Did DOJ Help Spark Riots By Agitating Ferguson Residents Over 'White Privilege?'

 

Apparently officials from the Obama Justice Department had a dual mission when they arrived in Ferguson, Missouri after the death of Michael Brown. Aside from investigating the incident, a separate group of Justice Department officials were there to amp up the outrage and sense of grievance of the inhabitants with meetings on topics like “white privilege.”

The DOJ’s Community Relations Service arrived in Ferguson purportedly to lessen the tension between protesters and city officials. But sources who attended the DOJ’s private gatherings with Ferguson residents tell NRO that the Justice Department also sought to educate and question the community about the issues of white privilege and racism. The political nature of the Justice Department’s intervention in Ferguson may not be exclusive to its interactions with residents; it also might have affected its ongoing investigations into the Ferguson Police Department and officer Darren Wilson. {...}

'Political nature?' That couldn't have anything to do with this, could it?

In an e-mail to NRO, a Justice Department spokeswoman said the meetings were designed to ease tension. The spokeswoman requested that NRO not quote her e-mails and added that it’s not the role of Community Relations Service officials to take a position on issues of race. Robert Driscoll, who from 2001 to 2003 was the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s chief of staff, says it’s not standard for these officials to educate the community about white privilege, and he called such action unfortunate. “Their function is supposed to be on the ground . . . and to talk to people and let them know what the processes are at the Department of Justice,” he says. “The hope is that it’s a way to channel public sentiment to avoid civil unrest.” Rioters still managed to burn down much of the town in the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson, but Knowles says he thinks the Community Relations Service’s involvement has been constructive nonetheless.

However, the mayor says he thinks the DOJ’s investigators misled him from their very first encounter, and he has concerns about DOJ’s ability to conduct a fair investigation. He says the investigators, including Jonathan Smith, the Civil Rights Division’s special litigation chief, told him that the purpose of their first meeting was to determine whether an investigation was necessary. But by the time Knowles got home from the meeting, Attorney General Eric Holder was on television announcing the investigation. “Clearly the decision was already made before they even met with me,” he says.

In other words, officials in the Department of Justice weren't trying to cool down what was already an inflamed situation...they were trying to turn up the heat.After which, of course, rioters and looter burned down a fair amount of the city. And why not? They had a license..it was payback for 'white privilege!'

 

Just imagine how much anguish is behind those words, 'rioters and looter burned down a fair amount of the city.' People had businesses and property they had scrimped and saved for years to build and establish destroyed because of an attempt to gin up black turnout to keep Democrats in control of the senate.

And the mayor's statements about these meeting being constructive seem odd in view of his other statements that the meetings usually ended with a number of people 'angry and screaming.'

In another interesting remark, Mayor Knowles said that he thinks that Attorney General Eric Holder's public statements have built up expectations of legal payback against police officers like Darren Wilson. Which, when they fail to do so, will unleash another wave of violent riots that are of course justified..no 'justice' no peace, remember?

But apparently the Department of Justice is using Ferguson as a template in other 'investigations', even when there's no evidence any civil rights violations have been committed:

The Civil Rights Division’s pattern of behavior elsewhere indicates that Ferguson is not the only community receiving special attention from the Justice Department. During the past five fiscal years, the Civil Rights Division has opened more than 20 “pattern or practice” investigations into police departments throughout the country — such as the one involving the Ferguson Police Department — which is more than twice as many as were opened in the previous five years, according to a statement from Holder on Thursday. These investigations are conducted to determine whether local law-enforcement officers have engaged in a pattern or practice that deprives people of rights protected by U.S. law or the Constitution.

While a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson in November, the Department of Justice seems to be hunkering down for the long haul. Holder pledged in a Post-Dispatch op-ed published earlier this summer that, “long after the events of Aug. 9 [Brown’s death] have receded from the headlines, the Justice Department will continue to stand with this community.” He did not say what it would take for DOJ to walk away from Ferguson, and that remains to be seen.

The force behind the Justice Department’s lasting presence in Ferguson may be Vanita Gupta, who was selected to lead the Civil Rights Division in October after heading up the American Civil Liberties Union’s efforts on Ferguson. Before beginning her new job, Gupta advocated for the Justice Department to take a more proactive role in its independent federal investigations and called for racial-bias training for forces that receive federal grants. A week ago, Holder announced his intention to “institute rigorous new standards — and robust safeguards — to help end racial profiling once and for all,” which were specifically directed at police. He said the Justice Department is preparing to implement these changes in the coming days. After announcing the changes, Holder went on to say, “In recent weeks, there have arisen great sparks of humanity, and hope, that illuminate the way forward.”

'Sparks' was perhaps a poor choice of words in view of what the DOJ helped ignite in Ferguson, but it could be that's exactly what our attorney general means to encourage.

 

Michelle Obama, NYT Columnist Charles Blow Say Blacks Are Mindless Sheep

Here's the transcript, with Charles Blow talking to CNN. Note what I emphasized:

LEMON: OK, yes, and I've heard a lot of that, having been from Baton Rouge and visited there recently, the thing is this candidate will vote on everything that the president has voted on. You also point out too that among the African-American voters support is still strong for the president, something that "SNL" alluded to this weekend. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Times are looking bleak. Republicans are likely going to take the Senate and many Americans have been disappointed with the president's handling of the Ebola crisis, immigration, and ISIS. So I'm asking, for real. Should we have voted for Mitt Romney? Hell, no. Hell, no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Then they went on to talk about other scenarios about, no, the president was wrong on this, but would that change your vote? And they say no. The woman who gave you birth feels the same way. Obama can do no wrong. The president has been out of sight in a lot of these key elections tomorrow. He is now playing to the black votes in an effort to keep the Senate. I mean, will this last-ditch effort, do you think, as you call it, will it work?

BLOW: Well, I don't know. But I think, you know, the idea of politicians trying to play to a particular demographic where they are strong is understandable and he's doing that. The African-American populations vote overwhelmingly Democratic regardless of who is on the ticket.

And they in particular seem to be holding this president in high regard. And he is now asking them to come out and vote in higher numbers. So in a couple of states, you know, maybe Georgia, maybe Louisiana, North Carolina, maybe Arkansas.

You could have enough of an African-American population in those states that if you cranked up the turnout among that group who always vote Democratic, you could have an impact. Whether or not this will work, who knows?

There is some suggestion in some of the early voting tallies that the numbers are up from 2010. Will it be up enough? Will more of those people actually show up on Election Day than are being predicted at this point? Who knows?

LEMON: That's a million-dollar question right there. Can I get this in? I want to get your quick response because I want to play this. This is from News One here, the first lady speaking to Roland Martin. A channel geared toward African-Americans. Here it is.

BLOW: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: And that's my message to voters. This isn't about Barack. It's not about the person on the ballot. It's about you and for most of the people that we're talking to, a Democratic ticket is the clear ticket that we should be voting on regardless of who said what or did this. That shouldn't even come into the equation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It's not about the person on the ballot. It's about you. Is she right?

BLOW: Well, I mean, it's hard to parse exactly what she means by that. But I do believe, you know, this is a Democratic presidency, the first lady married to a Democratic president. Of course, they are going to be in favor of the Democratic line.

And I think the Democrats have basically been trying to make this pitch that the Democratic Party is the more friendly party for particular populations and trying to make that case. Will it be enough? That keeps becoming the question. Is this going to be enough to make more people come out to the votes? African-Americans do come out relatively speaking in midterms as a decent rate. So you'd have to push that up even higher than it is now. Whether or not this pitch will do that, I'm not exactly sure.

Here's the entire SNL clip:



We'll just briefly mention the fact that the first lady is apparently uninformed or dissembling when she says 'the election isn't about Barak,' since the president himself said numerous times that this election was about him and his policies. But the message is unmistakeable. Blow was slightly more nuanced than the First lady, but they're saying the same thing. They both consider the majority of blacks to be mindless sheep who will vote Democrat and stay on the plantation regardless of who's on the ticket, regardless of what that person has said and done. And regardless of their interests. That's exactly what the SNL clip was satirizing.

The contempt they have for them deep down is palpable.

The Latest On Ferguson And Mike Brown

 

The grand jury's determination is past due, with no decision yet on whether to charge police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Mike Brown Ferguson, Missouri, two months ago. The shooting led to extensive riots and looting as well as the involvement of the usual suspects and of course, the Obama Justice Department, what with the midterms coming up and the need for a large black turnout.

The prosecution's star witness if there's a trial appears to be Dorian Johnson, who was with Mike Brown on the day of the shooting and participated in what amounted to Brown's  felony strong arm robbery of a convenience store shortly before the shooting occurred.

 



















Johnson's problem is that he's changed his story several times (at one point, he was claiming Officer Wilson stood over Mike Brown after he was on the ground and fired shots into him, something no other witness has even remotely alluded to) and Johnson's own record of making false statements under oath.

The latest witness, who remains unidentified was a black male who testified that Brown had stopped running and was moving back towards Officer Wilson when he was shot. Contrary to what Dorian Johnson and a couple of other witnesses have said, this latest witness denies that Brown had his hands up in surrender, but had them extended from his sides as he moved towards the white policeman..similar to a football rusher.

He also said that there was a scuffle in the car,  that Wilson did not fire at Brown until he was coming towards him and that Brown continued to rush towards the policemen in spite of commands to halt. This latest witness also referred to it as 'outright murder' but again, that's a subjective opinion, not evidence.

The autopsies and ballistics confirm that unlike what some witnesses have said, Brown was never shot in the back but was shot in front as he continued to move towards Officer Wilson, who was already badly injured.

 

This sort of difference in eyewitness accounts is actually very common. I recall a professor who once deliberately staged an altercation in his classroom and then assigned his class to write accounts of what had happened. The differences were astounding.

Sources with knowledge of the grand jury proceedings have also revealed that Officer Wilson has testified in front of them as to what had happened, and it hangs together with his medical records, the autopsies, and the forensic evidence to the point where even Pravda-on-the Hudson wasn't able to spin things too much.

According to the Times the officer reportedly told investigators that he was pinned in his vehicle and in fear for his life as he struggled over his gun with the 300 lb. Brown, who attempted to grab it from him after pushing him back into his squad car and inflicting an orbital fracture and other cuts and contusions on him.

The FBI performed its own forensics tests ( needless to say, AG Holder was pushing for a civil rights indictment) and confirmed the earlier tests performed by county authorities. The gun was fired twice in the car, with the first bullet hitting Brown in the arm and the second bullet discharged wildly inside the cab of the car, evidence that the was indeed a struggle for the weapon.

The fact that Officer Wilson chose to voluntarily appear for four hours before the St. Louis County grand jury also tends to back up his story somewhat, since he wasn't required to testify by law.

The struggle in the car and Wilson being injured by Brown are going to be very influential on what the grand jury does, as I predicted long ago. A police officer who has been assaulted in this fashion usually has a lot more leeway to respond with deadly force, especially when he's been injured and then can show that according to his or her state of mind at the time, there was a reasonable fear of further bodily harm...like a 300 lb. football player coming at you in spite of your orders to halt.

Pravda-on-the Hudson quotes unnamed Justice department officials as saying that while the federal investigation was continuing, the evidence so far didn't support civil rights charges against Officer Wilson. In fact, so far all the evidence on the struggle in the car supports Officer Wilson's version of events. So does the fact that Brown had drugs in his system when he committed the violent strong arm robbery and had the altercation with the police officer. No one in his right mind acts the way Mike Brown acted that day, and the only other explanation - that Officer Darren Wilson was a vicious racist simply looking to kill a black man on the slightest pretext - has no evidence whatsoever based on Wilson's past record.

As we all know, there's a distinct disadvantage in cases of this kind when there are two participants in an incident like this and one of them is dead.

The jury is claiming that they will have a verdict on whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson some time in November. The 'community' is threatening massive riots and disturbances if the grand jury doesn't indict him.

I actually have a feeling they will indict him, regardless of the evidence. After all, they'd be spending taxpayer money on the trial, so it makes no difference to them personally whether Wilson is convicted or not. And of course, they'd be appeasing the black lynch mob in Ferguson and avoiding responsibility for any riots or unrest. Once Wilson is indicted, that becomes someone  else's problem.

We'll see.

Star Witness In Michael Brown Shooting Charged With Theft And Filing False Police Report

Dorian Johnson, who was with Michael Brown when he was shot and is considered the prime witness for the prosecution if Officer Darren Williams goes to trial has been charged with theft and with filing a false police report. He had an outstanding warrant for a 2011 theft in Jefferson City Missouri that surfaced and pleaded guilty for filing a false police report related to that theft. The outstanding warrant surfaced when St. Louis ABC affiliate ABC 17 cross referenced Johnson’s name against several records, discovered the warrant and informed the authorities.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the details of the 2011 charges:

Johnson was charged with a misdemeanor after giving police a false first name after he was arrested on suspicion of theft. He later pleaded guilty after he was accused of stealing a package containing a backpack belonging to someone else from an apartment complex. When he was arrested in that case, he identified himself as Derrick Johnson and said he was 16. The warrant was for failing to appear in Jefferson City municipal court to answer to the theft charge..to which will now be added the charge of filing a false police report, a felony in Missouri I believe.Johnson has reportedly pled guilty to that charge as well.

None of this has anything to do directly with the Michael Brown shooting, but it does affect Dorian Johnson's credibility, which has also come under question because of a number of falsehoods he told in his original testimony. His story, repeated ad nauseum via the media was that Brown never reached for Wilson’s gun, never punched the policeman, had his hands up in surrender, was shot in the back and was 'executed' by Officer Williams who stood over him and fired two shots into brown when he was already lying wounded on the ground.

Almost all of this has been debunked by the first two autopsies, by ballistics and by Officer Wilson's medical records, showing his injuries. Brown did indeed punch Officer Wilson, there was a struggle inside the police vehicle for the cop's gun during which at least one shot was fired. The Michael Brown did in fact punch Officer Wilson and inflict severe injury on him, Brown was definitely not shot in the back and the last two shot were fired from two to three feet away from where Officer Wilson was standing while the rest were fired from a further distance away,giving credence to other witness accounts that 6' 4", 292 Pound Michael Brown had charged the policeman rather than having his hands up 'surrendering.'

Since Johnson has also admitted that he was with Michael Brown when he committed robbery and assault at that convenience store, that could also make him an accessory to that crime as well.

Don't be surprised if the prosecution declines to use Dorian Johnson as a witness.

Blackgammon: Eric Holder Plays the Game in Ferguson

 

Backgammon, on the surface,  is a pretty straight forward game. You roll the dice and move your pieces. But beneath that seeming openness are hidden strategies that may only reveal themselves later.

Today, Eric Holder traveled in person to Ferguson, Missouri, where the Aug. 9 shooting of black teen& Michael Brown by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson during an altercation has sparked massive violence, looting, protests and media coverage.

Holder's version of the game was revealed as he made his moves today in Ferguson.Ostensibly he was there to oversee the massive Federal investigation of the Brown shooting with the goal  of trying to arraign Officer Darren Williams on civil rights charges should the St. Louis County Grand jury fail to charge him with murder ala' George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. But this was essentially a campaign stop at government expense.

Read his remarks here and note the parts I've emphasized:

"I am the Attorney General of the United States, but I am also a black man," Holder told Ferguson residents at a community meeting. "I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding. Pulled over. ... 'Let me search your car' ... Go through the trunk of my car, look under the seats and all this kind of stuff. I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me."

"The eyes of the nation and the world are watching Ferguson right now," Holder told a group of community leaders assembled at a local community college. "The world is watching because the issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. This is something that has a history to it, and the history simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson."

Let's translate this, shall we?

"See Y'all, I'm black just like you are and that comes first before anything. So I understand your totally justified rage and anger against the white power structure. It's them that are on trial, not just a police officer although he'll do as a symbol of everything you feel whitey and the police have done to you over the years.That white power structure, you know, those white Republican Tea Partyers have always oppressed you,and this is just the latest outrage. I understand that, and that police officer looks just like them so they're going to try to protect him. But since we're in charge, we're going to do our very best to see that you get what you want. Because remember, I'm black and I look like you and so does the president, so you all need to vote Democrat in November to make sure we stay in charge."

 

It gets even better.

Holder arrived as a local grand jury began hearing evidence to determine whether Wilson should be charged in the fatal shooting.

The Justice Department is conducting a parallel investigation into possible civil rights violations related to the shooting. In an extraordinary move, he also ordered a federal autopsy — the third forensic examination of the body, which was hit at least six times by gunfire.

Before a briefing on the investigation at local FBI headquarters, Holder said the Justice Department had assembled "very experienced" prosecutors and agents to pursue the federal civil rights inquiry.

"Our investigation is different," Holder said in a meeting room surrounded by top local federal officials, including FBI Agent in Charge William Woods and U. S. Attorney Rich Callahan.

"We're looking for possible violations of federal civil rights statutes," the attorney general said.

Holder also met with Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who is coordinating law enforcement response to the protests. Asked whether he had confidence in the local investigation led by the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Johnson said: "General Holder, by being here, is a guarantee on that."

Johnson said he understood that the protests that have wracked Ferguson are not just about the shooting of Michael Brown.

"The community does not feel there is a connection," he said. "And that has to change."

 

You thought this was about the law? Hah! It's about community.

Normally, federal investigations for civil rights violations occur after a criminal trial or if a grand jury fails to indict someone and there's reason to believe they were biased and/or didn't look at all the evidence for bigoted reasons.You know, after there appears to be actual evidence someone's civil rights might have been violated.

That's not the way Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department do things. They don't drag their feet, unless it's in response to congress asking about Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS-Gate, something like that. But AG Holder has hit the ground running, with forty plus FBI agents, a team of federal prosecutors and auxiliary personnel, and even a third autopsy, all of which the taxpayers are footing the bill for..before there's even any evidence that Brown's civil rights might have been violated, or that the state and county investigations and the grand jury are going to quash things. Of course, that's the whole point.

By conducting a high profile investigation  like this, Holder is signalling to his audience that the police, the grand jury and the local prosecutor are all racist, but that he and the Justice Department can be depended on to address black grievance and get them the lynching they want. Just imagine if Whitey takes over after November is the implicit message. He's also signalling the same thing to the Grand Jury, putting pressure on them to prove they aren't racist by coming up with an indictment, a murder charge or at least manslaughter for the policeman. Think back - the Attorney General did exactly the same thing in the Trayvon Martin Case, leaning on the Grand Jury to come up with a ridiculous charge because of the politics involved. But the difference was that in the Florida case, Holder was a few months late to the game. George Zimmerman had already been released without being charged and it took Al Sharpton and the New Black Panthers to start the fire.

This one is too important for that. Holder's job here is to play racial politics and to gin up as big a black turnout as he can to try and keep the Senate in Democrat hands, so that the various scandals don't get any worse, gridlock continues for another two years and President Obama's de facto amnesty for illegal aliens continues to be viable without undue interference from the likes of congress.

Holder's mission has absolutely nothing to do with justice, or with law and order. If he was at all concerned about that, he'd at least wait and see what the grand jury comes out with before getting involved.But this is strictly about politics.

Holder's game of blackgammon is all about the politics. And it's going to be emphasized by an organized 'Day of Rage' in Washington DC put on by the New Black Panther Party and a number of their political soul mates.Thanks to Holder's 'separate investigation' even to the extent of getting a third autopsy, it doesn't matter if Darren Wilson isn't charged or if he's charged, tried and gets acquitted, the grievance mongers can still use it to get out the vote. Real justice is blocked, and Holder is setting himself up to win either way.


 

Backgammon players will recognize the strategy of blocking of the opponent's side of the board and then bumping one of his pieces so it remains stuck and there's no way to bear off (remove from the board) any of his pieces no matter what, unless he rolls a very large double number on the dice. And meanwhile, the other player who's doing the blocking has a number of turns to bear off his pieces or get them in position to do so.

That's exactly what Eric Holder is trying to do, cynically using the black pieces. Blackgammon is a highly appropriate name for it.

#Ferguson Update - Officer's Injuries Confirmed, Grand Jury To Be Convened

The Ferguson story continues...

Last night, the Missouri National Guard arrived in Ferguson, but they were apparently under orders to keep a low profile rather than actually, you know, stop the looting and rioting. That was left to the hapless police. It's almost sad to listen to the change in tone from Captain Ron Johnson, the black Highway Patrol officer who was brought in to command the security detachment and who lives locally.

He's gone from talking about how he's a part of the community (he lives locally) and saying the protests are oh so righteous to sheer disgust. Johnson said bottles and Molotov cocktails were thrown from the crowd at the police and that some officers had come under heavy gunfire. At least two people were shot and 31 were arrested, while four officers were injured by rocks or bottles.
“It has to stop,” Johnson told CNN.” I don’t want anybody to get hurt. We have to find a way to stop it.”

There is a way to stop it, and quickly, but Democrat Governor Jay Nixon certainly isn't going to authorize it. Instead, the cops and National guard will stay low profile and basically allow the party to continue as long as it's relatively confined - an absolutely horrible and racist decision victimizing the law abiding citizens and property owners of Fergusan

Meanwhile, Captain Johnson advised protestors to vacate the streets before sundown because, as he genteelly put it, there's “a dangerous dynamic in the night.”

Yes, there sure is.

One looter who came out of a QuikTrip told The Washington Post that he was proud of what he was doing.

“I’m proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what’s supposed to happen when there’s injustice in your community,” DeAndre Smith told The Post. “St. Louis ****ing not going to take this anymore.”

Or, as one policemen quoted by  the St. Louis Post Dispatch called it “looting tourism.”

“It’s like they are spending their gas money to come down here and steal,” the officer told The Post.

Looting - the new Federal entitlement!

Today, the injuries to Officer Darren Wilson were announced and they back up his version of events. He sustained a fractured orbital socket at the hands of Michael Brown, the 'gentle giant' who struck Wilson, pushed him back into his police SUV and tried to take his weapon. Essentially this means Wilson's eye socket was smashed.The injuries were confirmed by a source within the Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police. The sample below gives you an idea of what I'm talking about.



While the feds are conducting their own, independent investigation, the state and county police are presenting all the evidence they have to to a St. Louis County grand jury,which will determine whether Darren Wilson should be indicted.

Part of that evidence will undoubtedly be this. courtesy of St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers:

Christine Byers        ✔ @ChristineDByers

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Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson

7:30 PM - 18 Aug 2014

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It will be interesting to see if Wilson is indicted simply for the politics, as George Zimmerman was. If he is, I imagine most of the witnesses who gave police statements favoring the police officer's side of it will recant their statements...community pressure, you know. Even the Pakistani convenience store clerk victimized by Brown in that strong arm  robbery that proceeded his interaction with officer Williams reportedly begged reporters to include in their stories that it wasn't him who called police, but a bystander who witnessed it. The jury will also be a factor, which is why if Wilson is indicted, he will probably ask for a change of venue.

Of course if he isn't indicted, expect the feds to arraign him on civil rights charges, which should clue you in on what this is really all about...the Obama Administration using racial politics to try and get as massive a black turnout as possible so that the Democrats can hold the senate.

Michael Brown's life or death  means absolutely nothing to the Obama regime, except as a tool. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

National Guard Called in To Ferguson As Looting And Violence Continues

The Missouri State Highway Patrol has been unable to stop the violence in Ferguson, Missouri. Governor Jay Nixon has called in the state National Guard in an attempt to maintain order.

"Given these deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent attacks on lives and property in Ferguson, I am directing the highly capable men and women of the Missouri National Guard ... in restoring peace and order to this community," Gov. Jay Nixon said in a statement.

Nixon issued the order early Monday after what began as protests over the shooting of Michael Brown by a policeman spiraled into violence and two civilians were shot and wounded. Rioters hurled Molotov cocktails at police, and several businesses were vandalized or looted

Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson said the civilians were not shot by the police.

 

Johnson, who is black and lives in the area was put in command of the Highway Patrol units in Ferguson. It was obviously a gesture to get the largely white Ferguson police out of the picture. Although initially he was speaking about his solidarity with crowd, after a couple of days he seems to have a different opinion.

“Peace and justice took a very different turn after dark,” Johnson said. “Molotov cocktails were thrown, there were shootings, looting, vandalism and other acts of violence that clearly appear not to have been spontaneous, but premeditated criminal acts.”

Johnson said this had nothing to do with civil disobedience, but was designed to damage property, hurt people and get police to respond.

“The situation first started to deteriorate with the shooting of a civilian on W. Florissant and Ferguson Avenues at approximately 8:25 p.m.,” he said.

Police responded to West Florissant and Ferguson and got the shooting victim to safety, but then the violence ramped up and police became the target.

“That was followed by shots being fired on officers, a number of Molotov cocktails being thrown, and then the looting,” Johnson said.

Four businesses, including Dominos and Family Dollar, were ransacked and looted, followed by a number of shootings. There was a report of at least one more person down that was followed by rioters moving on the location of the police command center. Johnson said at that point, the crowd started throwing Molotov cocktails at them and they opened up with tear gas.

Officers fired tear gas into hundreds of protesters, including children, who were marching toward a police command post in defiance of the midnight curfew.The local CNN affiliate KSDK-TV ran video that showed children among the crowd chanting, "Hands up, don't shoot."

What kind of people bring kids to a riot?

In a local McDonald's, the patrons were forced to run into the storage room with the employees and lock themselves in as the restaurant was looted and vandalized.

Even Governor Nixon, a Democrat who depends on Missouri's black vote appears to have become fed up with this situation. Originally supportive of the protesters, the governor called out the National Guard without bothering to inform the White House or the Justice Department, which has shown a keen interest in the case for obvious reasons.

There is of course a way to end the violence and looting It's pretty much the opposite of what law enforcement in Ferguson and the vicinity have been doing thus far, but it remains to be seen  whether Governor Nixon is willing to do what's necessary. The alternative, of course is to simply to continue to try and contain the violence and let the burning and looting continue until most of the prime targets have already been hit.

As usual, it will be the people in the community with a stake in it-a job, business or a home - that suffer most.

In Black And White - The Latest On The Michael Brown Shooting

Some new information has surfaced on the Michael Brown shooting by a police officer that has led to several days of looting and rioting, and of course, the descent of Al Sharpton and the rest of the OBGI (Official Black Grievance Industry).

The pictures above are screen caps from a CCTV video located in a convenience store that appears to be the Ferguson Market & Liquor store on West Florissant Avenue. According to Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown's friend who was accompanying him, the two stepped into the market, Brown picked up a box of Swisher Sweets cigars (valued at $48.99), refused to pay for them and when the lone employee of the store tried to stop him from leaving, Brown physically assaulted him.

As you can see, Brown, at 6' 4" and 292 pounds towers over the much smaller clerk, who appears to be Asian. The video reportedly shows Brown grabbing the store employee by his shirt, throwing him into a display case and turning to glare and intimidate the clerk before stomping off with his friend.Johnson has admitted that Brown took the cigars.

The store employee called in the robbery and police were dispatched.

This, by the way is not mere shoplifting. It is classified as theft and assault, a strong arm robbery and a felony bust. It is also worth reflecting that this kind of behavior doesn't come out of a vacuum, but is typical of a certain mentality, someone who has done this sort of thing before, someone used to using his size and bulk to intimidate others and get what he wants.

This is a very different person than Al Sharpton's characterization of Brown as a 'gentle giant'.

According to the police report and numerous eyewitnesses including Dorian Johnson, Brown and Johnson were walking down the middle of the street obstructing traffic which is why they were stopped by Officer Darren Wilson. An altercation occurred and apparently Brown pushed Officer Wilson back into his squad car, where the two had a struggle for the policeman's weapon, and a shot was fired inside the police car.. The altercation apparently involved Brown striking Wilson,because according to the police Wilson sustained facial injuries.

Let's stop the narrative here for a moment. Here we have a very large and aggressive young man who has committed a strong arm robbery, slapped the clerk around and shoved him into a display case,is walking down the middle of a moderately crowded street and disrupting traffic rather than on the sidewalk, and then engages in cop fighting.

If this is accurate, (and it seems to be so far)That kind of behavior suggests something to me...a person who was impaired by drugs and/or alcohol. These are not the kind of actions taken by someone in full control of himself.

A toxicology report is being done on Michael Brown, and we'll know the results in a few weeks..maybe. A similar report was done on Trayvon Martin in the famous Florida case. It was never overly publicized, but it showed significant amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana in his blood and urine. Pot, especially when combined with other substances can definitely make a person overly aggressive and confident and affect judgment. The autopsy report also revealed moderate beginning signs of brain damage and mild liver damage associated with prolonged use of DXM. DXM, known as 'lean' among other street names is a very potent mixture of cough syrup, juice or soda, and candy (Watermelon Juice, Skittles, and Robitussin for example).

We'll find out if Michael Brown was similarly impaired, but here's a another clue as to what might have happened. Here's a video taken minutes after Brown was shot that was designed to be supportive of the narrative that Brown was shot for no reason...but if you look at the witness conversation that appears to be inadvertently recorded at about 6:28 - 6:29 of the video, the witness states that Brown turned around and charged the officer rather than putting his hands up in surrender(warning, NSFW language).



And if you look at the direction Michael Brown's body is laying pointing towards the police SUV rather than away from it, it makes sense. Here's a transcript

@6:28/6:29 of video
#1 How’d he get from there to there?
#2 Because he ran, the police was still in the truck – cause he was like over the truck
{crosstalk}
#2 But him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran – the police got out and ran after him
{crosstalk}
#2 Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus - the police had his gun drawn already on him –
#1. Oh, the police got his gun
#2 The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him
{crosstalk}
#2 Police fired shots – the next thing I know – the police was missing
#1 The Police?
#2 The Police shot him
#1 Police?
#2 The next thing I know … I’m thinking … the dude started running … (garbled something about “he took it from him”)

There's another snippet of background conversation from a witness starting around 8:41 or so that also says "he ran back towards him".

Finally, look again at Brown's behavior in the convenience store. He does something similar there turning back towards the clerk and advancing towards him to intimidate him. Will any witnesses 'from the community' whom saw what happened testify that Brown charged the officer if that's what happened? I'm not at all sure of that, but ballistics and forensic evidence may tell us the truth.

Meanwhile in Ferguson the rioting and looting continues. And so does the agitating, courtesy of Al Sharpton and the New Black Panther Party.Governor Jay Nixon (D) attempted to calm things down by essentially ordering the County police and the Ferguson police to stand down and putting the highway patrol in charge of security, with Capt. Ronald Johnson, a black man who lives in the neighborhood in command. He also called for a midnight to 5 AM curfew.

The reaction to the curfew was, essentially, this:



Captain Johnson, who made a point of mingling with the crowd and dissing the local cops has apparently changed his tune, calling the police response “proper” and saying he was “disappointed” in the actions of the 'demonstrators'.

As always with these things, it's always the people with a stake in the community - a job, a business, a home - who do the least rioting and who suffer them most:

Natasha Cornell, 42, who lives two blocks from the scene, said she is furious.

“Half of these protestors are not even from this area,” she said. “We don’t have too many stores to go to anymore because they burned it all up. My 20-year-old son ran all the way home from work. He was terrified. It’s not a race issue at this point, people just want to vent and loot.”

Exactly.

Two things I wan to mention in passing. A lot of people on the Left of the spectrum, especially certain black commentators have mentioned a lot about the 'militarization of the police' and how awful it is. Not one of them have dared to mention that it was President Obama that was responsible for this. It was President Obama who called for a 'domestic security force., just as well trained, just as well funded, just well armed as our military. Remember that?



And it is the Obama Administration that has sold these local police departments military gear, MRAPs and combat arms by the boatload, as well as establishing SWAT combat teams for over 70 federal agencies. This is what the people on the Left who are squawking about 'militarized police' voted for twice. It's too much to expect I know, but it would be nice if they admitted what a horrific mistake they made.

The second thing is President Obama and the Justice Department's involvement from day one. The president has weighed in several times on this, saying what a tragedy Michael Brown's death was, the Justice Department started out by monitoring the investigation by local and state law enforcement and are now conducting their own investigation, trolling for a civil rights violation. Attorney General Holder has even asked for the feds to conduct their own independent autopsy, the third one.

Now, just the day before Michael Brown was killed, Rabbi Yosef Raksin(HY"D) of Crown Heights was murdered Shabbat morning (13th of Av) on his way to the Beis Menachem Chabad Shul of North Miami Beach for services. This was in an area that has had Jewish synagogues and property vandalized in a racist manner, the description from witnesses identified the killers as two black males, and Rabbi Raksin was dressed in a manner that obviously identified him as a Jew. Yet the local authorities are refusing to call this a hate crime, even though the Rabbi was obviously targeted because he was a Jew.

The president has not deemed this worthy of comment, let alone our attorney general and the media has not mentioned it at all.

I wonder...would this change if Jews began rioting,burning and looting, and if loud mouth agitators like Al Sharpton were leading Jews in chants of 'no justice,no peace'? Would Rabbi Raksin's murder become newsworthy?

Or is race a factor? It seems like it, when a white police officer being accused with very little evidence of murdering a black man on the one hand merits presidential comment, federal attention,FBI investigation and massive media coverage while a murdered Jew apparently killed by two black males is simply no big deal.

Welcome to the new America. It seems that while there's lip service being paid to all animals being supposedly equal, some animals are obviously more equal than others.

UPDATE: Second Night Of Rioting In Missouri Over Death Of Black Teen

Rioting in Ferguson, Missouri continued last night over the death of Michael Brown, 18, who was shot to death in an altercation with the police. The rioting spread to south St. Louis, with a shoe store, a Radio Shack, a bank, convenience stores and and other businesses targeted by gangs of looters who reportedly drove up and appear to have picked out their targets in advance.

 

The FAA has issued a temporary flight restriction for th earea surrounding Ferguson after a number of shots were fired at a police helicopter.

The name of the police officer involved was supposed to be revealed today, but Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson has refused to do so until actual charges are filed against the officer:

Jackson says this is due to death threats called into the police department and posted on social media.
Jackson also says there are social media rumors swirling with a name of Ferguson police officer, but this is not the name of the officer involved.

 Some commentators on online news stories are posting photos claiming that they are the children of the Ferguson police officer, and Jackson says they are not.

 

The people who are doing this, of course, are the same ones who quiver with indignation when recalling the lynch mobs of the Jim Crow south. Amazing how things stay the same.

 

To his credit, Michael Brown Sr., the teen's father has been calling for peace and for an end to the violence. But apparently there are lots of people who look on this as a good excuse to act out, and there are others, like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Trayvon Martin lawyer Benjamin Crump swooping in like the vultures they are because they see an opportunity for cash and self-promotion in this tragedy.

We still don't know exactly what happened here. The witnesses are contradictory, with some saying Brown was shot in the car after a struggle over a police officer's weapon, others saying he was running away after being arrested, and others saying he had raised his hands 'in surrender' before being gunned down. We don't know why Brown was arrested, nor do we know if he was impaired or why he attempted to run away if that's what happened. We're going to have to wait for the investigation to be concluded by the FBI and the local police who are working together on this.

Everything I know about police procedure calls for subduing a fleeing unarmed suspect by non-violent means, sometimes quite forcefully.

So I see three possibilities here: (1) the officer involved, a six-year veteran may have had reason to believe Brown was armed (2) for some reason, the officer felt that he or she was unable to subdue Brown in a non-lethal way (Brown was 6'4" and muscular, and we could be talking about a female officer..police hiring practices have changed) and felt it was imperative he be stopped because he was a danger to public safety or (3) the officer simply lost control and overreacted, in which case the justice system will come up with an appropriate disposition.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who would use Michael Brown's unfortunate death as an opportunity to riot, destroy other people's property or otherwise cash in.

They deserve the maximum punishment the law allows, and to be shunned by decent society.

Race Riot Breaks Out In Ferguson, Missouri Over Death Of Black Teen

Massive looting, rioting and violence has broken out in Ferguson Missouri after the shooting of a black teen by police.

Michael Brown, 18 was shot and killed by police in the course of an arrest last Saturday afternoon. There's no word yet on why he was arrested, or whether or not he was under the influence. The circumstances seem confused, and there's no definitive information about what went down yet.The information that's been released so far is that Brown, who was extremely large and strong was being placed in the squad car, that there was a struggle for a policeman's weapon, and that he fled and was pursued. Earlier, the police were reporting that one shot had been fired inside the squad car that didn't hit anyone, and that a policeman had fired several rounds at Brown, who was unarmed and had killed him. If that's true, it's extremely odd, as everything I know about police procedure when pursuing an unarmed suspect involves pursuit on foot or otherwise and subduing the suspect with non-lethal force. I personally saw this in action one Hollywood night when a suspect did a runaway. The police ran after him, caught him and definitely subdued him (!) but they didn't shoot him.

Given Brown's size and strength, it might be that the officer involved felt unable to physically subdue Michael Brown and used his or her gun. Or it might have been that the officer believed Brown had a weapon. We'll know more as this develops.

 

As of right now, a full investigation is being carried out and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar has called the FBI in for assistance. In St. Louis, Special Agent Cheryl Mimura said, “I can confirm that the FBI is working closely with the St Louis County PD to review the matter at this time.”

The rioting itself broke out almost immediately after the incident. Further shots were fired as police arrived immediately after the shooting but no one was injured as angry residents screamed obscenities mixed with threats to “kill the police.”

 

But the real festivities started this evening.

While some people prayed, others spilled onto West Florissant Avenue, choking off traffic. Looting was reported at a QuikTrip at 9420 West Florissant Avenue about 9 p.m. and soon spread from there. Most of the businesses being targeted were mainly along West Florissant. 




Around 11 p.m., looters smashed into a Wal-Mart in the area near Interstate 270, as well as cell phone, clothing and dollar stores. A large fire was burning at West Florissant and Northwinds Estates Drive. A civilian was reported severely beaten near West Florissant and Chambers.

There's nothing that says 'social justice' like smashing up and looting a convenience store, a grocery or a Wal-Mart.Just another hot summer night. And apparently there was no pass for being a black businessman this night:

Jimmy Muhammad, 32, said he and his colleagues had just fended off a gang of masked young men with guns who tried to break into his uncle's store, United Mart, in the 10300 block of West Florissant. The front door was shattered.

"It's bad," said Muhammad, still gripping a pistol. Sirens blasted from police vehicles speeding by to other crime scenes. "I don't blame the police, but they can't keep up."

Silas Chung, 53, didn't get to his small store, Up N Up Fashion, in the 11600 block of West Florissant, soon enough to defend it.

"I feel bad," said Chung, cleaning up the damage. "This world is getting worse and worse."

At Ferguson Avenue and West Florissant Road, about 150 demonstrators also blocked traffic. They were taunting police officers, who were lined up in riot gear, carrying shields and batons.

"We have officers from just about every department around here," said St. Louis Police Capt. Ed Kuntz. "Obviously we don't want to use force. We are hoping that just the presence is enough."

By 1 a.m. today, he said pockets of stores had been looted from north of Interstate 270 to the city's northern border. Kuntz, who has worked in policing for 34 years, said of the level of looting: "This is the first time I can remember this ever happening here."


Like I said, just another hot summer night.

Meanwhile, the vultures have gathered.

 

Benjamin Crump, Trayvon Martin's lawyer was quick on the scene and announced that he had already been hired to represent Brown's family. That should be fun, as anyone who followed that trial remembers.

 

The odious Rev Al Sharpton, of course, is on his way, and Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly has his civil rights lawyers 'monitoring the case'.

Various politicians have weighed in as well, especially those up for election.

Regardless of what happened to Michael Brown, it was a tragedy to see a young life snuffed out like that. Whether a police officer badly overreacted or whether Brown had some part in that tragedy remains to be seen.

But those who chose to use that tragedy to act out and victimize people who had nothing to do with it, and the public figures who are using it to gin up racial animosity to fatten their wallets, to bring themselves publicity or to massage their own racism are beneath contempt.

Racism 101 "Vote Black...Not For Whitey Or Them Asians!"

Songhai “Sunny” Armstead is running as a candidate for judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. And her pitch? Pretty much what's expressed in the title, as evidenced here in a video of her speaking at an all black church in Gardena on April 27th her supporters got scrubbed from YouTube, but can be seen in full here thanks to Pat Patterico, one of our former Watcher's Council alumni.

After telling the congregation she's "the only African American running", she says:

You heard about realignment. You heard about the injustice that happens in our court system already. And you guys have seen who — I’m sure we all know who’s in our jails and who comes before our judges in court, right? It’s people who look a lot like the people in this room. People who look a lot like me.[...]

And part of the problem is that our judges don’t have the same life experiences that we have. They don’t have the same empathy. They don’t have the same understanding. They cannot relate. They have very narrow experiences.[...]

I am the only African American running. There’s only one Chicana running. Can you guess who else is running? Are there people who care about the people in this room? Probably not. I can’t speak before them, but probably not.

And then she tells them, "I'm a judge for you." Not for everyone in Los Angeles Couty, not for justice..but strictly based on race. This woman currently works as a prosecutor for the County, someone who gets paid by everyone's tax dollars, regardless of race. Can you imagine how this woman's racism has affected her performance as a prosecutor, in deciding which cases the DA's office goes after and which it doesn't, in what kind of plea bargains are made and who gets them, in what kind of sentencing to go after? Here's hoping the defense attorneys she's faced make a stink and cause her entire record to come up for review.

Imagine if she was campaigning in the nicer parts of the San Fernando Valley or the South Bay telling people to vote for her because she was going to be 'a judge for white people?' Or imagine if one of her competitors was telling people to vote against Songhai “Sunny” Armstead because she was black, as one local editorial (not the L.A. Times, of course) suggested?

The mainstrem media, of course, is totally ignoring this disgusting bigot.

But there is one thing. While I don't know how they'll behave in the voting booth, when you look at the video, you'll see at the end that the audience gives her polite applause,but that's about it. Hopefully, as Christians they have truly embraced the message of Jesus that all men are equal in G-d's sight and mostly rejected this attempt to manipulate them.

We'll see...

NAACP, Black Groups: Sterling's Punishment 'Not Enough', Seek Diversity Shakedown

The National Urban League, Al Sharpton's National Action Network, the NAACP and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation issued a statement today applauding Clipper's owner Donald Sterling's lifetime ban from the NBA and a $2.5 million fine, much of which, according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, will go to these same groups or as Silver put it, 'groups fighting racial discrimination'.

They called the decision “a bold, courageous and resolute message that the views expressed by Sterling do not represent the National Basketball Association as an organization today or the kind of organization that it seeks to be in the future.”

But getting Sterling banned and collecting what amounts to a bounty isn't enough. They want a meeting with Silver to negotiate a shakedown.

“Sterling’s long-established pattern of bigotry and racist comments have not been a secret in the NBA,” the statement said. “Yet until now, they have been tolerated and met with a gentle hand and a blind eye.”

They want Silver to mandate 'diversity' and affirmative action hiring in the NBA's executives and ownership to see to it that Sterling “remains an anomaly among the owners and executives in the league.”

Since Silver has already committed to using the NBA's influence and power to try to force Sterling to sell the Clippers, what these groups are obviously insisting on is that the next Clipper's owner be black, regardless of his qualifications or financial stability.

“Our goal is for Commissioner Silver to extend these efforts beyond a reactive approach to one egregious situation to a proactive approach that will allow him to set forth and enforce clear policies and codes of conduct that reflect the best of the NBA, as well as foster a league culture that is as inclusive in practice — at all levels — as it is diverse in players and fan base.”

That 'gentle hand and blind eye' included the NAACP and other groups, of course as long as Sterling kept donating large sums of money to them.

Just two weeks from today, Sterling was set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in a dinner headlined by - wait for it - Al Sharpton.



CBS reported today that Sterling was going to receive the award for his long history of donating to minority charities and giving game tickets to inner city children, one of a number of awards he'd gotten over the years.

This should be a good lesson to anyone donating to groups like these.Essentially, they're a bunch of race pimps and con artists who will turn on you when it's convenient.

It's not well known and the organizations have gone to some lengths to bury the fact, but the majority of the civil rights organizations were co-founded and funded by Jews. The NAACP, for example, was organized and co-founded by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who essentially kept it alive by extensive fundraising for them.In the 1970's, the Jew's reward was to have the NAACP and other groups like them turn on the them and refuse to support them on issues like Israel.



You won't find any mention of Rabbi Wise or any other Jews on the NAACP's website. Instead, they warmly welcome the likes of anti-semites like Louis Farrakhan as an honored guest with standing O's.

Obama To Spend $100M In Taxpayer Dollars In Stealth Bailout Of Detroit

President Obama has decided to secretly bail out Detroit and make its corrupt pension plan whole at the rest of the nations' expense.Which of course, means he lied about his commitment not to do so.

In order to sneak this past the American people, the regime is labeling this as 'blight remediation,' but the fine print allows the new city manager to shove it into the city's pension funds, which were looted over several decades by Detroit's Democrat politicians and corrupt public employee union bosses.

As the Detroit Free Press reported, the money's coming from a secret $7.6-billion slush fund the Obama Administration established called the the Hardest Hit Fund designed to help those 18 states hardest hit by the real estate collapse. Surprise, surprise, 11 of those 18 states (and the ones getting most of the cash) are either deep Blue enclaves or battle ground states with predominantly black urban Democrat populations. And the 7 of those states that are Red States likewise have significant black populations, like Georgia's urban Democrat stronghold in Atlanta. There's also looks like there might be an interesting correlation here between the areas hardest hit and a population of certain borrowers who received loans from Fannie and Freddie they weren't really qualified for normally based on those sharply reduced, politically correct underwriting standards doesn't there? And while the Democrats who controlled congress after January 2007 fought off any attempts at oversight of Fannie and Freddie during the Bush years.

Michigan is already the recipient of almost half a billion taxpayer dollars, and Detroit already received $320 million of your tax dollars in a separate bailout, so this $100M specifically earmarked for Detroit's pension funds is lagniappe, (a little extra) as they say in N'awlins.

So aside from the fact it's being done in secret without congressional oversight, why is this so outrageous?

First off, because it's racial politics written in big letters and a blatant political bribe to Detroit's public employee unions with the midterms coming on.

Second, because it sets a horrific precedent.Lots of cities whom have been Democrat ruled for decades have underwater pension funds. Looking at what Detroit's getting, what we're looking at is the old 'train pulling' logic..'hey sweetie, you did it for him, ain't I good enough?'

And finally, because of the nature of how Detroit's pension fund was looted. You see, while the politicians and union officials got the biggest , the rest of the pension recipients shared in the swag, receiving a '13th check' every year instead of any profits being re-invested to keep the fund solvent. They received it as what amounts to a political bribe to keep voting the some politicos and union bosses back into power no matter whether the fund did well or poorly.The constant looting of the pension funds was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it.

Meanwhile Americans with private pensions and 401K's aren't getting any bailouts and are getting hammered by higher and higher taxes to pay for the excesses of places like Detroit...and the other mismanaged Blue urban strongholds and public employee unions that are going to get in line behind Detroit for their share.

AG Holder's New School Discipline Diktats: "Stop Targeting Blacks And Hispanics":

Attorney General Eric Holder has a new crusade.He says that schools discriminate against blacks and Latinos when it comes to meting out discipline in public schools, and he wants it stopped.

The Justice Department and the Department of Education have issued new guidelines for disciplining students in public schools, and claim that their internal investigations show racial bias.

The wide-ranging series of guidelines issued today in essence threatens schools with strong action if they are seen as 'not adhering to standards of fairness and equity in student discipline.'

"In our investigations, we have found cases where African-American students were disciplined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students," the Justice Department and Education Department said in the letter to school districts. "In short, racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem."

Could it maybe have something to do with a higher percentage of black students constituting major discipline problems perhaps? Nah, couldn't be. Must be racism.

According to government civil rights data collection from 2011-2012, black students make up 15% of the population of America's public schools. Yet they were more than three times as likely as white students students to get expelled or suspended.They made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled. According to one study I saw, blacks were ten times more likely to get suspended or expelled than Asian students.

More than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black, according to the data.Racism obviously. Although not in California or some other jurisdictions, where the huge Los Angeles Unified School District has a policy now of not suspending students for what's called 'willful defiance'..in other words, repeatedly disrupting class, creating a climate where learning is impossible and refusing to pay any attention to a teacher's efforts to stop it. This has now gone statewide with pending legislation, AB40, that's going to make it fairly difficult for a public school to suspend or expel any student. This too was largely sparked by complaints that black and Hispanic students are being 'suspended too often'.

There's teeth in the new policies too. For instance, in Brevard County Florida, where the public schools suspend black students about two-and-a-half times as often as its white students, the NAACP has filed a complaint against the school district and the Justice Department and The U.S. Department of Education are helping them proceed.

Holder said in a statement that he blames the high rates of black suspension and expulsion on "zero-tolerance" policies that too often inject the criminal justice system into school discipline. The zero tolerance policies he's talking about are mandated set penalties for things like truancy, drugs on campus, or carrying a weapon, and our attorney general thinks it's time that stopped.

It used to be that trouble makers guilty of multiple offenses were sent to a specific school set up for exactly that purpose and placed under stricter discipline to both benefit themselves and the other children who actually wanted to learn. That sort of common sense arrangement is a thing of the distant past.

While the new Obama guidelines are said to be exactly that, they're clearly a warning and will be taken as such by the schools. So if your child is assaulted, bullied or cheated out of the education you paid for by someone's else's activities in the classroom and the perpetrator just happens to be black or Hispanic, don't even bother complaining, even if you yourself are black or Hispanic, let alone white or Asian. Ditto if you're a teacher,especially in one of the large urban politically correct school districts.

Or to put it another way, is there a reason you haven't started homeschooling or put your kids in private school yet?

China's Newest City: Detroit?

 

A federal judge has ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy proceedings can move forward, in spite of the attempts at sabotage by the city's all black, all Democrat city council:

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Detroit could proceed into bankruptcy and cut pensions to address its fiscal woes.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes affirmed that the Motor City was indeed insolvent and certified that it could move forward with plans to eliminate nearly $20 billion in debt. Half of that shortfall comes from the city’s defined benefit pension system, which was designed to guarantee workers a portion of their salary for life.

Rhodes said Detroit must provide a pension haircut in order to address the budget deficit.

“It has long been understood that bankruptcy law entails the impairment of contracts,” Rhodes said, while pledging that he “will not lightly or casually exercise power […] to impair pensions.”

Ordinarily, I would have a great deal of sympathy for retirees here. A pension is a contract, and should be honored. In this particular case, I do not, because of the way Detroit's politicians, in collusion with the public employee unions collaborated to create a fiscal disaster.

Detroit's politicians, starting when  five term Mayor Coleman 'I don't know nothin' about no Krugerands' Young took over in the 1970's set out to pillage what was at one time the most prosperous city in America with sweetheart deals  to various cronies, raising the tax base and rewarding the public employee unions with ever more opulent contracts and pension plans ..which in turn fattened their own coffers, either as campaign contributions or outright bribes.

Now that the bankruptcy has been approved,state appointed  Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr can restructure the ridiculous pension plans, and the ruling also allows Orr to restructure the union contracts.

Exactly how Detroit's pension plans got into this state is another reason I have little or no sympathy about their being restructured.

The theory behind pension plans is pretty simple. An employer and its employees contribute funds every month that are invested in certain vehicles like stocks and bonds, with the idea that retiree benefits with be eventually paid out of the profits. It's similar to an old, time tested strategy known as dollar cost averaging - you commit a certain percentage of your earnings to investment, and with even normally competent management, good years average out with not so good years to give you a decent profit on your investment over time.

Once Mayor Young took over as Detroit's first black mayor, Detroit started doing things differently. When the investments did well, instead of leaving them in the fund and re-investing them for further profit, Detroit paid its retirees a 'thirteenth check'. When the investments didn't do so well, that 13th check continued anyway, so there was a constant looting of the pension funds that was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it. And the ruling powers in Detroit, including the union bosses had a personal incentive to keep the status quo going, as many of them were dipping directly into the pension funds. That is one of the reasons former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is now a guest of the federal government.

Most of the current retirees voted en masse for politicians like Young and Kilpatrick, quite possibly on racial grounds. And as long as the money kept rolling in, no matter whom it was stolen from, they were content. Now, there's going to be a reckoning because there has to be.

So what does this have to do with China?

As I pointed out before, Detroit's problems are systemic, and are a result of the city's current population and a certain way of thinking. Orr won't be there forever, and the next election will see the current city council or others like them re-elected.

However, there may be change in the air. Forbes reports that Detroit is the fourth most popular destination for Chinese real estate investors:

“While the bankruptcy is viewed as a bad thing elsewhere, it raised the exposure level of Detroit’s real estate market in China,” says Evonne Xu, a Michigan attorney catering to Chinese purchasers. {...}

Chinese shoppers can’t resist a bargain. Where else can you buy a two-story home in the U.S. for $39? China Central Television, the state broadcaster, in March reported that two houses in Detroit cost the same as a pair of leather shoes. No wonder a poster on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like service, asked, “Seven-hundred thousand people, quiet, clean air, no pollution, democracy—what are you waiting for?”

Who says the Chinese are waiting? Dongdu International Group of Shanghai bought, sight unseen, two downtown icons, the David Stott building for $4.2 million and the Detroit Free Press building for $9.4 million, both at auction this September.

Moreover, Chinese purchasers are making bulk purchases of “inexpensive properties”—those selling for $25,000 or less—in the rings surrounding the city center. “They’re banking on the downtown resurgence spiraling out into those rings,” explains Kelly Sweeney of Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel. Mainland parties often buy at tax and foreclosure sales, hold their property, and patiently wait for appreciation.

The Chinese certainly have made an impact on the locals in Detroit. “I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’ ” said Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in nearby Troy, Michigan, to Quartz.com. “They say ‘We don’t need to see them. Just pick the good ones.’ ” Chen reports that one of her colleagues sold 30 properties to a Chinese investor.

Now this is an interesting development.

Here in my local area, I saw a community that was essentially a largely blue collar and middle class bedroom suburb go through a similar transition, as Chinese immigrants and investors bought up the modestly priced properties, refurbished them and began moving in. A local realtor told me that Chinese firms were actually sending brochures and video tours of properties to potential Chinese buyers overseas.

Here's what happened in the space of less than a decade, as the Chinese became the majority in the city:

The real estate and commercial markets soared because of the new demand, with hundreds of new Chinese-owned businesses opening their doors, totally rejuvenating the moribund downtown sections and providing a vast increase in the tax base, which allowed the city to spend more on development, community programs and services.

The city had never had a huge crime rate, but what crime there was plummeted to almost nothing, and after a few years, the local public schools showed a huge increase in test scores.

Local government had its occasional bits of corruption, but they were very small time, detected promptly and stopped. The city's government mostly remained fiscally prudent and responsible.

With the exception of increased street traffic and occasional language difficulties, the small city simply became a much nicer place to live and work.

Now the city I'm talking about had nothing like Detroit's inherent problems, but the effect that the change in demographics made was pretty noticeable. If the Chinese begin moving into Detroit, I think that MoTown actually has a chance of rejuvenating itself.

Culture matters.

Corruption In Action - Detroit Gets $320 Million Federal Bailout

Back when Detroit's financial woes heated up, Detroit City councilwoman JoAnn Watson made a racially oriented demand that President Obama bail them out, saying, "Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that."



As I wrote at the time, I trust you know exactly whom Ms. Watson meant by 'our people'. And given the almost certain probability of voter fraud in Wayne County, what she meant by 'support'.

Well, it may been a while coming, but President Obama saw to it that his friends in Detroit got a little somethin' somethin'. Shutdown or no shutdown, sequester or no sequester, Detroit just received $320 million of your tax dollars.

Now, the Regime would have it that this is certainly not a bailout. They're calling it a stimulus. But just like Obama's other stimulus,it seems like the money is mainly going as a payoff to the president's political allies rather then being being used to restructure debt or create any actual jobs.

The Obama Administration is being fairly closed mouthed about this. All they'll reveal is that the funds came from FEMA, Homeland Security, HUD and the TARP bailout funds, and no one seems to know who actually authorized it or put the package together.

As the normally Obama friendly Christian Science Monitor reported, another oddity is that most the money is supposedly earmarked for programs already being funded by places like the Ford, Kresge, and Knight Foundations. The reason for the apparent duplication will become evident when you realize where the money is actually going.

As I reported earlier, there has been a running war between the entirely black Detroit City Council and Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr ( who is also black, not that it matters to the Council), who filed bankruptcy after he was appointed to try and sort out the dysfunctional city's finances by Governor Rick Snyder.

Part of what Orr is trying to accomplish involves changing some of the sweetheart contracts the City Council and people like incarcerated Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made with the public employee unions in exchange for campaign swag and votes that allowed them to rule what was once America's most prosperous city as their personal fiefdom.

Aside from trying to restructure the ridiculously opulent pension plans, the bankruptcy also allows Orr to restructure the union contracts. And therein lies the real story behind the 'stimulus', which is exactly what this is, unless we want to use the more appropriate term 'bribe'.

You see, the majority of the funds come with some interesting strings attached. They require that the city ceases any attempt to change the existing union contracts and pay what are referred to as 'prevailing union wages', thus giving the City Council and the unions a huge weapon to use against any reforms Kevyn Orr might try to push through, since the money's available for the status quo courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Ditto when it comes to the pension plans. The Motor City's pension managers are insisting that the pensions are only underfunded by a mere $634 million, so no reform is necessary. Orr, a bankruptcy attorney originally from Washington DC has reports from his accountants showing the shortfall as a much more realistic $3 billion. With the arrival of the ObamaMoney , the opponents of any pension reform (again, mostly the unions) have another weapon to use.

It's worth mentioning, by the way, exactly how Detroit's pension plans got into this state.

The theory behind pension plans is pretty simple. An employer and its employees contribute funds every month that are invested in certain vehicles like stocks and bonds, with the idea that retiree benefits with be eventually paid out of the profits. It's similar to an old, time tested strategy known as dollar cost averaging - you commit a certain percentage of your earnings to investment, and with even normally competent management, good years average out with not so good years to give you a decent profit on your investment over time.

After five term Mayor Coleman 'I don't know nothin' about no Krugerands' Young took over in the 1970's, the City of Detroit started doing things differently. When the investments did well, instead of leaving them in the fund and re-investing them for further profit, Detroit payed its retirees a 'thirteenth check'. When the investments didn't do so well, that 13th check continued anyway, so there was a constant looting of the pension funds that was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it. Even a drug addled southside crack dealer would have realized that this was unsustainable, especially as the city's tax base moved away to avoid skyrocketing crime and taxes. But the ruling powers in Detroit had a personal incentive to keep the status quo, as many of them were dipping directly into the pension funds. That is one of the reasons former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is now a guest of the federal government.

Another question this raises..a lot of American cities are in trouble. Are federal bailout finds now going to be distributed on a 'party loyalty' or even a racial basis? Congressman Jerry McNerney, the Democrat representative of a district that includes the city of Stockton, California wrote President Obama and asked this question directly without getting a response. He wanted to know why aid was not extended to Stockton, a city which declared bankruptcy last year, “and suffers from many of the same problems as Detroit”.

I wouldn't expect an answer anytime soon if I were Rep. McNerney.

As for Detroit, let's remember something. This was not Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy . There was no emergency here that required the use of federal funds. This was merely a Chicago-style marker for money and services received, paid out from our tax dollars to President Obama's union allies, nothing less and nothing more.

Detroit's plight is due to over forty years of racial politics and Democrat rule, and the outright theft, greed and criminal mismanagement by politicians the people of Detroit continued to elect for decades, and will likely continue to elect in the future. The unions in particular have no claim on any bailout, since they were part of the same circle of corruption and benefited from it. Even worse, without attacking the core problems of Detroit (which may prove impossible, given th ecurrent population) nothing's going to change no matter how much federal aid pours in.

The Obama Administration has stated that Detroit cannot expect to receive any more federal aid. I'd rate that statement to be as true as President Obama's famous "If you like your doctor and your health plan, you'll be able to keep them."

Especially as we get closer to the midterms.