Obama’s Justice Department Sues Ferguson City When Council Rejects Draft Deal

AP

by LEE STRANAHAN10 Feb 2016Ferguson, MO293

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Wednesday afternoon that the federal Department of Justice will sue the cash-strapped city of Ferguson, Missouri, because the city council rejected an expensive deal negotiated by federal officials.

The rejection “leaves us no further choice,” Lynch said in her prepared statement, adding that Ferguson residents “have waited decades for justice. They should not be forced to wait any longer.”

With support from local residents, the racially mixed council rejected the deal unanimously because of its impact on the city’s budget.

The deal between the Department of Justice and the city of Ferguson was drafted after President Barack Obama’s administration investigated the city following the 2014 shooting death of Mike Brown, an 18-year-old black man who had accosted a store owner and then a white police officer. Widespread local misinformation about the shooting led to local riots and looting, as well as angry protests by the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.

The department’s investigation last year exonerated police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Brown but also criticized the criminal justice system in Ferguson. The report found that Ferguson was using the police department and the court system to generate revenue through ticketing.

The deal reached last month would have required a number of expensive changes, including raises for the police, training, and the hiring of an independent monitor. The costs would have required a tax increase on citizens. But after parts of the city were set fire by Black Lives Matter protesters, Ferguson has had a budget deficit of about $2.5 million.

At a meeting in Ferguson on Tuesday night that was monitored by top DOJ officials via a video, angry residents and city council members said that Ferguson could not afford the deal.

The council rejected the deal, partly because pay raises for police could cause a costly effect on pay for other municipal employees. The council offered some changes to the deal, and black councilman Wesley Bell said, “This is a way to meet the demands of the D.O.J., make progress with reform and keep lights on in the city.”

Wednesday’s decision by the Department of Justice shows that they are playing hardball. The move by the DOJ will likely cost Ferguson millions of dollars.

The aggressive moves by the Obama Department of Justice against Ferguson are part of a wave of lawsuits filed by the DOJ against police departments around the country.

Ferguson officials said that they plan to continue reforms, including the creation of a civilian oversight panel, despite the lawsuit.

Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.

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The Norquist Tax Pledge vs Fiscal Cliff

For those of you that don't know, Grover Norquist is a conservative activist who created an "Anti-Tax Pledge" for politicians to sign who are against any and all tax increases in order to let voters know where they stand. All over the news lately (or at least since immediately after the election) is what is called "The Fiscal Cliff." In a nutshell, the Fiscal Cliff is what we are told the country will fall over in January 2013 because of an automatic rise in taxes coupled with a mandatory sequestration on government spending which expert say will be devastating to the economy. What doesn't make sense is that liberals are fear-mongering the public into pressuring the Norquist Pledge Signers into caving in to raising taxes. It doesn't make sense because if nothing is done, taxes are set to raise automatically because the Bush Tax cuts expire. Tom Cohen of CNN says,

"With the U.S. economy showing more signs of improvement in its long recovery from recession, economists point to fears about higher taxes in 2013 as a potential threat to rising consumer confidence."

It seems to me that what I am seeing is very well executed plan by Democrats to put Republicans in a no-win situation: Either they violate their pledge and agree on a compromise which includes raising taxes which can be used against them when the higher taxes are blamed for stunting the growth of the economy even further, OR they can blame Republicans for sending us over the fiscal cliff by doing nothing, OR they can blame Republicans for the national deficit spiraling out of control if they keep their Norquist Pledge and pass legislation to not allow a raise in taxes.

What everyone should keep in mind is that taxes are the dollars earned by the hard work of people like you and I and redistributed to politicians to do with it what they want to. Money is power, so this effectively gives even more power to the Socialists in control of Washington.

Please do not fall for this fear mongering and focus on what's real. We don't have a TAX problem. While it might not be true for the bottom 47% of wage earners, the government gets plenty of our money, in terms of percentage of our income. We have a REVENUE problem. The BEST way to increase revenue is by ADDING more taxpayers by way of increasing the number of jobs (decreasing unemployment) and by increasing average wages (by fixing the economy). And honestly, the only reason we have a revenue problem is because the amount of revenue is nowhere near what the government spends, hence the national deficit. So we also have a major SPENDING problem. The biggest consequence of the current spending problem under the Socialists in control is that they are using a big chunk of the taxpayers money to pay able-bodied people to live comfortable enough to NOT work. This creates an unstable situation of reducing the need to work for people who would otherwise be able to earn enough to pay the taxes to increase the revenue that the government so desperately needs. The end result is a collapse, plain and simple. So Democrats are doing this free-stuff-givaway of taxpayer money in order to earn votes necessary to make such a giveaway possible all at the expense of the entire society, and possibly our beloved country as we have known it. What happens to the United States and her Constitution when the government that runs it and protects it dissolves? And are Democrats doing this knowingly or are they just ignorant of these consequences?