How farmer Andrew Kehoe became US’ first mass murderer, killing 38 children

Berenice Sterling was a first-grade teacher in Bath, Mich., in 1927 when she asked school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe for a favor. Sterling wanted to have some fun with her students on the final day of school, so she wondered if the class could picnic in a shady grove of trees on Kehoe’s farm that Wednesday, May 18. 

Kehoe agreed, but he urged Sterling’s class not to wait till that date. Instead, he said, they should have their picnic “right away.” 

Asked after May 18 why he thought Kehoe had made that suggestion, Bath resident Monty Ellsworth gave a stark reply: 

“I suppose he wanted the children to have a little fun before he killed them.” 

The full story of Kehoe — who went from first trying to control a school’s budget to finally just blowing the whole building up, killing 44 people in a fit of rage — is revealed in “Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer” (Little A), out now. 

Keep reading

Cops Forced to Create Crime in Quota Scheme of 4 Tickets Per Hour or Face Discipline

Most people reading this article know what it is like to have the blue and red lights pop up in your rear view mirror. The last thing going through your mind at this point is the feeling of ‘being protected.’ This feeling comes from the fact that the overwhelming majority of the time a driver sees police lights in their mirror is because they have been targeted for revenue collection—often the result of a quota system—and they are about to be given a ticket, or worse.

Police, we are told, are here to keep us safe and protect us from the bad guys. However, public safety all too often takes a back seat to revenue collection. Time and time again, the Free Thought Project has exposed quota schemes in which officers were punished for not writing enough tickets or making enough arrests.

The most recent ticket writing scheme to be exposed comes out of Hawaii and it implicates the Federal Government in the driving force behind it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) holds “traffic safety” grants throughout the year, which essentially require departments to meet certain numbers or they get no grant.

Though quotas are illegal in many states, they are just fine in Hawaii and the department has no problem implementing them to receive their federal handout.

Keep reading