Jelly Belly Chairman Doesn't Seem To Think Transgender Kids Deserve Equal Rights
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Et tu, Jelly Belly?
The chairman of America's lovable jelly bean brand apparently has helped fund efforts to repeal trans-friendly legal protections in California.
In September, Herman G. Rowland Sr., the chairman of the board of Jelly Belly Candy Company, Inc., donated $5,000 to Privacy for All Students, a coalition fighting for a referendum effort to repeal transgender rights legislation California Assembly Bill 1266.
The bill, signed into law by California Gov. Jerry Brown in August, requires the state's transgender students to be allowed to "participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records."
Herman's donation to Privacy for All Students was first reported by Frontiers' Karen Ocamb, who spotted the chairman's name on the California secretary of state's campaign finance information website.
"Like to munch on those gummy bears or jelly beans or candy corn as you spruce up your Halloween costume?" Ocamb asked. "Well, for every handful of what you think might be good, clean fun or a childhood sense memory, you’re putting money into the pocket of one of the men who’s trying to take away the rights of trans and non-gender-conforming expressive students."
While Jelly Belly did not immediately respond to The Huffington Post's request for comment, this wouldn't be the first time Herman has been tied to conservative causes. During the 2012 presidential election, Herman donated money to three GOP candidates and hosted a rally at Jelly Belly for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
This newest revelation, however, comes on the heels of a recent controversy involving the chairman of Italian pasta company Barilla, who announced in September that his company would not feature gay families in advertisements because he prefers the "traditional" family.
While Guido Barilla's comments sparked an immediate backlash, there has been no word of a Jelly Belly boycott just yet. However, a Change.org petition posted by the National Center for Lesbian Rights has already garnered several thousand signatures with its plea to "tell Jelly Belly Chair Herman Rowland Sr. that all students should be treated equally and have the same opportunities to be successful in school."
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
All In Agenda: Monkey court, part 2 | MSNBC
All In Agenda: Monkey court, part 2 | MSNBC
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Wednesday night on All In with Chris Hayes: Republicans got another chance to attack health insurance in a House hearing on the Obamacare rollout Wednesday morning. The GOP’s grilling of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ranged from serious to silly to just plain oblivious. Rep. Leonard Lance and Rep. Donna Christensen, both members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who attended Wednesday’s hearing, and Clay Johnson, Former Presidential Innovation Fellow and CEO of the Department of Better Technology, will join Hayes to talk about the latest installment in the saga of the ‘monkey court.’
Chris Hayes will also talk with Wendell Potter, former Health Insurance Executive and current Senior Analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, about the truth behind all the hooplah over cancellation letters some people are receiving from their health insurance companies.
Plus: Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts will join Hayes to talk about the Citigroup-authored bill to strip Wall Street regulations that some members of Congress are claiming he supports. (Spoiler alert: He opposes it.)
Later, Joel Berg, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and former USDA Coordinator of Community Food Security for the Clinton Administration, Swami Durga Das, Executive Director and CEO of The River Fund and Manager of The River Fund Food Pantry, and Margarette Purvis, President and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, will join the table to discuss the approaching hunger cliff. Every American on food stamps will see their benefits cut as stimulus funding starts to expire November 1
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Wednesday night on All In with Chris Hayes: Republicans got another chance to attack health insurance in a House hearing on the Obamacare rollout Wednesday morning. The GOP’s grilling of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ranged from serious to silly to just plain oblivious. Rep. Leonard Lance and Rep. Donna Christensen, both members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who attended Wednesday’s hearing, and Clay Johnson, Former Presidential Innovation Fellow and CEO of the Department of Better Technology, will join Hayes to talk about the latest installment in the saga of the ‘monkey court.’
Chris Hayes will also talk with Wendell Potter, former Health Insurance Executive and current Senior Analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, about the truth behind all the hooplah over cancellation letters some people are receiving from their health insurance companies.
Plus: Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts will join Hayes to talk about the Citigroup-authored bill to strip Wall Street regulations that some members of Congress are claiming he supports. (Spoiler alert: He opposes it.)
Later, Joel Berg, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and former USDA Coordinator of Community Food Security for the Clinton Administration, Swami Durga Das, Executive Director and CEO of The River Fund and Manager of The River Fund Food Pantry, and Margarette Purvis, President and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, will join the table to discuss the approaching hunger cliff. Every American on food stamps will see their benefits cut as stimulus funding starts to expire November 1
Monday, October 28, 2013
White House OKs limited waiver on health penalty - Yahoo News
White House OKs limited waiver on health penalty - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
With website woes ongoing, the Obama administration Monday granted a six-week extension until March 31 for Americans to sign up for coverage next year and avoid new tax penalties under the president's health care overhaul law.
The move had been expected since White House spokesman Jay Carney promised quick action last week to resolve a "disconnect" in the implementation of the law.
It comes as technical problems continue to trouble the website designed as the main enrollment portal for people who don't get health care at work.
As a consequence, Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats as well, are calling for a one-year delay in the penalties most Americans will face starting next year if they remain uninsured. Monday's action by the administration stops well short of that, and amounts only to a limited adjustment.
Under the latest policy change, people who sign up by the end of open enrollment season on March 31 will not face a penalty. That means procrastinators get a grace period.
Previously you had to sign up by the middle of February, guaranteeing that your coverage would take effect March 1, in order to avoid fines for being uninsured.
The extension — granted for 2014 only — addresses confusion that was created when the administration set the first open enrollment period under the law from Oct. 1-March 31.
The problem was that health insurance coverage typically starts on the first day of a given month, and it takes up to 15 days to process applications. So somebody signing up March 16 — well within the open enrollment period — wouldn't get coverage until April 1, thereby risking a penalty for being uninsured part of the year.
The administration "has determined that it would be unfair to require individuals in this situation to make a (penalty) payment," the Health and Human Services department said in guidance issued Monday evening. As a result, the department is creating a special one-time hardship exemption for people who get covered by March 31. And they won't have to file additional paperwork to apply for the exemption.
The mandate to carry health insurance is the most unpopular requirement of the health care law. It's meant to nudge as many people as possible into the insurance pool. That would help keep premiums in check, since the law also forbids insurers from turning away people with health problems.
Mindful of the need to sign up lots of healthy uninsured people, the administration released an analysis Monday that concludes nearly half of uninsured single young adults could buy a "bronze" level plan for $50 or less a month, after tax credits to offset the cost of premiums.
The inconsistency between the law's coverage requirements and the administration's schedule for the initial open enrollment season was first pointed out by the Jackson Hewitt tax preparation company.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
With website woes ongoing, the Obama administration Monday granted a six-week extension until March 31 for Americans to sign up for coverage next year and avoid new tax penalties under the president's health care overhaul law.
The move had been expected since White House spokesman Jay Carney promised quick action last week to resolve a "disconnect" in the implementation of the law.
It comes as technical problems continue to trouble the website designed as the main enrollment portal for people who don't get health care at work.
As a consequence, Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats as well, are calling for a one-year delay in the penalties most Americans will face starting next year if they remain uninsured. Monday's action by the administration stops well short of that, and amounts only to a limited adjustment.
Under the latest policy change, people who sign up by the end of open enrollment season on March 31 will not face a penalty. That means procrastinators get a grace period.
Previously you had to sign up by the middle of February, guaranteeing that your coverage would take effect March 1, in order to avoid fines for being uninsured.
The extension — granted for 2014 only — addresses confusion that was created when the administration set the first open enrollment period under the law from Oct. 1-March 31.
The problem was that health insurance coverage typically starts on the first day of a given month, and it takes up to 15 days to process applications. So somebody signing up March 16 — well within the open enrollment period — wouldn't get coverage until April 1, thereby risking a penalty for being uninsured part of the year.
The administration "has determined that it would be unfair to require individuals in this situation to make a (penalty) payment," the Health and Human Services department said in guidance issued Monday evening. As a result, the department is creating a special one-time hardship exemption for people who get covered by March 31. And they won't have to file additional paperwork to apply for the exemption.
The mandate to carry health insurance is the most unpopular requirement of the health care law. It's meant to nudge as many people as possible into the insurance pool. That would help keep premiums in check, since the law also forbids insurers from turning away people with health problems.
Mindful of the need to sign up lots of healthy uninsured people, the administration released an analysis Monday that concludes nearly half of uninsured single young adults could buy a "bronze" level plan for $50 or less a month, after tax credits to offset the cost of premiums.
The inconsistency between the law's coverage requirements and the administration's schedule for the initial open enrollment season was first pointed out by the Jackson Hewitt tax preparation company.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Colombian rebels free former American GI | abc11.com
Colombian rebels free former American GI | abc11.com
JohnButts@JBMedia:
Kevin Scott Sutay, who is in his late 20s, was quietly turned over to Cuban and Norwegian officials along with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the same southeastern region where he had disappeared four months earlier.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry immediately thanked Colombia's government in a statement for its "tireless efforts" in securing the Afghanistan war veteran's release. Kerry also thanked the Rev. Jesse Jackson for advocating it.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had said it was abandoning kidnapping as a condition for the launching of peace talks that began 11 months ago to end a half-century internal conflict. Cuba and Norway are serving as facilitators in those talks.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos resisted FARC efforts to make what he deemed a "media show" of Sutay's release and no images were released of the early morning jungle handover or of his reported late-morning arrival in Bogota, the capital.
The rebels first announced in July their intention to free Sutay as a good-faith gesture but the liberation was delayed.
Santos' firmness on prohibiting a ceremonial release of Sutay included objecting to the FARC-endorsed intercession of Jackson, who met with rebel leaders in Cuba in late September and said then that he would go to Colombia to lobby on behalf of Sutay's release.
Sutay was delivered to U.S. government representatives at Bogota's airport, according to a statement issued by the Cuban and Norwegian embassies.
The Red Cross said one of its doctors examined Sutay and he was good to travel and be reunited with his family. It was not immediately clear if he had flown on to the United States.
Sutay was the only foreigner known to be currently held by Colombian rebels.
Attempts by The Associated Press to locate relatives of Sutay after his capture were unsuccessful. His service record lists his hometown as Willow Spring, North Carolina.
Sutay was in Colombia as a tourist, the U.S. Embassy has said. When the FARC announced his June 20 capture in the southeastern state of Guaviare, it said it suspected him of being an agent of the U.S. government, whose close military assistance in training, logistics, surveillance and intelligence since 2000 has helped Colombia's government badly weaken the rebels.
Local officials in Guaviare and international reporters who encountered Sutay there in mid-June said he appeared to be nothing but a tourist who spoke little Spanish and was determined to travel by land through thick jungle to Puerto Inirida on Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela.
JohnButts@JBMedia:
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia's main leftist rebel group on Sunday released a former U.S. Army private who the guerrillas seized in June after he refused to heed local officials' warnings and wandered into rebel-held territory.
Kevin Scott Sutay, who is in his late 20s, was quietly turned over to Cuban and Norwegian officials along with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the same southeastern region where he had disappeared four months earlier.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry immediately thanked Colombia's government in a statement for its "tireless efforts" in securing the Afghanistan war veteran's release. Kerry also thanked the Rev. Jesse Jackson for advocating it.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had said it was abandoning kidnapping as a condition for the launching of peace talks that began 11 months ago to end a half-century internal conflict. Cuba and Norway are serving as facilitators in those talks.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos resisted FARC efforts to make what he deemed a "media show" of Sutay's release and no images were released of the early morning jungle handover or of his reported late-morning arrival in Bogota, the capital.
The rebels first announced in July their intention to free Sutay as a good-faith gesture but the liberation was delayed.
Santos' firmness on prohibiting a ceremonial release of Sutay included objecting to the FARC-endorsed intercession of Jackson, who met with rebel leaders in Cuba in late September and said then that he would go to Colombia to lobby on behalf of Sutay's release.
Sutay was delivered to U.S. government representatives at Bogota's airport, according to a statement issued by the Cuban and Norwegian embassies.
The Red Cross said one of its doctors examined Sutay and he was good to travel and be reunited with his family. It was not immediately clear if he had flown on to the United States.
Sutay was the only foreigner known to be currently held by Colombian rebels.
Attempts by The Associated Press to locate relatives of Sutay after his capture were unsuccessful. His service record lists his hometown as Willow Spring, North Carolina.
Sutay was in Colombia as a tourist, the U.S. Embassy has said. When the FARC announced his June 20 capture in the southeastern state of Guaviare, it said it suspected him of being an agent of the U.S. government, whose close military assistance in training, logistics, surveillance and intelligence since 2000 has helped Colombia's government badly weaken the rebels.
Local officials in Guaviare and international reporters who encountered Sutay there in mid-June said he appeared to be nothing but a tourist who spoke little Spanish and was determined to travel by land through thick jungle to Puerto Inirida on Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela.
Friday, October 25, 2013
The Sad Reality About School Violence in America | Parenting - Yahoo Shine
The Sad Reality About School Violence in America | Parenting - Yahoo Shine
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
It's been a bad week for violence in the schools.
Related: 15 things ALL parents need to remind themselves
While logic assures us that an unlawful death statistic of less than 1 percent is comforting, heavy hearts tell us otherwise. Twenty-three young victims are still too many, and once student suicides and teachers and staff are included, the statistic jumps to 45 brutal deaths per year in U.S. schools, according to the same study.
With two incidents of school homicide in less than a week, we're all asking the same question: is school violence a growing epidemic?
NBC reports, "Federal surveys suggest that school violence has decreased dramatically over the past thirty years. One school-safety consultant who is often called upon by the media, Ken Trump, says no one can be sure, because schools are not required to report violence. Congress in 1990 required colleges, but not elementary and secondary schools, to report crime statistics." That's not okay. I don't care how "rare" incidents of school violence are, recent history has shown that school violence isn't limited to the Virginia Tech's of the world. Accurate reporting of school violence among K-12 is required if we are to ever really know for sure. Less than a year after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, what has been done to ensure accurate reporting of school violence, effectively increase safety within our schools, or focus on the mental health of our students? Not much.
Trump told NBC News, "Probably the most disappointing, embarrassing thing that's occurred since Sandy Hook is that nothing's occurred. It's become a gun control vs. gun rights argument. Some of the responses have been absurd - telling elementary school kids to bring in a can of soup to throw at a gunman - and not a damn thing has made it to the front line to help principals."
Teachers and school administrators answered the call to educate our children; how absolutely tragic that protecting themselves and their students from school violence without resources has become part of their job.
Do we need to calm down about school violence? Hell no. We need to make more noise than ever.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
It's been a bad week for violence in the schools.
Just four days ago, a NV teacher lost his life at the hands of a middle schooler before the student turned the gun on himself, and late Tuesday, the body of a MA math teacher was discovered behind a high school with a 14-year-old student charged in her murder. With haunting memories of Sandy Hook and Columbine on our collective consciousness, it's hard to accept the fact that violence in the schools is actually pretty rare.
According to NBC News, "An average of 23 youths per year were the victims of homicides at elementary or secondary schools or on the way to a school event, over the years 1992 to 2011, according to the most complete federal study. And those 23 deaths include all kinds of homicides - drug deals gone bad, fights over a girl - in a nation with 130,000 schools and more than 50 million students in grades K-12." Related: 15 things ALL parents need to remind themselves
While logic assures us that an unlawful death statistic of less than 1 percent is comforting, heavy hearts tell us otherwise. Twenty-three young victims are still too many, and once student suicides and teachers and staff are included, the statistic jumps to 45 brutal deaths per year in U.S. schools, according to the same study.
With two incidents of school homicide in less than a week, we're all asking the same question: is school violence a growing epidemic?
NBC reports, "Federal surveys suggest that school violence has decreased dramatically over the past thirty years. One school-safety consultant who is often called upon by the media, Ken Trump, says no one can be sure, because schools are not required to report violence. Congress in 1990 required colleges, but not elementary and secondary schools, to report crime statistics." That's not okay. I don't care how "rare" incidents of school violence are, recent history has shown that school violence isn't limited to the Virginia Tech's of the world. Accurate reporting of school violence among K-12 is required if we are to ever really know for sure. Less than a year after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, what has been done to ensure accurate reporting of school violence, effectively increase safety within our schools, or focus on the mental health of our students? Not much.
Trump told NBC News, "Probably the most disappointing, embarrassing thing that's occurred since Sandy Hook is that nothing's occurred. It's become a gun control vs. gun rights argument. Some of the responses have been absurd - telling elementary school kids to bring in a can of soup to throw at a gunman - and not a damn thing has made it to the front line to help principals."
Teachers and school administrators answered the call to educate our children; how absolutely tragic that protecting themselves and their students from school violence without resources has become part of their job.
Do we need to calm down about school violence? Hell no. We need to make more noise than ever.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Texas judge forced to resign after caught texting instructions to assistant DA during trial | The Raw Story
Texas judge forced to resign after caught texting instructions to assistant DA during trial | The Raw Story
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Oh, the hilarity that is the phrase "criminal justice system." Talk to any defense attorney and they'll tell you how the deck is stacked against defendants and defense lawyers. The ideal of "innocent until proven guilty" has become little more than a disclaimer tacked onto cop-centered reality shows. Defendants are guilty until the jury is somehow tricked by the defense into handing down a "not guilty" verdict. A lot of effort goes towards dissuading defendants from even making it this far, as prosecutors will present worst-case scenarios comprised of every violation conceivable in order to get an agreement to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
The prevailing perception that the person charged is guilty, with the only answer yet to be determined is how guilty, makes defending arrestees an uphill battle. Judge (former judge) Elizabeth Coker took this uphill battle, increased the grade to 85 degrees, covered it with a sheet of ice and sprinkled it with a 50/50 blend of Teflon and motor oil.
Elizabeth E. Coker may forever be known as the "texting judge," but her notoriety will soon be all that is left of her days on the bench of the 258th District Court of Polk, Trinity, and San Jacinto Counties. Coker signed an "AGREEMENT TO RESIGN FROM JUDICIAL OFFICE IN LIEU OF DISCIPLINARY ACTION" with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct… The agreement comes in the wake of a recent investigation revealing Coker texted instructions from the bench to a Polk County Assistant District Attorney who was assisting in the prosecution of a case in Coker's court.
The good news is that Coker is being stripped of all of her judicial power. Once the resignation goes through, she won't even be able to perform a wedding. The bad news is that this texting incident was only one of several alleged incidents in which Coker undermined the justice system. [Perhaps someone should have passed her, and any prosecutors dealing with her courtroom, a copy of this letter from a Texas DA warning his staff away from ex parte discussions...]
[J]udge Coker used Assistant District Attorney Jones to privately communicate information about the Reeves case to the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case; to suggest questions for the prosecutor to ask during the trial; to ensure that a witness was able to refresh his memory and rehabilitate his testimony by reviewing his videotaped interview with law enforcement before he took the stand for the second time the following day; and to discuss legal issues pertinent to the case. in an unsuccessful effort to assist the State obtain a guilty verdict in the case… [t]he Commission investigated claims that Judge Coker allegedly engaged in other improper ex parte communications and meetings with Jones, other members of the Polk County District Attorney's Office, the San Jacinto County District Attorney, and certain defense attorneys regarding various Cases pending in her court; Judge Coker allegedly exhibited a bias in favor of certain attorneys and a prejudice against others in both her judicial rulings and her court appointments: and Judge Coker allegedly met with jurors in an inappropriate manner, outside the presence of counsel, while the jurors were deliberating in one or more criminal trials…
Add to all the alleged misconduct above the apparent fact that she kept using the same questionable tactics right up to her appearance before the Commission.
[t]he Commission also expressed concerns that Judge Coker discussed the Commission's investigation and Judge Coker's written responses to the investigation with a material witness prior to that witness' testimony before the Commission in an apparent attempt to influence that witness, and that the judge may not have been candid and truthful in her testimony before the Commission when questioned about her contact with the witness...
In addition to stripping her judicial powers, the Commission also leaves her solely responsible for bearing the cost of any litigation arising from her alleged misconduct. The Commission, however, chose not to pursue these allegations in exchange for her immediate resignation. Coker utilizes that out in her public statement.
"The Judicial Commission made no finding or determinations of fact in my voluntary resignation, and I have not admitted guilt, fault or liability in my voluntary resignation. While I could have fought these allegations, it would have involved significant time, significant expense, and disruption to everyone involved. I did not feel that was in the best interests of the taxpayers, our court system, my family or myself" Coker stated.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Coker sacrificing herself for the good of a long list of others, including the taxpayers who paid her salary and the court system she allegedly abused from a position of power. Thanks to the commission's decision, these will forever remain allegations -- the equivalent of "getting off on a technicality." If Coker ends up in court because of her previous improprieties, I would imagine she'll have to search well outside her district for a defense lawyer.
This article, Texas Judge Forced To Resign After Being Caught Texting Instructions To Assistant DA During Trial, is syndicated from Techdirt and is posted here with permission.
AIDS Awareness Documentary Reaches Out to the ‘13 Percent’
AIDS Awareness Documentary Reaches Out to the ‘13 Percent’
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Two Northern Virginia filmmakers have collaborated on a powerful documentary project that is not officially part of, but will be presented in conjunction with, the annual International AIDS Conference that is being held for the first time ever in Washington, D.C. next week. It’s a call to action to end the silence on the rampant and continuing spread of the HIV virus and AIDS among urban African-American populations across the U.S., and most specifically in D.C. itself.
Based just outside the Falls Church area, Art Jones’ and Pam Bailey’s “Dream Factory” operation last month completed their hour-and-a-half film, “13 Percent” that will be screened during the conference week on Tuesday, July 24, at Bloombars, 3222 11th St., NW in D.C., at 7 p.m.
It is more than just a documentary, Jones told the News-Press at a special media screening last week. It is aimed at provoking a movement, something akin to the “Act Up” civil disobedience movement among predominantly white male gays in the 1980s, to get some openness, understanding and frank dialogue going in a minority community that prefers silence on such matters.
“Act Up,” founded by gay activist Larry Kramer, had as its slogan, “Silence Equals Death,” and it began to force government entities at local, state and national levels to start seriously responding to what was becoming a raging epidemic of AIDS killing tens of thousands of American citizens.
The “Silence Equals Death” slogan is appropriate to urban African-American communities in the U.S. today, Jones said.
Blacks make up only 13 percent of the total population of the U.S., but every year are 50 percent of all new HIV infections. The “13 Percent” documentary is aimed not so much at the general population, where PBS “Frontline” and other documentaries have been directed, but at the Black minority communities, themselves. Washington, D.C. is an epicenter of the virus’ spread, as are 12 other major U.S. cities.
“Start the conversation!” is the closing appeal in it, and the hope is for the widest possible circulation of the film on cable television platforms as well as in churches and schools in inner cities.
It is a sobering and frank treatment of this plague’s spread in the Black community, and the consequences in real people’s lives of the lack of knowledge about it, about its consequences and about the lack of resources or education among public health officials to identify its symptoms and treat it early.
“It’s a dirty little secret that spreads across gender and sexual orientation,” the film says in its opening. It documents the lives of Blacks with the virus, starting with a heterosexual man who’s lived with it for 30 years and can barely lift his own shoes because of how the virus and side effects of the treatment have ravaged his body.
Interspersed are the statistics that a new person is infected with HIV every 9.5 minutes in the U.S., a total of 56,000 a year. The age group 13 – 39, representing the most promise and productivity among the total population, constitutes two thirds of all infected persons. The single group within this age range that is becoming infected the fastest are Black heterosexual women, who have the added benefit to the wider community of being of child-rearing ages.
In this, Jones said, he sees the greatest crisis. HIV and AIDS are threatening the very future and existence of African-Americans. Of newly identified HIV infections now, 62 percent evolve into full-blown AIDS within one year of diagnosis.
While combinations of treatment regimens can keep a majority of AIDS patients alive, life expectancy is still far lower for infected persons, even with treatment.
A Northern Virginia high school football star with a full scholarship to college is profiled. In routinely donating blood during his freshman year in college, it was discovered he was HIV positive. He kept it a secret from his family, even as his personal life spiraled downward to homelessness and drug abuse.
When he finally rebounded and sought to enlist in the military, he thought he’d pulled his life back together, only to have the military learn of his HIV status and turn him away at the last minute. Only then was he forced to painfully confess his condition to his parents and begin to build a life with the virus.
Another profile was of a girl born with the virus, and the stigma that attended others, including her teachers at school, finding out, subjecting her to cruel discrimination.
The film addresses the important role of churches in the Black population, which has contributed to the problem because of their refusal to acknowledge a problem exists, even though by 1986, 25 percent of all HIV infections were among Blacks. Stigma and rejection have amplified fear, denial and silence, Jones said.
“It’s 30 years since the outbreak of AIDS, and Black communities have undergone little change,” he said.
The film points out the virus spread fastest in the poorer communities that lack adequate health care and educational means. It cites the dominant culture in those communities and the lack of value placed on health. Self-deprecating slang, sex and killing people is all that the Black music and television offer, Jones said. These entities do not acknowledge the power of what they’re saying.
With “rap” being the new gateway out of the ‘hood, Jones commented, it matters whether the rappers are truly artists or just hustlers.
In this culture, Jones said, AIDS is still viewed as a gay man’s disease, and anyone known to have it is treated like a leper. Yet since 2003, more women than men in the African-American community are being diagnosed with the virus, and it is now the No. 1 cause of death for Black women ages 25 – 34.
There is a great fear of telling the truth about one’s HIV or AIDS status because of the fear of discrimination This and the lack of an ability to recognize the symptoms of the disease cause persons to delay seeking treatment, often until it is too late.
There has been a collective silence, Jones said. The film talks about the need for human beings to be moral to one another, and for young people to understand and utilize the power of their voice to bring this problem into the open so it can be fully addressed.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Two Northern Virginia filmmakers have collaborated on a powerful documentary project that is not officially part of, but will be presented in conjunction with, the annual International AIDS Conference that is being held for the first time ever in Washington, D.C. next week. It’s a call to action to end the silence on the rampant and continuing spread of the HIV virus and AIDS among urban African-American populations across the U.S., and most specifically in D.C. itself.
Based just outside the Falls Church area, Art Jones’ and Pam Bailey’s “Dream Factory” operation last month completed their hour-and-a-half film, “13 Percent” that will be screened during the conference week on Tuesday, July 24, at Bloombars, 3222 11th St., NW in D.C., at 7 p.m.
It is more than just a documentary, Jones told the News-Press at a special media screening last week. It is aimed at provoking a movement, something akin to the “Act Up” civil disobedience movement among predominantly white male gays in the 1980s, to get some openness, understanding and frank dialogue going in a minority community that prefers silence on such matters.
“Act Up,” founded by gay activist Larry Kramer, had as its slogan, “Silence Equals Death,” and it began to force government entities at local, state and national levels to start seriously responding to what was becoming a raging epidemic of AIDS killing tens of thousands of American citizens.
The “Silence Equals Death” slogan is appropriate to urban African-American communities in the U.S. today, Jones said.
Blacks make up only 13 percent of the total population of the U.S., but every year are 50 percent of all new HIV infections. The “13 Percent” documentary is aimed not so much at the general population, where PBS “Frontline” and other documentaries have been directed, but at the Black minority communities, themselves. Washington, D.C. is an epicenter of the virus’ spread, as are 12 other major U.S. cities.
“Start the conversation!” is the closing appeal in it, and the hope is for the widest possible circulation of the film on cable television platforms as well as in churches and schools in inner cities.
It is a sobering and frank treatment of this plague’s spread in the Black community, and the consequences in real people’s lives of the lack of knowledge about it, about its consequences and about the lack of resources or education among public health officials to identify its symptoms and treat it early.
“It’s a dirty little secret that spreads across gender and sexual orientation,” the film says in its opening. It documents the lives of Blacks with the virus, starting with a heterosexual man who’s lived with it for 30 years and can barely lift his own shoes because of how the virus and side effects of the treatment have ravaged his body.
Interspersed are the statistics that a new person is infected with HIV every 9.5 minutes in the U.S., a total of 56,000 a year. The age group 13 – 39, representing the most promise and productivity among the total population, constitutes two thirds of all infected persons. The single group within this age range that is becoming infected the fastest are Black heterosexual women, who have the added benefit to the wider community of being of child-rearing ages.
In this, Jones said, he sees the greatest crisis. HIV and AIDS are threatening the very future and existence of African-Americans. Of newly identified HIV infections now, 62 percent evolve into full-blown AIDS within one year of diagnosis.
While combinations of treatment regimens can keep a majority of AIDS patients alive, life expectancy is still far lower for infected persons, even with treatment.
A Northern Virginia high school football star with a full scholarship to college is profiled. In routinely donating blood during his freshman year in college, it was discovered he was HIV positive. He kept it a secret from his family, even as his personal life spiraled downward to homelessness and drug abuse.
When he finally rebounded and sought to enlist in the military, he thought he’d pulled his life back together, only to have the military learn of his HIV status and turn him away at the last minute. Only then was he forced to painfully confess his condition to his parents and begin to build a life with the virus.
Another profile was of a girl born with the virus, and the stigma that attended others, including her teachers at school, finding out, subjecting her to cruel discrimination.
The film addresses the important role of churches in the Black population, which has contributed to the problem because of their refusal to acknowledge a problem exists, even though by 1986, 25 percent of all HIV infections were among Blacks. Stigma and rejection have amplified fear, denial and silence, Jones said.
“It’s 30 years since the outbreak of AIDS, and Black communities have undergone little change,” he said.
The film points out the virus spread fastest in the poorer communities that lack adequate health care and educational means. It cites the dominant culture in those communities and the lack of value placed on health. Self-deprecating slang, sex and killing people is all that the Black music and television offer, Jones said. These entities do not acknowledge the power of what they’re saying.
With “rap” being the new gateway out of the ‘hood, Jones commented, it matters whether the rappers are truly artists or just hustlers.
In this culture, Jones said, AIDS is still viewed as a gay man’s disease, and anyone known to have it is treated like a leper. Yet since 2003, more women than men in the African-American community are being diagnosed with the virus, and it is now the No. 1 cause of death for Black women ages 25 – 34.
There is a great fear of telling the truth about one’s HIV or AIDS status because of the fear of discrimination This and the lack of an ability to recognize the symptoms of the disease cause persons to delay seeking treatment, often until it is too late.
There has been a collective silence, Jones said. The film talks about the need for human beings to be moral to one another, and for young people to understand and utilize the power of their voice to bring this problem into the open so it can be fully addressed.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Stop Corporations from Profiting Off the Prison Business | Black Blue Dog
Stop Corporations from Profiting Off the Prison Business | Black Blue Dog
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Did you know that 1 in 3 Black men will spend part of their lives in prison? That’s right—the United States of America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world with Black men being affected the greatest.
What’s even more tragic is that the private prison industry is making billions of dollars each year from prison labor. That means that private prisons must fill their beds with more prisoners because if they don’t, that equates to a loss of profits for them.
The Color of Change has launched a petition to stop these for-profit prison companies from profiting off of prisoners. They recognize that these organizations promote and exploit mass incarceration and the racial bias that goes on in the criminal justice system.
They also recognize that these for-profit industries also maximize profits by lobbying for and benefiting from laws that put more people in jail. In the 1990′s CCA chaired the Criminal Justice Task force of shadowy corporate bill-mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which passed “3 strikes” and “truth in sentencing” laws that continue to send thousands of people to prison on very harsh sentences.
Here are three main companies federal and state governments contract with to lock people up:
Color of Change is asking that you sign its petition to end this horrific practice. They want you to join in their efforts to urge investors and board members of these for-profit prison companies to get out of this exploitive and racist system.
Please visit their campaign on their website and sign the petition.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Did you know that 1 in 3 Black men will spend part of their lives in prison? That’s right—the United States of America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world with Black men being affected the greatest.
What’s even more tragic is that the private prison industry is making billions of dollars each year from prison labor. That means that private prisons must fill their beds with more prisoners because if they don’t, that equates to a loss of profits for them.
The Color of Change has launched a petition to stop these for-profit prison companies from profiting off of prisoners. They recognize that these organizations promote and exploit mass incarceration and the racial bias that goes on in the criminal justice system.
They also recognize that these for-profit industries also maximize profits by lobbying for and benefiting from laws that put more people in jail. In the 1990′s CCA chaired the Criminal Justice Task force of shadowy corporate bill-mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which passed “3 strikes” and “truth in sentencing” laws that continue to send thousands of people to prison on very harsh sentences.
Here are three main companies federal and state governments contract with to lock people up:
- Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
- GEO Group, Inc.,
- Management and Training Corporation (MTC).
Color of Change is asking that you sign its petition to end this horrific practice. They want you to join in their efforts to urge investors and board members of these for-profit prison companies to get out of this exploitive and racist system.
Please visit their campaign on their website and sign the petition.
Judge declines to halt 'Obamacare' insurance subsidies - Yahoo Finance
Judge declines to halt 'Obamacare' insurance subsidies - Yahoo Finance
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Foes of President Barack Obama's healthcare law lost a bid on Tuesday to put an immediate stop to a key part of the law - the insurance subsidies in the 34 U.S. states that declined to establish their own online marketplaces.
The latest round of legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," focuses on whether the 2010 law allows for subsidies in all states or only in states that have set up exchanges.
Only 16 states and the District of Columbia chose to set up the online marketplaces where people without private health insurance can shop for it, forcing the federal government to create them in the remaining states.
Subsidies, in the form of tax credits, are available to people with annual incomes of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $94,200 for a family of four. The Obama administration views the subsidies as essential if the law is going to work, because otherwise many people could not afford private insurance.
The suit was brought by a mix of individuals and businesses from Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. The plaintiffs argue the subsidies are unlawful and impose a burden by forcing them to purchase the insurance or else pay a penalty.
SEEKING AN EXEMPTION
David Klemencic, who does flooring work in West Virginia, is one of the plaintiffs. In court papers, he said he cannot afford insurance and wishes to forgo coverage entirely in 2014, using an exemption in the healthcare law for people with low income.
But the availability of the tax credits means he is not eligible for the exemption, his lawyers said, so he must either buy subsidized insurance at about $18 a month or pay a penalty equal to about $12 a month.
In rejecting a preliminary injunction, Friedman said there was no need for such an emergency measure because Klemencic has until the end of March to apply for an exemption from Obamacare, by which time the lawsuit may be over.
"As long as we get a decision in a timely manner, that's what we've been looking for," Michael Carvin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters after the hearing. Carvin was among the lawyers who appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 to argue that the healthcare law should be struck down entirely.
Two similar lawsuits are pending in federal courts in Oklahoma and Indiana. Neither has reached a final ruling.
Complicating the situation for the Obama administration is the wording of the law, parts of which were drafted in haste in 2010 as the legislation wound through Congress.
The law says subsidies may be given "through an exchange established by the state," not through one set up by the federal government, a point that the suit emphasizes.
The administration says the subsidies should be available to people in every state because Congress intended the online exchanges to be uniform.
At the core of this claim is what Congress intended when it wrote the law, not expecting that some states would fail to set up an exchange or would, as in the case of Texas and other Republican-controlled states, refuse to do so out of political opposition to Obamacare.
The case is Halbig v. Sebelius, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 1:13-cv-623.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Foes of President Barack Obama's healthcare law lost a bid on Tuesday to put an immediate stop to a key part of the law - the insurance subsidies in the 34 U.S. states that declined to establish their own online marketplaces.
At a court hearing, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., declined to grant a preliminary injunction sought by a group of individuals and small businesses that in a lawsuit call the subsidies unlawful.
Friedman ruled their lawsuit could move forward and said he would rule on its overall merits by mid-February, rejecting an argument from the Obama administration that the suit was too speculative to be considered.The latest round of legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," focuses on whether the 2010 law allows for subsidies in all states or only in states that have set up exchanges.
Only 16 states and the District of Columbia chose to set up the online marketplaces where people without private health insurance can shop for it, forcing the federal government to create them in the remaining states.
Subsidies, in the form of tax credits, are available to people with annual incomes of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $94,200 for a family of four. The Obama administration views the subsidies as essential if the law is going to work, because otherwise many people could not afford private insurance.
The suit was brought by a mix of individuals and businesses from Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. The plaintiffs argue the subsidies are unlawful and impose a burden by forcing them to purchase the insurance or else pay a penalty.
SEEKING AN EXEMPTION
David Klemencic, who does flooring work in West Virginia, is one of the plaintiffs. In court papers, he said he cannot afford insurance and wishes to forgo coverage entirely in 2014, using an exemption in the healthcare law for people with low income.
But the availability of the tax credits means he is not eligible for the exemption, his lawyers said, so he must either buy subsidized insurance at about $18 a month or pay a penalty equal to about $12 a month.
In rejecting a preliminary injunction, Friedman said there was no need for such an emergency measure because Klemencic has until the end of March to apply for an exemption from Obamacare, by which time the lawsuit may be over.
"As long as we get a decision in a timely manner, that's what we've been looking for," Michael Carvin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters after the hearing. Carvin was among the lawyers who appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 to argue that the healthcare law should be struck down entirely.
Two similar lawsuits are pending in federal courts in Oklahoma and Indiana. Neither has reached a final ruling.
Complicating the situation for the Obama administration is the wording of the law, parts of which were drafted in haste in 2010 as the legislation wound through Congress.
The law says subsidies may be given "through an exchange established by the state," not through one set up by the federal government, a point that the suit emphasizes.
The administration says the subsidies should be available to people in every state because Congress intended the online exchanges to be uniform.
At the core of this claim is what Congress intended when it wrote the law, not expecting that some states would fail to set up an exchange or would, as in the case of Texas and other Republican-controlled states, refuse to do so out of political opposition to Obamacare.
The case is Halbig v. Sebelius, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 1:13-cv-623.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon? A hidden History
Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon? A hidden History
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
“When is history not history?” asks Walidah Imarisha, at a recent Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon? presentation sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project. Imarisha, a Portland State University and Oregon State University instructor, poses the question to our group after we have spent 90 minutes examining, wrestling with and, mostly importantly, discussing with one another the history of black people and black communities in Oregon. The question is imposing – forcing us to look to the past and present for answers, and demand an honest reckoning for the future.
There are small posters on the walls of our conference room in the Midland Branch of the Multnomah County Library, forming a timeline of history ostensibly relating to black Oregonians. On one, there is a picture of Marcus Lopes, the first person of African descent in Oregon. Another item features Alonzo Tucker, a black man who was lynched in Coos Bay. A local newspaper described the lynch mob as “quiet and orderly” and found the lynching was not an “unnecessary disturbance of the peace.”
Portland State University and Oregon State University instructor Walidah Imarisha.
Time may move along, but progress can seem frozen in its eddies. A law prohibiting black people from voting remained in the state constitution until 1927. A connection to the Confederacy with a law prohibiting interracial marriages, only repealed in 1951. An item about Legacy Emanuel’s 1970 expansion that ripped a hole in the Albina neighborhood, after the project lay stagnant for nearly two decades resulting in vacant lots and boarded up buildings. It is still being completed. A photo of Mulugeta Seraw, the Ethiopian graduate student and father beaten to death by two skinheads in 1988. Laws, events, customs–all the stuff not just of history, but also of resistance, achievement, and ultimately, survival.
In 1844, pre-state Oregon declared slavery illegal. But making slavery against the law and embracing a diverse society are two different items, and from its beginnings Oregon was modeled as a white homeland. That same 1844 law ordered all black people out of the Oregon Territory under threat of lashing. This “Lash Law” mandated black people be publicly flogged every six months; however, before it could be enforced, it was modified and the whippings were replaced with forced labor.
In 1849 another law excluded any more blacks from settling in the territory. The passing of the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, granted free land to Whites only. The 1859 constitution included in its Bill of Rights a racial exclusion clause banning black people from emigrating to Oregon, as well as prohibiting them from owning land and entering into contracts. Although the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution rendered such exclusion illegal, it wasn’t until the 1920s that the ban was officially repealed from Oregon’s constitution.
This history, hardly exhaustive, is the substrate of the state of Oregon, and yet it tends to be seldom acknowledged, and, when recognized, usually depicted as an artifact of the past. This is one point where history is not history – when events are isolated, ignored, or otherwise relegated to a sphere where that is rarely discussed and where the societal effects of that history dwell without context. When you digest and discuss all those images and descriptions on the wall – as Imarisha encourages you to do with people whom you do not know – a narrative emerges. These snapshots that unto themselves seem aberrant, the work of vile individuals or groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, start running together, becoming a movie with obvious currents that formed with the state and flow into the present.
Measure 11, establishing mandatory minimum sentencing for several crimes, was passed 150 years after that first exclusion law. It applies to all defendants over 15 years old and require the accused of the listed crimes be tried as adults. Despite making up only 4 percent of Oregon’s youth population, black youth account for 19 percent of Measure 11 indictments. It seems William Faulkner was right: the past isn’t even past.
But if our state story reveals some of the horrific and disgusting acts committed, laws promulgated, and customs enforced, it also depicts acts of resistance that in themselves form a narrative. Resistance is a slippery concept, for its successes may come incrementally and some seem nothing more than drops upon a toxic pool.
The Hazlewood Building on Weidler near the Memorial Coliseum used to be home to Dude Ranch, a jazz club. It is the only remaining building of the approximately ten jazz clubs that were destroyed to make room for the Memorial Coliseum and the interstate freeway. Photo by Pete Shaw.
For example, in Bend in 1925 there was a sign that read, “We Cater To White Trade Only.” The black community in Bend, already aware of the local restaurants in which they were unwelcome, protested the sign. The city council agreed to remove it and similar Jim Crow signs, with the expectation that black people would now police themselves. Though the victory may seem Pyrrhic, it was an important step for those forced to daily encounter the signs and be reminded of the ways in which they were unwanted. It took thousands of these small largely unknown victories, won by tens of thousands of people you and I will never know, that ultimately led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Many of the institutions that shape our lives today are rooted in the Oregon constitution, and the legacy of the exclusion clause can be seen by observing where those institutions grant favor. One of the most glaring examples lies in housing and development. For the black community in Oregon, it has often been a history of taking and denial. Since homeownership is a foundation of generational wealth development, it becomes clear that Oregon’s black community is being denied an opportunity to develop wealth.
The places where black people could own property were limited through extra-legal means, such as The Portland Real Estate Code of Ethics (1919), which mandated real estate agents refuse to sell to people whose race would “be determined to lower property values in that neighborhood.” During World War II, over 13,000 black people moved to Vanport to build ships for Kaiser – a sixfold increase in the number of black people in Oregon. The Vanport flood of 1948 forced integration on Portland, as black survivors moved a couple of miles north to the Albina neighborhood, the only place the city would allow them to resettle.
The 1960 construction of Memorial Coliseum resulted in the destruction of over 400 homes and many black owned businesses, and created a physical rift in the community, particularly in Jumptown, the cultural center that ran between NE Williams and King. The construction of the interstate highways destroyed over 1100 housing units in South Albina.
A sign on NE Alberta Street tells the story of redlining in Portland’s past. Photo by Paul.
Banks refused mortgages to black people who tried to move outside “acceptable” boundaries, and often refused them within the red lines as well, because those loans were considered risky. More recently banks were willing to lend money in the form of subprime loans, often when people actually qualified for prime loans. These subprime loans largely targeted minority communities, and the current foreclosure crisis has hit communities of color hard. Black and Latino homeowners have been almost twice as likely as white people to lose their homes to foreclosure, a result, according to the ACLU in a recent lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, of the seemingly illegal and certainly unethical decision to encourage predatory mortgage loans to low-income African American borrowers.
Despite the trauma, a black community is still extant in Portland. As Imarisha noted when one black woman stated, “I don’t feel like I live here. I survive here,” sometimes survival is winning. “For a black community to exist here in Portland is incredible,” said Imarisha, “because it wasn’t supposed to exist at all.”
History is not history when some actors are denied acknowledgement of their roles at the expense of other actors who have parts that remain privileged. The importance of Why Aren’t There More Black People In Oregon? is difficult to understate. It keeps the unprivileged stories alive. Though Imarisha has made this presentation all over the state, she has only met one person who attended an Oregon public school who was aware of it. None of the ten people in our group who had attended school in Oregon had been taught this information. That is when history is not history.
The Hill Block Building was built by Charles H. Hill, Albina’s first mayor. Located at the corner of Russell and Williams it was at the center of the business district for Albina.
But history is history when people refuse to let go, when they fight for their stories to be heard, and when they spread those stories to other people who in turn pledge to keep them alive. That is real power of this presentation. It is not a lecture. It is a series of discussions, some one-on-one, some in groups of four or five, and some with the group as a whole. Real people and their stories spoken, life breathed into the material hanging from the walls.
When a woman notes how in the early 1950s the majority of restaurants in Portland would not serve black people, we see how that step taken in Bend in 1925 formed a link in a chain to today where, at the very least, such obvious segregation is unacceptable. When a man talks about how he has to pay an extra fee for his son to play in the school jazz band, it is easy enough to draw a line between the razing of four or five jazz clubs that stood in the way of the future Memorial Coliseum. Their demise meant not only fewer opportunities to experience a unique American art form, but also fewer popular culture venues where white and black people actually mixed. Though jazz has declined in popularity to the extent that students must pay extra for it, still it survives, vibrantly. That is a victory.
This is where the Hill Block Building stood. 40 years later, the Legacy Emanuel expansion has yet to be completed. Photo by Pete Shaw.
Much of the physical structure of the black community in Portland has been demolished many times over. Nature took a hand in Vanport, but it was the usual systemic oppression of the wealthy and powerful that led to Memorial Coliseum, the construction of the interstate highways, and the expansion of Legacy Emanuel. The black community has rebuilt every time. These are all huge victories.
Dome from the Hill Block Building, located on the Northwest corner of NE Russell and Williams. The building was razed during the Legacy Emanuel expansion. It now lies in Dawson Park, across from Legacy Emanuel. Photo by Pete Shaw.
Perhaps history becomes history when it expands beyond boundaries and reaches a greater audience. The point of Why Aren’t There More Black People In Oregon? is meant not to focus solely on the black community and its history, but to explore issues of race, identity, and power in the greater community.
The struggles and victories of black people are not unique. As can be seen with Multnomah County Sheriff Staton’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Latinos are facing their own trials. The exclusion laws from the early Oregon Territory and Oregon state constitution echo loudly, as the brave people proclaiming themselves Undocumented and Unafraid speak of the terror they experienced from being identified as people who do not belong, and whose existence within the community can be severely punished. The same scenario is going on nationwide.
A history that ignores uncomfortable aspects – whitewashes them, if you will – so that what is presented is a sanitized account with no accountability, is at best insular. It does not require thought, and therefore, does not challenge. It only asks that we accept its narrative as truth. It is mythology, not history.
The posters that form a timeline ostensibly related to black Oregonians actually relate to us all. They are a part of our history, informing our present and likely our future as well. How just a future we craft largely depends on how wide and deep a sense of history we bring along on the journey forward.
“When we see these events as part of a cycle,” Imarisha said, “then we can see what is really happening and can create a place we want to live in.”
- See more at: http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2012/11/28/why-arent-there-more-black-people-in-oregon/#sthash.FhKU99uE.dpu
Portland State University and Oregon State University instructor Walidah Imarisha.
Time may move along, but progress can seem frozen in its eddies. A law prohibiting black people from voting remained in the state constitution until 1927. A connection to the Confederacy with a law prohibiting interracial marriages, only repealed in 1951. An item about Legacy Emanuel’s 1970 expansion that ripped a hole in the Albina neighborhood, after the project lay stagnant for nearly two decades resulting in vacant lots and boarded up buildings. It is still being completed. A photo of Mulugeta Seraw, the Ethiopian graduate student and father beaten to death by two skinheads in 1988. Laws, events, customs–all the stuff not just of history, but also of resistance, achievement, and ultimately, survival.
In 1844, pre-state Oregon declared slavery illegal. But making slavery against the law and embracing a diverse society are two different items, and from its beginnings Oregon was modeled as a white homeland. That same 1844 law ordered all black people out of the Oregon Territory under threat of lashing. This “Lash Law” mandated black people be publicly flogged every six months; however, before it could be enforced, it was modified and the whippings were replaced with forced labor.
In 1849 another law excluded any more blacks from settling in the territory. The passing of the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, granted free land to Whites only. The 1859 constitution included in its Bill of Rights a racial exclusion clause banning black people from emigrating to Oregon, as well as prohibiting them from owning land and entering into contracts. Although the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution rendered such exclusion illegal, it wasn’t until the 1920s that the ban was officially repealed from Oregon’s constitution.
This history, hardly exhaustive, is the substrate of the state of Oregon, and yet it tends to be seldom acknowledged, and, when recognized, usually depicted as an artifact of the past. This is one point where history is not history – when events are isolated, ignored, or otherwise relegated to a sphere where that is rarely discussed and where the societal effects of that history dwell without context. When you digest and discuss all those images and descriptions on the wall – as Imarisha encourages you to do with people whom you do not know – a narrative emerges. These snapshots that unto themselves seem aberrant, the work of vile individuals or groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, start running together, becoming a movie with obvious currents that formed with the state and flow into the present.
Measure 11, establishing mandatory minimum sentencing for several crimes, was passed 150 years after that first exclusion law. It applies to all defendants over 15 years old and require the accused of the listed crimes be tried as adults. Despite making up only 4 percent of Oregon’s youth population, black youth account for 19 percent of Measure 11 indictments. It seems William Faulkner was right: the past isn’t even past.
But if our state story reveals some of the horrific and disgusting acts committed, laws promulgated, and customs enforced, it also depicts acts of resistance that in themselves form a narrative. Resistance is a slippery concept, for its successes may come incrementally and some seem nothing more than drops upon a toxic pool.
The Hazlewood Building on Weidler near the Memorial Coliseum used to be home to Dude Ranch, a jazz club. It is the only remaining building of the approximately ten jazz clubs that were destroyed to make room for the Memorial Coliseum and the interstate freeway. Photo by Pete Shaw.
For example, in Bend in 1925 there was a sign that read, “We Cater To White Trade Only.” The black community in Bend, already aware of the local restaurants in which they were unwelcome, protested the sign. The city council agreed to remove it and similar Jim Crow signs, with the expectation that black people would now police themselves. Though the victory may seem Pyrrhic, it was an important step for those forced to daily encounter the signs and be reminded of the ways in which they were unwanted. It took thousands of these small largely unknown victories, won by tens of thousands of people you and I will never know, that ultimately led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Many of the institutions that shape our lives today are rooted in the Oregon constitution, and the legacy of the exclusion clause can be seen by observing where those institutions grant favor. One of the most glaring examples lies in housing and development. For the black community in Oregon, it has often been a history of taking and denial. Since homeownership is a foundation of generational wealth development, it becomes clear that Oregon’s black community is being denied an opportunity to develop wealth.
The places where black people could own property were limited through extra-legal means, such as The Portland Real Estate Code of Ethics (1919), which mandated real estate agents refuse to sell to people whose race would “be determined to lower property values in that neighborhood.” During World War II, over 13,000 black people moved to Vanport to build ships for Kaiser – a sixfold increase in the number of black people in Oregon. The Vanport flood of 1948 forced integration on Portland, as black survivors moved a couple of miles north to the Albina neighborhood, the only place the city would allow them to resettle.
The 1960 construction of Memorial Coliseum resulted in the destruction of over 400 homes and many black owned businesses, and created a physical rift in the community, particularly in Jumptown, the cultural center that ran between NE Williams and King. The construction of the interstate highways destroyed over 1100 housing units in South Albina.
A sign on NE Alberta Street tells the story of redlining in Portland’s past. Photo by Paul.
Banks refused mortgages to black people who tried to move outside “acceptable” boundaries, and often refused them within the red lines as well, because those loans were considered risky. More recently banks were willing to lend money in the form of subprime loans, often when people actually qualified for prime loans. These subprime loans largely targeted minority communities, and the current foreclosure crisis has hit communities of color hard. Black and Latino homeowners have been almost twice as likely as white people to lose their homes to foreclosure, a result, according to the ACLU in a recent lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, of the seemingly illegal and certainly unethical decision to encourage predatory mortgage loans to low-income African American borrowers.
Despite the trauma, a black community is still extant in Portland. As Imarisha noted when one black woman stated, “I don’t feel like I live here. I survive here,” sometimes survival is winning. “For a black community to exist here in Portland is incredible,” said Imarisha, “because it wasn’t supposed to exist at all.”
History is not history when some actors are denied acknowledgement of their roles at the expense of other actors who have parts that remain privileged. The importance of Why Aren’t There More Black People In Oregon? is difficult to understate. It keeps the unprivileged stories alive. Though Imarisha has made this presentation all over the state, she has only met one person who attended an Oregon public school who was aware of it. None of the ten people in our group who had attended school in Oregon had been taught this information. That is when history is not history.
The Hill Block Building was built by Charles H. Hill, Albina’s first mayor. Located at the corner of Russell and Williams it was at the center of the business district for Albina.
But history is history when people refuse to let go, when they fight for their stories to be heard, and when they spread those stories to other people who in turn pledge to keep them alive. That is real power of this presentation. It is not a lecture. It is a series of discussions, some one-on-one, some in groups of four or five, and some with the group as a whole. Real people and their stories spoken, life breathed into the material hanging from the walls.
When a woman notes how in the early 1950s the majority of restaurants in Portland would not serve black people, we see how that step taken in Bend in 1925 formed a link in a chain to today where, at the very least, such obvious segregation is unacceptable. When a man talks about how he has to pay an extra fee for his son to play in the school jazz band, it is easy enough to draw a line between the razing of four or five jazz clubs that stood in the way of the future Memorial Coliseum. Their demise meant not only fewer opportunities to experience a unique American art form, but also fewer popular culture venues where white and black people actually mixed. Though jazz has declined in popularity to the extent that students must pay extra for it, still it survives, vibrantly. That is a victory.
This is where the Hill Block Building stood. 40 years later, the Legacy Emanuel expansion has yet to be completed. Photo by Pete Shaw.
Much of the physical structure of the black community in Portland has been demolished many times over. Nature took a hand in Vanport, but it was the usual systemic oppression of the wealthy and powerful that led to Memorial Coliseum, the construction of the interstate highways, and the expansion of Legacy Emanuel. The black community has rebuilt every time. These are all huge victories.
Dome from the Hill Block Building, located on the Northwest corner of NE Russell and Williams. The building was razed during the Legacy Emanuel expansion. It now lies in Dawson Park, across from Legacy Emanuel. Photo by Pete Shaw.
Perhaps history becomes history when it expands beyond boundaries and reaches a greater audience. The point of Why Aren’t There More Black People In Oregon? is meant not to focus solely on the black community and its history, but to explore issues of race, identity, and power in the greater community.
The struggles and victories of black people are not unique. As can be seen with Multnomah County Sheriff Staton’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Latinos are facing their own trials. The exclusion laws from the early Oregon Territory and Oregon state constitution echo loudly, as the brave people proclaiming themselves Undocumented and Unafraid speak of the terror they experienced from being identified as people who do not belong, and whose existence within the community can be severely punished. The same scenario is going on nationwide.
A history that ignores uncomfortable aspects – whitewashes them, if you will – so that what is presented is a sanitized account with no accountability, is at best insular. It does not require thought, and therefore, does not challenge. It only asks that we accept its narrative as truth. It is mythology, not history.
The posters that form a timeline ostensibly related to black Oregonians actually relate to us all. They are a part of our history, informing our present and likely our future as well. How just a future we craft largely depends on how wide and deep a sense of history we bring along on the journey forward.
“When we see these events as part of a cycle,” Imarisha said, “then we can see what is really happening and can create a place we want to live in.”
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Mary Matalin Contributes to Ted Cruz Campaign | Political MoneyLine Blog
Mary Matalin Contributes to Ted Cruz Campaign | Political MoneyLine Blog
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A national Republican political strategist has contributed to Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2018 campaign and helped his campaign committee raise $708,000 in the third quarter.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reported that his campaign committee, Ted Cruz for Senate had receipts of $708,242 and disbursements of $255,631 during the third quarter, leaving 1,096,587 cash on hand as of 9/30 and debts of $545,000 owed to Ted Cruz himself.. Most of his receipts were raised through his joint fund-raising committee, Ted Cruz Victory Committee. View earlier posting on their report.
One of his donors was GOP strategist Mary Matalin (advocate, Gaslight Inc., New Orleans, Louisiana) who gave $1,000 on 8/8. This was the same week that Sen. Cruz was at Matalin’s house in New Orleans.
Other donors included $1,000 from Woody Hunt (CEO, Hunt Companies, TX); $1,000 from Robert Michael Isley (Isley Trust, TX); $2,600 from Gary Martin (vice chairman, Martin Sprocket & Gear, TX); $1,000 from Thomas M. Niland (president, NiLand Company, TX); $2,600 from Robert B. Holland (chairman, Max Petroleum, TX); William J. Holmes (CEO, Datamark Inc., TX); Mrs. L. Charles Neely Jr. (CEO, San Antonio Steel, TX); and $5,000 from Alvin Dworman (president, Lee National Corp., NY); among others.
PACs giving to the campaign include $1,000 from Valero PAC; $1,000 from Entergy PAC; $2,000 from Burger King Franchisee PAC; $150 from Intel PAC; $1,000 from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck PAC; and $2,600 from Vermeer Equipment of Texas Inc. PAC.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A national Republican political strategist has contributed to Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2018 campaign and helped his campaign committee raise $708,000 in the third quarter.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reported that his campaign committee, Ted Cruz for Senate had receipts of $708,242 and disbursements of $255,631 during the third quarter, leaving 1,096,587 cash on hand as of 9/30 and debts of $545,000 owed to Ted Cruz himself.. Most of his receipts were raised through his joint fund-raising committee, Ted Cruz Victory Committee. View earlier posting on their report.
One of his donors was GOP strategist Mary Matalin (advocate, Gaslight Inc., New Orleans, Louisiana) who gave $1,000 on 8/8. This was the same week that Sen. Cruz was at Matalin’s house in New Orleans.
Other donors included $1,000 from Woody Hunt (CEO, Hunt Companies, TX); $1,000 from Robert Michael Isley (Isley Trust, TX); $2,600 from Gary Martin (vice chairman, Martin Sprocket & Gear, TX); $1,000 from Thomas M. Niland (president, NiLand Company, TX); $2,600 from Robert B. Holland (chairman, Max Petroleum, TX); William J. Holmes (CEO, Datamark Inc., TX); Mrs. L. Charles Neely Jr. (CEO, San Antonio Steel, TX); and $5,000 from Alvin Dworman (president, Lee National Corp., NY); among others.
PACs giving to the campaign include $1,000 from Valero PAC; $1,000 from Entergy PAC; $2,000 from Burger King Franchisee PAC; $150 from Intel PAC; $1,000 from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck PAC; and $2,600 from Vermeer Equipment of Texas Inc. PAC.
Other PAC donors included $5,000 from American Legacy PAC; $2,500 from In Defense of Free Speech JFC; $1,250 from E Pluribus Unum PAC; $1,000 from Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund; $500 from American Principles PAC; and $1,000 from Center for Coastal Conservation PAC.
The committee paid the law firm of Locke Lord LLP $6,005 for legal consulting. They paid $5,565 to the law firm of Patton Boggs LLP for legal consulting.
TIME magazine reported on Friday that Sen. Cruz had failed to disclose during his 2012 campaign an investment in a Jamaican private equity firm and a British Virgin Island holding company. Cruz amended his personal financial statement this May, but may not have fully disclosed the holding company and its location. Cruz told TIME he is amending his filing. View earlier posting on his wealth statements.
The committee paid the law firm of Locke Lord LLP $6,005 for legal consulting. They paid $5,565 to the law firm of Patton Boggs LLP for legal consulting.
TIME magazine reported on Friday that Sen. Cruz had failed to disclose during his 2012 campaign an investment in a Jamaican private equity firm and a British Virgin Island holding company. Cruz amended his personal financial statement this May, but may not have fully disclosed the holding company and its location. Cruz told TIME he is amending his filing. View earlier posting on his wealth statements.
Allen West Blasts Obama As 'A Tyrant, Not A President'
Allen West Blasts Obama As 'A Tyrant, Not A President'
JohnButts@JBMediia - Reports:
Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) took to Facebook Wednesday night to express his discontent with the bipartisan agreement that re-opened the government without defunding the Affordable Care Act, declaring that “the Constitutional Republic we know as America has suffered a horrible defeat."
"Obamacare is not the law of the land," West wrote. "It is an edict handed down by a tyrant, not a President."
West had slammed President Barack Obama throughout the shutdown crisis, previously calling the president “a spoiled brat child” and “a pathological liar.”
Wednesday night’s compromise legislation -- which was signed by Obama early Thursday -- funded the federal government through Jan. 15, raised the debt ceiling until Feb. 7 and narrowly avoided a historic debt default.
West, however, views the Senate’s vote to end the shutdown without undoing Obamacare as “reprehensible, and we can expect even more bad behavior from a President that continues to spit on our Constitution and in our eyes ... and smile.”
See West's full Facebook post below:
(h/t Red Alert Politics)
JohnButts@JBMediia - Reports:
Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) took to Facebook Wednesday night to express his discontent with the bipartisan agreement that re-opened the government without defunding the Affordable Care Act, declaring that “the Constitutional Republic we know as America has suffered a horrible defeat."
"Obamacare is not the law of the land," West wrote. "It is an edict handed down by a tyrant, not a President."
West had slammed President Barack Obama throughout the shutdown crisis, previously calling the president “a spoiled brat child” and “a pathological liar.”
Wednesday night’s compromise legislation -- which was signed by Obama early Thursday -- funded the federal government through Jan. 15, raised the debt ceiling until Feb. 7 and narrowly avoided a historic debt default.
West, however, views the Senate’s vote to end the shutdown without undoing Obamacare as “reprehensible, and we can expect even more bad behavior from a President that continues to spit on our Constitution and in our eyes ... and smile.”
See West's full Facebook post below:
(h/t Red Alert Politics)
Also on HuffPost:
The World According To Allen West
1 of 15
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Obama plans immigration push after fiscal crisis ends - Yahoo News
Obama plans immigration push after fiscal crisis ends - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that stalled immigration reform would be a top priority once the fiscal crisis has been resolved.
"Once that's done, you know, the day after, I'm going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language television network Univision.
The president's domestic agenda has been sidetracked in his second term by one problem after another. As he coped with the revelation of domestic surveillance programs, chemical weapons in Syria, and a fiscal battle that has shut down the U.S. government and threatens a debt default, immigration has been relegated to the back burner.
But Obama, who won re-election with overwhelming Hispanic backing, had hoped to make reforms easing the plight of the 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
In June, the Senate passed an immigration overhaul, but House of Representatives Republicans are divided over the granting of legal status to those in the country illegally, a step many see as rewarding lawbreakers.
Although the president had sought comprehensive reform, he said last month he would be open to the House taking a piece-by-piece approach if that would get the job done.
Obama on Tuesday blamed House Speaker John Boehner for preventing immigration from coming up for a vote.
"We had a very strong Democratic and Republican vote in the Senate," he said. "The only thing right now that's holding it back is, again, Speaker Boehner not willing to call the bill on the floor of the House of Representatives."
Boehner said the sweeping Senate bill would not pass the House and has said the lower chamber would tackle the issue in smaller sections that would include stricter provisions on border protection.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that stalled immigration reform would be a top priority once the fiscal crisis has been resolved.
"Once that's done, you know, the day after, I'm going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language television network Univision.
The president's domestic agenda has been sidetracked in his second term by one problem after another. As he coped with the revelation of domestic surveillance programs, chemical weapons in Syria, and a fiscal battle that has shut down the U.S. government and threatens a debt default, immigration has been relegated to the back burner.
But Obama, who won re-election with overwhelming Hispanic backing, had hoped to make reforms easing the plight of the 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
In June, the Senate passed an immigration overhaul, but House of Representatives Republicans are divided over the granting of legal status to those in the country illegally, a step many see as rewarding lawbreakers.
Although the president had sought comprehensive reform, he said last month he would be open to the House taking a piece-by-piece approach if that would get the job done.
Obama on Tuesday blamed House Speaker John Boehner for preventing immigration from coming up for a vote.
"We had a very strong Democratic and Republican vote in the Senate," he said. "The only thing right now that's holding it back is, again, Speaker Boehner not willing to call the bill on the floor of the House of Representatives."
Boehner said the sweeping Senate bill would not pass the House and has said the lower chamber would tackle the issue in smaller sections that would include stricter provisions on border protection.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff
A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff
JohnButts@JBMdia -Reports:
Hospitals, a reliable source of employment growth in the recession and its aftermath, are starting to cut thousands of jobs amid falling insurance payments and in-patient visits.
The payroll cuts are surprising because the Affordable Care Act (ACA), whose implementation took a big step forward this month, is eventually expected to provide health coverage to as many as 30 million additional Americans.
"While the rest of the U.S. economy is stabilizing or improving, health care is entering into a recession," says John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month — 8,128 — mostly because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies.
Total private hospital employment is still up by 36,000 over the past 12 months, but it's down by 8,000 since April and more staff reductions are expected into next year.
This month, Indiana University Health laid off about 900 workers as part of a move to trim its budget by $1 billion over five years. Vanderbilt plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs by year-end to help shave operating costs 8% a year. And the Cleveland Clinic is offering buyouts to 3,000 employees as it shaves its annual operating costs by $330 million.
"This is a challenging time for the health care industry," says Jim Terwilliger, president of two of Indiana health's hospitals. "The pace of change is far greater than anytime in recent history."
There are myriad reasons for the cuts, which are affecting administrative staff as well as nurses and doctors:
• Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies are all reducing reimbursement to hospitals. The federal budget cuts known as sequestration have cut Medicare reimbursement by 2%, the American Hospital Association says.
• The health care law has further reduced the Medicare payments to hospitals that provide lower-quality service or have high readmission rates.
• The National Institutes of Health reduced funding to hospitals by 5% as part of sequestration, forcing hospitals to trim research staff.
• The number of inpatient hospital days fell 4% from 2007 to 2011, in part because of the economic downturn, the hospital association says.
• As more Baby Boomers turn 65, their services will be reimbursed at Medicare rates that are lower than those of private payers, putting further pressure on hospital revenue.
The new health care law was supposed to ease the burden on hospitals by expanding Medicaid coverage to more low-income Americans, who often use hospital services in emergencies then don't pay their bills. But 26 states, including Tennessee, rejected ACA's offer of federal funding to expand Medicaid. That decision led to about a third of the job cuts by Nashville-based Vanderbilt, Howser says.
Still, J.P. Fingado, CEO of API Healthcare, a consulting firm for hospitals, says the layoffs are shortsighted because the providers likely will have to add staff as soon as next year to handle increased patient volumes resulting from the health care law.
"The cuts are a particularly short-term reaction," he says.
JohnButts@JBMdia -Reports:
Hospitals, a reliable source of employment growth in the recession and its aftermath, are starting to cut thousands of jobs amid falling insurance payments and in-patient visits.
The payroll cuts are surprising because the Affordable Care Act (ACA), whose implementation took a big step forward this month, is eventually expected to provide health coverage to as many as 30 million additional Americans.
"While the rest of the U.S. economy is stabilizing or improving, health care is entering into a recession," says John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month — 8,128 — mostly because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies.
Total private hospital employment is still up by 36,000 over the past 12 months, but it's down by 8,000 since April and more staff reductions are expected into next year.
This month, Indiana University Health laid off about 900 workers as part of a move to trim its budget by $1 billion over five years. Vanderbilt plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs by year-end to help shave operating costs 8% a year. And the Cleveland Clinic is offering buyouts to 3,000 employees as it shaves its annual operating costs by $330 million.
"This is a challenging time for the health care industry," says Jim Terwilliger, president of two of Indiana health's hospitals. "The pace of change is far greater than anytime in recent history."
There are myriad reasons for the cuts, which are affecting administrative staff as well as nurses and doctors:
• Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies are all reducing reimbursement to hospitals. The federal budget cuts known as sequestration have cut Medicare reimbursement by 2%, the American Hospital Association says.
• The health care law has further reduced the Medicare payments to hospitals that provide lower-quality service or have high readmission rates.
• The National Institutes of Health reduced funding to hospitals by 5% as part of sequestration, forcing hospitals to trim research staff.
• The number of inpatient hospital days fell 4% from 2007 to 2011, in part because of the economic downturn, the hospital association says.
• As more Baby Boomers turn 65, their services will be reimbursed at Medicare rates that are lower than those of private payers, putting further pressure on hospital revenue.
The new health care law was supposed to ease the burden on hospitals by expanding Medicaid coverage to more low-income Americans, who often use hospital services in emergencies then don't pay their bills. But 26 states, including Tennessee, rejected ACA's offer of federal funding to expand Medicaid. That decision led to about a third of the job cuts by Nashville-based Vanderbilt, Howser says.
Still, J.P. Fingado, CEO of API Healthcare, a consulting firm for hospitals, says the layoffs are shortsighted because the providers likely will have to add staff as soon as next year to handle increased patient volumes resulting from the health care law.
"The cuts are a particularly short-term reaction," he says.
Friday, October 11, 2013
'Moral Monday' cases go to trial | abc11.com
'Moral Monday' cases go to trial | abc11.com
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The second group of Moral Monday protestors charged with trespassing during demonstrations at the North Carolina General Assembly showed up at the Wake County Justice Center Friday.
Hundreds were arrested in more than 10 weeks of demonstrations. Now all those cases are threatening to jam up the court system - as many of the protestors are requesting trials.
On Friday, the court only got through one or two cases; many were pushed back to a later date.
Part of the delay is basically, there is not much legal precedent for trespassing at the General Assembly, meaning there's not a lot of case law for judges to rely on.
While all the cases are similar, they are different enough that we've seen different outcomes. Friday, a husband and wife arrested protesting on May 6 had the trespassing case against them dismissed.
But a week ago, the first Moral Monday defendant was found guilty of trespassing.
There's high interest in the cases from other defendants and other lawyers. There was plenty of note taking going on with every argument Friday. The legal wrangling could extend the trials well into the future - and cost taxpayers more money. But defendants say it's a small price to pay in the fight over rights.
"You cannot put a dollar on keeping our democracy strong, you cannot put a dollar sign on it. If this is what it takes to keep ourselves free, then we have to do it, there's not even a choice in my mind," offered Tara Blomquist - who was arrested on May 6.
There is a plea deal on the table for Moral Monday defendants. But many say they don't plan to take it as they see their arrest as a clear violation of their rights.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The second group of Moral Monday protestors charged with trespassing during demonstrations at the North Carolina General Assembly showed up at the Wake County Justice Center Friday.
Hundreds were arrested in more than 10 weeks of demonstrations. Now all those cases are threatening to jam up the court system - as many of the protestors are requesting trials.
On Friday, the court only got through one or two cases; many were pushed back to a later date.
Part of the delay is basically, there is not much legal precedent for trespassing at the General Assembly, meaning there's not a lot of case law for judges to rely on.
While all the cases are similar, they are different enough that we've seen different outcomes. Friday, a husband and wife arrested protesting on May 6 had the trespassing case against them dismissed.
But a week ago, the first Moral Monday defendant was found guilty of trespassing.
There's high interest in the cases from other defendants and other lawyers. There was plenty of note taking going on with every argument Friday. The legal wrangling could extend the trials well into the future - and cost taxpayers more money. But defendants say it's a small price to pay in the fight over rights.
"You cannot put a dollar on keeping our democracy strong, you cannot put a dollar sign on it. If this is what it takes to keep ourselves free, then we have to do it, there's not even a choice in my mind," offered Tara Blomquist - who was arrested on May 6.
There is a plea deal on the table for Moral Monday defendants. But many say they don't plan to take it as they see their arrest as a clear violation of their rights.
New GOP shutdown/debt plan, but no agreement yet - Yahoo News
New GOP shutdown/debt plan, but no agreement yet - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
House Republicans are offering to pass legislation to avert a default and end the 11-day partial government shutdown as part of a framework that would include cuts in benefit programs, officials said Friday.
Republicans also seek changes in the three-year-old health care law known as Obamacare as part of an end to an impasse that has roiled financial markets and idled 350,000 federal workers.
President Barack Obama has insisted he will not negotiate with Republicans over federal spending — or anything else — until the government is reopened and the $16.7 debt limit raised to avert the possibility of default.
Yet, regarding benefit programs, Obama has previously backed an increase in Medicare costs for better-off seniors, among other items, and that idea also has appeal for Republicans.
The White House appeared briefly to wobble on the issue of negotiations on Thursday, until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged from a meeting with the president to reaffirm it emphatically.
The House Republicans' plan was outlined Thursday night in a White House meeting that included senior aides to Obama as well as to House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, several hours after Obama met with top Republicans.
Without confirming any of the details under discussion, Cantor said, "We're waiting to hear" from administration officials.
In addition to ending the shutdown and increasing the debt limit, under the proposal Congress and the White House would explore ways to ease across-the-board federal budget cuts that began taking effect a year ago, and replace at least part of them with benefit-program curbs that have been included in recent presidential budgets. Officials who described the approach did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.
With the weekend approaching, and the deadline for raising the debt limit five days away, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said it was time to "put this hysterical talk of default behind us and instead start talking about finding solutions to the problems."
McConnell and Senate Republicans met with Obama at the White House, a session that lasted about 90 minutes. Returning to the Capitol, GOP lawmakers huddled with McConnell, who told reporters, "Now we're back here to actually work on trying to get a solution on a bipartisan basis."
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., predicted that "over the next three or four days I think you'll have a House plan kind of morph into a Senate plan. ... I'm more optimistic today than I've been in the last two weeks."
Additionally, the House voted 248-176 to provide funds for nuclear arms research and security despite the shutdown. It was the latest GOP bill aimed at reviving popular programs during the shutdown — and the latest to die in the Senate, where Reid has rejected bills that fall short of fully reopening the government.
While much of the attention has been focused on the House in recent days, McConnell and other Republicans have been exploring possible legislation to avert the default and end the shutdown and to require the White House to make relatively modest concessions on the health care law. Among the possibilities is a repeal of a medical device tax in the law, or perhaps stronger income verification requirements for individuals who receive federal subsidies to purchase coverage.
Determined to resolve the twin crises, the Republicans have reached out to senior Democrats, including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Senate Majority Leader Reid rejected the notion of a six-week increase in the nation's borrowing authority, pressing not only for a longer, 15-month measure but a reopening of the government.
Thursday's talks were held shortly before a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll was released bearing ominous news for the GOP. It showed more people blaming Republicans than Obama for the shutdown, 53 percent to 31 percent. Just 24 percent viewed the GOP positively, compared with 39 percent with positive views of the Democratic Party.
Boehner, R-Ohio, brought a proposal to Thursday's White House meeting to extend federal borrowing authority through Nov. 22, conditioned on Obama's agreeing to negotiate over spending cuts and the government shutdown. But participants said the discussion expanded to ways to quickly end the shutdown, which entered its 11th day Friday.
"It's clear he'd like to have the shutdown stopped," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said of Obama. "And we're trying to find out what he would insist upon" to reopen the government "and what we would insist upon."
One major problem for Boehner's plan was highlighted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. After he and fellow Senate Democrats had their own White House meeting with Obama, Reid said negotiations before the government reopens — a key part of Boehner's proposal — were "not going to happen."
The shutdown has idled 350,000 civil servants, prevented the Social Security Administration from revealing next year's cost-of-living increase for recipients and curtailed many consumer safety inspections. Officials warn of deeper cutbacks in services if it goes on.
The Obama administration has warned that the government will exhaust its borrowing authority on Oct. 17 and risk being unable to pay its bills and facing default.
"It would be a grave mistake" to ignore the risks to the U.S. and world economy that a default would raise, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
House Republicans' insistence on spending cuts and deficit reduction come with the 2013 budget shortfall expected to drop below $700 billion after four years exceeding $1 trillion annually.
But their insistence on cuts in the health care law as the price for reopening government has frustrated many Senate Republicans, who see that battle as unwinnable.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
House Republicans are offering to pass legislation to avert a default and end the 11-day partial government shutdown as part of a framework that would include cuts in benefit programs, officials said Friday.
Republicans also seek changes in the three-year-old health care law known as Obamacare as part of an end to an impasse that has roiled financial markets and idled 350,000 federal workers.
President Barack Obama has insisted he will not negotiate with Republicans over federal spending — or anything else — until the government is reopened and the $16.7 debt limit raised to avert the possibility of default.
Yet, regarding benefit programs, Obama has previously backed an increase in Medicare costs for better-off seniors, among other items, and that idea also has appeal for Republicans.
The White House appeared briefly to wobble on the issue of negotiations on Thursday, until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged from a meeting with the president to reaffirm it emphatically.
The House Republicans' plan was outlined Thursday night in a White House meeting that included senior aides to Obama as well as to House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, several hours after Obama met with top Republicans.
Without confirming any of the details under discussion, Cantor said, "We're waiting to hear" from administration officials.
In addition to ending the shutdown and increasing the debt limit, under the proposal Congress and the White House would explore ways to ease across-the-board federal budget cuts that began taking effect a year ago, and replace at least part of them with benefit-program curbs that have been included in recent presidential budgets. Officials who described the approach did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.
With the weekend approaching, and the deadline for raising the debt limit five days away, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said it was time to "put this hysterical talk of default behind us and instead start talking about finding solutions to the problems."
McConnell and Senate Republicans met with Obama at the White House, a session that lasted about 90 minutes. Returning to the Capitol, GOP lawmakers huddled with McConnell, who told reporters, "Now we're back here to actually work on trying to get a solution on a bipartisan basis."
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., predicted that "over the next three or four days I think you'll have a House plan kind of morph into a Senate plan. ... I'm more optimistic today than I've been in the last two weeks."
Additionally, the House voted 248-176 to provide funds for nuclear arms research and security despite the shutdown. It was the latest GOP bill aimed at reviving popular programs during the shutdown — and the latest to die in the Senate, where Reid has rejected bills that fall short of fully reopening the government.
While much of the attention has been focused on the House in recent days, McConnell and other Republicans have been exploring possible legislation to avert the default and end the shutdown and to require the White House to make relatively modest concessions on the health care law. Among the possibilities is a repeal of a medical device tax in the law, or perhaps stronger income verification requirements for individuals who receive federal subsidies to purchase coverage.
Determined to resolve the twin crises, the Republicans have reached out to senior Democrats, including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Senate Majority Leader Reid rejected the notion of a six-week increase in the nation's borrowing authority, pressing not only for a longer, 15-month measure but a reopening of the government.
Thursday's talks were held shortly before a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll was released bearing ominous news for the GOP. It showed more people blaming Republicans than Obama for the shutdown, 53 percent to 31 percent. Just 24 percent viewed the GOP positively, compared with 39 percent with positive views of the Democratic Party.
Boehner, R-Ohio, brought a proposal to Thursday's White House meeting to extend federal borrowing authority through Nov. 22, conditioned on Obama's agreeing to negotiate over spending cuts and the government shutdown. But participants said the discussion expanded to ways to quickly end the shutdown, which entered its 11th day Friday.
"It's clear he'd like to have the shutdown stopped," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said of Obama. "And we're trying to find out what he would insist upon" to reopen the government "and what we would insist upon."
One major problem for Boehner's plan was highlighted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. After he and fellow Senate Democrats had their own White House meeting with Obama, Reid said negotiations before the government reopens — a key part of Boehner's proposal — were "not going to happen."
The shutdown has idled 350,000 civil servants, prevented the Social Security Administration from revealing next year's cost-of-living increase for recipients and curtailed many consumer safety inspections. Officials warn of deeper cutbacks in services if it goes on.
The Obama administration has warned that the government will exhaust its borrowing authority on Oct. 17 and risk being unable to pay its bills and facing default.
"It would be a grave mistake" to ignore the risks to the U.S. and world economy that a default would raise, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
House Republicans' insistence on spending cuts and deficit reduction come with the 2013 budget shortfall expected to drop below $700 billion after four years exceeding $1 trillion annually.
But their insistence on cuts in the health care law as the price for reopening government has frustrated many Senate Republicans, who see that battle as unwinnable.
Tom Corbett Pressured By Civil Rights Groups On Philadelphia School Funding
Tom Corbett Pressured By Civil Rights Groups On Philadelphia School Funding
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Ten high-profile civil rights leaders are pressuring Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) to intervene in the sorry state of school funding in Philadelphia.
The national and local leaders -- including the NAACP's Ben Jealous and the Leadership Conference's Wade Henderson -- are asking Corbett to "take immediate action to address the budget crisis in the School District of Philadelphia," according to a letter the group sent to Corbett this week and provided to The Huffington Post. "The crisis has become an embarrassment to the entire nation," they wrote, accusing the state of "knowingly jeopardizing" students' futures.
The civil rights leaders warn that Philadelphia's school system has become "a cautionary tale for the rest of the country, illustrating the harm that occurs when political posturing and irresponsible budget decisions trump the educational needs of students, families, and communities."
The group is also asking the governor for a meeting.
Henderson, the Leadership Conference president, said in an interview that the letter is just the beginning of a campaign to pressure Corbett and like-minded governors into fully funding education.
"When students, mostly students of color, in the wealthiest nation in the world are being starved of qualified teachers and nurses and guidance counselors, even desks, it depends on and hardens a psychology of abandonment and consigns students to a netherworld of inequality," Henderson said. "Pennsylvania has become a national model of dysfunction in education. If civil rights groups don't act now, the brinksmanship of Governor Corbett is likely to become commonplace."
Public schools in Philadelphia opened their doors last month with much diminished staffs and a $304 million deficit. The district had previously shuttered 24 schools and laid off 3,783 employees, and then recalled fewer than half of those employees. Corbett is withholding $45 million in federal grant money, pending the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers signing a new contract in which the union would make $104 million in concessions, including taking a massive pay cut.
The year has been even tougher on the city's students. The school district is the eighth largest in America with 137,000 students, 82 percent of whom are low-income and 85 percent of whom are of color. They're dealing with crowded classrooms, missing guidance counselors, fewer school nurses and a dearth of arts classes.
Sometimes the budget cuts are a matter of life and death. Last month, Laporshia Massey, a sixth-grader, died after an asthma attack. Her father told the Philadelphia City Paper that she had felt sick earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, but there was no nurse to help her. “If she had problems throughout the day, why ... didn’t [the school] call me sooner?” Daniel Burch, the girl's father, asked the paper.
The national groups are getting involved because they are concerned that the cuts to Philadelphia's school funding could set a precedent for governors around the country. "The nation looks to you for your leadership to address immediately this moral, economic, and legal imperative," they wrote.
In a statement to The Huffington Post, Corbett spokesman Timothy Eller took issue with the groups' characterization of the funding situation. He said that rather than cutting education funds, Corbett "has increased state support of public schools by $1.17 billion." Pennsylvania taxpayers, Eller asserted, will contribute "more than $1.3 billion" to Philadelphia schools for the current school year.
Rhonda Brownstein of the Education Law Center -- Pennsylvania, who also signed the group letter, called Eller's analysis "smoke and mirrors," noting that the increases were legally mandated pension obligations.
The civil rights leaders are urging Corbett to release the $45 million in grant money without conditions. But Eller said that would be impossible. "Contrary to what is stated in the letter, state law requires the district to implement fiscal, education and operational reforms before the $45 million in state funding is released," he said.
The national groups also want Corbett to negotiate with the legislature an appropriations bill that would allow Philadelphia to restore its laid-off librarians, teachers, counselors and more. In the longer term, they are calling for broad reform to the state's school-funding formula.
"What is happening in Philadelphia is a tragedy for our children. We risk losing yet another generation of children to the consequences of an inadequate education," the letter concludes. "By taking the steps outlined above, with your leadership, we can begin the process of restoring excellence to the Philadelphia public schools."
But Eller said the governor sees the solution in a new union contract. The groups' request for a meeting, he added, "is under review."
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Ten high-profile civil rights leaders are pressuring Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) to intervene in the sorry state of school funding in Philadelphia.
The national and local leaders -- including the NAACP's Ben Jealous and the Leadership Conference's Wade Henderson -- are asking Corbett to "take immediate action to address the budget crisis in the School District of Philadelphia," according to a letter the group sent to Corbett this week and provided to The Huffington Post. "The crisis has become an embarrassment to the entire nation," they wrote, accusing the state of "knowingly jeopardizing" students' futures.
The civil rights leaders warn that Philadelphia's school system has become "a cautionary tale for the rest of the country, illustrating the harm that occurs when political posturing and irresponsible budget decisions trump the educational needs of students, families, and communities."
The group is also asking the governor for a meeting.
Henderson, the Leadership Conference president, said in an interview that the letter is just the beginning of a campaign to pressure Corbett and like-minded governors into fully funding education.
"When students, mostly students of color, in the wealthiest nation in the world are being starved of qualified teachers and nurses and guidance counselors, even desks, it depends on and hardens a psychology of abandonment and consigns students to a netherworld of inequality," Henderson said. "Pennsylvania has become a national model of dysfunction in education. If civil rights groups don't act now, the brinksmanship of Governor Corbett is likely to become commonplace."
Public schools in Philadelphia opened their doors last month with much diminished staffs and a $304 million deficit. The district had previously shuttered 24 schools and laid off 3,783 employees, and then recalled fewer than half of those employees. Corbett is withholding $45 million in federal grant money, pending the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers signing a new contract in which the union would make $104 million in concessions, including taking a massive pay cut.
Sometimes the budget cuts are a matter of life and death. Last month, Laporshia Massey, a sixth-grader, died after an asthma attack. Her father told the Philadelphia City Paper that she had felt sick earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, but there was no nurse to help her. “If she had problems throughout the day, why ... didn’t [the school] call me sooner?” Daniel Burch, the girl's father, asked the paper.
The national groups are getting involved because they are concerned that the cuts to Philadelphia's school funding could set a precedent for governors around the country. "The nation looks to you for your leadership to address immediately this moral, economic, and legal imperative," they wrote.
In a statement to The Huffington Post, Corbett spokesman Timothy Eller took issue with the groups' characterization of the funding situation. He said that rather than cutting education funds, Corbett "has increased state support of public schools by $1.17 billion." Pennsylvania taxpayers, Eller asserted, will contribute "more than $1.3 billion" to Philadelphia schools for the current school year.
Rhonda Brownstein of the Education Law Center -- Pennsylvania, who also signed the group letter, called Eller's analysis "smoke and mirrors," noting that the increases were legally mandated pension obligations.
The civil rights leaders are urging Corbett to release the $45 million in grant money without conditions. But Eller said that would be impossible. "Contrary to what is stated in the letter, state law requires the district to implement fiscal, education and operational reforms before the $45 million in state funding is released," he said.
The national groups also want Corbett to negotiate with the legislature an appropriations bill that would allow Philadelphia to restore its laid-off librarians, teachers, counselors and more. In the longer term, they are calling for broad reform to the state's school-funding formula.
"What is happening in Philadelphia is a tragedy for our children. We risk losing yet another generation of children to the consequences of an inadequate education," the letter concludes. "By taking the steps outlined above, with your leadership, we can begin the process of restoring excellence to the Philadelphia public schools."
But Eller said the governor sees the solution in a new union contract. The groups' request for a meeting, he added, "is under review."
Sunday, October 6, 2013
'Mulatto' Slave Traders: Who Were They?
'Mulatto' Slave Traders: Who Were They?
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 50: What's behind the legend of the mixed-race slave trader Joel A. Rogers called "Mongo John"?
The trans-Atlantic slave trade, as the historian David Eltis writes, "was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-19th century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the re-peopling of the Americas following the collapse of the Amerindian population." In fact, we now know, thanks to Eltis' Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, that some 12.5 million Africans were captured, traded and shipped to the New World between 1501 and 1867. But what most of us don't know is how all of these Africans were captured, moved to the coast of West and Central Africa, traded and then boarded on ships destined for the New World.
A Diabolical System
No family wants to find skeletons in its closet, and no people wants to discover lives being bought and sold, especially by their own, in the past. This is especially true for people of African descent regarding the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a system of capture and trade in black human beings that was, we might say, diabolically ingenious, involving African elites, European merchants and even a class of prosperous mulatto slave traders. There's more than enough blame and guilt to be shared by all parties.
First, slaves were captured in wars that African leaders waged for a variety of reasons, some specifically for the purpose of generating bodies to be sold to market for the New World slave trade. As the historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood state, a significant number of the slaves shipped across the Atlantic began their horrific journey as by-products of capture in these wars.
Others were captured illicitly "by African bandits and gangs who operated in hard-to-control areas, forests and so on, and hit as people were going to market or sailing on the rivers," as Thornton and Heywood wrote in an email.
Still others were enslaved by judicial means. Overall, some 90 percent of all of the Africans destined for the nightmare of slavery in North and South America and the Caribbean began their journeys in one of these three ways, and, Thornton and Heywood estimate, one-third of the Africans were captured by other Africans.
The African elites brought their victims to the coast and sold them to slave traders who operated through a variety of trading places, as David Eltis explained to me by email. Some were sold at "factories," the residence of a European or African trading agent or agents (or factors) of a slaving company, established in strategic locations along the African coast. Some were sold at coastal forts, in Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. "South of the latter (Guinea-Bissau) to the Gold Coast (Ghana), there was a large number of small, but fortified, trading posts." Then from Ghana east to the Togo boundary today there were about 40 castles of varying size.
Further east, from Little Popo in Dahomey [Benin] to Lagos, Nigeria, "the flow of slaves was controlled by African polities, and the Europeans had agents and storehouses under the protection of an African ruler," Eltis continued. "From the Niger Delta to Northern Angola, there were no permanent European posts at all, so each slave ship would negotiate with the African polity, and Europeans would not have had a permanent land-based presence, though the Congo River had a lot of European-controlled barracoons [enclosures to hold the enslaved] in the last 25 years of the trade." The exception to all of this was Luanda, in Angola. It was "the biggest trading site of all, which was Portuguese-controlled, as was Mozambique island," where there would be warehouses and holding yards.
If African elites controlled the capture of the slaves in the interior, who controlled these factories and trading places along the coasts? Europeans, right? Here's where things get interesting. Surprisingly, some of the largest traders in slaves were actually "mulattos," the offspring of European traders and the daughters of African rulers. They were connected to both the European merchants and the African elites by marriage, clientage and trade alliances.
http://www.theroot.com/views/were-there-mulatto-slave-traders
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 50: What's behind the legend of the mixed-race slave trader Joel A. Rogers called "Mongo John"?
The trans-Atlantic slave trade, as the historian David Eltis writes, "was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-19th century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the re-peopling of the Americas following the collapse of the Amerindian population." In fact, we now know, thanks to Eltis' Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, that some 12.5 million Africans were captured, traded and shipped to the New World between 1501 and 1867. But what most of us don't know is how all of these Africans were captured, moved to the coast of West and Central Africa, traded and then boarded on ships destined for the New World.
A Diabolical System
First, slaves were captured in wars that African leaders waged for a variety of reasons, some specifically for the purpose of generating bodies to be sold to market for the New World slave trade. As the historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood state, a significant number of the slaves shipped across the Atlantic began their horrific journey as by-products of capture in these wars.
Others were captured illicitly "by African bandits and gangs who operated in hard-to-control areas, forests and so on, and hit as people were going to market or sailing on the rivers," as Thornton and Heywood wrote in an email.
Still others were enslaved by judicial means. Overall, some 90 percent of all of the Africans destined for the nightmare of slavery in North and South America and the Caribbean began their journeys in one of these three ways, and, Thornton and Heywood estimate, one-third of the Africans were captured by other Africans.
The African elites brought their victims to the coast and sold them to slave traders who operated through a variety of trading places, as David Eltis explained to me by email. Some were sold at "factories," the residence of a European or African trading agent or agents (or factors) of a slaving company, established in strategic locations along the African coast. Some were sold at coastal forts, in Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. "South of the latter (Guinea-Bissau) to the Gold Coast (Ghana), there was a large number of small, but fortified, trading posts." Then from Ghana east to the Togo boundary today there were about 40 castles of varying size.
Further east, from Little Popo in Dahomey [Benin] to Lagos, Nigeria, "the flow of slaves was controlled by African polities, and the Europeans had agents and storehouses under the protection of an African ruler," Eltis continued. "From the Niger Delta to Northern Angola, there were no permanent European posts at all, so each slave ship would negotiate with the African polity, and Europeans would not have had a permanent land-based presence, though the Congo River had a lot of European-controlled barracoons [enclosures to hold the enslaved] in the last 25 years of the trade." The exception to all of this was Luanda, in Angola. It was "the biggest trading site of all, which was Portuguese-controlled, as was Mozambique island," where there would be warehouses and holding yards.
If African elites controlled the capture of the slaves in the interior, who controlled these factories and trading places along the coasts? Europeans, right? Here's where things get interesting. Surprisingly, some of the largest traders in slaves were actually "mulattos," the offspring of European traders and the daughters of African rulers. They were connected to both the European merchants and the African elites by marriage, clientage and trade alliances.
http://www.theroot.com/views/were-there-mulatto-slave-traders
Feds Ask Judge to Give Kwame Kilpatrick At Least 28 Years in Prison - Atlanta Black Star
Feds Ask Judge to Give Kwame Kilpatrick At Least 28 Years in Prison - Atlanta Black Star
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his partner Bobby Ferguson should spend at least 28 years or more in prison for organizing a “historic and unprecedented extortion scheme” from City Hall, according to federal prosecutors.
In sentencing memos written by four assistant U.S. attorneys for Michigan’s Eastern District, the prosecutors wrote that Ferguson should be sentenced to 14 to 28 years, while Kilpatrick should spend “at least” 28 years in prison for what prosecutors called his “widespread and corrosive breach of trust” during his six years in office.
Kilpatrick’s memo noted that his crimes while in office exceeded all other state and city corruption cases they surveyed, including former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for bribery and extortion charges in 2011.
“Kwame Kilpatrick was entrusted by the citizens of Detroit to guide their city through one of its most challenging periods. The city desperately needed resolute leadership. Instead it got a mayor looking to cash in on his office through graft, extortion and self-dealing,” the memo read.
According to prosecutors, Kilpatrick used the mayor’s office to steer $127 million in contracts to Ferguson, a contractor and head of Ferguson Enterprises.
Back in March, Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 charges after a five-month trial. Along with Ferguson and his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, the fallen politician faced 45 felony charges stemming from his term as mayor. Kilpatrick was found guilty on the most serious charges—extortion and racketeering, each of which carries a sentence of up to 20 years.
Ferguson was also found guilty of 11 charges, while the senior Kilpatrick was only convicted of filing a false tax return.
Kilpatrick’s tenure as mayor ended abruptly in 2008 amid a sex scandal and allegations of corruption. The trial’s September 21 start date was almost exactly four years from the date Kilpatrick left office.
Federal prosecutors presented months’ worth of damning evidence and witness testimony leading up to the March conviction.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said that jurors came to unanimous decisions on 40 of the trial’s 45 charges, after spending 15 days deliberating. Before reading the verdict aloud, Edmunds thanked the 12 jurors, saying that they did “an extraordinary job.”
“While Ferguson relied on Kilpatrick to back up his threats, Ferguson drove the extortion machine,” prosecutors said in the 30-page sentencing memorandum for Ferguson. “With ruthless abandon, he bullied local businessmen and women, threatening to cancel their contracts and promising to visit financial harm upon them if they did not accede to his demands.”
“Ferguson’s text messages with Kilpatrick revealed that far from promoting other African-American businesses, he actively undermined them, then laughed at their attempts at getting redress from the city administration,” the sentencing memo reads.
The two men have been held at a prison in Milan, Mich., since the trial concluded. They will be sentenced on Oct. 10 by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“Given these facts and the sheer volume of his ill-gotten gains — over $73 million in city contracts — Ferguson is deserving of a sentence at or near that of Kilpatrick,” the attorneys concluded.
The prosecutors said the city of Detroit, currently in bankruptcy, would move forward “in spite of its former leader.”
“For Kilpatrick similarly to move forward,” prosecutors wrote, “he will need to recognize and accept the true nature of his wrongdoings — how many people he let down and exploited, the enormous consequences of his criminal choices and the fact that he was not the victim but the cause of the painful circumstances now faces.”
http://atlantablackstar.com/2013/10/04/feds-ask-judge-give-kwame-kilpatrick-least-28-years-prison/
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his partner Bobby Ferguson should spend at least 28 years or more in prison for organizing a “historic and unprecedented extortion scheme” from City Hall, according to federal prosecutors.
In sentencing memos written by four assistant U.S. attorneys for Michigan’s Eastern District, the prosecutors wrote that Ferguson should be sentenced to 14 to 28 years, while Kilpatrick should spend “at least” 28 years in prison for what prosecutors called his “widespread and corrosive breach of trust” during his six years in office.
Kilpatrick’s memo noted that his crimes while in office exceeded all other state and city corruption cases they surveyed, including former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for bribery and extortion charges in 2011.
“Kwame Kilpatrick was entrusted by the citizens of Detroit to guide their city through one of its most challenging periods. The city desperately needed resolute leadership. Instead it got a mayor looking to cash in on his office through graft, extortion and self-dealing,” the memo read.
According to prosecutors, Kilpatrick used the mayor’s office to steer $127 million in contracts to Ferguson, a contractor and head of Ferguson Enterprises.
Back in March, Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 charges after a five-month trial. Along with Ferguson and his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, the fallen politician faced 45 felony charges stemming from his term as mayor. Kilpatrick was found guilty on the most serious charges—extortion and racketeering, each of which carries a sentence of up to 20 years.
Ferguson was also found guilty of 11 charges, while the senior Kilpatrick was only convicted of filing a false tax return.
Kilpatrick’s tenure as mayor ended abruptly in 2008 amid a sex scandal and allegations of corruption. The trial’s September 21 start date was almost exactly four years from the date Kilpatrick left office.
Federal prosecutors presented months’ worth of damning evidence and witness testimony leading up to the March conviction.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said that jurors came to unanimous decisions on 40 of the trial’s 45 charges, after spending 15 days deliberating. Before reading the verdict aloud, Edmunds thanked the 12 jurors, saying that they did “an extraordinary job.”
“While Ferguson relied on Kilpatrick to back up his threats, Ferguson drove the extortion machine,” prosecutors said in the 30-page sentencing memorandum for Ferguson. “With ruthless abandon, he bullied local businessmen and women, threatening to cancel their contracts and promising to visit financial harm upon them if they did not accede to his demands.”
“Ferguson’s text messages with Kilpatrick revealed that far from promoting other African-American businesses, he actively undermined them, then laughed at their attempts at getting redress from the city administration,” the sentencing memo reads.
The two men have been held at a prison in Milan, Mich., since the trial concluded. They will be sentenced on Oct. 10 by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“Given these facts and the sheer volume of his ill-gotten gains — over $73 million in city contracts — Ferguson is deserving of a sentence at or near that of Kilpatrick,” the attorneys concluded.
The prosecutors said the city of Detroit, currently in bankruptcy, would move forward “in spite of its former leader.”
“For Kilpatrick similarly to move forward,” prosecutors wrote, “he will need to recognize and accept the true nature of his wrongdoings — how many people he let down and exploited, the enormous consequences of his criminal choices and the fact that he was not the victim but the cause of the painful circumstances now faces.”
http://atlantablackstar.com/2013/10/04/feds-ask-judge-give-kwame-kilpatrick-least-28-years-prison/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)