In The States With The Worst COVID Situations MORE People Voted For Trump This Time Than In 2016! Kushner And His Ilk Are Evicting Them From Their Homes Now

 

I know I can come of like a jerk sometimes, but let me be brutally honest anyway: if people who voted for Trump get evicted, GOOD! They deserve it-- and worse. Now, Kushner-in-law would have never done this before election day but his real estate management firm, Westminster Management, has submitted hundreds of eviction filings in court against tenants with past due rent... despite the pandemic. I hope lots of Trump supporters learn a little something about who the Trumps are. It's the non-Trump supporters I'm worried about. As for the Kennedys' "Let's Lynch The Landlord," that's always been one of my favorite songs.

Washington Post reporters Johnathan O'Connell, Aaron Gregg and Anu Narayanswamy wrote this morning that "A state eviction moratorium currently bars Maryland courts from removing tenants from their homes, and a federal moratorium offers renters additional protection. But like other landlords around the country, Westminster has been sending letters to tenants threatening legal fees and then filing eviction notices in court-- a first legal step toward removing tenants. Those notices are now piling up in local courthouses as part of a national backlog of tens of thousands of cases that experts warn could lead to a surge in displaced renters across the country as eviction bans expire and courts resume processing cases. Many of the Westminster tenants facing eviction live on low or middle incomes in modest apartments in the Baltimore area, according to tenants. Some of them told the Washington Post they fell behind on rent after losing jobs or wages due to the pandemic."

Vultures in Maryland like Kushner are unable to evict anyone from their homes right now-- and the state moratorium was renewed last week. Now, they're just laying the groundwork. and  by the way, last year Kushner, personally made $1.65 million from his ownership stake in Westminster.

Last year Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh sued the company for its management practices, alleging that the company collects illegitimate fees for applications and evictions, and illegally claims tenants’ security deposits. Kushner Cos. representatives have called the suit politically motivated and are fighting the charges.

Westminster manages more than 20,000 apartments, according to its website. It is far from the only company moving to evict tenants despite the pandemic; housing experts have been warning for months that as Americans’ stimulus benefits run dry and eviction moratoriums expire, backlogs in eviction cases may be leading to a surge in renters being forced from their homes, particularly at the end of the year when the CDC moratorium ends.

Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions in 24 cities, found that landlords there have filed for 92,619 evictions during the pandemic. Election Lab’s Alieza Durana said that the lack of federal data made comparing time frames difficult but that whoever is elected president will face “increasing numbers of people at risk of eviction, particularly among marginalized communities.”

Data from past years suggests that evictions have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities. From 2012 to 2016, Black renters had evictions filed against them by landlords at nearly twice the rate of White renters, according to Eviction Lab data.

Some of Westminster’s tenants, including those facing eviction, are Black, and their plight was highlighted Oct. 26 by public backlash to comments Kushner made on Fox News. Kushner said on the air that Trump wants to help Black people but that they have to “want to be successful” for his policies to work.

“President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful,” Kushner said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Kushner, issuing a statement saying it was “disgusting to see internet trolls taking Senior Advisor Jared Kushner out of context as they try to distract from President Trump’s undeniable record of accomplishment for the black community.”

Another research and advocacy group, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, found that corporate landlords have filed more than 10,000 eviction notices in five states-- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas-- since September.

“There is definitely a question about what happens as time goes on,” said Jim Baker, the group’s executive director. “Clearly we are seeing some increases. It doesn’t add up to a surge yet. But with big companies making these filings and with moratoriums expiring, we are wondering if we will see more.”

Kushner is in a unique position to understand how the coronavirushas ravaged the national economy and the real estate industry.

After joining the nascent coronavirus task force with Vice President Pence, Kushner said at an April 2 news conference that “the president wanted us to make sure we think outside the box, make sure we’re finding all the best thinkers in the country, making sure we’re getting all the best ideas, and that we’re doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep Americans safe.”

But his handling of the federal pandemic response, in which he quickly assembled a team of private-sector volunteers with limited expertise in health, ended with the administration leaving large parts of the response to the states.

“The bottom line is that this program sourced tens of millions of masks and essential [personal protective equipment] in record time, and Americans who needed ventilators received ventilators,” Kushner said in a May statement. “These volunteers are true patriots.”

Before Trump ran for president, Kushner had taken over his family’s real estate company from his father, Charlie Kushner. Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, reported combined assets valued at between $204 million and $783 million last year.

Kushner has passed on some chances to avoid conflicts of interest. He planned to divest his stake worth between $25 million and $50 million in the real estate start-up he co-founded, Cadre, and received an approval in February from the Office of Government Ethics to do so tax-free. But in June he withdrew the request, according to a filing with the office.

Kushner’s company has struggled to pay some of its own debts, including by missing payments to one of its lenders on the retail space at the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, according to securities filings. Kushner Cos. did not comment when asked about the property.

Advocates credit President Trump, Congress and some states for moratoriums that they say have kept people in their homes despite job losses and pay decreases due to the pandemic.

The Cares Act prohibited landlords at properties supported by federal housing programs, including Westminster’s Owings Run property, from making any court filing to start legal action. That moratorium expired July 24, allowing landlords to begin filing after a 30-day grace period, as early as Aug. 25.

...Even with the moratoriums in place, tenants and advocates say landlords can effectively bully some families out of their properties without a formal eviction taking place.

Experts say they see far more “constructive evictions”-- cases in which people leave because they are pressured over missed rent and don’t know their rights. Some tenants don’t want an eviction on their permanent record because it can show up on credit ratings and other legal screenings, experts and tenants said. Others move out to avoid court fees.

“This is the warning shot-- do you want to have your stuff just thrown out on the street, or do you want to just go?” said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin. “I suspect in many cases landlords are hoping to move people out without having to go through the actual formal eviction.“ Several tenants said they were regularly being charged court fees for eviction cases that started before the pandemic and have been reopened in recent months.

Zafar Shah, an attorney with a Baltimore-based legal aid nonprofit, the Public Justice Center, said even relatively small fees “can make the difference between the eviction going through or not, or the tenant being able to take the bus to work.”

Booker, one of the Owings Run residents, described the eviction threats as “heartless” coming from a company owned by the president’s son-in-law.

“The way they’re treating us is just making us feel like we’re nothing. It feels like we’re … what’s the word … disposable,” she said. “They just want us gone so someone else can come in."

Homelessness is horrific at any time-- but during a pandemic! And remember, it was the policies of the Trump Regime that Kushner is such a big part of that has turned the U.S. into the world's worst COVID hellhole. The U.S. daily reports will absolutely be north of six figures today-- just as they were yesterday, when the U.S. had it's worst day in terms of new cases since Trump decided his role in the pandemic was to politicize it and kill as many people as possible. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported 94,467 new cases (and 1,187 new deaths). Wednesday there were new 108,353 new cases reported (and 1,201 new deaths). Numbers are still coming for today but there are already 118,204 new cases reported and 1,125 new deaths.

Any state or country with more than 20,000 cases per million residents has an out-of-control pandemic. Right now Trumpistan is the worst place on the planet earth, coronavirus-wise. These are the unlucky 13 states with their cases per million (along with what percentage voted for Trump's reelection:

• North Dakota- 65,398 cases per million residents (65.0% Trump, up from 63.0%)
• South Dakota- 57,820 cases per million residents (61.8% Trump, up from 61.5%)
• Iowa- 44,987 cases per million residents (53.1% Trump, up from 51.1%)
• Wisconsin- 49,924 cases per million residents (48.8% Trump, up from 47.2%)
• Mississippi- 41,627 cases per million residents (59.3% Trump, up from 57.9%)
• Alabama- 40,618 cases per million residents (62.3% Trump, down from 62.8%)
• Louisiana- 39,973 cases per million residents (58.5% Trump, up from 58.1%)
• Tennessee- 39,796 cases per million residents (60.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Nebraska- 40,329 cases per million residents (58.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Utah- 38,769 cases per million residents (58.3% Trump, up from 45.5%)
• Florida- 38,523 cases per million residents (51.2% Trump, up from 49.0%)
• Arkansas- 38,889 cases per million residents (62.7% Trump, up from 60.6%)
• Idaho- 38,935 cases per million residents (63.7% Trump, up from 59.3%)

I just saw this new analysis by AP that shows that 93% of the most infected counties in the country, 376 of them, went for Trump! Makes sense. Their survey showed that 36% of Trump voters described the pandemic as "completely or mostly under control" and another 47% said it was "somewhat under control," while, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control. So which group wears masks and practices social distancing and doesn't get COVID and which group doesn't wear masks and doesn't parctice social distancing... and gets COVID and then spreads it to their families, colleagues and friends? The biggest tragedy of the Trump Pandemic!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Your first reaction to seeing this photo of VP Mike Pence and cohorts in a state of deep prayer might be that they are praying that their god will vanquish the virus that sits before them on the table. But, these are Republicans. Never forget that. And, because they are Republicans, they might see their nihilism and hate as something that they can use to grow the virus and use to their own ends. According to the picture in tonight's meme, the coronavirus before them has already grown way beyond its initial microscopic size. Could this be a picture of it pulsing and feeding on the hate that republicans so willingly give? Ah, the power of thoughts and prayers!

OK. Perhaps I was being too harsh in the first paragraph. My tongue is firmly implanted in cheek but, hey, it is Republicans we're talking about and I know what lies at the core of being a Republican.

Maybe I've seen too many 1950s science fiction films or too many Hammer films from the 1960s. Yeah, that's it. I've missed the obvious. The biggest monsters are those white men (and one token white woman) in the picture and those like them. Like I said, they are Republicans. So, the question is-- Given that they are Repugs, who are they praying that the virus kills first? Republicans live for having a target. So, who is it this time? Gays? Longhairs? Muslims? Unionists? The poor? Does the Trump administration see the virus as a golden opportunity to remake the world? Is this why they've been so lax? Do they foolishly think they get to choose who the virus hits? Do they see the coronavirus a neutron bomb that will get rid of undesirable "enemies" but leave all the remaining space for real estate development? How Trumpian!

Check out the lyrics to "Kill The Poor" by the great Dead Kennedys below. Then listen to the song!

Kill The Poor

Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight

Gonna kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight

Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone, feel free again
Oh, life's a breeze with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night

While they kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight

Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone, feel free again
Oh, life's a breeze with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night

While they kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight

Songwriters: East Bay Ray / Jello Biafra
Kill the Poor lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
 

Nazis In Unpop Culture

A month or so ago, rock journalist Steve Knopper called me to discuss how punk music pushed back against Nazis who tried infiltrating the early anarchistic punk music scene. Fascists in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York seemed drawn to the scene's iconography, rowdiness and anti-establishment perspective. Soon after I went off to Thailand-- the Land of Smiles-- and forgot all about it. This week Steve's story, Nazi Punks F**k Off: How Black Flag, Bad Brains, and More Took Back Their Scene from White Supremacists was published by GQ. First paragraph:

Every hardcore band you loved in the '80s and beyond, from Black Flag to Minutemen to Fugazi, had one unfortunate thing in common: Nazi skinheads occasionally stormed their concerts, stomped their fans, gave Hitler salutes in lieu of applauding, and generally turned a communal experience into one full of hatred and conflict. Punk rockers had flirted with fascist imagery for shock value, with the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux wearing swastikas in public, but, as early San Francisco scenester Howie Klein, later president of Reprise Records, recalls: “Suddenly, you had people who were part of the scene who didn’t understand ‘fascist bad.’”

I watched in horror as bands, and their supporters, tried to out-do each other in outrageousness in the mid to late '70s. The idea is that if you could piss off your parents and other authority figures, you were succeeding (at something). At the time I had a punk label in San Francisco and our first signing was the most popular local band, The Nuns. Our very first release, a 3-song 7" EP-- looked vaguely Nazi-ish:

There were 3 singers-- one was Jewish, one was gay and one was an art school woman and the guitar player was from a prominent socially conscious Latino family. The song was "Decadent Jew," a live version of which from 1978 is posted above. The Jewish singer uses the N-word. At one point Bill Graham said he would manage the band if they stopped performing the song; they refused. The two other songs on the record were "Suicide Child" and "Savage." They got a lot of attention, which was the whole idea and the way to compete. The fans picked up on the vibe and were soon out-of-control, especially when the scene went from an ironic art school in-crowd joke, to a way for suburbanites to blow off some steam.

By 1980, a more violent strain of punk fans was infecting punk shows. “Pogoing became slam-dancing, now known as moshing, and some of ’em didn’t seem like they were there to enjoy the music, as much as they were there to beat up on people-- sometimes in a really chickenshit way,” says Jello Biafra, whose band, Dead Kennedys, put out a classic song about it in 1981: "Nazi Punks Fuck Off."

Many of the more conscious scene leaders, like Joe Strummer and Mick Jones (from The Clash), Jello Biafra (from the Dead Kennedys), Joey and Tommy Ramone (though not Johnny or Dee Dee) were having misgivings and feeling some responsibility very early on. The bands that didn't give a shit-- or even encouraged and exploited the worst aspects (like the Sex Pistols)-- were cooler, at least in some circles.

Knopper then puts the 3 decade old movement into the context of "the era of Trump and the alt-right, Charlottesville, and 'very fine people on both sides,' [when] fighting Nazis is sadly newly relevant, and veterans of the hardcore-vs.-skinheads battles of yore are happy to help with war stories and advice." The rest of his piece is a very worthwhile oral history on how punks took back their scene, featuring, among others, Black Flag's Henry Rollins, Mike Watt from Minutemen, Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains and Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery. I should have told Knopper to include Penelope Houston from The Avengers. Last night she surprised me with her recollection. "The Avengers broke up in mid-79. We didn't seem to attract super narrow-minded fans. I think the Nazis coming to punk gigs happened years after that, but I wasn't there. I'd made my way into more arty or folky kinds of punk: Human Hands, Monitor, B-People, Violent Femmes, after hardcore reared it's nearly shaved little head. There was one time some dudes from the suburbs came to our show at the Mabuhay and started punching people in the audience. We just stopped playing. This was in a pre-pit, pogo-esque time period. I still don't get why some people say the Avengers were the first hardcore band. We were not having it."



Darren Hill was the bass player-- and the brains behind-- the Red Rockers, a band on my label, 415 Records. They had come from Metairie, Louisiana, home of KKK Grand Wizard or Dragon (and Republican state legislator) David Duke. The Red Rockers were nothing like David Duke-- and when their first album was released they were often referred to as "the American Clash." Today Darren manages Paul Westerberg of The Replacements. I asked him to read Knopper's story and give me some input.

We knew that Nazi imagery had been adopted by some of the punk pioneers strictly for it’s shock value. That always made me uneasy but I never imagined that anyone in our scene would actually adopt their ethos.

Slam dancing had become a thing at our shows in New Orleans but it was harmless fun for the most part. Occasionally ignorant and testosterone fueled jocks would come out and misinterpret what was going on. They thought it was some kind of sport and started hurting people-- even girls.

We did a pretty good job policing it though-- stopping the show and calling them out. Ridicule and shaming was pretty effective because they were outnumbered.

It wasn’t until we hit the road that we encountered real Nazi Punks for the first time. I couldn’t believe it. This is a real thing? What in the hell are you doing at our show? Do you know what we’re about? Have you ever listened to our lyrics? We went from awareness and singing “Springtime for Hitler” in the van to the cognizance that this was real and dangerous… and very, very frightening.

By the time we returned home they had infiltrated OUR scene. The vilolence had spun up several notches and we could no longer control it-- to the point that the club we played at all the time had to ban us due to the violent element. I always believed that violence begets violence but there was no reasoning with these animals. Failed attempts and a black eye led to the realization that they were not just ignorant, they were brainwashed. We understood that we had to defend ourselves and our scene. The next time we hit the road, we took our friend out as a roadie-- the only employee we could afford at the time. He was a six-foot-four 260 pound hulk of African/Puerto Rican decent. Picture a NFL linebacker with a mohawk in a kilt. He couldn’t tune a guitar to save his life but probably saved our lives a few times. He would slowly skank across the stage while we played always keeping an eye on the crowd. If he saw any sign of trouble he would leap down into the middle of it and dance, then jump back up and resume skanking. He was actually quite graceful for such a big man. He was so intimidating yet peaceful and we never had a problem after that.

Years later, in the late 90’s, I was managing the Dropkick Murphys. There was a resurgence of the skinhead movement and they adopted the band as their own. Even though the band denounced them, there was still a huge presence at the shows. There was freightening confrontation at a Warped Tour show one year in Salt Lake City. The band’s vastly outnumbered crew stood up to a literal army of bad skins that day in what can only be described as a battle. What can I say, our guys were from Boston. Luckily there were no serious injuries and the skinheads were chased off in shame. There was a serious threat of retaliation if the band ever came back to SLC so we stayed out of the market for a while. Fortunately that dissipated over time.

Those who believe in hate cannot feel empowered and be allowed to grow. Charlottesville reminded me of this.

Hot New Tune: "Nazi Trumps Fuck Off"... And Ice Cold Congressional Race In New Jersey

Who remembers the Dead Kennedy's classic punk anthem "Nazi Punks Fuck Off?" Well, Biafra has updated it (above). How about Steve Lonegan? Do you remember him? He's a New Jersey political on the far right GOP fringe. Anything you read about him will always mention he was the mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, a mighty metropolis of 8,000 people. Other than that, he runs for anything nd everything-- and always loses. Because he's certifiably insane. He was the head of the Koch brothers' political operation in New Jersey and he was the chairman of Ted Cruz's presidential campaign there. New Jersey Republicans weren't buying Ted Cruz's neo-fascist message and Lonegan led him to an embarrassing 3rd place finish behind Señor Trumpanzee, Lord of Bedminster (80.6%), and John Kasich (13.3%) with a dismal 6.1% of the Republican vote. Go Ted! Go Steve!

Well, yesterday, after weeks of rumors, Lonegan made it official-- he's running against the worst Democrat in New Jersey's congressional delegation, worthless Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer. If there was ever a congressional race to wish both candidates lose by landslides...! NJ-05 is New Jersey's most conservative district, most of it in Bergen County (and including The Sopranos' Bada Bing strip club). The district sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Water Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Bada Bing club town). Politically, this is Chris Christie country although Sen. Bob Menendez won the district with 51% last time he ran. McCain won the district in 2008, 51-48% and Romney won in 2012, 52-49%. Last year Trumpanzee underperformed Romney but still managed to beat Clinton 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Garrett, until recently a Wall Street fave (as the anti-regulation sociopath chairman on the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets), only got $674,888 from the Finance Sector this cycle, way down from the $1,159,579 he scooped up from them in 2014 or the $1,224,313 he got in 2012. They wanted him to lose this year.

So on November 9, Bergen County residents woke up to some good news and some bad news. The good news was that Scott Garrett was on the losing end of a 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%) result. It was the Bergen County voters who had finally grown tired of Garrett's extremism and who had turned him out. In 2012 he won Bergen County with 100,874 votes. This time, which far more people voting, only 93,430 in Bergen County went for Garrett. 121,875 voted for Gottheimer. And that's the bad news, of course: Gottheimer won. It looks like this will turn out to be the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. Outside spending was through the roof. Ryan's House Leadership PAC and the NRCC refused to spent a nickel on the widely disliked Garrett. Only another of crooked hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer's PACs, the American Principles Fund, kicked in any substantial money for Garrett-- $309,025. Meanwhile, smelling blood in the water, the DCCC and it's allies, excited to get another slimeball Blue Dog into Congress, spent a gargantuan $6.4 million attacking Garrett and bolstering Gottheimer. It worked. I wonder if they still think it was worth it now that Gottheimer has become a regular supporter of Paul Ryan's agenda.

He promptly joined the New Dems and the Blue Dogs-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- and has earned one of the worst "F" scores from ProgressivePunch. His crucial vote score is 30.56, the exact same as "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran. Only 3 Democrats-- wretched Blue Dogs Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Collin Peterson (MN) and Henry Cuellar (TX) have worse voting records this year. Yeah Gottheimer is as bad as they come. He was one of only 5 Democrats, for example, to vote for the Great Wall of Trumpanzee. And then there's Lonegan.

Lonegan will be making the case that Gottheimer is still too far to the left of 5th District voters.

“Liberal Josh Gottheimer is not a moderate,” Lonegan said at his Thursday campaign announcement. “He is in step with this big government agenda… We need to stand up and fight that.”

At his campaign launch at a hotel in Paramus, Lonegan said Republicans need to get behind Trump’s policy agenda-- a reversal from his earlier position on the president.

During the 2016 election, Lonegan was one of Trump’s loudest critics in New Jersey. He was the state chairman for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and called on top party officials to “unbind” delegates to the Republican National Convention so that they could “vote their conscience.” That plan could have deprived Trump of the nomination.

Because of those efforts, Trump once called Lonegan a “loser.”

“Imagine if Republicans were all behind Trump’s agenda right now-- we’d be winning in Washington, D.C.,” Lonegan said, denying that he was ever part of the “never Trump” movement. “When Trump got the nomination I supported him… I am behind this president. I think what we are watching from the left is just absurd.”

Lonegan opposes abortion and leans heavily to the right on social issues. He is also a fiscal hawk in the tea party mold, supporting deep cuts to a range of federal programs. Democrats say electing Lonegan in 2018 would be step backward for the district.

“From opposing choice, even in cases of rape and incest, to his anti-gay and anti-minority bigotry, to working against law enforcement and firefighters, Lonegan’s tea party politics have no place in New Jersey,” said Evan Lukakse, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

On the other hand, some Democrats say they would be glad to have Lonegan as the Republican candidate in next year’s race. The former Bogota mayor has not found success running for higher office over the years.

...“Despite his fundraising prowess, has lost every time — it’s not often that I agree with President Trump, but he hit the nail on the head when he called Lonegan ‘a loser,’” Lukaske said.

Gottheimer is widely considered one of the most Democratic freshmen in Congress. He sells his votes to special interests and "has broken fundraising records this year for a House freshman, reporting almost $1.6 million in fundraising as of June 30." Like I said... the only rational position on NJ-05 this cycle is to wish both candidates fail miserably... or wind up in prison. I wonder which one Trumpanzee will support.

Trump May Be A "Punk," But No, Trumpism Is Not The New Punk Rock, Even If There Are Some Common Roots

I hadn't been back in America very long-- having been living abroad for nearly 7 years-- when I ran into someone I had met years before when I booked a Doors concert at my school. It was Danny Fields, who had gone from being an A&R man at the Doors' label, Elektra, to working as a journalist and managing a new band. He wanted me to see the new band. I didn't want to. He insisted and insisted until I agreed. I went down to the Bowery to a skeetzy club I had never heard of, CBGB's and saw a brand new band that hadn't recorded yet-- the Ramones. It charged my life, quite literally and completely. Along with others, I started one of the first punk rock magazines, one of the first punk rock radio shows and one of the first punk rock record labels in the U.S. Long before I wound up as general manager of the Ramones label, Sire Records, I had become close with virtually all the punk bands, from the Pistols and the Clash to locals like the Dead Kennedys and Crime. In fact, Johnny Strike of Crime just sent me this piece by Scott Galupo, Is Trumpism The New Punk Rock?

This post is meant to respond to Galupo's and Ijust want to establish that I was there and had a hand in it and understand what it was and why it was and feel confident that the Alt-Right isn't and never could be anything do do with punk rock, other than maybe being the antithesis. This goes way beyond the little dust up over American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and his assertions about his love for Depeche Mode, unrequited I might add. After writing this little piece about what Depeche thinks of neo-Nazis, I received an e-mail from Daniel Miller, head of Mute and the guy who discovered Depeche Mode, signed them and produced their early music and helped guide their career. It don't want to quote it because it was a little more violent than the way Daniel has always portraysed himself but let it suffice that he wished bodily injury on Richard Spencer.

Anyway, back to punk rock-- which has always used fascist iconology to communicate anger, irony, and, most of all, perhaps, attention-grabbing outrage. Punk bands have always drawn some equivalents of simple-minded, low-IQ Trump supporter-types (i.e., facsist dupes.) and the bands have always had to respond to it. The Clash, Morrissey and the Dead Kennedys all had mini-crises over fascist followers and all disavowed them in no uncertain terms-- the way Depeche Mode did with Richard Spencer last week. Is there anything unclear about this Dead Kennedy's underground hit and the way Jello Biafra introduced it at this 1982 show at the Ritz in Austin?

Punk ain't no religious cult
Punk means thinking for yourself
You ain't hardcore cos you spike your hair
When a jock still lives inside your head

Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks-Fuck Off!

Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks-Fuck Off!

If you've come to fight, get outa here
You ain't no better than the bouncers
We ain't trying to be police
When you ape the cops it ain't anarchy

[Repeat chorus]

Ten guys jump one, what a man
You fight each other, the police state wins
Stab your backs when you trash our halls
Trash a bank if you've got real balls

You still think swastikas look cool
The real nazis run your schools
They're coaches, businessmen and cops
In a real fourth reich you'll be the first to go

[Repeat chorus]

You'll be the first to go
You'll be the first to go
You'll be the first to go
Unless you think

Galupo writes that a young CPAC attendee explained that he'd grown up a standard-issue George W. Bush conservative Republican, but had more recently migrated to the alt-right movement. One of its attractions, he said, was that it felt like "the new punk rock." I suppose he's never seen Biafra's 1982 explanation at the Ritz. "The word 'punk,' to many, evokes images of angry hooligans and anarchic behavior," continued Galupo correctly. "Then again, it may sound blasphemous: The memory of 'punk rock,' as it has been canonized in the upper echelons of rock criticism, is associated with left-wing anti-authoritarianism. Hence it would be ridiculous to call yourself 'punk' while supporting a right-wing authoritarian like Trump." Exactly... like Trump-- an acolyte of Joe McCarthy collaborator Roy Cohen-- accusing President Obama of McCarthyism, as he did in an Adderall-fueled rage before dawn on Saturday morning on Twitter. He references his friend and former editor Daniel Wattenberg for his rejection of "any association between punk rock the alt-right, racialism, or white identitarianism. Rather, he sees parallels between punk and Trumpism more broadly. "I have to say, it does feel similar in a lot of ways, psychologically and emotionally," he says.

The first thing one must understand about the right-wing character of punk, Wattenberg says, is not that its exponents were soi-disantYoung Republicans, quoting Goldwater or God and Man at Yale. New York-centered punk began as "an intramural insurrection within the counterculture," he says. It was the punks vs. their somnolent, sententious hippie older brothers and sisters, who had for years propounded what Wattenberg calls the "reverse pieties" of anti-Americanism and anti-commercialism and white guilt.

What does this have to do with the president and his core following?

Wattenberg says Trumpism was "an insurrection against Conservatism Inc."-- a political establishment that had become flabby, complacent, and self-indulgent in the same way that 1970s progressive rock music had grown bombastic, pretentious, and long-winded. Whereas Republicans before Trump had been terrified of deviating from orthodox positions on trade, the desirability of immigration, or the wisdom of the Iraq war, Trump thumbed his nose at this orthodoxy.

Then there's Trump's seeming amateurism-- his "inexperience and rawness," Wattenberg says. Just as punks weren't trained musicians, Trump is frequently assailed for not playing politics the right way, that is, the professional way. When Wattenberg hears the media establishment pounce on Trump for falsehoods, misstatements, or exaggerations, he hears echoes of musical sophisticates belittling punk rock for its primitivism. Trump may get lost in the details, but he gets the big things attitudinally right. Put another way: He may know only three chords, but Wattenberg says his followers hear the "right three chords."

He also sees in Trump a political manifestation of punk's do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos. (By "do-it-yourself," punks don't mean changing the oil or remodeling your bathroom; it's meant as a command: Write your own song. Paint your own painting.) Punk-rock bands created their own independent labels and staged gigs in small clubs or church basements. Trump lacked support from Republican Party elites in the same way that punks lacked support from major labels and promoters. So he ran a shoestring campaign and made himself recklessly accessible to the media in pursuit of free coverage.

Finally there is the transgressive appeal of Trump's rejection of political correctness. Wattenberg says: "There's power in that. Punks were also occasionally misrepresented as harboring fascist sympathies. Once they call you a fascist, there's nothing more than they can say. That's the source of excitement Milo [Yiannopoulos] generated on campus: 'We're free again.' That's the thrill and the power of busting taboos."

Where does Trumpism lead, then? The legacy of punk rock can be looked at two ways. It could be seen as a musical movement that, outside of two bands (the potent, one-and-done Sex Pistols and the more creatively catholic Clash), ultimately didn't amount to much. Or it can be seen as a vital current that runs through subsequent movements from grunge to emo to more recent garage revivalists like the White Stripes.

Wattenberg, for his part, doesn't see Trumpism disappearing any time soon. "There are no longer any criteria of judgment independent of politics," he laments. For as long as the left gets to define the "permissible boundaries of expressive freedom," there will be some variant of Trumpism spoiling to defy it. And for as long as politics overspills into awards shows and sports pages and our personal social media, he adds, Trumpism will continue to appeal to those who want to escape its clutches.

It's enough to make you wanna be, well, sedated.

Wattenberg goes wrong in his belief that punk "as a musical movement that, outside of two bands (the potent, one-and-done Sex Pistols and the more creatively catholic Clash), ultimately didn't amount to much." This may sound blashpemous but by almost any conceivable measurement Green Day has had a bigger impact than their spiritual parents (the aforementioned Pistols and Clash). Green Day has had quite a lot to say about Trump and Trumpism to the non-Alt-Right among us. Another figure from the heady early days on punk rock in the late 70s and early 80s San Francisco punk scene was then-producer, now cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist and best-selling author Dan Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession , The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature , The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload and last year's A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. Literally, moments after Johnny Strike of Crime sent me Galupo's piece, Dan sent me one he had just penned for the Daily Beast, The Butchering of the Age of Reason. "Our country," he wrote, "is in a crisis that threatens to set us back 400 years." He didn't even specifically reference Trump. "I’m talking about reversing the Age of Reason, which ushered in a period of unprecedented intellectual, economic, and social growth. The Enlightenment, as it is also called, drew a line in the sand between rumor and fact, between testable hypotheses and anecdote, and between demonstrable facts and nonsense. Prior to the Age of Reason, people who heard voices in their heads might have been drowned or burned at the stake as witches; by the 20th century we had identified a biological disease that causes this (schizophrenia) and developed drugs to treat it. The Age of Reason led us to the germ theory of disease, penicillin, and-- although it took a while and is still not ubiquitous-- women’s rights, child labor laws, and a reduction in racism." The essence of punk ethos is far more in tune with Dan's critical analysis than in Wattenberg's hand-wringing stretch.

[U]ntil the last few months, [the Elightenment] allowed we citizens to engage in constructive discussion with elected officials about public policy matters, based on facts. It has allowed a free and independent press, with trained investigative journalists, to help us understand what is true and what is not. If the current administration brands as “fake” facts they find inconvenient, it undermines the entire political system. If we are going to throw out facts as a prerequisite to discussion, we are reversing centuries of cognitive progress.

...Why is it that musicians and scientists reach different conclusions when considering the same data? Perhaps for the same reason that voters reach different conclusions when considering the same statements, claims, and data presented by politicians. We engage in expectation-driven perception, and opposed to evidence-driven perception.

Expectations retune neurons and change the way our retinas, our eardrums, and our brains work. They cause firing patterns in our brain consistent with what we think we saw or heard rather than what we actually saw or heard.

Simply knowing that an instrument has a certain history could alter auditory pathways so that they actually sound better to us-- that is, if we know which one we’re hearing. Simply knowing that a person whose political views usually align with ours is speaking may cause us to evaluate the information less critically. Lord Chesterfield understood, over two hundred years ago, that we form impressions of others based on what we see and what we think, and that the seeing tends to overpower the thinking simply because seeing is so much easier than thinking. But we would do well to remember the words of his friend Voltaire: Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

When we listen to someone we like, such as an elected official whom we have supported, we tend to accept what they say more trustingly, even gullibly. We filter their remarks through a cognitive bias that they have our best interests at heart. We focus on aspects of the remarks that confirm our hopes, and we discount those that confirm our fears. We do the opposite with elected officials whom we oppose, thinking there can’t be anything of value in what they say. This has led to the current polarization of political parties, and obstructionism in congress. Evidence-based thinking would have us evaluate each statement objectively, and avoid jumping to conclusions. But that’s hard to do. As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown, under conditions of cognitive overload, we are much less likely to be able to do this.

So it takes some work. We need role models in positions of authority and influence to show us how evidence-based thinking works. Fortunately we have three institutions to help us, institutions that are the foundation of a free and democratic society, institutions that need our support more than ever. They are the judiciary, independent press, and the scientific method. When the panel of federal judges reviewed the Trump administrations immigration ban, note the language in the ruling: “We find no evidence.” Journalists reported that there was “no evidence” of WMDs in Iraq. Science reports “no evidence” of a link between vaccinations and autism. Former Republican President George W. Bush said in an interview recently that an independent press is “indispensable to democracy.” Cutting funding to education, interfering with judges and the press should never be made political issues-- supporting them supports the power of reason.

Punk rocker Billie Joe Armstrong's immediate reaction after learning that Trump had won the election was to urge people to "treat each other with respect and kindness and love" and then to re-write a song slightly, one I don't see the alt-right kiddies embracing any time soon:

2015 In Review: The Introduction-- It's Republican World!

By Noah

Introduction: Being A Republican Is A Choice.

What is Republican World? It’s not an amusement park. We are definitely not amused. No, Republican World is a hideous freakshow that half of the country’s population has chosen as a lifestyle. It’s a lot more than the insanity of Trump, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, Huckster and the rest of the party’s bizarre collection of miscreants running to be the party’s nominee for president. It’s an alternate universe of the mind that still, somehow, enables them to exist in the same time-space continuum as the world that normal, more well adjusted people live in.

Perhaps, if a normal person wanted to explain to a visitor what Republican World is, that person might tell the visitor to tune into any one of the fabulous Republican Party debates where they can see and hear a collection of 10 to 17 of the nation’s most prominent freaks; The Chosen of Reince Priebus, if you will. These are the people that Republican voters want to represent them in a contest for the nomination for the highest office in the land. Eventually, they will settle on one lucky winner, or, maybe two, if Republican World splits in half.

Make no mistake; these 10 to 17 freakazoids are not the only freaks. Regardless of which freak gets the Republican nomination, there will be over 45 million fellow freaks who vote for that freak. While doing that, they will also take advantage of the chance to vote for other freaks who are placed all over the ballot; freaks like Louis Gohmert, Steve King, Trey Gowdy, Darrell Issa… The list is a seemingly bottomless Cornucopia of Kookdom.

One could also watch any given 15 minutes of FOX News or listen to Michael Weiner Savage, Rush Limbaugh or any of the completely certifiable Republican hate radio people, politicians, or other Republican spokespersons. Hear them all as they recite the list of Republican Hall of Fame Hits of 2015, all brought to you by the hot new Republican product, Muslim-B-Gone! Now available in aerosol spray or specially engineered non-bio-degradable liquid!

1. No Minimum Wage!

2. Break up immigrant families no matter what the cost!

3. Benghazi!

4. Ban Harry Potter because Dumbledore is gay, and, witches! Satan! Satan!

5. Benghazi!

6. Obama is pro-Muslim! Obama is Muslim! And he’s not a leader!

7. Round up gays and execute them!

8. Benghazi!

9. Close clinics! Hunt down abortion doctors!

10. More Guns! More Guns! Bigger Guns! Canons for all!

Don’t forget 2015’s Republican Golden Oldie Of The Year!

11. Kill The Poor! By The Dead Kennedys. If you’re a Republican, you’ll even love the band name!



And, the most recent chart entry in Republican World--

12. Baby Parts!

2016 might just even bring us the hot new soon-to-be Republican chart topper Baby Parts Benghazi. It’s perfect for Republican World! Picked to click!

Over the years, the Republican hierarchy and money goons have built quite an infrastructure of hate radio and hate websites to constantly brainwash the susceptible. It only started with Roger Ailse’s Nixon-era plans for his “GOP TV” which became FOX "News" and, metastasized like cancer into corporately supported 24-hour hate radio, not to mention an infinite number of comparable hate websites.

Is it now only a matter of weeks before some lunatic republican website like The Daily Caller, World Net Daily, or Breitbart features a headline that reads "Hillary Dines On Baby Parts?" If that doesn’t go far enough for rank and file Republican voters, they’ll likely change it to "Hillary Dines On Baby Parts At Secret Lesbian Confab." These people are that far mentally out of control.

Meanwhile in Washington, if Hillary Clinton does, in fact, get the Democratic nomination, Republicans just won’t be able to stop themselves from creating some sort of Hillary-Baby Parts-Benghazi conflation, with millions more of our tax dollars spent and wasted on months of congressional nowhere investigations which will only make sense if… your mind lives in Republican World! Where fake scandals rule!

I’m old enough to remember when hippie counter-culture couples started naming their kids with names like Starshine and Moonbeam. Those names were relatively harmless. They were based on something real, with no nihilistic, negative connotation, but now I half expect that republican couples will soon start naming their newborns after their fake scandals. It’ll be "…and this is my daughter Baby Parts. This must be your son Birth Certificate." They can’t speak without mentioning this stuff. The tether to reality has disintegrated.

Republican World is an upside down bizarro place where Pope Francis is considered an evil, dangerous man but people think that someone like senile, self-proclaimed "America’s Mayor" Rudy Giuliani actually has something of value to say to us all. America’s Crazy Uncle is more like it. Why they keep trotting out this obvious poster boy for dementia, and putting him on camera with a microphone is beyond any reasoning? It’s also embarrassing and sad, but not to those who live in Republican World.

Republican World is also a world whose inhabitants think that not only could Alex Jones and Ben Stein pass a psychiatric exam but whose inhabitants would also ask, incredulously, why we would even think their sanity is in question. Well, especially with Stein, all one has to do is look at those bugged out eyes! Nurse! Bring the hypo! Now!

Republican World is a world where "Religious Liberty" applies only to some and means not only the right to deny marriage to gay people but to also kill them: right along with doctors who perform abortions. To Hell with the laws of the land.



Republican World is a state of mind where one can believe that the president was born in Kenya. Republican World is a place where temperatures are not rising and neither is the sea. Republican World is a place where commies and Muslims cohabitate under Republican beds, mass shootings are hoaxes, and, a dastardly wicked warlock of a president controls the weather while laughingly plotting the demise of America. It’s a place that has only existed for 6000 years and it’s a place where the Great Pyramids were used to store grain.

Republican World is a place whose inhabitants profess to love American out of one side of their mouths while saying they want to secede out of the other.

Logic and sanity have flown the coup. Normal people sigh and tell eachother that it would be very hard to make this stuff up, but, remember, Republican World is an alternate universe contrived by Republicans as a place where they can be comfortable and come up with explanations for a world that doesn’t make any sense to them, a world, for instance, where an African-American can be President (if he really was elected that is).

So, let’s take a look at the past year in Republican World. Who knows what 2016 will bring or where this mass hysteria will end. They walk among us. Outwardly, they look similar to us. Inward, it’s a whole different story. As Karl Rove, late of the George W. Bush administration, and now of FOX "News" once said while taunting journalist Ron Suskind for being from "what we call the reality-based community."

"That’s not the way the world really works anymore."

Well, at least for Republicans, it doesn’t work that way any more. The same can be said for any poor soul who lives in a padded cell in a mental institution.

Coming up in the morning: Chapter One of Noah’s 2015 In Review: It’s Republican World!

San Francisco Celebrates City Hall Centennial... With Classic Punk Rock

Penelope Houston, Jello Biafra, Chuck Prophet and Novena Carmel (left to right) rock San Francisco (click to enlarge). Photo by John Margaretten

by Denise Sullivan

"That was for librarian Cynthia Hurd, murdered two nights ago for being black in America," said Penelope Houston from the stage of Friday night's musical Centennial Celebration of City Hall, punctuating her 38-year-old song, "The American In Me," concerning the country's culture of violence. Accompanied by Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, Houston, who works by day as a city librarian and archivist, originally cut the song in 1977 with her history-making punk rock band the Avengers (they opened the last ever show by the Sex Pistols in San Francisco), and her remarks were welcome commentary at the mid-point of an  impressive cross-generational revue assembled by Prophet to sing the songs of San Francisco (a second stage devoted to jazz and blues held down by vocalist Lavay Smith featured internationally recognized hometown talent like Jules Broussard and Paula West).

Timed to coincide with the US Conference of Mayors, a visit to the city by President Obama, and a $33,000 a head fundraiser organized by House leader Nancy Pelosi, the outdoor event was a "a unique public private partnership" sponsored by PG&E, ATT, Wells Fargo and Twitter, according to the City's bumpf supported by the discreet logos flanking the stage. Representing the City's musical history from the dawn of rock and folk, the program veered from the dark "Tom Dooley" by the Kingston Trio to the excruciatingly light Beau Brummels and Journey, then back to dark as honorary San Franciscan Mark Kozelek turned in a terrifying performance of his true life tale, "Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes." As Prophet led the musicians often accompanied by Nona Brown's Inspirational Music Collective (a full backing chorus) and a string section, and journalist Ben Fong Torres emceed, it was Houston and her punk rock brethren Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys) who used their stage time outside the US Mayor's conference to stand down local and societal ills and sock it to 'em. Punk rock, alongside hip hop has long served as contemporary music's conscience and soul, or at  least since rock and folk has largely abandoned overt messaging and moved toward a more opaque and obscure language and centrist views. But there are some singers who mercifully shall not be moved from their mission to disrupt business and politics as usual.

Immediately following Houston, as a string section plucked "California Uber Alles," Jello Biafra noted, "This one's for City Hall," then he spilled his guts into "Let's Lynch The Landlord." Biafra, who took his own bid for mayor in 1979, was clearly delighted to be back on the civic beat. He told the San Francisco Weekly, "My hope for this festival, zillion-dollar light show or not, is that it's a celebration of the vibrant art and culture that makes San Francisco such a destination for other people. It's a shame the rent has gotten so expensive that people don't keep drifting in here from all over the country as teenagers, or a little older, all chasing a dream-- that's what I did." Biafra's dream led him to becoming one of the most recognized and fervently progressive voices in punk as leader of the Dead Kennedys and later as a solo artist, though it's also been at a cost. He's been persistently pestered by law enforcement since the day his band's name appeared on a marquee; he's survived an obscenity trial and fought his own eviction on Guerrero Street decades ago. But times have changed dramatically in San Francisco as reported here and elsewhere. Evictions are more frequent and uglier. And due to poor planning and housing policies we've seen large swathes of the City's culturally creative and contributing working, artist, LGBTQ, Latino, and African American populations continue to be priced-out, often following Ellis Act evictions alongside more unlawful and unethical practices.



As I watched Biafra perform "Let's Lynch The Landlord" with some urgency, I stood by friends who with the assistance of the City Attorney are presently  facing down one of the ugliest of all landlords our City and LA will ever know. I thought of the others we've lost to evictions, AIDS, poor health and other causes and wondered who will be next to be evicted or passed over in favor of a younger, richer and whiter San Franciscans. Steve Barton, the singer-songwriter and guitarist from Translator who left the city years ago told me of the housing crisis impacting West Hollywood where he's lived with his wife for 13 years.  Later in the evening,  he lead his frustration anthem, "Everywhere That I'm Not," to great effect as once again I contemplated where we'd been, how far we'd come, and where we'll all land when the boom goes bust.

"Don't forget who you are. Be true to yourself San Francisco," implored Debora Iyall following her battle cry, "Never Say Never." Iyall was at the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969; she returned for the punk rock invasion of the city in the late '70s and early '80s and when called upon to serve in the here and now, she answers. It's values, like that, among others, that punk rock taught her generation and that others in the tradition of resistance, like the protestors who jammed streets downtown and the creators of the Black Lives Matter installation at the celebration's periphery, still cleave to, while under under the gold dome of City Hall, insiders partied on.

"We've got to live together," sang Novena Carmel during grand finale singalong of her dad Sly Stone's hit, "Everyday People." And for a few hours, the remaining residents of the city that knows how did just that.

Debora Iyall and Chuck Prophet rock San Francisco

Should David Petraeus Get Away With It Because "He's Suffered Enough?"

Elites rarely think other elites need to face the same kind of justice non-elites have to face when they break the law. Whether banksters on Wall Street or legislators on Capitol Hill, the worst criminals in our society-- those given the greatest amount of public trust-- are rarely held to account for their transgressions. And the lack of accountability is systemic and has become almost a tenet of our entire society. Sunday, Dianne Feinstein was a guest on CNN's State of the Union. She echoed comments by 2 other Military Industrial Complex shills from across the aisle, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, that David Petraeus should not be prosecuted and that the Justice Department had erred in recommending charges against him.

"This man has suffered enough in my view," said Feinstein, whose own husband has been bbagman for her entire political career and who, as a military contractor, has made millions of dollars in obscene profits off Feinstein's positions. Both should be rotting in prison now instead of going on CNN to excoriate the Justice Department for trying to bring justice to the high and mighty. Calling Petraeus "the four-star general of our generation" and "a very brilliant man," Feinstein used the common refrain elites always use when telling us to just get over it when one of their own gets into legal trouble: "It's done, it's over. He's retired. He's lost his job. I mean, how much does government want?"



This week, Michael Foley, an author and academic from the University of Groeningen, interviewed me for his next book which is on the politics of the San Francisco punk music scene of the late 1970s/early 80s. Among his recent books are Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s and Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (33 1/3). A few days ago we had finished up and I was exhausted from talking non-stop for almost 3 hours. Foley asked me if I wanted to add anything but I was too tired to think. The next morning I remembered that he hadn't asked me about the White Night riots of May 21, 1979, sparked by the wrist slap to right-wing politician Dan White after he murdered Harvey Milk. Foley came back to my house a few days later for another segment of interview.

Although history paints the riots as part of a conflict between the gay community and the police, it was no such thing. The gay community organized a peaceful candlelight vigil and a march to City Hall. The gay community did not want violence, trouble or any kind of confrontation with the police. Individual gays, of course, had a different perspective.

Harvey was a close friend and mentor. If you watch the credits roll on the first PBS documentary of his life, you will see that I was credited with still photography. Harvey had staked me with a darkroom when I was flat broke and in return, I did his campaign photos. My partner Chris' punk rock record store, Aquarius, was right next door to Harvey's camera shop. I spent my days going back and forth between the two. Harvey has always distrusted and disliked Dianne Feinstein, a member, like himself and Dan White, of the Board of Supervisors (City Council). I had never heard of her until he told me what a pompous asshole she was. The assassinations of Harvey and liberal Mayor George Moscone launched the long, tedious career of the horribly conservative Feinstein.

May 21 found me distraught that White was given the most lenient possible sentence (7 years). I was beside myself and very much ready to do something about it. There may have been one or two other gay people with me and my friends but we were all from the punk rock community. Some cared about Harvey Milk or Dan White; some just wanted trouble. I wanted both. We were the first ones to turn over and burn the first (of a couple dozen) police cars. A picture of it wound up on the cover of the Dead Kennedys' debut album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.

Dan White served 5 years of his 7 year term. Two years later, the story goes, he committed suicide by using a garden hose hooked up to his car engine. He did die of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage... but he didn't commit suicide. By this time the gays didn't need the punk rockers to teach them about peoples' justice.

Looks Like We Have A Police Problem-- Ask Frank Serpico... Or Jello Biafra

A few days ago we took a look back on the 1992 war between the police and Body Count. They were hardly the only punk rock band to decry police racism and violence-- just the band that the police felt most threatened by. MDC never managed to sell the millions of records that Ice-T sold. Their music, which you can hear in the video above, was less accessible... and those initials stood, at least for a time when they moved from their native Austin to San Francisco, for Millions of Dead Cops. They did a lot of songs the police wouldn't have liked, like "I Remember" and "Dead Cops"-- and albums called Millions of Dead Cops in 1982 and another in 1991 called Hey Cop, If I Had A Face Like Yours. If the lyrics are difficult top decipher, here are the first couple of stanzas from "I Remember":

I remember getting intimidated and busted at age 13 by the police.
I remember my friend Tate Bryan getting shot in the back in Tampa, FL for his first-offense burglary.
I remember the police firing at the crowds and killing children cause they were the wrong color.
I remember the narcs from my high school trying to set me up for a big fall.
I remember the police bringing dogs into our school and sniffing away my rights.
The police is the klan is the mafia and they're out for me, and soon they're going to be out to get you, so you better get going if you know it's good for you and take your stand.

I remember when I first went to school
They said, Don't be a joker, don't be a fool
Pledge your allegiance to the red, white and blue
Don't expect your country to do nothin' for you
They said your forefathers loved you
but I only had one
And I watched him die in the heat of the sun
Suckin' up the bullets of a policeman's gun
There was nothin' I could do but stay away

Black Flag was one of the earliest California hardcore punk bands, starting playing gigs in Hermosa Beach in 1976 (as Panic) and become West Coast DIY icons-- and not big fans of the local police, as you can hear in their song "Police Story."

This fucking city is run by pigs.
They take the rights away from all the kids.
Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.

We can't win, no way.
Walking down the street.
I flip them off.
They hit me across the head with a billy club.

Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.
We can't win, no way.
Nothing I do, nothing I say.

I tell them to go get fucked.
They put me away.
Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.

We can't win, no way.
I got to court for my crime.
Stand in line, pay bail.
I may serve time.

Understand we're fighting a war we can't win.
They hate us, we hate them.
We can't win, no way

I don't recall the Crucifucks' "Cops For Fertilizer" ever becoming a hit but maybe it was big in 1981 in their native Lansing, Michigan. Leftöver Crack, from NYC, sprang out of the band Choking Victim in 1988. I don't recall any songs they ever did that weren't radical but "One Dead Cop" and "SoYou Want To Be A Cop" certainly stood out. The anti-authoritarian bands often wrote anti-police songs, for obvious reasons. The Bad Brains, which formed in DC in 1977, got pretty big for a hardcore punk band and there wasn't any question what "The Regulator" was all about, even if it tried to delve a little deeper into why the police were seen as the mechanism for social control in society.

You tell me what to say and when to say it.
You tell me what to do and how to do it.
And if I ask you why, you'll arrest me.
And if I call you a liar, you'll detest me.

You control what I'll be.
You control who I see.
And if I let you,
You control me.

You're the man who owns all the keys to the stores.
You're the man who always wants so much more.

You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.
You're the regulator.

The Clash had a lot more commercial success than almost any other early punk bands. They sold millions of records and their songs penetrated the mass consciousness, despite lyrics that were radically anti-authoritarian. "Guns of Brixton" (1979), from London Calling, their big U.S. breakthrough album, was the first Paul Simonon song the band recorded. Obviously reggae-influenced, the message is chilling-- if you're a cop.



First three stanzas:

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

The Dead Kennedys also became pretty successful worldwide And they were also about as anti-authoritarian as a band could be. "Police Truck" was a popular song and "Bleed for Me" was more about the CIA than the police per se, but the point was pretty much the same.

Anti-Flag formed in 1988 in Pittsburgh and released their first album, Die For The Government in 1996. It featured "Police State in the U.S.A." and the immortal "Fuck Police Brutality."



A couple of months ago, former New York City police detective Frank Serpico published a piece about the police in Politico. In light of the Pat Lynch threats against civilian control of the NYC police department, The Police Are Still Out Of Control is probably worth reading today. Excerpts:

In the opening scene of the 1973 movie Serpico, I am shot in the face-- or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face... [T]he Narcotics division was rotten to the core, with many guys taking money from the very drug dealers they were supposed to bust. I had refused to take bribes and had testified against my fellow officers. Police make up a peculiar subculture in society. More often than not they have their own moral code of behavior, an “us against them” attitude, enforced by a Blue Wall of Silence. It’s their version of the Mafia’s omerta. Speak out, and you’re no longer “one of us.” You’re one of “them.” And as James Fyfe,  a nationally recognized expert on the use of force, wrote in his 1993 book about this issue, Above The Law, officers who break the code sometimes won’t be helped in emergency situations, as I wasn’t.

...I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers. A couple of years ago after the death of David Durk-- the police officer who was one of my few allies inside the department in my efforts to expose graft--  the Internet message board “NYPD Rant” featured some choice messages directed at me. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” said one. An ex-con recently related to me that a precinct captain had once said to him, “If it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Serpico, I coulda been a millionaire today.” My informer went on to say, “Frank, you don’t seem to understand, they had a well-oiled money making machine going and you came along and threw a handful of sand in the gears.”

...So my personal story didn’t end with the movie, or with my retirement from the force in 1972. It continues right up to this day. And the reason I’m speaking out now is that, tragically, too little has really changed since the Knapp Commission, the outside investigative panel formed by then-Mayor John Lindsay after I failed at repeated internal efforts to get the police and district attorney to investigate rampant corruption in the force. Lindsay had acted only because finally, in desperation, I went to the New York Times, which put my story on the front page. Led by Whitman Knapp, a tenacious federal judge, the commission for at least a brief moment in time supplied what has always been needed in policing: outside accountability. As a result many officers were prosecuted and many more lost their jobs. But the commission disbanded in 1972 even though I had hoped (and had so testified) that it would be made permanent.

And today the Blue Wall of Silence endures in towns and cities across America. Whistleblowers in police departments-- or as I like to call them, “lamp lighters,” after Paul Revere-- are still turned into permanent pariahs. The complaint I continue to hear is that when they try to bring injustice to light they are told by government officials: “We can’t afford a scandal; it would undermine public confidence in our police.” That confidence, I dare say, is already seriously undermined.

Things might have improved in some areas. The days when I served and you could get away with anything, when cops were better at accounting than at law enforcement-- keeping meticulous records of the people they were shaking down, stealing drugs and money from dealers on a regular basis-- all that no longer exists as systematically as it once did, though it certainly does in some places. Times have changed. It’s harder to be a venal cop these days.

But an even more serious problem-- police violence-- has probably grown worse, and it’s out of control for the same reason that graft once was: a lack of accountability.

I tried to be an honest cop in a force full of bribe-takers. But as I found out the hard way, police departments are useless at investigating themselves-- and that’s exactly the problem facing ordinary people across the country-- including perhaps, Ferguson, Missouri, which has been a lightning rod for discontent even though the circumstances under which an African-American youth, Michael Brown, was shot remain unclear.

Today the combination of an excess of deadly force and near-total lack of accountability is more dangerous than ever: Most cops today can pull out their weapons and fire without fear that anything will happen to them, even if they shoot someone wrongfully. All a police officer has to say is that he believes his life was in danger, and he’s typically absolved. What do you think that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets-- this sense of invulnerability? The famous old saying still applies: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (And we still don’t know how many of these incidents occur each year; even though Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 20 years ago, requiring the Justice Department to produce an annual report on “the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers,” the reports were never issued.)

It wasn’t any surprise to me that, after Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, officers instinctively lined up behind Darren Wilson, the cop who allegedly killed Brown. Officer Wilson may well have had cause to fire if Brown was attacking him, as some reports suggest, but it is also possible we will never know the full truth-- whether, for example, it was really necessary for Wilson to shoot Brown at least six times, killing rather than just wounding him. As they always do, the police unions closed ranks also behind the officer in question. And the district attorney (who is often totally in bed with the police and needs their votes) and city power structure can almost always be counted on to stand behind the unions.

In some ways, matters have gotten even worse. The gulf between the police and the communities they serve has grown wider. Mind you, I don’t want to say that police shouldn’t protect themselves and have access to the best equipment. Police officers have the right to defend themselves with maximum force, in cases where, say, they are taking on a barricaded felon armed with an assault weapon. But when you are dealing every day with civilians walking the streets, and you bring in armored vehicles and automatic weapons, it’s all out of proportion. It makes you feel like you’re dealing with some kind of subversive enemy. The automatic weapons and bulletproof vest may protect the officer, but they also insulate him from the very society he’s sworn to protect. All that firepower and armor puts an even greater wall between the police and society, and solidifies that “us-versus-them” feeling.

...Many white Americans, indoctrinated by the ridiculous number of buddy-cop films and police-themed TV shows that Hollywood has cranked out over the decades-- almost all of them portraying police as heroes-- may be surprised by the continuing outbursts of anger, the protests in the street against the police that they see in inner-city environments like Ferguson. But they often don’t understand that these minority communities, in many cases, view the police as the enemy. We want to believe that cops are good guys, but let’s face it, any kid in the ghetto knows different. The poor and the disenfranchised in society don’t believe those movies; they see themselves as the victims, and they often are.

Law enforcement agencies need to eliminate those who use and abuse the power of the law as they see fit. As I said to the Knapp Commission 43 years ago, we must create an atmosphere where the crooked cop fears the honest cop, and not the other way around. An honest cop should be able to speak out against unjust or illegal behavior by fellow officers without fear of ridicule or reprisals. Those that speak out should be rewarded and respected by their superiors, not punished.

We’re not there yet.

...Every time I speak out on topics of police corruption and brutality, there are inevitably critics who say that I am out of touch and that I am old enough to be the grandfather of many of the cops who are currently on the force. But I’ve kept up the struggle, working with lamp lighters to provide them with encouragement and guidance; serving as an expert witness to describe the tactics that police bureaucracies use to wear them down psychologically; testifying in support of independent boards; developing educational guidance to young minority citizens on how to respond to police officers; working with the American Civil Liberties Union to expose the abuses of stun-gun technology in prisons; and lecturing in more high schools, colleges and reform schools than I can remember. A little over a decade ago, when I was a presenter at the Top Cops Award event hosted by TV host John Walsh, several police officers came up to me, hugged me and then whispered in my ear, “I gotta talk to you.”

The sum total of all that experience can be encapsulated in a few simple rules for the future:

1. Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;

2. Provide ongoing, examples-based training and simulations. Not only telling but showing police officers how they are expected to behave and react is critical;

3. Require community involvement from police officers so they know the districts and the individuals they are policing. This will encourage empathy and understanding;

4. Enforce the laws against everyone, including police officers. When police officers do wrong, use those individuals as examples of what not to do-- so that others know that this behavior will not be tolerated. And tell the police unions and detective endowment associations they need to keep their noses out of the justice system;

5. Support the good guys. Honest cops who tell the truth and behave in exemplary fashion should be honored, promoted and held up as strong positive examples of what it means to be a cop;

6. Last but not least, police cannot police themselves. Develop permanent, independent boards to review incidents of police corruption and brutality-- and then fund them well and support them publicly. Only this can change a culture that has existed since the beginnings of the modern police department.

There are glimmers of hope that some of this is starting to happen, even in New York under its new mayor, Bill DeBlasio. Earlier this month DeBlasio’s commissioner, Bill Bratton-- who’d previously served a term as commissioner in New York as well as police chief in Los Angeles-- made a crowd of police brass squirm in discomfort when he showed a hideous video montage of police officers mistreating members of the public and said he would “aggressively seek to get those out of the department who should not be here-- the brutal, the corrupt, the racist, the incompetent.” I found that very impressive. Let’s see if he follows through.

I wouldn't count on it. As Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report wrote Saturday, "When Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has the blood of two dead cops on his hands, he was issuing a physical threat to both the person of the mayor and the civil authority to which the police are subordinate and sworn to protect. In a nation under the rule of law, such a statement by a representative of an armed and enflamed constabulary-- 35,000-strong, the equivalent of three light infantry divisions-- would trigger an immediate defensive response from the State, to guard against mutiny. But, of course, no such thing happened."

The cops’ rage has been building in synch with the growth of a nationwide movement that challenges the legitimacy of the Mass Black Incarceration State, of which they are the frontline troops.

The cops are understandably angry and confused. As primary enforcers of the social order, they have an intimate knowledge of actual class and race relationships in America. Their perspectives are molded by the geographic and social boundaries they patrol; they are shaped and informed by the inequalities of the system they protect on behalf of the powerful people they serve. (Yes, they really do “serve and protect” somebody.) The cop’s worldview is also firmly anchored in the history of the United States. He may not be aware of his profession’s antecedents in the slave patrols, or even that the U.S. Supreme Court once ruled that Black people have no rights that the white man is bound to respect, but cops are the reigning experts on the borders that delineate rights and privileges in their localities. They know that public housing residents have virtually no rights that cops-- as agents of the rulers – are bound to respect. They know that whole sections of their cities, encompassing most of the Black and brown populations, are designated as drug zones where everyone is suspect and probable cause is a given, or as high-crime zones where every shooting is pre-qualified as a good one.

The cops threaten mutiny if the State does not stick up for the men and women who do its dirty work. PBA honcho Patrick Lynch denounced “those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did everyday. We tried to warn, ‘It must not go on. It cannot be tolerated.’”

To which the protesters answer: the police killings and the criminalization of a whole people must not go on and cannot be tolerated.

The movement has come to a critical juncture, a moment that would have arrived even if Ismaaiyl Brinsley had not made his own fatal decision. It was always inevitable that the cops would at some point demand that the State dispense with civil liberties pretenses and allow them to crush the nascent movement. New York City’s police force-- by far the nation’s largest army of domestic occupation-- is especially prone to mutiny and coup-plotting. Thousands of cops, many of them drunk, stormed City Hall in 1992 to express their utter contempt for Black mayor David Dinkins. But, the current crisis is far different, because it is the movement’s show, not the cops’. The people are exposing the most acute contradictions of American life through direct confrontation with the armed enforcers of the State. The cops are supposed to be upset. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained, “the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” The crisis is here, and will grow deeper, but freedom is non-negotiable. The movement must win or be crushed.

UPDATE: Ever Hear Of Redditt Hudson?

Hudson is a former St. Louis police officer who works for the NAACP and chairs the board of the Ethics Project. He wrote an essential-reading OpEd for the Washington Post a couple weeks ago that's worth revisiting, Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix.

When he was a kid he-- as well as friends and family-- were routinely roughed up by white cops. In 1994 he joined the force. He wrote that he "was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered. I won’t say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist... This attitude corrodes the way policing is done."

I liked my job, and I was good at it.

But more and more, I felt like I couldn’t do the work I set out to do. I was participating in a profoundly corrupt criminal justice system. I could not, in good conscience, participate in a system that was so intentionally unfair and racist. So after five years on the job, I quit.

Since I left, I’ve thought a lot about how to change the system. I’ve worked on police abuse, racial justice and criminal justice reform at the Missouri ACLU and other organizations.

Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.

The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.

Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.

We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth. I have little confidence in internal investigations.

The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW CONTINUES MONDAY --
at 5pm ET/2pm PT

Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 7:
• And so it begins: The running of the buffoons
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is
• and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup

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