Chez Chesler

The Massachusetts Attorney General says

Q: What is price gouging? A: The Attorney General has specific regulations in place concerning price gouging in petroleum-related businesses, such as gasoline. It is an unfair or deceptive act or practice, during any market emergency, to sell or offer petroleum products for an unconscionably high price. Q: What is a market emergency? A.: A market emergency means an actual or severe energy supply interruption. The Governor has the exclusive authority to declare an energy emergency in the Commonwealth. Q: What is an unconscionably high price? A: If the price charged represents a gross disparity between the price of the product, and either the price at which the product was sold by the business immediately prior to the market emergency, or the price at which the same product can be bought by other buyers in the same area, AND this price difference is not due to increased costs from suppliers or increased costs due to an abnormal market disruption.

I see where the AG is investigating stations that charged too much for gasoline. Why isn't he issuing criminal complaints against the station owners who kidnapped the drivers, carjacked their cars, and forced them to buy gas at their stations? And while he's at it, why isn't he investigating why we don't have massive lines at gas stations, like in the 1970s, or ration coupons, like during World War II? And why stop at gasoline? Why is milk $2.19 at White Hen, $2.49 at Market Basket, and $3.49 (or more now) at Stop and Shop? Why are the same brand of prophylactics $3.89/dozen at Target, but $11.99 at CVS? Why is a comparable house $150,000 in Lawrence, but $1,500,000 in Martha's Vineyard? Why is a year's work worth $30,000 in a factory, but $3,000,000 in the corner office?

As reported in The Boston Globe, Suffolk DA Daniel Conley said that charges were not warranted against Rochefort Milien, the cop who fired into a crowd on October 21, 2004, killing Victoria Snelgrove, because

• "There is no evidence that any officer on Lansdowne Street acted with any intent to commit a crime"
• police made a string of serious errors in the events leading up to her death, but that none of those mistakes rose to the level of criminal charges
• "Poor judgment, however, is not the standard for criminal charges."
• Police said some of the revelers were throwing bottles
• "The fact that the officers were placed in such a chaotic situation on Lansdowne Street was the result of poor crowd control planning by department commanders"
• "It's always easy to judge things in hindsight rather than from the eyes of the person who is living that moment out. No one could, obviously, suggest for a moment that Deputy Superintendent O'Toole or any officer present that night ever intended or thought for a moment that these consequences would ever come about," said Timothy Burke, attorney for Deputy Superintendent Robert O'Toole, who ordered officers who were not properly trained in use of the pepper-spray guns to use the weapons.
• "Officer Milien's decision to fire was negligent, but not wanton and reckless, a legal standard which must be met to support a charge of manslaughter," Conley said.

Milien's attorney, Thomas Drechsler, called Conley's report "a recognition that the officers were reacting to an extremely volatile and dangerous situation which presented a serious risk to public safety."

Getting killed by being shot in the eye by a cop is also a serious risk to public safety.

There is another case pending in Lawrence. Marine-of-the-year Sgt. Daniel Cotnoir fired a shotgun into the air in the early hours of August 13, 2005 after members of a noisy crowd leaving local nightclubs threw an empty bottle through his bedroom window. Nobody was killed, but two underaged drinkers were treated and released after being struck in the leg by fragments.

"It was never this man's intention, as he tells me, to hurt anyone," said his lawyer, Robert Kelley. "It was only his intention to fire a warning shot when he was placed in a threatening situation."

"I just thought he wanted to scare us to get away from the area," said [Stephanie] Tejeda [cousin of the shot 15-year-old], who attended Cotnoir's arraignment Monday in Lawrence District Court. "Who shoots at an open crowd?"

The Boston Police Department, apparently. Cotnoir is currently free on bail. We'll see if the Essex DA holds Cotnoir to the same standards as Conley held Milien.

Update: Cotnoir was charged, and on June 29, 2006, acquitted.

The Volokh Conspiracy - -#1126558476 John Roberts' comparison of a judge to a baseball umpire reminded Jim Lindgren, of the Volokh Conspiracy, of an old joke:

First umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, and I call them as they are.” Second umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, and I call them as I see 'em.” Third umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, but they ain’t nothin' ‘til I call 'em.”

You heard it here first in 1995. (Or, using Google Groups, the earliest you may have heard it is here in 1992. It's an old joke, and I first heard it from Peter Newbatt Smith, now an attorney working for The Center for Public Integrity in D.C. Responding to a question from Senator Cornyn that cited Lindgren's blogging of the joke, Roberts identified with the umpire who says they are balls and strikes regardless of the call. I have always thought the third umpire is correct. The ball did or did not cross the plate within the strike zone, just as the accused did or did not do the bad act with the requisite criminal intent, but the scoring, like the finding of guilt or innocence, or the counting of votes, is dependent upon the umpire or the judge. The scoring has more consequence than the actual position of the ball.

The Katrina Conundrum, an editorial by Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News ervice

As a nation, we are good at post-mortems, analyzing and explaining tragic events _ the '68 riots, the Loma Prieta earthquake, 9/11 _ and learning from the results. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demands a commission to answer this question: How did an event that had long been predicted and presumably prepared for turn into the New Orleans catastrophe?

At first it looked like New Orleans had dodged a bullet, with the greatest devastation falling on its hapless neighbors to the east. But then, after Katrina had passed, three levees failed, flooding the downtown, forcing the evacuation of a major city and turning much of its population into homeless, destitute refugees. How could this happen?

It's not as if the consequences of a levee breach were a surprise. Planners had long said a doomsday storm was a matter of when, not if, and an eerily prescient Times-Picayune story three years ago laid out pretty much what came to pass this week. And charges are coming to light that even though there were known defects in the system, the levees were seriously underfunded. Once the breaks occurred, there seemed no plan of action, with material and equipment in place, to repair them.

And Ann McFeatters of the Block News Alliance writes "Once again, the government failed so many"

WASHINGTON -- There can be no subject more worthy of our attention right now than what happened when Hurricane Katrina rained catastrophe on the Gulf Coast. I predict that the world will be riveted by how quickly the thin veneer of civilization was peeled away in the most powerful nation on Earth, as looters ruled the streets of New Orleans, as dead bodies floated by, as thousands of the barely living waited in desperation day after day without food or drinking water or sanitation or power or a place to sleep or a way to contact their families.

...

How can we not be outraged when we think of the billions of dollars we've spent on homeland preparedness after Sept. 11, 2001, yet watched as babies died for lack of water and food and electricity three days after the hurricane hit?

We understand that the flooding was a separate catastrophe from the hurricane. But why were there no plans to evacuate the one out of every three residents of New Orleans too poor or disabled or incompetent or unwilling to leave just before the storm struck?

Thousands of reservists from Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are serving in Iraq. Yet where was the National Guard as people in Mississippi and Louisiana desperately begged camera crews for help?

Why were water and food not airdropped to the thousands of the sick and the elderly and the children who went days with no help?

Meanwhile Osama and our other enemies are looking for another dam that could be blown up, or some other weakness in our infrastructure.

Update, thanks to an anonymous commenter, the original article is here. I couldn't find today's Boston Herald op-ed by Cornelius Chapman, president of the Roxbury Educational Foundation, on their site. He writes:

As the Rolling Stones "Bigger Bang" tour moves across the country with the force of a financial hurricane, it is time to ask the troubling question that will not be hear from the lips of the group's lascivious logo.

Do the Stones owe reparations to African-Americans?

Seriously.

Consider the Stones' company profile: there has never been a black member of the group.

Even the most drug-addled Stones fan knows that their product is a priated version of African-American music. In some cases the group paid royalties to living artists such as Chuck Berry, whose works they copied. In most other instances -- Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," for example -- they were able to get what they want for free.

Sigh. Has Chapman given any thought to what the logical conclusion of this reasoning is? I don't buy into the whole racial-identity politics, so my mind, addled not by drugs but by the recent events on the Gulf coast and my own economic and health woes, can't come up with but one example before I start foaming at the mouth. We all have always been dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. Meanwhile, Ty Taylor gets booted from Rock Star: INXS, and plays the race card. See my earlier post on Elton John's similar complaint about American Idol. Update: the Herald published at least two letters critical of Chapman in the days following.

The Trigger Effect (1996)

How tenuous is man's hold on civilization when survival becomes an issue? When the lights go out and stay out for several days, suburbanites Matthew and Annie learn the hard way that man is "by nature" a predatory creature. Matthew's long-time friend, Joe, happens by on the second day and a rivalry between the two friends simmers as Annie cares for her sick baby. When rumors of looting spread through the neighborhood, the two men buy a rifle for protection but Annie throws it in the pool. Later, that same night, Joe hears a prowler downstairs and awakens Matthew. They chase the stranger from the house and out into the street where a neighbor shoots him to death. No longer safe in their own home, they decide to drive to Annie's parents some 500 miles away. Before they reach their destination, more trouble comes their way when they stop to siphon gas from an abandoned car and discover the driver in the back seat... Is this what is meant by "man's inhumanity to man?"

That's why I don't live in a big city. When the next big mid-plate earthquake hits the northeastern United States, I wonder if the breakdown in order that David Koepp predicted and that we're seeing now in New Orleans will reach Woburn, or southern New Hampshire.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Comment on "Armed Response to Looters": Dem and Milhouse suggest that the goods being looted were already abandoned, flotsam, or otherwise lost. I agree. Breaking into a store because the cops are otherwise occupied for the night is looting. Taking stuff that the owners, or their insurance companies, are never going to recover (especially if it's perishable) is very different. Even in times not of crisis, people have made honest livings through garbage picking. Mr. Kopel distinguishes between taking necessities and taking luxury items. If I were in New Orleans and had nothing (because not only was my house washed away, not, by the way, by the storm, but by water from a failed levee, and because the shelter to which I reported didn't have the supplies) I'd rather have cigarettes, or CDs, or jewelry, any of which I might be able to later trade for food or water, than nothing. Anderson writes: I have no clue what we've been preparing for since 9/11, but evidently it wasn't "taking care of a devastated city." Indeed. Levees break, earthquakes happen, people figure out how to use loaded airliners as incendiary bombs, someday somebody will get an actual nuke. The response is not right. Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System allows us to get convoys from anywhere in the country to anywhere in the country in a day or two. Why is it taking this long to get food, water, and medicine down there, by truck, by media van, or by helicopter?