Tell the truth about police shootings
The media — CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, most every newspaper in the country — continually harps on the relatively few killings of blacks by white cops. If they searched for the truth using the justice system and police reports, they would find some shocking facts. Since Jan. 1, 2015, 732 white people were killed in police shootings, compared with 381 black people and 382 who were of another race. The media reports as if there was an epidemic of cops killing blacks, when in truth the overall number of these occurrences is in fact quite rare.
Between 1980 and 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks, and 84 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other whites. Why isn’t the media reporting the whole story? My theory is that doing so would not advance their agenda of making good use of horrible tragedies to advance the left.
Where are the media attacks on Chicago, where gun violence is on track to claim 500 lives this year, many of them black? The media are in fact helping to incite the groups like Black Lives Matter and Black Panthers to act up in protest of what statistically is a lie. Cops are not out to get black people, they are out to protect everyone. The media could do much to calm this racial unrest by reporting the facts and the truths instead of fueling the fires of racism that is unfounded in truth and fact. Why is it that the left hates facts and truths so much?
Howard Cutler
Dixmont
Adelman a gem
The BDN would do its readers a real service by having Eddie Adelman contribute more often to the OpEd page.
His classic July 11 OpEd about all those pompous pronouncements posing as mission statements was a downright gem. If we could harness the energy from all the smoke blown daily by corporate and governmental self-servers, we could light every home in America through 3016.
I’ve never met Adelman though we live in the same town, but to me, he’s a keeper.
Sid McKeen
Belfast
Clinton not the only one to use private email
The Republicans seem to be having so much fun investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, they might have even more delight looking into the email practices of former secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, too.
Since both of them also used private servers, who knows how long the investigations could go on. It might have been wise on all their parts since the State Department’s email system is known to have been hacked.
Pat Schroth
Sedgwick
Fact-checking LePage
Thanks to the BDN for providing documentation of Gov. Paul LePage’s disregard and contempt for the truth as he pursues his course of self-righteous attacks on many aspects of Maine society. From the beginning of his plurality win of the governor’s seat, he has felt free to disregard the majority of Maine people and the Legislature they elected.
In Donald Trump he has found a model. As The New York Times regularly publishes fact checks, so too the BDN has taken on that role. I’m grateful for the BDN’s work on behalf of all Maine people as we try to retain a sense of reality in the face of a barrage of untruths and false statements.
Ruth Nadelhaft
Bangor