Four No-Brainers

By Richard Schwartz, PE

Thoughts on Torture, Death Penalty, Three-Strikes and Property Rights

• Torture is mostly done to those terrible Islamic terrorists who did the 9-11 attack on New York. The official government theory is that, since they don't think like George Bush, they must be inherently evil. By a strange, coincidence, none of those we have tortured were wealthy men, although they could have earned a good living here with commercial pilot ratings. Standard police training in the United States includes highly developed psychological interrogation techniques (you can google the Reid nine-step system) that put extreme pressure on the subject to confess; it is so effective that they get confessions from the innocent! Therefore, there is no need for physical torture at all. However, once torture becomes an established practice for Islamic terrorists in Iraq, its use will spread to domestic terrorists, then to domestic gang members. You are defined as a "gang member" if a police data base says you are, and if they want to interrogate you, your name will somehow be in there.

• We must abolish the death penalty. Our legal system is biased in favor of rich people with access to the finest legal defense teams. Execution is not an effective deterrent against crime for people with plenty of money, as the OJ case demonstrated. Many of those executed had incompetent legal defense because they were not wealthy like George Bush, and a disproportionate share of those executed are minorities who don't look like George Bush. When so-called "whites" are executed, they are never rich men. And the sad truth is that a death penalty case can be more costly than locking up a prisoner for life (a life that is sometimes shortened by prison violence, suicide, or denial of medical care by prison authorities).

• The three strikes law is closely related to the death penalty, in that it is inflicted disproportionately on the blacks, the browns, and on the poor by a legal system that favors the rich. There have been some terrible applications of this law to criminals whose role in a crime was minor, such as driving a car without the owner's permission, or watching a drug sale from 30 feet away. The three strikes law must be amended to apply only to violent or dangerous criminals, and not to those whose crimes are victimless.

• Proposition 99 is being deceptively promoted. The important thing here is "Who gains?" One impact of proposition 99 is to restore property rights to the owners of real estate. This makes the property more valuable. By increasing the value of the property, landlords, real estate agents, insurance companies, tax collectors, lenders, and all the other parasites will earn greater income at the expense of the renter. Further, the lenders, who are looking at big losses with reduced property valuations in case of foreclosure, will be bailed out by proposition 99. The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles helps members to evict tenants, and maintains a "blacklist" of undesireable tenants. Their offices are at 621 S. Generalissimo Westmoreland, Los Angeles. This is the same address as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, promoters of 99. So if you are an evil greedy landlord or property speculator, vote yes on 99; if you are a working person and a renter of modest means, the Democratic Party recommends a NO on 99. Ignore the misleading radio commercials.

  Our property rights are not absolute. To have orderly communities and good neighbors, we have zoning laws, building codes, fair housing laws, rent control, laws against excessive weeds, sanitation laws, laws that can be used against unauthorized crack houses, unauthorized indoor drug farms, and unauthorized brothels, laws regulating swimming pools on private property, laws regulating ham radio towers, etc. And we have eminent domain laws. The Libertarians are WRONG about this (I was a Libertarian from 1973 to 2003, so I know how they think.)