wrongologist – Page 233 – The Wrongologist

The Circle of Graft

Trenton, New Jersey is the political home of Republican Governor Chris Christie. The rest of America sees Mr. Christie as a tough-talking know-it-all, a moderate Republican who could be a real threat to win the presidency in 2016.

David Sirota in the International Business Times reports that Christie is sending state pension money to his buddies on Wall Street. The idea was to improve pension plan investment returns. From Sirota:

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration openly acknowledged that more New Jersey taxpayer dollars were going to land in the coffers of major financial institutions. It was 2010, and Christie had just installed a longtime private equity executive, Robert Grady, to manage the state’s pension money. Grady promoted a plan to put more of those funds into riskier investments managed by Wall Street firms. Though this would entail higher fees, Grady said the strategy would “maximize returns while appropriately managing risk”.

Some of the higher risk investments were in hedge funds. Ten years ago, public pension funds stayed away from hedge funds. Possibly hedge funds seemed too risky, or opaque, or exotic. After all, public pension funds invest money so they can afford to keep sending checks to retired schoolteachers, police officers and firefighters. Christie and Robert Grady went ahead.

Now, four years later, New Jersey has achieved about half of their promised results:

With the exception of the 2012 fiscal year, annual public pension return rates in New Jersey are significantly lower than the national median. Those differences add up when you are investing a pool of $80 billion. However, the fees NJ paid to its financial managers have more than tripled since Christie assumed office:

Mr. Christie took office in 2010. In all, New Jersey’s pension system has spent $939.8 million on financial fees between fiscal year 2010 and 2013. That’s just slightly less than the amount Christie cut from state education funding in 2010.

Half the results at triple the cost! Madison Avenue is so NOT stealing that claim.

The news gets worse: NJ’s pension fund is $47.2 billion short of what it needs to fulfill its promised benefits to retirees. The gap had narrowed to $36.3 billion in 2010 after Christie signed bills that boosted contributions from employees, raised the minimum retirement age for new workers and froze cost-of- living adjustments for retirees.

But, the gap grew again after Christie skipped a $3 billion pension payment in fiscal 2011. Christie also decided in May to skip this year’s $3.1 billion payment, again, in order to balance the state budget. As justification for the move, he argued that retirement benefits for NJ police officers, firefighters and teachers are unaffordable and therefore must be reduced.

Even more bad news: Many of the Wall Street firms NJ now pays management fees have been donors to Republican groups backing Christie’s election campaigns. Employees of those firms have also donated more than $11 million to the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. Now, not all of that money goes to support Mr. Christie, but the New York Times reports that both organizations spent big in support of his 2013 reelection campaign: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

A third of the $1.65 million the [National Governors] association raised in New Jersey [in 2013 by Christie] came from people and businesses who had significant contracts with the state, or from utilities, which are prohibited from making any contributions to candidates for governor.

As the IBTimes also reported, at the time many of these campaign contributions were made, Robert Grady was moving about 1/3 of New Jersey’s portfolio to some of the donor firms. Grady is a former managing director of the Carlyle Group, and Carlyle and a subsidiary have received $450 million in New Jersey pension investments since Christie took office.

NJ has a history of pension pratfalls. In 1997, Republican Gov. Christine Whitman issued $3 billion of state bonds and used the proceeds to make a leveraged stock market bet that failed when the Internet bubble popped. Ms. Whitman went on to withhold payments of $ billions to the public employee pension funds over the next few years, using the bulk of that money to balance the state budget.

Wait! There’s more: From 2006-2009, NJ also failed under Democrats: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Orin Kramer [was]…Chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council, which is tasked with oversight of the state’s public pension system. In 2006 he successfully pushed to shift a huge chunk of the state’s $72 billion pension fund to private money managers rather than [have them managed by] state employees.

Kramer was also the architect of the decision to invest $400 million in Citigroup and $300 million in Merrill Lynch as those firm tried to survive the sub-prime market crisis in 2008. Later in 2008, Kramer “invested” union pension money into Lehman Brothers shortly before the firm’s collapse.

That move lost $115 million.

Although “public officials” decide where to place pension funds, increasingly with hedge funds, the pension monies belong to state employees.

How ironic that these same public officials blame the employees for the failure of the pension funds to have sufficient funds to meet their obligations.

Why not blame the “public officials”?

Circle of Graft, indeed!

Why We Are Driving Less

The Driving Boom, a six decade-long period of increases in per-capita miles driven in the US appears to be over. There are still millions driving, which means there are millions taking part in the Geico vs Progressive battle for the best insurance prices, but the number of drivers is not rising like it used to. From the Frontier Group:

Americans drive fewer total miles today than we did nine years ago, and fewer per person than we did at the end of Bill Clinton’s first term. The unique combination of conditions that fueled the Driving Boom — from cheap gas prices to the rapid expansion of the workforce during the Baby Boom generation — no longer exists.

If you drive a truck then you may want to purchase an ELD Device online to make driving more safe, one of the electronic logs is a great investment.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) reported in July on data from May, 2014, showing that travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.9% (2.4 billion vehicle miles) for May 2014 as compared with May 2013.

Here is an annotated graph of the FHA data from DShort:

The only other time in history that we’ve seen a similarly long time between the peak and trough was following the 1982 recession, when it took 39 months for total vehicle miles traveled to recover to its previous peak. It’s now been more than twice that long since the all-time high in vehicle miles driven, and unlike the 1980s, we don’t have a gas-tax hike to blame for it.

The research firm Behind the Numbers argues that we’re entering a new era in which Americans simply prefer to drive less. They report that it is unlikely that miles driven will eventually return to its prior trend. Among the reasons they say a sharp reversal is unlikely:

• Boomers are getting older and driving less.
• Millennials are less interested in driving, and are now the largest generation in the US.
• The trend toward living near the urban core reduces the need for driving.
• Higher gas prices discourage driving.
• Mass transportation is winning over more consumers.

As a result, Behind the Numbers thinks that tire and auto companies won’t do well in the future, since their sales are directly related to American driving. While it’s true that Baby Boomers are aging and will continue to drive less throughout their lives, the rest of their argument warrants rebuttal.

Let’s look at the relationship of miles driven to the Labor Force Participation Rate. The participation rate is the number of people over the age of 16, who are either employed or are actively looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been tracking this since 1948. Here is the relationship:

Note that the left axis is the Labor Force Participation rate expressed as a % of our total population, while the Vehicle Miles Traveled is measured on the right axis, expressed in billions of miles. It is clear that once the Great Recession started, and a smaller percentage of the population had a job or were looking for work, the miles driven stopped growing and began to decline. Conversely, when the participation rate was growing briskly, America’s miles driven grew dramatically.

The long-term growth in the employment participation rate has been discussed by many, including the Wrongologist:

During the 1970s and 1980s, the labor force grew vigorously as women’s labor force participation rates surged and the baby-boom generation entered the labor market…The labor force participation rate hit an all-time peak in early 2000 of 67.3%…And labor force participation has since dropped to 63%.

So, when the number of people working declined starting in 2007, miles driven declined. THAT may explain what is happening more clearly than “Millennials don’t like cars”, or “Mass transportation is more popular” or “Online shopping equals fewer trips”, although those may also be contributing factors. For those that are still driving on the roads, it’s worth investing in a dash cam from somewhere like BlackBoxMyCar so if an accident were to ever happen, you would have video footage to protect yourself.

Fewer miles driven means lower revenues from gas taxes. Less revenue from gas taxes means less to spend on road and bridge repair. Less spending on roads and bridges leads us toward becoming a second-world economy.

This is just one of the truly poor outcomes caused by our inability to deal constructively with the economic fallout of the Great Recession.

What can we do to reverse our national losing streak?

We do not have what it takes to leave the dysfunction of our politics behind. We have a self-reinforcing system based on our politicians scuffling for money from corporations and therefore, performing as trained monkeys for their lobbyists.

You must get out and vote. You must work to drive turnout in November. We, the people, have to get back in the game, or our losing streak will continue.

The Irony Burns at Burning Man

If you have never been to Burning Man, your perception is likely of a white-hot desert filled with 50,000 stoned, half-naked hippies doing sun salutations while techno music thumps through the air and a big wooden statue of a man gets torched on the penultimate night. From the New York Times:

….let’s go over the rules of Burning Man: You bring your own place to sleep (often a tent), food to eat (often ramen noodles) and the strangest clothing possible for the week (often not much). There is no Internet or cell reception. While drugs are technically illegal, they are easier to find than candy on Halloween. And as for money, with the exception of coffee and ice, you cannot buy anything at the festival. Selling things to people is also a strict no-no. Instead, Burners (as they are called) simply give things away. What’s yours is mine. And that often means everything from a meal to saliva.

That is what it was like 10 years ago. Not anymore. As the desert week of art, sunburns and egalitarianism has grown, it sold out all available tickets. Scalpers ran up ticket prices, and the demographics began to shift upwards. People went from spending the night in tents, to renting RVs, to building actual structures. More from the NYT:

We used to have RVs and precooked meals, said a man who attends Burning Man with a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs…Now, we have the craziest chefs in the world and people who build yurts for us that have beds and air-conditioning…Yes, air-conditioning in the middle of the desert!

The NYT reported that his camp includes about 100 people from the Valley and Hollywood start-ups, as well as several venture capital firms. And while dues for most non-tech camps run about $300 a person, he said his camp’s fees this year were $25,000 a person. A few people, mostly female models flown in from New York, get to go free, but when all is told, the weekend accommodations will cost the party goers over $2 million.

So, starting today, San Francisco will resemble a ghost-town, with empty Google buses and Starbucks gone quiet as the city’s tech community descends on the Nevada desert. And this year, there is a Burning Man Traffic Mitigation Plan. All vehicles entering Black Rock City will need a $40 vehicle pass, and only 35,000 such passes are available.

Imagine: The wealthy icons of Tech partying with hipster representatives of the 99% who buy their products. Guess that means we can hate the multinationals who are working inversion deals to pay fewer taxes, but shame on you for hating Apple, Google and Microsoft. They go to the desert with the rest of us.

Now, gentrification is inevitable in any city. This is just another gentrification of large, public events. Think about South By Southwest (SXSW), the film, interactive, and music festival and associated conferences that take place early each year in March in Austin, Texas. First held in 1987, now it has corporate sponsors. Same with Coachella, the music festival that began in 1993 at one of the Wrongologist’s favorite places, the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. (We go in January for an annual dog show, not for polo or the music festival in March).

These radical, egalitarian things morph into an amusement for the 1% just like the Hamptons, Jackson Hole, Ibiza or private islands. Its radical spending, and radical conspicuous consumption instead of the ideal of Burning Man, which is self-expression. Now, the ticket revenue is $20.4 million, ($300 x 68,000 tickets). There are no vendors allowed to set up inside the event but there are plenty of rich dudes on the inside ready to monetize and network.

In the words of Cyndi Lauper, “Money changes everything!” You know that’s true for Burning Man, since a featured guest speaker this week is Grover Nordquist, noted tax hater. It is doubtful that he would have attended this in earlier years, when it was a collection of just the naked 99%. Jon Stewart commented on Grover’s visit:

#TDSBreakingNews Grover Norquist is going to Burning Man. Thinking anti-tax message will resonate better if delivered in a neon thong.

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 30, 2014

Burning Man is organized around 10 Principles. Here is number 3: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Can you imagine what they could have done to Woodstock had it become an annual event?

This year, how about a huge moving sculpture of Burning Man jumping the shark?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 24, 2014

Here at Casa Wrong, we see the end of summer coming. It’s a sad time most years, but not now. Today, August HAS TO DIE! Here’s why:

• Foley was beheaded
• Instead of “back to school”, this August it is “back to Iraq”
• Russia invades Ukraine, says it’s for humanitarian reasons
• The Ebola epidemic continues to grow
• The reason why a teen in Ferguson is dead remains unresolved
• Hamas and Israel seem willing to fight to the death
• We still don’t know who shot down the MH17 over Ukraine
• Mitch McConnell says he’s willing to shut down the government again

August brought home that every pillar that has supported international order is tottering, if not yet collapsing. That means the UN, NATO and a strong, unified America. The “what’s wrong” list could be much longer, but what would be the point? August must die. On to humor.

ISIS or IS or ISIL, it’s a cancer:

James Foley is the most recent in a long line:

And in Ferguson news, don’t shoot is everyone’s mantra:

In domestic ~~warfare~~ policing, mindset should be first, not last:

Mayor Daley, 1968: “The police are here to preserve disorder”:

Don’t you feel safer knowing she’s off the streets?

https://twitter.com/stevenjhsieh/status/501492139197759488

You can read about this 90 year old Ferguson demonstrator here

Friday Music Break – August 22, 2014

Continuing our national meditation on Ferguson, MO, Here are three songs about guns and state power:

First, “Guns of Brixton”, written by The Clash bassist Paul Simonon. The song pre-dates the riots that took place in 1981 and again in 1985 in Brixton, but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent that were building due to the heavy-handedness of the police, and the recession at that time in England.

You can see The Clash perform this song all over the web. Here is the great Jimmy Cliff doing his take on their reggae-inflected song. Few remember that thirty years ago, the Clash were booed off the stage at Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica.

The line we like:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
or on the trigger of your gun?

Next, here is Green Day doing “21 Guns”, an anti-gun, anti-war anthem from their eighth album, 21st Century Breakdown. The line we like is up first:

Do you know what’s worth fighting for?
When it’s not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away and you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?

Finally, “Ohio” from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was released as a single in June of 1970, about a month after the May 4, 1970 shooting by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 and wounded 9 students. In thirteen seconds, the guardsmen fired 67 rounds. If it hadn’t only been 3 years after the Newark NJ riot where the Guard killed 26, and if the Guard hadn’t killed white students at Kent State, we might not remember it today. Indeed, few remember that eleven days later, 2 more students were killed under similar circumstances at what was then Jackson State College in Jackson, MS, a historically black school.

Eight of the Ohio guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense. In 1974, the Judge dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution’s case was too weak to warrant a trial. But we still remember: “4 dead in Ohio”.

Ferguson, Week Two

What we know: Two weeks ago, a police officer shot a man for jaywalking.

But, without any additional official information, we’ve learned a lot from Ferguson:

• The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.
• Police shoot African-American men with impunity.
• Most police forces in America have been militarized by the federal government.
• Militarized tactics and behavior by police has become accepted and normalized by local and state politicians, particularly since the Boston Marathon Bomber Manhunt.
• We’re way past “free-speech zones” now. Remember them? The Occupy Movement taught us that if you’re protesting, (peacefully or not) the police now bust you up without consequence.
• Reporters and journalists can and will be arbitrarily detained and/or tossed in jail. This began during the BP oil spill, increased with Occupy New York, and now is blatant in Ferguson. The police will shoot journalists with bean-bags and rubber bullets even if the journalists have complied with police demands.
• The airspace above an area where a dispute takes place can be completely closed to the media, even if there is no risk.

What you smell is the Constitution burning. All of the above should cause us to examine what is going on with police-involved killings in the US. Addicting Info reports:

According to data compiled by the FBI, in a seven year period ending in 2012 an average of nearly two black people were killed by police every week. Even more troublesome: Almost 20% of those killed were under the age of 21, more than double the rate of whites of the same age group. If you are black, being young doesn’t seem to protect you.

Deadspin reports that the US has no comprehensive database of police shootings. And there is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons, and why. There is no central infrastructure for compiling that information and making it public. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police.

USA TODAY quotes University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert:

I’ve looked at records in hundreds of departments…and it is very rare that you find someone saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.’ In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.

The Wrongologist reported that in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household. This means Ferguson is very reliant on revenue sourced from policing: From the Ferguson 2014 budget, here is a breakdown of The City of Ferguson’s revenues: in 2013, revenues from sales taxes were $5.8 million, while revenues from fines and public safety were $2.6 million (18% of total). In 2014, fines are expected to increase by $100k:

The increase in Fines and Public Safety revenues comes from both manned and un-manned traffic enforcement. Due to a more concentrated focus on traffic enforcement, municipal court revenues have risen about 44% or $623,000 from those in FY 2010-2011. Total court revenues are expected to reach $2,029,000 in FY 2013-2014. In the fall of 2011, the City implemented camera enforcement in three high traffic accident incidence intersections. Fines resulting from this implementation represent a portion of the increased revenues over the period, however, it should be noted that additional manned traffic enforcement also contributed to the increase.

We also learned from Ferguson that police officer safety is the number one issue on our streets today, even though officer fatalities are down. The Economist reports that in 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. And the primary cause for officer fatalities this year was traffic-related incidents, which claimed 46 lives. Firearms-related incidents are at the lowest level since 1887, when 27 officers were shot to death.

Sadly, the number one priority for the police used to be public safety, not police safety, and we are a coarser society because of the change.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time on what Ferguson has not yet delivered:

…a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

Could Ferguson MO become Newark NJ, 1967?

A little history:

A riot broke out in Newark in 1967, triggered by the police beating a black cab driver, who was falsely reported to have died. Five nights of rioting and looting followed in what the press in those days called the “ghetto”. Republican Governor Richard J. Hughes called up the New Jersey National Guard. When the National Guard arrived, reports began coming in of scores of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark with supplies for the uprising.

As a result, when the Police or the Guard saw people, or some shadow on far away windows, they began shooting. The results? 26 deaths and 725 wounded.

Were there truly black snipers? Here is some information from the report of The Kerner Commission: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the summer of 1967, after the riots in Newark, Detroit, and 125 other cities, President Lyndon Johnson convened an advisory commission to look into what happened and why. The report of the Kerner Commission, which warned of a nation moving toward a “system of apartheid” in its cities, concluded that the so-called snipers in Newark were actually members of the police, Troopers, and Guard, who, lacking any reliable communications and possessed by fear of the specter of armed black men, often ended up shooting at each other.

The most dangerous person in the world is a frightened person. If they are armed to the teeth, and they are frightened, really bad things can happen. It is very interesting to read contemporaneous reporting from the 1967 riot. The rioters are called “terrorists” by the New York Times:

Incensed by the slaying of a white fire captain by Negro snipers, Gov. Richard J. Hughes said he was considering an appeal for Federal help in capturing the terrorists.

What happened next was urban warfare. More from the NYT of July 16, 1967:

After midnight, Springfield Avenue, the main commercial street in the ghetto, was raked by machine gun fire from guardsmen and the police, who ducked behind cars and sprayed the roofs of buildings thought to contain terrorists…The Governor again said that the riots were not caused by a spontaneous uprising against unemployment, squalid housing and a general hopelessness – as negro leaders insist – but were an outbreak by a “vicious criminal element.” Thrusting out his jaw, he promised that the rioters would receive swift and retributive justice.

Ferguson hasn’t gotten to that point yet. But it has similar elements, all waiting for a spark.

The Kerner Commission Report concluded that the trigger for the Newark riots and those in 125 other US cities, were confrontations between the local police and members of local African-American communities. It also concluded that the residents’ held a perception (often justified) of the largely white police as an occupying force which was in the community to serve and protect the interests of the privileged white communities rather than to serve and protect the legitimate interests of the local minority residents, and that the police inherently harbored racist attitudes toward residents of minority communities that they were also charged to serve.

Compare that conclusion of 47 years ago to Ferguson MO today.

Newsweek reports that 22% of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7% receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3%, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

In the media commentary on Ferguson, there is little mention of the economic and social conditions that underlie both the current growth of police repression and the eruption of popular anger in response to it. We don’t hear that one out of four residents of St. Louis lives in poverty. Or that the wholesale closure of auto plants, breweries and other manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of two-thirds of St. Louis’s population since 1950.

Or, that 47% of the metropolitan area’s African American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.

What we are seeing in Ferguson is a disturbing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. And it is not just in miniority neighborhoods. Think about the excessive force used by police all across America to break up the Occupy movement’s civil disobedience.

This is why police departments across the US are being prepared and equipped to deal with mass unrest. That is what The Powers That Be are expecting.

Along with everybody else who has seen the writing on the wall.

Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience:

…Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest…

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 17, 2014

Difficult week. Ferguson MO, Iraq and RIP Robin:

The media is making a thing of Robin Williams’s suicide. Media coverage and commentary is wall-to-wall, just like when Seymour Phillip Hoffman OD’ed.

They ignore that CNN says that there are 22 suicides a DAY among America’s veterans. What has happened to proportionality in the press?

A study published this week in Health Affairs states that spending on behavioral health disorders is expected to decline from 7.4% of total health spending in 2009 to 6.5% in 2020, while actual dollars spent are projected to increase from $172 billion in 2009 to $281 billion in 2020. More needs to be done.

From the police blotter:

We heard on Friday that Michael Brown may have stolen cigars from a convenience store. The media says that it shows the kid was no saint. But people aren’t shot for shoplifting, they get arrested and need help from lawyers like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to help reduce their charges. This is despite the fact that shoplifting costs American retailers approximately $14B annually. Once again, the media are conflating the dead boy and his possible crime with the right of the people to free assembly to protest a grievance against their government, as well as the threat that is posed to ordinary Americans by militarized police.

The Ice Bucket Challenge throws cold water on Obama:

We revise our view of Iraqi history:

Iraq owns us. 4 US presidents in row have been called to action there:

Friday Music Break – August 15, 2014

With all that is happening this week in Ferguson, MO, we need to reflect on the struggles and violence that were hallmarks of the Civil Rights movement. Here are three songs from America’s Civil Rights era, which some amongst us (that’s you, SCOTUS) think has no relevance to what is happening in America today. They are of course, wrong.

We start with “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize“, an influential folk song during the American civil rights movement. Although the song was composed as a hymn well before World War I, the lyrics to this version were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. It is based on the traditional song, “Gospel Plow”, which is also known as “Hold On”, and “Keep Your Hand On The Plow”.

In this version from 2006, Bruce Springsteen starts the vocal, but then Marc Anthony Thompson (with hat) comes in and joins him, it becomes a great soul-stirring duet. Thompson has recorded under the name Chocolate Genius.

Next, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by the great Sam Cooke. It was a 1964 single, first recorded in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after Cooke’s death in late 1964:

Here is Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome” live in 1963. You may not know that the words and music were written by Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger.

The story behind the story of We shall Overcome is that the song is based on the early hymn “U Sanctissima.” Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in Philadelphia, added new words in 1901 and called his new hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” In the ensuing decades, the song became a favorite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as “I Will Overcome.” Apparently, the song was brought to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN. The school’s cultural director was Zilphia Horton. Pete Seeger visited the school and changed “We will overcome” to “We shall overcome.” Guy Carawan, a great folk artist who plays the hammer dulcimer, was then a music director at the Highlander School. He introduced it to civil rights activists during a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in 1960. Frank Hamilton was in Seeger’s band. The copyright omits Charles A. Tindley.

Let’s remember these words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant…In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Please don’t be silent.

What America has Become

The world is talking about Ferguson MO. Yesterday, a group of SWAT forces in riot gear faced angry citizens who had gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown. After nightfall, police deployed tear gas against the crowd, warning the protest was “no longer peaceful”.

“This is no longer a peaceful assembly. Go home or be subject to arrest,” police warned through a loudspeaker, shortly before shooting tear gas at the protesters. Police were also shooting rubber bullets while smoke grenades and tear gas canisters fell into the crowd.

Meanwhile, some of the protesters reportedly threw rocks and bottles at the police. The police also arrested reporters, an alderman, and a state Senator. The two arrested reporters, Wesley Lowery of the WaPo and Ryan Reilly of the HuffPo, were in a McDonald’s recharging their devices and writing up reports. They had identified themselves as reporters to the arresting officers. The WaPo reported that for the past week in Ferguson, reporters have been using the McDonald’s a few blocks from the scene of Michael Brown’s shooting as a staging area. Demonstrations have blown up each night nearby. But inside there’s Wi-Fi and outlets, so it’s common for reporters to gather there. The Police closed the McDonald’s. Both reporters were released after a short time in a holding cell. Both say they were assaulted.

So, this is what America has become. SWAT teams in Ferguson, in daylight, facing unarmed civilians:

And here is a short video loop taken by HuffPo reporter Ryan Reilly on Wednesday. HuffPo, in a statement, said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Ryan, who has reported multiple times from Guantanamo Bay, said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers, and treated those inside the McDonald’s as “enemy combatants.” Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.

Police are no longer seen as members of the community dedicated to “Protect and Serve”. They are becoming domestic soldiers. Local police departments throughout have the equivalent of tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style boot camp training.

When it comes to the up-armoring and militarization of America’s police forces, this is completely run-of-the-mill stuff.

In June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. The Pentagon has handed out 600 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs to them for essentially no cost, with plenty more to come. They’re surplus equipment, mostly from our recent wars, and perhaps they will indeed prove handy for a sheriff fretting about insurgent IEDs (roadside bombs) in New Jersey or elsewhere in the country.

The worst part of outfitting and training police officers as soldiers will be psychological. Give a man access to drones, MRAPs, and body armor, and he’ll believe that his job isn’t simply to protect and serve, but to eliminate danger.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re deployed in battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy.

Let’s remember that this is America, not a war zone.

The militarization of police departments has been covered by the Wrongologist here. The New York Times has reported on all of the other free military gear – like machine guns, armored vehicles and aircraft – that police are receiving from the Pentagon. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many for the purchase of armored vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for military hardware.

From Greg Howard:

There are reasons why white gun rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children’s toys.

Do the police actions in Ferguson look similar to police actions during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? National Guard soldiers, tear gas, and fire hoses were the old way of keeping protestors in line, but now the police are the soldiers. They still use the tear gas, but MRAPs and stun grenades are the new methods of disorienting protestors.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to address why local police believe that it is appropriate to arrest reporters. The DOJ needs to address why local police can walk on the people’s right to peaceably assemble.

The DOJ needs to do more than “monitor” the local situation.

And the mainstream media can be complicit in this too. The people who showed up at Ted Bundy’s ranch were called “supporters” and the protestors in Ferguson are referred to as an “angry mob”, even before any looting or violence started.

And thanks a lot SCOTUS, for deciding that we didn’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore because America’s racial problems are behind us. They aren’t.

Let’s close with a quote from William O. Douglas about oppression:

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air–however slight–lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Author: wrongologist