her to spread her cheeks and cough, she farted.  Hiking one leg up on a chair, she grabbed her butt with both hands and demonstrated.  Fortunately, even the guards found her escapade humorous and in a few short days, her advanced house privileges were reinstated.

The guards were liberal with their own jokes.  After one of the girls asked if she could borrow some white-out, he came back a few hours later and told her it was time for her to scrape the white-out off her page as she had only borrowed it.

One charmed me the first day he appeared.  With his bushy eyebrows and twinkling eyes, he looked just like a leprechaun.  He opened the door to our house, stuck his head inside and asked, “got pot?”

After he left, the veteran girls whispered to me, “don’t let him fool you.  We call him the cutter.”

“Why do you call him the cutter?”  I asked.

“Because his handcuffs are especially sharp.  If he uses them on you, your wrists will turn all black and blue.”

Now I was scared, and shrank away from him when he came in for count.  Finally one of the girls said, “McCarthy, show Karla your handcuffs.”  They had been especially made, alright.  The edges were the smooth and wide.  The clips were limited so they could not squeeze down on tiny, delicate wrists.  The “cutter” had taken the extra step to make sure he had the most humane handcuffs around.

However, this is not to say vacationland was completely perfect.  Contact with the outside world was practically impossible.  Although we were allowed two fifteen minute phone calls a day, we often spent the first ten minutes trying to connect, with the operator telling us each time, “I’m sorry.  All the lines are busy,” so that often times, the call only lasted five minutes.  Nor could the person answering on the other line switch the phone to the person you wanted to talk with.  If you were dialing your sister and her boyfriend answered, then handed it to the person you wanted to speak with, you were immediately cut off, with the operator announcing, “I’m sorry.  We do not accept third party calls.”

In order to receive visitors, the inmate had to fill out a request form to gain approval.  The request form wanted you to not only state the name of the person, but the street address, social security number, state identification and relationship to you.  The visitor had a two hour wait for a fifteen minute visit.

Over half the girls who came in sported new bruises around the wrists and forearms.  Some were bruised on the neck, upper arms, ribs and legs.  Some were bandaged and told they had sprains, but were never x-rayed to see if there was a break.

It’s the general opinion that if you’re in prison, you’ll receive free medical and dental care.  This isn’t completely true.  If you have two or three hundred dollars in your books, you can buy a new set of teeth or use it for commissary items.  The commissary offers a wide variety of products; refreshments, chips, cookies, microwave popcorn, coffee, cosmetics, stationary and pens, all at Walmart prices.  If you don’t have money on the books, the only way you’ll get these privileges is to work for thirty-five cents an hour.

If you’re in the hole, you can get a job mopping floors, doing laundry or working in the kitchen, but you don’t get one of the cushy jobs like dog training or working in the green houses the girls in the other houses are offered.  Still, when a job comes open, the girls line up like shopping day at the mall for it?  Is it to get their teeth fixed?  For commissary privileges?  No.  It’s for a four hour nightly pop of meds.

The meds are apparently so good, there are professional jail hoppers who come in and out on a regular basis for a thee day crash on meds.  They are called blue jackets because they always get busted for misdemeanors. Crazy Kelley was one of them. I had known Crazy Kelley for quite a few years, but I had not known she was a jail hopper, only as someone who routinely got into trouble.  The first time I saw her on the inside, she was in a separate house, but part of the same pod.  When I asked her what she was doing there, she told me she had gone to her ex-boyfriend’s house and burned some clothes she had given him.  He called the police and they busted her for destruction of property.

Her stay lasted three days, then she was out.  About a week later, she was not only back, she was sharing my room.  This was a little discomforting because Crazy Kelley was…well, crazy.  The first thing she did was demand her phone call, which disconcerted the house mouse.  The house mouse is the one who oversee’s and keeps order in the house; sort of the mama.  The house mouse was very unhappy because Kelley’s demand meant someone else would lose their phone call for the evening.  She finally sacrificed her own, but was very unhappy about it.  “The bitch,” she said, throwing herself in a chair.  “She can have her damned phone call, but I’m not doing her anymore favors”.

I sat next to her.  “I know that girl,” I told her.  “We call her Crazy Kelley for a reason.”

Her eyes lit up.  “Hey girls, did you hear that?  She’s Crazy Kelley and she’s called that for a reason.”

I was mortified.  I was afraid of what they would say when Kelley returned.  Sure enough, as soon as Kelley walked through the door, the house mouse exclaimed, “Hey Kelley, do you know what Karla said about you?”  She looked at me a moment while I cringed.  “She says she loves you!”

“Well, I love her too,” said Kelley complacently.  She had just made her phone call and had gotten her meds and went to her room to pop them.

I did love her enough to be concerned about her.  When they had brought her in this time, one of her hands was swollen and so bruised, it was turning black.  “What happened,” I asked.  “You just got out.”  She gave me an incoherent story; something to do with having called an ambulance because she was suffering a heart attack.  Instead of the ambulance coming, the police had showed up and stepped on her hand.

“I think you have two broken fingers.  When you get out, I want you to have them photographed and file a complaint against the police.”

“Uh huh,” she said, yawned, and went to sleep.  Three days later, she bailed out, although it’s doubtful she made her complaint.  As she was leaving, we all shouted, “remember, this isn’t a hotel!”  She nodded and waved cheerfully.

To Be Contd.

You’ll find them on the streets of just about every Indian town: dusty signboards, the paint beginning to flake off the battered aluminum sheets, proclaiming So-and-So English Coaching Class or English Academy, where one can learn “good spoken English for your bright career.”

But isn’t this redundant? Wasn’t the Indian subcontinent a British colony for close to two hundred years, whether that was under the East India Company or the Crown? Since the modern Indian educational system is a creation of the British, shouldn’t English be already taught everyone in schools as a matter of course? Then why should institutes like these coaching classes exist?

An old government-sponsored TV ad from the mid-1980s provides part of the answer.

It shows, as I remember, a black-and-white cartoon cafe in a foreign city; two “Indian” men are sitting talking to each other in English. A very Chinese-looking waiter (slant-eyes shown as lines) comes up and asks, in English, “Excuse me, don’t you have a language of your own?” The Indians say “Of course we do; our language is Hindi.” “Then,” says the waiter, “why are you talking in my language?”

This ludicrous bit of idiocy is so perfectly representative of the way the moronic Indian bureaucratic mind works, that it’s stuck in my brain for well over two decades now. It was meant, of course, to “promote” Hindi and the use of Hindi as the “national” language. Hindi, a language which is the mother-tongue of rather less than half of all Indians, a language which in many cases is more foreign than English to many Indians (especially in the East and South). Obviously, not only was this use-Hindi drive not going to succeed, it meant that parts of the country which weren’t Hindi-speaking would simply decide Hindi was going to be foisted on them by force and try and protect themselves by promoting their own local languages instead.

Usually, the way this language chauvinism worked was by banishing English, the language of the foreign rulers, from the curriculum of government-run schools and colleges, and force said schools and colleges to teach in the local language. The products of this education system, of course, found themselves all at sea when asked to compete for jobs or try and get a technical education. And some states tried to “compensate” by introducing a measure of English, somewhere around halfway through the average child’s school career. This English was taught on the side if at all (the teachers themselves not knowing much about the subject) and in at least one case, in West Bengal state, something bizarre called “functional English” was taught. This “functional” English basically mean that grammar, spelling, sentence construction and all the rest didn’t matter. All that mattered was somehow getting one’s message across – in whatever mangled form, so long as it was marginally comprehensible – and these people failed miserably even at that.

Meanwhile the politicians inveighed against English from public podia, and quietly sent their own progeny to the best private English-language schools, because they knew perfectly well that English was the key to prosperity. The private school industry flourished too, with little schools springing up in suburbs all competing to provide education in English, and making money hand over fist from the Great Indian Muddle Class. I remember seeing one such school which went by the same name as my old school, St Edmund’s, in a Lucknow suburb. It consisted of one single-storey suburban home and perhaps four rooms turned to classrooms – and all were packed.

Meanwhile, the average Indian parent was frustrated and helpless. He or she knew perfectly well that without English, the kids had no future. But private schools were far beyond his or her financial means, and the government schools taught no English that was worth the name. There was therefore a new market demand for English teaching outside the formal education system. Now, if we know one thing, it’s that when there’s a demand, there’s always someone to fulfill that demand. And of course Indians are known throughout the world for their opportunism; there’s even a saying that Indians can’t score goals in hockey because if given a corner they’ll build a shop on it.

And so it began; high up on the upper floors of tottering buildings, or along urine-tainted dank corridors behind tailor’s shops, sprung up the “English coaching institutes”. Many of them came with fancy names: Britannia English Coaching, Advent English Tutorials, and the like. None of them made any claim to either official recognition or certification, but they didn’t need it, because the demand to learn English was so great that they were making money hand over fist anyway. It’s absolutely certain that many of them were owned by the very same politicians who blocked English from the formal education system, because they were making so much money this way.

Some of the people who attended these places were quite surprising: not just the usual students taking English lessons on the side, but businessmen, salespeople, and even housewives. These housewives were a special category, because you must understand that especially in North India housewives have no independent identities of their own. They are expected to be virtual appendages of their men and have no personalities left, so one might wonder why they might be learning English of all things. The truth is utterly typical. They were attending class so that they could go home later and pass on what they learned to their hubbies, who were too busy or too embarrassed to come and take lessons themselves.

As for the quality of the English taught in these institutions, I love to remember a little episode from my Lucknow days. A friend of mine introduced me to a guy – I don’t remember his name now, but let’s call him Atul Verma – who had been attending one of these places for a month, and was very proud of his new English speaking ability. My friend urged him to introduce himself in English. This person turned slightly greyish around the lips, looked around furtively and mumbled “Myself Atul Verma.” And that was all the “English” either of us was able to get out of him.

Then there was erstwhile cricketer Kapil Dev, on TV in the late eighties, promoting another English teaching institute: “It’s-a really a good-a way to learn English.” It was the stuff of pure satire.

This isn’t really too surprising when you look at the teachers in these places, most of whom can hardly string together a coherent English sentence themselves, and who have their jobs only because they’re willing to work cheaper than anyone else. The owners of the coaching classes figure that since the pupils know no English at all anyway, they can’t criticize the quality of the teaching. All of which would be pretty damned hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, especially when you remember that the progeny of those coaching class owners certainly speak English with an artificial Americo-European accent and probably spend half the year on the other side of the planet.

Very recently, though, there’s some sign that the people are finally waking up. In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, the current government has finally decided to begin teaching English from the first grade onwards, as has the government in West Bengal. In both places, the same governments had been fanatically anti-English once but had to acknowledge the realities of people’s resentment about the “lost generations” of the non-English-speaking unemployable.

Of course, these states now have another problem, which is that there are not enough competent English-teachers to teach in the schools. That’s what you get when you throw away the English that you have without giving a thought for what’s to come.

Of course, once they recognize the problem, some kind of solution will finally be found. After all, in a world where, as I read recently, even North Korea has abandoned Russian for English as the foreign language it teaches in its schools, the allegedly hated colonial lingo has never quite been so important.

Myself being sure of this!

Last Easter weekend was the ninety-sixth anniversary of the Uprising in Dublin that without doubt paved the way for the formation of the Irish Republic. Although there are still die-hard so-called republicans in the form of dissidents in the remaining Six Counties of Ulster, I have no doubt whatsoever that within the next ten years or so, the entire country will be totally reunited. I will be happy in a sense, yet sad that it will have taken over four hundred years to achieve it and the loss of the hundreds of thousands of lives it has cost in the process. I am, and have always been, totally against violence to achieve such a status and believe that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 made it possible by peaceful means.

The visit of HM Queen Elizabeth Second to Ireland in May last year made everything possible. It was in fact, her earlier namesake, Elizabeth First who basically started all the bitterness and bloodshed that has plagued the island for centuries.

I will try to relate the history of ‘The Troubles’ that has continued almost unabated throughout that time…

When Elizabeth First assumed the throne in November 1558 on the death of her father Henry the Eight, she was Queen of England and all Ireland. At her instigation, the English controlled Irish Parliament in Dublin passed an Act of Supremacy confirming the Queen as head of the Irish Church. This was a Protestant denomination whilst the majority of Irish were Catholics. The act required all holders of offices of state or church to swear allegiance to her.

The English had tried several times to fully extend their jurisdiction outside Dublin but had failed several times. They had built a ‘Pale’ from north of Dublin, west into the midlands and south towards county Wicklow. Within this area the English dominated all aspects of life with the majority of inhabitants loyal to the Crown. Outside, Irish life as in the past continued under the control of various chieftains. Elizabeth ordered that her authority be fully extended to cover all Ireland.

Her attempts were to initiate The Nine Year’s War…

Two of the highest ranking Irishmen of the time were Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and chief of the O’Neill clan and Hugh (Red Hugh) O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel (now Donegal). They were fiercely Irish and maintained the Gaelic way of life, its laws, language and customs within their territories. The title of ‘Earl’ had been granted by the Crown to the head of the clan O’Neill and was held by Hugh’s grandfather. After a bloody battle with a relative he secured the title in 1595. The title was not the important factor in the clan. The title ‘The O’Neill’, the Irish version for leadership was what he wanted.

In 1587, at the age of fifteen, O’Donnell was arrested in an attempt to break the allegiance between the O’Neill and O’Donnell clans. He was imprisoned in Dublin Castle. He escaped briefly in 1591 but was recaptured within days. In January 1592 with the help of O’Neill he again escaped accompanied by his brother Art O’Neill. It is the only successful escape from the Castle during its long history.

They made their way across the Dublin and Wicklow mountains in the freezing snow and rain. Art died with another escapee suffering from frostbite and exposure. After receiving hospitality and medical aid from an ally they returned to their home counties in Ulster.

They organized the Irish chieftains and began a long running campaign against the English armies. Between 1600 and 1601 the English had eighteen thousand soldiers in Ireland. This was one of the largest armies ever mustered by the English at that time and it was putting a strain on the English Treasury.

O’Donnell had clan connections with Scotland and through his contacts; he enlisted Scottish mercenaries known as Redshanks. O’Neill on the other hand, as an Earl was entitled to hold a small army. By rotating the members of it he had literally thousands of trained men at his disposal. He purchased muskets and pikes from Scotland and England and enlisted the promise of help from Philip Second of Spain. This was an allegiance of Catholics against the threat of Elizabeth’s Protestantism. As a result, the army of O’Neill came to eight thousand men.

The Irish were very adept at skirmishes against the English army. Whilst they floundered in the bogs, the lightly armed Irish attacked them from all sides. The Irish were also familiar with their surroundings and weather conditions. The English were not and a great many died. In order for the English army to enter Ulster – the O’Neill stronghold – it was necessary for them to pass through mountains which the Irish were able to guard and prevent any movement by the English.

As a result of their static existence on many occasions the English suffered from cholera and dysentery. Again the army was dissipated.

In 1599, Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex arrived in Ireland with an army of 17,000 men. He decided to enforce English rule on the southern provinces of Leinster and Munster – leaving the territories of O’Neill and O’Donnell until later. When later he made his way towards Ulster he met with disaster when thousands of his troops were killed. Others who took refuge in garrisons quickly contacted typhoid and dysentery and more died.

Essex signed a treaty with O’Neill which was not agreed by Elizabeth and in order to brief her, and the fact that he expected to be recalled, he returned to London. He was charged with acting without the Queens permission and was executed.

Meanwhile back in Ireland, the Irish were inflicting innumerable casualties on the English Army. However, an English army under George Carew in 1600 killed 1,200 Irish and took the surrender of over 10,000 more.

In Ulster, the province had been entered by the English army at Derry. They had employed a ‘new’ tactic whereby the countryside was laid bare by burning all crops and killing the inhabitants. They believed that without help or food the Irish would be forced to surrender.

In 1601 news was received by O’Neill in Ulster that the long awaited help from Spain had arrived with 4,000 troops. However it could not have landed any further away than it did. It arrived in Kinsale, County Cork where they were immediately prevented from moving north by the English. O’Neill gathered his armies and the long march south began. They expected to trap the English between themselves and the Spanish.

Against advice, O’Neill ordered an attack on the English but as they formed up, the English in fact attacked O’Neill’s army with a cavalry charge. The Irish were routed whilst the Spanish surrendered. The remnants of the Irish army began the long march back to Ulster. They were totally defeated in all areas of the south.

O’Donnell left for Spain and pleaded with Philip for another invasion. However, in 1602 he died there. It was believed that he was poisoned by an English agent. His brother took over leadership of the clan O’Donnell but he and O’Neill were now reduced to random guerrilla tactics. The scorched earth policy and the killing of local inhabitants by the English were having a disastrous effect on the Irish army.

O’Donnell surrendered with good terms 1602 and was allowed to keep his lands under the direction of the Crown. O’Neill held on a little longer until on 30th March 1603 he too surrendered on good terms. Elizabeth had died the week previous on 24th March.

James First became King of England and the two Irish leaders were on good terms with him. He granted them full pardons and the return of all their land and property. The proviso was in each case that they abandon all titles, disband their private armies and swear loyalty only to the Crown of England. A similar amnesty was granted to all rebels throughout Ireland.

It may seem generous of the English but in fact it was purely a commercial transaction. They were almost bankrupt with the English unwilling to provide any more funds for a continued war.

The death toll of the Irish has now been revised to an almost certain 100,000 with at least 30,000 English soldiers dead in Ireland. Most of them died from disease.

A form of peace prevailed until in 1607, both chieftains – O’Neill and O’Donnell – gathered their clans and families together and exiled themselves to Europe. They hoped that they would one day return and reclaim not only their own lands but the entire island of Ireland.

This was known as ‘The Flight of the Earls’ or by the Irish, ‘The Wild Geese’. Many of those who left Ireland became famous in Continental armies reaching the highest ranks. Since then, Irishmen have throughout the centuries left to join foreign armies all over the world. I suppose really that it could even refer to my own family with my father having served in the Royal Air Force, followed there by my eldest brother, another in the British Army and my good self to the London Police.

In 1608 O’Neill’s and O’Donnell’s lands were confiscated by the English. The land was offered to Scottish, English and Welsh people thereby beginning the Plantation of Ulster.

So there you have it: Ulster (Northern Ireland) from being one of the most Gaelic, Catholic Provinces of Ireland is now the opposite. It is the six counties of the eight in Ulster that remain in the United Kingdom that have caused all the trouble over the years. Men, women and children have died on both sides of the divide for the ‘cause’ – one side to remain in the UK whilst the other for a united Ireland.

The strangest thing of all is that there are no border posts now on account of the European Union. The only way I knew that I had left the Republic and entered Northern Ireland was when I saw that the telephone boxes had changed colour from Green to Red. The truth is that you can spend Sterling on either side of the ‘border’, or Euros, or dollars, or …You see – money talks…

One morning, when Gregoralingam Samsamurthy woke from uneasy dreams of buxom maamis with big breasts and oiled black hair, he discovered that he had been changed in the night to a gigantic insect.

Yes, it was all there, he saw, lying on his back and looking down the length of his body through his compound eyes – the three pairs of jointed spiny legs, moving spasmodically; the relatively long antennae whipping back and forth, the mouth parts which he worked against each other in a futile attempt to lick his teeth.

“I’m an insect,” he thought. “Now how did that happen?”

Trying vainly to wriggle into a more comfortable position, he thought about how it might have occurred. “Perhaps,” he said to himself, “it was that woman in the dream with the very big – I mean the one who told me to quit bugging her when she caught me looking at her very big…! Well, if she didn’t want me to look at her she shouldn’t have walked around without anything on but panties, even if it was a dream.”

This train of thought gave way to another. “Assuming that this is not also a dream,” he thought, “I suppose I am actually an insect. This is a bit inconvenient. The kids in school won’t take too kindly to being taught by an insect. Especially in biology class,” he added, “they’re going to say they want to dissect me!”

The idea proved so distressing that he tried to find solace in the poster he’d bought from the bearded old Muslim man who had a stall in the lane behind Kumaramangalam Hardware Stores and sold porn books and photos under the counter. He’d bought the poster just yesterday in the evening and had intended to hide it away before sleeping, but had forgotten, and it stood propped up against the cupboard, the woman smiling coyly at him over her bared and, if truth be told, rather pendulous bosom. He couldn’t bend his head enough to see down to her exuberant thicket of pubic hair, but for some reason she no longer looked appealing at all. He wondered what he’d ever seen in her.

“Ayyo!” he thought. “Maybe I’ll only ever be sexually interested in insects again. I don’t even know how one would go about seducing a cockroach or a beetle, even supposing one could find one my size.” The thought was so appalling that he forgot to worry about the kids for some time. But the growing demands of his body brought his mind back to the situation.

“I had better get up now,” he thought. “It’s probably something like six in the morning and if I don’t get up soon I’ll be late for the morning tuitions.”

This proved to be easier said than done. His carapace, with its chitinous plates, was convex, inflexible, and proved difficult to manoeuvre on the soft mattress. He hated the mattress, but his mother had insisted on him putting the softest one in the house on his bed. “You work hard,” she’d informed him, as if he didn’t know that, “and you need to sleep comfortably.” So he’d had to take the accursed thing, which was so soft that it had always hurt his spine. Now, of course, he didn’t have a spine, but instead of giving him leverage to get up, it just led to his wriggling around like, well, a bug on its back.

As he lay wriggling, there was a knock at the door. “Perianna”. It was, of course, his sister Umaparvathi. “Perianna, your kaapi is ready. You should get up now. You’ll get late.” Samsamurthy waited, hoping she would go away, but Umaparvathi was a persistent girl, always had been. “Perianna,” she called, knocking at the door, “are you sick? Your kaapi is getting cold.”

Samsamurthy began to get exasperated with her voice. He’d never, he thought, noticed just how whiny it was, and he wished there was some way of making her shut up. But she just went on and on and on.

“Amma Appa,” she called, “Perianna is not answering. I think he may be sick.” This, quite predictably, brought Amma scurrying. “Kanna,” she called urgently. “Kanna, open the door. Are you ill?”

Samsamurthy attempted to deny this vigorously. Indeed, he was not ill. He was merely an insect. But all he managed was a kind of hissing noise through his spiracles.

“I can hear him coughing,” Umaparvathi said.

“Maybe he’s got the whooping cough,” Amma replied. “I can hear the whooping noise. I’m sure he’s got whooping cough. Get a doctor, quick.”

“What’s going on?” it was Appa’s voice, heard faintly. “Where’s my breakfast? What are you two doing outside the boy’s room? Why isn’t he up yet, anyway? He’s getting lazy; he needs a good beating, but you never let me hit him when it would have done some good.”

Samsamurthy listened to this peroration with mounting irritation, and tried without success to push himself upright in the bed. All this did was bring the poster into full view, dimples of cellulite, unkempt pubic puff, unshaven legs and all the rest of it. It provoked a moment of such pure nausea that he tried to close his eyes so as not to see it. But, not having eyelids, he couldn’t. Hissing with disgust, he sank back on the bed.

“Now I’ve had it,” he thought. “At least I hope I’ll be interested in female insects.”

There was a much louder banging on the door. “Get up!” Appa commanded. “You young ones have it too easy, disobeying your elders and betters. I’ve a good mind to break my walking stick across your back.”

“He’s sick,” Amma protested, in the whispery little voice which was all she dared use in counter to her husband. “He has whooping cough.”

“Whooping cough?” Appa yelled. “When I was his age I had malaria, and measles, and still I wasn’t ever one minute late getting up. Open, you! I tell you, if my dad had caught me locking my door, he’d have whipped the skin off me. I’ve been far too indulgent with him.”

“Appa,” Umaparvathi broke in. “The students are coming for morning tuition. I can see them from the window.”

There was a pause. “You get up,” Appa shouted. “You’re supposed to be a teacher, and you know that the tuition brings in more money than your salary, and you owe it to us to earn, and…”

With a convulsive movement, Samsamurthy rolled off the bed and fell on to the floor with a thud. Fortunately he fell the right way up and didn’t hurt himself too much. He was about to scuttle to the door and open it when he thought of the poster. His parents couldn’t be allowed to know that he had bought a nude poster. It wasn’t what good boys did – good bachelor boys weren’t even supposed to know or care what a naked woman was like. Even though the thought of a naked woman was enough now to make him puke, he went to it and yanked it down from where he’d propped it up on the wall. Not finding anywhere else to put it, he finally slid it under the bed.

Then he went over to the door, but he found himself labouring for breath, since his spiracles couldn’t oxygenate his tissues fast enough. Whistling like a boiling kettle, he heaved himself up to the door and somehow slipped the latch open.

Perhaps he should have known what would happen next. In his defence, though, he wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

Fortunately, though there was a stampede, nobody was hurt.

********************************

“I’ll go to Tirupathi Temple tomorrow,” Amma sobbed, “and shave my head. I’ll beg the Lord Balaji to cure him.”

It was later in the day. Samsamurthy was locked inside his room, his parents and sister whispering urgently outside. They’d phoned him sick at work, and sent away his tuition kids. Fortunately, none of them had caught a glimpse of the big insect or it would have been the talk of the town.

“I talked to the astrologer,” her husband said. “He says it’s because of the positions of Rahu and Ketu, and we shouldn’t do anything until the malign influence passes.” From inside his room, Samsamurthy could hear Appa’s urgent whisper. “Most of all,” he said, “we can’t let it out that this happened. Who would marry Umaparvathi then?”

“I don’t want to get married,” Umaparvathi said sullenly. “I want to become an engineer.”

Her parents ignored her. “This is what happens when we don’t keep tight control over children,” Appa said. “They go wild and then the gods get angry, and this kind of thing happens. I told you again and again, he needs to be beaten, but you would never let me put a hand on him. Now see where that gets you.”

Samsamurthy tried to protest, but only ended up hissing angrily.

“Listen to him!” Amma said. “The poor boy must be suffering. Now if only Lord Balaji takes pity on him then everything will be all right.”

“In any case,” Appa responded, “he has to recover quickly, so as to keep earning. We can’t risk his losing his job.”

“At a time like this,” Amma sobbed, “all you can think of is money?”

“Well, what do you suggest I think about? If he doesn’t recover, who’s going to earn? Do you expect me to go to work at my age?”

“I can work,” Umaparvathi declared. “I can easily get a salesgirl’s job in Muthuswamy and Sons. They pay well, and I can work in the evening, after school. All I’d have to do is give up music class. I hate music class anyway.”

Neither parent looked at her. “Your music class is important,” Amma said. “You’ll be able to get a better husband if you can sing. And I won’t let you go work somewhere like Muthuswamy where you can talk to boys.”

“The astrologer told me he’ll do some special calculations tonight,” Appa said to Amma. “He’ll be able to say when the influence of Rahu and Ketu will ease.”

“Give your brother some dosa to eat,” Amma told the girl. “He’ll be hungry and dosa is his favourite.”

The thought of dosa made Samsamurthy’s stomach turn over just as the naked woman in the poster had earlier, but he was hungry. Suddenly he realised he was famished. So when his sister pushed open the door and timidly slid a plate of dosa into the room, he made an attempt to eat. But he could not taste the food at all, and found it excessively crumbly – his mouth parts couldn’t handle it. So he flung it down again, and, disconsolately wandering about the room, suddenly he smelt something that felt to him like heaven. Throwing himself upon the bookcase, he pulled out the school textbooks, and, one by one, began to eat the paste binding the pages together.

Later, he had a sudden idea. He had heard Appa going out, stomping angrily across the floor, and knew he was going to the astrologer to find out what the reading had disclosed. Amma was sitting in front of her household shrine, praying loudly, and Umaparvathi had gone to evening music class. He decided to see if he could crawl up the wall and through the ventilator under the ceiling.

It turned out to be extremely easy. His spiny legs proved able to adhere easily to the plaster, and his broad but flat body squeezed without difficulty through the narrow space. He didn’t even have as much trouble breathing as he’d had down on the floor.

He squatted on the terrace of the building, looking out at the city, and especially at the big shopping complex opposite. Without too much difficulty, he thought, he’d be able to crawl across the intervening space and through ventilators like the one he’d just come through, all the better to find things he could eat, like the wonderful glue earlier in the day. He could even perhaps rob a safe or two and bring back the money, and leave it lying around, so his parents wouldn’t feel the pinch. He’d do it tomorrow, he thought. For tonight, it was enough that he knew he could do it.

After a while, he climbed back through the window, rooted around and ate a little more, and then went to sleep.

That night he had a dream. He was scuttling around in a huge room full of other insects, all of whom were very attractive and female. One particular lady cockroach drew his attention immediately, with her long sexy antennae and the come-hither look in her smouldering compound eyes. He ran after her, trying to caress her with his own antennae, but she kept on flicking him away. At last, with an angry hiss, she scuttled away faster than he could follow, squeezed through a hole in the floor, and disappeared. And when Samsamurthy looked around, he found that all the others had disappeared as well. He was alone.

He woke so bitterly disappointed that it was some time before he realised that his spine was aching. This was followed by the discovery that he had a spine, and a moment after that he realised that he had the usual four limbs again, and a nose and mouth and the rest of it. In the wan light of dawn, he saw that he was sprawled on top of his terrible soft mattress, human once more.

“Ayyaiyyo,” he said. “I wonder if I’m attracted to women again? There’s only one way to find out.”

Leaping up eagerly, he bent under the bed and pulled out the poster, his heart already thumping with excitement. And then, looking at it, he let out a hollow groan.

Sometime during the evening, he’d eaten most of it.

By Karla Fetrow

How the Citizen’s Informer sets up Deals 

Jennifer, oh Jennifer, how could you be so cruel?  This is not to say all Jennifers are invested with slithering personalities… I know several who are decent, honest, gregarious and kind, but this particular Jennifer; one whose last name I never did learn, throws a stone-packed ice-ball at the good name of Jennifers everywhere.  She used to be my friend; or so I thought.  Apparently friendships are not nearly so valuable to her as saving her skin when it came time to take a dose of federal induced medicine.

In all fairness, I had been forewarned.  A couple months earlier, I had been stopped by two federal agents while on my way to work, told they had a warrant to search my house, and the right to search my backpack.  There was nothing in my backpack except my wallet, camera  and a few of the things women were inclined to incur as necessary items for leaving the house, and nothing in my home except an ounce of marijuana, so I wasn’t greatly concerned.  It’s legal in Alaska to keep a few ounces of weed rattling about in your house for personal use, and I readily admitted to the presence of an ounce when they asked me.

They then proceeded to ask me about the guns, expensive electronic equipment and large sums of cash they insisted I had somewhere in hiding in my home.  This was surprising to me.  All that wealth, and I was living in a ramshackle trailer, with a faulty furnace not generating enough heat to bring the temperature up over fifty degrees in the winter, had to carry water because I had no plumbing, and was walking to work every day in thirty below weather because I had no car.  I asked them why I would be doing this if I had lots of money.

They weren’t impressed.  One of the agents told me he had worked in law enforcement for twenty years and he could tell I’ve been selling pounds of weed.  Pounds of weed!  Whoa!  He must have been mistaking me for the neighbor down the road, or one of at least half a dozen other people within a close vicinity.  I didn’t tell him this, but I did tell him I was lucky to receive two ounces at a time, and that on a front.  “You don’t sell weed?”  He asked.

“No, I answered.

“We have information you just sold an ounce.”

That’s when it occurred to me; there was only one person who had gotten an ounce from me and that was Jennifer.  Figuring she had just gotten popped for the pain killers she liked to peddle to anyone interested and they had found her little stash as well, causing her to squeal like a little stuck pig, I told them, “sometimes, if my friends are looking, I help them out, and if I am  looking, they do me the same favor.  But it isn’t really selling.  It’s just favors between friends.”

They then began asking me questions about my boss, which began to piss me off a little.  “Look,” I told them.  “My boss has cameras all over the store to keep things legal and aboveboard. Nobody conducts illegal transactions from his store.  He wouldn’t stand for it.”

They finally let me go, and I arrived at work with one minute to spare before I was officially late.  I punched in, then decided to tell both my co-workers and my boss what had just happened.  They decided Jennifer was not allowed back in the store.  She was trouble.

She certainly was.  According to the police report, CS11-17; Jennifer; was given three hundred dollars to purchase an ounce of marijuana from me.  The report read that “due to scheduling conflict within the unit, the controlled purchase needed to be moved to a later date.”  There was a scheduling conflict alright, but not with the agents.  Jennifer had been calling me night and day, wheedling and begging for an ounce and I had been ignoring her.  The report went on to say that she was finally escorted to my work place to arrange the purchase, telling the police deals were often set up from there.  It was because she showed up at my work place that I finally caved.  I was very protective of my boss’s small, independent business, and had made it a point to keep business and indulgences separate.  In order to get her off my back, I had told her to come by when I got off work and we’d set something up.

The little snitch was wired the entire time.  She had recorded my agreement to meet her at the house and when she arrived, had recorded our conversation in which I had told her I’d call a friend.  Officially, the arrangements had been made for the feds trafficking case.  And officially, I had just committed a felon when I scored the ounce and turned it over to her for the same price I had paid for it.  We were friends.  I wasn’t interested in capitalizing off her, but apparently, she was very interested in capitalizing off me.

My first meeting with my attorney, I was distrustful.  After all, he was a public defender and public defenders weren’t that interested in winning cases. I told him frankly I wanted a Civil Liberties attorney because the whole thing had been a set-up.

“What do you mean?”  He asked.   So I told him the whole story, adding I knew it was Jennifer because I don’t deal and she was the only one who had come by to ask for ounce.

“She begged me,” I said.  “She had gone to the states for several years, so when she came back, I figured she’d lost touch with her regular dealer.  I used to buy from her at least as much as she bought from me, so I thought I would do her a favor.”

“Then it was entrapment.”   Since it was rather pointless to try and continue hiding her identity, he then told me Jennifer was a citizen informant; a fancy word fora narc, a squealer.  She had agreed to turn in everyone she could so the charges against her would be dropped. “She chose you because you are not dangerous.”

There is a rather outdated viewpoint of the citizen’s informer as a somewhat sympathetic person; someone caught between the forces of lawful and illicit dealings by unfortunate circumstances; the unwilling or unwitting fool trapped by the mafia, the drug addict who would like to get off drugs but finds himself hopelessly entrenched, racketeers who develop a conscience, smugglers who wish to drop out of the game… but there is very little truth to this stereotype.  An informer informs for one reason only; he or she got caught and wants the least amount of sentencing possible.

The modern day informant might do it for money or do it for some kind of weird sense of glory, but a snitch chooses the least likely avenues for retaliation.  When Tim Allen, the oil lobbyist turned informer, welched out a number of Alaskan legislators, he did not mention even one of his oil cronies, who certainly carried their own guilt.  He did set up and ruin the life of one rather guileless representative named Vic Kohring.  I’ve known the Kohring family since my early teenage years.  They were honest and hardworking.  The boys didn’t even get into the usual trouble teenagers are so apt to get into, like staying up all night drinking, then terrorizing the neighborhood with loud noise and fast cars, or sneaking off during school hours to smoke cigarettes and make out with girls.  They were part of the clean cut crowd.

Vic was a junior representative.  He hadn’t even been in politics long enough to cut that many shady deals.  Most likely, when he saw how some of the legislators lined their pockets, he was ripe and eager to get a taste of the action himself.  He was set up, and Tim Allen was the wired informer.

When Ted Stevens beat the corruption charges filed against him, stating that the prosecution had with-held evidence favorable to his case, the feds said the elderly Senator’s case was the exception, not the rule.  Senator Lisa Murkowski disagrees.  She recently began pushing a bill that would require prosecutors to immediately turn over evidence to the defense that could be favorable to the accused.  The American Civil Liberties Union, among other human rights committees, also support the bill, saying this type of problem happens too often.

Special Prosecutor, Henry Schuelke, who produced the court -ordered report on misconduct in the Ted Stevens case states there have been cases with Justice Department errors comparable to the Stevens prosecution.  The same judge who presided over Stevens’ case, for example, in 2009 found that prosecutors improperly with-held important psychiatric records of a government witness who was used in a significant number of Guantanamo cases.

According to Schulke, prosecutors with-hold evidence simply because they want to win.  “The motive to win the case is the principal, operative motive.  I do not believe any of the prosecutors harbored a personal animus toward Senator Stevens.  I don’t believe they sought fame and glory.  They did, however, want to win the case.”

Winning is all it’s really about.  Jennifer did not turn in any of the real dealers, the ones who were moving pounds of marijuana or had growing operations in their back yards, and she certainly didn’t turn in her pharmaceutical contacts.  She turned in someone safe, someone who would not jeopardize her own illicit dealings.   “In fact,” said my attorney, “what the courts really want are the major players.  If you turned in your contacts, they would just set you free… but, I don’t see you as that kind of person.”

“I’m not,” I answered.  “And even if I was, the town is really a very small community.  By now, everyone has heard what has happened.  If I walked out of here and starting knocking on people’s doors, they would shut down tighter than a drum.”

My attorney was willing to take the case to trial, but he cautioned me that the wire tapping was damaging.  “It doesn’t really matter,” he explained.  “That you got her the ounce as a favor.  It doesn’t matter that you made no money from it.  The point they will make is that moving a controlled substance without a medical prescription is a felony.”  He then went on to illustrate just how easy it is to commit a felony.  “If you have a friend with a back-ache and you give her pain pills to relieve it, you’ve just committed a felony.  If your friend has an ear infection, and you give her some left-over antibiotics you happen to have on hand, you’ve just committed a felony. “

There are a number of other ways one can quite effortlessly and randomly commit a felony.  Under the three strikes system, practiced in twenty-six states, you can receive a felony conviction for your third driving under the influence of alcohol offense.  Or how about for a one dollar cup of soda?  A Florida man faces felony charges after refusing to pay $1 for a cup of soda in an East Naples McDonald’s restaurant.  The initial charge was for petty theft. But due to Abaire’s record of prior petty theft convictions, the charge was increased from a misdemeanor to a felony under Florida’s ‘three strikes’ statute.

After throwing a tantrum in school, Selecia Johnson was handcuffed, charged with battery, and kept in police custody for an hour before her parents found out what was going on. Though all charges have been dropped, Salecia — a 6-year-old –  now has an arrest record.

Should I try to beat the feds?  I had to think about this.  People who are sitting in jail do not normally beat a trial by jury.  People who are sitting in jail with a young public defender; even a very sincere and idealistic one; do not normally beat a trial by jury.  “I want a reduced bail hearing,” I said.

Two weeks later, there still was no word that I would be granted a reduced bail hearing.  Five thousand dollars cash or credit bail; called corporate bail; is really an astronomical amount for trafficking a small quantity of weed in a state where marijuana is the primary drug of choice.  In terms of bonded bail, where the bail bondsman covers the main cost, it would amount to $50,000 bail; the type of bail usually placed on more serious crime, like burglary or armed robbery.  It’s to be supposed that somehow, as a corporate, the courts still believed I should be able to cough up five thousand dollars.

So I sat, and read, and took walks in their melting exercise yard.  I also observed.  It wasn’t long before I noticed a particular pattern in the revolving door of detainees.  As soon as a few beds were unoccupied for any length of time, there was a sudden rash of new criminals, and we were filled to maximum capacity again.

I also discovered four other women from my community within the first two weeks I was incarcerated; women I knew on a first time basis; a couple who were long term friends.  Doing the math, I estimated that at this rate, every woman in my home town would have a taste of Highland Vacation Land within the next five years.

I noticed another disturbing trend, the number of girls who had been arrested because of the men who had placed them there.  One young woman, no more than five feet tall and a hundred ten pounds, was arrested after getting into a shouting match with her (male) neighbor and attacking him with her fists.  When she requested a reduced bail hearing, she was denied, because, the neighbor told the court, he feared for his life.  Another was thrown in the day after she broke up with her boyfriend for using his credit card; a card he had given her permission to use until the day of their quarrel.  One woman was thrown in for going to her ex-boyfriend’s house and destroying all the gifts she had given him previously.  The most pitiful case was a woman charged with harboring a fugitive; a man who had not bothered to tell her he was running from the law when he asked permission to stay at her house.

Women represent the fasted growing population in prison. Between 1980 and 1993, the growth rate for the female prison population increased approximately 313%, compared to 182% for men in the same period. At the end of 1993 women accounted for 5.8% of the total prison population and 9.3% of the jail population nationwide.

Incarcerated women are overwhelmingly poor. The majority of women prisoners (53%) and women in jail (74%) were unemployed prior to incarceration.

When women go to prison, it takes a devastating toll on the family. Sixty seven per cent of women incarcerated in state prisons are mothers of children under 18. Seventy percent of these women compared to 50% of men had custody of their dependent children prior to incarceration.

Six per cent of women are pregnant when they enter prison. In almost all cases, the woman is abruptly separated from her child after giving birth.

In the Continental United States, a disproportionate number – 60% – of inmates are black or Hispanic, but in Alaska discrimination favors a separate minority.  While thirty-seven percent of the population is Alaskan Native, approximately 54% of these girls gone wild belong to the Native category.  Most are incarcerated for minor infractions; drinking while driving, disorderly conduct, petty theft, resisting arrest, but generally receive the maximum penalty for their misdemeanors.

Finally, I received another visit from my attorney.  “The judge has offered you a plea bargain.  If you plea guilty to one count of misconduct with a controlled substance, they will give you thirty months of probation.  If you complete your probation without another infraction, the charge will be stricken from the record.  It’s a good deal,” he added hesitantly.  “If you agree, we can go to court Friday and you can walk out of jail.”

Friday was five days away.  Five days away and there had been no bail reduction hearings, no indication that some champion of human rights would come to my rescue, very little contact with the outside world at all.  I had bills to pay, a house in disorder, responsibilities to assume.  All I had to do was report to a probation officer once a month and stay out of trouble.  While a part of me still wanted to fight the good fight, the entire rest of me wanted to be free.  I accepted the deal.

To be Continued

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/1-mcdonalds-bill-leads-felony-charge-florida-resident

http://www.adn.com/2012/03/28/v-printer/2395454/dont-target-all-prosecutors-for.html

http://people.umass.edu/~kastor/walking-steel-95/ws-women-in-prison.html

May 1st, if you lived in the financial district of Los Angles; or anywhere near it, you couldn’t help but hear the demonstrations going on. I happen to enjoy these things; so I already knew I would participate.

They Marched and Spoke

And yes, it was a wonderful feeling to see them all supporting the very things I write about and have supported for so long.

But, I couldn’t help but feel that it was only just one day.

And that all of the ideas they spoke about were great, if only people would maintain that thought all year long. But would they? I wasn’t confident about that.


Personalizing the Demonstrations

I was asked by two men why I was there. I answered that I was there for probably the same reason as everyone else. But one young man made it more personal.

He said, “No! I want to know why are YOU here?”

So I told him my personal story and he made sort of a usual statement...”You should talk to the press. They love stories like yours.”

I had to correct him. In reality, the press could care less about stories like mine. When all of this happened to me, I was certain that if only the right reporter heard about the injustice, they’d run with the story. I realized, quickly, that this was far from the truth.

After May Day

But even while I sat at Pershing Square and listened to all of the music and speeches; I couldn’t help but wonder about the aftermath of May Day.

What would happen once the demonstrators, police, rebel rousers, speechmakers, street painters, hippie socialists and fake hippie photo shooting police spies went home?

And I’m not talking about simply marching in the streets, as the Occupy LA Movement does every Friday night, blocking traffic, and carrying tents, as they shout, “Whose streets, our streets!”

What now?

I’m talking about action in the voting booths, active participation in boycotting corporations exploiting employees, living our lives in a manner that tells the 1% that we aren’t lying down and accepting what they’ve planned for us; but instead, we are actively going to ensure that living our lives with quality matters too.

We’ve proven that boycotts work. Remember the boycotts of Bank of America and how that changed their policy? Why not implement this into a method of change? For instance, can we start a site aimed at:

• Companies asking for Facebook passwords during an      interview
• Companies discriminating based on age
• Companies threatening employees for using vacation time
• Companies with over 50 people who don’t offer health      care plans

Why not provide a list of companies and their behavior, the same way they look upon us for our reputations? Do I really need financial services from a company who asks for Facebook passwords during the hiring process?

Yesterday was supposed to be the day of the worker. So why aren’t workers bringing back unions to solidify fair employment contracts?

If the excuse is that we removed unions to keep our jobs, then aren’t we living in denial?

Those jobs went overseas right after the unions were removed!

So…what happens now?

• Are we going to unite and go after the 1%?
• Are we going to vote for a leader that demands they pay      their fair share of taxes?
• Are we going to stop unfair overly personal background      checks?
• Are we going to create corporate reputations?

We have the ability. But will we do what’s needed?

Grosvenor Square Riots – 1968.

When the London Riots of August 2011 was ongoing, I was shocked, horrified and indeed frightened at the behaviour of the thousands of young men and women who were looting, assaulting and committing arson at numerous sites across the city and suburbs. I watched on television as police officers, fire officers and ambulance personnel came under severe attack from all directions.

My thoughts wandered back to the mid 1960’s when as a young Constable I found myself frequently on duty policing demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Quite often those demonstrations turned into what we then knew as ‘riots’ which bore no resemblance to the 2011 versions.

I shall try to outline a little of the ‘history’ behind the period of which I write whilst at the same time try to put it into context…………………..

When the Second World War ended in 1945, many young soldiers, both men and women, who returned from overseas and other military duties, settled down, married and began to have families. There was a boom in childbirth over the next several years.

Subsequently, in the mid 1960’s, those same children were in their late teens and early twenties. They had grown up hearing and reading about the tragedy of war from their parents in respect of WW2 and indeed most likely from their grandparents about WW1 and the horrendous harm to humanity both had caused. The majority had definite opinions about war and its effects.

As they grew through their teens, they watched the spectacle of the most televised war of all time, namely the Vietnam War. Again, nightly they watched in horror at the treatment of the Vietnamese. It appeared to most young people, and it was an honest held belief, that the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, America, was causing massive pain and suffering on a distant people. As a result, many hundreds of thousands of young people worldwide began to protest. The UK was no exception………

I was one of many young police constables in London at the time and very quickly we began to police weekly anti-war demonstrations – mostly on Sundays. In fact in early 1968 I doubt if we ever had a Sunday off. Being young myself, and many others of my age with young families, we felt badly done by. We regularly found that whatever arrangements we had made for upcoming Sundays had to be cancelled as we were being called on for demonstration duties.

We, and I would include 99% of all young officers were completely against the ‘War’ and in sympathy with the demonstrators. Of course there was a conflict of interest but we did our duty fairly and squarely and did what was necessary.

In March 1968, most British demonstrations against the War were aimed at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square London. University Students in particular, with others, were being bussed into the Capital from all corners of the country every weekend to demonstrate. The Metropolitan Police did not have catering for officers at that time and it was a case of taking sandwiches with you when leaving home and hoping that somehow one would be able to get a cup of tea at some stage. At the Embassy, a couple of other young officers and myself, found that if we quietly made our way to the rear, one of the Marine guards would provide hot coffee during the tour of duty. It was a Godsend……………

A point about policing demonstrations that is constantly lost sight of by most people – especially those demonstrating – is the fact, and I guarantee this, that the police are there to ‘protect those protesting and their right to peacefully protest within the law’. I and I honestly believe that the vast majority of officers I have known always upheld that rule. One must remember also at that time that we did not have body armour, riot gear, reinforced helmets or any other protection. In fact our uniform at that time when wearing it during cold weather required extra cumbersome pullovers etc. We had an armband at that time which was supposed to denote that we ‘were on duty’ which was ridiculous. As if we would, when off-duty remove the armband and wear our uniform for whatever reason. It did in fact give the demonstrators something extra to grab hold of.

Some of the demonstrations in March 1968 became known as the ‘Grosvenor Square Riots’. It was frightening; it was dangerous and almost went out of control on several occasions. On one Sunday in particular, the crowd, estimated at about 80,000 crowded into the square and side streets. It became extremely noisy; the crowd became threatening and determined to storm the Embassy. Firecrackers were lit and thrown as were rocks and any other missiles that came to hand. Officers were attacked with the wooden handles used on the placards.

The troublemakers, loosely called Anarchists, who had forced their way to the front of the crowd, were determined to enter the embassy and many managed to breach the police lines. Mounted police officers were brought in to assist in controlling the ever-encroaching crowd.

The point about mounted police officers in London at that time is that – and it probably is as a result of their ‘horsy’ duties, is that the vast majority of them were very gentle people.

The horses are highly trained for crowd control and are still used mostly for ceremonial duties and football crowds. The mounted officers are high above the crowd and therefore become easier targets. And so it was. We foot officers began to see them being quite brutally attacked with long pieces of wood and one officer in particular was taking a serious beating.

There was talk of ball bearings being thrown under the horses to make them slip and rumours were rife that the horses were being attacked with some kind of weapons believed to be knitting needles or such. One must remember also that we did not have ‘police radios’ at that time, they did not come in until a year or two later. All information we were receiving was by word of mouth and like all ‘Chinese whispers’, such information was either vague or embellished.

Word came to us that if any of the demonstrators managed to breach the police line and enter the Embassy, there were Marine guards on the first floor with mounted machine guns with orders to use them. This truly put the fear of God into each and every one of us. I think it was at this stage that our sympathy for the anti-war line was put on the back burner. Self-preservation became the rule of the day.

Truncheons were drawn and used in an attempt to force back the crowd who were now almost on the steps of the Embassy. In fact, we were truly in fear for our lives – either from the now totally out-of-control demonstrators or the armed Marines behind us. We were being forced by the crowd closer and closer to the doors. Arrests were of no avail, as it would have entailed officers leaving the lines to deal with the prisoners.

After an hour or so, some semblance of peacefulness began to prevail and things started to quieten down. There were many injured police officers and protesters. As in all such cases, it was a case of innocent people taking the brunt of the injuries. Of course some were injured by police officers but in fact most were injured by those determined to cause havoc among the crowd.

Quietly the crowd began to disperse and it seems now that within about half-an-hour or so, the Square was deserted. I well remember slowly returning to the Police coach and falling into a seat totally exhausted. It was one of the most traumatic days in my police service up to that stage.

When I look back at it now and watch the YouTube video that I link at the bottom of this posting, I have the feeling that in fact the so called ‘Riot’ was nothing whatsoever compared to modern day riots that police in London have to, or have had to deal with since. To modern day police officers it must seem like a ‘doddle’ and more like a mere ‘Saturday Night punch-up’ outside the local pub.

However, on that fateful day in March 1968, I can honestly say that I was scared beyond imagination. Thankfully, in those days, demonstrators did not carry knives, guns or bombs – unlike today……………..

The following link is a demonstrator’s memory of the events
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcCzQA_0MHM

Here we are at the neginning of May and a lot of Americans are still in a fugue after finishing up their taxes.  A good many more aren’t finished and have filed extensions.

As sure as morning will arrive, you will hear people bitch and complain about paying taxes.  After all, our country was born out of a tax kerfuffle, and even if it had to do with no representation, we are not happy to be compelled to hand over our increase.

And why would we be?  It is one thing for a wage earner to support causes they believe in, or need  like local infrastructure.  I have never heard any great deal of bitching when rural property owners have to pony up to gravel a rode together.  It’s not exciting to spend money on gravel, but it makes getting home a lot easier.  People share the cost willingly when it makes sense.

But more and more nothing our taxes are collected for is making sense to the general constituency.  And, by more and more, I mean for over a century, this didn’t appear from nowhere.  One of the biggest problems constituents are having is the Federal Income Taxes.

Brought on by (what else?) war, the Federal Income Tax was first instituted in 1862 to support the Civil War effort.  Now there were taxes and tariffs before this but they were mostly on “stuff”; things like Alcohol, Tobacco, fine china, imports/exports and niceties.  All the “Stuff” taxes provided proficient money to run the government.  It did not however provide outfitting an army and fighting a war.

In 1868, Congress again focused its taxation efforts on tobacco and distilled spirits and eliminated the income tax in 1872. It had a short-lived revival in 1894 and 1895. In the latter year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the income tax was unconstitutional because it was not apportioned among the states in conformity with the Constitution

It was the 16^th Amendment, passed in 1913 that made federal income taxes a permanent fixture.  So, next year maybe mail a nice pie or cupcake in with your return, for the 100^th birthday of you paying protection fees to the U.S. government.

Now, it should not  have escaped notice that in the early 1900’s when the Federal Income taxes where made constitutional, it was also the birthing time of another important part of our government;  Special Interests.

Special Interests were really picking up at that time, politicians, businessmen and Hoods were keen on making money from constituents through construction of all sorts of things from roads to airplanes.  After all they had to find a way to supplement (and launder) the money they made/had made from alcohol and the prohibition thereof.

As part of the New Deal the withholding of income taxes was made constitutional in 1943, up until that time people could conceivably hide money in their mattresses or whatever and not pay taxes.  But the citizenry were sold on helping each other out and expanding their horizons through radio ads and wanted road and dams so they too could check out the cool places they heard of and partake of General Electric’s toys and gadgets.  Interesting that they forgot the Railroad managed to build a cross-continental line and expand their parent’s lives without taxes.

Here is the rub: Is it really the federal government’s place to collect from all of its citizens income taxes?  If not why are we not working to change the current tax laws so we can better manage our own resources from state to state as intended when we began this “great experiment.”  (Which, by the way was part of the reason the south seceded in the first place, they were fed up with paying taxes for exporting their highly profitable goods.-It was never about slavery, that was a happy convenience for the north.)

Many states themselves are saying enough is enough and if the Federal Government is not going to help our constituents to live manageably, we are.  Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Washington currently have no state income tax.  Tennessee and New Hampshire have only dividend income tax.  Currently the state of Tennessee is looking at getting rid of income tax all together as are Missouri, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma.

However the thinking behind this may be flawed.  Generally the pitch is “It will force the State to get rid of flawed, big government programs that don’t work and that make things worse.” Or “It will increase personal revenue thus injecting the economy.” or “Ending the income tax will make the legislature accountable to workers and taxpayers – instead of government employees, lobbyists and special interests who profit from high government spending.”

Some of these things may be true but what it won’t do is cast down laws agreed upon by voters to provide services within states like Mental Health , Social Services, Housing, Education(Including Higher) , Foster Care, etc.  These services will still need to be filled because to not fill them will put the state out of compliance and they will get sued and lose money because of it. These are the “Big Government Programs” people are complaining about. This isn’t an overwhelming problem; it’s just short-sighted.  If you are going to get rid of the funds also get rid of the things you agreed to pay for with them at the same time.  Just be prepared because currently “Big Government Programs” pay for over half the jobs in any given state either directly or indirectly through contracts.

What is an overwhelming problem is the states will be that much more beholden to the Federal Government.  What that means is if say we want collapsing bridges fixed we are going to do the Feds a favor and deport some immigrants, even if we don’t really want to. Or let them bust pot farmers, even if your state says it’s legal or enforce any other of their numerous stupid rules that are not regionally minded.   And we all want crumbling bridges fixed right?  But constituents don’t make that connection when voting; they just remember writing out that last income tax payment.

A better solution may be to keep the State Taxes and get rid of the Federal ones.  Yes, the Feds are going to cry “We are in an insurmountable amount of debt, Atlas will be released from his curse before we are out of debt and everyone in the nation owes…You guys are responsible!”

No you are not.

Americans may have bought into this in 1993 when Clinton was president and he passed  Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993 into law- The act’s purpose was to reduce by approximately $496 billion the federal deficit that would otherwise accumulate in fiscal years 1994 through 1998.  But he also reduced taxes to middle income families AND nearly did away with our debt.

What we have on our tab now is not our fault.  We are paying for a war that our “representatives” voted for when they were scared and lied to.  Also they did not consult with their constituents, there wasn’t time given. So yeah, YOU have been taxed without representation because YOU had none of your letters, phone calls or protests heard.  And YOU have continued to be taxed without representation.  In fact the only people being represented or “heard” are the Special Interest groups that sprung from the criminal activity of the prohibition era.

What did we do last time we were taxed without representation?

Just a thought.

However we don’t need to break up, we just need some serious considering of our relationship here in the U.S.  We need couples therapy between the States and the Feds.  The States need to be empowered so they will be infused with life and a will.  Especially a will.

Because maybe if the States were a little less beholden to the Feds, they wouldn’t vote for things their constituents don’t want or need.  Like wars.  And maybe if the Feds had a little less of our money they would have to make a choice between paying off our debt and funding their wars.  Not that they would chose correctly, just we would know how much or little they care.

The Federal Government can be run on tariffs and “Stuff” taxes.  And, there is a way for everyone to be happy. If Big Business and other Special Interests want armies and research and Space Stations they can pay for it outright, get together and send a check to the government.

It would save them money on lobbyists, cocaine and hookers.