 |
| That's America! Via |
This stunning New Yorker cover illustration has gotten a lot of notice as well:
 |
| Sept 1, 2014 New Yorker Magazine cover art by Eric Drooker |
He's witnessed too much, too many times, too many places, seen too much death and destruction....
And now, maybe, Americans in general are waking up to what's going on.
Che,
ReplyDeleteSomewhat off-topic; the two gofundme websites that were collecting money for Officer Asshole Wilson were shut down over the weekend. There is a third site collecting for him as well; the jerk has had three-quarters of a million bucks donated in his behalf to "help him in his time of need". Yeah, well, the dumbasses who sent donations in must not realize that 1) he is currently still receiving pay, 2) gofundme takes a 5% fee out of all donations for itself, and 3) the Asshole has not been charged with anything and may never be, in which case, what the fuck are the donations going to be used for?
Anyway, it appears that two of the donation sites have gone silent after collecting a ton o' money, leading one to wonder if someone absconded with the money. Ok, it maybe only leads ME to wonder, but I am "one", right?
Strange shit. Maybe the money was invested in Malaysian Airlines. Anyway, here's an article on the disappearing cash; you have to read the whole thing, although I'll only post the opening paras:
************
After raising more than $400,000 for the police officer who killed an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., two donation pages were shut down without explanation over the weekend.
On the crowdsourced fundraising site GoFundMe, "Support Officer Darren Wilson" and "Support Officer Wilson" - two separate pages with similar names - raised $235,750 and $197,620, respectively, for the officer who shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9.
A similar page for Brown's family, run by the family's attorney, Benjamin Crump, had raised $316,194 as of Monday afternoon. [...]
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/01/238282_fundraising-web-pages-for-ferguson.html?rh=1
Hard to get "off topic" around here, as just about anything is fair game. I'd heard about the one Wilson site getting shut down. Then another one was said to open up that was at least for a valid outfit (police benevolent or something). Didn't know it had been shut down, too. Funny. Interesting that GoFundMe says they didn't shut them down. Looks like both are frauds, tho, which is even funnier. A fool and his money, yadda yadda.
DeleteThe Michael Brown Memorial GoFundMe site is up to $323,000 now. It seems to be completely legit.
Update: The StL Post Dispatch asserts authoritatively that there is nothing nefarious going on:
Delete" A police charity has stopped taking donations for Darren Wilson — the Ferguson officer at the center of a national shooting controversy — until determining the tax implications of spending proceeds on his legal bills, organizers said Tuesday.
“There is nothing sinister going on,” said Jeff Roorda, a board member speaking for Shield of Hope, a nonprofit arm of the Fraternal Order of Police. “We just may have to make it a legal fund rather than a charitable fund, but it all depends on what the tax folks have to say.”"
Mmmkay.
Wouldn't Wilson have access to free legal representation from the FOP attorneys, in any case?
ReplyDeleteWhatever. I think someone is making a ton of money off the whole thing. I also think that it would be cheaper, all around, if cops would just quit shooting unarmed people. Then no-one would need a "legal fund".
And I swear to God, I will NOT read any more comment sections on articles about the matter of police shootings. (Well, except here.) It makes me feel wretched and hopeless. Fucking racist Americans creeping out from every crevice in the internet like roaches in a dark room.
Damb right.
DeleteI've been shocked. Really. I don't think I've lived a particularly sheltered life, but I don't ever recall seeing the level of extreme racist hatred on the internet that I've seen practically everywhere since the killing of Michael Brown. It's an order of magnitude worse than the racist reaction to the killing of Trayvon Martin. It's sick and sick-making. Its prevalence is shocking. But we wouldn't be seeing so much of it if it weren't serving a segment of very powerful interests...
Meanwhile, the GoFundMe funds for Michael Brown's killer have raised plenty of money and plenty of questions. According to news reports, the couple of hundred grand raised by one of the sites was "donated" to the other site, the one run by the FOP, or whatever. They say they need the money because the legal costs to defend Wilson could easily bankrupt them (oh poor babies), and that would just be terrible. Cough.
The idea of ceasing the killing is apparently far too radical for any serious consideration. And yet, interestingly, where public outrage has boiled over -- such as in Albuquerque and some other places, including apparently St. Louis -- the rate of homicides by police may increase briefly, but then it seems to start a slow decline. Police become more careful about use of force in general and about use of lethal force in particular. Someone tells them to back off. It's not a neat picture, though, because of other issues involved, but at least from what I've seen, public outrage can result in some positive policy changes -- for a while.