Who Should Pay To Clean Up The Protest Damage?

Everywhere the “peaceful” protestors have protested, decidedly un-peaceful violence has regularly followed. Protestors have defaced, vandalized or burned down private residences, small businesses, government buildings, and a huge assortment of statues and memorials.

Yes, there were a great many protesters justifiably upset with the death of George Floyd by white cops. What they should have been at least equally upset with was that progressive politicians started pushing a worst case scenario of police racism before the facts were actually in.

Turns out the leftist Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, hid the actual video of George Floyd’s arrest. Why? He says it was so he could assure a good, clean conviction against the police.

That is NOT his job! His damn job is to forthright with the people and for his office to be transparent; neither of which happens very much!

But the narrative Keith Ellison, the other leftist local politicians, and the media pushed was only partly true. They didn’t tell the whole truth because the whole truth does not fit their narrative that racism had everything to do with the arrest, that America is fundamentally evil, and that they hate the police.

Their false narrative reinforced by the limited portion of the video they released, resulted in violence and destruction to take over Minneapolis.

It rapidly spread from Minneapolis where Floyd died to the Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, New York, Austin, and damn near every other city in the country. And still they hid the full facts.

Hundreds of people were wounded; more than two dozen have been killed. Some of the dead were participants in protests and killed by their fellow protesters. Some were just innocent bystanders, small business owners, or police and former police engaged in protecting and serving.

And sixty days later Americans are still faced with criminals taking advantage of the situation. The destruction and killing persist.

At the height of the destruction and chaos we began to hear demands from the leadership at BLM and ANTIFA. These demands went from the totally insane; “all white people should turn over their homes to black people,” to even more insane; Congresswoman Shirley Jackson Lee demanded $14 trillion in reparations to black people — about $400,000 for every black in the country. Given her family were never slaves in America, (her parents immigrated from Jamaica,) and she was privileged to attend Yale University and the University of Virginia Law School, I wonder if she expects to receive reparations or pay them.

Whatever, none of the demands being made by the left have anything to do with George Floyd’s death. NOTHING! They all have to do with gaining power; and bilking taxpayers so socialist Democrats, and leftist organizations get rich.

Democrat run cities and states are the hardest hit by the violence. First, the liberals who have run these cities for most of 50 years refused to stop the violence. In Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, the lefty Democrat mayor, actually made a speech to rioters just before they went out to rain hell on his city. At almost the same time, he was also demanding Donald Trump provide federal funds to repair the damage.

In Seattle, Portland, New York, and Chicago; President Trump repeatedly offered federal law enforcement help to stop the violence, damage, and killings. In every case, local Democrat politicians said not just no, but hell no. They said they didn’t want his help. What???

All the Democrats care about is beating Trump. They’ll take every opportunity to make him look like a dictator. They’ll let their own cities burn so news reports show a country in chaos and so-called “journalists” report on a president who doesn’t know how to solve the problem. But they can’t have it both ways, if he’s a dictator why does he defer to local officials, and if he sends federal law enforcement to protect federal property, as he did in Portland, then he’s too authoritarian.

The mayor of Seattle who allowed criminals to take over a meaningful portion of her city (where four blacks were shot, and two killed) told the country that she didn’t want help from Trump because this was his dress rehearsal for martial Law. Oh please!

Now, Nancy Pelosi, has proposed a $3 trillion Chinese virus relief plan to add to the $22 trillion debt America has piled up. $1 trillion of the money in her plan is intended for cities and states. That money has nothing to do with Covid losses, and a great deal to do with covering decades of corrupt management by progressive politicians on things like public employee pensions. And to pay for the damage those politicians allowed rioters to wreak on their cities.

Let’s return to George Floyd and the half-truths that started it all. The American people were grossly misled by the Democrats and the media as to what happened to George Floyd. The world saw a video that showed only the very end of Mr. Floyd’s death. What they didn’t see, was how police approached his car in the beginning; how they asked him politely to get in the back of their squad car, how he resisted. He started saying, “I can’t breath,” long before anyone’s knee was placed on his neck.

Now we learn Floyd had enough Fentanyl in his system to cause him to stop breathing. I’m sure the police holding him down, with a knee to the neck contributed to his death, and the coroner ruled it a homicide well before the violence took place. But I wonder how things would have turned out if he’d cooperated with police and told them about the Fentanyl. He might well be alive today.

But the truth doesn’t matter to Democrats. They saw the opportunity for chaos and they encouraged it. They knew protesters in the streets would reflect poorly on President Trump, and distract from their own failures to lead. Then, when things got out of control, they used the opportunity to blame Trump for the violence.

The result has been hurt, death, and destruction. All because they were playing politics rather than doing their jobs. Now they’re talking about defunding the police; entirely or by degree it doesn’t matter. They’re making neighborhoods even less safe. Biden joined in by saying as president, he’d “redirect” law enforcement money.

Were it up to me, the politicians who allowed the destruction to go on, and the voters who elected them, should bear the cost for repairing the damage. People need to know there are consequences for electing liars, crooks, and leftists.

And, in the long run, the consequences are always bad.