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TASER – “It’s Better Than Shooting Someone, Isn’t It?” Print E-mail
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Legal Outrage
Written by Tiffany Sanders   
Tuesday, 18 March 2008 04:40
Controversy abounds about whether TASER use by law enforcement reduces the use of deadly force and whether TASER use is in itself deadly force, but the debate—however well-intentioned—misses a more important issue. Law enforcement officers and other supporters of liberal use of TASERS often point out that it’s “better than having to shoot someone”. It is. Without question, it is. But is that really the decision that law enforcement officers are facing?

News reports have been full of TASER stories over the past several months, and many of them have provoked outrage and controversy—bloggers and newspaper reporters across the country have taken issue with the reasonableness of “tasing” (among others) a student who declined to yield the microphone at a political event, an elderly woman, a woman in a wheelchair, and a six-year-old child.

In nearly every case, law enforcement officers and others stepped up in forums and editorials to explain why the use of a TASER had been perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.

So, the debate rages about whether or not the use of a TASER was right in a particular high-profile case, whether or not TASERS are safe for use at all, whether or not TASERS should be legal and on and on and on. Unfortunately, with emotions running high and victims of apparently extreme tasings taking the spotlight, one basic and absolutely critical fact is being overlooked: these aren’t cases in which police have used TASERS instead of guns. They’re cases in which an officer using his gun would not only have been likely to have been suspended, but might very well have faced murder charges. In other words, in many cases TASERs don’t decrease the level of violence, but introduce violence into a situation in which it would clearly have been unacceptable without them.

Consider again these recent high-profile TASER cases, but asking a different question. Rather than thinking about whether or not the officer “should” have used his TASER, think about whether or not he COULD have used his gun.


Were all of those tasered behaving reasonably? Of course not.

Should some of their actions carry legal penalties? Probably. But with law enforcement officers and others continually repeating, “It’s better than shooting them, isn’t it?”, it’s important to consider just how often that really is the issue. It seems unlikely that police in the circumstances above would, in the absence of TASERs, felt comfortable and justified in using their guns. It seems certain that if they had, successful lawsuits and possibly criminal prosecutions would have followed.

Reasonable people may be able to argue about the relative dangers and merits of TASERS. Even the Australian Medical Association has stated that they can save lives. But if they’re going to save lives, it will be because they truly are used in place of deadly force rather than any time an officer feels he isn’t shown the proper respect.
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Trashy Political Campaigns – It’s Not Just Mudslinging Print E-mail
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Earthly Outrage
Written by Gerri L Elder   
Tuesday, 18 March 2008 02:55
It remains to be seen whether or not the outcome of the 2008 elections will be good for the United States. We can be certain though; the campaigns will not have a particularly great outcome for the planet.

If you’ve been out driving anywhere, you’ve seen the blobs of campaign signs along the roadsides. While there are laws mandating that these signs get cleaned up after the elections, the fact is that they don’t - and even if they do - what happens to them?

None of the high profile candidates have made it a priority to speak about the mountains of campaign sign waste, but there’s actually a lot to say. There are plenty of dirty little secrets that aren’t exactly small in their impact to the environment.

Many campaign signs are made of plastic, and while some may be technically able to be recycled, according to recycling centers most are made of materials which are simply unsuitable for recycling and end up in the landfills. Are any of the candidates making sure that the mess they are making actually gets cleaned up and the materials reused, rather than just becoming a more obvious form of litter as they are strewn across the landscape?

Perhaps some are, but sadly, they seem to be the minority. Most are not even making sure that their signs are being made of materials that are able to be recycled, and are decidedly unconcerned about whether they end up on the side of the road or in a landfill after the election.

In August 2005, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection surveyed all 67 counties in Florida to determine which would be interested in participating in a campaign sign recycling pilot program. Only four counties expressed an interest. In the end, four waste management organizations covering a total of six Florida counties agreed to participate. Collectively the population of the participating areas was 1,319,639 people. Since it was not a presidential election year the amount of campaign signage was of course significantly less than it is this year.

The results of the project were somewhat disappointing. Although over 3 tons of campaign sign waste was collected for recycling in these relatively small areas of Florida, this was only a fraction of what could have been done. The counties had hoped to see more of the signage come in for recycling.

It boggles the mind to think about how many tons of campaign sign waste must end up in landfills across the country during a presidential election year, given that this little piece of Florida with less than 100 percent participation collected more than 3 tons of campaign waste during a year with no presidential election. At this moment, how many thousands of tons of campaign garbage are littering the landscape and on the way to the landfills?

Two of the waste management organizations that handled the campaign sign recycling for four of the six counties had problems with recycling the plastics that the signs were made from. They found it difficult to find an end market for the materials that could be recycled and found it cost prohibitive to ship what could not be used to other facilities that may have been able to salvage the materials. In the end, only three of the participating counties in Florida planned to continue collecting campaign signs for recycling.

Although the pilot campaign recycling program in Florida was disappointing, the good news was that the cost involved in the recycling program were minimal and less than had been expected. That means that if there were an effort being made everywhere to recycle the campaign signs, it would not be costly. The thing is that very few people are concerned with recycling this type of garbage, and on the face of it, it seems that the politicians could care less if their signage is even made of products that are suitable for recycling.

As for the larger political conventions, there may be a bit more being done to shrink the carbon footprint the campaigns are leaving behind. As the candidates and their supporters focus on other things, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC) has stepped in to make things a lot greener, as best they can.

The amount of waste produced at political conventions is monumental. In 2004 CERC worked to promote environmentally friendly practices for the Democratic and Republican conventions in Boston and New York.

The 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston was powered entirely by renewable energy sources and overall the party worked hard to make the whole affair a very green one. Since the Democrats have Al Gore and the party regularly promotes recycling, renewable energy, mass transportation and efforts to reduce pollution, it only makes sense that they would pay attention to the environmental damage that large conventions cause. Otherwise, they’d be hypocrites, right? God forbid.

So, at least on a national level, the Democrats are trying not to trash the planet. CERC helps the Republicans out at the larger conventions, but there is very little press to be seen about the environmentally friendly steps that the Republican Party is taking on its own to make sure that their conventions do not leave behind a mass of garbage and a mess for the environment. It can probably be reasonably assumed that if they were making much of a green effort, they would be saying it – and loudly.

At a local level, politicians still seem to be littering the landscape more than ever. No matter whom you support in an election, you can bet that some of their signs will still be littering the roadsides long after the ballots are counted.

Some individuals salvage the signs and reuse them as they are able, and in some localities small groups of concerned people gather up the signage for recycling, if it is possible for them to be recycled. However, something you don’t ever hear about is a politician making an effort to ensure that their campaign trash is cleaned up and able to be recycled. Their apathy towards the environment makes every campaign a losing one, environmentally speaking.

For what it’s worth, shame should be heaped onto the heads of those responsible for making these messes. Cleaning up after politicians is hardly a new concept. Do you think they might pass laws to penalize themselves for the litter they create? Somehow, I doubt it, so it looks like it’s up to the rest of us to save the planet.
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Page 9 of 11

One Minute Outrage - Political

Issue: We pay lip service to setting aside international differences and coming together in the spirit of healthy competition, good fun, and the common ground that makes us all human--but the way it plays out looks a lot like all of the other international power plays in the world.

Impact: Stronger, richer countries use the Olympics as one more means of demonstrating their superiority and lording it over the rest of the world and we all get wrapped up in the spirit of pride in "our team"--or the sinking feeling of knowing that our team isn't up to par--extending international tensions into yet another arena rather than bridging the gaps.

Read More: Promoting World Peace by Counting Everybody's Gold

 

One Minute Outrage - Earthly

Issue: A blind couple is prosecuted for employing a commonly accepted method of composting in their own garden.

Impact: Your tax dollars at work making life difficult for people with the audacity to grow vegetables--and an apparent legal preference for chemical fertilizers over organic matter that might actually help the environment.

Read More: Gardener Threatens Public Safety with Compost

One Minute Outrage - Legal

Issue: Police departments in major cities across the country aren't content to arrest self-made criminals, but have decided to hit the streets and see whether they can create some more.

Impact: Time and tax dollars poured into sting operations designed to test ordinary people and create crimes that would never have been; meanwhile, who's minding the store?  Hundreds of thousands of unserved felony warrants lie inactive across the country while police experiment in subways, department stores and on streetcorners.

Read More:  Make Your Own Criminal – It's So Much Easier than Chasing the Real Ones

 

One Minute Outrage - Cultural

Issue: Righteous indignance and the spirit of protest sweep us away for the pettiest of reasons; hundreds of thousands of complaints pour in and a dozen attorneys work for more than four years to hash out the consequences of a half-second view of a pop star's breast.

Impact: We use up our time, energy, and money on the easy battles while the ones that could change the world languish, unfought, because they weren't as spicy or as simplistic and they required that we do more than pick up the phone or dash off an email.

Read More: Janet Jackson’s Breast Eclipses World Issues

Is Clarity a Curse in 2008?

 From the author of Globally Rational

2008 presidential election

Barack Obama has been criticized for being “too vague” and not providing enough details about his plans for change in America. But are we ready to listen to the details? In a culture of buzz words, sound bites, and cheap plays for emotional reactions, would a candidate who tried to tell us what he planned to do and why stand a chance—or would we tune out the details and flock back to someone who was willing to boil it down to a catchy slogan and pretend that there were easy answers?



Read More: Election 2008 - Buzzwords and Blurred Issues

 

 

 

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