From [HERE] Even though Ohioans voted in 2008 to cap payday loan rates at 28 percent, lenders sidestep those limits and charge up to 591 annual percentage rates on the short term loans in Ohio — the highest rates in the nation. But a handful of lawmakers are now pushing to close legal loopholes and set stricter limits.
Backing the effort is the Rev. Carl Ruby, of the Central Christian Church in Springfield, who is building a statewide coalition of faith leaders to support new legislation sponsored by state Reps. Marlene Anielski, R-Walton Hills, and Michael Ashford, D-Toledo.
Anielski and Ashford, who have yet to introduce the bill, want to ban high-cost short-term loans that often trap borrowers in a cycle of debt and fees. “What we have is a financial epidemic going on, not only in Ohio but across the country,” Ashford said. Rates should be cut back to the 28 percent APR approved in 2008 by lawmakers and voters, he said.
Ruby said he was stunned to learn Springfield has more payday lending stores than McDonald’s. “We have six McDonald’s and 12 to 15 payday lending centers. I see this as an issue of standing with the working poor,” he said. “To me, the entire industry is based on trapping people in a cycle of debt, not helping people in an emergency.”
The Small-Dollar Loan Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts reported recently that one in 10 Ohioans have taken out a payday loan, Ohio borrowers are charged up to four times more than borrowers in other states and two-thirds of the 650 payday loan stores are operated by out-of-state companies. Alex Horowitz, senior researcher on the project, said Ohioans borrowing $300 through a payday loan on average pay $680 in fees.
Patrick Crowley, spokesman for the Ohio Consumer Lenders Association, said his organization will oppose efforts to “drastically” cut rates, saying lenders won’t be able to stay in business. “We don’t think anything that reduces access to short term credit is a good idea. It’s not good for consumers,” he said.
Horowitz, though, says it’s a false choice to say that it’s either 591 percent APR loans or no credit. He points to Colorado as a model for Ohio and other states to follow. Pew research shows that consumers in states that limit interest rates on payday loans pay lower rates than in states without limits.
In 2010, Colorado lawmakers ditched conventional two-week payday loans with six-month installment payday loans at lower costs for borrowers. Pew research found that access to credit is still widely available, the average loan takes up 4 percent of a borrower’s upcoming paycheck and three-quarters of loans are repaid early.
The same $300 loan over five months that costs an Ohioan $680 in fees costs a Coloradan $172 in fees, the Pew researchers found.
Ohio’s history of embracing payday lending is relatively recent
Ohio law banned payday loans for more than 50 years but in 1995 the Legislature approved the Pay Day Loan Act, which requires state licensing and exempts payday lenders from the state’s usury laws. By 2008, lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation to curb payday loan rates and cap them at 28 percent APR. The industry put the legislation up for a referendum and 63.6 percent of voters decided to keep the new limits.
Lenders then sidestepped the law by getting licenses to operate as credit service organizations, which don’t face fee limits, and issue loans under the Ohio Mortgage Lending Act and the Ohio Small Loan Act. There are no lenders licensed under the Short Term Loan Act, which was intended to regulate payday loans.
For the past eight years, lawmakers have declined to close the legal loophole.
Ruby attributes the inaction to industry lobbying and campaign contributions.
“It is a very lucrative business and they spend a lot of money on protecting it and lobbying for it,” he said. Ruby added, “We are relying on the moral argument that this is unethical and it’s just plain wrong.”
Supporters of new restrictions on payday lending will have to win over state leaders, who are willing to listen but aren’t yet convinced changes are imperative.
Statehouse may take action
“I need to grasp the information a little bit more and talk to Rep. Anielski a little more about her bill. But we’ll probably have that conversation in the caucus and see something forthcoming,” said Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville. “I need to dive into it but clearly there are some areas that we must need to show some attention to and I’m willing to do that.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said it’s always a balance between setting a rate high enough to keep lenders in business but reasonable for consumers.
“I don’t like those high rates but let’s see what the Legislature does,” Kasich said. He added, “You want to make sure you’re looking at this from all different angles and if the rates have crept up beyond what the people thought they wanted then it needs to be reviewed. I have to see what comes and what makes sense.”
When told that the Pew report shows Ohio has the highest rates and the average APR is 591 percent, the governor said “Yeah, you know what, that may be true and I don’t like that. But you know I can put together a lot of statistics that can tell you a whole lot of things. I just have to take a look at it.”
Eurasians have disrupted civilizations of African descent people (ADP) (Blaut, 1993; Chomsky, 1993; Fagan, 1998) continuously for over 6000 years (Williams, 1976). For African-U.S. people (descendents of Africans enslaved in the United States) this has resulted in a profound mental victimization (Azibo, 2011a; Jennings, 2003, 2011; Wilson, 1993). The victimization, in turn, has bewitched, bothered, and bewildered African-U.S. people to the point of inferiorizing their masses (Welsing, 1991). What is to be done for the victims?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized the importance of overturning this inferiorized mentality when he encouraged study of "psychological and ideological changes in Negroes" (King, 1968:183). Frantz Fanon (Hansen, 1996; Holdstock, 2000) issued a call to "set afoot a new man" (Fanon, 1963:316) meaning new ADP mentally speaking. Some heeded these civil rights era imperatives early on (e.g., Krupat, 1975:13-43). Despite some improvement, as the 1990s approached, Amos Wilson (1989) acknowledged dissatisfaction with many African-U.S. males and admonished "make another man" (original emphasis) and John Henrik Clarke (1997:xvii) pointed to the continuation of this social engineering imperative for ADP: "In the twenty-first century .... first we change ourselves" (added emphasis). Caucasian scholar Michael Bradley (1992) pleaded for the direction the change must take:
I cannot help but make a plea: African Americans must forsake the white man's social structures, concepts of justice and, yes, even religion and return, as far as possible, to genuine African values and identity (insofar as these can be accurately recovered and reconstructed). (p. 243-244)
Harkening these clarion calls would seem to suggest the need for reemergence of the racial construct called the African personality. We run to race for its explanatory and prescriptive power. Indeed, "race as part of personality ... just is [and] Race can be understood by way of racial identity [psychological Africanity] theory, and, by using it, one can grasp race's role in human development" (Carter, 1995:267-268).
In pursuing the African personality it becomes clear that what remains needed in a concretized form is "a model .... [with] blueprints and examples" (Fanon, 1963:312). In articulating such a model, wise instruction "not to imitate Europe" (Fanon, 1963:313) will be heeded. It would be equally unwise for ADP to imitate the Eurasian Arab (Williams, 1976:23-24, 58-61) whose Arabicizing of ADP has been shown to be pernicious (Ali, 2006, 2007, 2010; Chinweizu, 1987). In articulating our model we draw upon African-centered social theory and philosophical deep thinking especially as it applies to the nature of African human nature or the African personality (Azibo, 2011b; Khoapa, 1980; Osei, 1970, 1971, 1981).
"African Americans must forsake the white man's [cultural orientation] ... and return, as far as possible, to genuine African values and identity.... I make this plea, not only for you who are Black, but for myself(and my son, and other people) who are white.... [as] we continue to look to Blacks to create an alternative to our culture.
Michael Bradley (1992, 243-244)
The poignancy of Michael Bradley's quote presupposes the necessityof racial identity assessment which, in turn, presupposes adequate underlying theory. We are critical of the conceptual edifice underlying so-called nigrescence and multidimensional models that prevail in counselor education. Instead, we promote the conceptualization of racial identity as psychological Africanity (Azibo, 2006a) which generates a distinction between ordered/appropriate and disordered/inappropriate racial identity functioning. A longstanding literature, albeit heretofore ignored in Western psychology, addresses the latter as a psychological MISorientation to reality. We begin by plumbing this construct and then address appropriate racial identity functioning under the rubric of psychological Africanity. Then, hypotheses about the validity of three measures consonant with the psychological Africanity formulation, two of appropriate and one of inappropriate racial identity functioning, are investigated.
Roots. The great disaster perpetrated on African descent people (ADP) by past colonization and enslavement schemes of European descent people and Eurasian Arabs as well as the neocolonialism and unrelenting, devastating Eurasian domination of ADP that has ensued is known as the Maafa (Ani, 2004). It is important to understand Maafa as warfare against ADP (Chinweizu, 2010; Obadele, 1968, 2003). One result of the pogroms and daily dehumanization of the Maafa/war is that mental afflictions have beset ADP worldwide (Azibo, 2011a, 2011b; Sutherland, 1997, 2005). Recognition for mental afflictions that stem from the contact with and hegemony of Western cultures on non-Eurasian victimsabounds (Danieli, 1998). How odd, however, the propounding by Cross (1998) denying the same type of afflictions in African-U.S. people (descendents of Africans enslaved in the United States).
The only country in the Americas to be freed from black colonial rule -- neighboring Haiti -- the Dominican Republic still shows signs of racial wounds more than 200 years later. Presidents historically encouraged Dominicans to embrace Spanish Catholic roots rather than African ancestry.
Here, as in much of Latin America -- the "one drop rule'' works in reverse: One drop of white blood allows even very dark-skinned people to be considered white.
A walk down city streets shows a country where blacks and dark-skinned people vastly outnumber whites, and most estimates say that 90 percent of Dominicans are black or of mixed race. Yet census figures say only 11 percent of the country's nine million people are black.
To many Dominicans, to be black is to be Haitian. So dark-skinned Dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years -- Indian, burned Indian, dirty Indian, washed Indian, dark Indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.
The Dominican Republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, Brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait, sunburned, morena, Malaysian woman, singed and "toasted."
"The Cuban black was told he was black. The Dominican black was told he was Indian," said Dominican historian Celsa Albert, who is black. "I am not Indian. That color does not exist. People used to tell me, ‘You are not black.' If I am not black, then I guess there are no blacks anywhere, because I have curly hair and dark skin."
Using the word Indian to describe dark-skinned people is an attempt to distance Dominicans from any African roots, Albert and other experts said. She noted that it's not even historically accurate: The country's Taino Indians were virtually annihilated in the 1500s, shortly after Spanish colonizers arrived.
Researchers say the de-emphasizing of race in the Dominican Republic dates to the 1700s, when the sugar plantation economy collapsed and many slaves were freed and rose up in society.
Later came the rocky history with Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Haiti's slaves revolted against the French and in 1804 established their own nation. In 1822, Haitians took over the entire island, ruling the predominantly Hispanic Dominican Republic for 22 years.
To this day, the Dominican Republic celebrates its independence not from centuries-long colonizer Spain, but from Haiti.
"The problem is Haitians developed a policy of black-centrism and . . . Dominicans don't respond to that," said scholar Manuel Núñez, who is black. "Dominican is not a color of skin, like the Haitian."
Dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled from 1930 to 1961, strongly promoted anti-Haitian sentiments, and is blamed for creating the many racial categories that avoided the use of the word "black."
The practice continued under President Joaquín Balaguer, who often complained that Haitians were "darkening'' the country. In the 1990s, he was blamed for thwarting the presidential aspirations of leading black candidate José Francisco Peña Gómez by spreading rumors that he was actually Haitian.
Resentment toward anything Haitian continues, as an estimated one million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, most working in the sugar and construction industries. Mass deportations often mistakenly include black Dominicans, and Haitians have been periodically lynched in mob violence. The government has been trying to deny citizenship and public education to the Dominican-born children of illegal Haitian migrants.
"There's tremendous resistance to blackness -- black is something bad," said black feminist Sergia Galván. ‘‘Black is associated with dark, illegal, ugly, clandestine things. There is a prototype of beauty here and a lot of social pressure. There are schools where braids and natural hair are prohibited." Purdue University professor Dawn Stinchcomb, who is African American, said that when she came here in 1999 to study African influences in literature, people insulted her in the street.
Waiters refused to serve her. People wouldn't help Stinchcomb with her research, saying if she wanted to study Africans, she'd have to go to Haiti.
"I had people on the streets . . . yell at me to get out of the sun because I was already black enough," she said. "It was hurtful. . . . I was raised in the South and thought I could handle any racial comment. I never before experienced anything like I did in the Dominican Republic.
"I don't have a problem when people who don't look like me say hurtful things. But when it's people who look just like me?
From [HERE] At least 12 million people lived in ongoing displacement caused by conflict, violence, and other disasters across the African continent in 2015. And in the future, climate change may be the lead driver of even greater displacement.
In the Africa Report on Internal Displacement — a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre that focused on internal displacement across the entire African continent — researchers found that “disasters triggered by rapid-onset natural hazards” forced 1.1 million people from their homes across 33 African countries last year. What’s more, disaster-induced displacement makes people more vulnerable from one year to the next and more susceptible to food insecurity since planting and harvesting become disrupted when farmers are absent.
“The figure of 12.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs) is more than double Africa’s 5.4 million refugee population across the continent, and is a reminder of the protracted nature of many conflicts in Africa,” Alexandra Bilak, the director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), said in a statement. “But it still underestimates the full scale of Africa’s internal displacement crisis because data over time is not available for the millions more who become trapped in displacement as a result of disasters and development projects.” [MORE]
From [HERE] The US Congress on Saturday passed legislation [HR 5067, PDF] that would continue reviews of racially motivated killings in the civil rights era. The bill indefinitely extends [AP report] a 2007 law, which expires next year, that calls for a full and complete accounting of racial killings, many of which have been closed cases for decades. More than 100 cases have been examined so far with one conviction, but more cases are continuously being identified. The law [HR 5067 materials] provides federal resources to local jurisdiction to look into the cases. The legislation requires the Justice Department and the FBI [official websites] to consult civil rights organizations, universities and other sources of evidence for cases up to the end of 1979.
There were numerous racially-motivated murders and hate crimes [GovTrack report], particularly in the South. Decades after they occurred, a number of these crimes had still gone unsolved. The 110th Congress then passed a bill HR 923 [text, PDF] called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act [HR 923 materials]. The legislation passed nearly unanimously in both the House and the Senate. It established unsolved civil rights crimes division at both the FBI and the Department of Justice.
From [HERE] The aligning interests between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s choice for U.S. president (Donald Trump), and Big Oil represents the gravest threat to humanity (and democracy) since the rise of the Axis powers in the 1930s.
That’s because while Trump may not be able to destroy global climate action and the landmark 2105 Paris climate deal all by himself — as he pledged to do during the campaign — he probably could do that with help from Russia and the trillion-dollar oil industry.
So much is explained by Trump’s Secretary of State choice. Media reports now say it will be Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil giant ExxonMobil, which had made a $500 billion oil deal with Putin that got blocked by sanctions.
Stalling the biggest oil deal ever did not just “put Exxon at risk,” as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explained last week this deal was so big it was “expected to change the historical trajectory of Russia.”
This deal could explain why Putin appears to have interfered in U.S. elections in favor of a Trump victory. Recently, “the C.I.A. altered its formal assessment of Russia’s activities to conclude that the government of President Vladimir V. Putin was not just trying to undermine the election,” as the New York Times reported Saturday, “but had also acted to give one candidate an advantage.”
You can certainly make a plausible case, as many have, that Putin had enough motivation to interfere simply to undermine the legitimacy of U.S. elections.
On the other hand, it was always a little puzzling that Putin seemed to so admire a guy who had pledged to fully open the on-shore and off-shore spigots of U.S. domestic oil (and gas) drilling. After all, the end result of those policies would inevitably be a lower price for oil and gas, which compose the single biggest source of revenue for Russia. That’s why we saw headlines from January like, “Oil Price Collapse Pushing Russia’s Economy To The Edge” and from October like, “Why U.S. Oil Production Trumps Any Russian-OPEC Deal.”
But for Putin and the kleptocrats who benefit from his rule, little matters more than enriching coffers right now. It is no coincidence that just last week, Putin revealed Russia had sold a 19.5 percent stake in the Kremlin-controlled oil giant Rosnet for $11.3 billion to Qatar and others, “confounding expectations that the Kremlin’s standoff with the West would scare off major investors,” as Fortune reported in a must-read piece that connects major pieces of this puzzle.
“Just a few weeks ago, most industry watchers had written off the chances of a foreign investor being found for Rosneft,” Fortune reports. But this deal, the biggest oil deal of 2016, “pointed to a possible reassessment by foreign investors of the risks of dealing with Russia, at a time when the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president has heightened expectations of a thaw between Moscow and Washington.”
And how does Putin benefit? That $11.3 billion goes to the Kremlin, not Rosneft. No wonder “Russian officials were jubilant that Rosneft had pulled off a deal which will deliver a large chunk of the cash they need to fill gaps in the state budget caused by an economic slowdown and sanctions” (per Reuters).
Kleptocracy — and apparently meddling with a foreign an election — looks like it pays very well.
And if the sanctions are lifted — something a new Secretary of State could help make happen — it would pay off big time for Exxon. As Bloomberg explained in an October piece, “Exxon Faces Collateral Damage From a New Cold War,” the company’s “project queue for 2018 onward is weighted to resources challenged by low prices or higher costs, such as LNG and oil sands.”
From [HERE] Whether or not you believe the Dylann Roof episode was a "false flag" operation, it is clear that he is not having a real trial right now. A major difference between the Roof episode and other alleged "false operations" was going to be this criminal trial; usually the assailants are murdered or plead out so no public trial ever takes place.
However, no real trial is actually taking place in Roof's case. In a filing last week, Roof's defense lawyers wrote that “the sole issue” was “whether the federal death penalty will be inflicted.” [MORE] His attorneys did so after the Government refused to offer a non-death penalty guilty plea. [MORE]. Roof's defense team has conceded that he’s guilty and has, instead, tried to focus on sparing him the death penalty, according to the Associated Press. Thus, his "trial" is uncontested.
On November 25, 2016, Roof was declared competent enough to stand trial.Three days later, a federal judge granted Roof's motion to represent himself. On December 4, 2016, Roof, in a handwritten request, asked the Judge to give him back his defense team for the guilt phase of his federal death penalty trial.On December 5, 2016, the Judge allowed Roof to hire back his lawyers for the guilt phase of his trial.On December 6, 2016, a federal judge denied a motion by Roof's defense team to delay Roof's trial [sought the delay because of blanket media coverage of the mistrial Monday in white cop's Michael Slager's separate murder case of an unarmed, fleeing Black man in the same city. [MORE]
A criminal trial is usually an adversarial contest between the Government and a defendant. It is an actual dispute over a set of facts - facts that are rigorously tested through the pre-trial and trial process. Since he has conceded all liability, Roof will not contest any of the essential facts in the case, object to the admissibility of evidence and the Government will have no problems authenticating any of its evidence for things such as Roof's murder plans journal/manifesto (a witness familiar with his handwriting would have to confirm that his writing in fact was in the journal) and show that Roof in fact created the Facebook page and made entries on it to demonstrate that it was "his" [things that may not be so easy to do during a contested trial]. Last week Roof's lawyers made no objections to the admissibility of the journal b/c he has conceded. [MORE]
There will also be no meaningful cross examination on issues relevant to establishing guilt. The right to rigorously confront witnesses and cross examine them is the primary purpose of the 6th Amendment and essential to a fair trial. Roof has basically waived this right by admitting guilt. Cross frequently produces critical evidence in trials and is the defense's tool to raise doubt and produce an acquittal. Through cross, witnesses and evidence are tested for their authenticity. None of this will be applicable in Roof's case.
Pursuant to his defense strategy Roof also apparently will waive his right to refrain from testifying and testify to explain why he committed the murders. So, you will have to take his word for it.
The announcement that President-elect Donald Trump will remain an executive producer on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice opens up a series of conflicts of interest for both Trump and NBC News. It also defies NBC’s previous claim that they did not want to be associated with Trump because his bigoted statements had defied the network’s core values.
Trump began his presidential campaign with a blistering, widely-denounced attack on Mexican immigrants. In his June 16, 2015, presidential announcement speech, he claimed that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” instead claiming that most immigrants were rapists or drug dealers.
Two weeks after that speech, NBC announced that they were “ending its business relationship” with Trump due to what it termed his “derogatory statements” about immigrants. The network announced that they would no longer air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, which were part of a joint venture between the network and Trump and were scheduled to run during the presidential election. According to the statement, “At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values.”
At the time, the network stated that Celebrity Apprentice “is licensed from Mark Burnett's United Artists Media Group and that relationship will continue.” But NBC News reported that this was because “Trump ceased his involvement with the reality show during the presidential bid.” Now, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is suggesting that Trump might actively work on the show as president in his “spare time.”
In any case, since NBC released their statement cutting ties with Trump, he has not demonstrated that he shows “respect and dignity for all people.” Instead, he has continued to denigrate people of color, immigrants, Muslims, and women. In fact, NBC fired Billy Bush over the former Access Hollywood host’s role in an open mic tape that featured Trump admitting to sexual assault. NBC didn’t want a business relationship with someone who laughed at such comments, but apparently has no qualms with the man who said them.
It certainly raises questions about what NBC really considers “cornerstones of our values.”
Fuck You Too. From [HERE] On a “thank you” victory tour across the country Friday, President-elect Donald Trump claimed that low voter turnout among African Americans helped him win on Election Night.
“The African American community was great to us,” Trump said at an evening stop on his “USA Thank You Tour” in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “They came through big league. And frankly, if they had any doubt, they didn’t vote. And that was almost as good. Because a bunch of people didn’t show up, because they felt good about me.”
Trump also thanked the Latino community and women.
“And women,” he said. “My goodness. We did great with women, so I want to thank women.”
Democratic rival Hillary Clinton won African American voters over Trump, 89 percent to 8 percent, the Washington Post reported. In comparison, President Barack Obama won the group 83 percent to 6 percent in his 2012 reelection against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Clinton lost in part because voter turnout was low in urban areas and she received a lower margin of support from demographic groups that turned out to vote for Obama. At the same time, Trump received a boost in support from working-class white voters and won Michigan, a state that went for Obama in 2012.
Low Black voter turnout may be indirectly connected to Trump’s suggestion that his supporters commit voter suppression. In the months leading up to the election, Trump nudged his supporters to “watch” polling places in “certain areas” to make sure everything is on the “up and up.” He also appeared to encourage supporters to show up with friends to “go check out areas because a lot of bad things happen.”
From [HERE] The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. However, the CIA is apparently not investigating the GOP's "Crosscheck" voter purge program for manipulation of the voting system. Rep. Alcee Hastingshas called for criminal indictments and formally requested a Congressional investigation into Crosscheck's impact on the election. [MORE]
Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. According to the Wall Street Journal last month, Russia was in contact with the team of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign and the country’s deputy foreign minister said "this work will continue." [MORE]
In a state of unconscious attachment to racial stupidity, zombied out racists don't give a shit about Trump/Russia or anything else. These suckers want to be deceived. To the white votary Trump hates niggers & that is all that matters to them. Never mind "alt-right" or "David Duke" - look behind the curtain; this white votary, they are the same "normal," "middle of the road," "Brady Bunch," white folks who refused to accept Black people's money at segregated lunch counters in the 60's even if they were broke & needed business at their raggedy ass stores. The same assholes who hate standing behind non-whites in line at the CVS. These mind blocked robots will vote against equal pay, protecting their environment and pervert their own judicial systems & do whatever else because they really hateniggers. White supremacy/racism is a virus in the mind.
This news story seems to be designed to confuse & distract from the fact that this shrinking white votary must rig elections through suppression tactics to survive. There is no democracy here. Your meaningless vote also does not count.
At any rate, the U.S. has been interfering with elections in other nations for decades and has proudly boasted about it. [MORE]
Crosscheck. According to investigative journalist Greg Palast millions of non-white voters were purged by a program known as the Interstate Crosscheck. Crosscheck has nothing to do with electronic voting or Russians.
The program, launched in 2005 by racist suspect, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach [in photo], was designed as a method to counter voter fraud through so-called "double voting." Double voting occurs when the same person registers to vote in more than one state and then casts multiple ballots on election day in different states. It is a felony criminal offense. With no factual basis or evidence of actual fraud - that is no prosecutions, arrests or convictions, the GOP have claimed that double voting is rampant in the US.
Interstate Crosscheck removes a voter from the voter list if the voter's name appears to be registered in more than one state. Around 7 million names were put on the list of “potential double voters” before the 2014 election. Crosscheck then compares each state’s list with lists from other states in the program (30 states participate).
Although the Crosscheck program aims to prevent individuals from voting in more than one state in the same election, Crosscheck has been doing the exact opposite and is used to remove legitmate voters from voting rolls. Greg Palast has claimed that before a single vote was even cast, the election was already fixed by Trump operatives who eliminated millions of legitimate African American, Latino and Asian voters from the voter rolls in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
An investigation in Rolling Stone found that Crosscheck uses a biased and questionable methodology that puts voters with African-American, Latino, and Asian names in greater danger of being purged from the voter list and being falsely accused of double voting. Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.
However, in practice a quarter of the names on the list did not have a middle name match or were only partially the same name. The list contained thousands of errors. The system also neglected to take into account designations of Jr. and Sr., and did not include any Social Security numbers to croscheck whether the suspected voter is the same person.
How was the list manipulated? An overwhelmingly disproportionate number of non-whites have been removed who have typical Black, Latino and Asian last names and who reside in predominately minority zip codes. Names such as Jackson, Garcia and Wong in areas such as Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. “If your name is Washington, there’s an 89 percent chance you’re African-American,” says Palast. “If your last name is Hernandez, there’s a 94 percent chance you’re Hispanic.” Finding these common names the GOP targeted non-white voters and put them on the list and then stopped them from voting on election day.
For instance, if the common name "Jose Garcia" appears on voter rolls in Wisconsin and Michigan it was removed from the rolls in both states without any cross referencing for middle name or social security number. When "Jose Garcia" appeared to vote on election day he would be given a provisional ballot -which would never get counted.
This inherent bias in the Crosscheck database results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans landing on what Palast dubs “Trump’s hit list.” His investigators calculated 1.1 million non-white people, many spread over crucial swing states were deprived of their right to vote on election day. Thus far, Palast's claims have not been refuted.
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922
Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257
Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824
Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008
North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393
Enough votes to swing the election away from the Hillary Clinton victory predicted in polls – explaining suspicious exit polls inconsistencies – and towards a "suprising" result for Trump and Republican victory in the Senate. [MORE] and [MORE]
If They Do "Justice" on White Folks Like This then How Will They Murder "the Blacks?" Like my man said, "Although America goes on claiming to be the greatest democracy in the world, it is sheer bullshit." [MORE]
From [HERE] and [HERE] A white Alabama inmate heaved and coughed during his execution Thursday night, a lethal injection process that lasted for more than half an hour, according to media witnesses.[translation for Trump voters: lethal weapon is not just a 'tv shaw' on Fox. The death penalty is state approved murder. "Civilization still remains an idea – it has not become a reality." Like KRS said, "your government is corrupt.]
The lethal injection came after a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court decided not to step in, but with four of the eight justices saying they would have stayed the execution, one shy of the number needed to halt the process.
Ronald Bert Smith Jr., 45, was sentenced to death for killing Casey Wilson, a convenience-store clerk, during a robbery in 1994, according to court records. Prosecutors said that Smith pistol-whipped Wilson, shot him and then returned to shoot the clerk again, killing him. Wilson also was white.
During the 34-minute execution at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Smith heaved and coughed for about 13 minutes and underwent two consciousness tests to make sure he couldn't feel pain.
Smith's last words publicly were "no ma'am" when he was asked by the warden if he wanted to make a statement. However, he was moving his lips before and after the drugs were administered.
During 13 minutes of the execution, from about 10:34 to 10:47, Smith appeared to be struggling for breath and heaved and coughed and clenched his left fist after apparently being administered the first drug in the three-drug combination. At times his left eye also appeared to be slightly open.
A Department of Corrections captain performed two consciousness checks before they proceeded with administering the next two drugs to stop his breathing and heart.
The consciousness tests consist of the corrections officer calling out Smith's name, brushing his eyebrows back, and pinching him under his left arm.
Smith continued to heave, gasp and cough after the first test was performed at 10:37 p.m. and again at 10:47 p.m.. After the second one, Smith's right arm and hand moved.
Smith had claimed in a lawsuit challenging Alabama's lethal injection protocol that the first drug to sedate may not make inmates insensate enough so they can't feel the burning pain the next two drugs would cause.
None of Smith's family members attended the execution. Two of his lawyers, however, did witness the execution and clearly had a problem with the way the execution was proceeding. At one point while their client was struggling, one of the attorneys said out loud that he and another attorney had warned prison officials that a contingency plan was needed if an inmate struggled like that.
“There will be an autopsy that will be done on Mr. Smith,” Jefferson Dunn, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, said in a briefing after the execution. “And if there were any irregularities or anything, then that would be shown, borne out, in the autopsy.”
Dunn said that officials “followed the protocol according to the way it is written.”
Alabama uses a combination of three drugs during executions. Although the state corrections department considers its execution protocol confidential, a spokesman has confirmed to The Washington Post that it uses midazolam and two other drugs during lethal injections.
In response to a years-long shortage of lethal-injection drugs, prompted in part by European opposition to the death penalty, which halted a supply of the chemicals, states have altered their execution protocols to adopt new drug combinations.
Last year, the Supreme Court heard a case involving Oklahoma’s use of midazolam after those high-profile executions. The justices upheld use of the drug, but they were bitterly divided on both that case and larger questions regarding the death penalty.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to stay Smith’s execution Thursday came a month after the shorthanded court halted the execution of Thomas Arthur, another inmate in Alabama, by a thin margin. Four justices in that case said they thought it warranted a stay, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he would vote with them as a courtesy. (The four justices were not identified in the court’s order at the time, but it is likely they were the same four justices who would have granted the stay Thursday for Smith.)
It takes four votes on the court to accept a case for review but five to grant a stay. Roberts’s vote last month meant that Arthur remained alive while the court considered whether to review his case and the question about the Alabama death penalty he posed.
There was no such “courtesy” vote Thursday night in Smith’s case, and the justices did not provide explanations for their decisions. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — the justice assigned to the 11th Circuit, which includes Alabama — denied the last stay request shortly before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. Smith was pronounced dead a little more than 90 minutes later.
Last-minute attempts to have the Supreme Court prevent executions are expected. But the frantic and unsuccessful effort Thursday to save Smith may have revealed something about the court and the unwillingness of conservative justices to even temporarily spare those on death row.
At one point Thursday evening, the Supreme Court denied the stay, but the four liberal justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — all said they would have granted that request.
They did not give a reason, but apparently wanted more time to consider Smith’s claim that Alabama’s death penalty system held at least as many constitutional problems as the Florida statute the Supreme Court voided last term. Both states did not give the final decision on whether to impose a death penalty to the jury.
A jury in Alabama had voted to give Smith life in prison, rather than a death sentence, by a vote of 7 to 5, but the judge overruled that and sentenced him to death. Attorneys for Smith argued in Supreme Court filings against that death sentence based on the judge overruling the jury, but Alabama prosecutors rejected those claims, saying that Smith should be executed for the “extraordinarily brutal” killing.
Smith’s attorneys said Thursday that “the Court should not permit executions in the face of four dissents,” stating that “the Court’s inconsistent practices respecting 5-4 stay denials in capital cases clash with the appearance and reality both of equal justice under law and of sound judicial decision-making.”
Other people have been executed despite four justices voting to spare them. But the court’s action raised the question of why Arthur received the stay but not Smith. As is the court’s custom, it was not explained. [MORE]
Smith’s attorneys had pointed to the Supreme Court decision early this year to strike down Florida’s death penalty as unconstitutional because it let judges, rather than juries, make the final call on death sentences. The decision has thrown Florida’s death penalty system, which includes the country’s second-largest death row, into disarray. Florida lawmakers rewrote their state’s death penalty statute in response to the high court’s ruling, but in October, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the new statute as unconstitutional.
Alabama — which, like Florida, is among the country’s modern leaders in capital punishment — lets judges overrule a finding by juries about whether convicted people should be put to death. An Alabama inmate earlier this year had argued that the state’s system was “virtually identical” to the earlier system struck down in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Christopher Brooks’s appeals, and he was executed in January, the state’s only other execution this year.
SNAGs - $nitch-ass Negroes Aiding Governments. 2) COINTEL-BROs. 3) SmileNegroAnd Grin - while I put it in. 'SNAGs are coin-operated, sniggering negroes on the stroll who support the psychopathological dominant minority elite European global racist-supremacist mindset and Agenda along with its narcissistic projections and population control objectives (genocide and eugenics). Dr. Blynd asks, "It's easy to heckle and hyde, but why do we seem to always let self-hating sucker-perpetrating- Negroes electric slide? '[MORE]
Racists Often Promote Incompetent or Unqualified Blacks In Order To Produce Confusion & Failure. From [HERE] To sail his little paper boats about urban renewal for "the Blacks" Mr. Trump has chosen coin operated, COINTELBRO-HoBen Carsonto oversee the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities,” Mr. Trump said in a statement Monday morning. “We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities.”
With no experience in government or running a large bureaucracy, Mr. Carson, 65, publicly waffled over whether to join the administration. Initially he said he was uninterested in working in a cabinet position b/c he was unqualified to do so. His aide, Armstrong Williams told The Hill on Nov. 15, Carson “feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” [MORE]. Despite the white media's insistence that he is a brilliant doctor, this man is sleep, dull and sounds concussed.
Now he will oversee an agency with a $47 billion budget, bringing to the job a philosophical opposition to government programs that encourage what he calls “dependency” and engage in “social engineering.” Although the GOP promotes some story about him growing up in the projects - according to USA Today Ben Carson never lived in public housing. [MORE]
The Department of Housing and Urban Development oversees programs that provide vouchers and other rental assistance for five million low-income families, fights urban blight and helps struggling homeowners stave off foreclosures.
Housing policy was rarely mentioned on the campaign trail by candidates in either party. When Mr. Trump spoke of “inner cities,” he painted with a broad brush to describe the lives of poor blacks and Hispanics as “a disaster,” pleading for their votes by asking, “What do you have to lose?”
"A disaster" created by racism/white supremacy. Racist Trump has nothing but hatred & contempt for non-white people b/c they look different from him and can produce color. So, he chose an incompetent to lead this agency. As opposed to poverty being a symptom of white supremacy/racism, Carson says "poverty is a personal choice." [see video below]. In other words, he believes something is inherently wrong with poor people - particularly Black people, himself included. Thus, he is crazy. "It is not so much that the European says we are inferior and that the European maligns our character, et cetera. It is the belief on our part that what he says is true that drives us to be crazy. It is a crazy reaction to what the European says, an insane and unthinking kind of approach to dealing with what he says about us, that maintains the craziness." [MORE] and [MORE]
Carson, who spent the bulk of his career in a job that has nothing whatsoever to do with housing policy, is an odd choice for this job. The current HUD secretary, Julian Castro, is a former big city mayor. The guy who held it before him led New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The guy who held it before him previously ran the Small Business Administration. The guy who held it before him ran the Dallas Housing Authority. Typically, secretaries of housing and urban development are people who have professional experience working in housing or urban development.
Carson, however, has not been completely silent on housing policy. In 2015, he signed an op-ed in the Washington Times critical of the Obama administration’s efforts to desegregate neighborhoods. In that op-ed, Carson also criticized a Supreme Court decision which left intact a key provision of the federal law banning housing discrimination.
During the Obama administration, the Justice Department used these disparate impact suits to score major settlements against banks engaged in discriminatory practices. DOJ, for example, entered into a $335 million settlement with the mortgage lender Countrywide after discovering that the lender “charged higher fees and rates to more than 200,000 minority borrowers across the country than to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk.”
Despite the fact housing discrimination persists (African Americans with good credit scores were 3.5 times as likely as whites with good credit scores to receive higher-interest-rate loans, and Latinos were 3.1 times as likely to receive such loans. And the Federal Reserve found that in 2009, African Americans were twice as likely to be denied a loan, even controlling for income and other qualifying criteria) Carson believes that the Fair Housing Act needs to be weaker.
In his Washington Times op-ed, the former surgeon labeled disparate impact suits “mandated social-engineering schemes,” and dismissed them as part of a “history of failed socialist experiments in this country.” Carson also aligned himself with a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, which would have eliminated such suits under the Fair Housing Act. [MORE] Right, this mf is stupid so therefore he is perfect to be in charge of something racists could care less about. Like hiring a lifeguard who can't swim. What's next? Kevin Hart as special federal prosecutor against police brutality? Do you remember the SNigger that Bush put in charge of HUD, Alphonso Jackson?? [MORE] See left photo.
Shadowboxing For Racists. [Racial Shadow Boxing occurs when victims of racism (non-white people) are directly or indirectly, "assigned", bribed, coerced, and/or otherwise influenced, by the racists (white Supremacist), to speak or act to do harm to other victims of racism. White Supremacists oftentimes hide behind others whom they use as shadows of themselves. [MORE].
Carson was the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 7, 2013 and made it big with racists. The speech garnered Carson considerable attention because the event is normally apolitical in nature, and the speech was critical of the philosophy and policies of President Barack Obama, who was sitting 10 feet away [MORE]. The GOP searched far and wide to find anybody Black to express their opinions about Obama. He also later said, President Barack Obama was “raised white” and doesn’t really represent the “experience of black Americans.” [MORE] Fuck Ben Carson.
Carson also has shadowboxed Muslims, ignorantly stating "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson said. “I absolutely would not agree with that.” [MORE] and [MORE]
GOP Black Rolebot. (A role-bot merely plays the role of the mask - the personae - society issued and approved. [MORE] This alleged brother goes around with this rags to riches story that feels like bullshit. He is a rolebot for the GOP with this re-born negro character he portrays for white folks. [like a westworld host] His personal story line is one that Republican voters (white people) find so appealing — he says his so-called hard upbringing aided his transformation into a good reformed Christian. But the story is always changing. In his autobiography he originally said he attempted to stab a friend — but now says the victim was a “close relative.” Yet CNN interviewed several former classmates and neighbors of Carson and found that those “who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” a former classmate, Gerald Ware, told CNN. “It would have been all over the whole school.” It is unclear who he is trying to impress with his talk about how hood he imagines he used to be. [MORE] However, his fabricated admissions are lock step with the racist perception that there is no innocent Black male, just Black male criminals who have not yet been detected, apprehended or convicted. [MORE] But thanks to the white Jesus and Jesus' daddy (God, also a white man) reform of Blacks is possbile.
Carson’s campaign manager, Armstrong Williams, responded to questions from CNN about the accuracy of his little bio saying: “Why would anyone cooperate with your obvious witch hunt? No comment and moving on…… Happy Halloween!!!!!” Carson himself said that the media was simply trying to paint him as “a pathological liar.” “The story is well-documented,” Carson said, according to ABC News. “If you choose not to believe it, if it doesn’t fit the narrative that you want, that’s fine. Let’s let the American people decide.”
Carson also claims he was once held at gunpoint at a Popeyes restaurant in Baltimore. Neither the Baltimore police department nor Popeyes could corroborate Carson's story, since no police report had been found.
He also lied about his "harrowing tale of how he sheltered his white classmates during Detroit race riots after MLK was murdered. Race riots ravaged Detroit’s Southwestern High, which enrolled more black students than white students.Carson, a junior lab assistant at the school with a key to the school’s biology workroom, claims he shepherded his frightened white buddies to the lab to shield them from the violence, he told the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal spoke with a half dozen of Carson’s classmates and his high school physics teacher — and not one remembered his heroic acts.[MORE]
He will say anything b/c he is a whore for racists. [MORE] Since his retirement in 2013 Carson and his wife reported income of between $8.9 million and $27 million from January 2014 to May 3, 2015. [MORE] White supremacy is big business.
Black Lives Don't Matter. “We need to talk about what the real issues are and not get caught up in silliness like this matters or that matters,” he said at a rally to defund Planned Parenthood outside the U.S. Capitol, where protesters held signs reading “Unborn Lives Matter.”
“Of course all lives matter. I don’t want to get into it, it’s so silly,” he continued, laughing to himself. “Black lives are part of all lives, right? When we’re talking about a culture of life, then we ought to be talking about a culture of life and not allow ourselves to get caught up in all the divisive rhetoric and terminology and political correctness. It’s the reason we can’t make any progress as a society.” [MORE]
Potted Plant for White Party with Fake Campaign. Carson's bid for the presidency appeared to be pure propaganda designed to make this party of neanderthal racists seem more moderate to white moderates. That is, by all accounts the campaign was fake. In total, Ben Carson's campaign spent $58 million. However, most of the money went to political consultants and fundraising rather than advertising. Rather than admitting being a puppet cadidate Carson so-called "questioned" whether his campaign was economically sabotaged from within. [MORE] and [MORE]
That state of affairs raised eyebrows and may have contributed to a major top-level staff shakeup at the end of last year. Now even Carson himself admits his moribund campaign has had the appearance of a big scam.
During an appearance on “CNN Newsroom," Carson, referring to the propensity of his staffers to raise and spend huge sums of money, laughed and said, “We had people who didn’t really seem to understand finances… or maybe they did — maybe they were doing it on purpose.”
The profligacy of Carson’s campaign stands in sharp contrast to the discussion of fiscal responsibility on his website, which says, “The fiscal irresponsibility of our federal government must stop. We cannot go on mortgaging our future to wasteful spending and pretend that nothing is wrong.”
“I will institute fiscal discipline in Washington in order to restore a bright future for our children and grandchildren,” Carson’s “Prescription for a Responsible and Efficient Government” adds. [MORE]
In November 2015, Carson's campaign aired a 60-second TV advertisement in which excerpts from Carson's stump speech were intercut with a rap by a wack "artist" named Aspiring Mogul [see video above. shit is wack. so wack its demeaning to Blacks]. They spent $150,000 on the ads, which were aired in Atlanta, Detroit and Miami.Carson initially weakly defended the ad, saying "Well, there are people in the campaign who felt that was a good way to do things ... I support them in doing that, but I probably would have taken a little different approach."He then later said the advertisement was done without his knowledge, that "it was done by people who have no concept of the black community and what they were doing", and that he was "horrified" by it. A reporter pointed out that the advertisement contained an explicit approval statement from Carson, and he replied "Well, obviously. But you notice no more of those kind of ads coming out now." [MORE] wha?
Then in late April, Carson wrote to the Nevada Republican Party, requesting the two delegates he won in Nevada be released and free to support whoever they want [MORE]
Ben Carson also hired racist suspect, former federal judge Charles W. Pickering to serve as his Mississippi state chair. In a statement, Carson said he is grateful for the retired judge’s “trust and confidence,” and Pickering said Carson has the “integrity and moral authority to lead and bring America together.” Yet Pickering has a troubled history of racism and support for apartheid. Most notably, he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and attacked advocates who were working to end Jim Crow during the 1960s. [MORE]
Monday, January 16, 2017 at 07:38PM 
