Category: Maryland

I Could Walk There

No Comments

Magnificent Desolation

Less than 5 miles from my house, there are exposed chunks of the mantle, at Soldiers Delight.

Because of the unique chemistry of the area, very low calcium and very high magnesium in the soil, we have what can be called a, “Barrens”.

Standing among patches of muddy snow on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, I bent down to pick up a piece of the planet that should have been hidden miles below my feet.

On that chilly February day, I was out with a pair of geologists to see an exposed section of Earth’s mantle. While this layer of rock is usually found between the planet’s crust and core, a segment peeks out of the scrubby Maryland forest, offering scientists a rare chance to study Earth’s innards up close.

ven more intriguing, the rock’s unusual chemical makeup suggests that this piece of mantle, along with chunks of lower crust scattered around Baltimore, was once part of the seafloor of a now-vanished ocean.

Over the roughly 490 million years since their formation, these hunks of Earth were smashed by shifting tectonic plates and broiled by searing hot fluids rushing through cracks, altering both their composition and sheen. Mantle rock is generally full of sparkly green crystals of the mineral olivine, but the rock in my hand was surprisingly unremarkable to look at: mottled yellow-brown stone occasionally flecked with black.

“Those rocks have had a tough life,” says George Guice, a mineralogist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Because of this geologic clobbering, scientists have struggled for more than a century to determine the precise origins of this series of rocks. Now, Guice and his colleagues have applied a fresh eye and state-of-the-art chemical analyses to the set of rocky exposures in Baltimore. Their work shows that the seemingly bland series of stones once lurked underneath the ancient Iapetus Ocean. 

More than half a billion years ago, this ocean spanned some 3,000 to 5,000 miles, cutting through what is now the United States’ eastern seaboard. Much of the land where the Appalachian mountains now stand was on one side of the ocean, and parts of the modern East Coast were on the other.

This is wicked cool.

I Think that His Consultant Gigs are at an End

No Comments

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh has announced that there will be a review of all the reports on in custody depths by former Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland David Fowler following his clearly dishonest testimony at the Derek Chauvin.

Given that Fowler is currently being sued for covering up the eerily similar death of Angus Black under police restraint, it seems to me that Fowler’s days as a hired gun for bad cops are over.

As an aside, I am not at all surprised that he was born in what was then Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe) and was did his medical school in Cape Town, South Africa, graduating from medical school in 1983,  working in South Africa until moving to the US in 1991.

It does appear that he has a rather long history of excusing law enforcement misconduct against people of color:

The Maryland’s Attorney General’s Office said Friday it believes there should be a review of “in custody” death reports produced by the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during the tenure of Dr. David Fowler, nine days after Fowler testified that an ex-Minneapolis police officer was not responsible for the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after the attorney general’s office received a letter from the former medical examiner of Washington, D.C., Roger A. Mitchell, signed by 431 doctors from around the country, saying Fowler’s testimony and conclusions were so far outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice that all his previous work could come into question.

“Dr. Fowler’s stated opinion that George Floyd’s death during active police restraint should be certified with an ‘undetermined’ manner is outside the standard practice and conventions for investigating and certification of in-custody deaths. This stated opinion raises significant concerns for his previous practice and management,” the letter said.

Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office said Friday afternoon that it agreed for the need to review Fowler’s work, and said it had been in contact with Gov. Larry Hogan’s staff.

“We agree that it is appropriate for independent experts to review reports issued by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) regarding deaths in custody,” Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for Frosh, said in an statement to The Baltimore Sun. “We are already in conversations with the Governor’s Office about the need for such a review, and have offered to coordinate it.”

Fowler testified that Floyd died of a sudden heart rhythm problem due to his heart disease while being restrained by police, contradicting several experts who said Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck.

………

Black’s 2018 death was captured on video, with Greensboro police holding the unarmed teenager down for more than six minutes. Fowler ruled that Black died because of a sudden cardiac event while struggling with police, and not because they pinned him in a prone position.

Testifying in the Floyd case, Fowler said that police, who held Floyd down in a prone position for more than nine minutes, did not cause Floyd’s death. His testimony was rebutted by a string of prosecution medical experts.

………

The office will review all cases from 2003-2020, which falls under Fowler’s tenure. He retired in 2019 after 17 years as chief medical examiner to go into private consulting practice. He was considered one of the foremost medical examiners in the country and served on national boards.

Included in that time period is the death of Tyrone West, who died after struggling with Baltimore Police following a traffic stop in 2013. Witnesses and the officers themselves said there was a violent struggle between the officers and West, but the state medical examiner’s office ruled that he died from natural causes exacerbated by the struggle and the summer heat. That ruling played a significant factor in the officers being cleared by the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office.

That the findings of the study are likely to support the lawsuit against him over the death of Angus Black is just the cherry on top of all of this.

Here is hoping that this guy’s professional reputation is destroyed.  It should have happened years ago.

They Do Want Vaccines, You Racist Dirt-Bag

No Comments


Sites in PG County mostly serve (White) folks from outside the County

So, now Maryland Governor Larry “Ratf%$#” Hogan is claiming that it’s not his policies that are undervaccinating Black people, it’s that Black folks don’t want vaccines. 

While the never Trumpers see Hogan as the future of the party, it is clear that he as extensively relied on racist appeals to maintain his popularity, particularly by deliberately short-changing Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, the which have the two largest minority communities in the state:

A 94-year-old veteran got so tired of waiting for an appointment that he drove around his Washington suburb at random, hunting for a vaccine.

A partially blind 81-year-old wanted a shot but had no computer or smartphone to register online. Yet another elderly Black resident of Maryland’s hardest-hit county, this one 102 years old, relied on church friends a few decades younger to help her through a distribution system best navigated by Gen Z.

Amid concern that prioritizing speed has heightened vaccine inequity statewide, Prince George’s County stands out: The majority-Black suburb has by far the most coronavirus cases in Maryland, and the lowest percentage of vaccinated residents.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has repeatedly cited vaccine hesitancy among minority groups as the key cause for the lagging rates, saying at one point that African American and Latino residents in Prince George’s, who represent 84 percent of the county’s population, are “refusing to take the vaccine.”

But local, state and federal leaders from across Maryland — all of them Democrats — blame the state’s decentralized sign-up system, which they say prioritizes those with more time, technology and information at their disposal over those who are disproportionately dying.

In interviews, more than a dozen vaccine-seeking Prince Georgians agreed.

………

Statewide, Black people represent 31 percent of Maryland’s population but only 16 percent of vaccine recipients for whom race has been reported. That disparity has grown wider over the past two months, according to a state analysis. Prince George’s lags far behind other counties, with just 8.3 percent of residents having received their first shot as of Thursday. 

………

An equity task force Hogan created released plans on Thursday to target underserved communities with pop-up clinics and other efforts, and solicit ideas from community groups about how best to deliver vaccine doses. The governor acknowledged the state was “not where we need to be with the Black community or the Hispanic community.”

But Hogan also said he believes the state has done far more than others to acknowledge and address racial inequity in vaccine distribution.

“I’m not going to respond to every criticism of every person who does not like what we say or do,” he said.

To quote John Mulaney, “That’s what I thought you’d say you dumb f%$#ing horse.”

Last week, the governor outraged Democratic lawmakers when he said Baltimore City was receiving more doses than it was “entitled to.” 

Yes, massah. 

He’s got more class than Trump, who doesn’t, but he’s pandering to the same racist dirt-bags.

The Report on the Baltimore Police is Out

No Comments

And in news that surprise no one, the Baltimore PD is revealed to be a thoroughly racist organization:

As a black man and a lifelong resident of this city, Ray Kelly has been stopped by the police more times than he can count. And as a community organizer who tried to document police bias after the death of Freddie Gray, Mr. Kelly, 45, had always expected that a federal investigation would uncover a pattern of racial discrimination.

Even so, the scathing report that the Justice Department unveiled here on Wednesday — a data-rich indictment of how Baltimore police officers have for years violated the Constitution and federal law by systematically stopping, searching (in some cases strip-searching) and harassing black residents — gave him a jolt.

“Hearing the actual numbers, like on the traffic stops, is blowing my mind,” Mr. Kelly said.

Release of the 163-page report, at a packed City Hall news conference here, was another wrenching moment of self-examination in this majority black city. Even as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the police commissioner, Kevin Davis, accepted the findings — both vowed to turn the Baltimore Police Department into a ‘‘model for the nation’’ — there was relief, but also rage and skepticism among black residents here who wondered if anything would change.

………

In one stark statistic after another, the department’s report helped validate the experiences of Mr. Brown, Mr. Kelly and countless others in poor African-American neighborhoods who regard the police as an occupying force. Many wanted to know what took so long.

………

In Baltimore, a city that is 63 percent black, the Justice Department found that 91 percent of those arrested on discretionary offenses like “failure to obey” or “trespassing” were African-American. Blacks make up 60 percent of Baltimore’s drivers but account for 82 percent of traffic stops. Of the 410 pedestrians who were stopped at least 10 times in the five and a half years of data reviewed, 95 percent were black.

You can read the full report here.

A Bit of Excitement Today

No Comments

Walking to work from the Metro, there was a veritable fleet of trucks parked around the Hippodrome theater.
It turns out that they were filming some scenes from the Kevin Spacey series House of Cards.
They were setting up when I came into work, and shutting down when I was on my way home.

Posted via mobile.

And No One Goes to Jail for Killing Freddie Gray

No Comments

I am so voting for Marilyn Mosby next time she runs

Following repeated setbacks in court, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby dropped charges against the remaining Freddie Gray defendants:

The criminal case in the death of Freddie Gray has ended with the top prosecutor failing to convict any of the six police officers involved in the arrest last year that sparked riots in the city and fueled nationwide debate over fatal police encounters involving black men.

Facing a judge who repeatedly said there was insufficient evidence in the cases, the Baltimore state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, on Wednesday dropped criminal charges against three officers still awaiting trial. A judge found three other officers not guilty after separate trials in May, June and July.

After a brief court hearing, Mosby spoke in the West Baltimore neighborhood where Gray had been arrested and described her decision to drop the charges as “agonizing.”

The prosecutor conceded that Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Barry G. Williams “does not agree” with the state’s argument that officers committed crimes by failing to buckle Gray in the back of a police van in which he later fell and broke his neck. If the government continued with more trials, she said, prosecutors faced a “dismal likelihood of conviction.”

On the way out, she explicitly accused elements of the Baltimore PD of conspiring to sabotage the investigation, which they clearly did:

Mosby also accused police of undermining — and in some cases impeding — the investigation by refusing to serve search warrants against fellow officers and making up memos to impugn key witnesses. The city’s police commissioner issued a statement defending the integrity of the investigation, saying 30 seasoned detectives “worked the case tirelessly to uncover facts.”

Attorneys and other advocates for the officers have defended the pursuit of Gray, a frequent target of arrests who ran from a high-crime area when he saw an officer.

One of the lessons here is that you cannot allow a police department to investigate its own members ……… ever.

They are Full of Crap

No Comments

The Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) is now refusing to release footage from Mondawmin at the start of the Freddie Gray riots because they claim that it would increase the risk of terrorism.

I have not seen such a transparent load of bullsh%$ since Hillary Clinton started making excuses for not releasing her speeches at Goldman Sachs:

The Maryland Transit Administration has once again denied a Public Information Act request by The Baltimore Sun for surveillance footage from the Mondawmin Metro station on the day last April that riots broke out in Baltimore, saying that releasing the video would “facilitate the planning of a terrorist attack.”

On April 27, 2015, large numbers of police officers staged in the area around the Metro station and adjacent mall based on intelligence they said they had received that large numbers of students planned to gather in the area en masse to protest the police-custody death of Freddie Gray.

Many in the city, including teachers at nearby Frederick Douglass High School, have blamed the police for provoking students and stranding others by canceling bus service at the transportation hub just as they were getting out of school.

The Sun has sought the footage from the MTA station for nearly a year in order to glean more information about how the clashes that began there, grew, and ultimately turned into rioting, looting and arson in the city that night.

In denying the Sun’s first PIA request last year, the MTA said that the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had asked it not to release the footage because it was still being used in criminal investigations.

………

The Sun sent the MTA another PIA request for the footage last month, noting that there is a statute of limitations of one year for misdemeanor charges, and that it had been a year since the incident in question — limiting the number of pending investigations there could be.

………

When the MTA responded last week, it made no mention of pending investigations in the state’s attorney’s office. It said instead that the footage could not be released because of Homeland Security concerns.

………

The MTA responded Friday, explaining that The Sun would have to ask the federal Transportation Security Administration for written permission to review any of the footage from the cameras, because they were funded through Homeland Security grants.

But if The Sun were to get that permission, it said, the MTA still would deny the footage based on its belief that the footage “would reveal the facility’s safety and support systems, surveillance techniques, and security systems and technologies,” as well as “jeopardize the security of the facility; facilitate the planning of a terrorist attack; and endanger the life or physical safety of the public.”

Please, take them to court.  Because their arument is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.

The only question is whether the MTA is protecting itself, or if the Baltimore PD strong armed into the coverup.

This Sucks………

1 Comment

2 trials, and no convictions against the cops who killed Freddie Gray:

Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams rejected the state’s case Monday against Officer Edward Nero, acquitting him on all counts for his role in the arrest of Freddie Gray.

The verdict, which followed a five-day bench trial, is the first in the closely watched case. Nero, 30, had faced misdemeanor charges of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of misconduct in office. The 25-year-old Gray died last year of injuries sustained while riding in the back of a police transport van.

I’m beginning to think that all these cops are going to walk.

I Need to Stop Calling Him Governor Rat F%$#*

1 Comment

He just jammed up the useless Baltimore Executive to force him to install air-conditioning before the start of the next school year instead of waiting for at least 3 years, and now he going to sign into a law a bill that provides free birth control to Marylanders:

Advocates say a new Maryland law will place the state at the forefront of efforts to require insurance plans to offer birth control at no out-of-pocket cost, expanding access to women and men who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

 The law goes further than President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which already reduced costs for women seeking birth control in many cases.

 Under the Contraceptive Equity Act, Maryland will be the first state to require insurance companies to cover over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, such so called morning-after pills, at no cost. Maryland also will be the first state prohibiting out-of-pocket costs for men who have vasectomies.

 Advocates who pushed the bill through the General Assembly say Maryland is the first state to pass such a comprehensive approach.

 “Maryland is on the forefront across the board with this act,” said Karen Nelson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Maryland.

 Other provisions prohibit co-payments for any type of contraceptive and also ban preauthorization requirements for long-acting contraceptives such as IUDs. The law allows women to receive six months’ worth of birth control pills at one time.

Did I mention that he’s a Republican?

While I am not a fan of of the governor or many of his policies, he is not the kind of batsh%$ insane Australopithecine of many other (Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, Bruce Rauner, Sam Brownback, Matt Bevin, Rick Snyder, Pat McCrory,Greg Abbott, etc.) Republican governors.

Credit where credit is due.  He did the right thing. 

*Full disclosure, when we had problems with health insurance exchange, we called our state senator, and we ended getting a call from Hogan’s office, where a staffer fixed the problem.

Baltimore’s Man From Teach for America

No Comments

With the rather hapless Stephanie Rawlings Blake not running for reelection as Mayor of Baltimore, it it is a bit of a free for all, with pretty much everyone, including her larcenous (she was convicted and served time) predecessor.

Needless to say, there is much opportunity for mischief, and it appears that the hedge funds first choice for pillaging the public school system, Teach for America, has a candidate in the race:

For those who’ve never paid much attention, Teach For America sounds like a benevolent and benign idea: recruit bright college grads, give them some teacher-training and place them in some of the nation’s neediest schools for a two-year commitment to teach kids.

The reality behind TFA’s sunny exterior is somewhat more sinister. Education policy experts today consider the nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990 to be at the vanguard of the school privatization movement. TFA is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems. TFA’s funders, including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates and top Fortune 500 corporations, all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end.
………

When Mckesson announced his campaign for mayor of Baltimore this month, his name topped the list of trending topics on Twitter for several hours. Even without outlining a strategy to defeat better-known, more entrenched candidates, Mckesson received nearly $130,000 in online donations, met with President Barack Obama (who said Mckesson and associates “were better organizers than I was”), and secured his status as one of the country’s most closely watched political outsiders. Headlines appeared across national media, from Slate to the Guardian to the Washington Post, with the progressive online magazine Truthdig proclaiming Mckesson “Truthdigger of the Week.”

With his candidacy for a city whose public schools are a key target of the education reform movement, the time seems right to scrutinize Mckesson’s relationship with Teach for America more closely. His high-profile appearance at the TFA gala only days after filing his last-minute bid to enter the race was only the latest collaboration with the organization spearheading a sustained attack on teacher’s unions and traditional public schools.

………

As Mckesson rose to prominence, TFA was there to provide promotion through its powerful PR apparatus.

Mckesson had no connection to Ferguson when he first arrived on Aug. 16, 2014, according to an interview he gave Huffington Post later the same year. But it didn’t take him long to connect with another protester named Brittany Packnett, with whom he began working the same day. The fact that Packnett is executive director of TFA’s St. Louis chapter likely contributed to their immediate rapport.

At the time, Mckesson was senior director of human capital for Minneapolis Public Schools. He says he commuted to Ferguson on weekends before eventually quitting his job to protest full-time.

A Twitter search query produces a clear timeline of Mckesson’s subsequent transition from human resources manager to social justice talent, aided by promotion from Teach For America. It begins with a post to TFA’s official blog, in which Mckesson pontificates on his activities in Ferguson. TFA tweeted a link to that post on Aug. 21, 2014, at which point Mckesson would have been in the besieged midwestern town for five days.

………

I reached Mckesson by phone soon after he announced his candidacy for mayor. When I asked him how he funded all of his travel despite not having a job, he initially replied, “I don’t have an answer to that. There’s an answer in the New York Times article.”

After being informed that the Times offered no such answer, Mckesson stated, “You know, people ask me this, and I haven’t even had to answer this. I, you know, me and you don’t have a relationship. You know, you’re a reporter to me, you know—I’ve answered it many times. I will put that on my list of things and try to double back with you.” Several hours later, Mckesson texted me the link to a Tweet from last spring claiming that his excursions were funded by unnamed “family and friends.”

………

Mckesson the ruthless administrator is a difficult characterization to reconcile with Mckesson the protester, as he’s typically portrayed in print, nor does it come through in his television appearances. But commentary from some activists who have encountered him on the ground in Ferguson and Baltimore suggests that the public image he’s cultivated is a media fiction.

Baltimore activist Duane Davis, in a tweet addressed to DeRay, says, “[W]e crossed paths. On more than one occasion….you never engaged in conversation. [Y]ou were more focused on media attention.”

In a February 15 interview with Jared Ball on Real News Network, Hands Up United Coalition co-founder Taureen Russell offered a withering assessment of Mckesson’s alleged role as a protest organizer. “I never worked with DeRay. I’m really hard-pressed to find any local people who have worked with DeRay. All the local people that I know worked with DeRay…work with the establishment,” he said. “So when I hear him go on Colbert and Colbert is saying he’s organized protests in Ferguson…I don’t know an action or a protest that he was a part of.”

Russell is a founder of the organization that initiated the protests in Ferguson against the police killing of Michael Brown and the acquittal of the officer who gunned him down. He told Ball he was relieved that Mckesson had moved on to politics because “it makes my job [as a grassroots organizer] a little easier.”

Addressing Baltimore, Russell said of Mckesson: “He’s a proponent for charter schools. He’s not typically a fan of public schools. So the educational issue comes up. His policy, to be honest, most people see as a neoliberal kind of policy. And we know his policy comes from Teach For America.”
………

Mckesson’s political platform, which he has begun rolling out on the DeRay For Mayor website, seems modeled in part on those who have forced corporate education reforms under big-city mayors like Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg. Both of those mayors have justified unilateral takeovers of the public school districts in their respective cities using teacher evaluations based on standardized test scores, which have consistently been debunked as unreliable measures of academic performance.

The language in his section on education is typical of school privatization advocates, according to Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of education at California State University at Sacremento who has written extensively about Teach For America on his website, Cloaking Inequity.

………

The lack of transparency in the DeRay For Mayor campaign means the public will have to wait until March to identify all the contributors to its six-figure finances. But if history is any indicator, we can expect it to include many of the same financial interests that have waged assaults on public school teachers and students across the country. It remains to be seen if Teach For America and one of its most famous cadres will finally be held to account for their privatization agenda, before it begins to take hold in Baltimore.

Yes, I know that this sounds tin-foil hat, until one looks at the history of the charter school movement.

There is a lot of  money to made from sucking the marrow from pub lic education, and when there is a lot of money to be made, people work very hard to make it.

It’s basic economics, or to quote Willie Sutton, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Wall Street is hip deep in privatizing education, and leveraging politics to create ill gotten gains is their “A” game.

Governor Ratf%$# Just Got Served

No Comments

Yesterday, he Maryland legislature overrode 5 of Governor Hogan’s vetoes:

The Maryland General Assembly on Thursday overturned five of Gov. Larry Hogan’s 2015 vetoes, turning the bills into law and proving that the Democratic-controlled legislature can enforce its will despite opposition from a popular Republican chief executive.

The resurrected measures dealt with public marijuana smoking and pot paraphernalia; police seizures of criminal assets; taxation of online hotel-booking services; and funding to renovate an arts center in Annapolis.

Overturning a veto requires the approval of three-fifths of the 141-member House of Delegates and the 47-member Senate. Both chambers completed the process for the five measures Thursday.

………

The Senate postponed action on Hogan’s veto of a bill that would grant voting rights to felons who are on parole or probation, pushing the vote to Feb. 5 so that a vacant seat can be filled.

Miller said this week that the vote of the new senator could be critical. The voting-rights bill passed the Senate last year with 29 votes, exactly the number needed to override Hogan’s veto.

I really hope that they expand voting rights.

Removing voting rights from felons is an evil relic of Jim Crow.

Here is an Interesting Bit of Politicking………

No Comments

Joe Steffen, a former aide to former Maryland Governor Robert “Badhair” Ehrlich was forcibly retired from his position when he got caught planting false stories about Martin O’Malley. (Someone caught him bragging)

Because of his reputation as Ehrlich’s hatchet man, and the glee with which he did his work got him the nickname, “Prince of Darkness”.

He blogs occasionally, and muses on Maryland politics with a focus on the Republican party, which can frequently be rather illuminating.

Case in point:

You know, I can remember when former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, was running for Governor the first time, the time that he won, the time I was still in his employ, that he and a few others from the campaign were in contact with the National Rifle Association (NRA) – in an effort to get the NRA to LOWER its rating of Ehrlich’s time in Congress from an “A” to a “B.”

I don’t recall who it was that Bob and his chosen spoke with at the time, but I do know that the NRA obliged Ehrlich’s request. The reason that the soon-to-be one term Governor made the request is because Bob didn’t want to be going after that office against liberal firebrand and dumbass, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend as an “A” rated NRA supporter. The reason he didn’t want THAT was because at that time the NRA was viewed none too favorably in Maryland, and Ehrlich figured that an “A” rating from them would likely sink his chances at attaining the Governorship.

First, I find it interesting, though not surprising, that the NRA gamed its own rating system to benefit a Republican candidate.

It’s also interesting just how a good NRA rating is poison in Maryland, or at least that it was in 2002.

Given that Steffen is complaining about Governor Larry Hogan’s tepid moves regarding expanded carry of firearms in Maryland (thank you, Governor), it appears that the politics have not changed much in the state.

It also is another bit of evidence that the NRA has become a blatantly partisan organization.

It’s why you read stuff from people that you disagree. You learn stuff.

As to his categorizing Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,(KKT) Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter as a, “liberal firebrand and dumbass,” I disagree with the former, not because she wasn’t a liberal, but because the term, “Firebrand,” implies the ability to generate political heat, and KKT could not generate enough heat to light a match.

As to dumbass bit, I have repeatedly noted that KKT was the worst candidate in the history of the Kennedy clan, and arguably the history of history. (She kicked Ehrlich’s ass in the debate, and still got beaten like a rug in the election.)

This Guy Deserves to be Horsewhipped

No Comments

It’s such a joy having Governor Ratf%$# running Maryland.

Case in point, Kenneth Holt, Governor Hogan’s secretary of Housing, Community and Development is claiming that black mothers are feeding their children lead to get free housing:

Gov. Larry Hogan’s top housing official said Friday that he wants to look at loosening state lead paint poisoning laws, saying they could motivate a mother to deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing.

 Kenneth C. Holt, secretary of Housing, Community and Development, told an audience at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention here that a mother could just put a lead fishing weight in her child’s mouth, then take the child in for testing and a landlord would be liable for providing the child with housing until the age of 18.

 Pressed afterward, Holt said he had no evidence of this happening but said a developer had told him it was possible. “This is an anecdotal story that was described to me as something that could possibly happen,” Holt said.

 He offered no specific proposals, but said he hoped to limit the liability of landlords in lead paint cases. He said his department is working with the Maryland Department of the Environment to draft legislation for the 2016 General Assembly session.

 Health advocates reacted by saying they would fight any effort to weaken lead paint protections — and Holt’s suggestion that parents might poison their children to gain housing benefits provoked outrage.

 “To me it’s beneath contempt,” said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.

Of course it’s beneath contempt.

Just when I think that Republicans cannot get any more evil, they outdo themselves.

This guy so needs to get fired ……… Out of a cannon, into the sun.

Governor Ratf%$# Outdoes Himself

No Comments

Our Governor, Larry Hogan, wants to kill the Purple Line light rail line that will run east and west north of the District.

He thinks that it is too expensive, but he wants to drop $10 billion on a 500km/h magnet levitation line:

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan campaigned on cutting costs. Since taking office, however, he’s expressed interest in throwing big money at numerous transportation programs—just not the transit lines that actually work and which businesses and residents want. His latest big spending idea: A $10 billion maglev between DC and Baltimore.

Hogan is in Japan right now on a trade mission, and according to WAMU’s Martin di Caro, has agreed to work with Japan and seek federal funds for a study of what it’d take to build a maglev line here at home.

The Federal Railroad Administration has $27.8 million available for a maglev study, but Maryland is the only state in the nation that’s interested in seeking the money. Japan is offering $5 billion in loans to help make the line happen, but that money would still have to be paid back.

The maglev line could run over 300 miles per hour and, di Caro reports, possibly go from DC to Baltimore in 15 minutes (though time estimates for transportation facilities often are rosier, before the gritty details come in).

However, to run that fast, the tracks would have to be very straight. There’s no place to put very straight tracks right through the mostly-suburban area in between; instead, maglev supporters expect the line to be mostly in a tunnel. According to contributor and maglev supporter Peter Dovak, Japan’s maglev (which is different from its well-known “Shinkansen” high-speed trains) will run in a tunnel for 85% of its length.

That makes it very expensive.

This guy is a complete tool.

Governor Ratf%$# Will Veto This, of Course

No Comments

A bill has passed the Maryland legislature which would grant ex-offenders the right to vote while on parole of probation.  It now goes to the desk of the newly elected Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

Gee, a restriction on voting that applies largely to communities of color that vote for Democrats.

Any guess as to what hizzonner will do?  He’s already trying to defund education in Baltimore City and Prince Georges County, so I don’t think that he is counting on getting much in the way of the Black vote the next time around.

He has until May 30 to veto the bill.

Charges for Murder and Manslaughter, but the Bigger Picture is Worse

No Comments

All 6 police officers have been charged in death of Freddie Gray:

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray – who died after being injured in police custody – have been charged criminally, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday.

 Mosby’s announcement on the steps of the War Memorial Building was greeted with cheers and applause. Mosby said she told Gray’s family that “no one is above the law and I would pursue justice upon their behalf.”

 The city was gearing up for another round of demonstrations after the announcement. Baltimore City and Maryland state offices granted workers in the city liberal leave early Friday afternoon.

 After the charges were announced, Desmond Taylor, 29, shouted in jubilee in front of the War Memorial Building.

 “I did not expect this, but I prayed for it,” he said. “This day means that your actions bring consequences in Baltimore City.”

 Reacting to news of the charges, President Barack Obama called it “absolutely vital that the truth come out.”

 “What I think the people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth,” the president said. “That’s what people around the country expect.”

 All six officers were in custody and being processed at Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center as of 2 p.m., said Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

 Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 45, who was the driver of a police van that carried Gray through the streets of Baltimore, was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, second-degree assault, two vehicular manslaughter charges and misconduct in office. A man who answered the phone at Goodson’s home declined to comment and hung up the phone.

The rest are charged with, involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and false imprisonment in various combinations.

I would have liked to seen obstruction of justice added, because, given the circumstances, that charge would be pretty clearly guaranteed conviction.

The big picture, of course,  is that sort of stuff happens every day, because random arrests of black people, and brutality against them, along with the inevitable revenue generation.  (Properties don’t seize themselves.)

It is incredibly rare for a police officer to be investigated, much less charged.

Interestingly enough, the charge of murder is based on the rather interestingly named “depraved heart murder”:

The term “depraved heart” means something more than conduct amounting to a high or unreasonable risk to human life. The perpetrator must realize the risk his behavior has created to the extent that his conduct may be termed willful. Moreover, the conduct must contain an element of viciousness or contemptuous disregard for the value of human life which conduct characterizes that behavior as wanton.

But, as I said before, for each of these 6 police officers, there are tens, if not hundreds, of other cops who have done the same thing, albeit it probably did not result in a death, or massive protests and riots.

And You Wonder Why I Do Not Believe This………

No Comments

Someone in the Baltimore City state security apparatus has leaked a report that Freddie Gray intentionally injured himself to the Washington Post:

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

 The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

 The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Yeah, it’s clear that Mr. Gray snapped his neck and crushed his larynx all by himself.

This reminds me a LOT of that cigar video that the Ferguson police released, or the videos of the victim that were recently released by the Tulsa police department in an attempt to justify the shooting by their septuagenarian “reserve deputy” sugar-daddy.

What Part of “Peace Officer” Don’t You Get?

No Comments

Protests in Baltimore were relatively peaceful last night, and now we are getting reports police escalated last night’s events by penning up the teenagers who were at the Mondawmin Mall:

After Baltimore police and a crowd of teens clashed near the Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore on Monday afternoon, news reports described the violence as a riot triggered by kids who had been itching for a fight all day. But in interviews with Mother Jones and other media outlets, teachers and parents maintain that police actions inflamed a tense-but-stable situation.

 ………

 When school let out that afternoon, police were in the area equipped with full riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police were stopping busses and forcing riders, including many students who were trying to get home, to disembark. Cops shut down the local subway stop. They also blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Mall and Frederick Douglass High School, which is across the street from the mall, and essentially corralled young people in the area. That is, they did not allow the after-school crowd to disperse.

 Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:

Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of students…It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.

The kids were “standing around in groups of 3-4,” Harris said in a Facebook message to Mother Jones. “They weren’t doing anything. No rock throwing, nothing…The cops started marching toward groups of kids who were just milling about.”

A teacher at Douglass High School, who asked not to be identified, tells a similar story: “When school was winding down, many students were leaving early with their parents or of their own accord.” Those who didn’t depart early, she says, were stranded. Many of the students still at school at that point, she notes, wanted to get out of the area and avoid any Purge-like violence. Some were requesting rides home from teachers. But by now, it was difficult to leave the neighborhood. “I rode with another teacher home,” this teacher recalls, “and we had to route our travel around the police in riot gear blocking the road… The majority of my students thought what was going to happen was stupid or were frightened at the idea. Very few seemed to want to participate in ‘the purge.'”

A parent who picked up his children from a nearby elementary school, says via Twitter, “The kids stood across from the police and looked like they were asking them ‘why can’t we get on the buses’ but the police were just gazing…Majority of those kids aren’t from around that neighborhood. They NEED those buses and trains in order to get home.” He continued: “If they would’ve let them children go home, yesterday wouldn’t have even turned out like that.”

Meg Gibson, another Baltimore teacher, described a similar scene to Gawker: “The riot police were already at the bus stop on the other side of the mall, turning buses that transport the students away, not allowing students to board. They were waiting for the kids.…Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.” With police unloading busses, and with the nearby metro station shut down, there were few ways for students to clear out.

………

Mondawmin Mall is where lots of students catch the bus, when you shut down MTA how the heck they gonna get home? @BaltimorePolice
— Jay (@Ms_lionesss) April 27, 2015

It is the job of police to maintain the peace. It is why they sometimes are called peace officers.

The police are the professionals in this situation, and they must act professionally.

The expectation of professionalism is why they are get to use a gun, a badge, and tools like tear gas and pepper spray.

It means, for example, that they need to use the appropriate tools to manage a situation, and not, for example, throw bricks back at the protesters:

We’re about to look now. Here’s a video of police throwing rocks back at protesters:

This is not in indicator of professionalism in a police force.

The rioting last night was foreseeable given the behavior of the police.

They presented themselves in an overly confrontational way to teenagers, they then made impossible for people to leave the area.

While the behavior of the protesters is reprehensible, the behavior of the police can only be described as extreme malpractice.

There are a number of senior cops on the Baltimore PD who needs to be fired over this.

The Technical Term is Lying Sack of Sh%$………

No Comments
In this case, the term can be applied to the President of the Maryland Police Union:

Protests escalated in Baltimore on Saturday over the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a serious spinal cord injury while in police custody. The mysterious injury raised suspicions that he was taken on a “rough ride,” in which officers deliberately drive erratically to injure unbuckled and handcuffed passengers. But the president of Maryland’s police union told ThinkProgress he is unaware of the unsanctioned police practice.

In a word, bullsh%$.

“Rough rides”, a procedure where a person is placed in a paddy wagon, handcuffed but not buckled in, and then subjected to a ride that consists of sudden starts, stops, and abrupt maneuvers, and so tossing them around the inside of the vehicle.

I understand that Mr. Canales has a responsibility to represent his union members, but this sort of bald faced lie, much like the boneheaded statement by Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore FOP that the earlier peaceful protests were akin to a lynching, are transparently false.

What’s more these statements are clearly inflammatory, and so both of these folks served to put their own members at risk.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that term before,” Maryland Fraternal Order of Police President Vince Canales said when asked about the event that may have caused Gray’s death.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged on Friday that Gray’s injuries could have been caused by a “rough ride,” but said the investigation into the circumstances of his death will continue even after the police findings are given to prosecutors on Wednesday.

A Baltimore Sun investigation found that Gray is not the only person to emerge from a Baltimore police van with serious injuries — others have won multi-million judgments after suing the police department for their injuries. But despite the repeated brutal incidents, Canales and others closely entwined with the city police are still unaware of the practice.

Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar told the Baltimore Sun she has no personal knowledge of “rough rides,” but others in her office are aware of the practice. “It is common knowledge among public defenders that [the Baltimore Police Department] has paid out significant judgments in ‘rough ride’ and other cases,” James Johnston, a Baltimore public defender, told the Sun. “In my experience, it is not uncommon for clients to suffer injuries during an arrest.”

When asked about a series of cases of police brutality in Baltimore, Canales presented a very different view from advocates who say the recent incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere were part of a larger systematic problem with police.

Instead of banning any particular police practices, Canales said each incident should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis because “everyone responds differently to different situations.” But reports from across the country have proved otherwise. In Baltimore, an investigation from 2014 found that the police department has paid around $5.7 million to more than 100 people since 2011 in lawsuits claiming officers beat up mostly African American suspects.

Maybe police officers should turf out Vince Canales and Gene Ryan at the next union election, because they sure as hell aren’t serving their members or the general public.

The Police Story on the Freddie Gray Killing Changes

No Comments

Gee, what a surprise. Once what happened to Freddie Gray became a matter for independent investigation, the police story changed:

Police chiefs in Baltimore retreated on Friday from earlier claims that Freddie Gray, whose death has caused an outcry, must have been injured inside the van carrying him after his arrest.

They said they were investigating what happened during one of the stops made by the vehicle.

Asked whether Gray was fatally hurt by a so-called “rough ride” without a seatbelt in the back of the vehicle, or could have been injured outside the van, police commissioner Anthony Batts said at a press conference there were “potentials for both of those”.

“If someone harmed Freddie Gray, we will have to prosecute him,” said Batts.

Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis said officials were looking into the second of three stops the van’s driver made after Gray was arrested on the morning of 12 April. “The facts of that interaction are under investigation,” said Davis.

Gray, 25, died last Sunday after suffering a broken neck and injured voice box. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said earlier this week “what happened happened inside the van,” echoing a police report that said Gray “suffered a medical emergency” in the vehicle.

………

Davis said Gray said he needed a medic during a third stop by the van, made to pick up a second prisoner, but an ambulance was not called until 25 minutes later, after the vehicle arrived at police headquarters. Batts told reporters that during the third stop, officers “picked him up off the floor and placed him on a seat”.

Batts said on Thursday that the second prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall, told investigators that Gray was “was still moving around, that he was kicking and making noises” until the van arrived at the station. Police are declining to identify the man due to his status as a witness in the criminal inquiry.

This thin blue line crap needs to stop.

We not only need to go after don’t cops, we need to go after cops who refuse to go after bad cops.

Zero tolerance.