Civil Rights – Page 7 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 10, 2016

Quite the week. You thought that the Saudi/Iran blow-up would dominate the news, until North Korea’s claim of a Hydrogen Bomb test took over the front page, but then, global stock markets melted down, following China’s markets into the crapper. And for relief, we had the President’s Executive Order on Gunz, the Bundy Brigade in Oregon, and the presidential candidates.

Some Asian explosions look alike:

COW H Bomb

Trump’s idea on North Korea’s new toy:

COW Trump Strategy

Between Lil’ Kim and Trump, the Donald having his finger on the button is a LOT mo scary!

Obama’s tears were not the only ones last week:

COW Tears The logical conclusion of 2nd Amendment Absolutism:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Bundy Brigade take over causes momentary outrage:

COW Bundys Boys Saudi Arabia vs. Iran: Make sure we have no skin in their game:

COW Saudi Iran issue

Are the Bundys America’s Y’all Qaeda?

Off Topic: Here is your last Santa photo of the season. Santa dodges tear gas in Bethlehem, 2015:

Santa in Bethlehem

Source: The Economist

Everyone is following the story of the standoff in Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop: Will the authorities shut down the Ammon Bundy crew? Will bullets fly? Will they wait them out? As Josh Marshall said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…we just confirmed from Oregon State police the Ammon Bundy and his crew, who appear to be running low on supplies (Fritos, beef jerky, pizza, etc.) are actually free to come and go as they please. So if they need more food they can just leave the standoff, drive off to the nearest grocery store on a food run and come back and keep up the historic siege.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 13, 2015

(This is the last column until Thursday 12/17. Wrongo and Ms. Right are in San Francisco. Talk amongst yourselves, keep hands inside the blog at all times.)

The hits keep coming! The San Bernardino killings continue to reverberate in our psyches. People are scared beyond what should be reasonable, given the statistics about killings by Islamic terrorists. The Paris climate agreement is signed, but what will it really do? The Supreme Court considered affirmative action again, with predictable BS from both sides. Trump continues, and Rahm Emmanuel looks to be on the wrong side of justice in Chicago.

Here come the same tired solutions once again:

COW Tom Tomorrow 2

It’s Trump’s world, but so few can live in it:

COW Trump World

Chicago’s mayor finally decides to get rolling on solving the problem:

COW Rahm Truck As mayor, he sat on that video for over a year. He had to know, because the $5 million payment to the victim’s family didn’t come from petty cash at the Chicago PD. He was the chief architect of the cover-up. And he needs to go.

Justice Scalia again covers himself with glory:

COW Scalia Bad Thing

Won’t matter what Paris says about climate change:

COW Climate Change

Monday Wake Up Call – November 9, 2015

Welcome to Monday. In doing research for a post on GDP, I stumbled on this speech at the University of Kansas by Robert F. Kennedy in March, 1968 while he was running for president. There is a surprising parallel between events then and now. Consider his joke about the polarization in the Senate:

I think of the warmth that exists in the Senate of the United States – I don’t know why you’re laughing – I was sick last year and I received a message from the Senate of the United States which said: ‘We hope you recover,’ and the vote was 42 to 40.

Or, his thoughts about the (then) current state of the nation that mirrors today: (edits and brackets by the Wrongologist)

There is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam…at…the root of all of it, [is] the national soul of the United States. The President calls it “restlessness.” Our cabinet officers…and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don’t think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.

Or, his thoughts about income inequality that are still relevant today:

I have seen children in Mississippi…with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven’t developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live…so that their lives are not destroyed, I don’t think that’s acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.

Or, his thoughts about race in America:

I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms…warding off the cold and warding off the rats. If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.

We tend to remember RFK as the anti-Vietnam candidate in 1968. But he was very concerned about political polarization, income inequality and the great stain of racism in America. His comments on those issues could be made today. The oligarchs are still at work, attempting to politically isolate the progressive candidates. Income inequality has gotten substantially worse, and race relations have not improved, as the “Black Lives Matter” movement shows.

RFK’s passion to end the Vietnam War led him to say:

It was said, a number of years ago that this is ‘their war’…’this is the war of the South Vietnamese’ that ‘we can help them, but we can’t win it for them’ but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that’s unacceptable.

Does that sound like the Middle East today? He goes on to say:

I think it’s a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling it’s worth their efforts – that they’re going to make the sacrifice – that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and…the last several years have shown…that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don’t think it’s up to us here in the United States…

Bobby closed with:

So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help…If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.

We really need an RFK in our politics today. Let’s hope that his plain-speaking idealism is not lost forever. For your wake-up, listen to his comments on GDP in the KU speech:

He is challenging the basic way we measure economic progress and well-being. RFK said the Gross Domestic Product counts “everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can listen to the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 8, 2015

Another interesting week. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, most leaves are on the ground, except for the Oak trees. Squirrels are very busy with this year’s bumper crop of acorns. In politics, Jeb and Ben looked, but couldn’t find any acorns. Mr. Obama said “Yes” to troops in Syria and “No” to the Keystone pipeline.

Not a great week for Republican candidates. Jeb can’t escape the family legacy:

Dr. Carson fumbled science, including why we have Pyramids:

Tuesday’s elections followed a tried and true script:

Mr. Obama pushed the pram into Syria:

But, we have no “boots on the ground”:

A study revealed that middle-aged whites are dying more quickly in the US:

You Say You Want a Revolution

The Nation describes Bernie Sanders’s “Political Revolution”: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When Sanders speaks of that political revolution, he is asking Americans—especially younger Americans like the crowds of Iowans in their teens and twenties who packed the Sanders bleachers in Des Moines’ Hy-Vee Hall for the Jefferson-Jackson dinner—to believe that electoral politics might actually change something. Sanders knows that won’t happen unless people who are frustrated and disengaged and disenchanted see him as a candidate who is distinctly different from the rest.

For Sanders, “Political Revolution” means a protracted, grassroots effort to fix a broken political, economic and social system. He says it will take millions of people to get involved and then stay mobilized after the election to bring about a political revolution.

That’s what Bernie Sanders’s campaign is all about.

So, if you agree that our politics is broken, shouldn’t we actually be working to fix the underlying problems? Without something that looks like a “political revolution”, fixing these problems is difficult if not highly unlikely. Consider the following:

• Capitalism as an economic engine has created unheard of levels of wealth, but since the 1980s, that wealth only accrued to those at the very top.
• Democracy is in trouble, because Capitalism needs a plutocratic system of government to operate.
• Democracy gets in Capitalism’s way because the interests of the people are not congruent with the interests of the corporations. They are often in direct competition.
• In order for corporations to keep their preferred position in this conflict of ideas, the voice of the people must be weaker than the voice of the corporations. Hence, Shelby County vs. Holder, Citizens United and the soon-to-be decided Evenwel v. Abbott.

Democrats say “vote for us because we’re not as crazy as the Republicans” (even though they actually support the same corporate interests). The Dems will also offer you a few social policy crumbs that you should enjoy on your way to becoming the big losers in our latest Gilded Age. And those crumbs will expire when Republicans control all three branches of government.

The last political revolution began when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. That revolution has continued through two Democratic and two Republican administrations, for more than 35 years.

• It resulted in higher taxes for the middle classes which paid for lower taxes on the wealthy.
• It reversed progress toward voting rights, racial equality and equal rights for women, progress that was made in the 1960s and 1970s
• It has prevented universal health insurance.
• It led to increased terrorism and endless war.

So, it’s been a wild success! And it’s still going strong under its second Democratic president.

Bernie’s “political revolution” is to attempt to turn Democrats back to being the party of the people, to give Capitalism a conscience. The theory goes, if Democrats embraced Bernie’s point of view, people will vote in large numbers. If they vote in large numbers, change will come.

This is the fight Bernie is leading.

But Bernie has no real chance at the nomination, and if he got it, there is a high probability he’d lose the general election in a blow-out. And since he’s not doing the things he needs to build a constituency in Congress, or it other down-ticket races, his populism is unlikely to translate into a movement. America has to hit rock bottom for that to happen, and we’re not there yet.

OTOH, Hillary doesn’t seem to have a plan to win the House or Senate in 2016 either.

But the fact that it is unlikely that he can win doesn’t mean that Bernie and his supporters shouldn’t fight for his policies. He has already forced Hillary to recant a few illiberal positions. And his pursuit of right-leaning white working class voters could help forge a new populist coalition down the road. Poor white folks have been clinging to the GOP for the past forty-odd years, and they are still poor, and getting poorer.

They might be willing to embrace his populist economic message even while they hold their noses when they hear his social justice views.

So, when you hear about Sanders’ political revolution, it doesn’t sound so much like a revolution as a return to policies that had been in place for much of the 20th century, those policies that began during the FDR era.

What Sanders describes is a political restoration, not a revolution.

Little that he proposes is radical from the point of view of where the country was in the 1970s.

Back before the Regan revolution began.

Monday Wake Up Call – October 26, 2015

From the NYT:

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

Comey is lending his support to a meme called the “Ferguson Effect”. As the “Ferguson Effect” theory goes, police have slowed down enforcement due to public scrutiny, which has led to more crime, including homicides. In the absence of tough policing, chaos reigns.

Ever since Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, MO last year, people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and the mistreatment of black men and women. At the same time, police officers and pundits began arguing that demonstrators are jeopardizing community safety, pointing to rising violent crime rates.

This theory for the uptick in violence in some cities is partly based on a cherry-picking of violent crime data, since some increases actually occurred BEFORE the Ferguson demonstrations, and in general, the data are unclear. We know that far more people are being killed in America’s cities this year than in many years. And to be clear, the increases are largely among people of color, and it’s not cops that are doing the killing.

Most of America’s 50 largest cities have seen an increase in homicides and shootings this year, and many of them have seen a huge increase. These are cities with little in common except being in America—places like Chicago, Tampa, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Orlando, Cleveland, and Dallas.

So something big is happening, but what? Comey thinks he knows, and in Chicago, he floated the same idea as Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently floated, that cops are not doing their job because people have started taking videos of police interactions with their smart phones.

Here is snippet of what Comey said:

I spoke to officers privately in one big city precinct who described being surrounded by young people with mobile phone cameras held high, taunting them the moment they get out of their cars. They told me, ‘we feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars.’…I’ve been told about a senior police leader who urged his force to remember that their political leadership has no tolerance for a viral video.

If Comey’s impression both of the Ferguson Effect, and the role of cameras is correct, cops have stopped doing the job we pay them to do because they’re under amateur surveillance.

If Comey’s right, what he’s describing is the chilling effect of surveillance, the way in which people change their behavior because they know they will be seen on camera. That the Director of the FBI is making this claim is more striking, since the surveillance cops are undergoing is targeted, and by the public. It is not the total government surveillance (such as the use of small planes and stingrays to surveil the Baltimore and Ferguson protests), which both the FBI and NSA use in inner cities.

Comey can’t have it both ways. Since he said in Chicago that surveillance has a “chilling effect”, that it makes cops feel under siege, maybe he should consider the implications of what he is saying about surveillance by his own agency and the NSA of all Americans.

If the targeted surveillance of cops is a problem, isn’t the far less targeted surveillance conducted on Americans a much larger problem?

And why can’t Americans hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their minds at the same time? We love the police, and want them safe. But, the real problems in US law enforcement have to be addressed.

And why does Comey imply that we need to accept a trade-off between a brutal police state and weakened policing? Why can’t we have civilized police who focus on getting the real bad guys, instead of choking a man to death for selling loose cigarettes?

So, wake up Mr. Comey! Show us data that support your feelings, or get in line with the data we have. To help you wake up, here is Humble Pie doing “30 days in the Hole”, from their 1972 album, “Smokin’”. The song was featured in “Grand Theft Auto V”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Learned Ignorance in Texas

Why does conservative America try to intentionally withhold historical information?

Consider the latest effort to whitewash American history textbooks. Here is this interpretation of slavery as immigrant labor in the “Patterns of Immigration” section of McGraw-Hill’s textbook, “World Geography”:

The photo above was texted by 15 year-old Coby Dean-Burren to his mother, Roni. The WaPo quoted Roni Dean-Burren:

This is erasure…This is revisionist history — retelling the story however the winners would like it told. In calling slaves ‘workers’ and their move to the United States ‘immigration’

As she noted in Facebook posts last Wednesday and Thursday, the textbook suggests not only that her African American ancestors arrived on the continent willingly, but also that they were compensated for their labor.

This is another skirmish in a broader effort to promote theocracy and remove references to major social justice issues in American textbooks. The NYT 2010 story that is linked above reported on the Texas Board of Education approving a social studies curriculum that put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. For example, the board:

Cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

Anyway, McGraw-Hill Education sought to address the issue with a statement saying that while their geography program:

Meets the learning objectives of the course…our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor.

Apparently the changes will be made in the textbook’s digital version and included in its next run. WaPo reports that Dean-Burren has mixed feelings about the outcome:

On a surface level, ‘yay’…I understand that McGraw-Hill is a textbook giant, so thumbs up for listening.

On the other hand, she indicated that few students use the digital version, and since her son’s textbook is brand new (copyright year 2016), another print version is unlikely to come out for ten years.

According to WaPo, as recently as last year, scholars reviewing textbooks based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills guidelines found a number of historical misrepresentations, among them several in McGraw-Hill’s proposed textbooks. The issues included:

• Declaring that a Muslim garb hinders women’s rights
• Mitigating the inequalities African Americans faced under Jim Crow
• Representing slavery as only a secondary cause of the Civil War

After all, if they can keep kids from learning about the reality of our history, they’ll be less likely to be sensitive to solutions that address long-term inequality, or that promote religious and cultural diversity.

Conservatives give us lots of information, it just isn’t usually completely true. There is a large group of pundits who are well paid to spread disinformation in comment pieces each week, and it’s hard to recall any of them ever suffering any discomfort for lying.

Think about how conservatives attempt to block progress–whether it is our history, climate change, or civil rights. They use three basic arguments: 1) it didn’t (isn’t) happening; 2) its too late to do anything anyway; 3) it will cost too much. They emphasize whichever argument the circumstances require.

The modern conservative game plan includes learned ignorance. They know they’re wrong on many of the issues, so they hope to limit access to data and truth.

The “System” of Prisons

Politicians throw the term “reform” around all the time, and it usually means nothing. One problem that most agree requires reform is the US prison system. VICE did a fantastic job with their report, “Fixing the System,” which aired on HBO, about America’s broken criminal justice system. You can see it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTL_3WL5gfw

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.

In July, VICE followed Mr. Obama to the El Reno Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, and recorded the first time a presently serving president sat down with a bunch of inmates at a prison. He talked about their families, how they got into crime, why they copped a plea, what kind of businesses they’d like to start, how they might get financing to start those businesses, what kind of responsibilities they have as parents and to their communities, the reasons for and against the War on Drugs, and the impact of the cycle of mass incarceration on communities of color.

Perhaps a little background. The US has 2.2 million prison inmates. China is second with 1.5 million, and Russia third with 874,000. According to PrisonPolicy.org, The US incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country. And Vox reports that 16 US states have more people in prisons than in college housing!

The HBO show says that this era of mass incarceration came about due to the war on drugs which focused on crack cocaine, meaning that many nonviolent people of color wound up in prison. Next, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-the-key culture, with long, destructive prison terms.

Well, leave it to David Brooks to take exception yesterday to the common view that prison reform would be a net positive for American society:

The drug war is not even close to being the primary driver behind the sharp rise in incarceration. About 90% of America’s prisoners are held in state institutions. Only 17% of these inmates are in for a drug-related offense, or less than one in five.

See what he did there? Brooks reframed the discussion to state prisons. Sadly, on the federal level, 48% were in prison for drug crimes, according to Department of Justice statistics. Brooks also misunderstands that the Federal sentencing minimums do not necessarily apply in state courts. He is incorrect that states hold 90% of prisoners. They hold 64%, or 1.4 million of the 2.2 million prisoners. They do hold the vast majority of violent offenders, with 725,000 (53%) jailed for violent offenses. Brooks wanders around and at the end, lands in his typically happy place:

Lifting the spirits of inmates, as described in the outstanding Atlantic online video “Angola for Life,” can also help. But the fundamental situation won’t be altered without a comprehensive surge, unless we flood the zone with economic, familial, psychological and social repair.

Well, Mr. Brooks, if you wanted to make sure that nothing changed, you would recommend waiting for an entire cluster of problems to be addressed, not one of which is remotely likely to happen. He doesn’t support any solutions. And he studiously avoids the stacked deck that makes the prison population so black.

He also missed the other elephant in the room. You can’t escape the parallel between mass incarceration and the growth of for-profit prisons. These corporations have contracts that require that cities and states provide them sufficient prisoners to meet an agreed number, or pay the prison in cash.

This incentivizes putting people behind bars, and should have nothing to do with free market capitalism. This is a policy error that must be corrected.

Two final points:

• Crime flourishes in areas where economic abandonment has produced poor schools and poor prospects. Yet Brooks has argued in the past that the minimum wage should not be raised, that welfare is wasted on moochers, and that the social safety net is too expensive to maintain.
• The plea-bargain system is another culprit. Somewhere in the 1970s, prosecutors figured out an easier way. Threaten an accused with massive charges and punishments, and then propose a plea bargain to a lesser charge. Because people are risk-averse, and/or do not have the money to hire the lawyers to fight the worst charges, they accept the plea bargain and end up in jail, without a trial. This is why it’s always important (if you can do so) to get in contact with a firm such as Mark Rees Law and similar alternatives to ensure you get a fair trial when it comes to your court date.

Conservatives like to cite the number of one-parent households and how the lack of both parents around makes it more likely that a child from a poor area will become a criminal. Mr. Brooks seems to think that releasing non-violent drug offenders from prison will not have much effect on society. But many prisoners are parents.

How many children could have a parent back with them, and maybe avoid incarceration themselves?

See the documentary. Reform the system!

Somewhere, Bull Connor is Smiling

You don’t remember Bull Connor? He was Commissioner of Public Safety (chief cop) in Birmingham, Alabama when, in 1963 he used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights activists. The films of the confrontation and Connor’s disproportionate response, became an iconic image of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He became an international symbol of Southern racism.

Now, science has come up with a better, more efficient crowd control product. From the Daily Dot:

Imagine being soaked, head to toe, in a frothy mix of pureed compost, gangrenous human flesh, and road kill, and you might get some idea of what it’s like to be sprayed with Skunk, according to those who’ve had the misfortune of being doused.

A few police departments in the US, including the St Louis Metropolitan Police, have reportedly purchased the spray, a non-lethal riot-control weapon originally developed by the Israeli firm Odortec, and used first in the occupied West Bank in 2008 against demonstrators. The sticky fluid, which Palestinians say smells like a “mixture of excrement, noxious gas and a decomposing donkey,” is usually fired from armored vehicles using high-pressure water cannons.

Decomposing donkey? Where and when do you learn what THAT smells like?

It was used in Hebron on February 26, 2012 to disperse a crowd of an estimated 1,000 people which clashed with Israeli soldiers during a protest described as commemorating the anniversary of the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre.

Mistral Security, based in Bethesda MD, offers Skunk products to US police and the military. According to the company’s website, they sell it using a number of delivery systems, including 60 ounce canisters with a range of 40 feet; a “skid sprayer” equipped with a 50 gallon tank and a 5 HP motor that can shoot over 60 feet at up to 7 gallons per minute; and a 40mm grenade that can be fired by a 12-gauge shotgun.

The company reports that Skunk is made from 100% food-grade ingredients and is 100% eco-friendly – harmless to both nature and people. From their website:

Applications include, but are not limited to, border crossings, correctional facilities, demonstrations and sit-ins. Decontamination soap is available to mitigate the odor.

So what we have here is another way that our police spend money to create citizen compliance. Police have an ethical problem: How do they control (or disperse) a crowd that gets unruly without causing injury?

In the past year, we have seen several examples of “comply or die” in cities around the US. Now, we see that the technology is evolving from Bull Connor’s days of attack dogs and fire hoses, to tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags, and now, Skunk. Policing seems to be headed in a strange direction. You better do what you’re told, and not participate in any, you know, civil disobedience, like sit-ins, protests, demonstrations and such, or we will Skunk you, (or worse).

A fundamental Constitutional issue has emerged in police response to civil disobedience in the past few years. City property has been “privatized”, with the municipal corporation as the owner. Public space is not owned, it is supposed to be available to the public with only limited conditions. But, we now see a growing number of examples where police, mayors and municipalities are limiting access for the press, for demonstrators as well as for ordinary citizens to public spaces.

When our laws are manipulated in order to suppress a free press, or personal speech, it shows contempt for the entire idea of a free people or a government of laws. When our police continually purchase new weapons to insure compliance with police orders, peaceful protest is at risk.

Consider this: At Donald Trump’s Dallas rally on Monday night, Politico reports that as the mostly white attendees filed out, they clashed with 200 or so protesters, mostly black and Hispanic.

Dozens of police officers, including several on horseback, pushed protesters off arena property. After being pushed to the other side of the street, one protest leader encouraged the rest to arm their families and teach them to protect themselves:

You’re only going to get Martin Luther King so long before you get Malcolm X.

Our police should be careful what they wish for.

See you on Sunday.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Civil Rights