Political quickie: four Ferguson follow-ups

The protests are diminishing. So is it not beyond time for calming statements from our politicos? Not a chance. If anything their statements have stirred the pot, not calmed it. And the news media supinely parrot the flawed findings of the Department of Justice (DoJ) report on the Ferguson Police Department. Our previous posts are here, here, and here.

Now Heather MacDonald has written another of her perceptive articles refuting the claims of police misconduct such as racial profiling. In Fueling cop-hate: how politicians fan the flames she highlights the half-truths and deceptions of Eric Holder:

The Brown report should have forced a massive reconsideration of the virulent anti-law-enforcement campaign that sprang up in the wake of the shooting. Instead, Holder paved the way for the report’s marginalization by calling, a few days before its release, for a lower standard of proof for civil-rights cases. Implication: Only an artificially high standard of proof prevented Justice from prosecuting Wilson.

After she demolishes the DoJ report accusing the Ferguson PD of systematic racism because the report lacked proof and misused statistics, she inculpates President Obama for stoking resentment with more untruths:

President Obama echoed the Holder spin two days after the reports’ release. “We may never know exactly what happened” to Michael Brown, he told students at South Carolina’s Benedict College. Actually, we do know what happened. Numerous credible witnesses and the forensic evidence confirmed Wilson’s account. But Obama presented the case as a subtle standard-of-proof problem: “The finding that was made was that it was not unreasonable to determine that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Officer Wilson.” He then blasted the Ferguson PD: The overwhelmingly white force was “systematically” biased, he said, placing minorities under its care into an “oppressive and abusive situation.” Such rhetoric guaranteed that the purges of Ferguson officials in the wake of the second Justice report would fail to satisfy the protesters.

Meanwhile, following on the Holder-Obama provocations, the group “MU 4 Mike Brown” demonstrated the night of March 12 in front of the home of the Chancellor of the University of Missouri (MU.) (What does a university over 100 miles from Ferguson have to do with Mike Brown anyway?) It was reported that one demonstrator said of the Chancellor: “Call him out…for not doing anything.” Demonstrators carried signs proclaiming: “End racism now” and “We back; we black.” MU long ago erected an quasi judicial structure designed to punish infractions against diversity and equity, along with sexual-assault kangaroo courts and other tokens of politically correct sincerity. Since no level of racial pandering is ever enough, the demonstrators evidently believe that since racism runs rampant on campus, why doesn’t the Chancellor stop it just like that? That they seem to be protesting for its own sake more than for anything specific shows, we think, the extent to which the organizers of the racial games are able to keep the pot of racial resentment at boiling level.

Perhaps the demonstrators want institutional change of the kind advocated by MSNBC’s resident radical Ed Schultz:

What about disarming the police? What about just having them carry nightsticks and the authority to arrest? It would take a brave person to do something like that. But there are places on the face of this earth where there are police officers that don’t carry firearms. I know the right wing’s gonna think I’m crazy for saying that but if you really want change, you have to institutionally show it to the people that you want to do this.

We recently heard a talk by a St Louis pastor who grew up in Ferguson. Until age 18 all he heard in school and on the street was that white people hated him. As he dabbled with Black Muslim practices he began to encounter white people for the first time and these experiences turned out positive, to his surprise. This cognitive dissonance – forgive us this academic term – eventually led him to think his way out of the PC box, to Christ, and to an unfortunately retrograde evaluation of Ferguson similar to ours.   

Troglo

U.S. medicine the best in the world: 6.5 million of us over 111 years old

The Inspector General of the Social Security Administration has revealed the good news about our longevity here. The proof is that over 6,500,000 registered Social Security Numbers (SSNs) of people 111 years or older have no death date – conclusive proof of ObamaCare’s success in extending life.

Those of the vast right-wing conspiracy dispute this finding, seditiously attacking American medicine under the Affordable Care Act and insinuating that ‘illegals’ (i.e. undocumented Americans) are actually using the SSNs of long deceased people for nefarious purposes. They of course cannot explain how people with SSNs could be considered ‘undocumented.’ It strains credulity that itinerant, illiterate illegals could locate still active SSNs of the so-called deceased when the vast resources of the Federal government fail to do so. Pretty soon these lunatics will complain that our elderly centenarians are actually exercising their right to vote.

These conspirators are diabolically attempting to extinguish the legitimate dreams of our young undocumented Americans (dreamers,) when we know that legal Americans do not have such dreams, pace the Prince George’s County NAACP’s weak protestations here. Proof that these nativists have no dreams is seen in the data showing that all the new jobs created since 2007 have gone to undocumented Democrats.   

Troglo, always the bearer of good news

 

The flawed and controversial Department of Justice report on Ferguson

The report may be read here. It was clear last summer that Officer Wilson acted appropriately and could not reasonably be charged with any crime. But news media hyperbole and non-stop coverage kept the pot boiling. Under pretext of possible civil-rights violations, the race hustlers at the Federal Dept. of Justice (DoJ) started an investigation of Officer Wilson and the Ferguson Police Department. The motivation was political gain and perhaps ideological blinders. No surprise then that the findings regarding the Ferguson PD are scandalously flawed.

The findings of “racial bias” are bogus and the methods used to show them are so crude and wrong-headed they would not pass muster in an undergraduate term paper. A further problem is that the media will not mention these criticisms. Apparently anyone who disputes the findings is unenlightened at best and racist at worst. All we heard was that the report was characterized by adjectives like “scathing.” There was no effort to report the other side, because when it comes to race, there is no other side. Did you hear that the report is “controversial?” Neither did we. (We slipped this term into our title just to catch your attention.) ‘Controversial’ is only used for reports and points of view the left does not like. Ours, for example.

The biggest flaw in the DoJ report is the use of the legal doctrine of ‘disparate impact,’ which, as has been pointed out time and again, for example here and notably by Heather Macdonald here, is logically and statistically invalid and inconclusive.