Observations from A Tiny Revolution: Fired Up? Ready to Go (Electrocute People)!

May 22, 2012

Fired Up? Ready to Go (Electrocute People)!

The Washington Post just published a big article about how, despite Obama's promises, a deluge of lobbyists continues to inundate the White House. Most of them are for boring companies like Goldman Sachs, so it's nice to find something even a little out of the ordinary:

[L]esser-known names are [] among the frequent lobbyist visitors, including Tim Hannegan, an informal adviser to Obama’s 2008 campaign with clients such as Comcast and Taser International. He has been to the White House and executive buildings more than 30 times for social events or meetings.

Hannegan did not respond to requests for comment.

This is from an article this month in Medical News Today:

Tasers, also known as stun guns, can cause sudden cardiac arrest and death, researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine reported in the journal Circulation.

Here's a bl*g keeping track of this kind of thing:

According to Amnesty International, between 2001 and 2008, 351 people in the United States died after being shocked by police Tasers. Our blog has documented another 174 taser-related deaths in the United States in 2009-2012. That means there have been 525 documented taser-related deaths in America.

And of course Digby writes about individual taser atrocities more thoroughly than anyone.

Anyway, I see Tim H. lives in a million-dollar home in a lovely leafy suburb of Washington, D.C., coincidentally in the same neighborhood as my elementary and junior high schools. In fact, he and his wife recently hosted a fundraiser for the "education foundation" connected to my junior high, which pays for "state-of-the-art computers, software and AV equipment" there. All in all it's a great place to live, as long as you don't have enough of an imagination to hear all the screams of pain that pay your mortgage.

—Jon Schwarz