Addressing the causes of crime in cities

 Three black mayors are getting to the root of the problem.

Woke works

 

Unwelcome

Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young (D) has urged President Trump to cancel an upcoming visit to the city amid the coronavirus outbreak, saying that he's worried the trip will send the "wrong message" to residents currently under a stay-at-home order.

Trump is slated to visit the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine on Memorial Day and participate in a ceremony honoring U.S. armed forces.

  The Hill

There's no way he's not going.

"That President Trump is deciding to pursue non-essential travel sends the wrong message to our residents, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 virus," Young said in a statement. "I wish that the president, as our nation’s leader, would set a positive example and not travel during this holiday weekend."

As the saying goes, wish in one hand....

Young added that in addition to sending a "conflicting message" to residents, Trump's trip would require a financial obligation that the city is not in a position to handle right now. Young said that Baltimore is losing on average $20 million per month and that it can't "afford to shoulder" costs associated with personnel and equipment.

And now that he's disparaged the big baby, Trump will be especially eager to cause the city more hardship.

“The brave men and women who have preserved our freedoms for generations did not stay home and the President will not either as he honors their sacrifice by visiting such a historic landmark in our Nation’s history," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement to The Hill.

Tinpot.

A spokesperson for [Republican governor Larry] Hogan told The Baltimore Sun that his office is "honored that the president and first lady have chosen to spend Memorial Day at Fort McHenry."

Of course. But then, why....

Hogan and Young are not expected to attend the event.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh my. Baltimore doesn't love Melania

She'll never go out in public again.  And he'll be on Twitter trashing Baltimore (again).

And who the hell booked her to Baltimore?  Stephanie Grisham?  That's still her top staffer, I think.  After Trump trashed Baltimore ("rat-infested", "dangerous", "filthy") to put down Elijah Cummings, I wouldn't think it would take much of a genius to know there'd be risk.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus wept

Soooo much wrong with that.





He has to keep attacking to stay alive, like a shark has to keep swimming.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Damage control - for the umpteenth time

And then he'll go back and tweet another dig at Cummings and/or Sharpton.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Taking aim at another dark face

Can't say I'm an Al Sharpton fan, but Trump was. I like how His Lardship hedged his bets on this one by admitting that he went to some Al Sharpton events, but "seldom". That's because he knows there are many pictures online of the two of them together.  Of course, it was always Sharpton begging for favors.

Old Lardass is still getting blowback from far and wide for his racist screed about Elijah Cummings and Baltimore.





(FYI, AoDespair, David Simon, is producer and head writer of the hit show The Wire.)





Salute!

David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," an HBO series set in Baltimore, on Saturday denounced President Trump.

[...]

"If this empty-suit, race-hating fraud had to actually visit West Baltimore for five minutes and meet any of the American citizens who endure there, he’d wet himself," Simon said on Twitter moments after Trump targeted Cummings and his congressional district.

Simon added later that the "president is 'literally' a simplistic, racist moron."

"I am 'literally' the guy writing stuff about the last century of U.S. policy, about the drug war and mass incarceration, about Brown v. and white flight, about all of modern U.S. history to which your kind stays mute," he said in a tweet defending his criticism.

[...]

"The Wire" was a renowned HBO series that documented many issues facing the city of Baltimore, including drug abuse and police corruption. Simon served as the show's executive producer and head writer.

  The Hill

"Taintsniffing moron" is a pretty good one.

So, after all that, why is Trump nasty-tweeting about Al Sharpton this morning?  Apparently, Sharpton is scheduled to...

...hold a news conference in Baltimore to decry Trump’s derogatory weekend tweets directed at the city and an African American congressman.

Sharpton, a former Democratic presidential candidate and MSNBC talk-show host, is scheduled to appear in Baltimore alongside Michael Steele, who formerly chaired the Republican National Committee and served as Maryland’s lieutenant governor.

The two plan to address “Trump’s remarks and bipartisan outrage in the black community,” according to an advisory.

  WaPo

And to my point about His Lardship hedging his bets...

Sharpton responded Monday morning on Twitter by sharing a photograph of Trump attending a 2006 conference hosted by Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network.

Trump is nothing if not transparent.

“Trump at NAN Convention 2006 telling James Brown and Jesse Jackson why he respects my work. Different tune now,” Sharpton wrote.

Trump soon responded on Twitter, saying that Sharpton would “always ask me to go to his events” as “a personal favor.”

[...]

Sharpton later continued the back-and-forth on Twitter, writing: “Trump says I’m a troublemaker & con man. I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a con man he would want me in his cabinet.”

[...]

Steele also spoke out about Trump over the weekend, raising a question in a tweet about “how much more of Trump’s incessant whining, tweeting, bullying, & racism are we willing to put up with.”

Later this morning, His Lardship is still at it, but trying again to hedge his bets.






Baltimore was once great and he wants it to be great again (in fact, he apparently can make it happen all by himself from the "beautiful oval shaped office"), but Elijah Cummings - a black man - can't do it.  As David Simon pointed out to some imbeciles on his Twitter account, Baltimore has a mayor, and Maryland has a governor - they're in direct line from the president.  The people's representative in Congress can only make his voice heard.

What "crew" is he talking about?  They'll all be black, you can bet on that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Doubling down, of course

A disgusting prick and poor excuse for a human being.

UPDATE:



Touché.

P.S.re Baltimore

Well, well.

Oh, Snap!

Can I get an AMEN!?

The Baltimore Sun editorial board ripped President Trump as the "most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office" on Saturday in a scorching piece after Trump referred to Rep. Elijah Cummings' (D-Md.) 7th congressional district, which includes west Baltimore, as a "rat and rodent infested mess."

In a scathing column, the editors of one of the country's oldest newspapers wrote that Trump himself had more power to affect immediate change in Baltimore than Cummings does, who Trump also targeted for criticism Saturday, and urged him to use the power of the presidency to affect positive change.

  The Hill

Kudos to the Baltimore Sun.

Better to have a few rats than to be one

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb."

In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments.

[...]

And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.

  Baltimore Sun

Mr. Asshole President doesn't deserve the respect Cummings gives him in this tweet.

Click here to show your love for the Baltimore Sun editorial and continue reading the piece.

Also: Impeach the motherfucker.

UPDATE:

Scared, but not speechless

House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings is making him stew.







That's the loudest dog whistle on the planet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Also, I thought his complaint about "The Squad" was supposedly because they talked bad about America.  Where is Baltimore?

UPDATE:

Police state on trial in Baltimore

The Baltimore Sun is reporting on some wild roguery in the police force - the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force - that seems more common than rogue, including police officers robbing people, and Charlie Pierce has a commentary on it with this conclusion:

Ask yourself how calm you would be if, every day, corrupt cops came up and rousted you because they didn’t think you had a legitimate reason … for owning a backpack. We’ve gone backwards on [criminal justice reform], like we have on so many others. The ground we have to make up is about the width of a continent now. And that’s just to get back to 1789.

  Charles P Pierce

Of course, this is nothing new, and if you want to watch an entire documentary on mobster police that will leave you shaking your head, watch The Seven Five on Netflix.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Coming to a City Near You

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Freddie Gray Killing

After seven months and four trials, Baltimore prosecutors have not secured a single conviction against officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, who sustained fatal injuries in the back of a police van.

  Guardian

And if you read that article, you will be convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that the last trial coming up will not get a conviction either.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wacko, Texas ... Another Shootout

WACO (May 18, 2015) About 170 suspects arrested after a shootout between rival biker gangs and police Sunday at Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant that left nine dead and 18 injured were ordered held in lieu of $1 million bonds Monday while investigators continued the painstaking process of gathering evidence at the crime scene.

  KWTX

Baltimore

The near-complete economic abandonment of urban America since the U.S. unconditionally surrendered in "the War on Poverty"...The labeling of every social program as "welfare" (and the racialization of that word) -- the criminal justice system didn't do these things. The cops, courts and prisons were given the job of controlling & containing what the other elements of the system refused to deal with.

[...]

Problem with focusing solely on police violence (like: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/ …) is it glides over the economic violence that conditions it. Libertarian [...] focus on cops is understandable, and it is what #BlackLivesMatter is proximately about, but the cops did not destroy the black industrial working class, or finance the slumlords, or redline poor neighborhoods.

  Billmon Twitter