Concerned that official records undercount the number of people shot and killed by police in the United States every year, the Washington Post(12/26/15) attempted to compile a list of every fatal police shooting in 2015. The paper found nearly a thousand such cases—more than twice as many as the FBI reports in a typical year.
The Post‘s project—which corroborates a similar tally conducted by the British Guardian (6/9/15)—is a journalistic accomplishment, as well as an achievement of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has worked to call attention to police violence in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
But it’s hard for me to escape the feeling that the Post story—by Kimberly Kindy and Marc Fisher—was framed by the paper to minimize the project’s remarkable findings. Take the first paragraph that summarizes details of the results:
In a year-long study, the Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many US communities—most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men—represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, the Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: They were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.
“The kind of incidents that have ignited protests…represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings”: That sure sounds like an attempt to play down the number, doesn’t it? Particularly since the write-up never presents the raw number for fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in 2015—which is 37—or the more comprehensive number of all unarmed civilians shot and killed: 90. Those numbers can be found on a graphic that accompanied the story in the paper’s print edition, and in an interactive feature online–but are nowhere to be found in the Post‘s own article on its project. (“Just 9 percent of shootings involved an unarmed victim,” a sidebar accompanying the graphic began—that word “just” indicating that we should read that as “not so many.”) [...]
The Post‘s delicate approach to police killings can be appreciated by comparison with the Guardian‘s similar project. For one thing, the Guardiancontrasts the numbers with statistics on police killings in Europe, so you can see that the rate at which US cops kill people is far out of line with the frequency of such deaths in comparable countries. For example, England and Wales had 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years, while the US had 59 in just 24 days. (The higher level of crime in the US explains some but not much of this difference; the US murder rate is about four times the UK’s, but has a rate of police killings about 70 times as high.) [...]
The fact that today, just 27 percent of Americans who are poor enough to qualify for cash benefits under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families actually receive those benefits is one of the great successes of welfare reform, if you measure success by the "get everyone off of welfare at whatever cost to their health and well-being" standards the reformers intended. And by that measure, Georgia is amazing: Less than 7 percent of Georgia families living in poverty receive TANF, Slate's Neil deMause reports.
In 2004, the state hired a new Department of Human Services commissioner whose overriding goal was to get people off of welfare. Not to make them not need it, just to keep them from receiving it. (Again, in the spirit of welfare reform.) Under her leadership, 60 percent of those who had been receiving benefits—a number that had already plunged in the immediate wake of welfare reform—dropped out of the program, and the percentage of applications approved dropped from 40 percent to 20 percent. Today, Georgia receives $330 million a year from the federal government for TANF, but it doesn't go to TANF.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we were back with a live show, catching up on items of varying importance. Greg Dworkin updated the 2016 news. Paul Ryan tried to govern, so the loons are mad. GunFAIL continued apace. Speaking of which, air ambulances cost big bucks! Often!
Ted Cruz is selling himself on “authenticity” and saying things even if it is not popular. Unfortunately, he forgets there are recording devices. Who can forget when he had less than kind words for Donald Trump even though in public he praised Trump and completely avoided attacking him. He denied doing so. But unfortunately for him, all of it was on tape. He justifiably questioned Trump's judgement:
"Who am I comfortable having their finger on the button? Now that’s a question of strength, but it’s also a question of judgment. And I think that is a question that is a challenging question for both of them," Ted Cruz said referring to Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
Well, he was caught going against a pillar of his narrative, his objection to same-sex marriage. Politico reported the following:
During the question period, one of the donors told Cruz that gay marriage was one of the few issues on which the two disagreed. Then the donor asked: “So would you say it's like a top-three priority for you — fighting gay marriage?”
“No,” Cruz replied. “I would say defending the Constitution is a top priority. And that cuts across the whole spectrum — whether it's defending [the] First Amendment, defending religious liberty.”
Soothing the attendee without contradicting what he has said elsewhere, Cruz added: “People of New York may well resolve the marriage question differently than the people of Florida or Texas or Ohio. ... That's why we have 50 states — to allow a diversity of views. And so that is a core commitment.”
It turns out that as opposed to being the straight talker that promotes his values irrespective of its popularity, like any other politician, he can be nuanced. That nuance is not what his voters expect. In fact it is the only reason a pathologically obstinate person disliked by most in Washington and elsewhere can garner a platform. How many more times will we see the Ted Cruz stutter?
A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Antonio LeGrier in the police shooting of his 19-year-old son Quintonio, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Quintonio, home on Christmas break from Northern Illinois University, was fatally shot on December 26, along with 55-year-old Bettie Jones, a neighbor, by an as-yet-unidentified Chicago police officer. The elder LeGrier called 911 saying his son was irate and in possession of a baseball bat. Bill Foutris, attorney for the elder LeGrier, says he called 911 because he wanted help in defusing the situation. “He certainly didn’t call to have his son shot and killed,” said Foutris.
The lawsuit alleges that police did not render aid to Quintonio after shooting him; that video showing a portion of the events that occurred has been confiscated by the city; and that the elder LeGrier was detained at the police station for several hours after his son was shot. The family of Bettie Jones, also killed, has not stated yet whether they will also be filing a lawsuit.
The killings are exactly what Chicago does not need right now, with a federal investigation freshly brewed and newly arrived in the city.
You know what else is not needed right about now? Black folks calling 911, that’s what. We simply have got to stop calling this number hoping that people will show up and help us with our loved ones. They don’t care about our loved ones; they will not help us with our loved ones; they will kill our loved ones.
The sooner we accept that truth, as we struggle throughout various corners of the country to bring about transparency and accountability and an end to state-sanctioned violence, the more energy we can focus on that task and securing the resources necessary for our loved ones who occasionally go through mental health episodes.
Noted financial services expert Newt Gingrich was given the opportunity by congressional Republicans to testify about the horrors of consumer financial protection earlier this month. Because it's a Republican Congress and it's Newt Gingrich. Turns out, Newt thinks protecting consumers from predatory lenders is a bad idea. And worse.
"Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is so far outside the historic American model of constitutionally limited government and the rule of law that it is the perfect case study of the pathologies that infect our bureaucracies at the federal level. […] It is dictatorial. It is unaccountable. It is practically unrestrained in expanding on its already expansive mandate from Congress. And it is contemptuous of the rights, values, and preferences of ordinary Americans."
Republicans have been attempting to kill the CFPB since its inception with almost the same zeal that they've been trying to destroy Obamacare. You have no more right protecting your meager finances from predators than you do keeping your body healthy in the Republicans' world. But just as Obamacare is helping to save actual lives, the CFPB is directly helping people, saving them billions of dollars.
Earlier this month, the CFPB released a report examining how one part of its financial regulation has unfolded. The CARD Act, passed in 2010 and overseen by the CFPB, aimed to clean up the credit card industry by eliminating hidden fees that hurt consumers.
According to the CFPB, the CARD Act's changes saved consumers from $16 billion in these sorts of hidden fees between 2011 and 2014. Most of those savings have been paid for with higher upfront interest rates. Still, the total cost of credit cards declined in the first few years after the law's enactment and has held steady since then at about 2 percent less than before the CARD Act.
That's just one of its regulations, and just one aspect of its success in the five years of its existence. Those successes—that's the real problem for Republicans and for Wall Street interests that bankroll them. For example, Gingrich was actually testifying as "a paid adviser to a corporate-funded group, the US Consumer Coalition," a group which does not disclose its donors but was created by a PR firm for the sole purpose of bringing down the CFPB, the banking industry's enemy number 1.
But it's not just the fact that Wall Street hates anything that might make them put the good of the country ahead of their profits that fuels Republicans. It's the evidence that government can do something meaningful to actually make people's lives better. That, in Republicanland, is just not acceptable.
The attorney for Guantánamo Bay detainee Tariq Ba Odah was furious to learn from a Reuters investigation published Monday that the Pentagon has continued to obstruct efforts to get the long-time hunger striker resettled even though he was cleared for release nearly six years ago. In a statement, Omar Farah, Ba Odah’s attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said:
Today’s revelations prove there is no line the Pentagon will not cross to frustrate the president’s efforts to close Guantánamo, even potentially blowing up resettlement negotiations at their most sensitive juncture. The only question is whether the White House is blind to or passively allowing the insubordination to continue. Either way, if this persists, Guantánamo will surely outlast Mr. Ba Odah, who still weighs just 74 pounds.
Fourteen years after the Pentagon established it, the military prison remains open, a stain on America’s reputation, a reminder of cruelty and injustice, and a recruiting tool for extremists.
Civil libertarians and lawyers for detainees were temporarily heartened when President Obama signed an executive order on his second day in office in 2009 that he would close the prison within a year. But nearly seven years later, thanks to maneuvering by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and some foot dragging by the administration itself, there are still 107 prisoners languishing there even though more than half have been cleared for release.
In November in the Philippines, Obama repeated his earlier vow to close the place, noting once again that it serves as a recruiting center for the Islamic extremists of ISIS/Daesh and others. In December, he rejected and returned for revisions a Pentagon plan to shut down the Guantánamo prison and build a new one in the United States. The cost to close it, the Pentagon estimated, would be $600 million, including a one-time $350 million construction cost. Running the prison at Guantánamo now costs about $400 million a year. One hundred prisoners. You do the math. By contrast, it costs the government about $75,000 a year to hold a prisoner at a high-security super-max prison.
The 45 square miles now housing the naval base and prison were pried from Cuba at gunpoint more than a century ago. The 1903 treaty that made the theft “legal” was abrogated three decades later, but a forced lease that can only be abandoned if both parties agree has been the arrangement between Washington and Havana ever since.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration looked upon Gitmo, as it was long ago nicknamed, as the perfect place to imprison suspected terrorists. As the administration’s lawyers saw it, here was a place not controlled by Cuba yet not legally part of the United States, which offered what the Bush team viewed as a jurisdictionless locale where prisoners would have no access to legal counsel and not be covered by U.S. domestic law or international law, including the Geneva Conventions. The only differences between Guantánamo and the string of secret torture prisons the Central Intelligence Agency set up abroad is that the world was informed about Guantánamo.
The day ended with impassioned calls for calm; that Cleveland and Ohio residents be respectful and mindful of the process and the inevitable march toward justice. I closed my laptop during Cuyahoga Prosecutor Tim McGinty’s call to remain calm and his invocation of the fabricated danger against police because I, like most people paying attention to this sort of thing, had already seen this movie before.
There was the shooting itself. Tamir Rice’s fate was probably sealed when a 911 call was placed about him and dispatchers neglected to inform police that he could have been a child playing with a toy gun. When Cleveland police officers got the call, they already had the playbook: in their minds this was an armed and dangerous black man. And you know what happens to armed and dangerous black men.
When officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback pulled up to Rice, irresponsibly close and creating a situation that could only end in tragedy, they of course judged Rice to be much older and much more dangerous than he actually was. Either that, or they knew that just about any defense would serve to keep them out of prison. So, instead of trying to de-escalate or try anything other than using lethal force, Loehmann did the one thing police officers are trained to do best. He shot first and asked questions later.
Even after mass protests and Tamir Rice’s name becoming a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter, McGinty followed the same playbook as written in Ferguson and Long Island before. There was a grand jury, in which—instead of deciding if there was enough evidence to indict—McGinty did the opposite and began a campaign of publicly citing reasons to ease the pressure after the decision to not indict. There were the early reports released by his office in the name of “transparency” that both supported the officers. More details emerged: that Rice wore large pants; that the video had been enhanced; and that Loehmann gave verbal commands and aimed for the gun. All of the tactics had been honed in police grand juries before.
And the end result, as expected, was no indictment.
In the end there were no riots. A handful of protesters braved the cold winds and rain because they knew what we all knew: that it was over as soon as Loehmann pulled the trigger. This is the way things were always going to turn out.
Jeb!'s Super PAC, Right to Rise USA, is taking aim at Marco Rubio, who is fast emerging as the odds-on establishment favorite to take on whichever candidate wins the GOP's wacko-bird outsider race.
Playing on Rubio's distinction of skipping more votes than any other U.S. senator in the last several years, the ad notes that even in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, Rubio prioritized fundraising over doing his job.
AUDIO: Days after the Paris attacks, Senators came together for a top-secret briefing on the terrorist threat, Marco Rubio was missing. Fundraising in California instead.
TEXT: Tampa Bay Times, 11/18/15
AUDIO: Two weeks later, terrorists struck again in San Bernardino. And where was Marco? Fundraising again in New Orleans.
TEXT: The Advocate, 11/30/15; The Times-Picayune, 12/2/15
"Politics first, that's the Rubio way," concludes the ad, which will begin airing in Iowa next week.
Rubio is now consistently polling in double digits in the Hawkeye State while Jeb! has been stuck in single digits there for months. The PAC will be spending nearly $1.5 million in Iowa over the next couple weeks. Of course, it's already dropped nearly $50 million in its fruitless quest to improve Jeb!'s standings.
Direct from Josh Duggar's twitter account on May 16, 2015: "Great to visit w/ my friend @GovMikeHuckabee this morning in DC. Thankful to have his voice on the #2016 stage!"
Direct from Josh Duggar's twitter account on May 16, 2015: "Great to visit w/ my friend @GovMikeHuckabee this morning in DC. Thankful to have his voice on the #2016 stage!"
Our favorite pastor turned pill pusher turned politician is having a senior moment regarding his old buddy Josh Duggar of America's finest reality show, 19 Kids and Counting. Remember when that panoply of wholesome family fun was sullied earlier this year by the revelation that a teenaged Josh molested several underage girls, including four of his sisters? Well, you might recall how you reacted to that news, but Mike Huckabee is a little fuzzy about his response. Here's his latest take, via BuzzFeed:
“I really didn’t support Josh,” Huckabee told Iowa radio host Simon Conway on Dec. 23. “I supported his parents, if you’ll go back and look at what I said. There’s no support for what he did.”
Hmm ... let's see if we can jog the memory. Where, oh where could we find a refresher?? Oh, right, the Huckster's very own Facebook page, where he wrote a virtual tome (by FB standards) on the matter just a day after the allegations first surfaced.
Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn’t mean 'unforgivable.' ... No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. ... No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility. ... It is such times as this, when real friends show up and stand up. Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends. Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.
Oh, Huckster—you slay me! Josh is just "good people" who was targeted by a “blood-thirsty media" that was "sensationalizing" his misdeeds even though he's now living "a responsible and circumspect life."
Next thing you know, Huckster will be claiming to be a man of god. Lol.
Politico is at it again, deciding that Hillary Clinton will be "haunted" in the general election, should she get the nomination, by six "choice remarks and positions" she's taken in 2015. Because you know, unlike Clinton, the eventual Republican nominee will have never said anything controversial.
They start out by making sure that Third Way gets their say:
"Hillary has kept her powder dry," said Jonathan Cowan, a former Clinton administration official who is the president of the moderate think tank Third Way, "refusing to embrace the most liberal ideas, like more Social Security benefits for all and raising taxes on the middle class. She is wisely avoiding [Mitt] Romney's fatal error of tacking so far towards the base that you win the nomination but lose the general election."
Never mind that raising the payroll tax to do things like the guarantee of paid time off for family leave, or for increasing Social Security benefits is hugely popular, and even tea party Republicans are okay with the payroll tax. Politico and the Third Way aren't going to tell you that. But it's something the Clinton campaign should do a bit of research on. Because even in the general election, Third Way's endorsement wouldn't get her much.
But on to the real meat of the story, which posits that the things Clinton has said and positions she's taken will fuel a potential general election campaign against her. Those issues: on ISIS ("We now finally are where we need to be." Note that the Iraqis just had a pivotal victory against ISIS in Ramadi); on Republicans (the enemy she's most proud of, compared to the kinds of things Republicans have been saying about her and her husband for the past 23 years); on the nothingburger email scandal (her joke about wiping her server "like with a cloth or something"); and her support for closing the gun show loophole and an assault weapons ban.
Also, because the whole electorate cares about charter schools, her shift away from them means "Republicans could seize on her flip-flop." She's also doomed herself with young Hispanics, Politico says, with her really not smart to equate herself as a grandmother with Hispanic grandmothers. Yes, young Hispanic voters will flock to the candidate who wants to deport their grandmothers, and everyone else in the family.
Clinton certainly isn't running a perfect primary campaign and wouldn't be perfect in the general, but the idea that anyone in this Republican field could make hay on any of these things is pretty laughable. This Republican field, full of blowhards and pathological liars. Not that Politico won't do its very best to help.
Sixty-nine journalists were killed around the world on the job in 2015. Twenty-eight of them were slain by Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaeda and ISIS, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. [...]
While some of the deaths were among reporters covering conflict zones, journalists in several countries also were killed after reporting on sensitive subjects. At least 28 of the reporters who were killed had received threats before their deaths, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
In Brazil, Gleydson Carvalho, a radio broadcaster who often criticized local police and politicians for purported wrongdoing, was shot and killed while presenting his afternoon radio show in August.
“For the Trump campaign, it means access to a database containing a trove of information on more than 200 million Americans, which can be used to power a get-out-the-vote effort. And for the RNC, it means that any information Trump collects from his supporters, many of whom are not traditional Republicans, will be fed back into the database for future use by the party and its candidates.”
It’s some time in the not too distant future. The American mid-west has turned into a dust bowl. Birds are dropping out of the sky. Cities are encapsulated in domes so that people can breathe clean, if recycled, air.
Billions of refugees, victims of drought and famine, are on the move. The streets are full of violent gangs and human traffickers. Pandemics are breaking out.
Welcome to a new literary genre – climate fiction, or cli-fi.
The Senate on Dec. 18 passed the bill by a voice vote, and the House passed it earlier this month. The legislation was co-sponsored by Reps. Fred Upton, the St. Joseph Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey.
“It’s a banner day for Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes -- we now have a bipartisan law on the books to cleanse dirty microbeads from all our nation’s waters,” Upton said in a Monday statement. “Microbeads may be tiny plastic, but they are wreaking big time havoc in our waters. We came together, Republicans and Democrats, and got the job done.”
At Texas State University, I teach an honors course called “Demonology, Possession, and Exorcism.” It’s not a gut course. My students produce research papers on topics that range from the role of sleep paralysis in reports of demonic attacks to contemporary murder cases in which defendants have claimed supernatural forces compelled them to commit crimes.
In fact, talk of demons isn’t unusual in Texas. The first day of class, when we watched a clip of an alleged exorcism at an Austin Starbucks, many of my students said that they’d seen similar scenes in the towns where they’d grown up.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we were back with a live show, catching up on items of varying importance. Greg Dworkin updated the 2016 news. Paul Ryan tried to govern, so the loons are mad. GunFAIL continued apace. Speaking of which, air ambulances cost big bucks! Often!
Black Lives Matter-Cincinnati is planning a rally today, Tuesday, December 29, at 6 PM, protesting the lack of indictments in the 2014 murder of Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer. The rally will be held at Findlay Playground and organizers want all those who stand in solidarity to bring a toy in honor of the 12-year-old Rice.
A Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, who shot Rice within two seconds of coming into contact with the child on November 22, 2014. Loehmann and his partner answered a 911 call of a person concerned about a child with what looked like a gun in a park pointing it at people. The caller specifically mentioned that the person was a child and that the gun was “probably” not real.
Hours after the decision not to indict the officers was announced, organizers in Cleveland opened a “safe space” for people to congregate and vent. Plans for a larger Cleveland demonstration have not been announced by the group as of yet. Speaking to a National Public Radio affiliate late Monday evening, Cleveland Black Lives Matter organizer Elle Hearns stated that the group understands that the lack of an indictment is a systemic issue:
“Well, I think the injustice that is here starts, one, with the fact that the prosecutor actually didn't advocate for charges to the grand jury towards the officers that were responsible for the murder of Tamir. Prosecutors have oftentimes acted in defense of the officers as opposed to in defense of the families and of the lives that had been taken. So I think really analyzing the root of the issue is essential to understanding why we consistently have no accountability when officers are pulling the trigger.”
“ … there has to be a complete overhaul of the system that continues to let black lives be taken. And when our children - when our children's lives are taken and there's no accountability for anyone, that actually is something that will continue to fuel the movement … ”
Prosecutor collusion in the Rice investigation has been written about before. It worked for George Zimmerman and we’re seeing how it is currently playing out in Chicago with Anita Alvarez.
Black Lives Matter organizers in Cincinnati have four demands they are promoting:
Cuyahoga County fire Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty
Cuyahoga County re-open the Tamir Rice case
Cleveland Police Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback be indicted for the murder of Tamir Rice
U.S. Department of Justice open an investigation into the murder of Tamir Rice and the unjust pretrial proceedings
