Small change, comparatively speaking:

The figure comes from an extensive report dropped by the Claremont Institute on Tuesday. The report details $82 billion dollars in social justice/BLM investments by major American companies. SVB stands out as one of the larger donors, next to big donors like Apple ($100 million) and Comcast ($165 million). While at the top of the donation pool, those contributors do pale in comparison to donors like Blackrock ($810 million) and Citigroup ($1.1 billion). However, the group did pledge on their website to provide in total up to $11 billion dollars by 2026 for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and racial justice causes.

SVB executives explained on their website the turbulent racial atmosphere following the George Floyd killing and protests prompted them to expand “opportunities for dialogue,” a calling that doesn’t seem too have much concrete investment return, but ended up taking $74 million dollars out of bank coffers anyway.

The George Floyd “narrative” that was pushed by the left and the MSM bore tremendous fruit – for BLM itself. Corporations almost immediately, way before any trial or many facts had come out, scrambled to outdo each other in demonstrating their solidarity with the idea that Floyd’s death was a terrible act of murder by a racist cop and was typical of the sort of thing that happens all the time in America. A fiction, but a useful one, and one that persists to this day among a huge percentage of the voting population.

And then we have this report:

Kevin Hassett reveals "there were buyers who were willing to step in & buy [SVB, but] the radicals at the @FDICgov basically weren’t going to allow that to happen … the Biden Admin had a whitelist of companies that were allowed to buy the failed bank & companies that weren’t." pic.twitter.com/Tsp2zPK70t

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 13, 2023

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I have to say I assume that many jurors either either lied outright or simply were unaware of their preconceived notions or the strength of them and how that would affect their ability to be fair in Chauvin’s trial. This is always a hazard in a high-profile emotionally- and politically-laden case such as Chauvin’s. It’s one of the reasons the judge should have bent over backwards to do everything he could to minimize the risk, such as changing the venue or at the very least allowing more challenges for cause when jurors seemed to have biases.

However, even with the case of this man – Brandon Mitchell – whose photo has emerged contradicting his sworn testimony, I doubt the revelation will spark a successful appeal. Many of the same forces that worked against Chauvin’s getting a fair trial in the first place, including fear of riots, will work in any appeal because judges are hardly immune to such fears as well as politics.

From the Daily Mail article:

Questions have been raised about the impartiality of one of the 12 jurors who convicted Derek Chauvin of murder after it was revealed he attended a rally last summer where George Floyd’s relatives addressed the crowd.

A photo, posted on social media, shows Brandon Mitchell attending an August 28 event in Washington, DC, to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech during the 1963 March on Washington.

It shows Mitchell, a high school basketball coach, standing with two other men and wearing a T-shirt with a picture of King and the words, ‘GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS’ and ‘BLM’. He is also wearing a baseball cap printed with Black Lives Matter.

Mitchell has admitted the photo is of him from that date, but defended attending the rally, claiming it was not explicitly a protest against police or a commemoration for George Floyd.

That is despite the fact that Floyd’s brother and sister, Philonise and Bridgett Floyd, and relatives of other African Americans who have been shot by police addressed the crowd that day.

Mitchell said he answered ‘no’ to two questions about demonstrations on the questionnaire sent out before jury selection.

The two questions were specifically about attending demonstrations to protest police brutality, however. So technically speaking, although this was part of the DC rally that Mitchell attended, it’s not clear that it was explicitly advertised that way. Nor does it matter, because once Mitchell had attended, he would have known or should have known because of the speakers that a prominent part of the proceedings was to protest supposed police brutality against black people. To me, the thing that implicates Mitchell the most as being biased is the “Get your knee off our necks” T-shirt. That is a specific reference to the Chauvin case, and he wore it to the rally. It is an explicit protest against the actions of police in the case and elsewhere.

The rest of the Daily Mail article is actually a quite comprehensive look at many of the sources of bias in the trial, including statements by Maxine Waters and Joe Biden.

Mitchell also had more to say:

“I mean it’s important if we wanna see some change, we wanna see some things going different, we gotta get out there, get out into these avenues, get into these rooms to try to spark some change,” [Mitchell] said. “Jury duty is one of those things. Jury duty. Voting. All of those things we gotta do.”

Now that’s obviously problematic because you’re not supposed to be sitting on a jury to “spark some change.” You’re only supposed to be deciding guilty or not guilty based solely on the facts and evidence presented in the case, nothing else.

That certainly seems like a political motive to me.

[NOTE: Another take away from Mitchell’s interview is that Dr. Tobin’s testimony – you know, the doctor who said (among other bizarre things) that he knew from watching the video the exact moment Floyd died – was highly influential as far as the jurors were concerned. I touched on some issues with Tobin’s testimony here. The jury seems to have ignored the exculpatory evidence and seized on testimony like Tobin’s to justify their pre-existing belief in Chauvin’s guilt, as well as seemingly ignoring the important issue of intent for the murder charges. Mitchell said that he thought the jury should only have taken about 20 minutes to reach a verdict. In a case as complex and as fraught with conflicting expert testimony as this one, such a contention is preposterous.]

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This time the supposed provocation was the police killing of a 27-year-old black man named Walter Wallace, who was apparently armed with a knife and coming towards the police, The family says they had called for an ambulance because he was having mental health problems. The police say they got a call “about a man screaming and saying that he was armed with a knife.” The family may have wanted an ambulance, but in a situation so unsafe, ambulance workers are not going to be the first ones to interact with the person. Then:

In video filmed by a bystander and posted on social media, officers yell for Wallace to drop a knife. In the video, Wallace’s mother and at least one man follow Wallace, trying to get him to listen to officers, as he briskly walks across the street and between cars.

Wallace advanced toward the officers, who then fired several times, said police spokesperson Officer Tanya Little. Wallace’s mother screams and throws something at an officer after her son is shot and falls to the ground.

A terrible and tragic situation. And now Philadelphia is falling prey to looters who are using this incident opportunistically.

More on Wallace’s history here (in the NY Post):

Walter Wallace, the mentally ill Philadelphia man whose death sparked riots in cities across the US, had a long history of violent run-ins with the law — and was a newlywed about to have his ninth child, according to reports.

Wallace’s family members, including his father, who witnessed the shooting, are “never going to be the same again,” Fitzhugh said. “They actually sat and watched their son literally get murdered,” he told NBC.

Certainly not “murdered” if a person is wielding a knife. More:

Police had been called to his home dozens of times in recent months, including twice Monday before they returned a third time when he was shot, sources told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Since May, police had received 31 calls about the address — including reports of someone with a weapon as well as assaults, sources told the paper.

Why wasn’t this guy in custody already? Possibly in some mental health facility?

Wallace had also been in and out of court for nearly a decade, with convictions for crimes including resisting arrest and robbery, the paper said.

He had been arrested in March after he allegedly threatened his child’s mother over the phone, saying, “I’ll shoot you and that house up,” NBC said.

In 2019, he was charged with resisting arrest by “kicking the windows and door panels of a police patrol car.”

In 2016, during a robbery, he allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck and held what she believed to be a gun to her head, NBC said, citing court records. He was sentenced to 11 to 23 months behind bars, WPVI said.

His mother had a protective order against him in 2013 which he allegedly violated when he “threw water in her face and punched her in the face” and “threatened to return and shoot” her, the reports said, again citing court records.

That same year, he pleaded guilty to assault and resisting arrest after punching a police officer in the face, WPVI said. That same year, a judge also ordered a psychiatric evaluation along with mental health treatment, the reports said.

The aspiring rapper’s music also heavily featured guns and rhymes about shooting people, including police, the station noted.

That’s quite a history. And quite different from what the earlier article I quoted – which is from NBC Philadelphia and very lengthy and detailed – would lead us to believe. That NBC article mentions none of Wallace’s violent history, and a reader would tend to think that the fatal incident was sparked by some isolated breakdown in an otherwise peaceful but troubled person.

But actually Wallace had a lengthy rap sheet and a long and repeated history of violence against family as well as other criminal activity. I wouldn’t doubt that he may also have been mentally ill, but whatever previous evaluation and treatment he got in 2013 don’t seem to have done any good, which is no surprise.

This case follows the same pattern as so many others that have been used as propaganda by BLM. What are police supposed to do in such situations, work magic? They can’t fix the complex problems being exhibited here. They can only defend themselves and others, if threatened – and if BLM has its way, even that avenue will be closed.

The post Riots in Philadelphia follow a familiar pattern appeared first on The New Neo.

Because with news like this, one wonders:

A George Floyd autonomous zone in Minneapolis is blocked off by barricades & checkpoints. A business owner within zone was violently beaten unconcious by a man who demanded money. Responding police & ambulance were stopped by aggressive protesters. #BLM https://t.co/8FJduWFC50 pic.twitter.com/yKCwgaRRac

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 18, 2020

As Ace writes:

It’s almost as if this isn’t about civil rights for blacks, but about granting political power to violent, sociopathic street thugs and killers.

Much much more at the link, including this (and note the woman’s age; she’s got to be at least in her sixties – no naive youth she):

Asked about Trump supporter who was murdered in cold-blood in Portland, leftist woman responds:

"Tough luck. Don’t be a f**king Trump supporter in Portland."pic.twitter.com/dF9h2jaYH6

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) September 17, 2020

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