Does Being Black Justify Use Of Excessive Force?

Any white cop will tell you it does.  You can’t predict how a Black will act, they’re just weird, so you must detain him first to protect your own safety… and only then, determine if they’ve ever committed a crime…

And no, you don’t have to do that to white people they tell you….

This brought to mind something quite weird…

Have you ever seen a Black guy walk through an all white neighborhood?  All the white people stare at him… No one says “hey, yo, what’s up bro?  How you feelin’ today?”  The phones ring behind closed curtains as old lady calls old lady… “Better be careful out there, there’s a black guy loose”…  It’s like: put one black guy on the street and everyone gets panicky…

This is fact.  You don’t see that in all-black neighborhoods… When a lone white guy walks down Spruce Street in Wilmington, everyone out on their stoops, calls out to him… Kids run up, “hey, Mister.”  Old folks holler from their porches… “Hot enough for you out there?”  Black men on the corner all say, “hey, what’s happenin’, bro?”…  The atmosphere is a community oriented around love and they open up their hearts (providing you aren’t police)… But it is fact: when a white guy walks down a Black neighborhood street, everyone doesn’t assume he is there to commit crime… But that is EXACTLY what goes on in white neighborhoods…..

Why is that?  Why do whites as a rule get all uppity around blacks, but blacks don’t around whites?

The phenomena which is very prevalent, gives credence to all those cops killing black men because of their skin color… Their fear of the black man is innate.  That “I’d better shoot first or he’ll kill me” attitude causes all of them to respond to fear in a crises and not with ones head…

And this is embarrassing for most white people to acknowledge but they do admit it.  They may not have racist bone in their body, but they KNOW, their community is very scared of black people… Whereas black communities will invite white strangers into to a home BBQ if one is going on… ( especially if they bring booze).

And if you come from that mentality of instinctive fear, you are going to make the assumption that guy is going to kill you first and ask questions later; “Ka Pow”… no questions needed now…

How do you diffuse this?

I believe you can ratchet things downward by asking someone to explain how a gene affecting pigment in your skin makes anyone more dangerous than someone lacking that gene…

I think if we all apply science to this problem and realize that it is just a gene that makes skin dark; no gene is going to make someone kill you first before you have time to assess the threat… any more than the lack of that pigment gene is going to make them kill you first… Pigment has nothing to do with wanting to kill, it’s there to protect skin from excessive sun… Otherwise white people would be locking up freckled Irish, out of fear over what might happen… “THEY HAVE DARK SPOTS ON THEIR SKIN!!! ”

Our race problem is strictly based on myths we carry from our childhoods.  Like Black people are dangerous; … Or white people are always nice to each other and always respect authority… of course neither are true… What is true is that most people do respect authority out of self preservation; a learned trait it comes from their experience in life, not a pigmentizing gene.

When we collectively come to the realization that race is arbitrarily decided by skin color, (it could be eye color, or foot size) then we will have overcome its influence… I know such success is kind of hard to accomplish when you have one major party’s Presidential candidate saying the exact opposite…

But if you were a white cop, and upon walking up to a car see it’s a black person and right then, take a deep breath and pretend its a white person like your Uncle Joe, then the tension with which you approach that car, is the same as if you approached some white old man with freckles…  The person in that car, who’s apprehensive and afraid you are going to go berserk as in those videos, all because he was driving while black, relaxes and diffuses as well for he looks at you as a black cop, same skin color as him…

If every cop did this exercise upon approaching a suspect or someone pulled over, we just might get along a little better…

Research has proven that blacks do get treated more meanly than any other race… We have that data… They are indeed roughed up a lot more than any other race…

The severity seems to be white peoples’ fault; those same white people who freak out every time a black person strolls through their neighborhood and whisper:  “what’s he doing here?”

 

 

Baton Rouge II: One More Reason To Ban Guns

Why is this happening I hear as the news is announced.  Social Media explodes with “what is this world coming to…”

The answer is that the world is no different than it ever was… Except that today, it is just awash in guns thanks to the NRA….

The NRA’s campaign of madness drove everyone to buy a gun. Whether mentally stable or not…they now have guns and are itching to use them… Seeing a cop kill someone needlessly on YouTube, is a good reason as any….

Extreme passions will always exist.  But the caliber of weapons in their hands, don’t have to.. WE chose to allow that, and now, finally, it is our policemen who are dying for it…

Ban guns like Australia, and let’s fight with bows and arrows instead… Though crimes of passion may remain, our death toll will go down and that is what we all want..

Right now, I don’t think anyone cares about the 2nd Amendment anymore… Do you know of anyone out there saying these dead policemen are just the collateral damage for keeping our rights?  (That is exactly what Wayne LaPierre said of dead blacks; wonder what’s different about “dead policemen”?)

Let me explain the rational behind actively banning all guns…. If you say nothing and the gun owners scream 2nd Amendment rights, nothing will change; guns stay the same… And the exact opposite would occur if you scream BAN ALL GUNS and the NRA stays silent, which is why gun laws do get passed in crime ridden inner cities….So what has to happen is that you work to ban all guns, yet are willing to accept any compromise that allows some to remain safely in hands of people who will never use them in anger… If it appears that having guns banned is really about to happen, the NRA will modify their stance into a compromising position, instead of losing the right for anyone to own a gun forever.

We will have success, in fact both sides will win… But that achievement can ONLY happen if political pressure far great than the NRA’s, lines up to BAN ALL GUNS…..

Saying you want all guns banned is not really to ban all guns….. but to make the NRA believe it is about to happen so they un-harden their hearts and compromise….

On one hand you proclaim noisily that you want to ban all guns, and with the other you craft legislation that compromises your principles and allows some guns, but puts restrictions strong enough to keep guns out of the hands of all but the most trustworthy of collectors…

Instead of posting on social media you stand with the blue, like and share, you should be protecting the blue from being shot by posting you are against all guns… Get it?  ALL GUNS…. (but really you aren’t:  wink, wink)….

Explaining “Black Lives Matter” Versus “All Lives Matter”

Everyone is hungry.  All sit down at the tables… Food is brought out and everyone gets served…. but Bob….

Bob looks around and says, “I deserve food”.

Everyone looks up and says:  “We all deserve food” and continues eating…

Bob still has no food….

So. What’s Bob to do?

Amy Joyner-Francis

It is with deep personal sadness that I write this.  All of us who send our children out the door every morning, never thinking it may be the last time we see them, are deeply affected.  All of us uttered when we heard:  that could have been my child.

The tragedy has now broadened.  Three more families are having their lifelong dreams snuffed out with the arrest of those responsible for the death of that child..

Recently the talk shows were abuzz with one of the lawyers’s statements trying to woo public opinion towards sympathizing with the newest victim, the one arrested, and take our minds off the previous one, the one who died.

That man is just doing his job.  He is being paid to represent the best interest of his client and he is doing what he is being paid to do.  Getting angry at him for doing his job, though human, is not in society’s best long term interest.

The cause of death, it appears was congenital heart failure, and the lawyer’s argument that his client could not know about the flaw and was just having a little fight, never intending to kill her target, is probably accurate.

Yet, had the “little” fight never occurred, she would be alive today.

This is ultimately for the courts to decide.  What we need to decide is what will we do about this.  That is very important.  A very horrible, horrible thing happened in that school. Justice must be meted out.  In that courtroom battle we will be spectators only. We will have no impact on its verdict.

But we can do a lot of things.  One of the first, is to vow that this can not happen again. The second is after making that decision, to begin working on preventing any other occurrence.  We should do it because we know our child could be the next one.

Everyone on social media, on talk shows, in any public forum, has their opinion on what is needed to prevent the next re-occurrence.  Some ideas are good; some impractical. They’ve been rehashed over and over so there is no point in me adding the same.

Because if you sit back and listen to them?  They all start with…….”Somebody should do something about……”

Better security.  Cellphones.  YouTube.  Bullying.  Conflict Management. Better parenting. More religion.  Better teaching.

And the lists tend to go on and on…. If you are like me, you probably saw the problem was in the first paragraph, not the second…. Wanting “someone” else to do something instead of you being the force of change….

And that is where this murder or killing, for me was different than all the others… I came to the conclusion that before my child or any other gets similar treatment, I need to work of doing something to fix this problem…

This tragedy is deeply depressing… It IS a sign of hopeless times.  And there is nothing worse in the human condition, when you have exercised all your options, and know there is no hope left in you, for you.  Things so much bigger than you have brought this down upon you.  It was pointless, pointless, pointless.  There is no redeeming factor here.  A very wonderful child, who we would all be happy to have our children behave like her, is not here anymore.  And to make things worse, her killer, is not some horrible, horrible human being, a maniacal, bloodthirsty, psychopathic, destroyer of human life… She too, is very much like our some of our own children… Anyone of which could possibly make the same decision under duress as did her, and instigate what they thought would be a minor fight for whatever reason, that went horribly wrong.

Four lives ruined, because of a fight…

It is all so senseless. So pathetic. So tragic in the deepest way.

So what are you going to do about it?  Yes.  I said “you”.  What are you going to change in your own life that may at some future point in time, prevent a similar fight or argument that might also produce a similar morbid result?

Because that in essence, is what these things happen for.  Though they happen on their own, outside of our world, outside our influence, they turn out to become a reality check on how little control we have over our fate. They become a reality check on how much we coast through our lives, preoccupied with things we think are so important, but when confronted by such events they are but minuscule compared to the loss of a child’s future.

And if… “you” don’t do something, or change, or do anything different to make a difference in some small way in the future, then there is no redeeming value in the loss of Amy…. But… if you make a point, any point, some point, just something different, to change something in the future, then believe it or not, there is some redeeming value in this action.

Now this is a hard topic, especially for her extended family.  For them this is superfluous; nothing will bring Amy back.  Nothing will fill that hole that remains for the rest of their earthly lives.  Which brings back anger, hurt, rage perhaps, at least once every … single… day.  But the rest of us can swear that this girl did not die in vain.  The rest of us can swear that this girl woke us up. That this girl made us change in ways so that the world did become a little better for some people… The rest of us can swear that we will make positive change in our lives, her memorial… That she touched something in us that changed us; something that would still be inert, had this horrible tragedy not happened.

If I’ve lost you by this point, you are probably wondering what on earth could you possibly do to honor this person appropriately with your life choice?

So let me give one example before I close and I recognize that not everyone is the same as me, so if this rings hollow, I’d suggest you try what you feel is calling you to do…

But here is one thing.  When you have a crowd of kids in your house, throw together some snacks and call them all together… Tell them you are sad someone had to die in school but you want to teach or tell all of them how they can prevent that from happening to them…. you can tell them that if their friends say they will beat someone up, that getting an adult involved beforehand, can fix the problem of why they want to beat that person up, without having anyone get hurt as a result.  You can tell them stories of when you were little, and regrets you carry to this day. You can tell them that hurting someone just to be on YouTube is wrong; that if they watch those things, they are making others want to do it more… Best bet is for them to say doing that is stupid and to talk their friends out of it.  You can tell them how easy it is to die, and how horrible one feels if one accidentally kills someone; how afterwards their life becomes horrible and worthless when it could have been great and fun.  You can tell them that a good rule is that if they wouldn’t want someone to do something to them; they shouldn’t ever do it to someone else…

You should make it clear you love them; both your kids and their friends.  You don’t have to say it, but if you treat them with respect, they will know.  And if you did that, and followed through all the way through High School, and beyond, and you did just that little thing for Amy, …. then in a small mysterious serendipity sort of way, something good did come out of her murder whether that killing was intended or not….

And if all of you did it… there would be more good than if just one… And if you put what you were doing on Facebook or Instagram, inspiring other parents to do the same, and they did it, there would be a lot more good than if you hadn’t, and if they got results so it spread, then the possibility out there still lurks that great positive change all over, came about because of the horror of what took place in that school bathroom..

And if, when you are very tired after a long day of work… just want to put you feet up, turn on the TV and zone out for a nap, but don’t, and instead talk to your kids and their friends one more time, asking how they are, how their day went, and what they wanted to do in their future….and you did it, because something inside of you said only through your actions will redemption come through Amy’s passing, then regardless of how much you hurt, regardless of how close you were to her, regardless of how hopeless this made you feel… it was not in vain……

And if all of you can do that…. we are well on our way making sure another child, never, ever, gets killed in school. Period.

 

 

 

 

Equaling Out Income

The income imbalance is gigantic.  You may have see this before.  It is our income imbalance as seen in three perspectives… What it is… versus what we think it is,… versus what we would like it to be.

So what would it take to make it like we would like it to be?

Obviously we would take the top 20% down from 85% ownership to around 30%… a  drop by 55% of the nation’s wealth. That would be divvied up though not equally, among the other four 20%….

So what if we used those numerical principles to tackle income inequality?  Then instead of wealth, simply use the same alignment picked by most Americans to figure out a theoretical income distribution?

In 2007 prior to the Recession American families brought in $7..723 trillion dollars….  one half of that went to the two 20% with incomes over $100,000..

If our aim were to move the slider from 50% down to 35%… then this is how much a percent of national income, the top 10% would take…   From 50% to 35% is 15% and fifteen percent of $7.7 trillion is $1.1 trillion dollars each year…

So basically to get the middle class back to where it was in the past, we need to take $1 trillion a year from the top 10% and give it back to everyone else…

America is roughly at 315 million people. and they live in 123 million households… If we lop off the top 20%, we have 80% left which is 252 million people or 98.4 million households…

Giving us 25 million households giving up their $1 trillion to be split up with 98.4 million households.

The average given would be $40,000 given up by 25 million households per year. And if spread across America’s other 80%, it would average………………..$10,204……

The economic value of that total gets reflected by the memory that the wealthy don’t spend the $40,000 into the economy; they lock it away in stocks. But an yearly extra $10,000 in the hands of the stressed 80%, gives a big boost to economic demand.

And this does not get us to equal. It is just where Americans think the levels inequality SHOULD be.

In fiscal 2014, the federal government collected nearly $1.4 trillion from individual income taxes, making it the national government’s single-biggest revenue source. (Along with corporate income taxes and payroll taxes, other sources of federal revenue include gasoline and cigarette taxes, estate taxes, customs duties and payments from the Federal Reserve.)

WE are saying this now needs to be raised to $2.4 trillion with ALL that average increase borne by the top quintile… As a rough estimate (since they are actually paying near a 25% real tax rate now), because we need double the intake of income, doubling their rates up to the 50% level for the highest margins, would bring us close to parity. Exactly to the level to which Ronald Reagan cut taxes in his first term.

THAT, should give you an indication of where we were at one time, and how bad things have been allowed to slip away from the middle class.

I should add, there is only ONE candidate who is addressing this issue…All other candidates are pandering to those who already “have”…..

Sharpening Our Focus…….

There is general agreement today that American society is top heavy.  We live in Bizarro World‘s Soviet Russia.  Our Congress is semi-capitalist instead of Communist, but certainly it is not there to represent our interests, which are those of We, The People. Our elite (primarily our largest investors) control all of Congress’ perks while we wait in line for daily bread. Gigantic tax breaks for the wealthy are easily and quickly passed, and services for the rest of the 99% are cut to pay for them. Though we too are taxed (lightly), our money spent, does not come back to us; it rises to the top and stays there.

Ironically this is the exact opposite of what every American child learned about his country if he grew up in the years after WWII… while there still was a communist Russia.  Everything we learned was bad about Soviet Russia, is now happening to us to some degree…. Mass surveillance; rigged elections; rigged judicial systems; loss of our class wealth.

But the big difference we learned was that in America, power rose from the ground up.  We elected our representative and they were beholden to us. Today despite on how we vote, big money first vets and then funds our representatives. We go through Communist-like fake elections to put a rubber stamp on one of the two candidates selected, but long before we do, they were the ones who first picked who runs.

We can see this personified by our educational policy.  The communists of Russia had a state system to which if you did not comply, you were shot. We have something similar but instead our punishment is that our school doesn’t receive Federal funding unless comply with the Politburo’s wishes…

This was decreed from the top and is still in place despite our representatives voting 60 to 10 to support of “Opting Out”.

It all goes to show the now blatant view that whatever We, The People want, does not matter.

And that is a colossal failure of democracy. Democracy was simply a government designed to do whatever its people want; not the opposite of their desires.  .

If we want to change this, we need to take a page from our own founding fathers and create millions of small conversations across America regarding  the direction our future evolves out of the issues affecting us, and not be deflected towards flaws in our candidates’ personalities…

Currently our media is devoted entirely to personalities… Carson’s lying?  What does that have to do with how well we live 4 years from now?  Who is winning in Rubio’s and Jeb’s tit for tat?  Plenty of conversation but no information on how our lives will be better 4 years from now.  Tomorrow our media will use the most popular High School social analyses to determine who *(they think) won the debate tonight.

We all know who lost.  The American People… After all this is our country and we too need to be informed; not entertained, not tricked into voting for whom the top echelon wants to be in power..  Imagine a brain surgeon who didn’t know medicine?  Would we go there?  Imagine a plumber who didn’t know plumbing?  Or an electrician who didn’t know electricity?  Or a Math Teacher who didn’t know math?  Would we ask them to do a job for us?

But We, The People (over these past 2 decades which has see the corporatization of all big media), must make decisions as blindly as do High School classmates when voting for a Student Body President… Consequently the same methods that work in high school with uneducated voters are in play for our national elections.  As in who would we like to spend time with? Who acts the part of Chief Exec the best?  Who comes across as snooty or arrogant?   Who is the sexiest?   Our press discusses these; it does not touch on policy that affects Americans like:

• What result will we get if we raise taxes instead of lowering them?
• What is the cost of immigration if we do or don’t seal our  borders?
• What is the cost of not raising minimum wage versus raising minimum wage to $15/ hour?
• Should our property legally be taken because “friends” of politicians want it for development?
• Why is being spied on 24/7 bad for us all
• What will life be under the TPP if it gets implemented? What will it do for wages 15 years from now?

Those of us who modify public opinion need to be wary of the tricks big media is playing.  We need to call them out with facts or ideas that actually help people and therefore indirectly help corporations.  But getting bogged down in pie fights does a disservice to our readers as well as to the nation as a whole.

There is only so much time.  If our time is wasted on inconsequentals, things of consequence do not get done!  Which makes one believe they almost all our pie fights are there only for diversionary purposes…

The Red Cup controversy is only one example…  Everyone is discussing how inane the argument is.  So far in real life I have not found anyone out of roughly a 1000 people who thinks the Red Cup is anti-Christian.  Yet I have heard quite a few media references to it.  But by just bringing it up,  people are wasting time talking about Christmas faux-rage instead of questioning under which candidate they are most likely to get their boss to adequately raise their salary… And as we listen to the media gear up for tonight’s debates… the best explanation for how crazy they sound, is that they are not crazy and know exactly what they don’t want you to ask, and deflect you entirely from breeching that number one question regarding……..

Our salary increases. … That is really what is important.

There is only one national candidate now who is intent on making that happen.  There are a lot more on the local level.. Those are the contenders around whom your discussions need to center  Everything else in the political-media jungle is right now aimed at keeping you from seeing that..

Just A Couple Of Thoughts On Today: Where We Are…..

We are opting out of state mandated tests.

We are served up a spectacle of Presidential debaters living in bubbles saying nothing of substance.

Our media ignores the one person who is mouthing things of substance; basically the problems 99% of us face in balancing our paycheck against our expenses…. One is too low, the other is too high… They should be reversed.

Our Arctic Ice Cap is dangerously low, our entire global climate is reeling.

A seven billion person planet  freaks out and cannot handle a meager 1 million refugees from just 0.3% of its land mass.

The globe has never been richer…. EVER…. yet 99% of its people live in poverty.

Our own children are pawns in a grand scheme to eliminate public education and fix it so investors get rich off it.

Our corporate media simply doesn’t tell the truth anymore.  One has to turn to comedians to get real information.

A raspy brash loudmouth Jew with crazy hair calls out an Evangelist University of higher learning for not following the very laws laid down by Jesus Christ. An act very similar to that of another Jew a little under 2000 years ago who also challenged the religious authorities of HIS time.

==============================

That was today.  Meanwhile almost 50 million of our country lives in poverty, often while working too jobs… and everyone shrugs and thinks that’s ok.  The only thing worth discussing is Planned Parenthood and punishing Iran.

Is this really America then?  Are we no longer the land of opportunity emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty’s bottom?

Something has got to give, right?

It starts with you…. when you get mad enough to do something… that’s when it changes… 

You can… if you think about it…. start by going to Dover … 12:30 pm…. to protest the Smarter Balanced Assessment.   Because it is all connected… it is all about big money doing what it wants over your objections… It’s all about getting you out of their way….

BRRRR It’s Cold Tonight, Guess That Makes Global Warming A HOAX…

You know it is bad when you are tracking on the bottom of the standard deviation….  Every single year…

Like a strained marriage there comes a time, a moment, when there is no going back… Earth files for a divorce. You don’t know when its coming. But every day it doesn’t come kinda rewards continued bad behavior, until one day… Boom, it’s over and all the consequences you thought would never happen to you, dump very quickly.

You discover your bright future is over. and it’s time to pay.  Boy, do you pay…

To Privatize or Not To Privatize…. That Is The Question….

Newark City is thinking of privatizing their garbage collection.

Here are things to remember:

• As a public service, their prime duty is to their customers. Which is you.
• As a private service, their prime duty is to their investors, not you.

• As a public service, there is public input allowed on raising the rates.
• As a private service there is no public overseer of rate rising.

• As a public service hiring locals, all the money spent on labor, returns to your economy.
• As a private service the money spent on labor goes to where each employee lives.

• As a public service if you complain someone follows up.
• As a private service they can tell you, we just don’t do that…

• As a public service, a contract is valid as long as the city is standing or until it is replaced by City Council
• As a private entity, a contract is null and void as soon as the company is acquired by another investor.

These are the grand points to ponder… Another is this…  can a private service perform the operation as well or cheaper than the city.  If savings are sufficient, it may pay to switch….

But this concerns all of you…  Please go to the Church of the Nazarene on Paper Mill Road for the discussion and public airing of this proposal… Set this date… Monday, September 21, 2015 … at 6 pm….  Don’t be pushed around… And don’t believe everything you hear about privatization… some of you still remember what happened with Delmarva Power….

Oh…. So Now They Are Trying To Blame Opt Out On Teachers Unions……It’s All Frederika Jenner’s Fault: HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!

Teachers don’t take the stupid test…. Children do…

This test is the most stupid piece of organized corporate illiteracy ever seen….. and any of us who’ve worked for corporations have certainly seen our fair share. That is why every parent needs to protect their child, gather them up in their arms, and opt out against the test….  Our kids should be learning, not trying to succeed by chasing constantly shifting goal posts which will never stay still if we don’t stop the process by opting out NOW.

The adulations corporatists use in defense of this test, fall to pieces whenever an adult finally takes the test… This is about the test… This test is abysmal, this test is ridiculous, this test is dangerous if allowed to dictate Delaware’s education over years to come.  We’ve been tearing apart this test for a year now. The time has come to accept it is offal and rid ourselves of it… anyway we can…  Which, of all the choices given to us…. the easiest is to opt out…

If more, and more, and more, and more parents opt out every day…. the teachers will then have the clout they need in legislature to join us… right now, if teachers tell the truth… they get dismissed….  Privately, you cannot find an experienced teacher who is no longer wet behind the ears, still supporting this or Common Core.  If every district even gets one opt out a day, forget charter schools, at 19 each day in 100 school days, or by test time, we will have 1900 opt outs.. = 1.5 %… if two?  3.0%.. if just three per district every school day… 4.5%!   So let’s get 4!!!

Really I wonder how many parents would let their children be put in harms way if public school teachers were behind something almost as silly such as mandatory hypnosis…   I’m sure all parents would chipe up and say… “Well, we know it is harmful but we will put our kids in harms way just to support the teachers union…..”

HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!

If it doesn’t work that way, Mr. Corporate, it can’t work your way…….

So I’m just going to come right out and say it….   “What a stupid jerk you all are….. ”  Thinking parents are opting out because of teachers unions…  The reason we opt out is because we saw the test; we took the test, as adults, we loathed the test.   You are worried about money… Don’t be. They print more money every day…. As for our children…. there are not any other like them in the whole world….

You all are so stupid….

HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!