You Know why I hate Bad Cops? Because of Good Cops.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky has always followed a two-career path: Music and/or the humble Microchip. One or both of the two have helped keep body and soul together since the 1970’s, and although the musical side is preferred from the standpoint of personal satisfaction, the IT Biz has most often provided the bulk of the family income. C’est le guerre. And as you’d expect, some of those manifold IT gigs have been more rewarding than others.

One of the best of those IT gigs has been working for Law Enforcement (yeah, I am sometimes surprised by that, too). On the first day on the job, the marching orders were given, and were simple: “Make sure the right people (guilty ones) go to jail, and the wrong people (innocent ones) don’t go to jail”. Said orders coming from a 30+ – year veteran cop who started off as a patrolman and worked his way up. And the criteria for who belonged in jail was simple: evidence and a conviction. A good attitude, and something an IT geek can help with.

In the course of that employ, a LOT of cops have been met and worked with. Ditto prosectors. Ditto-ditto other types of lawyers and support personnel, the vast majority of whom are on board with those same marching orders. Good cops, you’d call them.

A fair few crap cops have also been met, and they have provided some of the best opportunities to effect change. You see, if we improve the quality of, say DNA analysis, lab analysis, cameras and reporting software, it becomes harder for rogue cops to get away with their fascist, abusive, un-American bulls***. Because of efforts by this writer and thousands of others in and out of IT, many innocent people have been freed and lots of guilty motherf***ers (including some bad cops and their bosses)have been jailed.

It’s a nice warm fuzzy, sure, but the more important reward for your humble correspondent has been seeing how many good, honest, justice-loving people there are in Law Enforcement at local, State and Federal levels. From the blanket 70’s – era labeling of “Pigs” this and “Pigs” that, living in the belly of the beast has been a revelatory experience, one that showed that unique individuals exist everywhere, even in groups we love to heave stereotypes at.

Bad cops suck, and they need to be treated as the corrupt/disrespectful/murdering/lying filth that they are. Lock the f***ers up and throw away the key. Both because they deserve censure and punishment, and because of the pain they cause to good cops, and the damage they cause to the fabric of society.

Some good cops out bad cops, and get punished for doing the right thing. (Serpico is but one example of many.) Other good cops try to avoid bad cops, or even cover for them, to save their own skins or out of a misguided sense of loyalty. Some good cops quit in disgust at the way bad cops have perverted the institutions of justice. All of these are tragedies that hurt us all, by damaging the rule of law that our nation was founded upon. And all of them are the fault of bad cops.

Today in America, there are a lot of stories about bad cops in the media. Other bad cops and numbnuts among Right-Wing, Teavangelical, “Republicans” are trying to shut the discussion down before we can clean up the mess and sweep out the garbage from the Law Enforcement community (a cleanup that is already long overdue).

Some on the Left and Right Wingtips would like you believe that all cops are bad. This is also bulls***. There are good and bad people in blue uniforms, like there are in every occupation. The good need rewarded and the bad need spanked. It does no good to punish the innocent along with the guilty: all it does is encourage lawless behavior.

Remember those marching orders? The bad cops (guilty ones) need punished, and the good cops (innocent ones) need to not be punished. Hammer the bad cops and praise the good cops. That, friends is true justice: the same justice for the police as for the rest of us.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Republicans” Can Only Win with Democrats’ Help.

According to a recent poll, Ohio’s GOPee Guv John Kasich has a large number of Democrats voting for him. The percentage of such idiot voters is sufficient to provide a comfortable margin of victory. Thousands of Dems have said that they will vote for a thieving, lying, union-busting, woman-hating Wall Street motherf***ing “Republican”.

By so doing, those Dems will enable thievery, lying, starvation, forced births, pollution, contract violations, voter suppression, and income inequality to not only continue, but become even more prevalent. Think about that for a second, Gentle Reader. These are Teapublican values and policies, being supported by alleged Dem Voters.

This is the story of the 2014 midterms, friends: in spite of every evil deed, every crime against humanity, GOP candidates are projected to win. Why? Because a s***load of voters who should know better will make some truly stupid choices.

Stupid choices like voting for Teapubbies, casting protest votes in close races, or just not voting at all. That is how “Republicans” win. It ain’t just vote-rigging, corruption and bribery that enables the Repub Reign of Error: some Democrats are partially culpable.

Please do your part: vote smart. If enough people do so, we can pull off an upset. Smart rarely triumphs over stupid, but it can happen, if enough smart people take the time to vote smart.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Who Cares who Alison Lundergan Grimes Voted For?

Bitchy Mitchy McConnell tells a lot of lies. A LOT of lies. But a very subtle and sneaky one jumped out at this humble blogger during the lone debate with his Democratic challenger: he said Americans have no right to a secret ballot:

Grimes stuck to her days-long refusal to say if she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. She insisted that if she answered the question, it would “compromise a constitutional right” to cast a secret ballot.

McConnell quickly scoffed at that. “There’s no sacred right to not announce how you voted,” he said, seated next to Grimes for an hour-long debate hosted by KET, the state’s public television station.

There is indeed no explicit Constitutional right to a secret ballot: because Boards of Election need to track voters and ballots to prevent fraud. But that’s the only place where your right to voting privacy is limited.

But old Jerkle the Turtle goes a step further: not only does he not think you have a right to privacy in the voting booth, he thinks you can be forced to reveal your votes if any old yahoo asks you. This is some truly, scarily insidious, authoritarian, big-government s*** here, folks: “Republicans” think they can force you to tell them how you voted, and that you have no right to privacy.

It’s of a piece with GOP philosophy: they hates them some Fourth Amendment. Repubs think the government should be able to wiretap you, arrest you, torture you, dictate your medical care, and monitor your sex life. So voting rights are likewise non-starters for Big Brother Motherf***ers like McConnell and the rest of his party. Once again, Gentle Reader: Repubs think you have no right to privacy.

We should all of us applaud Ms. Grimes’ strong stand on privacy, and support her right to not say for whom she voted. This seems obvious, but even some Democrats are saying she should tell us all how she voted. Poppy-f***ing-cock. She has the same privacy rights as the rest of us, and we should all have her back on this issue – because we all are in the same boat. Want to be forced to tell your boss how you voted, or your parents, or a “news” organization? This writer does not, and you shouldn’t have to, either.

This election isn’t just about candidates, folks: it’s about our freedom from Big Government Repubs and their NSA-Patriot Act-Morals Police-Brute Squad vision of America. We all need to vote against any candidate who would take away our rights, and support any candidate who supports our rights.

Your humble correspondent doesn’t give a single turd from a tufted titmouse’s ass how Ms. Grimes voted. It’s her right to keep it private, and good on her for asserting that right.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Labor Day Alert: Bosses are trying to erase U.S. Labor History

The Blair Mountain Battle was a pivotal event in our nation’s history: 10,000 abused miners were set upon by thousands of armed rent-a-cops and Brute Squad members. Lots of poor workers died, and the battlefield (seriously, it was that bloody) is on the National Register of Historic Places, as it damned well should be. From the article at Archaeology:

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA—Today marks the 93rd anniversary of the beginning of the battle between more than 10,000 union coal miners and thousands of local law enforcement officers and coal company guards along Blair Mountain Ridge—the largest armed confrontation in American labor history. Now, two mining companies want to strip-mine coal from areas near the Blair Mountain Battlefield, and from the battlefield itself, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. According to a report in The Charleston Gazette, environmentalists, preservationists, and the United Mine Workers continue to work for stricter regulations to preserve the landscape. “Some historians recognize the Battle as a principal catalyst for passage of the National Labor Relations Act [in 1935], the federal statutory framework for worker organizing and the peaceful resolution of industrial disputes,” Laura P. Karr, a lawyer for the United Mine Workers, wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers last year. Charles B. Keeney III, chair of the Friends of Blair Mountain, adds that artifacts related to troop movements, buried weapons, shell casings, entrenchments, and possibly even human remains are likely to be at the site, and they would be lost by any potential mining activity.

Got it? Big Business and Bosses are trying to shove this shameful episode in their history down the memory hole, so they can more easily re-enslave us. They’ve done it before, of course. But this one was big – the slaughter of striking workers. Another article goes into greater detail:

…But in 1921, that sound was replaced by the rattle of machine guns and the pop-pop of squirrel rifles, when the valley was just one corner of a battlefield sprawling across 10 miles of ridgeline. In late summer of that year, a force of striking coal miners crept through this hollow, dodging fire from anti-union forces stationed above. The Battle of Blair Mountain, as it is called, involved more than 10,000 men and was the country’s largest civil conflict besides the Civil War. Though the battle is little known outside of union and historian circles, it was a key moment for the American labor movement.

…As the miners neared Chafin’s three-mile defensive line along Spruce Fork Ridge, open war broke out. Archaeologists estimate that a million rounds were fired over the battle’s five days…In early September, federal troops arrived to end the conflict. The state of West Virginia charged the leaders of the strike with treason, and though none were convicted, the trial exhausted the UWMA’s coffers and broke the union there until a dozen years later, when the National Industrial Recovery Act officially recognized the right to organize. After that, led by some of the same men from the march, the southern coalfields of West Virginia became a stronghold of union sentiment (at least until more strikebreaking in the 1980s). Union leaders from Appalachia also helped organize other industrial heartlands. “If you work for a living, if you get unemployment, if you have minimum wage or better, paid vacation, or health insurance, you owe it to those folks who stood their ground on Blair Mountain,” says Barbara Rasmussen, a historic preservationist and president of Friends of Blair Mountain.

The archaeology on the mountain, and the story it is beginning to tell, has helped bring together an unusual coalition—including the Sierra Club, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and a number of local organizations—in what some are calling “The Second Battle of Blair Mountain.” It is certainly a fight over historic preservation, but for many involved, including local archaeologists and historians, the mountain is symbolic of much more—labor struggle, the social effects of resource extraction industries, and what they see as a century-long class conflict.

This post is a day late, because a goodly part of the Cranky family took the day off yesterday and spent the long weekend camping. This was possible because of unions, people. It was ONLY possible because of unions. They may be pooh-poohed today, but labor unions were and are responsible for much of what American workers take for granted today.

And the bosses know this, and fear the resurgence of unions. So they are busily working to erase the memory of unions’ struggles against the plutocrats. Today, say “thanks” to any union workers you meet, because we owe them a lot.

And remember those who died for you, on battlefields like this one. In spite of Corporate America’s efforts to the contrary, remember.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Lying Sacks of S***of The Week: Boeing

Remember when Boeing decided to move to the “Right to Work” states of the Southeast, because the eeeevil nasty unions of the Northwest were unwilling to work for half the pay they’d been getting? And remember how Boeing said these new workers would do the same jobs better and cheaper? They lied.

“Boeing’s South Carolina facility is running behind projections and won’t make its goal of producing three 787 Dreamliners a month by the end of 2013. In fact, the Everett plant will have to make up the difference in order for the company to reach its overall goal of 10 jetliners a month by year’s end.

In other words, the cheaper workers are providing less work than the more expensive workers. And the Carolina workers are producing such crap, the union workers often have to redo it to fix what the non-union yokels f***ed up.

Big lesson here: “Right to Work” does not mean “ability to work”. This has come as a shock to all of the Boeing MBAs who smugly assumed that anybody with ten digits could do a task as well as anybody else. These “managers” are a bunch of purblind fools who couldn’t manage their way out of a wet paper sack with electric carving knives.

This writer thinks that Boeing’s MBAs should be made to give back their degrees. The reason is simple: companies are supposed to return maximum value to their shareholders, yes?

And Boeing is failing to do so, and that miserably. Instead of taking care of business, they pursued a sociopolitical agenda: and that agenda was to a large extent based on theoretical notions and was characterized by short-term thinking.

When your planning horizon is “what time is it?”, you will fail. When you rely on unquantified assumptions and do not adapt when the data proves them false, you will fail spectacularly.

MBAs are taught not to do these things. Anyone who does them is not worthy to hold the title.

This will, in a future business school be a case study of everything NOT to do in a business situation. I hope the workers get the jobs they deserve from Boeing’s competitor.

And hopefully Airbus will never be crowned with a Crown O’ Polished Turds, as those lying sacks of s*** at Boeing have just been.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Michigan’s Government Interferes with the Free Market

Mr. Blunt and Cranky has noticed an increased amount of government meddling in the private sector over the past few years: legislation that voids contracts, creates burdensome obstacles to business and labor, and generally makes it harder for we schmucks to make a buck. Today’s example:

Michigan’s Right-To –Work Law, in which the government takes it upon itself to trash, void and re-write contracts to which they are not signatories.Mark this well, my friends – private industries and their workforces negotiated and signed contracts that made good business sense. And now some yahoo legislators want to shred those agreements without the consent of the parties involved. Much money will be lost by the companies, their workers, suppliers, and consumers as a result of this un-asked for governmental power grab.

Note that, contrary to the usual media-produced stereotypes, the meddlesome bureaucrats in this case are “Republicans”. In a perversion of the free-market principles on which they used to base their principles, they are using government influence to rig the markets in favor of those who give them cash. And to Hell with the private sector and their legal rights.

Yes, there is government interference in the free market. But it isn’t always where you expect to find it.

Mr. B & C

Motherf***in’ Mitt Made Millions from The Auto Bailout

The source of those millions? We, the taxpayers paid them to Mitt and his cronies, while Delphi workers lost their jobs, pensions, and healthcare. Then their jobs were sent to…you guessed ‘er, Chester; China. Yes, Mitt’s cronies sent American auto industry jobs to China. (Mitt later claimed that Obama sent autoworkers’ jobs there. That takes some brass.)

Click the link below for a rare example of actual journalism (yeah, a sadly uncommon thing these days)covering the money trail and the crooked slimeballs involved. Short version: Mitt invested in a company that bought Delphi, got paid more than once for the purchase, and then shipped each and every union job to China. The former American workers are in foreclosure, working at Wal-Mart, going hungry, doing without health care, and so on. The usual fate of de-jobbed American workers in our modern Dickensian economic reality.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza

Mr. Blunt and Cranky really, really has a problem with his tax dollars going to pad the offshore bank  accounts of these motherf***ers. Especially when Romney opposed the bailout in public, whilst profiting from it in private.  He stole our money and money owed to the former American Delphi workers, sent the jobs overseas, and then tried to blame Obama for it.

If you read this and still vote for Romney, you are one of the following:

Number A: Stupid

Letter 2: Racist AND Stupid

Thirdly: In on the scam and making tons of money from it.

If you are in the third category, well; f*** you assh***, give us our money back.

Mr. B & C

If You are Anti-Labor, Get Your A** to Work Today

http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm   is a good history of the roots of labor day: and guess what? “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

Everybody got that? It was not about the rich folk of the country, it was not about the business owners, it was created to honor the working schmucks who actually built and made things.

That being understood, Mister Blunt and Cranky would like to make a few suggestions:

Number A, if you feel the minimum wage should be abolished, then you have no business taking today off, and should be at work. Go on. Off with you now. Don’t come home until Tuesday night, and work the entire time, every single minute. No overtime, either, you whining slacker.

Letter 2, if you think unions are some sort of job-destroying anti-Christ organization, then you have no business taking today off, and should be at work. Go on. Off with you  now. Don’t come home until Tuesday night, and don’t let us find you malingering the while (you know, meal or bathroom breaks, or any of that lazy behavior).

Thirdly, if you are opposed to any sort of health, safety, or life-saving regulations that save workers’ health or lives, see the remedies in Number A and Letter 2.

In a day and age in which the  Wall Street Crook is lionized and the Main Street worker is demonized, this writer hopes this brief history lesson will help some Americans remember what Labor Day is about: ordinary working people. They, my friends, are the real American Majority.

Seeing Wall Street tycoons, anti-labor lobbyists, and wingnuts like Michelle Bachman celebrate Labor Day is like watching Atheists take Communion.  Except, of course, one never sees an Atheist behaving in such a hypocritical fashion.

Mr. B & C