After a jury convicted Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd by choking him to death with his knee, many people said that the verdict would set a precedent that would hold police officers accountable in the future. But they are forgetting what it really took to lead to Chauvin getting charged in the first place.
Incredibly, Republican state legislators in Iowa and Oklahoma half passed bills granting immunity to drivers who is vehicles hit protesters in public streets. Beware of the law of unintended consequences.
A few things are being handled somewhat the way that they should be, including the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin after he was videotaped suffocating a man on video for over nine minutes. The fact that we are pleasantly surprised by the guilty verdict speaks volumes about our lack of faith in the justice system.
Police who shoot unarmed civilians use incredibly lame arguments to justify their actions. They thought the wallet in the victim’s hands was a gun. They were distracted by onlookers. Most often, it comes down to being scared. A cop’s vague feeling that he or she might be in danger, without that danger being clearly evidenced, ought not to be cause to kill.
There is something Orwellian in the sense that it violates the meaning of language by pandemic-related vocabulary. You don’t “go” to a Zoom meeting. You just click into it.
President Joe Biden has ordered complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, without conditions, on or before September 11, 2021. Better 20 years late than never.
The shooting of 20 year old Daunte Wright by a Minnesota police officer sparked yet another round of protests by people outraged at cops shooting unarmed Black men. You have to wonder, why would anyone want to become a cop?
On issues like the drive to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour, many Democratic defenders of President Biden indulge in magical thinking, pretending that he actually wants to get this done even though there is very little evidence that it’s on his agenda.
Republican state legislatures have been going hogwild with voter suppression tactics intended to reduce turn out among Democrats, especially blacks. Surely they aren’t finished yet.
The Biden Administration would like to increase corporate taxes. Big companies complain that the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which is true. What they don’t like to talk about, and it’s also true, is that there are so many loopholes and deductions that they pay some of the lowest taxes in the world. Many large companies like Apple computer pay no taxes at all.
