Dear Attorney General Eric Holder,
This letter is in regards to your March 4, 2015 press conference on the DOJ’s Ferguson report.
You said you wanted to address the causes of what you called the “powder keg” of Ferguson. You talked about how local authorities use law enforcement for revenue generation (“policing-for-profit”), and how municipal court practices disproportionately harm African American residents. You talked about how this causes an “intensely charged atmosphere” where residents feel they are under “assault and under siege” by police. You attribute this to “implicit and explicit racial bias.” You noted – correctly — that these kinds of “powder kegs” are not exclusive to Ferguson, but pervade across the United States. You also asserted that “violence is never justified” — right before you justified violence by saying it is “not difficult to imagine” in Ferguson.
Well of course violence is not difficult to imagine. Ferguson is a Big Government Welfare Police State. And yes, there is evidence of racism from individuals in the Ferguson Police Department. But if you want to see the larger “face” of Big Government Welfare Police State violence – the root cause of “powder kegs” like Ferguson — simply stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Obama and look in the mirror.
You said you wanted a “broad, frank, and inclusive conversation” on the issue. But your press conference was neither frank, broad, nor inclusive. So here are some frank points you can include going forward to help broaden the conversation.
The root cause of these “powder kegs” is an over-abundance of laws and regulations. Why not allow people to be free instead of imposing more laws and regulations on them? That way, there’d be less laws and regulations for the police to enforce in the first place. Take for example, the “War on Drugs” which has ravaged African American communities. Why not engage the topic of ending the War on Drugs? Is that not a frank, broad, or inclusive enough conversation topic for you and President Obama to engage in to address “powder kegs” like Ferguson?
You decry “policing-for-profit.” But policing-for-profit is an extension of the same Big Government you represent. The Bigger the Government, the more revenue it needs. The Bigger the Government, the Bigger the Laws and Regulations. The Bigger the Laws and Regulations, the smaller the economic pie shrinks. Where do you think Big Government, local or federal, will then go trolling for revenue? Big Government shakes down the most vulnerable in society. You know this. So why not include the topic of cutting down the size and scope of Big Government in your “frank, broad, and inclusive” conversation? Why not liberate people living in “powder kegs” from Big Government?
There’s also an ironic hypocrisy here. You’re the AG for the Big Government which forced Obamacare on U.S. citizens. What happens to citizens who refuse to pay the individual mandate? Will enforcement not entail a form of “policing-to-pay-for-healthcare?”
Also interesting is that, according to Kevin Jackson at The Black Sphere, your report failed to mention that although Ferguson receives 15 percent of its operating budget from fines and forfeitures, the state of Missouri is suing nine “black-run” cities for collecting fines and fees of over 30 percent of their budget. This is in violation of Missouri state law. It’s curious why you failed to mention that. Does it not fit a specific narrative you’re trying to establish? Is the expectation of any government to fund it’s budget with fees, fines, and forefeitures ethical or sustainable in the first place? Furthermore, why not have a frank, broad, and inclusive conversation about your own questionable Civil Asset Forfeiture record and “reform,” and the fact that your presumable successor, US Attorney Loretta Lynch, seized $904 million in asset forfeiture in 2013 alone?
Perhaps most importantly though, you neglected to mention the devastating effects of minimum wage laws, compulsory schooling, and the War on Poverty on African American communities. Minimum wage laws were designed decades ago to keep minorities, immigrants, and poor people out of the work force. Minimum wage laws are still painfully effective at doing as much, are they not? And as for what the Big Government Welfare State has done to African Americans with its War on Poverty, here’s Dr. Walter Williams:
“They will never be able to pull themselves out of poverty one step at a time. Like some giant drug-pusher, their government has lured them into dependency in a system that will maintain them in permanent poverty. In every respect, welfare has backfired. The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, what the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done—namely, break up the black family.”
Why not include Dr. Walter Williams in your frank, broad, and inclusive conversation?
Also, why not address the Federal Reserve? Was it not the Fed’s cheap money policies which fostered the sub-prime mortgages targeted directly to African Americans? What about the role of Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act? What about the Fed’s inflation as the primary driver of the “inequality” you and Obama claim to care so much about? Should the Fed not be a topic in your frank, broad, conversation? But then again, you let the Big Banks off the hook with a slap on the wrist, so why would you pursue the Fed in the name of “justice”?
In short, the problem here is that you’re really not interested in a frank, broad, and inclusive conversation. In fact, as you stated at the conclusion of your press conference, you’ve already decided on your solution: more Big Government “on a scale not seen since the Johnson Administration.” This despite the complete, utter failure of Johnson’s “Great Society.” And you plan to implement more Big Government with more force and violence: “The United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change.” The “basic change” you plan on forcing includes your Task Force on 21st Century Policing – which essentially calls for a nationalization of police departments — and a National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. This won’t build trust and justice. This is the Great Society 2.0. This is more Big Government, the root cause of these problems in the first place.
In closing, I have a hunch that you indeed do understand that the answer to the problem of these growing powder kegs is freedom. Surely you understand that when people are free from the chains of Big Government, they at least have a chance at realizing peace and prosperity. So, in paraphrasing Bastiat I ask: why not try freedom?
Yours for the cause of Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty,
Jason Peirce, Voice of Liberty
