Archives for July 2011

I’m still thinking today about that public hearing I went to Wednesday where federal environmental officials were supposedly listening to the public’s concerns about pollution. I know it’s impolite to point out something this obvious, but they weren’t there to listen to citizens. They were there to perform for TV cameras.

I heard the emotional appeal about children several times during the meeting. (Remember that I’ve produced plenty of manipulative political material over the years, so I’m very sensitive to the pious invocation of kids’ needs.) Ignacia Moreno, the assistant attorney general who was headlining Wednesday’s show, spoke of having to be away from her children traveling around the country. A man in the audience talked about his two daughters’ health problems. There were others, too.

Here’s the question, though. Why did they bother to put on this public show? Was anything said that anybody didn’t already know? I knew walking in what the various players on the federal side were going to say. The state and federal officials knew, too. The truth is that we weren’t there for the content of what was being said. It was all about putting on a show for the television cameras.

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There’s something wrong with the “justice” system when a jury convicts a man of a crime, but sends a note to the judge saying, “We’ve all reached a verdict. To us we feel he has been wronged. Please consider that in his sentencing.”

In other words, the jury felt that the accused was actually the victim in the case, but they still did what the judge and prosecutor told them to do. That’s wrong. (They’ve probably never heard of jury nullification, because judges work pretty hard to make sure jurors aren’t aware of their real rights and responsibilities.)

A Texas jury convicted a man of resisting arrest after police mistook him for a burglar and broke into his home — and he tried to escape from them. Police say a neighbor reported — wrongly — seeing a black male kicking in a door to the house. For some odd reason, this Hispanic man apparently didn’t trust that police who had just broken into his own home had his best interests at heart.

The man’s attorney says his client has the mind of a child and also struggles with the English/Spanish language barrier, but I’d say the guy showed good judgement in resisting the people who were breaking in and trying to grab him, whether they were dressed in police costumes or not.

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If it had been a scene in “Atlas Shrugged,” the guy would have disappeared into the secrecy of Colorado with a shadowy figure who we would later learn to be John Galt. In real life, the story will probably be more complex. But I wonder how long it’s going to be before businesspeople really do start walking away and deciding it’s not worth doing business in America today. Or is it already happening and we just don’t know it?

The man you see in the picture is Ronnie Bryant. He operates coal mines in Alabama. I’d never heard of him until this morning, but after what I saw and heard from him, I’d say he’s a bit like a southern version of Ellis Wyatt from Ayn Rand’s novel. What I saw made an impression on me.

I was at a public hearing in an inner-city Birmingham neighborhood for various government officials to get public input on some local environmental issues. There are several hot topics, but one of the highest-profile disputes is over a proposal for a coal mine near a river that serves as a source of drinking water for parts of the Birmingham metro area. Mine operators and state environmental officials say the mine can be operated without threatening the water supply. Environmentalists claim it will be a threat.

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