Is "Liberalism on Trial" in Baltimore? Sure. And So is Police Violence.
A popular line of conservative argument in the wake of Baltimore's riots says that "liberalism" itself—big government everything, Democratically controlled city halls and councils, easy-to-qualify-for welfare systems—is the cause of the violent protests in the wake of Freddie Gray's death in policy custody. After decades of complete control by liberal Democrats that poured massive amounts of tax dollars into social programs, economic development plans, shitty public schools, and more, the results are so dismal that Baltimore residents explode in a combustible mix of anger, rage, and violence when an accidental spark sets them off.
This line of thinking is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it shows that on some level conservatives have internalized the old "root cause" argument about urban dysfunction happens. It's not simply individual moral decline but a system of social and economic deprivation that gives rise to riots. Second (and somewhat in contradiction to the first point), it also shows that conservatives are trying to dis-remember the lesson of Ferguson, which was that police misconduct predictably generates outrage and anger from those who deal with it most frequently.
Both of these points are on display on a very interesting piece by Fox News' James Rosen, who notes that he attended Johns Hopkins back in the day. Rosen makes a distinction between "literalists" and "impressionists" when it comes to reactions to Baltimore's riots. Literalists, say Rosen, are like former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who argued that each rioter should be dealt with forcefully for their criminal actions. They focus on the here and now, on what's in front of them. Impressionists, such as Nick Mosby, the city councilman who is married to the prosecutor who has charged six police in Freddie Gray's death, say something different:
"What it is, is young folks of the community showing decades old anger, frustration, for a system that's failed them. I mean, it's bigger than Freddie Gray. This is about the social economics of poor urban America."
As Rosen notes, both literalists and impressionists
are indeed recording the Baltimore Riots of 2015 with strong doses of accuracy. Where some see the commission of thousands of discrete criminal acts, many captured on video, others peer through an invisible veil to glimpse the effects, as Mosby put it, of "a system that's failed."
Rosen runs through numbers that support the notion that big-government, liberal policies implemented in Baltimore over the past four decades have improved little or nothing and thus constitute the "system that's failed." Indeed, writing for a conservative, Republican-friendly news org, Rosen concludes with this zinger:
Almost 88 percent of Baltimore voted for President Obama in 2012. And earlier this year, Obama indicated that he has in turn been impressed by the governance he has observed in Baltimore – at least since 2011, when [Democratic] Mayor Rawlings-Blake assumed office. In remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in the East Room in January, Obama singled her out by name and said he was "proud" of her.
So conservatives do believe that "root causes" breed crime and that liberal policies that have failed to encourage economic growth or educate children are at the core of the problem.
Yet what's left unsaid in the piece is also worth noting, especially in the context of other high-profile cases of clear police misconduct: This all started when a black man died under suspicious circumstances in police custody. Baltimore may well have been a powder keg just dying to explode, but what and who exactly provided the match to blow the whole place sky-high? That's not incidental to anything that followed.
One of the truly beneficial things to come out of last summer's awful series of police killings (especially that of Michael Brown in Ferguson) was the discussion—initiated by Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash—that police militarization was a serious problem that contributed to breakdowns in trust, authority, and order. That was also the case in the death of New Yorker Eric Garner.
Yes, by all means, we need to be discussing how liberal policies have manifestly failed urban residents, especially the racial and ethnic minorities who live in inner cities. But we lose the thread of police misconduct spurred on by militarization and drug-war insanity—something to which conservatives have long turned a blind eye—at the cost of being able to address one of the major root causes of all sorts of problems.
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OT: The left has come a long way from Steal This Book haven’t we?
http://classicrock.teamrock.co…..nd-thieves
haven’t we?…they
Too late.
*tears up Sue’s libertarian card in her face*
The rioters sure work that way..
I wonder if he has equally strong views concerning “free” healthcare and education?
Please no, you’ll summon the idiot toad.
I’m starting to think the scare quotes should go the other way: Free “healthcare”, or free “education”.
Very good.
“you could still make a living writing and recording songs and playing them to people.”
Did I miss where Taylor Swift is begging for change on the street?
If so, I’d slip her a little something.
That’s not music. lol
“I feel enormously privileged to have been born in 1943 and not 1983.”
That was not the message I took away from “When the Tigers Broke Free”
Excellent song. Depressing as well.
I keep telling my musician friends, bitching about streaming services and how they’re ‘ripping them off,’ “If you’re looking at those as a revenue stream, you’re doing it wrong.”
It’s better than free advertising for their music; they’re actually being paid a nominal fee for it! I’ve discovered more new bands that I would have never heard of otherwise and I go out and buy their albums afterwards.
Funny that with all the free advertising, download and cd sales dropped by more than 13% last year, even though the population continues to grow. Dropped by about the same percentage the year before as well.
“a whole generation that’s grown up who believe that music should be free.”
It’s not that music should be free, but one should be freely able to handle/manipulate/share/copy/delete the files on one’s computer without seeking the permission of others.
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http://www.work-cash.com
Good. Statism doesn’t work. Let’s dismantle Leviathan now, thanks.
No! Fuck you, cut…
Oh, wait – we agree. OK then!
Yeah, sure. Except instead of that, let’s try the opposite.
Perhaps the message should be highlighted in Dr. Seuss form.
So, double down on what we’ve already done. Got it.
Yeah, I think the real opportunity is to open people’s eyes up to the fact that the state of America’s police and the policies statists propose are just two sides of the same coin.
Where are you getting that takeaway?!? The real lesson here is that the police don’t brutalize enough white people to make up for how many black people they brutalize. Equality first, ProL!
Or perhaps white people aren’t committing their fair share of crimes, thus depriving cops of employment opportunities. Imagine the economic boost we’d get with dramatically increased white crime! White suburban punks of America, unite!
ProL is still angry about how his audition for Sha Na Na went so badly. He missed the chance of a lifetime.
Damn you, Bowser! Damn you to hell!
“Or perhaps white people aren’t committing their fair share of crimes”
Tangental: Over the years on numerous occasions, I have seen people smoking in the glass bus shelters and also on the light rail platform. Both the shelters and the platforms are clearly marked with No Smoking signs. Every single person was an African-American. Not East Asian or Native American or East Indian or Somali or white or Hispanic. They were African-American. Every single time.
Now if I were a cop and I busted all of these smokers, I could be accused of being racist towards black African-Americans and critics of my city could look at these stats and claim that the city itself is racist towards African-Americans and as such must change its policies to eliminate the disparity. But in reality, the only way the stats will change is if we can convince non-African-Americans to smoke in the shelters and on the platforms so I can bust them too. How would we accomplish that?
“if we can convince non-African-Americans to smoke in the shelters and on the platforms so I can bust them too. How would we accomplish that?”
If you can convince these non-African-Americans that it is not their country and no matter what they will always feel like foreigners, they will smoke in these glass shelters of yours, and more besides.
That’s just silly.
Maybe so, but it’s based on personal experience. In foreign lands, I often have the feeling that petty rules and regulations apply to local folk and I can (and do) smoke in such places with a feeling of being above it all. I suspect that American blacks also must have the feeling to some degree that they are strangers in a strange land.
So when in other countries, you break minor laws?
No further questions?
“What it is, is young folks of the community showing decades old anger, frustration, for a system that’s failed them. I mean, it’s bigger than Freddie Gray. This is about the social economics of poor urban America.”
“What it is, is tax-paying folks of the community showing decades old anger, frustration, for a system that’s failed them. I mean, it’s bigger than Andrew Stack. This is about the social economics of America.”
Rich, that’s different because WHITE.
We’re all red on the inside.
And sticky.
“Well, you know what I say about kids, they’re all pink on the inside.”
“But we lose the thread of police misconduct spurred on by militarization and drug-war insanity….”
So, is there evidence that the Gray case is one of police misconduct spurred on by militarization and drug war insanity? It may or may not turn out to be the case. But, given that so little is currently known about what actually happened, wouldn’t it be reasonable to suspend judgement for now and await the facts?
I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to assume the reason for the initial police interaction is directly linked to the war on drugs. Gray had been arrested several times for dealing and it isn’t exactly a state secret that police often go back to their preferred fishing holes. The “knife” is a canard. Unless Gray was flicking it out in the open or the police have x-ray vision, these cops likely had history with Gray dealing and, when he ran, that was all the excuse they needed to effectuate an arrest. Everything else, regardless of waiting, is a result of the reasoning behind the initial encounter.
I’m thinking the cops had had a good time roughing him up several times in the past, so when he saw them he reasonably feared for his safety and ran. Then they went out of their way to prove his concerns to be valid.
I heard a Balto cop swear that Gray’s arrest for running is in fact justified under federal law. We’ll see.
At this point I’m coming to the conclusion that to be a cop you must be a pathological liar. That’s the only thing that can explain how cops lie about absolutely everything, even when faced with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, and still stick to their lies. They honestly believe that whatever they say is God’s truth, even if it’s not, simply because they said it.
+1 the police wouldn’t lie about a thing like that
Every cop I’ve ever talked to was a very proud liar. They would brag about lying to suspects to fool them to confess to things. They lied on the stand. I’ve had cops lie in court about me running red lights…even though I *did* run the red light. But the cop still lied about the circumstances (which was so blatant it caused the judge to dismiss it for me).
I’m not sure what it is, but “cop culture” seems to push them all into being pathological liars. In my personal experience with cops, it’s completely pervasive. They’re proud of it.
It puzzles me how so many people believe that cops who proudly use deception to catch criminals magically become Boy Scouts when they fill out reports and testify in court. Liars are liars. Period.
“It puzzles me how so many people believe…”
So many white people. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?
Like the six who have been charged? They are no all white. It is because it is not as much a racial problem, as it is out of control policemen. The racism is another problem hat society, as a whole, needs to fix!
“It is because it is not as much a racial problem”
It’s a deeply rooted problem of institutional racism rather than it is a matter of whether any given individual is a racist or not.
“good time roughing him up.” And you know this how….?
You seem to think you know a lot about an incident for which very few facts are actually known.
A guy with an intact spine got put in a van by cops who are *known* to give “nickel rides”, and he came out of that van with a severed spine…and died. What judgement are we suspending here?
That thug probably broke his own neck to make the police look bad. Just wait until the totality of the circumstances comes out.
Look, Warty, it could have been an accident. As we all know, the cops have zero responsibility to make sure that when they kidnap arrest someone, that person is relatively safe on their way to the station and at the station. How can you blame them for a simple accident? You know, a simple accident that resulted in someone’s death?
Actually Warty and Epi, I need to point out that it was the people at the hospital who killed Mr. Gray – he was still alive when in police captivity.
Er – while being conveyed by law enforcement.
Bureaucrat Chuck, you are technically correct–the best kind of correct.
I used to be a rather manipulative bastard, so it wasn’t hard to conjure up.
(Now I’m just a bastard)
I need to point out that it was the people at the hospital doctors who killed Mr. Gray President Lincoln – he was still alive when in police captivity he left Ford’s Theater.
John Wilkes Boothe has been unfairly demonized all these years. The real assassin was a team of doctors!
Well, Dean, as long as they were southern doctors….
Ford’s Theater was in the south? II learn something every day..or maybe not!
So, you know that these cops gave him the nickle ride? Citation, please. We also know of at least one other person who took that ride who didn’t come out of the van with injuries.
You may or may not be right, but the actual facts of the case haven’t been released, yet. That may not matter to those for whom facts get in the way of their biases. I seem to remember more than a few people in these parts who had already convicted the Ferguson cop before the investigation had even been complete and the findings made available.
Hey a fire! Quick, throw this bucket of money on it.
(golf clap)
Aw come on. That’s just rubbish. Just because the cops stop people for little or no reason and treat them like shit doesn’t mean the people have reason to be mad. So what if the cops treat victims like criminals when they are called after a crime was committed? That’s no reason to get pissy. So what if cops don’t investigate most crimes with victims because they figure the victim deserved it? That’s no reason to lose respect for the cops. You’ve got to remember that by busting nonviolent drug offenders, the police are preventing crimes with victims. Busting druggies prevents so much crime that there’s no reason to bother investigating crimes with actual victims. And protecting property? Police can’t be everywhere at once. Sheesh. This is so overblown. Cops are heroes. After they root out the racist bad-apples, everything will be fine.
Black markets can only be dealt with in the harshest manner possible. It creates jobs for thugs and offers up a great example of what happens when you challenge our gods.
You want to be safe, don’t you?
I saw some of this stuff on Fax while I was at the gym last night. I was pretty surprised that Fox was on it this hard.
My sister makes $75 every hour on the laptop . She has been laid off for seven months but last month her pay check was $18875 just working on the laptop for a few hours.
Look At This. ????????? http://www.jobsfish.com
You call 251 hours “a few”?!
The welfare state is part of the problem but the majority is the WoD. It has taken the older males out of the community through jail and death and has cultivated a culture of violence and oppression.
A pox on both their houses, again?? Mate, it wasn’t like the police in cities like Baltimore/Chicago/Detroit etc were run by Republicans while everything else was run by Democrats. Certainly, the Dems seem to be fine with the hard line approach to the WOD as well.
Can we at least have a story tag called Yeah, But Republicans for convenience?
That’s actually one of the big problems I’ve had over the years with the idea that Republicans own law-and-order crap. That’s complete nonsense, as the Democrats have long tried–since the 70s, when they were viewed as soft on crime–to out tough guy the Republicans. I mean, look at the long list of bullshit the Clinton administration pulled in this area.
I think the point is to focus on police abuse and the WoD *as well as* the failed-liberal-welfare-state stuff.
I think the point should be hammered that like with Garner, the people granddtanding don’t care that Gray was arrested, and will go to prison, they only care about the methods used. None of their proposed solutions will change the constant harassment for victimless crimes, and therefore none of their changes will do anything.
Last night, while I was thumping the lightweight Sevo around like an insect, I made the case that South Carolina is a complete shithole (except for a few resort islands) like Baltimore is. But SC is TEAM RED! so Sevo got all blustery and pale and yelled NO FAIR! like a whelping screaming for a teat.
Shorter PBP: TU QUOQUE!!!
MY HERO!
Will you be my gay lover? We can force Eddie to bake us a cake and everything.
Re: Peter Caca,
That’s a clear code word for “There go again those blacks”, you racist! Check your privilege!
BUUUUUTTTTPPPLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUGGGGG
I made the case that South Carolina is a complete shithole (except for a few resort islands)
You can always tell a shithole by their rate of economic growth be at the top for their region:
http://www.politifact.com/trut…..astest-gr/
And especially if they are in the top half of the states, ranked by unemployment rate:
http://money.cnn.com/interacti…..ent-rates/
it’s 8% better than I thought it would be!
The mentality of social welfarism breeds a casual attitude toward social mores. It manifests in indolence, discontent, and criminality. Recipients become serfs to their political patrons, giving them less practical recognition in civic affairs?like, say, reining in the conduct of police. So police become more controlling as their conduct deteriorates. Throw in various other destructive policies like drug prohibition and there’s your social collapse.
Are you trying to say that people who are brought up in apathetic environments will be apathetic? That’s crazy talk.
Saturday a guy in NYC was concealed carrying and a cop suspected it and decided to start trouble, despite the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The Bill of Rights never got through that NYPD goon’s head, but a bullet did. Let that be a lesson to sheriffs and police chiefs: If you don’t straighten out your cops, the undertaker will straighten out your cops. Let that be a lesson to voters: If you elect unlibertarians, you’re not pulling the trigger, but you are pulling the lever. Defend liberty with ballots or your fellow citizens will defend liberty with bullets. Cops under control, or cops under flowers. Any objection? Objection overruled, casket closed.
Republicans own teh Law-n-Order, because they want to lock everybody because they’re vengeful bullies. Democrats, on the other hand, want to lock everybody up because they’re concerned about them.
Democrats’ left wing authoritarianism is based on compassion.That makes it okay.
—-“how [s] liberal policies have [/s] government has manifestly failed urban residents, especially the racial and ethnic minorities who live in inner cities”
Along with everyone else. If government was so great, it would be voluntary and wouldn’t require violence to ensure it’s continued existence.
Yet slavers keep telling others how only if they vote in the right people, will things get better. That’s the problem I have with Rand Paul’s “economic freedom zones”. Let the people opt out of the gov’t altogether. That is the only way they can be free.
Government has distorted markets, and has prohibited the private production of defense through bullshit agreements between other countries. If private defense and security were free to flourish, it would have exceeded the state monopoly of defense in both effectiveness and efficiency as it was historically and even till this day.
Look at a map of Kentucky. In the extreme western end is an exclave called Kentucky Bend, a part of Fulton County that is disconnected from the rest of the commonwealth. Now, somebody could write a novel or movie where Kentucky Bend is adjudicated it cannot be part of Kentucky because it does not touch the rest of it. (Lines on the map mean a lot to bureaucrats.) Because it was considered USA by virtue of being part of Kentucky and it is not, this means the place is not part of USA and the residents establish a real economic freedom zone. Imagine what they could make with hospitals, drug stores and banks.
Fail at my attempt of strike through. Someone please teach me.
[s]Delete me[/s], using the greater-than and less-than symbols instead of brackets. Thus, Delete me.
strikethrough?
Indeed!
Thanks, Pro Libertate.
I’ll donate to your Sky Elevator crowdsourcing effort now.
Strikethrough is kick ass
I went from hawt to uber hawt thanks to pro liberate.
:0P
Useful. Now teach me how Cyborg does his thing.
Are you certain that you want to even skim the surface of that deep, dark lake, straff?
For the unlearned
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/html_cheatsheet/
They honestly believe that whatever they say is God’s truth, even if it’s not, simply because they said it.
This may have to do with how often cops get slapped with contempt of court and perjury while telling flagrant lies on the witness stand.
Testilying, I believe is how it’s referred to in the professional journals.
I was a witness in a week-long trial back in Colorado. I watched a social worker lie under oath. And I mean, everyone knew it. The CASA worker gasped and started whispering in shock to the CASA supervisor, everyone else went real quiet and inspected the floors and ceilings. Apparently the CASA and some other court-appointed something had a meeting with the social worker on break and made her admit to the judge that her testimony was a knowing lie. The social worker wrote a letter to the judge, and the judge told her nicely not to do it again.
The witnesses were sequestered until we were called. Another guy and I watched the prosecuting attorney stand in the hallway and fill in his expert witness on what had been testified so far. The other guy reported it, and the prosecuting attorney and the expert witness played dumb, no idea what he could be talking about, no sir, until the judge dragged the other guy onto the stand, where he (a sequestered witness) described in detail the testimony the prosecutor revealed. The expert witness was disqualified after having been provably tainted by prior knowledge of testimony, but you know what else happened? Not a damn thing.
The icing on the cake was that after: closing arguments, the prosecutor asked to call a witness not on the witness list and have them sworn in as an expert witness to boot. Was any of this a problem for the judge? Don’t be silly.
They pretty much do anything they want.
It’s because for the “players”–the attorneys and judges–it’s all a game. It’s their day job. Are their lives/fortunes/future on the line? Nope (unless you count job advancement). So they cut each other huge amounts of slack, because they’re all just playing a game. Does it matter to them that someone’s life might be on the line? Not really. They do this every day. It all blurs together.
Depraved indifference for the win!
Depravence?
I think I might regret coming up with a contraction….
But this is Reason H&R, so I’ll see where it leads.
Lawyers breach ethics and even the law in trial settings all of the time. How often do they get disciplined? Rarely.
Dead cops don’t lie in court, they lie in caskets. The only thing stopping some victims is the silly idea that they need to find the exact same cop that lied about that exact same victim.
Fuck it. I’ll say it. Eliminate the minimum wage, WOD and 90% of all biz regs. Drop taxes as revenues come in and have the safety net set at a level the bottom 10% of society live at. At least let me dream. Oh yeah, and fire every cop in the city. Ah, that felt good.
I’ve already said the same thing several time on FB last week.
It’s the no-brainer solution, which is why it will never happen. Real solutions are BIG things, with committees and programs and names and photo-ops. Solution aren’t about actually solving things. it’s about taking credit for things that will never happen.
Solutions to problems caused by central planning must be centrally planned or they won’t work.
If only there were a “black market” for justice. But only the State may be entrusted with the fair and even-handed dispensation of justice. Otherwise it would just be subsumed by corporate greed and self-aggrandizement.
The welfare state, the WOD and the militarization of the police. Let’s tie them altogether. From my favorite Baltimore blogger.
“My Jungle Bunny Neighbors”
a snippet:
As long as these domestic brutes are paid handsomely to alienate their men and terrorize their boys, the rest of us will face a steady stream of irrationally violent black youths, who, if successfully defended against, have the ingrained entitlement and victim/martyr instincts of the postmodern feminist to fuel their calls for media and legal justice against whoever would deny them the impulse of acting out like their unaccountable mothers.
Remember, that when you see a black man irrationally arguing with, resisting, and even fighting, cops, that he has been raised to behave like a perpetually PMSing woman; the same woman who refused to help him with his school work, and then went to school and threatened to beat up his teacher when he fared poorly as a student; who was then simply ushered out tender-handedly by the unarmed school cop who addressed her respectfully as ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’ the entire time. And then, when he is finally killed acting according to her abusive conditioning, she is overcome by guilt, and makes for the perfect martyr queen as she falls over his casket wailing, “Ma baybay! My sweet baby boy!”
http://www.jameslafond.com/art…..=2121&pr=0
Ack!
“One of the truly beneficial things to come out of last summer’s awful series of police killings (especially that of Michael Brown in Ferguson)”
What. The. Fuck?
Just let him be – he’s signaling.
This. Just more desperation to be liked by the SJWs.
The “especially” refers to the “one of the truly beneficial things.” Brown’s case got the biggest reaction and put criminal justice on the front page for a lot of people.
But it’s Nick, so it must really be his way of getting a free cocktail at tonight’s happy hour.
Setting aside that most police violence is justified
And that BPD is likely worse than the average PD vis a vis police brutality since it’s a city agency in a city with some of the worst city governance in the nation and in recorded history
A black male in Baltimore is more than 40 times as likely to die from nonpolice related violence
If all police violence disappeared, they’d still be 10 times as likely to be killed on any given day than in NYC
ITs a city with a black mayor, police commissioner,majority black pd, and a black DA
According to MacDonald et al, ceteris paribus, black cops are more likely to shoot black suspects than white cops…
This is a city where in 5 days last June there were 28 shootings and 10 fatalities
(None police related)
so at least we will be spared some of the racial idiocy we saw in Ferguson ( remember that case where a cop was lynched in the press for using self defence right to protect himself from a murderous thug. Where people were SURE it was murder, where a lie ‘hands up don’t shoot’ has finally been outed such that even Huffpo admits it was a lie)
Why does freedom scare you? If you were such a “good cop” you would have no problem acquiring your salary through voluntary means, through the free choices of individuals?
If they didn’t need your services, or wished to remove their funding because you were a bad economic actor, and go to another competitor, folks should indeed have that option. The very existence of the police department is through violence and extorted money. How can anyone say they are protecting and serving others by violating their rights to begin with?
You wouldn’t want the local grocery store owner shoving a gun in your mouth telling you you couldn’t shop anywhere else, so who are you and the state to demand money from others in the same exact manner?
We can actually figure out how fast Brown was moving during the shooting from the physical evidence. Brown moved towards Wilson 25′. The audio of the shots is 6.5 seconds long with a 3 second pause apparently when Brown paused. That means that Brown moved 25′ in 3.5 seconds. That means that Brown was moving at 4.8 mph, hardly a charge, more like a brisk walk. Try it yourself. So was Brown charging “full speed”, head down as Wilson and some witnesses allege or was he stumbling forward with 4 gunshot wounds? This goes to the reasonableness of Wilson’s fear and the accuracy of his testimony.
Just get the fuck out of here.
“Setting aside that most delivery driver violence is justified.”
“Setting aside that most health care professional violence is justified.”
“Setting aside that most educator violence is justified.”
“Setting aside that most mechanic violence is justified.”
“Setting aside that most citizen violence is justified.”
Unfair?
^^^This^^^
How would he feel if the auto mechanic shot him for not obeying his commands , as the mechanic felt his life was in danger because dunphy turned the wheel the wrong way?
Setting aside that most police violence is justified
Which, if true, is relevant how to the question of whether any particular episode of police violence is justified?
A black male in Baltimore is more than 40 times as likely to die from nonpolice related violence
Which, if true, is relevant how to the question of whether any particular killing of a black male by a cop is justified?
Setting aside that most police violence is justified
We know the police justify all their violence.
Setting it aside is what we no longer wish to do.
Setting aside that most police violence is justified
If by that you mean the violence is justified by the police themselves, their police bosses, the police unions, the prosecutors, and the judges, who are all on the same team and have an incentive to never admit to being at fault because that might tarnish the unjustified faith that so many people have in them, then you are indeed correct.
But is it justified from any other point of view? No. It is not.
Setting aside that most police violence is DEEMED justified. FTFY. As you know utterly corrupt police agencies investigate themselves and the results of their so-called “investigations” are generally worthless. Although the rest of your post was mostly spot-on.
liberal policies implemented in Baltimore over the past four decades have improved little or nothing
This is being far too kind.
Liberal policies have been a huge NEGATIVE for American cities:
1) Increased unemployment
2) Increased taxation (pensions alone make up most of this)
3) Decreased property rights
Minimum wage and the war on drugs have been the biggest contributors to keeping the underclass the underclass. The middle class has been driven from American cities since LBJ’s Great Society and the cities have all gotten worse. For every pocket of increased prosperity in a metro area there are 2 or 3 pockets slipping into worse decay.
And we’re concentrating on cities because that’s what is easiest for mass media companies. Liberal polices have ruined a lot of rural communities, too. And I’m not just talking agricultural, there are thousands of instances where rural employers have had no choice but to mover operations overseas because of liberal policies like minimum wage, overzealous environmentalism, etc.
OT:
Another example of why “expectation of privacy” is a shitty way to try to limit searches and seizures:
Court of Appeals rules that no one has an expectation of privacy in the tracking of their location via cell towers, because “everyone knows” your location is tracked by cell towers. Ergo, the cops can get historical data on your travels without violating your privacy, and don’t need to get a real warrant.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s…..5-10-56-52
It’s outrageous. Everybody also knows that GPS-enabled phones track your location down to about ten meters. So in this court’s reasoning, if you have the GPS function on, you have no expectation of privacy regarding anywhere you go. This flies directly in the face of the DC Court of Appeals ruling regarding placing a GPS monitor on a vehicle and tracking its movement over a period of time.
The moral of the story: “never let a crisis go to waste” is a game that all sides of the political spectrum can play
Big government: You can stab ‘n’ shoot ‘n’ spit but they won’t be fixin’ it. They’re lyin’ an lazy.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
There’s so many reservations about removing usurpations, some say they are necessary for the function of nations. From the household, the gas station, and even on down to your private session of masturbation, your rights at the hands of the state will always be on the receiving end of its defecation.
The only way to persuade some young guys not to join DAESH to go off and kill innocent Kufr for disobeying Sharia law would be to suggest that instead they should stay in USA and kill cops for disobeying the Bill of Rights. After all, the cops deserve it a lot more IMHO.
Most politicians pay only lip service to police brutality and trumped-up charges but oh boy do they whine like crybabies every time a p-o-o-o-r defenseless cop chooses to get himself killed in retaliation. The only thing stopping some victims is the silly idea that they would need to target the exact same cop.
This argument is open to the same criticism it makes. People respond to incentives, and do so along cultural schemic rules.
Those of us on the classic right have some understanding the multivariate programs (govt and cultural) unleashed by progressive fascists leading to the outcomes we see with the poor, Baltimore black community. But this isn’t like Ferguson.
If we admit that incentives matter and shape culture, then the same day to day incentives and realities that lead to the cultural decline if the black community, then how do you remove the day to day reality of cops living and working in the black ghetto from having an effect on those cops. In your argument, the cops somehow enter and leave somehow outside, and separate, from their reality and experiences.
The are required to be superhuman, while that other players in your story are merely human.
The rough treatment seemed to gave been a practice called a “rough ride.” How do we know this isn’t something that developed in response to the day to day dealing with career criminals of a sort that is unique to generational memory?
If you wanna get holistic, be holistic.
Let me give you an example of how liberalism years ago perversely corrupted — and I do mean “perversely” — the one program that might have prevented the economic blights contributing to the riots in Baltimore and elsewhere:
“Why affirmative action failed black families where it matters most” http://malemattersusa.wordpres…..-families/
Actually, conservatives could just as easily have said that liberals are the ones that believe in the socio-economic root causes, have had complete domination in Baltimore to implement them, and have failed to solve any feelings of anger, hatred and frustration, thereby supporting the theory that socio-economic causes are not the root at all and that a certain social/cultural mentality may lie at root. Regardless of whether any of this is true.
Also, police brutality is not a “race” issue. It’s a state-violence issue, and the problem is not any less urgent if a white person is the victim. Turning it into a race issue is just turning a symptom into the root cause again. It’s not racism; it’s POWER. As a matter of fact, because it’s Baltimore this is clearly proven because if it was a race-problem, liberal-dominated Maryland should have been much better in this regard. Power is lusted after by both conservatives and liberals. Give power to a bunch of trigger happy thugs and this is what you get. Talking about “race” is just another diversionary tactic to avoid talking about the real issue: government power, and how government employees are almost always held above the law.