Never confuse what’s legal with what’s right!

What’s wrong with this picture?

The Black woman sentenced to six years in prison over a voting error 

Pamela Moses was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register despite a felony conviction but officials admitted making a series of mistakes

Officer who killed Laquan McDonald leaves prison after barely three years 

Jason Van Dyke, a white police officer who murdered the Black teenager, was freed early for good behavior

California county on track to be run by militia-aligned group 

Shasta county’s recall efforts highlight how distrust in the government has led to increasing extremism in local politics

Video: Amir Locke, under blanket, holds gun as Minneapolis police officers enter, fire 3 shots

The 55-second video shows officers at the downtown Minneapolis apartment unit to serve a search warrant in connection with a St. Paul homicide investigation. Locke was not the subject of the warrant. 

The first two headlines are from The Guardian’s US edition. Is there any possible equivalence in sentences of six years each between a voting error where “officials admitted making a series of mistakes” and one, effectively cut in half, for murdering a black teenager?

Does the lack of such equivalence, in part, help explain the third headline about a US county  “on track to be run by militia-aligned groups?” Is such distrust in government further compounded by events such  as those in the fourth headline in which police shot and killed an individual, not named in the warrant, within 9 seconds of breaking into that person’s apartment?

Could our governments’ (federal, state and local) inability to effectively address such issues have anything to do with funding elected politicians in a manner comparable to the one below?

$educed by Money

Is this the kind of country we want to live and raise families in? If not, what are we going  to do about it, because it will take most of us, not just a concerned few, to change things. I had hope when Jack Kennedy was elected. He was killed. My hope was renewed as Martin Luther  King made progress. He was killed. My hope briefly returned when Bobby Kennedy ran for president. He was killed. Minnesota’s Senator Paul Wellstone appeared to be cut from much the same cloth as King and the Kennedys. He died in a plane crash. We are now represented at a national level by the likes of Rand Paul, Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz. Are they the best and the brightest the  country has to offer, or do they just represent the best value for the money to political contributors.

Corporations are not people, they are legal persons not, like real ones, subject to a death penalty. Money is not speech. A Nobel Laureate from Minnesota said it best, I believe, more than fifty years ago. Read today’s poem, especially the fourth from the last stanza. We’re proving to be not very effective at self governing, aren’t we?

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Written by: Bob Dylan 

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright 

© 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music