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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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Amy Klobuchar Not Just Violent
When most of America thinks of Minnesota two things come to mind, it’s damn cold and the people are damn nice. Well nice doesn’t apply to Klobuchar, but cold may very well apply. Lets take a look at this lady that has thrown her hat into the ring.
A Nightmare To Her Staff:
It’s said you can learn a lot about someone by watching how they treat others, if that’s true Ms. Klobuchar doesn’t look good
It is common for staff to wake up to multiple emails from Klobuchar characterizing one’s work as “the worst” briefing or press release she’d seen in her decades of public service, according to two former aides and emails seen by HuffPost.
Although some staffers grew inured to her constant put-downs (“It’s always ‘the worst,’” one said sarcastically, “‘It was ‘the worst’ one two weeks ago”), others found it grinding and demoralizing. Adding to the humiliation, Klobuchar often cc’d large groups of staffers who weren’t working on the topic at hand, giving the emails the effect of a public flogging.
Apparently she didn’t stop at verbal and emotional abuses and escalated to throwing things at her employees.
She was known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides, they said. Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning — a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber.
Not a pretty picture. Sort of the reverse of the current president who has been called a boor in his public persona but a very nice person in his private one and beloved by his employees.
A Scary History As A Prosecutor:
Seeing as she is running for president a look at how she performs in the exercise of executive power should provide some insight into how she will perform in the highest office in the country.Thankfully we have her record as county attorney for Hennepin County to look at and it’s a horror show.
One of the great nightmares of modern life is the idea that you might get caught in the crosshairs of an official that can bring the power of the government to bear against you. It gets even scarier when it’s to enhance their reputation or other gain making it impossible to reason with them. That was the case with baseball hall of famer Kirby Puckett.
In 2002, Amy Klobuchar was Hennepin County attorney and pressed charges against legendary Minnesota Twins player Kirby Puckett. The prosecution charged Puckett with grabbing a woman and bringing her into a men’s room and groping her; Puckett said he had merely escorted her into the men’s room when the women’s room had a long line. Klobuchar pursued charges of false imprisonment, fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct, and fifth-degree assault. After eight hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Puckett on all charges.
After the verdict, Puckett’s defense attorney, B. Todd Jones, contended that prosecutors had let his client’s fame drive their decision to pursue charges. “When it comes down to it, they just did not have the courage to not charge Kirby Puckett
I could applaud prosecuting the powerful, it would be nice if there were evidence instead of he said, she said.
The flip side of the coin is not prosecuting people that should be. To have a viable society everyone has to be the same before the law and has to be accountable for their actions. The same way she went after a famous target that would build her reputation she avoided others that would hurt her rep.
Christopher Burns, a 44-year-old black man, was unarmed and at home in Minneapolis with his fiancee and three young children when the police arrived in response to a domestic violence call. The officers put him in a chokehold, and he died on the scene, according to the medical examiner.
The 2002 incident marked the third killing of a black person by the city’s police department that year, prompting local activists to stage rallies and demand that the two officers involved in Burns’s death face charges
I am about as law and order as can be, but killing an unarmed man in front of his family by choking him to death certainly raises questions. When you compare that to the fact that she escalated prosecutions for things that weren’t previously considered criminal or felonious. A prime example sending a man to jail for non payment of child support. Both breaching common practice (first time was done in 30 years) and raising the question of just how the heck he was supposed to pay it while in prison ?
Taken together the above are disturbing but not a solid indictment of someone for abusing power and putting their personal advancement ahead of doing what is right in their office. Police have very difficult jobs and mistakes get made just as Kirby Puckett likely shouldn’t have been prosecuted the same possibility exists for the police officers. It is harder to square the good done by putting a father in jail because he couldn’t support his child, but that could be said to be “sending a message”.
What does nail the lid shut on her actions is how she shifted once she was in the Senate.
“For people who have been victimized and have been a victim of crime, they need a criminal justice system that works for them. And I have worked with a lot of very good prosecutors and very good police officers that do some of the hardest jobs every day,” she said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“But we know that there is racism in the system that needs to be fixed, that’s why we have started instituting body cameras, which is a great solution, doing things on eyewitness ID, and I think the solutions are there for us. We just have to reform the system.”
This is from a woman who made a habit of putting kids in prison for graffiti and vandalism. If there is “racism in the system” she was certainly part of it. It’s hard not to conclude she either knew what she was doing was wrong when she was doing it, just said the above to shine up her liberal bonafides or a bit of both. Either way I can’t see anything to recommend her for president and many reasons to keep her away from the office.
Drink up That’s it for the Watercooler today. As always it’s an open thread
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