Thursday, September 22, 2016
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
The Chaos Continues
There was another night of rioting in Charlotte, North Carolina. This time the city’s business district was targeted. Apparently the mob heard the demand of Nation of Islam leader B. J. Murphy for an economic boycott of the city.
Here are some observations after a second day of anarchy in Charlotte.
First, where is President Obama? For nearly eight years, he has commented on virtually everything from pop culture and sports. But when Charlotte is being trashed by rioters, the president can’t seem to find a camera or microphone.
Ninety-three percent of black Americans voted for him. Presumably he has some influence. He is a constitutional law lecturer. This is an excellent time for him to remind the rioters that everybody — not just accused Muslim extremists, but even police officers — has a right to due process.
There is a report, courtesy of White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, that Obama addressed the rioting in a call to the mayor of Charlotte. Obama told her that “any protests should be conducted in a peaceful manner and that local law enforcement should find ways to calmly and productively engage those protesting.”
The mayor has no ability to make the protestors be peaceful. And how do police officers “calmly” engage with rioters? That phone call had one purpose — to tell the mayor to make sure the police were not assertive in restoring order. The result, sadly, was obvious.
If you watched video from the streets of Charlotte last night, the response to the rioting was pitiful. The police were vastly outnumbered and were under orders to keep their distance from the rioting. The mob controlled the streets.
Multiple stores and business were ransacked. One man was viciously beaten in a parking garage. Reporters covering the riots were attacked. In one instance, rioters attempted to throw a photographer into a fire.
One man was shot during the violence and is reportedly on life support. Late last night, Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard.
Second, journalists need a refresher course on the plain meaning of English words. Breaking windows, stealing cigarettes, Red Bull and drugs, attacking journalists and other innocent bystanders is not a protest. That is a riot. It has no relationship whatsoever to a black police officer shooting an armed black man. But most media continued to refer to the violence as “protests.”
Finally, I want to review some statistics. There is little evidence to support the left-wing narrative that there is a widespread problem in American law enforcement of black men being killed by racist white cops. For example:
- More whites are shot every year by police than blacks. The Washington Post reports today, “Law enforcement officials have fatally shot 706 people this year, 163 of them black men.” That means just 23% of fatal police shootings involved black men and the vast majority of those shootings were justified. (See below.)
- A Harvard study found that there was zero racial bias by police in the use of deadly force. The black economics professor who conducted the study said, “It is the most surprising result of my career.” The New York Times conceded, “The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold.” But they have that image because of media bias.
- According to data from the Department of Justice, and confirmed by a study conducted by a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, black police officers were 3.3 times more likely to use deadly force at a crime scene than were other officers.
- According to Heather Mac Donald, a research fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black criminal than a black citizen is to be shot by a police officer.
- The Washington Post conducted a massive study of police shootings last year and concluded: “But only a small number of the shootings — roughly 5 percent — occurred under the kind of circumstances that raise doubt and draw public outcry. . . The vast majority of individuals shot and killed by police officers were . . . armed with guns and killed after attacking police officers or civilians or making other direct threats.”
Boeing’s Bad Bet
Boeing is in the business of selling airplanes. I get that. But sometimes corporate responsibility demands more than putting profits first. Sadly, Boeing was among the companies that rushed to do business with Tehran as soon as President Obama lifted sanctions on the rogue regime. And yesterday the Obama Administration formally approved the sale of 80 Boeing airliners to Iran.
The deal reportedly includes a restriction “to ensure that the planes will be used exclusively for commercial passenger use, and cannot be resold or transferred to another entity.” In other words, we don’t want Iran using the planes for military purposes.
But how exactly is that going to be enforced? Iran is already using its civilian airliners for exactly this purpose, running troops and supplies into Syria on a regular basis.
Obama has done everything he can to appease Iran. He lifted sanctions, sent the regime plane loads of cash and even looked the other way when it failed to comply with the terms of the nuclear deal. On a day when his failure to help African Americans (by stopping the rioting in Charlotte) is on full display, he continues doing everything he can to help Iran.
What is less clear is why Boeing would bet on the Iranian regime — the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism — to keep its word.
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