#nixon's 1968 the “first civil right”/“law and order” political campaign ad

[contemplatingoutlander]

This Salon article by Ian Hanley-Lopez is well worth taking the time to read. Although it was written in Dec. 2013--BEFORE the age of Trump, it was prescient of the continued trajectory of the Republican Party towards a white nationalist agenda. The article describes:

How the indirect racist messaging of "dog whistle politics" began with George Wallace, using the language of being opposed to "arrogant federal authority," and being for "states’ rights," "law and order, running your own schools, [and] protecting property rights." Even though Wallace was a Southern Democrat (and later an Independent) the "dog whistle" strategies he employed were later appropriated by the GOP in the "Southern Strategy."

How the GOP's "Southern Strategy" slowly developed in the 1960s, when Goldwater began to push “states’ rights,” as well as “freedom of association." This strategy over time helped the Republican Party begin to appeal to those white voters who still held overt or covert racial prejudices.

How Kennedy and Johnson, by promoting civil rights legislation, turned the Democrats into the party identified with championing the civil rights of marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

How Richard Nixon fully embraced the "Southern Strategy," through his messaging of being for "law and order," and against the "forced busing" of children (to integrate public schools). As he gradually adopted this strategy, Nixon also turned against one of his own administration's earlier policies (developed by George Romney), which Nixon later derided as the "forced integration of the suburbs."

How, according to Hanley-Lopez, these changes in the racial strategies and policies of the diverging Republican and Democratic parties in the 1960s/early 1970s contributed to "the rise of racially identified parties," with a majority of white voters shifting to the GOP (which became "in fact, though not in name, the White Man's Party"), and the Democratic Party being associated with racial and ethnic minorities (as well as a smaller proportion of white voters, i.e., well-educated whites, especially white women). [color emphasis of terms, quotes added]

Echoes of Nixon's 1968 campaign ad in one of Trump's 2020 campaign ads

Hanley-Lopez mentions a 1968 Nixon campaign ad that focused on "exploiting the growing panic that equated social protest with social chaos." Above is the video of that 1968 ad: "The First Civil Right." Below is a transcript of the video:

TRANSCRIPT* (Music with snare drum and dissonant piano chords) MALE NARRATOR**: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States. [TEXT: THIS TIME VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE WORLD DEPENDED ON IT. . .NIXON] [Color/ emphasis added.]

This 1968 Nixon campaign ad is eerily like at least one Trump 2020 campaign ad, "Abolished," which used some out of context video footage in order to exploit the fears of many white conservative voters regarding the Black Lives Matter protests and the poorly worded "Defund the Police" slogan.

Below is a transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" video.

TRANSCRIPT*** [ Phone ringing/ Answering machine beeping/ background music. ] AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE: You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we're sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you're calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye. [ TEXT: Joe Biden's supporters are fighting to defund police departments. Fox News, 6/6/20 | Violent crime has exploded. ABC News, 6/24/20 | You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. | TRUMP   PENCE   KEEP AMERICA GREAT   20 ] TRUMP: I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. [Color/ emphasis added.]

In conclusion, the barely covert racism in the GOP's political messaging that was so prominent during Trump's administration, and currently in the DeSantis Florida administration (among other GOP administrations) was not new. It was deliberately fostered by Republicans, starting in the 1960s, as they deployed their "Southern Strategy" to woo white voters who still had some overt or covert racial prejudices. The "Southern Strategy" relied on Republicans incorporating into their messaging strategies the kind of covert racist messaging that George Wallace used.

This strategy has unfortunately succeeded all too well.

[edited]

______________ *Transcript source (before layout changes/ edits) of the 1968 Nixon campaign's ad "The First Civil Right,"(alternatively called "Law and Order"): Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012. **Note that the "male narrator" sounds a lot like Nixon (at least to me). ***The transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" ad is based on the English auto-generated YouTube transcript, as well as the video text and sounds/music.

#southern strategy #how the gop became the “white man's party” #george wallace #barry goldwater #richard nixon #donald trump #covert racism #dog whistles #nixon's 1968 the “first civil right”/“law and order” political campaign ad #trump's 2020 “abolished” political campaign ad #ian hanley-lopez #salon #youtube video #the living room candidate video

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

if the GOP could win for real, they would do a lot less cheating

Something you have to understand about recent American history is that the Republican party lost its shit in the 1960s. There are always plenty of reasons for decades-long historical trends, but arguably the core one is that Lyndon Johnson’s administration made a bunch of human rights advances known collectively as the Great Society, the cornerstone of which was a sincere and substantive effort to address the unfinished business of Reconstruction with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Racist white people who didn’t want to share democracy with everyone else became reliable Republican voters, but they’re nowhere near enough to win an election on their own. Republicans realized that their ideology is a miserable death cult that can’t win a fair fight. They could have gotten better ideas, but instead, they started sabotaging democracy.

I am not here to overwhelm you with a list of all the American right wing’s assaults on democracy. But there is a relatively narrow subset which forms a pattern that has become increasingly urgent: times Republicans have abused, usurped, or radically and unilaterally bastardized the power of American government in order to limit voters’ ability to hold them accountable in free and fair elections.

Because it only includes events backed up by reliable and freely available sources, it necessarily only includes the times times they were ham-fisted or sloppy enough to get caught. It has over two dozen entries and is almost certainly incomplete.

1968: Richard Nixon sabotages peace talks to end the Vietnam War because anger over the war is a winning campaign issue for him. Johnson catches him and calls him out, but doesn’t tell the public. Nixon wins and takes office.

1972: Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP, because these people are fucking Bond villains) goes on a crime spree which includes multiple break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

1992: President George H.W. Bush asks British Prime Minister John Major’s government to dig through official archives for anything compromising on his rival Governor Bill Clinton from Clinton’s time at Oxford University.

1992: A political appointee at the Bush State Department has Governor Clinton’s passport files searched for potentially embarrassing information.

1992: Bush’s Attorney General William Barr pressures federal prosecutors in Arkansas to make some public movement on a white collar crime case tangentially associated with Governor Clinton.

2000: The Florida state board of elections does a racist voter purge, targeting largely Democratic communities of color.

2000: A mob, mostly Republican congressional aides, force election officials in Palm Beach County to shut down its recount.

2000: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents shut down the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion so specious and nakedly partisan that it irreparably damages the legitimacy of not only the Bush presidency but the Supreme Court itself.

2004: Republican election administrators in Florida attempt another racist voter purge, only abandoning it when they get caught.

2006: The Bush administration leans on federal prosecutors to influence the midterm elections with bogus investigations into Democratic politicians and prosecutions of non-existent “voter fraud” cases. After Republicans lose the midterms, several attorneys who resisted the pressure are fired.

2010: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, in an existential fiat, reclassify money as speech, opening the floodgates to swamp every level of politics with dark money.

2013: The same five Republican Supreme Court justices gut the Voting Rights Act, specifically and explicitly because it has been relatively effective in preventing racist voter suppression.

2010s: Republicans in various state legislatures pass a bunch of laws to suppress the ability of voters to hold them accountable.

2016: Associates of Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani loudly and unprofessionally conduct numerous bullshit investigations into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They successfully pressure FBI director James Comey – himself a veteran of the corrupt and politicized Bush Justice Department – into several improper and decisive actions against Clinton.

2016: Donald Trump conspires with Russian intelligence and business interests to sabotage his opponent in a presidential election.

2016: Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blackmails the Obama administration out of explaining the Russian government’s sabotage of the presidential election, leaving state boards of elections and the general public vulnerable to the assault.

2017-18: The Republican administration sits on evidence that Russian military hackers have penetrated state voting equipment.

2018: Republican Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp insists on overseeing the election in which he is running for governor. He squeaks out a “win” after purging thousands of voters, arbitrarily closing or refusing to equip polling places, and baselessly accusing his Democratic opponent of trying to hack the election.

2018: A Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina hires operatives to defraud local senior citizens who were attempting to cast absentee ballots.

2018: Republicans lose the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, but keep control of the state legislatures due to gross gerrymandering. Before the new governors can be sworn in, they cram through laws stripping power from the incoming Democratic governors.

2019: Trump administration officials try to warp the data which will be collected in the 2020 census in a way that will enable future gerrymandering by undercounting largely Democratic constituencies. When they get caught and stopped, they try to justify themselves by lying to the federal courts.

2019: Donald Trump privately tries to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: Donald Trump publicly pressures the government of China into opening bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: All but one House Republican opposes impeaching Trump for his extortion of Ukraine – until that one guy is pushed out of the party. Therefore, no House Republicans vote to impeach Trump.

2020: With one exception, every Republican in the Senate validates Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election by voting to acquit him.

2020: Republicans dig in their heels and refuse to take easy and obvious steps to keep voters safe from COVID-19 at the polls.

This is just the list of things that I could remember off the top of my head and could find receipts for with relative ease. It doesn’t include things that are plausible but unproven, like the allegations that Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff tried to repeat Nixon’s first stunt by working to prolong the Iran hostage crisis because it was a winning campaign issue for him. It doesn’t include dirty, bigoted campaigns that you might call awful but lawful, like the racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign in 1988 or the repulsive homophobic ballot initiatives that were engineered to bolster George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. It doesn’t include the wide array of brutalizations of a constitutional small-d democratic system which aren’t specifically and concretely about elections – everything from eroding the credibility of scientists, experts, and reporters to packing the courts with proto-fascist hacks to lying the American people into war in Iraq.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not I think Republicans win elections legitimately. It’s extremely important that Republicans do not believe they can win elections legitimately.

Now think for a second about their cherished “voter fraud” trope. All this time, Republicans have been screeching that SOMEONE was out there trying to steal elections FROM THEM. It is absolutely correct to focus on and be upset about the racist history and intent of this particular conspiracy theory. I would simply argue that white supremacism is not the only unforgivable aspect of this nonsense trope. The other is the way those claims make it impossible to deal with actual threats against legitimate elections.

This is similar to what psychologists call projection, or the tactic domestic violence experts refer to as DARVO. It is not unrelated to “swiftboating” or the phenomenon students of genocide refer to as the “accusation in a mirror.” It is the axiom small children cite when they say “he who smelt it, dealt it.”

I don’t know the ONE WEIRD TRICK to make it not work. I just know that it – maddeningly – does work, not least on the Very Serious Experts whose ONE FUCKING JOB it is to know better.

So I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a “many bad people on all sides” disclaimer about who does political dirty tricks, but “both sides” is not operative, no matter how desperate the hot-take-industrial-complex is to make fetch happen. It hasn’t been operative for twenty-five years, and it’s really not operative for the next six months. You can bury yourself deep in literature about asymmetric polarization, but you don’t have to do all that to understand what’s important here. Democrats support democracy and want to stop the plague, Republicans support the plague and want to stop democracy, and you should be extremely skeptical of anyone who claims not to know the difference.

#voting rights #donald trump #george w bush #george hw bush #democracy #authortiarianism

[jennielim]

[daveliuz]

[antoine-roquentin]

To appreciate the tenacity and enduring political constancy of Trumpism, George Wallace’s story is the essential text. Soon after Trump started running in 2015, commentators started to clock the uncanny parallels with his southern predecessor. As Trump’s path into presidential politics was greased by birtherism, so Wallace commandeered the national spotlight by playing the race card, showboating before television cameras to try to block black students from attending class at the University of Alabama in 1963. As Trump’s followers came for the racism but stayed for the nationalism and populism, so had Wallace’s. His presidential campaign slogan was “Stand Up for America.” He inveighed against “pointy-headed professors,” the “filthy rich in Wall Street,” and Washington’s “briefcase-totin’ bureaucrats” while supporting big-government programs like Social Security and Medicare that benefited his base. Wallace, again anticipating Trump, decried the two parties as interchangeable while refusing to offer anything beyond anger and complaints as an alternative. Wallace was “interested in exploiting issues, not solving problems,” as the Times put it in 1972. He “has no real policies, plans, or platforms,” observed the contemporaneous journalist Kirkpatrick Sale, perceptively adding that “no one expects them from him.” That he lost all his crusades against the federal government, including his signature battle against desegregation, didn’t faze his followers either. “What matters is that he fought and continues to fight,” wrote the early Wallace biographer Marshall Frady.

What Wallace did have was a pugnacious and charismatic persona. He loved baiting protesters and courting violence against them at raucous gatherings like his 1968 rally at Madison Square Garden, where visiting members of alt-right precursors like the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party turned up to cheer him on. In his canonical Wallace study, 1995’s The Politics of Rage, the historian Dan T. Carter describes his speeches as “stunningly disconnected, at times incoherent, and always repetitious,” but adds that “his followers reveled in the performance” and “never tired of hearing the same lines again and again.” Like Trump, Wallace knew his audience. His “genius” was “in his ability to link traditional conservatism to an earthy language” rather than the lingo of Republicans like Goldwater who “parroted the comfortable platitudes of the country club locker room.” Wallace was also brilliant at “constantly manipulating television’s infatuation with visual action, dramatic confrontation, and punchy sound bites.” The editor of The Nation groused that “without any conscious bias, the television cameras automatically focus on him.”

Wallace’s reception from liberal and conservative pundits alike is indistinguishable from Trump’s. In The New Republic, Richard Strout invoked 1930s Berlin and called Wallace “the ablest demagogue of our time.” William F. Buckley’s National Review, prefiguring the NeverTrumpism of its 2016 incarnation, decried Wallace’s populism as “the radical opposite of conservatism” and warned that it would “poison the moral source of its strength.” The political press predictably underestimated the vulgar interloper’s appeal from the start. The Times relegated the announcement of his 1964 candidacy to a brief on page 76. The television networks didn’t cover it at all.

History is written by the winners. Some comparing Trump to Wallace in the run-up to the 2016 election assumed Trump would lose in part because Wallace did. As one Politico piece had it, Wallace “never came close to winning his party’s presidential nomination, so if past is prologue, we shouldn’t expect Trump to carry the GOP’s colors at the Republican convention.” But that’s not quite the case. Wallace did come closer to winning his party’s nomination — the Democratic Party’s — than is remembered now. His electoral history should have been read as an indicator that Trump had an outside chance of victory in 2016, not as an omen of likely defeat. What stopped Wallace from winning was not the verdict of the voters but the assassination attempt that felled him at the height of the 1972 primary season. Had his health and career not been ruptured then, he might have brokered a major party’s presidential ticket and perhaps won its nomination outright, more than 40 years before Trump did. And he would have done so with much the same amalgam of issues and prejudices as Trump and with voters who often demographically and geographically mirror those of Trump’s 2016 base.

Wallace “was the most influential loser in twentieth-century politics,” writes Carter. That was true when he was writing, three years before Wallace’s death in 1998, and it is even truer now. Up until the would-be assassin, Arthur Bremer, riddled Wallace with bullets at a Maryland campaign stop, Nixon had so feared Wallace’s looming threat to his reelection that he tried to derail him preemptively by secretly contributing $400,000 to Wallace’s opponent in Alabama’s 1970 Democratic gubernatorial primary. (The dirty trick failed.) Both in 1968 and 1972, with the race-baiting Spiro Agnew on the ticket, Nixon worked hard to usher Wallace’s disaffected white Democrats into the GOP en masse by pandering to their racial and cultural resentments with respectable code words (“silent majority,” “law and order”) rather than rants like Wallace’s clarion call for “segregation forever.”

Nixon’s fears of Wallace’s political prowess were driven not by paranoia but by hard numbers. What’s now forgotten about Wallace’s doomed first presidential run, as a Democrat challenging the then-popular Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 primaries, was how well he did in three states north of the Jim Crow South — Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland — against local favorite sons running as proxies for LBJ, who, as a sitting president, didn’t appear on primary ballots. In Maryland, the LBJ stand-in, the incumbent Democratic senator Daniel Brewster, condemned Wallace as “a professional liar, a bigot and an aspiring dictator, and a certain enemy of the Constitution of the United States.” Nonetheless, Wallace won 43 percent of the Democratic vote (to Brewster’s 53 percent) and 15 of Maryland’s 23 counties in a record turnout for a state primary. In Wisconsin, where he won 34 percent of the Democratic-primary vote, Wallace anticipated Trump’s 2016 showing in the home state of the Progressive patron saint Robert La Follette, winning over white steelworkers in Milwaukee, suburbanites, and rural voters in Joe McCarthy country. His serial successes drove LBJ to commission a detailed confidential poll of the Maryland primary and to take a closer look at the Indiana and Wisconsin polls. The numbers told him that the backlash fueling the Wallace insurgency was a “potential threat” if not yet a “real” one.

Wallace pulled off a more remarkable feat four years later: qualifying on the ballot in all 50 states as an Independent under the rubric of the American Independent Party. His fund-raising power would be another early iteration of Trump: Though he took in $5 and $10 contributions from his populist voters, he also scored large checks from right-wing plutocrats: the Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, the South Carolina textile magnate and John Birch Society stalwart Roger Milliken, the Hollywood star John Wayne, and the Kentucky Fried Chicken titan “Colonel” Harland Sanders. Wallace ended up with only 46 electoral votes in the tumultuous three-way race of 1968, but that total belies his strength. He won four once-Democratic states in Dixie that Goldwater, by dint of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, had hijacked for the GOP four years earlier. In the border states of North Carolina and Tennessee, Wallace beat the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, and finished close behind Nixon. Full-blown Electoral College chaos and racial conflict were narrowly averted. “Had Wallace carried either state,” writes Carter, “a shift of less than one percent of the vote in New Jersey or Ohio from Nixon to Humphrey would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives.”

Running once more as a Democrat in 1972, Wallace was a political threat to the party’s Establishment right up until Bremer’s assault severed his spine. Though the Democratic National Committee tried to distance itself from his campaign and force him to sign a loyalty oath — much as Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee would later try with Trump — he kept piling up victories. Of the 14 primaries that cast votes by the time he was gunned down in mid-May, Wallace won five and came in second in five more. Among his wins was Michigan, where his voters would be rechristened “Reagan Democrats” in the 1980 Republican sweep — the ancestors, perhaps, of the 11,000 or so voters who put Trump over the top in that state last year. Wallace’s overall 1972 delegate total was unimpressive — like Trump’s operation, his was fuzzy on the Byzantine party rules — but his support from Democratic voters might have been hard for the party’s hierarchy to tamp down at that summer’s convention. Before he was sidelined, Wallace had won 3.3 million Democratic votes, compared to 2.6 million for Humphrey and 2.2 million for the ultimate nominee, George McGovern. Even four years later, fading and wheelchair-bound, Wallace came within four percentage points of edging out Jimmy Carter in the Florida Democratic primary. Perhaps only a neighboring southern governor could have beaten him.

It’s been an article of American faith for more than half a century that the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 was the tragic bolt from the blue that altered America’s destiny, plunging the nation into an abyss from which it is still digging itself out. But it could also be argued that Bremer indirectly had a historical impact on a par with Lee Harvey Oswald’s, by giving America a false sense of security for which all these years later it is paying the price of a Trump presidency.

this much longer article is well worth a click-through

[douglasacogan]

Puzzling though crime data, practically and politically, in the crazy year that is 2020

This new New York Times piece discusses the latest crime data as we head into the back half of 2020.  The piece's full headline captures its themes: "It’s Been ‘Such a Weird Year.’ That’s Also Reflected in Crime Statistics: In large cities across America, murders are up sharply, while other violent crimes have decreased."  Here are excerpts:

The national numbers for murder and other types of violent crime rarely move in opposite directions. But this is no ordinary year.

Overall crime is down 5.3 percent in 25 large American cities relative to the same period in 2019, with violent crime down 2 percent.

But murder in these 25 cities is up 16.1 percent in relation to last year. It’s not just a handful of cities driving this change, either. Property crime is down in 18 of the 25 sampled cities, and violent crime is down in 11 of them, but murder is up in 20 of the cities....

Homicides usually rise in the summer, which coincided this year with many people emerging from pandemic lockdown. In one recent weekend in Chicago, 14 people were killed and at least 106 people were shot, the most in eight years. And as The New York Times reported recently: “It has been nearly a quarter century since New York City experienced as much gun violence in the month of June as it has seen this year.” (On Sunday night, the city reportedly had nine killings in the previous 24 hours.)

An additional 17 cities provide year-to-date murder data. Murder is up 21.8 percent in all 36 cities with 2020 data through at least May, with 29 of those cities seeing an increase this year relative to last year.

How often do murder and other types of violent crime move in opposite directions? There have been only four years since 1960 (1993, 2000, 2002 and 2003) when murder increased but overall violent crime decreased nationally, and the increase in murder was small in each of those years. The average absolute difference between the national change in murder and violent crime since 1990 has been just 2.2 percent, so a big increase in murder nationally while violent crime falls is almost unheard-of.

But this year has been distinct in many ways, because of the pandemic and because of the protests and civil unrest after the death of George Floyd in police custody. Jerry Ratcliffe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University and host of the Reducing Crime podcast, has cautioned against comparing crime figures in one year with the previous year. This year’s upheaval may be even more reason to be cautious.

Identifying the trend in murder statistics is relatively easy. Understanding why it is happening and what can be done about it is much harder. Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and C.E.O. of the Center for Policing Equity, points to increased domestic violence as one possible cause of the increase in murder. “The first explanation that I have is that this comes from people being locked inside (during quarantines) and a lack of social services,” he said. “All those things are things that we would expect to lead to higher rates of violence. That’s speculation, though. I have no evidence that that’s the right thing other than the rise in calls for domestic violence.”

Mr. Ratcliffe agrees that increased domestic violence may be playing a role. He also hypothesizes that “Covid-19 could have reduced the market and opportunities for recreational drug use/dealing, which puts stress on the drug markets and increases violence.”

“If that is one of the causes, then we might see those tensions ease as lockdowns are relieved,” he said.

Jennifer Doleac, associate professor of economics and director of the Justice Tech Lab at Texas A&M, said: “People are worried about increasing domestic violence, and that could certainly lead to increases in homicide. Any kind of crime where most of it is between strangers or requires people being out and about would be down, and homicide is usually between people who know each other, so it might be affected differently.”

It’s plausible that the increase in murder this year might reflect a trend that began before the pandemic got underway. A review of the percent change in murder in 10 cities before coronavirus struck (generally defined as through February or March) and those cities’ most recent June update for the year so far shows a worse year-to-date percent change in eight of them, suggesting that the trend may have accelerated over the last few months....

Some research suggests that a loss of trust in law enforcement can cause citizens to be reluctant to contact the police, and people may be more likely to take justice into their own hands to resolve disputes.

It’s important to keep the rise in historical perspective. Murder in New York was up 25 percent compared with last year as of June 14, but that total was the same one the city had in 2015. Murder is up 22 percent in Chicago, but it’s down 6 percent from where it was at this time in 2017. Murder is up 42 percent in New Orleans, but a year ago murder was its lowest point there in almost half a century.

“These numbers do not tell a story that supports any ideological side of the debate around policing,” Mr. Goff said. “What it supports at most is a need for rigorous curiosity about a vital issue.” Ms. Doleac also says it is too early to draw any firm conclusions: “This is such a weird year in so many dimensions, and it’s going to take us a while to figure out what caused any of these differences in crime. It is perfectly reasonable to think the first half of this year may not tell us what the rest of the year will look like.”...

“The reality is that we just don’t know” what’s driving the change in murder, Mr. Goff said, “and it’s not a straightforward process to figure it out.”

Notably, Prez Trump already has released a campaign ad seeking to tie police reform efforts to increased crime. If homicide numbers keep going up and up in big cities like New York and Chicago, I would expect the Trump campaign to continue to try to stoke up fear of crime and continue to claim that he is the only "law and order" candidate.  That political playbook worked pretty well for Richard Nixon in 1968 and for George H.W. Bush in 1988, and the next few months will show if it can work for Donald Trump.

One final macabre observation: as I reflect on crime data circa July 2020, I am finding that the COVID pandemic skews my perspective on some of the numbers.  These crime data on New York City reports 176 murders in roughly the first six months of 2020 compared to 143 murders during the same period in 2019.  While that is a troubling 23% increase in NYC murders for the first half of the year, it is still well less than half of the 500+ daily deaths from COVID that NYC experienced in early April. Though there are lots of problems with comparing data on homicides and COVID deaths, I am finding that the grim COVID death data that we are all still processing make even elevated homicide numbers look not quite as frightening.  Of course, a global pandemic should not make us complacent about crime, but I am still struck by how the reality and reactions to crime is always going to be contextual and contingent.

Prior related posts:

Rounding up some tales of crime amidst COVID lockdowns 

What can and should we really learn from crime data in the midst of a pandemic and lockdowns? 

With data showing significant "overall decline in crime," headline still blares "Some Crimes Are Spiking"

Reviewing some more national and local accounts of (mostly declining) crime rates during a pandemic 

Another window on the mixed realities of US crime in our new COVID era

With reopenings, might coming months bring big crime spike (and will modest jail and prison releases be blamed)? 

"COVID-19 and Homicide: Final Report to Arnold Ventures" 

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2020/07/puzzling-though-crime-data-practically-and-politically-in-the-crazy-year-that-is-2020.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[we-arnold-lockshin-blog]

US was built on mass murder - 6

Факты, которые  подконтрольные ЦРУ СМ»И»  в России   скрывают...

Dictatorship USA – Run By A Plundering and Murderous Ruling Class - 2019 (718)

Uncle Sam was Born Lethal  - 6

For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.  – Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852

BlackAgendaReport, Aug. 21, 2019

Indirect Massacre

The merciless savagery of U.S. foreign policy in “America Era” did not always require direct U.S. military intervention. Take Indonesia and Chile, for two examples from the “Golden Age” height of the “American Century.” In Indonesia, the U.S.-backed dictator Suharto killed millions of his subjects, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists. A senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s later described Suharto’s 1965-66 U.S.-assisted coup as s “the model operation” for the U.S.-backed coup that eliminated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, seven years later. “The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders,” the officer wrote, “[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965.”

The U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a ‘zap list’ of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. … The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia. ”

Two years and three months after the Chilean coup, Suharto received a green light  from Kissinger and the Gerald Ford White House to invade the small island nation of East Timor. With Washington’s approval and backing, Indonesia carried out genocidal massacres  and mass rapes and killed at least 100,000 of the island’s residents.

“Spiritual Death”: From “Great Society” and Vietnam to Mass Incarceration and the Destruction of Iraq and Libya

By that time, Uncle Sam had just finished killing as many as 5 million Southeast Asians over the previous thirteen years in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia . The slaughter was drastically escalated at the precise moment when the domestic civil rights movement had compelled the “Great Society” Lyndon Johnson administration to expand the welfare state. The enormous taxpayer expense of the crucifixion of Southeast Asia meant that Johnson’s much-ballyhooed “war on poverty” at home was stillborn.

Beyond murdering millions in Southeast Asia, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted on April 4, 1967 (one year to the day before his execution in Memphis, Tennessee), the deadly imperial expenditures crushed “hope for the [U.S.] poor – both black and white.” The anti-poverty program was “broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle plaything of a society gone mad” on a militarism that drew “men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube…A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” King added, “is approaching spiritual death.”

America has become lethal just under Trump? More openly and soul-numbingly racist, nativist, stupid, eco-cidal and sexist in the time of the textbook malignant narcissist and neofascist Trump-Pence-Bannon-Miller-McConnell regime, surely, but not lethal for the first time. Study North American and U.S. history with clear eyes: it’s a record loaded with vicious racist exterminist and lethal Americanism. Ask older Black Americans about the Jim Crow and “Sundown Town” eras.

Born into a virulently racist society at the tail end of the McCarthy era, I am old enough to harbor early childhood through young-adult memories of Civil Rights activists being murdered in the South, the executions of Malcolm X and King, Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley telling police to “shoot to kill” Black rioters protesting King’s murder, the openly white-supremacist 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace, the racist 1968 “law and order” presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, the racist Chicago police-state execution of the young Black Panther leader Fred Hampton , the imperial state murders of student protesters at Kent State and Jackson State universities in May of 1970, the beginnings of the racist mass-incarcerationist “War on Drugs” under Nixon , the election of the malevolent racist Ronald Reagan in 1980, and much more terrible to contemplate. I’ve experienced the United States as lethal both domestically and globally lethal from my earliest moments of political consciousness.

Speaking of merciless racist savagery in a time still within the living memory of tens of millions of Americans, consider an account of how the mass-murderer and war criminal William Calley became a political folk-hero to Confederate flag-waving southerners while being embraced by Nixon during Tricky Dick’s noxious re-election campaign:

“The Confederate flag stopped flying as the pennant of reconciliation, the joining of the southern military tradition to northern establishment might to spread Americanism abroad [by the early 1970s]. It now was the banner of those who felt that the establishment had sacrificed that tradition, ‘stabbed it in the back.’ The battle flag became the banner not of of a specific Lost Cause but of all of white supremacy’s lost causes.”

“The working-class Floridian lieutenant William Calley, the only solider convicted for taking part in the March 1968 My Lai Massacre [one of dozens if not hundreds of village massacres carried out by U.S. imperial troops in Vietnam] became the representational bearer of this aggrieved standard. He was popular throughout the country,especially in the South; his supporters rallied under the Confederate Flag and Richard Nixon embraced Calley in his reelection campaign.

As a result, the massacre of over five hundred Vietnamese civilians was transformed from a war crime into a cultural wedge issue, used to nationalize southern grievance and weaponize the wartime coarsening of sentiment for electoral advantage. ‘Most people,’ said Nixon of Calley’s actions at My Lai, ‘don’t give a shit whether he killed them or not.’ ‘The villagers got what they deserved,’ agreed Louisiana senator Allen Ellender,”

How fascistic and lethal was that?

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Перед нами - коварный и опасный мошенник, расист, лжец и фашист Дональд Трамп, порочный Конгресс, нацистские ФБР - ЦРУ, кровавые милитаристы США и НАТО >>> а также и лживые, вредоносные американские СМ»И».

Нынешние киевские власти — фашистские агенты американского империализма...  Именно то, чего хотят Трамр/ США и в Венесуэле!

А также в Иране. А также в Cирии.  Затем и в России!

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Правительство США жестоко нарушало мои права человека при проведении кампании террора, которая заставила меня покинуть свою родину и получить политическое убежище в СССР. См. книгу «Безмолвный террор — История политических гонений на семью в США» - "Silent Terror: One family's history of political persecution in the United States» - http://arnoldlockshin.wordpress.com

Правительство США еще нарушает мои права, за 15 лет отказывается от выплаты причитающейся мне пенсии по старости.  Властители США воруют пенсию!!  

ФСБ - Федеральная служба «безопасности» России - вслед за позорным, предавшим страну предшественником КГБ, мерзко выполняет приказы секретного, кровавого хозяина (boss) - американского ЦРУ (CIA). Среди таких «задач» -  мне запретить выступать в СМИ и не пропускать отправленных мне комментариев.   А это далеко, далеко не всё...

Арнольд Локшин, политэмигрант из США

BANNED – ЗАПРЕЩЕНО!!

ЦРУ - ФСБ забанили все мои посты, комментарии в Вконтакте, в Макспарке, в Facebook (“a dangerous account — your post goes against our Community Standards so only you can see it”), в Twitter (“Your account is suspended and is not permitted to perform this action”), в Medium.com, Одноклассники (почти всё) ... и удаляют ещё много других моих постов!

[minister-akaiha]

The Real Deal No Bs Talk Show

The Real Deal No B S Talk Show with Queen Akaiha & King Darrell Topic of the Day

The "War on Drugs"

 Co Host By Darrell Duke

As early as 1914, there was strong support for eradicating marijuana and opium in the United States. By the late 1920s marijuana was popular among Black jazz musicians and Mexican Americans. The term “war on drugs” was first used nationally by Theodore Roosevelt the 26th President of the United States. His administration stirred up anti-African American and Latino sentiments around the country and the Commissioner of The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Harry Anslinger started a crusade against marijuana. A organized campaign against black and Mexican marijuana smokers. They did so by publicly stating that “Marijuana can arouse in Blacks and Hispanics a state of menacing fury or homicidal attack” propaganda used to convince white people that blacks and Latinos were dangerous.

In 1968, Richard M. Nixon was elected to office as the 37th President of the United States. On July 14, 1969 while addressing Congress, President Nixon cited an increase in drug related juvenile arrest and crime from 1960 to 1967 to support his position that there was a need for a national drug policy (state/federal). Historical data and surveys show that drug abuse was rare, as well as accurate information about the effects of drugs (a 1969 Gallup Poll found that only 4% of Americans over the age of eighteen had tried marijuana, and 34% stated they did not know how marijuana effected people).

As Michelle Alexander pointed out in her book The New Jim Crow on page 41 in the second paragraph “Despite significant controversy over the accuracy of crime statistics during this period (the FBI’s method of tracking crime was changing), sociologist and criminologist agree that crime did rise but can be explained in large part by the rise of the “baby boom” generation---the spike in the number of young men in the fifteen-to-twenty-four age group, which historically has been responsible for most crimes.”

To paraphrase the end of the paragraph the surge in the population (of young men) occurred at the same time as unemployment was rapidly increasing for black men. These economic and demographic factors contributed to rising crime but were not expressed in the media. Instead, crime reports were sensationalized and offered as evidence of a breakdown in law and order, morality, and social stability in lieu of the Civil Rights Movement.

On pages 46 and 47 (the last paragraph of pg. 46 and first paragraph of pg. 47) of the book The New Jim Crow is Nixon’s popular television advertisement that began with frightening music and images of civil rights protestors, bloodied victims, and violence; Nixon said, “It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resorting to violence. Let us recognize that the first right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States."

At the end of the ad, a caption declared: This time … vote like your whole world depended on it . . . Nixon. Viewing his own campaign ad, Nixon reportedly remarked with glee, "The ad ‘hits it on the nose. It’s all about those damn Negro—Puerto Rican groups out there’.”

Two years after calling for national drug policies (in 1971) President Nixon declared “war on drugs.” The “war on drugs” was a policy aimed at stopping the decriminalization and or legalization and use of marijuana. You see there was growing sentiment at that time for the legalization of marijuana. The “war on drugs” was a policy founded on Nixon’s hypocrisy, misinformation, and prejudices. According to the Library of Congress White House tapes of President Nixon made these comments while in the White House; • [President Nixon] “I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. That’s a funny thing; every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists…” • [President Nixon] “You see, homosexuality, dope, and immorality in general. These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communist and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they’re trying to destroy us.” • [President Nixon] “Marijuana consumers smoke to get high while a person drinks to have fun. At least with liquor I don’t lose motivation.” • [President Nixon] “Radical demonstrators that were here two weeks ago…there all on drugs, virtually all.” • [President Nixon] “Enforce the law, you’ve got to scare them.”

These are recorded statements from President Nixon’s own mouth and if those weren’t bad enough author of the book Smoke and Mirrors Dan Baum quoted President Nixon saying “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

The “war on drugs” targets blacks and Latinos without appearing to do so. The policies of the “war on drugs” still dictate legislative, correctional, and law enforcement procedures and protocols that do more harm than good. The drug war has essentially been a war on ethnic minorities and the poor. This segment gives the history of the “war on drugs,” its objectives, practices, laws and the lack of evidence to support a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish black and Latino marijuana smokers.

The “war on drugs” is a failed policy built on personal prejudices, racial biases, classicism, and Nixon's self-aggrandizement. Many are suffering from both the intended and unintended consequences of this deliberately fabricated policy.

President Nixon commissioned the most extensive and comprehensive study of marijuana ever performed by the United States government. He established the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (NCMDA) and according to White House tapes from 1971, President Nixon made it perfectly clear to Governor Shafer (Commissioner of NCMDA) that the report was to support his war on drug policies,

Much to Nixon’s dismay, his National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommended that marijuana no longer be considered as a criminal offense and their findings were, “Marijuana’s relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it.” The most extensive and comprehensive examination of marijuana to date called for decriminalization of marijuana. This certainly gives credence to the “war on drugs” being founded on Nixon’s own hypocrisy, misinformation, and prejudices.

Angered by the findings of the Commission, Nixon called for an all out war on marijuana smokers and drug users, and a movement was started by the U.S. to destroy marijuana crops in Mexico. Nixon established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on July 1, 1973 as the lead federal agency to enforce domestic drug laws under the Controlled Substances Act. All other federal drug enforcement agencies like the Bureau of Narcotics came together under the umbrella of the DEA.

The official goal of the DEA was to eradicate drug crops in Mexico, stop the production of cocaine in Peru, coordinate the governments drug control activities, combat drug smugglers and drug use within America’s borders, enforce federal drug laws, and be responsible for pursuing and coordinating drug investigations abroad.

In 1971, President Nixon sold Americans on the idea that increasing drug use among young ethnic minorities was public enemy number #1 as he addressed the nation saying “In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all out offensive” as he publicly declared war on drugs. Noted scholar and author Daniel P. Mears wrote in his book “American Criminal Justice Policy: an Evaluation Approach to Increasing Accountability and Effectiveness” Chapter 1 “Too many criminal justice policies are ill founded, ineffective, or inefficient, or they lack sufficient evidence to support them. Put differently, we have too many unreasonable, illogical, and unjustifiable practices directed at sanctioning rather than solving the problems associated with crime.

Mears suggest that the politicization of crime and the belief in quick-fix solutions to crime have led to criminal justice policies that are counterproductive and ineffective. Noted scholar Samuel Walker wrote about the “prediction problem” in his book Sense And Nonsense About Crime, Drugs, And Communities.

The prediction problem refers to the bait and switch tactic of many policies that are unrelated to the most serious parts of a crime, but are pushed forward as solutions to the most serious crimes. This phenomenon is present throughout the entire criminal justice system. The “war on drugs” promised to attack drug smugglers and drug use but has mainly resulted in the imprisonment of black and Latino nonviolent offenders.

The bait and switch started during the Nixon administration and is still with us today. Nixon took the social issue of marijuana, an emotive and moral issue, and made it a highly contentious legal and political issue. Nixon’s presidency ended in scandal and unethical behavior that revealed Nixon had personally tried to cover up Watergate – a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters. Nixon’s administration had been filled with illegal activities.

Richard M. Nixon faced impeachment proceedings for multiple abuses of power, but did not want to stand trial, so he resigned on August 9, 1974 (the first President ever to resign from office). Richard M. Nixon was pardoned by his successor and Vice-President Gerald Ford, but 69 members of his administration were indicted, and 25 were convicted and sent to prison.

Nixon’s “war on drugs” resulted in many lives being destroyed in a fabricated war that cannot be won. By 1980 a new conservative narrative had been put forth that hard working white people were being made responsible for poor lazy black people that did not want to work. Ronald Reagan’s campaign for President of the United States of America was wrought with hidden messages of racism with descriptions like criminal predators and welfare queens but not explicitly pointing his finger at black folks.

This tactic also allowed Reagan the ability to deny any racist intentions. Reagan would go on to promise that he would return power to states to determine and solve issues in their prospective states as he campaigned across America. Clearly this was a signal to white conservatives in the South that he believed that they should have had the power to determine civil rights in their prospective states.

Meanwhile, America has become a nation of addicts, our elderly have medicine cabinets filled with prescribed drugs, our children are routinely given Prosaic, Xanax or Ritalin, and most of us are addicted to one substance or another (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, prescription medications, heroin or cocaine).

The “war on drugs” has filled our prison and jails (primarily with poor blacks and Latinos) and spent several decades wasting over $500 billion dollars with countless numbers of lives lost. These things warrant the highest level of concern. Nixon’s first budget for his “war on drugs” was $100 million dollars. Since that time the United States has repeatedly funded and increased programs that do little to stop the trafficking of drugs into America.

Consequently, more racist and hypocritical policies, such as, mandatory sentencing laws for possession of crack cocaine, the Three Strike Laws, and the harsh on drug offenders mentality that have resulted in the lack of treatment and rehabilitation facilities. These things combined with the economic effects of the failed policies of the “war on drugs” have been astronomical.

The “war on drugs” is costing state and federal government upwards of $60 billion a year. This does not include the billions it cost to incapacitate drug offenders. America has more people locked up than any other country in the world. The prison population has grown by more than 400% in the last 30 to 40 years.

According to the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) “Police arrested an estimated 872,720 persons for marijuana violations in 2007, the highest annual total ever recorded in the United States, and of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89%, 775,137 were charged with possession only. An American is now arrested for violating marijuana laws every 38 seconds” (in 2007).

Also, according to the FBI’s UCR “Arrest for drug violations this year (2009) are expected to exceed the 1,841,182 arrest of 2007. Law enforcement made more arrest for drug abuse violations, an estimated 1.8 million arrest 13% of the total arrest than for any other offense in 2007. Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 17 seconds.” The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported that state and local government spent at least $30 billion in 2001 and The Office of National Drug Control Policy found that the federal government spent $19 billion on the “war on drugs” at a rate of $600 per second.

The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars. Estimates on the money spent in 2010 on the “war on drugs” are as follows; • Federal: $17,446,332,446 • State: $26,780,120,304 • Total $44,226,452,750 The overpopulation of our prisons led to even more spending to build more prison, hire more correctional officers, policemen, training and equipment. This has led to the (profit driven) privatization of prisons. Growth in the correctional system has caused a large number of inmates to be released on parole costing millions to hire and train new parole and probation officers. The courts are backlogged with cases and we are forced to hire more judges, lawyers, bailiffs, clerks, and court coordinators. These are just a few of the unintended consequences of the “war on drugs.”

In addition, the “war on drugs” has had a detrimental effect on not only America as a whole, but the world. The policies of the “war on drugs” are built on prejudices and cultural biases that continue to disproportionately affect African Americans. Reporter Gary Web [Mercury News] wrote a story in 1996 that revealed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives deliberately brought crack cocaine into African American neighborhoods in California in the 1980s to finance a war to overthrow the Sandinistan government of Nicaragua.

Young black men are sent to prison at rates far greater than any other group for drug related crimes. Blacks make up 35% of jail inmates, and 37% of prison inmates of the 2.2 million male inmates as of 2014 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). Tough on crime policies generated by the “war on drugs” incapacitate black men far more than any other ethnic group. America’s drug policies and laws have historically been determined largely by race and class.

In the 1800s immigrant Chinese laborers building the railroads in America were known to smoke opium to relax. The United States banned the smoking of opium during this period. By the 1900s American cigarettes were being laced with cocaine and their popularity led to advertisements in popular American Catalogues.

However, when The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article stating that African Americans in the South were using cocaine President Theodore Roosevelt started his “war on drugs.”

The “war on drugs” has been a war on human rights. Law enforcement agencies wage war on black and Latino communities committing human rights violations while financially benefiting from their attacks. The “war on drugs” and U.S. drug policies further their own interest abroad as well through maintaining strong military presence in certain regions of the world. In Latin America the “war on drugs” justifies military troops in the area, in Columbia, the United States military used toxic herbicides to poison drug crops while also poisoning the environment, poor farmers, and villagers as they terrorized the country-side. This is all done with congressional support.

Human Rights Watch linked American involvement and leadership in paramilitary groups in kidnappings, torture, and murder in Columbia in 2001. In New York the “war on drugs” is responsible for the incarceration of well over 11,000 people and most of them were convicted of minor offenses with no history of any violent behavior. More than 85% of those locked up in New York for violating drug laws are black or Latino, but research shows that those who use and sell drugs the most are white.

Now we watch misleading television ads and standby silently while doctors are bribed by pharmaceutical companies allowed to distribute drugs at will (all done with approval from the Food and Drug Administration). Human rights are at the bottom of the list of priorities. Corporate profits determine policy in Washington, DC.

In Summary, there was never any evidence to support a “war on drugs” especially, marijuana or for the harsh punishment of black and Latino marijuana smokers. In fact, the evidence was to the contrary as President Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (the most extensive study on marijuana to date) findings were “Marijuana’s relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it.”

The Library of Congress official White House tapes of President Nixon gives evidence to Nixon’s own racial biases and self-aggrandizement. The United States government should implement evaluation research starting with a needs assessment. Then, assess whether the theory underlying the “war on drugs” is logical.

The “war on drugs” and its policies have failed miserably with regards to stopping the production of cocaine in Peru, controlling drug activities, eradicating marijuana crops in Mexico, fighting drug use, and investigating and enforcing drug laws and arresting drug smugglers. What the “war on drugs” has been successful at is assaulting and arresting blacks, Latinos, and poor disenfranchised minorities (to include poor whites).

The drug war has led to prison overcrowding, large expenditures to employ and train more law enforcement agents, correctional officers, judges, court-room personnel, and the profit drive privatization of prisons. The war and its policies have only been effective at harming black and Latino families through their mass incarceration.

Last but not least, the “war on drugs” has not been cost effective, billions of American tax dollars have been spent, and the American people are still suffering from the intended and unintended consequences of this deliberately fabricated “war on drugs.” It has been alienated blacks and Latinos by stereotyping them as gang bangers, drug dealers, killers, thieves, predators, and illegal immigrants. Author Daniel P. Mears suggest that evidence based crime policy analysis should be the direction the criminal justice system should go. The National Criminal Justice Commission has found that the “war on drugs” is racially biased.

Wake up black people, for years now you’ve been able to determine the outcome of Presidential elections. The Black vote put President Obama in office, the black vote put Bill Clinton in office for eight years, you put John F. Kennedy in office, and despite the fact that your vote has been the deciding factor in their elections what have you gotten out of it.

Black people have been in the strategic position of deciding who goes to the White House. Your vote has put Democrats in office and they take care of all the legislative business they want never mentioning issues that affect Black people. After they’ve passed all the legislative bills that they believe are important, they come to the black community saying my hands are tied, and there’s nothing I can do. After, black folks have put them first (and gotten them elected) they put black folks last.

Well, black folks are waking up, and realize that even when the Democrats had the majority both in the House and the Senate they still refuse to keep promises made to black people. We’ve been bamboozled; you can’t continue to identify yourself with a party that cannot adhere to promises made to black folks. Black people are now able to see and think for themselves and the white supremacy agenda is no longer acceptable. Drastic times call for drastic measures and these are drastic times.

This is not an American problem, but a human and a world problem. Our right to humanity, our rights as human beings are being violated, the United States will never solve the problem of inhumanity within her borders. We must take it to the United Nations and demand our rights as human beings, and not civil rights. The human rights record of the United States is one of, police violence, war, privacy violations and racism.

There has been no truth and reconciliation. The U.S. has been spying on citizens, has put its citizens in internment camps, murdered hundreds of thousands of Indians (trail of tears,) murdered Chinese immigrants (Rocks Springs massacre) and has broken international law (drone warfare), American History regarding drone strikes, capital punishment, mass surveillance, torture, prison system, failure to close Guantanomo Bay, imprisonment of poor, homeless, juveniles, solitary confinement, nonviolent offenders to lanquish in prison for decades as a result of mandatory sentencing. Drone strikes/stop and frisk is atrocious.

We can not find comfort in killers or solace in being rocked in the bosom of those who kill us. We are people of culture, and strength. Not always have we given in to the threats and scare tactics of others.the powerless ones. What is the difference between two women in New Orleans shot point blank in the back of the head and two women bound in their car in Bagdad. Or government sanctioned killings in Kenya and a sister held hostage in a house in Virginia. Or poverty in Haiti or poverty in Jamaica, rape in Rwanda or or rape in Samolia, sweat shop in China or one in Guatamala. King made us aware that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. We must be strategic, victorious, and free. The beast has shown the same face for centuries. We must never let them forget the blood that is on their hands (millions of blacks murdered and abused). .

We have found comfort in a system that kills us, relief from our grief and discontent in a government that openly destroys us, we’ve traded our comprehensive knowledge of self for assimilation (looking and acting like white people), and accepted subjugation instead of the power to act, think, and speak without hindrance or restraint. We are God’s chosen people, made in his image, and we’ve been tricked and coerced by white supremacist. Now, we allow the blood of our sons and daughters to cover the streets as we are lulled to sleep.

Thousands march in protest to no avail. Marching has not stopped cops from killing black people, falsely accusing and arresting them, nor has the court system stopped its relentless pursuit of black and Latino families. We’ve been hood-winked, accepting the toxic ideology of our oppressor, and the crumbs that fall from his table (that our hands prepared).

We must never let them forget the blood that is on their hands (millions of blacks murdered and abused) as they smile in our face during the day, but secretly dawn their KKK robes by night. Black people are resilient and always able to recover from difficult conditions. America has committed every atrocity known to man on blacks and people of color. Poet, Sonny Patterson said it this way, “What is the difference between two women in New Orleans shot point blank in the back of the head and two women bound in their car in Bagdad or government sanctioned killings in Kenya and a sister held hostage in a house in Virginia. Or poverty in Haiti or poverty in Jamaica, rape in Rwanda or rape in Somalia, sweat shop in China or one in Guatemala. Martin Luther King made us aware that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

Black people we are bold, magnificent, dignified, flexible, strong, and tough always able to recover from difficult conditions. Our feet and hands are no longer shackled!

[takebackthedream]

Nixon, Reagan Paved Way for GOP's Race-Charged Health Agenda by Richard Eskow

After a presidential campaign filled with racist rhetoric, the Republicans have proposed a healthcare agenda that will harm many black, brown, and poor Americans while helping the white and wealthy. It’s the same cynical strategy Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan pioneered decades ago.

Southern Strategy

To be sure, the Democratic Party has its own legacy of racism. They couldn’t have prevailed for so long in the Jim Crow South without it. Richard Nixon, who was openly racist in private, sought to undermine Democrats with his 1968 campaign’s “Southern strategy,” which welcomed segregationists into the Republican party.

It worked. Urban riots in 1967 had already provoked fear among many white voters, who didn’t understand their underlying causes. Mass demonstrations for peace and civil rights confused and disturbed them. Nixon’s “law and order” rhetoric, which foreshadowed Donald Trump’s, sent a thinly-disguised message to white voters that he would protect them from blacks and hippies.

Nixon’s “war on drugs” was another racially-based stratagem, as top White House aide John Ehrlichman later admitted:

You want to know what this was really all about? (We) had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Ehrlichman added: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Reagan on Race

Ronald Reagan, whose propensity for bald-faced lying paved the way for Trump’s disregard for the truth, specialized in caricaturing poor and black Americans.

“If you are a slum dweller,” Reagan once said, “you can get an apartment with 11‐foot ceilings, with a 20‐foot balcony, a swimming pool and gymnasium, laundry room and play room, and the rent begins at $113.20 and that includes utilities.”

That claim was false.

Reagan also promoted the legend of a Cadillac-driving “welfare queen,” based on the case of a woman who was thought to be African-American. “She used 80 names,” Reagan said, “30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.

Reagan was lying again. The woman in question was charged with using four aliases, not 80. She was convicted of fraudulently collecting $8,000, not $150,000 per year. And, far from being typical, she was an unusual character with an extraordinary propensity for criminality.

The “welfare queen” myth fit the Republican ideological universe perfectly: she was black, undeserving – and a woman. The story caught on like wildfire, and Ronald Reagan became president four years later.

As president, Reagan pioneered the kind of government-by-oligarchy Trump champions three decades later. As Peter Dreier recounted in 2004, Reagan “appointed a housing task force dominated by politically connected developers, landlords and bankers.” That task force proposed deep cuts to housing assistance for the poor, saying that “free and deregulated” markets would solve the problem.

Predictably, this advice led to a surge in homelessness. When confronted about this on television in 1984, Reagan responded that “people who are sleeping on the grates… the homeless… are homeless, you might say, by choice.”

Obama To Trump

The presidency of Barack Obama seemed to drive Republican politicians into a frenzy, despite Obama’s political moderation. The Reaganesque rhetoric of hate returned, with Republicans fulminating about an “entitlement society” that offered privileges to the black and poor. GOP stalwart Newt Gingrich even described the nation’s first black president as “the food-stamp president.”

They still follow Ehrlichman’s stratagem of denial, of course. “Gingrich would say that if Obama was white,” a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute improbably asserted to CNN.

Everybody knows who Republicans mean when they talk about “the poor.” American media have been equating poverty with blackness for years. When Yale political scientist Martin Gilens analyzed news coverage of poverty in 1996 and 1997, he found African Americans were portrayed in 62 percent of the poverty stories in leading magazines, and in 65 percent of network news stories about welfare. News magazines depicted nearly 100 percent of the “underclass” as African-American, but fewer black people were the subjects of “sympathetic” coverage about welfare.

Today, the GOP even has “think tanks” that churn out racially-tinged talking points. The far-right American Enterprise Institute specializes in provoking outrage at the supposedly luxurious lifestyle of the poor. It is common to complain, as Heritage Foundation fellow Robert Rector did in 2004, about the fact that most poor people have televisions – and color televisions, at that! If you’re poor, you’re apparently expected to stare at the wall all night and reflect on your personal shortcomings.

A 2011 Heritage report co-authored by Rector concluded, among other things, that a lot of poor people have refrigerators. It offers comments like this: “80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.”

Note that nearly all of those households also have electric light,  while zero percent of the entire U.S. population had electric light in 1878.

The faux Fox outrage that followed this 2011 report – “how can you be poor and have all this stuff?” asked Bill O’Reilly – paved the way for Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s disparaging remarks last week about poor people who “love” their iPhones. Republican Rep. Steve King turned up the racial heat this week with racist, white nationalist comments that openly equated “our civilization” with white European culture.

Those comments shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Republican politicians have been attacking black, brown, and poor people for at least half a century with the same kind of language. And they’ve been doing it for the same reason: to promote policies that benefit the wealthy, while harming the poor and middle class.

White voters who fall for this ruse will pay a price in the end. It will be no different this time. The GOP’s health care plan also disproportionately harms rural communities and older lower-income people, including the aging lower-income whites who are increasingly plagued by addiction, overdose, and suicide.

As Republicans roll out their divisive agenda, Senator Bernie Sanders has been reaching out to these voters, and their response so far has been promising. That’s a good sign. These voters – and the rest of the country – deserve an alternative to the politics of division, fear, and hate.

[jamesgierach]

Guns and Drugs

TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT OF SB 233 February 21 2017 NH SENATE Independent Firearm Owners Association On behalf of the New Hampshire based Independent Firearm Owners Association (“IFoA”) we would like to extend our strong support for this bill. For decades this legislature and most others have heard loudly and convincingly about the peoples desire for less government intrusion into our lives. The gun rights movement has been at the forefront of a return to liberty and a respect for individual rights and freedoms. I have spent thirty-five years spearheading that fight first as a political director for the National Rifle Association, (NRA) and later as the CEO of the firearm industry trade association (ASSC). It’s put up time in Concord! Gun rights activists are generally perceived as coming from the political right while marijuana reformers are typically thought of as belonging to the political left . The same is true here in Concord, NH with the legislature. It is time that we discover that our pursuit of civil liberties is universal and non-partisan. The violence associated with the black markets created by Prohibition of marijuana provides political cover and motivation to those seeking to permanently curtail our 2nd Amendment rights in the name of law and order. Gun owners are beginning to understand that much of the impulse to over-regulate and ban firearms would evaporate overnight—along with much of the crime—by joining forces with the anti-Prohibition forces to take away the lucrative black market for both drugs and guns by legalizing marijuana. That is what we are doing here today. Pro gun rights legislators should understand that the expansion of federal power to curtail their favored liberties—to keep and bear arms on one side and to consume whatever substance consenting adult (or their physicians) desire on the other—began at roughly the same time. Firstly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) was organized in response to the 1968 Gun Control Act. While its stated mission has been to support the nation’s gun laws to prevent criminals and mentally incompetent people from acquiring firearms, the BATF has a history of what might kindly be termed “overzealousness.” The second movement enacted at the time that illustrates the view of Americans as children in need of federal supervision was the War on Drugs announced by Richard Nixon in 1971. Whatever inappropriate zest the BATF may be accused of pales in comparison to the victimization of our citizens by the War on Drugs; which is really a War on Drug Users, AKA Americans. The direct cost (51 billion annually) to our court and prison systems is well known. Less understood is the indirect cost in ruined lives, sundered families and the pervasive violence that surrounds the drug trade as it does any highly profitable black market. “Combating crime” is a political cliche pandering politicians have invoked to control both guns and drugs for decades. But blaming either guns or drugs for violence is an intellectual cop-out. Neither per se causes violence. Competition for control of lucrative illegal markets for banned drugs makes violence an inevitable means to settle arguments since neither the courts nor the police enforce business transactions between gangsters. While this ongoing violence fuels misguided outcries to add more gun prohibitions on top of drug prohibition this secondary prohibition only creates another black market in guns; one that is exploited by the criminals themselves and leads to additional crime, e.g. burglaries in search of firearms. Forget for the moment that over the last four decades we have squandered over a trillion dollars waging this unwinnable war . Forget that we shelled out $450 billion in federal corrections dollars or $190 billion to police our porous borders, arrest 37 million non-violent drug offenders in our country and pay for policing other countries. Don’t even think about the tax dollars that flowed from State treasury coffers into this economic sinkhole. Why add that stress to a country teetering on bankruptcy? The BATF has announced — without input from Congress or the public — that anyone who has a state-issued medical marijuana card is no longer eligible to own a gun. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that this action has instantly deprived 1,000,000 Americans — yes, one million — of their 2nd Amendment rights with the stroke of a pen. Using similar bureaucratic moves, the Department of Justice (which, not incidentally, runs the BATF) several years ago also announced attacks on the 1st Amendment by threatening to seize the assets of newspapers which run ads for state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. The more of our increasingly scarce tax-funded resources we spend on attempting to prevent drugs (mainly marijuana) from coming into the country, the more the price goes up, the greater the profits for criminals, the higher the pressure becomes to give up more of our civil liberties while pouring more money into what we should now recognize to be a bottomless pit. Few politicians have the guts to change paradigms, but America’s gun owners are known for their prowess and intellectual honesty when it comes to preserving our firearm freedoms. As President of the Independent Firearm Owners Association (IFOA), I believe the time has come for activists across the political spectrum to join forces with marijuana reform campaigns in order to protect our civil liberties. By ending drug prohibition we have a merging of the right and left down the pro-freedom, independent center of the road. Our nation is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy; let’s stop digging our financial grave any deeper, let’s learn from our own history for a change: end marijuana prohibition; stop wasting 100’s of billions of dollars every year in policing, prosecuting, and incarcerating our citizens; stop funding drug gangs, ruining civil society and corrupting our law enforcement agencies on both sides of the southern border. This is a clear case where government doing less will mean doing more to lower crime, save money and help protect and preserve our civil liberties. The “Live Free or Die” State should have little difficulty making the choice to expand liberty and not restrict it. New Hampshire gun owners are watching to see if the pro-freedom sentiments of our legislature espoused during campaign season extend to legislative season as well. Submitted by Richard Feldman, Esq. President Independent Firearm Owners Association, Inc.