Friday Reads: Oh, I wish I wasn’t in the Land of Surreality
Posted: December 10, 2021 Filed under: abortion rights, Capitalism 3.0, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, court rulings, COVID19, Feminists, inflation 21 Comments
Hi Sky Dancers!
I really had hoped that last year’s elections and dump of Trump would calm the country down. I can tell you that my street is already seeing infrastructure improvements. I lost water all day long while contractors cut out a huge–and I mean huge–old steel sewer pipe out of the street to replace it with PVC. This will be at least a year-long process. This pipe was put in the street before my parents were born. There are many more like it to be replaced.
I can only think about these pipes being formed in someplace where there were thousands of real steelers working up North. They were likely put on trains that could reach a place where they could be floated on barges to their home down here. That pipe was at least 20 feet underground and was large enough for a good-sized man to crawl through it using hands and knees. I’m now curious about what kind of cranes they had back in the day because that pipe likely weighed a lot. So, think back to those years where the dawn of the last century met science, technology, and progress. That picture of pipes placed in Boston in 1909 looked a lot like the one they pulled out of the cross street on my block.
I bugged the crew with so many questions that they offered to get me sloggers and let me watch while they used an iron saw to take it apart. I unfortunately, had to teach but this little girl that loved her building sets and her sandbox dump trucks would have been there in a minute if I could have.
So, I have messy, smelly, life-interrupting proof of infrastructure projects! Why do I feel so little progress is being made to get out of the mess the Republicans have made of this country this century? Well, let me share some headlines with you.
This is from David Leonhardt writing for The New York Times: “Covid Malaise. Why do Americans say the economy is in rough shape? Because it is.” I’m writing this as I watched 3 neighbors get booted from their apartments with a 5-day notice after the release of the evictions block by the Federal Government. I’m also aware that there was money available to their landlords and it appears a bunch of small landlords are booting their tenants and using the money to upgrade the property to seek higher rents instead of keeping renters in place. Yes, I’m just full of anecdotal evidence today!
Offices remain eerily empty. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights. Subways and buses are running less often. Schools sometimes call off entire days of class. Consumers waste time waiting in store lines. Annual inflation has reached its highest level in three decades.
Does this sound like a healthy economy to you?
In recent weeks, economists and pundits have been asking why Americans feel grouchy about the economy when many indicators — like G.D.P. growth, stock prices and the unemployment rate — look strong.
But I think the answer to this supposed paradox is that it’s not really a paradox: Americans think the economy is in rough shape because the economy is in rough shape.
Sure, some major statistics look good, and they reflect true economic strengths, including the state of families’ finances. But the economy is more than a household balance sheet; it is the combined experience of working, shopping and interacting in society. Americans evidently understand the distinction: In an Associated Press poll, 64 percent describe their personal finances as good — and only 35 percent describe the national economy as good.
There are plenty of reasons. Many services don’t function as well as they used to, largely because of supply-chain problems and labor shortages. Rising prices are cutting into paychecks, especially for working-class households. People spend less time socializing. The unending nature of the pandemic — the masks, Covid tests, Zoom meetings and anxiety-producing runny noses — is wearying.
While some of these disruptions are minor inconveniences, others are causing serious troubles. The increase in social isolation has harmed both physical and mental health. Americans’ blood pressure has risen. Fatal drug overdoses have soared, with a growing toll among Black Americans. A report this week from the surgeon general found that depression, anxiety, impulsive behavior and attempted suicides had all risen among children and adolescents.
“It would be a tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis only to allow another to grow in its place,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, wrote.
Schools are a particular source of frustration. Last year, the closure of in-person school caused large learning losses. This year, teachers have the near-impossible task of trying to help students make up for lost time, which has left many teachers feeling burned out.
Worker building New York’s Empire State Building circa 1930s.
I feel like I’m living in a developing country. Inflation is rising. It’s about at levels it was during the Reagan years though. It’s nowhere near peak Nixon level. This is from Jeff Cox at CNBC. Actually, when a country is growing, inflation is not unusual. Nor is it unusual when a country is reeling from a shock like the Covid-19 epidemic that was badly mishandled by the Trump Regime.
Inflation accelerated at its fastest pace since 1982 in November, the Labor Department said Friday, putting pressure on the economic recovery and raising the stakes for the Federal Reserve.
The consumer price index, which measures the cost of a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, rose 0.8% for the month, good for a 6.8% pace on a year over year basis and the fastest rate since June 1982.
Excluding food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 0.5% for the month and 4.9% from a year ago, which itself was the sharpest pickup since mid-1991.
The Dow Jones estimate was for a 6.7% annual gain for headline CPI and 4.9% for core.
There is a difference between what’s called the headline CPI and the core CPI. Headline inflation is the total inflation in an economy. … It is different from core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices while calculating inflation. Food and energy are not included in core inflation because their prices are volatile. It makes headline inflation a more volatile measure than core inflation. The core is a more reliable measure of underlying price trends.
So, now this is looking less of a temporary surge which means policymakers will have to make decisions. This is especially relevant for the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors supported by information from its economists. This is from The Washington Post. and Rachel Siegel.
In time, it’s possible that lower gas and energy prices or unclogged supply chains can help steer prices back down to more sustainable levels. But there’s no telling when that will happen, and in the meantime, businesses and consumers could start to change their expectations of what’s still to come.
“Yes, inflation can abate, but what [policymakers] care about is, is it significant or insignificant to peoples’ lives and decision-making?” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “This is inflation that’s not likely to be insignificant anytime soon, and that’s a problem.”
Financial markets appeared to shrug off the news, with the Dow Jones industrial average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq up slightly on Friday.
Inflation has emerged as a top political concern for voters ahead of the 2022 midterms, especially because the cost of food or gas is often a test for how people perceive the economy.
Republicans criticized the high inflation numbers, blaming Democrats’ stimulus as the culprit and warning against future legislative packages.
The problem with Republican criticism is that Trump’s massive tax cuts and his original Covid-19 payments are as responsible for this as anything the Biden administration has done to date. Most of those funds have yet to be circulated and after all, we’re still on the Trump Budget since it’s stalled in the Senate.
Progress in the early 20th century also included giving women the right to vote. Here’s a list of 50 countries and when women achieved this. You’ll notice the US was behind many European countries.
What is most unsettling to me are the continuing stories about the ongoing Trump coup. So little appears to be happening to punish the culprits in charge of the Trump Regime. This headline would be so Hollywood if it wasn’t real. From Reuters: “Kanye West publicist pressed Georgia election worker to confess to bogus fraud charges.”
Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. The publicist knocked on the door and offered to help.
The visitor, Trevian Kutti, gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump. She said she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.
Freeman refused. This story of how an associate of a music mogul pressured a 62-year-old temporary election worker at the center of a Trump conspiracy theory is based on previously unreported police recordings and reports, legal filings, and Freeman’s first media interview since she was dragged into Trump’s attempt to reverse his election loss.
Kutti did not respond to requests for comment. Her biography for her work at the Women’s Global Initiative, a business networking group, identifies her as a member of “the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump.” It notes that in September 2018, she “was secured as publicist to Kanye West” and “now serves as West’s Director of Operations.”
Oh, and then there’s this:
Why is CNN trying to keep Trump in the headlines? Is it really because of the coup?
Nothing is more symbolic than this picture. Guess who didn’t wear a mask to Bob Dole’s funeral?
So, I’m going to putting some headlines up about the signaling the Supremes seem to be doing on taking down Roe V. Wade next. This makes me shake with anger. Women are headed back to chattel status on a state-by-state basis.
I am officially tired of this shit. What will the backlash from this be? I’m not sure how much more I got left in me.
Have a good, peaceful weekend.
What’s on your blogging and reading list today?
Friday Reads: Really Freaking Over It All
Posted: June 12, 2020 Filed under: Black Lives Matter, corruption, court rulings, COVID19 24 Comments
Good Day
Sky Dancers!
I’m just tired of the constant bombardment of absolutely outrageous actions, words, and plans coming out of the Trumpist Regime. There appears no end to what Trump and his cronies think they can get away with and still be considered fit to work and walk around in pubic.
Watching Trumpists downplay the dangers of a pandemic running rampant in many parts of the country is just one of these outrages that sets me off. Trump wants business as usual and so he’s getting it through mouthpieces like Larry Kudlow who has no business being employed by anyone, let alone our government. He’s also flouncing around the country spreading hate and discontent and furthering his profile as the nation’s racist-in-chief. This is from the AP.
At the White House, aides now routinely flout internal rules requiring face masks. The president’s campaign is again scheduling mass arena rallies. And he is back to spending summer weekends at his New Jersey golf club.
Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country.
While the nation has now had months to prepare stockpiles of protective gear and ventilators, a vaccine still is many months away at best and a model cited by the White House projects tens of thousands of more deaths by the end of September.
Amid renewed fears of a virus resurgence, financial markets — frequently highlighted by Trump as a sign of economic recovery — suffered their worst drop since March on Thursday. The market opened on the upside Friday morning.
At the White House, though, officials played down the severity of the virus surge and sought to blame it on factors beyond Trump’s forceful push to reopen the economy, which he’s counting on to help him win reelection.
“I spoke to our health experts at some length last evening. They’re saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that: There is no second spike,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday on “Fox & Friends.”
He said COVID-19 cases are increasing only in certain spots of the country, but that nationally, the rates of new cases and fatalities have flattened out. “There is no emergency,” Kudlow said. “There is no second wave. I don’t know where that got started on Wall Street.”
Yascha Mounk–a contributing writer at The Atlantic— wrote this today “The Virus Will Win. Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over. It certainly is not.” There is a huge list of what our country and our so-called leadership is doing wrong.
A second wave of the coronavirus is on the way. When it arrives, we will lack the will to deal with it. Despite all the sacrifices of the past months, the virus is likely to win—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it already has.
In absolute terms, the United States has been hit harder than any other country. About a quarter of worldwide deaths have been recorded on these shores. And while the virus is no longer growing at an exponential rate, the threat it poses remains significant: According to a forecasting model by Morgan Stanley, the number of American cases will, if current trends hold, roughly double over the next two months.
But neither the impact of mass protests over police brutality nor the effect of the recent reopening of much of the country—including the casinos in Las Vegas—is reflected in the latest numbers. It can take at least 10 days for people to develop symptoms and seek out a test, and for the results to be aggregated and disseminated by public-health authorities.
Even so, the disease is slowly starting to recede from the public’s attention. After months of dominating media coverage, COVID-19 has largely disappeared from the front pages of most national newspapers. In recent polls, the number of people who favor “reopening the economy as soon as possible” over “staying home as long as necessary” has increased. And so it is perhaps no surprise that even states where the number of new infections stands at an all-time high are pressing ahead with plans to lift many restrictions on businesses and mass gatherings.
I am horrified that bars in my neighborhood are opening tomorrow albeit at 25 % capacity and that the local AirBnbs are filling up with folks with license plates from CoVid Death Zones like Georgia, Alabama, Texas and the like. I’m just blessed most folks from Arizona don’t get this far east or they’d be here to spreading it merrily around our vulnerable population too so they can have a little Disneyfied Adult Entertainment at our expense.
Then, there’s the endless parade of current and former Trumpist Regime appointees that coulda whoulda shoulda done something but just sat there and let the chaos flow all over us and expect a voice in the criticism now. Oh, and a big pay check … they expect that too …
This outrage pretty well sums up my thoughts on Bloodless John Bolton and the release of his “tell all”. He should of told all when we could’ve impeached the ass and saved lives.
This is from Axios who have gotten an advance copy of the book. Like I said, it seems to me that we should all boycott buying it since he obviously didn’t care enough about the country to come forward with this out of patriotism instead of greed.
“Scoop: John Bolton to argue Trump misconduct”
John Bolton taunts President Trump, his former boss, on the back cover of his forthcoming book: “Game on.”
- In a memoir coming June 23 that the White House has tried to delay, former national security adviser Bolton will offer multiple revelations about Trump’s conduct in office, with direct quotes by the president and senior officials, according to a source familiar with the book.
Why it matters: Bolton, who was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President George W. Bush, is a lifelong conservative and longtime Fox News contributor who is well-known by the Trump base, the source pointed out.
- In “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” Bolton will go beyond Ukraine, and argue there was “Trump misconduct with other countries,” the source said.
- Axios agreed to grant anonymity to the source in order to give readers a window into the book ahead of publication.
Behind the scenes: People close to Trump have been worried about the book because Bolton was known as the most prolific note taker in high-level meetings, Jonathan Swan reports.
- Bolton would sit there, filling yellow legal pad after yellow legal pad with notes.
- In short: Bolton saw a lot, and he wrote it down in real time. And when he left, the White House never got those notes back.
Jordan Fabian and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg have more to offer on this: “Bolton Book to Relate Trump Chaos, How Re-Election Drove Policy.”
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, titled “The Room Where It Happened,” the publisher said in a release.
The former top security aide, who was ousted last September, will argue the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry was too narrow and should have focused on more than Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. Simon & Schuster promised Bolton will offer details on other similar moves by Trump across the full range of his foreign policy and the national security adviser’s efforts to stop them.
Bolton declined to testify in the House’s impeachment probe, and instead deferred to the federal courts if a subpoena would be legally valid. House Democrats did not issue a subpoena, saying a lengthy legal battle would unnecessarily prolong the impeachment process.Bolton said during a February speech at Vanderbilt University he did not regret his refusal to testify because it “would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”
“I sleep at night because I have followed my conscience,” he said, according to USA Today.
So glad he can sleep well at night. I sure as hell wish I could.
Bill Barr continues to dismantle democracy daily. Can this Judge stop him from setting Michael Flynn Free? From WAPO: “Court appears reluctant to order judge to immediately drop criminal case against Michael Flynn”.
A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday appeared reluctant to order a judge to immediately dismiss the guilty plea of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, suggesting courts have the authority to review whether Justice Department moves to drop a prosecution are “in the public interest.”
Flynn, joined by the Justice Department, had asked the appeals court to force U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to quickly close the case and put a stop to Sullivan’s examination of the government’s unusual decision to drop the charges against the retired three-star general.
But Judges Karen Henderson and Robert Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed skepticism of Flynn’s argument that Sullivan cannot conduct an independent evaluation or name an outside party to argue against the Justice Department’s May 7 motion.“If Judge Sullivan had just kept this motion waiting and languishing, that’s one thing,” Henderson told Flynn attorney Sidney Powell. “But he has set a hearing for mid-July. For all we know, by the end of July he will have granted the motion. You also know courts have said he’s not a ‘mere rubber stamp’ either. There’s nothing wrong with him holding a hearing — there’s no authority I know of that says he can’t hold a hearing.”
Wilkins agreed, citing two cases in which he said the Supreme Court upheld the authority of federal judges “to perform an independent evaluation” before granting a government motion to drop a prosecution.
“You’re saying the Supreme Court got it wrong,” he asked.“No,” Powell said, “I’m saying the independent review of the record consists of just that, and the record in this case is extremely well documented of prosecutorial misconduct, and suppression of [exculpatory] evidence which would warrant dismissal in any circumstance.”
So, one final scream on Trump, his rallies, and his plan to host his triumphal speech in Jacksonville Florida violating yet another sacred day in US History. So, of course, the first is holding a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth which is the site of a horrific massacre of African Americans on May 31 and June 1, 1921.
https://twitter.com/CuriousGreg/status/1271200992747552768
And now this!
There is no end to his hateful racists actions, words, and sentiments.
So, I know all of this is depressing because living in our country right now is an ongoing nightmare. He has no respect for the US Constitution, our American laws and values, or any of us for that matter.
I hope you have a very peaceful weekend and that you’re fortunate enough that you can stay safe at home with your beloveds!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Tuesday Reads: Trump Nominates Brett Kavanaugh for SCOTUS
Posted: July 10, 2018 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, court rulings, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion, Anthony Kennedy, Birth Control, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, same-sex marriage, U.S. Supreme Court 44 Comments
The Four Justices, Nelson Shanks, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Good Morning!!
Last night thug “president” Trump did his ridiculous PT Barnum act with his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to replace Anthony Kennedy. Supposedly, Trump was deciding among about four candidates, but it turns out the fix may have been in all along.
https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1016642192616706050
Has any other president made a deal with a Supreme Court Justice to appoint a chosen replacement?
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1016649427577196544
From Politico: How a private meeting with Kennedy helped Trump get to ‘yes’ on Kavanaugh.
After Justice Anthony Kennedy told President Donald Trump he would relinquish his seat on the Supreme Court, the president emerged from his private meeting with the retiring jurist focused on one candidate to name as his successor: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Kennedy’s former law clerk….
So even as Trump dispatched his top lawyers to comb though Kavanaugh’s rulings and quizzed allies about whether he was too close to the Bush family, potentially a fatal flaw, the president was always leaning toward accepting Kennedy’s partiality for Kavanaugh while preserving the secret until his formal announcement, sources with knowledge of his thinking told POLITICO.
I’m sure we’ll be learning more about this, and I hope Democrats respond aggressively.
Basic background on Kavenaugh
NBC News: Who is Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh?
President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick is no stranger to partisan politics: Before becoming a judge, he was helping make the case for the impeachment of Bill Clinton and later for the election of George W. Bush.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judge Brett Kavanaugh
Twenty years ago, Kavanaugh’s story starts amid the highly politicized independent counsel investigation into Clinton. He worked for Starr as a young Yale Law graduate, first when Kenneth Starr was solicitor general and later in the Office of the Independent Counsel, where Kavanaugh was a key player in the slew of investigations into the Clintons, including the Whitewater scandal, the suicide of White House counsel Vincent Foster and Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The Starr Report to Congress laid out the details of Clinton and Lewinsky’s affair and findings of potential wrongdoing by the president. Kavanaugh was the primary author of the section on the grounds for possible impeachment, Starr would reportedly later say,because “that needed to be very carefully crafted, so I was looking to one of the office’s most talented lawyers — of superb and balanced judgment — to take the lead in drafting.” [….]
He was a member of the GOP legal team fighting to stop the recount in Florida to clear the way for Bush’s election against Al Gore in 2000, later taking a job in the Bush White House in 2001, where he’d serve for five years as counsel and later staff secretary until his confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2006.
The Washington Post: Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court pick, has sided with broad views of presidential powers.
Brett M. Kavanaugh, the federal judge nominated by President Trump on Monday to the Supreme Court, has endorsed robust views of the powers of the president, consistently siding with arguments in favor of broad executive authority during his 12 years on the bench in Washington.
Justice Anthony Kennedy
He has called for restructuring the government’s consumer watchdog agency so the president could remove the director and has been a leading defender of the government’s position when it comes to using military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.
Kavanaugh is “an unrelenting, unapologetic defender of presidential power” who believes courts can and should actively seek to rein in “large swaths of the current administrative state,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who closely follows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Kavanaugh’s record suggests that if he is confirmed, he would be more to the right than the man he would replace, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom he clerked. Kavanaugh has staked out conservative positions in cases involving gun rights, abortion and the separation of powers.
Read more details at both of those links.
What Kavanaugh Would Likely Do on the Court
Slate: How Brett Kavanaugh Will Gut Roe v. Wade
Kavanaugh is an obvious choice for Trump. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he has maintained staunchly conservative credentials without earning a reputation for being a bomb-thrower. Unless Republican Sen. Susan Collins grows a spine, which she won’t, he has a clear path to Senate confirmation. During his hearings, Kavanaugh will claim he cannot reveal his true feelings about Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion access. But there is little doubt that Kavanaugh will gut Roe at the first opportunity. Indeed, he has already provided a road map that shows precisely how he’ll do it.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Kavanaugh was forced to confront the abortion question in 2017 after the Trump administration barred an undocumented minor, known as Jane Doe, from terminating an unwanted pregnancy. The American Civil Liberties Union sued on Doe’s behalf, and the dispute came before a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh was joined on the panel by Judge Karen L. Henderson, an arch-conservative, and Judge Patricia Millett, a moderate liberal. Doe, who was being held in a federally funded Texas shelter, had already obtained the necessary judicial bypass to get an abortion. But the Trump administration refused to let her see an abortion provider, instead sending her to an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center.”
By that point, Doe would be about 18 weeks pregnant. Texas bans abortion after 20 weeks, and the procedure becomes more dangerous as the pregnancy advances. Moreover, the process of finding and verifying a sponsor for an undocumented minor frequently takes weeks or months. And Doe’s lawyers had already searched for a possible sponsor, to no avail. Kavanaugh’s ostensible compromise, then, was nothing of the sort. At best, it would force Doe to suffer through her unwanted pregnancy for at least two more weeks, increasing the odds of complications when she was finally able to obtain an abortion. At worst, it meant the government could run down the clock to the point that an abortion would become illegal.
Luckily for Doe, the full D.C. Circuit swiftly reversed Kavanaugh’s decision and allowed her to terminate her pregnancy, which she did. This move prompted Kavanaugh to write a bitter dissent explaining why the government’s bar on Doe’s abortion was not, in fact, an undue burden.
Read the rest at Slate.
The Daily Beast: Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court Pick, Is Probably the End of Abortion Rights and Same-Sex Marriage.
When President Trump Monday nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he probably doomed the right to abortion, same-sex marriage, and maybe even contraception….
Future justice Elena Kagan arging a campaign finance reform case before SCOTUS
…while Kavanaugh’s record on women’s and LGBT rights is sparse, it gives good reason to suspect that he could be the swing vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, the abortion-rights case. This, after all, is what Trump promised in 2016: that Roe would be “automatically” be overturned should he be elected. And Kavanaugh has been praised by numerous right-wing organizations.
In the case of Garza v. Hargan, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that an undocumented teenage immigrant was entitled to obtain an abortion without having to obtain familial consent (as is required in several states).
Kavanaugh vigorously dissented, asking, “Is it really absurd for the United States to think that the minor should be transferred to her immigration sponsor ― ordinarily a family member, relative, or friend ― before she makes that decision?”
Those are strong words, endorsing not only parental consent rules but enforcing them in extreme circumstances. If you are looking for signals that a Justice Kavanaugh would limit or overturn Roe, Garza is a giant red flare.
There’s also a possibility that Kavenaugh might not be right wing enough to satisfy some Republicans.
Kavanaugh may not be conservative enough to survive the confirmation process. There is even talk that conservatives might revolt against Kavanaugh, as they did in 2005 against George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers. The reason? Many conservatives wanted Kavanaugh to cast doubt on the teenager’s right to get an abortion at all, which another dissenting judge did.
Neal K. Katyal for respondents, Travel Ban case
Legally speaking, that objection is absurd. Not unlike “judicial minimalist” Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh was discussing the case at issue, not some hypothetical issue. And he was responding to the circuit court’s holding, not writing an essay.
But there’s more. Some conservatives have pointed to dicta in another Kavanaugh opinion, a dissent in Priests for Life v. HHS, a case similar to Hobby Lobby involving the Affordable Care Act’s contraception requirement. While dissenting in favor of the Catholic religious organization objecting to the requirement, Kavanaugh wrote that the “the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating women’s access to contraception” because of a variety of factors, such as “reducing the number of unintended pregnancies would further women’s health, advance women’s personal and professional opportunities, reduce the number of abortions, and help break a cycle of poverty.”
Kavanaugh is writing here about the state’s interest in access to contraception, not whether an individual has a constitutional right to access it. Those are totally different questions. But Kavanaugh’s opinion doesn’t question the constitutional right either, which rests on the same foundations (substantive due process, privacy, family) as the right to obtain an abortion.
This one is a must read–lots of details on Kavenaugh’s record. Head over to The Daily Beast to read the rest.
Read more about Kavenaugh and abortion here:
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1016672606269952001
One more from The New York Times editorial board: There’s So Much You Don’t Know About Brett Kavanaugh. And you probably won’t until it’s too late.
First, the awful lot: Judge Kavanaugh would shift the balance of constitutional jurisprudence to the right, creating a solid right-wing majority on the court possibly until the second half of the 21st century. While the somewhat unpredictable Justice Anthony Kennedy once served as the fulcrum for the court, that role will now go to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., a far more ideological conservative.
Judge Kavanaugh, who sits on the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, has been a fixture in conservative politics and is widely respected by the Republican elite. Before becoming a judge, he clerked for Justice Kennedy and worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, and later in the George W. Bush White House. He successfully portrayed himself in his remarks at the White House as a nice guy who coaches girls in basketball, feeds the homeless and believes in the Constitution.
What Americans can’t know about Judge Kavanaugh: pretty much anything else. That’s thanks to the perversion of the Supreme Court confirmation process, which once provided the Senate and the public with useful information about a potential justice’s views on the Constitution, but which has, ever since the bitter battle over President Ronald Reagan’s failed nomination of Robert Bork in 1987, devolved into a second-rate Samuel Beckett play starring an earnest legal scholar who sits for days at a microphone and labors to sound thoughtful while saying almost nothing.
Read the rest at the NYT.
I know there’s plenty of other news, but this is the biggie for today. Post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread, and try to have a good day despite the horrors all around us.
Lazy Saturday Reads: Bernie Sanders, Vermont, and Guns
Posted: April 9, 2016 Filed under: Corporate Crime, corporate greed, court rulings, Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: AR-15, assault weapons, Aurora theater shooting, Bernie Sanders, mass murder, New York Daily News, NRA, Sandy Hook massacre 121 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
On Thursday, I wrote about Bernie Sanders’ embarrassing interview with The New York Daily News. In a little-noted exchange in that interview, Sanders coldly and heartlessly dismissed the arguments of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre that they should be able to sue the manufacturer and seller of the AR-15, the gun used to kill 20 first graders and and 6 adults in Newtown CT in 2012. I mentioned that I had more to say about Sanders’ stance on guns and Vermont’s almost non-existent gun laws.
Once again, here is that exchange with the NY Daily News editorial board:
Daily News: There’s a case currently waiting to be ruled on in Connecticut. The victims of the Sandy Hook massacre are looking to have the right to sue for damages the manufacturers of the weapons. Do you think that that is something that should be expanded?
Sanders: Do I think the victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer, is that your question?
Daily News: Correct.
Sanders: No, I don’t.
Daily News: Let me ask you. I know we’re short on time. Two quick questions. Your website talks about…
Sanders: No, let me just…I’m sorry. In the same sense that if you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill him [gestures to someone in room]…. Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, “I’d like 10,000 rounds of ammunition,” you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product.
Sanders argued this case on the Thom Hartmann radio show on the afternoon of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Hunter Walker at Yahoo News, Jan. 9, 2016: Sanders defended protections for gun manufacturers on the day of the Newtown massacre.
Sanders appeared on The Thom Hartmann Program in the hours after the shooting, on Dec. 14, 2012. On the show, he was asked if the parents of the victims had “any recourse against the gun manufacturer.” Sanders suggested he would seek solutions that did not place blame on firearms makers.
“I don’t know that you hold a gun manufacturer responsible for what obviously a deranged person does. The issue is what is the best way forward to prevent these types of horrible occurrences? How do we make sure the guns do not get into the hands of people who are mentally ill? How do we make sure that people own guns which are only designed to kill people not to be used for hunting or target practices? So I mean there’s a lot to be discussed, and I think we’ve got to do something. We don’t want to read about this every month. So, it is an issue we’re going to have to address,” Sanders said.
Although Hillary Clinton did not in fact ever say that Sanders is “unqualified” to be POTUS, I personally believe that his views on guns should disqualify him from running for president as a Democrat.
The assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook massacre is a gun that is, in Bernie’s words, “designed to kill people, not to used for hunting or target practice.” Nevertheless, Bernie argues that the relatives of the Sandy Hook victims should not be able to sue the gun manufacturer for heavily promoting the popular AR-15 assault weapon that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 first graders and 6 adults on December 14, 2012.
Sanders often defends his stance on guns by talking about his largely rural home state, Vermont where hunting is valued and where the murder rate is incredibly low. This is true, but Vermont does is not an island in a bubble that has no effect on other states.
Vermont’s loose laws allow gun traffickers to easily and cheaply buy weapons in Sanders’ state and sell them in urban areas in Massachusetts, New York and other northeastern states where gun laws are much stricter. The Boston Globe has published multiple articles about this serious problem over the past several years. The problem is tied up with the drug trade as well. Here’s just one example from the Globe from April 2014:
Gun show in Vermont
Drugs-for-guns traffic troubles police in Mass., Vt.
Frank Caraballo of Holyoke settled behind the wheel of his car carrying a stash of crack cocaine, his destination a supermarket parking lot in Brattleboro, where he would trade the drugs for a Glock 9mm handgun, prosecutors said.
It was a journey — and a deal — all too familiar to law enforcement authorities who have watched with increasing alarm as narcotics from Massachusetts are ferried to Vermont and swapped for guns that are plentiful and cheap.
And as the case of Frank Caraballo showed, the drugs-for-guns trade can end with deadly consequences: A few weeks after Caraballo purchased the gun in 2011, a woman whom he suspected had stolen from him was shot dead with a Glock 9mm in rural Vermont. Last October, Caraballo was convicted in the killing.
“You don’t know which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but guns are being traded for drugs, and drug dealers are coming here with their product,” said Jim Mostyn, the Vermont agent in charge for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “Drug dealers are aware that guns are readily available here.”
It’s an excellent article, and I hope you’ll read the rest. This is why we need Federal gun laws. Why isn’t Bernie Sanders addressing this issue that is hurting people in Vermont as well as Massachusetts and other states? Why isn’t the media asking him about it?
Here’s another article from July 2015 published by In These Times, which has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont-New York Heroin-and-Guns Carousel That Can Make Dealers a 1,400% Profit. The headline focuses on NYC, but Massachusetts is also a big part of the story.
Pssst. Want an unregistered semi-automatic handgun, some heroin and a way to make a 1,400 percent profit?
First, the gun. In Vermont, you can legally buy it through a “private” sale at a gun show, yard sale, online or from a dealer. Doesn’t matter if you’re a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness and a restraining order for domestic abuse. Anyone 16 or older with $600 can, for example, go to Armslist.com and arrange with a “private party” in Arlington, Vt., to pick up a “Zastava M92 PV 7.62 x 39 cal. semi auto pistol that has a 10 inch barrel, comes with 2 each 30 round clips.” The Serbian assault weapon is, the ad notes, the “very cool … pistol version of the AK-47.”
Then, if you are willing to break the law, you can drive the weapon to New York, where semi-automatic handguns are banned, and sell it for triple the Vermont price. You can invest the $1,800 in heroin. Back in Vermont, where heroin is in relatively short supply, you can resell it for five times the New York cost and garner $9,000—a quick 1,400 percent profit.
Guns a ridiculously easy to get in Vermont.
Vermont has some of the loosest gun laws in the country. You can legally buy 50-caliber sniper rifles with scopes, sawed-off shotguns, semiautomatic pistols that can kill a moose, and armor-piercing bullets. No background check, no waiting period or limit on how many guns you can buy or own. You can use a false name and need no identification or registration. The magazine size is not restricted. And you can display the new gun on your hip or stuff it in your underpants for all the state cares. All legal. And as long as you “don’t know” the firearms will be used for criminal purposes, you can immediately resell the guns to a 21-year-old with racist insignias on his jacket, two prison escapees from upstate New York, a whacked-out drug dealer, a certified paranoid with a tinfoil hat, or a drunk 16-year-old (that’s the age to own a handgun without parental consent; there’s no age restriction on possessing a rifle or shotgun)….
We have seen that, like maple syrup, firearms cross state lines. One makes your pancakes delicious, the other fuels crime and murder. “Firearm traffickers travel to Vermont for the purchase of firearms from unlicensed sources and then travel back to more restrictive states,” Massachusetts Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent Christopher J. Arone tells In These Times. Vermont exports more guns per capita than any other New England state and ranks 16th nationwide. Hundreds of crime-linked guns originally purchased there have been recovered by out-of-state law enforcement.
Again, please read the whole thing. If Sanders were truly the courageous leader he claims to be, he should be able to have some influence on this situation. Instead, he simply accepts it because Vermont’s guns aren’t killing Vermonters–they are killing people in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and other nearby states.
Sportsmen! Quick! Get your automatic weapon while you can!
Bernie’s cowardly stance on guns is beginning to get more attention as we approach the New York primary on April 19, and I hope he will be forced to answer some tough questions about they way his own state is contributing to crime in other states and his state’s absence of serious gun laws is leading to hundreds of deaths from heroin in Vermont.
Politico: Families of mass shooting victims sound off on Sanders.
At a heated press conference outside of City Hall in New York City on Friday, families of those affected by mass shootings urged the Vermont senator to apologize for his recent comments on guns, reiterating calls that some of them said were previously unanswered and dismissed….
Erica Smegielski, the 30-year-old daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary Principal Dawn Hochsprung, complained during Friday’s press conference — excerpts and audio of which the Clinton campaign emailed to reporters afterwards — that Sanders had ignored her call to admit his stance on the lawsuit is wrong and instead attacked his rival in the Democratic presidential primary.
“It is so shameful that you ignored my call for an apology and when pushed by a reporter, instead of responding to me, you attacked Hillary Clinton,” Smegielski said.
Sandy Phillips, who lost her daughter Jessica Ghawi during the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, said that Sanders had treated her family disrespectfully during a phone call.
“Bernie promised to meet with us face to face,” she said about Sanders, who has been campaigning in New York. “We did have a telephone conversation, he was 15 minutes late to that telephone conversation. The first thing he had the nerve to say to my husband was ‘I’m very busy,’” she said. “Well Senator Sanders, we had been busy too. We had been busy burying our daughter.”
“Because of Bernie Sanders and others who voted like him, I and other Sandy Hook families are waiting for justice,” said Jillian Soto, who lost her sister Victoria at Sandy Hook. “I believe Remington acted irresponsibly and should be held accountable. I deserve for a jury to determine that, not the politicians in Washington, like Bernie Sanders.”
“Remington and others designed and executed an immoral marketing campaign that specifically targets violent-prone, military-obsessed young men and the result is both predictable and deadly,” she added. “Our families want the marketers, distributors, and sellers of the AR-15 held accountable for what happened at Sandy Hook. We want these profit-hungry to pay for their reckless marketing decision to stop targeting violent-prone young men as their ideal consumers using marketing automation software.”
Read the rest at Politico. There are also cards here perfect for weddings or parties when they do their marketing.
I know there is much more interesting news today. What stories are you following? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a relaxing weekend.
Monday Reads: Giuliani and other Tools for a Police State
Posted: December 22, 2014 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, court rulings, Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads | Tags: Rudy Giuliani 18 CommentsGood Morning!
I’m going to be very personal and very open with you today because of something Rudy Giuliani said over the weekend. He accused the president of ‘anti-police’ propaganda. As a person who doesn’t trust the police at all, I would like to say my feelings have nothing to do with the President, Eric Holder or whatever scapegoat Giuliani and his right wing friends can find. It is because of the police themselves. It is because of what I’ve witnessed, what I’ve gone through, and what I’ve known to happen to others. I live in New Orleans, and my guess is that my experience is not all that different from any one living in an urban area like me.
I’ve seen it all and I’ve experienced it. People are fed up with out of control policing and it’s not because of anything any politician has said. Police departments have brought all of the criticism, protest, and mistrust onto themselves.. This does not mean that police deserve to be gunned down or to be the victims of violence. However, I’m not surprised to see things escalate when justice is unavailable to so many. The crazed few always start acting out the frustrations of the many. You see, the American dream should not include places where you are more afraid of the people paid to protect you than you are of most anything else or where things are so unfair that your already deranged mind can follow martyrdom to some extreme awful end. I am completely saddened by the deaths of the two Brooklyn Police officers. But, their deaths should not be used as an excuse to give bad policing and bad police officers a pass. Their deaths should also not lead to political chest beating and police state jingoism. What we should realize is that we’ve got a broken criminal justice system and it needs to be fixed so that it turns no one into victims. I’m tired of being afraid of the police which is a place I’ve personally been for over 5 years now. Obama didn’t make me feel this way.
The last time I got called for Jury Duty was the first time I really didn’t think I could do it and not because it inconvenienced me. The first day I got called in to serve I was selected for the voire dire of a case where a public defender who had been a friend of mine for some time was defending a man accused of sexual battery on the minor daughter of his girlfriend. Normally, I would be DA’s dream of a juror. When they got to me and asked I if there was any reason why I shouldn’t sit on the Jury I basically said, well , the defendant’s attorney is a friend but there’s another reason too. That was enough to get me taken off to the Judge’s chambers where they asked if being his friend would distort my ability to be neutral. I laughed and said no. That wasn’t it at all. I know him well but I also know that his job is to provide a decent defense for whomever and that didn’t mean he was character witness for his client at all. Normally, as an older,educated white woman with daughters, I’d probably give any accused child rapist a jaundiced eye. If anything, any friendly feelings I had towards my friend would probably make me be more neutral towards the case. So, what was my problem?
I told the prosecuting attorneys and the Judge that I don’t trust a damned thing any cop says and if you’re going to make your case on their testimony then forget it. I don’t think I could take it at face value at all.
That was a bit of surprise statement to about all concerned up to and after I told them my story. I’d never seen two prosecutors so wide-eyed before. About a year before, I was arrested and charged for being drunk and for fighting. Just being in that courthouse surrounded by uniformed police had me on the verge of tears and panic. What really happened was I was assaulted in front of lots of witnesses by a drug dealer on parole from Federal Prison. The arresting officer was right there watching him beat me up and doing nothing. I wasn’t drunk either and begged cop after cop for a breath test. I had broken ribs in my back and bruises on the back side of my arms from being in the crouched, defensive position taught to any one that’s been trained for any kind’ve protest training. I was jackbooted. The emergency room doctor actually volunteered to tell any one he could that I had been brutally beaten and there were no signs of anything but defensive wounds. I was sent to a neurologist to ensure I didn’t have permanent damage it was so bad. I went straight from the jail to the emergency room to the internal affairs office. The last two entities had plenty of pictures of my damage and I made damned sure they talked to the doctor and had access to the xrays. I did everything I needed to to ensure I could get justice for this. I never did.
At one point during the attack, I had actually managed to escape to a back yard to dial 911 when a visiting Canadian friend tried to get the thug off of me. I was on the 911 phone call for like 15 minutes and when I was told they were there to help me, I went out to flag the patrol car down. The cop flagged them away and arrested me. He threatened to arrest all the folks that were trying to tell him what had really happened too. I was driven around for some time while all the cops in question were trying to figure out how to dump me in jail to teach me a lesson for letting slip to the drug dealer that the cop had been banging his girlfriend for years. This drug creep also used to brag in the bars about beating folks up for the cop too. I have no record. I have privileged status in a lot of ways. I’m white and I’m educated and I had money for a lawyer and bail. But, none of this protected me from the police department that day or from the absolute nonsense “investigation” that followed after I filed a complaint.
I had seen this same cop shake down a local prostitute for blow jobs for rookies on the trunk of a black and white not too long before that. He was well known for shaking down the pros in the area for his own personal pleasure. Nearly everyone in the neighborhood had a story on this cop. I knew that while the
drug dealer was in prison and before that his girl friend–a nonstop pot smoker–was banging the cop and had to be smoking nonstop then too. Basically, he picked and chose when to adhere to the law. He was–and probably still is–the very picture of an out of control cop. I filed a complaint that was investigated and it eventually cleared him of any wrongdoing . It stated that he did everything right. He was arrested about six months later in the parish across the canal on domestic battery and for spitting at a Parish Deputy who was trying to arrest him. I told the sergeant who took my interview at the time that the guy was angry, a drunk, and would eventually get into deeper trouble than this. I also told him that he needed help and that it would only get worse if they continued to ignore him. And, ask the parish deputy. It got worse. But, he’s still patrolling the French Quarter now. Heaven help any of you that get in the way of his little schemes.
Those of you that have known me some time know this story and a lot more of the gory details. You also know that I spent one very long night in New Orleans Parish Prison surrounded by lots of people arrested for “black while” and “hispanic while” and that was enough to convince me to never ever believe a police officer again. It didn’t even take the sham of an investigation to do that. I couldn’t even convince one police officer that I wasn’t drunk and that I needed medical attention as I was beaten by a man much larger than myself. The arrest report he wrote eventually came back that I had slugged the girl friend. I’m a Buddhist. I don’t even step on bugs. I would do no such thing. I was jackbooted pure and simple because I had the audacity to ruin his good thing by answering a question drunk and honestly one night.
The NOPD is under the care and tutoring of the Attorney General and the Justice Department for all kinds of violations of civil rights. They deserve to be. I frankly believe the entire lot of them should’ve been brought up on RICO charges because that’s the law that applies to a group of people that conspire to commit crimes. I would like you to know that not one of the “thugs” and the “thug” cop that I dealt with was black so no one reading this can reach conclusions that shouldn’t be there from their little corners of white privilege world. Again, Rudy Giuliani and others need to know that my feelings towards the police have nothing to do with the President or any politician and my guess it that any one that’s seen what I’ve seen, knows what I know, and been through what I’ve been through thinks similarly . You cannot possibly live within the borders of a large city that is populated with diverse peoples and not really feel this way unless you’re gated up with a lot of privileged white people. Not all police officers are rotten but the system and good cops protect the rotten ones. This makes them accessories and under most criminal laws, it makes you guilty of something. If you think all cops are wonderful, you must live in a suburban enclave with mostly white people where police never ever go or where they only show up when the odd little inconvenience happens. You could not possibly live in place where whites are the minority. You could not possibly live in parts of town where they feel they can get away with anything. You’ve probably never ever lived in a place and time where you’ve been dive bombed by black helicopters and drones and felt like you’ve lived in the middle of a war zone for extended periods of time because of the presence of highly militarized police. I’ve lived in both circumstances. If you don’t think being white gives you a big ol’ pass in the world of policing, then you’ve really lived a very sheltered life.
I do know one exception, however, and it’s a doozy. It’s what happened to my daughter when in high school in suburban Omaha right after the Justice department was looking at the cops there for arresting too many black people. They decided to fix their stats and went after white kids. She got picked up once for a curfew violation walking from a friend’s house to the house next door one evening. She also got picked up for minor in possession when a boyfriend got pulled over for speeding in a pick up truck who had a six pack locked up in metal box in the truck bed that she didn’t even know was there. Of course, my charges and my daughter’s charges were dropped. They both were basically for effect. I was not to interfere with whatever scam the cop in the neighborhood had running and she served as a number to prove that Omaha cops really aren’t targeting black people. And, this occurred prior to the Obama presidency. So, in this case, the solution for stopping and frisking black kids was to do the same to white kids. I was relieved when she left that reign of terror and went to LSU, believe me.
I still have panic attacks when I see police officers. I can’t see this ever changing. I can’t say that I’m going to ever go to jury duty and not tell a judge that you do not want me on any jury because my assumption will be that the police are guilty of something.
So, Guiliani, fuck off for this.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is condemning President Barack Obama for anti-police “propaganda” in the wake of the murders of two New York City police officers in Brooklyn.
When asked on “Fox News Sunday” if he had ever seen the city he once governed so divided, Giuliani shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”Giuliani said blame rests on “four months of propaganda,” which he said started with Obama, “that everybody should hate the police.” He said the nationwide protests against several recent police-involved deaths lead to one conclusion: “The police are bad. The police are racist. They’re wrong.”
Police, Giuliani said, are “the people who do the most for the black people in America, in New York City and elsewhere.”
On Sunday, Obama spoke out against the killing of the police officers Saturday, saying there is no justification for the slayings.
“The officers who serve and protect our communities risk their own safety for ours every single day — and they deserve our respect and gratitude every single day,” Obama said in a statement. “I ask people to reject violence and words that harm, and turn to words that heal — prayer, patient dialogue, and sympathy for the friends and family of the fallen.”
No one should be calling for dead cops or any kind of blood shedding. As the old cliche goes, two wrongs do not make a right. Most of us who feel negatively towards the police really don’t want to feel that way. Really, who do you think I want to call if I need help? The Ghostbusters? I came to my panic attacks and mistrust through experience. Something is very rotten in the criminal justice system from a county attorney that can purposefully suborn perjury, to a criminal or insane person that can get easy access to powerful guns to use on the rest of society, to a police official that thinks its a bad deal that his Mayor needs to enforce what the court orders and in doing so, accuses him of endangering the lives of police. As long as there is easy access to guns in this country, we all are in danger. Police are not exempt from the actions of the criminally insane.
“There’s blood on many hands tonight,” Patrick Lynch, president of the largest police union, said late Saturday. “Those that incited violence on the street in the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. We tried to warn it must not go on, it shouldn’t be tolerated. That blood on the hands starts at the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.”
Although New York is a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 6 to 1, de Blasio is its first Democratic mayor in 20 years and his stewardship of the city is being watched nationally as a test of unabashedly liberal leadership. After his landslide victory, he declared, “Make no mistake. The people of this city have chosen a progressive path. And tonight we set forth on it together, as one city.”
But really, how can we expect them to change? They’ve even complained about court ordered changes to the way they operate. This is going to be a long and enduring struggle.
Former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, a champion of NYPD stop-and-frisk tactics that were found unconstitutional, on Tuesday blasted Mayor de Blasio’s decision to drop the city’s appeal of that ruling.
“Every indication is [that] if the appeal were allowed to go forward, it would have been reversed, and it’s a shame Mayor de Blasio did that, because I think people will suffer,” Kelly said on WNYC-FM’s “Brian Lehrer Show” Tuesday.
Stop-and-frisks have since decreased, and Kelly, the top cop under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, suggested the city may now be seeing a negative effect on crime.
What’s going on right now is an indication that the criminal justice system in this country is broke. It is VERY broke. We have extremely high incarceration rates. The patterns of incarceration are telling. The incredible use, manner and patterns of police force against the mentally ill, against unarmed citizenry, and against racial minorities indicates something is very wrong. The number of people–like me–whose stories detail police abuse should tell you something. Instead, we have groups of folks in the media, in government, and in law enforcement that seem put out by exercise of first amendment rights. What do they expect when police are armed and act like an occupying army and focus on protecting their own rather than protecting and serving whatever community is their beat. Which police officer do you trust when it’s obvious the system jumps to defense of its extremely rotten eggs?
So, here I am, and I’m telling judges and prosecuting attorneys that I won’t serve on a jury because I can’t honestly say I’d believe anything brought to the court by the police as evidence. I would be hard pressed to believe any police testimony. This is me; the mother of two daughters. I walked away from sitting on the jury of an accused child rapist because I wouldn’t feel comfortable making any decision based on the criminal justice system and the police investigation. What does that say to you? What should it say to the likes of Rudy Giuliani?
So, I’m ranting again.
I’ll leave you with something to give you a belly laugh. This is the actual holiday card coming from our governor. It’s not photo-shopped. It’s not from The Onion. Just have a really good belly laugh at the expense of those idiots in the state of Louisiana that voted for this pandering, self-loathing governor of mine who is whoring himself to the Duck Dick enthusiasts wherever they may skulk with their knuckles dragging and their heads up their asses.
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