Doctrine is like your mother – you are forgiven and protected within her embrace – no matter what you have done: so it’s not surprising that doctrine holders run from unpleasant historical facts and ethical prohibitions; to hide in a political doctrine whose teachings are unconditional and unjudgeable.
There’s corruption – and then, there’s collegiate corruption: the sort that’s wrapped in so many layers of studies, credentials, and pretty mission statements – that the essential ugliness is hidden from all but the most determined of searchers. And most people don’t want to search.
The prevailing atmosphere of our “college-destination county” is fear. When a County Highway Director made public claims that were proven to be blatantly untrue – no one in the County’s Ethics Committee, the Ithaca Tompkins County Transportation Committee, the County Legislature, and no Lansing Town Board member, or any other Town or County official approached would comment on it, or even mention its occurrence.
How’s that for an Ivy League University town that pretends to be a beacon of free thinking and equitable illumination? How’s that for a conspiracy of silence?
When the rich, Cornell-sponsored agribusinesses decided to take over north Lansing, NY for their sole benefit and profit: Cornell’s planner stated that the existing rural residents “didn’t deserve to live there” – and rather than this being denied – all of the Town of Lansing, Tompkins County, and Cornell officials continued to use this bias statement as the foundation for their every policy decision and regulatory agenda of the last 15 years.
Tompkins County’s rural people are disposable; and in the County’s “vision of the future” Comprehensive Plan: they no longer exist — they’ve been disposed of.
Isn’t it better not to be robbed, beaten, raped, and killed? This is not an option available to those in the victim pool of our criminal justice system. Like today’s one-click companies; that can’t seem to deliver the right product to the right address to remain unbroken to do the job they claim it can do – the criminal justice system relies on a “customer service” approach to fix things that never should have happened in the first place.
The victim’s only option is for them to try to apprehend the assailant to build a case to plea bargain down to a shortened jail term with early release on parole that is broken and obtain a ho-hum warrant while the assailant commits another crime or two before being apprehended and the whole futile process starts all over again.
The criminal justice system has changed over the years: murders used to get the death penalty; then life in prison; then a few years in prison; then no prison because they are not accountable for their actions — but the outcome for the victims has remained the same: they’re dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
The Town of Lansing is about to turn the rural community into an AG Zoning District for the sole benefit of a handful of rich farmers. Non-farming residents [the poor 95%] have had all their land uses removed except for having a house – this will force them to sell all other land to famers; or face the regressive tax burdens of AG structured assessments. The rural community have had no meaningful participation, representation, or respect from the unilateral planning authorities.
This is how Progressive government works: the rich get richer – and the poor get stepped on . . . and demeaned . . . and disposed of
No wonder debate is dead – Doctrine is a revealed belief: there is no need for debate or thought. The insistence on facts brings denial, anger, and then . . .
Facts may beat assertions — but fists can beat you senseless.
Everybody in the Criminal Justice System knows: it’s the victims that cause all the trouble – they’re the grit that fouls up the smooth running cycle of plea bargains and paroles, cause unnecessary paperwork, and drive up departmental statistics.
So the victims are now “complainants” – and the criminals? They’re victims of complainants.
The dangers of Emerging Technologies are like the iceberg the Titanic hit – best avoided by foresight; only officially accounted for in hindsight — but the protocols are so good that we don’t need to carry lifeboats.
The farther from the bright urban center – the less your worth. In rural New York no one can hear you scream . . . it’s not important, anyway.
When did we change from believing that people were so important; we should form policies around them – to believing that policies are so important; we should form society around them? When did “important” change from the raison d’être for rights – to the raison d’être for restrictions?
Lincoln believed that; “Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.” When did we begin to bend them to fit our desires?