"The mayor is black. The council is almost two-thirds black. The school superintendent is black. The police chief is black, and a majority of his officers are black.
Race riots inevitably end in contention over what social woes led to the trigger point, with one overarching element: a white power structure ruling a black populace.
Baltimore left behind that vestige of segregation long ago, yet the city nonetheless has been perched on the edge of chaos for much of this week, as African American protesters took to the streets to express grievances over police abuse and urban neglect.
“We ain't talking about color,” said John Baptist Watkins III, 53, sitting on the steps of a boarded-up brick row house on North Avenue, as men nearby peddled drugs — one of the few ways to earn money in this part of town.
Even the city's African American elected officials, Watkins said, “have no clue what is going on in the city.”" LA Times
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If the cops in Baltimore broke Grey's neck they should be prosecuted for homicide.
Nevertheless, it should be remembered that, as I wrote earlier today, the list above should include the state prosecutor who is black and Major General Singh, the Adjutant General of Maryland, a politically appointed state officer, who is also black and a woman.
IMO the root cause of this catastrophe in the life of the City of Baltimore is a lack of available jobs that are accessible to entry level men who are not well qualified for jobs that require education and self discipline in a changing economy.
The reason for this scarcity of jobs is the loss of industrial enterprise in the Baltimore area. This is a historic phenomenon that results from changes in the world economy. US government has been complicit in this change. Can the US government help reverse the loss of industry in Baltimore, probably not. pl
----------
Well, pilgrims, the cops who have been acquitted should sue all those involved including the City of Baltimore. pl 27 July, 2016
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-power-20150429-story.html#page=1
Will,
Its only totally different if you ignore everything similar in the media's response, right down to the fawning coverage of the rioters.
Posted by: Tyler | 01 May 2015 at 02:19 PM
" Most of us do not want to harmonize state law. "
As I said, thus entities like ALEC do it for you, without the benefit of public debate.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 01 May 2015 at 02:20 PM
GCP,
And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.
Maybe if opening a business wasn't a losing proposition in the slums due to the natives there'd be more capital investment.
Posted by: Tyler | 01 May 2015 at 02:21 PM
GCP,
Ah and the "original sin" of Leftism has arrived.
Funny how the Left has been running the show for the past 60 years for thr most part and it just keeps on getting worst and worst for them. Wonder why?
The Jews got Holocausted 70 years ago, and they're doing pretty awesome for themselves. What do you think "indentured servitude" was?
Posted by: Tyler | 01 May 2015 at 02:24 PM
Nick,
You're trying to be cute because you know you're playing with a losing hand.
The Left dominates media, law, politics, and academia, by and large. I understand you have to pretend you're still the underdog but don't try to pull that sh*t on me like its a big joke while the country goes under, TIA.
Posted by: Tyler | 01 May 2015 at 02:28 PM
Shorter CP:
"Our tyranny is different, so that makes it okay."
Posted by: Tyler | 01 May 2015 at 02:30 PM
Power is the State Religion
Posted by: Charles I | 01 May 2015 at 02:35 PM
Is the same not true of high performing kids in poor white communities with low rated schools?
Posted by: rjj | 01 May 2015 at 02:51 PM
GCP,
The closest people I have to in-laws are from rural Louisiana. In fact, I suspect that they are precisely the people whose culture you think "needs to be marginalized." Do you see where this is headed?
I've found them to be very reasonable people when it comes to their worldview, aware of the practical problems of the current policies and very much open to consider alternatives. What they do have problem with is with the people who hold them in contempt and in condescension and they will be absolutely hostile to those who they think look down on them, as well as they should. I don't think the vast majority of people in the flyover country are all that wedded to the policy being undertaken by the current Republican Party. They are, however, suspicious of the Democrats and their agenda more than they are of the Republicans. What the Democrats do, including the overt contempt that many Democrats have for people like my quasi-in-laws, only reinforces this suspicion. From what I hear of the liberal camp, it strikes me that much the same holds true with the bicoastals and the Democrats--and the Republicans. The only way out of this mess is to break the distrust, and if that is through making appropriate "cultural" appeals, then so it must be. What else would you have? Send those whose culture you hold in contempt to reeducation camps until they recant (this applies as much to the conservatives as to the liberals, by the way)?
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 01 May 2015 at 05:37 PM
rjj, I have no idea, but I am curious. Feel free to research that topic and post your results :)
Posted by: Valissa | 01 May 2015 at 05:47 PM
Tyler,
Sorry for trying to have some fun and develop a little rapport. If you want to be dour that's your choice.
Substitute 'rich' for 'left' and I think you'd be closer to the mark.
Posted by: nick b | 01 May 2015 at 06:12 PM
Tyler wrote: 'The Left dominates media, law, politics, and academia, by and large. I understand you have to pretend you're still the underdog but don't try to pull that sh*t on me like its a big joke while the country goes under'
Complete nonsense. It's your side that's dragging the country down trying to take us back a few centuries.
As for all that domination - more nonsense.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 01 May 2015 at 06:54 PM
You think it's worse for them now than it was in the 1950's? Would you really like to make that case?
Do you expect 60 years of the left to wipe out 400+ years of slavery and domination? Give us the same 400+ years your right wing slaveholders had and we'll certainly generate a better outcome than your friends did forcing them to the back of the bus.
As for the Jews, give them the same amount of land, armaments (including nuclear) and money every year on a per capita basis and the blacks will do just fine for themselves.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 01 May 2015 at 06:58 PM
Tyler wrote:
'Maybe if opening a business wasn't a losing proposition in the slums due to the natives there'd be more capital investment.'
If it is such a losing proposition then why are the white business owners down there? Why don't the slumlords sell their properties?
Frankly, you do have a point though. What the blacks really ought to do is take the riots out into the suburbs and burn some of them instead. That noted left wing media outlet - Faux News - could have a lot of fun with that.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 01 May 2015 at 07:02 PM
GCP,
You are demanding I not only feel guilt over an injustice I did not cause which was inflicted upon people who are no longer alive but that I must also pay morally and economically to someone who was not injured by my conduct solely due to the color of my skin. Let me know when you are going to demand this from the Italians, their slave empire lasted a couple of millennia. As a descendant of Spartacus I'll be happy to demand reparations. Otherwise the polite answer is no.
Posted by: Fred | 01 May 2015 at 07:22 PM
Tyler,
ah, Germany is a tyranny. You probably just forgot to add the 'socialist dystopia'. On the scale of tyrannies I live somewhere near the petting zoo.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 01 May 2015 at 07:28 PM
CP "that socialist utopia is by and large a European reality with which we live, and live well, for well over a century now. Just saying."
A century ago was the middle of WW 1, that wasn't European paradise. Neither was the follow on war. I don't think those currently unemployed in Spain or Greece are particularly enamored of the European reality.
Posted by: Fred | 01 May 2015 at 07:28 PM
Fred,
" A century ago was the middle of WW 1, that wasn't European paradise. "
When I wrote 'well over' I meant more than a hundred years, and not 'exactly a hundred years'.
Social security insurance was introduced in Germany in 1883/1884. We enacted our BGB, the civil law code in 1896, after 22 years of deliberation. The procedural code ZPO went into power in 1879. We use all of that still.
Now that you have changed topics and threw in some general Germany- and Europe-bashing - Greece's problems today have everything to do with bad governance in Greece.
As I have said here before, when you have specific euphemism like 'fakelaki' for the little envelope with whith you give the bribe, then that is a very good indicator for a broader phenomenon and its acceptance as a fact of life.
Yes, austerity is bad, painful and very probably also wrong, but that doesn't change anything about Greece's own responsibility for the majority of their problems.
It isn't Germany's and also not Europe's fault that Greece didn't raise taxes to pay for all their expenses or their debt, or that the public sector made up iirc about 50&% of their exonomy, not to speak of the endemic fraud. We didn't encourage them in any of that, and they are a sovereign country. They liked it the way it was before it collapsed.
Babak mentioned the need to make sure people have useful productive jobs in order to be able to live meaningful lives. I agree wholeheartedly.
In Greece that often meant giving someone some public service job, sometimes a no show one, so he wouldn't sit on the street. That Greece cannot afford that anymore is not Germany's or Europe's fault. It is that way because it wasn't very economic to begin with.
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 01 May 2015 at 08:00 PM
Tariffs tend to be contagious (Smoot-Hawley, anybody?) and capricious (how much on which things?).
But we cold at least drop a carbon tax on the heavy oil burned by those container ships which come in heavy & go out light.
Posted by: elkern | 01 May 2015 at 08:39 PM
Actually, I'm not demanding anything but to ignore that injustice as the primary cause of problems today and to deny as a white man you profited from that injustice (even peripherally) is ignorant.
What the blacks demand to rectify the problem is up to them but I'm not demanding anything.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 01 May 2015 at 11:28 PM
Smoot-Hawley DID NOT cause the depression.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 01 May 2015 at 11:29 PM
kao_hsien_chih wrote:
'The only way out of this mess is to break the distrust, and if that is through making appropriate "cultural" appeals, then so it must be. What else would you have? Send those whose culture you hold in contempt to reeducation camps until they recant (this applies as much to the conservatives as to the liberals, by the way)?'
No, I don't think making cultural appeals (i.e. - surrender to them and their religious culture) is appropriate at all. What is appropriate is for them to let everyone live their life as they please (which includes them living their lives as they see fit) and keep their religious views out of government policy.
You (like the colonel sometimes) like to use the word 'condescension'. It's not that at all. It's as though you want the rest of the country who disagrees with these people to treat them like three year olds throwing a tantrum. Just give them what they want so they'll shut up. Is that what you are proposing? In the year 2015 why should a woman not be able to use birth control at will, or get an abortion if she so desires? What business is it of theirs? Why should two gay people not be able to wed given the legal benefits? What business is it of theirs? Are we all to live by their religious dogma? They side with industrialists, international capitalists and war mongering profiteers at the expense of labor (which includes them) so they don't have to bake cakes for gay weddings and we are all supposed to coddle them?
No reeducation camps are necessary. The world is passing them by. The world isn't going back to the 1500's.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 02 May 2015 at 12:10 AM
GCP,
The world is passing them by? That's awfully Francis Fukuyama of you. In 18th century, "educated" people thought the future will be an enlightened world where everyone would be behaving "rationally." 19th century did not look anything like that. "Educated" people at the end of 19th still thought their future would be different. 20th century did not exactly turn out as expected. So are we back to pronouncing that OUR future is going to look different?
The old-fashioned people whom we may not agree with are not going away. They are perfectly able to adapt themselves to the modern technology and the ways of the future without changing their worldviews. They are as part of the future as much as you and I are, and in some sense, perhaps more than we are. Declaring them irrelevant because we think their views are outdated is both utter arrogance and madness. They have to be dealt with, in some fashion, and if you won't "fight" them, you have to talk to them, since I am not going to "fight" my people (in a manner of speaking), I don't see an option other than talking to them and engaging them. And contra the left wing dogma, I have found many of them perfectly reasonable and thoughtful people who are very much amenable to arguments not born of condescension, and often, even able to point to flaws in my own thinking.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 02 May 2015 at 12:02 PM
Does anyone know the status of the police officer whose condition was listed
as "non-responsive"? or the condition of the fire fighter who was hit on the head with a cinder block?
Does anyone doubt the presence of "Occupy" professional hell raisers...
their sponsor ought to pay for the rebuilding of the CVS & the senior center.
Posted by: elaine | 02 May 2015 at 06:20 PM
kao_hsien_chih wrote:
'The world is passing them by? That's awfully Francis Fukuyama of you.'
'Declaring them irrelevant because we think their views are outdated is both utter arrogance and madness. '
Don't misinterpret what I'm saying. In the 1800's all those fine southern christians justified slavery with their Bible. Do you hear any talk like that today? What is referred to today as the 'culture wars' will be won by the liberals over time and your friends will have to get over it. They'll still be able to cling to their guns and their bibles but they won't be able to use them to impose on the rest of us.
Posted by: GulfCoastPirate | 02 May 2015 at 10:25 PM