printThe moron media, reporters like CNN’s Sara Sidner front-and-center, have framed the Ferguson Report released by the Department of Justice as offering conclusive proof of institutionalized racism. With pride can Sidner The Inciter tweet out praise for her impartial reporting, but that doesn’t make it so.
#Ferguson releases names of Officers: Rick Henke & William Mudd resigned yesterday over racist emails unearthed by @TheJusticeDept
— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) March 6, 2015
#Ferguson names one of he employees fire for racist emails: Mary Ann Twitty. Who is she? The city's court clerk. An Important position.
— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) March 6, 2015
.@cnnbrk Dept of Justice Finds Systematic Discrimination Against African Americans in #Ferguson @evanperez reporting from #Washington
— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) March 3, 2015
The Ferguson Report is the best of pseudoscience. Most in the media, Sidner for one, do not appear to have the wherewithal to understand that confounding variables are at play here: The reason blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped by law enforcement is that there are differences in rates of offense between blacks and whites (and Asian, by the way, who’re conveniently omitted from the “disparate impact” formula used by our racism-spotters, because they’re likely to commit fewer offenses than whites).
Not even Radley Balko’s plaintive account, illustrating the correlation between poverty and lack of compliance with the law, manages to make the case for institutionalized racism, as Megyn Kelly mindlessly called it.
Radley writes:
“These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don’t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.”
All Americans groan under too many laws and regulations. The police and government see us all “as little more than sources of revenue.” Some of us find it harder to comply with these many, mostly-unjust laws.
Repeal unnecessary laws—and certainly laws criminalizing the use of drugs and their sale—but stop the racism libel.
With respect to the open season on cops in Ferguson, Missouri, it’s hard to fault Andrew C. McCarthy when he suggests the following about politicians:
When public officials signal to the mob that its anger is so justified that its criminal behavior, even if not exactly condoned, will be rationalized, minimized, or ignored, they are facilitating criminality. So of course they should be deemed contributorily culpable when the criminality happens.
What about members of a media-congressional complex who pose as impartial agents when they are in fact agents provocateurs?