Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. That snowstorm was a disappointment. If it’s going to snow, at least snow enough where I have to shovel. I only got about 2″ at my house and work is open as usual.
From Chapter Five, page 139:
“Local resentment became a media theme and then a self-fulfilling prophesy. Even those who privately thought the federal government was doing the best it could under the circumstances could not say so publicly. Coast Guard responders watched Governor Jindal — and the TV cameras following him — return to what appeared to be the same spot of oiled marsh day after day to complain about the inadequacy of the federal response, even though only a small amount of marsh was then oiled. When the Coast Guard sought to clean up that piece of affected marsh, Governor Jindal refused to confirm its location. Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be ‘angry,’ both were disinvited.”
Bobby Jindal is a fake, what a surprise! Jindal was a shameless self-promoter during the spill and he ended up wasting millions of dollars on those useless sand berms too.
Mother Jones has a good article explaining the sovereign citizens’ movement and their ideas about grammar control.
To theorists like Robert Kelly, publisher of The American’s Sovereign Bulletin, the leading publication in the sovereign-citizen world, it all started with the Constitution’s Reconstruction Amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—which established a secondary class of citizens under the control of the government. This was done by cleverly deploying phrases such as “citizens subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and “inalienable rights” (supposedly denoting rights that can be surrendered, as opposed to “unalienable rights” that can never be taken away). People in the sovereign citizens’ movement believe that these subterfuges were originally used to limit African Americans’ rights, but have been expanded over time to make all of us second-class citizens with limited rights. (Another favorite case in point: the use of the phrase “man or other animals” in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act—implying, they argue, that humans have no more legal rights than animals).
The sovereign citizen movement argues that if you closely study the Constitution, you can prove that federal laws are illegitimate—leaving you free to choose not to, say, pay taxes or follow traffic laws. In their view, the minute you get a Social Security number or driver’s license, you enter into a contract giving up your sovereignty. (Several sovereign-citizen adherents have told me that home births are popular in the movement for this reason.) To become a sovereign citizen, you retroactively withdraw from this contract. Some also argue that you aren’t bound to government contracts if you sign documents in red crayon or use lowercase lettering, alternative punctuation for your name (say, “Justine,,, Sharrock”), or add the letters “TDC” for “under threat, duress, and coercion.”) There are myriad theories on how to prove your sovereignty in a court of law, with plenty of experts willing to help—for a fee.
“They are innovative with the pseudolegal and historical tactics,” says Mark Pitcavage, a researcher with the Anti-Defamation League. “They are always coming up with new things.” Most sovereign citizens employ what the FBI calls “paper terrorism”—using legal documents fraudulently to harass public officials—when fighting the government in the courts. People identifying as sovereign citizens have also on occasion fired on police officers trying to enforce laws, and there are rare cases of extreme violence—most notably Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, who identified as a sovereign citizen and even tried to use the movement’s arguments in his legal defense.
There are a lot of strange people in the world but of the truly strange, this is the type I’ve run into the most. The hyper-rulebound (but only as to how it helps themselves) who tie everyone up with endless paperwork about how people are violating this ordinance or another. It’s bizarre. Has anyone else ever had to deal
with someone like this? When I was in grad school there was a retired chem professor who would place these newsletters in everyone’s mailbox about how county government was violating all these laws and they should all go to jail for 100 years. They were cuckoo.