Archive for the ‘Connecticut’ Category

New Haven uses SWAT team to harass strip club

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Well, strip clubs are, of course, fair game for governmental harassment.  After all, what righteous citizen is going to complain about the rights of mere strip club patrons and owners?

According to the New Haven Register:

For a moment, employees at a St. John Street cabaret said, they thought they were being robbed when masked gunmen with assault rifles stormed in Monday night.

That’s just standard law enforcement protocol.  For your common drug enforcement thug, nothing quite satisfies like violently busting into a place dressed in black, disguised with masks, and scaring the crap out of people by recklessly waving firearms in their faces.

New Haven police Lt. Jeff Hoffman, who heads the narcotics squad, stressed the warrant wasn’t specifically for Crazy Horse Cabaret, the former Stage Door Johnny’s, at 85 St. John St., but rather for the 15,000-square-foot building, an old clock factory that takes up an entire block on Hamilton Street.

He confirmed the search warrant was part of an ongoing drug investigation. He declined to say what police found, but the owner of the club Tuesday said he understood police found a marijuana grow operation in another part of the sprawling complex.

Ooooouh!  Scary.  Someone was growing pot!  If anything demands an armed  paramilitary invasion it’s got to be people who are interested in getting high and happy on weed.

“Battering rams, bulletproof shields, assault rifles. They had 30 to 35 people on the floor in cuffs and this whole building was locked down in a matter of three or four minutes,” the man said, not wanting to provide his name.

Hey, humiliating and threatening 35 people is a small price to pay when it comes to rescuing the world from the terror of marijuana.

He didn’t stick around after police let him go.

“They were starting to tear apart the place when I was leaving.”

Of course, they were.  Wrecking a place is all part of the fun of being a drug cop.

Let’s hope California passes prop 19 next week.  The drug war is nothing but a jobs program for self important, intellectually challenged, neanderthal drug cops.  It’s time to start the ball rolling on dismantling it and forcing those assholes to get real jobs.

Posted in Big Brother is Watching You, Connecticut | 2 Comments »

NPR reports on the Craigslist crusade

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

…and repeats the same rescue industry propaganda:

[Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights] estimates that as many as 300,000 minors each year are being trafficked into the sex trade in the U.S.

300,000?  That seems a little steep since the so-called scientific study sponsored by the Women’s Funding Network only “counted” a total of 3800 for Georgia, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Ok, I take it back.  300, 000 isn’t just a little steep.  It’s preposterous.  And yet, NPR repeated the number without even asking for a source.  Nice work, NPR.  You’re clearly right up there with CNN in terms of objectivity in your reporting.  Even searching the Rebecca Project website I was unable to find a single reference substantiating that claim.

Then there’s the “if-it-only-saves-one-child-it-will-all-be-worth-it” mentality:

Sgt. Greg Albin, a member of the vice squad in San Jose, Calif., and the veteran of many sex-crime investigations…says if shutting the Craigslist ads down saves one child from prostitution, that’s great. But, he adds: “I don’t think [that's] going to be the answer, because people will work around it.”

Of course, saving one child is NOT worth any cost.  If it were, all children would be locked in plastic bubbles and anyone who looked at them sideways would be summarily executed.  Not exactly the kind of world we (or our children) would want to live in.

But Albin says the big companies aren’t that helpful: “None of them go over and above to cooperate with police investigations.”

The companies have other factors to weigh, he explains.

“All of them consider confidentiality quite a bit. All of them rely on their First Amendment rights.”

Yeah, that pesky ol’ Bill of Rights is a major annoyance to law enforcement.

They did get a comment about the closing of Craigslist adult services section from from online safety advocate Parry Aftab:

“I don’t think it’s going to make women and minors any safer,” she argues. “Instead you’re going to be seeing a lot more underground websites that are run by people who don’t care as much as Craig [Newmark] does.”

I don’t know much about Parry Aftab,  so won’t comment further about her until I do.

Posted in Connecticut, Prostitution, Trafficking | Comments Off

Condemnation of Craig’s List shifts to Personals

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is now lamenting over the possibility that the closure of Craig’s List adult services section will lead to the ads being reloacted to other sections of the onlineclassified ad site. From the Westport News:

Blumenthal, who is running for the U.S. Senate, has been an outspoken leader of the AGs and yesterday sent a letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster asking for confirmation that the adult services portion of the site has been permanently shut down. Now, the word “censored” appears where the adult services listings have been. Blumenthal also asked the business to actively prevent sex-for-hire ads from being posted on other parts of the website.

“There is the distinct danger and apparent trend that prostitution ads may migrate to other heavily trafficked portions of your site. Already, there are indications that the personals section may become rife with sexually graphic content and illegal activity, including prostitution,” Blumenthal wrote in the letter.

If it weren’t such a blatantly self-serving ploy to milk the sensational story for headlines, it would be laughable.  My advice to Craig’s List from the beginning has been to resist caving into these fear-mongers.  Acceding to even one demand only whets their appetite for more.

Four Washington D.C.-based rescue industry groups released a statement asking Craigslist to close their adult services section on their websites outside of the U.S. as well.  From the Wesport News on Tuesday:

“While this is a good first step in the U.S., there are still more than 250 other Craigslist ‘erotic’ pages around the world where children and young women are still being sold for sex through Craigslist,” the statement said.

The nonprofit groups, the Polaris Project, the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, FAIR Fund and Courtney’s House, also said the website has become a major player in the child and women trafficking market.

Craig’s List should have blown off the crusaders and waited for the inevitable legal action on the part of the states.  The 1996 Communications Decency Act provides some immunity to Craig’s List, but states can be very creative when it comes to intimidation and harassment.  The states need to be clearly identified as the aggressor in this issue.  Trying to accommodate government and non-government crusaders simply lends legitimacy and moral standing to what is really just a witch hunt.

Stay tuned, because this issue will remain in the news as long as the media, rescue industry, and politicians can milk it for headlines.

Posted in Censorship, Connecticut, Prostitution | Comments Off

Reason blasts the crusade against Craig’s List

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

In perhaps the best treatment of the controversy I’ve seen to date, Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum writes about the closing of Craig’s List adult services section in response to a  group of witch hunting politicians specifically singling out Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Conflating prostitution with slavery and child rape, Blumenthal accused Craigslist of profiting from horrendous crimes. “We recognize that craigslist may lose the considerable revenue generated by the Adult Services ads” if it closes the section, Blumenthal and 16 other state attorneys general wrote in an August 24 letter to the company. “No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by craigslist.”

The article goes on to make this astute observation on the blatant hypocrisy of these crusaders to whom the end (abolition of prostitution) justifies any means:

But to fully appreciate the audacity of his charge that money blinded Craigslist to the suffering of sex slaves, note that the company started charging for adult service ads in 2008 at the behest of law enforcement officials.

If there is anything the campaign against Craig’s List was not about it’s concern for women and children.  Those who protested Craig’s List are anti-prostitution crusaders, self-serving politicians, and sensationalistic mainstream press. Collectively, they couldn’t muster enough compassion for women and children to fill a thimble.

Keeping prostitution illegal delivers prostitutes right into the eager hands of the sleazy criminal underworld who will abuse and exploit them.  Those who oppose legalization are, therefore, accomplices to the abuse (regardless of all the lofty righteous rhetoric to the contrary).

Posted in Censorship, Connecticut, Prostitution, Trafficking | Comments Off

You people!

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Before I started this site, I wanted to start a blog called youpeople.org because, folks, there are times when you just want to grab the public by the shoulders and yell, “What’s wrong with You People?”

While everyone has heard the phrase, ‘sex sells’, it would be a challenge to find anyone more dedicated to that philosophy for their own personal gain than politicians.  And way out ahead of the pack you will find prosecutors.

Nothing exemplifies that approach to self fulfillment quite like the parade of state attorneys general who have hitched their wagon to the moral crusade against craigslist.  As described on Huffington Post, seventeen state attorneys general have signed a letter (PDF) demanding that craigslist remove its adult services section.

“Only Craigslist has the power to stop these ads before they are even published,” Kansas attorney general Steve Six said in a statement.

Yes, that is absolutely correct.  That’s because the First Amendment prevents the government from doing it itself.  Unfortunately, being good students of the persuasion techniques practiced by organized crime, state governments are masters at intimidation when it looks like it could gain them some votes.

The campaign against craigslist didn’t start as a grass roots movement.  It started as a crusade by a noisy minority who are adept at stirring up public emotion with visions of children being exploited.

“No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by Craigslist,” the letter said.

Women who advertise on criagslist are invariably described as idiots with no will of their own to resist exploitation by evil pimps and slave masters.  They have to be victims, otherwise who would get worked up about it?  And, of course, a lot of them have to be children for the same reason.

While wearing sheets is out of fashion, there should be no mistake that these state attorneys general are using persecution of a favorite target as a means to inflame the public’s mob mentality.  They might as well be carrying torches and pitchforks.  And the public, knowing that it would be impolite to demand actual numerical evidence that rises above the level of guesses and delusional claims, mindlessly goes along with the hysteria.  Who would oppose those whose only wish is to “help women and children”?  But, the last time I heard, a willingness to be your brother’s keeper wasn’t sufficient reason to burn the Constitution.

My message to the people of these states is this:

Well, folks, your wish is coming true.  In your fervor to impose your narrow personal values on everyone else, You People have created a monster who will enthusiastically piss on free speech in order to carry out your will.  But, be warned.  The monster is pretty kinky.  He likes a threesome, so don’t be surprised to find him in your bed as a supervising partner deciding what does or doesn’t constitute acceptable behavior between you and your lover.

P.S.  I intentionally avoided mention of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley simply because if I started writing about her, this post would have turned into a book.  She is probably one of the most self-serving and parasitic of politicians, having mastered the craft of exploiting children and sex hysteria for her own personal benefit.  In a contest to be the antichrist, Coakley would be a leading contender.

Posted in Arkansas, Censorship, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Prostitution, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Trafficking, Virginia | 1 Comment »

Adult businesses face regulation hell

Monday, August 9th, 2010

After posting about the a ridiculous West Virginia ordinance controlling adult stores, I did a search for other similar cases.  If it were any other kind of business, the public wouldn’t stand for the kind of harassment that cities level at adult businesses.  But, sex related businesses are fair game and people either don’t care or don’t want to stand up to crusaders who claim to be “protecting children”.

Nothing like being kicked when you’re down. The VIP Bookstore in Calexico City, California collapsed during a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in April and the city is preventing it from reopening while it cooks up new regulations to restrict the operations of adult businesses.

Don’t be usin’ our roads to get to yer sex stores! Rensselaer, NY is complaining about a law passed in nearby E.Greenbush restricting the location of adult businesses because people would, you know, have to drive on their roads to get to the area.  Says Rensselaer Mayor Mark Pratt:

“If people have to drive through the city to get to these [sex] shops, it’s obviously not something we would want to see,”

Complaints during the comment period complained that:

Under this law, locker rooms at health clubs could be eliminated because there is nudity there,” said a man identified only as Phil. “Women would not be able to wear bikinis at pools, because they would be semi-nude.”
The man said the law would also infringe on the arts in the event nude models were used, as well as on the theatre.

The law is “designed to balance First Amendment rights with the rights of other citizens”.  Huh?  Is that like trying to balance people’s First Amendment rights against those who don’t think there should be First Amendment rights.

You can’t make this shit up. In Gastonia, NC adult merchants are prohibited from having “two sexually oriented uses under one roof”.

A pair of adult businesses in Gastonia have been cited by the city for both showing sexually explicit movies and selling explicit videos and DVDs — a combination that violates state and local laws.

God wouldn’t approve! A church group is fighting an already approved adult business in Southington, Connecticut.   While a challenge to the approval of the VIP (Very Intimate Pleasures) store was mysteriously dropped at the last minute, the towns folk will have another opportunity to get out their pitch forks and torches in October:

The next chance for public comment on the VIP approval will be Oct. 6, when the Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on a moratorium on adult-oriented businesses.

The above are only a sampling of stories about the legal challenges aimed at adult oriented businesses happening over the last week.  One can only wonder why anyone would want to get into the business knowing the persecution they can expect from intolerant residents who are all for freedom (except when they aren’t).

Posted in California, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, Sex Toys and Paraphernalia | Comments Off

Craigslist should tell Connecticut to fuck off

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Nary a day goes by without some new episode of the government accusing craigslist of not cracking down sufficiently hard on what people are saying in the “land of the free”.

pcmag.com says:

Connecticut’s attorney general [Richard Blumenthal] on Monday issued a subpoena to Craigslist, asking the site to turn over evidence that it is fulfilling its promise to get rid of ads for prostitution and other illegal activity, as well as data on what it earns from adult ads.

Blumenthal pointed to a recent study that said Craigslist will earn an estimated $36 million in 2010 from the sale of adult-oriented ads.

First of all, conflating statistics about adult ads with prostitution as if they were the same thing is typical of what you’d expect from crusading prosecutors who build their reputations on the bodies of the citizens whose lives they ruin.

Craigslist is a communications medium that has no business policing, at the government’s behest, what people want to say  when the government itself has no power over the very ads they’re complaining about.  The First Amendment prohibits government from interfering with free speech.  Using intimidation to get a private business to do what the government can’t is a clear violation of that principle.

It’s unfortunate that Craigslist can’t just blow off Blumenthal, but they could never win against  America’s war-on-sex mentality.  Elected officials, even in the midst of a huge budget-straining recession, have the audacity and power to piss money down the toilet by harassing private businesses in their campaign to make a name for themselves.  And the sex paranoid public eats it up.

Posted in Big Brother is Watching You, Censorship, Connecticut, Consensual Sex, Prostitution | Comments Off

Arizona jumps on the stupid law bandwagon

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Two of the more recent trends in state law has been the crusade to eliminate or drastically extend the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims to file suit against alleged perpetrators and the push to make johns responsible for guessing how old prostitutes are.

Arizona is moving forward with a bill that does both.  I’ve already written about similar legislation to change the statute of limitations in Connecticut.   Connecticut, which permitted lawsuits by child abuse victims until they were 48, moved to eliminate the statute of limitations altogether, while Arizona is pushing it out from age 20 to age 53.  While it’s undisputed fact that a person’s memory distorts recollections with time, there are still adherents to the largely discredited “recovered memory” syndrome.  In any case, such a bill is not really so much about justice as it is about capitalizing on sex hysteria to garner votes.

The other part of the bill increases penalties for those who buy sex from a prostitute who is underage, even if they had no idea how old the prostitute was.  This essentially forces someone to guess at the prostitute’s age and then face stiff penalties if they guess wrong.   It substitutes the concept that someone can be punished for knowingly committing a crime with the idea that it’s acceptable to punish them for doing something they will only know is a crime after the fact.  Of course, as is common when the behavior involves sex, the underage girl is completely immunized from any share of the responsibility even if she misrepresented herself as being older than she is.  This is right in line with child porn laws that require a viewer to know whether someone in a pornographic image is a minor.  The idea is, of course, preposterous since it’s impossible to guess someone’s age simply by looking at them. While it’s true that prostitution is illegal regardless of the age of the woman, there is no justice in penalizing someone more harshly when there is no way for them to know that the stiffer penalty applies.

There is really no limit to what lawmakers can get away with if they invoke the mantra that it’s to “protect children”, especially when it involves sex.  And, while penalties for child sex abuse are already severe, there is always room to pass a new law when votes are at stake.

Posted in Arizona, Child Molestation, Connecticut, Prostitution, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Legalizing child prostitution.

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Connecticut State Senator Robert Kane, R-Watertown is jumping on the bandwagon to save children from being prosecuted under prostitution laws.

Although state prosecutors say they almost never prosecute underage prostitutes, child advocates say the laws need to be changed to reflect this reality, or else there is always the possibility that a juvenile offender could be prosecuted rather than helped.

Actually, it’s more like just another opportunity to get some free press coverage under the grand humanitarian title of “protecting the children”.  No one exploits children quite as aggressively as politicians and children’s advocacy groups.

So how prevalent is underage prostitution in Connecticut?

Those testifying for and against Robert Kane’s bill seemed to think it’s not a huge problem. But because of the way such cases are handled by local officials, the official numbers might not totally reflect reality.

Uh-oh.  Saying child prostitution is not a big problem is not going to earn them any brownie points with the anti trafficking crusaders.

“It is not enough to just let the minors go free, to return them to a situation that probably gave rise to their crimes and troubles in the first place,” said Kane. “We need to give them a chance to rebuild their lives.”

So, what Kane is really after is that opportunity to help them whether they want it or not.   You know, like forced re-education, right?

Deborah Del Prete Sullivan, legal counsel in the Chief Public Defender’s Office, told lawmakers that regardless of a possible change in the wording of the state’s prostitution law, “this legislation will not change the fact that the juvenile will be arrested and possibly detained.”

Good point.  All the anti-prostitution crusaders are really interested in changing is who gets to exploit the kids.  If they really want to help prostitutes, old or young, they would legalize it for everyone making it a safer business.  Then they might consider loosening up child labor laws so that children on the street aren’t forced by law into illegal jobs like prostitution and selling drugs.

Politicians love to help people even if they have to kill them to do it.  A state senator in Georgia is already capitalizing on a similar publicity stunt to “protect exploit the children”.

Posted in Connecticut, Prostitution | Comments Off

Connecticut may scrap statute of limitations for civil suits alleging sexual misconduct

Monday, March 1st, 2010

According to a press release:

Responding to the requests of constituents who are seeking justice and their day in court for decades-old acts of sexual abuse, state Sen. Mary Ann Handley (D-Manchester) and state Rep. Beth Bye (D-West Hartford) today unveiled a bill designed to eliminate the statute of limitations in civil cases stemming from child sexual abuse, exploitation or assault.

Legislators absolutely love the opportunity to leverage off of the paranoia over child sex abuse because nothing sells quite so quickly with less examination than a proposed law that “protects children” from the horrors of child abuse, real or imagined.  Are adults in Connecticut being unfairly denied their day in court due to an unrealistically short statute of limitations?  Not exactly.

The purpose of the bill is to eliminate the civil lawsuit ‘clock’ that begins ticking at age 18 in cases involving the sexual assault, abuse or exploitation of a minor. Individuals have 30 years—until age 48—to file a civil lawsuit, or they lose their chance to achieve justice in a court of law.

So as the law currently stands, someone who was sexually abused as a child has until they are 48 years old to file suit.   My guess is that law makers there have already capitalized off the sex hysteria to get it stretched out that long.  30 years is not just a bit excessive.  It’s fucking preposterous.

The press release goes on to mention two specific cases that supposedly demonstrate the need for elimination of the time limit.  Of course, if a statute of limitations could be eliminated on the basis a of one or two cases of someone who missed the boat, there would be no such limits for any crime.

Blogger and civil rights lawyer Norm Pattis critiques the bill further, with an eye toward the potential  mischief from those who still support the largely discredited recovered (aka repressed) memory syndrome, where someone recalls trauma (usually sex abuse) that supposedly happened decades earlier.   Accusations based on recovered memory are as close as it gets to complete fabrication of a crime, but innocence rarely saves the accused from having their life utterly destroyed.

Posted in Child Molestation, Connecticut, Rights of the Accused | Comments Off