Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Everybody saw this coming.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

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“We Spent Too Much Money on Riot Gear, So… “

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(1978 – via Slate)

From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department, courtesy valued commentor LAMH36, Bloomberg reports:

Ferguson, Missouri, which is recovering from riots following the August shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman, plans to close a budget gap by boosting revenue from public-safety fines and tapping reserves…

To close a projected deficit for fiscal 2014, which ended June 30, the municipality will deplete a $10 million capital-projects reserve, Jeffrey Blume, Ferguson’s finance director, said in a telephone interview. For the current year, the city is budgeting for higher receipts from police-issued tickets.

“There are a number of things going on in 2014 and one is a revenue shortfall that we anticipate making up in 2015,” Blume said. “There’s about a million-dollar increase in public-safety fines to make up the difference.”

Revenue from violations, which already represents the city’s second-largest source of cash after sales taxes, will rise to 15.7 percent of receipts in fiscal 2015, from a projected 11.8 percent this year, he said. In 2013, fines brought in $2.2 million, or 11.8 percent of the city’s $18.62 million in annual revenue, according to budget documents…
***********
Two bills that were pre-filed last week in the State Senate would limit what municipalities can collect from public-safety fines.

‘‘For Ferguson to respond to all of this and say that increasing ticketing was a good idea is outrageous,” Scott Sifton, a Missouri state senator who sponsored one of the pieces of legislation, said in a telephone interview.

The bills will be reviewed and voted on after the legislature reconvenes on Jan. 7, he said. If approved, the measures would take effect in August at the earliest, Sifton said….

Let’s hope Ferguson’s budgeting geniuses get together, over the holiday, with some relatives who can tell them to stop eating the smart pills.

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  1. 1.

    satby

    I’m sure people living there would love to just bail on the place, but property values probably went down as a result of the months of bad publicity too. Elections matter. So I hope at the next one all these bums get thrown out.

  2. 2.

    JPL

    In honor of the season, a local gun club has a family event planned for today. Nothing says celebrate the life of Jesus as getting a picture with Santa.

    Families are invited to the Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range, 8040 Roswell Road, Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for an opportunity to express their holiday spirit and passion for firearms……………………………………..
    Admission to the event is free. The business will be accepting non-perishable food donations for the Community Assistance Center in Sandy Springs, and Santa Claus will be visiting with customers. Mag-nificent Instant Photo Magnets will be taking portraits with Santa in a safe and fun environment. The event and photo magnets are free of charge and will be available for download online.

    Tomorrow it will be two years since Adam Lanza mowed down young children and teachers. We haven’t learned anything from that horrific massacre.

  7. 7.

    PaulW

    Tomorrow it will be two years since Adam Lanza mowed down young children and teachers. We haven’t learned anything from that horrific massacre.

    Actually, we have learned something. That the NRA is so disproportionately powerful a lobby for its meager (4 million members at most out of 70 million gun owners, and more than 330 million Americans!) numbers that it can easily intimidate elected officials into ignoring basic, common sense gun safety laws that 80 percent of all Americans (a majority of gun owners themselves!) want enacted.

    The Mafia ain’t got sh-t on the racket the NRA is pulling.

  10. 10.

    PaulW

    As for Ferguson, the fact the police department is looking to increase their revenues from increasing their harassment of their own citizenry explains exactly how they have and still are failing to serve and protect their own community.

    Gosh, FPD and St. Louis County police, I thought quotas were illegal.

    I hope to God the FBI finishes up their investigation and shuts the whole damn place down.

  13. 13.

    Botsplainer

    I’m inspired to win a lottery so I can sponsor an massive assault and sniper rifle giveaway among Ferguson’s most impoverished residents (the giveaway criteria being production of the family’s EBT card). Following the giveaway, I’d sponsor a training program that emphasized firearm maintenance and targeting skill, the bullseyes on the targeting mannequins consisting of badges, riot helmets and flabby pundit double chins.

    I could be the George Soros that the RWNJs insist is real…

  15. 15.

    geg6

    WTF? Seriously? These people are fucking insane. Ferguson is gonna blow and I don’t blame anyone who shows these fuckers just how insane they are.

  17. 17.

    TR

    @Botsplainer:

    You joke, but that’s the way to get gun control passed. Make it clear that black people are going to start exercising their 2nd amendment rights.

    There’s a reason California suddenly passed sweeping gun laws in the 1960s — it was called the Black Panther Party.

  22. 22.

    RSA

    @JPL:

    If Jesus had an assault rifle, he would not have been crucified.

    “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a Bushmaster XM15-E2S and a Glock 20SF.”

    ETA: Damn it, Scott…

  26. 26.

    Botsplainer

    @RSA:

    This year’s hot new toy – GI Jesus with Kung Fu grip. Accessorizing waterboard, baton projectile weapon and riot shields sold separately.

  27. 27.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @OzarkHillbilly: Hey, Ferguson has a Mayor and a City Council. What’s the problem? It’s not like the 14th Amendment protects citizens of a state or something, ya know.

    The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) were the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the relatively new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was a pivotal case in early civil rights law, reading the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the “privileges or immunities” conferred by virtue of the federal United States citizenship to all individuals of all states within it, but not those privileges or immunities incident to citizenship of a state. However, the federal rights of citizenship were few (such as the right to travel between states and to use navigable rivers) and the 14th Amendment did not protect the far broader range of rights covered by state citizenship. In effect, the 14th Amendment was of minor importance.

    […]

    Miller believed that the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment (“All persons born and naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State where they reside”) differentiated between two citizenships, one of the United States and one of the state. Furthermore, the second sentence forbidding states from making “any law which shall abridge”, only applied to federal rights alone.[1] Thus, the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution only protected rights guaranteed by the United States, not by individual states. As author Jack Beatty put it, these rights included “access to ports and navigable waterways, the ability to run for federal office, and to be protected while on the high seas…they did not include what we call ‘civil rights.'”[1]

    Miller argues that if the privileges or immunities clause protected the civil rights of citizens of a state from that state, then the 14th amendment would in essence be granting to the Federal government the power to protect all civil rights that had previously been protected by the states, and that “in the absence of language which expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt”, this was too radical a change to be within the scope of the 14th amendment.

    See? “Minor importance”. The 14th Amendment clearly isn’t meant to protect people’s civil rights rights, ya know? I mean, come on[strike]e[strike]!

    /snark

    Seriously, there’s a class-action civil rights suit waiting to happen if this goes forward.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Grr. I’m in moderation again. Editing twice is a no-no I guess.

    rassin’ frassin’ FYWP.

    Help? Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  30. 30.

    Botsplainer

    Archie McPhee makes Sigmund Freud, Jane Austen and Edgar Allen Poe action figures.

    http://mcphee.com/shop/fun/novelties/action-figures.html

    Clearly, there’s a market for a Conservative Jesus action figure, complete with a suit and tie, a Bushmaster, a water board, incorporating documents for a dark money 501C(4), a checkbook to hand out donations, and a packet of meth.

    The SLUTS SHUT UP placard for Him to use in demonstrations in front of Planned Parenthood offices can be a “forced scarcity” limited issue accessory…

  31. 31.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Of course he is…:

    By Alexander Bolton – 12/13/14 08:44 AM EST
    Sen. Ted Cruz, the firebrand conservative freshman from Texas, has blown up the Senate leadership’s plans to have a peaceful weekend by forcing round-the-clock votes on President Obama’s nominees and the $1.1 trillion omnibus.

    Cruz took to the floor late Friday to castigate congressional leaders for trying to pass the 1,600-page spending bill after only a few hours of debate and questioned the resolve of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fight Obama’s executive order protecting five million illegal immigrants from deportation.

    “Even though millions of voters rose up just one month ago to protest how President Obama and the Senate Democrats were running Washington, business as usual is continuing inside the marble halls of the United State Congress,” Cruz said in a fiery floor speech.
    Because of objections from Cruz and his ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the Senate will begin slogging through procedural votes on nominees starting at noon Saturday and vote to end a filibuster of the omnibus spending package at 1 a.m. Sunday morning.

    “It appears that we’re going to have to have a series of votes all day tomorrow starting as soon as we get here and perhaps into the morning,” Reid said shortly before temporarily adjourning the chamber Friday night.

    A senior Senate Democratic aide said the Senate may hold up to 40 procedural votes on nominees this weekend due to what he called the “extreme pettiness on the part of Republicans.”

    The plan sets up a final vote on the omnibus at 7 am Monday and confirmation votes on 20 nominees starting Monday.

    […]

    The House extended the temporary CR through Wednesday before they fled. The way it usually works is that if the Senate makes any changes to a House bill then the House has to vote on the changed version. Presumably that would trigger a shut-down as the House ran away. But who knows these days. Maybe Bohner could have a handful of people vote and that would be good enough…

    Fun times.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    F

    So I glance at the Google News aggregate, and what greets me on the very top?

    “Elizabeth Warren now Ted Cruz of the left?”

  33. 33.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Amir Khalid: I edited my comment once (indicating a change by doing an HTML strike through an “e”), but saw the change was invisible, so I tried to indicate a change a different way (using square brackets). On saving the 2nd time it threw the comment into moderation.

    I think FYWP just doesn’t like me this week. I’m not sure any sacrifices I do would matter. :-/

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Waynski

    @Botsplainer:

    This year’s hot new toy – GI Jesus with Kung Fu grip.

    I guess we should all be shorting frozen concentrated orange juice then. Thanks for the investment tip.

  36. 36.

    MomSense

    Do you think Eisenhower imagined when he warned us of the Military Industrial Complex that they wouldn’t be satiated by conventional wars, proxy wars and cold wars conducted by nation states?

    The drug war, militarization of our local police departments, and the NRA pushing modified military weapons to weekend warriors with fevered fantasies of fighting government tyranny or the thug lurking around every corner–are all markets for the weapons manufacturers.

    All of these markets depend on the constant marketing of fear which our corporate owned media are more than happy to fulfill.

  37. 37.

    Patrick

    @Baud:

    The NRA is powerful because 80% of Americans don’t really care whether gun laws get enacted.

    Amen. That’s exactly what happened in the Colorado recall elections. The people who actually cared showed up and voted. The so called 80% number didn’t bother. Elections have consequences. Until the 80% actually bother voting, it is an irrelevant number.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @geg6:

    It’s much bigger than Ferguson:

    An April American Civil Liberties Union report documented in Ohio what has become an increasing trend around the country — the revival of so-called debtors’ prisons in which those who cannot pay fines face incarceration. The ACLU found that judges were illegally imposing jail time on the poor in two ways: First, they were threatening criminal punishment for those who don’t pay a non-criminal fee, such as court costs, a civil fine, or other fees. Second, they were failing to assess whether an individual ordered to pay a criminal fine has the ability to pay that fine before sentencing them to jail time — a violation of a 30-year-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
    A new “bench card” that the Ohio Supreme Court will disseminate to all judges explains that imposing either one of these sentences is illegal. “An offender CANNOT be held in contempt of court for refusal to pay fines,” the memo states. “Accordingly, unpaid fines and/or court costs may neither be a condition of probation, nor grounds for an extension or violation of probation.”
    In many places, this trend has been significantly exacerbated by private firms that handle probation while charging all sorts of monthly fees with the threat of jail time. Probation firms sell their services by offering a cost-free mechanism of collections; they make all their money by extra fees charged directly to the individuals who owe fines — often those least able to afford them. But the ACLU’s reports on debtors’ prisons in Ohio and elsewhere have pointed out that the cost of jail far exceeds the cost of an unpaid fine.

    The ACLU did a really smart thing in the report. They named the courts that were the offenders. A list. It made it impossible for the state supreme court to ignore, because when you identify a court you’re naming a judge or judges. My municipal court was on the list. Until the ACLU took it up, some defense lawyers here had been trying to stop it using case law from the early 1900’s on “jail fees” but they were losing over and over.

    It’s absolutely crazy-making for those lawyers, because it’s this horrible cycle. The person is picked up for something really minor and they are still involved years later. They cannot get out of the system, because it’s like credit card debt: they can’t get ahead on the fines and it just gets worse and worse for them. The stories make you want to tear your hair out.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    So Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored a bill with Diaper Dave Vitter to strip out the provision in the shitty new spending bill that would gut a key portion of Dodd-Frank. Don’t know how good their chances are of altering the bill — probably somewhere between “jack” and “shit.” But damn if the Wall Street giveaway hasn’t exposed fault lines all over Congress.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I loved how she involved other Senators in that speech. Really smart to bring them in, because of course they’re going to portray this as a lone crazed Leftist on a crusade :)

    They don’t know how to describe anything outside of compare/contrast. “This is just like Ted Cruz…” It’s such an easy box to put everything in.

  41. 41.

    Shalimar

    I suspect putting an increasing number of black citizens in jail and taking away their right to vote because they can’t pay nuisance fines is considered a benefit by the white city council of the majority black city. Wouldn’t want those people voting you out of office.

  42. 42.

    Shalimar

    @TR: I’m not sure the Black Panther approach to scaring the fuck out of Reagan-wannabees would work now. Police would just kill any black people marching with guns, and get cheered on by Hannity, Rush, etc. I actually think we’re more racist as a country now than we were in the ’60s because one of our two parties is lock-step in applauding any evil committed by their side. You wouldn’t have as many outright KKK members in the street, but every Republican would find excuses for why it was ok to massacre a few hundred people. “I’m not racist, but those thugs were a menace. Someone was going to get hurt.”

  43. 43.

    PurpleGirl

    @Botsplainer: OMG, I haven’t seen an Archie McPhee catalog in years. At my last job, a co-worker and I regularly bought little things from McPhee to play with and keep around the office. I may have to buy a “Crazy Cat Lady” action figure.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Shalimar:

    Keep it in mind when you read those thought pieces on generational poverty and the breakdown of the family. They can’t get out of it once they’re in it. They’re paying fines for 5 years after the (minor) offense. We have people here who beg for “straight time”, and they’re not even threatened with incarceration. Please, Dear God, put me in jail and then let me get on with my life. Don’t put me into the eternal hell of the fine collection system!

  45. 45.

    Mike in NC

    For the current year, the city is budgeting for higher receipts from police-issued tickets.

    This is SOP for police departments pretty much everywhere between Thanksgiving and New Year’s: count on people to be out partying and pull them over and arrest them for DUI. Peace on earth and screw you suckers.

  48. 48.

    GregB

    Looks like we are simply back to the old ‘liberals/Democrats soft on crime’ as a political cudgel.

    The NY police union is asking their members to sign waivers preventing Mayor DeBlasio from attending their funerals because he’s not supporting them in the way real Mayor’s like Il Rudy or Bloomberg.

    Link.

  49. 49.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    A good 45% care. They care because they’re assholes who fantasize about shooting someone, or because they will by GOD put a stop to everything the nigger-loving hippies have done to destroy America (You know, create enough equality a black man can become president), or because they live in pants-wetting terror of a variety of imaginary threats (black people are highly involved in many of those).

  54. 54.

    Tommy

    @PaulW: That is well said and exactly what they are doing. In fact there are more tickets and bench warrants then there are people in the town. By a factor of 3. Makes you think if people had the financial means they’d flee.

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    Student loans.
    Credit card debt.
    Court fees for private companies
    All leveraged to the point that no one can ever get out of debt.
    I see a theme here. The mafia would be ashamed about the lack of morals shown.

  57. 57.

    Tommy

    @Aaron S. Veenstra: The MO House couldn’t even pass a bill to ban puppy mills. People actually went to the House floor to argue FOR PUPPY MILLS. It is a strange state on many different levels.

  58. 58.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Tommy:
    Cleek’s Law. Liberals want to help animals, and fuck what liberals want. Add in an unhealthy dose of asshole cruelty, and Republicans have been stonewalling attempts to pass even such basically popular legislation as this since, oh, 2009.

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @ruemara:
    A person who actively goes after something with the point of winning everything, money or power even both, is going to say enough is enough. Yeah I don’t see that happening either. I mean if you are aiming for a world record you don’t stop until you get there or are incapacitated.

  60. 60.

    Shalimar

    @raven: Yes. Good point, murdering Black Panthers wouldn’t be a new thing. It just seems like there is no morality anymore, only tribal loyalty. We can’t even get half of the country to agree that acts which have always been considered torture are torture. At least there was a strong backlash to that raid. I’m not sure it would be allowed now. Conservatives say this, liberals say that, both sides disagree and it slips out of the discourse without anything changing.

    Look at this story. The final result is to double-down on the bad behavior.

  61. 61.

    scav

    @GregB: The police really are on a near-universal mission to prove themselves just as crap as so many have been telling us for so long. Public shake-downs for needed cash (when they can’t get enough goodies free from the govt) and political intimidation of those that fail to kiss up to them and support them exactly in the manner to which they wish to be supported and admired. And these over and beyond a universally recignized Get Out of Consequences card good for all actions including rape and murder while on duty and sometimes off. Whee. Gotta love the Bebadged Boys club.

  63. 63.

    SatanicPanic

    @Shalimar: I don’t buy the idea that we’re more racist now than we were, but I agree with the rest of your comment. NRA would welcome black people owning guns and white people wouldn’t care because they’d know that outside of a few black RWNJs any black person who carried a gun around would be shot on sight. Black people are getting shot for holding BB guns.

    And you know what else I notice a lot of? Rappers going to jail on gun charges. Who else in the USA ever goes to jail on gun charges? That’s weird, right?

  66. 66.

    Ruckus

    @scav:
    I have a friend who spent 30 yrs as a CHP. Seems like a pretty good person. I’d bet that he was a pretty good cop. But he has told me some stories that just confirm that as a whole, cops are bad. Yes there are shinning points of light in their ranks. But that is nothing in comparison to the mounds of crap that makes up most police forces. It doesn’t have to be this way, I’d bet that a lot of police wouldn’t be assholes if they didn’t think it was necessary to keep the job. But they do so they are. And of course that doesn’t account for the ones that are assholes on or off duty. But it’s always been this way or even worse. When have police been held accountable for their actions? It’s not unheard of but it is very rare and always has been. They are there for the protection of those in power, not the rest of us. Twas ever thus.

  67. 67.

    ruemara

    @MomSense: Naw, sadly, a key beneficiary of EEOC laws does not stand with the “us” that got them there. White men and women’s world. Yes, I know. #notallwhitewomen. But when it counts, at the voting booth. over 50% break for the neoconservative candidate. It will be thus until even their gains are threatened.

  68. 68.

    Shalimar

    @SatanicPanic: I guess what I meant was more tribal. The Birchers have taken over the Republican party and you have to believe everything they believe to be a member in good standing. And not just believe, you have to be viciously hateful about your beliefs or they question your sincerity.

    We’re probably less racist than we were in the 60s, but there are many many more people willing to rationalize and say “I’m not racist, but …”. Which allows them to agree with the overt racists without feeling bad about themselves, and support white conservative supremacy causes without paying attention to the results of their beliefs. It’s not all racism, but the results are the same or worse.

  69. 69.

    scav

    @Ruckus: They certainly pretended better in the past. It seems a current point of pride to stand on the digital rooftop and shout how disdainful you are towards minorities, women, those not of your faith, etc. The NYPD is apparently willing to go on record as to how much it disdains even the pretense of civilian control by insulting the mayor as not being properly reverential to their every whim. The military at least still makes a stab at publicly obeying their civilian leader, even when of the incorrect party and melanin level / ethic background.

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    @Shalimar:
    Your example, “I’m not a racist but…” has an ending. The entire thing goes like this:
    “I’m not a racist but I really like how they think and want the same things they do.”

  71. 71.

    Tommy

    @Shalimar: Tribal and also in my experience often hateful. Most of my clients are pretty hardcore Republican. My brother married into a huge Republican family. I often want to yell. Grab them by the shoulders and shake them. But I don’t. However how mad they can get when I just politely suggest there is maybe another way to look at the world still stuns me (but I guess it shouldn’t). I can like somebody and still not agree with them on everything. It seems not everybody is like me on that point.

  73. 73.

    SatanicPanic

    @Shalimar: The way I look at it is- Republicans have become crazier. Everyone else has gotten less crazy. But there are less Republicans and they’re distrusted by young people, so we’re slightly better off, depending on how you look at it.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @scav:
    They didn’t pretend better in the past. You just didn’t hear 99% of the stories from both sides. Now you have the possibility of that. It changes your perception that cops have gotten worse, you hear more about it. Forty yrs ago Ferguson would have happened but you would never know. You didn’t know about south central LA until the Watts riots, or Detroit, or… My experience as an interested in being one observer from 45 yrs ago tells me that they haven’t. They haven’t gotten any better either. They do have better weapons and protection but their tactics haven’t really changed. Of course as @Kay: pointed out the courts tactics in some cases have gotten worse. The people in those positions would have been arrested for minor violations decades ago but they would have done some time if they couldn’t pay. Now it’s all about the money. The power and money must have theirs. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t/shouldn’t belong to them, they are going to have it.

  76. 76.

    Petorado

    So essentially Ferguson’s going the North Korea route where the family of an executed prisoner is forced to pay for the bullets used to to kill them. When despotism comes to Missouri it will be carrying a badge and wrapped in a civic ordinance.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:
    @MomSense:

    I am frequently embarrassed by my demographic group. I actually have the triple whammy: married white woman who is part of Generation X, which is more conservative than the groups on either side of it (Baby Boomers and Millennials).

  79. 79.

    scav

    @Ruckus: The media certainly helped the pretense along more in the past (in re policing, I mean. I’m far from imaging a sweet heyday of universally beneificent coppers on the beat in all neighborhoods.). But there does seem to be a general cultural swing-back to pride about being visibly intolerant within the last few years. Women and minorities and Muslims are bearing the brunt of it — Gays are at least manging to get better acceptence of marriage past the trend.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    Exactly.
    Decades ago black men were still being beaten, shot and lynched for the non crime of being black. But unless you knew the victim or lived on the block, you’d never know. No one was going to tell you and if they did, and you were white, who you gunna believe? No one could be that big of an asshole could they? Turns out, yes they can.

  81. 81.

    Ruckus

    @scav:
    Once again the only difference about the intolerance that you see is that you see it. Decades ago you had to be looking for it to see it. Now it’s in your face and you can’t pretend not to see it.
    That’s not a take down of you in any way, we humans have to be exposed to recognize things. Travel to foreign lands is an example. And even then you have to get out of the bus and mingle. Most people weren’t exposed so they didn’t know. And even some that were exposed were mollified by the press and their friends, they didn’t get out of the bus and mingle.

  82. 82.

    Kryptik, A Man Without a Country

    @Ruckus:
    @Ruckus:

    This doesn’t seem to necessarily take into account those who are getting exposed to this kind of stuff via the same mass media exposure and social media exposure, and like it to the point of wanting to see more tribalist and racist behavior.

    And unfortunately, it seems like that segment of the population is definitely large enough to kibosh any immediate hopes of progress.

  84. 84.

    Ruckus

    @Kryptik, A Man Without a Country:
    You are correct but I think for the wrong reason. They were always the people that wanted tribal and racist behavior. The difference is that we get to see them easily now. The light didn’t used to shine on them, there was at best a small candle, maybe moonlight on a cloudy night level. Now it’s the light from every cell phone and that’s a lot brighter.
    And progress? How could progress be made if only the victims knew/cared about the problem? Now at least the problems are much more out in the open. I have no idea how long it will take for that to have an impact but it will take time and still be lives ruined and ended. Someone said that maybe Ferguson is a tipping point. Given the last 50 years I’m skeptical but tipping points happen when least expected. They get pushed along by innocuous bits and pieces, by enough people recognizing what ever the problem is and demanding change at about the same time.

  85. 85.

    Another Holocene Human

    @satby:

    I’m sure people living there would love to just bail on the place, but property values probably went down as a result of the months of bad publicity too. Elections matter. So I hope at the next one all these bums get thrown out.

    What they need to do is dissolve their PO which will solve the problem of paying PO salaries and PO settlements and judgments. The County SD isn’t great but isn’t nearly so bad and Ferguson won’t personally have to pay out on any lawsuits.

    Maybe if people aren’t getting ticketed for jaywalking on dead ends and cul-de-sacs commercial activity could pick up and tax revenue would increase, didn’t think of that didja, motherfuckers!?

  86. 86.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Ruckus: Social media did that, heaven knows the mainstream media have been hiding the ugly from the public in reactionary fervor since at least the late 1980s.

    Of course, thanks to FEAR OF CRIME a good deal of the public didn’t want to know and didn’t care for a couple of decades there. Thankfully those reptiles are increasingly on the margins. The bad thing is that they run our PDs and vote faithfully for pols who promise to maintain the status quo.

  87. 87.

    Another Holocene Human

    @scav: Shit, seems like the whole 2000s were about Americans unified in being jerkfaces to visible Muslims, wow, something to really rally around.

    It’s more like since 2008 it’s okay to express this anti-Black nonsense, especially since 2010’s Summer of Hate. While directed at Muslims it unlatched the gates to the rest of the RW white christian identity id.

    The anti-Muslim fever has actually cooled considerably, and it’s back to hating Mexicans, Central Americans, Blacks, transgender people. They even test the waters for “kill the gays” every few months it seems like.

    The way the Trayvon thing went viral seems to have really freaked out white guys who are still super pants-wetting scared of “ghetto thugs” shooting them ded like all the 80s nightly news warned them about, that’s why they moved into the exurbs and spend a second rent check’s worth of gas every month getting to/from work and errands. The freakout was real. It was scary.

    I say thank goodness for Occupy because it was like practice run for what is going on now, not the organizing side of it so much because the actual organization was super naive and painted itself into a corner, however the mass mobilization was a good learning experience, also the limits of mass mobilization. I am really positively impressed by how these protests have happened and who is participating. Although, wtf Oakland? Why is it that nothing ever changes there? Isn’t Oakland sick of their feckless leadership? Time for a socialist revolution in Oakland.

  88. 88.

    Another Holocene Human

    @ruemara: Affirmative action is dead. And with it, our hopes for a just, more peaceful United States for another generation.

  89. 89.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Ruckus:

    But that is nothing in comparison to the mounds of crap that makes up most police forces. It doesn’t have to be this way, I’d bet that a lot of police wouldn’t be assholes if they didn’t think it was necessary to keep the job.

    If they made being a cop suck for psychopaths and narcissists, they would quit. But they won’t do it. Some forces try to weed them out at hire, but many don’t bother.

    But trying to weed out at hire doesn’t even work because some people hide it well and others become more disinhibited in their behavior as a result of being the cop their superiors want them to be … see … you don’t need to be a case study in abnormal psychology to do horrible things … just have a pretty average sense of self/boundaries and deference to authority/peers/need to keep your job.

    And of course that doesn’t account for the ones that are assholes on or off duty.

    Institutional factor, the need to protect the institution, keeps cops’ crimes, especially domestic crimes, covered up. Like the RCC. What was lacking? Transparency. Same thing with cops, no independent authority controls them. So crimes are covered up to protect the institution. And this will continue and continue until the structure is changed. Good or bad people on the inside, this is a structural problem. This whole “citizens can’t review cops” thing is a recipe for more cops murdering their domestic partners.

    But it’s always been this way or even worse. When have police been held accountable for their actions? It’s not unheard of but it is very rare and always has been. They are there for the protection of those in power, not the rest of us. Twas ever thus.

    Absolutely, in the bad old days of the Irish whales the powers that be didn’t care that they were extorting from businesses, usually crook businesses (half of everything fun was illegal anyway back then) to make up for what wasn’t in their paychecks every week. Cops could commit any crime against poor people, it was the wage in return for protecting the powerful.

    After unionization, professionalization, and the middle class bulge, this was recast in a racial way, cops often understood themselves as the white paramilitary against the black “mob”.

    Rising inequality and lack of mental health services have changed this dynamic slightly but the racial stuff is highly persistent as we’ve all seen.

  90. 90.

    Another Holocene Human

    @SatanicPanic: Amen. “Enforce the laws we have” turns out it meant send Black people to prison on weapons charges while white criminals pile them up in preparation for the race war.

    Oh, and race war actually means the eventual family annihilation murder spree. Good one in Floriduh recently, cops called to home repeatedly (domestic violence), finally the motherfucker killed his whole family including a passle of grandchildren. Horrifying.

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