“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984
This is where we are in the course of public debate - there is none. There is only rage. There is violence against personal property and invective for those who disagree. Take a can of spray paint to a building or a statue and pump a clenched fist in the air – while clicking a selfie. Draw an obscenity on a police car or paint a phallus on a storefront with an all inclusive obscenity. Dare the owners or officials to clean it up and come back again. When that is over, make demands to overrule convention by undemocratic means or more magic will appear in the streets.
The basic premise of Black Lives Matter—that racist cops are killing unarmed black people—is false.
There was a time when I believed it. Two things changed my mind: stories and data.
First, the stories. Each story in this paragraph involves a police officer killing an unarmed white person -- all of them from a single year, 2015, chosen at random. [Timothy Smith, William Lemmon, Ryan Bolinger, Derek Cruice, Daniel Elrod, Ralph Willis, David Cassick, six-year-old Jeremy Mardis, Autumn Steele] ... the list could go on.
For every black person killed by the police, there is at least one white person (usually many) killed in a similar way. The day before cops in Louisville barged into Breanna Taylor’s home and killed her, cops barged into the home of a white man named Duncan Lemp, killed him, and wounded his girlfriend (who was sleeping beside him). Even George Floyd, whose death was particularly brutal, has a white counterpart: Tony Timpa.
By Bill Buley and Craig Northrup, Coeur d'Alene Press, June 1 and 6, 2020 - Posted on June 14, 2020
COEUR d’ALENE, June 1, 2020 — Reports and rumors that groups bent on rioting and violence in Coeur d’Alene brought out men and women with guns on Monday determined to stop them if they arrive
Coeur d'Alene, June 6, 2020 — A Friday afternoon letter signed by Mayor Steve Widmyer and the Coeur d'Alene City Council expressed support for the rights of armed citizens who have been patrolling downtown since Monday.
The riotous Capitol Hill residential neighborhood where free spirits roam with their feral dogs and semi-automatic weapons. A 30-year-old dreadlocked hip-hop artist named Solomon Simone, who goes by the moniker Raz, has emerged as a spokesman for the six-block enclave.
You also have to hand it to the inhabitants of CHAZ for their ambition. ‘This is no simple request to end police brutality.’ the organizers tweeted at the head of a 30-point list of demands. These range from specific criminal-justice reforms up to what might be called the socio-economic realm. They want the ‘de-gentrification’ of Seattle, for example, increased funding for ‘arts and culture’, and a segregated local healthcare system. (Yes, that’s right: ‘Only black doctors and nurses should be employed specifically to care for black patients,’ it says here.)
Meanwhile, the gloriously feckless Washington governor Jay Inslee was asked at a press conference to weigh in on the no-go zone that had by then been up and running for the last 36 hours. ‘Well, that’s news to me, so I’ll reserve any comment,’ Inslee said. Could this be the same man who for the past three months has issued a near-daily series of executive orders and fiats that control every aspect of his citizens’ lives?
USA Today
In Seattle, a group of peaceful protesters have cornered off several city blocks and established the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone – a sort of protest haven where artists paint murals, speakers discuss topics of racial equity, snacks are handed out for free and virtually no police are in sight.
It's a group of people gathering lawfully and exercising their First Amendment right of free speech, said Mayor Jenny Durkan. "It is patriotism," Durkan added.
The group gathered after Seattle police abandoned a precinct in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on Monday and effectively handed the area over to the protesters they had clashed with for days.
Fox News
Activists and police have clashing views regarding the activities going on inside the so-called “CHAZ,” a six-block area of Seattle that has been taken over by protesters — and authorities are still scratching their heads as to who is actually running the rabble.
Photos of demonstrations inside the zone, which includes a now-shuttered police precinct, seem to paint a rosy picture: outdoor movies, music performances, sidewalk artwork and more.“There’s that stuff, but then there’s the darker side of things too,” one law enforcement official told Fox News
A volunteer works security at an entrance to the so-called “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” on June 10, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. (Getty)
Minneapolis’ soy boy of a mayor, Jacob Frey, proves that no matter how much you abase yourself to the mob, you can never be woke enough.
In a scene reminiscent of a Maoist struggle session, he stood before two black protest organizers Saturday and confessed through a mask into a microphone that he was “coming to grips with my own brokenness.”
But the organizers, standing on a platform above him, weren’t interested in providing therapy for this 38-year-old man-child.
“Yes or no?” asked a woman with a microphone. “Will you commit to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department … We don’t want no more police.”
Poor Frey couldn’t bring himself to say yes, so his fate was sealed.
“Get the f–k out of here!” she snarled, and he was forced into a ritual walk of shame through the jeering crowd as they chanted, “Go home, Jacob!”
By Bud Morten, CT Mirror, June 6, 2020 - Posted on June 7, 2020
Just as homeowners must disclose to buyers any known problems with their properties, just as pharma companies must disclose any known adverse side effects with their drugs, and just as IPO issuers must disclose in their prospectuses all the things they can think of that may go wrong, the State of Connecticut should disclose to new residents and businesses the known risks they will face.
Here is the warning label every new resident should receive upon entering CT:
In January a state trooper shot and killed a mentally ill black man, Mubarak Soulemane, 19, as he sat in a stopped car with the doors closed and windows rolled up after a chase that ended in West Haven. Soulemane had hijacked the car at knifepoint in Norwalk and is no martyr. But from police video of the incident it is impossible to see how Soulemane posed a threat at the moment he was killed. A prosecutor is investigating, but four months have passed and he should hurry up.
The Connecticut people who protested last weekend about the Minneapolis case should be more concerned about local cases, because, while nowhere in the country is it official policy for police to murder or otherwise abuse black people or anyone else, it is official Connecticut policy to conceal complaints of police misconduct.
The state's contract with the trooper union prohibits public access to records of complaints against troopers that have not been verified by supervisors, who...
Connecticut towns and cities still have no idea if or how the state plans to share CARES Act funds with communities. Specifically, the federal stimulus package contained a Coronavirus Relief Fund, which is for state and local government expenditures regarding the pandemic. Connecticut received $1.38 billion from the fund. The law left it up to states to decide if and how much financial aid to provide to municipalities with populations under 500,000.
Many states are entering into agreements to share funds with their towns and cities. So far, not Connecticut, a state containing three of the hardest hit areas in the country (Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties).
Just look to our neighbor, Massachusetts. Aside from large local governments — Boston and Plymouth County, where funds have been sent directly — Massachusetts is setting aside 25% of its Coronavirus funds for its towns and cities.
Gov. Ned Lamont is winning solid approval ratings from a large majority of the state’s citizens for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. You have to like the no-nonsense, non-sensational way he has been handling this awful situation. What could be harder than having to balance human lives saved against jobs lost and economic security for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens?
But what does the data say about how Connecticut is doing compared to other states? Isn’t that a very real scorecard on performance we should be looking at to judge the effectiveness of our political leaders and our collective citizen responses?
The data are not so flattering — they are decidedly grim.
According to Kaiser Family Foundation data as of May 22, our state ranks third in COVID deaths per million of population (1,031), behind only New York at 1,492 and New Jersey at 1,248. The national average is “only” 296 COVID deaths per million; our neighbor Rhode Island is at 564.
How could we be so far off the national mark? Are our death rates somehow an inevitable consequence of having New York as a neighbor?
A big part of the puzzle could be that we have not focused on the heart of the problem in Connecticut. The state’s own data reports that about 71 percent of our COVID-related deaths have been from residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. By contrast, 51 to 53 percent of COVID deaths are from nursing home residents nationwide. If you add in the COVID deaths in Connecticut’s prisons, the percent of our death toll from “confined populations” is over 76 percent.
It’s hard to argue that our high death rates in these vulnerable but confined populations is somehow the result of proximity or contagion from New York.
Obsessed with the virus epidemic, Connecticut might not have noticed two deaths last week from a different cause -- the murder of two women in their home in Windsor. There is little chance that Connecticut will notice those murders any time soon, for while police have charged two 17-year-olds with the crime, the young men have not been officially identified and their prosecution will be secret, as in totalitarian China.
Ever since 1818 Connecticut's Constitution has declared unambiguously, "All courts shall be open." But last year the General Assembly and Governor Lamont enacted the Chinese system on the premise that secrecy would be better for juveniles charged not just with lesser offenses like car theft but also with murder and rape, lest juveniles so charged risk getting bad reputations.
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Restoring accountability in state government should not stop with repeal of the secret trials law. The legislature also should take note of the farce that has become the Partnership for Connecticut, the agency created by statute last year at the request of Governor Lamont's friend, the billionaire Ray Dalio, to mix government money with the billionaire's and spend it in the name of improving the education of disadvantaged students. Also at Dalio's request, the partnership was exempted from state accountability and ethics laws.
