Category Archives: Criminal Justice Reform

A Democratic Project 2029.

Posted on by

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 embraced by the Trump regime has made the US virtually unrecognizable by creating an autocratic oligarchy that panders to the wealthy and the powerful and erodes the individual rights guaranteed by our Constitution. And it’s likely to get much worse as Project 2025 is only roughly 50 percent implemented!

When a Democratic president and congressional majority is elected to supplant the MAGA miscreants (assuming we have free and fair elections), we need to be prepared to not only restore our democracy but to improve it with a Project 2029. MAGA has shown us the way to quickly reshape the US according to its ideology. Democrats must not shy away from doing the same. Following are my suggestions:

1 – Immediately nullify all of Trump’s Executive Orders.

2 – Pass legislation to restore all powers to the legislative branch as enumerated in the Constitution.

3 – Order the Attorney General (AG) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to begin prosecutions of those who participated in the Trump regime’s many violations of the Constitution.

4 – Pass legislation to eliminate immunity for all federal employees past, present and future.

5 – Order the AG and DOJ to begin prosecutions of all international war crimes, including those committed by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes.

6 – Reduce, restructure or eliminate DHS, ICE and CBP.

7 – Break up corporate monopolies. No company should ever control more than 10% of any industry.

8 – Impeach Justices Thomas and Alito for their inexcusable grift and unethical behavior and replace them with liberal justices. If necessary, increase the size of SCOTUS to 12 with nonpartisan appointments.

9 – Eliminate financial and weapons support for Israel’s Zionist government until such time it demonstrates respect for the human rights of all people under its control.

10 – To prevent corporations and billionaires from further corrupting our elections, pass legislation to repeal the decisions of Citizens United v FEC and Buckley v Valeo. Ban private campaign donations beyond $500 and provide government funding for all legitimate federal candidates so members of Congress can work instead of spending 40 percent of their time fundraising.

11 – Pass legislation to require every high school graduate to pass a thorough civics test.

12 – Pass legislation to eliminate the electoral college and make election day a national holiday. Automatically register all high school graduates and naturalized citizens to vote.

13 – Pass legislation reinstating the Fairness Doctrine to clearly label and separate opinion from news. Revoke the licenses of any media outlet that fails to do so.

14 – Pass legislation to fully restore all civil liberties, including a woman’s right to choose.

15 – Pass legislation to ban any convicted felon from holding public office.

16 – Pass legislation to place strict controls on government surveillance and invasions of privacy.

17 – Expand IRS, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security regulators to catch fraudsters.

18 – Make the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes by eliminating tax loopholes.

19 – Eliminate all tax shelters, both on and offshore.

20 – Restore funding for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.

21 – Restore funding for public education and research grants for universities. Pass legislation to ban government funding of private religious schools.

22 – Enforce rules for churches and 501c3s that ban direct political engagement at risk of losing tax-free status.

23 – Pass legislation instituting term limits on Congress – 4 terms for the House, 3 terms for the Senate.

24 – Restore funding for USAID and other international aid groups, including the UN.

25 – Hold the Department of Defense accountable for failing audits and its inability or refusal to account for more than $21 trillion in spending.

26 – Create a humane and practical immigration policy that accepts refugees and asylum-seekers, that provides renewable work permits for necessary workers, and that provides a path to citizenship.

27 – Address homelessness and food insecurity by recognizing that no one who works or has a disability should be unhoused or hungry.

28 – Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and aggressively address climate change.

29 – Move quickly to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels.

30 – Ban drilling and oil exploration on federal lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

31 – Claw back all emoluments gained by the Trump family and members of the regime. Pass legislation requiring that anyone who uses a public office for financial gain be fired and prosecuted.

32 – Pass legislation to reinforce separation of church and state.

33 – Restore an accurate account of US history, including the genocide of indigenous people, slavery and Jim Crow.

34 – Pass legislation restoring the Voting Rights Act.

35 – Pass legislation creating Medicare for all.

36 – Notify all federal employees that anyone who makes decisions based on politics and religion will be fired.

37 – Rebuild the East Wing of the White House and restore the Kennedy Rose Garden.

38 – Pass legislation reaffirming our commitment to NATO and all long-standing treaties.

39 – Remove the Trump name from every federal building and edifice and make it illegal to display the name on any structure other than portable toilets.

40 – Instead of an eternal flame, equip Trump’s eventual grave with modesty panels and a catchment basin for the legions of people who will want to piss on it.

The Trump Regime’s Toxic Racism.

Posted on by

The MAGA movement began with racist attacks on Mexican immigrants and attacks on political correctness (aka courtesy and civility). It incorporated the slogan “America First” previously used by the Ku Klux Klan. And it gained momentum with the claim that Critical Race Theory was being taught in K-12 classes. (It was only taught in law schools to help attorneys understand the disadvantages faced by minorities.)

And now that Trump is, once again, in the Oval Office, his blatant racism has permeated the entire federal government as well as both private and public institutions with his assault on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), a long overdue initiative to create fairness for all Americans. The regime is even using its distaste for DEI to bludgeon corporations and universities by withholding federal contracts and research grants from those that refuse to accept the regime’s racist policies.

The Trump family’s well-known history of prejudice has led his loyal cabinet members to decapitate our military leadership by firing black and female military leaders and ordering the military to ban transexuals. It has led to the firings of minorities throughout the federal government. It has led to his takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. He and his MAGA minions have banned books featuring histories of slavery and any reference to the LGBTQ community.

None of this should come as a surprise. Since the late 1960s, the Republican Party has been built on racism and vicious attacks on minorities following the SCOTUS ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation of public schools. It counted on Jim Crow, attacks on gay marriage and voter suppression to win elections.

The Party continued to create new scapegoats and culture wars including the myth of black “Welfare Queens” and the racist belief that poor black women relied on abortion as a method of contraception. It gained power by claiming that all Mexican immigrants were murderers and rapists. And that boys and men were emasculating themselves as transexuals just so they can enter girls’ bathrooms and succeed in sports against girls and women.

Now the Trump regime is rewriting the history of the George Floyd murder suggesting that Floyd was a violent criminal who deserved to be choked to death or that he actually died of drug abuse. The regime’s “Justice” Department is seeking to dismiss police reforms enacted following racist murders in Minneapolis and Louisville. And, in a clear sign of racist immigration policies, the regime has welcomed white Afrikaaners as refugees while pushing to end the Temporary Protected Status of black and brown refugees from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and elsewhere.

Not long ago, the House of Representatives banned the nation’s first transexual congressional representative from using the Capitol’s women’s bathrooms. What’s next? Labeling federal buildings as white only?

No One Should Be Surprised By Actions Of The Minneapolis Police Department.

Posted on by

Minneapolis and St. Paul are known as the Twin Cities. One (St. Paul) has enjoyed a competent, public service-focused police department for all of my nearly 40 years of living in the area. The other (Minneapolis) has long been plagued by a police department that is often overly aggressive and racist in its actions.

As I’ve previously written, I personally encountered MPD cops who were corrupt, lazy, incompetent, racist and brutal. Without going into great detail, I’ve seen MPD cops shake down a bar owner. I’ve witnessed a group of six officers acting as a violent gang that needlessly beat, kicked, stomped, and maced a black man who was handcuffed face down in the snow, slush and ice. And I served on a jury for a case in which the police failed to interview even a single witness to a so-called assault.

The list of such incidents is long.

So, when George Floyd was murdered by a MPD Field Training Officer, I was not surprised. But I am surprised that, after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder, the MPD would be so quickly back in the headlines for killing an innocent black man, especially after it narrowly dodged an attempt to replace the department with a new department of public safety.

Sure, some things have changed. The previous head of the much too powerful police federation resigned. But I suspect the Federation still has more control over the department than the mayor, city council and police chief combined. And though the previous chief has retired, the interim police chief, Amelia Huffman, was promoted from within. She has been with the MPD for 27 years. That’s 27 years of being influenced by the status quo.

Despite the MPD’s long history of problematic behavior by some of its officers, in the first interview after her appointment, Huffman proudly stated that she “loves” the MPD. She went on to state, “As a department, we must collectively recognize that rebuilding trust and enhancing public safety will require excellence in the line of duty as well as a willingness to embrace bold community safety and reform strategies.”

How has she demonstrated that commitment to excellence and reform?

When asked to cooperate with the St. Paul Police Department in executing a warrant for the arrest of a suspect in a St. Paul murder case, the MPD demanded a “No-Knock” warrant (a practice that the St. Paul police abandoned in 2016). And when a Minneapolis officer shot an innocent young man as a result, the MPD initially issued a press release in which it referred to the victim as a suspect. Only later did it acknowledge that Amir Locke was not named in the warrant and had no criminal history. And, when questioned by reporters, Huffman walked out of a press conference even after promising full transparency. (The MPD still claims the shooting was necessary because the victim pointed a gun at officers.)

If it wasn’t obvious to everyone before the Locke murder, it should now be abundantly clear that the MPD needs drastic change. There are, no doubt, many good officers within the department. But it needs a large influx of new public service-focused officers that are representative of the various neighborhoods within the city. It needs a complete new set of operating standards. It needs better training. It needs to be restructured. And it desperately needs new leadership from outside the department.

It needs its own Chief William K. Finney – the man who made the St. Paul Police Department seem like the polar opposite of the MPD.