Sunday, July 26, 2009

Hooray! The Brits catch and jail yet another lying bitch

But she only got 18 months so will be out in 9. I noted another such incident just days ago. So much for the feminist assertion that women don't make false rape claims

I gather that some of my American readers think it sounds bad for me to call the woman a bitch. My question is: If not her, whom? This blog is, after all, a defiance of political correctness


A woman who falsely accused her ex-boyfriend of rape when he broke off their relationship was jailed yesterday for her 'vile lies'. Louise Johnson, 37, drove Andrew Tutty to the brink of suicide after he was arrested and suspended from his job. After accusing the care worker of the rape, Johnson then took out an injunction against her former lover whom she claimed was continuing to harass her. The mother-of-one then contacted police again to claim Mr Tutty had turned up at her home with a knife, ordered her to strip and then threatened to rape her.

Yesterday a judge told Johnson she was guilty of telling 'lies of the most vile kind' as Mr Tutty told of the 'devastating' impact of the case on his life. The 41-year-old was arrested twice, had his DNA swabbed and spent two-and-a-half months on police bail until he was able to prove his innocence when CCTV proved he was with his son at a train station 160 miles away when Johnson claimed he turned up at her home with the knife.

Mr Tutty, from Dudley, West Midlands, said: 'I couldn't believe it when I was arrested by the police. It was devastating - especially as I was suspended from my job over it. 'It has been a long slow two years during which my name has been dragged through the mud. I have been through hell. 'It has been a nightmare and I would not be on this earth if it had not been for the support of friends and family. I would be six feet under.'

The couple met through their jobs as carers at a residential care home for disturbed young people. They had only been going out for two months before Mr Tutty ended the relationship in March 2007.

Alka Brigue, prosecuting, said Johnson took Mr Tutty's decision to finish the relationship 'very badly'. He was first arrested on suspicion of rape in July 2007. Johnson claimed he had forced her to perform a sex act on him but the incident never took place. The following month Johnson took out the injunction and a short time later Mr Tutty was arrested again after she claimed that, armed with the knife, he arrived at her home in Tividale, West Midlands, ordered her to strip and threatened to rape her.

Miss Brigue said: 'Johnson claimed he turned up at her home and assaulted her. He took clothes off and attempted to rape her. 'She said there were blows to various parts of her body from his hands and fists. He also brandished a knife.' Wolverhampton Crown Court heard at that precise time Mr Tutty had been filmed on CCTV boarding a train in Gosport, Hampshire, with his son.

In a victim impact statement filed with the court, Mr Tutty described how Johnson's lies caused him 'considerable distress and discomfort'. He has since been reinstated to his job.

Johnson then complained she had received a string of text messages from Mr Tutty and that he had again assaulted her but, at the time, he had been attending his mother's 67th birthday party before going straight to work. Analysis of Johnson's phone suggested she had sent the messages herself, a source said.

The court heard Johnson had made a string of allegations against other people over the previous 12 years. It is understood she had accused a man of raping her in 2005, although charges were never proceeded with.

The court heard Johnson suffered from a personality disorder. Samantha Powis, defending, said Johnson had suffered from abuse as a child. Her alleged tormentor was acquitted after a trial. Miss Powis said Johnson 'accepts these were gravely serious allegations and they not only undermined him but those who make genuine complaints.' Johnson admitted perverting the course of justice. Judge Nicholas Syfret QC told her the two arrests had a 'huge impact' on the life of Mr Tutty.

Jailing her for 18 months, Judge Syfret said: 'He felt suicidal and it affected his work. These allegations were not only embarrassing but they meant he was suspended fromdoing his job.' The judge said there were people who felt 'there is no smoke without fire' and, while he was completely innocent, they would believe there was some truth in the allegations. 'There was not a word of truth in what you said,' the Recorder told Johnson.

'A colossal strain was put on police resources while they investigated these complaints and you also undermined the causes of genuine people who had been the subject of serious complaints.' He told her only a custodial sentence could be justified because the offence she had committed made it notoriously difficult for women who had been raped to get justice.

SOURCE



Family Court Injustices to Men

Did you know that a family court can order a man to reimburse the government for the welfare money, falsely labeled "child support," that was paid to the mother of a child to whom he is not related? Did you know that, if he doesn't pay, a judge can sentence him to debtor's prison without ever letting him have a jury trial? Did you know that debtor's prisons (putting men in prison because they can't pay a debt) were abolished in the United States before we abolished slavery, but that they exist today to punish men who are too poor to pay what is falsely called "child support"?

Did you know that when corporations can't pay their debts, they can take bankruptcy, which means they pay off their debts for pennies on the dollar, but a man can never get an alleged "child support" debt forgiven or reduced, even if he is out of a job, penniless and homeless, medically incapacitated, incarcerated (justly or unjustly) or serving in our Armed Forces overseas, can't afford a lawyer, or never owed the money in the first place?

Did you know that when a woman applying for welfare handouts lies about who the father of her child is, she is never prosecuted for perjury? Did you know that judges can refuse to accept DNA evidence showing that the man she accuses is not the father?

Did you know that alleged "child support" has nothing to do with supporting a child because the mother has no obligation to spend even one dollar of it on a child, and in many cases none of the "support" money ever gets to a child because it goes to fatten the payroll of the child-support bureaucracy?

These are among the injustices that the feminists, and their docile liberal male allies, have inflicted on men. The sponsor was former Democratic Senator from New Jersey and presidential candidate Bill Bradley.

His name is affixed to the Bradley Amendment, a 1986 federal law that prohibits retroactive reduction of alleged "child support" even in any of the circumstances listed above. The Bradley law denies bankruptcy protections, overrides all statutes of limitation and forbids judicial consideration of obvious inability to pay.

Most Bradley-law victims never come to national attention because, as "Bias" author Bernard Goldberg said, mainstream media toe the feminist propaganda line, among which is the epithet "deadbeat dads." But one egregious case did make the news this summer. Frank Hatley was in a Georgia jail for more than a year for failure to pay alleged "child support" even though a DNA test nine years ago plus a second one this year proved that he is not the father. The Aug. 21, 2001, court order, signed by Judge Dane Perkins, acknowledged that Hatley is not the father but nevertheless ordered him to continue paying and never told him he could have a court-appointed lawyer if he could not afford one.

Hatley subsequently paid the government (not the mom or child) thousands of dollars in "child support," and after he was laid off from his job unloading charcoal grills from shipping containers and reduced to living in his car, he continued making payments out of his unemployment benefits. But he didn't pay enough to satisfy the avaricious child-support bureaucrats, so Perkins ruled Hatley in contempt and sent him to jail without any jury trial. With the help of a Legal Services lawyer, he has now been relieved from future assessments and released from jail, but (because of the Bradley Amendment) the government is demanding that Hatley continue paying at the rate of $250 a month until he pays off the $16,398 debt the government claims he accumulated earlier (even though the court then knew he was not the father).

This system is morally and constitutionally wrong, yet all the authorities say the court orders were lawful.

Another type of feminist indignity is the use in divorce cases of false allegations of child sexual abuse in order to gain child custody and the financial windfall that goes with it. Former Vancouver, Wa., police officer Ray Spencer has spent nearly 20 years in prison after being convicted of molesting his two children who are now adults and say it never happened. The son, who was 9 years old at the time, was questioned, alone, for months until he said he had been abused in order to get the detective to leave him alone. The daughter, who was then age 5, said she talked to the detective after he gave her ice cream.

There were many other violations of due process in Spencer's trial, such as prosecutors withholding medical exams that showed no evidence of abuse and his court-appointed lawyer failing to prepare a defense, but the judge nevertheless sentenced Spencer to two life terms in prison plus 14 years. Spencer was five times denied parole because he refused to admit guilt, a customary parole practice that is maliciously designed to save face for prosecutors who prosecute innocent men

SOURCE



Obama: Tilting at Racial Windmills

In an interview published December 10th in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, Barack Obama stated that one of his top priorities as president will be to put an end to racial discrimination in the criminal-justice system. This pledge is consistent with his oft-repeated campaign promise to “eliminate disparities in criminal sentencing,” most notably “the disparity between sentencing [for] crack and powder-based cocaine,” which Obama said was “wrong and should be completely eliminated.” At a presidential primary debate in January 2008, Obama asserted that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences…for the same crime.” On another occasion he sounded a similar theme: “We have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than on what you look like and where you come from.” Though neither the media nor the McCain campaign dared to challenge any of Obama’s presumably sacrosanct pronouncements about racism in the justice system, the fact remains that every one of those pronouncements was an unadulterated falsehood.

Long ago, the injustices which Obama references certainly existed, particularly in the South. But it hardly seems appropriate for a supposedly forward-looking President—who founded his entire campaign on a platform of “change” —to continue fighting yesteryear’s battles again and again. Simply put, black offenders do not receive stiffer penalties than white offenders for equivalent crimes—not today, and not at any time in recent decades. The most exhaustive, best designed study of this matter—a three-year analysis of more than 11,000 convicted criminals in California—found that the severity of offenders’ sentences depended heavily on such factors as prior criminal records, the seriousness of the crimes, and whether guns were used in the commission of those crimes. Race was found to have no effect whatsoever. In fact the researcher, Joan Petersilia, was forced to admit that these results contradicted conclusions she had drawn from an earlier study—in which she had not taken prior convictions and the use of firearms into account.[1]

The criminal-justice process is composed of a number of stages, or decision points, at which law-enforcement personnel such as police and judges must decide how to proceed (i.e., whether to make an arrest, whether to convict or acquit a defendant, or whether to impose a harsh or a mild sentence). Contrary to popular mythology, there is no evidence of racial discrimination at any of these decision points. Black overrepresentation is almost entirely at the arrest stage—reflecting the simple fact that the “average” black breaks the law more frequently than the “average” white. The National Crime Victimization Surveys, conducted annually by the Census Bureau, show that statistically the “average” black is far more likely than the “average” white to be identified, by a victim or witness, as the perpetrator of a violent crime. This racial gap, moreover, is approximately equal to the racial gap in actual arrest rates. “As long ago as 1978,” says Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald, “a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests—a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes.”

At all the decision points subsequent to arrest, the outcomes are virtually identical for blacks and whites alike—and the slight differences that do exist tend to favor blacks.[2] In studies that consider all relevant variables—such as the defendant’s prior criminal record, the severity of the crime in question, the offender’s demeanor with police, whether a weapon was used, and whether the crime in question was victim-precipitated—no differences have been found in sentencing patterns, either in relation to the victim’s race or the offender’s race.[3]

In 1983, the liberal-leaning National Academy of Sciences found “no evidence of a widespread systematic pattern of discrimination in sentencing.”[4] In 1985, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology concluded that a disproportionate number of blacks were in prison not because of a double standard of justice, but because of the disproportionate number of crimes they committed.[5] That same year, federal government statistician Patrick Langan conducted an exhaustive study of black and white incarceration rates and found that “even if racism [in sentencing] exists, it might help explain only a small part of the gap between the 11 percent black representation in the United States adult population and the now nearly 50 percent black representation among persons entering state prisons each year in the United States.”[6] In a 1987 review essay of the three most comprehensive books examining the role of race in the American criminal-justice system, the journal Criminology concluded that there was little evidence of anti-black discrimination.[7] A 1991 Rand Corporation study found that a defendant’s racial or ethnic group affiliation bore little or no relationship to conviction rates; far more important than race were such factors as the amount of evidence against the defendant, and whether or not a credible eyewitness testified.[8] This same study found almost no relation between a defendant’s race or ethnicity and his or her likelihood of receiving a severe sentence.[9] A 1993 study by the National Academy of Sciences agreed that race had a negligible effect on sentencing.[10] Also in 1993, a study of federal sentencing guidelines found no evidence of racially disparate punishments for perpetrators of similar offenses. The seriousness of the crime, the offender’s prior criminal record, and whether weapons were used accounted for all the observed interracial variations of prison sentences.[11]

In 1995, Patrick Langan analyzed data on 42,500 defendants in America’s 75 largest counties and found “no evidence that in the places where blacks in the United States have most of their contacts with the justice system, that system treats them more harshly than whites.”[12] A 1996 analysis of 55,000 big-city felony cases found that black defendants were convicted at a lower rate than whites in 12 of the 14 federally designated felony categories.[13] This finding is consistent with the overwhelming consensus of other recent studies, most of which indicate that black defendants are slightly less likely to be convicted of criminal charges against them that white defendants.[14] Liberal criminologist Michael Tonry wrote in his 1996 book Malign Neglect: “Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.” The following year, liberal criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen concurred that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, accounted for the fact that blacks were likelier than whites to be in prison and serving longer terms. [15]

In short, notwithstanding Barack Obama's professed concerns about "discrimination" in the justice system, it is entirely demonstrable that even two and three decades ago charges of racial inequities were largely chimeras without basis in objective reality. Nothing in the criminal-justice literature of the past decade indicates that anything has changed in that regard.

As noted above, president-elect Obama has complained that the penalties for possession of crack cocaine, a drug most often used by poor blacks, are much harsher than the penalties for possession of powder cocaine, whose users are typically affluent whites. The implication is that the imposition of harsh anti-crack penalties was rooted, at least initially, in racism. But the Congressional Record shows that such was not at all the case. In 1986, when the strict, federal anti-crack legislation was being debated, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—deeply concerned about the degree to which crack was decimating black communities—strongly supported the legislation and actually pressed for even harsher penalties. In fact, a few years earlier CBC members had pushed President Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy.[16]

Incidentally, Obama fails to mention that the vast majority of cocaine arrests in the U.S. are made at the state—not the federal—level, where sentencing disparities between cases involving crack and powder cocaine generally do not exist; indeed, only 13 states punish crack convictions more harshly than powder convictions, and the differentials are much smaller than those on the federal level. Furthermore, drug possession accounts for fewer than 2 percent of all offenses that propel individuals into federal prisons. Those most likely to be incarcerated for drug convictions are not mere users, but traffickers who are largely career criminals with very long rap sheets.[17]

Moreover, it is reasonable to wonder why Obama feels compelled to speak out about alleged inequities vis à vis federal cocaine penalties (which he says discriminate against blacks), but is silent on the matter of federal methamphetamine-trafficking penalties—which, it could easily be argued, discriminate heavily against whites. Heather MacDonald explains:
The press almost never mentions the federal methamphetamine-trafficking penalties, which are identical to those for crack: five grams of meth net you a mandatory minimum five-year sentence. In 2006, the 5,391 sentenced federal meth defendants (nearly as many as the [5,619] crack defendants) were 54 percent white, 39 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent black. But no one calls the federal meth laws anti-Hispanic or anti-white.
In the final analysis, Barack Obama’s assertions about inequities in the justice system ring absolutely hollow today, just as they have rung hollow for at least a quarter-century. To be sure, it is possible that the president-elect is ignorant of the facts presented herein and, as such, is simply parroting the misinformation to which he has been exposed. Another possibility is that Obama is entirely aware of the actual facts but has elected instead to play the time-honored political game of fabricating pernicious “injustices” that allegedly plague an entire demographic of “victims”—and then positioning himself as the hero who will save the day. Neither of those two scenarios casts the president-elect in a dignified light.

SOURCE



The Consequences of Government Intrusion into Prices

By Jon N. Hall

Prices are set by billions of people constantly making trillions of decisions about what they need, what they can afford, and what is important to them, i.e. their values.

But that's only how prices work in some pure, laissez-faire, free enterprise system. Such a pure system hasn't existed in America since at least the advent of FDR. More and more, government comes between buyer and seller and subverts the sensitive mechanism of price -- a mechanism at the very heart of commerce and the economy.

Where price is especially sensitive is in the realm of essentials, such as food and fuel. If there's a shortage of an essential, its price immediately soars -- unless the government intrudes. Government can stop upward spirals in the price of essentials with price controls and price gouging laws. But such measures can cause supply to run out even sooner or drive sales underground.

Last summer, when the price of petroleum went through the roof, politicians called for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In other words, drive down the price at the pump by creating more supply. But this would have been a misuse of the SPR as it is for emergencies only; high prices aren't an emergency.

Just as government tries to keep some prices low, it tries to keep other prices high.

For instance, during the Great Depression FDR destroyed livestock and perfectly good food just to keep prices high. (This, while many Americans were hungry.) And now we see the government trying to prop up the plunging price of housing.

Government, though, is partly responsible for the turmoil in housing prices. Sure, there were unscrupulous actors in the private sector, but government also played a leading role in the housing drama. From the creation of Fannie Mae in 1938, to its "privatization" in 1968, to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, to the historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve in the aftermath of 9/11, government has intruded into the housing market, and therefore into housing prices.

The Community Reinvestment Act was a major culprit in that it forced banks to abandon their time-honored lending standards, such as requiring hefty down payments. The CRA is an egregious case of government intrusion into a price, i.e. the price of money, loans. With money so cheap, the heightened demand "manufactured" by the CRA made home prices soar. Stan Liebowitz of the Journal observed: "If substantial down payments had been required, the housing price bubble would certainly have been smaller." Now that the housing bubble has popped, some in government want to shore up falling house prices rather than let the market sort out those prices.

This is yet another instance of the government picking winners and taking sides. In this case they've sided with buyers (especially first-time buyers), who benefit from the deflating price of housing. That the price of housing may be too high, or that America might be "overbuilt", or that some folks just aren't responsible enough to be homeowners seems not to have occurred to the government. Government simply decided that more Americans should own homes -- it was social engineering on a grand scale.

Price is at the heart of the mess in the financial sector, as well. Treasury Secretary Geithner created the Public-Private Investment Program to determine (by means of Geithnerian "price discovery") the price of the famous "toxic assets" that have so bedeviled the banking industry. But banks showed little interest, and now PPIP has been postponed indefinitely. Meanwhile, foreclosed properties sit unoccupied and untended and wide open to squatters and vandals while their values plummet. Some former owners even trashed their homes before vacating. And some homes have had to be demolished for the sake of surrounding communities.

Government has its fingerprints all over the rise and fall of housing prices. But politicians refuse to admit their mistakes, blaming it all on the private sector. They tell us that "only government" can fix the problem, even though government caused much of it. (Check out the free streaming videos of Peter Robinson's interview of economist Thomas Sowell on the housing bust at National Review Online. They're terrific.)

We speak of "wage and price controls" as though they were two different things. But a wage is a price: the price of labor and services rendered. And in the sphere of wages and fees, government again intrudes into price. Government does this by subsidizing certain activities and enterprises with direct outlays (education, health-care); requiring folks to buy things, like health insurance (the individual mandate); and siding with one faction over another (Card Check). All such efforts are either designed to keep prices high, or simply end up doing so. The recent bailouts of GM and Chrysler are mostly about the government propping up the price of UAW labor.

The enterprises where we see the most rampant inflation are where government is most involved. This is especially so in the health-care and education industries.

Mandated employee benefits jack up the price of employment, which gets passed along to the consumer. Minimum wage laws are the government dictating a price. And the federal minimum wage is scheduled to go up on July 24th -- in the middle of a recession!

Government intrusion into the tender mechanism of price is actually an imposition of the values of one group onto everyone else. If the geniuses in Washington happen to think everyone should be paying a higher price for burger flippers (minimum wage law), then that's the way it going to be -- and we'll all be paying more for fast-food. Those most willing to impose their own values onto everyone else comprise the political left. (Yet, it is this same political left that tells us we shouldn't make "value judgments".)

The consequences of government intrusion into prices include: shortages; unemployment; inflation; loss of industry due to offshoring; and artificial prices that foul the real market.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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