{"id":29863,"date":"2017-10-14T07:59:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T14:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=29863"},"modified":"2017-10-14T07:59:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T14:59:45","slug":"everyday-erinyes-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/14\/everyday-erinyes-96\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #96"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.\u00a0 These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.\u00a0 Even though there are many more which I can’t include.\u00a0 As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/strong><\/span>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

What a week.\u00a0 Trump signs executive order<\/a> to eliminate insurance rules, undermine marketplaces.\u00a0 The United States withdraws from UNESCO<\/a>, … citing anti-Israel bias.\u00a0 And don’t even get me started on Puerto Rico.\u00a0 The war on the planet just got so bad that my alternative energy company sent me an email about it – well, at least that wasn’t in itself bad news; they’re not going out of business.<\/p>\n

It kind of makes me wonder how many people in 1930’s Germany did in fact speak out, but their voices were drowned by the juggernaut of Hitler’s regime.\u00a0 In eighty years, will they know how we spoke out?\u00a0 Those of us who weren’t able to attend protests in person?\u00a0 And even those who were?\u00a0 Or will the juggernaut of Trump’s regime hide that from view?\u00a0 Now, that’s depressing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is depressing too<\/a>.\u00a0 Did you know that among other Congressional perks, they had an on-site pharmacist?\u00a0 It was news to me.\u00a0 And he (of course it’s a he) has even worse news for us.\"\"<\/p>\n

Mike Kim, the reserved pharmacist-turned-owner of the [Grubb’s] pharmacy, said he has gotten used to knowing the most sensitive details about some of the most famous people in Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n

“At first it’s cool, and then you realize, I’m filling some drugs that are for some pretty serious health problems as well. And these are the people that are running the country,” Kim said, listing treatments for conditions like diabetes and Alzheimer’s.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It makes you kind of sit back and say, \u2018Wow, they’re making the highest laws of the land and they might not even remember what happened yesterday.'”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, it’s not quite true that the pharmacy is on-site.\u00a0 What it does is deliver pretty fast to the Office of the Attending Physycian, which is on-site.\u00a0 And is really, really secretive.\u00a0 More so than HIPAA requires.\u00a0 Which probably has something to do with the fact that the fees for members are relatively low – always a hot topic when health care is discussed.<\/p>\n

The Office of the Attending Physician itself was formed in 1928, after three members of Congress died in their offices within months of one another – more than 50 years after Grubb’s first opened its doors.<\/em><\/p>\n

But the pharmacy services at the Capitol may go back even further – a 1911 text on senatorial privileges describes an “assortment of drugs and viands, tonics and recuperatives” on hand and “readily accessible” for lawmakers. Back then, reportedly, senators took tablet after tablet and vial after vial of quinine, pepsin, and calomel, “endless supplies of cough drops,” and something described as “dandruff cure.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I do realize that some drugs used to treat Alzkeimer’s are also used to treat conditions other than Alzheimer’s, so this pharmacist’s revelation that Alzheimer’s drugs have been filled does not necessarily out anyone in congress as having Alzheimer’s; he was just speculationg, and the fact that it certainly would explain a lot is just coincidence.\u00a0 But it certainly would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n

Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, really the only way to make the costs and delivery of prescriptions fair is Single Payer Health Care – which just took another kick in the groin.\u00a0 Good luck.<\/p>\n

Now, this story, from Philadelphia<\/a>, shows pretty well why I am essentially no longer asking police departments to fire murderers:\u00a0 they just don’t stay fired.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia police officer Cyrus Mann stood on a rain-slicked road, pointed his gun at a moving car and pulled the trigger five times, hitting the driver.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"The next year, he chased an unarmed man down an alley and shot him in the back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Two years later, he fired his gun four times at a man he had stopped for a suspected traffic violation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most officers will never fire their weapons while on duty. Mann, a nine-year member of the Philadelphia Police Department, shot three people in just over three years. The shooting in the alley, on Aug. 9, 2012, would prove fatal and prompt the police commissioner to try to fire Mann.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like many police chiefs across the nation, he would fail.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “Reader’s Digest version” of this is that the Union fought for Mann, it went to arbitration, and the arbitrator reinstated him.\u00a0 Well, at least the arbitrator wasn’t racist.\u00a0 I guess.<\/p>\n

But many who are not reinstated to their own jobs still return to law enforcement after “geographic therapy.”\u00a0 Police forces just do not have enough qualified candidates, or enough HR to weed out the others.\u00a0 Unless charges are pressed, and successfully pressed, there is no certain way to keep a known murderer out of law enforcement permanently.\u00a0 And that isn’t the call of the chief or the commissioner, but of the district (or whatever) attorney.\u00a0 Who has to work with police on every case in order to get a conviction.\u00a0 So how is that going to work out?<\/p>\n

We desperately need law enforcement reform, and wherever we turn, we are hampered in getting it.\u00a0 Tisiphone<\/strong><\/span>, would you look into this and see if you can come up with anything?<\/p>\n

Now – I promised to try for follow-up information on cases referred to the Furies where there has been at least mild success.\u00a0 On September ninth<\/a>, I asked Alecto<\/strong><\/span> to look into the case of a rogue cop, and to help in making her findings widely public.\u00a0 Well, she did.\u00a0 She did that so well<\/strong><\/em> (making it public, at least) that Jim beat me to it<\/a>, in a comment on Thursday’s Open Thread.<\/p>\n

In view of the Washington Post story above, however, I’m not terribly impressed.\u00a0 So Payne has been fired.\u00a0 Well, that takes the heat off his (now former) department, which was going to come under FBI investigation – no more Payne, no more problem.\u00a0 And also no guarantee Payne will not get hired elsewhere as a law enforcement officer.\u00a0 He was also fired from his second job as an EMT – but I didn’t see anything about stripping him of his qualifications for that, so that also is likely not a closed door.<\/p>\n

Don’t give up on this one yet, Alecto<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n

Cross posted to Care2 HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.\u00a0 These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.\u00a0 Even though there […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}