NAACP Too Radical for Trump. From [HERE] President Donald Trump’s decision to decline an invitation to attend the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s 108th annual convention, “underscores the harsh fact: we have lost—we’ve lost the will of the current Administration to listen to issues facing the Black community,” said Leon Russell, the group’s board chairman.
“It’s extremely unfortunate that during these pressing and urgent times, the President has chosen to turn his back on the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization—though I must admit, his refusal to attend our convention is not totally unexpected,” Russell said.
“This is the second time President Trump has refused an offer to speak at our annual convention,” he added. “We get the message loud and clear.”
NAACP is a bipartisan organization, and Trump’s absence is a notable departure from his predecessors. In recent years, the group has hosted former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
From [HERE] The Federal Reserve’s Community Advisory Council (CAC), created two years ago to counter criticism that the central bank was overly dominated by banking and corporate interests, has offered a rather somber assessment of the economy that conflicts with policymakers’ optimism about growth and jobs.
In its most recent report, the council said a decent pace of overall economic expansion and employment growth masked deep pockets of weakness among the country’s most vulnerable communities.
Unlike the Fed, which prefers to stay away from politics and has largely skirted discussion about the impact of Donald Trump’s economic policies, the central bank’s community council did not shy away from taking issue with the president’s proposals.
"While capital markets have shown continuing signs of strength, recent budget proposals and executive actions by the new administration, if enacted, would severely constrain capital flow into low- and moderate-income communities," the Fed’s community council said.
The council argues race-related economic gaps are likely to have a growing impact on the economy because "a large portion of consumers of the future are going to be people of color." For example, seven out of 10 new households over the next 10 years will be non-white, the report says.
"Failing to address these disparities, particularly in segments that are driving the demographic growth in our nation, will likely result in national level economic consequences, including lagging economic productivity and reduced GDP."
From [HERE] THE CRIMINALIZATION OF political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On U.S. campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so commonplace that the Center for Constitutional Rights refers to it as “the Palestine Exception” to free speech.
But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.
The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year: [MORE]
From [HERE] President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of a “big, beautiful” wall is one step closer to happening. The United States Army Corp of Engineers has begun preliminary work on the border wall that is slated to be constructed along the nation’s southern border with Mexico.
According to the The New York Times, the group is “drilling and taking soil samples to determine what type of barriers would be most effective in the different types of geography along the border.” Testing is happening in locations in New Mexico, California and Texas. “The agency has identified the San Diego area and the Rio Grande Valley as priority regions for new border walls,” reads the Times article.
As work moves forward, there are still critical factors necessary for the border wall that are not in place. The design doesn't appear to be set. Last week, Trump told journalists on Air Force One that the wall could be partially transparent and fitted with solar panels, but no commitments have been made if this will happen. And funding for the wall is not secure. The administration requested $3.6 billion in its 2017 and 2018 budget proposals, but Congress has not committed to providing the money.
White Presumacy. The white population is rapidly declining in the U.S. and worldwide. At the same time, Latino, Asian and Black populations are growing inexorably. White people's numerical inadequacy and vulnerability fuel the practice of racism here and abroad. [MORE] Racists must practice racism to survive - this includes rigging elections.
Electionologist and investigative journalist Greg Palast, explains 'the GOP's white votary was not large enough to elect Donald Trump. That is, it is too small unless the GOP quietly builds a secret blacklist of millions of voters, especially voters of color, and systematically and quietly wipes out voter registrations. [MORE]
Another Election Hoax.Pro-Trump media & its Racist Believers are selling a new voter fraud conspiracy theory. From [HERE]. Thousands of people withdrew their voter registrations after Colorado agreed to provide some data to Trump’s election integrity commission
Over 3,300 Coloradans canceled their voter registrations after Trump’s election commission requested personal voter data from states. In Colorado, 3,394 people “canceled their voter registrations” after President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission requested voter data from the states, according to The Denver Post. According to the Post, Colorado officials said “that voters have typically given them two reasons for the withdrawals: They don’t trust President Donald Trump’s voter integrity commission, and they didn’t realize how much of their voter registration information was already public under state law.” From the July 13 article:
Nearly 3,400 Coloradans canceled their voter registrations in the wake of the Trump administration’s request for voter info, the Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Thursday, providing the first statewide glimpse at the extent of the withdrawals.
The 3,394 cancellations represent a vanishingly small percentage of the electorate — 0.09 percent of the state’s 3.7 million registered voters. But the figure is striking nonetheless, with some county election officials reporting that they’ve never seen anything quite like it in their careers.
The withdrawals began in earnest earlier this month, after a presidential advisory commission on election integrity requested publicly available voter information from all 50 states.
County election officials told The Denver Post that voters have typically given them two reasons for the withdrawals: They don’t trust President Donald Trump’s voter integrity commission, and they didn’t realize how much of their voter registration information was already public under state law. [The Denver Post, 7/13/17]
Pro-Trump and fringe outlets make the unfounded claim that deregistrations are evidence of voter fraud
Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft: Deregistrations are proof of “obvious voter fraud.” The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft asserted that Democrats are “pretending” that the withdrawn registrations were the result of “voter suppression,” rather than proof of “obvious voter fraud.” From the July 15 article:
Top Democrats are worried after thousands of likely illegal voters cancelled their registrations in Colorado.
More than 3,000 Colorado voters withdrew their registrations since the Trump administration’s election integrity commission requested available voter information from the states.
Hillary Clinton defeated President Donald Trump in Colorado by 136,000 votes.
Democrats are worried that may change if more voters withdraw their registrations.
Democrats are pretending this is voter suppression rather than the obvious voter fraud that caused voters to deregister. [The Gateway Pundit, 7/15/17]
By [Russ Feingold] In the middle of the hot summer, citizens will gather this week in Florida to champion a ballot initiative to end the state’s permanent felony disenfranchisement.
As we face the daily jaw-dropping revelations about the Trump campaign and administration’s actions, keeping our focus on restoring legitimacy to our elections and our democracy has never been more important, and ending the historic wrong of felony disenfranchisement absolutely must be part of our agenda.
It seems unlikely that the Trump-Pence “electoral integrity” commission will touch this important issue, and any commission that ignores it isn’t serious about the legitimacy of our elections.
Trump's next attack on democracy: mass voter suppression
The right to vote is the most fundamental right of any democracy, granting it legitimacy as a means of government by instilling power in the people and not in politicians. It ensures “consent of the governed” and holds government accountable to the people: not law-abiding people, or moral people, or any other qualifier, but the people.
This most fundamental right is not and never has been about rewarding good citizens or even law-abiding citizens. It is not a luxury or a reward, handed out by the government as it sees fit. It is a right, and should not be conditioned on anything more than citizenship, and being of voting age.
And yet since the civil war, states have intentionally denied the right to vote to a certain category of citizens – those with a felony conviction. Today, felony disenfranchisement bars roughly 6.1 million citizens from the ballot box – one in 13 African Americans nationally.
This denial of a right so inherent to democracy – and to citizenship – is not based on respect for the law, but is rather a historic and deliberate effort to prevent black people from voting.
Whither goest thou White GOP Votary? [Already, California, Illinois and New York are lost. The GOP has not carried any of the four in seven presidential elections. When Texas – where whites are a minority and a declining share of the population – tips, how does the GOP put together an electoral majority? That is why your votes are not counted.] MORE]
From [HERE] Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) waged legal war against the voter ID rules Texas lawmakers passed in 2011, saying the new restrictions would disproportionately impact minority voters. That finding was later validated by multiple federal court rulings, two of which concluded the state’s GOP majority passed a deliberately racist bill.
This week brought another sign of the 180-degree change on voting rights cases under the Trump administration’s DOJ, which on Monday filed a legal brief that argues Texas should be allowed to fix its voter ID rules without federal intervention or oversight. The filing also argues that the courts should simply trust Texas to educate voters on the tweaked voter ID law the Legislature passed earlier this year, despite the state’s faceplant trial run when it tried to implement those rules during last year’s presidential election.
Experts say it’s a remarkable argument, given the history of the state’s years-long legal struggle to implement some version of a voter ID law that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once called “the strictest regime in the country.”
“The state’s track record here is not impressive,” Rick Hasen, an elections law expert at the University of California Irvine, told the Observer. “The state of Texas and the Justice Department are now saying, ‘Oh, just trust Texas.’ It seems to me there’s not a lot of basis for trust given how much of a train wreck this has all been.”
GOP lawmakers cited the imaginary problem of rampant voter fraud as reason for the sweeping voter ID restrictions then-Governor Rick Perry signed in 2011. That law, Senate Bill 14, required Texas voters to present one of seven state-approved photo IDs — excluding such documents as utility bills and bank statements, which previously sufficed. Civil rights groups that ultimately challenged the law argued the seven types of ID were chosen in large part because white voters were most likely to have them. The following year, the Obama administration successfully blocked the law.
Then, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gutted the portion of the Voting Rights Act that required Texas and other states with a history of race-based voter suppression to clear elections law changes with the feds. Within minutes of the ruling, then-Attorney General Greg Abbott said Texas would immediately implement the new voter ID rules.
So the Obama administration, along with another group of plaintiffs, again sued Texas in an effort to stop the law, this time under a different provision of the Voting Rights Act. In 2014, Corpus Christi federal court judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos issued a thundering 147-page opinion that quoted Abraham Lincoln and concluded that lawmakers intentionally passed a racist law. Ramos pointed to the state’s alarming track record of voting laws that discriminated against minorities — from poll taxes, literacy tests and secret ballots in the 1960s to laws that required voters to own property that pervaded in some parts of the state well into the 1990s.
Even judges on the federal Fifth Circuit appeals court, largely considered the most conservative of the federal appellate courts, have twice ruled the law carried an “impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African Americans.” But the Fifth Circuit last year punted on whether the 2011 law was deliberately crafted to suppress the minority vote, instead kicking the question of so-called legislative intent back down to Ramos’ court for reconsideration.
From [HERE] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced on Wednesday that it is reviving a provision of the federal civil asset forfeiture program, which was suspended [JURIST report] in September 2015. The DOJ is reviving a portion of this program in response to President Donald Trump's order to reduce crime because asset forfeiture diminishes organized crime. Attorney General Jeff Sessions outlined the changes to the program that will help better protect law-abiding citizens. Any state or local law enforcement agency must provide sufficient evidence of criminal activity before asset seizure is permitted. One safeguard to ensure the evidence standard is met is the "Request for Adoption of State and Local Seizure" form, which requires the law enforcement agency to provide additional evidence supporting probable cause before seizure is permitted. The policy directive [text] notes that additional safeguards may also be placed on the adoption of cash amounts equal to or less than $10,000, stating:
Those adoptions will be permissible where the seizure was conducted: (1) pursuant to a state warrant, (2) incident to arrest for an offense relevant to the forfeiture, (3) at the same time as a seizure of contraband relevant to the forfeiture, or (4) where the owner or person from whom the property is seized makes admissions regarding the criminally derived nature of the property.
In a tweet, Eric Holder wrote that Sessions' policy was "another extremist action." "This is a reform that was supported by conservatives and progressives, Republicans and Democrats," Holder said. Holder is referring to a Justice Department memo he issued in 2015 that limited a type of practice that allowed local police to share the proceeds of seized cash and property with the federal government.
From [HERE] Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn't much interested in the "justice" side of the Department of Justice. Instead, it appears he'd like to throw on his letterman's jacket and head back to his glory days as a hard-nosed, 1980s-vintage drug warrior. Things were better when Sessions was a federal prosecutor in Alabama, ringing up drug convictions at a rate four times the national average.
But there are violent crime increases in a few major cities. He's not sure what's to blame for this potential historical blip, but he has several theories. It might be soft-on-drugs Obama-era policies embraced by his predecessor's DOJ. It might be a lack of respect for law enforcement, which Sessions feels is a failure of the American public, rather than the failures of those who serve them. It might be rambunctious legislators scaling back asset forfeiture all over the country. Whatever it is, the current course needs to be reversed and the policies that failed for multiple decades be allowed to fail again.
In her first signature legislative proposal as a U.S. senator representing California, Democrat Kamala Harris is offering states millions of dollars in grants if they abolish their “money bail” systems. Harris is Black.
The bill, introduced Thursday with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), is called “The Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act of 2017.” It would authorize a three-year, $10 million grant to states that reform or replace pretrial release processes that lean heavily on arbitrary cash and deposit bonds as a means to ensure defendants return to court for trial. If successful, the grants could lead to a reduction in punitive bail practices that studies have shown historically and disproportionally disrupt the livelihoods of black and brown defendants.
“Our justice system was designed with a promise: to treat all people equally,” Harris, who previously served as California attorney general, said in a statement released with the bill. “In our country, whether you stay in jail or not is wholly determined by whether you’re wealthy or not — and that’s wrong.”
States would become eligible for the grant if they replace their money bail system with “individualized, pretrial assessments with risk-based decision-making,” Harris’ statement said. These assessments — which often include court officials determining whether the defendant is a “flight risk” — must not result in practices that are racially discriminatory or unfair to any classification protected by federal law, according to the proposed guidelines. Overall, states must establish the presumption of pretrial release once a defendant has been reasonably evaluated for his or her risk to others in the community. [MORE]
From [HERE]A new study by Washington DC-based think tank, Urban Institute reveals the average number of years prisoners spend in jail has increased.
According to the Marshall Project, between 2000 and 2014, the average time served rose by around 37 percent.
And the 10 percent who have been in prison for the longest period, mostly serving sentences for violent crimes, saw their jail time by go up by 42 percent.
Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts, told the Marshall Project, the numbers didn't surprise him and that he sees them as proof of a system gone awry.
“There is little to no evidence that longer prison terms produce safety,” Gelb said. “If the objective is punishment for the sake of punishment, regardless of whether we are safer, then the present system is successful.”
The study based its findings on data collected between 2000 and 2014.
It found that in order to reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.S., currently standing at 2.2 million people, the criminal justice system will have to look at how people who commit violent crimes are treated.
“You could take every nonviolent offender out of prison today. We would still have mass incarceration,” Michael Jacobson, director of the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance told the Marshall Project. “Targeting low-level offenders is necessary, but it cannot resolve the prison population problem by itself.”
From [NPQ] In a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Politics on city government use of fines and court fees as a revenue stream, the authors found that as the proportion of black citizenry increases, so too does the likelihood that a city government will use fines and fees to raise revenue. The study analyzed more than 9,000 cities using data from the Census of Governments provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. These systems often act like debtor’s prisons.
It gets worse. The study also calls out prior evidence indicating racial bias in pedestrian stops. Citing further studies, the authors suggest that politicians are more likely to communicate with constituents with similar descriptive traits and that citizens are more likely to communicate with same race representatives. Taken together, this paints a grim picture of local governance and exploitative fines. These are regressive taxes that hurt the poor, and insofar as minorities are targeted by police, it hurts poor minorities.
Latino and Black New Jerseyans Get More Traffic Tickets and Summonses
From [HERE] Hispanic and black drivers have been more likely than white drivers to be ticketed by New Jersey State Police troopers in the eight years since federal monitoring of the agency ended, according to the Stanford Open Policing Project’s data set covered in the Daily Record. Data from 2009 to 2016 revealed that Hispanic drivers were 28% more likely to receive tickets than white drivers when pulled over. In addition, white drivers were more likely than black drivers (46% vs. 41%) to receive a warning following a stop, rather than a summons.
Carmen Salavarrieta, the director of Angels for Action, suggested that Hispanics may receive summonses at higher rates because some are prohibited from having a driver’s license due to their immigration status. Gov. Chris Christie has opposed creating a system for issuing licenses for undocumented immigrants, a reform that Salavarrieta hopes the next governor will support. The Stanford Open Policing Project has 130 million records from 31 state police agencies across the country.
Racial Disparity in New Jersey Marijuana Arrests
From 19,607 arrests in 2000 to 24,067 in 2013, New Jersey police are making more marijuana possession arrests than ever before and racial disparities in the state’s marijuana arrests are at an all-time high, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. Black New Jerseyans were arrested for marijuana possession about three times as often as whites in 2013, despite marijuana use being similar among racial groups. In some small towns, blacks are arrested 25 to 30 times as often as whites for this offense, reports Philly.com. This report comes at a time when the New Jersey legislature is considering legalizing recreational use of marijuana, though it does not have support from Gov. Chris Christie.
The New Jersey state Assembly passed legislation requiring schools to teach children how to interact with police in “a manner marked by mutual cooperation and respect,” reports NBC News. The legislation, which would affect students in kindergarten to 12th grade, needs to be passed by the Senate before it reaches the governor’s desk. However, not all believe that this bill would be helpful in improving police-civilian relations. “This legislation does not empower young people, especially those living in brown and black communities. Instead, it empowers law enforcement by allowing them to continue to evade accountability for abuse and misconduct while forcing the burden on the public,” says New Jersey teacher and activist Zellie Imani. Texas recently passed similar legislation mandating that high school students be taught how to interact with police, while law enforcement undergoes civilian-interaction training.
Friday, July 21, 2017 at 01:54AM 
