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The Right to Protest Comes with Responsibility

/ Joe Broadmeadow / 4 Comments

The recent tragic event in Minnesota is convoluting two separate and serious issues; the validity and efficacy of the President’s immigration enforcement policy and the use of deadly force by police officers.

These issues need to be separated to ensure a fair and impartial analysis and investigation of the officer involved in the shooting.

The are several elements which are indisputable.

The officer was engaged in a legitimate law enforcement effort.

The officer was acting in accordance with his responsibilities as a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

When one engages in protest,
this right comes with responsibilities.

Renee Good was exercising her right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

From the moment the officer involved first encountered Ms. Good until the moment he made the decision to employ deadly force, the only facts that need be considered are if the officer’s encounter with Ms. Good was within the parameters of his job, whether Ms. Good was in a position to harm officers, and what the officer perceived of that threat.

If an officer, acting within the color of law and performing a function of his job, perceives a threat or act of deadly force directed against himself or others he has the absolute right to engage the threat with the force necessary to stop it, up to and including deadly force.

Investigating this incident needs to be limited to the facts of the incident, not the issue of the policies that put the officer there in the first place.

The tragedy here is Ms. Good may very well have not intended to harm the officers. From all the reports of family and friends, she was a caring and considerate person who was upset by the government policy and felt obligated to voice her protest.

Now many of you will find this hard to accept, but none of Ms. Good’s admirable qualities matter. The officer had no way of knowing that in the short time of the encounter. All the officer involved had to go on was what unfolded before him.

Everyone has the right to protest against government policy. No one should fear engaging in protest because of the potential threat from the government.

The overwhelming majority of ICE officers are conscientious and professional. They perform a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. The officer involved will live with his decision to take a human life for the rest of his, it will not be easy to accept that responsibility. People who don’t understand that have never faced the possibility.

When one engages in protest, this right comes with responsibilities. The officers tasked with keeping the peace do not know anything about the protesters. They have no way of gauging the individual threat level of a crowd of people.

If you engage in protest, you need be mindful of your actions. This is not to blame the victim here, but if you are operating a several thousand pound vehicle. and are engaged in a verbal confrontation with the police, you have a responsibility to make sure you don’t inadvertently pose a threat.

The investigation of this incident needs to focus solely on the circumstances from the moment of the initial encounter up to the use of deadly force and nothing else. Arguing about the validity of the policy or the legitimacy of the officer’s presence clouds the issue.

This may well be a tragic consequence of an ill-conceived policy. An unnecessary death is the result of such circumstances, but we have to consider the alternative. If the officer had been fatally struck, would the level of outrage be the same?

Policy didn’t kill Ms. Good, circumstances did.

Police officers are faced with making these decisions in seconds. An officer is expected to make these decisions in less time than it takes to read this sentence. They do not have the luxury of deliberation and extensive consideration of their options. They have to deal with immediacy of the moment.

To expect them to do otherwise is ludicrous.

Clearly some review of the use of force policy and procedures in place needs to happen. It is legitimate to ask whether firing at a vehicle is an effective method of ending the threat, a dead driver behind the wheel of a running vehicle may be more deadly. But any change or modification to the policy cannot alter the circumstances of the incident. The officer, in his perception, believed his life or the lives of his fellow officers were in jeopardy.

He had the right and responsibility to act.

The tragedy of the result notwithstanding, this is all that should be considered in determining the legitimacy or illegality of the officer’s actions.

What’s the Difference?

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

Russia claims Volodymyr Zelensky is not the legitimate elected President of Ukraine.

The United States claims Nicolas Maduro is not the legitimate elected President of Venezuela. (They had a practice run in 2020 about claiming election fraud and learned from that.)

Russia initiates unilateral actions against the Ukraine.

The United States initiates unilateral actions against Venezuela.

Russia takes territory and citizens of a sovereign nation without cause.

The United States seizes the President of Venezuela and his wife by military force.

Russia unilaterally demands the Ukraine surrender territory and the Ukrainian people within those territories to Russia.

The United States unilaterally claims the authority to “run” Venezuela and bring in American companies to run the oil industry to the benefit of the Unites States.

Expediency should never be a rationale for circumventing our Constitution and our commitment to international law.

Joe Broadmeadow

Can somebody explain the difference other than we have a more effective military capability?

Can somebody explain on what basis they think the Venezuelan people will welcome the imposition of a government run by the United States on their sovereignty?

Can somebody explain why we choose not to commit similar actions in other countries controlled by dictators, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Vietnam (oh wait, we tried that one), Sudan, Nigeria…

Here’s the list of the current 59 dictatorships in the world, https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/

That anyone in this country supports the actions by President Trump in Venezuela is terrifying.

Whether Maduro is a narco-terrorist or not is irrelevant. We are a country of laws living in a tenuous post-World War II world that is based on international law.

Whether or not we have the ability and resources to execute such actions is irrelevant. Expediency should never be a rationale for circumventing our Constitution and our commitment to international law.

Rallying around successful but questionable military operations ostensibly seeking to right a wrong is fraught with risk.

We need to keep in mind the people of Venezuela have the right and the obligation to find their own solutions to their internal problems.  Inasmuch as the narcotics business affects us, we need to look inside ourselves for the fundamental reason for the existence of this business, the demand for narcotics by Americans.

If we accept the rationale that narcotics trafficking is an act of terror, then we are a country where millions of our citizens support terrorists and some reap financial benefits from their actions.

Perhaps dealing with the problem should begin at home.

We offer a market for the business and do little, if anything, to reduce that demand. Rest assured the flow of narcotics will not diminish substantially until this demand is reduced. And our using extrajudicial means to combat it is a slippery slope.

We could try to jail them all in keeping with our worldwide lead in the number of citizens we incarcerate.

Or, go right to the summary executions to avoid those pesty technicalities under the law. Perhaps pay-per-view executions in the Presidential Ballroom.

These operations make for glitzy press conferences, flag waving hysteria, and testosterone-fueled fist bumping, cue the patriotic music, but do little to address the problem.

The moronic comparisons to our imposing caretaker governments in Japan and Germany after the war are laughable. We did not do that without the consent of most of the nations united against Axis fascism. This is an unjustifiable and extrajudicial use of military force to seize a citizen of another country, taking unprovoked military action against that country, and rationalizing it by claiming we are helping the Venezuelans, righting a historical wrong, and combatting narco-terrorists.

There will be a great deal of ranting about how Venezuela nationalized the oil industry and unlawfully seized American assets. This is not the place for a history lesson, but one might want to try to at least have a fundamental understanding of this complex issue.

Nationalization, which took place over several years and presidential administrations, beginning in 1971, did not happen overnight. It was a progressive process meant to address the imbalance of the profits taken by the American companies as compared to the profits shared with Venezuela. American companies were given concessions to drill for oil, they were not given possession of the land, and they took billions in profits.

Any attempt to justify this as righting the wrong of this nationalization is a white-washing of history to paint the United States as a victim, it was not.

What we are doing is helping ourselves to the Venezuelans oil and there is no doubt Mr. Trump will get his cut of the profits.

And we will be left with an indelible stain on the history of our country and irrefutable evidence of our hypocrisy.

What’s the difference? There is none.

Author’s note.

(Now, I’ll sit back and wait for the vitriol pointing out how I am unpatriotic, support dictators (I have my voting record to refute that one), and my sympathizing with narco-terrorists to come pouring in.
In preparation for the barrage, I’ll put on the coffee. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I will. I particularly enjoy the ones in CAPITAL LETTERS!)

An American Crossroad

/ Joe Broadmeadow / 1 Comment

“When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”
Yogi Berra (sort of)

Ozymandius

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

America faces the most challenging crisis since the Civil War. Our government of checks and balances is now woefully unbalanced, controlled by those with checks and deep pockets.

The distortion of power between the uber-wealthy and the majority of Americans teeters on the brink of totalitarianism and total loss of our constitutional rights. And the most frightening thing about it is the willful blindness or stunning indifference of a significant number of American citizens.

We have a President who lacks even the slightest element of empathy or commitment to the greater good. His callous pronouncements about others, be they those recently deceased or the weakest and most vulnerable among us, are a sad commentary on his lack of humanity.

Like Ozymandius, he struts to engrave his name all over the country as if he deserves such honor, failing to learn from history the emptiness of such efforts by other maniacal egos. First, it was the unlawful and shameful renaming of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (it’s only a matter of time before the only events they can book there will be UFC and some failed country-western acts who mourn the loss of the Old South).

Then it was the unilateral decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House to build another testament to ego and self-aggrandizement. It is only a matter of time before he decides to dynamite Mount Rushmore, rename national parks (Trump-Yellowstone, Trump-Grand Tetons) after they pump out all the oil and decimate the environment, and imprint his picture on the one-hundred-dollar bill.

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

We have a neutered majority in Congress who sit silent in the face of these outrages, using the cowardly argument that they hold their tongue to prevent Trump from seeking vengeance on the states they represent.

Is there any worse example of cowardice than that?

These Senators and Congresspeople have forgotten the lessons of the great women and men who came before them and, while working for their particular districts, kept in mind the greater responsibility to do what is in the best interest of the American people.

We may be a nation of Irish-American, Italian-American, Jewish-American, Catholic-American, Muslim-American, African-American, and a host of other hyphenated Americans. Yet, we need to keep in mind that the word before the hyphen is but an adjective. The essence of all people in the country is American, and we deserve a President and a Congress that keeps that in the forefront of all their considerations.

Our commonality as Americans is our most cherished characteristic, and we should resist with all our will any effort to segregate us into the haves and have-nots.

2026 is America’s crossroads. Unless we send a clear message that we will resist this march toward an authoritarian President with unrestrained power, we may not survive as the country our founding fathers created.

When a President can order the military to kill wounded individuals, even if we accept they are enemies of the United States and wish us harm, how can we object the next time an American pilot is shot down, captured, then executed by others?

Combat, despite the horrors and fog it engenders, has rules of engagement. We cannot hold ourselves up as people to be admired and emulated if we descend into the behavior of those we most criticize.

Mr. Trump has denigrated, diminished, and demeaned the Office of the President of the United States and this country in the eyes of the world. That most people outside this country are shocked by the sudden decline in our standing is telling. That many people within the United States are blind or indifferent to it is horrifying.

The list of acts that confirm this contention is long and dismaying, but there is hope. There are positive signs of resistance within the once-admirable Republican Party and encouraging signs of a revitalized and refocused Democratic Party.

Let’s strive to put people in office who will re-establish the balance of power among the three branches, remember their oath is to the Constitution of the United States, not partisan political parties, and seek a consensus among differing perspectives to preserve and protect this country.  

Now is the real moment to make America great again. If these last few months have not demonstrated the danger of the alternative, nothing will.

A Policy Dichotomy of Extraordinary Hypocrisy

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

Okay, class, we are going to start the day with a pop quiz. Simple two question test on current affairs. Ready?

Who WAS Alejandro Carranza?

Who IS Juan Orlando Hernández?

Come on, now. This should be easy. Okay, times up. Can anybody tell me the answers? No? Okay, I’ll explain.

Alejandro Carranza was the name of a Columbian fisherman on a boat allegedly smuggling cocaine into the United States. While the identification is unconfirmed, as is the allegation of drug smuggling, Mr. Carranza now resides in the digestive tract of any number of species of fish or other ocean going carnivores having been obliterated by a US Navy missile(s).

Juan Orlando Hernández, on the other hand, is the former president of the Honduras arrested, tried, and convicted under our due process procedures after an extensive multi-year investigation by the Department of Justice for orchestrating and benefitting from smuggling 400 ton of cocaine into the United States.

Now, here’s an easy bonus question. Besides one being alive and breathing and one being disintegrated, what is the difference between them?

In Mr. Carranza’s case, the President of the United States unilaterally ordered him executed. In Mr. Hernández’s case, the President ordered him pardoned and released.

So the policy of the United States government, this most Christian nation born of the doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth and, apparently, less than enthusiastic about innocent until proven guilty, is to kill people on the lower end of the drug cartel hierarchy we “think” might be smuggling drugs and to pardon those of the upper echelon we CONVICTED of smuggling drugs.

I can see how this will indeed make us great again.

While we are at it, in keeping with our new naming policy of various departments within government, i.e. Department of War, let’s rename the Department of Justice to the Department of Smiting Offenders without Having a Trial (SO WHAT)

The Longest War

/ Joe Broadmeadow / 1 Comment

If you were to ask most Americans to name the longest war we have ever fought, they would say the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They would be wrong by a factor of three. This one is still ongoing.

The longest war, a war the President declared at the time with the advice and consent of Congress, is the war on drugs. President Richard Nixon, in 1971, a few months before his fateful decision to authorize the Watergate break-in, announced drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” (don’t you miss the days when we declared public enemies?) and began increasing the funding for federal, state, and local law enforcement.

For ten years, the war on drugs was more public relations than combat. It took President Ronald Reagan, in 1981, fresh off his “success” with the Iranian Hostage crisis, to fully ramp up the effort.

Focusing almost exclusively on enforcement and incarceration, the number of people imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses went from 50,000 in 1980 to  400,000 in 1997. Reagan’s wife, Nancy, contributed in her own way with the wildly “effective” Just Say No campaign.

The U.S. Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which allocated $1.7 billion to the War on Drugs and established a series of “mandatory minimum” prison sentences for various drug offenses. A notable feature of mandatory minimums was the massive gap between the amounts of crack and powder cocaine that resulted in the same minimum sentence: possession of five grams of crack led to an automatic five-year sentence. In comparison, it took the possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger that sentence. Since approximately 80% of crack users were African American, mandatory minimums led to an unequal increase in incarceration rates for non-violent Black drug offenders, as well as troubling indications that the War on Drugs was fundamentally racist.

This is not a Republican or Democratic policy issue; it is shared across the political spectrum.

When the use of civil process to seize drug dealers’ assets became available, it was like winning the lottery. We took cars and cash and, as the theory held, used them to enhance drug investigations. Making drug dealers pay for the investigations into drug dealing seemed genius.

It turned out to be our own form of addiction. Many agencies became more focused on seizing the assets to pay their budgets than on stopping drugs. They lost sight of the goal. If an agency became aware of a kilo of cocaine in a location, they could get a search warrant and seize it. But, if they waited a few days, they could seize the remaining cocaine AND get the money from the sale of the rest.

Don’t believe that happened? It did, all over the United States. A very astute Assistant U.S. Attorney in Rhode Island at the time predicted as much in a conversation we had one day.

Not every agency engaged in such questionable activity. Still, it was enough to create a challenge to effectiveness and a stain on the whole purpose.

Now I was a loyal soldier during these halcyon days of the war, having served in a police department and working in various units focusing on drug enforcement. But over time, it became apparent that we were fighting a single-front war on a multi-front battlefield.

The majority of people we arrested, while engaged in breaking the law, were as much slaves to the drugs as those in the higher echelons were to the revenue.

If one is going to fight a war, one needs a strategy that identifies the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses.

In the war on drugs, we face three enemies. First, those engaged in the manufacture and distribution of drugs, both domestic and foreign. Second, we face the powerful force of addiction. And lastly, we face an even more powerful force, greed.

Putting all of our resources into targeting just one aspect of this three-pronged front is self-defeating. Over the years, the type of drugs has changed, the methods of smuggling adapted, and the avenues for laundering the proceeds have grown more sophisticated. Yet we continue fighting with the same strategy.

It hasn’t made us drug-free. It has put us in the top five countries in terms of the number of individuals we incarcerate per capita. We are just behind El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan at 541 per 100k.

And, one might argue, one of the “benefits” to come from the war on drugs is private prisons. Now, there is something we should be proud to have invented. Good old capitalism at its best.

To put it in the context of a war. If we had focused all our efforts on fighting Japan during World War II, because it was the only nation that directly attacked us, what would have happened in Europe?

Some Presidential administrations and some state and local authorities recognize the need to expand the war to address these other fronts. But not consistently. Treatment facilities for addiction, alternative sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and targeting the banks, businesses, and financial institutions reaping the largesse of drug money are not conducive to public relations campaigns.

Blowing up boats makes for great theater, like a 21st-century Circus Maximus. It is all show and little substance. It makes people who don’t understand the complexities involved excited, gives the politicians a moment in the public spotlight (their own addiction,) and accomplishes nothing.

I dare say some would embrace the idea of putting drug dealers in the middle of a stadium and letting lions devour them for the entertainment of the masses. It would generate excellent TV ratings, even better than UFC. But it would have no effect on reducing the level of drugs being consumed in this country, would be another waste of efforts, and do nothing for the lions but make them lazy and fat.

 Our fifty-five-year war on drugs drags on, casualties mount—and not just the ones clinging to an overturned boat miles from shore—and we are no closer to our goal.

The Twelve-Year-Cycle Redux

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

Coming up on the twelve-year-cycle I wrote about here, https://joebroadmeadowblog.com/2019/01/24/an-american-twelve-year-memory-loss/, I wonder what 2028 will offer us?

The last time I wrote about this, 2016, we had just elected Trump to his first term. Somehow we survived, chose not to re-elect him to a second term, had four years of relative stability, then exhibited the most common symptom of insanity by repeating an action and expecting a different result.

I will give him this, we are not engaged in any active combat at the moment, but it would seem he desperately wants to try out the effectiveness of his renamed Secretary of War department by starting his own. (A bigly, better war. They say it’ll be the best war we ever had.)

We now find ourselves acting in the manner of enemies we long despised, where someone in the military chain of command orders a second strike to kill wounded combatants (I’ll grant the assumption for now, absent evidence to the contrary) in clear violation of the rules of engagement.

We have a President who supports the Secretary of War’s assertion that the decision for the second strike did not come from him, but from a field commander instead. This raises important questions about accountability and the chain of command in our military actions. There is no denial of the order. No announcement that this field commander has been relieved of duty pending an investigation. Nothing.

And keep in mind, while the designation of these alleged drug runners may be lawful, it does not mitigate the rules of engagement. Even if we assume the initial strike is lawful, no one has ever claimed these vessels posed a danger to the military assets engaged with them.

No one was shooting back at the Navy and one would be hard pressed to claim that two likely wounded men floating in the ocean posed any hazard to a 100,000 ton displacement aircraft carrier. They wouldn’t have even left a spot of the hull had they been run over by the ship (which would have been a less messy explanation of their demise.)

“Come to heading 250,”
“Aye aye sir,”
Bump!
“What was that?”
“I didn’t hear anything”
“Sir, there’s a small red stain on the hull.”
“No worries, we’ll paint it later”

2028 is on the horizon. Let’s hope we regain our senses before then. A new President, not a recycled one, will (hopefully) take office. We have frightened the world enough for this cycle.

A Childish Miscreant and Menace in the Oval Office

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

We live in a time of chaos with a President whose behavior mirrors that of a petulant child rather than a statesman. The Oval Office, once a symbol of dignity and deliberation, becomes a stage for tantrums, impulsive decisions, and self-serving theatrics. The “childish miscreant” is not merely immature; they are dangerous in their recklessness, wielding power without restraint or reflection.

Want to make America great again? Then recognize that the single greatest threat to the success of that goal is sitting in the White House like Jabba the Hut.

If you agree with his policies (why and how do you even articulate his T.A.C.O. gyrations), then find someone with a modicum of civility and put them in the position. This poisoned tongue, inarticulate, uncouth, uncivil, unkempt, unkind, uncaring, unrefined, unsophisticated, unintelligent, unworldly, inept shell of a human is an embarrassment to this country, to the world, and to humanity.

The terms idiot, imbecile, moron, and their derivatives were formerly used as technical descriptors in medical, educational, and regulatory contexts. They have fallen out of favor, but I think we need to resurrect them to accurately describe the individual currently occupying the Oval Office.

There is something seriously deranged with that man, and more consequently, with any individual who can, with a straight face, ignore, tolerate, or justify the unmitigated idiocy of the verbal projectile vomit expelled from his mouth.

This poisoned tongue, inarticulate, uncouth, uncivil, unkempt, unkind, uncaring, unrefined, unsophisticated, unintelligent, unworldly, inept shell of a human is an embarrassment to this country, to the world, and to humanity.

Joe Broadmeadow

That anyone, A N Y O N E, in this country can stand silent in the face of him calling their fellow human beings retarded, piggy, stupid, or any other epithets is abhorrent. There is no justification, no rationalizing, no mitigating the damage this causes.

That anyone voted for this man after he openly and publicly mocked a handicapped individual is disgusting. And for those evangelicals out there who find it convenient to embrace this man because he echoes (but doesn’t practice) what you want to hear, I hope, should your belief turn out to be true, that you’re working on your defense for when your God asks you to explain your tolerance of this most unchristian behavior.

Those who either laugh it off as Trump being Trump or think it harmless are enablers. Those who are shocked by it but remain silent are cowards. Those who embrace it are the lowest form of life in the universe.

Suppose a high school freshman were to call someone retarded, or piggy, or stupid in front of the entire school, or mock a handicapped person. In that case, they’d be suspended in a heartbeat. But if you’re the President of the United States, using these terms against those who disagree or challenge him is somehow acceptable.

Until everyone in this country recognizes this boorish and uncivilized behavior for what it is and challenges it, this country will never be great again.

The End of the World is Nigh

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

In one of the better examples of how failing to understand history can lead to repeating the same mistakes, we have this.

1960 The Catholics are Coming; The Catholics are Coming.

2025: The Muslims are Coming; the Muslims are Coming

This latest baseless hysteria arises from the election of Zohran Kwame Mamdani as Mayor of the City of New York.

In 1960, many saw John F. Kennedy as a threat to America because he was Catholic and would be subservient to the Pope. I’d love to hear Marilyn Monroe’s take on how strict a Catholic Mr. Kennedy was, but she is unavailable.

Before Kennedy there were other examples of hysterical fear based on race, national origin, or other unchangeable aspects of individuals.

No Irish Need Apply

Whites Only

And here we are amid an administration, set on widening the gaps between those who agree with their policies and those who are horrified by them, doing everything it can to fuel this raging inferno of ignorance and intolerance.

And the good ole’ evangelical Christians are right there leading the ‘moral’ charge. The “all men are created equal” line in the founding documents be damned,

I would venture to say much of this fear and loathing arises from those Christians who—having never actually read the Bible, or even a Cliff Notes version—fail to embrace the nuanced allegory of religious doctrines and went right to the inerrant word of God version. They are driven by the same religious hysteria that caused the Crusades, witch hunts, and the stoning of heretics.

And they add the finishing touch of wrapping themselves in the flag of patriotism.

That they cannot see the contradiction in their proclamations is astounding.

“Mamdani is a democratic socialist!” they scream, making the same mistake as those who embraced McCarthyism, lumping the propaganda-driven definitions of communism and socialism and bundling them into one. Given the challenge to define either term, they’d fail. Most would point to countries like Russia, China, or North Korea as examples of communist or socialist states.

They are not. In the history of the world, no true communist or socialist state has ever existed.

Communism is defined as,

“a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned, and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.”

Socialism is defined as,

“a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”

Some aspects of these systems sound attractive; the problem is that every form of government involves people, and they are not naturally inclined to live in such systems.

Democratic Socialism is defined as,

“Democratic socialism is a socialist economic and political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers’ self-management within a market socialist, decentralised planned, or democratic centrally planned socialist economy.”

Not if you can set aside your fear-based revulsion of socialism, and take a step back, you would see we have a blended version of a socialist democracy. We have a free-market economy with many restrictions and controls in place. Just a brief look back in history at the abuse of labor by big businesses, the monopolies created in some industries, and the environmental damage done absent legislated controls will demonstrate the reality.

Whether Mr. Mandami is a Muslim, a Christian, or a non-believer does not, by our laws and practices, matter. All that matters is he follows the laws and rules of government in setting policies.

Whenever I hear the nonsense claims that “sharia” law is coming to New York, I find it hard to believe there are people who believe such idiocy.  Then again, many of these are the same people who would welcome a Christian-based government imposing Christian-based rules and morality on the nation.

They are blind to their own hypocrisy. But, just in case, they are investing some money in a Pakastani company that exports hijabs.

My Sarcasm ruffled some feathers

/ Joe Broadmeadow / Leave a comment

A lightly sarcastic post on Facebook about the ineptness of certain members of the Trump administration, illustrated with an image of the Three Stooges, brought an unusually virulent torrent of criticism from those who blindly and enthusiastically support this administration.

Now I enjoy these moments, but I thought I should explain the facts and reasons behind the sarcasm and criticism of the administration.

These individuals rising to the defense of the President seem to be thrilled by the specter of the American military being tasked with blowing up boats, ostensibly trafficking in narcotics, with little evidence other than a few war whoops from the Secretary of War and similar chest pounding by Mr. Trump.

So, let’s play devil’s advocate here.

Assuming these boats are transporting drugs—and in all likelihood they are, but that is beside the point—how effective will this policy be in interdicting the flow of narcotics into the United States?

Here are some interesting facts from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

According to ICE, 95% of Fentanyl is seized at Points of Entry (P.O.E.). The overwhelming majority of which are land-based border crossings or airports.

Of the Sea-based routes, 75% are Pacific Marine Routes.

China plays an integral part in providing precursor chemicals to Mexico, where the majority of Fentanyl is produced and then smuggled into the US through P.O.E.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 90 percent of heroin seized along the border, 88 percent of cocaine, 87 percent of methamphetamine, and 80 percent of fentanyl in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year were caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points, and that trend has continued.

While other means are certainly used, including boats offloading offshore and coming in under cover of darkness, the statistics are a good indication of the preferred methods of smuggling.

Because most fentanyl seizures occur at ports of entry, the majority of fentanyl is smuggled by people who can enter the United States legally. These individuals can evade detection by posing as normal travelers entering or re-entering the United States. As a result, transnational criminal organizations tend to recruit U.S. citizens, who receive the least scrutiny on entry.

From FY 2018 through FY 2024, over 92 percent of all fentanyl was seized either at a port of entry or at a Border Patrol vehicle checkpoint.

Importantly, fentanyl seizures peaked in spring 2023 and have been declining since. CBP fentanyl seizures hit record levels in April 2023 at 3,220 pounds. Although the exact reason is not yet clear, seizures fell nearly every month after that, and by March 2025, had dropped to just 760 pounds. This drop in seizures occurred almost entirely at ports of entry, with nationwide Border Patrol fentanyl seizures in April 2025 (133 pounds) remaining at roughly the same levels as April 2024 (140 pounds) and April 2023 (137 pounds), despite dramatically fewer migrant crossings.

Evidence suggests that less fentanyl may be coming into the country because there is less demand for it in the U.S. as opioid overdoses fell dramatically in 2024, with official CDC data through November 2024 showing that overdose deaths dropped in all but two states (Arizona and Hawaii). Should these trends continue, it suggests the worst of the fentanyl crisis may be behind us.https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/fentanyl-smuggling/

This policy of targeting drug boats in international waters focuses on the least common method of smuggling drugs into the country. Perhaps, if one can believe the information from DEA and ICE, by not stripping resources away from P.O.E. and redirecting them to capturing Walmart shelf stockers and McDonald’s hamburger flippers, we could focus on the routes delivering the overwhelming majority of drugs to the US and, perhaps, catch more Americans who are active and willing participants.

Mr. Trump’s administration may lack many things, but creativity is not one of them. They crafted a convenient end run around domestic law and inconvenient principles like Posse Comitatus and designated organizations like Tren de Aqua as terrorist organizations and declared them as enemies engaged in attacks on US sovereignty.

In this particular instance, I agree with them. When Nixon declared drugs to be “public enemy number one” and started the War on Drugs campaign, it was anything but a war. Like other failed policies with good intentions, it lacked a clear purpose, a clear method of application, and a clear goal.

It was never a war.

Mr. Trump’s designating the issue as one of armed aggression against the United States is a wise one, but it shouldn’t be the basis for derailing our system of justice and, at the very least, should operate under the rules of war.

The United States, unlike many other nations, always weighs the value and purpose of a military action against the risk to innocent civilians. The history of the world reflects very few countries that do so. Yet even the United States resists some limits imposed by well-articulated international law.

One of those is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This defines the principle of self-defense in international waters. UNCLOS+ANNEXES+RES.+AGREEMENT

The principle of self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter only allows the use of force against an imminent threat. It is hard to see how a drug-laden speedboat in international waters hundreds of miles from U.S. territory posed an imminent threat to the United States. (Interestingly enough, the US Congress, despite decades of lobbying by other Presidents and supporters, refuses to ratify this treaty.)

With the level of surveillance sophistication available to the military, tracking these boats to our territorial waters, then interdicting them by whatever means necessary, including destruction, would not only be lawful but also offer the kind of proof needed to justify the actions.

And maybe, in our on-again off-again relationship with China, our on-again agreement on trade can be expanded to get the Chinese to cooperate in stopping the flow of precursor chemicals.

Thus, my criticism and sarcasm are based not on the method or goal of this policy, but that they are focusing on the least effective methods and areas at risk. And the process and willingness to ignore accepted military and civilian law enforcement protocols is clearly un-American.

Why, you might ask, should we care about some smugglers getting blasted out of the water when it is clear they are trafficking? Because if we are willing to accept that blurring of the lines, where does it end?

The Founding Fathers were wise in devising our form of government. Power is not concentrated in any one branch. If we allow one branch to ignore that balance, and subvert the equal parts of government, we face a reduction in our rights and an inexorable march toward totalitarianism.

In simplest terms, you can blow up all the boats you like, twelve miles off the coast, as long as you follow our laws.

“Fortunately, I keep my feather numbered for just such an occasion.”

The Most American Thing

/ Joe Broadmeadow / 3 Comments

“I hear a train a’comin’…”

By most estimates (except, of course, by those who routinely produce attendance numbers of the crowds at MAGA Events that are beyond believable), seven million Americans took to the streets all across the country to protest the abomination that is the Trump Administration.

And the reactions of those who support Mr. Trump were pathetically predictable.

Speaker Mike Johnson called them “unAmerican.”

Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins wrote on X,

“Good Morning to my fellow Americans who are celebrating No Kings Day today. While most of us celebrate this reality on July Fourth, you do you.”

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas Collins.

Note to Mr. Collins and Mr. Johnson.

The Fourth of July celebrates the end of the Revolutionary War where we fought to rid ourselves of a King. It was the culmination of decades of protests and resistance over unfair government policies and the use of military troops occupying the cities and towns in America. Actions that ultimately ended with troops firing upon protesting civilians under orders of this Monarch.

Perhaps you missed this in history class. Perhaps you prefer willful ignorance. Perhaps, since you enjoy the favor of this wannabe King, you long for a return to a monarchy.

Does any of this sound familiar? Could this be one of those moments of history that rhyme?

There is nothing more American than peacefully protesting the wrongful actions of the government. You’ll also notice the lack of violence by these millions of Americans and the low number of arrests. These protests are clearly anti-fascist in nature, yet none of these protests in any way resembled the actions of a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government…” as Mr. Trump has designated them.

Mr. Trump sees opposition to his policies as anarchy, something to be suppressed by all means. Those of us who have actually read the Constitution and support it understand better that these disagreements are the very foundation of our success.

At least up to this point in history, the future is more precarious.

Perhaps Mr. Johnson would have preferred these protests take the form of violent storming of the US Capitol building and the threatened lynching of government officials? It is clear Mr. Trump, by pardoning the J6 insurrectionists, and Mr. Johnson, by supporting such actions, prefer that form of “American” protests.

Their concept of a patriot also has precedents in history, generally attired in brown shirts and particularly proficient at breaking glass.

We should take heart in the number of Americans peacefully voicing their open disgust at this march toward totalitarianism. Seven million Americans of courage and conviction took the most patriotic of actions and “petitioned their government for a redress of their grievances.” Something those patriots of the Revolutionary War gave their lives to obtain for future generations, Mr. Collins, but you’ll ignore that reality out of blind fealty to your dear leader.

Take heart, for this large gathering of Americans is the sign of hope rising.

Come this mid-term election, and, more importantly, the next Presidential election, the world we see that the American people can weather the worst of storms raging against us, even those we create ourselves, and restore these United States to the country our forebearers intended it to be.

Mr. Trump and his maniacal band of charlatans will become just another scab on a long history of self-inflicted wounds in this country, soon enough to heal and fade away.