Police Brutality

Police assault a short 115-pound girl who matched the description of a tall 170-pound male.

Police are on the lookout for a 30-year-old 5' 10" 170-pound bald, black man with a goatee and a pink backpack and a machete. It is broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon. They stop a 19-year-old 5' 2" 115-pound female who is not bald, does not have a goatee, and has a black and red backpack. According to their own statement, one of the officers got his feet tangled in her bike, yet they say she pushed the 200-pound officer and he fell. The officer grabs her wrist and wrestles her, but the claim is that she continued to assault the downed officer. The K-9 officer claims he was afraid that she would grab the mythical machete and continue her attack, so he sics the dog on her. It apparently takes two officers with their knees on her along with a K-9 dog chewing on her to subdue the 115-pound suspect. They also claim that she was the one who grabbed the dog's muzzle, yet the officer stated that he commanded the dog to release her hand. Also note that according to the police statement she attacked instead of fleeing on her bike, as if that were the only two choices.

The whole police statement stinks, yet she is arrested on felony charges for not complying, for resisting arrest, and for attacking officers. And the excuse once again is that a police officer was afraid. If you cannot understand how asinine and racist this is, then substitute white for black and ask yourself if their story makes any sense and is in any way consistent with proper procedure. Ask yourself why a short 115-pound girl would attack officers who had guns drawn as well as a police dog (which they threatened her with prior to the "resistance"), all while facing three police cars with lights flashing. Even if they mistook her for a male, nothing else in the suspect's description came close to matching her except that she was black. She was black.

Go ahead and continue to blame the victim. And keep dismissing Black Lives Matter as another way of saying Blue Lives Don't Matter and ignore and excuse the continued slaughter of blacks in this country.

Email to Al Franken on The Nomination of the Wolf of Wall Street

The nomination of Joseph Otting for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. This was my reply to the news story. "Who are the fools who will confirm his appointment? The GOP - Greed Over People. Aiding and abetting the Conniver in Chief, the Head Thief, the delusional ignorant treasonous idiot who rode into Washington on a Russian Red carpet. Remember this moment in 2018. Remember the values and morals of these criminals, and reward them appropriately. Resist." If you have anything at all to do with the confirmation hearings, remember the anger of your constituents. We are mortified at the continuing nominations of thieves and anarchists and thugs to head the Departments which are supposed to be there to protect America and its citizens. How many decades will it take to repair the damage done? Who is protecting this country and protecting its people and protecting our standing in the world while these carpetbaggers destroy our government?


Huffington Post Article, "Donald Trump’s Pick For Key Bank Regulator Is A Foreclosure Kingpin, Of Course"

A Response to Someone Who Thinks Trump is Great

If you don't like the ACA, too bad. Millions got insurance that didn't have it before. Insurance before the ACA was primarily for the healthy and when people needed it they found that their insurance was more like a coupon. Ever see bake sales to raise money to help someone with medical expenses? Ever hear of insurance companies denying benefits because the treatment was "experimental"? Or the insured suddenly lost their coverage when they needed it most because they did not disclose treatment for acne which occurred before the time they were asked about on their application? And hello, medical bankruptcies. Ever see hundreds of people lined up for a chance of getting treatment by doctors in animal stalls?

Obamacare was Romneycare, a product of the Heritage Foundation. It was a Republican plan. More than 170 changes were made to the ACA to please Republicans. Even the public option was dropped. In the end, no Republicans voted for their own plan. After passage, Republicans sued to get Expanded Medicaid optional. The expansion was supposed to cover people who did not make enough to qualify for the ACA. So millions in Red states were screwed out of health care coverage.

This is your for-profit health care system. Don't like it? Then do what most other western industrialized nations have done. Single-payer universal health care. Paid for by a flat tax rate. I would rather pay 15% of my income than go bankrupt or go without life-saving treatment. Or are you going to cry American Exceptionalism and tell us all about how those people in other countries have it worse than us and can't get treatment and have long waits and how the lower costs are somehow a bad deal?

Don't like the idea of the wealthy paying their fair share? You think poorer people are moochers, are lazy, are less worthy, and are victims of their own choices? Too bad. We don't think greed is a virtue. We are sick of people at the top sucking up the wealth and forcing workers to get government assistance. A worker on welfare is a company getting welfare. And people who can't get medical treatment are people who can't work.

So don't call the ACA shitty. At least it got millions insured. And if your premiums went up, guess what? That's how insurance is supposed to work. Health insurance is not just for the healthy. And because insurance companies actually had to cover some sick people, their expenses went up. But their administrative expenses also went up, because they wanted their 20% take.

One more thing. With the GOP hell-bent on getting rid of the already weakened Dodd-Frank reforms, it is probably only a matter of time before the toxic mix of commercial banking and investment banking (securities firms) creates another financial crisis. The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in response to the Great Depression to keep them separate. It worked until its repeal in 1999, following which critics predicted a crisis in 10 years. They were wrong. It was 9 years.

Now banks are bigger than ever. Price/earnings ratio for stocks (how much investors are willing to pay for stock earnings) are as high as just before the Great Depression, the internet bubble in the 90's, and the Great Recession. So if you are somehow equating your pension doing great with the rise in the stock market, good luck. And I hope your pension is not being invested by your broker with someone like Madoff.