Media (and Police) Double Standard On Wide Display In Waco

At Least 9 Dead In Waco, Texas Biker Shootout

idth=" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JZG8PIYKBa0"> -dead-in-biker-gang-shooting-at/article_37addf70-e4e5-505a-98b4-ecbef08a2a87.html">a shooting in Waco, Texas yesterday. When the smoke cleared, nine people were dead, another 18 or so injured, 100 weapons recovered, and many arrests were made.

Calling it a shooting is far too mild. It was a shootout, with no regard for the safety of innocent bystanders.

The brawl began at a restaurant in a mall in Waco, a place where people go with their families on Sundays. It escalated from chains and knives to guns. I can't even believe I typed that, because I've never had to type any such thing about Ferguson or Baltimore. Only Waco.

In Baltimore or Ferguson, police would have been dressed in riot gear with billy clubs after an event such as that. A curfew would have been imposed. The media would have been all over it. Fox News would trot out every conservative commentator they could to point fingers at those "thugs" who start senseless violence. We would hear about how the parents raised said thugs, and how they fritter away their welfare check on implements of thuggery.  READ MORE

Waco Police On Alert After Thug Bikers' Orders To 'Shoot Anyone In Uniform'

 

Texas Republicans want to take millions from HIV prevention and use it to fund abstinence

Texas has the third highest HIV diagnosis rate in the country. Texas is fifth highest in teen pregnancy rates.
 
Republicans in Texas are working on their budget. This past Tuesday they approved an amendment that would cut $3 million from HIV prevention programs and spend that money elsewhere—on abstinence education.

The GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly approved the budget amendment, but not before a tense exchange with Democrats that veered into the unusually personal. Republican state Rep. Stuart Spitzer, a doctor and the amendment's sponsor, at one point defended the change by telling the Texas House that he practiced abstinence until marriage. The first-term lawmaker said he hopes schoolchildren follow his example, saying, "What's good for me is good for a lot of people."

What's good for me is good for a lot of people? Infuriating. So infuriating, in fact, that things got pretty interesting after that little speech.  
READ MORE

Energy firm uses 'land grabs' to secure fracking rights from reluctant landowners

Ranjana Bhandari and her husband, Kaushik De,
stand near a Chesapeake Energy gas well in Arlington,
Texas, on Sept. 16, 2012.

October 2, 2012, NBC News

Ranjana Bhandari and her husband knew the natural gas beneath their ranch-style home in Arlington, Texas, could be worth a lot - especially when they got offer after offer from Chesapeake Energy Corp. 

Their repeated refusals didn't stop Chesapeake, the second-largest natural gas producer in the United States. 

This June, after petitioning a Texas state agency for an exception to a 93-year-old statute, the company effectively secured the ability to drain the gas from beneath the Bhandari property anyway -- without having to pay the couple a penny. 

In fact, since January 2005, the Texas agency has rejected just five of Chesapeake's 1,628 requests for such exceptions. Chesapeake's use of the Texas law is among the latest examples of how the company executes what it calls a "land grab" -- an aggressive leasing strategy intended to lock up prospective drilling sites and lock out competitors.  

Chesapeake has become the principal player in the largest land boom in America since the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and ‘50s, amassing drilling rights on more land than almost any U.S. energy company. After years of leasing tracts from New York to Wyoming, the company now controls the right to drill for oil and gas on about 15 million acres -- roughly the size of West Virginia.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.

In Texas, a GOP War on Education

What happens in a state controlled and dominated by Republicans? In particular how do they deal with budget deficits? Do they raise taxes? Of course not. What they do is literally starve public schools of funding. This year the Texas Legislature cut $5.4 Billion dollars (via the New York Times) from the state's budget previously dedicated to public schools. Those budget cuts went into effect this year and will continue next year.

Texas has 1,264 public school districts. Here are some of the consequences of preserving tax cuts for corporations and the uber-rich, and passing the cost of balancing budgets onto the backs' of Texas' public school children and their families according to the NY Times report:

• Eliminating bus services: Many districts, to save money have simply stopped providing bus services to children who live within a two mile radius of their school. For many children this means that they spend up to an hour or more walking to and from school each day. Other school districts have started charging parents a fee (up to $355 per year for one district) for children who are bused. Others now sell advertising space on the side of school buses.  READ MORE

The US schools with their own police

Texas is a huge state. There are 1229 Independent
School Districts (ISDs) and Charter Schools in Texas
serving over 4 million students.READ MORE

January 9, 2012, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor.

Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour? Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle [school] has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons.

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later. "We've taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal," said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer.

"They're kids." The very young are not spared. Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years . Note: For a long list of bizarre arrests of children, for behavior not at all unusual, that have been reported in the mainstream media, click here.

Watch Gruesome Applause from GOP Crowd At Perry's Execution Record

Just in case you didn't see it, one of the big talked-about moments in last night's GOP debate was the spontaneous applause from the audience at the mere mention of the number of people (234) whose executions Rick Perry had overseen while governor of Texas--even though the question was whether Governor Perry felt any moral compunction on this score. It's a moment that underscored the moral bankruptcy and barbarism active in a large segment of our population. Read more

Tortured to Death in the US

"The manner in which Texas carries out the execution of human beings is riskier, less transparent, and has less oversight than the euthanasia of cats, dogs, birds, lizards."READ MORE