We need an end to the militarization of our police, which is federally driven. We need real accountability, including national databases of police violence and relentless DOJ attention to police abuses.
Yet when the CRITICAL role of purchased, corporate politicians in the creation of this police state America is becoming is mentioned, the Third Way circles the wagons and refuses to demand accountability from our politicians. No, we are to cheer pretty speeches instead, even though they come with no intent for real change. The militarization continues.
Exactly what we have come to expect from our corporate government when it comes to outrages like this.
We get cynical, pretty speeches and cheering propaganda voices, and nothing more.
Nothing gets better anymore. No one is ever serious about actual change for the better.
In fact, the corporate politicians making pretty speeches are relentlessly making things worse:
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025390424
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/aclu-police-militarization-swat_n_2813334.html
It's almost certain that if the police agencies cooperate, the ACLU will find that the militarization trend has accelerated since Kraska's studies more than a decade ago. All of the policies, incentives and funding mechanisms that were driving the trend then are still in effect now. And most of them have grown in size and scope.
The George W. Bush administration actually began scaling down the Byrne and COPS programs in the early 2000s, part of a general strategy of leaving law enforcement to states and localities. But the Obama administration has since resurrected both programs. The Byrne program got a $2 billion surge in funding as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, by far the largest budget in the program's 25-year history. Obama also gave the COPS program $1.55 billion that same year, a 250 percent increase over its 2008 budget, and again the largest budget in the program's history. Vice President Joe Biden had championed both programs during his time in the Senate.
The Pentagon's 1033 program has also exploded under Obama. In the program's monthly newsletter (Motto: "From Warfighter to Crimefighter", its director announced in October 2011 that his office had given away a record $500 million in military gear in fiscal year 2011, which he noted, "passes the previous mark by several hundred million dollars." He added, "I believe we can exceed that in FY 12.”
Then there are the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism grants. The Center for Investigative Reporting found in a 2011 investigation that since 2001, DHS has given out more than $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many of which have been used to purchase military-grade guns, tanks, armor, and armored personnel carriers. The grants have gone to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Canyon County, Idaho; and Tuscaloosa, Ala.
It's united oligarchy, not divided democracy. And it's united oligarchy with a relentless propaganda machine to try to obscure the truth.
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