Little Gold Statues & Lots of Gun Deaths

Oprah reacts to being mistaken for Whoopi

It wasn't really my plan to "boycott" the Oscars last night.

The idea of black Hollywood heavyweights who are privileged enough to be able to attend the American film industry's premiere awards event staying away struck me as counterproductive to the goal of increasing diversity in the industry - and not supportive of host Chris Rock.

After Website Total Beauty posted a photo of Whoopi Goldberg on the red carpet and confused her with Oprah Winfrey, my guess is Oprah is glad she decided to stay home to watch the Oscars with best friend Gayle King.

Oprah's facial reaction posted online is priceless. Total Beauty? Total ****up.

For me personally, after a long day at work on Saturday, I just didn't feel a particular need to spend 4 hours on a Sunday evening watching an industry awards show.

Instead I opted for periodic updates on the New York Times mobile app as the winners were announced while I caught up on some reading - Russ Belville's Huffington Post blog about the rather sketchy math behind Hillary Clinton's sweeping up Democratic "Superdelegates" in the primaries was quite illuminating.

As for the Oscars, there's been so much discussion, so much written about the Academy's failure to nominate the work of a single non-white performer in the past month that I was kind of worn out from it by the time the actual ceremony came around.

The way I see it, it's 2016, either Hollywood is going to get it, or they won't - either they want to be culturally relevant to an increasingly diverse global film audience, or they don't.

Frankly I'm more interested in seeing how the film industry decides to begin to develop concrete ways to incorporate a wider diversity in terms of casting in front of the camera, hiring in positions behind the camera and in the executive suite - and the kinds of stories that make it through the arduous approval-production process to be made into the kinds of mainstream films that benefit from the extensive marketing campaigns, global theatrical distribution and organized awards campaigns that major studios can bankroll. 

As much as I love film, I guess I just wasn't in a celebratory mood on Sunday.

Chicago memorial for 5 people (including an infant) shot & killed

Even with the extra Leap Year day (thanks to Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.), February is a short month, but it's been a long one in terms of gun violence in this country.

The two recent mass shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan by 45-year-old Uber driver Jason Dalton (who shot eight people and killed six), and last Thursday in the small Kansas town of Hesston where Cedric Ford killed three people and injured fourteen before taking his own life, were just two of an astounding 36 mass shootings that have taken place in the United States in 2016.

According to stats tracked by the non-profit GunViolenceArchive.org, there have been 2,011 gun deaths in the U.S. this year, including 82 children 11-years-old or younger and 438 teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17 killed - 520 kids in two months.

Out of an estimated 7,777 gun-related incidents through January and February, there were approximately 233 defensive uses of a gun.

There have also been an estimated 766 officer-involved shootings in 2016.

Have you seen the comprehensive LA Times report covering each of the victims killed by police in Los Angeles since 2000?

Those, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who've been quick to demonize and dismiss the Black Lives Matters protest movement against excessive use of force by police should take some time and go through the LA Times article; not all of those homicide victims of LA cops were angels, some were innocent.

Many, you have to wonder why they were shot at all - a question that needs to be asked equally of gang members, perpetrators of mass shootings as well as cops prone to use of excessive force.

Ex NYPD officer Peter Liang

I can't honestly recall ever having seen such widespread protests by members of the Chinese-American community as I have in the past few weeks as thousands of people in various cities across the U.S. have  expressed outrage over the recent conviction of former NYPD police officer Peter Liang for manslaughter in the shooting death of Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project building in 2015.

On one hand I think members of the Chinese-American community have a right to be upset over the fact that a scared rookie cop born in Hong Kong gets manslaughter for mistakenly firing his weapon in a dark stairwell and killing Gurley; though he must face responsibility for his actions.

While NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was caught on videotape intentionally using an illegal choke hold on Eric Garner as the man pleaded for his life - not only did Pantaleo face no charges  thanks to a Staten Island grand jury, he's still on paid duty as we speak.

Liang was fired from the NYPD.

And as I've blogged about before, Pantaleo has a history of excessive force and racial bias while on duty - interesting that a rookie Asian-America cop catches the manslaughter charge while the Italian-American cop walks. And two more unarmed Africa-American men are dead.

Granted, it didn't help Liang that he stepped around Gurley's body after shooting him, refused to offer medical aid, then used his phone to call his police union rep rather than call an ambulance.

As Chris Rock observed during the Oscar ceremony, there are some things that happen (or have happened) in this world that make the Academy best acting nomination snubs seem trivial.

But I think the Oscar protests that were taking place down the street from the ceremony last night, and the recent protests by Chinese-Americans over Peter Liang being found guilty of manslaughter for shooting an innocent man walking down the steps with his girlfriend are both linked with the larger Black Lives Matter protests.

Some are about professional snubs, some are about life and death, but they're all related to the wrinkles and tears in the cultural fabric in this nation.

And they're certainly more important than a little gold statue.

The Republican's White Elephant

After last night's Republican presidential debate, which seemed more like televised gladiatorial combat than an open exchange of ideas, my only question to the Republican party is this:

Why did it take so long for someone to stand up and confront front-runner Donald Trump?

Is it too late for Rubio at this point?


For month's, the country and the world have watched in horror as Trump has energized what's been a fairly marginalized and disenfranchised segment of the Republican voter base with inflammatory language laced with a toxic mix of anti-immigrant xenophobia, racism and delusional pie-in-the-sky campaign promises that have nothing to do with a coherent political strategy for governance.

The Republican brand was already bruised and tarnished from ten years of the GOP's having relinquished their party to the narrow self-interests of zealot anti-tax, anti-government libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.

Right-wing oligarchs who bankrolled the Tea Party with the help of  Fox News and saddled us with ideologically unhinged politicians like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz.

Which makes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's announcement today that he's endorsing Trump all the more bizarre.

All ahead full! Chris Christie endorses The Donald?

Christie left the Garden State on his quest for glory as a fairly moderate Republican who appealed to Democratic voters over a year ago and came back, well, like this.

Just weeks ago on the campaign trail Christie was vilifying Trump as the embodiment of evil.

As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows; Christie backing Trump is like learning Vito Corleone is teaming up with Don Barzini.

Christie will soon be back in the media headlines with the approach of the Bridgegate trial, so maybe he needs all the friends he can get - even a candidate whose two main campaign promises seem to be building a really big wall and assuring Americans "there'll be so much winning"- if he's elected president, whatever that means...

On behalf of many reasonable-minded New Jersey-folk, we're as confused as you are about this.

Plus we have two more years of him as governor. (Sigh)

Thanks in part to Trump's unhinged political campaign, the GOP's public perception has sunk so low even conservative South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told an audience gathered at a dinner last night that "My party has gone batshit crazy."

The day before Graham made that comment, former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke took aim at the ethnicity and race of Cuban-American GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and African-American candidate Ben Carson when he told the audience of his radio show:

"Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage." 

These people.

That could be the new motto for the Republican party. There's little doubt that "these people" is a hardly-secret codeword meant to characterize anyone who isn't conservative, Christian and white.

White supremacist David Duke

As David Duke urged the white nationalist listeners of his radio show on Wednesday:

"...call Donald Trump's headquarters, volunteer...Go in there, you're gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have."

And therein lies the dilemma of the great white elephant currently crowding the roomful of increasingly nervous Republicans.



Nudging it with a stick isn't going to make it leave.

It won't leave nicely if asked.

Shooting it would be excessive.

But as the presidential campaign season comes closer to the Republicans having to choose a candidate, they can no longer pretend the stench of that elephant isn't making the room unbearable to be in.

Christie's Friday Night Slight (Of Hand)

President Richard M. Nixon

Anyone familiar with media, business, politics or the law knows that the release of information to the public that's negative or potentially harmful to a business, institution, organization or individual, is a precarious matter.

To reduce the risk, you release it on a Friday or Saturday night at the low end of the weekly news cycle to minimize the damage or fallout.

It doesn't always work.

One of the best historical examples from the political realm is the infamous Saturday Night Massacre that took place on Saturday October 20, 1973.

At the height of the Watergate Investigations, the independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox took the unprecedented step of issuing a subpoena to then-President Richard Nixon requesting copies of conversations from the Oval Office of the White House that had been secretly taped (and ordered) by Nixon; between February 1971 and July 1973, Nixon recorded at least 3,700 hours of Oval Office conversations and phone calls which came to be known popularly as "The Nixon Tapes."

Archibald Cox (left) & Elliot Richardson (right)

On Friday October 19, 1973, Nixon suggested that the notoriously hard-of-hearing 72-year-old Democratic Senator from Mississippi named John C. Stennis instead listen to the tapes and summarize them for Cox.

Cox refused this absurd suggestion, and on Saturday October 20th an enraged Nixon ordered then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, Richardson refused and resigned in protest.

Nixon then ordered  Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, he too refused and resigned in protest.

That night Nixon summoned the Solicitor General of the United States Robert Bork (an eventual Supreme Court nominee) to the White House and Bork finally fired Cox - shaking the foundations of American Democracy and politics, enraging the American public and bringing about Nixon's eventual resignation.

Now in no way am I comparing the Bridgegate scandal that haunted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie like a clingy ghost throughout his 2016 presidential run.

But as Jonathan D. Salant reported for NJ.com at 10:35pm last Friday night, the state attorney general's office released  the latest invoices showing that New Jersey taxpayers are now responsible for an astounding $10 million in legal fees related to the Bridgegate scandal.

About the only thing quieter than Christie's unceremonious withdrawal from the 2016 GOP presidential race after his sixth place finish in the recent New Hampshire primary, was the release of those bills form Stroz Friedburg, a forensics firm that specializes in data analysis and investigations.
 
Thus far Stroz Friedburg has billed NJ taxpayers $2.3 million for work related to collecting the volumes of official emails from the governor's office and organizing them for the investigation.

That $2.3 million comes on top of the $8 million billed to Garden State taxpayers from law firm Gibson, Dunn & Cratcher, the firm Christie hired to defend himself against the charges related to Bridgegate.

Debra Wong Yang

As NJ.com reports, Gibson, Dunn & Cratcher is the same firm that issued a "report" that conveniently exonerated Christie of any wrongdoing in the scandal and instead scapegoated Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly.

The report was authored by firm partner Randy Mastro a close associate of Christie - federal judge ripped the law firm for failing to keep notes of conversations and interviews of witnesses.

Sketchy? It gets better.

As reporter Matt Katz reported for WNYC back in December, Christie's personal friend Debra Wong Yang, who (luckily for Christie) leads the crisis management practice group for Gibson, Dunn & Cratcher and is  one of the lawyers who interviewed Christie for the Bridgegate investigation.

In a remarkable example of blatant conflict of interest, she also hosted a $2,700 a-plate fundraiser for Christie in Los Angeles, and is one of the 28 different Gibson, Dunn & Cratcher lawyers who've made donations to Christie's 2016 presidential campaign.

Small wonder the acting NJ Attorney General John Jay Hoffman's office reported that "more than a dozen of the firm's attorney's work at a 'blended rate' of $350 an hour."

Christie's relationship with acting at Hoffman (who's been the state's "acting" AG since 2013 only because Christie decided not to subject him to the Senate approval process...) is fraught with a disturbing variety of fundamental conflict of interest issues.
 

NJ Attorney General John Jay Hoffman

Not simply because of their personal relationship, but because of the politically incestuous proximity of their professional offices and the fact that New Jersey is one of only five states in America where the governor appoints the attorney general to office.

Yup. That''s right, the governor personally appoints the state's top official responsible for law enforcement.

Ripe for abuse?


Like a fat juicy grape on a Napa Valley vine during harvest season.

As reporter Bob Jordan observed in an article for The Courier Post in May 2015, the governor's appointment of the AG in New Jersey is one of those untidy little open secrets in the Garden State that people have been griping about for years.

It not only undermines the independence of the AG's office, it calls into the question the fundamental checks and balances of power a Democratically elected state government should have as a foundation.

It is of interest to note fifteen days before the release of the $2.3 million bill to NJ taxpayers from Stroz Frieburg last Friday, John Jay Hoffman, who's been notoriously reluctant to pursue any investigations of Christie's office (go figure!) announced that he will be resigning his office in March to take a position with Rutgers University with an annual salary of $395,000.

Hoffman made his announcement on February 4th, exactly one day before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton began hearing oral arguments from lawyers for former Christie Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey related to their pending trial for charges related to the Bridgeate scandal.

It's not Watergate, but it's a "Gate" with a capital G.

Trump's South Carolina Primary Win Taken With Salt

Trump addresses supporters in South Carolina 

Anyone troubled by Donald Trump's decisive victory in last night's South Carolina Republican presidential primary should keep a few things in mind.

First, like the residents of most states where presidential primaries or caucuses are held, residents of the Palmetto State have been fond of bragging about their state's penchant for accurately predicting the eventual Republican nominee in the past.

Take that with a big grain of salt.

The last time around in 2012, South Carolina picked the divisive former House Speaker and pillar of Republican obstructionism Newt Gingrich - who had about as much chance of winning a general election as Sarah Palin.

So while Trump's victory does add to his momentum, with all due respect to the good citizens of South Carolina, winning a presidential primary there doesn't tell us a whole lot about how he'd fare in the larger general election.

Especially in the current political environment in which conservative primary voter's tendency to lean towards anti-establishment figures with zero political experience (Trump, Carson) could be seen as a reflection of frustration with a dysfunctional Washington political environment, anger at President Obama, or anxiety about the one-sided "economic recovery" that has left the vast majority of the voters who support Trump (disenfranchised white male and female citizens with some or no college education) left out in the same cold where most supporters of Bernie Sanders are.

2012 electoral college map results for Obama's 2nd win

Second, consider the numbers.

By that I mean the all-important 538 electoral college votes up for grabs in the 2016 presidential election.

270 are needed to win it.

In the last 2012 election, President Obama won 322 electoral votes to Mitt Romney's 206.



Thus far Trump has won victories in New Hampshire, which has 4 electoral votes, and South Carolina, which has 9 electoral votes - Iowa, which Senator Ted Cruz won, has 6 electoral votes.

So if you look at a breakdown of the electoral college votes by state, in effect, if we use the primary / caucus votes so far as a gauge of the 2016 presidential elections, Trump has "won" a total of thirteen electoral votes of the 270 he would need to win.

As far as winning the Republican nomination to be the 2016 presidential candidate, those votes are significant, but as far as him going head-to-head against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in a general election, it really doesn't tell us all that much.

2010 U.S. Census demographics by race

Based on the most recent available U.S. Census data, the state of Iowa is about 91.3% white, New Hampshire is 93.9% white and South Carolina is about 68.3% white, 27.9% black and 1.5% Asian.

Let's not forget that South Carolina was the state where voters were swayed, in part, to vote for George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential election after members of the Bush campaign printed up thousands of fliers that falsely accused Senator John McCain of having fathered a black child and placed them under the windshields of South Carolinians vehicles in order to tap into the racist undercurrent that is such a part of the state's history.

The current crop of Republican candidates have engaged in such shenanigans as well.

As reporter Schuyler Kropf reported in The Post and Courier on Friday February 19th, the day before the primary, pro-Ted Cruz robo-calls went out criticizing Trump and Republican Governor Nikki Haley for having weighed in on removing the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina statehouse last year.

Specifically the robo-call chided Trump for "talking about our flag like it's a social disease."  

Using language like that to describe the Confederate flag is simply a more high-tech version of slipping racist fliers on the windshields of cars - but the fliers were used in 2015 too.

KKK flyers found on South Carolina cars in July, 2015

A month after racist killer Dylann Roof walked into a prayer service at the Emanuele African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston and shot nine innocent African-Americans on June 17, 2015, the same tactics were used again.

As WBTW reported, a month later on the night of July 14, 2015, groups of white men in pickup trucks waving Confederate flags were seen driving through the predominantly black Dorchester Waylyn neighborhood of North Charleston, South Carolina the night before flyers from the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were found placed under the windshields of resident's cars.

It's certainly not fair, or my intention, to dismiss all whites who live in South Carolina as being racist against blacks, or harboring bias against Hispanic or other racial groups or ethnicities.

However, it is fair to say that Donald Trump's divisive language and rhetoric played well to conservative white primary voters on Saturday night, and it was a factor in his winning the primary with 32.5% of the vote - a 10% margin of victory over Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who basically split 2nd place with 22.5% and 22.3% of the vote respectively.

The "big" electoral vote states like California (55 electoral votes), Texas (38 electoral votes), Florida and New York (29 electoral votes), Illinois and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and Ohio (18 electoral votes) are all far more racially diverse.

Major power brokers in the Republican party are rightfully concerned over how Trump's huge unfavorable poll ratings amongst non-whites and women will affect Republican chances in the 2016 general election when the votes of citizens of African descent, Hispanics and Asians will have a much larger impact.

Which is why Republicans have spent so much time and effort enacting "voter ID laws" around the country to put up barriers to make it harder for people of color, other ethnicities and legal immigrants to cast votes.

Many political observers, myself included, are waiting to see how Trump's open embrace of bigotry (he's been endorsed by white supremacist groups), anti-immigrant hysteria and total lack of foreign policy experience would play out in a national election.

Conservative thinker Pat Buchanan

As the paleoconservative thinker and author Pat Buchanan (a presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996) observed in an interesting Washington Post interview with Chris Cillizza back in January, Senator John McCain lost the African-American vote 24-1 in the 2008 presidential race, and Mitt Romney lost the Hispanic vote in 2012 by 70%.

Should Trump lose California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio by those kinds of margins, Republicans are going to have to wait until 2020 to mount another attempt to retake the White House - and by that time the shifting demographic make-up to a far more diverse American populace are going to render the current Republican party even more irrelevant.

Thus far Trump's only coherent policy position seems to be the construction of a wall hundreds of miles long along the southern border of the United States and a totally unrealistic pledge to deport up to 11 million illegal immigrants.

Despite repugnant conservative smear tactics, the vast majority of those people work AND pay taxes.

In 2015, a nationwide study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported that the approximately 11-plus million illegal immigrants in the U.S. paid about $11.84 billion in local and state taxes in 2012 - so Trump's signature presidential position would not only cost U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and add to the deficit, it would also strip nearly $12 billion in annual tax revenue from local and state coffers.

Thus far Trump has offered absolutely no realistic plan on how he'd get the current divided do-little Republican-majority Congress to authorize, or pay for, the billions of dollars needed to pass either of those two fantasy initiatives.

In his zeal to win favor amongst the small Tea Party / extremist faction of the Republican party to win the GOP nomination, Trump may very well have rendered himself unelectable in a general election because he's alienated such a huge portion of the U.S. populace.

In the wake of the recent passing of author Harper Lee, maybe Trump should take some time to read Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird", a classic American novel that explores the impact of racism through the lens of a small southern town that 'A Prairie Home Companion'  host Garrison Keillor called a book about "decency".

It's doubtful such literary insight would reverse the damage he's done to his brand with his divisive ranting, but it might help him to understand why most Americans find the idea of him as a president to be unpalatable.

Except in South Carolina.

My guess is current Republican Congressman Joe "You Lie!" Wilson would approve of Saturday night's results - which, like many South Carolina voters, might have more to do with personal racial perspectives than actual political policy.

American Idiot (s)

His Holiness gets medieval on the Donald

My decision to use the term "American Idiot" as the title for tonight's blog has absolutely nothing to do with the title of the Grammy-winning musical of the same name by the band Green Day.

After witnessing so many examples of outright buffoonery by members of the Republican party this week, I can't think of a more appropriate term to describe the shenanigans being perpetrated by members of the "Party of No".

Where to begin?


It's been while since I've given out a George Lincoln Rockwell Award, but this week's hands-down winner has to be Donald Trump.

The astronomically-conceited leading Republican presidential bigot candidate showed his presidential chops earlier in the week when he visited right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage's show on Monday to lend credence to the baseless loony insinuation being bandied about by extremist conservatives that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.

Despite reports from federal marshals (who actually saw the body) that the 79-year-old Scalia died of natural causes related to a serious heart condition he'd had for years, right-wing conspiracy nuts have evidently confused reality with the plot of The Pelican Brief.

Trump's proof? As reported by Caitlin Yilek on TheHill.com on Monday, Trump told Savage:

"...I'm hearing it's a big topic. But they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow." 

Case solved Columbo!

Pope Francis offers his take on Trump's spirituality

But as you've likely heard, Trump once again distinguished himself as a petulant clown-child today by getting into a war of words with Pope Francis after His Holiness told reporters during a conversation on the plane ride home that: 

"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not a Christian. This is not the Gospel."


Having served the Catholic Church for 47 years, it's fair to say Pope Francis knows a little bit about what it means to be Christian.

Versus Trump, who famously reduced the sacred act of communion on the campaign trail last year by insisting, "I drink my little wine, and eat my little crackers." - like some kind of buffoonish simpleton 12-year-old; no doubt that sat well with the Vatican.

After the Holy Father's words went viral around the globe, Trump responded with a series of typically nonsensical responses, but a statement like that from the Pope isn't going to be erased from the minds of the millions of American evangelicals Trump hopes to woo.

And the message, that the Pope thinks Trump is far from presidential material, couldn't be any clearer.

The message to thousands of voters in the state of Wisconsin was pretty clear too after the state's local primary elections held on Tuesday offered the first glimpse of how the new voter ID laws implemented by Governor Scott Walker and the majority-Republican state legislature.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker 

As Alice Ollstein reported in an article for ThinkProgess.org yesterday, across the state some veterans were unable to cast votes because Wisconsin's laws do not consider a valid Military ID card, or a federal Veterans Administration card with a photo to be acceptable forms of ID to vote.

Some college students in different cities were turned away from the polls after presenting valid out of state driver's licenses.

Back in March of 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to expand the types of voter ID's the state can accept to permit residents to cast votes (including military ID's), but Judge Lynn Adelman (a Bill Clinton appointee) denied the ACLU request.

Leave it to Wisconsin Republicans to create a law that will prevent a veteran of the U.S. military from voting because his VA card isn't valid ID - all to protect against almost non-existent voter fraud.

Voter rights advocates are rightfully concerned about how those laws will affect turnout in the upcoming April 5th presidential primary. Outrageous.

Disastrous Republican Governor Sam Brownback 

But across the country in Kansas, where Republican Governor Sam Brownback and his Republican-majority state legislature have plunged the state into socioeconomic turmoil by passing a series of draconian cuts to government spending to finance tax cuts so lavish the state has virtually eliminated some taxes on business completely.

For example, back in April, 2015, I blogged about Brownback enacting almost Orwellian restrictions on how Kansas welfare recipients could spend the modest sums they receive; including limiting cash withdrawals from the state-issued debit card to $25 at a time, subjecting already economically disadvantaged residents to excessive per-transaction fees given that many lower class and poor Kansas residents have limited access to normal banking services and most ATM's don't allow withdrawals in $5 denominations.

Well the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed an appeals court decision that the Republican state legislature had violated Constitutionally-mandated equitable funding for public schools after they switched from a per-pupil formula used to determine public school funding, to a block grant system.

Last Thursday the state Supreme Court ruled that Republican's actions had undercut funding for poorer public school districts by an astounding $54 million, and ordered the legislature to come up with a revised funding formula by June 30th.

As Edward Eveld reported for The Kansas City Star last week, the court ruled that "without a constitutionally equitable school finance system, the schools in Kansas will be unable to operate beyond June 30th," 

Between Trump giving legitimacy to bizarre conspiracy theories about some kind of liberal plot to kill Antonin Scalia, Wisconsin's voter suppression and the massive unequivocal failure of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's use of the state as some kind of "laboratory" for fringe right-wing ideas that bankrupt  government services to enrich the wealthiest few at the expense of public school education - it's like a parade of American idiocy.

As the presidential primaries move into larger states with more diverse populations that accurately reflect the American populace and mainstream thinking, let's hope that like Pope Francis, voters begin to see today's Republican party for what it is.

A party that wants to burn bridges instead of building them.

Buffeted By Reality - Clayton Homes & The American Nightmare

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffet

The wild swings the stock market has taken over the past six weeks have made anyone fortunate enough to have a 401k through an employer, investments through a broker, or maybe some stocks purchased through an IRA account, a little bit nervous.

So a third day of solid gains in the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ today comes as a relief for many.

As a modest investor, I'm not a panicky day-trading reactionary, I keep my eye on the long-term picture.

In general, I follow the investment philosophy advocated by Warren Buffet, the folksy, plain-spoken  chairman of the massive, Omaha, Nebraska-based holding company Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffet, a multi-billionaire and generous philanthropist with a net worth of about $66.7 billion, is the second-wealthiest individual in the United States and widely recognized for his down to earth, no-nonsense approach to investment.

While I don't deify the guy or anything, I've always admired his intelligence, investment savvy, and the fact that he's pledged to give away 85% of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when he passes away.

In some ways many Americans view him affectionately as their (extremely) "rich uncle".

Clayton Homes sales office in Salt Lake City, Utah

So it was troubling for me to read that the largest mobile home builder in the United States, Clayton Homes, appears to be dabbling in the same kinds of bait and switch tactics on home owner's mortgages that was such a major factor in the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Clayton Homes is owned by Buffet's company Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire Hathaway owns, or has controlling stakes in a wide range of large companies; it's not like Buffet oversees the day-to-day operations of Clayton Homes.

But based on some startling investigative journalism maybe he should be.

Back in December Daniel Wagner of Buzzfeed.com and Mike Baker of The Seattle Times published the results of a joint investigation into claims that Clayton Homes are boosting profits by using the socioeconomic status, race and/or ethnicity of home buyers to charge higher mortgage rates.

To hear Buffet himself tell it, as he has in televised interviews in response to charges that Clayton Homes is engaged in wide-scale consumer fraud, the company is simply trying to provide home loans for borrowers of modest means who wouldn't otherwise have access to a home loan.

But hidden fees, deceptive lending practices, verbal agreements that turn out to be false are just some of the parts of this classic tale of exploitation.

It's an unfortunate reality that some businesses can reinforce institutional racism and classism in this country by using bias based on race, ethnicity or economic status as a means to treat customers differently.

In fact, with the help of billions in capital investment from Berkshire Hathaway, Clayton Homes and it's subsidiary companies have systematically bought up competitors to gain a near monopoly of America's mobile home market.

As the joint Buzzfeed.com - Seattle Times article notes, Clayton Homes, either directly or through its subsidiary lending arm Vanderbilt Mortgage controls some 72% of the African-American mobile home mortgage market.

In one particularly glaring example that has parallels in the consumer and auto lending industries, according to the article, federal statistics show "that Vanderbilt typically charges black people who make over $75,000 a year slightly more than white people who make only $36,000 a year."

But Clayton Homes' exploitation of buyers is not just a black and white issue at all.

Clayton victim Ellie Carosa and her granddaughter.

In April of 2015, The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times published the results of an extensive joint investigation into the practices of Clayton Homes and some of the 18 other companies operating in the mobile home industry under different names that Clayton and Berkshire Hathaway own - companies that many unsuspecting buyers don't realize are in fact, Clayton Homes.

Some of the stories are heart-breaking, like disabled 67-year-old grandmother Ellie Carosa (pictured left) of Napavine, Washington.


According to the CPI - Seattle Times investigation, Carosa put down $40,000 in savings she inherited to purchase a $65,000 used mobile home from Clayton that later turned out to be worth only about $35,000.

As the report details, Clayton sales reps misled Carosa into taking out a 20-year mortgage at 9% interest through Clayton-subsidiary Vanderbilt Mortgages to finance the remaining $25,000 cost of her massively-overpriced mobile home - leaving her stripped of her savings, heavily indebted to Clayton Homes and saddled with a mobile home she can't sell worth thousands less than her down payment.

Take a few minutes and read some of these stories for yourself, these aren't just people who were seeking an easy mortgage to buy a house then refinance it and take the money and run; these were hard working Americans duped by classic bait and switch tactics that border on criminal.

Tim Smith, victim of Clayton's Oakwood Homes

One of the most disturbingly insidious aspects of racism and classism in America is the way in which it allows companies and businesses, from small "mom and pop" stores to large corporations, to justify treating customers differently, and unfairly, simply because of the color of their skin, ethnicity, where they live, or the amount of money they make.

The housing industry in this nation has a particularly long and complex track record of working with banks and lenders to do just that.

Sadly, for many unfortunate mobile home owners of limited means in this country, Berkshire Hathaway figured out how to turn Clayton Homes into a company that brings the role of contractor, builder, lender, insurance-provider all under one roof to systematically exploit mobile home buyers.

And when things go bad, they've also got the aggressive collection agents to harass unsuspecting buyers into making payments they can't afford - or repo agents and trucks to come and haul off what they thought would be their small slice of the American dream.

Scalia's Death & Republican's Contempt for Obama's Authority

Justice Antonin Scalia 1936 - 2016

If the ideological engine that drives American politics was already revved up with the pending changes of the 2016 presidential elections, the unexpected passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday at the remote Cibolo Creek Ranch in the Chinati Mountains in Texas just pushed it into overdrive.

As someone who graduated from Penn State with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis on Constitutional Law, I can certainly appreciate Scalia's contributions to the Court.


My former professor and informal advisor at Penn State, Dr. Bruce Allen Murphy, wrote an Op-Ed published in The New York Times earlier today that offers perspective and insight into Scalia's legacy on the bench.

Given my centrist-progressive leanings I don't agree with all of his opinions but I respect them.

By the same measure we can't forget the sometimes bizarre, hyper-conservative ideology that Scalia, a long-time opponent of affirmative action, brought to his legal opinions either - he frequently courted controversy over the course of his 30 years as a SCOTUS justice.

When for example, as John Amato observed in an article posted on CrooksandLiars.com, in his comments during oral arguments last January during a case dealing with affirmative actions in college admissions, Scalia suggested that "most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools." and that subsequently a "slower track" is more beneficial to them.

During the same oral arguments, Scalia went on to dismiss the intellectual capacity of black American students admitted into colleges under affirmative action guidelines when he fretted that, "They're being pushed into schools that are too advanced for them."

Affirmative action - do as I say, not as I did

It is of interest to note that if Scalia had his way, his fellow conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas might not have been sitting near Scalia on the same bench nodding in agreement when Scalia said those words last year.

Thomas, a gifted student, was admitted to Yale University with the help of financial assistance based on an affirmative action policy designed to attract qualified minority students to the prestigious Yale Law School.

Yet he joined Scalia in vehement opposition to the value and merit of affirmative action policies - how typically conservative.

It's like watching Republican firebrands like Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose parents all immigrated to this country, pontificate against the evils of immigration to exploit the xenophobia that lights the fire of so many conservative voters.

Voters who seem to have conveniently forgotten that every single American who's not Native American is an immigrant.

In the latest example of the vicious undisguised contempt the Republican party harbors for President Obama, G.O.P Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell skipped right over any sentimental condolences for the passing of the 79-year-old conservative legal icon and promptly announced that the president should not fulfill his Constitutionally-mandated task and appoint a new Supreme Court justice, and instead, should wait until January and let the newly elected President make the appointment.

Obama and McConnell - ready to face off?

The President, who was out in California for some private Democratic fund raisers and a couple rounds of golf in Rancho Mirage when Scalia's death was announced yesterday, wasted no time in paying tribute to Scalia's career before announcing that he fully intended to move forward with the lengthy, complex and politically-charged process of appointing a new justice.

Setting up what is sure to be a titanic election-year confrontation between the White House and an obstructionist majority Republican Senate that's spent the past two years blocking any presidential initiatives since it regained the 54-44  majority in the 2014 elections.  

As Elizabeth Williamson observed in the editorial blog of The New York Times this morning, the six remaining Republican presidential candidates used the opening minutes of last night's G.O.P to echo McConnell's wish that the president allow the SCOTUS appointment to pass to the next President.

When Donald Trump was asked if he would fill the appointment if he was in Obama's shoes, he responded that "If I were President I would certainly try to nominate a justice." before insisting that Senator McConnell and the Republican Senate should do everything to "delay, delay, delay" President Obama's doing the exact same thing - again, how typically conservative.

Let's be frank here.

Republican bigot Rep Joe Wilson

The Republicans suggesting that President Obama does not have the right to nominate a qualified candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court is reflective of how some G.O.P members of Congress have openly treated him as if he's some sort of presumptuous "uppity Negro" instead of the leader of the free world.

Their unprecedented disrespect for Obama, rooted in the toxic contempt for black Americans which is now an open part of Republican party values, has been expressed in private and in public almost since the day he took office.

Remember when Republican South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson interrupted Obama's address to a joint session of Congress back in 2009 by shouting out "You lie!" in the middle of the speech like some kind of inebriated redneck?

The Republican's aggressive politicization of the newly-created (and unexpected) vacancy on the Supreme Court is just the latest example.

It stems not just from their having become accustomed to having the Robert's Court handing down decisions that pander to and promote the ideology of the political right, like undermining the foundations and principles of Democracy by gutting key provisions of the Voter Rights Act, or allowing unlimited anonymous campaign contributions to flow into the coffers of political candidates.

To me, the Republican Senate's move to try and seize control of the Supreme Court nomination process  is also clear example of how institutional racism remains entrenched in America with the cooperation of some of those elected to govern on behalf of the people.

Journalist - writer Ta-Nehisi Coates 

In recent years writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who penned a searing indictment of 250 years of systematic racism in America for The Atlantic in June of 2014, "The Case For Reparations", and Michelle Alexander, a nationally-recognized civil rights attorney, activist and prisoner rights advocate who authored the groundbreaking "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age of Colorblindness" in 2010, have used a combination of facts and eloquent words to illustrate how deeply embedded racism is in this nation.

The announcement yesterday by Republicans of their intent to circumvent the Constitutionally-mandated authority of the President to appoint a Supreme Court Justice reflects their willingness use the skin color of the President to expand the reach and influence of what has been an activist hyper-conservative court unafraid to use legal decisions to promote a conservative ideology.

The power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court is expressly granted to the President by Article II of the Constitution which states (in part):

"he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law..."

That's the law.

Regardless of the personal views certain members of the U.S. Senate hold of the President's race.

A Slap In the Face - Environmental Racism in Flint

What does environmental racism taste like?

Michigan Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow didn't mince words over the outrageous efforts of Republican senators in Washington to actively obstruct the approval of $600 million in emergency federal funding for the city of Flint, Michigan to address the massive crisis resulting from the city's tainted water system by attaching unrelated partisan spending measures to the passage of the pending energy bill currently being debated on Capitol Hill.


"I personally feel it's an insult, it's being done to embarrass us."

Considering that thousands of children in Flint have potentially been exposed to toxic levels of lead poisoning, it's more than an insult, it's a crime.

As Jordain Carney reported in an article for TheHill.com last week, Jim Inhofe, the climate change- denying Republican Senator from Oklahoma, had the gall to introduce an amendment to the energy bill that would authorize the appropriation of emergency federal relief money for the people of Flint only if that money is taken out of funds that were previously allocated to the Department of Energy's budget for alternative vehicle research.

What do funds to research the development of vehicles that run off of alternative energy sources have to do with safe drinking water for thousands of people in Flint, Michigan? Absolutely nothing.

But some of Inhofe's top campaign contributions in 2013-2014 came from companies, PAC's or individuals with ties to the petroleum industry.

According to campaign finance data tracked by OpenSecrets.org, Inhofe's top contributors include Exxon-Mobil, BP, Koch Industries, Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy, the American Chemistry Council, WPX Energy and Murray Energy.

Inhofe brings cutting-edge science to the Senate floor

Inhofe, the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, famously brought a snowball onto the floor of the U.S. Senate chamber (really) as scientific evidence that human-influenced climate change does not exist.

Leave it to a guy like that to use the allocation of federal funds for providing fresh water for citizens in Flint and repairing damaged infrastructure as an opportunity to shamelessly shill for the oil industry. Pathetic.

As of last Monday the leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington, said both sides were still at odds on approving funds for Flint to pass the stalled energy bill.

To me, all this politicking and righteous indignation about approving funds for Flint on the part of Republicans is a glaring example of how the issue of environmental racism happens in this country.

Remember, this whole debacle in Flint wouldn't have happened if Republican Governor Rick Snyder hadn't allowed an unelected "emergency manager" to switch the source of the city's water from Detroit's water system to the polluted Flint River as a "cost-saving measure" in the first place.

Actions that are part of the nationwide effort of extremist conservatives to use Republican-dominated state legislatures to shrink the size of government to finance tax relief for the wealthy and gut environmental regulations that protect our water, land and atmosphere to increase the profit margins for the nations biggest polluters.

The language and tactics these conservative politicians use is little more than a ruse.

Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn

According to Carney's Hill.com article, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn also joined his conservative climate-change-denying cohort Jim Ihofe in politicizing the providing of fresh drinking for the mostly poorer African-American and Hispanic residents of Flint, Michigan.

As Cornyn told members of the press:

"Adding additional debt to our tab, especially for something that's a local and state responsibility...strikes me as a bad idea."

Seriously, when did authorizing emergency funds for fresh water become a "bad idea" in this country?

It shouldn't come as a shocker that Ole' Johnny has raised $46,817,109 from campaign contributions between 2001 - 2016, want to take a guess at who his top five contributors are?

According to OpenSecrets.org they include Exxon-Mobil, JP Morgan Chase and Lock Lorde, LLP - an international law firm based in Dallas with more than 1,000 attorneys that specializes in among other areas, environmental law, antitrust law, banking regulation, securities, white-collar criminal defense and energy laws.

It should also be noted that back in November, John Cornyn was one of four sitting U.S. Senators identified by the global hacktivist collective Anonymous whose names were affiliated with KKK organizations around the nation in a list that was released online.

He denied the allegations of course but when you read about his dismissing the request for emergency funds to address the crisis in Flint as "additional debt to our tab" and a "bad idea", it makes you wonder.

A Flint mom comforts a child being blood tested for lead

In the meantime thousands of middle and low income families and individuals in Flint are stuck in a once-thriving manufacturing hub that is now shackled by high unemployment, bleak job opportunities, plummeting home values and a municipal water system that's so toxic that millions of bottles of drinking water are being shipped in from as far as California until city, state and federal officials can hammer out a strategy to fix it.

So far Republicans have managed to sidestep responsibility for this man-made health crisis.

After all, it's the Republican's unhealthy obsession with shrinking government (which at this point borders on a kind of delusional paranoia), and their alliance with corporate contributers that put fiscal savings ahead of the health and well being of thousands of innocent people and the care and maintenance of critical infrastructure.

As numerous media sources reported earlier this week, serious investigations are gearing up which could put pressure on Washington Republicans to quit stalling and authorize emergency funds for Flint.

On Tuesday Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette, special counsel for the AG's office investigating the crisis Todd Flood, chief investigator Andrew Arena and deputy chief investigator Ellis Stafford held a press conference to announce that involuntary manslaughter charges could be filed against government officials found guilty of gross negligence or breach of duty.

After all, the human cost in Flint is already shocking. At least nine deaths have been attributed to Legionnaire's disease contracted as a result of lead poisoning to the municipal drinking water supply.


According to an informative but heart-wrenching article by Abby Goodnough in The New York Times two weeks ago, a staggering 8,000 children under the age of six years-old could be affected by lead poisoning that could stunt their mental development and have grave physical consequences on their future health.

In the meantime the investigation continues, the bottled water continues to be shipped in and anxious residents can only wait while heartless conservative Republicans like Jim Inhofe and John Cornyn hold their allegiance to the petroleum and energy industry over the health of the residents of Flint, Michigan.

As Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow told TheHill.com, "It's a slap in the face."