Leon Lewis: Real Hollywood Hero

USC Professor Steven J. Ross

For many people, the national media justifiably focusing its spotlight on the fallout from the indictments of former Trump campaign members Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (and former Trump campaign advisor George Papadolous' guilty plea), is a positive step for democracy, the rule of law and basic American principles.

The downside is that the two white supremacist rallies that took place in Tennessee last weekend are quickly fading from the news cycle.

But the deeper danger that those rallies represent, and the divisive ideology that spawned them, is still very real.


An interesting article in the September 20th Hollywood Reporter about a concerned American who took it upon himself to uncover, confront and fight Nazis and fascist anti-Semites in Los Angeles in the 1930's serves as an important reminder that the hate that has seeped to the surface in the wake of Trump's campaign and election, is not new in America.

The article, "When the Nazis Tried to Exterminate Hollywood", is a fascinating excerpt from a new book by Steven J. Ross.

A professor of history at the University of Southern California who received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University, a philosophy degree from Oxford and his PhD in history from Princeton, Ross also serves as the director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, and is the co-founder and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC.

Ross has written and edited four critically-acclaimed books on Hollywood film history, including Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics - his 2011 Pulitzer Prize-nominated examination of the influence of the film industry on both liberal and conservative political activism in America.

But it's his latest book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, released on October 24th, that seems particularly timely given the outsized influence that neo-Nazi sympathizers and white nationalists now openly wield inside a Trump White House that actively cultivates their views - and covets their supporters as political allies.

Since last November, I've watched and read prominent members of the American media trying to dissect the root causes of the disturbing rise in racist and anti-immigrant attacks against innocent people, irrational xenophobia, and the almost-seismic shift of fringe white supremacists and neo-Nazis into the light of mainstream political coverage.

(Many of those same journalists, "opinionaters" and media talking heads failed miserably at holding Trump up to the same level of scrutiny given to Hillary Clinton and other presidential candidates during the divisive 2016 campaign.)


So I was pretty taken back after I read the excerpt from Ross' new book in THR yesterday. 

Not just because it's a compelling story that's been all but left out of American history about the impact of the Great Depression on American society and the rise of Nazi sympathizers and pro-fascists leading up to World War II.

But because it also sheds light on the dangers posed by neo-Nazi and white nationalist efforts to expand their influence into mainstream society in the Trump era.

Hitler in Los Angeles examines how Nazi ideology spread from Germany to Los Angeles, its roots and rise amongst LA citizens, particularly German-Americans and disaffected WWI veterans, and a small but determined group of concerned Jewish citizens who worked with U.S. veterans to infiltrate, spy on and confront the Nazi threat in LA.

ADL co-founder Leon Lewis

One of the central figures of the book is a man named Leon Lewis, a WWI vet who, as Ross writes, earned his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1913 and became the first executive director of the Anti Defamation League - the ADL's charter states the group's purpose is (in part) "to fight anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry (in the United States) and abroad".

Sparked by a determination to monitor Adolph Hitler and the growing threat he posed to Jewish people, Lewis became convinced that the U.S. government wasn't doing nearly enough to keep the growing influence of Nazism in America in check.

As Ross wrote in the excerpt of his book published in THR last month, on July 26, 1933, just seven months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, a group of "100 Hitlerites, many dressed in brown shirts and sporting red, white and black swastika armbands, held their first public meeting at their spacious downtown headquarters in the Alt Heidelberg building."

According to Ross' research, the group heard an address by Hans Winterhalder, the propaganda chief of a Nazi organization known as the Friends of the New Germany (FNG) - a group created as an American outreach effort in May, 1933 at the behest of Rudolph Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer of the Nazi Party in Germany.

Winterhalder's outline of a plan to bring the numerous German-American organizations that were located throughout California under one umbrella that espoused the National Socialism ideology of the Third Reich, and were loyal to Hitler and the Nazi Party, made clear to Leon Lewis that action needed to be taken.

As Ross told John Williams in an October 29th New York Times interview about his book, he first learned of Lewis' role in forming a spy ring to infiltrate the Nazi organizations in LA back in 1999 while he was doing research on actor Edward G. Robinson's anti-Nazi activities in Hollywood for his book Hollywood Left and Right.

He learned that Lewis befriended and recruited white Christian WWI veterans like John Schmidt and one-time Long Beach, California KKK member Charles Slocombe to join, infiltrate and spy on anti-Semitic pro-Nazi organizations like the FNG, American National Party, Silver Shirts and the Lode Star Legion.

Friends of the New Germany leaders Herman Schwinn
(2nd from left) & Hans Winterhalder (far right)

Ross reveals that those groups weren't just meeting to talk and socialize.

As Lewis' network of male and female Los Angeles spies would discover, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels saw Hollywood as a dangerous threat because of the American film industry's ability to churn out movies that revealed the dark side of Nazi Germany and motivated people in the U.S., England, France, Canada and other countries to support the growing allied effort to stop the German war machine. 

On New Year's Eve 1935, Lewis learned that the leader of the American National Party, Ingram Hughes, was working with FNG leader Herman Schwinn on a terror plot to kill at least 20 influential Jewish members of the Hollywood community.

Winterhalder later "testified about FNG's private militia, its acquisition of arms" and plans to infiltrate the California National Guard - so these characters weren't just talking the talk.

Those targeted by the FNG-ANP plot included Lewis, Superior Court Judge Henry Willis and director Busby Berkeley - as Ross notes, Hughes was reported to have said, "Busby Berkeley will look good dangling on a rope's end." 

(Such a threat was not made lightly in 1935 - according to Wikipedia's extensive article on lynchings in the United States, "1934 saw 15 lynchings of African-Americans with 21 lynchings in 1935").

But as Ross writes, that plot was never carried out because Schwinn (correctly) suspected that the FNG had been infiltrated by spies working for Lewis.

UK fascist Leopold McLaglan

Two years later in 1937 his spies spoiled another plot by British fascist Leopold McLaglan to assassinate 24 well-known Hollywood influencers including:

"some of the most famous people in the world, including Edie Cantor, Charlie Chaplin, Samuel Goldwyn, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, James Cagney, Frederic March, Paul Muni, Joseph Schenck, B.P. Schulberg, Gloria Stuart, Sylvia Sidney, Donald Ogden Stewart, Walter Winchell and William Wyler."

Fortunately, Lewis' spy Charles Slocombe was able to successfully trick two of McLaglan's co-conspirators (fascist Henry Allen and Silver Shirts leader Ken Alexander) to cut a deal with the DA which led to McLaglan's arrest and eventual deportation.


These were dangerous people committed to a twisted ideology based on racial and ethnic hatred.

Against the backdrop of a town known in the 1930's for larger-than-life, handsome celluloid heroes, it's interesting that a low-key Jewish attorney from the midwest would become the catalyst for attacking the spread of Nazism in Hollywood and taking the leaders of its fledgling pro-Hitler movement head on.

I'd venture to say that Lewis would take it as a compliment that the Nazis considered him "the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles."

Patriot Leon Lewis' actions and Steven J. Ross' book offer valuable insight into the dangers of government apathy in the face of Neo-Nazi extremism - a very real concern today considering the white nationalist advisers like Stephen Miller who still surround Trump.

As Ross said of Hitler in Los Angeles in his New York Times interview on Sunday,  the book
"offers important lessons for today. Leon Lewis and his spies defeated a variety of enemies bent on violence and murder. They showed us that when a government fails to combat extremists, democracy demands that every citizen protect the lives of every American, no matter their race or religion."

Trumpism In Tennessee

Two of the estimated 200 white supremacists  who
protested in Shelbyville,  Tennessee on Saturday

If the white supremacist rallies held in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee on Saturday are any indicator, the divisive genie that Donald Trump uncorked on the very first day of his announcement to run for president two years ago is going to be difficult to stuff back into the bottle.

Having surrounded himself with a cadre of individuals with established white supremacist beliefs and ties, including Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, there's no way for Trump to uncouple his presidency from the movement he encouraged and legitimized with his divisive rhetoric and policies.

As has frequently been the case since the inauguration, last week was not a good one for a White House that continues to struggle to achieve meaningful policy achievements in the face of a rocky relationship with the Republican majorities that control both houses of Congress and a foreign policy that lacks consistency, substance, cohesiveness and diplomatic polish.

The week started off with Republican Arizona Senator Jeff Flake publicly eviscerating Trump for his behavior and conduct on the floor of the U.S. Senate before announcing he would not seek reelection because he could no longer support his own president - leveling criticisms that a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have shared privately.

In an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday, Flake confided to reporter Ed O'Keefe that he "couldn't sleep at night having to embrace the president or condoning his behavior, or being okay with some of his positions. I just couldn't do it, it was never in the cards."

Flake's comments came on the heels of a speech by former two-term Republican president George W. Bush that was widely seen as critical of Trump without specifically naming him - whether those comments will embolden the more moderate Republicans who've been marginalized by the increasingly right-leaning ideology that now dominates the GOP remains to be seen.

Former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele

True to form, the erratic POTUS shrugged off Flake's criticism and instead engaged in a bizarre attempt to try and shift blame for Russian interference in the 2016 elections onto Hillary Clinton's campaign based on a Washington Post story last week detailing a court letter filed on Tuesday showing that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid the research firm Fusion GPS for some of the damaging information on Trump that was later included in the Steele Dossier. 

The Steele Dossier, a document compiled by the highly-respected former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 Moscow field agent who also headed the MI-6 Russia desk, is where the disturbing allegations that the KGB had compromising proof that Trump had engaged in lewd conduct with two Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel suite, first originated.

Even though members of the Trump campaign, including his son Donald, Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, actively sought damaging information about Clinton from the Russians, Trump suggested that the news that Democrats had paid Fusion GPS for damaging information on him was akin to the Watergate investigations.

He tried painting the ongoing investigations into whether the Trump campaign actively participated with and sought Russian interference with the 2016 elections as some kind of partisan fishing expedition.

But the gas was let out of that balloon with the news that it was the Washington Free Beacon, the conservative Website bankrolled by the billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, that first paid money for anti-Trump information months before Democrats requested it.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller

The news (first leaked on Friday by CNN) that a federal grand jury in Washington has just approved the first criminal charges filed by special counsel Robert Mueller involving Russian interference in the 2016 elections also put a damper on Trumps baseless accusations that the Russia investigation is a politically-motivated witch hunt.

My sense is that Trump's unsubstantiated comments last week were intended to deflect attention.

Not just from Jeff Flake's comments on the Senate floor, but also to distance Trump's name from the white supremacist rallies popping up in cities across the country.

In many ways, the rallies in Tennessee yesterday, the rally in Gainesville, Florida on October 19th, as well as the violent rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia weeks ago are a reflection of Trump's base of support.

Not just in terms of the bigotry, xenophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria that defines their ideology - one protester in Tennessee told a reporter that immigrants must be viewed as "conquerors" - but in terms of actual numbers.

Trump is unapologetic about having no interest in appealing to all Americans, virtually everything he signs, does, says or tweets is aimed at appeasing his base of support - which is currently about 38% of the U.S. population based on the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.

So the overwhelming majority of the country, 58%, do not approve of the job he's doing in office.

It's a reflection of the white supremacists protesting in Tennessee on Saturday.

Counter-protesters assemble to oppose the
presence of white supremacists in Shelbyville, TN

As the Tennessean.com reported, about 30 people showed up for the "white lives matter" protests in downtown Murfreesboro, Tennessee - but they were outnumbered by the 800 - 1000 counter-protesters who came out to condemn the message of hate and bigotry.

While Daniel Politi of Slate.com reported that about 200 white supremacists showed up for protests in Shelbyville, Tennessee, again they were outnumbered two-to-one by counter-protesters - who at one point drowned out a Neo-Nazi trying to give a speech by playing a recording of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.

In the same way that Trump basically speaks to about 38% of the country, the white supremacists at the rallies in Charlottesville, Gainesville, and Tennessee are essentially addressing a fraction of the U.S. population.

And as Alan Blinder reported for the New York Times yesterday, the majority of the people seen on the news attending these rallies are not from these local areas - they're traveling there from around the country to try and give the illusion of how large the white supremacist movement in this country is.

In no way does that reduce the danger that these kinds of groups pose to American society, but the fact that more of them are emboldened to bring their fringe movement and beliefs out into the public square is a troubling reminder of Trumpism.

The same political party that gave us candidate Trump is preparing to try and pass massive tax cuts for the 1% and corporations (tax cuts that will add more than a trillion dollars to the federal deficit) while screwing the working and middle class.

Yet thousands of disenfranchised people from around the country who now self-identify with the alt-right, white nationalist or Neo-Nazi / KKK groups that have sprung up with the help of the internet are directing their rage at people of color and immigrants.

Why aren't they marching against the big banks that created and profited from the mortgage crisis that took many of their homes and decimated the economy?

Or the corporations who've moved manufacturing overseas and outsourced millions of American jobs to countries with lower wage standards?

People of color and immigrants aren't responsible for the rust-belt communities and stagnant wages across America that have angered the base that Trump now speaks to exclusively.

But scapegoating "others" is like a comfortable shoe for many in this country, and that's what Trumpism is all about - those rallies in Tennessee were basically pro-Trump events.

And that genie isn't going back in to the bottle anytime soon. 

With Mueller set to announce the first criminal indictments for interfering the 2016 elections on Monday (indictments that may well be handed down to Jared Kushner or Donald Trump, Jr.) Trump needs that genie more than ever.

Anything to deflect attention from the truth of his presidency.

Gosar's Block Backfires

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar

Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner and the holiday season could be a bit awkward for the members of Republican Congressman Paul Gosar's family.

The alarming comments he made earlier this month in an interview with Vice about his strange theory about who was behind the Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia has thrust the representative of the reliably-conservative leaning state of Arizona into the national media spotlight lately.

And not for good reasons either.

The problem started when Gosar tried to muzzle members of his own constituency from posting critical things about him on Facebook.

As Elspeth Reeve wrote for Vice, during the interview Gosar was trying to defend his having blocked J'aime Morgaine, a U.S. Army veteran, liberal activist and resident of the Arizona 4th Congressional District that Gosar represents, from commenting on his Facebook page.

She made headlines over the summer by driving two and a half hours from her home in Kingman, Arizona several times a week to peacefully protest at Gosar's Congressional offices in Prescott by bringing a brick or block with the words "Please stop blocking your constituents." written on them. 

When that didn't work, Morgaine filed a federal lawsuit against Gosar in September, arguing that his blocking her from posting criticism of the job he's doing in Congress violated her 1st Amendment right to freedom of expression.

After months of Morgaine's old school grassroots protests, as it became clear to Gosar and his staff that trying to muzzle one of his own constituents was not winning the PR battle, in October he finally relented and unblocked her - along with a number of other critics he'd blocked on Facebook as well.

J'aime Morgaine leaving a "block" at Gosar's office

But even though Morgaine's resolve won her the battle over the right to confront her own Congressman in a public forum, she still hasn't dropped her lawsuit.

As she told Phoenix New Times reporter Antonia Noori Farzan two weeks ago:

"In fact, the lawsuit is more important than ever. The fact that he has unblocked us doesn't change how unconstitutional the block was. It also doesn't change how completely unaccountable he has been to his constituents." 

During the October 5th Vice interview, Gosar suggested he'd blocked Morgaine and others because of the potential danger posed by left-wingers.

Gosar is an unapologetic lackey of the National Rifle Association who co-sponsored legislation that would allow non-citizens of a state who have concealed carry permits to carry concealed weapons in that state (funny how selective Republicans can be about "states rights").

But he suggested to Vice that Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise being shot in the leg by a disturbed individual with a semi-automatic rifle in Virginia while practicing for a Congressional softball game a few months ago was evidence that liberal-leaning critics posed a physical threat to his safety.

But after bringing up the antifa (anti-fascist) movement to bolster his questionable reasoning for stifling the 1st Amendment rights of his own constituents, Gosar really dipped his toe in the swamp when he tried to suggest to Vice that the organizer of the alt-right / Neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Jason Kessler was "an Obama sympathizer". 

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler

Kessler is publicly known as an advocate of the "white genocide" theory frequently bandied about by the alt-right community.

According to Vice, that "theory"posits that: 

"a shadowy elite are trying to replace white people by denigrating white identity and encouraging immigration." 


Does that sound like someone who voted for Barack Obama to you?

An article about Kessler by the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that he started a campaign to unseat Wes Bellamy, the only African-American city councilman in Charlottesville after Bellamy advocated removing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

It's troubling enough that a member of Congress would try and suggest that the collection of alt-right, KKK and Neo-Nazi rabble that marched in Charlottesville was organized by an Obama supporter.

But Paul Gosar dove into the swamp when he had the gall to suggest that billionaire liberal activist and philanthropist George Soros was a financial backer of the Unite the Right rally, telling Vice:

"You know George Soros is one of those people that actually helps back these individuals. Who is he? I think he's from Hungary. I think he was Jewish. And I think he turned in his own people to the Nazis."  

Philanthropist George Soros

Suggesting that George Soros, who is an actual survivor of the Holocaust, used his own considerable resources to promote Neo-Nazis marching in modern day America is frankly as absurd as it is offensive.

As the DailyKos reported on Tuesday, Gosar's seven siblings, collectively published a letter denouncing their brother's wacky and totally unsubstantiated anti-Semitic accusations - they also made clear that his comments in no way represent the beliefs their parents taught them growing up in Wyoming.

In fact, one of Paul Gosar's brothers David, a Wyoming lawyer who told the Phoenix New Times that his brother's comments made him "look insane", actually offered to help represent J'aime Moraine in her federal lawsuit against his brother.



Gosar's younger brother Pete, who also signed the letter, used to chair the Wyoming Democratic Party - so obviously he was horrified over his brother's accusation that Soros was a Nazi collaborator.

Oh to be a fly on the wall for the Gosar family Thanksgiving.

Outside of conservative Washington insiders, people in his home state and members of the anti-abortion community, Gosar doesn't have a lot of national name recognition.

He was one of the many Tea Party candidates swept into office during President Obama's first term on a wave of extremist hatred and angry clamoring for rigid, far-right ideology.

The fact that he was endorsed by Sarah Palin and former Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio should tell you something about his political leanings and values.

As Vice rightfully noted, Gosar basically repeated a totally fabricated anti-Semitic myth popularized by Alex Jones, a quasi-delusional right-wing wind-bag who uses his media platform to espouse kooky nut-job theories so absurd they border on lunacy.

Jones essentially tries to paint kooky alternative theories around modern violent events that get linked to right-wing ideology as "liberal plots" including the Oklahoma City Bombings and the Sandy Hook Massacre.

Infowars host Alex Jones

So it's both sad and remarkable that Congressman Paul Gosar is watching way too much Infowars because his comments to Vice make it sound like he's confused the delusional crackpot theories regularly floated by nutbag host Alex Jones with fact.

Not that actual facts really matter all that much to the right-wing extremists that now control the Republican Party.

A party that now elevates ideology over truth.

But if sport-shirt-wearing alt-right haters are going to march alongside members of the KKK and Swastika flag-carrying Tiki Torch Nazis chanting ignorant slogans like "Jews will not replace us!", then Republicans like Gosar better damn well own up to that because it's being channeled by the same masters that he and Trump both serve.

The idea that the far right is engaged in a half-ass Goebbels-like campaign to pin the blame on Democratic supporters for the shocking display of racist buffoonery the world saw in Charlottesville, including an angry alt-right asshole intentionally ramming his car into a crowd of protesters killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others, is a sad indicator of just how far the Republican Party has sunk.

Like the absurdity of Trump, whose own son, son-in-law and top campaign officials met with Russian players during the 2016 presidential campaign to get damaging info on Hillary Clinton, now expressing righteous indignation over allegations that DNC and the Clinton campaign paid researchers to find damaging info on Trump.

It's the deepest kind of delusional hypocrisy intended to undermine our democracy.

But as J'aime Morgaine's campaign demonstrates, trying to block criticism and dissent is a violation of the very principles Republicans so often claim to hold dear, but repeatedly trample.

Vicki's Marbles & Ames Mayfield's 1st Amendment Stand

11-year-old Cub Scout Ames Mayfield

As one of the many people who actively participated in the Boy Scouts of America during portions of their childhood and early teens, I was fortunate to have multiple opportunities to interact and work with dozens of different scouts (and some really cool adults who volunteered as Den Leaders, Scout Masters, Assistant Scout Masters and instructors) while I was a Cub Scout, and eventually, a Boy Scout.

But I must admit I never met a Scout quite like 11-year-old Ames Mayfield of Broomfield, Colorado.

As you may have read, Mayfield has been making headlines around the globe after his Cub Scout Den Leader booted him out of his local pack for firing off some pretty tough questions at Republican Colorado State Senator Vicki Marble during an October 9th Q&A with his fellow Cub Scouts.

By all accounts, the budding journalist caught Senator Marble off guard when he asked her, "I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun. Why on earth would you want someone who beats their wife to own a gun?"

In light of the horrific mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas on the night of October 1st, it struck me as entirely appropriate for a young person to ask a Republican politician, especially one who backed legislation that would make it easier for convicted domestic abusers to own firearms, to explain why they would support such a measure.

But rather than offer some kind of reasonable justification for her position on gun control, Marble launched into a diatribe of disjointed pro-gun nonsense that sounds like she picked it off a flyer she found in a trashcan at a gun show in Pomona - [side note: I actually went to a gun show in Pomona a few years ago when I was out in California shooting a film, where I saw, among other things for sale, a framed six-foot color portrait of Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler. True.]

Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble

Want to get a better sense of who Vicki Marble is, and what kind of political ideology she represents as the duly elected Republican state senator representing the 23rd District of Colorado?

The good folks over at the Colorado Pols Website took the time to provide actual transcripts of the comments she made to Ames Mayfield and the members of his Cub Scout pack.

Click the link to see for yourself, but Marble never actually answered Mayfield's question about why she would support a domestic abuser having the right to own firearms.

Instead she veered off into bizarre comments about how she has a concealed carry permit, how Las Vegas and Chicago are both "gun-free zones" and the need for "crime control." 

But it was her strange analogy about lions and gazelles that makes me honestly wonder about Vicki's marbles, she said (and remember, she's speaking to Cub Scouts):

"When you look at a lion in Africa going after a gazelle, you do not think that the lion should disarm the gazelle, from having his horns and his hooves to protect himself. Do you? Do you think the gazelle should give up his horns and hooves to protect himself from the lion? A gazelle should have the opportunity to protect itself at any time."

I'm not going to get into the question of whether Senator Marble believes that firearms are actual human appendages and not man-made mechanical devices that are manufactured, but that's just one of a number of borderline loony statements she gave to Ames Mayfield and his fellow Cub Scout pack.

She also told them "I've had friends who have been violently attacked and raped, and I also know they were in a gun-free zone...Had my friend had her gun, maybe the rape wouldn't have happened, and maybe the other woman would still be alive."

(Again, this is from the co-sponsor of a bill in Colorado that would make it easier for convicted domestic abusers to own firearms...)

Seriously, click over to the Colorado Pols Website and read her comments for yourself - if Marble had suddenly pulled out her concealed carry handgun in the middle of that Q&A with the Cub Scouts, dove head-first into a corner while yelling "Fire in the hole!!" it wouldn't surprise me.

Marble answers Ames Mayfield's
questions on October 9th 

Last night I was reading through some of the reader comments posted to the New York Times article about this story, and it was striking to hear how some conservative-leaning Times readers actually attacked 11-year-old Ames Mayfield simply for asking Marble a couple questions - about things that she's said.

One reader accused the kid of being rude and disrespectful.

But as multiple news outlets have reported, the Cub Scouts were instructed to prepare carefully written questions for the Q&A, and as Marble herself told a reporter, "It wasn't much different than the questions I normally field in other meetings."  

But if the answers she gave to that Cub Scout pack are the kind she "normally" gives, it's a rather troubling glimpse into right-wing conservative ideology.

Mayfield wasn't the only kid who asked her tough questions, another Cub Scout asked Marble about fossil fuels - her answer would bring tears of pride to the eyes of EPA head Scott Pruitt.


"Fossil fuels are the only thing we have to give us this building." she told the astonished Cub Scouts,  as she waxed philosophic about the wonders of fossil fuel production, "To give us this great landscape out there and all of the tractors and mowers that keep it well and good. And move those rocks - everything is run by fossil fuels." 

(Never mind that ancient Egyptians used a canal system to transport huge blocks of quarried stone over great distances to the Pyramid construction site in Giza over 4,000 years ago...)

It is of interest to point out that according to Ballotpedia.org, Marble serves on the Colorado legislature's Agricultural, Natural Resources and Energy Committee - where she no doubt brings her unique zeal to advocating for all things fossil fuel.

In all seriousness, it strikes me as troubling that a politician and overt NRA flunky like Marble serves as the State Senate Majority Caucus Leader in Colorado.

And frankly the kind of opinionated nonsense she was dishing out to those Cub Scouts is disturbing.

Colorado Rep Rhonda Fields addressing Marble's
"Chickengate" comments

As Colorado Pols reported, back in 2013 "Marble was the voice behind the infamous "Chickengate" affair, in which she explained in a legislative hearing on poverty that African-Americans have a shorter life-span because they eat too much chicken and barbecue."

After her jaw-dropping comments, Marble (who also made comments about Mexican people eating vegetables until they reach the U.S.) went on to say:

"Although I've got to say I've never had better barbecue and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you, I mean, I love it. Everybody loves it." 

Again, as a former Cub Scout and Boy Scout, I really can't recall a year in which the BSA has been so publicly entwined with political controversy surrounding idiotic and inappropriate statements made by right-wing Republican politicians.

As I blogged about back on July 28th, the BSA was recently under fire for having allowed Fake President to stand in front of thousands of Scouts at the National Jamboree and ramble on incoherently about himself and his political enemies like some kind of delusional drunken tyrant.

The marketing director of the Denver Area Council of the BSA, Nicole Cosme told the Denver Post  that the BSA is "a wholly non-partisan organization and does not promote any one political position, candidate or philosophy." 

And yet the Den Leader of the Broomfield, Colorado Cub Scout pack kicked 11-year-old Ames Mayfield out for asking Vicki Marble questions about positions she holds and things she's said publicly.

By the way Mayfield also asked Marble about her comments in the "Chickengate" controversy - she lied to his face and told him the story was made up by the media and that she'd never said it.

Now who does that sound like?

Kicking a kid out of an organization for asking questions strikes me as distinctly Trump-ian, and an insult to the 1st Amendment Right to Free Speech - the right to hold our politicians accountable for the things they do and say lies at the heart of this thing we call Democracy.

At least that's what it says in the Constitution. 

More White House Low Ball - Et Tu John Kelly?

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly

By all accounts, former U.S. Marine general John Kelly was supposed to bring a much-needed measure of order, discipline and ethical clout to a White House that has been embroiled in chaos and controversy since the day after the inauguration in January.

A cursory glance at his lengthy service record leaves little doubt about his love of country, or that he merits the respect of his fellow American citizens.

But it hasn't taken long for him to sink down into the very morass that he was supposed to fix.

After Fake President became defensive about all the negative attention he was receiving for taking twelve days to finally reach out to the families of the four U.S. servicemen killed in an ambush in Niger by terrorists supposedly aligned with ISIS earlier this month, he did what he usually does.

He started throwing around baseless accusations in an effort to blame other people for his own failings - not surprisingly, his target was President Obama.

On Monday, Trump flat out lied by suggesting that pervious U.S. presidents had not reached out to the families of fallen American soldiers as much as he had - as if consoling grieving families is some kind of competition.

It's well known that Obama often went to Andrews Air Force Base in the middle of the night outside Washington, D.C. to pay respects to the remains of fallen soldiers arriving back from overseas before meeting privately with the families at the base chapel.

He frequently visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland too.

(Isn't it interesting that regardless of the issue, somehow it always ends up being about Trump's off-the-chart narcissism?)

Robert Kelly (left) with his brother John Jr. (center)
and his father John Kelly, Sr. (right)

When former White House staff members of both Obama and George W. Bush publicly pushed back on Trump's fake accusations, on Tuesday he ratcheted up his idiocy even further by having the gall to invoke White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's deceased son Robert's name in a pathetic effort to lend credibility to his latest lies.

A 1st lieutenant in the 5th Marine Division, Robert Kelly was 29-years old when was killed after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan during his 3rd combat tour.


Kelly rarely spoke about his son's death publicly, so it's a pretty sad reflection of the monumental insensitivity and ethical cluelessness of Trump to use a personal tragedy like that to bolster a lie.

By Tuesday afternoon Trump was facing mounting criticism over his lies about previous presidents, and was clearly desperate to try and at least appear as if he gave a shit about the four fallen U.S. soldiers killed in Niger.

So instead of apologizing for speaking in error, or taking twelve days to contact any of the family members, he blundered yet again when he called up Myeshia Johnson, the widow of the 25-year old African-American Army special forces sergeant LaDavid Johnson who was one of the four killed in the attack.

Trump called her in the limo that was taking her to the airport to receive her husband's flag-draped coffin, and his insensitive and ill-timed comments angered both the soldier's mother Cowanda Jones-Johnson and Florida Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson - who were both in the car and heard Trump's call on speakerphone.

Myeshia Johnson weeps over her husband's
coffin on Tuesday

His comments were so lacking in empathy, tact and manners that it only brought more attention on the lie he originally told on Monday that ignited the whole controversy.

Congresswoman Wilson publicly took Trump to the woodshed for his clearly unscripted comments during the call, and in an interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday, the soldier's mother confirmed Wilson's allegations saying:

"President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband."

In response, Trump basically called the widow and mother of a fallen U.S. soldier liars by publicly denying he'd said the things Wilson claimed he'd said on the call.

Now at this point, one would think the White House Chief of Staff would have stepped in to try and halt this epic PR disaster, right?

Sure enough, John Kelly did step in, but rather than try to privately counsel Trump to dial back the rhetoric, stop attacking the widow and mother of a fallen soldier and the Congresswoman who knew him personally, Kelly made an on-camera appearance in the White House briefing room on Thursday.

Not only did he discuss his son's death in Afghanistan in 2010, he did so to try and justify the flagrant lie that Trump told on Monday about other U.S. presidents not comforting grieving families.

Kelly stepped waist deep in the swamp - and then some.

Not content to polish up Trump's lies, he joined the Trump White House's uncaged attack-dog mentality, ignored the obvious optics of the situation (a racist president attacking the African-American members of a soldier who gave his life for his county) and suddenly veered into a bizarre alt-righty character assassination of Rep. Wilson.

As careful examination of the video of a nine-minute speech Wilson gave during the dedication of a federal building in 2015 named after two FBI agents shows, as the New York Times reported on Friday, it became clear that the Boston-born, Irish Catholic former four-star Marine general John Kelly lied in front of millions of people.

Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson

The video (now widely viewed) proves unequivocally that the Democratic Florida representative was not "grandstanding" as both Kelly and his narcissistic boss alleged.

In fact, the video shows her giving credit for a Republican-majority Congress quickly authorizing funds for the federal building to several Republican Congressman, including the former Speaker of the House John Boehner.

Desperately trying to defend yet another White House bundle of lies, the truth-adverse WH press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then veered even further into territory that can only be described as disturbingly pro-authoritarian by suggesting that members of the press had no right to question anything that Chief of Staff John Kelly said because he used to be a four-star Marine general.

What planet is she on?  Like Trump, she later walked back her comments in a rather timid written statement when the degree of the authoritarian absurdity of what she'd said became apparent.

But she also expended more of the White House's dwindling credibility by peddling more juvenile character assassination jabs at Wilson - as one point even poking fun at the colorful hats that Wilson is known for wearing.

Like her hats have anything to do with Trump waiting twelve days to try and reach out to the families of four fallen service members, then politicizing the death of John Kelly's son Robert to justify his having lied.

Yet another disastrous week for an erratic dysfunctional White House that seems almost clinically detached from the optics of the remarkably petty battles it chooses to engage in.

It's hard to gauge what's going on with John Kelly, a man who devoted his entire career to service, honor and duty, apparently reduced to shilling for a xenophobic racist sociopath and compulsive liar who's just insecure enough to pick fights with Gold  Star families.

With Trump, the bar is so low we expect that kind of low-life bush-league crap.

But Et Tu John Kelly?

AmeRaqqa's Secret War Against ISIS?

Syrian Democratic Forces celebrate in Raqqa

This week, the headlines of many major news media outlets (including CNN the New York Times and the BBC) are all trumpeting what's being described as "the fall of ISIS" in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Because the battle-scarred city sits on the banks of the Euphrates River in the northern part of Syria, it's been the site of wars since the 4th and 5th century AD when the Byzantine, Roman and Persian empires all wrestled for control of the region when it was an important outpost along critical trade routes.

But the shocking scenes of rubble-strewn streets, death and widespread destruction you've seen on TV, online or in newspapers or magazines are the sad byproduct of the devastating Syrian Civil War that began back in March of 2011.

Considering the wide array of international "players" currently on the battlefields of Syria (including Americans, Russians, British, French, Germans, Dutch, Norwegians, Kurdish nationals, members of Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda as well as Mid East players like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and others), the origins of this conflict are rather humble.

As a BBC overview of the timeline of the Syrian Civil War notes, it was a group of young teenagers who spray-painted anti-Bashar Assad slogans on the wall of a school in early 2011 that first sparked the fire that's been raging across Syria for more than six bloody years.

When notoriously repressive Assad dispatched his forces to arrest and torture those teenagers to make an example of them, it didn't discourage protests against his brutal authoritarian regime.

It sparked violent pro-Democracy demonstrations that grew exponentially until protesters began arming themselves to battle pro-Assad forces - the rest, as they say, is history.

Syrian civilians fleeing during a break in fighting

To date well over 250,000 Syrians have been killed, thousands have "disappeared" and more than 11 million displaced from their country; causing refugee crises in multiple nations and conflicts over immigration that have influenced internal domestic politics in countries as far away as Europe and the United States.

It's morphed into a complex proxy war for a host of other conflicts - Sunni versus Shia, America versus Russia, Saudi Arabia versus Iran.


But the situation in Raqqa itself really went south after ISIS took over, as journalist and Iraq War veteran Seth Harp observed recently in Rolling Stone:

"Since 2013, when ISIS fighters took control of the city, Raqqa has been the most violent place in the world, a no-go zone where medieval punishments like beheading and crucifixion are meted out in the streets and diseases like polio and black fever run rampant."

While I'm not an expert in the Mid East, I am a political science major who follows current events.

And I'm also one of the millions of Americans tired of the thousands of lives, torrents of blood, and trillions of tax payer dollars the U.S. has spent fighting wars in one of the most destabilized regions on the planet over the past two decades.

As a nation principally founded on the institution of slavery that fought a war to liberate ourselves from the yoke of British rule, then fought another war to settle the uncomfortable question of slavery, Americans as a whole have never shied away from a fight.

But there's something deeply troubling about the current state of "perpetual war" that politicians, some members of the intelligence community, the massive bureaucracy of the Pentagon and Department of Defense, and the enormous web of defense contractors who fuel and profit from armed conflict, have somehow made the new American norm.

A norm the American public somehow has little say in that we nonetheless pay for to the tune of billions of dollars a month.

On Wednesday I was burning off some calories on the exercise bike during lunch at the gym, on CNN I saw this clip of a Syrian Democratic Forces armored personnel carrier crowded with elated SDF fighters celebrating in the dusty, rubble-strewn streets of Raqqa - the tracked vehicle was doing donuts in tight circles like a NASCAR driver who just won the Daytona 500.

SDF commanders announce their plan to retake
Raqqa back from ISIS in November, 2016

Personally I'm a bit troubled by this narrative the media seems to be pushing. 

The U.S. military has been notoriously restrictive about allowing American journalists and television cameras into Syria.

But lately TV and the internet are full of all these snippets of SDF forces celebrating a victory against ISIS in Raqqa.

ISIS is notorious for planning terrorist attacks in secret.

So is it really wise to goad them publicly and preen about taking back a stronghold from them when we're not really sure where all their fighters who were in Raqqa have gone?

Clearly there is cause to celebrate the liberation of a city from ISIS control, especially considering the dehumanizing ways in which they treat civilians; but there's no evidence that ISIS is "defeated."

The push to retake Raqqa was a long, brutal campaign that began with a SDF press conference in Ein Issa just north of the city back in November of 2016 as Americans were focused on the presidential elections and the terrifying prospect of a Trump presidency.

The campaign was called Operation Euphrates Rage, which would consist of 30,000 "US-backed" SDF fighters - but there was no clear definition of what "US-backed" really meant.

U.S. Special Forces operating in Syria

What strikes me as interesting about all these headlines about "the fall of ISIS in Raqqa" is the lack of mention of the U.S. military's role in helping to push ISIS fighters out of the region.

After reading through a number of news articles about Raqqa's liberation, the term "US-backed coalition" was used quite a bit, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are being widely credited with the victory.


The bulk of the SDF are made up of an alliance of Kurdish militias, a strongly feminist mix of fighters that includes Christians and Muslims among their ranks.

Now it's not like the news media hasn't been reporting about the deployment of American troops in Sryia to back the SDF, but if you look at an ABC News article from last April for example, while it does report about a battery of U.S. Marines who arrived to set up an artillery base to support coalition troops, it starts off with a quote from Donald Trump saying that U.S. troops are "not going into Syria."   

But that wasn't true then, and it's not true now.

As I've said, I don't assign homework or anything (it's not that kind of blog) but if you want to understand just how extensive the U.S. combat role in Syria is, you should really take some time to read journalist Seth Harp's recent Rolling Stone article "The Siege of Raqqa: On the Front Line Of America's Secret War With ISIS". 

It's a remarkable piece of journalism lifted from his having been secretly smuggled into Syria with the help of SDF guides (and probably a fat cash donation from Rolling Stone).

U.S. Marines carrying 155mm artillery shells in
Northern Syria

Not only does Harp, himself a veteran of the Iraq war who writes from a position of knowledge and experience, visit the front lines of Raqqa where SDF fighters are dodging ISIS drones that drop grenades on them from above as they huddle in blasted out buildings waiting for U.S. air and artillery support - he also talks about the massive U.S. combat presence there.

Not hundreds of U.S. soldiers but thousands of American personnel.


And not just members of SEAL teams, Green Berets, Army Rangers and Delta Force operators who make up the Special Forces (JSOC) on the ground fighting ISIS - but members of all 4 branches.

As Harp writes in the opening of his RS piece: "Today, there are some 14 U.S. military bases on Syrian soil. The troops on the ground include personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, but the government won't say exactly how many, where they're located, what precisely they're doing or how long they'll stay. A Few have died and a good deal more have been injured in combat, but like almost everything else about the U.S. presence in Syria, the number of wounded is classified."

If the SDF is going to become the face of "Democracy" in Syria, what does that mean for the thousands of American troops already stationed there?

Is this the start of another 15-plus year deployment of U.S. troops? If so what's it going to cost U.S. taxpayers?

And what are the parameters of their mission there?

The current news blackout on that mission by the Pentagon prevents American citizens from getting answers to those questions, but we have a right to know if American blood and treasure are being committed to a multi-year combat role in a foreign nation - especially one as destabilized as Syria.

My sense is that many Americans (including me) would consider defeating ISIS a noble cause, but if we're going to fight a war to do that then Congress needs to fully authorize it, hold public hearings about it and most importantly be upfront and straight with American citizens about what's going on there.

We have a right to debate the wisdom of deploying Americans to fight in a country that's been wracked by war since the 4th century AD - trying do that in secret is not the way to do it.

Something the Twitter-happy president who campaigned on an "America First" philosophy while criticizing President Obama's overseas military interventions is going to have to own.

Ma$$ Incarceration in the American Gulag: Ugly Truths in Caddo Parish

Caddo Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff Steve Prator

The news story that surfaced last week about Caddo Parish, Louisiana Sheriff Steve Prator's comments about incarcerated prisoners performing manual labor was a troubling reminder of one of the most insidious aspects of mass incarceration in America.

Namely the profit motive that channels people into the justice system on the front end, then moves them through an overburdened municipal, state and federal prison pipeline that extracts financial gain in a variety of ways.

Profit realized not from rehabilitating those found guilty in courts of law, but from keeping those individuals incarcerated for as long as possible, irrespective of flawed sentencing laws, overt bias on the part of some members of local law enforcement, or sometimes even a suspect's guilt or innocence - as in the tragic case of Glenn Ford.

As Jonah Engel Bromwich reported in a New York Times article last Thursday, it was almost three weeks ago back on Thursday October 5th that the sheriff of Caddo Parish Louisiana, Steve Prator, held a lengthy press conference in which he railed against a series of substantive prison and sentencing reforms passed with overwhelming bipartisan support by both Democratic and Republican members of the Louisiana state legislature.

Whether Sheriff Prator harbors personal political ambitions isn't really clear.

But his alarming suggestion that the 1,400 low-level offenders convicted of non-violent offenses scheduled to be released from various Louisiana prisons (under the terms of the bipartisan prison reform bills) would have negative economic consequences because they perform a variety of manual labor services for the state's prison system, seemed close to justifying slave labor.

Incarcerated Americans sewing military fatigues

Consider a Prison Policy Initiative report by Wendy Sawyer last April that noted that there's been a decline in the average of the already-meager prison wage nationwide - which can be as low as 50 cents an hour in some states.

In some southern states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and (Surprise!) Texas, do not pay inmates for regular work in prison at all.

My sense is that part of the reason Sheriff Prator's comments drew such widespread criticism was that he shed an unsettling light on some of the numerous ways that prison labor is used in the Caddo Parish jail - including cooking and washing and performing mechanical work on cars and vehicles.

But more troubling was that he was arguing that low-level offenders jailed for non-violent offenses should STAY in prison because local state municipalities need the revenue - that's frightening.

And to many it seemed to reek of the undisguised authoritarian stench of Trumpian policy; undermine the free press, label anyone who disagrees with him an "enemy of the people", encourage law enforcement to use excessive force against suspects, lie at will, support for-profit prisons and back off of prison reforms that would keep more people out of the mass incarceration pipeline.

As Bromwich noted the story really didn't blow up nationally until journalist and criminal justice activist Shaun King posted a link to Sheriff Prator's comments on his Twitter feed early last Thursday morning.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards

In the wake of the utter devastation wreaked upon the state of Louisiana's economy after the disastrous economic policies of former Republican Governor-turned failed 2016 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, one of the core campaign promises of current Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards was to reform the state's notoriously broken prison system.

A system that, like in other states, costs taxpayers hundreds of millions a year to operate.

Back in June, as Rebekah Allen reported for the Advocate, when Edwards signed the ten separate bills into law with a large group of Republican and Democratic supporters looking on (Republicans drafted seven of the bills), the scope and depth of the reforms was hailed as an "historic achievement" - click the link above and read some of the details outlines of the bills that were passed.

It's literally a progressive roadmap-template for sensible national criminal justice reforms, and as Bel Edwards successfully argued, those reforms would save the state of Louisiana over $260 million a year by keeping non-violent low-level offenders out of prison and out of the justice system.

For men like Sheriff Prator to argue against that kind of common sense change reflects the deep systematic challenges to meaningful prison reform in America.

For years, writers, historians, advocates of prison reform and criminal justice reform have presented data and made the case that mass incarceration in America and other countries is used as a means to warehouse a massive pool of readily cheap labor.

Not just for states and local municipalities either - we're not just talking about some guys hoeing fields or cutting grass.

A small sample of companies that use American prison
labor in some capacity

Prisoners do everything from logging, to road resurfacing to working in call centers for major retailers - yes, some of those people you speak to in customer service when you call to place an order, book an airline ticket or return an item are prisoners.

There's a long list of companies like Walmart, McDonald's and Victoria's Secret that benefit from prison labor.

When you consider the immense lobbying power that these companies wield on Capitol Hill, and the influence they wield on Congressman, Senators and Governors (and Fake President), the pushback against prison reform, which has bipartisan support in the Senate, starts to become more clear.

Sheriff Prator isn't alone in his opposition to releasing non-violent offenders because it will make labor costs rise, many U.S. corporations feel the same way.

Of course you'll never see THAT in a television commercial for McDonald's or AT&T, but they do.

Remember the efforts to untangle the prison phone rate scam a couple years ago?

If you recall, the Democratic-majority Federal Communications Commission, in conjunction with wider prison reform efforts by the Obama administration, passed a rule capping the outrageous rates that major phone companies charge prison inmates.

Trump's FCC head Ajit Pai

But a federal court shot that down earlier this summer, and the conservative right-wing puppet that Fake President tapped to head the FCC, Ajit Pai, refused to pursue the fight.

Ajit Pai basically sided with the large telecommunications carriers that lobbied Republicans to be able to freely charge wildly excessive phone rates to incarcerated inmates - making it even more difficult for them to maintain some kind of emotional bond with family and friends on the outside.

Think about that.

But it's not surprising, like a young Dinesh D'Souza, Pai is one of those Ivy League-educated sons of hard working Indian immigrants who seem to revel in prostrating themselves before the alter of right-wing conservative American ideology - gleefully pushing all the buttons that make the corporate establishment squirm and giggle with pleasure.

If there's any issue on which the FCC could rule to stick it to consumers and make it easier for large telecommunications and internet companies to consolidate their power and rack up profits, you can be sure Ajit Pai will be on the front line making it happen - after using his law degree to work for the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division, he took a job as Verizon's Associate General Counsel where he (surprise!) specialized in among other things, regulatory issues.

Now he does the bidding of a president who holds dark-skinned people in total contempt - MAGA!

Sadly, all this corporate ass-holery is not new in America as illustrated in disturbing detail in Douglas A. Blackmon's Pulitzer-Prize wining book, "Slavery by Another Name", which explores the disturbing truth that slavery in this country continued up into the 20th century in the form of forced human bondage based on arcane local laws, corrupt local courts and greedy businessmen who conspired to target, imprison and torture thousands of African-Americans in flagrant violation of the Constitution to quench a thirst for free labor that grew exponentially after the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.

African-American prisoners laboring on a railway
in the late 19th or early 20th century 

These weren't just farmers using wrongly-incarcerated prison labor to clear fields or harvest crops; in some cases corporations like U.S. Steel and Standard Oil dipped into that ill-gotten labor pool too.

Slavery By Another Name is also a brilliant PBS documentary if you've never seen it; albeit a disturbing one that will alter one's perspective on the U.S. justice system and corporate America.


Michelle Alexander's 2010 nonfiction book "The New Jim Crow" is also an essential tool to understand the dynamics of mass incarceration in America and it's relation to a justice system warped by bias and internal dysfunction.

If there were some kind of a litmus test to measure the federal government's response to the urgent need for prison reform in the U.S., where would the score be on the spectrum?

The rigidly conservative, yet remarkably uncurious Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an ideologue whose quasi-religious adherence to his narrow concept of the "rule of law" could be seen as conditional and uneven with regards to the role the Department of Justice should play in such efforts.

While he's stated publicly that he would prosecute members of law enforcement who cross the line, there's little indication that he will - especially considering that he's already gone on record as saying that the Department of Justice under his leadership will steer clear of efforts to monitor local police departments who engage in systematic biased policing based on race.

Sessions also steered the DOJ back to approving the use of for-profit prison companies to manage some federal institutions - despite those companies having a sketchy track record in such areas as safety and cost-effectiveness.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions 

Part of what's troubling about the hands-off approach to bipartisan criminal justice reform under Sessions' DOJ is the simple stubborn refusal to recognize the dehumanizing and alienating effects that flawed sentencing laws and biased court systems have on the men, women and children who populate America's prisons.

It's like his adherence to an ideology blinds him to virtually anything else.

Nothing else exists - reality, facts and common sense are secondary to his entrenched belief system.

The narrow-minded, simplistic ideological rhetoric of men like Sessions, Fake President and Sheriff Prator often obscures the simple fact that prisons house real human beings - sure some have committed violent crimes and deserve to be in jail for their crimes, but they're still people.

Did you see the New York Times article last week that quoted the Texas Criminal Department of Justice as saying that some 6,663 inmates housed in correctional facilities across the state of Texas collectively donated some $53,863 to Hurricane Harvey relief charities?

This despite the fact that most only keep on average about $5 in their prison commissary accounts; much of which goes to telecom companies so they can make phone calls.

Prisoner fire fighters in California 

Recently the news has been full of the devastation and loss of life and property in parts of California in some of the worst fires seen in years - but as MotherJones reported recently, a remarkable 30% of California's forest firefighters are made up of state prisoners.

When you consider that California's forest fire fighting budget in 2014 was about $209 million, 30% of the thousands of forest fire fighters coming from prison labor is not small change.

Despite that devastation Trump has called for a $300 million dollar cut in the US Forest Service's wild fire prevention budget for fiscal 2018 (again, ideology uber alles), who knows, maybe he plans to plug those gaps with even more prisoner labor?

So in retrospect, Sheriff Steve Prator's griping about loosing a few inmates from the Caddo Parish prison cafeteria staff and motor pool seems like chump change in comparison with the wider use of prison labor in America by both the military, private corporations and state governments.

Given all that, it's interesting how much time Trump spends talking about how immigrants are taking away American jobs in this country.

Why read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's massive three-volume work on the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system when we've got an American Gulag going on right here at home?