The Birth of The American Political Prison

Several day ago, the news broke that U.S. President George W. Bush has authorized the state security apparatus to spy on American citizens without due process of law. In that time, I have struggled to decide how to address such a serious issue. The only thing that saddens me more than Bush's fundamentally misguided decision to spy on The People, is The Peoples' unwavering resolve not to care about it, let alone do anything about it.

Fortunately, even the mass media has publicized this issue, and writers around the nation are making the arguments that need to be made against domestic surveillance. That is pretty easy to do, since those arguments are perfectly obvious to anyone who understands the most basic principles upon which the United States of America was founded (i.e., support for personal liberty, and opposition to government tyranny).

So I've decided to use this opportunity to explain how a virtual prison like the American Debtors Prison orginates, because what President Bush has effectively done by authorizing domestic spying is to inadvertently authorize the creation of The American Political Prison.

First and foremost, the American Debtors Prison is a virtual prison, in which the "chains" that bind are actually the electronic transfer of personal information about debtors from one place to another. For example, if a debtor defaults for any reason and begins to be terrorized by collection agents, they could previously move to another location ("skip"), re-establish their ability to earn an income without interference from collections terrorists, and return to a position of financial stability that would allow them to repay their defaulted debts. The electronic transfer of personal information in the American Debtors Prison makes "skipping" all but impossible today, because the instant a debtor establishes residence in another location, collection agencies know about it. And collectors will immediately begin to interfere with the debtor's ability to earn an income just as before, by terrorizing them at home and at their new job, illegally revealing their defaulted debts to new co-workers in a misguided attempt to coerce payment, etc. There is no escape from the American Debtors Prison by non-miraculous means, because the electronic transfer of personal information allows anyone to track any other person, anywhere, at any time. The American Debtors Prison has utterly annihilated the concept of personal privacy, in the most profound sense imagineable.

But what is domestic spying, if not a fundamental invasion of privacy in a nation that prides itself on constitutional guarantees of personal liberty? The U.S. government does not have warehouses full of people listening to phone calls live, reading emails as they are sent, or otherwise introducing a human interpretation into the vast amount of personal information they gather. Just like the credit bureaus, which claim to be able to determine unique human beings' characters by creating a standardized scoring system based on nothing but data of dubious authenticity and credibility that is stored in computers, the U.S. governement analyzes the bulk of its data using computers to "listen" for certain words in your telephone calls, using computers to scan emails for certain words and codes, etc. It is all done by computers--the very same kind of computers that give us the "blue screen of death" at the most crucial times in our own daily use of computing technology.

In other words, the U.S. government's ability to discern anything meaningful about a typical subject's intent is no different than credit bureaus' ability to discern anything meaningful about a typical debtor's intent. The government can't discern anything meaningful at all about peoples' intent by merely intercepting their communications and using computer programs to analyze discrete examples of their language and behavior out of context. Especially in the United States, where The People are supposedly enjoy freedom of speech, analyzing that free speech with computer programs cannot possibly lead to accurate assessments of real peoples' character and intent. (Human analysis cannot succeed in that regard either, for that matter). For example, do YOU know anybody who says one thing, and does something completely different? Or more to the point, do you know anybody who doesn't?

Here's an example from the American Debtors Prison: A debtor's credit report generates a score that classifies him as "high risk", which naturally implies that the computer program which generated that score was somehow able to discern details of his character. However, when a human being investigates the matter, she may discover that something entirely different is really going on. Perhaps the debtor fell "off the radar" because he is working 80 hours a week doing odd-jobs for the enormous amount of cash necessary to hire an attorney who can negotiate with his creditors, precisely because he intends to repay his debts. After all, the American Debtors Prison itself prevents debtors from obtaining gainful employment through normal channels, so it only makes sense that many debtors prisoners would be forced to go "off the radar" if they are to survive at all. Conscious attempts to elude tracking by predatory lenders and terrorist collection agents does not necessarily mean that everyone who "skips" is trying to run away from their debts. It can just as easily mean they are diligently trying to repay their debts by the only means creditors have left available to them (which literally requires them to "run away" from collection agents, since collections terrorism represents a major, if not an insurmountable obstacle to earning an income with which to repay debts).

No computer program can discern an individual's true intent by merely cataloguing and classifying a tiny subset of the nearly infinite variety of possible human responses to extraordinary stimuli like collections terrorism. But the credit bureaus claim they can identify a true "deadbeat" by simply scoring whatever inaccurate, contradictory, incomplete information exists in their databases. And so does the U.S. government claim that it can identify a true "terrorist", using essentially the same criteria.

In other words, domestic spying is about as reliable at identifying terrorists as credit reports are at identifying "deadbeats". Which is to say, it is not reliable at all.

Yet all of that information the U.S. government gathers about its citizens in its futile attempts to identify terrorists does go somewhere. It goes into various files and databases, where it may be lost, stolen, or shared with other government agencies. This massive dissemination of personal information, taken completely out of context, and rarely if ever interpreted by intelligent human beings, is analogous to the credit bureaus' endless quest to gather, store and distribute personal information about consumers. The end result is a glut of so much dubious information that there is no conceivable way to analyze it at all and arrive at accurate conclusions. So the agencies who gather, share, and analyze so much data have no choice but to resort to heuristics (analytical shortcuts) instead.

In this way, a teenager who borrows a library book about the Manhattan Project for a book report can be flagged by some government computer program as a "potential" terrorist. And that is the status this citizen will possess in top-secret government databases until an intelligent human being finally investigates the matter and "clears" him. If no intelligent human ever researches this, that citizen will carry the label of "potential terrorist threat" for the remainder of his or her life, without even being aware of the fact--until it suddenly becomes a weapon to be used against him (perhaps when he runs for President of the United States 30 years later--because he is a good citizen and a patriotic American). This is precisely what happens to debtors prisoners when they suddenly realize what financial institutions and credit bureaus have been doing to them all along, quietly, behind the scenes, without their knowledge, until it was too late.

President Bush's decision to spy on American citizens is not only an attack against everything the United States of America stands for, it is an example of exactly what we should be fighting against in the so-called War on Terror. There is probably nothing Osama Bin Laden would love more than to make American citizens distrust each other to the point where democracy, freedom, liberty, constitutional rights, rational thought, and simple human decency grind to a halt in the United States, causing us to destroy ourselves with no effort at all on his part. President Bush is making Bin Laden's dream come true.

Likewise, if it were possible, the credit bureaus would store every detail of your personal life, right down to a play-by-play of every action you take, every moment of every day. Why? Because they have carefully cultivated a mythology in our society that they, and they alone, are able to discern a citizen's true character and intent--as long as the credit bureaus have enough personal information to feed into their computer programs and generate a score. The simple-minded theory they proffer is this: the more information you plug into the computer, the more accurate the result will be. It is a fundamentally misguided, if not downright stupid theory.

But here is a secret: even the credit bureaus are aware that this analysis is bullhit! However, they continue the ruse because it is the perception that the credit scoring system works that creates "added value" to their services, not the reality of whether or not that system actually works (and the reality is, it doesn't work well at all).

The credit bureaus would joyfully sacrifice YOUR personal privacy down to the minute details of every movement you make, every moment of the day--if it were possible to do so--because that is what maintains the illusion that they have a useful product to sell at all. Even though doing so would create such a degree of false accusations, distrust, faulty assessments of individual character, corruption and other unintended consequences, that the fabric of society itself would be put at risk. But the credit bureaus don't care about that; non-human corporations have no national loyalty. They are only in it for the money. This kind of capitalist fundamentalism is a concept that Osama Bin Laden could easily relate to, and it can be articulated simply:

"Even if every other person on the planet suffers, and the entire world is destroyed, it's worth it as long as I get what I want."

Likewise, President Bush is merely maintaining a grand illusion with his domestic spying program, with no foresight at all, no comprehension of the unintended consequences that must inevitably result. Nothing good can come from gathering, storing and distributing information about the one subset of human beings on earth (American citizens) who are least likely to want to cause the United States harm. Yet, all the personal information gathered WILL end up in documents and databases, and it WILL be analyzed by computer programs, and it WILL cause a lot of citizens a lot of problems. If not today, then perhaps a year, or a decade from now. The information gathered never goes away--is only gets shuffled around, obfuscated, corrupted, and placed even more out of context than it was when it was originally gathered.

Make no mistake about it--the similarity between domestic spying and modern debtors imprisonment are profound. And since the American Debtors Prison is a virtual prison that is built on personal information gathered and analyzed out of context, it is not unreasonable to expect that the U.S. government's gathering and analysis of personal information out of context can only lead to a similar type of virtual prison--the American Political Prison.

The Third Reich kept a lot of files on its own citizens too--probably more so than the intelligence it gathered on foreign enemies. Those files were stored on paper (and to an extent, on primitive computer punchcards supplied by IBM). Today's files on American citizens are stored in a complex network of modern computer databases, linked together in a manner that remains Top Secret. This represents a crucial distinction between domestic spying in Nazi Germany decades ago, and in the United States today. Even so, there is no good reason here to challenge the aphorism that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The problem is that too many people are trying to learn from the wrong history lesson.

Like the Holocaust, the American Debtors Prison is a bona-fide human atrocity that posterity will liken to human slavery in terms of it's barbarism and injustice. So what else can we really expect to come from President Bush's decision to essentially create the infrastructure for a virtual American Political Prison which, for all intents and purposes, is identical to the infrastructure of the American Debtors Prison? After all, the Nazis thought they were doing the right thing for their country, too. The Law of Unintended Consequences means that those who commit atrocities might very well believe they are actually doing good work. To my knowledge, neither Hitler, nor Osama Bin Laden, nor President Bush, nor the credit bureaus, nor Satan himself, has ever confessed to doing evil.

No, if we are to truly comprehend the implications of domestic spying in the United States we must not look to emotional political rhetoric about Nazi Germany for answers. The stakes are simply too high for that kind of intellectual negligence. We must look instead for the most fundamentally similar example from history, and learn from it. But neither Nazi Germany nor Al Quaeda represent good analogies for domestic spying in the U.S., because neither are based on a network computerized information systems that store and analyze personal data about human beings out of context. Only the American Debtors Prison provides a clear example of what must inevitably result from President Bush's decision to spy on the very citizens who elected him to office. All we need to do is recognize the enormous amount of human suffering that the credit bureaus have caused among the very consumers that brought the credit bureaus to power, and the future consequences of domestic spying become clear.

All the best,
Paul

Update on San Diego Terror Tactics

As "they" so often point out, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Almost four weeks ago to the day, I posted a commentary concerning San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre's decision to use standard terror tactics to collect city debts from "deadbeats" (See November 21 entry below). In that post I mentioned that the majority of the debts being collected are of a dubious nature, and many of them are owed by government agencies--including the city of San Diego itself.

Well, today, the San Diego Tribune reported that Mr. Aguirre himself has been fined $9,000 by the San Diego Ethics Commission, for failing to properly disclose how he spent appromixately $316,000 during his campaign for City Attorney--the position from which he launched his campaign of public humiliation (i.e., terror) against 500,000 San Diego "deadbeats" who have not paid their various fines, fees and such. I can only assume that unlike many of the half million relatively impoverished people he is attempting to collect debts from, Mr. Aguirre can probably handle a $9,000 fine out of pocket. At the very least, we know that if Mr. Aguirre does not have a spare $9,000 laying around, he will be certain to post his own name on his own "deadbeat" website. Right? Because Aguirre is an honorable man.

To be fair, the ethics commission did not find any intent to mislead or misrepresent his management of campaign funds. He simply failed to follow the rules properly, and having run for public office myself I can assure you that the ethics rules for campaign finance run slightly south of comprehensibility.

But then again, that is my point. Most debtors who don't pay are not "deadbeats" or criminals at all. Something--often beyond their control--happens to interfere with their ability to repay debts on the rigid, inflexible schedule demanded by creditors. For example, they might suddenly be hit with an unexpected $9,000 fine when they don't have that much cash laying around.

The question is this: Is Mr. Aguirre a clear enough thinker to make the connection, or will he think that his case is somehow a "special" circumstance, and it is only those 500,000 accounts that did not get fined by the ethics commission who are "deadbeats".

The American Debtors Prison is ultimately founded on hypocrisy, stupidity, absurdity and irony (in addition to pure greed, powerlust and other creditor character flaws). However, it is precisely because of this that sometimes, by random chance, the irony actually turns the tables on the wardens. Like when a bank or financial corporation (that claims by definition to know how to handle finances better than the "masses") goes bankrupt. Or when a man who uses the sheer terror of public humiliation to collect debts himself ends up in the news for committing an ethics violation.

All the best,
Paul

Stanley Tookie Williams To Be Struck Down By Lesser Gods

I am troubled that I possess the knowledge that two hours from now, a man who is now alive will be dead. After all, the man is in good health, is surrounded by security guards, and I am not God. Yet I still know for certain, with no real doubt, that this man will be dead in a few hours.

If I am not God, then how could I possibly know that a man who is now alive will be dead in a few hours? Because the State of California, and it's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, have announced that they will kill Stanley "Tookie" Williams just after midnight tonight. And it has been my observation that, with very rare exceptions, when our government says it is going to kill someone, it does so--and with a vengeance.

Stanley Tookie Williams is an enigma to everyone but himself. To the State of California, he is a ruthless killer, who founded the brutal Crips street gang, senselessly murdered four people in 1979, and never repented. To the State of California, Williams is the epitome of human failure in civilized society.

However, to a large group of supporters, some of whom have have gone so far as to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, Williams represents the epitome of our penal system's potential for success--a truly reformed man who used his time in prison wisely, and through introspection and education, has become an inspiration to other underprivileged children to avoid the mistakes he made, possibly saving thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.

I'm afraid that I do not have enough personal knowledge of this story to offer an informed opinion on whether or not Williams has sincerely reformed. I cannot say for certain that he has, and I cannot say for certain that he hasn't.

The key point is that neither can you. Even if your name is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yet Gov. Schwarzenegger has refused clemency in this case, because he believes he is certain that Williams never reformed. That kind of God-like knowledge of what lies in other people's hearts is quite an accomplishment for an Austrian immigrant who fled the destruction wrought by Nazi Germany only to ascend the capitol steps in Sacramento by stepping over countless mutilated bodies that his own characters violently slaughtered in his films. Unlike the Terminator, however, Williams won't be back. In real life, death is final. Perhaps it is time that Gov. Schwarzenegger realized that real life is a little more complicated than works of fiction, and that it requires a little more thought before taking action. For example, if Hitler had put a little more thought into his actions, perhaps Schwarzenegger would never have had to flee the destruction wrought by Nazi Germany.

The American Debtors Prison exhibits a medieval brutality not because those who routinely "execute" inmates are necessarily evil and vicious themselves, but because they are intellectually lazy, and refuse to do exactly what his supporters say that Williams has done: devote oneself to a lifetime of introspection, education, and growth with enough courage to completely change your fundamental beliefs, if necessary. Instead, they merely rely on the same lazy intellectual shortcuts--heuristics that don't require any deep or rational thought at all. Examples in this case include:

Authority figures say Williams has not reformed. Therefore he has not reformed.

Popular social activists say Williams has reformed. Therefore he has reformed.

The victims' families want Williams to be executed. Therefore he should be executed.

William's family does not want him to be executed. Therefore Williams should not be executed.

I believe in capitol punishment. Therefore Williams should be executed.

I do not believe in capitol punishment. Therefore Williams should not be executed.

I'm a good Christian, and I believe in "an eye for an eye", as God did. Therefore Williams should be executed.

I'm a good Christian, and I believe in showing mercy, as Jesus did. Therefore Williams should not be executed.

And here is the heuristic that Gov. Schwarzenegger appears to be using:

I don't see any evidence that Williams feels remorse for his crimes. Therefore Williams doesn't feel any remorse for his crimes, and I should not grant clemency.

The fallacy of this intellectual shortcut, of course, is that Gov. Schwarzenegger is not Stanley Tookie Williams, and therefore he has no earthly business claiming to know how another unique, individual human being like Stanley Tookie Williams would exhibit remorse even if he did feel it--unless, of course, Gov. Schwarzenegger is God, and therefore does know how Williams would exhibit remorse. But in reality, for all Schwarzenegger's accomplishments, he was never an impoverished black youth moving from the utter poverty of New Orleans to the utter poverty of Los Angeles in the early 1970's. He never had the code of the LA ghetto literally burned into his mind as a young man, and never spent 25 years in prison trying to remove that branding influence from his mind, all by himself.

To my knowledge, no one was requesting that Williams be released from prison. They were merely requesting that he not be murdered (euphemism: "executed") by the State of California simply because the State of California has determined that murder is evil, and that murder must therefore must be stopped by every means possible (including murder). That is not an unreasonable request, when you bother to actually think about it. It is merely an appeal against hypocrisy--a form of evil that has been fundamentally responsible for more atrocities and human suffering (including the American Debtors Prison) than even the abhorrent crime of murder has been responsible for.

It is quite possible that Williams committed those crimes and was proud of them at the time, but over the years has transformed into a man who feels deep shame for what he did, and simply doesn't know how to express the monumental degree of shame and regret he feels. How would YOU feel, and how would YOU behave 25 years after senselessly taking four people away from their loved ones forever? The correct answer is, you have no idea how you would feel or behave, because you haven't experienced that.

So we are all left making our own assessment (translation: best guess) of whether Williams was innocent or guilty of the original crimes for which he is about to be executed, and whether or not he has truly reformed since then. And precisely because everyone feels and behaves differently under the same circumstances--because we are all unique individuals--we are witnessing a bitter feud between William's supporters and his critics as the moment of his death draws near.

This phenomenon, which results from sheer intellectual laziness among nearly everyone in society--not just Gov. Schwarzenegger--is one of the primary reasons that Western Civilization is rightfully regarded as hypocritical to the point of utter damnation. It is the reason that Americans tolerate losing more than 2100 American lives (so far) in pointless response to a terrorist act that already killed 3000 Americans. It is the reason that Americans sit back and watch a democratic government that was founded in response to tyranny itself become an even worse tyranny. It is the reason that "proud" Americans say and do nothing at all as their jobs are eliminated and shipped overseas. The list is endless.

And this is also the reason why American citizens, ultimately, are the ones responsible for a resurgence of the medieval brutality that is known as the American Debtors Prison.

Yes, I am certain that Stanley Tookie Williams will die tonight. Not because I am God, but because Gov. Schwarzenegger--and Americans citizens in general--have the audacity to play God even as they "submit" to that same God in church every Sunday, rather than exercising the intellectual stamina necessary to evolve into human beings that think rationally, exhibit real moral courage, and stand up against tyranny of every kind in the great tradition of our American Founders.

Williams will die tonight, just as surely as the American Debtors Prison will continue to fill with formerly free human beings. And both will occur, ultimately, for the exact same reason.

All the best,
Paul

Richard Pryor Dies

Comedian Richard Pryor has died of a heart attack at age 65.

I mention Richard Pryor here because he dared to do what few people in America today have the courage to do: To speak the Truth, even when the Truth is ugly. Pryor's "colorful" rants about racism and other injustices and absurdities in America made people feel uncomfortable, not merely because of his foul language, but because they knew he was speaking the Truth. For that reason, Richard Pryor has always been one of my heroes, and an inspiration.

Rest in peace, Richard, and thank you for opening America's eyes to so many things that needed to be brought out into the open. You will be greatly missed.

All the best,
Paul

Social Security Subject To Seizure For Student Loans

The Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Government may seize a portion of social security benefits to pay for defaulted student loans, leaving senior debtors prisoners with even fewer means to survive, let alone enjoy, their "golden years".

In a case brought by 67-year old student loan debtor James Lockhart, who is attempting to survive on an already low social security benefit of $874 per month, the Supreme Court was unanimous in its 9-0 opinion that as much as 15% of the already insufficient benefits supplied by social security may be seized to help pay for some $7 billion in defaulted, but federally-guaranteed student loan debt.

This ruling only confims the core principle of the American Debtors Prison: Debtors who default for any reason are regarded as "deadbeats", and punished in exactly the same manner, as debtors who commit criminal fraud by taking on debts that they never had any intent to repay. The key that makes this principle so brutal is that there is no way for any debtor to look into a crystal ball and know for certain, without any doubt, that they will have the means to repay debts plus interests, fees, and hidden costs, for the duration of the loan. Creditors do not possess a crystal ball either, and that is why they have used their stupendous wealth and political influence to place the consequences of their actions (i.e., lending money) entirely onto the debtor, retaining no share of the responsibility themselves.

In Mr. Lockhart's case, he owes approximately $80,000 in student loans, but over the years has become disabled with diabetes and heart disease, which neither he nor his creditors could have anticipated when he was a younger man seeking to fund an education so that he could enjoy a more satisfying job, higher income, and a better life. The Supreme Court's ruling places the entire responsibility for this situation onto the least powerful person involved, Mr. Lockhart.

Not only does this ruling show--as the recent bankruptcy "reform" bill did--that the U.S. government fully endorses the modern-day atrocity known as the American Debtors Prison, but it exhibits a lack of empathy and foresight that defies all rational explanation. There is no empathy for American citizens who will die a slow, painful, tragic death--perhaps on the streets, because of this ruling, when in many cases their student loan default was entirely beyond their control and, indeed, they may have spent their entire lives desperately trying to repay their loans. And there is no foresight, because the social security system is already insufficient to support retiring Baby Boomers, and there will be hell to pay in one form or another when the rest of the world and posterity witnesses an entire generation of American citizens living out their final years in the kind of misery and suffering on a scale that hasn't been seen since the Middle Ages (which, incidentally, is when the model for today's debtors prison originated)

Nor does this ruling exhibit enough rational thought to even ask the important questions that need to be asked. For example, if it is considered a maxim that the United States must have a well-educated populace to remain competitive in the world, and to ensure the freedom and prosperity of its citizens, then why is a huge portion of the population forced to go into massive debt to finance that education? Why does the government allow young people in particular to accumulate so much student loan debt, by definition, before they have earned the very degree that ostensibly will allow them to obtain a job with a high enough salary to repay that debt? Why doesn't the U.S. government recognize the fact that most citizens are not as wealthy and well-connected as the members of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Executive Branch, and therefore that it only takes a relatively small personal disaster to completely devastate a debtors ability to repay debts of any size?

The Supreme Court does not consider these and other important questions; it only considers the very specific and carefully-worded argument brought before them as if the case it is reviewing has no relation to any other institution, policy or life experience. This is not the decision of wise judges who carefully consider the broader ramifications of their rulings. This is the decision of an elite class of politicians with mediocre capacity to think. And it is our nation's shame that U.S. citizens do not take a greater role in pressuring Congress to approve only nominations of wise individuals to the Supreme Court.

All the best,
Paul

Paul Interviews Noam Chomsky

I was honored to interview political and social activist Noam Chomsky in Cambridge today, as part of the long-awaited American Debtors Prison documentary film (still in progress, I'm afraid). Look for more details here when I announce the launch of the film-related website and podcast.

For now, a brief transcript excerpt follows:

So people are working hard. I mean we now have some of the lowest wages and highest working hours in the industrial world. You go back twenty five years and it was the reverse, as you'd expect in the richest country in the world. Well, that means people are working really hard. They're being deluged with propaganda, which is called advertising, and mass media, and cinema and so on, but it's just propaganda, which is designed to make you feel that your worth in life depends on how many useless commodities you pick up. And this starts with infants....

You got a family with a husband and a wife that are working hard to put food on the table. And back at night, you know, your kids want this, that, and the other thing because somebody else has them or they saw it on television. And okay, you get it for them, and it just keeps going. Pretty soon you're in a debt trap. And that's a traditional way to enslave people. They didn't invent it.

I mean, when there were slave revolts back in the early nineteenth century, in Jamaica, the Caribbean and so on. . . you had to figure out a way to keep the slaves under control once they were technically free. And everybody hit on the same technique: get them to want useless commodities. And then they go to the company store, and you tell them you're gonna give them a little credit, and--you know the game. Pretty soon you're back in slavery.

Thank you to Professor Chomsky for consenting to the interview, and to Bev for setting everything up.

All the best,
Paul