California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Uvalde: A Good Guy With a Gun Was Not Able to Stop a Bad Guy With a Gun

by John Lawrence

Yesterday Texas Gov. Abbott held a farcical press conference in which he demonstrated he didn't even know how to pronounce Uvalde. About a dozen white men and one white woman stood up there while Abbott blathered about the tragic Uvalde mass shooting involving 20 Mexican-American children and 2 Mexican-American teachers. So it was up to a bunch of white men to cover up what actually happened in a Mexican-American community. First the school district police officer encountered the shooter outside the building. Here was a guy with an unconcealed (obviously) AK-47 on school property. Why didn't the police officer just take out his gun and shoot him right there? What did he do - try to reason with him? Second, the shooter enters through an unlocked door. Why isn't every school door locked? They are here where I live. No one can just walk into a school. You press a button and announce yourself and your business and then and only then does the door get unlocked so you can enter.

Then the loony school superintendent gets to speak. He couldn't imagine such a thing happening. What planet has he been living on? This event was "extraordinary." No, it happens every day. That makes it ordinary. As it turns out, local police officers were on the scene outside the door where the carnage took place for 40 minutes to an hour before someone went in and shot the guy. Their excuse? The door was locked. You mean to tell me they couldn't shoot off the lock? It happens all the time. A locked door shouldn't stop a good guy with a gun. Instead the gunman was free to shoot probably all the kids in the classroom plus the two teachers. Law enforcement was a total failure at the scene of a horrific crime. But Gov. Abbott wanted to talk about mental health and the fact that this guy was pure evil. Yes, let's religify the situation and ignore the fact that law enforcement (the good guys with guns) totally failed at their job. And prayer it seems won't stop the next mass shooting. It seems that God has delegated that task to the human race which is totally failing to do its job. C'est La Vie! And then Abbott was going to get all kinds of mental health down there after the one who really needed it was dead!

It took Beto O'Rourck to confront all these white men, trying to cover up a crime in a Mexican-American community, to confront them about gun control something Abbott had recently loosened up in favor of gun owners even more. This gunman who had just turned 18 got to legally by 2 AK-47s and 350 rounds of ammunition at a gun store at a price of $3500. which made the gun store owner very happy and profitable. It was a good day for him, a bad day for everybody else. But then that's what the lack of gun control is all about - profit for the gun industry and campaign donations to Republicans from their lobbyists. So gun advocates want the teachers armed? What good would that do when armed police officers who were in a position to prevent this crime weren't able to do it or chickened out, one or the other. And why in the hell didn't they simply lock their frickin doors? Thank you Mr. School Superintendant, Hal Harrell, for your supervision.

Off the Top of My Head

A Second Look at the Derek Chauvin Conviction

by John Lawrence

The video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck was in and of itself enough to get a murder conviction and a lengthy prison sentence for Chauvin. But as his defense attorney stated at the time of conviction, there are a lot of "what-ifs" in this case. First of all what if George Floyd had not resisted arrest and compliantly gotten into the police car? He would still be alive today of course. Many but not all of the most publicized deaths at police hands were triggered by noncompliance on behalf of the person being arrested. Second, at the time of George Floyd's death the knee on neck restraint was a legal maneuver according to the Minneapolis police manual. NBC News reported in a June 2020 article: "The version of the Minneapolis Police Department's policy manual that is available on-line, however, does permit the use of neck restraints that can render suspects unconscious, and the protocol for their use has not been updated for more than eight years." The headline of the article was "Minneapolis police rendered 44 people unconscious with neck restraints in five years." The article went on:

"Since the beginning of 2015, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have rendered people unconscious with neck restraints 44 times, according to an NBC News analysis of police records. Several police experts said that number appears to be unusually high.

"Minneapolis police used neck restraints at least 237 times during that span, and in 16 percent of the incidents the suspects and other individuals lost consciousness, the department's use-of-force records show. A lack of publicly available use-of-force data from other departments makes it difficult to compare Minneapolis to other cities of the same or any size.

"Police define neck restraints as when an officer uses an arm or leg to compress someone's neck without directly pressuring the airway. On May 25, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on the neck of a prone and handcuffed George Floyd for eight minutes — including nearly three minutes after he had stopped breathing."

However every police officer that testified against Chauvin condemned him for using this technique and ran as far away from the stated policy in the police manual as they could get. Perhaps Chauvin's intent was to render Floyd unconscious, not to kill him. However, the manual also states ""Place the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia." Chauvin's lapse in judgment included his failure to put Floyd in the recovery position. The exact quote from the police manual is:

"Neck Restraint 25 Minutes

"Compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck)

"Non-Deadly Force Option

"Two Applications-Conscious & Unconscious"

So while the police manual is not entirely clear on the matter, what is clear is that the knee on the neck restraint was legal, many persons had been rendered unconscious by the use of this technique and, evidently, George Floyd was the first person that died from the use of this technique.

What if the ambulance had gotten there a few minutes earlier and George Floyd was still alive when he was put in the ambulance? What if there was no video of the incident? What if they had placed George Floyd in the recovery position? What if Chauvin hadn't volunteered to come into work on his day off? The death of George Floyd was a tragedy for everyone concerned certainly for the Floyd family. The fact that this was Chauvin's first offense, that the neck restraint was a legal maneuver at the time and the fact that there was no intent to murder George Floyd should be mitigating factors. Chauvin's lapse of judgement concerned not putting Floyd in the recovery position. That was his big mistake of Greek tragedy proportions. The aggravating factor that there were children present is ridiculous since the attempted arrest was conducted near a sidewalk where people including children could be passers by. Are police officers just supposed to stop their arrest if the children decide to stop and stare at the proceedings?

As for Derek Chauvin, he will be paying the price for not placing George Floyd in the recovery position for many years.

Racism is Profitable

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Since the first colonizers arrived in the United States to this very moment, wealthy elites have used the tools of theft, exclusion, and exploitation to expand their wealth and power at the detriment of Black, Latinx, Indigenous people, and marginalized people of color.It all boils down to this simple truth: Racism is profitable.

The profitability of racism sparks a vicious cycle called the Oppression Economy:Elite institutions are motivated to keep suppressing the economic vitality of people of color. That economic oppression in turn hinders their political power, and that political oppression kneecaps their ability to change the system. 

This cycle plays out in every aspect of our economy and is particularly apparent in mass incarceration.The criminalization of people of color is a multibillion-dollar industry: In 2017 alone, mass incarceration cost $182 billion; trapping mostly low-income Black and Latinx people in a cycle of economic and political disenfranchisement. 

If we follow the money, we find that some of America’s largest banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, have all extended millions of dollars in credit lines to for-profit prison operators like GEO Group and CoreCivic. 

The unregulated operations of prisons has increasingly mandated cheap service for maximum profit. For example, bail bonds companies, telecommunications, food, and commissary companies gouge both those incarcerated and their families.The exploitation doesn’t stop upon release from prison. 

The suppression of economic vitality of people of color is just beginning. Because of discrimination, formerly incarcerated people face an unemployment rate of 27 percent — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including during this pandemic and the Great Depression. 

Fines and fees associated with the criminal “justice” system have placed $50 billion in debt on the shoulders of approximately 10 million people who have been through the system. To make matters worse, many states bar people convicted of felonies from receiving any government assistance.That’s just incarceration. 

Over the past four decades, the cost of policing in the U.S. has skyrocketed, almost tripling from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017. Of the 100 largest cities in America, the nine police forces that kill people at the highest rate per population all take up over 30 percent of their cities’ budgets — leaving paltry resources to invest in housing, education, or health care.

This deliberate economic oppression suppresses political power of people of color, weakening their constitutional right to change the rules of a system that regulates whether or not profit can be derived from racism. 

In our current system, the wealthy elite use their purchased political power to manipulate the system for their own gain at the expense of people of color.

Let’s turn back to people who are incarcerated. In 48 states, those who are currently or formerly incarcerated face restrictions on their right to vote. Yet, inmates count as residents of where they are incarcerated, rather than their hometowns. That means people in prison have no representation, and are used as pawns to skew representational power towards the largely white, rural areas that house prisons. 

This leaves incarcerated people’s hometowns under-represented. The restrictions on voting power don’t end upon release. 6.1 million people are prevented from casting a ballot due to a prior felony conviction, and 1 in 13 Black people have lost their right to vote due to felony disenfranchisement, compared to 1 in 56 non-Black people.

It’s a never-ending cycle that has been churning for centuries: the profitability of racism motivates elite institutions to continue economic oppression of people of color that in turn hinders their political power, and that political oppression kneecaps their ability to change the system in which racism is so profitable.

So how do we break the cycle?

Let’s start with supporting candidates and pressuring elected officials at every level of government who will support bold policies that dismantle the Oppression Economy and build a Liberation Economy — and remove those that don’t. 

To end the Oppression Economy, our government must end the criminalization of people of color, end their political suppression, and curb runaway corporate power.

And, to build a Liberation Economy our government must guarantee that all people of color have access to basic economic rights like guaranteed income and employment, universal health care, guaranteed housing, a free college education and generational wealth.    

This Liberation Economy is within our power to create. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “we are the government.” It does not belong to the corporations and the plutocrats that currently control them. It belongs to us, and it is within our power to take it back.

We can break this cycle, if we act together.

Let’s get to work.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Ain't A Gonna Matter if Trump Gets Reelected

by John Lawrence, September 5, 2020

Right now peaceful protesters need to get off the streets in the lead up to the election. Why? Because they act as human shields for the rioters, looters, arsonists, gun nuts and counter protesters who come right in behind them and who have more nefarious purposes. Getting the protesters off the streets takes away Trump's law and order issue. People sitting on the fence are going to vote for Trump if they see cities going up in flames. It's as simple as that. We need calmness to prevail in American cities. When people see visuals of burning buildings on nightly news, it plays right into Trump's playbook.

I don't dispute the fact that black people have been treated differently by the police than white people. There is no question that there needs to be police reform, that there should be no choke holds, no 'no knock' warrants, that more social workers need to be dispatched to deal with people with mental health issues. However, it's no secret that at least some of these black men who have been shot and killed by police would be alive today if they had simply obeyed the cops' orders. Resisting arrest, giving the cops verbal back talk, physically struggling, trying to run away - all these things tend to make it more probable that a black person or any person is going to get killed. Rayshard Brooks, the man shot and killed in a Wendy's parking lot in Atlanta, would be alive today if he hadn't struggled with police and then tried to get away. When a situation escalates, things can get out of hand. Cops don't always act in such a way as to deescalate the situation. They should of course, but they are human beings. They can lose their cool. There is no question that police need more training as to how to handle tense situations and how to better control their emotions.

Right now this situation is playing out in Rochester. Mainly peaceful protesters are acting as cover for a relative few to do more dastardly deeds. There are skirmishes with the police. Tear gas spews out. Bottles are thrown. Trump tweets the whole scene. He couldn't be happier. Trump compared the cop's shooting of Jacob Blake to a golfer "choking" over a 3 foot put. While this is a horrible analogy, there is a kernel of truth there. The cop in question probably wishes he had handled the situation differently. However, if Blake had obeyed his orders in the first place, he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

There are 2 sides to every situation, and a lot of people sitting on the fence about who to vote for are people who just want to go about their lives as peacefully as possible. They are not necessarily Trump's base supporters. In battleground states, Trump won in 2016 by just a handful of votes. These fence sitting voters are very important to the outcome of the election. All those concerned that black lives matter have already been convinced and especially by the example of John Lewis who represented non violence and working within the system to vote, take power and get results that way. At this stage of the game it is totally redundant to react with street protests over every questionable situation in which a black man is killed by police. We have seen this movie many times before. And Trump's counter protesters are getting very active because they know that the more violence that occurs, the more this is only going to help Trump's chances of being reelected.

Sorry to put it this way, but that's the truth as I see it. I am totally in favor of police reform, economic reform, universal health care and a Green New Deal. But first Joe Biden has to get elected. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders, but he would have been an easier target for Trump to take down. The importance of this election is not only for the future of America. It is important for the whole world. The US and China are the world's 2 leading greenhouse gas emitters, responsible for about 40% of total world emissions. If these 2 countries don't cooperate to reduce GHGs and get the world using renewables, nothing else will matter. If Trump is reelected, not only will the US go up in flames, the entire earth will burn and very soon. The tension that the Trump administration is creating with China makes it less likely that GHGs will be reduced especially in light of the fact that Trump does not even believe in global warming and is telling the fossil fuel industry, in effect "Full steam ahead!"

In short street protests are counter productive at this time. Someone other than me needs to tell the protesters that.

Off the Top of My Head

How Many Dumb Cops Are There in America?

by John Lawrence, August 26, 2020

Now another black man has been brutally almost murdered. We'd never have heard of it but for the fact that another black man picked up his phone and videoed it. Any encounter between a white cop and a black man is fraught with tension just because of the history of these encounters. The point is that the cop is supposed to be a professional. He's supposed not to react with a chip on his shoulder although in truth both parties have chips on their shoulders. A cop cannot shoot someone if he disobeys the cop's orders, resists arrest, tries to get away, struggles physically, calls the cop names, insults the cop or spits on him. In all these cases the cop should have been trained to react professionally and not pull his gun. In the case of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the cops failed miserably with the result that a black man, father of 4 children, is paralyzed for life. There were at least 3 cops on the scene with at least 3 more squad cars on the way. You mean to tell me they couldn't have tackled this man without using their guns?

Have the cops learned nothing from all the previous incidents involving cops killing black men while being videoed? They are professionals. They have been trained how to react in these situations. The citizen they are encountering has not been trained. He or she may react irrationally. The cops don't have a right to react irrationally. What the cops did in Kenosha was even more culpable than what happened with George Floyd because the knee to neck restraint that Officer Chauvin used was a legal techniques according to the police manual. Shooting an unarmed man in the back 7 times is not something that is justified in any circumstances. Obviously, Jacob Blake was not dangerous to the cops or anyone else. Only if he were, would the cops be authorized to shoot him.

If Jacob Blake survives, and it looks like he will, he will be example A for the #BlackLivesMatter inditement of racist police. Also it will cost the Kenosha treasury millions of dollars for his support for the rest of his life because he won't be able to work. There will be a colossal mess just because a cop couldn't restrain himself and act professionally. What's wrong with these people? It's difficult for them if a citizen doesn't obey their orders and tensions are running high, but they need additional training as to how to deescalate the situation.

Resources need to be put immediately into retraining police to handle these situations. It would be more cost effective than the outcomes in which half the city is burned down and the resulting lawsuits which will bankrupts what's left of Kenosha and other affected cities.

The Real Choice: Social Control or Social Investment

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Some societies center on social control, others on social investment.

Social-control societies put substantial resources into police, prisons, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the military. Their purpose is to utilize fear, punishment, and violence to divide people and keep the status quo in place — perpetuating the systemic oppression of Black and brown people, and benefiting no one but wealthy elites.

Social-investment societies put more resources into healthcare, education, affordable housing, jobless benefits, and children. Their purpose is to free people from the risks and anxieties of daily life and give everyone a fair shot at making it.

Donald Trump epitomizes the former. He calls himself the “law and order” president. He even wants to sic the military on Americans protesting horrific police killings. 

He has created an unaccountable army of federal agents who go into cities like Portland, Oregon – without showing their identities – and assault innocent Americans. 

Trump is the culmination of forty years of increasing social control in the United States and decreasing social investment – a trend which, given the deep-seated history of racism in the United States, falls disproportionately on Black people, indigeneous people, and people of color.

Spending on policing in the United States has almost tripled, from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017.

America now locks away 2.2 million people in prisons and jails. That’s a 500 percent increase from 40 years ago. The nation now has the largest incarcerated population in the world.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has exploded. More people are now in ICE detention than ever in its history.

Total military spending in the U.S. has soared from $437 billion in 2003 to $935.8 billion this fiscal year.

The more societies spend on social controls, the less they have left for social investment. More police means fewer social services. American taxpayers spend $107.5 billion more on police than on public housing.

More prisons means fewer dollars for education. In fact, America is now spending more money on prisons than on public schools. Fifteen states now spend $27,000 more per person in prison than they do per student.

As spending on controls has increased, spending on public assistance has shrunk. Fewer people are receiving food stamps. Outlays for public health have declined.

America can’t even seem to find money to extend unemployment benefits during this pandemic.

Societies that skimp on social investment end up spending more on social controls that perpetuate violence and oppression. This trend is a deep-seated part of our history.

The United States began as a control society. Slavery – America’s original sin – depended on the harshest conceivable controls. Jim Crow and redlining continued that legacy.

But in the decades following World War II, the nation began inching toward social investment – the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and substantial investments in health and education.

Then America swung backward to social control.

Since Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” four times as many people have been arrested for possessing drugs as for selling them. 

Of those arrested for possession, half have been charged with possessing cannabis for their own use. Nixon’s strategy had a devastating effect on Black people that is still felt today: a Black person is nearly 4 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than a white person, even though they use it at similar rates.

Bill Clinton put 88,000 additional police on the streets and got Congress to mandate life sentences for people convicted of a felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug offenses. 

This so-called “three strikes you’re out” law was replicated by many states, and, yet again, disproportionately impacted Black Americans. In California, for instance, Black people were 12 times more likely than white people to be incarcerated under three-strikes laws, until the state reformed the law in 2012. Clinton also “reformed” welfare into a restrictive program that does little for families in poverty today. Why did America swing back to social control?

Part of the answer has to do with widening inequality. As the middle class collapsed and the ranks of the poor grew, those in power viewed social controls as cheaper than social investment, which would require additional taxes and a massive redistribution of both wealth and power.

Meanwhile, politicians whose power depends on maintaining the status quo, used racism – from Nixon’s “law and order” and Reagan’s “welfare queens” to Trump’s blatantly racist rhetoric – to deflect the anxieties of an increasingly overwhelmed white working class. It’s the same old strategy. So long as racial animosity exists, the poor and working class won’t join together to topple the system that keeps so many Americans in poverty, and Black Americans oppressed.

The last weeks of protests and demonstrations have exposed what’s always been true: social controls are both deadly and unsustainable. They require more and more oppressive means of terrorizing communities and they drain resources that would ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive. 

This moment calls on us to relinquish social control and ramp up our commitment to social investment.

It’s time we invest in affordable housing and education, not tear gas, batons, and state-sanctioned murder. It’s time we invest in keeping children fed and out of poverty, not putting their parents behind bars. It’s time to defund the police, and invest in communities. We have no time to waste.

Off the Top of My Head

Does Resisting Arrest Justify Being Shot?

by John Lawrence, June 14, 2020

Yesterday another black man, Raychard Brooks, was shot and killed by police in Atlanta. Police were called to a Wendy's because Brooks had fallen asleep in his car in the drive in lane although other cars were going around him so he wasn't really blocking the drive through. Brooks moved his car out of the way. Police determined that Brooks had been drinking; he failed the breathalizer test. At that point they proceeded to arrest him on a DUI and, as they were putting on the handcuffs, Brooks started fighting back. In the ensuing struggle Brooks grabbed a taser and broke away running from the police in the parking lot. He turned and fired the non-lethal taser at the police, and the cop fired back with his gun and shot Brooks. Brooks died at the hospital. The officer who fired the gun was terminated and the police chief resigned. The Wendy's was burned down.

Those are the facts of the case. It seems that another black man was shot and killed by police, but it's not as simple as that. If Brooks hadn't resisted arrest, he would be alive today. Everything was proceeding on a civilized basis until the officers tried to put the handcuffs on. Pretty much standard operating procedure for arresting someone being taken to jail for a DUI. I know someone who was arrested in San Diego after being stopped by police, and failing a breathalizer test after having 2 drinks. He happened to be black. Fortunately, the outcome was very different because he didn't resist arrest. He insisted on having the blood test which is more accurate. His car was impounded, he was taken to jail, presumably handcuffed, his passenger was dumped out on the street at 2 AM to find her own way home. He eventually was convicted of the DUI which happened to be his second, fined $10,000, lost his driving privileges, had to take several months of drivers education and had to pay to get his car out of impound. A huge amount of hassle after having 2 drinks at a birthday party, but he is alive today. The outcome might have been very different if he had resisted arrest.

So what is the lesson here? Lesson 1: Don't resist arrest. Remember "the talk"? Evidently, this guy never got it. Maybe it should be repeated at school many times as people are growing up rather than counting on the parents to do it. It should be part of everyone's - not just black kids' - educational curriculum. Observation 2: Do the police have the right to kill someone who is under arrest, fights with the police, resists arrest, breaks free and is running away? Maybe and maybe not. In this case, it seems that the cop would have eventually caught up with him because they seemed to be in an enclosed parking lot. What then? Would he have tased the cop from close range, perhaps disabling him. Would the cop have been in another fight with a man who was evidently a lot stronger than he was? After all he outfought 2 cops to get away in the first place. So was the cop really at fault? Should the cop have merely let him run away?

I can't really blame the cop in this instance. What does the police manual teach them to do under these circumstances? Let them run away or continue to pursue and how much do cops have to engage in physical struggle with someone before they are allowed to use deadly force? Are they suppose to entertain physical violence directed against them even though it could result in severe injury to the cop(s). Some guys under the influence of certain drugs have superhuman strength. Is the cop supposed to have the skills of a professional wrestler or fighter?

My feeling is that, if some one is resisting arrest, white or black, and things get out of hand, the cop has a right to use deadly force. Otherwise, as a society we are advocating that cops have a professional responsibility to place themselves in situations of jeopardy perhaps to the point where they are killed or injured themselves. I don't think society has the right to demand that of police. I repeat that "the talk" should be part of every kid's health curriculum. They should role play the role of police and the role of someone being placed under arrest. This should happen in school since it's an important part of everyone's education which is currently being totally ignored in schools. If every kid knows how to respond when encountered by police, many more people, white and black, would live to tell about it.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Defund the Police ... Defund the Military

by John Lawrence, June 11, 2020

Police have been given jobs social workers should be doing. They've criminalized everything from homelessness to mental illness to drug addiction. That's what defunding the police is all about. They should hire more social workers and less police. The police are asked to do a lot more than what police work should be all about. So has the military. Every problem overseas, many of which could be solved by teachers, social workers and doctors has been looked at as a problem for the military to solve. Many of these problems derive from the fact that people are in dire poverty. They need help building schools, houses, sanitation systems. Instead we send the military in to bomb them just as we send the police in at home to take them to jail by any means necessary.

We glorify police work with all kinds of TV shows just as we glorify the military. No one ever glorifies the Peace Corps though, and, if they were sent in more often, there would be more positive results. Instead of helping people, the first thought of American leaders is to send in the police or the military. The Washington Post reported:

To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.

Everything that could be said about the police could be said about the military. Instead of helping people overseas to escape from the poverty they experience, we police them instead. What a novel idea to spend less on the military and more on the Peace Corps. Let's reimagine the role they play in public safety. Policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. The military has been the primary vehicle to perpetuate American control over black and brown bodies in other parts of the world.

The Peace Corps budget is $410.5 million. The military budget is $934 billion. The military budget covers the DoD, overseas contingency operations, the VA, Homeland Security, the State Department, and many others that involve national security. By contrast in 2003, the military budget was less than half that - $437.4 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. If the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on the Cold War, the US is in danger of collapse from overspending on its military when it is not even engaged in a major war. Overspending on the military is just a jobs program that Congress will not curtail. Trump for all his bluster about wanting our NATO allies to spend more on defense, nevertheless, authorized a $34 billion increase in military spending for 2020. Meanwhile, China, the world's second largest spender on its military is spending $178.2 billion in 2020 while Russia spends a mere $70 billion.

The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget. Many major cities spend as much as 40 percent of their municipal budgets on policing, leaving a dwindling pool of resources for poverty prevention, infrastructure and everything else. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this dynamic: Cities facing steep revenue declines are trying to decide which services to cut to remain solvent, and mayors are often hesitant to cut law and order spending. Welfare spending has been on a long, uneven decline, while law and order spending ballooned almost unabated until about 2010, when it amounted to nearly 2.5 percent of national income. Since then, law and order spending has fallen to a hair under 2 percent, while welfare spending stands at about 0.8 percent of national income less than half what we spend on police.

The US domestic Peace Corps called AmeriCorps has a budget of $560 million. So the US spends a paltry $1 billion on its foreign and domestic Peace Corps while spending $180 billion on police and almost a trillion on its military. Without this spending the economy would surely collapse. Military and police jobs are jobs of last resort for non college educated youth. However, this could be turned around. This money could be spent on other pursuits like housing the homeless (Habitat for Humanity), social workers, teachers, sanitation systems in foreign countries lacking them, building green infrastructure (Green New Deal), eradicating poverty, education (giving "The Talk" as part of public school curriculum), sustainable agriculture, clean water, cleaning the oceans, cleaning the rivers and more.

While the US spends a huge amount of its budgets on police and military work, China is spending its budget building infrastructure all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Whatever you want to say about it, it represents peaceful development of countries outside of China while the US does nothing of the sort, preferring instead to police the world with its 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. So while the US presence outside the US is mainly military in nature, China's presence outside China is basically peaceful development. This development will also lead to economic advantages for China through increased trade.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

The US has sought to demonize China's BRI and to create a second Cold War to justify its military expenditures. Throw Russia into the mix as well. The US wants to line up its group of allies in a potential contest versus China and its allies. However, many US purported allies are jumping ship as they read the tea leaves and realize that the US sees its role in the world and at home as mainly police work. Poverty alleviation is something the US doesn't do. This needs to change if we are ever to combat our common enemy, the coronavirus and climate change, and forget about creating a Second Cold War which will only drain US resources while China goes ahead building infrastructure and increasing trade.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Is Police Reform Enough?

by John Lawrence, June 10, 2020

The people in power, the status quo, thinks they can contain the Black Lives Matter movement to just police reform. They just don't want any profound changes to the system that go beyond police reform. So let black football players kneel all they want, but they just need to keep playing so the profits keep coming. Remove a few Confederate statues, rename a few military bases, but don't challenge the trillion dollars a year spent on the military. Defund the police, but, whatever you do, don't defund the military. Don't remove any of the US military bases that exist in almost every country of the world. The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. Do we really need military bases in Germany and Japan?

So pass a few laws about police reform, but don't threaten the power structure in this country. Throw black people a few bones, and maybe the whole BLM movement will quiet down and just go away. Then we can get back to business as usual and rich people can get on with the job of getting insanely richer. Inequality will remain the same. Those in power will stay in power. Legal bribery in terms of lobbying will remain in effect. That's the way business is done in this country. Needless to say poor people can't afford to hire lobbyists. Political reform will be off the table as will economic reform.

The American version of capitalism will continue to reap rewards for the billionaires while the Chinese version of capitalism will continue to bring people out of poverty and build infrastructure in many parts of the world. While the US polices and sanctions, the Chinese are winning friends and influencing people, much as Dale Carnegie suggested. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs communism. Every country in the world, including the US is some combination of both. Some countries just implement their version more effectively. The US implements its economic system in such a way that it favors the rich and condones the rest to debt servitude including middle class people strapped with student loan debt which they don't have a prayer of paying off. Don't worry payday lenders are only reaping 400% interest.

So will the BLM movement just die away satisfied with the result of police reform - no more chokeholds, no more no knock warrants, a few other things if Republicans go along which they probably won't at the Federal level. The Democrats can pass all the legislation they want. It is meaningless if it never passes the Senate and gets enacted into law. It is just spinning their wheels. It's gridlock; it's not democracy. It's democracy hamstrung; it's democracy rendered impotent. It's a political system which will patronize the BLM movement and give it a few ineffectual reforms, more lip service than anything. The real profit making infrastructure will not change. Perhaps they will absorb a few black people into the power structure by giving them a few more positions on corporate boards, but the power structure itself will not change. Poor and homeless people will stay poor and homeless. even if a few escape their dire situations. The media will highlight some black person who escaped poverty and made a million dollars. See you too could do it if you only had the gumption. This is the message they will send. Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps as so many others have done. Systemic inequality will still remain even if systemic racism doesn't. The only mistake the recent looters made was not forming a hedge fund before they started looting.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Did Minneapolis Take Down the Use of Force Policy Website?

by John Lawrence, June 3, 2020

At the heart of the matter is the Minneapolis Police Department's Use of Force policy which legitimizes the Knee-to-Neck restraint which killed George Floyd. Shouldn't we all know exactly what that Policy is? We know it has been used 237 times by Minneapolis police in the last 5 years and that it has rendered 44 people unconscious. It has been outlawed by many, but not all, police departments throughout the US. It was an accident waiting to happen that someone would eventually be killed by this policy. That someone was George Floyd and the whole grisly scene was videoed. So are there any limitations of this policy in the Minneapolis police manual? Does it say, for instance, that you can only apply it for a certain amount of time before you allow the victim to breath? Does it say that you have to check the victim's pulse? Does it say that you can't have another officer knee him in the back at the same time? What exactly does it say?

"Mr. Floyd died in our hands and so I see that as being complicit," Minneapolis Chief Medaria Arradondo told CNN's Sara Sidner. "Silence and inaction, you're complicit. If there was one solitary voice that would have intervened ... that's what I would have hoped for." So why didn't the chief take the opportunity to say that the knee-to-neck restraint would no longer be used by the Minneapolis police department? He did not. Other departments have changed their policies regarding "carotid restraints."The New York Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993 after a number of people died while being apprehended or in police custody. In July of 2014, Eric Garner died after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo wrapped an arm around his neck, obstructing Garner's ability to breathe. In this case the chokehold was clearly illegal. Not so in the case of George Floyd. The Chicago Police Department implemented a new policy in February that  classifies "carotid artery restraints" as a deadly force technique. In May 1982, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates banned the bar-arm chokehold after a 24-year-old black motorist sued in an effort to forbid the move.

At least three major police departments have banned similar neck holds or chokeholds amid increasing attention on policing maneuvers that cut off oxygen to people under arrest or restraint. On Monday, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and San Diego police Chief David Nisleit announced that the San Diego Police Department would immediately stop using the hold. But San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore said he's opposed to the city's decision. Each of tens of thousands of police department jurisdictions sets its own policy. At a minimum the protest movement should call for a national ban on carotid restraint techniques for all police departments in the US. Would that even be possible or does the decision have to be made one by one in local jurisdictions?

The problem with the protest movement is that there is no leadership. They have not made any tangible, concrete or substantial demands like a demand for the cessation of carotid restraint policies in all police departments. It would seem that this would be a minimum demand for police reform. Where are the leaders? where are the Stokely Carmichaels, the Malcolm Xs, the Martin Luther Kings? It is not enough to just protest that white people should be nicer to and more understanding of black people. All this huge amount of protest energy will go to waste unless there are tangible demands. Right now there are none. And without them American society including police departments will eventually just go back to business as usual.

Mitch McConnell is easing back in his easy chair. He knows that the nature of this protest is cultural, not political, and, therefore, nothing much will come of it in the same way that nothing much came of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Derek Chauvin and the other involved policemen may never go to prison if the Use of Force policy in the Minneapolis police manual has no specific limitations on the knee-to-neck maneuver. His lawyer will point out that there has never been a death following the use of this maneuver until now, and that the death of George Floyd was an unfortunate accident. He will point out that the point of this restraint was to render the party unconscious. He will point out that Chauvin thought that George Floyd was merely unconscious not dead. As horrific as the video actually was, the US has used even more horrific techniques while torturing people like waterboardiung and the other extraordinary rendition techniques used on Muslim detainees at Abu Ghraib. However, there are no videos of these horrific events.

Too bad Bernie Sanders has been mute lately. His demands are concrete and tangible. Forgiveness of student loan debt, free college tuition, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All. All these things would benefit the mostly millenial crowd that comprises the current protest movement and benefit black people most of all. Unless there are concrete and substantial demands, all this protest energy will have been wasted. There is nothing tangible about what the protesters want other than nicer police especially police nicer to black people. The same thing was going on 50 years ago, and nothing much came of it. The Civil Rights movement did have tangible results. The right to public accommodations, equal education, equal voting rights - all those things were implemented by the Civil Rights legislation of the 1950s and 60s. So what legislation is being demanded now?

Off the Top of My Head

237 Other Incidents of Knee-to-Neck Restraints in Minneapolis

44 Rendered Unconscious

by John Lawrence, June 1, 2020

I reported 2 days ago that what happened to George Floyd was standard operating procedure for the police force there. It's in the Minneapolis police department's Use of Force Guide. The knee-to-neck restraint is accepted practice although it is banned by many police departments throughout the country because it's considered by many to be too dangerous. At this point it should be banned everywhere. In San Diego where I live this "carotid restraint" procedure is perfectly acceptable with the police department.The purpose of this procedure is to render the person unconscious. In the case of George Floyd, however, not only did they render him unconscious, they rendered him dead. Evidently in the other 44 cases, the people did not die.

All the protest and property destruction we have seen in the last week was over a twenty dollar bill! Where is that alleged counterfeit 20 dollar bill now? Has it been determined that it really is counterfeit? Has it been determined that George Floyd himself counterfeited it? Was everything that happened since that store owner reported George Floyd to the police really worth it? Obviously not.

So what led up to the incident that resulted in the loss of Mr Floyd's life. There has been a lot of video shown on TV. At one point Mr Floyd was actually in the police car, but an officer standing outside was struggling with him as he sat inside. So what happened there that provoked the police to pull him out of the car and put him in the neck restraint. Did Mr Floyd insult the officer? Did he knee him in the balls? Did he spit on him? Whatever he did as he was handcuffed inside the car in no way justified what happened to him. I understand how an officer, how anyone, can be provoked. But those officers need to be trained not to react to insults, backtalk, spitting or anything that a restrained man could do to provoke them. They need training to be saints. Not likely that police officers, who are after all human beings, could ever be expected to react like a saint would. Like Jesus would. Remember "Turn the other cheek"? But they need to try.

The whole situation was extremely unfortunate. But there have just been too many incidents regarding black men and a few regarding black women. The whole police community needs to upgrade its performance. But beyond that there needs to be radical change in the direction of this whole country. We should not go back to business as usual prepandemic and preprotest. America has to become a more compassionate society with regards to the least among us, the most vulnerable among us. FDR was right with the New Deal. Apologists for war tend to denigrate it saying that it was the Second World War that brought us out of the Great Depression. I believe that, if the Second World War never took place, the New Deal would have succeeded in pointing this country in a better, more salubrious direction.

What is needed now is a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. What we need now is Bernie Sanders' agenda.The destruction seen in the last week due to vandals and looters is nothing compared to what Mother Nature has in store for us if we don't address in a significant way the phenomenon of climate change. People need to be put to work doing constructive jobs, not just bartending, barista and gig work jobs. The infrastructure of this country needs to be rebuilt. There is so much constructive change that needs to happen. Instead we have a society where half the people could not cover a $400 emergency. How the hell can they recover from the loss of livelihoods caused by a pandemic?

Off the Top of My Head

Why Derek Chauvin, the Police Officer Who Knelt on George Floyd's Neck, Will Probably Get Off

by John Lawrence, May 30, 2020

Short answer: it was a perfectly legal tactic for police in Minneapolis. And it's a legal tactic in many other police departments. However, it is banned by many cities. Why isn't there a call at the national level for legislation that would ban this tactic throughout the US? It should be named in honor of George Floyd. In all the reporting on this story I have never heard it mentioned that this tactic was perfectly legal in Minneapolis. At a minimum this should be changed in Minneapolis. Why isn't the Mayor calling for it? Why isn't the Governor calling for it? As it turns out Derek Chauvin was applying a perfectly legal police maneuver. Whether or not there was a reason for it, given the fact that Floyd was already in handcuffs, will probably be a conundrum that will play itself out in court. Furthermore, carotid restraint maneuvers, very similar to a choke hold, are legal in many police departments.

In San Diego the knee-to-neck tactic is perfectly legal as is carotid restraint. The San Diego Union reported:

A controversial neck hold that many large departments have banned or restricted was used hundreds of times by San Diego police officers over the last five years, a practice the department has no interest in changing despite cries from community members to get rid of it.

The move is called a carotid restraint, also known as a sleeper hold or a blood choke. Officers use an arm to put pressure on the sides of a person’s neck, which — if applied correctly — can cause someone to quickly fall unconscious.

“They are not willing to change policy when it comes to using deadly force, especially when it comes to communities of color,” said Bishop Cornelius Bowser of San Diego’s Charity Apostolic Church and an activist. “That contributes to the problem with trust in our communities over the transparency and accountability of law enforcement.” A recent review by the police department found that the carotid restraint was used more than 400 times over a five year period between 2013 and 2017.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that kneeling on a suspect's neck is no longer allowed in most Minnesota law enforcement agencies. But in Minneapolis, certain officers can still use the maneuver. George Kirkham, a professor emeritus at the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, told the Star-Tribune that the maneuver of putting a knee on a suspect's neck isn't often taught in police academies anymore, because it is a risky move that can cause brain death in just a few minutes.

It's unknown if Chauvin was properly trained in how to use the knee maneuver used before Floyd's death.

The kind of people that go into police work are probably not the kind for whom it comes naturally to be restrained and diplomatic. They are probably people who can not naturally be subjected to abuse, verbal or otherwise, and remain nonchalant. Who knows what has been happening in their personal lives or what their psychological biases they have? That's why they need to undergo extensive training and retraining about how to relate to the public and especially to provocative situations.

Off the Top of My Head

by John Lawrence

Our good friend, Nurse Wubbles

Got herself in a whole lot of twubbles

When she refused to draw blood from a crook,

"Now Officer Payne, you cannot complain

This procedure is not in the book."

 

 

Which brings up the question, if an officer has a warrant for a doctor who's performing open heart surgery, can he barge into the operating room and put the doctor in handcuffs? Obviously, there should be some protocol involving these situations. Mrs. Wubbles was following procedure correctly. Officer Payne did not have a warrant so she could not draw blood. Then Officer Payne put her in handcuffs and roughed her up a bit before someone came to their senses and let her go.

Nurse Wubbles said, "This is crazy," as she sobbed. Obviously, no nurse should be placed in such a situation. Nurse Wubbles was only doing her job. The officer was out of line. He obviously had very little impulse control and an inability to deal with the situation correctly. How many other officers are in the same frame of mind when put in challenging or frustrating situations especially by black people. Is that why so many black people have been killed by officers? Out of fustration? Out of a lack of patience?

Hippies Move To Ease Tension in Ocean Beach

From the San Diego Free Press circa 1969

Reprinted by the OB Rag

Transcribed by John Lawrence

Relations between Ocean Beach Hippies and the San Diego Police Dept. continue to deteriorate according to Ocean Beach residents.

Police patrolmen have apparently shifted their tactics from Field Interrogation type harassment to outright threats and intimidation. Officer McLean told a gathering of youths in front of the In-Between on Newport Ave, "I've been watching you guys ... milling around ... We're just watching, for we're not gonna give you a ticket, but we're gonna take you to jail. All we're looking for is the sacrificial lamb. Any of you guys want to step forward and be first?"

Reactions of the hippies to this hardened police attitude have ranged from anger to desperation and resignation. Many feel that the police are actively trying to make any modus vivendi impossible, and that their real purpose is to drive the hippies out of town, despite token measures of the police public relations department to 'open up ways of communication.' The general feeling is that a mass confrontation between police and hippies is inevitable if the police continue on their present course, and rumors are that it could take place during Easter vacation.

Such a confrontation would be disastrous in its effects, according to many hippies. Said one of them at a meeting at the In-Between at which the problem was discussed: "We're just beginning to establish a certain amount of communication and understanding with local church groups and businessmen, and a thing like this would turn the community entirely against us, thus playing right into the hands of the police."

The situation thus defined, a course of action was decided upon. First the Hinky-Dinky Report, a newsleaflet published by and for Ocean Beach youths, is to be distributed more widely to inform all hippies of the situation and invite them to join in the effort to rally the community to their cause.

Second, it was agreed upon that the hippies are to take the initiative and attempt to gain community support by proving to the more orthodox residents that hippies, also, care about the community in which they live. Tactically, it was decided that the best way to do this was to counter the prevalent impression of hippies as being dirty, etc. by cleaning the streets of Ocean Beach. This is scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 16, beginning at 10 AM with the Newport Ave area from Bacon to Abbott streets. Brooms and food will be provided, and the 0. B. Drum Company is expected to be there. Coordinator for the Street Sweep is Andy McKinney, who may be contacted at the In-Between.

Third, and last, plans are now being made to try to prevent the feared confrontation between police and hippies during Easter by rechanneling the energies brought by the people into a more constructive and peaceful meeting, where grievances are rapped about and solutions sought.