Louisiana Voice

Just in time for the 2020 presidential elections

Martial law. Federal occupation. Storm troopers. Suspension of the First, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and possibly even the Second Amendments.

A bit dramatic? A conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But perhaps not. It certainly can’t be any wilder conspiracy theory than some we’ve already seen espoused by the right-wing kooks: Pizzagate, Wayfair, staged mass shooting at schools with actors playing student victims.

But for a real-life conspiracy, look at what’s already happened in Portland and now Donald Trump is threatening similar actions in Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Oakland, Philadelphia and Albuquerque and other “lawless” cities run, coincidentally, by Democrats.

And just in time to disrupt the November presidential election. Talk about an October surprise…

Trump, the “law and order” president, reminiscent to the “law and order” Richard Nixon, laments the loss of control over crime run amok in those cities as his justification for sending in the brown shirts. And of course, his 35% base cheers him own like the good Christians they profess to be. I mean, what’s more demonstrative of Christian love and charity for your fellow man than watching unidentified federal agents in unmarked vans cracking heads with batons?

And that’s just for the graffiti-sprayers. God only knows what happens to those who dare commit real crimes.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that it was the right-wing conservatives who originally were so terrified of the “jack-booted thugs” who would come to take us away in the middle of the night?

But I digress.

If you think those people in Portland are bad enough to warrant deployment of nameless, faceless storm troopers acting in the name of Trump (make no mistake, this is his show, no one else’s), then let’s compare crime rates of other cities.

We’ll start with Portland since that seems to be the epicenter of the federal crackdown for the time being.

In Portland, you have a horrific violent crime rate of 5.2 per 1,000 population. Shocking. It makes Portland the third least safe city in the entire state of Oregon. No question something needed to be done to bring the thugs under control. I mean, who would want to live in a state’s third most dangerous city?

But then there are all those other lawless cities whose violent crime rates are even higher:

• Albuquerque: 14 per 1,000 population;
• Baltimore: 20.per 1,000;
• Detroit: 21 per 1,000;
• Dallas: 41 per 1,000
• Philadelphia: 51 per 1,000
• Houston: 52 per 1,000
• Washington, DC: 56 per 1,000
• Jackson, Mississippi; 56 per 1,000
• Atlanta: 58 per 1,000;
• Oakland: 75.5

Trump cited most of the above cities by name but there are also these cities, all located in rock-solid red states that also have higher violent crime rates than Portland.:

• Tulsa: 11 per 1,000
• Nashville: 11 per 1,000
• Wichita: 12 per 1,000
• Indianapolis: 13 per 1,000
• Milwaukee: 14 per 1,000
• Little Rock: 14 per 1,000
• Cleveland: 15 per 1,000
• Kansas City, Mo.: 16 per 1,000
• Birmingham: 19 per 1,000
• Memphis: 19 per 1,000

So, will Trump send in the troops to those cities as well? They are, after all, hotbeds of crime when compared to wide-open Portland.

For that matter, there are no fewer than 10 Louisiana cities that could qualify for the unwanted presence of federal “law and order” crackdowns similar to those we’ve seen on television from Portland. That’s because all ten have violent crime rates far exceeding that of the Oregon city.

They are:

• Baton Rouge: 66 violent crimes per 1,000 residents (Louisiana’s most dangerous city and second only to Oakland among the 30 cities listed here);
• Shreveport: 61 per 1,000;
• New Orleans: 59 per 1,000;
• Lake Charles: 56 per 1,000;
• Lafayette: 53 per 1,000;
• Hammond: 40 per 1,000;
• Monroe: 22 per 1,000;
• Crowley: 16 per 1,000;
• Bogalusa: 13 per 1,000
• Natchitoches: 12 per 1,000

Are you ready to see jack-booted thugs tear-gassing your favorite aunt or uncle as they try to vote this November?

That’s what these federal occupation forces are really all about—voter suppression.

With the exception of the smaller of the Louisiana cities, the vast majority of the 30 listed here have Democratic-leaning citizenry, many of whom are African-American. Those are the ones Trump and his Republican enablers like Steve Scalise and Clay Higgins are desperate to keep from voting on Nov. 3^rd.

Forget the “law and order” rhetoric of Trump. That’s a distraction, a diversionary tactic, just as it was with Nixon, who employed it to deflect Americans’ attention from Watergate. Trump likewise wishes more than anything to get people’s minds off the coronavirus pandemic or Russian interference by getting them to focus on some other high-visibility issue. So, like Nixon, he’s creating a “law and order” smokescreen to conceal the real issue of his ineptitude and inability to deal with a crisis—any crisis.

And he’s deploying his storm troopers to make sure we keep our focus where it should be.

And that could well be the “October surprise” of all October surprises.

“Well, I don’t know what the bankers have said. The Plaza is a very valuable property. Everybody told me, ‘oh, you paid too much, you paid too much,’ now they’re all saying what a great deal he made on the Plaza.”

–Donald Trump, in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1990. [Of course, it ended like so many other Trump business ventures that went south: he ended up taking an $83 million bath on the Plaza Hotel.]

“As we approach the election, again, …who’s to say whether or not these agents could potentially be used to intimidate or otherwise disturb the election process while they’re here?”

–New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, expressing concerns that Trump’s storm troopers could disrupt the presidential election on Nov. 3. [You know, fascism, third-world dictatorship, and all that stuff that we thought could never happen here—like storm troopers, children in cages, firing inspectors general, that kind of thing.]

“The violent tactics deployed by Donald Trump and his paramilitary forces against peaceful protesters are those of a fascist regime, not a democratic nation. Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election.”

—Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, quoted in The Guardian, July 25, 2020.

“It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to a unilateral, uninvited intervention in one of my cities.”

—Forer two-term Republican governor of Pennsylvania and the first homeland security secretary. [And of course, Trump responded by calling Ridge a RINO (Republican in Name Only).Insults, slurs and derogatory nicknames seem to be his only way of responding to criticism—as opposed to applying logic and reason to dispute resolution.]

“A key difference between now and before: In 1970, the attorney general was urging restraint. Today, the AG leads the charge.”

—The Washington Post, in an editorial explaining the difference between J. Edgar Hoover’s convincing then-Attorney General John Mitchell to dissuade Nixon from signing the so-called Huston Plan calling for federal troops to restrain domestic unrest 50 years ago, and Attorney General William Barr’s “Operation Legend,” which does just that.

“Plaintiffs’ gambit here—they seek to have the Court enter an emergency injunction based on alleged past encounters involving federal law enforcement officers, but have not demonstrated that similar incidents will take place in the future, much less that these particular plaintiffs will again experience the same alleged conduct by federal law enforcement officers. Because Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate a certainly impending injury, they lack standing to seek injunctive relief.”

–Attorney General William Barr’s response in claiming that the ACLU has no legal standing to request that Trump’s storm troopers be prohibited from beating, gassing or shooting with “impact munitions” reporters to prevent them from recording attacks on Portland citizens. [Nothing to see here, move along (translation: we don’t want witnesses).]

“Only nine states, an electoral Hall of Shame, make you choose between your health and your right to vote, because they don’t count the pandemic as a valid reason to request an absentee ballot. The nine: Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, LOUISIANA, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.”

Dana Milbank, Washington Post, July 24, 2020.  [Louisiana? With the myopic legislators so gifted with the Clay Higgins demagogic version of justice and democracy that we have in this state, go figure. If it doesn’t benefit their corporate donors, they’re just not interested.]

“I think it’s an abuse of DHS. I mean really the president’s trying to use DHS as his goon squad. That’s really what’s going on here. I think this is a crisis of leadership. A failure of leadership in the Trump administration. I think it’s an abuse of DHS.”

–John Sandweg, former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, aka ICE, quoted in The Guardian on Donald Trump’s invasion of Portland.

“This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. We cannot have secret police abducting people and putting them into unmarked vehicles. I cannot believe I have to say that to the president of the United States.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, stating the painfully obvious at a press conference on Wednesday.

“All run by liberal Democrats. Look at what’s going on — all run by Democrats, all run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by radical left. If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell. And we’re not going to let it go to hell.”

–Donald Trump, on Fox News, revealing his plans to deploy more occupational forces and to expand open warfare on American citizens—at least those living in Democratic cities. [But it’s all about law and order, not politics, right Donald?]

“I think any leader is better if they have people holding them accountable. Not just enemies, but people that can then give them honest feedback about job performance. Politics is so ego driven that many times honest feedback doesn’t happen.”

–Wendy Day, former vice-chair of the Michigan Republican Party who refused to endorse Trump in 2016. [Wendy, did you ever try to give “honest feedback” to a ?

Out of town for a couple of days. Catching up.

“Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.”

—Mary Trump, in her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. [So, Mary, we hope your book tells us something we don’t alread know on the Tangerine Toddler.]

“Today I am announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime.”

–Donald Trump, July 22, 2020. [Fourth Amendment, folks, Fourth Amendment. We’re edging dangerously close to becoming a police state here with one person (well, with Barr, two persons) calling the shots. Are you seriously ready for that?

“I’m not afraid, but I am pissed off. This is an egregious overreaction on the part of the federal officers.”

–Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, after being tear-gassed by unidentified storm troopers. [No one will be immune.]

“Republican responds to calling a colleague ‘disgusting’ & a ‘f—ing b*tch’ w/ ‘I cannot apologize for my passion’ and blaming others. I will not teach my nieces and young people watching that this an apology, and what they should learn to accept. Yoho is refusing responsibility.”

–Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in response to retiring Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida) after he semi-apologized for his misogynistic remarks during a confrontation with Ocasio-Cortez on Monday. [Most probably a God-fearing, family values Republican at that.]

“I really think you could duct tape a spatula to a Golden Retriever’s paw, and half of the media would say, ‘Oh my God! That dog’s a chef!’”

–Comedian Seth Meyers, in criticizing the media for its portrayal of Trump as pretending to take the coronavirus crisis seriously. [Can I get an “Amen” to the media’s treatment of Trump as serious about anything?]

“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs.”

—Dr. Eric Topoi, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, about the coronavirus. [But Trump said as recently as yesterday that it was only “the sniffles.”]

“Let’s make this clear. I’m not buying a mask. I’ve made it this far by not buying into that damn hype.”

—Richard Rose, an Army veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an April Facebook post, who was dead on July 4, three days after testing positive for COVID-19. [The most dangerous enemies are those we refuse to acknowledge.]

“It is what it is.”

—Donald Trump, when told by Chris Wallace that the US death toll from coronavirus is approaching 1,000 per day. [Is it me, or does that seem just a bit cavalier? A bit reminiscent of “Let them eat cake.”]

“I will be right eventually.”

—Donald Trump, in interview with Chris Wallace. [Lordy, we can only hope so.]

“We don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know the circumstances under which they’re making arrests.”

—Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, responding to controversial arrests and abductions being carried out by unidentified, uniformed military personnel in unmarked vans. [Looks like Trump has ripped a page from Richard Daley’s 1968 playbook.]

“You’ll see something rolled out this week, as we start to go in and make sure that the communities — whether it’s Chicago or Portland or Milwaukee or someplace across the heartland — we need to make sure their communities are safe.”

—White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in announcing that the administration will intensify its storm trooper-like activities in response to what Acting Secretary of Homeland Security described as “violent anarchists,” activities primarily limited to painting graffiti on public buildings. [God knows what’ll happen if one of those anarchists gets his hands on a bull horn.]

“Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. These are not the actions of a democratic republic.”

—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Trump’s storm troopers. [Regardless of your political party, your political philosophy or your personal opinion of Pelosi, what’s occurring in Portland sets a dangerous precedent and places in literal peril everyone’s constitutional rights from this moment forward. We all should be hearing the alarms and seeing red flags in these tactics. THIS IS NOT THE AMERICA WE WERE TAUGHT ABOUT IN CIVICS CLASS!]