Michael Moore: Disarm the police

[woo me with science]

22. Note the immediate Third Way pushback to any suggestion that actual policy changes need to occur.

The MO of corporate Third Way propaganda is to give lip service to the disempowerment of minority groups while DEFENDING THE MALIGNANT POLICIES THAT SUSTAIN IT and attacking those who would implicate Third Way politicians in its perpetuation and escalation.

Police militarization has been aggressively expanded under the Obama administration. Militarization of our police departments is a *bipartisan* effort of corporatists in both parties, right along with mass surveillance, the assaults on journalism, and the persecution of whistleblowers. The programs and legislation that are turning our police departments into paramilitary forces come through Homeland Security and the Pentagon, and are being used to suppress and intimidate dissent, exploit communities, and fill lucrative private prisons with slave labor as the nation is corporatized and Americans are made into a nation of low-paid wage slaves.

The entire Democratic leadership opposed Grayson amendment to stop arming cops with DOD weapons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025390424

Police Militarization (including the Obama administration's role)
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&quot , 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.

The corporate corruption of this nation will never end as long as we fail to recognize how we are being manipulated by politicians and their propaganda machines that claim to care about these problems, but deliberately rule out discussion of actual policy changes to address them and smear those who attempt to begin such discussions. Notice how our corporate media never even MENTIONS the complicity of corporate politicians in expanding these programs that militarize police.

That is why the lies of neoliberals are so dangerous.