Obama Wants to Kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program, Thus Torpedoing Hopes of Inner-City Blacks

And blacks still love this president, despite his every move demonstrating how he mostly exploits race to keep his corrupt crony Democrats in power.

See Stephen Moore, at WSJ, "President Obama, Are You Listening? The president wants to zero out a program that is saving poor kids from bad schools—the kind of reform that could work in Baltimore too":

The scenes of Baltimore set ablaze this week have many Americans thinking: What can be done to rescue families trapped in an inner-city culture of violence, despair and joblessness?

There are no easy answers, but down the road from Baltimore in Washington, D.C., an education program is giving children in poor neighborhoods a big lift up. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which George W. Bush signed into law in 2004, has so far funded private-school tuition for nearly 5,000 students, 95% of whom are African-American. They attend religious schools, music and arts schools, even elite college-prep schools. Last month at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, I met with about 20 parents and children who participate in the program. I also visited several of these families in their homes—which are located in some of the most beaten-down neighborhoods in the city, places that in many ways resemble the trouble spots in Baltimore.

These families have now pulled together to brace for a David vs. Goliath fight to save the program. For the seventh straight year, President Obama has proposed eliminating this relatively tiny scholarship fund, which at $20 million accounts for a microscopic 0.0005% of the $4 trillion federal budget.

The parents and students point out that the scholarship program has extraordinary benefits—they use phrases like “a godsend for our children,” “a life saver” and “our salvation.” One father, Joseph Kelley, a tireless champion of the program, says simply, “I truly shudder to think where my son would be today without it.” (He and his son, Rashawn Williams, are pictured at home nearby on this page.)

Virginia Ford, whose son escaped the public schools through a private-scholarship to Archbishop Carroll, now runs a group called D.C. Parents for School Choice. She tells me that “kids in the scholarship program have consistently improved their test scores, have higher graduation rates, and are more likely to attend college than those stuck in the D.C. public schools.”

The numbers back her up. An Education Department-funded study at the University of Arkansas recently found that graduation rates rose 21 percentage points—to 91%, from 70%—for students awarded the scholarship vouchers through a lottery, compared with a control group of those who applied for but didn’t get the scholarships. For all D.C. public schools, the high-school graduation rate is closer to an abysmal 56%.

“If you’ve got a program that’s clearly working and helping these kids, why end it?” asks Pamela Battle, whose son Carlos received a voucher and was able to attend the elite Georgetown Day School. He’s now at Northeastern University in Boston. She says Carlos “almost surely wouldn’t have gone to college” without the voucher. “We send all this money overseas for foreign aid,” she adds, “why not save the kids here at home first?”

Amazingly, these energized parents are opposed by almost every liberal group, even the NAACP, and nearly every Democrat in Congress—including Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in Congress but opposes a program that benefits her own constituents.

There is little question what stirs this opposition. The teachers union sees the program as taking away union jobs, and it is so powerful that the Democratic establishment falls in line. “It is so sad that our public schools aren’t doing what’s best for the kids,” laments Ms. Ford, but instead are looking out for “the adults.”

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program turns conventional politics upside down. President George W. Bush created the program and invited several of the parents, including Ms. Battle, to the White House. “I got to meet President Bush and his wife, who was so lovely,” she recalls about the meeting.

Mr. Obama won’t even meet with these parents...

Underline that a million times: President Obama won't meet with the parents of the kids he wants to throw under the bus of inner-city crime, unrest, and poverty.

And yet, blacks love the Democrats.

Our political system is seriously f-cked up.

More at the link.

After Urban Riots, a Long Road to Revival

From Christopher Caldwell, at the Wall Street Journal, "In troubled American cities, such as Baltimore, neighborhoods devastated by unrest seldom come back":

The Woodberry Kitchen, near Druid Hill Park in northwestern Baltimore, is among the best restaurants in the mid-Atlantic. It shares a renovated cotton mill with an art gallery and a glassblowing studio. Washingtonians flock there. The restaurant website recommends taking the highway, but there is a shortcut for those willing to creep northward along Fulton Avenue in West Baltimore.

I suspect few patrons take that shortcut twice. The jazz bandleader Cab Calloway and the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall grew up in the neighborhood, but it has, to put it mildly, gone downhill since then. This is Sandtown, where dozens were arrested this week in the rioting that followed the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray (on Friday, charges were filed against the officers involved). Unless you have been to the worst parts of Detroit or Camden, N.J., you are unlikely to have seen anything like Sandtown.

More shocking, perhaps, is how little distance separates sophisticated, 21st-century Baltimore—where you can dine on wood-roasted Delaware River rockfish with pak choi and koshihikari rice—from the left-behind, boarded-up Baltimore that Americans have been watching on television with alarm.

The country can only hope that this week’s damage remains limited to one wild night. The fate of Baltimore and other troubled American cities often depends on how the violent parts get rebuilt after rioting. In most cases, riot-torn neighborhoods don’t get rebuilt at all.

Baltimore missed the boom of the 1990s. It has lost 120,000 residents in the last quarter-century. It has a murder rate (37 per 100,000) that only New Orleans, St. Louis and Detroit can match. A decade ago, under Democratic mayor (and now presidential candidate) Martin O’Malley, reforms drove the rate down, but they required policing so aggressive as to be unsustainable. In 2005, there were 108,000 arrests in a city of 622,000 residents. Less than half of Sandtown’s working-age residents work.

The city, which is two-thirds black, has a black political establishment that has been entrenched for a generation. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her police commissioner, Anthony Batts, called last fall for a federal civil-rights probe of their own city. The notion, heard on some talk shows, that the city’s leaders want to keep black residents down can be dismissed.

In the wake of urban unrest, well-positioned neighborhoods eventually attract private and public capital for rebuilding. Both Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have suffered riots that were orders of magnitude greater than this week’s in Baltimore. Washington’s U Street corridor, nearly destroyed by the revolt that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, is again a lively business hub.

But it took a very long time. U Street didn’t see the first stirrings of revival until the 1990s. And businesses were replaced, not restored. U Street was once the premier black downtown in the U.S.; now it is a place for hipsters to drink microbrews and smoke hookahs. That’s better than nothing, but U Street isn’t the hub it was. It is a new hot spot on the site of the riots rather than any sort of resolution of the problems that the riots revealed.

The legacy of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which followed the acquittal of four policemen videotaped beating the black motorist Rodney King, is similarly mixed. A 2009 poll found that 68% of the city’s African-Americans and 76% of its Latinos had a favorable view of the city’s police department, formerly denounced for its paramilitary tactics.

But here, too, the process took time, with the lost economic activity amounting to as much as $3.8 billion. A 20-year retrospective in the Los Angeles Times showed that the unemployment rate in the neighborhood is now higher and median income lower than at the time of the riots.

Less prominent cities tend to languish after riots...

More.

Web of Problems Led to Baltimore Rioting

At WSJ, "Longstanding troubles include a steep drop in manufacturing jobs, drug use, abandoned houses and crime":

BALTIMORE—To 18-year-old high school senior Diondre Jackson, the causes of Monday’s rioting here go much deeper than boiling anger over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray from spine injuries he suffered while in police custody.

The spasms of looting and destruction in predominantly African-American parts of the city sprang from long-festering distrust of police among young blacks, he said, along with what he called weakened family structures and inadequate leadership in the community.

“There’s nobody to tell them right from wrong,” he said of young rioters. “A lot of them don’t have parents. When there’s no leadership to raise a child, how can you expect the child to act civilized and adultlike?”

Cleaning up the damage will be far easier than addressing the complex web of problems that has weighed on inner-city Baltimore for decades, including a steep drop in well-paying manufacturing jobs, the scourge of drugs, high crime rates and what some call a prison pipeline that leaves many young black men with records that lock them out of jobs.

At Mr. Gray’s funeral Monday, several speakers highlighted these problems. The Rev. Jamal Bryant spoke of self-empowerment but also about the forces that he said have made some African-Americans feel “boxed in”: housing discrimination, high incarceration rates, poor schools.

Former Mayor Kurt Schmoke said that when he graduated from high school in 1967, the region’s largest private employer was Bethlehem Steel Corp. By the time he became mayor 20 years later, Johns Hopkins University and its health system had risen to No. 1, a perch they maintain.

Just since 1990, the number of manufacturing jobs in the Baltimore metro region has fallen to 55,000 from 131,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the same span, employment in education and health services has jumped to 258,000 from 146,000.

“There are jobs going begging,” said Mr. Schmoke, a Democrat who is now president of the University of Baltimore. But he said they are out of reach for many city residents.

“They are jobs that require a level of literacy that is higher than the parents or grandparents of these people needed to obtain,” he said, adding that improving public schools is critically important.

Another challenge many residents face in finding employment is a criminal record, often for low-level drug offenses, Mr. Schmoke said. He noted that a task force led by Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, a Republican, is looking into making expungement easier.

“An arrest for marijuana possession when you’re 18 should not be a cross you bear for the rest of your life,” Mr. Schmoke said.

Drugs have long plagued the city. During the 1990s homicides topped 300 a year, fueled by a crack cocaine trade concentrated in black neighborhoods. Heroin addiction is also a long-standing problem.

Online court records show Mr. Gray had a number of arrests, mostly for drug-related offenses, some of which resulted in conviction.

He was arrested on April 12 after running from a police officer when the two made eye contact in an area known for drug-dealing, officials have said. When they caught him, officers allegedly found a switchblade in his pants pocket and loaded him into a transport van.

A family lawyer has said that while Mr. Gray was in police custody, his spine was nearly severed at his neck and three vertebrae were broken. Mr. Gray died of his injuries on April 19. Six police officers have been suspended with pay, and five have given statements to police. None has commented publicly on the case...

More.

Baltimore's Indictments and How Not to Fix America’s Cities

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

Baltimore got the celebration this afternoon that many in Ferguson, Missouri longed for last summer and fall. The decision of Baltimore’s State’s Attorney to indict all the police officers connected with the death of Freddie Gray while in their custody turned demonstrations about the case into street parties today. The announcement that the cops had been charged with the most serious charges possible and faced decades in prison was exactly what the city needed to restore the peace that was disrupted by violent riots earlier in the week. But even as the nation sighs in relief at the prospect of calm in Baltimore, the upcoming trial and the ongoing debate about the significance of the case may raise more questions than can be answered by the indictment of six officers. If, as may happen, the officers are not convicted, the prospect of violence will be great. Nor is it likely that much light will be shed in the debate about the future of troubled urban areas like Baltimore or law enforcement in the rush to jail the cops in the case that has given new life to a largely misleading narrative of racism.

Unlike in Ferguson, protesters need no longer demand that police accused of a role in the death of a young black man be arrested and indicted. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby immediately became a media heroine when she gave demonstrators and pundits calling for quick justice what they wanted during the course of a lengthy address that blasted the accused for their conduct.

Mosby handled her press conference ably. But the haste with which the state’s attorney charged the officers and her choice to avoid using going through the grand jury process, leaves open the possibility that her decision had more to do with politics and the need to keep the peace than justice. The multiplicity of charges as well as the second-degree murder count also makes it likely that she is hoping to offer a plea to some of the officers in order to convict others. The guilty should be punished severely. Yet it remains to be seen whether she has overcharged the police. But just as the accused are entitled to a presumption of innocence, so, too, must the country hope that the evidence exists to support the accusations of murder. If not, then Mosby is earning temporary applause that will eventually blow up in her face as well as that of the rest of the city...

More.

Also at Weasel Zippers, "Alan Dershowitz: #Baltimore Prosecutor Overcharged Officers, Identified With Protesters, Saying “You’re at Forefront of This Cause and as Young People, Our Time Is Now.”

Freddie Gray's Death Ruled a Homicide, Six Officers Charged

At the Baltimore Sun, "Six officers charged in death of Freddie Gray":

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray – who died last month after being injured in police custody – have been charged criminally, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday.

Mosby's announcement on the steps of the War Memorial Building was greeted with cheers and applause. Mosby said she told Gray's family that "no one is above the law."

Word traveled quickly of the charges against the officers. In West Baltimore, cars honked their horns. A man hanging out of a truck window pumped his fists and yelled; "Justice! Justice! Justice!"

At the corner where Gray was arrested, 53-year-old Willie Rooks held his hands up in peace signs and screamed, "Justice!"

Meecah Tucker, 23, wearing a T-shirt that read, "I Bleed Baltimore," said: "If it was one of us doing that against a police officer, it would be first-degree murder."

In Gilmor Homes, the neighborhood where Gray lived, things were quiet Friday, with a police helicopter circling overhead. At the intersection of North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, the focus of rioting Monday and demonstrations all week, traffic moved through with many motorists honking their horns.

Warrants were issued for the arrest of all six officers. It wasn't immediately clear where the officers were Friday morning.

Also at Ms. EBL's:

Cops Indicted #FreddieGray Death http://t.co/1wRXnNb1me #BaltimoreUprising #BaltimoreRiots @rsmccain @LilMissRightie pic.twitter.com/SIn6zvafal

— JeSuisEBL (@MsEBL) May 1, 2015

'Nothing Matches the Hysteria' for Mayweather-Pacquiao Title Bout

Profiles of the 1 percent, heh.

Mostly leftist 1 percenters, at that.

At LAT, "Celebrities fight for the best tickets to Mayweather-Pacquiao":

Saying yes to Robert De Niro was easy.

The Oscar-winning actor will get a prime seat for Saturday night's main event. So will Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

As the clock ticks down to the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao bout — the most-anticipated fight in decades — promoters are scrambling to accommodate a flood of ticket requests from celebrities, business tycoons and superstars from other sports.

"They can't all sit in the front row," said Dena duBoef of Top Rank Inc., which represents Pacquiao. "Tickets and seating are probably the biggest nightmare for this fight."

Most of the 16,800-seat arena at the MGM Grand has been divvied up among the resort and the two fighters' camps, with only 500 seats made available for public sale.

There will be about 900 ringside spots, depending on the final configuration. That isn't enough for all the A-list names and high rollers who want to be near the action.

"Nothing matches the hysteria we're seeing," said Stephen Espinoza, a Showtime executive who controls some of Mayweather's allotment.

Promoters are still mixing and matching names, pondering whom to put where, especially in the first few rows. As longtime Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman said: "Absolutely there is a pecking order."

Star-studded crowds are as much a part of boxing as uppercuts and smelling salts.

Mayweather versus Pacquiao has become a red-carpet event if only because it took years of negotiation to get the boxers — perhaps the greatest of their generation — into the same ring.

"This has been a long time coming," Oscar winner Jamie Foxx says in a promotional TV spot.

The MGM Grand declined to comment for this story, as did numerous celebrities expected to attend. The Times received a list of ticket requests from boxing executives who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss seating details.

De Niro, Eastwood, Damon and Affleck made the cut for the first few rows, the executives said. So did Michael J. Fox and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Will Smith and Jimmy Kimmel are expected to be there, but one Oscar winner was placed farther back and decided not to attend, said an executive not authorized to give the actor's name. UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, quarterback Tom Brady and nearly a dozen NFL team owners were still waiting for their exact seat locations.

Celebrities will share the floor section with the likes of Jesse Jackson and hip-hop mogul Sean Combs. The MGM Grand has offered prime seats to its best customers — gamblers who carry a minimum $250,000 credit line in the casino — said Bob Arum, chief executive of Top Rank Inc.

Over the last few weeks, the longtime boxing executive has stopped short of making promises to big-name actors and directors, telling them instead: "We'll put you on the list."

The situation is delicate because boxing and the entertainment industry enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship. No one complained when pop star Justin Bieber — a regular in Mayweather's entourage — barged onstage at a recent pre-fight news conference.

A singer with more than 63 million Twitter followers can generate buzz and boost pay-per-view revenue. Espinoza said that Bieber "adds to the s

In return, celebrities parlay their fame into great seats. They get a close-up view, a chance to hear the thud of each body blow and some free publicity.

More.

Also, "Will the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout affect future of boxing in the U.S.?"

California Latinos Lag 'Far Behind' in College Achievement

Over half the students at my college are Hispanic, so you can get a sense of the challenges we're dealing with.

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Latinos in California lag ‘far behind’ in college enrollment, graduation rates":

While nearly 60 percent of Latinos in the state between the ages of 25 and 64 are foreign born, even those who are native born were much less likely than the state average — 18 percent vs. 31 percent — to have at least a bachelor’s degree, the report found.

In addition, only 29 percent of 12th-grade Latino graduates completed all of their coursework to make them eligible for UC or Cal State entrance, compared with 47 percent of white students and 65 percent of Asian students, according to the report.

The obstacles Latinos face are many. A good number are low-income, they are often the first generation in their family to go to college and many attend low-performing schools that do not adequately prepare them for college, [Michele] Siqueiros [president of the Campaign for College Opportunity] said. They are grappling with these challenges as students today share a greater burden in funding their education than before in light of a decline in state contributions...

More.

'F*ck Her Right in the Pussy' — Black Thug Disrespects CNN's Poppy Harlow on Live Televsion

At Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Fuck her right in the pussy Philly ‘protester’ to CNN VIDEO."

Michael Jackson Impersonator Busts a Move in #Baltimore

Watch, at WMAR ABC 2 News Baltimore, "Man busts a move like Michael Jackson to raise money for Freddie Gray's family in Baltimore."

And at the Baltimore Sun, "Michael Jackson impersonator hopes to make a better day."

Michelle Keegan World's Sexiest Woman 2015

At FHM UK, on Twitter, "Video proof that Michelle Keegan (@MichKeegan) deserves the #100Sexiest crown."

Also at ABC News, "Michelle Keegan: FHM's Sexiest Woman in the World."

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Black People in Baltimore Are Subjected to Violence All the Time

He's an extremely talented writer. Sure, he overstates his case most of the time, but he pushes all the right buttons with eloquence. That's why he's god-like on the radical left.

At the Atlantic, "The Clock Didn't Start With the Riots":

When I was going to school, I thought about every little article that I wore when I walked out the house. I thought about who I was walking with. I thought about how many of them there were. I thought about what neighborhoods they were from. I thought about which route I was going to take to school. Once I got to school I thought about what I was going to do during the lunch hour—was I actually going to have lunch or was I going to go sit in the library. When school was dismissed I thought about what time I was going to leave school. I thought about whether I should stay after-school for class. I thought about whether I should take the bus up to my grandmother’s house. I thought about which way I should go home if I was going to go home. Every one of those choices was about the avoidance of violence, about the protection of my body. And so I don’t want to come off as if I’m sympathizing or saying that it is necessarily okay, to inflict violence just out of anger, no matter how legitimate that anger is.

Smart kid.

Keep reading (via Memeorandum).

New Information Released by Baltimore Police: Additional Stop Made by Paddy Wagon Transporting #FreddieGray

Watch, at CNN, "Police: Van carrying Gray made additional stop."

Bill O'Reilly: 'The truth is, we don't know what happened' to #FreddieGray

A righteous Talking Points Memo, via Nice Deb, "O'Reilly Gets it Right: Baltimore Rioting is Leading to Madness (Video)."

Are Cops Racist?

Buy Heather Mac Donald's book at Amazon, Are Cops Racist?

Also, Shop Mother's Day Savings in Amazon Exclusives .

I'm teaching all day.

More blogging tonight.

Baltimore in Flames

From Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "While the city burns, liberals place blame everywhere but where it belongs: on criminality and on family breakdown":

The apologetics began almost as soon as the fires were lit in Baltimore yesterday, heralding a night of violence and looting that would leave 24 police officers injured and 19 buildings torched, including a $16 million senior center providing affordable housing and a CVS drugstore providing crucial medications for elderly customers. Society “refuses to help [young blacks] in a serious fashion,” Michael Eric Dyson announced on MSNBC. “We’re only there when they riot.” Mika Brzezinski observed on Morning Joe: “This was an extremely, desperately poor city. This was bound to happen.” We were seeing an “uprising of young people against the police,” the result of a “combination of anger and disparity,” said professional talking head Wes Moore. Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore police officer and member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, blamed the drug laws.

In other words, the looters and arsonists were pushed to the breaking point by racism, poverty, and police brutality, the latter exemplified by the still unexplained death of Freddie Gray in police custody. The rioters’ means may have been regrettable, but they were engaged in a profound, if fiery, cri de coeur against the social injustice in which we all play a part.

Bunk. What happened last evening in Baltimore was simply a larger and better-covered version of the flash mobs that have beset American cities for the last half-decade, in which black youths gather via social media to steal from stores and assault whites. In May 2012, for example, students from Mervo High School in Northeast Baltimore crammed into a 7-Eleven store that was offering free Slurpees as a promotion. The teens grabbed all the merchandise they could get their hands on—$6,000 worth in total—and fled from the store. The manager tried to close the door to prevent the thieves from escaping and was viciously beaten. On St. Patrick’s Day that same year, a flash mob converged on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The Baltimore Sun reported that by the time the rampage ended, “one youth had been stabbed, a tourist had been robbed, beaten and stripped of his clothes, and others had been forced to take refuge inside a hotel lobby to escape an angry mob.” Last April, a bicyclist in Baltimore was attacked by a group of black teens who knocked him off his bike and pummeled him.

Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Washington D.C., among other cities, have all grappled with similar violence. None of it deserves a righteous political gloss. Nor does the violence last night, which began with an invitation sent out over social media to convene at a local mall and “purge” it.

Perhaps if the media had not shrunk from reporting on the flash mob phenomenon and the related “knockout game”—in which teenagers tried to knock out unsuspecting bystanders with a single sucker punch—we might have made a modicum of progress in addressing or at least acknowledging the real cause of black violence: the breakdown of the family. A widely circulated video from yesterday’s mayhem shows a furious mother whacking her hoodie-encased son to prevent him from joining the mob. This tiger mom may well have the capacity to rein in her would-be vandal son. But the odds are against her. Try as they might, single mothers are generally overmatched in raising males. Boys need their fathers. But over 72 percent of black children are born to single-mother households today, three times the black illegitimacy rate when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his prescient analysis of black family breakdown in 1965.

Baltimore councilman Brandon Scott came closest to the truth last night in a city news conference when he angrily called on adults to “get out there and stand up for your neighborhood . . . . Adults have to step up and be adults and control our future.” True enough. But primary responsibility lies with children’s own two parents. Pace Dyson, “we” have spent trillions of dollars since the 1960s trying to help black youth. A social worker and a government check are no substitute for a father and mother, however.

Still more.

From Rodney King to Freddie Gray

From Jonathan Capehart, at WaPo, "Two riots, 23 years apart: From Rodney King to Freddie Gray":

On this day, 23 years — April 29, 1992 — the City of Angels erupted in what would be six days of rioting after four police officers were acquitted of charges of assault and excessive force against Rodney King.

In March 1991, King was in a car with two other men on a Los Angeles freeway when they were stopped by police. But they then led the cops on a high-speed chase that ended with King being viciously beaten by five white police officers. What made the attack a national story was that it was captured on videotape. For the first time, we saw with our own eyes what African Americans had been protesting for decades: excessive force by police.

And still, those officers were set free, which proved too much for the community to take. Fifty-three people died and as many as 2,000 people were injured during the Rodney King Riots, including Reginald Denny whose vicious bearing after being pulled from his truck was caught on camera. There was an estimated $1 billion in property damage. Thank God that was not the fate of Baltimore on Monday. But there is a straight line that connects Los Angeles 1992 to Baltimore 2015.

The sense of oppression and injustice at the hands of police that sparked the Rodney King riots are at the root of the Freddie Gray riot. Gray died on April 19, one week after suffering a nearly severed spine while in police custody. How it happened remains unexplained. An investigation is underway, but the excesses of the Baltimore Police Department are well-known. That’s why Gray’s mysterious death was a spark that ignited kindling that had piled up for years. Nothing excuses the violence that happened in Baltimore, but knowing this history certainly explains the anger that fueled the riot and the peaceful protests that preceded it...

Whatever pervasive injustice blacks face in America (real or imagined), it never justifies the kind of anarchy and evil wanton violence that inevitably accompanies the rioting. Just ask Reginald Denny.

More.

U.S. Growth Nearly Stalls Out

At WSJ, "U.S. Economic Growth Nearly Stalls Out: Businesses slash investment, exports tumble and consumers show caution as GDP expands at 0.2% pace":

WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy slowed to a crawl at the start of the year as businesses slashed investment, exports tumbled and consumers showed signs of caution, marking a return to the uneven growth that has been a hallmark of the nearly six-year economic expansion.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 0.2% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The economy advanced at a 2.2% pace in the fourth quarter and 5% in the third.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected growth of 1% in the first three months of this year, though many were braced for a surprise to the downside.

The latest reading on the economy came hours before Federal Reserve officials released their policy statement, in which they said slower growth reflected, in part, “transitory factors.” The Fed gave no new explicit clues on the timing of interest-rate increases, but the slower growth made the timing a bit more uncertain.

The first-quarter figures repeat a common pattern in recent years: one or two strong readings followed by a sharp slowdown. First-quarter GDP growth had averaged 0.6% since 2010 and 2.9% for all other quarters. That has worked out to moderate overall expansion but no growth breakout.

“This is another quarterly number which confirms the long-term slow-growth thesis, but there are good odds we get a bit of a bounce later in the year from stabilized business spending and the housing markets, which are setting up quite promising,” Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said in a note to clients.

Last year, economists pinned much of the blame for a bad first quarter—GDP shrank 2.1%—on unusually harsh weather. This year, multiple factors appear to be at work, including another bout of blizzards, disruptions at West Coast ports, the stronger dollar’s effect on exports and the impact of cheaper oil.

Better weather, a return to normal at port terminals and steadying investment could boost growth later this year.

“We expect the economy will rebound in [the second quarter] and beyond, similar to last year,” said Michelle Girard, economist at RBS Securities.

But not all the factors behind the slowdown appear temporary. A stronger dollar and cheaper oil could persist, keeping exports and energy-sector investment at bay.

As well, rising inventories kept the U.S. economy out of recession, contributing 0.74 percentage point to GDP in the first quarter. A second-quarter repeat is unlikely.

Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said producers probably will allow inventory positions to run off rather than building them up even more. “This tells us that current-quarter growth is likely to run around 2.5%, not the 4% snapback we had previously been anticipating,” he said.

U.S. households will have to pick up spending to help the economy grow. Wednesday’s report showed consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic output, decelerated to a 1.9% pace in the first quarter, down from 4.4% growth in the fourth quarter.

Rather than using savings from cheaper gasoline to buy more goods and services, Americans have been setting money aside for a rainy day. The personal saving rate at 5.5% in the first quarter was the highest since 2012. The figure was 4.6% in the fourth quarter.

Another key driver of the economy, business spending, also has faltered of late. Nonresidential fixed investment—which reflects spending on software, research and development, equipment and structures—retreated at a 3.4% rate, compared with a 4.7% rise in the fourth quarter.

Energy companies in particular are feeling the effects of cheaper oil. Business investment in structures fell 23.1%, led by a 48.7% contraction for mining sector spending on shafts and wells, Commerce said.

A stronger dollar, meanwhile, has made domestically produced goods more expensive overseas and foreign products cheaper inside the U.S. Combined with disruptions at West Coast ports, trade was constrained. In the first quarter, exports fell at a 7.2% rate, compared with 4.5% growth in the fourth quarter. Imports rose 1.8%, compared with 10.4% in the fourth quarter...

Also at Gateway Pundit, "OBAMA vs. REAGAN on GDP GROWTH — NOT EVEN CLOSE."

Two-Headed Calf Born to Cow at Florida Farm

Trippy.

At ABC News Los Angeles, "COW GIVES BIRTH TO TWO-HEADED CALF IN FLORIDA."

Freddie Gray Was 'Trying to Injure Himself...'

At WaPo, "Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says":

Fox is all over the Wash Post story, CNN hasn't mentioned it

— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) April 30, 2015

BALTIMORE — A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.

Police have said they do not know whether Gray was injured during the arrest or during his 30-minute ride in the van. Local police and the U.S. Justice Department both have launched investigations of Gray’s death...

More.

Also at Twitchy, "Rick Leventhal also heard that Freddie Gray threw himself into walls of van," and Instapundit, "FIFTY SHADES OF FREDDIE GRAY: The Washington Post reports that a prisoner sharing a Baltimore police transport van with Freddie Gray could hear Gray “banging his head” against the van walls and believes Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself”."

New York Protesters March for Freddie Gray

A live blog, at the Guardian UK, "Freddie Gray protests sweep US from Baltimore to New York – live updates."

And at the New York Times, "Hundreds March in Manhattan to Protest the Death of Freddie Gray":

“Freddie Gray, Michael Brown. Shut it down, shut it down...”