1418 Choke Hold Justice

The cops’ lament: “If I did that, I’d be pounding a beat in Staten Island.”  

The Superior Officer version: “Keep it up, Bozo, and you’ll be pounding a beat in Staten Island.”

Never was much of an assignment. Still isn’t.

Does the white cop’s killing of a 350-400 pound asthmatic black man by using the departmentally banned choke hold rise to the level of the Ferguson shooting death? Or is it even worse?  Doesn’t matter.  Each is bad enough.

After three months of testimony, a grand jury elected Wednesday not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo who has something of a history of not being indicted in lesser but similar cases.

Eric Garner, 43,  was accused of selling single untaxed cigarettes --  they call them loosies on the street -- at a Staten Island corner.  Others say he was breaking up a fight.  Garner is forever unavailable for comment.

Here’s the video .

So, how long before the character assassinations begin?  Was Garner really a “gentle giant” and neighborhood peacemaker who was selling loosies to people who can’t afford to pay retail at New York’s outrageous $12 to $14 a pack? A Pack?!  The city tax is higher than the cost of cigarettes.

But the penalty for unauthorized untaxed sales at street level usually is a fine, not death.

There are demonstrations from coast to coast and there will be more.  So far it doesn’t look like anyone’s looting or burning.  Probably by the time it all ends, there will be a few new unpaid for TV sets and iPods and maybe some canned goods in a few homes.

But New York, Los Angeles and Seattle are not some no-horse town in the Low IQ belt.

Here, we find demonstrations from the Brooklyn Bridge and Staten Island to midtown at the Rock Center Christmas tree lighting and Grand Central to the West Side Highway and up to Harlem.

As well we should.

The mayor, with a multi-racial family, gets up and speaks with great passion and love, but without condemning the grand jury action.

Huckster Al Sharpton seems legit for ten minutes.

Attorney General Holder announces a federal civil rights investigation.

Wrongful death lawyers gather, salivating.

And the defense?  If Garner had been shot dead, the officer’s would be “I was just cleaning the gun and it went off.” or “I didn’t know it was loaded.”

But there was no gun.  So the defense becomes “I meant him no harm.”  Say what?  One guy, piled on by a bunch of cops one of whom has him in a choke hold?  For selling cigarettes on a street corner?

If he even was doing that.

There’s strong evidence the cops in the incident and Garner knew each other.  If so, the police knew they could have talked down the situation instead of piling on.

You -- whoever you are, wherever you are -- could have talked things down.

The choke hold around the neck of justice.

Shrapnel:

--Note to squeegee men: if Garner’s offense was the kind of crime Bratton’s NYPD is focused on as it was in the Giuliani days, take a few weeks off.  Same goes for you, turnstile jumpers.  And jaywalkers.

--RIP Herman Badillo who has died of congestive heart failure at age 85.  He was the first Puerto Rican- born member of congress among much else.  But he never managed to realize his dream: becoming Mayor.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1388 Cadillac and Kmart

Here’s what happened to Kmart, which had been chugging along nicely since before the turn of the 20th century until the game shifted from the sales floor to the boardroom.

In the late 1980s it was still ahead of Wal-mart… and was the country’s second largest retailer, behind Sears.

Enter Joseph Antonelli, a long time Kmart executive, elevated to CEO. Among his bright ideas were things like getting big name endorsers… Martha Stewart for one. Jaclyn Smith for another.

Those lines flopped.  So did much else Joe did.  But the biggest flop of all was dividing the company into four different entities.

Instead of selling clothing, pots, pans and such, he sold stock.

Kmart never recovered and today is a shadow of its former shadow.

You’ve heard this from Wessays™ before.  Now, you’re going to hear it again.  When all the action is in the boardroom, the team on the field can’t win.

Fast forward to 2014.  General Motors has announced it is turning Cadillac into a separate company and moving its headquarters to New York City.

Not to GM’s imposing Fifth Avenue skyscraper, but to a relatively small office in SoHo.

Why?  Well, because Cadillac is the Kmart of luxury cars.  And some of the North American headquarters of some of the competing luxury brands are in Manhattan.

Caddy even has its own version of Joe Antonelli.  His name is Johan de Nysschen who once ran Audi/North America and more recently the beleaguered Infiniti division of Nissan.

Perfect. Infiniti is a mess.  And when was the last time you saw one on the road?  They sold about 9,000 cars in the US last month, down almost 23% from August, 2013.

At the same time, Lexus sold almost 30-thousand cars and Cadillac about half that.

The most optimistic prediction:  nothing will change.  A probable prediction: moving the front office off the auto industry’s beaten path while leaving engineering, design and production right where it is -- Detroit -- can’t possibly do the brand any good.

Cadillac still does a pretty good business in markets most of us don’t think about much.  Ambulances.  Funeral cars.

Actually, they and their outside contractors make the coolest ambulances and funeral cars on the planet.  But the call for that stuff is limited and mostly people only ride in each once, if that.

Other than those customers and a bunch of traditionalist grandparents, they don’t sell a whole lot of tin.

A typical reaction to seeing one of their stock models: “Wow, that’s a beauty.”  But more often than not, the thought is followed by “I’d buy one of those if they weren’t so bad underneath the skin.”

People who buy luxury cars are easily divisible into categories: show offs, arthritics and that part of the population with money to burn.

Cadillac needs to pay attention to all three categories.

Shrapnel:

--Attorney General Holder is quitting but he’ll wait until the Senate confirms the president’s nominee.  Figure Holder will be around until after the 2016 presidential election. The Senate wouldn’t approve John Jay, if Obama wanted him.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014