Posted on 12/11/2014 6:25:25 AM PST by HomerBohn
Hello. I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. President Obama is right — finally. This could be the only time in six years that I’ve agreed with Obama. He says that police officers should wear body cameras. Bravo. That’s the only smart move of his presidency. That’s what I’d call a no-brainer.
Of course, Obama wants it for a different reason than I do. He is suspicious of cops. He thinks cops are often bad guys. He thinks cops are racist.
I think cops have an impossible job. I think cops deal with terrible people all day long. I think if people treated cops with respect, 90 percent of all violent confrontations with police and shootings by police would never happen. Body cameras are the perfect solution for both concerns.
It doesn’t matter who is right: Obama or I. Body cameras solve the problem. Police will act completely differently, knowing they are on camera. And so will the people that cops deal and interact with every day. I’ve been in the television business my entire adult life. I’ve hosted, created and produced multiple hit television shows. And I can tell you that people always act differently when they know cameras are rolling.
So body cameras work for both Obama and me. Obama wants cops to stop beating and shooting unarmed or innocent citizens. Well, you can bet cops will think twice before escalating a confrontation, knowing it’s all being recorded. And, of course, so will the people on camera interacting with the police. Everyone will be on his best behavior.
The main reason I support body cameras is far different than Obama’s. I want to avoid or drastically reduce lawsuits against the police, thereby saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. If a police interaction with bad guys is all captured on camera and the video proves the cop conducted himself professionally, there are no longer grounds for a lawsuit. Case closed.
My message to the bad guys is, “Smile, you’re on ‘Candid Camera!’” The cops and the taxpayers are the big winners once cops put on body cameras. I’ll bet Obama didn’t think about that.
But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Obama is such a fan of body cameras for police officers, why shouldn’t politicians wear them too?
History proves politicians like Obama are far worse for the citizens and taxpayers than any police officer. Politicians are liars, crooks, frauds and criminals at a far higher rate than cops. Heck, at one point last year, we suffered a crime wave by Democratic politicians from coast to coast. Many of them will go to prison.
But the worst example of lies, fraud and taxpayer abuse is Obama himself. He lies about virtually everything. He said, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” Not true: Millions of Americans have had their insurance canceled, with millions more to come. He promised we could keep our doctors, too. Not true. He said rates would go down $2,500 per family, per year because of Obamacare. Instead, rates went up dramatically during Obama’s presidency. Now, because of Obamacare they are going up dramatically again. Our deductibles and co-pays have doubled, too. He also claimed it wasn’t a tax, yet it turned out to be one of the biggest tax increases in history.
Don’t take my word for it. Just watch Jonathan Gruber (the architect of Obamacare) on video. He says Obama lied. He admits Obama and the architects of Obamacare committed fraud to fool the stupid voters. He admits they couldn’t tell you the truth, or you wouldn’t have bought the product. That’s fraud. And we got him on video saying it. See how valuable video cameras are?
Don’t forget Benghazi. Obama and Hillary Clinton claimed that fiasco was all due to a movie that no one in the Middle East ever watched. That’s called a cover-up. Wouldn’t you have liked a body camera in the room as Obama and Clinton made up that story?
Don’t forget the IRS scandal. Obama claimed it was tiny, unimportant and never rose above a few bad apples in one office in Cincinnati. All of that has been proven untrue. The attacks came from many IRS offices across the country. The attacks just happened to be aimed at groups and individuals that criticized the president — like me. I was targeted and attacked from the Las Vegas IRS office.
Next, we found out thousands of IRS emails had been destroyed — emails that could implicate the White House in the targeting. Just last week, we found out that the IRS handed confidential and private tax information to the White House. Why? Wouldn’t you have liked a body camera in the room as Obama met with the heads of the IRS and the IRS government employees union hundreds of times to plan and plot this massive scandal?
The list of lies, fraud and violations of the Constitution by Obama is long and seemingly endless.
What a cop does to some random perp doesn’t affect my life. But lies and crimes committed by politicians like Obama dramatically affect all of our lives.
The deals they cut in the backroom should be watched and heard by all of us. We, the taxpayers, pay their salaries. It’s time that politicians — in particular, presidents — wear body cameras. It’s time for real transparency. It’s time for politicians to live by the same rules as the rest of us.
So let’s agree with Obama about putting body cameras on cops. Then let’s make him live by the same rules as the rest of us. It’s time to watch the politicians.
Look at the bright side. If nothing else, we can finally learn how good Obama’s golf game is.
Or when Reggie is “visiting”.
I said that too.
Body camera for Michael “Michelle” Robinson...wait...uh, no (breakfast just came back up)
IMHO, this call from the White Hut for police body cameras is a typical distraction from the crimes committed up on high. Go figure.
But for as long as there have been ‘enforcers’ (law, edict or otherwise), there has been a corrupt element.
The same is true of leadership/politicians, if not more so.
The big difference between police & presidency is that police cannot make their own laws. The presidency’s ‘executive orders’, while not ‘laws’, have the same effect as laws passed by Congress. The big difference here is that a president’s edicts are a macro effect, vs. a police officer’s ‘micro’ effect in day-to-day interactions with the public. Thus, the proposal makes sense. For politicians, too.
Going further, overwhelmingly there is an exponentially-greater element of ‘good cops’ vs. politicians and bureaucratic ‘leaders’.
If the IRS targeting scandal, Fast & Furious, passage of Obamacare and, latest but not least, the secretive passage of the omnibus spending bill (to name but a few) are any example, these politicians’ & bureaucrats’ focus on farming citizens’ data & records seems hypocritically-misplaced.
Thus, to put this proposal in perspective, the proper response would be to assert that ALL who receive public dollars are subject to open records laws and those that impact freedoms or finances are all subject to wearing body cameras as well. That would include Justice, Police bureaucrats, Congressmen, IRS, etc.
What an equalizing force that would be...
If humans are ever to have futuristic wearable ‘microchips’, our ‘leaders’ (INCLUDING bureaucrats) should be the first recipients, recording much, if not all, of their daily ‘public service’ routines, imho.
I though Reggie had an unfortunate accident.
He slipped on a bar of soap.
Brilliant idea. Certainly politicians should be relieved to have video and audio proof that they are always doing the bidding of the American people.
Obama was there to break his fall.
He doesn’t need one he’s so addicted to ‘selfies’
I’d like to see Clown Prince nobama wearing an orange jumpsuit in a Fed Supermax.
One step futher - let’s make teachers where body cameras so we can see just what a waste of money public education is.
Like he used to when he was a younger punk.
It would look like the Golf Channel.
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