Saturday, November 21, 2020

Bad Ideas


Kyle Rittenhouse is charged with first degree intentional homicide and first degree reckless homicide in the shooting deaths of two persons, and with attempted first degree homicide in a third shooting, at protests in late August following the killing of an unarmed black man. Accused of the shooting death of two persons and wounding of another at a racial justice/anti-police protest, he now has been bailed out of Kenosha County Detention Center in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Rittenhouse was released after a conservative organization named Fight Back put up $2 million cash bail, some of it by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and actor Ricky Schroder, and left Twitter is up in arms (pun intended) by Schroder's contribution.  So, too, is The Young Turks' Aida Rodriguez, who claims

If he would have been black, he would have been under the jail. There would be no two-million dollar bond and I'm just tired of them trying to normalize the other side's opinion when the other side is just evil and wrong.



Would there have been no two million dollar bond, with the alleged perpetrator still in jail, had the accused been black? There is no way to be sure but a few weeks before the murderous incident in Kenosha we learned

A Minnesota nonprofit has bailed out defendants from Twin Cities jails charged with murder, violent felonies, and sex crimes, as it seeks to address a system that disproportionately incarcerates Black people and people of color.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) received $35 million in donations in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, with many of those donations intended to help protesters who were jailed during the demonstrations and riots in May.

The group’s mission was celebrated on social media with praise from Hollywood celebrities, like Steve Carell, Cynthia Nixon, and Seth Rogen. 

There was another particularly famous individual who celebrated the group's mission. (Read on to the end to find out whom.)  Perhaps not surprisingly, given focus on police shooting of unarmed blacks, the spate of donations

was an unexpected windfall.  Prior tax returns in 2017 and 2018 show MFF would pull in about $100,000 in donations.  

We initially got some raised eyebrows especially when we ramped up our activity from $1000 a day to now $100,000 a day, raised eyebrows from our bankers,” said Greg Lewin, the interim executive director of the fund.

Among those bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) is a suspect who shot at police, a woman accused of killing a friend, and a twice convicted sex offender, according to court records reviewed by the FOX 9 Investigators.  

According to attempted murder charges, Jaleel Stallings shot at members of a SWAT Team during the riots in May.  Police recovered a modified pistol that looks like an AK-47.  MFF paid $75,000 in cash to get Stallings out of jail.  

Darnika Floyd is charged with second degree murder, for stabbing a friend to death.  MFF paid $100,000 cash for her release. 

Christopher Boswell, a twice convicted rapist, is currently charged with kidnapping, assault, and sexual assault in two separate cases.  MFF paid $350,00 in cash for his release. 

“The last time we were down there, the clerk said, ‘we hate it when you bail out these sex offenders, that is what they said',” Lewin said. 

Personally, I'm not crazy about it, either, especially if it is a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree sexual assault.  Nor is attempted murder, alleged to have involved a weapon nearly identical to Rittenhouse's weapon of choice, a minor charge.

So we learn that blacks, too, are allowed to be released on bail in our criminal justice system.  I can think of better uses of my money than setting (temporarily) free blacks, whites, or any other individuals accused of violent crime, but people are free to spend their money on whatever (within the law) they wish.

Rodriguez stated also

The Washington Post is having a sit-down with Kyle because we want to know what a murderer is thinking and then we wonder why the world and our country is in disarray- because the media, the mainstream media is constantly adding fuel to the fire.

There are many reasons the world and the country are in disarray, but its habit of "shedding light"- as Rodriguez disparagingly puts it- on major events is not one of them.. The media fails in its mission when it avoids shedding light on such matters as the role of the financial and housing industries in prompting the Great Recession or the periodic support given to eugenics by Donald Trump.

She continues, unfortunately "I don't want to hear what he has to say, right- I don't want to hear what he has to say, he's a criminal, a cold-blooded murderer." Well, yes, probably he is, which is no reason he should be ignored. And because the murder he committed was partially motivated by political ideology, there is even more reason to interview him.

There are countries in which the media doesn't dare "shed light" on political affairs or affairs of the state. They would include most notably mainland China, Syria, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and North Korea, nations in which journalists who report the news objectively sometimes are never heard from again. 

If Rodriguez believes that it's foolhardy or dangerous to bail out people who are accused of serious, violent crimes, her criticism would apply to contributors to the inaptly-named Minnesota Freedom Fund. Those so generous do demonstrate that the USA is, as Rodriguez terms it, "in disarray."

Alas, they would regrettably include the junior Senator from California, who is now the Vice President-elect. It's a nation and world in disarray, or perhaps extreme danger. Donald Trump and Mike Pence thankfully are being dispossessed of power, in favor of 78-year-old Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the latter believing individuals accused of a violent felony deserves swift release from detention pending trial. At least she has no such sympathy- presumably- for Kyle Rittenhouse, a state of affairs most fortunate.

 


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