Botham Jean and Amber Guyger and Michael Brownn and Darren Wilson
What if Dallas police officer Amber Guyger had shot a real burglar in her own apartment in the exact same circumstances? Would she be likely to have faced murder charges? An innocent person was tragically killed here and the rest plays out like somebody just has to take the weight.
But, first, let’s compare the Botham Jean–Amber Guyger shooting to the Michael Brown–Darren Wilson shooting.
Just so you know where I’m coming from on police abuse, let’s make out the Ferguson police to be 10X more intrusive than New York police at their stop-and-frisk worst. At their worst, after a crime drop 4X (75%), Bloomberg-Bratton instituted 7X as many stops = 28 times as stops per reported crime. Ferguson had more warrants than people = an order of magnitude worse interference than New York.
Having said that, Michael Brown acted a lot like somebody who was trying to commit suicide by police officer (he wasn’t). His autopsy showed six bullet wounds: right thumb, outer forearm traveling to the inner, right bicep, two in chest, one in forehead: all frontal.
His wounds were all in the front, meaning he was moving toward Officer Wilson – not standing passively while shot over and over. The wound in the thumb which he got inside the police car tells us he was not passively waiting to be shot.
Unarmed? Nobody is unarmed when somebody else in the situation has a gun that can easily be taken from him or her. Darren Wilson was six-foot two and 215 but Michael Brown was six-foot, five and 290. Botham Jean was equally heftier than our too typically, too small female officer.
If this were England where the cops and robber don’t carry guns, Amber could have run out or called backup without fear of being disarmed when she turned her back. Come to think, nobody usually expects threatened police to turn and run. Prosecutors saying Guyger could have called backup or retreated instead of entering (what she thought was) her apartment: raising a new theory of criminal culpability – wonder how seriously an appeals court would (will?) take that?
Nobody but Amber knows what actually happened in there. Did she have sufficient justification and make up a better one before the forensics suggested differently. Did she violate the first law of criminal defense: “Tell your lawyer the truth and let her do the lying”? If Botham Jean (miscast burglar) refused to show his hands he could have looked like he was hiding a gun. OTH, if he was getting up from a chair right next to the police officer (fits forensics) not understanding the fatal danger he was confronting, she would still not guilty of murder (think real burglar). Keep in mind the difference in body sizes and her gun being within his arm’s reach.
The late (lamented) prosecution witness said he could hear voices but not what they were saying – also that gun shots followed immediately. Could that mean Amber fired too quickly? Maybe; maybe not – not exactly proof of anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
Her hysterics, once she recognized her tragic mistake don’t match that of a vile racist looking to kill a black man. Was she responsible for knowing what apartment she was in (get off the cell phone?): another legal rabbit pulled out of the prosecutorial hat?
In the Bronx, where I used to go to court a lot in the late ‘70s, we had a slew of what we called BS cases. This doubly tragic case looks sadly to me like the BS case of the year.
The Fed through years of stabilizing the worlds markets bought government debt to essentially float the too big to fails, the budget deficit, and provide liquidity to a frozen market. Great! Brenanke was thinking well, we just set up a due to/due from between the Fed and the Treasury and then once conditions improve, slowly settle it back into the market, Fed releases the debt into the market bringing their assets back to zero and the Treasury continues to not have to eat $1.4 trillion in funny money. You follow?
So here is the tantalizing bit. The Fed and the Treasury are essentially both 100% owned subsidiaries of USA, Inc. The Fed could technically write down the full $1.4 trillion in assets and essentially cancel the debt. It would show a huge loss, but the Fed has no stakeholders. So why not do it? Perception. If the Fed makes 6% of the US debt essentially disappear, this means that any time in the future the US can float debt, cancel on the Fed side, and therefore the debt being floated is worthless. But in reality, the debt is essentially worthless anyway since a) US borrows in its own currency b) world markets are tied to US currency and debt.
So why not just cancel the debt? We have to go back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. During his presidency the country owed a huge amount of debt to both domestic and foreign entities alike. Once he authorized the cancellation of the debt the economy came to a screeching halt.
This tells me the Fed does it’s homework, and also is a patient observer of history.
We are in serious trouble and in great danger of turning authoritarian.
“Various toads and lackeys are lining up now to sacrifice what’s left of their integrity in service to the mad king. It is an incredible spectacle to watch grown men—almost entirely white male Boomers with long careers in public life—debase themselves to defend a man in obvious cognitive decline with an extensive track record of backstabbing the toads and lackeys who came before them. Apparently, Republican loyalists in Congress and beyond are under the impression that Donald Trump will be president forever, or at least, that there will be no consequences for having been a collaborator if and when this disgraceful assault on the American republic comes to an end. Unfortunately, they’re probably right. Just ask Star Who Was Danced With Sean Spicer.
The newest clown in the circus is Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi supersleuth who has run through a truly incredible selection of abominable hairdos. According to the AP, he’s joining a Trumpian legal squad that is now engaged in an apocalyptic battle against the United States Constitution. The crack team released a letter Tuesday night that, in between spewing bits of MAGA brainspittle about Schifty Schiff and The Whistleblower, essentially argued that there is no valid mechanism for holding the president accountable. He cannot be indicted because the Department of Justice says a sitting president cannot be indicted. He cannot be impeached, a mechanism expressly laid out in the Constitution as a remedy for presidential misconduct, because durr, it would overturn the results of an election. Never mind that Mike Pence would become president if Trump were removed. None of this is relevant. There is incredibly strong evidence that he broke the law. He must be held accountable or he will continue breaking the law.
So Mr. Gowdy is joining a legal team whose expressed position is that the Executive Branch will not cooperate in any way with an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. The king has decided he’s not interested in being impeached, so he’ll just pretend it isn’t happening. They will ignore subpoenas. They will block witnesses from testifying before Congress. They will argue in court that Congress has no oversight powers (!) over the Executive Branch. They will carry out this campaign of open-and-shut obstruction of justice under the renowned legal principle of, Fuck You, That’s Why. And how does Gowdy feel about all this?
Mark Elliott @markmobility
I NEVER would have expected this from Trey Gowdy:
“The notion that you can withhold information and documents from Congress no matter whether you are the party in power or not in power is wrong.”
Oh, wait. This was in 2012.
Ah, wait—that’s Gowdy in 2012, when he was investigating Obammer and Hillary for doing Benghazi. In the time since, as he’s aged gracefully and continued to cut his own hair, Gowdy has apparently decided that actually, the White House has no need to comply with congressional subpoenas or the law. What on earth could have changed? I suppose we could ask the same thing of Lindsey Graham.
All of this becomes a bit less confusing when you take into account that the Republican Party is the vehicle for an authoritarian movement whose defining principle is that anything is acceptable if it means holding onto power. You can say the exact opposite of what you used to say because this is now what benefits Dear Leader. You can allow your bathrobed king to run roughshod over the Constitution’s separation of powers because it helps him get a Win on his Big, Beautiful Wall. You can say nothing when he weaponizes the Departments of Justice and State to pursue his personal interests. You can excuse it away when he openly solicits foreign interference in an American presidential campaign, because it could help your party retain control of the White House. You can try to stop Certain People from voting, or make their votes count for less, because it could help you retain control of Congress or state legislatures.
Anything is acceptable if it hurts your political enemies and keeps you in power. Anything. If that means excusing the president’s virulent public racism, that’s fine. If it means pretending he didn’t just have one of his twice-weekly meltdowns on the White House lawn, that’s what you gotta do. If it means letting kids die in the system of concentration camps we’re running at the border, so be it. They will show the world just how far that goes if they are not met with the full force of the law and routed at the ballot box.”
It isn’t just remaining in power; it’s remaining in power so that the bizarre President will continue signing favorable tax legislation, issuing executive orders dismantling all regulation protecting the general public and interfering with profits, and installing right wing judges. It’s getting their way. They are fully responsible for him.
In his jobs posting PGL tells me “the strong economy in the late 1990’s was not a bubble”.
Is that really consensus?
Oops. It was pgl that responded with “the strong economy in the late 1990’s was not a bubble”.
I still ask, is that any kind of consensus?
Botham Jean and Amber Guyger and Michael Brownn and Darren Wilson
What if Dallas police officer Amber Guyger had shot a real burglar in her own apartment in the exact same circumstances? Would she be likely to have faced murder charges? An innocent person was tragically killed here and the rest plays out like somebody just has to take the weight.
But, first, let’s compare the Botham Jean–Amber Guyger shooting to the Michael Brown–Darren Wilson shooting.
Just so you know where I’m coming from on police abuse, let’s make out the Ferguson police to be 10X more intrusive than New York police at their stop-and-frisk worst. At their worst, after a crime drop 4X (75%), Bloomberg-Bratton instituted 7X as many stops = 28 times as stops per reported crime. Ferguson had more warrants than people = an order of magnitude worse interference than New York.
Having said that, Michael Brown acted a lot like somebody who was trying to commit suicide by police officer (he wasn’t). His autopsy showed six bullet wounds: right thumb, outer forearm traveling to the inner, right bicep, two in chest, one in forehead: all frontal.
His wounds were all in the front, meaning he was moving toward Officer Wilson – not standing passively while shot over and over. The wound in the thumb which he got inside the police car tells us he was not passively waiting to be shot.
Unarmed? Nobody is unarmed when somebody else in the situation has a gun that can easily be taken from him or her. Darren Wilson was six-foot two and 215 but Michael Brown was six-foot, five and 290. Botham Jean was equally heftier than our too typically, too small female officer.
If this were England where the cops and robber don’t carry guns, Amber could have run out or called backup without fear of being disarmed when she turned her back. Come to think, nobody usually expects threatened police to turn and run. Prosecutors saying Guyger could have called backup or retreated instead of entering (what she thought was) her apartment: raising a new theory of criminal culpability – wonder how seriously an appeals court would (will?) take that?
Nobody but Amber knows what actually happened in there. Did she have sufficient justification and make up a better one before the forensics suggested differently. Did she violate the first law of criminal defense: “Tell your lawyer the truth and let her do the lying”? If Botham Jean (miscast burglar) refused to show his hands he could have looked like he was hiding a gun. OTH, if he was getting up from a chair right next to the police officer (fits forensics) not understanding the fatal danger he was confronting, she would still not guilty of murder (think real burglar). Keep in mind the difference in body sizes and her gun being within his arm’s reach.
The late (lamented) prosecution witness said he could hear voices but not what they were saying – also that gun shots followed immediately. Could that mean Amber fired too quickly? Maybe; maybe not – not exactly proof of anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
Her hysterics, once she recognized her tragic mistake don’t match that of a vile racist looking to kill a black man. Was she responsible for knowing what apartment she was in (get off the cell phone?): another legal rabbit pulled out of the prosecutorial hat?
In the Bronx, where I used to go to court a lot in the late ‘70s, we had a slew of what we called BS cases. This doubly tragic case looks sadly to me like the BS case of the year.
ADDENDUM — just to get in another swipe at phony Bloomberg, New York law enforcement: https://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-personal-south-bronx-plan-to-crush_26.html
The Fed, a $1.4 Trillion accounting nightmare.
The Fed through years of stabilizing the worlds markets bought government debt to essentially float the too big to fails, the budget deficit, and provide liquidity to a frozen market. Great! Brenanke was thinking well, we just set up a due to/due from between the Fed and the Treasury and then once conditions improve, slowly settle it back into the market, Fed releases the debt into the market bringing their assets back to zero and the Treasury continues to not have to eat $1.4 trillion in funny money. You follow?
So here is the tantalizing bit. The Fed and the Treasury are essentially both 100% owned subsidiaries of USA, Inc. The Fed could technically write down the full $1.4 trillion in assets and essentially cancel the debt. It would show a huge loss, but the Fed has no stakeholders. So why not do it? Perception. If the Fed makes 6% of the US debt essentially disappear, this means that any time in the future the US can float debt, cancel on the Fed side, and therefore the debt being floated is worthless. But in reality, the debt is essentially worthless anyway since a) US borrows in its own currency b) world markets are tied to US currency and debt.
So why not just cancel the debt? We have to go back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. During his presidency the country owed a huge amount of debt to both domestic and foreign entities alike. Once he authorized the cancellation of the debt the economy came to a screeching halt.
This tells me the Fed does it’s homework, and also is a patient observer of history.
Run,
Thanks for the editing, but actually it would be in NewDealdemocrat’s job’s posting pgl tells me “…”
Arne:
So PGL is being nice??? No worries. I will text NDD.
We are in serious trouble and in great danger of turning authoritarian.
“Various toads and lackeys are lining up now to sacrifice what’s left of their integrity in service to the mad king. It is an incredible spectacle to watch grown men—almost entirely white male Boomers with long careers in public life—debase themselves to defend a man in obvious cognitive decline with an extensive track record of backstabbing the toads and lackeys who came before them. Apparently, Republican loyalists in Congress and beyond are under the impression that Donald Trump will be president forever, or at least, that there will be no consequences for having been a collaborator if and when this disgraceful assault on the American republic comes to an end. Unfortunately, they’re probably right. Just ask Star Who Was Danced With Sean Spicer.
The newest clown in the circus is Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi supersleuth who has run through a truly incredible selection of abominable hairdos. According to the AP, he’s joining a Trumpian legal squad that is now engaged in an apocalyptic battle against the United States Constitution. The crack team released a letter Tuesday night that, in between spewing bits of MAGA brainspittle about Schifty Schiff and The Whistleblower, essentially argued that there is no valid mechanism for holding the president accountable. He cannot be indicted because the Department of Justice says a sitting president cannot be indicted. He cannot be impeached, a mechanism expressly laid out in the Constitution as a remedy for presidential misconduct, because durr, it would overturn the results of an election. Never mind that Mike Pence would become president if Trump were removed. None of this is relevant. There is incredibly strong evidence that he broke the law. He must be held accountable or he will continue breaking the law.
So Mr. Gowdy is joining a legal team whose expressed position is that the Executive Branch will not cooperate in any way with an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. The king has decided he’s not interested in being impeached, so he’ll just pretend it isn’t happening. They will ignore subpoenas. They will block witnesses from testifying before Congress. They will argue in court that Congress has no oversight powers (!) over the Executive Branch. They will carry out this campaign of open-and-shut obstruction of justice under the renowned legal principle of, Fuck You, That’s Why. And how does Gowdy feel about all this?
Mark Elliott @markmobility
I NEVER would have expected this from Trey Gowdy:
“The notion that you can withhold information and documents from Congress no matter whether you are the party in power or not in power is wrong.”
Oh, wait. This was in 2012.
Ah, wait—that’s Gowdy in 2012, when he was investigating Obammer and Hillary for doing Benghazi. In the time since, as he’s aged gracefully and continued to cut his own hair, Gowdy has apparently decided that actually, the White House has no need to comply with congressional subpoenas or the law. What on earth could have changed? I suppose we could ask the same thing of Lindsey Graham.
All of this becomes a bit less confusing when you take into account that the Republican Party is the vehicle for an authoritarian movement whose defining principle is that anything is acceptable if it means holding onto power. You can say the exact opposite of what you used to say because this is now what benefits Dear Leader. You can allow your bathrobed king to run roughshod over the Constitution’s separation of powers because it helps him get a Win on his Big, Beautiful Wall. You can say nothing when he weaponizes the Departments of Justice and State to pursue his personal interests. You can excuse it away when he openly solicits foreign interference in an American presidential campaign, because it could help your party retain control of the White House. You can try to stop Certain People from voting, or make their votes count for less, because it could help you retain control of Congress or state legislatures.
Anything is acceptable if it hurts your political enemies and keeps you in power. Anything. If that means excusing the president’s virulent public racism, that’s fine. If it means pretending he didn’t just have one of his twice-weekly meltdowns on the White House lawn, that’s what you gotta do. If it means letting kids die in the system of concentration camps we’re running at the border, so be it. They will show the world just how far that goes if they are not met with the full force of the law and routed at the ballot box.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a29411756/trey-gowdy-joins-trump-legal-team-impeachment/
It isn’t just remaining in power; it’s remaining in power so that the bizarre President will continue signing favorable tax legislation, issuing executive orders dismantling all regulation protecting the general public and interfering with profits, and installing right wing judges. It’s getting their way. They are fully responsible for him.