Here are three stories that I've heard about on Twitter in the past couple of days that I haven't heard about much if at all in my local newspapers or on MSNBC. All three are indicators of our growing police state, and some of the integration of the police state with the Republican Party.
Yesterday, the Tennessee State Capitol was flooded with protesters, many of them high school students, calling for action on gun legislation. At least there was an AP story about that in both of my local papers (though nothing on MSNBC that I saw), but what the AP story didn't mention was that the majority Republicans have moved to expel three Democrats from their positions in the legislature because they acted to support the protesters. That seems like it might have been worth a mention?
In Tallahassee, Florida, peaceful protesters against the state legislature's imminent action on a six-week abortion ban were arrested for sitting and singing in a park. No national coverage of that at all, anywhere, that I saw.
I guess everyone was too busy repeating the same things about DJT's upcoming arrest, ad nauseum.
On Sunday, a Los Angeles Times story from March 30 (the previous Thursday) provided a break from these types of direct repression from politicians.
In this incredible story, a 9-year-old girl's mother tried to retract the girl's agreement to have her 4H goat slaughtered after it was shown at the Shasta County Fair. The mother jumped through several hoops described in the Times story and — get this — had California law on her side. But the Fair's executive director decided to make an example of the kid, and called in the state troopers. They got a felony warrant (even though the goat's value wouldn't rise to the dollar amount required for a felony), which allowed them to breach doors and things like that, then drove 500 miles to retrieve the goat. Once it was returned to the Fair's officials, it was slaughtered instead of being held until the disputed ownership could be resolved.
According to this person who read the lawsuit that has been filed against the offending parties, the girl was always the owner of the goat. The Fair or the 4H was never the owner, and they knew it; they were only the facilitators of the auction. Under California law, "minors have a broad right to disaffirm contracts" so when she asked, before the auction, to keep the goat, it should have been allowed.
Additional wrinkles of California law that are explained in the lawsuit: police knew that the ownership of the goat was disputed, and that grand theft is not possible if you believe property belongs to you. That makes a case civil, not criminal. Despite that knowledge, police got a felony warrant.
Even with that warrant, the law required the police to retain control of the property until the dispute over the goat was settled. But instead, the police handed the goat over to the Fair for slaughter.
Something something "lack of due process."
Quoting one of the final tweets in that Twitter thread:
The whole story is an almost-cartoonishly evil abuse by people who apparently wanted to teach a little girl a "lesson" by killing her goat.
A number of other commenters along the way in the various threads I saw about this situation have contrasted it to the one in Charlotte's Web, and it's hard not to see it that way.
The only good thing about the whole thing is that the Shasta County Fair is getting bad PR out of it, which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place. But that hardly seems worth the child's trauma, the animal's death, or the evidence the story provides of police enforcement of petty private disputes on behalf of their favored parties.
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