Author: leeheidhues

I am a Green Party member, legal worker, walker, cyclist who follows politics, world events, 🌎 the literary world and đŸŽ„ film

Teen’s Death a Political Weapon. Refugee killed a girl, 14. Germany’s far right saw opportunity in tragedy.

The New Yorker 1.28.2019

Letter from Germany

Hundreds of people are murdered in Germany every year. But the troubling circumstances surrounding Der Fall Susanna, the case of Susanna Feldman, helped create a cause cĂ©lĂšbre, generating intense media coverage—and activating the major fault lines now running through the country. Far-right parties hailed her as a martyr. Horst Seehofer, the country’s interior minister, who has repeatedly clashed with Angela Merkel over the government’s policy on immigrants and refugees, invoked the case when he threatened to resign last summer, sparking one of the most dramatic political crises in the country’s postwar history. And conditions were already fraught. Germany’s once placid political system had, over the past five years, been thrown into chaos by the rise of a new populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Support for Merkel had rapidly weakened, and, in October, in part to avert rebellion within her own party, the Christian Democratic Union, she resigned as its chair and promised to step down as Chancellor by the next general election.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/how-a-teens-death-has-become-a-political-weapon

The Making of Kamala Harris, Willie Brown’s protĂ©gĂ©. Remaking herself. A progressive populist

Another Snarky WSJ Editorial.  Check out the Picture with Senator Elizabeth Warren. Two Women who could be President and will definitely stick it to Trump. I’m sure Willie Brown will have something to say in his Sunday column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wall Street Journal Editorial 1.23.2019

Senator Kamala Harris smiles during a press conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Jan. 21. PHOTO: ZACH GIBSON/BLOOMBERG NEWS

California Senator Kamala Harris dove into the race for President on Monday, as everyone who knows her expected. Though she’s been a Senator for only two years, the victories by Barack Obama and Donald Trump have shown that ambition beats national experience as a qualification to get to the White House, if not necessarily to succeed as President.

“I love my country and this is a moment in time where I feel a sense of responsibility to fight for who we are,” Ms. Harris declared on Good Morning America. So professes every Democratic aspirant #metoo. Though a longtime member of the Democratic elite, the 54-year-old seems ready to run as a progressive populist.

But as progressives like to say, Ms. Harris grew up privileged. Her Indian-born mother was a breast cancer researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and her Jamaican father was a Stanford economist. Amid the Democratic obsession with identity politics, Ms. Harris’s biracial background will be a selling point.

She was also raised politically by the Democratic machine. After law school, Ms. Harris went to work in the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Despite failing the state bar on the first try, she was allowed to continue working until she passed.

Her book jacket summarizes her rise: “She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer” of California. The longer version is that she dated Willie Brown, the longtime state Assembly Speaker who was three decades her senior. Mr. Brown appointed her to government sinecures and connected her to Democratic donors, though he isn’t mentioned in her book.

Ms. Harris also received substantial support from unions she repaid as Attorney General. At the Service Employees International Union’s urging, she blocked Prime Healthcare’s bid in 2015 to rescue an insolvent Catholic hospital network. Last year the over-leveraged hospitals declared bankruptcy, jeopardizing pensions for thousands of workers.

Ms. Harris also employed prosecutorial powers for political purposes such as her assaults on for-profit Corinthian Colleges and Exxon Mobil . She sought to force the disclosure of conservative donors but was blocked by a federal court. She is running as a criminal-justice reformer, but she declined to support two state referenda opposed by public-safety unions that aimed to reduce incarceration.

Her Senate career has been unremarkable, though she garnered publicity with her inquisition of Brett Kavanaugh. She’s now running on a redistributionist’s dream platform of Medicare for All, a $6,000 guaranteed income for households earning less than $100,000, and tax credits for renters who spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

While a prolific fundraiser—she raised $1.5 million within 24 hours of declaring for President—her financial jaunts to the Hamptons and penchant for first-class travel will draw criticism from rivals. But what makes Ms. Harris formidable is that she synthesizes all the varieties of current Democratic politics.

US Supreme Court upholds policy barring transgender people from military

Study the Poster from the German History Museum in Berlin.  This is where Trump, aided and abetted by his Supreme Court, is moving Amerika.

Deutsche Welle 1.22.2019

Nazi Era Poster. German History Museum – Berlin  (Lee’s Perspective Photo.   Taken in Berlin October 2018)

The court gave  Trump a victory by upholding his policy that blocks many transgender people from serving in the military.

The decision, with the court’s five conservative justices prevailing over its four liberals, granted Trump’  request to put on hold injunctions issued by federal judges against enforcement of the policy while a challenge to its legality continues in lower courts.

https://www.dw.com/en/us-supreme-court-upholds-policy-barring-transgender-people-from-serving-in-military/a-47188635

Kamala Harris shaped by crucible of San Francisco politics

Quote from Politico  1.21.2019

Long before the presidential race, Kamala Harris has pitched herself as a different kind of prosecutor. In her first race for San Francisco district attorney, the 38-year-old trudged around town with a makeshift standing desk made from an ironing board that bore the sign “Kamala Harris, a voice for justice.”

San Francisco Examiner 1.21.2019

http://www.sfexaminer.com/kamala-harris-shaped-crucible-san-francisco-politics/

Photo: New York Times 1.16.2019

 

Welcome to the State of Intolerance. Teens mock Native American at Washington rally

Life in Trump’s Amerika

Deutsche Welle 1.20.2019

A Catholic school has apologized after a group of its students harrassed a Native American elder while he was singing. The incident has been widely condemned and the videos have gone viral on social media.

A US diocese on Sunday promised to take action after boys from a Catholic private school mocked an elderly Native American man at a rally by indigenous communities in Washington.

The footage, which spread on social media over the weekend, shows a student from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky smirking as he stands exceptionally close to Nathan Phillips, a Native American Vietnam war veteran, who beats a traditional drum while chanting.

Other teens, many also wearing clothing bearing President Donald Trump’s political slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ jeered, jumped and appeared to mock the man.

Several intimidating minutes

A member of Phillips’ march, Marcus Frejo, said the boisterous students began chanting slogans and then started doing the haka, a traditional Maori dance.

At one point, students chanted, “build the wall, build the wall,” the 64-year-old Phillips said in a separate video.

“These are indigenous lands, we’re not supposed to have walls,” the elder of Nebraska’s Omaha tribe added, wiping away the tears.

“I wish I could see that energy of that young mass of young men, put that energy into making this country, really, really great, helping those that are hungry.”

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

The incident took place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday when the annual anti-abortion March for Life, which the boys had attended, coincided with a rally by indigenous communities calling for their rights to be respected.

After the video drew widespread criticism on social media, the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School issued a statement rebuking the students.

“We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C,” the statement said.

Boys face expulsion

“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person. The matter is being investigated, and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”

Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress in November, linked the students’ behavior to rising levels of racial intolerance under the Trump administration.

“The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking,” she wrote on Twitter.

Weimar, 1919: Birth of Germany’s first democracy

Deutsche Welle 1.19.2019

In 1919, German women voted for the first time — in an election that was to play a pivotal role in the country’s history. It came on the heels of the disastrous Great War and the year before Hitler formed the Nazi party.

https://www.dw.com/en/weimar-1919-birth-of-germanys-first-democracy/a-47143440

Couple sue SFPD. Police mistakenly ransacked their apartment

San Francisco Chronicle – Evan Sernoffsky 1.19.2019

Police mistakenly raided a San Francisco couple’s apartment in search of stolen iPhones, ransacking the unit while officers took a young man into custody and shouting at his shocked wife, who was wearing only a towel, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

“After the SFPD left with their battering ram and pry bar, Mr. Garcia and Ms. Knuth sat and witnessed the disarray that their home was put in by the SFPD,” Attorney Josh Brownstein wrote. “As they commiserated, they overheard several SFPD officers outside their window laughing and joking about a ‘pending lawsuit.’”

As  the team of officers ripped through the couple’s personal belongings that day in 2017, they slowly began to realize they had goofed, attorney  Brownstein wrote in the lawsuit.

It turns out Rick Garcia had legally purchased his iPhone two weeks earlier from the Apple store at Stonestown Galleria. And, at 5 feet 9 and 120 pounds, he clearly wasn’t one of the three “husky” burglars police were looking for who had targeted that store, his attorney said.

Garcia and his wife, Shannon Knuth, are now suing the city and its Police Department after suffering “physical and emotional injuries” in the episode, Brownstein wrote.

The episode began after a team of burglars stole 300 iPhones from the Apple store at Stonestown Galleria on Nov. 1, 2017, according to the lawsuit.

The investigation was assigned to the Police Department’s newly formed General Crimes Unit, a team of 35 officers dedicated to crimes such as burglaries, robberies and bicycle thefts. The case, Brownstein said, was the first one assigned to the new unit.

More than two weeks later, on Nov. 19, Garcia bought his new iPhone X from the same Apple store along with a leather case, totaling $1,498.84, his attorney said.

Then on the early morning of Dec. 4, 2017, Garcia was “abruptly awakened by a shouting and banging emanating from his exterior hallway,” Brownstein said, adding that police were shouting from the hall, “San Francisco Police Department” and “search warrant.”

While his wife was in the shower, Garcia approached the door, looked through the eyehole and saw police with a battering ram preparing to bust in, his attorney wrote.

When Garcia opened the door, Brownstein said, police rushed in, pulled Garcia into the hallway, handcuffed him and took him to Taraval Station for questioning.

Back at the apartment, officers shouted at Knuth, who was in a towel and was “confused and extremely frightened,” Brownstein said. “She insisted that something was wrong — that they must be mistaken.”

Police began searching the home and handed Knuth “a bra, thong underwear, yoga pants and a sweatshirt” and told her to get dressed in the bathroom, her attorney said.

Once Knuth was dressed, and police told her they were looking for a iPhone X, she showed them the receipt, proving Garcia legally owned the phone, Brownstein said.

Realizing their blunder, police brought Garcia back home to the ransacked apartment, the attorneys said.

Chesa Boudin and The Media

My Post in the San Francisco Examiner 1.18.2019

Chesa Boudin will wage a spirited and intelligent race. Chesa will bring a level of intelligence and a perspective of the criminal justice system which is sadly missing. He knows up close and personally the impact the American system has on people caught up in its tentacles. Regrettably, Chesa will have to fend off the disparaging attacks all too apparent in the Mainstream Media and a portion of the public at large. Chesa will be fine and his campaign will gather a large following.