Buchanan Sept 8^th

Patrick Buchanan asks, “Do the lives of police matter to Obama?” His thesis is that of course they don’t. To make his case he has to leave out some data and distort some other facts. We should expect no less from Patrick J. Buchanan.

Buchanan tells us that Deputy Goforth was shot 15 times by “an alleged black racist.” He tells us too that the President called this officer’s widow but “he didn’t show the…indignation and outrage he exhibited...at what happened to Michael Brown…and Trevon Martin.” So now Buchanan evaluates the President’s condolence phone calls on whether he believes they have shown the proper degree of “outrage.” Buchanan’s arrogance here is right up there with Donald Trump’s… maybe Buchanan is planning to get into the Presidential race once again.

Deputy Goforth’s killer, Shannon J. Miles, was charged with assault in 2012. He was then declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. It seems that Shannon J. Miles was probably not in his right mind when he murdered Officer Goforth either. The question that Buchanan ought to be asking, and one he doesn’t even touch, is how does someone like this get a weapon capable of firing 15 shots with 15 trigger pulls? Buchanan would much rather talk about President Obama’s lack of adequate outrage at Officer Goforth’s killing than ask how his killer, once declared mentally incompetent, acquired the weapon that killed him. One question fits Buchanan’s agenda, the other question doesn’t.

Moving right along Buchanan tells us that “Eric Garner had an encounter with the police on Staten Island…” Indeed he did have “an encounter with the police…” actually he had an encounter with five police officers and as a result of this “encounter” he was choked to death. His “crime” was selling individual cigarettes. As he was forced to the sidewalk with an illegal chokehold he said, “I can’t breathe.” This utterance was taken by the police as evidence that he certainly could breathe. The police, apparently unfamiliar with the mechanics of breathing, should know that making a sound requires expelling air; it is not evidence that you can bring air into your lungs. The result was that Mr. Garner died right there with his face pushed into the concrete sidewalk and this “encounter” cost the city 5.9 million dollars. Again, Buchanan mentions none of that.

Then Buchanan describes his favorite crime fighter, Ronald Reagan; he tells us that Reagan, beginning about 1980, increased the number of people incarcerated from 600 thousand to 2 million. “Muggers, robbers, rapists and killers were taken off the streets and put away for decades.” Well perhaps, but the great majority of these criminals were minor drug offenders, many were pot smokers; this was the beginning of the “war on drugs” which has led to long prison terms and overcrowded prisons for the possession of small amounts of marijuana. The Corrections Corporation of America whose mission it is to privatize prisons and profit from swelling prison populations began  its ascent in 1983; just another bow to the free enterprise system from Buchanan’s conservative hero, Ronald Reagan.