[guest post by Dana]

Yesterday I posted about an allegation from a senior law enforcement officer that the mayor of Baltimore had given a directive to officers to let protesters loot, claiming that it was only property.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake, in a bit of verbal gymnastics, denied giving a stand-down order:

“You have to understand, it is not holding back. It is responding appropriately”

Today, Sheriff Michael Lewis of Wicomico County, who traveled to Baltimore to help the officers stop the rioting, was interviewed:

We were assigned to assigned to protect Baltimore City Police headquarters, all of E. Fayette Street up to City Hall, to include City Hall. There wasn’t a whole lot of activity taking place at all. We could smell that putrid smell of burning tires and a city on fire when as we came into the city. Had lots of concerns like everyone else. We maintained our post all night long until we were relieved.”

But what shocked him the most, he said, was when city police told him not to confront and accost the rioters.

“I was sick to my stomach like everybody else. … This was urban warfare, no question about it. They were coming in absolutely beaten down. The [city officers] got out of their vehicles, thanked us profusely for being there, apologized to us for having to be there. They said we could have handled this, we were very capable of handling this, but we were told to stand down, repeatedly told to stand down,” he said. “I had never heard that order come from anyone — we went right out to our posts as soon as we got there, so I never heard the mayor say that. But repeatedly these guys, and there were many high-ranking officials from the Baltimore City Police Department … and these guys told me they were essentially neutered from the start. They were spayed from the start. They were told to stand down, you will not take any action, let them destroy property. I couldn’t believe it, I’m a 31-year veteran of law enforcement. … I had never heard anything like this before in my life and these guys obviously aren’t gonna speak out and the more I thought about this, … I had to say a few things. I apologize if I’ve upset people, but I believe in saying it like it is.”

–Dana

It’s about time someone said it:

Cruz accuses Obama of inflaming racial tensions

Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday accused President Barack Obama and his administration of inflaming racial tensions and pitting Americans against each other on major societal issues.
“President Obama, when he was elected, he could have been a unifying figure,” the Republican presidential contender said during an appearance hosted by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“He could have chosen to be a leader on race relations and bring us together. And he hasn’t done that, he’s made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions that have divided us rather than bringing us together.”

. . . .

He pointed to a moment during the 2012 presidential election when Vice President Joe Biden warned, to an audience that included African Americans, that Republicans “want to put y’all back in chains.” That “kind of incendiary and hateful rhetoric,” Cruz said, was an example of the administration “deliberately dividing and inflaming tensions.”

What Cruz should note as well, because it’s important, is that this attitude is not just rhetorical — the racial tensions are inherent in progressivism, because progressivism is at the root of the divisions in the country. Obama’s comments on the recent riots gave the mandatory lip service to the lack of fathers in the communities that are ripping themselves apart, talking about

communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community.

But Obama failed (as he must, being a progressive) to note government’s role in creating this situation. Why are there no fathers? Because the state has made it possible for women to marry the government instead of the father of their children. Out of wedlock births soared beginning in 1970 after the implementation of the Great Society, breaking up family units across the nation. Minimum wage laws serve to disemploy the less educated and skilled from earning a living, even as welfare and the welfare rights movement normalized being on the dole.

The solution is not more big government. Obama talks about “job training.” Job training programs have a horrible track record of success, largely because the basic skills necessary for maintaining a low-level job, like punctuality and reliability, are not attributes taught in the culture that Big Government has wrought. So: you know the people who don’t show up for jobs on time, or come to work every day? Those same people also don’t show up for their job training on time, or even come to the training every day. Most people in LBJ’s “Job Corps” didn’t even bother to finish the training.

Obama’s other preferred solutions, like more funding for early education, have a similarly bleak track record. Head Start has been repeatedly shown to be a failure. In California, we spend absurd amounts of money on education to no avail. Kids have iPads but no basic life skills, because their culture has not taught them responsibility.

I honestly think people like Obama believe they are helping the poor and minorities. But in truth, the free market would help these people, while progressivism just keeps hurting them.

Progressivism is destroying America. Ted Cruz is one of the few people who will stand up to progressivism.