George Floyd

[Darren]

Mama warned me about wrestling with pigs (you get all muddy and the pig enjoys it) but I get sucked in anyway.

You can roll back on top of your sister now.

I've never regarded the term redneck as a pejorative. Neither do most others in WV. FWIW, I'm related to the Hatfields distantly via my maternal grandmother. They're good people.

"Mingo County native, Wilma Lee Steele, is one of the board members for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Steele is a retired art teacher. For her the passion of sharing this history started from telling young activists about the history behind the word "redneck" and the red bandana. Striking miners tied Red Bandanas around their necks during the march on Blair Mountain.

“The thing that gets me, I guess, and what makes me want to do this, and tell other people about this, is that all these immigrants from all these different countries, they didn’t speak the same language. They did not have the same culture. And they were fighting each other and divided. But when they tied on these (red) bandanas and marched, they became a brotherhood. And one of the things I love about the union is that the union was one of the early ones that said equal pay for blacks and whites. It’s pretty special.”"

https://www.wvpublic.org/post/do-you-kn ... y#stream/0

[RayThom]

Mama warned me about wrestling with pigs (you get all muddy and the pig enjoys it) but I get sucked in anyway.You can roll back on top of your sister now.

I've never regarded the term redneck as a pejorative. Neither do most others in WV. FWIW, I'm related to the Hatfields distantly via my maternal grandmother. They're good people. "Mingo County native, Wilma Lee Steele, is one of the board members for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Steele is a retired art teacher. For her the passion of sharing this history started from telling young activists about the history behind the word "redneck" and the red bandana. Striking miners tied Red Bandanas around their necks during the march on Blair Mountain.“The thing that gets me, I guess, and what makes me want to do this, and tell other people about this, is that all these immigrants from all these different countries, they didn’t speak the same language. They did not have the same culture. And they were fighting each other and divided. But when they tied on these (red) bandanas and marched, they became a brotherhood. And one of the things I love about the union is that the union was one of the early ones that said equal pay for blacks and whites. It’s pretty special.”"
https://www.wvpublic.com/post/do-you-kn ... y#stream/0

WTF, Darren. Why do you need to double up on so much of the "cut and paste" screed that you post in here?

Gob warned you about starting a new thread whenever you had a new thought bubble explode above you fat head. I guess double posting is the way to get around his warning.

Darren's plea: "Look at me, I'm important, damn it."

[Darren]

Thanks for being such a devoted follower, Ray. I appreciate the heads up.

[Scooter]

[Darren]

"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The state of Minnesota on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department in hopes of forcing widespread changes following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for minutes, even after he stopped moving.

Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced the filing of the formal complaint at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. The governor and Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said they hope to reach agreement with the city to identify short-term ways to address the police department's history of racial discrimination, and use the investigation to find long-term solutions for systemic change.
...
Mayor Jacob Frey said the state's intervention will help break what he called a stalemate on reform.

“For years in Minneapolis, police chiefs and elected officials committed to change have been thwarted by police union protections and laws that severely limit accountability among police departments," Frey said in a statement. “I welcome today’s announcement because breaking through those persistent barriers, shifting the culture of policing, and addressing systemic racism will require all of us working hand in hand.”"

[RayThom]

"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The state of Minnesota on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department in hopes of forcing widespread changes following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for minutes, even after he stopped moving.Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced the filing of the formal complaint at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. The governor and Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said they hope to reach agreement with the city to identify short-term ways to address the police department's history of racial discrimination, and use the investigation to find long-term solutions for systemic change....Mayor Jacob Frey said the state's intervention will help break what he called a stalemate on reform.“For years in Minneapolis, police chiefs and elected officials committed to change have been thwarted by police union protections and laws that severely limit accountability among police departments," Frey said in a statement. “I welcome today’s announcement because breaking through those persistent barriers, shifting the culture of policing, and addressing systemic racism will require all of us working hand in hand.”"

Darren, That's something.

In your professional opinion, what do you think will happen next? (No "cut and paste.")

[dales]

Nobody Told Me
John Lennon

Everybody's talking and no one says a word
Everybody's making love and no one really cares
There's Nazis in the bathroom just below the stairs
Always something happening and nothing going on
There's always something happening cooking and nothing in the pot
They're starving back in China so finish what you got
They're starving back in China so finish what you got
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
strange days indeed
Everybody's runnin' and no one makes a move
Everyone's a winner
and no one seems to lose
There's a little yellow idol to the north of Katmandu
Everybody's flying and no one leaves the ground

[Darren]

In your professional opinion, what do you think will happen next? (No "cut and paste.")

I don't have a professional opinion other than a tale of two states from experience as an analogy.

The state fire marshal's office in WV has absolute control of the fire departments in part due to the fact the state sends each fire dept a quarterly check from insurance surcharge collections. Depts are subject to inspections which include member training records, fire trucks and equipment on the trucks. You're given a period of time to correct any deficiency. If not corrected, the charter is pulled, the money is cutoff and the dept. can't legally provide fire services.

Pennsylvania does none of that. There are no statewide training requirements. The only inspections are by a garage that can inspect heavy trucks which is normal in WV too.

I quit a PA fire dept. after seeing "maintenance" issues which were ignored by the inspection garage. That information was given to the appropriate PA agency with jurisdiction. Nothing happened.

Two out of the three trucks should not be on the road. One for a brake line issue. That one had a brake failure when I was driving it to an accident. The repair was not done properly.

The tanker has severe rust in components holding the tank, weighing nine tons when full, onto the truck. Firefighters due to federal law can drive heavy vehicles which normally require a commercial driver's license (CDL) to operate without a CDL. See the perfect storm potential?

Run that down the road to an incident, pass a school bus in a curve and a 18,000 lb loaded tank rips off and totals a full school bus. Tankers are notoriously unstable anyway due to the sloshing of the water in turns and when stopping.

Now you're thinking how does that apply to getting George Floyd murdered?

IT'S CALLED NO EFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT AND CONTROL.

There were ample signs the Minneapolis police dept had personnel issues that should have been rectified long ago. What you had is what I call a protected turf problem. No one from the outside had the moxy to make changes.

The police in Minneapolis were allowed to self-police which means there's a multitude of accomplices to the murder of George Floyd because numerous parties abdicated their responsibility. George Chauvin should have been gone and very likely incarcerated long ago.

What will happen next?

Unless the feds get involved, the furniture will be rearranged a few hands slapped and things will continue on their merry way,

[BoSoxGal]

Police unions and benevolent associations are more at fault than police leadership in many cases - they are often the obstacle to disciplining or firing bad cops. A much better balance must be struck between protecting cops and protecting citizens.

[Big RR]

Unless the feds get involved, the furniture will be rearranged a few hands slapped and things will continue on their merry way,

Sure, because the feds have such a great record in this regard; these are people who rip kids from their parents and stock them in cages, then haul extremely young minors before courts without even the benefit of counsel. It hasn't always been this way until the current cheeto in chief became president, but the last thing we need is letting the fox guard the henhouse. And the feds need to get their own house in order.

BSG--I think it's more endemic; I think cops routinely cover up for other cops unless their backs are against the walls. Many are decent people, whose sesne of decency disappears when a fellow officer does anything wrong. I think strong pressure from above can alleviate some of that, but there has to be a change through the rank and file as well, for them to see that the rogue cops are bringing their profession into ill repute and to hold them into account and dismiss them when this occurs. Police should realize they are part of the community, not separate from it; and dialogues and understanding, not shows of blatant force in the name of law and order, can move us a long way toward this.

But, IMHO, such coming together and understanding scares the cheeto in chief more than anything else.

[Darren]

Unless the feds get involved, the furniture will be rearranged a few hands slapped and things will continue on their merry way,

Sure, because the feds have such a great record in this regard; these are people who rip kids from their parents and stock them in cages, then haul extremely young minors before courts without even the benefit of counsel. It hasn't always been this way until the current cheeto in chief became president, but the last thing we need is letting the fox guard the henhouse. And the feds need to get their own house in order.

Did you forget this?

"on September 24, President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 members of the Arkansas National Guard, taking authority away from Governor Faubus. The next day, the Army troops escorted the students to their first day of class."

[Big RR]

That's when we had a president who prized ideals over idiotic rhetoric; one who stood up for people and their rights, not put kids in cages. I'm not extolling Eisenhower as president, far from it, but we've reached a new low in the last 3+ years. Trump is like the kid who got picked on in grade school and just wants to prove how tough he is now by acting like an asshole; he doesn't want to resolve the situation, just escalate it to increase the divisions and pump himself up.

[Darren]

That's when we had a president who prized ideals over idiotic rhetoric; one who stood up for people and their rights, not put kids in cages. I'm not extolling Eisenhower as president, far from it, but we've reached a new low in the last 3+ years. Trump is like the kid who got picked on in grade school and just wants to prove how tough he is now by acting like an asshole; he doesn't want to resolve the situation, just escalate it to increase the divisions and pump himself up.

You're missing the point.

Trump can use the military as has happened many times in the past under the Insurrection Act. That's in case you want to cry a river over the Posse Comitatus Act being violated.

[BoSoxGal]

BSG--I think it's more endemic; I think cops routinely cover up for other cops unless their backs are against the walls. Many are decent people, whose sesne of decency disappears when a fellow officer does anything wrong. I think strong pressure from above can alleviate some of that, but there has to be a change through the rank and file as well, for them to see that the rogue cops are bringing their profession into ill repute and to hold them into account and dismiss them when this occurs. Police should realize they are part of the community, not separate from it; and dialogues and understanding, not shows of blatant force in the name of law and order, can move us a long way toward this.

But, IMHO, such coming together and understanding scares the cheeto in chief more than anything else.

With regard to the issue of rooting out wrongdoing in the first place, I agree with you entirely - the ‘neutral’ cops who stand by and watch silently while their coworkers engage in civil rights violations with impunity are definitely a major problem.

I was speaking to Darren’s point about where the problems lie in removing bad officers. There are many jurisdictions where police leadership is actually on board with reforms and want to get rid of bad cops but the pressure from unions and PBAs is incredibly fierce. These same organizations contribute to the campaigns of local prosecutors, making it difficult to get a local prosecutor to charge bad cops. Beyond my belief that prosecutors shouldn’t be elected in the first place, while they still are, all police brutality cases should be handled by prosecution authorities from outside the jurisdiction. Every state’s AG’s office should have a division solely dedicated to investigating and trying these cases.

[Darren]

I was speaking to Darren’s point about where the problems lie in removing bad officers. There are many jurisdictions where police leadership is actually on board with reforms and want to get rid of bad cops but the pressure from unions and PBAs is incredibly fierce. These same organizations contribute to the campaigns of local prosecutors, making it difficult to get a local prosecutor to charge bad cops. Beyond my belief that prosecutors shouldn’t be elected in the first place, while they still are, all police brutality cases should be handled by prosecution authorities from outside the jurisdiction. Every state’s AG’s office should have a division solely dedicated to investigating and trying these cases.

As long as you have a synergistic or parasitic relationship, depending on your pov, that won't change. The back scratching has to be interrupted no matter the basis. Forming a committee or even a state investigation that ends up going on forever due to recalcitrance is not acceptable.

That means if it's culturally acceptable to violate the civil rights of a minority, an outside agency needs to intervene, as in Little Rock, when the existing political structure would not correct the issue. They had years to fix the issue in Minneapolis. Time's up.

Now it's time for the DOJ to rip lots of new assholes.

[Big RR]

That only works if they get rid of their own assholes first.

[Big RR]

That's in case you want to cry a river over the Posse Comitatus Act being violated.

Gee Darren, and here I would have thought that you would have liked the posse comitatus act to protect the states from federal tyrrany. Personally, I am happy to see the troops being used to enforce federal laws passed by Congress (especially when the courts are also involved like Eisenhower and the Civil rights Act), or when a governor requests it (like in a serious national disaster); not so much when the president can use the troops against his own people on a whim (like Trump proving he's tough).

[BoSoxGal]

Exhibit A re: the negative role of police unions and PBAs in preventing police and municipal leadership from holding bad cops accountable.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... d-him.html

[Econoline]

That's when we had a president who prized ideals over idiotic rhetoric; one who stood up for people and their rights, not put kids in cages. I'm not extolling Eisenhower as president, far from it, but we've reached a new low in the last 3+ years. Trump is like the kid who got picked on in grade school and just wants to prove how tough he is now by acting like an asshole; he doesn't want to resolve the situation, just escalate it to increase the divisions and pump himself up.

You're missing the point.

Trump can use the military as has happened many times in the past under the Insurrection Act. That's in case you want to cry a river over the Posse Comitatus Act being violated.

Au contraire...

Can President Trump Really Order Troops Into Cities?

By Jeffrey Toobin
June 2, 2020

In his speech in the Rose Garden on Monday evening, President Trump said, “If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” Can he do that? Can the President send the U.S. military into a state, even when the governor of that state doesn’t ask for its assistance, or even if the governor actively opposes such a step?

The answer is no, probably. The reasons relate to a venerable principle in American law: that the military should stay away from actions on domestic soil. One of the founding principles of the Republic was that the federal military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement. But, over the years, the law has carved out certain narrow exceptions to that rule, notably in the form of the Insurrection Act, from 1807. This law says that “whenever there is an insurrection in any state against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or its governor,” call in the armed forces. So that seems pretty simple. The President can bring in the military only if a governor or a state requests it. In recent years, the law has been invoked only when governors have requested the assistance of federal troops, such as in 1992, when California sought help in quelling the rioting after the acquittals in the Rodney King case. (Similarly, in 1967, Governor George Romney, of Michigan, requested federal troops to control riots in Detroit.) Now, however, the governors of California, Illinois, and Michigan have all made it clear that they will not seek the involvement of federal troops in their efforts to handle disturbances in their states.

But that’s not the end of the story. There is another provision of the Insurrection Act that arguably gives the President greater unilateral authority. This provision states that, when the President determines that there are unlawful activities which “make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States,” he may call in the armed forces. It was passed in 1956, in order to give Presidents the authority to enforce civil-rights laws. President Eisenhower invoked it to send Army troops to enforce the integration of the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. It’s unclear whether the law, which was based on the protection of constitutional rights, would give Trump the authority he wants to overrule governors today.

In other words, there appears to be some ambiguity about the President’s authority to do what he promised to do. It may be, of course, that Trump merely wanted to threaten the use of the military without ever intending to follow through. On Monday, the President was governing by spectacle—ordering the clearing of peaceful protesters so that he could stage a photo opportunity with a Bible at a nearby church. The threat to send troops was a similarly showy gesture. Trump was trying to look tougher than the governors, but he didn’t take any actual responsibility for bringing calm to the country. If he were to send troops, the burden would be on him to show results.

In all likelihood, then, there will not be the clashes that the President’s remarks portend. He will not send troops into a state that doesn’t want them. But, in threatening to do so, Trump has shredded another norm. He has abused his power in yet another way, extending his legacy of lawlessness and authoritarianism, with more such abuses likely in the months to come.

---

Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002. He is the author of, most recently, “American Heiress” and is at work on a book about Robert Mueller’s investigation.

[Darren]

The New Yorker? Cough! Cough! I don't read the fiction in the New Yorker.