Mireille Knoll and the Spirit of Unity

85-Year-old French Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll

For many, days like Easter Sunday help to reinforce the importance of spending time with love ones, while remembering those who are no longer here with us.

As millions of people around the globe gather with family to observe one of the holiest times of the year for both Christians and Jews, the children and grandchildren of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll were cruelly denied the chance to celebrate Passover with their beloved mother and grandmother.

Her partially-burned remains were found on Friday March 23rd after two assailants brutally stabbed her eleven times then attempted to set fire to her body in a frantic effort to cover up the evidence of their heinous and cowardly attack on an elderly woman with Parkinson's Disease who lived alone. 

Because the assailants, one of whom was her neighbor, specifically targeted her because they believed she possessed large amounts of valuables or money in the apartment because she was Jewish, French investigators are calling it a hate crime.

"Hate crime" is probably putting it lightly, but perhaps it best summarizes the wanton criminal violation of someone's person or property based on assumptions or stereotypes about their religion, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

However you wish to define it, the accused attackers who took Mireille Knoll's life two weeks ago displayed a remarkable contempt for human life.

A contempt rooted in the anti-Semitism based on time-worn stereotypes that have dehumanized, marginalized and vilified Jewish people based solely on their faith and customs since before the 1st century AD - when the Roman emperor Hadrian outlawed the Jewish tradition of circumcision because it offended some ancient Romans concept of the natural body.   

Thousands of French citizens turned out to honor
Mireille Knoll and oppose anti-Semitism

The thousands of people who marched in Paris last Wednesday to honor the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor know all too well that the ugly face of anti-Semitism is not an unfamiliar one in France.

In the same sense that Americans still struggle to reconcile with the institutionalized racism that fueled slavery, or the ethnic hatred and xenophobia the led to the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens into American concentration camps during World War II.

The murder of Mireille Knoll serves as a violent reminder that France as a society still faces the ethical challenge and moral responsibility of reconciling the French motto "Liberte´, Equlite´, Fraternite´ " (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) with the fact that some French authorities cooperated with occupying Nazi forces during WWII to deport some 75,000 French Jews to German concentration camps where some 72,500 were eventually killed. 

The fact that Mireille Knoll was able to narrowly escape that fate in the summer of 1942 as a young girl because her mother had Brazilian passport only compounds the sense of outrage that accompanied her brutal death.

The same hatred that led to the death of millions of Jews, Roma and others during WWII at the hands of the Nazis eventually caught up to her inside the small apartment where she lived alone in the 21st century.

As Lelia Dessante, the home-care aide who cooked and cleaned for the Parisian grandmother who lived alone observed to a New York Times reporter:

"She survived the Holocaust in the last century, I think she had a happy life, and yet she was killed at home, frail and defenseless. What world are we living in?"

Steve Bannon and Marine Le Pen at a conference
held by French far-right National Front party 

It's a world in which right-wing political parties which embrace xenophobia and quietly (or openly) tolerate anti-Semitic views have gained footholds in legislatures across Europe.

It's a world in which the current American president refused to condemn a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia where some brandished flags with the swastika and chanted "Jews will not replace us."  

Those kinds of repugnant views aren't just relegated to the sidelines of global politics or in the dark corners of the internet either.

If you recall, back on Saturday March 10th, just about two weeks before Mireille Knoll's murder, former Trump campaign manager and senior White House adviser Steve Bannon was in Paris to address a conference of the French far-right political party National Front.

Bannon famously told the cheering crowd, "Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor."

Now I'm not suggesting that Bannon appearing alongside former right-wing French political candidate Marine Le Pen to encourage white supremacists to embrace being called racists directly led to Mireille Knoll's murder.

But there's little doubt that his championing of racist and xenophobic views as the basis of political policy, and the hatred that led to her death, are inexorably linked.

Some of the thousands of people who marched to honor Mireille Knoll last Wednesday felt so too.

Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, whose anti-immigrant hatred and bigotry helped propel Emmanuel Macron to victory in the French presidential election back in May of 2017, was openly booed by some as she marched in the parade last Wednesday.

Lassana Bathily attends a memorial service for
Mireille Knoll in Paris last Wednesday

Some even chanted "N is for Nazi!" as she walked past in an expression of contempt for the intolerance and anti-immigrant hysteria she cultivates as a tool to boost her political power.

Those kinds of public reactions to her presence echo the overwhelming majority of the country who voted against her in the 2017 French presidential race.

Now obviously there's no changing the brutal circumstances of Mireille Knoll's horrific death.

But there are some positives that have come about as result of it - including a broad and diverse cross-section of French people, including many non-Jews, who came out to honor her memory last and march against anti-Semitism.

As Cnaan Liphshiz reported in an article for the Times of Israel, 27-year-old Lassana Bathily (pictured above), was one of many non-Jews who attended a vigil prayer service at the Tournelles Synagogue in Paris last Wednesday.

Bathily, an African Muslim from Mali, was the employee working inside the stockroom of a kosher store called HyperCacher in France back in January, 2015 when a radicalized Islamist terrorist named Amedy Coulibaly entered the kosher store and murdered four people.

He bravely guided twelve Jewish shoppers who were inside the store to safety and helped them hide inside a refrigerated room until the attack was over.

Mourners place flowers and candles at a makeshift
memorial outside of Mireille Knoll's apartment

The African immigrant was recognized as a national hero for his actions and granted French citizenship.

And as Liphshiz reported, Bathily was warmly received at the ceremony for Mireille Knoll last Wednesday by some of the French Jews in attendance - many of whom crowded around him to shake his hand or hug him to thank him for his actions.

As Liphshiz reported, a Jewish man from Sarcelles, France named David Mechal who attended the vigil on Wednesday, told reporters:

"The Minister is here and Mayor Anne Hidalgo is also here, and that's important because their commitment to the values of the French Republic is imperative for the survival of Jewish life here. But real change us not up to them. It's up to people like Lassana, so it's moving to see him with us here, standing with us in solidarity in our hour of need." 

That kind of spirit of cross-cultural unity is one way to respond to the hatred and anti-Semitism that has reared it's ugly head in France, America and other countries - but it must be accompanied with a justice system that demonstrates a willingness to treat hate crimes as the threat to law and order and personal human rights that they are.

That spirit of unity won't erase the brutal act that took the life of Mireille Knoll in Paris, but it shows that people of different races, ethnicities, religions and nationalities are willing to step forward and stand up for the rights of all - regardless of who the victim is.

Perhaps that's the most meaningful embodiment of the Easter and Passover season.

The Narrow Scope of Republican Justice

Trump's name is removed from a Panama hotel after
his company was accused of mismanagement  

Increasingly, it seems clear that the scope of "justice" as defined by the Republican Party that now controls both the White House and both chambers of Congress, is remarkably limited to targeting those seen by some conservatives as "others".

The traditional role of the Department of Justice, as the nation's top independent legal authority, has been usurped to function as a de facto enforcer of the right-wing ideology that defines the Trump administration.

While former top White House adviser Steve Bannon was over in Paris on Saturday extolling members of France's far right political party the National Front to embrace their racism and xenophobic views, here in the U.S., rampant violations of protocol, ethics, laws and morality by the White House go all but ignored by the racist perjurer masquerading as attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Despite a court ruling in Panama last week in favor of a majority investor in the Trump Panama City hotel named Orestes Fintiklis, who filed suit to oust the Trump Organization because of serious lapses in management of the property, you won't find Sessions directing Department of Justice resources towards investigating any of Trump's numerous violations of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution - which expressly forbids those holding office from receiving "profit", "benefit" or "advantage of any kind" from the title of his or her elected office.

After directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to launch Operation Keep Safe, yet another round of crack-of-dawn anti-immigrant arrests in northern California two weeks ago, last Wednesday Sessions announced the DOJ was suing the state of California over three state laws intended to protect immigrant's rights.

As NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams reported last Tuesday, Sessions' lawsuit targets SB-54, AB-450 and AB-103, three laws recently passed by the California legislature intended to put into place protections that would limit the federal government's ability to arrest undocumented immigrants at their place of employment, or target them in court or upon release from jail.
   

Part of California's Adelanto Detention Facility
owned and run by the GEO Group 

According to Williams, Sessions is even going after state law AB-103, "which requires the state to inspect detention facilities where federal authorities are holding immigrants who face deportation." 
 
Just consider that last one for a moment.

Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law that would mandate state inspections of federal facilities where deportees are being held.

Facilities like the Adelanto Detention Facility (pictured above), a privately-operated facility located in a remote desert region of San Bernardino County, California 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles with a capacity of about 2,000 male and female detainees.

As journalist Paloma Esquivel reported in an LA Times article in August, 2017, the Adelanto facility,  has gained notoriety for a series of suicides, hunger strikes and deaths of detainees while in custody since it first opened in 2011.

Deaths like that of Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos back in 2015.

As Esquivel's LA Times piece notes, in the months leading up to his death, in one of the two written  complaints Ramos submitted to Adelanto officials, he told them:

"To who receives this, I am letting you know that I am very sick and they don't want to care for me. The nurse gave me ibuprofen, and that only alleviates me for a few hours. Let me know if you can help me, I only need medial attention."

GEO Group CEO George Foley

A medical report released after Ramos' death in detention noted that he had an abdominal mass which had been present for months - as Esquivel observed, a doctor who examined him wrote that it was "the largest she has ever seen in her practice."

As journalist Mirren Gidda reported in an article for Newsweek, two days after then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that Department of Justice would begin scaling back federal use of private for-profit prisons on August 17, 2016, a subsidiary of the GEO Group donated $100,000 to Rebuilding America Now - a pro-Trump Political Action Committee.

A month later GEO gave $200,000 to another Republican PAC (the Senate Leadership Fund) and on November 1st, just days before the 2016 presidential election, GEO gave another $125,000 to the pro-Trump PAC.

So it's not surprising why Attorney General Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law mandating state inspections of federal facilities like Adelanto - shedding light on GEO Group's controversial record of management of juvenile and adult prison facilities across the U.S. is certainly not in the interest of the Trump administration.

Especially considering that as a U.S. Senator Sessions was not only one of the leading anti-immigration advocates on Capitol Hill, he also opposed bipartisan legislation to reduce mass incarceration in American prisons.

And as Trump's attorney general he's advocated ramping up the incarceration of undocumented immigrants as well as non-violent drug offenders since day one.

Given the fallout from media coverage of the rampant ongoing chaos of the White House following the recent resignations of Communications Director Hope Hicks and Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, it hardly comes as a surprise that Sessions would initiate a lawsuit against the state of California for its efforts to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants.

Republicans spent most of former President Obama's two terms in office whining about overreach by "Big Government", so the idea of a Republican attorney general expanding federal authority to try and trample individual state efforts to protect their immigrant populations represents a pretty remarkable change of government philosophy for both Sessions and the Republican Party.

In fact it's a total 180 degree turn that reveals that Republicans like Big Government when it suits their own ideological or financial needs and wants.

Spencer Hogue and Evelyn and Albert Turner, also
known as "The Marion Three"

Historically, when it came to the Republican Party using race as a wedge issue to expand its support among white working-class voters in the 60's, 70's and 80's, "States Rights" was the clarion call-codeword  used to champion the rights of individual states to oppose federally-mandated laws on school desegregation, voting rights and the enforcement of civil rights.

The Confederacy rallied behind "States Rights" as the right of southern states to keep the institution of slavery intact.

While Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard) was born and raised in a rabidly pro-States Rights segregated Alabama, he demonstrated a willingness to use the power of the federal government to reflect his own racist ideology early in his professional career.

When he was serving as the U.S. attorney for the Office of the Southern District of Alabama in 1985, Sessions decided to try and prosecute three well-known and respected local civil rights activists, Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hogue, Jr. (pictured above) for voter fraud.

The Turners and Hogue, who became known as the "The Marion Three", had worked doggedly to help poor African-Americans in rural Perry County, Alabama register to vote and participate in the voting process in a county in which blacks were the numerical majority.

As Scott Zamost, Drew Griffin and Curt Devine reported in an article for CNN.com, Albert Turner had worked as an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched alongside the civil rights icon in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 in support of voting rights.

Turner formed the Perry County Civic League to help consolidate and expand black representation in local politics, and Sessions tried to prosecute him, his wife and Hogue on 29 separate charges of tampering with voting ballots during the 1984 Democratic presidential primary.

Then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions during 1986 Senate
hearings for his failed nomination to the federal bench

While a grand jury indicted The Marion Three, they were eventually found not guilty and acquitted of all charges in a highly-publicized case that was widely seen as "racially motivated."

Especially considering the institutional segregation and voter oppression which had left blacks in Perry County marginalized in terms of political representation and county services for years.

The Marion Three case exposed Sessions' views on race and eventually helped to sink his nomination to be a federal judge.

His highly-publicized Senate hearings in 1986 included testimony from four different lawyers who'd worked with Sessions in the Office of the Southern District of Alabama - all four testified about a variety of different comments Sessions had made in DOJ offices that were seen as racist and demonstrated his personal contempt for civil rights and organizations like the NAACP.

Coretta Scott King famously penned an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging Sessions's nomination to the federal bench be denied because of his having used the power of his office to "intimidate and frighten elderly black voters."

While he eventually withdrew his nomination to be a federal judge, he was later elected State Attorney General of Alabama in 1995 where he championed a state school funding model that disproportionally underfunded majority-African-American schools - a model which was later found to be unconstitutional.

Anyway that's who Jeff Sessions is.

ICE agents escorting an immigrant to plane

His announcement of a lawsuit against the state of California last week to try and attack legitimate efforts to protect immigrants within their borders is simply a reflection of the overt racial bias he demonstrated in his attempts to prosecute The Marion Three for voter fraud back in 1984.

As much as Trump demeans him publicly, including referring to him as "Mr. Magoo" recently, Jeff Sessions is exactly what the Trump administration ordered.

An attorney general whose archaic views on immigrants, people of color and mass incarceration are informed by his own personal bigotry.

One who is willing to use the power of the Department of Justice as a tool to enforce the "otherism" that lies at the heart of chaotic right-wing ideology of the Trump administration - and twist the DOJ's mission to enable it to function like a quasi-Gestapo where immigrants are concerned.

It's a reflection of the narrow scope of justice as interpreted by the Trump administration and the Republican politicians on Capitol Hill who remain silent - content to savor their precious tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while chaos reigns in the White House.

And inside the immigrant communities they vilify.

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.

DeVos & Mnuchin: A Peek Inside the (Republican) Cabinet

Trump's exclusive Bild interview [Photo - Getty Images]

With the uninformed and divisive rhetoric of the soon-to-be inaugurated PEOTUS now inspiring ripples of uncertainty and fear across the European continent in the wake of his Sunday interview published in the Times of London and Germany's Bild in which he described the 67 year-old NATO alliance of 28 countries as "obsolete", the world is finally grasping the sense of unease felt by millions of Americans.

Welcome to our world Europe.


Much of the political amd media establishment's attention was justifiably focused on the contentious confirmation hearings of Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos, a politically conservative billionaire with no actual education experience who has given large political donations to five of the same Republican Senators sitting on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee tasked with approving her nomination. (Drain that swamp!)

That's a pretty scary thought for advocates of public education as well as the bedrock Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

According to an extensively researched and well written article posted today on Mother Jones.com by Kristina Rizga, in a 2001 interview, when asked if Christian schools should continue to rely on the kinds of philanthropic donations ($50 million between 1999 - 2104) she and her husband give to Christian schools and organizations, DeVos famously said:

"Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."

As Forbes reported earlier this evening, during questioning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders reminded DeVos that millions of Americans are troubled by the idea of a small handful of conservative billionaires forming an oligarchy that ostensibly controls the country.

He then asked DeVos how much her family has contributed to the Republican party.

She said it's "possible" her family has donated $200 million to various Republican politicians.

"Advance God's kingdom" indeed...

For those who may shudder at the idea of a crusading charter school advocate and Republican rainmaker whose father-in-law (Amway founder Richard DeVos) is worth over $5 billion being given the keys to the Department of Education, today the federal government only contributes about 10% of the funds for American public schools.

So the reality is that there is really only so much damage that she can actually do if she is nominated to the post.

More worrisome was her testimony that she wants to see more control over schools established at the local level.


I'm not an expert on education by any means, but I do believe strongly in the need for federal standards and guidelines for schools, curriculums, teachers, administrators and students.

Should administrators, teachers and parents have influence on the local level?

Absolutely, but when DeVos uses language like shifting control of schools to the local level, it reflects the growing disparity and segregation (both socio-economic and racial) in American schools that stems largely from the steady decline of federal funding for public schools that has taken place since the 1960's.

Back in June I touched on this subject in a blog post after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie advocated for a "Fairness Formula" that would cap per-pupil spending in New Jersey public schools regardless of the school district.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie

Like DeVos, Christie was in essence arguing for the kind of public school funding that we have here in NJ - for the most part wealthier school districts with higher tax bases are able to fund higher quality public school education than urban areas coping with trickier fiscal challenges, less concentration of higher paying jobs, less tax revenue and the steady drain of human capital to the suburbs.



I don't think DeVos is a bad person or anything.

I just don't think it's a good idea to put someone in charge of the Department of Education who never attended public schools, didn't educate her kids in public schools, has money invested in for-profit education and has no degree in education - or ever worked in education in a professional capacity.

Did I mention that she thinks that teachers are overpaid?

Yes, she whose family has given $200 million to the Republican party.

Speaking of controversial cabinet picks by the embattled PEOTUS, the nominee for Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin has certainly raised eyebrows.

Remember during the presidential campaign when Trump berated both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for their ties to Goldman-Sachs?

Steven Mnuchin

In addition to Mnuchin, Trump now has no less than four key advisors and cabinet picks who are former Goldman-Sachs employees; including his pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Manhattan attorney Jay Clayton.

As has been widely reported, it's not just the fact that the 53-year-old Mnuchin is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs.

His fitness to be placed in charge of the U.S. Treasury has been called into question over his role as part of the management team that purchased the notoriously troubled lender IndyMac during the housing crisis in 2009.

As Kim Masters reported in an excellent article on Mnuchin's rise from Goldman-Sachs to film financier in a recent issue of the Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin and his investors paid $1.5 billion for IndyMac, renamed it OneWest, then pocketed a tidy $1.9 billion profit after selling it to the CIT Group in 2014 for $3.4 billion.

As Max Kutner reported in an article for Newsweek back in December, some critics and former homeowners charge that Mnuchin ran OneWest when it was a "foreclosure machine" that systematically (and heartlessly) kicked thousands of California homeowners out of their homes in an effort to squeeze profits for investors via the mortgage crisis that almost wrecked the economy.

Mnuchin later became Trump's campaign finance chairman - and presto, is now possibly the man who will take over the Treasury Department.

Take a few minutes to click the link above and read Kim Master's THR article on Mnuchin and his move to Los Angeles, very interesting read.

Is he fit to be Secretary of the Treasury?

By the standards of the political and financial establishment, Yale graduate, Goldman-Sachs partner, he is - he's clearly a smart guy.

But his personal choices and his role in the sale of OneWest call into question what his priorities will be as head of the U.S. Treasury - like Betsy DeVos, I'm highly skeptical that it will be the interests of the American people who are not members of the 1%.

Kellogg's Dumps Breitbart; Shiny Things & Cake

Tony the Tiger says no to toxic bigotry,
anti-Semitism and rampant misogyny  

Now I was never really a "cereal guy" as a kid.

My younger brother was almost fanatical about sugary cereals like Frosted Flakes or Boo Berry, but I was just one of those kids who never liked the idea of crunchy fibrous bits soaking in a bowl of milk.

But as an American child who grew up spending hours on Saturday mornings in my pajamas watching cartoons, I certainly recognized Tony the Tiger as one of the first corporate icons geared towards youth.

So it seems appropriate to kick off the month of December by giving a shout-out to Kellogg's for their timely decision to pull it's advertising from the "alt right" Website Breitbart News.

As Aimee Picchi reported in an article for CBS News' Moneywatch on Friday morning, large corporations and organizations including the AARP, Vanguard and 3M also announced that they will be pulling their ads from the Breitbart Website in an effort to disassociate their brands from the overt racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and white supremacist ideology which has become a hallmark of the site since the passing of it's founder Andrew Breitbart.

Picchi's article quoted statements from both Kellog's and Vanguard regarding their ad decisions, though neither went into too much detail, their recognition that Breitbart has become an offensive online hub for toxic hate was clear.

Kellog's said that Breirbart didn't align with the company's values and Vanguard said that it does not advertise "on any overtly political Websites."

So kudos to these organizations for recognizing that the overwhelming majority of the people who use their products and services, both here and around the globe, find the kinds of hate and divisiveness that Breitbart peddles in to be reprehensible and offensive to decent folks.

Anti-KKK marchers in Albany, NY on Saturday

Trump seems too busy publicly patting himself on the back for Carrier's decision to keep 800 jobs from moving to Mexico on his self-created "victory tour" to take much notice of the Breitbart kerfuffle.

Or the KKK's plan to march in celebration of Trump's election victory.

Fortunately the Klan's decision to honor Trump with a parade in a small town near Pelham, North Carolina was overshadowed by much larger anti-KKK rallies in Raleigh, NC, Albany, New York and elsewhere.

As Jeff Taylor reported on LGBTQ.com earlier yesterday, anti-Klan marchers gathered in Pelham, NC in an effort to try and find the Klan march to counter-demonstrate, but even after marching to nearby Danville, Virginia they were unsuccessful - perhaps the Klan opted to keep their Trump celebration under the hood.

It's been interesting to watch Trump and his advisors try and pretend he has nothing to do with the hundreds of overt acts of hostility against Muslims, African-Americans, LGTBQ-folk and others that have taken place around the country since the November 8th election.

Like the young Muslim woman who was verbally and physically attacked on a crowded New York City subway by three intoxicated white men yelling Trump's name, snatching at her bag and demanding she remove her Hijab last Thursday night - no onlookers helped her by the way.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway got into a pretty heated spat with Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri at a post-election discussion forum held at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government the other day when Palmieri called out the Trump campaign for deliberately stoking bigotry and racism.

Kellyanne Conway & Clinton campaign manager
Robby Mook at the Harvard forum discussion

As Wonkette.com reported, an indignant Conway asked Palmieri, "Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?"

Palmieri responded, "You did, Kellyanne You did." 

Meanwhile Trump's boasting about the Carrier jobs deal has been undermined by the fact that it's basically just a $7 million tax giveaway to United Technologies, the parent company that owns Carrier.

A corporate tax giveaway that will benefit Trump financially.

United Technologies is a defense contractor that also owns aircraft engine maker Pratt &Whitney and UTC Aerospace Systems, so not only does it have billions in defense contracts with the United States government, financial documents show that Trump also owns stock in the company - so his "deal" represents a staggering conflict of interest.

But does he Tweet about potential conflicts regarding his ownership stake in UT or other companies around the world?

No, his bizarre Twitter message about people burning the American flag being jailed or denied citizenship dominated much of the media coverage of the president elect this week.

It's pretty clear that he understands that using his Twitter account to repeat pretty much anything that comes into his head, no matter how disjointed or unsupportable by fact, has become his de facto MO.

Trump understands that his followers are easily distracted by bright shiny things that make a lot of noise - doesn't matter if they're true or based on actual evidence.


Remember just a few weeks ago when he was telling his followers that the election was "rigged"?

Now that he's won the election and evidence has surfaced of pro-Trump voter fraud, his lawyers (and individuals who support him)  are filing suits to stop recount efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Consider how much mainstream media coverage has been devoted to his Tweet about the leader of Taiwan calling him to congratulate him about his election victory - it's dominated the headlines this weekend and for Trump has served as an effective way to distract the American people from the rampant and unprecedented conflict of interests his global business relationships represent.

No wonder he won't release his tax returns; it makes Hillary's emails seem like a third grader's fudged report card.

Like the flag-burning Tweet, it just came out of nowhere - can you recall a time during the recent presidential race where burning the American flag, or Taiwan was an issue?

Would you personally rank either of those topics as in the top ten most critical issues facing the nation?

How many people could locate Taiwan on a map?

Trump has figured out that mainstream media is willing, and even eager to help him get his message out there, even though he's just using it as a smokescreen for his con game - reports have surfaced that his pro-Taiwan statement came after his overtures to build a hotel there.

His supporters aren't necessarily interested in facts, they prefer bright shiny things that twinkle in the light that are easy to digest and repeat.

Trump's unfiltered nonsensical Tweets have become almost like a 21st century version of "Let them eat cake", the quote incorrectly attributed to Louis XVI's wife Marie Antoinette that has come to symbolize the ruling classes' disdain, contempt and misunderstanding of the living conditions faced by the poor.

The president-elect has the same disdain for the poor and working class (as evidenced by his stacking his cabinet with billionaires and entrenched political elites), he's just become adept at using Twitter to distract people from seeing what's dark, and for Trump, quite profitable.

Internet Trolls and a Noose in Mississippi

Writer & Alt Right target David French

If you're unfamiliar with the alarmingly far-right branch of conservatism on the American political spectrum known as the alt-right, then I'd recommend that you spend a few minutes listening to the interview Terry Gross did with National Review writer David French yesterday on Fresh Air.

Who is David French? For starters he's both principled and fairly conservative in his worldview.

He's a married Iraq War vet with three children, Harvard-trained lawyer and conservative writer for one of the more conservative periodicals out there.

That's why it's all the more remarkable to listen to him describe the extent of the virulent backlash of online hate and vicious internet trolling he, his wife and young daughter were subjected to after he emerged as one of the leading conservative thinkers in the "never Trump" camp.

According to his interview yesterday, it really started after he criticized the far-right racist xenophobe nutbag author Ann Coulter; you really should read the National Review article he wrote last week detailing the extent of the alt-right campaign against him.

It's not just shocking and disturbing.

It offers insight into a largely younger-skewing demographic that has oepnly embraced an aggressive white-identity movement with decidedly white supremacist leanings, one that is largely organized around social media and is far right enough to be hostile towards, and totally contemptuous of the Republican establishment in Washington.

Oh and they love Trump.

Trump campaign guru Steve Bannon 

Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon deserves a large measure of credit for building a large online tent-community where those who identify as alt-right could gather and reinforce their extremist views.

As the chairman of Brietbart Media, the Goebbels-like propaganda specialist turned Brietbart News into an online hub for racism, xenophobia and white supremacy.

Is it surprising that Trump tapped Bannon to head up his campaign?

Trumps' son Donald, Jr. (he of the quasi-mafioso 80's-esque Gordon Gekko hair style) is young enough, internet-saavy enough and enamoured enough with the language of the white identity movement to have likely been one of the insiders to suggest that Bannon would be a good pick to run the Republican front-runner's campaign.

You may recall Junior as the brainiac who tried to ape his father's use of Twitter to offend millions of people by trying to illustrate the "danger" of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war by comparing them to a bowl of Skittles.

Arguably one of the main reasons Bannon was hired by Trump was that he brought with him a ready-made online audience of haters aching to attach themselves to a mainstream political candidate who talked their talk and walked their walk.

After all, as Sarah Posner wrote in an August article about Bannon for Mother Jones, before Trump gave them a feeling of legitimacy and belonging, the alt-right was "a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee's favor on social media."

Brietbart tech editor & Net Troll Milos Yiannopoulos

And use social media they have, in some truly alarming ways.

With a disturbing combination of anger, group-think and internet trolling, the alt-right has developed something of a "hive-mind", taking to their keyboards, cell phones and electronic pads to swarm en-masse upon unsuspecting victims who displease them.

Remember the unprecedented Twitter attack on SNL's Leslie Jones in the wake of many fanboys displeasure over Sony's all-female Ghostbusters remake this summer?

The outspoken Milos Yiannopolous, one of Bannon's Brietbart lieutenants, was largely responsible for fanning the flames on social media and encouraging the onslaught of flagrantly sexist and racist hate directed against Jones; Yiannopolous was finally booted from Twitter for his obnoxious online campaign - and Jones closed her Twitter account.

What's more troubling than the idea of a bunch of people developing an organic online campaign against an actor because they didn't like a movie, was that swarm mentality taken to a different level with writer David French.

With individuals posting offensive Photoshopped images of his young Ethiopian-born daughter and making threats against an Iraq war veteran's family simply because he criticized Donald Trump.

Miss. NAACP Pres. Derrick Johnson with Stacey
and Hollis Payton, parents of the victim

What's the broader impact of large numbers of often anonymous alt-right followers using technology and the internet to spread the message that virulent hate is okay?

Does it reach a point where it goes beyond the internet and starts to morph into reality?

Actions like the one taken against Jones and French aren't happening in a bubble; what kind of message is that sending to the millions of susceptible young minds who spend so much time on the internet?

Given the terrible and violent legacy of lynching in America, it was troubling to read about charges leveled in a press conference on Monday that a group of four white high school students from Stone High School in Wiggins, Mississippi snuck up behind a 16-year-old African-American boy sitting in a locker room, slipped a noose around his neck and then tightened it.

If that was some kind of sick joke it's certainly not remotely funny, and if it was an actual attack then those responsible need to be held accountable - especially since the incident took place on school grounds.

According to statements from Stacey and Hollis Payton, the parents of the boy, they contacted the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP after officials at Stone High School took no action against any of the four students involved - one of whom is the son of a local former police officer.

Stone High School, Wiggins, Mississippi

In a statement read by Derrick Johnson, the President of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, the same four students were supposedly part of a group of students who recently drove to the high school with Confederate flags draped on their vehicles.

The story has gone national so pressure to conduct a proper investigation will be ratcheted up on local school and county officials.

More details on this incident will likely emerge in the next few days.

As a former Boy Scout who spent time learning how to tie a variety of knots, I can tell you that it's not easy to tie rope into the kind of noose used to hang or lynch someone; where did those four high school kids learn to do that?

Did they learn that skill from parents, relatives or friends? And why would they do it?

Did they pick up that kind of toxic anger online while hanging around the fringes of the alt-right community?

I'm certainly not the only one who wants answers to those questions; and it's not unreasonable to surmise that the openly hostile racial climate fostered by Trump and his alt-right followers online, on TV and in rallies over the past months played some kind of part in making those four kids think that slipping a noose around a 16-year-old black American student's neck was okay.

Or maybe it was just a local-thing, after all Mississippi is the only American state left with a flag that contains the image of the Confederate battle flag on it.

My money is on those four kids having been exposed to the same kinds of intolerance we saw at Trump rallies all throughout the spring and summer - my guess is they're simply wannabe spawn of the Orange-Haired One and his alt-right legions.