Welcome to Ferguson

Sorry, I just can't seem to let this Feguson thing go. It says so much about what's America today.

Pattern Crimes: The second largest source of income for the city of Ferguson, MO is the $2.6 million it gathers from fines levied on its citizens for parking, speeding, jay walking and the like. Ferguson is, of course, a white-run black community where 86% of vehicle stops involved a black motorist, who is twice as likely to be searched as a white driver and also twice as likely to be arrested. The average black household in Ferguson is hit with three warrants a year, resulting in the loss of $300 to fines and fees. And if you can't pay the fine or cover the fees, you go to jail. Welcome to Ferguson, MO, where Michael Brown was stopped for jaywalking.

Gunning 'Em Down

"313 is not my lucky number."

I'm recently involved in an email conversation with a dear friend who thinks we should just "wait" before we come to any conclusions about what happened in Ferguson, MO. I politely demurred. I don't think there's any question about the broad outline of the story: a cop shot an unarmed black teen (Michael Brown) to death. How exactly did it happen? Some witnesses say the guy had his hands up and was basically in a submissive position; others disagree. In fact, there are several versions. You can find a video of what the victim's friend, who was with him during the incident, said here and here. Both of these accounts are in sync. Does this guy look like he's making it up as he goes along? Fabricating a story because he and his friend were actually the villains of this piece? Or does it sound like a guy who's just seen his friend shot down and was scared shitless himself? I suppose we're going to get several different stories on this whenever the "investigation" of the incident gets finished. (I've read that there are going to be at least three investigations, including one by the Justice Dept.) But we now do know that this one cop, Darren Wilson, shot the guy six times, twice in the head. Something's not right here.

I'm not prejudging--or am I?--when I observe that cops shooting and killing young black men are hardly a rarity in the Land of the Free, which is why I don't see that "waiting" for a answer is really going to change much of anything. This article, and accompanying data, contends that a black man is shot by police or vigilantes once every 28 hours in this country. That's 313 in the year 2012. It would repay your glancing at it. The numbers are convincing. And even if it's only half-true, that's still a dead black man at the hands of cops three times a week. Does that sound like we don't have a problem?

Here's what Some Assembly Required has to say, a different tack:

Inquiring Mind: What makes you think that the clash between the poor and the police in St. Louis is about race, rather than the continuing economic slavery the descendants of slaves have been kept in for 125 years? How long before the 50 million Americans who are poor realize that being poor gives them more in common than the shades of their skin divide them, that being poor is as big a crime as being black? That united they would be unstoppable? Maybe it starts in the #QuickTrip People's Park.

And that's a good argument too, except the "descendants of slaves" are all African-Americans, and the institution they descended from in America was strictly race-based.

What Lawn Chairs Do When Nobody's Looking

I don't think any commentary on this story is needed. Although I can think of a few silly puns, and my guess is you can probably conjure up some commentary of your own.

SEATTLE -- Public nudity by itself will not get you arrested in Seattle, but police say one woman turned her nudity into indecent exposure when she committed a sex act with Beacon Hill family's lawn furniture.

According to police, nudity becomes criminal if it "causes a person to reasonably experience fear, alarm or concern." That was the case on August 4 when an "extremely intoxicated" 33-year-old woman wandered into a yard in the 78000 block of Beacon Avenue South.

With several members of a family looking on in horror, police say the woman "hiked up her dress and engaged in an intimate act with several lawn chairs."

She then began urinating on the lawn before "quite purposefully exposing her genitalia, and then posterior, to the family inside the home," according to police.

The family called 911 and officers arrived moments later and arrested the woman. She was booked into King County Jail for indecent exposure.

And wait a second . . . did you get that about "fear, alarm, or concern"? It seems this case might have indeed triggered the latter two, but just think about how slippery the wording of this law is. When is somebody walking around naked not going to cause "concern" for somebody? And note that the family didn't call 911 till the flashing started. That's interesting. I also notice how one lawn chair did not seem to meet the arrestee's needs. Interesting also.

Sorry, seems like I had some commentary after all.

Bullets from Babylon

My (for the present) favorite blogger, Charles Kingsley Michelson III at "Some Assembly Required" has these gems this morning:

• They Made Me Do It: The fertilizer companies responsible for the explosion and fire in West, TX last year claim that the city, not the fertilizer companies, were to blame, which is a load of fertilizer. 
• Have you ever noticed that whatever happens, it's always somebody else's fault? You know what makes news? Those occasions when somebody in charge steps up and says: "It was my fault. You wanna blame somebody, blame me." Now that's news.

• Obey: NYC cops dragged a naked 48 year-old woman from her shower, through her apartment and into the hallway, subdued and arrested her - and her 12-year old granddaughter who tried to help gramma – for resisting . Wrong apartment. 
• You've heard me wax eloquent and not so eloquent at the unremitting abuse of the citizenry of the United States--it doesn't matter where you are--by the cops. There are whole websites devoted to it, with videos and all. The fact this is not happening on your nice suburban street with its daisies and lilies and people walking their AKC-approved dogs, doesn't mean that some innocent citizens of your town aren't getting the shit kicked out of them right this minute by the guardians of law and order. P.S. Want to guess what color the woman was? 

• Cookie Monsters: In Palm Beach a church had a homeless man arrested for stealing $2.25 worth of cookies. In Decatur, IL a man discovered that his female roommate had eaten the three cookies he had intended to have for breakfast, so he strangled her.
• In the first instance, lemme guess . . . it was a church that follows Jesus, who told us to love our neighbors as well as we love ourselves, right? And in the second instance, what else was the guy supposed to do? He needed those cookies to sustain life.

Vatican North

The UK is being rocked by a pedophile scandal of mammoth proportions and (of course) official complicity in covering up the crimes of highly placed individuals in British society and government. Here's a summary of events in the probe until now. Susan asked me if I had heard about this a couple of days ago. I had, but just barely. My guess is we're going to be hearing a lot more about this appalling business in the days ahead.

Vatican North: The UK establishment is apparently home to as many, if not more, pedophiles than the Roman Catholic Church, with an appalling concentration in Whitehall. The practice, concealed since the Thatcher government if not before, has been at best passively condoned by politicians and senior government officials. And the denial continues, with over 100 child abuse investigative files being 'missing from official records.' The current Education Secretary, continuing decades of cover ups, insists there is no need for a public inquiry into the cover-up or the crimes – especially in that investigation would show that Madame Thatcher's administration actively hid the crimes of MPs and peers. According to a former UK health minister, as early as 1992, government investigators were aware that “powerful people” used government run children's homes as a “supply line” for their victims.

Why is it . . . ?

. . . that whenever you read these kind of stories they are always about people of color? Have you ever noticed that? Can somebody send me a link to a story about a white person being freed from prison years later because he was innocent and jailed anyway for a crime he didn't do? I'm certain there have to be some, but these stories about some poor (always) innocent African American being incarcerated are almost as regular as stories about mass shootings in this country. Which is to say, frequent enough to be quite disturbing.

Nobody seems to draw, or at least mention, what to me is a perfectly obvious conclusion. That our judicial system of the past was grossly racist, and routinely did not serve the cause of justice. Do you ever wonder how many guys (and women) are in prison for crimes they did not do? And do you have any idea of how long it takes to right an injustice like this? This in itself is a crime. But don't hold your breath about it being prosecuted.

The Cost of Doing Crooked Business

The cost is actually pretty low, if you're a crooked bank. Which is to say if you're a bank, although I'd really love to see some press on the honest bankers out there. Surely there are some. The point to remember here is that these fines don't mean diddly to these scumbags. They are simply the cost of doing business as usual, which is to say, keeping the world constantly on the brink of economic catastrophe.

Pocket Change to These People. Oughta be Putting the CEO's Asses in Stir

Random Stories

With the subtitle: Mostly bad news. The following headlines appeared in today's USA Today.

• Economy shows new signs of weakness -- Well, for the regular people,the 99 percent of us who don't inhabit the realms of unreality where there is no such thing as not enough money to do any damn thing you want, this is not a great surprise. In fact, I would argue that the so-called "recovery" has not arrived for most of those millions brought low by the recession. The real question is whether it ever will.
• Police: Boy's parents researched hot-car deaths -- A mom and dad in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, did some Internet research on child deaths inside of vehicles and the temperatures required for that to happen. Then the dad drives their 22-month old toddler to his job and leaves him locked in the SUV for 7 hours. The little boy died of hypothermia. The father claimed he "forgot" the kid was in the car. I don't know if there is a hell, but there ought to be. With a special place for people like this. 
• Critical need for primary care providers -- Bottom line is U.S. because of population growth, more aging people, and the Affordable Care Act is expected to need 52,000 more primary care physicians by 2025 and we're going to fall far short. There are a number of issues including funding for medical residencies, the rising cost of med school, more lucrative specialty care fields, and the scope of practice laws (states have been slow in allowing PAs and nurse practitioners to take over services traditionally provided by physicians.) I think the only thing this country is going to have more of by 2025 is idiots and poor people. Everything else, we're going to fall short.
• Ebola crisis now deadliest ever -- When does good news come out of Africa? The crisis in western Africa is the worst ever and it's threatening to spread. 400 dead already. This Ebola virus is deadly. Causes high fever, vomiting, muscle pain, diarrhea and can lead to massive internal bleeding and organ failure. It kills 90 percent of its victims. It's spread by simple contact with victim's (human or animal) fluids, tissues, or blood. Traditional African burial rituals, suspicion of foreign doctors, and just plain ole ignorance are not helping in the fight.
• Iraqi insurgents announce new Islamic state -- This Al-qaeda breakaway bunch (ISIL--Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant--they left because Al-qaeda wasn't radical enough) has overrun parts of Syria and northern Iraq. They say they are now a new Islamic caliphate. I guess we'll have to see, but another piece on the editorial page that asks "If the U.S. is going to re-engage, it should do so with the means to win." sends chills up my spine. Can anyone in their right mind think what we should do is get entangled in that shit again?

Sounds Just to Me

Read this story. Lemme give you the bare bones outline of it. Married man repeatedly sexually abuses his step-daughter for four years, starting when she is 12 years old. He goes to trial for the crimes and is sentenced. That's what this story is about. Now, without knowing another thing about it except that the defendant took a plea, what do you think the judge's sentence was? Most of you, I would hope, would think such a crime, even plea-bargained, would rate at least 10 years in jail. We're talking pedophilia here of the most loathsome kind.

Ten years, you say? You fool. What you don't know in this case are some salient details that change everything about justice for this beastly crime. The defendant was one Samuel Curtis Johnson III, a Wisconsin billionaire. Originally charged with a felony (sexual assualt on a minor) for his deeds, he ended up getting the charges reduced to a misdemeanor (fourth-degree sexual assault and disorderly conduct) after two trips to the state supreme court. And the judge, who cited the importance of the Johnson family in the community, sentenced him to four months in jail. He will be eligible to get out after two months.

You will please forgive me for not launching into a rant about the obvious here.

Justice Delayed . . .

. . . is justice denied, or so the saying goes. Makes you wonder about this kind of story. Germany has decided to bring war crimes charges (murder) against 20 former guards at the Majdanek death camp near Lublin, Poland. These crimes were committed over 70 years ago. When does the statute of limitations run out on these guys? Never. Not as long as a single one remains alive. They deserve imprisonment. Or do they? You have to ask yourself is this really justice? Wouldn't justice have been locking these monsters up for the rest of their lives when they had some life left to live--as their victims did so long ago? Indeed, there were originally 30 names, but 10 have died in the interim. You really have to wonder why it's taken so long to run these guys down . . . I suspect the Cold War and the necessity of cultivating a new NATO Germany back when these crimes were fresh had a lot to do with it.

Doesn't Matter How Long You Worked Here

Amazingly, the German authorities have the names of another 220 former death camp guards they are looking for. They don't know where they are. The 20 being brought on charges all live in Germany.

If You Can't Say Anything Good . . .

So they say if you can't say anything good, you shouldn't be saying anything at all. It appears that that's been the case since I've gotten back from Florida, which now seems like it was a long time ago. But in fact this been very little good news since my return. (Aside from the wonderful winning ways of the Texas Rangers lately.) But rather than say nothing at all, let me just give you a few short bullets about what's happened in the past week – all the good news:

• The Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has leaked another 300 tons of radioactive water into the soil. You will not believe how much radioactive water has been released into the ocean and into the ground there since the 2011 tsunami. It is staggering. Scientists don't really know what the long-term effects of this is, but – surprise! – They are concerned about marine life. Check out this article.
• A military judge has sentenced Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information. Manning is a whistleblower, he's not a traitor, he's not a criminal. It used to be that whistleblowing was adjudged an honorable thing to do. We are a long way from that in paranoid America today where terrorism and terrorists are everywhere.
• Along with the security state apparatus, which is everywhere. We just found out that NSA "accidentally" collected the email communications – or was it Internet transactions? – of over 50,000 Americans who had no connection whatever to terrorism. Does anybody really believe these people at NSA or in the White House when they say anything at all about this domestic spying and how they've got it under control now? I don't.
• Another crazy rube, admittedly "off his meds" with a gun in an elementary school. This time in Atlanta. Some brave soul in the school actually managed to talk him out of killing anybody, so nobody was hurt. But don't you worry: some idiot perfectly protected by the laws that the NRA has stifled will succeed in blowing a bunch of innocent people away with a gun in the not-too-distant future. There is no safer bet in America.
• The Syrian government has killed hundreds of its own people with poison gas near Damascus. The USA Today this morning had a picture of about 25 dead bodies laid out on sheets, and most of them, or I should say all of them, were kids. There's something so repulsive about this so repugnant to human decency, that it puts a serious question to my pacifism. The last thing I want is for the United States to get involved in punching the Middle Eastern tar baby again, but the moral dilemma presented by something like this is almost insoluble.
• Closer to home in the little city of Duncan, Oklahoma, three teenagers shot and killed a 22-year old Australian baseball player who was jogging near his girlfriend's home. They were bored and just decided to kill somebody, one of the thugs explained. They did it "for fun." Does this really need any commentary? It was a .22 caliber handgun. Story here.

Maybe I shouldn't be saying anything at all, huh?

Justice?

Here it is six whole days since my last post, and I'm wondering just what happened to the week. I look back on it, and for my life cannot discern anything all that earth-shattering. Just where does time flee to? I can say this: three days of the past week were taken up with in-house guests. Three of Susan's sisters can to visit us, two from Baton Rouge and one who lives in Houston. This occasioned a couple of nights in a row that we got to see our daughter and her family also.

I've been scurrying about for a couple of days trying to line up a dog-sitter to watch Prozac the Boston terrier when Susan and I take off next week for Oregon. Looking forward to that trip with Susan. I've never been there, although I was to Seattle a few times.

The George Zimmerman verdict is in, which is what I really wanted to comment on. The six-woman jury found him innocent. Of any wrongdoing whatever. Susan says she's not surprised, and she watched practically the whole trial. To tell you the truth I am surprised. I didn't think the state would be able to prove second-degree murder, but I thought the lesser-included charge of manslaughter was not only possible but probable. To me, there would not have been any question. I would have never qualified for the jury. Yahoo with a 9 mm. tracking a black kid at night, getting out of the car he's been following him in. Then the black kid ends up with a bullet through the heart. And this guy is let go pleading self-defense. Please.

To me, a southerner, brought up in the South, schooled in the South, there's only one way of understanding this. Jury in a southern state frees white guy who killed a black guy . . . what else is new?

Someone Was Murdered, Take 1

Susan and I have a just right-sized retirement house. No room wasted. So my "Boss" chair and ottoman is located in living/TV room. It's where I read the morning paper. Well, since the George Zimmerman trial has started, Susan's been watching it and by osmosis, if not by interest--and I cannot deny there has been more than some of that on my part--I have absorbed a good bit of the court proceedings in Florida. The American legal process is something to behold in its nitty gritty. The prosecution's star witnesses, a 19-year old girl named Rachel Jeantel, daughter of a Haitian immigrant mother and father from Santo Domingo, spent the better part of two grueling days of testimony most of it from the defense attorney about the conversation she had with Treyvon Martin on the night he shot to death in Sanford, Florida.

You will recall that she was on the phone with Treyvon Martin as he was being followed by George Zimmerman and at the early part of the confrontation between them. It is amazing to me that a lawyer can ask the same questions of the same witness numerous times before finally (and mercifully for the viewers and the witness) the judge puts a halt to it. To me, it was perfectly obvious that the defense lawyer was trying to catch her in an inconsistency. One slip, not answering the same question precisely the same way, and he would pounce.

Rachel Jeantel under the gun, Zimmerman trial, Sanford FL, June 27, 2013

It was relentless. Over and over, the same question. And not just two or three times. Eight, ten times. If it had been me, the lawyer would have probably gotten under my thin skin pretty quickly, and I would have been snappish if not downright confrontational after answering the same question two or three times. I personally thought she held up really well under the barrage, but her irritation was at times palpable. I remarked to Susan that this black teenager proved to be every bit the equal of the powerful white, beautifully manicured, impeccably spoken lawyer. She is not highly educated (she's a ghetto black teen, for Pete's sake), she doesn't speak the king's English, but she's not stupid. She refused to be tricked, refused to have words put into her mouth, refused to let her dead friend be blamed for his own death. She knew what she heard on the phone, and she knew what it meant. The bottom line here is: somebody got murdered, and this trial is about holding that murderer to account.

There's a flood of commentary about this witness out there. Here's a sample:

The Nation
The Raw Story
Salon
Time
Media-ite

What Do You Think They Should Do to This Guy?

You know the guy I mean. The guy who kidnaps three girls, two of them teenagers at the time, the other like 20 years old, and keeps them for ten years as sex slaves locked up in his house in the middle of Cleveland, Ohio. His name is Ariel Castro. He rapes them repeatedly. Subjects them to beatings. Chains them up. Starves them and  beats 'em in the belly when he impregnates them so they will miscarry the child. (Doesn't succeed in one case because there is a little six-year-old girl that was born into this hellish nightmare.) They are allowed to leave the house maybe twice in all that time . . . to go into the yard and garage.

Ten years of these women's lives, their entire formative years in the case of two of them. It's just beggars the imagination. I'm a pacifist, trying my best to live the kind of life that Jesus did. I cannot suborn torturing or executing this monster, but these are the kinds of cases that severely test my Christian resolve. You just don't think--or rather, mainly feel--that somebody like this should escape some of the punishment he inflicted on these innocent girls. It not what we think he deserves.

There are not many people anywhere who would agree with me on this.

Related articles

• 3 captive women were raped and starved, 1 forced into miscarriages: police (globalnews.ca)
• The Ohio abductions: A decade of torment in the city of Cleveland (independent.co.uk)
• Three women freed after 10 years of capture (efgk5.wordpress.com)
  

Happy Mothers Day!

Bystanders comfort a shooting victim after gunfire injured 19 people during a Mother's Day parade
in New Orleans on Sunday

I spent my childhood in New Orleans. I loved the place. I could not believe it when the family moved to Baton Rouge, only about 90 miles away when I was a junior in high school. I thought my life was ending. I could not imagine living anywhere but this city that I loved so much. And, as a matter of fact, I still do love New Orleans. But I would not live there.

This incident, where some crazed guy with a gun just shoots into a crowd of people at a Mother's Day parade, a spontaneous so-called "second line" event that the city is famous for, and hurts 19 people (one has since died, I learn) is also the kind of thing the city is famous for. It and its sister city Baton Rouge up the road are infamous for the amount of crime they suffer, especially violent, life-endangering crime like this.

But let's all remember, even as we try to wrap our minds around these kinds of disconcerting facts, that guns don't kill people, and gun controls cannot possibly diminish such crimes.

We are a doomed people, I tell you.

Related articles

• Police ID suspect in New Orleans mass shooting (sacbee.com)
• 19 New Orleans shooting victims included 2 kids (sfgate.com)
  

Cops Amok, Part ____

You can just fill in the blank above, it could be any number. Cops are beating people up all over the country every day. YouTube has hundreds of examples. The video accompanying this post is just one of them. But it is genuinely horrific. You will notice that most of the people set upon by the police are black people, not unusual at all when you think about the percentages of the races that we lock up in this country. But the absolute worst beating here is administered by huge black officer with his billy club on the helpless prisoner already being held down by another cop. For a peaceful and nonviolent soul like myself, these scenes were absolutely horrifying, disgusting, vile, and really scary. Conjures up in my mind thoughts of the Nazi brownshirts, and the state-sponsored terror that allowed them free reign to assault and murder German citizens pretty much with impunity. I don't think there is any doubt that the United States is moving closer every day, under its oppressive and overpowering fear and loathing of ________ – you can fill in at this point with whatever you want: terrorists, criminals, people with a different religion, Muslims, strangers, people who look different, people of another race, foreigners--to a garrison state where might is all that determines right. That got Americans prisoners of their fears. Afraid enough to send gun sales to the roof and, sadly, to even justify some of this behavior by the cops who are sworn to protect us.

Don't watch this if you got a weak stomach. But remember the main message of the film: it takes guts and the cops hate it, but you have every right to videotape them doing whatever it is they do. And all too often they are abusing their authority and giving vent to the cruelest and meanest instincts we have. Thank goodness for the brave souls that took these pictures.

And Another Thing about This Florida Killing

I wrote the other day about the February 26 murder of a black teenager by an over-zealous Neighborhood Watch guy named George Zimmerman. The story has only gained much more national traction since then. It's been on the news and on the radar for millions of people ever since the story broke. There's been enough ink spilled on the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL to float a good sized ocean liner. We have heard about racism, community protest, more than we ever want to know about Zimmerman, minute dissection of the 911 recordings, plus all kinds of ancillary stories about the town, the neighborhood, etc. But one thing you haven't heard diddly about is guns. Because of course it was a handgun that killed this boy. It's just taken as a given that a weirdo such as Zimmerman, who appointed himself a one-man protection squad for the neighborhood, should be allowed to pack heat while he was playing at being a cop. Nobody in authority talks about guns because everybody is terrified of the NRA. The NRA has written the gun laws for this society. Which is to say, laws that don't stifle even queer ducks like Zimmerman from getting a gun and riding around with it in his SUV, hoping against hope that he gets to use it on some "punk."*

*Audio experts have determined that this is how he referred to the kid he was following a few minutes before he put a bullet in this chest and took his life.

Lock 'Em Up

Some facts about incarcerations in the United States. (Source for this article is the ACLU National Newsletter, Winter 2012). From 1970-2005 US prison population rose by 700 percent. Meanwhile the growth rate in general population was 44 percent. Well over 2 million people are behind bars. US has five percent of world population and 25 percent of its prisoners. Nearly half of the people in state prisons are non-violent. For this we can thank the "get the bastards" policies of the past 40 years: "war on drugs," "getting tough on crime" which has given us things like the "3 strikes and you're out" laws and mandatory minimum sentencing. All of this was based on fear--has it ever occurred to you how convulsed with fear this country is? We're probably the most fearful democracy on the planet. It possesses us.

But locking up all these people has not made us safer--no more than our wars and the obscene amount of money we spend on the military has made us safer--instead it's burdened the taxpayers, overcrowded the prisons something fierce, normalized "an overly punitive mindset that turns to incarceration as a first--rather than a last--resort."

And of course people of color are disproportionally locked up. Why? Discriminatory laws as well as biased sentencing and enforcement*, even though "white Americans commit crimes at the same rates as people of color." It's just beyond scandalous that 1 in every 9 young (20-34) black men is incarcerated.

All these people in jail is crushingly expensive: In the twenty years 1987-2007, states spent more than $44 billion on jail and related expenses, up 127 percent since 1987. Oh, and during the same period states upped spending for higher education by 21 percent.

This is all insane, of course, but since when has that stopped us from doing something?


*See shooting in Sanford, FL: black kid dead, white killer free

Related articles

• Obama Budget: Grow Prisons and Keep Gitmo (motherjones.com)
• ACLU: Counties opting for incarceration, not rehabilitation (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)
• The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States (blackpoppymag.wordpress.com)

Good!

The US Department of Justice is going to investigate the recent (February 26) murder of a black teenager named Trayvon Martin in a suburb of Orlando. A Florida grand jury is also going to look into the matter. The killer was a self-appointed vigilante named George Zimmerman who was from all accounts a one-man neighborhood watch patrol in his gated community. Zimmerman claims he acted in self-defense after Martin attacked him. See this story for a voice recording of Zimmerman's call to the cops. His story of what happened is bullshit, of course. Read here for more breaking information. The kid was on the phone with his girlfriend, and he told her that he was being followed. The guy was carrying candy and a can of iced tea, for Pete's sake, and as the voice tape with the dispatcher proves, Zimmerman followed this kid, even after he was told not to do it. NY Times story is here; it has voice recordings of several calls to 911 reporting the shooting. No charges have been filed in this killing. Hence the growing outrage.

I read about this a couple of days ago. Since, it has gone viral. Good! This is the kind of incident that should be known in every hamlet and town in this country . . . and especially heeded by all those deluded out there who think racism isn't alive and well in this land of the free. There's not a doubt in my mind that if Trayvon Martin had been white, he's be walking the streets alive and well right now.

Related articles

• Trayvon Martin's Final Moments (thedailybeast.com)
• Trayvon Martin: Why His Killer Remains Free (inquisitr.com)

Oh, Really?

Here's something that won't surprise you even if all you have going for you is a smidgen over basic motor functions: people are making money, lots of it, opposing relaxation of marijuana laws. Oh, really? It is positively insane that 1 of every 8 people in US prisons is there for pot-related offenses. That's 800,000 and about $1 billion in costs to keep them there. (Source) And this isn't because the people of this country are clamoring to keep these dangerous potheads off the streets. No. Fact is half of the people in the US favor outright legalization of the weed, a record number, and the first time this many people have expressed this opinion. Many, many more favor decriminalization measures of some sort. But, as in so many other areas--gun laws and withdrawal from foreign wars come to mind--what the people want and what they get are two entirely different matters.

So I'll give you some guesses as to who is behind these efforts to keep the ridiculous pot prohibition on the books. Bingo! If you guessed police, you get a gold star. The simple fact of the matter is the police unions prosper with greater numbers if you're out there chasing pot offenders. This article focuses on California, but surely what's true there is true across the county. Several counties in the state, it should be noted, collected handsomely for anti-marijuana initiatives from stimulus money early in the recession.

But guess who else is against any change in the marijuana laws? Who would you think? Beer companies, alcohol corporations . . . and are you ready for this? Prison guard unions. And less not forget our favorite friends, Big Pharma, who fear a low-cost form of competition.

Money talks. Weed just smokes.