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Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’

We’re Not Done Yet

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2012| 21 Comments »

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.  –  Charles Caleb Colton

What, you thought we were finished with updates for the month?  I’m getting so many of these now I’ll soon be changing the way I handle them; look for a new feature, “That Was the Week That Was”, coming next Saturday (February 4th).  But in the meantime…

What the Hell Were You Thinking? (April 4th, 2011)

I’ve suggested that amateur women protect themselves by taking tips from the pros, including checking in and out.  Well, somebody had the same idea:

…myDate…makes it easy to set-up a network…who will receive text and e-mail alerts should you not make it back from your date at a [predesignated] time…Provide details of your upcoming date, including where, when…contact information for the person you are going out with…[and] a check-in time…[when] you expect to be back home alone…If you don’t [check in]…text and e-mail alerts are sent to your [contact] list…if something goes wrong, you’ll have loved ones on your trail as soon as possible…if…you stay out longer than expected, you can always…change the check-in time…[or] cancel the whole thing if your date never shows up…

The main flaw in this is that the man doesn’t know about the “app” unless you tell him.  A callout does more than let others know your status; “it also sends a clear message to the man:  People know where I am and how long I’m supposed to be here…It’s difficult to stop someone who intends to commit a crime with malice aforethought; what basic protective measures do is to deter opportunistic crimes.  Locks prevent morally weak people from being tempted to easy thefts, and the knowledge that others know a woman is with him might stop a man with poor impulse control from succumbing to the desire to rape her.”

The Pro-Rape Coalition (April 14th, 2011)

The evidence strongly indicates that as porn has become more available, the rates of rape and other sex crimes have decreased; some studies even suggest that porn is actually responsible for the drop.  Therefore, any politician who wants to increase the number of federal obscenity prosecutions is, whether he admits it or not, pro-rape.  Some of you might like to know the names of the current presidential candidates who want to see more American women raped, and XBiz is happy to oblige:

…Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have each pledged to enforce federal obscenity laws against major commercial distributors of hardcore adult pornography.  The pledges [were] compiled and published by Morality in Media [as] part of the organization’s…”War on Illegal Pornography”…None of the other…candidates nor President Obama has responded to efforts initiated by MIM to learn their views…

Sales Pitch (May 22nd, 2011)

Sweden is so invested in selling itself as the “feminist” moral arbiter of the world that it’s willing to lie about the success of its eponymous model, pretending that it has greatly reduced both prostitution and the demand for it.  So I think it’s fair to consider this scandal (as reported in Feminist Ire) what the young people call an “epic fail”:

I posted…here…that, contrary to the claims of advocates of the Swedish model, brothels continue to thrive under the sex purchase ban.  Now, it seems that they’ve had a little bit of help from friends in high places:

A high-ranking civil servant in Sweden’s defence ministry has been sacked after it was revealed he was involved in running several Thai massage parlours on the side…The raids revealed that the wife of the defence ministry official operated three massage parlours in the Stockholm area and that he served as an alternate board member of the company that ran the operation.

And according to the Swedish Tax Agency,

“We have clear indications both in the trafficking of girls and that many deal with unreported wages and pay unreasonably low payroll taxes”.

This isn’t the first time a high-ranking official has been found to be personally involved in undermining Sweden’s claims to have all but eliminated trafficking and sex work.  Last year, the chief of police in Uppsala…was convicted on numerous charges including rape, purchasing sex, and “procuring” (translation: he was running a prostitution ring, involving underage girls).  And regular Swedish press reports prove that they have as many examples as any other country of police and government officers being (literally) caught with their pants down…What gets my goat is the deliberate deception of those Swedish officials who come to other countries and tell us…that it’s “impossible to run a brothel in Sweden” when your own fucking government official is running several of them – and when their tax non-compliance seems to be the main source of your interest in them…

The Punitive Mindset (October 20th, 2011)

Remember how the unholy union of sadists and neofeminists are trying to ban porn in Connecticut prisons?  Well, as explained in this January 10th article from Slate, it gets much worse:

…While you might think of masturbation as a sort of last refuge for the incarcerated…that is not the case.  In fact, a number of state prisons regard jerking off as a rule infraction…In North Carolina…it is a violation to “touch the sexual or other intimate parts of oneself  or another person for the purpose of sexual gratification”…Tennessee forbids “any behavior intended for the sexual gratification of the subject.”  Ohio prohibits “seductive or obscene acts, including  indecent exposure or masturbation.”  Kentucky regards inmate masturbation as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”  In California…masturbation is permissible provided it is stopped immediately if noticed by staff, blue balls be damned.  If the masturbator perseveres, even if concealed by bed sheets, he can be cited for “Intentionally Sustained Masturbation without Exposure.”    These policies are part of a long correctional tradition to forbid all forms of sexual activity…

In practice, inmates are seldom sanctioned, so long as they touch themselves discreetly.  In Connecticut, masturbation is against the rules only when performed “in a lewd and public manner.”  Other states have similar policies.  But the line between intentional and inadvertent exposure can be blurry in a context where inmates do not control their privacy and cells are sometimes defined as public places.  What’s more, some experts on prison sex contend that anti-masturbation and anti-porn policies in prisons are counterproductive because they effectively drive inmates to engage in risky sexual behavior…increased access to pornography—which goes hand-in-hand with increased access to one’s doo-dads—might be just what correctional facilities need to stem prison rape…

…the idea that sexual amenities could or should be part of the American correctional tradition never gained wide acceptance.  Prison policy…grew more punitive in the ’70s…Today only six states allow conjugal visits, down from more than a dozen two decades ago… [Another] new factor [is]…the female prison guard…women are steadily replacing men because prisons prefer to hire guards without criminal records and with some education beyond high school—both of which favor female applicants…[also] they can legally oversee housing units for both male and female inmates, whereas men often are permitted to guard and conduct pat-searches only on other men.  The result is that male inmates are accorded less privacy in which to masturbate than female inmates…

Prisons must also protect female guards from the hostile work environment…as established in a [2006 federal] case…The threat of sexual harassment is now also used as a justification for keeping porn out of prisons…Connecticut said explicit materials create a hostile environment for staff…[and] Pennsylvania’s 2006 ban was designed to improve working conditions for women…But…what if porn—and its natural consequence, masturbation—has the potential to deter sex crimes like prison rape?…a review paper on porn and sexual aggression from 2009 points out that as the availability of sexually explicit content has exploded in the Internet era, sex crimes have dropped nearly everywhere the matter has been studied.  That doesn’t match with the theory that using porn facilitates rape, and some researchers even argue that porn might have a protective effect, by giving people a safe outlet for pent-up desires…patients seeking treatment in sex offender clinics often say porn helps them restrict their urges to their imaginations rather than acting them out by force.  In effect, masturbation displaces rape…yet in prisons, Stone Age attitudes toward…sexuality still rule…Correctional officials may wish inmates were sexually inert, but a more pragmatic attitude might yield better results…

Ask yourself what kind of sick mind would want to be a female guard in a male prison, and I think you’ll understand where a lot of this “harassment” nonsense comes from.  Angry, sadistic neofeminists aren’t allowed to literally castrate men, but they want to get as close as possible.  And if their ridiculous demands cause more men to be raped, that’s just a bonus.

One Year Ago Today

“Wild Guessing (Part Two)”  dissects the Schapiro Group’s treatise on stealing grant money from worthwhile programs using lies, exaggeration and appeals to emotion.

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The Punitive Mindset

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2011| 63 Comments »

Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.  – George Bernard Shaw

Some euphemisms are just so absurd it’s a wonder they aren’t the subject of constant public ridicule; one of these is “Department of Corrections”, a common American phrase meaning “Prison Department”.  It also has a number of derivatives like “correctional institution” (prison) and “correctional officer” (jailer).  But surely, no sane person believes that prisoners are being “corrected” or rehabilitated in any way; in fact, the evidence is the opposite, that locking criminals up for long periods of time merely makes them worse, and imprisoning those who break minor laws destroys their lives and/or turns them into career criminals.  The reasons for this should be obvious; prisons are little more than schools for crime, where those who are not thoroughly violent when they get in are forced to become more violent to survive.  Furthermore, excessive sentences remove prisoners from society for so long they forget how to behave among normal people and internalize the prison mode of behavior so that it’s difficult to “unlearn” when they get out, especially since criminal background checks, offender registries and other post-incarceration punishments often prevent former prisoners from ever returning to normal society.  These measures create a permanent criminal underclass who can never make a good living or otherwise reintegrate, so their incentives to return to crime (or enter it for the first time if their initial incarceration was for a consensual “offense”) are very strong indeed.  Women who cannot get “regular” jobs can always fall back on prostitution or marriage, but for male ex-convicts there aren’t many options for a worthwhile income other than drug dealing.

None of this makes any difference to lawheads, who defend their punitive mindset with tautologies, a priori statements and asinine slogans derived from TV cop show theme songs.  They take sadistic pleasure in seeing others suffer even if that suffering undermines rehabilitation, endangers society at large and costs the state tremendous amounts of money.  The prevalence of such warped mentalities in the United States can be demonstrated by the fact that we have only 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners and that since 1980 the incarceration rate has grown wildly out of proportion to the crime rate, largely thanks to mandatory sentencing laws, “three strikes” laws and the War on Drugs.  Nor are these perverts satisfied with caging human beings; oh, no!  They constantly agitate for longer sentences and harsher treatment of prisoners, both during their imprisonment and after their release.  And when badge-licking sadism gets into bed with political correctness and neofeminist “social construction” mythology, the result is just plain revolting:

A group of prisoners has begun a letter-writing campaign to protest what they see as an unfair ban on pornography inside [Connecticut’s] correctional institutions.  The Department of Correction announced in July that it would be banning all material that contains “pictorial depictions of sexual activity or nudity” from the prisons beginning next summer.  The state says the ban is intended to improve the work environment for prison staffers, especially female staffers, who might be inadvertently exposed to pornography.  “While it is not supposed to be displayed, it is still visible to staff, whether it be on the inside of a foot locker or underneath their bunks, so they are still exposed to it,” said Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett.  “And secondarily, is the fact that this is contrary to our rehabilitative efforts, particularly when it comes to sex offenders.”

OK, let’s see if we can follow the “logic” here; they’re applying “hostile work environment” rhetoric derived from “sexual harassment” law to prisons?  The mind boggles; one would think any sane being with the most rudimentary knowledge of human sexual behavior would recognize that for a woman, the inside of a men’s prison would be practically the archetype of a “hostile work environment”.  And if a woman is able to see under a male prisoner’s bunk or into his foot locker, porn is the least thing she has to worry about being “exposed” to.  And how, pray tell, is access to material which the great majority of adult males view regularly somehow “contrary to rehabilitative efforts”?  Looking at porn is one of the few normal male things prisoners can do, and contrary to anti-porn claims it seems to reduce the rate of sex offense rather than increasing it.

…Bill Dunlop, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, said there is a constitutional argument to be made.  But, he said the courts have generally sided with prison officials, as long as they can prove the ban has a legitimate goal other than to simply suppress material that some people might find objectionable — such as maintaining safety in the prisons, or keeping the material out of the hands of sex offenders.  “The courts don’t require the prison officials to look for other ways of achieving those goals without infringing on First Amendment rights, to the extent that they would for government outside the prison,” he said.  “Based on the press release and the notice to the prisoners, it looks as though it’s in the general area of regulations that have been upheld in the past.”  But the state’s total ban on sexually explicit material appears to go beyond bans that the Supreme Court has upheld in the past, he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut…is not representing any of the inmates and doesn’t advocate for pornography in prisons, but is concerned that the ban could be enforced in an arbitrary and overly broad manner.  “Similar regulations have been used to censor an image of the Sistine Chapel, newspapers and magazines with lingerie ads and the novel Ulysses,” Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said in a statement.

…The ban has the support of the union that represents prison guards.  Lisamarie Fontano, president of Local 387 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, said she has been pushing for such a ban for several years, and has received complaints from female employees who have been sexually harassed by inmates using pornography.  “It’s a betterment to all to have it gone,” she said.  “Some inmates don’t want it, because their own sexual and mental issues were being forced onto them, even though it shouldn’t be there in the first place.”  Prisoners also use pornography as currency in prison, trading the pictures for other things of value, she said…

Given that prison guard unions, like all public employee unions, wield power far out of proportion to their numbers (the California prison guards’ union is thought to be the most powerful union in the United States), I have no doubt that the ban will be supported by the courts.  I don’t believe for one second that Fontano or any other female freaking prison guard is so lost in neofeminist La-la Land that she honestly believes that male sexual desire derives from looking at porn; she just wants to create her own sadistic mental porn by depriving male prisoners of one more simple human pleasure.

One Year Ago Today

“Yesterday” is a cynical rumination on what it will take to get the mainstream media to stop acting as prohibitionist propaganda organs, and to really get the cause of sex worker rights moving, using lessons learned from gay rights activism.

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…And Don’t Forget To Wash Behind Your Ears

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2011| 14 Comments »

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.  –  Thomas Jefferson.

One of the first ways a child knows his mother recognizes that he’s growing up is that she stops reminding him of commonsense things.  Obviously, there are some mothers who never stop, but this gets pretty irritating because it tends to mean the mother doesn’t really trust her child to remember it himself; in other words, it’s a sign she views him as immature and therefore irresponsible.  A mother who regularly called to remind her adult son or daughter to take typical adult precautions such as locking doors, brushing teeth or dressing warmly in wintertime would certainly be perceived as annoying and interfering; such reminders are at best patronizing and at worst examples of a pathological need to infantilize the one to whom they are delivered.  Any normal woman would resent such behavior if her mother did it…so why do we accept it from busybody strangers?

In my column of April 4th, I offered a few safety tips for my amateur sisters who date strangers (including men they meet online).  But I’m not in authority over any of my readers; my suggestions are intended in the spirit of sharing my considerable experience in dealing with strange men in sexually-charged situations with women who may not have been in that position.  You don’t have to take them, don’t even have to read them and in fact can say “up yours, Maggie” if it pleases you to do so.  I’m certainly not going to put the suggestions on my front page so you’re forced to look at them every time you sign on, and I couldn’t take measures to “protect” you from your own decisions even if I wanted to.

Others, however, have a lower opinion of the adult competency of those who use the internet.  After an entitlement junkie recently sued Match.com for failing to warn her that meeting strange men for potentially sexual purposes might be, like, dangerous, the popular dating site announced that it will now screen users via the national sex offender registry.  Because obviously, anyone who isn’t on the registry must be perfectly safe, and anyone who is on it deserves never to have sexual contact ever again with anyone for the rest of his life, even if he’s there for screwing his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 19, or she’s there for prostitution or taking nude pictures of herself as a teenager.  Match.com is a business and if it decides to nag its users with commonsense warnings or discriminate against certain groups as a ward against future lawsuits, that’s certainly its right.  But as this AP release, from last Thursday (April 21st) explains, Big Nanny wants to force websites to do those things:

… Amid accounts of sex offenders using matchmaking sites to find victims, lawmakers in several states are trying to pass legislation to help make online daters more aware of the potential pitfalls of the process.  Bills are pending this year in Connecticut and Texas to provide users with more information to protect themselves.  Connecticut’s bill, mirroring a law in New York, requires Internet dating services to provide a safety awareness notice during registration that offers advice such as never including your last name, email address, place of work, phone numbers or identifying information in an Internet profile.  Similar laws are already on the books in Florida and New Jersey…”I’ve heard a lot of stories, not only people who had their physical safety endangered, but also financial safety,” said Connecticut…[bill sponsor] Mae Flexer…”I’ve heard from a number of people who unfortunately met someone online, they gave them too much information and were damaged financially as well.”

The Texas legislation requires online dating services to clearly disclose to customers whether they conduct criminal background checks on each member before allowing them to contact other members on the site.  The same bill requires the sites to remind customers that background checks are not a perfect safety solution and they can be circumvented by criminals.  New York lawmakers are considering a similar bill that would supplement last year’s law.  It would also require the companies to clearly notify users whether they conduct criminal background screenings…

Donna Rice Hughes, CEO and president of Enough is Enough, a Virginia-based nonprofit that focuses on improving Internet safety for children and families, said it makes sense for corporate matchmaking websites to proactively take steps to make their services safer…”The last thing they need for business is for somebody to get harmed by something through their site… They should be running their database against the sex offender registries.  That’s a no-brainer.”  [But] Alex Vasquez, founder of the L.A.-based blog theurbandater.com, said not everyone in the online dating community likes the idea of background checks.  “It’s definitely going to be a hot-button item because there’s definitely that privacy issue,” he said.  Vasquez recommends both women and men use common sense when meeting their online dates face-to-face…

One would think that since Mrs. Hughes made her own highly questionable choices involving men without the assistance of the internet, she would understand that it’s dating strangers which carries the risk, not the method by which people find each other.  Meeting strangers via online personals ads is no different from meeting them via print personals, except that the online personal is likely to contain a great deal more information (not to mention a picture and the ability to “chat” electronically without exchanging phone numbers).  If anything, using computer ads vs. print ones actually decreases the danger; it certainly has for escorts.  The real change isn’t the medium, it’s the percentage of people using such ads for dating.  But even then, does anyone really believe meeting a man online is remotely as dangerous as meeting him in a singles bar?

Mr. Vasquez has it right; if people would simply use common sense, they wouldn’t need corporate and political nannies telling them whom they’re allowed to meet and talk to and insulting their intelligence with “advice” which should be obvious to any rational adult.  Alas, common sense has gone out of style; taking personal responsibility for one’s choices and the consequences thereof make it much more difficult to sue somebody if one screws up or unforeseen circumstances occur, and people who accept personal responsibility tend to reject the efforts of “authorities” to control their lives, beliefs and finances…and we certainly can’t have that.

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Holiday Leftovers

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2011| 9 Comments »

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought. –  Honoré De Balzac

A collection of links and comments leftover from the twelve days of Christmas.

Update: Lying Down With Dogs

Remember my column about how the US seems bound and determined to align itself with third-world countries and oppressive regimes?  Well, this article is sort of a reverse example, because while in Afghanistan organizations which protect women from abuse are accused by the media of promoting prostitution, in the US prostitutes’ rights organizations are accused by the media of promoting abuse of women.  Is one so different from the other?

Am I Missing Something?

In this article from the New York Post, we read that a 24-year-old Manhattan woman named Lily Shang has filed suit against her estranged husband, 26-year-old David Glenn Rucker, after he threatened to post sex videos they took together on the internet (though he plans to edit himself out).  Leaving aside for a moment the issue of their ages (which supports my contention that men shouldn’t marry until at least 30 and women until at least 25), what I want to know is how this is even one particle different from this story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, the stories are by two different writers, and yes, the latter are celebrities while the former aren’t, but otherwise what’s the difference?  How is a man using the threat of releasing a sex tape in order to lower his divorce settlement any worse than a woman using the exact same threat to raise hers?  In my opinion both threats are equally reprehensible, and if I were the judge I’d throw the book at the one making such a threat, but then I believe in justice.  Of course I also believe in Santa Claus, so what do I know?

How Exactly is This is Different From Every Other Year Since the Dawn of Civilization?

Lisa France of CNN says 2010 was “The Year of the Mistress”, and claims celebrity mistresses were a bigger story last year than in other years.  No offense, Lisa, but were you educated in a convent?  Did you somehow miss the fact that wealthy men have always had mistresses, that it’s always a scandal when others find out, and that such scandals have always been wildly popular with the hoi-polloi at least since the invention of the printing press?

Really Cheap Whores

Former Playmate and Hugh Hefner “girlfriend” Izabella St James reveals in her new book just how cheaply Playmates sell their favors:  $1000 a week, and not for easy work either.  For comparison purposes, I’ll mention that my fee for an entire week was $8000.  True, Hef also gave them plastic surgery and the possibility of a centerfold gig, but considering that none of my plastic surgeries cost over $5000 I hardly think that makes up for their getting paid one-eighth what a New Orleans call girl could command.  And that’s even more true when one factors in Hef’s baby oil obsession and preference for anal cowgirl.

Update:  My Body, My Choice

In my column of November 19th I pointed out that Roe vs. Wade established that a woman’s right to privacy includes her right to own and control her body, and since the sexes supposedly have equal protection under American law it also establishes that a man has a right to own and control his body.  And though many states argue otherwise, it clearly establishes the right to suicide; if it’s legal to end the life of a dependent fetus, how can it not be legal to end one’s own?  The contradiction is a logical and legal absurdity.  Yet the state of Connecticut argues that it has the right to force-feed a prison inmate named William Coleman who wishes to starve himself to death to protest what he says is his wrongful conviction on a charge of raping his ex-wife…a charge she only made after consulting a divorce lawyer when Coleman sought sole custody of their children.  Maybe, as some commenters on the story suggest, it’s a grandstand play, but when the state of Connecticut tried to make the problem go away by offering Coleman parole, he refused on the grounds that to sign the papers would constitute admitting his guilt.  Obviously we don’t know what happened, but I think the timing of the events and his refusal to accept parole lend considerable credibility to his story.  And it isn’t like he’s asking for a retrial or pardon, though I’m sure he’d accept either; all he’s asking for is the right to end his own life, as established under international law.  The state of Connecticut’s case is apparently based on the claim that Coleman’s actions infringe on its right to torture him for as long as it pleases, or perhaps because he has dared to call attention to the fact that courts are not infallible.  Many women seem unable to even consider the possibility that any rape accusations might be false, a problem whose implications were discussed by Furry Girl in a recent column, but this isn’t even about that; even if he’s as guilty as a cat with a mouthful of feathers, he still retains the right to end his own life rather than submit to torture.  And the state has no right to torture anyone, not even a rapist or someone accused of espionage.

Dutch Treat

Though this article was published in mid-November, it only came to my attention over the holidays. Maybe the reason Dutch women are so accepting of prostitution is that they realize that for a woman to pursue a male-style career is really kind of stupid unless it’s really, truly what she wants and not just what neofeminist-influenced society has forced her into.  One of the reasons many of us take up prostitution is that, like the Dutch women in this article, we recognize that there are a lot more interesting and fulfilling things to do with one’s life than climbing the corporate ladder and sitting in a cubicle all day.

Devil’s Advocate

How old are you, and how good is your memory?  Can you remember the way male writers of the ‘60s and ‘70s used to ridicule feminist complaints?  Admittedly, some of the rhetoric of those early feminists was overblown, histrionic and even a bit silly (e.g. “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”), but most of those women had legitimate grievances that were no less legitimate because they were awkwardly or emotionally expressed.  And if those male writers had taken the time to look beneath the surface and to strive to understand why women were acting that way instead of just insulting them and dismissing their feelings, the “gender war” might never have happened and we’d all be a lot better off today.  With that in mind, take a look at this Jezebel article and its follow-up.  I guess some people will call it “turnabout is fair play”, but IMHO the appropriate aphorism would be “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

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