Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Double Standards

Recently there was a large amount of belly aching over Indiana's RFRA, because it was alleged that it allowed discrimination against gay people, who in Indiana are not a protected class. The argument went that a private business had to serve all customers regardless of their personal positions of what services that customer is requesting.

Now we have the shooting in South Carolina and some people decided to use GoGFundMe and IndieGoGo to financially support the officer. Regardless of how one feels about the situation, we live in the United States where supposedly a person is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by either a jury of one's peers or a judge. With that in mind I find the following from CNET to be quite disturbing:

Popular crowdfunding site Indiegogo on Friday removed a page to help pay for legal and other costs for a white former South Carolina police officer who has been charged with murdering an unarmed black man during a traffic stop.

Indiegogo said in a statement it took down the page supporting North Charleston police officer Michael Slager because "our Trust & Safety team regularly conducts verifications and checks and this campaign did not meet their standards."

What standards? The intrepid reporter did not ask what standard they have? If a person is charged with murder and is presumed innocent and cannot afford to pay for his or her defense they are not allowed to solicit? Is that the standard?
Indiegogo's removal of Slager's page comes two days after another site, GoFundMe, rejected a similar fundraising campaign. GoFundMe said it took down its page after Slager was fired Wednesday.
Because being fired from your job is proof of criminal activity. And I suppose that being employed is a "standard" required by GoFundMe?

This isn't the first time a crowdfunding campaign in defense of a white police officer involved in the fatal shooting of a black man was taken down. GoFundMe removed a page supporting Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, who was identified as shooting Michael Brown in August.

Wilson's campaign raised nearly $235,000 before it was taken down after five days due to legal concerns, the company said. The shooting triggered a series of violent protests nationwide.

What legal concerns? What exactly in the law makes it legally risky to host a fund raising page for a presumed innocent person? Someone explain that to me. Apparently the reporter doesn't have a clue because he didn't ASK. Besides Wilson maintained his innocence so how does that make GoFundMe look?

In a properly run government, GoFundMe and IndieGoGO would find themselves on the receiving end of a DOJ and EOC investigation with fines up the wazooo

ORRRRR

We'd leave IndieGoGO and GoFundMe alone, along with the bakers, photographers and caterers who don't care to associate with gay weddings. The fact that the actions of IndieGoGo and GoFundMe have gone largely unnoticed and not condemned in the same fashion that Indiana shows the actual level of contempt for equal application of the law by liberals and the cowardice of those so called "law and order" conservatives.