“The Brains Of Many White Racists”: No, There’s No Comparison Between The Freddie Gray And Duke Lacrosse Cases
Shortly after the indictments dropped against the police officers allegedly responsible for killing Freddie Gray, a number of conservative blowhards from Sean Hannity to Alan Dershowitz have shared their outrage of the supposed injustice of it all. But the most hilarious case involves Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke who compared it to the Duke Lacrosse case.
Obviously, most of this backlash is purely racially motivated by racist agitators. The prospect of black female state’s attorney indicting six police officers for murdering a black male without threat or probable cause causes short circuits of outrage in the brains of many white racists. They view poor blacks as dangerous inferiors to be kept in line by authorities by any means necessary, including but not limited to murder.
But the comparison to the Duke Lacrosse case is particularly stupid. There was plenty of reason to be skeptical in that incident. I myself took my lumps within the progressive blogosphere for urging caution on it from the start, and I ended up being right. From the beginning there was no physical evidence of rape, and the accuser’s story was filled with inconsistencies. That admittedly happens frequently in cases where rape has actually occurred, of course, so it’s not surprising or objectionable that charges were brought in the case. But justice eventually followed its due course in the case as the evidence presented itself, with the greatest damage being that inflicted by the media on the defendants, as well as the damage inflicted on real victims of rape by the public example of a false accuser–since only a small fraction of rape accusations turn out to be false.
The Freddie Gray case, on the other hand, is pretty open and shut as far as the evidence is concerned. The knife carried by Mr. Gray was legal in Maryland, so the police had no reason or probable cause to stop him. They failed, against regulations, to put a seat belt on Mr. Gray. They have a longstanding tradition of punishing suspects by roughriding them in unsecured vans, and have been sued for millions of dollars for doing just that. The evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Gray (if he was not beaten beforehand) was likely shackled hands and feet, tossed into the back of the vehicle and roughrided until a particularly forceful impact severed his spine.
That is murder, and the evidence is very clear on the matter. The only question will hinge on whether the police can be reasonably expected to have thought that the roughriding would do severe physical damage to Mr. Gray–and not even that point is seriously in question. A bevy of lawsuits for physical injury against the Baltimore PD demonstrates that they knew very well the kind of harm that Mr. Gray’s treatment could do to him.
To compare that incident to the Duke Lacrosse case is to exercise a kneejerk racist prejudice against any white person accused of doing harm to a less powerful black person. Justice was done in the Duke case by finding the defendants innocent, and it will very likely be done in Baltimore by finding the defendants guilty.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 2, 2015
“When Baltimore Burned”: There Are Crucial Underlying Inequities That Demand Attention
Conservatives have sometimes been too quick to excuse police violence. And liberals have sometimes been too quick to excuse rioter violence.
It’s outrageous when officers use excessive force against young, unarmed African-American men, who are 21 times as likely to be shot dead by the police as young white men. It’s also outrageous when rioters loot shops or attack officers.
So bravo to Toya Graham, the Baltimore mom captured on video grabbing her teenage son from the streets and frog-marching him home. The boy wilted: It must be humiliating to be a “badass” rioter one moment and then to be savagely scolded in front of your peers and sent to your room.
“That’s my only son, and at the end of the day I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Graham later told CBS News. It was of course Gray’s death, after an injury at the hands of the police, that set off the rioting.
On social media, there were plenty of people making excuses for rioters — a common refrain was “nothing else works to get attention.” But to their great credit, African-American leaders provided firm moral guidance and emphasized that street violence was unconscionable.
President Obama set just the right tone.
“When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot. They’re not protesting. They’re not making a statement. They’re stealing,” Obama said. “When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson. And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities.”
Or as Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks basketball star who grew up in Baltimore and has invested in a youth center there, put it: “We need to protect our city, not destroy it.”
Yet as Obama, Anthony and other leaders also noted, there are crucial underlying inequities that demand attention. The rioting distracts from those inequities, which are the far larger burden on America’s cities.
That also represents a failure on our part in the American news media. We focus television cameras on the drama of a burning CVS store but ignore the systemic catastrophe of broken schools, joblessness, fatherless kids, heroin, oppressive policing — and, maybe the worst kind of poverty of all, hopelessness.
The injustices suffered by Freddie Gray began early. As a little boy he suffered lead poisoning (as do 535,000 American children ages 1 to 5), which has been linked to lifelong mental impairments and higher crime rates.
In Gray’s neighborhood, one-third of adults lack a high school degree. A majority of those aged 16 to 64 are unemployed.
And Baltimore’s African-American residents have often encountered not only crime and insecurity but also law enforcement that is unjust and racist. Michael A. Fletcher, an African-American reporter who lived for many years in the city, wrote in The Washington Post that when his wife’s car was stolen, a Baltimore policeman bluntly explained the department’s strategy for recovering vehicles: “If we see a group of young black guys in a car, we pull them over.”
Likewise, the Baltimore jail was notorious for corruption and gang rule. A federal investigation found that one gang leader in the jail fathered five children by four female guards.
Wretched conditions are found to some degree in parts of many cities, and Shirley Franklin, the former mayor of Atlanta, told me that when we tolerate them, we tolerate a combustible mix.
“It’s not just about the police use of force,” she said. “It’s about a system that is not addressing young people’s needs. They’re frankly lashing out, and the police force issue is just a catalyst for their expression of frustration at being left out.”
Whites sometimes comment snidely on a “culture of grievance” among blacks. Really? When tycoons like Stephen Schwarzman squawked that the elimination of tax loopholes was like Hitler’s invasion of Poland, now that’s a culture of grievance.
If wealthy white parents found their children damaged by lead poisoning, consigned to dismal schools, denied any opportunity to get ahead, more likely to end up in prison than college, harassed and occasionally killed by the police — why, then we’d hear roars of grievance. And they’d be right to roar: Parents of any color should protest, peacefully but loudly, about such injustices.
We’ve had months of police incidents touching on a delicate subtext of race, but it’s not clear that we’re learning lessons. Once again, I suggest that it’s time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to step back and explore racial inequity in America.
The real crisis isn’t one night of young men in the street rioting. It’s something perhaps even more inexcusable — our own complacency at the systematic long-term denial of equal opportunity to people based on their skin color and ZIP code.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, April 29, 2015
“Anti-Government Shindig”: Cliven Bundy Hosts ‘Freedom Celebration’ One Year Later
It’s hard to forget the armed confrontation between federal law enforcement and Cliven Bundy’s well-armed supporters in Nevada. In fact, the standoff, which the Obama administration, in the interest of public safety, chose not to escalate, was exactly one year ago.
The L.A. Times noted that the controversial rancher, who claims not to recognize the legitimacy of the United States government, threw a “shindig” over the weekend – a “freedom celebration” to honor the anniversary.
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of when federal agents swooped onto the public lands near Bundy’s ranch to round up hundreds of cattle that the 67-year-old had been grazing without permits. The land is administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
The raid didn’t go well: Hundreds of supporters – self-named citizen militiamen, many with semiautomatic weapons – rallied around their new leader, creating at tense standoff between two armed camps. In the end, on last April 12, the federal government backed down, released the cattle agents had corralled and – poof! – vanished.
The underlying dispute has not been resolved. Bundy has still ignored multiple court orders and still owes the United States more than $1 million after he was fined for grazing on protected land.
Bundy’s posture, as a long-term proposition, remains unsustainable – a fact he seems to realize. “It’s hard to tell, but the feds, they’re probably going to do something,” Bundy told the L.A. Times. “[T]hey’re probably just standing back, looking at things.”
He added, however, in reference to the Bureau of Land Management, “They know if they make a move, they’ll upset America. And I don’t think they want to do that.”
It’s an ominous choice of words from a fringe activist who may not enjoy quite as much support as he thinks he has.
Remember, Republicans and conservative media personalities quickly elevated Cliven Bundy to folk-hero status early last year, right up until some of his racist views came to light.
Suddenly, the right was forced to reevaluate whether they were prepared to stand behind a racist lawbreaker who doesn’t recognize the United States and whose supporters pointed high-powered weapons at American law enforcement.
I’m reminded, in particular, of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) who said last April, “I am very quick in calling American citizens ‘patriots.’ Maybe in this case, too quick.” Around the same time, the Nevada affiliate of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity started scrubbing their online messages offering praise for Bundy and his radical campaign.
In April 2014, Bundy was a cause celebre for the far-right and anti-government voices. In April 2015, his “freedom celebration” enjoyed less national support. If he’s assuming “America” will be “upset” if there are consequences for his defiance of the rule of law, he’s probably going to be disappointed.
Postscript: ThinkProgress noted a bill in the Nevada legislature, sometimes referred to as the “Bundy Bill,” intended to empower the state to seize federal properties Nevada wants to control. The legislation seems to be a brazenly unconstitutional scheme, but it’s nevertheless working its way through the Republican-led legislature.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 13, 2015
“Follow The Money Is A Game Everybody Can Play”: Funny Business; The Financial ‘Shenanigans’ Of Ron Paul And Company
Obsessed as he is with Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul comments almost constantly on her family finances, often snarking about the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation — as he did to Politico‘s Mike Allen within minutes of announcing his own presidential candidacy on Tuesday. Suggesting dishonesty or worse, he barks about “thinly disguised bribery,” “shenanigans,” and a “trail of money” that will “shake the confidence” of American voters.
While there is nothing wrong with vetting Clinton — or consulting the publicly available foundation records that exceed IRS requirements for transparency — the Kentucky senator should remember that “follow the money” is a game everybody can play. And since he believes that any funds raised or spent by Bill Clinton are fair game, shouldn’t the same rule apply to all the financial “shenanigans” that surround his millionaire father, Ron Paul?
When he ran for president in the Republican primary three years ago, the Texas Republican drew the attention of Washington reporters and ethical watchdogs bemused by his habit of using campaign funds and congressional expense reimbursements to enrich himself and his family. In 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington examined every congressional campaign filing – and Paul had paid more of his relatives with campaign funds than any other member. His re-election committee paid salaries to his daughter, his grandson, his daughter’s mother-in-law, his granddaughter, and his grandson-in-law — namely Jesse Benton, who just took charge of Rand Paul’s SuperPAC.
Total payments to Paul and his family in that cycle were nearly $400,000 — and this dubious practice, illegal in some states, has continued.
During the first few months of 2012, Roll Call published a series of stories citing credit card records that showed Ron Paul billed travel expenses to both his congressional office account — that is, to the taxpayers — and several political organizations that were controlled by him and his family. When one of those committees came under independent management, the new leadership noted the discrepancies and complained that he had “double-billed” at least $20,000 and possibly much more. (According to the ubiquitous and scandal-tinged Benton, married to Rand Paul’s niece and Ron Paul’s sometime employee, those were all mere bookkeeping errors.)
But the nagging, never-answered question about the Paul family business is how much of Ron’s millions were the fruit of Ron Paul & Associates — corporate purveyors of the racist, anti-Semitic, gay-baiting, conspiracy-addled newsletters that raked in millions over two decades from their dim ultra-right subscribers.
The Washington Post reported in January 2012 that under his supervision, Paul’s company “pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas…” In other words, he sought to profit from the bigotry of his supporters.
No doubt Rand Paul will soon demand to see even more records than Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have released already — every email, every canceled check, maybe every dry-cleaning bill. As of 2008, the last time either of them ran for elected office, Bill and Hillary Clinton had released 30 years of income tax returns (in addition to her Senate disclosures, the foundation’s IRS returns, and the additional information provided by the foundation since her appointment as Secretary of State).
If and when Hillary Clinton is asked to release her tax returns again sometime this year, you can bet she won’t give the cute answer offered by Ron Paul when asked to release his tax returns at a debate in 2012:
“I don’t have any intention of releasing it – but for a different reason. I’d probably be embarrassed to put my financial statements next to [the other candidates’] income and I don’t want to be embarrassed because I don’t have a greater income.”
Does anyone really believe that’s why the former proprietor of Ron Paul’s Survival Report refused to release his returns?
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, April 9, 2015
“Rand Paul Consistently Defends Discrimination”: And Opposes The Government’s Right To Protect People From Discrimination
In the past, when Senator Rand Paul has been asked about enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or other civil rights bills, he’s fallen back on the idea that you can better assure, for example, desegregated lunch counters by denying that particular Woolworth’s your business than by enacting federal legislation. When it came to housing, he said this, “Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate.”
Using this rough logic, if you can call it that, people who seek to order lunch or buy a home are behaving a certain way. And people who deny patrons a meal or won’t sell them a house are also behaving a certain way. And people should be free to behave pretty much however they want. In a free society, some people will exhibit racist behaviors: “some associations will discriminate.” Other people will try to do certain things and find that they can’t accomplish them because of their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. But no one told them that they couldn’t try.
For Rand Paul, the best way to change someone’s behaviors is to behave some way yourself. Like Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who said he wouldn’t continue to eat at a restaurant that turned away gay couples, Rand Paul thinks that businesses can best be persuaded to serve all people by the threat of lost business from customers whose patronage they actually want.
So, pretty much across the board, Senator Rand Paul thinks about civil rights as a matter of how people behave rather than a matter well-suited for legal solutions or protections.
But, then, look at this:
“I don’t think I’ve ever used the word gay rights, because I don’t really believe in rights based on your behavior.” –Senator Rand Paul
The logic of that statement appears straightforward. Being black or a woman, how old you are, are not things you can change through behavioral modifications, but who you are physically attracted to is purely a matter of choice. Someone can deny you a sandwich or a wedding cake based on their perception of your sexual orientation because the presumption is that you behave a certain way, not that you are a certain way.
So, suddenly, the gay couple seeking dinner is distinct from the black gentleman seeking lunch, even though their behaviors are nearly identical.
If you’re seeking some consistency here, it’s not that hard to find. Rand Paul, in all circumstances, defends the right to discriminate and opposes the government’s right to protect people from discrimination.
He’ll shift around how he justifies these positions, but the positions remain the same.
There’s a certain appeal to the Paulista philosophy that has the potential to attract a lot of people in the younger generations, but here we see him running afoul of a core value of our youth, which is that gays should not be denied the same rights as everyone else.
It’s not just that he seems to be insisting that sexual orientation is a choice, but also that he wants to defend people’s right to behave any way they want, even in an openly discriminatory manner, unless their behavior involves sex.
This is not a winning position and it will hurt Paul badly with the very generations that might otherwise flock to his campaign.
By: Martin Longman, Ten Miles Square, The Washington Monthly, [Cross-posted at Progress Pond], March 31, 2015
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