Thursday, June 18, 2020

RAYMOND IBRAHIM - MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

It’s Your Fault They Are Violent!

That is, if you’re white and they’re not.
 
Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
According to the media narrative, whatever unpleasant behavior a person or group is engaging in—from criminal activity to sheer terrorism—if you’re white and they’re not, that proves their behavior is entirely your fault.  Your insufferable racism and xenophobia have pushed them over the top; their criminal behavior is a reflection of their many grievances against you.
This would certainly require ameliorating, if it were but true.  It’s not.  This is not to say that there is no racism or xenophobia, things which cannot be “legislated”; rather, it is to say that the overwhelming majority of criminal behavior is and always has been fueled by things other than grievances.
Take Islam for instance.  Following the savage 9/11 terror attacks, the great question was “why do they hate us?” The answer from the media and its array of “experts” was that they had grievances against America.
Thereafter followed a litany list of supposed American/Western crimes against Muslims: originally it was Western political “sins”—from the crusades to colonialism to the creation of Israel.  But with each new Islamic terrorist attack or outrage, the “grievances” Muslims had grew: free speech, churches, even teddy bears were included.
The media might as well have mentioned your sheer existence as a free infidel as the ultimate grievance, which would have been closer to the truth.  After all, unjustified Muslim attacks on the West began nearly 1400 years ago, a few years after Islam was born; they continued for a millennium, swallowing three-quarters of the Christian world and bombarding every corner of Europe, whence many millions of slaves were abducted.
Even America’s first war as a nation was with African Muslims, who were raiding and enslaving American vessels.  When Jefferson and Adams asked the Barbary ambassador what “injury” the newborn American state could possibly have committed to provoke such attacks, “the ambassador answered us,” Jefferson wrote to Congress in 1786, “that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, … that it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all.”
Muslim attacks on the West finally went on hiatus in the early nineteenth century, when Europe, fed up by Islamic depredations, invaded and colonized the Muslim world.  Even that “process of European expansion and empire,” explains Bernard Lewis, “has its roots in the clash of Islam and Christendom….  The victorious liberators [Europeans], having reconquered their own territories [from Muslims], pursued their former masters whence they had come.”
Regardless, the West has been so inundated with “it’s your fault,” Muslim “grievances,” and “Islamophobia” propaganda from their own media that the Islamic State itself (ISIS) made it a point to clarify that it hates and terrorizes the West first and foremost because Islamic law requires it to do so, irrespective of Western behavior.
Or consider the abysmal way Muslim nations treat their minorities, chiefly Christians.  How could these peaceful, tiny, and politically disenfranchised communities possibly “aggrieve” Muslims? They are often the same race, ethnicity, and speak the same language as their Muslim counterparts; you cannot tell them apart except for religion—and that is the “grievance” their persecutors have: non-Muslim minorities are “infidels” and therefore to be despised and oppressed.
Despite such outrageous persecution, which often leads to the murders of several Christians every month, the Western media seldom mentions this truly systemic and endemic topic, and never honestly: doing so would throw a wrench in their “grievances” narrative that Muslim misbehavior is a byproduct of “grievances” against the West.
Now consider how the media is using this same grievance-paradigm to justify criminal behavior and violence: a black man was killed by a police officer; although the latter was properly arrested and charged with murder, that’s not enough.  If you’re white, the current turmoil—the looting, burning, and killing—is again and ultimately your fault: “grievances” coming to roost; or, to quote a recent Politico headline, “White America is reckoning with racism.”
And yet, just as with Islam, the media’s “black lives matter” narrative is extremely selective and manipulative: the cold-blooded murder of several admirable black Americans, such as 77-year-old retired police captain David Dorn, who was tragically shot to death for protecting a pawn shop from looters, apparently do not matter (whose “protesting” for them?); nor do the many lives of hardworking American blacks whose businesses have been ransacked and destroyed.
Nor, for that matter, does the fact that several thousand black lives are snuffed out by other blacks every year matter to the media (American blacks have killed 324,000 other blacks between just 1979 and 2014).  As for the fact that, although amounting for about 15 percent of the U.S. population, blacks commit half of all murders—which at the very least means they end up in violent confrontations with police—what difference does that make?
Only those very, very few black lives that can possibly be made to conform to the grievance narrative will ever matter for the media.
The irony of all this is that only a naturally fair-minded people would ever care let alone allow the accusation that they are not being fair enough to their minorities shake them.  Try telling any non-Western nation (we’ve already seen how it goes under Islam) that they are mistreating their minorities—or better yet, that they need to get on their knees and apologize for their race—and see where that gets you.

GOOD COPS, BAD COPS AND BLACK LIVES MATTER LITTLE TO BLACK LIVES MURDERED BY BLACKS


THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!

 

“But maybe there is an opportunity here to strike a blow against the impunity that has permitted this pervasive culture of police racism and abuse.”

 

Why Conservatives and Liberals Might Join to Fight Back Against Police Unions

In 2011, Wisconsin Republicans led by Governor Scott Walker enacted a controversial measure to weaken the state’s public employee unions. But they exempted firefighters and police officers, reflecting the conservative movement view that unions may be bad, but cops are very good.
But in the wake of the George Floyd murder, the conservative movement view is changing. The Wall Street Journal editorial pageNational Review, the Washington ExaminerHeritage Foundation, and even the Federalist have all identified police unions as a primary culprit in allowing violent and racist officers to operate with impunity. Even Walker, normally an authoritarian apparatchik, now concedes that he was wrong to exempt police.
Curtailing police unions may not be a sufficient response to the scale of the problem — as Eric Levitz pointed out, the handful of states without unionized police forces have hardly banished police misconduct — but it does seem to be a necessary step. Reporters like Noam Scheiber and Melissa Segura have detailed how police unions have thwarted even fairly determined efforts to curtail biased and abusive policing. One study found that police agencies that unionized saw a 27 percent increase in misconduct complaints, as officers wielded their newfound impunity.
The common theme running through these accounts is that unions bargain not only for better pay and benefits, but also job security that shields their members from accountability. Any effort to reform police means changing the rules governing the conduct, but the enforcement of those rules requires subjecting officers to accountability and, ultimately, the loss of their job if they refuse to cooperate.
Of course, making it hard to fire people is one of the central functions of most unions. In the case of police officers, this protection effectively insulates the most violent, bigoted and authoritarian cops from complying with regulations. The union is the trapdoor beneath every police reform campaign.
The Washington Post has two related accounts of how police routinely thwart reform. The first is an analysis of a new paper in Yale Law Journal about fired police officers. They often get hired elsewhere, usually in smaller towns that have fewer resources — and which are either unaware of, or indifferent to, their offenses. They estimate that 3 percent of all police officers in Florida have previously been fired from other jobs as police officers.
That finding is even more harrowing when read in conjunction with a second piece in the Post, by Daniel Oats, a former police chief. Oats describes the difficulty police unions pose to an agency that is trying to weed out bad actors. Any cop subject to discipline usually has the benefit of an arbitration process stacked in their favor, enabling (among other advantages) a full review of all evidence marshaled against them before they have to testify, so they can craft their testimony to avoid being caught in a lie. Oats writes that during a nine-year stint as police chief in Aurora, Colorado, he wanted to fire 16 (out of 650) cops. He only succeeded in firing four of them — and three of those firings were reversed by the Civil Service Commission.
The grueling, lengthy, low-probability process of trying to remove an officer has the predictable effect of discouraging police chiefs from even trying to fire miscreants. The drain of time and resources is simply not worth it, he argues, except with the worst of the worst.
When you consider this in conjunction with the fact that many fired officers just get new police jobs elsewhere, you have a picture of how overmatched any reformer is against the protections most officers enjoy. Again, the precise details differ significantly from town to town, and some police forces have humane cultures and more robust systems of accountability.
The problem of police unions upends the normal ideological divisions. The left loves unions and dislikes police, and the right loves police and hates unions. At the moment, the left has largely overlooked its affinity for labor, and the right has overlooked its support for police, perhaps because Floyd’s grisly murder and the scenes of brutality against protesters have put the rot in police department cultures across the country on such vivid display.
Perhaps polarization will swallow up the fleeting moment of consensus. (President Trump himself has expressed no interest in taking on the police unions, whose abuses he has enabled and goaded on.) But maybe there is an opportunity here to strike a blow against the impunity that has permitted this pervasive culture of police racism and abuse.

Good Cops, Bad Cops, and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the Police Protest Movement


NYPD officers kneel down after answering a call for unity from protesters during a June 2 demonstration in New York City over the death of George Floyd. Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Of the million or so words written these past few weeks about the causes and effects of police brutality, of all the earnest observers who have weighed in with suggestions on how to reform or rebuild police departments, none highlighted the scope of the problem more succinctly than Lieutenant Robert Cattani of the New York Police Department. He felt compelled, on June 3, to email an anguished apology to his colleagues for taking a knee in solidarity with protesters demonstrating in the city over the killing of George Floyd.
“I thought maybe that one protester/rioter who saw it would later think twice about fighting or hurting a cop,” Cattani wrote as the protests intensified earlier this month. “I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life.”
“I spent the first part of my career thriving to build a reputation of a good cop,” he continued. “I threw that all in the garbage on Sunday [May 31].”


In Foley Square, resounding chants of “NYPD take a knee.” Eventually, four cops kneel to huge chants. “We just want to get home safely, same as you,” says one protester.

That Cattani thinks he threw his good reputation “in the garbage” by making a token gesture of sympathy for protesters is the heart of the problem here. His email is a rare glimpse into the ground-view toxicity of the “us-versus-them” mentality within police departments in historic moments like this. It also flips on its head the hoary notion, repeated even now by tribunes of the Trump administration, about how policing in America is tarnished by a few rare “bad apples” mixed in with all the “good” ones.
Here’s a decent cop — a “good apple,” you might say — who did something while in uniform that harmed no one and that earned him respect, if not appreciation, from the people he is sworn to protect and serve. And for that he knew he would be treated as a pariah by his fellow officers — let’s call them “bad apples.” “Culture eats policy for breakfast,” one expert said of policing over the weekend. Indeed, how can anyone reasonably expect genuine accountability or transparency within a police department where such warped sensibilities prevail?
The cop who takes a knee on a street to acknowledge the existence of police misconduct — that is to say, the cop who takes a knee to acknowledge reality— is doing something to help solve the problem of police brutality. The cop who plans to retaliate against that officer — that is to say, the cop who plans to engage in unlawful retribution — is doing something to perpetuate the problem. Answering the questions of how and why police union officials won’t recognize that obvious distinction is answering the question of how we got into this mess to begin with.
The reaction by the NYPD cops who received Cattani’s email also helps explain the state of play as nationwide, popular demonstrations roll into their fourth week. “Police sources expressed relief that Cattani had apologized — but questioned what he was thinking,” the New York Post tells us. “I’m glad he took it back, because your officers are out here battling with these guys and that’s what you do to show appreciation? Never show your weakness,” one insider said. “You did it to appease these people who didn’t appreciate you anyway.”
That’s nonsense. The cop who takes a knee in solidarity with protesters isn’t doing it for the looter or the rioter or the criminal who is taking advantage of the protests. That cop is doing it instead for the majority of protesters, and millions of others who aren’t protesting publicly but who want to see sweeping police reform — and who don’t necessarily see the police as enemies of peace and justice. If police departments are trying to win the hearts and minds of the public, police union attacks on decent rank-and-file cops is a terrible strategy.
This is not a New York City problem, either. It’s a national problem and it warrants nationwide attention among justice reformers. Late last week in Chicago, for example, the city’s police union leader threatened to kick out of the union any cop who takes a knee during a protest. “If you kneel, you’ll be risking being brought up on charges and thrown out of the lodge,’” warned John Catanazana. “Specifically this weekend,” he argued, “this was about defunding and abolishing the police officers. And you’re going to take a knee for that? It’s ridiculous.”
Nowhere in these missives against conscientious objectors among police officers is there any acknowledgement by police union officials that the growing talk of “defunding” police departments is a direct result of the brutality with which some cops have attacked peaceful protesters. It’s not just a vicious cycle. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Protests against police misconduct over the past three weeks have engendered countless proven examples of more police misconduct. The police themselves, on our streets, are making the case for their own abolition.
This past weekend, for example, Michael DeBonis, an ex-NYPD detective and former police spokesman, posted withering criticism of the police work in the Eric Garner case. Garner, whose last words also included the now iconic phrase, “I can’t breathe,” was killed by NYPD cops after he was put into a chokehold during a dubious arrest on Staten Island in 2014. “We killed Eric Garner,’ DeBonis wrote, but then felt compelled to add that “In writing this post I’m fully aware that some of my cop friends may call me a traitor, a hypocrite or even un follow me.”
Police officers who tell the truth about police brutality are not “traitors,” they are heroes. They are also indispensable to the police reform movement. If police officers continue to be afraid to speak out about the misconduct they see, if police whistleblowers are punished instead of protected, the reform movement will continue to morph into a “defund” movement. By refusing to embrace reasonable reforms — or in other words, by drawing lines like the ones they’ve drawn around protesters — unions will continue to undermine their own political and moral support.
The kicker? On Sunday, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, said that changes to “qualified immunity” rules that would make the police more often liable for misconduct — a reform with broad support from conservatives and progressives alike — should be considered as a “poison pill” in pending federal legislation because of opposition from police unions. There can be no meaningful federal police reform legislation that does not take on the unions directly. Ask Lieutenant Cattani. He understands.

 

Blacks not the only victims of rogue cops

 

The videos below are of a 2014 incident in Independence, Missouri where former policeman Timothy N. Runnels arrested Bryce Masters, a 17-year-old boy.  The first video is two minutes and is very disturbing, especially the ending.  The second video is 54 minutes and includes the arrival on the scene of backup and ambulance.  The second video shows a brief split screen of what Masters shot of the incident before Runnels tased him into cardiac arrest.
The incident was covered in depth by The Intercept and by the website for Britain's Daily Mail.  The incident was also covered at Officer.com.  In 2018 in nearby Kansas City, the Star's Tony Rizzo reported: "Federal prosecutors later charged Runnels criminally with violating Masters' civil rights, and the former officer was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison. Runnels, 35, is scheduled to be released from custody in January 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons."  Here's the only clear photo of Runnels I could find on the Net.  If you see him, steer clear.
Blacks are by no means the only victims of police brutality.  Police departments must do a better job of identifying and quickly getting rid of any thugs on their payrolls, but they're being protected by the police unions.  We need our police, but not the criminal rogues.
To watch the videos at YouTube, click on these URLs:
 Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped).


Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to 

provide cover for Democratic governors and 

mayors who have overseen brutal police 

attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-

police record of the Obama administration.

Democrats announce toothless police reform bill


9 June 2020
With a great deal of rhetoric accompanied by a political stunt, the Democratic congressional leadership on Monday released its “Justice in Policing 2020” bill.
Prior to the press conference to present the measure, more than 20 Democratic lawmakers, all wearing African kente cloths, knelt in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing the 46-year-old African American worker.
The group of Democrats included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass and senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
At the press conference, Bass, Pelosi, Schumer and other sponsors of the bill repeatedly cited the nationwide mass demonstrations against the murder of Floyd and touted their bill as a “transformational” and “bold” attack on police violence and systemic racism. 
But their statements and the token character 
of the reforms included in the bill make clear 
that the measure is nothing of the kind.
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to 
provide cover for Democratic governors and 
mayors who have overseen brutal police 
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.

 It is also aimed at containing and dissipating social protests by workers and youth against not only racism and the fascistic Trump administration, but also the social inequality, repression and poverty that are embedded in the capitalist system and magnified by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democrats are well aware that even their collection of mild reforms has no chance of being passed by the Republican-controlled Senate or signed into law by President Trump. Just minutes after the Democrats’ press conference, Trump, who later met behind closed doors with law enforcement officials, tweeted: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
The major provisions of the bill include:
* Changes in the wording of statutes dealing with police abuse that somewhat lower the legal threshold for obtaining a conviction. The bill alters the federal standard for criminal police behavior from “willfully” violating the constitutional rights of a victim to doing so “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
It also changes the standard for determining whether the use of force is justified from whether it is “reasonable” to whether it is “necessary.”
* It somewhat limits, but does not eliminate, the application of “qualified immunity” to police offenders. For the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has interpreted the “qualified immunity” doctrine, which applies to public officials pursuing their official duties, to vacate civil suits and throw out criminal cases against police who break the law or use unwarranted force.
Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark argued in 2019 that “qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people’s constitutional rights with virtual impunity.” The Obama administration repeatedly intervened in Supreme Court cases to uphold the blanket use of “qualified immunity” to shield cops from civil suits or criminal prosecution.
* The bill limits, but does not eliminate, the transfer of military equipment to the police. Obama continued the practice of militarizing police departments with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, drones and other tactical weapons.
* The bill creates a national register of police misconduct.
* It bans chokeholds.
* It establishes a grant program allowing—but not requiring—state attorneys general to create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive force.
* It requires body cameras for federal uniformed police officers and dashboard cameras for marked federal police vehicles. These federal forces comprise only a small fraction of the 687,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the US. The bill also mandates that state and local agencies use federal funds to “ensure” the use of body and dashboard cameras.
* The bill bans racial profiling.
* It grants subpoena powers to the civil rights division of the Justice Department for “pattern and practice” investigations of police departments.
* It makes lynching a federal hate crime.
At the press conference, Bass, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, went out of her way to profess her support for the police. “I am certain that police officers, professionals who risk their lives every day, are deeply concerned about their profession and do not want to work in an environment that requires their silence when they know a fellow officer is abusing the public,” she said.
She went on to present police officers as the unwitting victims of poor training and policing practices and a lack of “transparency.”
Pelosi called the bill a “transformational” and “structural change,” ran through its main provisions, and concluded by saying, “Police brutality is a heartbreaking reflection of an entrenched system of racial injustice in America.” She called the bill a “first step,” promising “more to come.”
New York Senator Schumer, known as the senator from Wall Street, referred nervously to the massive demonstrations that have continued in New York City and in cities and towns across the US for nearly two weeks, noting in particular their multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity.
He then proceeded to define the issue of police violence exclusively in racial terms, saying, “The poison of racism affects more than just our criminal justice system. It runs much deeper than that. There are racial disparities in housing and health care, education, the economy, jobs, income and wealth and COVID has only placed a magnifying glass on them.”
This is a continuation of the narrative that has been employed by the ruling class, and particularly that faction represented by the Democratic Party, for more than 50 years, ever since the massive urban rebellions of the 1960s. Beginning with the Kerner Commission Report of 1968, there has been a concerted effort to portray the essential social category in America as race, rather than class.

BLOG EDITOR: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RELIED ON THE BLACK SLAVE CLASS UNTIL IT BECAME APPARENT THAT THE INVADING ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS WOULD MAKE A BETTER CLASS OF SLAVES. 
ASK YOURSELF WHAT BARACK OBAMA EVER DID FOR BLACK AMERICA AS HE SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING 'CHEAP' LABOR MEXICANS.
This was designed from the outset to divert attention from the class exploitation upon which capitalism is based and within which racism serves as a weapon to divide the working class. All of the African-American lawmakers at the Democrats’ press conference are wealthy beneficiaries of policies that have elevated a thin layer of blacks into the upper-middle class and the bourgeoisie, while leaving black workers, and the working class as a whole, in far worse circumstances than in the 1960s.
A reporter asked if the sponsors of the “Justice in Policing Act” supported calls for “defunding” the police that have been embraced by some local Democratic officials, who have generally defined it as diverting a small portion of the police budget to social services. Bass had previously made clear she did not support such calls and the campaign of Joe Biden released a statement Monday disavowing the demand.
Responding to the question, Pelosi said, “We want to work with our police departments. There are many who take pride in their work, and we want to be able to make sure the focus is on them.” She went on to warn against getting “into these questions that may come by the small minds of some.”


Government-employee unions—including those for police—put the power and interests of their workers above the public interest.
June 8, 2020 
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, and the ensuing protests and urban riots, have brought police departments under enormous scrutiny and widespread hostility. Liberals and conservatives alike have identified police unions as a barrier to salutary reform. They aren’t wrong—and union contracts are one reason why reforming police departments is so hard. But while Left and Right may agree about police unions, those on the left would not make a broader connection: that the problems posed by police unions in particular are similar to those with public-sector unions in general.
Liberal sympathy for organized labor doesn’t extend to police unions because cops are seen as the “bad proletariat.” Liberals try to paint the problems of police unions as unique to law enforcement, rather than endemic to unionized government. In the wake of the Floyd killing, some have called for the abolition of police forces—and, in Minneapolis, the city council has announced that it will “begin the process” of disbanding the city’s police department. On the other side, conservative aversion to government unions often stops short of police unions because conservatives worry that criticism of cop unions will be mistaken for criticism of the police. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for example, excluded police unions from Act 10, which dramatically weakened public-sector unions in his state.
The deeper problem is that unionization and collective bargaining have made it almost impossible to bring about meaningful reform of state and local government, policing included. The consequences are huge, because the inability to reform government means that performance suffers and public trust in key institutions declines.
Collective bargaining is not fundamentally about products or services—whether public safety, education, automobiles, or anything else—but about the power and interests of workers and management. Public-sector unions are in the business of winning better salaries and benefits, protecting job security, and advancing their members’ occupational interests. Organizational incentives, and state law, ensure that union leaders prioritize these amenities.
Police and public schools are the institutions of government with which Americans most frequently engage. Police protect our most vulnerable citizens and allow communities to thrive. Schools offer opportunities for social mobility. There are thousands of heroic and devoted police officers and school teachers. But unionization and collective bargaining have enmeshed these two crucial government functions in red tape that too often protects the inept and abusive.
Collective bargaining in the public-safety and educational sectors strips government executives of the tools they need to supervise and manage their workforces effectively. Police chiefs and school principals struggle to weed out poor performers. A few bad actors can undermine an entire organizational culture.
Upholding the law presents unique challenges, and police can have adversarial relationships with the communities whom they serve. Consequently, police-union contracts contain myriad formal rules and procedures designed to protect police officers from the inevitable complaints—some justified, others not—that arise in the course of duty. Many big-city union contracts limit officer interrogation procedures after alleged wrongdoing, mandate the deletion of disciplinary records, and require cumbersome grievance proceedings.
Language spelling out these procedures often makes up the largest part of any contract—it’s roughly 20 percent of the New York City police officers’ contract, for example. These provisions allow both police unions and individual officers to challenge personnel actions by their superiors. If the matter can’t be settled by appealing up the chain of command, it is sent to binding arbitration. Arbitrators often split the difference and avoid dismissing officers. For instance, in 2018, a Seattle arbitrator reinstated—with back pay—an officer fired for punching a handcuffed, intoxicated woman. The nuisance involved in dealing with grievances, and the prospect that an appeal will reverse the outcome anyway, can dissuade supervisors from initiating discipline procedures against poor performers.
Police officers accused of misconduct are, consequently, rarely disciplined or punished insofar as investigations are long, highly regulated, and allow for frequent appeals. One study found that the worst 5 percent of officers in the Chicago Police Department accounted for a third of all civilian complaints. But few were ever disciplined or removed. Jason Van Dyke, the officer who killed an unarmed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, was among the officers with the most civilian complaints. But he remained on active duty.
Teachers also enjoy extensive job protections that make them nearly impossible to fire. State laws and union contracts create a labyrinth of paperwork and processes. In most school districts, over 95 percent of teachers receive satisfactory ratings and get tenure (which means more job protections) after three years on the job. Many principals don’t even bother trying to dismiss bad teachers because of the costs involved. One study found that dismissing a veteran teacher for poor performance takes a minimum of two years; in Los Angeles and San Francisco, it takes at least five years.
Even teachers accused of sexual misconduct rarely lose their jobs. Under many state laws or union contracts, an independent investigator—usually an independent law firm or the school superintendent—first vets any accusation. Then the case goes before an arbitrator chosen by the teachers’ union and school district. Usually arbitrators’ decisions split the difference and result in suspensions or fines rather than dismissal.
As a result of such protections, New York City infamously put hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms,” where they were paid full salaries and accrued benefits but could not interact with kids. This “program” cost the city some $800 million a year. Unable to end it fully, the city converted it into the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), which continued to pay teachers not to teach to the tune of $105 million a year. In 2019, 930 teachers held spots in the ATR—perhaps 25 of whom were there because of charges of misconduct—costing the city nearly $100 million in salaries and benefits.
Within the confines of collective bargaining, public executives need to push for a recovery of management rights. Only then might school principals and police chiefs have a fighting chance of improving their organizations. Going further, states may want to revisit the extent to which work rules that establish disciplinary procedures should even be the subject of collective bargaining. Greater accountability in state and local government would be better for everyone, good teachers and cops included. Weeding out poor performers will improve public services, protect communities, boost organizational morale, and spur upward mobility. It’s time to put the mission of public agencies ahead of job protections for public workers.

THE CORPORATE BRIBE SUCKING BLACK LIVES MATTER HOAX - Annually, some 93% of all black homicide victims are killed by other blacks; in Chicago a few days ago 18 African-Americans were shot and killed on a single day of almost unparLaled violence—all by other blacks

REALITY: THE BLACK SUBCULTURE 

COSTS AMERICA BILLIONS YEARLY DUE 

TO THEIR VIOLENCE. THERE IS NO 

SUBCULTURE ON EARTH MORE VIOLENT

THAN AMERICA'S GHETTO BLACKS.

SEE BELOW:

"Annually, some 93% of all black homicide 

victims are killed by other blacks; in Chicago 

a few days ago 18 African-Americans were 

shot and killed on a single day of almost 

unparalled violence—all by other blacks."


The BLM Movement: An Existential Threat to America

Its sudden rise and metastasizing power puts America at a dangerous crossroads.
 
Dr. Craig Luther

BLACK LIVES MATTER has taken America by storm. Simply put, it is a radical Leftist outfit that seeks to replace capitalism with socialism, abolish the police (and let criminals out of jail), and looks to socialist Venezuela as a model. Historically, BLM’s antecedents reach back to the Black Panthers of the 1960s; in recent years it has drawn inspiration from the radical Occupy Wall Street movement.
The BLM movement was given added impetus by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The Left mobilized upon Brown’s tragic death in 2014, BLM and other radical groups promoting the false narrative of "Hands up! Don't shoot!"--supposedly the young man’s final words before he was, we were told, brutally gunned down by a racist white cop. Destructive and deadly riots ensued.
Of course, "Hands up! Don't shoot!" was One. Big. Lie. Every black witness who testified before the grand jury stated that Michael Brown had attempted to force his way into the officer's police cruiser, assaulted the officer, and tried to grab his weapon. Looked at objectively, Mr Brown was a thug who, sadly, paid with his life for the terrible choices he made; even the Obama justice department could not come to a different conclusion.
Yet due to his death at the hands of a white police officer--as well as 2 or 3 similar events in recent years--the monstrous lie took hold that white police officers were engaged in genocide against black men. This dangerous falsehood was assiduously promoted by many in the media and by legions of “progressive” professors on our college campuses, where sadly, the mostly white student bodies lapped up every word; "yes, they thought, America is irredeemably racist, and there is nothing we can do to remove the stain of bigotry from our white skin except bow down before the New Racial Conformity.” So today young whites fall to their knees to repudiate their "white privilege" and beg for forgiveness that will never be forthcoming. And why not? Because, our new racial overlords lecture us, racism is not simply inherent in white America’s shameful past, it still permeates our white skin, and we can do nothing about that; it is who we are. White folks can even debase themselves by washing the feet of black men (as has occurred recently in several separate incidents), yet the original stain of white racism can never be symbolically washed away.
Of course, the protests and riots of the past two weeks were triggered by the tragic death of George Floyd. He certainly did not deserve to die, and those responsible should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, it is troubling that this man has been transformed into a tragic hero of the Left--this man with a long “rap” sheet, who once stuck a pistol in the stomach of a pregnant woman during a home invasion robbery. 
Yet Floyd’s untimely demise is ruthlessly exploited by BLM as yet another example of the “fact” that black men are being murdered wholesale by racist police officers. Might there be at least a scintilla of truth to that explosive charge? Question: How many unarmed African-Americans were shot and killed by police last year?
90,000?
9,000?
900?
90?
9?
If you selected "9" you’d be correct. In other words, in the millions of encounters law enforcement had with African-Americans in 2019, only 9 unarmed blacks were killed; and according to police records, a majority of the fatal encounters were the outcome of fully justified police actions. In the same year, 19 unarmed whites were shot dead by police; yet no one hears or even seems to care about these victims, because they don’t fit the Left’s narrative. (Note: The above data is gleaned from the Washington Post’s data base of fatal police shootings; however, after this tally of 9 unarmed black victims was reported by several news outlets, the Post scrambled to reclassify more than a dozen of its armed victims of police shootings as unarmed in an obvious attempt to plump up the number of black victims; still, even the new figure [if it can be trusted] raised the number of unarmed black victims in 2019 to just 15, which comprise just 0.2 percent of all black homicide victims.)
Annually, some 93% of all black homicide victims are killed by other blacks; in Chicago a few days ago 18 African-Americans were shot and killed on a single day of almost unparalled violence—all by other blacks. Of course the thousands of overwhelmingly male African-Americans killed each year by other African-Americans are also of little concern to the radical Left and their “progressive” media allies, as they work together to whip America into a veritable frenzy of rioting, looting, destruction, even murder.
Where do we go from here? I have no answer to that question, other than to say that all good people who believe in real justice (not the Marxist scam of "social justice") need to raise up their voices in opposition to the scurrilous lies and uncivilized behavior of groups like BLM. Police are NOT waging war on African-Americans. This is NOT a nation mired in systemic racism. We are a flawed yet decent people, who for decades have struggle successfully to right the wrongs of our past. We need bow down before no one.
Yet time is short. The Left has prepared the cultural battlefield well, and with BLM in the vanguard, they have turned to outright insurrection in an effort to obliterate the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our civilization This is now occuring right before our eyes in Seattle, where BLM, Antifa, and other radical groups have seized control of a large swath of the city; while they beat innocent people and extort money from businesses, the mayor hails them as patriots and orders the president back into his bunker. “Black Lives Matter!” she virtue signals.
So where do things stand at this utterly surreal moment in our nation’s history: After 50+ years of relentless Leftist agitation, America has finally reached an existential tipping point; indeed, should Biden win the presidency in November, his victory will be far from a conventional one; more likely it will signify a final and enduring seizure of power by BLM, Antifa and other Marxist/anarchist forces bent on destroying all decent Americans hold dear.
Craig Luther completed his Ph.D. in Modern European History at UC Santa Barbara. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, retired U.S. Air Force historian, and author of 8 books on the Second World War focusing on German military operations on the eastern front. His recent book, First Day on the Eastern Front: Germany Invades the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, was selected by the WW2 book aggregator site Stone & Stone WW2 Books as one of the six best books on WW2 published in 2018.



Black Lives Matter Managing Director Roasted for Dodging Questions on Finances, Antisemitism

Kailee Scales
10 Jun 2020393
2:31
Kailee Scales, managing director for Black Lives Matter Network Action Fund and Black Lives Matter Global Network, Inc., has been universally panned for her performance in an online Q&A where she dodged simple questions about where donations to the movement actually go.
Scales was the subject of an “AMA” or “Ask Me Anything” discussion on Reddit Monday. Over the course of 17 total answers, she explained the group’s advocacy for defunding police departments and addressed issues of crime, violence, and the Wuhan coronavirus as they relate to Black Lives Matter protests. However, the reactions to many of her posts were overwhelmingly negative, with users complaining about vague and tone-deaf answers to basic questions.



I am Kailee Scales, Managing Director for Black Lives Matter. Ask...






Finances was one particular focus of Scales’ critics. Black Lives Matter has been the recipient of millions of dollars in the past few weeks, as a string of corporations and celebrities announced massive donations for her organization to establish social justice bona fides for themselves. “Obviously right now BLM is getting MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of dollars in donations,” asked one Reddit user. “Where is all the money going and how is it allocated?”
“Yeah, I would love to see a report about the amount of donations and for what it was used. Without this, the organization only uses the BLM name tag to get donations,” another said in the ensuing discussion thread.
Scales ignored these messages but eventually answered a question on the same topic. It did not go over well.
“When people give money to Black Lives Matter, where specifically does it go?” one user asked. “What’s financial transparency like for your organization?”
Scales gave a terse, generic reply. “Hi — great question. Right now, our programs are focused on civic engagement, expansion of chapters, Arts & Culture, organizing and digital advocacy resources and tools,” she said. “Please visit our website and subscribe to blacklivesmatter.com for updates and more information to come!”
This response did not satisfy the Q&A participants, who signaled their disapproval by “downvoting” Scales’ reply. Her post currently has -1163 net votes. The top comment on that thread asked: “Why don’t you post actual links to where the funding goes? This is not an answer.” Several Redditors then tried looking up tax information for the foundation, questioning whether it is even a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Scales also received copious criticism and downvotes on the topic of antisemitism, offering only a rote denunciation of “hate speech or bias of any kind.” One user gave specific examples of alleged antisemitism in the movement, asking how BLM will fight bigotry within its own ranks:
Your organization has been accused of anti-semitism both by its members, it’s alliances, and its reverence for avowed Jew haters. For example, the myth that Jews were particularly involved in the slave trade seems to be particularly pervasive and pernicious, and is entirely fabricated by the Nation of Islam. Jews on the streets of Brooklyn have been repeatedly targetted by black citizens in violent crimes. BLM has turned a blind eye to antisemitism in its support of the Palestinian cause, a cause in no way related to black equality in the United States.
It should be obvious that equality for blacks people cannot be achieved through bigotry and subjugation of another oppressed group.
What are you doing to fight bigotry within BLM?
Scales flatly denied any problems with Jew hatred in the movement: “I am not sure where you receive your information, but BLM is a political home for all those marginalized, invisible, and oppressed by the dominant culture,” she said. “We do not support or express hate speech or bias of any kind.” That post currently stands at nearly -800 net votes.
“Not surprised at all by their non-answer,” one reply stated. “I support the protests, police reform, and especially black lives. But if the organization can’t even disavow the many anti-Semitic statements and dog whistles it puts out, there needs to be a better group leading this righteous cause.”
The most-upvoted comment in the entire discussion summarized frustrations with Scales’ evasive answers: “As a Black woman, I’m really disappointed… this AMA has really colored me to BLM as not having themselves together with hard and fast facts,” one user wrote. “I’m done reading this AMA because it’s not [answers about anything]. It’s a lot of reposting and saying going to BLM website.”
Are you an insider at LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com. 
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.


 

 

$454 Million: Corporate America Floods Social Justice Causes With Cash Amid Floyd Protests

Stephen Maturen/Getty, iStock/Getty
11 Jun 2020612
6:28
Corporations are opening up their treasuries to give money to social justice causes, including Black Lives Matter, in the wake of nationwide protests and riots over the death of George Floyd.
Many of the big companies are pushing their employees to do the same.
Some businesses are donating to controversial bail funds like the Minnesota Freedom Fund that seek to bail out protestors and rioters.
Here is a list thus far.
Sony Music—A fund “to support social justice and anti-racist initiatives around the world”—$100 million
Walmart—a new racial equity center—$100 million
Warner Music—campaigns against violence and racism and social justice causes related to music industry—$100 million.
Nike—”Organizations that put social justice, education and addressing racial inequality in America at the center of their work”—$40 million
Alphabet/Google—Various organizations, starting with $1m each to Center for Policing Equity and Equal Justice Initiative—$12 million
Amazon—ACLU Foundation, Brennan Center for Justice, Equal Justice Initiative, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP, National Bar Association, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Urban League, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, UNCF (United Negro College Fund), Year Up—$10 million
Facebook—“groups working on racial justice”—$10 million
Target—long-standing partners such as the National Urban League and the African American Leadership Forum in addition to adding new partners in Minneapolis-St. Paul and across the country—$10 million
Verizon—National Urban League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Action Network, Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, Rainbow Push Coalition, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund—$10 million
United Health—YMCA Equity Innovation Center of Excellence and Minneapolis-St Paul businesses—$10 million
Goldman Sachs—donor-advised fund to support “leading organizations addressing racial injustice, structural inequity and economic disparity”—$10 million
Spotify—matching employee donations—$10 million
Disney—organizations that advance social justice—$5 million
Procter & Gamble—NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, YWCA Stand Against Racism and United Negro College Fund; also smaller organizations that mobilize and advocate, such as Courageous Conversation—$5 million
Cisco—Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Color of Change, Black Lives Matter and a Cisco fund for fighting racism and discrimination—$5 million
Lego—organizations supporting black children and educating all children about racial equality—$4 million
Microsoft—Black Lives Matter, Equal Justice Initiative, Innocence Project, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, Minnesota Freedom Fund and NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund—$1.25 million
Starbucks—“Organizations promoting racial equity and more inclusive and just communities” nominated by employees—$1.25 million
Intel—support of efforts to address social injustice and anti-racism across various nonprofits and community organizations; and encouraging employees to consider donating to organizations focused on equity and social justice, including the Black Lives Matter Foundation, the Center for Policing Equity and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, all of which are eligible for Intel’s Donation Matching Program—$1 million
McDonald’s—unspecified—$1 million
Uber—Equal Justice Initiative and Center for Policing Equity—$1 million
Duke Energy–nonprofit organizations committed to social justice and racial equity–$1 million
The Travelers Companies–organizations such as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Urban League, YWCA Minneapolis and the We Love Midway fund established by the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with the City of St. Paul–$1 million.
Warby Parker–organizations “combating systemic racism”–$1 million
PwC Charitable Foundation—NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Dream Corps, American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Policing Equity—$1 million
Glosser—$500,000 to various organization that are focused on combating racial injustice, including Black Lives Matter, The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and We The Protesters; also an additional $500,000 in grants to Black-owned beauty businesses—$1 million.
Etsy—$500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative, $500,000 to Borealis Philanthropy’s Black-Led Movement Fund, and match any employee donations—$1 million.
Yelp Foundation—Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund—$500,000
H&M—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Color of Change—$500,000
Levi’s—$100,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and $100,000 in grants to Live Free USA—$200,000
Lululemon—the 
Minnesota Freedom Fund—$100,000