DL Open Thread: Saturday, January 28, 2023
The Killing Of Tyre Nichols Is America’s Shame:
The spectacle of a televised countdown to the showing of the video in which Tyre Nichols was savagely beaten by Memphis police officers doesn’t just theatricalize Black death; it is a damning indictment of American perversion.
It was horrific, as promised, but unfortunately not singularly so. It was instead yet another data point in a long line of videos showing the torturing of Black bodies by police. It was more snuff porn with Black victims in a country becoming desensitized to the violence because of its sheer volume.
America — and the world — had the realization that police violence was a problem, and then it simply walked away before the work was done and the war was won.
Authorities moved relatively quickly to fire, arrest and aggressively charge the officers.
But instead of leaping to my feet to applaud a system working as it should, rather than as it was designed, I am stuck on the fact that there should have been federal legislation to prevent such killings.
America should be ashamed. It abandoned the issue of police reform.
As has Delaware, with Speaker Pete and the Kop Kabal performing just like a second police union.
FUCK Rural America. I’m sorry. They get far more than their fair share of Federal assistance, yet they act as if the Feds are their enemy. Because they’re so willingly fooled by demagogues:
This week my colleague Thomas B. Edsall surveyed research on the rural Republican shift. I was struck by his summary of work by Katherine J. Cramer, who attributes rural resentment to perceptions that rural areas are ignored by policymakers, don’t get their fair share of resources and are disrespected by “city folks.”
As it happens, all three perceptions are largely wrong. I’m sure that my saying this will generate a tidal wave of hate mail, and lecturing rural Americans about policy reality isn’t going to move their votes. Nonetheless, it’s important to get our facts straight.
In terms of resources, major federal programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, in part because such areas have a disproportionate number of seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare. But even means-tested programs — programs that Republicans often disparage as “welfare” — tilt rural. Notably, at this point rural Americans are more likely than urban Americans to be on Medicaid and receive food stamps.
And because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside. These subsidies don’t just support incomes; they support economies: Government and the so-called health care and social assistance sector each employ more people in rural America than agriculture, and what do you think pays for those jobs?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new governor of Arkansas, has pledged to get the “bureaucratic tyrants” of Washington “out of your wallets”; in 2019 the federal government spent almost twice as much in Arkansas as it collected in taxes, de facto providing the average Arkansas resident with $5,500 in aid. So even if Democratic policies greatly improve rural lives, will rural voters notice?
No. They’re dupes. So, fuck ’em.
Trump: Trump Organization Can’t Be Sued Because–It Doesn’t Exist:
Donald Trump, his real-estate company and his three eldest children have filed an extraordinary, nose-thumbing response to the $250 million fraud lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James in September, stating that “Trump Organization” is branding shorthand — not a legal entity — so it can’t be sued.
“To the extent a response is required, Defendant specifically denies the definitions of “Trump Organization” and “Defendants,” reads Donald Trump’s response to the lawsuit, one of 16 answers filed late Thursday night.
“While the shorthand “Trump Organization” is utilized by Defendants for branding and business purposes, no entity as such exists for legal purposes,” Donald Trump’s response continues, using language that is repeated throughout his 300-page filing and throughout the similarly-lengthy 15 filings of his fellow defendants.
But does it exist for illegal purposes?
Delaware Among States With Highest Annual Aoartment Rent Increases. Why? That’s a question the reporter neglected to ask of–anybody.
What do you want to talk about?
“Authorities moved relatively quickly to fire, arrest and aggressively charge the officers.”
Yes. All five are Black. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the Blue Line evaporated for them.
Re: Delaware rent increases story.
Writer didn’t ask the question because the story indicates she wrote it from a report. No evidence that she talked to anybody.
Well, shouldn’t she have?
Absolutely.
First call should have been to the Delaware Apartment Association.
I used “writer” in my original post because there’s no evidence that a “reporter” wrote this article. Could have been a bot.
Young reporters need editors, and there aren’t many left.
w.r.t. rural American. Clintonite neoliberalism sold all their good jobs away. As currently constituted, our system will never be able to offer “assistance” to cover what was taken.
On the lynching in Memphis, when one comes to terms with the very true notion that Black cops, Latino Hispanic cops, Muslim cops and white cops are all racist, a big important lesson is learned. It’s not about individual interaction or personal behavior. It’s vioient systemic oppression.
I get it, and yet it is surprising to see the pictures of these cops. For me it because in the absence of any real reform, there is a slight hope that at least Black, Latino Hispanic, & Muslim cops, or Black, Latino Hispanic, & Muslim Chief’s of Police could push back against the system in some way.
Obviously they are products of the system, so that’s naive, but hope has its own logic.
The Biden climate plan includes lotta money for geographically targeted manufacturing. It won’t cover what was taken, but it will help the areas that are bleeding jobs and young population, which it should, even if they’re ungrateful.
The Edsall piece quotes a lot of research that indicates it’s the cultural issues, not the economics, driving the rural rush to Republicans.
I’ve seen this before, it’s the classic “Us Vs Them” mindset, you see it in the military retirees in Dover as well. As such their all authoritarians, and we are all the enemy to some extent. Unless of course your rich and or “well connected”, pretty much the same thing. Will say if they try to soft pedal this they are doomed, the video is damning beyond belief. And if you think it can’t happen here you are very, very wrong.
https://www.wdel.com/news/st-georges-bridge-will-close-for-repairs-for-18-months-starting-in-april/article_2b7012c0-9e90-11ed-9444-539888ae2c58.html
Closed for a year and a half!!! My favorite bridge, man. I always go over this thing when I head north a couple times a month, it’s so much easier to fly over this bridge and totally disregard the speed limit instead of having to hang left to get onto Route 1 first and merge with all that traffic. Ugh. Slower Lower Delaware, for real.
Yeah. that’s absurd. At least bring back the ferry service,