Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/13/2021

     Things not always what they appear

Having been called, culled and never seated for a jury, I respect anyone who has “donated” of their time, attention and energy to that most basic aspect of self-rule: trial by a jury of one’s peers. Sometimes the guilt or innocence are so one-sided that there’s thankfully little interruption to other obligations, or qualms on the conscience.

Every trial represents the clashing of two irreconcilable viewpoints. Unlike plea bargains acknowledging a level of guilt, avoiding litigation; or cases dismissed for lack of serious evidence, or an out-of-court settlement with no full vindication—in a trial, one side wins and the other side loses. It can be no other way, appeals aside. Losers rarely feel they lost on the merits—unfairness, prejudice, improperly disallowed evidence and testimony, and legal shenanigans being common complaints.

Most probably have a sense of whether Minneapolis Police Officer Derik Chauvin did something wrong; some have concluded for or against his guilt. This writer withholds judgement and avoids the news media’s “reporting”; it easily follows chosen narratives, while the presumption of innocence is cast aside. Those same news outlets have taken thinly-veiled “sides”—for Biden, against Trump, for Obama, against Bush, for Democrats and against Republicans on most budget/policy issues. Why would we rely on 3-minute summations, or even long segments, in the trial over George Floyd’s death?

Take the following at face value, since they’re supported by testimony and evidence: The 8 to 10+ minutes of video—not of the knee-on-shoulder/neck by Chauvin, but of the lengthy interaction after officers “contacted” Floyd over counterfeit money—show in stark detail the difficulty and frustration of officers attempting to arrest an ultimately uncooperative and drug-addled criminal.

Unless you are inclined to allow—like the principle now enshrined in California law—property crime to be ignored or simply cited (if under CA’s $950 arbitrary threshold), then our society expects cops and sheriffs to arrest such miscreants. The news media, Black Lives Matter mob and leftist criminal defense lawyers have a side, the same side, and won’t tell you things that undercut their side.

Also supported by evidence: Chauvin didn’t have his knee on Floyd’s neck, but on his shoulder; the gathered mob probably contributed to the officer’s sense that if he released Floyd from the hold, he would be “un-arrested” at the mob’s hands. The cops could have used a “taser” but that might have also led to heart stoppage, brought about—not by the pressure from Chauvin’s knee—by the meth and fentanyl in his system.

Those drugs were in the SUV Floyd was taken out of, and on his person; he likely ate drugs to avoid arrest, also contributing to his own death. Floyd’s drug dealer, Chester Morris, was in that SUV, having tried to use fake $20 bills, and may have encouraged Floyd to hide the evidence by eating the drugs. That dealer “took the 5^th” so as not to be culpable for the drugs; Floyd himself said, “I ate too many drugs.”

The muscle-bound, 240-pound, 6’4” Floyd was capable of violently resisting any number of smaller officers (Chauvin was 5’9” and 140 pounds); the overdosed criminal engaged in numerous attempts—you’ll see in the video preceding the knee-hold—to escape arrest. Look up “Officer Chauvin's Knee Was NOT on George Floyd's 'Neck' and 8 Other Things You Didn't Know About This Case,” by Victoria Taft (4/08, pjmedia.com)

In other news, we find that the terms “unity” and “veracity” are alienated from every utterance or action of the Biden-Harris (or vice versa) regime: The Biden $2.2 trillion “Infrastructure Plan” is loaded with “blue state” goodies no one (not paid to say so) would call “infrastructure”—that is probably why it’s called the “American Jobs Plan.” Even the paid hacks put less than 1/3^rd (or $621 billion) towards “transportation”; only $115 billion goes to “roads and bridges.” Cost per job: $666,000.

Fact checkers dispute Republican claims that only 5 to 7 percent is real “infrastructure” but they have to accept fanciful notions (Biden: “what we’re really doing is raising the bar on what we can imagine…”) of trains 40 percent faster than now exist, and exceeding the 550-mph jet speed. See “You Can’t Ignore Physics, Joe” (Jim Geraghty, 4/08) and “Joe Biden’s So-Called ‘Infrastructure Plan’ Is Built On A Lie” by Randal O'Toole.

On Biden’s “gun violence proposals,” any of the following irrefutably prove what we 2^nd Amendment supporters say: “Biden the Uniter Wants to Trample Your 2nd Amendment Rights,” by Stephen Kruiser (pjmedia.com, 4/09); “Biden Gun Speech Filled With Falsehoods,” by Stephen Gutowski (freebeacon.com, 4/08); and “Fact Check: Biden’s Claims About Background Checks at Gun Shows Are Misleading,” by Jack Phillips (theepochtimes.com, 4/09).

Gun shows are not exempt from federal firearms laws, as most sellers are licensed and require background checks just as if they were selling from a storefront. If state law allows, private sellers can sell without that step but they cannot sell very many guns before a license is required; the number and kind of guns that avoid background checks are totally inadequate to arm the multitudes of urban, even rural, criminals.

Such criminals routinely use “straw buyers,” girlfriends with clean records and more fear of their guy than the feds. I’ve checked the box swearing I’m not buying the gun for someone else; even private sellers must comply with the law wherein they are not knowingly selling to someone ineligible to own a gun. The common-sense right of a non-criminal relative or neighbor to defend themselves supersedes the anti-gun notions of control and, ultimately, removal of any citizen’s weapons.

But then, none of the First and Second Amendments rights are immutable to the obsessively-controlling-of-others, radical left now defining the Democrat party.