In countries including Uganda, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and Indonesia, more people pay a bribe to a policeman every year than to any other government service provider including health professionals, teachers, utility workers, the judiciary or tax and land records officers. Police are the most common or second most common bribe recipients in 38 out of 107 countries that Transparency International surveys.
And, according the same organization, “seven percent of Americans who say they had contact with police over the last year report paying a bribe.” What can be done?
When it comes to straightforward corruption in rich and poor countries alike, paying a bribe to a police officer should be decriminalized (to encourage reporting) while receiving a bribe should be automatic grounds for being sacked and incarcerated. And in the many countries where large numbers report paying bribes to policeman, the solution may be to reduce the number of police officers. Even in the U.S., where corrupt cops are the exception, the police in cities like Ferguson would be far more effective without the officers that are financed by fines, because that would reduce the pressure to put predatory officers on the beat. A cop’s job is to serve and protect. We shouldn’t pressure them to fleece and intimidate.
We don’t seem to have finished discussing Ferguson, so one more thought. I agree with those who argue that the police’s interaction with young black men is, in too many cases, riddled with bias and far too quick to use lethal force. But I agree with others that the Michael Brown case is not the case with which to make that argument. And the liberal reflex to turn it into a synecdoche is a troubling one for reasons John Judis lays out:
Liberals took the decision by the grand jury to symbolize, or stand in for, the greater injustice of the Ferguson and of the American criminal justice department. But in fact the reverse occurred. They projected the larger injustice of the system onto the grand jury’s ruling.
I’m reminded of the case of Matthew Shepard, where the need to project the injustice of violence against gay men onto one complicated case blinded people to a more interesting and complex reality. Michael Brown did not deserve to die, any more than Matthew Shepard did. But that doesn’t mean both are perfect victims, unalloyed by all the flaws that flesh is heir to; or that their deaths illustrated pure random homophobia or pure racism. And this need for perfect victims is of a piece with a church of liberalism in which there is only one way to be good – a member of a minority – and only one sin – prejudice. All churches need saints and martyrs. But liberalism – no more than conservatism – should never be a church. It’s as dangerous to civil politics as Christianism.
A reader notes how this church’s doctrines are increasingly enforced – and sinners punished – on social media:
Many of us mocked the Tea Party in its seemingly religious quest to root out “RINOs” and its dedication to finding ever more fringe and lunatic conservative causes, but something similar seems to be happening to liberals. Looking at the weekly outraged Facebook posts and blog articles of friends, colleagues, and commentators, I see the purpose of the liberal conversation as increasingly being the enforcement of a shared set of ideals and the rooting out of those among us who might disagree with them. We’re building an echo chamber in which dissenting voices are first drowned out and then excluded. This isn’t about building forums for debate with like-minded souls – it’s about dividing the world into The Righteous and The Wicked.
Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 19 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. Dish t-shirts are for sale here and our new coffee mugs here. One happy customer:
Just got mine! It’s big, solid. I can feel the quality!
Another new owner:
My ten-year-old rescue mutt (border collie/Labrador?) is enjoying our new beagle mug.
The monthly report card is due. Revenue remained pretty solid last month at $30.5k:
The monthly pattern for revenue seems to echo 2013, with a decline in the summer months and an upsurge in the fall, leading to $26.5k in November 2013:
So we’re up a bit year-on-year. The comparison, as of yesterday, is $814k for the first eleven months of 2013, versus $934k for the first eleven months of 2014, a 15 percent year-on-year increase. Traffic is also relatively steady: at 714,000 unique readers this month, for 5.2 million pageviews, about average for the last six months, but lower than when we had just initiated the pay-meter.
The number of subscribers edged up a bit this month to 30,264 but remains in the 30,000 range we reached at the end of the summer. All in all, a very gradual growth on a very solid base. We’d like to be growing more, and we’ve been brainstorming how and what that would entail – probably an upgrade from our current very amateur but viable business model. But I’m cognizant of what David Carr told Lucia Moses today:
This was a big year for new media startups. How sustainable are they?
What would happen if you took away all the exits and people had to make a living off existing CPMs? It would be pretty bloody.
We’re currently making a living off no CPMs. Know hope.
A dangerously ill HIV patient waits to be taken to the hospital for treatment on November 29, 2014 in Yangon, Burma. The center, which has be been in operation since 2002, is owned and has been operated by the opposition party, the National League for Democracy, after the failure of the Myanmar government to take action and NGO’s being prevented from intervening. By Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Julia Ioffe posted a reflection on how her Russian-Jewish family came to the US that zooms out into a history lesson on our immigration laws – a history replete with political calculations, arbitrary rules, exceptions, and yes, presidential fiats. Far from offering a clear-cut distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, she concludes, “American immigration law is perhaps one of the most mercurial sets of laws we have”:
It is not set in stone, nor has it ever been. Historically, it has depended on racism, trade priorities, and geopolitical considerations, just as it does today. And as Senator Ted Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, rails against Hondurans and Mexicans for coming to America illegally, keep in mind just how lucky his family is to come from a country that got the kind of special status that allowed, and still allows, Cubans to come to U.S. in ways that would be considered illegal for other populations and to get a green card in a year. Consider that this is not because of a law passed in the U.S. Congress, but because some guy we didn’t like seized power in 1959 and a few American presidents decided to help the Cuban bourgeoisie—and to stick it to Nikita Khrushchev. It’s why I and my 60 relatives are here, too. And it is quite likely that one of your ancestors got in through some giant, executive loophole ages and ages ago. Or got here when there were no loopholes because there were simply no laws pertaining to immigration.
The Dish previously covered the “cutting the line” argument against amnesty for illegal immigrants here.
The study, recently published in the journal Demography, does not dispute the tendency to move for a husband’s career. Rather, the new study takes issue with the reasons behind the move. The big take-away: Women enter professions that make it easy to work anywhere, and move for any reason, including for a spouse. Men choose careers in fields that are geographically-constrained. In other words, men have to move in order to move up.
“The tendency for men to move more often than women is completely explained by the types of jobs they enter, not that they are men or women,” [study author Alan] Benson said in an interview. “Men who enter female-dominated jobs don’t tend to move as much for work. If you look at women who enter male-dominated jobs, they tend to move a lot.”
And if you look at women who are not married, they relocate for a job less often than men do.
This segregation, Benson finds, is particularly pronounced among people with college degrees.
There are a lot of things this could mean. One of those is that women happen to like more flexible jobs. Another is that women feel a lot of pressure, from a young age, to sort themselves into flexible jobs.
At the end of the day, this goes back to a common conclusion from research concerning gender and careers: women often trade a lot of earning potential for flexibility, for better or for worse.
In light of the horrific allegations that UVA covered up a student’s gang-rape, Libby Nelson imagines applying the university’s honor code – which has seen 183 students expelled over academic infractions since 1998 – to sexual assault allegations:
When California colleges began requiring affirmative consent, or “yes means yes,” there was an outcry from commentators afraid that they were reclassifying ordinary sex as rape. But “yes means yes” is simply the sexual version of an academic honor code. It’s acknowledgment that attending a college is not a right but a privilege that comes with responsibilities, and that one of those responsibilities is to treat fellow students with respect. …
Although false accusations of rape are extremely rare, a wrongful criminal conviction for sexual assault is a travesty. A wrongful expulsion from college after due process for the accused is deeply unfair, but it leaves a less permanent stain. If a student expelled for sexual assault enrolls elsewhere, their transcript doesn’t usually list the reason for the expulsion, and colleges don’t have to disclose the details.
A common rejoinder is that hearings are not legal proceedings. But the hearings actually operate in a legal gray zone.
For example, the last campaign from the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault includes improving cooperation with the police. Increasingly, the testimony an accused gives without due process can be turned over for use by the police and courts. Moreover, the hearings impose penalties as draconian as a court. A student can be expelled with the word “rapist” permanently in his file. He may be tens of thousands of dollars in debt with no ability to obtain a license to practice his chosen profession. Many unlicensed professions will shun him as well. What university of quality will accept him? His reputation and belief in justice may be damaged beyond repair.
Rebecca Plante and Andrew Smiler take a different view, arguing that the low standards of evidence used by the university’s misconduct board actually make them less likely to “convict”:
Although apparently the president’s office was aware of allegations of sexual felonies, including gang rapes, it also appears that the Charlottesville police were not asked to investigate until recently. Why are colleges and universities investigating allegations of felony sex-related crimes without having to involve local law enforcement? Given the paucity of the training, is it reasonable to expect board members and university staff members to investigate and adjudicate such serious criminal allegations? Board members are also expected to base their findings on a preponderance of evidence (for example, a 51-percent likelihood that a crime was committed). That standard may dissuade board members from finding the accused guilty.
Meanwhile, like one of our readers, Richard Bradley finds the Rolling Stone story incredible:
Jackie makes her way downstairs, her red dress apparently sufficiently intact to wear; the party is still raging. Though she is blood-stained – three hours with shards of glass “digging into her back,” and gang-raped, including with a beer bottle – and must surely look deeply traumatized, no one notices her. She makes her way out a side entrance she hadn’t seen before. She calls her friends, who tell her that she doesn’t want to be known as the girl who cried rape and worry that if they take her to the hospital they won’t get invited to subsequent frat parties.
Nothing in this story is impossible; it’s important to note that. It could have happened. But to believe it beyond a doubt, without a question mark – as virtually all the people who’ve read the article seem to – requires a lot of leaps of faith. It requires you to indulge your pre-existing biases.
[W]hen I say that I was initially inclined to believe the story, it’s not because I wanted or needed it to be true to fit my worldview. Rather, I assumed honesty on the part of the author and her source—not because I’m naive, but because I didn’t think someone would lie about such an unbelievable story. This isn’t a case of he-said / she-said; this is an extraordinary crime that indicts a dozen people and an entire university administration. Assuming a proper investigation—which the police are now conducting—confirming many of the specific details should be relatively easy. If “Jackie” is lying, there is a good chance she will be caught (and Erdely’s career ruined). So I believed it.
However, some of the details do strike me as perplexing on subsequent re-reads.
Ben McGrath has a long and fascinating profile of Sasha Hostyn, aka Scarlett, “the most accomplished woman in the young history of electronic sports,” namely Starcraft II:
Some context from McGrath:
“It’s not a sport,” John Skipper, the president of ESPN and, by extension, the emperor of contemporary sports, has declared, referring to gaming in general. “It’s a competition.” He added, “Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”
That “mostly” was an acknowledgment that the network has nonetheless begun hedging its bet against a cyber-athlete insurgency. In July, ESPN2 aired a half-hour program previewing an annual tournament for a game called Defense of the Ancients 2, or Dota 2, thereby enraging football and basketball fans who would have preferred round-the-clock speculation about off-season roster moves, and who vented on Twitter: “None of these people are anywhere near athletic,” “Wtf man. This is our society now,” “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING ON ESPN2?,” and so on. Meanwhile, the winners of the Dota 2 tournament took home a total of five million dollars.
Back to Scarlet, and how her story touches on the themes of gamergate:
[A]s an academic Rob [Scarlet’s father] had been a longtime observer of online communities, with their anonymous sniping and trolling. He was one of the first few hundred people to create an account on the social-networking site Reddit, and still recalled the coarsening of the site’s tone as its user base expanded beyond programmer geeks. “I knew that small communities are pretty good, and big ones get toxic,” he said. … The toxicity of gaming culture, with its adolescent sexuality and its tendency toward misogyny, was of particular relevance in Scarlett’s case. Shortly after she turned pro, word got out on the Internet that she was a transgender woman.
(She won’t discuss the subject with journalists, as she feels that it has no bearing on her role in gaming.) That was in early April of 2012, about a year after she began playing the game casually, and about a month after a controversy arose in a coarser corner of the e-sports world, when a prominent Street Fighter personality named Aris Bakhtanians was asked by a Twitch employee, Jared Rea, whether the fighting-game community’s habits of using vulgar and, in some cases, hostile language toward women could be tamped down. As Rea put it, “Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?”
Bakhtanians replied, “You can’t, because they’re one and the same thing. This is a community that’s, you know, fifteen or twenty years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting-game community it’s not the fighting-game community—it’s StarCraft.” …
In the rush to discover more about this new sensation, a few people noticed that the previous fall she’d entered—and won, easily—a couple of Iron Lady events, women-only tournaments organized online by the Electronic Sports League. No fair, some argued, apparently believing that StarCraft players, like sprinters, should be segregated by degrees of testosterone. The tournaments’ director, pHaRSiDE, wasn’t buying it. “Transgender girls have been competing in Iron Lady since the start of the tournament series,” he wrote. “No one seemed to care until Scarlett started winning. So it’s kinda funny how people only want to ban transgender girls who are incredibly good.”
The Dish 