The Politics Guys

The only reason we know that a North Charleston, SC police officer murdered a fleeing suspect is that this unconscionable act was captured on video. The bad news is that so many other abuses aren’t filmed. While body cameras for police aren’t by any means a panacea, they have been demonstrated to significantly reduce use of force. Why, after all the incidents in recent years, aren’t they mandatory for all police?

One of the most commonly cited issues is cost. Police budgets are tight, and the expense of not only purchasing a camera for every cop, but keeping the camera data and doing all the back-end servicing and maintenance is too much. It’s not a bad point: a typical camera runs about $400, which is actually less than the costs associated with storage and maintenance, which add around $600 per year. In other words, an extra $1000 per year, per officer. (Actually, that’s slightly inflated, as all of the cameras wouldn’t have to be replaced every year. But it’s a nice round number, so let’s stick with it.)

But that’s peanuts for the federal government. There are around 920,000 sworn officers in the United States authorized to use force, federal, state, and local. But again, just to make the numbers nice and clean, lets round up to 1 million. Outfitting them with cameras and providing the necessary storage and maintenance would cost $1 billion per year. (Though this number is surely high, as prices for mass purchases would almost certainly be lower.)

To put this in perspective, $1 billion is 0.02 percent of the 2015 federal budget. It’s less than half the cost of a single nuclear attack sub. Here’s another way to look at it: earlier this year, President Obama announced that we’d be keeping 9,800 troops in Afghanistan for another year. The Congressional Research Service has estimated that this will cost about $3.9 million per troop, per year, for a total of $38 billion. In other words, 257 fewer troops in Afghanistan means an extra $1 billion that could fund a ‘body cams for every cop’ program.

Do we care more about the security of Afghanistan than we do about American citizens? Sometimes I wonder.

It doesn’t seem possible to improve on the below photo, from the White House, and the accompanying comment, from the American Spectator, so we’re simply reposting the photo and telling you to read what the Spectator has to say about it.

Ezra Klein’s ‘explanatory journalism’ site Vox.com seems to have concluded that Trevor Noah is guilty of not meeting the high moral standards required of a Daily Show host. (A requirement I wasn’t even aware of until now.) They base this conclusion on half a dozen tweets, out of thousands that the comedian has made over the years.

Vox claims to pride itself on careful, dispassionate examination of data (really) before making conclusions. But I guess that careful, dispassionate examination of thousands of Trevor Noah tweets was just too hard, and not nearly as fun as following the pack in all of its moral outrage at Noah’s failings.

In an absolutely stunning revelation, it’s been discovered that Trevor Noah, who will be taking over The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves, has made jokes. Jokes that have offended some people. As opposed to all those amazingly funny jokes that offend absolutely nobody. You know, jokes that tend to start with, “Knock, knock…” (Politico, 3/31/2015)

Hillary Clinton deleted all the emails on the private email server she used while Secretary of State, according to the chair of the House committee investigating Benghazi. But she promised that her attorneys looked over everything and made sure all work-related emails were released. I *totally* believe her, because when it comes to sharing with the public, Hillary has such a great track-record. (Politico, 3/27/15)

You may be a damn good DEA agent, but around here, we do things by the book!—- attend a party with drug cartel hookers, and you’re looking at a two to ten day suspension!

“Seven of the 10 DEA agents alleged to have participated in the gatherings — most of which took place at “quarters” leased by the U.S. government — admitted to having attended the parties, the report found. They received suspensions of between two to 10 days.” (Washington Post, via MSN News, 03/26/15)

In his ‘farewell speech‘ disgraced Representative and former Men’s Health cover model Aaron Schock said that his situation was a lot like Abe Lincoln’s. Except for the cheating on his mileage reports. And spending tens of thousands of dollars to decorate his office, Downton Abbey style. And being, in general, a big giant corrupt ass. But that aside yeah – they’re practically the same guy. (Politico, 3/26/15)