Lachrimæ (seaven teares) ... to loot or not to lute.

I'll just drop this one right here.

For counterpoint ... and an actual review of the book ... there's Ben Sixsmith at Spectator, honing in on a particularly head-scratching part of Osterweil's case.

‘When it comes to small business, family owned business or locally owned business, they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses.’

Well, I don’t see what gives to Osterweil the darn right to determine whose businesses deserve to survive but perhaps they provide good products, friendly service and a local alternative to the mega-corps which are swallowing up Western economies in the aftermath of a vicious COVID-19-lockdown combo.

Chain envy by an anarchist? Say it ain't so.

One Author's Argument 'In Defense Of Looting', by Natalie Escobar (NPR)

In the past months of demonstrations for Black lives, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about looting. Whether it was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying that stealing purses and sneakers from high-end stores in Manhattan was "inexcusable," or St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter saying looters were "destroy[ing] our community," police officers, government officials and pundits alike have bemoaned the property damage and demanded an end to the riots. And just this week, rioters have burned buildings and looted stores in Kenosha, Wis., following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, to which Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has said: "Peaceful protesting is a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Rioting is not."

Writer Vicky Osterweil's book, In Defense of Looting, came out on Tuesday. When she finished it, back in April, she wrote (rather presciently) that "a new energy of resistance is building across the country." Now, as protests and riots continue to grip cities, she argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of "law and order," and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.

I spoke with Osterweil about this summer's riots, the common narratives surrounding looting, and why "nonviolence" can be a misleading term. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity ...

Politicians paint murals, but protesters make genuine change and real history.

Give 'em time, and we'll have statues of automobiles. I volunteer to be first in line when it comes to bringing those symbols down.

Go Ahead and Destroy That Racist Statue (and Then the System Too), by Jillian Steinhauer (The Nation)

While politicians are painting murals in lieu of undertaking real change, protesters are making history by pulling down symbols of white supremacy.

On June 9, after a week and a half of large, daily Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that began as part of a national uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was taking action: He would name a street in each of the five boroughs after Black Lives Matter and paint the name of the movement on those roads. The decision came days after Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser received widespread attention for turning a section of 16th Street NW across from the White House into Black Lives Matter Plaza, with the phrase painted in 50-foot yellow letters on the pavement. Meanwhile, a short way down the National Mall, Democratic members of Congress, most of them white, showed up at the Capitol on June 8 wearing kente stoles. They knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the same amount of time that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck—before entering their chambers to introduce the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

Politicians around the country are performing. They’re trying to show their constituents that they’re working on the problem of white supremacy in ways big and small. They’re using gestures to attempt to broadcast a message—but one that is ultimately hollow. As Shannon Keating put it recently in BuzzFeed News, it amounts to “performative absurdity from powerful people who’ve long avoided real accountability for causing or excusing Black suffering” ...

Nick Vaughn: "A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues."

I first met Nick Vaughn in 2015 when he was younger than he is now (oddly, I haven't aged) and was running for city council in the Republican primary. Nick lost a very close race, then graduated from high school, began his studies at Hanover College, breezed through university in what seemed like a few months, and ran for office again, this time for a county council seat. Unfortunately Nick lost another  tighterthanthis primary contest, but he's plowing forward with plans for the resurrection of The Aggregate (stay tuned) ... and found time to submit this guest column.   

---

A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues

I do not like to tout my credentials because I was taught to always be humble, however I feel it is necessary to explain my educational background for clarification. Firstly, on May 1st I graduated from Hanover College with a Bachelor of Arts in History. I did not have an official focus and I took classes on many topics including The Reformation, American Revolution and early republic, and a class specifically dedicated to Abraham Lincoln’s life, legacy, and how he has been portrayed by historians and popular media throughout the years. Additionally, I wrote my required Senior Thesis on Abraham Lincoln’s sole term in Congress.

While I tried to keep a diverse schedule of classes, I always gravitated towards the classes covering the time period from 1815 to the end of Reconstruction. Of course, the Civil War lay in-between the start and end date of the period of American History I find most interesting.

Before truly diving into the subject at hand, I also want to highlight my experience as a Republican college student. Many faux-conservative, incendiary personalities would have you think that Republicans are under constant chastisement, harassment, and belittlement on a college campus. Some also would have you believe that college campuses are hollowed liberal grounds where only the Democrats, Socialists, and Communists are able to freely share thoughts and ideas.

Friends, while I cannot speak for all college campuses, this was not my experience at Hanover College. You know those faux-conservatives I mentioned? I’m sure they have a rough time at colleges like Hanover. In fact, I know some who did. This is not because of their ideology, instead it is because of their inability to craft a coherent, fact-based argument. Additionally, some were poor students. I have had plenty of disagreements with professors who hold different political beliefs than I do, however I was never punished, chastised, harassed, or belittled for being a Republican. At Hanover, you don’t survive based on your ideology, but instead on the laurels and merits of your argument.

To suggest Hanover College is a very liberal school in an attempt to discredit what we have learned and the hard work it took is dishonest and extremely disrespectful to the thousands of people who have graduated from the college.

As someone who loves history and possesses a degree in the subject, the past couple of weeks with protests across the country advocating for police reform seemed like an unlikely place I would find myself. Of course, many are pointing out the shades of similarities this year has had to the 1920s due to a pandemic, or the year 1968 due to heightened racial tensions brought on by long standing and systemic injustices.

Recently, scars from the American Civil War have begun to be reopened as protesters advocating for racial equality have (rightly) begun advocating for the removal of Confederate statues and symbols from publicly owned land. As someone who has studied the Civil War, the Union, the Confederacy, and the historiography, this seems appropriate to me. Why do we have statues and symbols dedicated to traitors who attempted to break the Union because they wanted to enslave people?

To my initial surprise, many do not agree with this sentiment. However, after remembering back to my “Readings on the American Civil War” class, a class dedicated to the study of Civil War Historiography (what historians and scholars have written about the Civil War), I recall a couple weeks where we discussed Southern Revisionism and the Lost Cause ideology.

As someone who has read Jefferson Davis’ The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which, like nearly all former Confederate traitors, attempted to rationalize the reason for the South’s attempted secession as being due to states’ rights (and as being honorable), I can tell you this distorted reality is very far from the truth.

So why do people think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols is “tearing down history?” Well, I suppose those monuments dedicated to traitors are historical in the sense that they represent a historical event, although from a perverted point of view. The argument, to me, is not whether they are historical or not, it is why do statues of traitors exist in the first place and why are people so irrationally attached to them?

There are three points I want to make in attempting to answer those questions: first, Southern Revisionism, the coming of the Second Ku Klux Klan, and groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy have spread lies so successfully about the American Civil War, that many schools across America still incorrectly teach the subject. Second, history is much more complicated and nuanced than Twitter or Facebook allow historical events to be conveyed. Third, racial undertones have turned into overtones regarding the subject as the removal of statues have been used as rallying points for the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and other traitorous and dangerous organizations.

In regards to Southern Revisionism as it relates to the KKK an infamous black and white film by D.W. Griffith (a Southern Revisionist who made propaganda films in support of the Lost Cause, white supremacy, and the KKK), The Birth of a Nation highlights the disgusting and disingenuous imagery and language used by Southern Revisionists. David W. Blights points out in his book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory that “Dixon's [Dixon wrote the book Griffith’s film was based on] vicious version of the idea that blacks had caused the Civil War by their very presence, and that Northern radicalism during Reconstruction failed to understand that freedom had ushered blacks as a race into barbarism, neatly framed the story of the rise of heroic vigilantism in the South. Reluctantly, Klansmen—white men—had to take the law into their own hands in order to save Southern white womanhood from the sexual brutality of black men. Dixon's vision captured the attitude of thousands and forged in story form a collective memory of how the war may have been lost but Reconstruction was won—by the South and a reconciled nation. Riding as masked cavalry, the Klan stopped corrupt government, prevented the anarchy of 'Negro rule' and most of all, saved white supremacy.”

Today, you see similar disingenuous remarks made on Twitter regarding the cause of the Civil War. One tweet that made my blood boil is shown here.

The supposed quote from Robert E. Lee is fake, however he has written similar things as a way to play into and prop up the Lost Cause ideology. The quote, which is one sentence in a much longer statement from Abraham Lincoln attempts to portray Lincoln as never truly being opposed to slavery and instead was focused on the preservation of the Union. The full quote, from 1862, is “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

The main goal of the war, in Lincoln’s mind, was certainly the preservation of the Union, however it should be noted that Lincoln was opposed to slavery ever since he saw the boats carrying slaves on the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky. During his time in Congress, he introduced a resolution to end the practice in Washington D.C. The issue of slavery and Lincoln is, as I stated earlier, much too complex for a Twitter or Facebook post. Hell, it’s even too complex for this article. If you’d like to learn more about Lincoln and the issue of slavery, I recommend starting by reading my thesis (linked above) and then using the bibliography to find further reading. Additionally, the movie Lincoln is a good starting point as well.

In the AP’s article on the disparity between where someone lives and how the Civil War is taught, they point out that “Confederate sympathizers have long promoted the “Lost Cause” theory that the Southern side was heroic against impossible odds, and that slavery was not the driving force behind the war. Edward Countryman, a history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he learned that idea growing up in New York State in the 1950s.”

I want to especially point your attention to the “growing up ... in the 1950s” part of that quote. I would be being dishonest if I did not point out the obvious generational differences in the understanding of the Civil War. Not to be overly general, but the vast majority of people I know who post on Facebook about Lost Cause ideology and are opposed to the removal of Confederate statues and symbols are of a certain, older age group typically labeled “Baby Boomers.” This is because during the 50s and 60s, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Lost Cause ideology saw a resurgence and began to be taught in white schools again (or even more vigorously if not previously ended).

To be fair, both people vastly older and vastly younger have fallen victim to the Lost Cause myth, and it makes sense that more people will as Facebook and Twitter refuse to label falsehoods as such.

If there is anything you should take away from this article, I hope it is this: if you think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols, memorials to traitors who enslaved people, is tearing down history, you might want to turn off the phone and computer, and pick up a book written by a reputable historian, take a trip to a museum, watch the movie Lincoln (not Gone With the Wind), or give me a call, because I am sick and tired of the ignorance.

A good reading list on the topic:

David W. Blight, Race and Reunion
David Donald, Lincoln
Kenneth Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln
Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War
William Davis, Look Away
Gary Gallagher, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

And down came that accursed statue -- Colston in Bristol UK ... and also Castleman in Fischerland KY.

Now we're getting somewhere: "Historic scenes were witnessed in Bristol over the weekend as Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a controversial statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and rolled the memorial into the city's harbour."

More here:

BLM protesters topple statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston, by Haroon Siddique and Clea Skopeliti (The Guardian)

Statue that had long been a focal point of local anger rolled down to harbour and pushed into the water

The historian David Olusoga compared the action to the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. However, the home secretary, Bobby Caesar Priti Patel, urged the police to respond. She told Sky News: “I think that is utterly disgraceful and that speaks to the acts of public disorder that have actually now become a distraction from the cause in which people are protesting about.”

And yes, Greg Fischer at last mustered the cojones to remove an inanimate Confederate statue, even if he hasn't yet managed much for living human constituents. It might be wise to hold the applause until we're certain Fischer isn't selling the "replacement sculpture" rights to Brown-Forman to erect a bourbon bottle on the spot.

Louisville Removes Controversial Statue Of John Breckinridge Castleman (NPR)

We've been here before ...

Reconstruction: "Democracy was subverted, and the human toll, however inexact, was enormous." Bye bye, Castleman and Prentice.

Even as we foresee the Champs-Ély-Jéffrey, Berlin "contends with street names of a brutal, overlooked past."

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Photo credit: Mother Jones.

From The Economist: (Order above the law) ... How to fix American policing. The country’s forces kill too many of those they serve. Here is how to change that.

Systemic racism does not mean that all officers are racists or bad people; it means that the system operates in a racially biased manner regardless of individual motivations.

Militarization and violence. Aren't they synonymous?

A paper by Jonathan Mummolo, a political scientist at Princeton, found that police militarisation fails to enhance public safety while also eroding public trust in the police.

That makes sense: military forces are designed to win wars, not trust. The army’s goals and those of the police differ. The army kills its enemies. Police are supposed to serve and protect Americans without violating their civil rights—and to face consequences for violating those rights.

Yet when it comes to killing, few officers face consequences.

Curative measures are a navigational challenge. Police unions are one such outcropping and courts, another.

With courts a narrow avenue for reform, some have started to advocate hitting law-enforcement agencies where it hurts: right in the budget. Advocates in at least 15 cities are waging campaigns to defund the police and use the money on other social services.

Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College professor and defunding advocate, says that people assume “the problem is that individual officers aren’t doing their jobs properly, when the problem really is that they have been asked to do too big a job.” Police have been asked to provide security in schools, respond to people’s mental-health crises and drug overdoses. “Policing is about use of force,” Mr Vitale explains. “It should be a last resort...We don’t want another community meeting with police. We want them out of our lives.”

Barry Friedman, who runs New York University’s Policing Project, has a simpler suggestion: clear legislation.

Rolling Stone provides a fine overview of what it actually means to "defund the police." To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Consider the fact that four Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call that described a minor, nonviolent crime. “George Floyd is the perfect case to look at,” Garcia says. “What he was accused of — what the police were called for — was a nonviolent offense: trying to use a fake $20 bill. If we reduce the number of crimes that exist or repeal ordinances which are really bloated with nonviolent offenses that were created during Broken Windows, it will allow police to focus on violent crime — on the crimes where they are actually needed — instead of criminalizing the poor.”

Vaguely reminiscent of the intent of NA-FC schools and the recently rejected safety referendum, eh?

But many of the typical voter's objections apart from the impact on the pocketbooks of ratepayers centered on prevention as namby-pamby; we need more security, not counseling . How many people did I hear or read saying if the money covered armed police, high walls and padlocked gates, they'd be okay with it?

This brings us back to The Economist and another pressing issue.

Unlike most police forces elsewhere, American police patrol a heavily armed country. That can make their job dangerous—between 2000 and 2014, 2,445 died on duty, compared with just 25 in Britain. But police also return fire, killing around 1,000 people each year.

And the rub:

African-Americans are nearly three times likelier than whites to be killed by police. In fact, being killed by police is now the sixth-leading cause of death for young black men. African-Americans are likelier to be convicted, and serve longer sentences than whites convicted of the same crime; they comprise 13% of the adult population, but 33% of the imprisoned population.

Trump's biblical photo op? It was American history in a nutshell.

The Economist believes America's chronic anger has led to this violent juncture. That's surely true. But where does the anger come from? It makes sense for the downtrodden to be angry. But why the people who have so much? That's level of fear that's hard to fathom.

'How did we get here?': Trump has normalised mayhem and the US is paying the price, by Julian Borger (The Guardian)

The sheer tumult of the Trump era, the unceasing torrent of events that were unthinkable even hours before, has left a nation constantly off balance, unable to find its bearing and grasp how far it has traveled.

The developments of the past 24 hours were a reminder of how slippery the downward slope has been.

More than a hundred thousand Americans are dead from a pandemic after the government’s botched response; there are armoured cars and troops outside Washington metro stations; men in combat gear carrying sniper rifles were seen perched in the open door of a helicopter flying low over the commercial district. A military chopper buzzed a crowd of demonstrators so close to the ground they were buffeted around by the wind from the rotor, a dispersal technique learned in counter-insurgencies abroad.

On Monday, an entirely peaceful protest was driven out of a city square in front of the White House with teargas, baton charges and mounted police, so Trump could pose in front of a church with a Bible.

A priest and a seminarian, who had been distributing water and hand sanitizer to protesters from the steps of St John’s Episcopal, were driven away by police with helmets and riot shields to create an uncluttered tableau. A Bible was procured for Trump from inside the church for him to hold aloft. Journalists asked if it was his Bible. “It’s a Bible,” he replied.

The rate of fresh affronts has often outpaced the capacity to digest – or even describe – them ...

Stick a fork in Fischer. He's done.

I tried to watch Greg Fischer's live comments this morning. No, really. I tried mightily to maintain composure as one mealy-mouthed evasion followed another on the heels of each previous abdication of responsibility.

A self-satisfied imperial mayor, grand poobah of "bourbonism" (the word's OTHER meaning is political conservatism), now reduced to listlessly (rubber) bullet-pointing all the reasons why he is pathetic and powerless.

Apparently the police and national guard sent themselves to assault the citizenry, and if so -- if the mayor isn't responsible and can't do anything about it -- then what's the reason for him being in this office in the first place?

Exactly what is the reason for having such an office, if it isn't to be used? After all, we can eat ham and drink bourbon and wear Derby hats on our own, without Fischer's involvement.

It's tempting to say that when the good times roll, it's easy to make a big show of pretending to lead, but the fact eluding Fischer and his supporters is the illusory nature of those "good times."

They weren't, at least not for everyone; Fischer and Louisville's vapid "leadership" caste couldn't be bothered to address a multitude of societal problems before the explosion, and now have no way to address any of it apart from empty platitudes testifying primarily to their fundamental absence of principle and character.

If Fischer had any such self-knowledge, he'd resign in sheer embarrassment. That's how badly he's botched this. It won't happen, but it damn well should.

(The photo depicts Fischer -- to the right -- at a Floyd County DemoDisneyDixiecratic function a few years back, gladhanding with CM Greg Phipps. In the context of my thoughts here, it's worth remembering that Fischer is Mayor Jeff Gahan's political idol.)

LIVE TO EAT: Those new clothes you're wearing, well, they're a tad threadbare. That's regrettable.

I was working on this post when a notice from my former business popped up on social media feeds.

Good for them.

Pints&union will return next Tuesday, June 9. In exactly what format is, as yet, unknown.

I know it's frivolous to be writing much of anything without acknowledging the Black Lives Matter protests taking place in Louisville, just a few miles from my house. To me they're entirely justified protests, and government's response has been horrendous. Mayor Greg Fischer is underwater, and should resign.

This said, it has been utterly fascinating to see which local food service operators have spoken up about the protests -- during which admired BBQ chef David McAtee was killed by police -- and which have continued hawking their wares on the street corner as though nothing important was occurring, just as they were doing following the pandemic reopening period, as though science had been a ghastly imposition the previous months.

By the way, it may surprise you to learn that COVID-19 did not agree to take a holiday amid the unrest.

Yes, there is a considerable schism within the ranks of local restaurateurs. It was there before, albeit more hidden than not, and kept in check by commonalities and shared experiences. There always were narcissists on one-side and the public minded on another; the coronavirus then pulled back the curtain, and now protests for simple human injustice have sealed the deal.

And yet, in spite of it all, I retain a certain loyalty to the segment, if not some of the less defensible bad actors populating it. I'm not "outing" anyone; they've outed themselves, and I'm confident that lots of folks who "get it" can "see it" clearly without me pointing.

However, speaking for myself alone, it's just not going to be possible for me to be close with some of them any longer. It's going to be difficult for me to patronize them. I intend to keep it to myself, but some of the shrillness and superstition masquerading as public health (and justice for all) have been repugnant.

History sometimes offers us the chance to stand up and be counted. Some restaurateurs are seizing this moment, others not so much. I wish there weren't a scorecard now, but it's there. I can't NOT look at it.

My friend and boss Joe Phillips is on the right side of history.

And here:

Why some restaurants are keeping their doors closed in states that have reopened, despite backlash, by Ashlie Stevens (Salon)

“I have a huge problem with people choosing profit over people. And I would rather go bankrupt"

At Pints & Union, a pub in New Albany, Ind., a skeleton crew readies for a rush of Saturday evening to-go orders. Save the sounds of that kitchen prep, it doesn't feel much like a restaurant anymore. The smell of beer has been replaced by the smell of bleach, while the wooden booths have long been sanitized and subsequently covered in plastic. Occasionally, a pedestrian tries to open the bright red front door —rattling it against its navy frame — but it's been locked for weeks.

Takeout orders are now called into the restaurant and paid for via phone; once they are ready and the customer is outside, only then is the door briefly opened by a masked and gloved employee who places the carryout bag on a small table nearby to be retrieved.

According to owner Joe Phillips, this is the way Pints & Union is going to operate for the foreseeable future as a way to prevent the continued spread of the novel coronavirus. This is despite the fact that Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb cleared all restaurants in the state (save those in three "hotspot" counties: Marion, Lake, and Cass) to open at 50% capacity as of May 4.

"There's a lack of testing in southern Indiana," Phillips said. "There's only one place you can get tested locally — it's the health department — and it's only open on Saturdays from 11 to 1, and you have to have symptoms. So no one is getting tested."

However, in late March, the chief medical officer at Baptist Health in New Albany called Floyd County, in which the city is located, a "hotspot for the coronavirus" after over 20 people tested positive.

The amount of unknowns about the virus and its spread is, Phillips said, his largest deterrent against reopening.

"I have a huge problem with people choosing profit over people," Phillips said. "And I would rather go bankrupt."

Joe Gerth touches all four: "Mayor Fischer is missing in action as Louisville struggles with racial issues."

I hope you can get through the pay wall because Gerth's eloquence needs to be read in its entirety. I've converted Gerth's commentary to baseball:



Deprived of sloganeering, the faux Democrat Greg Fischer is exposed as an inept fraud. Time for him to resign. Bourbonism's no longer an option, is it?

Gerth: Mayor Fischer is missing in action as Louisville struggles with racial issues, by Joseph Gerth, Louisville Courier Journal

Since the first people began carrying signs and exhorting us to say Breonna Taylor’s name last week, Louisville has wrestled with what has unfolded on our downtown streets.

We’ve seen protesting like we haven’t seen in more than 50 years. We’ve watched rioting and looting on our downtown streets. We’ve seen the death of yet another black man at the hands of police.

What we haven’t seen is leadership.

Where is Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer while all this is going on?

He showed up for a few minutes Monday morning to offer his condolences to Odessa Riley, the grieving mother of David McAtee, who died early Monday when police and National Guardsmen returned fire into a crowd at 26th and Broadway.

And then he left.

He’ll appear on a livestream soon from a secured bunker somewhere and then he’ll disappear.

He might even call a late-night press conference when those who most need to hear from him are not at a television or computer where they can watch.

They’ll be out dodging his police department's pepper balls and tear gas canisters — and God forbid, more bullets — then.

In the five days since this all began, Fischer has been in hiding. Emerging only to spout a few platitudes and finally — years after he should have — fire his police chief.

He’s been hunkered down and blaming the rioting and the protests on “outsiders” who have come to Louisville to raise hell and cause trouble.

To do that, however, misses the real issue.

We have a problem with race in this community.

Bourbonism can't help us. Neoliberal frauds be gone. Greg Fischer is clothesless, and he should resign, now.

There was Typhoid Mary, now COVID Larry. Big guns, empty heads. Servants, back to work!

I received an e-mail from something called Liberate America, which claimed to be organizing these spontaneous protests.

I hit the “Unsubscribe” but just couldn’t find the “Piss Off Douche Cap” button.

How very disappointing.

These People Aren’t Freedom Fighters—They’re Virus-Spreading Sociopaths, by Elie Mystal

The “liberate America” protesters claim they just want to make their own choices about their health and safety, but they really want to force others to risk their lives.

I’m going to make a confession: I am half inclined to let the fringe Republicans agitating to “liberate” America go out and catch Covid-19 and die in whatever way seems best to them. Safely ensconced in my house, living under the protection of a Democratic governor, I am not required to care about maskless fools in Ohio, frosting the statehouse windows with their communicable diseases.

In related news: I’ve never once cared about a recreational mountain climber who goes missing halfway up Mount Killayadumass. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

And yet, I care about the sherpas. I care about the impoverished community of workers who make their living propping up the rugged individualist fantasies of richer people, and who sometimes die in the process of making the mountain-climbing economy work ...

snip

Philosophically, I’m okay with right-wing agitators’ going out there and getting the coronavirus at a protest, if they want to. Maybe I’m a bad person, but I just don’t have the emotional energy to care about the latest wound Republicans have decided to self-inflict in their never-ending quest to “own the libs.”

But they must not be allowed to infect everybody else. My freedom to live is every bit as important as their freedom to die.

Learn about Käthe Kollwitz.

Outbreak.

On Sunday I posted a link to an essay in which the author, an American living in Germany, related (among other things) her visit to an art exhibit in Cologne.

Loneliness.

A bank in a mall was a weird place to find the largest collection of prints by the German artist, socialist, and pacifist Käthe Kollwitz, since her work is famously concerned with the agonies and struggles of the working class. In the old boardroom of the bank, Kollwitz’s work hung, some of it so blazing with grief and feeling it was hard, actually, to take.

Käthe Kollwitz is an artist we all should know.

SUMMARY OF KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

Fiercely committed to portraying the plights of workers and peasants, Käthe Kollwitz rendered the grief and harrowing experiences of both historical and contemporary wars in the first decades of the 20th century. Bucking usual artistic trends, Kollwitz adopted printmaking as her primary medium, and drawing from her own socialist and anti-war sentiments, she harnessed the graphic and expressive powers of the medium to present to the public an unvarnished look at the root causes and long-lasting effects of war. While her interest in printmaking and sometimes her subject matter coincided with the Expressionist painters in Germany, she remained independent from them, charting her own path in the burgeoning world of modern art.

In following the example of Goya's print series, The Disasters of War, Kollwitz's depictions of rebellion, poverty, and loss refuse the melodrama of war and sacrifice and instead concentrate on specific personal experiences that can be understood by many. In addition to her powerful visual legacy that still reverberates among graphic protest artists, her role as a recognized, leading female artist of the time ensures her place in the annals of 20th-century modern art.

Anti-advertising protests in France are an inspiring holiday season corrective.

"Consumer Madness":
Photo credit, The Guardian.

Nowhere else except France could there be a "Pee in Peace" parliamentary motion to "ban video ads above urinals and toilets."

But there should be such a movement here. After a half-century or more of reducing human beings to little more than consumer drones, we're reaping what we've sown in the form of pervasive societal cluelessness.

'Advertising breaks your spirit': the French cities trying to ban public adverts, by Angelique Chrisafis (The Guardian)

Activists in Lille recently demonstrated against advertising, while Grenoble has replaced hundreds of adverts with trees and noticeboards. Could cities remove ads altogether?

On a pavement in the northern French city of Lille, an advertising panel rotated pictures of bargain Aldi prawns and blended scotch whisky, competing for the average three-second attention span of pedestrians. Suddenly a 31-year-old hospital nurse darted across the street, unrolled a mass of white paper and began to cover the ads.

“I’ve been treating sick people in emergency rooms for 11 years, but this is about treating a sick society,” he said, as he reached up with other protesters to tape the paper in place. “When you walk down the street, how can you feel happy if you’re constantly being reminded of what you don’t have? Advertising breaks your spirit, confuses you about what you really need and distracts you from real problems, like the climate emergency.”

Passersby began to gather, some baffled, some nodding. Police officers arrived to move the demonstrators on, but they were already on the move, hurrying down into the metro to cover their key target: digital video screens advertising trainers.

For decades France has had one of the most well-organised anti-advertising movements in the world, ranging from guerrilla protests with spray-cans to high-profile court cases. But now the boom in what is artfully called “digital-out-of-home advertising” – eye-catching video screens dotted across urban areas, from train platforms to shopping centres – has sparked a new spate of French protests, civil disobedience and petitions ...

These seven important things about the government shutdown -- and look, not one of them has to do with Covington Catholic High School.

The federal government shutdown has brought the dysfunction of American civilization right to our doorsteps, and yet we've spent the past few days screaming at one another about Catholic school students in DC.

Maybe our Pavlovian reactions to social media prompts are the problem, not the solution. Localism is my mantra, and while defining it hasn't always been easy, to me it comes down to paying attention locally.

How does our local habitat work, and can it work in a more human way?

What's happening outside our front doors and in our own communities?

What can we do at the grassroots level to make life here fairer, better and more equitable?

Social media has been both a blessing and a curse as it pertains to localism. The medium is capable of ready use in reaching numerous households with matters of local importance, but just as often serves as an impediment by monopolizing attention spans over a plethora of national and international issues both fake and real, none of which tend to be capable of addressing by direct grassroots action.

In the sense of ancient Rome, bread and circuses: "A diet of entertainment or political policies on which the masses are fed to keep them happy and docile."

Or in our times, increasingly unhappy, angry and feeling pinned down.

I haven't watched any of the videos documenting the MAGA/Native American molehill. I've read none of the commentaries, screechings and tub-thumpings. Rather, I've been viewing the local scene these past few weeks, and noticing the shutdown becoming increasingly divisive -- and why wouldn't it be?

Since time began, the powerful seek to maintain their privilege by dividing the populace; we're already losing our grip on reality, so why not a few more coffin nails? The article below adroitly surveys the situation, most aspects of which are being ignored as we prepare for the arduous demands of the 10-year challenge on Facebook, or the next student field trip outrage.

As for the government workers being held hostage by the two-party system, it's a siege. If you're feeling bad because you've played no role and done nothing to help them, here's an idea: Do something to help them.

Occam's razor and all; the simplest explanation usually is the best.

---

Time for the U.S. Yellow Vests, by Paul Street (CounterPunch)

Here are seven things you won’t hear much if anything about in the reigning corporate media regarding the ongoing record-setting partial shutdown of the United States federal government:

1: The Longstanding Neoliberal War on “Big Government”: a proper understanding of the shutdown in relation to the longstanding capitalist project of what the leading corporate-neoliberal champion Grover Norquist called “starving the beast,” with “beast” taken to mean “big government.” Norquist wanted, he said, “to cut government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Now might be a good time to recall how Trump’s former top political adviser the faux-populist Steve Bannon (with whom Trump certainly still regularly speaks) described his main policy goal when speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February of 2017: “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Bannon once proudly told an academic: “I am a Leninist.” Bannon said that “Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too.”

Is the current shut-down not an exercise in “administrate state deconstruction” – something right out of the faux-libertarian (more on why I use that term in my next comment) fever dreams of a Norquist, a Bannon, a Charles Koch, a James McGill Buchanan, a Milton Friedman and others of their right wing and so-called free-market ilk? The orange monstrosity says the shut-down could “go on for years.” You can be sure that capitalist politico and ideologues in the Norquist and Bannon mode are hoping the shut-down can last as long as possible with no clear reported disasters resulting. This will help them advance their “drowning” project. “See?” they can proclaim, as former federal employees work for reduced wages at grocery stores and shopping malls, “we don’t really need this big monstrous and totalitarian government after all. All hail the free market!”

2: On the “Left Hand of the State,” That is: any serious discussion of which parts of government are really targeted by right-wing neoliberal “Leninists” like Norquist and Bannon. Beneath their anti-statist discourse about the great conflict between “government bureaucracy” (bad) and the “free market” (good), they wish to aggressively wield state policy of a specifically regressive, plutocratic, and authoritarian — state capitalist — sort. They don’t really want to destroy the state. They want to de-fund and de-legitimize what the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “the left hand of the state”— the programs and services won by past popular struggles and social movements for social justice, equality, environmental protection, and the common good. They do not wish to axe the “right hand of the state” – the parts that provide service and welfare to concentrated wealth and dole out punishment (including rampant mass incarceration and felony-marking) for the poor (and right-handed social-control functions tend to rise when left-handed ones fall). They do not go after America’s Pentagon system, a great cost-plus subsidy for high-tech corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and Boeing.

It’s not about whether the state should work or exist. It’s about who government should work for: the public and the working-class majority or leading centers of concentrated wealth and power.

3: The Bipartisan Terror of Neoliberalism: how richly complicit the contemporary Democratic Party is in the ugly and regressive neoliberal project. The 2018-19 lockout may be primarily owned by Trump and the Republicans (as MSNBC will tell you again and again) but (as “MSDNC” will not report) the Democrats have participated in the assault on positive government functions across the whole long neoliberal era.

The deregulation of corporations rose dramatically under the Jimmy Carter presidency. It was the arch-neoliberal president Bill Clinton who proudly proclaimed that “the era of big government is over” and then signed off on ending poor families’ entitlement to federal cash assistance while advancing racist mass-incarceration (a government program) with his “three strikes” bill. Clinton passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a new continental bill of regulation-free rights for global investment capital. He also worked on to work with Republicans to de-regulate derivatives and the financial sector more broadly. Giant Cold War-level “defense” (empire) budgets – a massive taxpayer windful for corporate war masters – remained the rule under Clinton despite the collapse of the only other planetary “super power” (the Soviet Union) right before the beginning of Clinton’s presidency.

Bill Clinton was a masterful, silver-tongued fake-progressive champion of the U.S. bourgeois state’s movement from left- to right-handed state power when it comes to enforcing social control on the victims of the nation’s intertwined regimes of class rule and racial oppression. So, of course, was Obama, whose richly right-handed neoliberal and imperial policy record I have detailed on numerous prior occasions here and in other venues.

4: Wall Street Dems for the Wall: how key Democrats like Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Senator Minority Leader Charles Schumer have in the past supported border fencing. All three voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and all three supported the 2013 Senate immigration overhaul that passed the Senate, which called for tougher border security including additional physical barrier construction. As Oliver Ortega noted on Counterpunch two years ago, the border wall was a bipartisan project before it became a partisan football under Trump:

“When President Trump signed an executive order last week to complete a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, he was building on decades of bipartisan consensus among lawmakers…In fact, Congress had already approved a border wall not too long ago. In 2006, legislators—including many Democrats—passed the Secure Fence Act, which called for 700 miles of double-fence construction along certain stretches of the border. Trump cited the Bush-era law in the first paragraph of the executive order he signed Wednesday as rationale for his executive authority to order a wall be built.

“Many of the same Democratic leaders now bemoaning Trump’s wall voted for one at the time— Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein….Then-Senator Barack Obama, who as President would later deport a record-high 3 million people during his two terms, lauded the bill on the Senate floor, saying it would ‘help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country.’”

And let’s not forget Bill Clinton’s critical wall-building activities in anticipation of heightened Mexican in-migration expected to result from NAFTA’s decimation of Mexican farmers. As Ortega noted:

“The most pivotal moments in the militarization of the border arguably took place during the time of Obama’s Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton. ‘Operation Gatekeeper,’ passed in 1994, poured billions of dollars into border security. High-intensity stadium lights, motion detectors, and remote video surveillance were installed along key points of the U.S-Mexico divide, and the amount of border patrol agents was increased by roughly a third. With resources deployed to patrol densely populated sectors, undocumented immigrants were often forced to trek barren desert and mountains. Thousands died in their quest for a better life. ‘We will not surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and justice,’ President Clinton said at the time.”

“It’s no coincidence that Operation Gatekeeper followed another landmark in US-Mexico relations that same year: the North American Free Trade Agreement. Under NAFTA, Big Ag flooded the Mexican market with heavily-subsidized corn and other staples, displacing small farmers in Mexico in one of the greatest neoliberal coups in history. The result was a flood of immigrants heading northbound in search of opportunities, accelerating one of the largest mass movements of people in history.”

“In short, the U.S. government, acting in the service of corporate profits, caused the very mass migration it has spent the last 25 years trying to keep out and criminalize.”

5: The Authoritarian Idiocy of Our Holy Constitution, crafted to prevent popular sovereignty in the time of the French Bourbon monarchy: how the manifestly un- and even anti-democratic U.S. Constitution empowers the right-wing-led assault on positive federal government functions by absurdly over-representing the nation’s disproportionately white rural “red” (Republican) states in the presidential selection process and in the composition of the U.S.Senate. We hear nothing about how the Constitution helps feed the partisan polarization that lay behind the current government shutdown by enabling states to create House of Representatives districts so badly gerrymandered on partisan lines that right-wing extremists in Republican districts can exercise political influence far beyond their numbers. And we hear little if anything about how the Constitutional system of “checks and balances” is prone to crippling gridlock when its separate components are controlled by different and conflicting, mutually hostile parties (the Constitution’s framers thought they had avoided this flaw because they foolishly believed or claimed to believe that they had created a scheme that would prevent the emergence of political parties).

6: The Need for a Popular Intervention Beneath and Beyond the Masters’ Election Cycle. The Gilets Jaunes (“yellow vests”) in France have given us a taste of what’s required. Among their list of demands is a real and functioning democracy—popular self-rule. Further to that, they have called for a referendum whereby 700,000 citizen signatories would force the French Parliament to debate and vote on a given law within one year. Evoking the French Revolution of 1789, there have even been calls for a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution meant to create a new French government—a Sixth Republic based on popular sovereignty and majority rule rather than the demands of a de facto corporate-financial dictatorship. Imagine!

The yellow vests have no illusions that their nation’s reigning elite-controlled political parties and time-staggered election cycle offer anything remotely like substantive popular and democratic input on the making of policy. They have already forced the repeal of a regressive fuel tax and are fighting effectively every day and in the streets for things supported by the majority of the French populace.

We, like the French, get to vote every few years? So what? Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where, as the latest and best political science definitely shows, “government policy…reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office” The notion that “we the people” are supposed to sit around with glazed eyes captivated by the endless RussiaGate drama and the already-underway two-year build-up to the next quadrennial electoral extravaganza (U.S. cable news is already obsessing over the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate field when it isn’t panting over crumb of Mueller-Trump-Russia news) while hundreds of thousands of “our” government’s workers go unpaid and key positive government functions are disabled in the present is preposterous from any kind of remotely democratic perspective.

7: The Potency of Direct Action. As the venerable left writer Barbara Ehrenreich recently Tweeted: “The shutdown would come to a sudden end if airport workers stop working and shut down air travel. Business, aka capitalism, cannot function if its minions are all floating in the stratosphere or fattening themselves at Cinnabon. The whole thing should take no more than 3 hours.”

That’s a bit too simple, perhaps. TSA workers lack the legal right to strike and are likely afraid of losing their jobs and the back pay that is due them if they walk off their jobs. Still, the basic direct-action point is sound. Hiring replacement airport screeners for no pay would be no small problem for the federal government. The TSA workers would get strong public support for refusing to work without pay – support that might be modeled on the remarkable airport mobilizations that protested Trump’s Muslim travel ban in early 2017. And what if the airline pilots walked off their jobs, reasonably refusing to fly planes under the unsafe conditions created by the non-payment of air-traffic controllers?

It’s not for nothing that the remarkable Gilet Jaunes struggle and story has been essentially blacked out in U.S. corporate media.

The time has come for direct worker and citizen action against the insane federal shut-down. Since I’m referencing Twitter, let me give the last word to an excellent and dead-on Tweet from the left economist Richard Wolff: “Where are the US ‘yellow vests’ to protest gov’t shutdown and the wall? Millions would sympathize, mobilize. The movement could grow, win demands, and expand just as in France.”

Every day, too: "NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests."

"Don’t ever get old. Don’t ever get rich."

Terry Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Bills, might be interested to know that Charlton Heston retired from the National Rifle Association in 2003 and died in 2008.

One wonders if Pegula ever read a book.

NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests, by Tom Ley (Deadspin)

... How do advanced age and generational wealth affect a person’s ability to have a meaningful discussion about a heavy subject? Not well, it seems. The Times reports that the meeting was full of school-room invocations of Wise Men Of History—Falcons owner Arthur Blank quoted Thomas Paine while Dolphins owner Stephen Ross brought up Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on Selma—and failed metaphors. Bills owner Terry Pegula was in rare form.

Then the pinnacle of foot-shot references from Pegula, who made his fortune in fracking.

And then Pegula came back with whatever the hell this idea is:

Pegula offered that he thought the league was battling a perception and “media problem.” He said it would be great for the league to find a compelling spokesman — preferably a player — to promote all of the good things they were doing together. He suggested that the league could learn from the gun lobby in this regard.

“For years we’ve watched the National Rifle Association use Charlton Heston as a figurehead,” Pegula said. “We need a spokesman.”

ENOUGH New Albany and NAFC Superintendent Brad Snyder offer perspectives on Wednesday's #NationalSchoolWalkout.

When I was in high school at Floyd Central, there was a walkout once. If an eroded memory properly serves, some upperclassmen (and women) were protesting tightened rules v.v. the outdoor smoking area.

What's going down these days strikes me as a great deal more principled.

First, the forthcoming protest as described on electronic media, which didn't exist in 1975, when all we had were ... that's right, smoke signals.

Sorry about that. I'm very much in favor of these protests.

ENOUGH New Albany

New Albany Senior High School• 1020 Vincennes Street , New Albany, IN 47150

Women’s March Youth EMPOWER is calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10am across every time zone on March 14, 2018 to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods. We need action. Students and allies are organizing the national school walkout to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship.

Students and staff have the right to teach and learn in an environment free from the worry of being gunned down in their classrooms or on their way home from school.

Parents have the right to send their kids to school in the mornings and see them home alive at the end of the day.

We are not safe at school. We are not safe in our cities and towns. Congress must take meaningful action to keep us safe and pass federal gun reform legislation that address the public health crisis of gun violence. We want Congress to pay attention and take note: many of us will vote this November and many others will join in 2020.

Join us in saying #ENOUGH!

Superintendent Brad Snyder's perspective from atop the tightrope.

STUDENT PROTESTS

Dear Parents,

This letter provides information regarding school “walk-outs” organized by students.

Many of you may already know that in the aftermath of the Parkland Florida shootings, students have started to raise their voice and others have joined in. At present, certain organizations from around the country are encouraging students to take part in multiple scheduled school “walk-outs.” The walk-outs are being presented as “student led protests” to bring more awareness to current events and societal issues.

We anticipate that some of our students will be interested in participating in these events, and others will not. Thus, we need to remain mindful of the needs of everyone who comes to school ready to learn. We do not plan to interrupt our normal instruction for these protests. Students who wish to protest may do so provided their individual actions do not materially interfere with the function and operation of their school. Students who do not wish to protest will be able to focus on their individual academic pursuits.

Student safety and instruction remain our ultimate concerns.

Sincerely,

Dr. Brad Snyder
Superintendent
NAFC Schools

Q1: Are students legally allowed to protest during the school day?

A1: Yes, as long as their actions and their words do not materially or substantially interfere with the function and operation of their school. The US Supreme Court has ruled in Tinker vs. Des Moines, that students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate. Thus, students do have a constitutional right to protest / free speech. However, at the same time, the same ruling also provides that students do not have a constitutional right to materially and substantially interfere with the function and operation of their school or school activities. Students have both rights and limits.

Q2: Does the School Corporation support these student protests?

A2. The School Corporation is neutral to all student led political protests. As a government institution, we do not endorse student led protests nor do we discourage student freedom of speech.

Q3: Will teachers help the students organize the protest?

A3: No. All forms of student protest must be student led.

Q4: Can teachers participate in the protest?

A4: No. An individual teacher’s action could violate state law and local policy. Unlike students, the court has ruled that teachers and school employees are not protected by the Free Speech clause while they are on duty and working for the public school. While in the line of duty, employees have a requirement of neutrality.

Q5: Can parents protest with their student?

A5: No. A parent may sign their child out of the building at any time.

Q6: What will a protest day look like?

A6: We will provide a safe internal environment for students who desire to protest while maintaining a routine for those who wish to focus on academics. We will provide our expected and routine orderly environment for all students and staff.

Q7: Will my student be safe if they walk-out?

A7: Students will be in the safest position if they remain inside of their school building. We have notified local law enforcement regarding the potential of these walk-out situations in the event some students decide to venture outside on their own.

Q8: Will students be disciplined if they participant in the walk-out?

A8: If an event occurs, it will be a normal school day, and as such, routine attendance practices and policy remain in force. All polices within the student handbook will be our guide to assess acceptable behavior.

Q9: Why is the school “protest neutral” and not willing to help the kids more?

A9: Policy directs school administration to avoid all situations in which personal interests, activities, and associations that conflict with the interests of the Corporation. The Corporation will not support outside non-school activities which threaten the effectiveness or the integrity of its staff or the regular school day. Our goal is to be protest neutral and remain safety vigilant. Student safety is a full time and serious matter. Finally, we do not know how many groups may want to conduct similar civil protests in the future and for what political or societal cause.

Q10: As a parent, what can I do?

A10: Talk with your developing teen. Help them think through and discuss the relevant issues and emotions, emphasize personal decision making, and clarify appropriate behavior.

Satire sinks into farce as Minneapolis "bikelash" marchers park their cars to protest "Nazi Lanes."

Photo credit: Look at all those angry white male drivers.

I hesitate passing along this information, given the existence locally of satire-resistant automobile supremacists. They might get ideas -- then ram the ideas with their monster trucks.

But allow me to offer this prediction: If such a protest occurs in New Albany, the aggrieved won't (in many cases can't) get out of their cars to walk the parade route.

I mean, who wants to carry that bag of Rally's Archer Daniels Midland Burgers through the Nazi Lane when it can rest so very handily right there on the front seat?

How a Satirical Call for Bikelash Became a Real, Invective-Laden Protest, by Jared Goyette (CityLab)

People carried signs reading “Nazi Lanes” at the Minneapolis anti-bike lane demonstration, which several political candidates attended.

You probably haven’t heard of internet prankster Jeremy Piatt, but you may be familiar with his work. A mock GoFundme campaign to “Get Kanye out of debt” was widely covered in the press as serious, with Kanye’s camp eventually having to clarify that no, he didn’t want the money.

Piatt, a graphic designer, recently pulled off a sequel of sorts by stirring up the hornet’s nest that is the the current bike-lane debate in Minneapolis ...


 ... But some people took his invitation seriously. On Sunday, a small crowd of about 15 to 25 people showed up to protest at the designated place, the intersection of 26th and Hennepin Avenue, including two city council candidates, Joe Kovacs and David Schorn.

The protest was even more intense than Piatt had satirically called for: As Minneapolis’s ever-present political Twitter account, @WedgeLIVE, noted, people carried signs that read “Mafia Lanes,” “Suck it Lanes,” and “Nazi Lanes.” For extra effect, sign posts were painted red to look like they were dripping with blood.

Pleasant Ridge, meet Louisville City FC: "These people having their homes is more important than a soccer stadium."

First a protest by New Albany Housing Authority residents at last Saturday's Harvest Homecoming parade; now the targeted at Pleasant Ridge taking the consciousness-raising across the bridge.

These are interesting times, eh?

Last year John Neace donated to Trey Hollingsworth, a Republican, but the Louisville City FC stadium drive is Greg Fischer's gig, and he is a Democrat (?), as is Jeff Gahan, who idolizes Fischer, and who recently waged a hostile takeover of public housing in New Albany; now the Democrats opposed to Hollingsworth decry the mayor of Charlestown (a Republican) for hopping into bed with Neace, but Gahan gets a free pass for doing the same thing as Bob Hall, because ...

Because why, exactly?

Apart from unalloyed hypocrisy, that is? 

'Better ways to do business': Pleasant Ridge residents protest LouCity FC chairman at game, by Grace Schneider (Courier-Journal)

Nearly two dozen residents of Pleasant Ridge, a neighborhood in Charlestown, Indiana, picketed outside Louisville City FC's Saturday night game to highlight their opposition to the city of Louisville's involvement with team chairman John Neace.

Carrying signs and a banner, residents handed out pamphlets that said Neace "is trying to bulldoze our homes."

They shouted "Go FC" to fans headed into Slugger Field and told them they were there only to protest Neace, the team's biggest investor.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has proposed using a $30-million bond issue to buy property and improve infrastructure in the Butchertown neighborhood east of downtown to assist the stadium project. Metro Council members are scheduled to vote on a bond ordinance Oct. 26.

Mike Pence's NFL walkout proves our former governor still isn't "worth a bucket of warm piss."

About which we are thankful that Dave Zirin sets matters straight about John Nance Garner's quote. Warm spit never made any sense to me.

Mike Pence’s NFL Walkout Was a Cheap, Transparent Stunt ... For which taxpayers picked up the tab, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

Vice President John Nance Garner once said that being the vice president was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” (Many know this quote as “bucket of warm spit.” It’s “piss”.) The current holder of that office, Mike Pence showed on Sunday that Garner, if alive, would owe an apology to piss buckets everywhere.

Pence used the NFL to star in a cheap, transparent political stunt. The narrative Pence tried—and failed—to sell was that he showed up at the Colts-49ers game in Indianapolis and then supposedly left in a huff after being shocked—SHOCKED!—at seeing the San Francisco 49ers kneel. After assumedly taking a whiff of his personal smelling salts, he immediately released a statement that magically was already prepared, which read in part, “I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.”

Except ...

It’s not what happened. It’s how it happened. This was staged: a taxpayer subsidized stunt aimed at attacking dissenting black athletes. It was revealed in record time to be yet another toxic effort by this administration to divide people along racial lines and distract us from a train wreck of an administration, described by Senator Bob Corker as “an adult day care center” that looks after a big orange baby.

Skip to the conclusion ...

This was amateur hour fraud. It was Gulf of Tonkin for idiots: a ham handed effort to isolate people brave enough to dissent in the face of the most powerful people in the world and raise issues of racism that this administration is too craven to discuss. It’s also very disturbing. The very week Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke about Trump’s “respect for the 1st Amendment,” we had a staged spectacle with the highest levels of government attempting to intimidate and coerce people to not exercise those rights. It’s disgusting and another example of Pence’s degradation, his Faustian bargain with this administration. If Mike Pence thinks he can deodorize Trump with a fraudulent photo-op, he should know that even the contents of John Nance Garner’s bucket gives off less of a stench.