California and Florida: Different Political Cultures in the U.S.

As evinced by Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney likening a planned referendum on whether Alberta should vote to separate from the rest of Canada to “Brexit,” in which Britain seceded from the E.U., as if the UK in the European Union were equivalent to Alberta in Canada, political category mistakes can run rampant without being detected as such. Referring to the referendum in the province, Carney said, “That is a very dangerous bluff.” He was “pointing to the turmoil that followed the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.”[1] The implied false equivalence of Canada and the E.U., as if the former too had been formed out of countries, is as incorrect as that which Carney was more directly assuming between Alberta and Britain. A region of a country, even if the latter has a federal system, is not equivalent to a country that joins a political union such as the E.U. and U.S. That Britain was once the host kingdom in the British Empire, and thus equivalent to other members of the empire, including Ireland and Virginia, does not mean that the UK as a state in the E.U. was equivalent to the latter, or to other political unions consisting of early-modern-scale countries.

Even before they became independent countries, the thirteen British colonies that would rebel were considered to be an empire within the British empire, and such an incongruity was correctly believed to render the latter unstable[2]. Empires consist of (early-modern) kingdom-scale polities, rather than of empires. The distinction between a kingdom and empire was well established, as in Althusius’s 1603 book, Political Digest, on federalism. It would not surprise Althusius at all that the countries that became members of the U.S. would continue to have their own political cultures rather than be fully homogenized at the empire-level.  The ideological conviction that the 50 states are somehow very similar culturally, as if linguistics were the exclusive basis of cultural differences, and thus that the U.S. is equivalent to an E.U. state, is empirically false (as are most ideological biases).

On May 27, 2026, the head of government of California vowed “to tax any payouts that California residents receive from a $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund that Donald Trump secured in a settlement with his own [U.S.] Justice Department.”[3] Newsom said, “Anyone from California that receives any of those funds, we want to tax 100 percent of those proceeds.” A similar proposal had been made in New York by NY Senator Mike Gianaris. It would be a grave mistake to assume that such a bill were also being entertained by the Florida legislature, and the reason goes beyond partisanship between the two major American political parties.

That Newsom would make public his proposal means that he believed that the political center of gravity in California favored going after not just corruption generally, but also efforts to reward people who had rioted at the federal Capitol building as the states’ respective votes for U.S. president were being counted in 2020. State populations differed appreciably on the ideology behind Trump’s “MAGA” populist movement. That movement had a much lower percentage of believers in say California and Massachusetts, than in Florida and Oklahoma. Alaska and Hawaii provide yet another stark contrast on how pervasive support for MAGA was as of 2026.

The sheer ideological difference between the centers of political gravity of those two republics resonates with the theoretical claim that the heterogeneity between kingdom-level polities in an empire is not just a matter of degree, but, rather, a leap, from the cultural differences that exist within any one of those polities. This is why federalism, which intentionally includes governmental means of managing inter-state cultural diversity, originated with empires rather than kingdoms, and is better suited to empires even though some early-modern-scale kingdom-level polities have federal systems (e.g., Germany, Switzerland, Belgium). The cultural differences between E.U. states is a leap rather than just a degree more than such differences within Germany and even Belgium within which different languages are spoken (in Flanders and Wallonia, respectively). The practical need to take account of cultural differences is greater in E.U. governance than at the state level, and thus federalism is more valuable—more fitting—at the E.U.-state interface than within a given state.

Back to the U.S., on the very day on which Newsom announced his proposal to tax all of the proceeds of Trump’s “slush fund” to his base that had sought to interfere with the role of Congress in counting the ballots of electors from the States for in the federal presidential election, Ron DeSantis, the head of Florida’s government, announced his proposed tax cut that would vastly increase the exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 on property taxes in Florida. Ben Albritton, the president of the Florida Senate, said, “I can’t think of a more meaningful way to celebrate America’s 250 [year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence than] the passage of $250,000 in tax relief for every Florida homeowner.”[4] Both men were betting that any drop in school budgets from the drop in tax revenue would be less important to most voters than paying less in property taxes. Here again, a distinct political ideology was in play—one that would get considerably less broadcast air-time in California where proportionally more voters believed in a more expansive role of government and thus for government spending by which public goods could be provided even if taxes are high. To be sure, the ideological divide between favoring tax-cuts versus government spending on public goods is an old one; my point is that the peoples in the American states differed, at least as of 2026, significantly on which side should be valued more. In fact, the European states may have differed much less in this respect even though different languages were spoken! So much for the false claim that cultural differences depend on linguistic differences! Belgium and the Netherlands were much more alike on this axis of political ideology that were California and Florida. Moreover, the differences within a given state, whether of the E.U. or U.S., were a leap down from the differences between the states.

Therefore, Alberta leaving Canada (or the southern region known as Egypt leaving Illinois—which has been attempted five times in Illinois history) is not like Britain seceding from the Union. Even though Canada’s regions admittedly may differ culturally, an empire consists of many polities and thus the diversity between the polities in an empire is greater than in Canada. Put another way, Canada would come into the U.S. as states just as every other country that has become a member of the U.S. has (and territories that became states are legally assumed to have been sovereign countries). Neither Texas nor Hawaii merged with the existing U.S., so neither would Canada merge with the United States. Neither would Canada come in as just one state, but this is not to say that each province would translate into a state; even if each one would, Canada still could not be classified as an empire (unlike the E.U. and U.S., both of which have many country-level republics).  

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1. Mike Blanchfield and Sue Allan, “Carney Warms Alberta Not to Pull a “Brexit,” Politico, May 25, 2026.
2. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire.

3.Tyler Katzenberger and Nick Reisman, “Newsom Vows 100 Percent Tax on DOJ ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Payouts,” Politico, May 27, 2026.
4.. Gary Fineout, “In One of His Final Acts, DeSantis Calls For Vote on Sweeping Florida Property Tax Cut,” Politico, May 27, 2026.

The ECJ Castigates the Commission for Paying Off Hungary

In an opinion submitted to the European Court of Justice, which tends to follow the legal opinions the 11 Advocates General, Tamara Capeta recommended in February, 2026 to the Court that it “should annul the European Commission’s 2023 decision to disburse €10.2 billion” to the E.U. state of Hungary.[1] Capeta found that the state government had not sufficiently addressed “concerns over systemic corruption and rule of law violations” to qualify for the payment.[2] That the Commission released the payment nonetheless points to corruption at the federal level—in its executive branch in particular—and this charge against the Von der Leyen administration renders the charge against the Hungarian government rather ironic. Rule of law should apply (and be respected!) at both the federal and state levels for the E.U. to continue to be viable. This applies especially to the Commission, as it is tasked with enforcing E.U. laws, directives, and regulations as well as treaty obligations that the EU, including its state governments, have to other countries, whether they are federal unions (e.g., the U.S.) or independent states.  

The Commission’s decision to reverse itself on the payment “came just days before a crucial December 2023 EU summit, where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán threatened to veto a €50 billion aid package for Ukraine and block the start of EU accession with Kyiv.”[3] At the European Council’s meeting, “Orbán left the room for a coffee break, allowing the other 26 E.U. [states] to approve the accession talks.”[4] At “an extraordinary” Council session in February 2024, “Hungary lifted its veto on the €50 billion Ukraine support package.”[5] Some representatives in the E.U.’s parliament “suspected the E.U. [had] struck a deal with Hungary, trading unfrozen funds for Orbán’s withdrawal of his veto” even though the Commission “denied any such agreement was made.”[6] Given Orbán’s twice reversal after his state government had just received the suddenly unfrozen funds from the Commission, its denial strains credulity at best, and more realistically actually confirms the charge of sordid dealings in the Commission at the expense of E.U. law.

It is harmful enough to the federal union when a state government violates E.U. law, especially with impunity; for a federal-level governmental institution to shirk federal law says in effect that the E.U. does not respect its own law (so why then should state officials respect it?). Presumably either the Commission and/or one or more of the states could have made a deal with Orbán that did not involve violating E.U. rule-of-law.

Moreover, occasioning the unlawful deal is the staying power of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the EU. A minimum of nine states was at the time sufficient for the federal program of “enhanced cooperation” to be invoked, in which case blocs of states could move forward in being subject to a federal law or regulation even though one or more state would still be in opposition but not to be subject to the law. Of course, this program could not apply to votes on whether to annex another state to the Union, and to decisions on whether to spend E.U. funds on other countries, including Ukraine because on such matters, the E.U. itself must either act as one or not act. So a so-called “multiple-speed” E.U. is not a complete answer to the basic problem of applying the principle of unanimity to 27 (and potentially more!) states.

Rather than relying primarily on its state governments for defense and even foreign policy, the E.U. could look to the U.S., which has both a federal military and state armies (called militias). That the federal president can temporarily call upon such armies even if their respective state presidents refuse does not mean that those armies are federal. Such an arrangement, which the E.U. did not have at least as of 2026, is consistent with the underlying dual-sovereignty of both the federal and state governments (or, for the ideologically squeamish, governmental institutions). The augmented federal powers would need to be decided by qualified-majority voting in the Councils that represent the state governments at the federal level; otherwise, no such partial transfer of governmental sovereignty could take place. Being politically unwilling to “step up to the (baseball) plate and bat,” federal and state officials should not collude in deal-making in ways that violate federal laws, lest the Union itself head down a slope wherein federal law has no force. This is especially of value in a world in which military aggressors such as Russia and Israel were wantonly violating international law with impunity; E.U. and U.S. jurisprudence, which is not international, and the corresponding duties at both federal and state levels of government, is not as self-evidently strong as Europeans and Americans may have been assuming in as invasions and genocides elsewhere were going on with impunity internationally.

On a visit to Florida at the time, I was shocked at the extent of brazen refusals by police employees of at least two cities to enforce criminal law—some employees even denying the existence of whole statutes, and the subordinates’ respective managers refused to hold those employees accountable. I was so stunned by the sheer brazenness of the lies that I decided not to move to that U.S. state. The rule of law cannot be assumed as though it castigates sordid personal discretion automatically; rather, law depends on humans to enforce it with integrity. This is why the international “laws” that Putin and Netanyahu were able to violate with such violence for years may not even count as law, for the enforcement-mechanism was entirely lacking de jure et de facto. “Law” without this cannot be counted as law.

The obligation of government officials to recognize and enforce rather than deny the very existence statutory law should be a given. It follows that federal officials in the Commission should not have been permitted to ignore the relevant federal law when it became an obstacle to making political deals with Hungarian state officials. If getting those state officials on board with a political priority of the Commission was so important, then the Commission could alternatively have pressured the states to reduce or end outright the application of the principle of unanimity in the two federal councils that represent state officials directly at the federal level, at least with respect to foreign policy and defense and even on the matter of “enlargement” (i.e., annexing future states). If qualified-majority is too low, then perhaps 75% of the states could be used as a benchmark for such very important policy decisions. The QMV-unanimity distinction is a false dichotomy, given the daylight available between the two voting methods. If one state can hold an entire Union back, then something is wrong with that federal system, and violating federal law to get around that problem is at best a short-sighted, expedient solution. In other words, the E.U.’s federal system has been suffering, at least as of 2026, from a much more serious problem than (collusive) corruption in the Commission and the Hungarian government.

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “E.U. Court Challenges Controversial €10.2bn Payment to Hungary,” Euronews.com, February 12, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Police Ignoring Laws in Florida: A Case of Systemic Corruption

Systemic corruption means not only that a department or agency has an organizational culture that allows for and may even laud corruption, but also that a city hall, as well as larger jurisdictions such as member-states and even federal agencies may be enabling the corruption by looking the other way and even lying to cover-up the lower-level corruption. A study at Florida Atlantic University published in the Journal of Criminal Justice identifies 24 categories of police misconduct in Florida from 2012 to 2023. Even though it is tempting to highlight violent illegal acts by police employees, lying regarding criminal law and refusing to take reports of criminal activity may be more detrimental because such misconduct is probably more common than is the violent sort. If so, the extent of corruption and the underlying false sense of entitlement by police patrol-employees and even their supervisors may be vastly understated in the United States.

The “24 categories of police misconduct” in Florida range “from assault/battery to weapons offenses, manslaughter, homicide, extortion and false statements/perjury (lying under oath).”[1] The results of the study state that “the most considerable incidence of police misconduct offenses was related to officer failure to report and perjury.”[2] The incidence of this type of corruption was higher than “sexual-related crimes” and “(d)rug and alcohol-related offenses.”[3] The serial lying to citizens and refusing their requests for police reports reflects back on the faulty use of psychological screening on police applicants. The propensity to bully too is indicative that such screening has been substandard and therefore should be drastically fortified.

The police department in Largo, Florida, which is located just north of St Petersburg and west of Tampa, is a case in point. As of 2025 at least, police personnel who have taken oaths to enforce (and thus acknowledge) Florid law were to take reports of fraud. “It takes several people to have reported a case of fraud for us to make a report,” one police employee told me when I called to confirm the wayward policy. The statement demonstrates not only corruption, but also a sordid breach of rationality, for if no initial reports of fraud by a person against another are allowed, then it would be impossible to make a complaint after several other people have done so regarding the same culprit. Incredibly, that same police employee nevertheless maintained that in Florida, reports of fraud are made to the police local departments.

That same squalid department also has a policy that landlords, including local individuals and property-management company employees, can enter rented residential space at any time for any reason because, as I heard when I called to confirm, “there is no such thing as trespassing on a person’s own property.” The department even lies to residents by claiming that neither the town nor Florida has any laws protecting tenants from what is in fact trespassing. The Largo police department took the decision to ignore section 82 of the Florida statutes, which stipulates the conditions under which a property-owner can enter leased premises. The sheer extraordinariness of the lie should not be overlooked, for a brazen, hardened corrupt mentality can be inferred, especially when wielded like a club by police employees who have sworn an oath to uphold rather than ignore and lie about the law.

As for Florida’s Law Enforcement Agency, the official line is that there is no state-level agency in Florida that oversees local police departments; the internal affairs offices of local police departments are the only avenue for complaints. That such a pertainent agency can so easily be coopted by their “brothers in arms” opens up the ethical problem of a conflict of interest. The office of Lori Berman (D), Minority Leader of the Florida Senate, also insists that no state-level avenue for complaints by residents of local police corruption exists; only the towns and counties could take such complaints. In investigating this problem by speaking with one of Berman’s employees, I suggested that federal oversight of corrupt local police departments is also possible. The result was a patronizing, “Now let’s slow down,” reply. I had heard enough, so I called Congresswoman Anna Luna’s office, whose district includes corrupt Largo. I asked which office in the U.S. Department of Justice I could contact regarding a corrupt police department, but was told by one of Luna’s enabling employees, “We have nothing to do with the U.S. Department of Justice.” Enabling the corruption of a local police department is itself a corruption, as is lying about the oversight of federal agencies by the U.S. House of Representatives. 

There is a saying in philosophy, “turtles all the way down.” A thread of corruption extending from local fraud, a lying local police department unwilling to uphold (or even acknowledge) the law, the state of Florida that is presumably unconnected from local agencies or departments, and federal office-holders from Florida for whom federal oversight does not exist either in the Congress or the U.S. Department of Justice qualifies as the epitome of systemic corruption. Just as an unethically dysfunctional culture of a company like Arthur Anderson, Wells Fargo, and Enron is notoriously difficult to dislodge or cure with disinfectant, a corrupt local police department encased and enabled at the state and Congressional level is as intractable as they come, utterly impervious to correction and reform. Translucent sunlight may be in short supply in the sunshine state.

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1. Gisele Galoustian, “Study Finds Police Misconduct ‘Hotspots’ Across Florida,” News Desk, Florida Atlantic University, July 30, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

American Law Enforcement: Extricating the Aggressive Personality and Presumption to Violate the Law Off-Duty

The assumption that more police than we might expect have in not being subject to the law even while off-duty suggests that hiring, training, and retention practices of police departments are inadequate. The presumption of being an ubermench and thus untouchable is dangerous when the person can legally carry a gun. Memo to police departments in the U.S.: please notify your employees that they are subject to local, state, and federal laws, period. Any indication of any presumption to the contrary subjects the culprit to termination. Unfortunately, police departments and their respective city governments in the U.S. are far from such enlightenment as could hold their employees accountable.

In June, 2023, a police employee of Orlando, Florida faced charges by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office for reckless driving and resisting and fleeing from a deputy. The culprit “refused to show the deputy his license, got back in his car, and took off . . .”[1] He had been driving at 80 mph in a 45 mph zone. It is significant that he thought that going to work was a viable excuse for speeding. Even more incredibly, he told the deputy to notice his police uniform, as justifying the speeding! When the deputy asked for the man’s driver’s license, the violator abstinently said a quick, “NO!,” and turned to get into his car before fleeing the scene. How dare you as me for MY license! That’s something I do to OTHER PEOPLE. How arrogant, wrong, and incorrect. Moreover, the man’s reaction to being held accountable provides the public with a view of someone having the legal use of a gun and yet not willing to be held accountable himself. He may have incorrectly appropriated the former President Nixon’s erroneous declaration that if the president does something, it is legal. A local police employee is not even close to being the president of the United States. Even aside from prosecuting the presumptuous law-breaker in Florida, the city of Orlando would have done well in considering whether such a person should be granted the legal right to use lethal force.

My point includes the subtle one that prosecution is not sufficient and is thus inadequate as a litmus test for deciding whether a police employee literally takes liberties off duty should remain employed. Due to lack of evidence of a malicious intent, a police employee of Chicago, Illinois was not found formally guilty of assaulting a 14-year-old, whom the off-duty employee had wrongly assumed had stolen his son’s bike. The employee inserted one of his knees in the eighth-grader’s back.[2] Regardless of whether there was sufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution, the photograph of the man on top of the boy should be enough for a chief of police to decide that such presumptuousness predicated on being a police employee should eliminate the attitude from being on a police force. The presumption in being allowed to attack a child who happens to walk past a stolen bike would be a red flag even in the case of a police employee on-duty. Off-duty, a man who happens to work as a police employee is just like any other dad. While any father may feel like being judge, jury, and executioner of a suspected thief of one’s son’s bike, what father would actually act on the urge? Hence, the off-duty police employee can be seen as presumptuous, and even as questionable psychologically, as can a police employee who curtly says no when asked for his driver’s license for speeding to get to work. An aggressive tenor can be detected from both men, and this alone should bar them from having the legal right of lethal force.

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1. Connor Hansen, “Orlando Police Officer Accused of Reckless Driving, Leaving Traffic Stop after Exchange with Deputy,” Fox35 Orlando, June 12, 2023 (accessed June 17, 2023).

2.  Alex Hammer, “Moment Off-Duty Chicago Cop Kneels on 14-Year-Old Boy’s Back after Mistakenly Accusing Him of Stealing a Bike,” DailyMail.com, July 4, 2022 (accessed June 17, 2023).

Police/Security Over-Reaches: A Mentality Unfit for the Job

Absolute authority corrupts absolutely. On an organization or even a local scale, people with authority can play considerably on the ignorance of individuals to over-reach at their expense. As a consequence, surveillance and actions can be horribly excessive without there being recognition of it. Seeing an off-duty police employee wearing a bullet-proof vest and standing next to a store security guard in the entry-way of a grocery store in Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, can give at least new-comers an immediate sense of the excessive use of authority to intimidate even the innocent shoppers. As if seeing a policeman and security employee "greet" customers entering the store was not enough, I also saw a young mother with her young daughter in one of the aisles “freeze up” at the sight of the policeman (wearing a bullet-proof vest) staring at them in a confrontational posture from the end of the aisle. I could not believe my eyes. As the front doors opened as I left the store, I looked up only to see a security guard with his feet pointed right and left, respectively, in a confrontational posture. 

A security guard stands in a confrontational posture at an Albertsons (Frys) grocery store in Phoenix.

Could such practices ever be accepted as the default in the "land of the free"? It depends on the State. Furthermore, how does such ill-fitting excessiveness, which would only fit were someone reported to be shooting in the store, shift from inappropriateness to become the default—the status quo? Typically the underlying mentality is one of stubborn ignorance that cannot be wrong, backed up by an excessive and microscopic grip on real or invented authority. How is it that the more educated and broad-minded perspective in upper-echelon management comes to doubt even its common sense by being hoodwinked by the lower mentality? Excessive delegation to middle-and-lower levels of management, where the wider perspective can easily be lacking, may be part of the answer. Playing a supporting role, the value-system in the local culture may actually support the excess or look the other way in blind obedience to an ideology. Finally, if a practice beyond the pale gets its toehold in the status quo, then people can become blind to the excessiveness and treat it instead as normal. Excessiveness as the new normal. Dislodging an invasive or encroaching unquestioned trend can be very difficult given the nature of the status-quo default to act like cement. Two case studies demonstrate that an absurd over-reach by someone in the security field can occur. The first took place in Orlando, Florida. Accountability did occur, so the absurd was not allowed to become ensconced. The second was in Phoenix, Arizona. Such accountability is much more difficult there, so the aggressive over-reach of authority would likely become further ensconced in the conducive or enabling local culture. 

In September, 2019, an elementary school “resource officer” arrested two 6-year-olds at school in Orlando, Florida. At least one of the kids had committed the high crime of kicking another student. The “resource officer,” a misleading term for what was actually a policeman capable of making arrests (a resource for whom?), was subsequently fired for not having obtained permission from a “watch commander.” The militaristic term, commander, in having anything to do with first-graders, makes clear just how far the Orlando police department had overreached. Indeed, I submit that the cloak of being a resource is just as dishonest, and overreaching, as is the appropriation of military terms. A police employee is neither a security guard nor a military commando.

Of course, arresting a first-grader is such an obvious overreach that the judgment involved in the overreaching itself is arguably incompatible with the legal right to use lethal force. At least one of the first-graders was arrested for battery, fingerprinted, and had mugshots taken. That a police employee (or department) would even suppose that with a commander’s permission is appropriate or sufficient to arrest a first-grader for kicking another kid is so far-fetched that a lack of perspective, not to mention common sense, was also in the mix. Even Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala chastised the Orlando police department when she said, “These very young children ought to be protected, nurtured, and disciplined in a manner that does not rely on the criminal justice system to do it.”[1] That a police employee (and department) would interlard that system indicates a basic lack of understanding regarding that system and the fact that it has boundaries. People who have problems with boundaries should not be wielding power, for such people love power too much to exercise it realistically. For a child to make being a child a crime suggests that that child should not be allowed to play with guns, much less to be lawfully entitled to use them. 

Such an obvious overreaching mentality can also exist “under” the police, such as in security guards. In Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, the security guards on the light-rail trains have regularly over-reached beyond their authority. This reflects the culture, as the same tendency can be observe in other domains there. 

For example, some of the employees of the security subcontractor have turned on passengers simply for taking pictures inside the train. Guards have aggressively threatened to kick such passengers off the trains, using the flimsy excuse that the guards had been photographed and the erroneous claim that picture-taking on the trains was illegal. Such ignorance that could not be wrong backed up by authority that simply did not exist is inherently toxic and utterly incompatible with (i.e., a danger to) wielding even the authority that has been authorized. Beyond even the ignorance is the sheer aggressive nature that looks for any opening in which to bully another person. In fact, the dismissiveness of other people’s natural boundaries may itself be sociopathic. The aggression unleashed by efforts to hold such people accountable points to a demented perspective in which the victim rather than the aggressor is actually the aggressive party. 
It is interesting, or telling, that security employees would be so preoccupied with passengers taking pictures and yet actually refuse to do anything, whether on a platform or on a train, about a passenger known to have walked across the tracks even in front of an oncoming train. 

This man rushed across the tracks so fast his baby's carriage back wheels caught on a rail.  

Once I witnessed a man run across a street (amid oncoming cars) and across the tracks before entering the train-car that I entered. The security employee told me that he too had seen this, but could do nothing. "The street is not our property," he explained. "Aren't the tracks your property?" I countered. He did not reply. Being so reluctant to even confront such a passenger (or people smoking on the platforms) is quite a contrast to the excessive presence of the employees on a train car. 

Three security employees are clustered together in one half of a rail car. Typically none of them would be checking tickets. Imagine being a passenger surrounded by security guards! 

Looking at me leaving the train and then at the three security employees, the man in the foreground asked me if he could enter the train! When I was on the train standing next to the door, the security employee shown on the right walked over and stood in the middle between the doors, blocking the entry-way to the rest of the car. He was too big to be standing in that space, but I suppose he felt that he could do whatever he wanted as he had a badge.

That the security company put as many as six guards at a time in a car (typically not during commuter times, as office workers could be expected to complain) suggests a proclivity toward and enabling blind-spot concerning excessiveness itself. At the very least, the employees don't care whether passengers feel uncomfortable as a result. Sometimes the excessiveness is so obvious on a rail platform that customers may stand at a distance until a train comes.

Four or five security employees were on this platform. 

Twice I witnessed around fourteen police and security employees enter a rail car to check tickets. In both instances, three or four passengers were taken to the platform to be surrounded by the police and security employees as the latter wrote municipal citations! Imagine if so much attention were directed to a motorist pulled over for speeding! In effect, the passengers were being treated as criminals likely to become violent. 
Tellingly, at least one supervisor of bus drivers at a bus-transfer hub in Tempe decided to have his new van's yellow lights flashing continuously, as if the default were to treat the routine as a constant state of emergency just because one might be possible. 

Even during daylight hours, on a Sunday when the hub was virtually empty, a supervisor still felt the need to have his flashers on!

The flashing yellow lights on top of the white van are barely visible, and yet presumably someone thought they were fitting. 

People who are not willing or able to perceive when they have gone too far should not be permitted to wield power over other people. 

The relationship between excessiveness and over-reaching is an interesting one. Perhaps the former connotes being oblivious while the latter stresses the underlying motive. In both of the cases of Orlando and Phoenix, the excessiveness in the over-reaching itself was of such an extent as to be utterly transparent to the naked eye. It is perhaps a easily overlooked truism that going beyond authorized authority is itself an over-reach.

Typically when an over-reach or excessiveness is treated as part of the legitimate status-quo, or societal default, the culprits eventually go so far that they come to be viewed as a problem. For example, the decision of Allied Security in Phoenix to have the ticket-checkers/security-guards wear police-color uniforms and even separate silver badges could eventually lead to the company being charged with intentionally impersonating police. 

One of six security employees (not the one who became aggressive concerning picture-taking of half of the car)  watching passengers (rather than checking tickets) on a routine basis rather than because of an incident suspected or in progress on one car of a light-rail train in Phoenix. The obvious police impersonation, with its (intended) implications of additional authority, is no accident. Even though the employee pictured here was not belligerent, she and another employee blocked the conduit between the two sides of the car (and thus were "front and center" for any general picture-shot).

I submit that the impersonation to look like police employees was geared to intimidating customers beyond that which a security guard as such could muster. On account of the low pay, minimal qualifications (a High School diploma), and the bad (hiring) management (as reported by former employees online), it should be no surprise that the attitude toward customers has been more like that of the local police to the citizens than customer service in a company. The allure of power taken can be too much, especially if that elixir is not ideally in a customer-service attitude.
In the Phoenix Public Library, the security employees also wore silver detachable badges, at least as of 2019.  

The security employees are so numerous that a patron could easily sense that the library's management had gone too far. That the security employees intermingle with the police stationed at the library renders the impersonation problem more of problem because patrons could more easily assume that the employees also have police powers. 

The policewoman is at the left-back, next to one of the security employees. 

That the police and security employees are constantly making the rounds passing by patrons who are reading or studying does not render the library a place conducive to studying. 

At the Tempe Public Library, armed security employees with badges stood at the entrance at least by 2019. A volunteer told me that a manager had insisted that the "Welcome" desk be relabeled "Security" just in case patrons miss the point even in seeing two armed guards in front. 

Those security guards, each having a gun and taser, also made rounds through areas where patrons were reading or studying, as the video below testifies. 

At one of the pot dispensaries in Phoenix, a security guard could be seen sitting at a close proximity to the customers on whom he was keeping a direct eye. I doubt it made any difference to him whether they felt uncomfortable with his excessiveness. To him, he may not even have been excessive. 

The security guard is seated on the right, positioned to face the three customers seated against the side wall. Was the guard worried that one of the customers would suddenly explode in reefer madness? Such over-blown assumptions, while ludicrous, have existed in Arizona even as marijuana was legal in some of the other States. 

In the television series, Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith, remarks that power goes to the head of a common person like strong drink. She is referring to the village physician whom the British military put in charge of the military hospital during World War I at the Downton residence. If that could be said from her perspective of a physician, the hiring of (in many cases) inner-city youth to wear badges on trains can be expected to lead to a host of problems.  

The dynamic can be explained by appropriating Nietzsche’s philosophy in which some people are weak internally and so they cannot resist their instinctual urge to dominate even and especially the strong. The weak resent the strong for their self-confidence and surfeit of strength. Whereas the strong do not feel a need to use more power than necessary because they have more than enough strength anyway, the weak will stoop to even cruelty to exact even a bit of pleasure from the exercise of power externally; exerting power internally, as in mastering an intractable urge, requires more strength than the weak have.

If a hiring budget is inadequate to attract a certain maturity- and knowledge-level, then fine-tuning the hiring criteria will not be adequate. Unfortunately, if, as Nietzsche says, the weak cannot but be weak and the strong cannot but be strong, then training too can be expected to have limited usefulness. Organizational, governmental, and even societal accountability may have to be called on to supply the needed check on the power-overreaches. Unfortunately, in such a law-and-order culture as has existed in Arizona at least through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, security guards as well as the local police could be expected to get away with a lot. Even the state's major universities, including ASU and UA, were not immune from over-reaches by security guards given police status (a police department is reports to a city, rather than an organization), and yet students passively took it while the "academic" administrators compromised academic ways to make way for other values such as intimidation (i.e., of students). 

It was not uncommon, at least by 2019, for campus "police" to park their cars on a routine basis on sidewalks used by students to get from class to class. The assumption that they would not be concerned passing such a car belongs in a fantasy movie rather than on at an institution of higher learning (at least in principle). 

It was not uncommon for campus police to "patrol" in one place on an ongoing basis out in front where students walk. The obvious need to stick out carries with it a certain amount of ego and lack of concern for how the young students may be affected emotionally. Few, I submit, would feel that such a presence during a school day is necessary to feel safe. 

In fact, in addition to the campus police, ASU hires student security guards. The result is a sense of constantly being watched on that campus, which obviously must have had cameras too. 
Once while talking to two students representing a cause at a table, I noticed that a student security guard was taking his job too seriously, or was told to do so, by how he was so obviously watching us. I was reminded of the secret police of the Communist states in the last century. 

Notice how needlessly confrontational the security employee's posture is in this picture. 

To the extent that a local culture enables the over-reaches by casting a blind or even permissive eye, as in Arizona, the imposition of checks on authority are especially important. That Florida's authorities, in contrast, came out against the child-cop who tried to criminalize being a child suggests that not every state is as dire in this respect as is Arizona. 

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1. A. Willingham, Artemis Moshtaghian, and Amir Vera, “A School Resource Officer Is Fired after Arresting Two 6-year-old Children,” CNN.com, September 23, 2019 (accessed same day).

Disenfranchising an Electorate: Using Legal Language on Referendums

Popular sovereignty, the ultimate sovereignty of a people as a whole, is typically exercised by an electorate at the ballot box. Such sovereignty is above that of governments (i.e., governmental sovereignty), which might come as a surprise given how little voters actually decide. Typically, the will of the people is limited to filling public offices by selecting among candidates or write-ins. In the last few decades of the twentieth century, California effectively expanded the power of popular sovereignty by adding a number of referendum questions to the ballots, but even those questions have not come close to covering the full spectrum of major policy issues, which are typically left to the office-holders: the agents of the People. Even though the popular sovereign (i.e., the direct will of the people) can make mistakes—such as requiring a 2/3 legislative majority to pass a tax increase in California—the expansion from merely filling public offices to actually making basic public policy decisions is from a democratic perspective a good thing. The key is to go broad enough that judgement rather than technical expertise or specialized knowledge is used. This effectively franchises at least the vast majority of an electorate as nearly everyone is capable of making a judgement among competing values, whereas a small percentage of people are highly educated in any given society—even in advanced industrial states. 

The problem, it seems to me, lies in how the policy questions on a ballot are written. In particular, they must be written in such a way that they are understandable to the typical voter. Writing a question, whether on policy, law, or a constitutional amendment, in legalize circumvents the expansion in popular sovereignty. Such an approach defies common sense itself, and yet it the Florida legislature did just that in 2012, placing the Florida electorate in a nearly-impossible position as the popular sovereign. Perhaps the legislators knew that the incomprehensible legalize would effectively safeguard their existing power.

Concerning the 2012 election in Florida, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville wrote, much “of what’s on the ballot is legalese and difficult-to-understand wording associated with the amendments.” The newspaper advises Florida’s citizens, “To save time, it will help to know what each amendment does, how you want to vote, and if a “Yes” or “No” achieves that desired vote. In short, be prepared.” Much too much is assumed in this advice concerning the wherewithal of the typical citizen to make sense of the technical legal words, and even to research each question before voting in order to understand what the  technical language means (assuming that the typical voter is going to wade through even the newspaper’s own deciphering).  In general, assuming too much of an electorate reflects negatively not on the electorate, but, rather, on the legislators who crafted and approved the ballot’s language.

For example, the matter of the third proposed amendment on the Florida ballot was put to the voter in the following words (from the ballot): “This proposed amendment to the State Constitution replaces the existing state revenue limitation based on Florida personal income growth with a new state revenue limitation based on inflation and population changes. Under the amendment, state revenues, as defined in the amendment, must be deposited into the budget stabilization fund until the fund reaches its maximum balance, and thereafter shall be used for the support and maintenance of public schools by reducing the minimum financial effort required from school districts for participation in a state-funded education finance program, or, if the minimum financial effort is no longer required, returned to the taxpayers.” Besides the basic, rather obvious point that the typical voter could not possibly be expected to understand this language (and yet someone approved it nevertheless!), the language assumes that the voter knows what goes into the existing revenue limitation (and can thus compare it with basing a limitation on inflation and population changes). Furthermore, the voter is assumed to be familiar with what a budget stabilization fund is, and able to assess its dynamic (e.g., maximum balance, etc.). The proposal is so specific, moreover, it may be misplaced as basic or constitutional law rather than as a mere statute. Indeed, the decision on the question is more along the lines of governmental than popular sovereignty (i.e., the elected representatives, who write laws and thus either understand the legalese or have a staff that does).

Supposing perhaps that the typical voter has a real estate brokerage license, the fourth proposed amendment on the ballot states in part: “In certain circumstances, the law requires the assessed value of homestead and specified nonhomestead property to increase when the just value of the property decreases. Therefore, this amendment provides that the Legislature may, by general law, provide that the assessment of homestead and specified nonhomestead property may not increase if the just value of that property is less than the just value of the property on the preceding January 1, subject to any adjustment in the assessed value due to changes, additions, reductions, or improvements to such property which are assessed as provided for by general law.” The legislators erred, in my view, in projecting their own language onto the general public, and, moreover, in conflating what is actually a statute with constitutional language, which is (or at least should be) much broader.

Another proposed “amendment” was for “an exemption from ad valorem taxes levied by counties, municipalities, school districts, and other local governments on tangible personal property if the assessed value of an owner’s tangible personal property is greater than $25,000 but less than $50,000.” Besides the Latin term and the legal jargon, the specification of the dollar figures is clearly statute-level rather than constitution. Furthermore, how many Floridians knew what “ad valorem taxes” are?

To be sure, some items of detail should be decided by the People’s agents because broad judgment is not required. For example, could not the legislators have been entrusted with making the decision on whether to “replace the president of the Florida Student Association with the chair of the council of state university student body presidents as the student member of the Board of Governors of the State University System.” Is this even constitutional language? The typical voter might legitimately have wondered, what is the council of state university student body presidents, and is it really much different than the Florida Student Association? Moreover, why am I being asked to decide this? Because popular sovereignty is superior to governmental sovereignty, that which a legislature puts to the electorate to decide must reach a certain threshold of importance. Deciding on contending student representatives so obviously does not meet this test that one might wonder whether the Florida legislature was fit even to legislate, much less address matters to the agents’ principal—the voters as a group.

The truly unfortunate thing about Florida’s bastardization of popular sovereignty is that sensible proposals to expand popular sovereignty could face unnecessary hurdles based on botched attempts to have an electorate decide on proposed constitutional amendments. In other words, by using legalize, the Florida legislators set the electorate up to fail. Going back to limiting popular sovereignty to the selection of candidates would suffer from the fact that so many reasons go into why voters elect a person to an office that it is impossible to say that the majority of the voters have expressed a general will on a given policy by electing a particular candidate.

Here’s what the Florida legislature missed: Whereas the typical voter does not have a basis in real-estate, accounting and law, he or she could be expected to reflect on and give an answer to questions such as: should abortion be illegal, should the U.S. give aid to Israel, should military spending be cut, should Florida provide subsidized health insurance to residents unable to afford it, and should property taxes be cut to reduce the deficit or raised to add funding to roads and education? A legislature could even add some non-legal terms to such questions to clarify them without losing the typical voter, and testing such questions by using focus groups could add confidence that the legislators have not unintentionally projected too much of their own world into the wording. Additional specificity could be handled by the agents (i.e., the legislators), as per the nature of principal-agent relationships.

In short, expecting too much from the electorate is not only utterly unfair to the voters, it also risks undercutting real progress on popular sovereignty, an electorate being fully capable of deciding general policy and even law, with the legislative agents then being tasked with writing the expressed general will into legal language. Yet legislators have so much power in deciding major policy that being mere implementers would surely be a let-down. Hence they would resist efforts to enhance the People’s exercise of popular sovereignty.

Sources:

Sample Florida Ballot 2012

Matt Dixon, “Florida Constitutional Amendments: Voter’s Guide,” The Florida Times-Union, October 13, 2012.

The 2012 U.S.Trade Deficit: An Analysis

Coming in at 2.7% of GDP, the U.S. trade deficit fell to $107.5 billion in the third quarter of 2012—down 9 percent from the second quarter’s $118.1 billion, which was 3% of the economy at the time. The current account includes merchandise, services, and investment flows. The surpluses in services and investment were out-done by the deficit in merchandise to produce the overall trade deficit. According to the New York Times, the “improvement in the current account in the third quarter reflected a decline in the deficit on goods and a small increase in the surplus on services, led by a gain in foreign earnings made by financial services, insurance and professional services provided by companies in the United States. The surplus on investment earnings narrowed to $50.8 billion, down from $52.1 billion in the second quarter.” Most of the decline in the deficit on goods reflected a decline in the foreign oil bill, according to Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics.

Analysis:

Lest we get bogged down in the purportedly significant differences between 2.7% and 3.0%, $107.5 billion and $118.1 billion, and $50.8 billion and $52.1 billion, respectively, we might take note of the rather stark difference between goods on the one hand (i.e., sustained deficits) and services and investment (i.e., sustained surpluses). Although it was no doubt true that the economic slow-down in China and the debt/austerity-induced recession in the E.U. were reducing demand for American exports, a basic imbalance between exports of American-made and imports of foreign goods is clear from the numbers year after year. Indeed, in 2006 the current account deficit had reached a record $800.6 billion—suggesting that something fundamental was “out of whack.”

                                               This graph isolates the deficits in goods imported/exported.   source: thismatters.com 

The question may be whether Americans were importing too many foreign goods or were too uncompetitive in making goods. Regarding the former, being able to buy a relatively inexpensive television made in China is not in itself a bad thing, particularly to the consumer. The question is perhaps whether the price was artificially low, due for instance to a relative lack of environmental regulations, lower labor costs, or government/bank subsidies. However, even if due to these factors, a low price is undoubtedly welcome to any consumer.

Regarding American competitiveness, was it hampered by labor and environmental standards or simply by unmotivated workers and bad management? Whereas American consumers benefit from cheap imported products, no such benefit can be found in the U.S. to any sector from a relative inferiority in competitiveness.

There is, however, the argument that an “advanced” economy oriented to professional, business and financial services rather than manufacturing can enjoy a higher standard of living if the services are more premium than the goods would be. The pristine notion of the “knowledge economy” captures this point very well. That not all Americans are willing or even able to participate at this level suggests that the term could never completely cover an entire economy. Hence, it is necessary even in an “advanced,” or “high tech” and “professional,” economy to tackle the problem of competitiveness in manufacturing.  Does it come from high regulatory costs (which can be viewed as part of a demand by Americans for a certain “standard of living” writ large), a lack of product development, or an inefficient labor or management force?  Whereas wanting a decent wage-floor or environment as a condition of manufacturing has merit—the cost being that society may have to support people who would otherwise be working in manufacturing—a dearth of ingenuity, bad employee attitudes, and inept management have no such positive aspect.

I was born and raised in a medium-sized industrial city in the “rust belt.” Furniture was the first industry, following which machine tools were the dominant manufacture until competition from Europe took out most of the factories. Speaking a few years ago with a European who had been sent over to oversee a factory that had been taken over by a European company, I was not surprised when he admitted, “the workers here just are not good. They are not motivated and they don’t pick up on the training very good.” Years before that, I had watched a program on the American public broadcasting network about a man’s effort to prepare inner-city black people for job interviews. Midway through his talk, the man admitted to the folks attending, “from your attitude even here, I have to admit I can’t see how anyone would hire you, so I don’t see any reason to continue here.” The man ended the workshop at that point. Doubtless his decision prompted little if any self-criticism from the participants. A bad attitude is perhaps almost impossible to correct from the outside—even with the inducement of money!—given the nature of a bad attitude. Regarding people under thirty, perhaps a year or two at a military “boot-camp” might break down the attitude’s intransience and build up self-confidence and self-respect, not to mention basic civility. Absent such a strategy, perhaps the segment of the American population unwilling (or able) to become part of the “knowledge economy” is inevitably lost—not being able to compete even on a factory floor. The cost to the rest of society goes well beyond money.

While visiting Miami, I witnessed repeated incidents on the buses from the mainland to Miami Beach of black men shouting and even hitting each other, as well as bumping into (and even falling on!) tourists. The black drivers ignored the shouts (including a drunk black man loudly and repeatedly calling a pregnant white woman a “fucking bitch”) and even fist-fights. Even with tourists begging the drivers that the aggressive passenger be dismissed from the bus, the drivers just drove on. In two cases, the drivers asked the men being hit if they wanted to press charges. They replied that they did not, so rather than get the aggressor off the buses or call the police, the drivers simply started driving again. This happened twice in the last 24 hours of my visit!  Near the beginning of my visit, I myself was pushed against the open bus door of a bus at a rail station while I was attempting to board a bus because I had not allowed all of the black passengers to enter first. The black driver refused to call the police or even tell the aggressive black man who had squeezed me to leave the bus. The driver simply replied to me—as I was pinned to the open front-door—“no, I won’t call the police. You shouldn’t have gotten on then. That’s how it is here.” I should have called the police! I was so stunned at the violence and systemic cover-up that I simply wanted to get to my destination. Just after I took my seat, a nice older black woman asked me where I was from. I told her that I had grown up in Illinois. “It must be worse in Chicago,” she remarked. “No,” I countered, “it is worse here. The blacks there are better.” In spite of being the only white person on the bus, I went on. “Even with the blacks killing each other in south Chicago, the people are better there.” She asked if north Chicago was white and the south part black. “No, the north part of the city itself is integrated, while I think the south is black. I was referring to the north—the blacks there are much better than the ones here. Here—I can’t leave soon enough.” Silence . . . complete silence. It then occurred to me that the entire bus—which still had not left the tri-county rail station—had been listening to this white guy talk about blacks very directly.

As it happened, a month or so later I was in Chicago taking a bus when a black man tried to enter the bus by pushing three old white women in line in front of him. The driver, who was also black, saw the attempt and quickly said, “Hey, what do you think you are doing? Get back out of the bus and let those women on first. Who do you think you are?” Then the driver turned to us in the bus and remarked, “It’s all about him, isn’t it?” The offender must have been startled, for he merely replied, “But it is cold out.” The driver pointed out that it was cold for the women too. The three women ended up sitting near me, and I told them (and the front half of the bus) about what I had witnessed in Miami on the buses there—and that it really was better in Chicago and even warmer despite the cold—even in terms of people moving past each other in the isle. “In Miami, the driver would not have intervened and you all would have been pushed out of the way of the guy who was behind you in line. Even complaining to the driver would have had no effect, and the man would have gotten away with it—whereas here that attitude is an exception. It was therefore countered, or pushed back, and therefore not allowed to become the default.” I don’t know whether the driver heard my compliment.

While it is easy to point to the bad attitude of many of the black passengers in Miami, I contend that the incompetence and attitude of the bus drivers there were just as problematic, and my anecdote from a bus in Chicago demonstrates that the attitude need not be enabled rather than challenged. The fact that the drivers in Miami all reacted the virtually the same way suggests that the decadence is systemic there. Put another way, the rudeness and aggression had become the norm and thus could not be checked. Perhaps this is why the drivers simply ignored even the violence—though this is hardly a viable excuse.

In terms of passive aggression, I witnessed drivers of buses going between downtown and Miami Beach regularly and knowingly cram too many passengers (even tourists!) on the buses and then demand that the extra passengers (who had already paid) shout back into the bus for others to step back so the extras could “get behind the yellow line.” To allow passengers known to be beyond capacity on board and then put them in an impossible situation while refusing to take control of the bus by making an announcement for people standing to move back evinces not only incompetence, but also an almost-sadistic mindset. On several occasions, I saw order itself fall apart on buses there as frustrated passengers—even tourists!—openly challenged the unjust and incompetent drivers on this very point.

Leaving Miami, my overall conclusion was that that county should not be part of the United States of America because of the rudeness, aggression and even the break-down in order—all tacitly sanctioned by county managers and employees. The rudeness, by the way, was nearly everywhere, rather than just on buses. I could not imagine any of the aggressive passengers or enabling drivers lasting more than a few days working in a factory, and the bus company managers (who knew of the incidents, according to local passengers) were doubtless virtually unemployable in the private sector too.

In short, the serial merchandise trade-deficits may point to an America that even many Americans do not know exists. That is, the structural imbalance may reflect a decline in American society—both in terms of labor and management—that manifests in a significant number of Americans compromising manufacturing or even being virtually unemployable. Put another way, I suspect that the condition in the American factory was at least as of 2012 part of a much more serious problem wherein even the social contract itself was under threat, or at the very least the American empire was in decline.

Source:

The Associated Press, “US Shirks Trade Deficit As Oil Falls,” The New York Times, December 19, 2012.