The number and scope of police abuses in the US is escalating out of control.
The LAPD’s recent actions, I hope, are a tipping point where conservatives will get their heads out of the ground and stop being fawning holster-sniffers. It’s long past time to start demanding real accountability from law enforcement, and it’s even longer past due to take a pretty good whack at their compensation packages and their spending on military and para-military toys.
This is an excellent article.
I was recently witness to an abandoned and empty warehouse fire, next to my place of work. It was started by some vagrants trying to keep warm, and if I had one handy, I probably could have extinguished it myself with a long garden-hose.
Instead, we had 70 firefighters on the scene, about 15 cops, paramedics, two-helicoptors - and even 2 scary-looking, totally-black Homeland Security SUV’s. Even the Red Cross had to show up with their donut truck to hand out free coffee as there were so many public-safety officials standing around doing nothing.
Just as important as the security-paranoia is to the growth of these Gov’t paramilitaries, it is also about the Gov’t funding spigots that were opened without control after 9/11, for everything from TSA to Customs to your local police department. I call it the “Bin Laden Tax.”
I think Bin Laden will destroy America after all, but even he didn’t realize how it would eventually do it.
I agree. The troop deployment is drawing down, and there is no reason for a lot of this patriot act stuff anymore after 12 years. We can and should have a case for drawing down the American occupation. It should be as much a part of our platform as the second amendment.