Many Forms of Freebooting

The difference between a pirate, and a privateer, is that privateers traditionally have a letter or charter that legalizes their otherwise illegal behavior. Traditionally it was known as a "letter of Marquee" and would give the pirate permission to prey on enemy ships and make war on enemies of the state for the duration of a war between States. They were supposed to stop when peace came. Indeed most elite pirates who got hung as pirates were privateers who just hadn't been able to stop themselves when the war ended, from seeking loot. Captain Kidd spent most of his life as a privateer, not a pirate. A lot of smugglers were also pirates. A lot of privateers were too. Captain Kidd just got caught. When a privateer or smuggler engaged in piracy, and wanted to keep his image of "respectability" he'd operate under a fake name, and to make sure things went right, he'd kill his victims. "Dead Men Tell no Tales" was a corollary to "Pirates hang, but gentlemen retire a squire." There is know way of knowing how many pirates really were hung and how many were more successful than they let on. Piracy is thievery after all. The pirates we all hear about and that are depicted in tall tales were mostly open thieves living on the edge of a noose. But when J.P. Morgan boasted being a descendent of Henry Morgan, the official story was that Henry Morgan died in Panama. Piracy is also about the successful operation of secrecy. Blackbeard was really Edward Tech. The official story there is that he was killed and his head chopped off by the captain who killed him. It makes a great story. A lot of pirates ended under mysterious conditions with stories of their families continuing and them continuing under a new name. Who knows? A lot of important families were founded by folks who made their money elsewhere and suddenly arrived acting like a gentleman. After the age of the classic privateers we had the freebooters known as Filibusterers who led private armies all over the world. Some of them established or came from established families who have names that are still important. William Walker for instance tried to conquer Latin America to reboot slavery there.

Privateers, Buccaneers and modern Freebooters.

Well nowadays we have freebooters who use their corporate charters as letters of marquee. Privateers who seek to privatize more than war, but whole functions of government that were traditionally the prerogative of Kings. These Buccaneers and Freebooters have set it up so that they sail the entire world. Lafitte would be envious and his ghost and descendents probably are running a New Orleans smuggling operation. Blackbeard's descendents wear expensive suits. Morgan's operation has become a giant company that wears his name and only flies his flag on the owners ghost yacht or a rum brand. French companies are members of this new "brotherhood of the coast" every bit as English Buccaneers and even Indian, Chinese, and Japanese buccaneers. They even use each other ships. Where-as before the pirates sailed the seas looking for loot, or carrying smuggled goods, or dealing in drugs and liquor, now it's all legal-like. The corporate charter has become a "letter of Marquee", and instead of declarations of war, they freeboot based on trade treaties that give them license to loot and steal all over the world.

Modern Buccaneers form armies of corrupt lawyers, propagandists, and legislators. Some examples of their freebooting:

1. leveraged buyout followed by junking the company. Perfected by Baine Capital under Buccaneers like Mitt the 47% Romney. Buy the company with borrowed money. Strip it of it's assets. Anything worthwhile ship overseas and then close down the factory, loot it's pension plans, and put it in bankruptcy and junk it, or simply sell it to the unsuspecting.
2. "Lean and Mean" Six Sigma reform driven by lowest price producers usually involving prison camps in Vietnam or China. Usually following after "restructuring" as jargon for looting.
3. "Reverse Mercantilism" Buccaneering involving exporting dollars to buy goods cheap while paying high tariffs or other hidden costs to US exports in return. We hire pirates in other countries to use prisoners and prison camps to make our goods -- at least until we can setup a similar prison industry here (well on the way).
4. Privatizing privateering. Who needs to be a pirate if one can wear a nice suit. Run politicians 'against government' and then use their offices to loot and steal at will and all "legal right." At this point we have buccaneers taking over entire cities so they can loot them "legal light". Most modern piracy gets it's modern "letters of Marquee" from the government while decrying any form of socialism that actually helps the marks. "libertarianism" is the motto of modern pirates. After all one can't be free if one can't freeboot! Who needs to worry about Government if you own it? Henry Morgan got to be such a great pirate by being Governor of Jamaica. Buccaneers ever since have aimed their guns at Governments so they can take them over and loot at will.
5. Once you've got the loot what better way to use it than to buy the bank? Old style freebooters would put their gold in a vault and then lend out paper money bills until something happened and people wanted their gold back. Then they'd flee town. Such cons were known as grifters. Nowadays you don't even have to have any gold. Just a charter from the Government and the government will pick up the tab if anyone gets wiser about your reserves. So the buccaneers operate their reverse mercantile and "corporate takeover" looting from the safety of a banking Headquarters with gold plated faucets in the bathroom! Henry Morgan's descendent J.P. Morgan used to fly his father's flag on his yacht. His ghost gets hauled into court again and again for fraud, with never an admission of guilt or a single person going to jail. Henry Morgan would be proud, court settlements of this kind are basically bribes to keep the records sealed so that the stolen-from can't sue in court. Henry Morgan and J.P. Morgan would both be proud. Banking looting is perfectly legal. They are almost back to Robin Hood era holding peasants upside down style robbery.
6. Ground Looting piracy in the form of energy companies who get "mineral rights" to property they have no business acquiring and then move in and steal minerals or oil resources, pay off (in bribes) local officials and politicians around the world (including in the United States) to get access to trillions in resources and loot these resources til they are gone -- often leaving behind poisoned wells, soils, rivers and destroyed mountains, towns, countries. Imagine if Henry Morgan had spoken better Spanish. Again he and JP would be proud.
7. Nuclear Piracy; A particularly diabolical form of ground looting that involves building nuclear power plants, looting out poisonous rocks and refining them into pure poison that can be used for nuclear blackmail or to produce electricity and high levels of radiation which kill workers and periodically blow up like a cheap iron cannon, killing everybody nearbye. All paid for by local governments who think that somehow possessing a nuclear weapon is a magic key to entry into modernity. The nuclear pirates are polluting countries from China to Europe and ocean shores from the entire Pacific to the Mediterranean, even to Somalia.
8. Arms Smuggling pirates; build weapons, including nuclear ones and gin up wars and conflict so they can sell expensive arms to both government and the folks the government is repressing, and to both sides of ethnic conflicts which are usually over the equivalent of which side to break a soft boiled egg on.
9. Oh and the pain buccaneers, who take voodoo medicine and turn it into placebo pills and poisons which they market all over the world, and then use their money to buy hospitals and doctors and raise prices so that the only way people can get medical service is to buy insurance, which then becomes a protection racket for the privateers.

I could go on with more details of just how this piracy under the marquee of a corporate charter amounts to modern privateering and filibustering but I think this brief list gets the point across.

Further Reading:

Related Posts

Two Generations of Pirates

[http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/two-generations-of-pirates.html]

Justice and Oligarchs Hightower talks about J.P. Morgan Chase

Justice and Oligarchs Hightower talks about J.P. Morgan Chase

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/justice-and-oligarchs-hightower-talks.html

High Levels of Radiation measured in Encantado Brazil

The Fukushima disaster is doing more than providing trace radiation readings. It is registering major fallout contamination all over the world. We've gotten so used to such contamination that we don't realize what it means to us. Sure, the levels aren't high enough that hair is falling our or people are dying directly. But they are high enough that it is causing stochastic disease; degraded immunity to disease and energy levels, and increased odds of various cancers including leukemias, lung cancers, thyroid cancers, and a whole host of others. The governments response to fallout contamination, all over the world, is to put a classification stamp on the information and treat those who disobey the gag orders as nuts. So when someone gets one of his reports into a newspaper or magazine it is a rare and encouraging thing. One activist I've met recently is a young fellow named Samuel Dal Pizzol who recently wrote about his own measures in Encantado Brazil, inland from Porto Alegre in the area that is part Pampas and was once part of the little country of Uruguay. It is a land of Gauchos and farmers, and beautiful country. And they are getting radiation there.

"recorded peaks of up to 86 uSv / h ( microsievert per hour , unit for measuring radiation) , a result considered very high . Although the "discovery " , Brazilian nuclear experts and authorities found that the region of Encantado no risks of contamination."

Read more: http://noticias.r7.com/internacional/cientista-amador-tenta-desvendar-misterio-radioativo-no-rs-mas-autoridades-negam-contaminacao-09122013

86 microsieverts per hour is a high enough reading. And the experts know this, but our governments seem only unanimous in their desire to treat this ongoing disaster as a publicity and propaganda issue, rather than doing anything about it. "No risk of contamination?" This is evidence of contamination. And people with geiger counters have been measuring rates double or tripple the previous background all over the world since Fukushima started.

Samuel Dal Pizzo is an ordinary young man, living in a place that is out of the way in a part of the world where everybody in the rest of the world confuses Buenos Aires with Rio De Janero, but the locals know the scale of their own countries is grand. I consider him a hero and hope we realize the massive fraud and injury being done to us by the folks involved in manufacturing Atom Bombs and dangerous reactors -- before we get worse.

I once tried to pretend that everything was okay after a series of disasters. And everytime I said "at least it can't get any worse" it got worse. And our situation with Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and other sources of massive contamination is the same reality, the more we pretend that this time "we've learned our lessons and it can't get any worse" the more we find they haven't learned anything and are setting up the next one. Each disaster worse than the previous. We have found out just how incompetent, reckless and cheap the people running the nuclear system are. I hate saying that because I grew up in a family of engineers, some of whom were involved in this industry. But this system of secrecy, restrictions on information, and hiding failure has already led to multiple cascading massive potentially earth threatening earthwide disaster. We need to wake up before the people running this industry kill us all.

Samuel Dal Pizzo is a hero and we need more like him.

Fukushima On the Web

This little blog entry is just so that I can park some web-pages on the subject that people may be interested in. Mostly this is for my own reference so feel free to not trip around on this, it might give you nightmares. It does me.

Japan Declared Evacuation too expensive

Information suppression and government preparing to water down relief to victims

Homepage

Chernobyl and Atom Bomb testing

Canada covering up radiation spikes

Rice contamination

Piece of the debate about the #4 Spent Fuel pool which probably mostly burned into fallout

Beware the Nuclear village

Economy chief has cancer

http://hrn.or.jp/eng/news/2013/11/07/anand-grover-esq-un-special-rapporteur-on-the-right-to-health-criticizes-unscear-report-on-fukushima/

Anand Grover criticizes UNSCEAr report

Secret Fallout

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096706371300112X

Radioactive Fish everywhere, including Switzerland

Suicide Watch

She's too sweet to be on any kind of suicide watch.
Don't let the downs keep you down,
or the topsies unbalance you to fall.
Don't let pain and suffering become a wall.
There is a moment you realize they don't own you.

Sadness and pain, exhaustion and depression,
are just a normal cyclic expression.
When one is exhausted and sad it is time to sleep.
When there are people who need us,
we have promises to keep.
When sadness is indescribable, it is time to sing the blues.

She's too sweet and precious for anyone to let down.
We all need love, 
to feel your love, 
to give you love, 
to let you know;
 
That the cold days of winter, yield beautiful snow.
 
And that there is something lovely in naked trees
and winds that howl when they blow.
It's sad to see those markers, that remind us where our friends go.
But that doesn't last, green things grow from the ground,
where it was dark yesterday, tomorrow there will be sun.
 
And our loved ones are rooting for us,
we've got things to do,
and reasons to keep one foot in this world,
while letting our hearts to soar.

Christopher H. Holte


Based on a response to someone's sadness.

ACA, IT and Dismantlng the New Deal

I've been a requirements person on complex medical IT systems. I did apply to the folks running the ACA program, but they didn't hire me. I'm kind of glad because if they had I'd be the designated "firee". The hurdles that ACA faced were so many and large that what is happening to the workers trying to make it work is both familiar, and painful, to me to watch. It has all the issues I'm so familiar with on Joint projects involving multiple developers and unclear/unrealistic requirements. I don't doubt that someone needs to be fired, but I suspect they won't fire him or her, but instead will fire the designated "firee". It's the sort of job I regularly get hired for, and I've learned how to manage. Had I worked on the ACA implementation it either would have succeeded or I'd have specific notes on why it doesn't work.

Integration

The Front End suffered from what is known as "changing requirements". The Republicans refused to cooperate with the creation of ACA. The Republicans tried to destroy it. The Supreme Court allowed the States to opt out of cooperating with it's creation, and the same states that opted out of cooperation also opted out of the Medicaid extensions that would have made it work better for the customers, us. And this all was in flux and still is in flux. It's difficult to deliver the right software if one doesn't have the requirements for what that software is supposed to deliver until just before the delivery deadline. In fact, impossible.

Unfortunately, while I've worked as a requirements manager requirements are written by politicians, bureaucrats and officials, and if the requirements are contradictory, the software created will be sketchy. Infighting, changing rules and requirements, insufficient funds, etc... all contribute to problems with schedule, delivery and cost. Those are a triangle that no amount of hope and will can change. It takes money, time, and breaking down a problem into it's pieces and tackling the pieces. That they got what they did up on the first day was about exactly what I expected. One can ask or a Cadillac but if one only has resources for a toy wagon, won't get one.

The backend of the ACA requires cooperation between private insurance companies and the Federal Government. It had to be rebuilt because originally the Federal Government was going to refer people from a national website to State Websites. Where the State websites are healthy, the system is working well. The Federal government did something right. The Federal Government created a standardized form, called the 834, which is supposed to be filled out online and sent to the insurers. This was a good way to standardize the requirements across the board.

But to ensure that piece works they needed to do integration testing. They had virtually no time for integration testing so the integration testing they are doing is with live data, online, and that is a mess. It is a predictable mess, and the engineers are right to point that out. But not having "enough time" or resources is never an excuse when problems arise, so someone's head will roll. A scapegoat is needed. I volunteered but didn't get the job. As a Requirements manager that was always my role or that of the project manager. In this case the requirements were unstable and always changing, the project managers were dealing with shortages of time and resources, and that always adds to the cost and dysfunction of the result. But probably some Project managers will lose their jobs. The iron triangle of program management is time, resources and scope. And the faster you slap something together the lower the quality.

I'm sure all this will eventually come together. Government IT projects take a lot of time because they are complex, require sustainment, and most business project management types are only concerned with delivering the minimum possible on the contract, getting the biggest return from government disbursements, and so all the risks are always with the program office, unless a private company under-bid on it's deliverables and can't deliver -- and even then the contractor seems to manage to get paid for the shoddy things it delivers.

Here one solution would be to require the insurance companies to electronically verify the 834 form and if there are problems request corrections either from the Government or the insured. [For more see: Glitches, but as with all private contractors I've ever met, there are some bean counters who are only concerned with what they can get away with. They are perfectly capable to ask for extra money to fix a problem they were originally required to deliver differently on. Any excuse will do. The Republicans are such privateers they prefer to sink programs that they can't loot. Kind of like some of the contractor managers I've met.

Every identified problem can be fixed. It will add to the costs over what would have happened had the plan been realistically costed, funded, scheduled and executed, but that is what always happens with governing efforts. They are messy because people don't cooperate, because with new things, stuff gets missed, and because folks listen to marketeers more than engineers. It was going to take as long as it is taking to roll out ACA. Some of the problems they are facing are inevitable. When I worked on the Theater Medical Information Program (TMIP) we had many features where doctors and other stakeholders told us what they wanted (or we had to guess) and we delivered different from what they wanted and had to fix it. Good requirements requires a lot of up front work, and hurry up and get it done projects rarely budget money or time to that, and so FUBAR is built in.

When I first worked on the TMIP program, the users were so unhappy, I drew a tank shooting at us in my notebook based on comments from one stakeholder who was making such withering comments that I was wondering if I was working on a shelfware project and she was going to bring in a tank and blow us up. By the last few months I was there the Program was working so well she was praising it and my Manager was considering finally staffing my job with enough personnel to keep up with all the work. I did my job by relying on the engineers and project managers. If you can get the requirements right up front you can get any job done right. ACA has requirements that depend on the States, and when the States decide to cooperate the people will get what they want. In Government the people are the stakeholders, and as people see what they are getting they'll tell program management what they want. Sometimes managers forget that. Certainly at that project we had our share of folks who didn't get the message that it wasn't about what we wanted or padding profit margins, but delivering medicine to injured and hurting people.

In one project there were some things we couldn't get done on time despite having gotten the requirements, because we couldn't get the requirements approved in time for them to be built when they needed to be built. That is how obstruction works. It threatened whether the software could be used. I left before I found out the denouement, but I believe fortunately the contractor got away with the late delivery and I've heard the problem got fixed after I left. Obstruction is sneaky and can undermine anyone's efforts. I can only imagine what it's like having an entire faction of people obstructing one's efforts.

But that doesn't excuse the Republicans.

ACA was a heritage foundation idea. Most of us Democrats wanted a single payer system to extend what we've already done with medicare and medicaid to everyone. As we can see from the sabotage of the Republicans, they've been actively dismantling things done for rural and city places, such as rural hospitals! That their own base depends on. They refused the "medicaid expansion" that would have brought medical coverage to the poor and restored medicaid coverage that the Republicans had been cutting all along. But this represents a wholesale attack on the poor and middle class, including 47% of their own base in rural areas. It is time for us Progressives to step up to the plate and get our Democratic Politicians to support a New Deal for folks, or to back real progressives and get them out of office. We need to point out that their own supporters are being betrayed with bait and switch arguments that gin up racism and fear in order to get folks to vote against their own interest.

Further reading:

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/30/247898470/glitches-in-digital-insurance-forms-threaten-aca-rollout

Fibromyalgia and Alpha radiation

Fibromyalgia is defined in a google search as:

"Fibromyalgia is a common syndrome in which a person has long-term, body-wide pain and tenderness in the joints, muscles, tendons, and other soft tissues. Fibromyalgia has also been linked to fatigue, sleep problems, headaches, depression, and anxiety."[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001463/]

An article titled "AAssociation of fibromyalgia symptoms with beta radiation levels." by a fellow named Bobby shows his connection of materials from several sources and the association of beta radiation with Fibromyalgia symptoms. [http://optimalprediction.com/wp/association-of-fibromyalgia-symptoms-with-beta-radiation-levels/]

Source: http://optimalprediction.com/files/fibroradiation.jpg

Anyway, after reading this article, and all the other ones about fibromyalgia, I don't see a clear message yet. I read up on the main alpha emitters and they include:

Alpha Emitter	Atomic Number
americium-241	95
plutonium-236	94
uranium-238	92
thorium-232	90
radium-226	88
radon-222	86
polonium-210	84

Source:http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/alpha.html#emitters

So whatever is causing fibromyalgia, if it's a alpha emitter, it's pretty nasty stuff.

The author notes:

"Symptom severity positively associated with beta radiation and statistically significant: Mental focus impairment, memory impairment, anxiety, depression, gastrointestinal problems, sleeping problems"

So if these symptoms correlate to the radiation or the chemical substance causing that radiation, the effects appear to be in the above list. The author then notes:

"Symptom severity positively associated with beta radiation and not statistically significant: Pain, fatigue"

And

"Symptom severity negatively associated with beta radiation and not statistically significant: Stiffness"

This result corresponds to recent research on environmental triggers for fibromyalgia, and other diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity

Considering that war zones and the use of depleted uranium are a major source for complaints of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. How much is beta radiation and how much other kinds of poisoning? (chemical).

Search for Causes

And note these measures were taken before the Fukushima disaster, so I wonder what radiation was being measured, and from what source? Could it be radon from folks basements. Or is something else going on?

I've observed it is hard to find information on these subjects and it appears much of it is classified. But what we can see is that these conditions are most likely the result of chemical assaults (directly in the case of toxic chemicals or dissolved metals, and indirectly in the case of insults like radiation) on the chemistry of the cell itself. This article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155329/ notes:

"The scant experimental evidence gathered so far in controlled clinical/laboratory studies on MCS patients still poorly support the whole body of medical hypotheses. In particular, available clinical data prove, though only indirectly, that functional or/and genetic defects of endogenous enzymes detoxifying hydrogen-/lipid-peroxides or stable toxic products of lipid peroxidation, may cause chronic oxidative stress and consequent metabolic and immunologic alterations characteristic for the patients with environmental SRI. Our group has recently demonstrated [17] relevant alterations vs. healthy controls of erythrocyte catalase, glutathione peroxidase (Gpx), glutathione transferase (GST) activities, and of decreased levels of glutathione and polyunsaturated fatty acids, in association with specific alteration patterns of pro-inflammatory cytokines, significantly correlated with clinical manifestations in a representative group of MCS Italian patients, has registered some progress towards the identification of reliable markers of disease onset and progression. These and other possible validated markers may also be useful for a correct and evidence-based evaluation of treatment outcomes and follow-up, to-date unfortunately still unaccomplished."

The jargon basically is telling us that they have a poor evidentiary understanding of what is going on, but there are indications that the causes of many of these diseases are to be found int chemical insults that oxidize (basically burn) important chemical pathways and create inflammation as a result. The article further notes:

"Relevant studies, thoroughly reviewed by Thomas et al., [43] have linked these conditions to exceptionally severe and prolonged intoxicating events, most notably multiple vaccinations, exposure to depleted uranium and powerful chemical toxicants present in war theatres. Other conditions connected to this polymorphic disorder are the post-traumatic stress disorder [44] and the burn-out syndrome [21], displaying similar impairment of the immunologic and neuro-endocrine patterns, and overlapping symptoms."

When you get a list like this it usually means the scientists aren't sure what is going on themselves, but we can see the reference to depleted Uranium there. The same agents that cause cancers and mutations also cause damage to cells in less specific ways that lead to symptoms like fibromyalgia, and syndromes like "Gulf War Syndrome." So it's not surprising that the author of the main subject found one cause to be alpha emitters. I imagine that there are also contributing effects from other forms of radiation and drugs. The article goes on to describe the direct relationship to mercury fillings and similarly. Oddly there are doctors who recommend using Cesium for treating fibromyalgia. Oh Maya. I don't think that is a good idea:

"Decreased appetite, nausea, and diarrhea were reported in a man who ingested about 34 mg Cs/kg (as cesium chloride) after morning and evening meals for 36 days; this man also experienced apparent neurological changes within 15 minutes of dosing (Neulieb 1984). Prolonged QT syndrome and associated cardiac arrhythmias have been described in patients who have ingested cesium chloride as a component of homeopathic remedies (Bangh et al. 2001; Harik et al. 2002; Saliba et al. 2001). [source: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp157-c3.pdf]

So the conclusion is that there may be a link between Fibromyalgia and alpha radiation exposure, to depleted uranium exposure, to mercury exposure and beyond that I still don't feel satisfied that I know squat. I sure hope our scientists and doctors are further along than what I've seen published so far.

Commissions - Institutionalized Democratic participation versus Robin Hood

We've developed a cludgy legal system, where lawyers and judges have been trying for years to "control juries". This pits them at odds with the concept of an empowered, informed jury. The justification for every increasing jury control is that "wild juries" have been known to free locals, over-ride the legislature, and "nullify" decisions -- when given half a chance. This works to protect "Robin Hood" type high status criminals in a neighborhood against frustrated prosecutors and Sheriffs, but it also, traditionally has been a protection for ordinary citizens against corrupt prosecutors and police who treat their neighborhoods as occupied territory to loot and steal from with impunity. In my review of Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) and their history, one thing that popped out at me was that legal concepts such as "Racketeering" shift in meaning in US Legal politics. Racketeering law (and it's predecessors) was initially applied selectively; aggressively against Unions and tradesmen, and not at all among higher status business felons (Lawyers, Wall Street, Big Business). As a result, mostly minority communities such as those where Italians, Irish or Jews lived, often resisted these laws. From the point of view of reformers and elites these people were all racketeers; tradesmen, union organizers, union members. From the point of view of folks trying to survive in cities and rural areas, these people were often heroes. From the point of view of folks living in cities and rural areas, the officials going after them were corrupt oppressors. This is where you get Robin Hood style legends applied to local real gangsters:

Classic Robin Hood stories

I've heard the same Robin Hood story told about Jessie James, and Al Capone (Heard story, no evidence). Al Capone is credited with starting a soup kitchen. The point is that when the government is corrupt and people are excluded from participating in their government; two things happen. One is that the people form their own informal governments, including elevating gangs to power (Robin Hood effect). And the other is that when the authorities have no social pressures to limit their looting and corruption and become oppressors some of the criminals become heroes. Example Story:

"A Missouri widow claimed that Jesse James and his gang boarded with her one evening. While she served them dinner, not knowing who he and his gang were, she lamented the fact that the government was going to foreclose on her house, due to unpaid taxes. James generously gave her the money she needed to pay her taxes. What a kindly soul he was."

"However, legend goes on to say that James and his gang waited for the tax collector to leave the woman’s house and then, robbed him- thereby obtaining their money again!"[From Brighthubeducation.com]

Similar Stories are found all over the world where government is often corrupt and mistreats people.

Policing the Police: Citizen Commissions

The principle here is that no one person should ever be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, in the same person and we need to change the manifold locations where we have that currently.

The issue is that the people either participate in government or government acts like a looting army. Juries were created to put a check on corrupt judges. "Commissions" have a more problematical history due to their tradition of being agents of established authority.

Rather than join with the outlaws activists have found that participating in government works better than forming "Robin Hood Bands" or trying to outwit corrupt taxmen and other executives. Commissions traditionally are created with high status lawyers forming their members, and the only way the government seems to think it can establish balance is to appoint partisans from both dominant party and it's nearest competitor. This often leaves out reformers, citizens, labor, etc.... A commission is often formed of "experts" who never-the-less deliver less than expert results. Commissions often are accused of (and many guilty of) being official white-wash on institutional malfeasance, and the old boy network created by appointing insiders, relatives and country club members from the same club as the prosecutors, judges and executives belong to, is so obvious that people often lose their trust in their legitimacy. They simply don't do their jobs a good portion of the job, or when they do, they do it for the "wrong" stakeholders.

The way to reform this is through citizens commissions drafted by lot from among the jury pool, and staffed with the folks who usually run commissions plus people hired by the commissioners themselves. The commission chair can be a judge or expert, but the commissioners should explicitly have explicit power within the scope of their commission. And when their commission expires a new one will be convened. This certainly would work better than the current arrangement.

Citizen commissions are vital for policing any institution where "old boy" habits develop; police, fire, legal professionals, judges, executive agencies. And they can have the further benefit of serving as juries when there are disputes within executive organizations that otherwise would be handled by the hierarchy. To get at genuine justice, the "judge" and Jury must both be impartial. And to get at that doesn't mean that people can't know the subject, they simply can't have a vested interest in the outcome one way or another or corrupt associations.

We need to empower juries not control them. A jury trial or any other commissioned citizen exercise should be a discovery walk through a body of knowledge where the Jurors play the "ingenue" and can look at issues freshly to render a verdict. We need citizen commissions to balance the institutional prejudices and vested interests inherent in appointed or elected judges and other executives. We also need to clearly separate the judging role from the executive role for all decision making except the highest level of abstraction. This is a matter of good process, good government, and executing integral principles to establish or restore, and enforce integrity.