Friday, October 25, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

From Huffington Post:
Black College Student Arrested For Buying A Designer Belt, Barneys & NYPD Slapped With Lawsuit
Barneys New York and the New York Police Department have been slapped with a lawsuit by Trayon Christian, a college student from Queens, who was arrested at the luxury department store in April.
"His only crime was being a young black man,” Michael Palillo, Christian's attorney, told The New York Post.
The Post reports that the 19-year-old was at the store buying a $350 Salvatore Ferragamo belt, but following the purchase, he was stopped by undercover officers that were allegedly called on by a Barneys sales clerk who believed the transaction was fraudulent.
The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, states that the NYC College of Technology freshman was asked by the cops: “how a young black man such as himself could afford to purchase such an expensive belt?” He was then handcuffed and taken to a local precinct.
Despite showing the officers the receipt for the belt, his ID and the debit card used, "Christian was told that his identification was false and that he could not afford to make such an expensive purchase," Palillo said.
Christian, who saved up money for the pricey accessory from his part-time job at college, said he returned the belt and never plans to shop at the Madison Avenue store again. His story comes just days after another instance of racial discrimination was reported in Baltimore when a black woman was allegedly fired from Hooters for having blonde highlights.
Barneys has not commented on the matter and Christian's lawsuit against the store and the NYPD is for unspecified damages.

The following statement can be attributed to a Barneys New York spokesperson:
“Barneys New York typically does not comment on pending litigation. In this instance, we feel compelled to note that after carefully reviewing the incident of last April, it is clear that no employee of Barneys New York was involved in the pursuit of any action with the individual other than the sale. Barneys New York has zero tolerance for any form of discrimination and we stand by our long history in support of all human rights.”


This is like the store in a European country, I can't remember which one, where Oprah encountered a sales clerk who refused to show her an expensive designer bag, saying it was too expensive for her to afford. In this case, unless the undercover officers were standing around in the store observing and decided on their own to arrest the young man, it was another sales clerk who started the problem. Still, the police should not have told him that his ID was false and pursued the arrest. They were undoubtedly hoping to browbeat him into a confession to a crime he didn't commit – still a technique used too often by police. It is easier than digging for evidence. I hope we'll hear the end of this story. Everybody did a lot of “assuming” in this case, using the definition of “assume” that goes “you make an ass out of you and me.” I hope the police officers will be fired, and I'm glad the man is filing suit. I think he is likely to win.

More on the subject from Wikipedia:
Shopping while black
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Shopping while black" is a phrase commonly used for the type of marketplace discrimination that is also called "consumer racial profiling", "consumer racism" or "racial profiling in a retail setting". Shopping while black describes the experience of being denied service or given poor service because one is black.
Most commonly, "shopping while black" involves being followed around or closely monitored by a clerk or guard who suspects you may steal, but it can also involve being denied store access, being refused service, having ethnic slurs directed at you, being searched, being asked for extra forms of identification, having your purchases limited, being required to have a higher credit limit than other customers, being charged a higher price, or being asked more rigorous questions on applications.[1] This can be the result of store policy, or individual employee prejudice.[2] Consumer racial profiling occurs in many retail environments including grocery stores, clothing shops, department stores and office supply shops, and companies accused of consumer racial profiling have included Eddie Bauer, Office Max, Wal-Mart, Sears, Dillard's, Macy's and Home Depot.[1]
Shopping while black is sometimes also called "shopping while black or brown", but researchers say black people are the most frequently targeted.
Shopping while black has been extensively covered by American news media, including a hidden camera ABC News special in which actors posing as store staff harassed black customers to see how other shoppers would respond,[3] and a Soledad O'Brien segment called "Shopping While Black", part of a CNN special on being black in America.[4] It is usually assumed to occur mainly in the United States, but has also been reported in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands.[5][6]
In his 2003 paper "Racial Profiling by Store Clerks and Security Personnel in Retail Establishments: An Exploration of 'Shopping While Black'" criminologist Shaun L. Gabbidon wrote that the majority of false arrest complaints filed in a retail setting in the United States are filed by African-Americans.[9]
Researchers who conducted in-depth interviews with 75 black people living in black neighbourhoods in New York City and Philadelphia found that 35% reported receiving consistently negative treatment when shopping in white neighbourhoods, compared with 9% who said they received consistently negative treatment in their own neighbourhood.[2]
In 1995, a young black man shopping at an Eddie Bauer store in suburban Washington, D.C., was accused of having stolen the shirt he was wearing, and was told he would need to leave it behind before leaving the store. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging "consumer racism", and was awarded $1 million in damages.[10] In 2000, a black man named Billy J. Mitchell was awarded $450,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from Dillard's, after being arrested despite having done nothing wrong. Also in 2000, a black woman unsuccessfully sued Citibank after she was detained for no good reason while making large purchases with her Citibank Visa card
One cause of racial profiling in shops is overt racism. Store staff operating under an "animus-based theory" treat African Americans differently because they dislike them, and may want to "keep them in their place". Some shopkeepers practice racial profiling because they think it will increase their revenues ("revenue-based statistical discrimination"), for example by catering to discriminatory preferences of other customers by excluding black people. Other shopkeepers are trying to minimize costs ("cost-based statistical discrimination"). In these cases, researchers describe the cause of racial profiling as "subconscious racism", with retailers making assumptions about their black clientele based on stereotypes that say blacks are likelier than others to commit crimes and to not be credit-worthy.[12
People who have experienced consumer racial profiling have described it as embarrassing, insulting, hurtful and frightening.[2][13]
Some black shoppers try to avoid racial discrimination either by avoiding white-owned businesses entirely or by deliberately dressing in a middle-class style. Because they are likelier to live and work in majority-white neighbourhoods, middle-class black people experience more racial profiling than poorer black people.[2]
Responses to "shopping while black" treatment can be divided into the three categories of exit, voice and loyalty: shoppers can leave the store; complain, boycott or file a lawsuit; or accept the situation and continue shopping.[14] Black people are likelier to launch a boycott against a shop-owner in a majority black neighbourhood rather than a white one. Social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner have described this as pragmatic and rational: a boycott is likelier to succeed in your own neighbourhood, where other residents are likely to support you and where the shopkeeper's social status is similar to your own.[2]
In 1992, R&B singer-songwriter R. Kelly told Jet magazine that when he appeared at a Chicago shopping mall to sign autographs, "the security guards took one look at the way I was dressed and the fact that I am a young Black man and thought I was a shoplifter."[16]
In 2001, Oprah Winfrey told Good Housekeeping magazine about how she and a black companion were turned away from a store while white people were being allowed in, allegedly because she and her friend reminded the clerks of black transsexuals who had earlier tried to rob it.[17] And in 2005, Winfrey was refused service at the Parisian luxury store Hermès as the store closed for the evening, in what her spokesperson described as "Oprah's 'Crash' moment", a reference to the 2004 movie about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles.[18] In 2013, a shop assistant in Zurich refused to show Winfrey a $38,000 crocodile skin Tom Ford handbag, saying it "cost too much and you will not be able to afford [it]."[19]
In the 2007 biography Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, author Elisabeth Bumiller describes two "shopping while black" type incidents: one when Rice was six and a department store clerk tried to keep her mother from using a whites-only fitting room, and another when Rice as an adult was shown cheap jewellery by a Palo Alto clerk, rather than the "better earrings" she had asked for.[20]


Well, I can see from this Wikipedia article that Shopping While Black incidents happen way too often. Racism has just gone undercover in this country, and is still too common among the average US citizenry. I still say we have made progress in our actions, if not our attitudes, and in the actual laws of the country, though, so overall I am encouraged. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the right wing part of our society are even now trying to get blacks and Hispanics off our voter rolls in a number of states, most particularly Florida, under the theory that they are fraudulently registered. Of course, they are mainly trying to remove Democrats, as blacks and Hispanics are more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. And the other reason our right wing politicians are moving for this is that it plays well with the racist members of our populace and brings the politicians more votes. Just another sad thing about white society.




Mystery girl case: 'I was a fool' to give up Maria, Bulgarian mother of nine told neighbors

Sasha Ruseva, 35, may be the biological mother of the blond girl known as "Maria" who was found in Greek Roma camp last week, according to her grandmother.

NIKOLAEVO, Bulgaria -- The matriarch of a Bulgarian Roma family told NBC News on Friday that she strongly believes the mystery girl known as "Maria" is her great-granddaughter.
Zineb Kasimova said her granddaughter Sasha Ruseva had left a child in Greece in the care of another Roma couple. When Ruseva saw the blond, blue-eyed Maria on television after she was removed from a Roma camp last week, the 35-year-old woman allegedly told neighbors she was the "fool" who had given the girl up.

If Maria is proved to be a blood relative, Kasimova said she was prepared to "take her home."
"They left the kid because they have no money at all," said Kasimova, who has about 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. "When the mother saw the child on TV, she went to the neighbors and told them, 'I was a fool to leave the kid there'.'"
Speaking at her mud-floored dwelling, Kasimova added: "If she doesn't take her home, then I will go there and I will take her home because I'm her great-grandmother."
Ruseva told Bulgarian TV on Thursday that she had once left a baby behind in Greece after working there.
"I didn't take any money," Ruseva said. "I just didn't have enough money to feed her. I intended to go back and take my child home, but meanwhile I gave birth to two more kids, so I was not able to go.”

Bulgarian police later questioned Ruseva and her 36-year-old husband Atanas Rusev.
"The prosecutors' office has opened a pre-trial investigation against [Sasha Ruseva] for agreeing to sell her child on an undisclosed date in 2009 in Greece," the regional prosecutor's office in the southern town of Kazanlak said in a statement. "The probe is opened following checks linked to the female child with the name Maria in Greece."
Ruseva and her husband both vanished after being interviewed by investigators, police told NBC News on Friday.
Neighbors in Nikolaevo told NBC News that the couple have nine children -- including four who are blond and fair-skinned like Maria.
She was found living with Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, last week in a Roma settlement near Farsala, Greece.
They have been charged with abduction and procuring false documents. Magistrates ordered that Salis and Dimopoulou be held in custody until they face trial.
The couple who were found with a 4-year-old blonde girl named Maria who's unrelated to them have explained how they obtained custody, telling authorities that a prostitute handed them the girl to care for. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
Their lawyer Marietta Palavra told NBC News earlier this week that Maria's real mother is a Bulgarian Roma prostitute who was looking for a home for the unwanted baby among local Roma families in Greece.
DNA taken from Maria does not match anyone in Interpol’s global database of missing people in 190 countries.
Meanwhile, Greek police arrested a couple on Wednesday for buying a baby Roma girl from her mother for 4,000 euros ($5,500) in March because they could not have children of their own.
"The baby has been with them since then while they sought ways to legalize it," police said.
They were due to appear before a prosecutor on Friday. 


So this turns out to be another sad story about the life of the Roma, rather than a case of criminal activity. I hope the DNA taken from Maria matches up with the woman who finally claimed her, making this a solved case. Too many children and no birth control – one of the main things that keeps the poverty stricken people here and elsewhere poor and women in house-bound bondage. At least Maria's great-grandmother has enough money to keep her, so it's a happy ending after all.



FDA proposes strict new  safety rules for animal food
Food produced for domestic pets and other animals will have to follow strict new standards under a proposed rule issued Friday by the Food and Drug Administration.
The new regulation, part of the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act, would require for the first time that companies that make pet food and animal feed follow good manufacturing practices that encompass basic issues such as sanitation and hazard analysis.
“We have been pushing feed safety for a number of years,” said Daniel McChesney, director of the office of surveillance and compliance at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we’re just making food for animals.’ They’re the first part of the food chain. We're a part of the overall food industry.”
The new rules will be open for public comment for 120 days, and would be adopted as law within 60 days after the comment period closes.
They would apply to all domestic and imported animal food, including pet food, pet treats, animal feed, and the raw ingredients that make those products.
That means, for instance, that the producers of chicken, corn and sweet potato jerky treats made in China and blamed for the deaths of 600 pets and illnesses in about 3,600, will have to meet strict new requirements before their products can be sold, officials said.
FDA has always had rules in place that prohibit adulterants in pet food. That’s why the agency has issued company-initiated recalls for salmonella-tainted bird food, for instance, or dog food contaminated with aflatoxin, a naturally occurring mold by-product.
But, until now, there’s been no requirement that companies analyze the potential food safety hazards of their products or that they follow current good manufacturing practices, or CGMPs, that specifically address animal food.
“We’re not starting completely from scratch,” said Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine. “What’s important is that FDA take a comprehensive approach to food safety that covers the food supply comprehensively.”
The challenge for firms that produce animal foods and pet products will be in meeting the deadlines for compliance, McChesney said. Times will vary according to the size of an operation, with small and very small businesses being allowed more leeway.
The FDA will hold three public meetings in November and December to seek input on the proposed rule. 


I have had six or seven cats in my life, and as those of you who keep cats know, cats won't eat just anything. A dog, unfortunately, will. Dogs have been known to eat objects made of wood or metal if they are small enough to swallow. A dog, when it eats, gulps its food down rapidly and then looks up at you for more. They will eat more if you give it to them and will get very fat. This is a habit from their wolf ancestors, which go off on a hunt, kill a big animal that is too heavy to drag home, and then (pardon me if you're eating while reading this) they regurgitate the excess for the newly weened pups left at home. A cat will walk up to its food dish, and if you have bought that store brand special food that was on sale, will sniff it once and walk away. I never bought the special fresh meat foods that veterinarians sell because it's just too expensive. I did successfully feed them Purina dry food, and they ate it hungrily, so there are vast differences among pet foods. The fact that as consumers we have little idea what all the ingredients are or how clean the production process of the food is, unless we closely read the labels, makes it a matter of multiple guess which foods we should end up buying. I bought Purina because it is a little more expensive, and is therefore hopefully top grade. It also was always well-received by my cats, the final test.



Credit data giant Experian tangled in ID theft case

An investigation of an alleged Vietnam-based identity theft ring has dragged in the credit reporting firm Experian and rekindled a congressional effort to force companies to reveal how they use Americans’ personal and financial data.
The scam, revealed in an indictment unsealed on Friday, allegedly resulted in the theft of data for 500,000 Americans, information which was then posted for sale on websites, including superget.info and findget.me. But the indictment made no mention of the source of the data.
Security expert Brian Krebs uncovered that detail and reported on it Sunday. In a post at KrebsOnSecurity.com, he said the conspirators bought the information from a company called Court Ventures by posing as private investigators. Court Ventures, purchased in March 2012 by California-based Experian, had obtained the information through a data-sharing agreement with USInfoSearch.com, he wrote.

In a statement to Krebs, Experian said the Secret Service had notified it that “Court Ventures had been and was continuing to resell data from US Info Search to a third party possibly engaged in illegal activity.” Experian said it then stopped reselling the data from USInfoSearch.com and worked with law enforcement to catch the crooks.
“Experian’s credit files were not accessed,” the statement said. “Because of the ongoing federal investigation, we are not free to say anything further at this time.”

That response didn’t satisfy Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D.-W.Va. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he sent a letter to Experian President Donald Robert on Wednesday asking for details on Court Ventures’ involvement in the case, including the dates on which its sales to the alleged conspirators began and when they ended. Those dates could be important if the sales continued after Experian bought Court Ventures. 
Krebs quoted USInfoSearch.com CEO Marc Martin as saying the sales did continue for nearly a year after Experian acquired Court Ventures, citing a conversation he had with an unidentified Secret Service agent.
Read Sen. Rockefeller’s letter to Experian in PDF 
Martin also told Krebs that the Secret Service told him that the superget.info conspirators paid Court Ventures’ monthly data access charges with wire transfers through Singapore and wondered why such a payment method didn’t raise red flags.
The case has similarities to the 2005 ChoicePoint case, one of the first big thefts from a major data broker, technology columnist Bob Sullivan said. That case, first revealed by Sullivan, involved the theft of information from more than 160,000 people. ChoicePoint paid $15 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it failed to protect consumers' data.

Rockefeller’s letter, first reported in The New York Times, is the senator’s latest effort to get big data companies like Experian to divulge what they’re doing with Americans’ personal and financial information. Two weeks ago, Rockefeller sent letters to nine such companies, asking them to respond by Nov. 2 to detailed questions on collection and security of the data.
Then came news last week of the indictment and the Krebs report.
“If these recent news accounts are accurate,” Rockefeller said in his latest letter to Experian’s Robert, “they raise serious questions about whether Experian as a company has appropriate practices in place for vetting its customers and sharing sensitive consumer data with them.”
Experian and Rockefeller did not respond to NBC News requests for comment. 

Experian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Experian plc is a global information services group with operations in 40 countries. The company now employs 17,000 people with corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and operational headquarters in Nottingham, United Kingdom, Costa Mesa, California, US and São Paulo, Brazil. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
This company was created in 1996, when GUS plc, a conglomerate, acquired TRW Information Systems & Services merging it with its own subsidiary, CCN Group.[3]
CCN (Commercial Credit Nottingham) was an information services company and had been formed in 1980 by GUS in the UK. TRW operated the largest credit bureau in the US and also provided clients with a range of analytical, direct marketing and real estate information services. In 1996 GUS plc acquired the US credit reporting business Experian, formerly known as TRW Information Services, from Bain Capital and the Thomas H. Lee Partners.[4]
During the next ten years, Experian broadened its product range to new industry sectors, beyond financial services, and entered new markets such as Latin America, Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe. The business expanded through both organic development and acquisitions.[3] In October 2006 Experian was demerged from the British company GUS plc and listed on the London Stock Exchange.[5]
In August 2005, Experian accepted a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that Experian had violated a previous settlement with the FTC. The FTC's allegations concerned customers who signed up for the "free credit report" at Experian's Consumerinfo.com site. The FTC alleged that ads for the "free credit report" did not adequately disclose that Experian would automatically enroll customers in Experian's $79.95 credit-monitoring program. In January 2008, Experian announced that it would cut more than 200 jobs at its Nottingham office as it moved development work to India to reduce costs.[8]
Experian shut down its Canadian operations on 14 April 2009.[9]
Experian's principal lines of business are credit services, marketing services, decision analytics and consumer services. The company collects information on people, businesses, motor vehicles and insurance. It also collects 'lifestyle' data from on- and off-line surveys.
Experian states that its corporate responsibility initiatives are focused on six key responsibilities: communities, consumers, employers, data, products and services and environment.
In July 2012 Experian launched a free online teaching resource called "Values, Money and Me", designed to help primary school pupils explore both practical and emotional issues around managing money. The tool aims to give young children a head start in life by helping develop their financial knowledge and abilities, as well as their attitudes and values towards money. Values, Money and Me has been awarded a Quality Mark by pfeg, a UK financial education charity.[35]
Experian subsidiary and data aggregator Court Ventures sold personally identifiable information on at least hundreds of thousands of Americans to a man in Vietnam, who then resold the information through the identity fraud enabling websites Superget.info and Findget.me.[38] [39] [40] [41] [42] The information offered for anonymous sale on these websites included individual’s name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of work, duration of work, state driver’s license number, mother’s maiden name, bank account number(s), bank routing number(s), email account(s) and other account passwords.[42]


This Wikipedia article is up-to-date as of the latest news article, I notice. I really like Wikipedia. According to this article Experian had only one prior charge against them, which was over their “Free Credit Report.” I have always resisted looking on the Free Credit sites out of fear of being known, tracked or conned. Also, most sites that advertise services for free will end up trying to charge money for it within a short time. I have recently been looking for work on the Internet and gave employers in a couple of cases my mother's maiden name and my social security number. I should have backed out of the employer site as soon as they asked me for those pieces of information. I don't have any credit card history because I have always preferred to pay from my checking account when I made purchases, but I have noticed that there have been several websites that recognized me immediately, though I was on their site for the first time, so it has to be from information that Google or some other site has collected on me.




Rossen Reports: Thieves target seniors at nursing homes
Video: A bookkeeper at one of Mississippi’s top-rated nursing homes plead guilty to stealing more than dollars $100,000 from elderly residents and going on a shopping sprees with the funds. Most states don’t require nursing home administrators to go through background checks. TODAY’s national investigative correspondent Jeff Rossen reports.
Across the United States, nursing-home residents are having their money stolen by people they know: the homes’ bookkeepers and office managers who handle their trust funds and manage their expenses.
It's a crime that's been committed against thousands of nursing-home residents, including Leo Foster’s 89-year-old mother at the Vicksburg Convalescent Center in Vicksburg, Miss.
“It made me feel sick at my stomach,” Leo’s wife Phyllis Foster told TODAY's National Investigative Correspondent Jeff Rossen. “It just didn't dawn on me that someone would be so low as to steal from a vulnerable adult.”
Police learned that a woman named Lee Ray Martin, a business office coordinator at the Vicksburg Convalescent Center and Shady Lawn Health and Rehabilitation homes, had been raiding residents’ trust accounts.
“In (a) three-month period there were 12 or 15 cash withdrawals,” Phyllis Foster said of her mother-in-law’s account. “And we knew that there was something drastically wrong.”
In August, Martin pleaded guilty to 29 counts of exploitation of a vulnerable person and one count of conspiracy. She is accused of stealing more than $100,000 from 83 residents’ trust funds and going on shopping sprees at stores like J.C. Penney, Gap, Walmart and American Eagle. In one instance, Martin bought a pair of designer jeans and expensed them to an elderly resident with no legs.
A USA TODAY investigation into thefts from nursing home trust funds found that more than 100 cases like Martin’s have been prosecuted since 2010.
“What we found was that it is just enormously easy for people to get away with this, even in really good nursing homes,” USA TODAY investigative reporter Peter Eisler told TODAY.
“In most states there are no audit requirements. The people who do the nursing home inspections really aren’t looking close at the books for these trust funds.”
Know a scam? Been ripped off? Email Rossen Reports
Officials say there’s another loophole as well: In most states, there are no criminal background checks for nursing-home administrators. Someone who has been convicted for a crime of this nature can relocate to another state and get the same kind of job at another nursing home.
“And you know what I’ve found about embezzlers,” said Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. “They’re gonna do it again. ...
“I think we oughta have mandatory background checks for anybody that works in a nursing facility.”
Officials in the long-term care industry say such theft is rare. Martin’s employer fired her, turned her in to police, reimbursed all theft victims and implemented “additional management controls” to prevent fraud.
To protect nursing-home residents from being swindled, their loved ones are encouraged to request and carefully check monthly statements from the facility. It’s also a good idea to ask for actual receipts for any purchases made for loved ones.
If fraud gets detected, here’s some good news: It’s possible to get stolen money back. Nursing homes are required to have insurance that covers this type of theft.


Not only do we have to worry about bed sores and mistreatment, we have to examine the company's books every month. I hope I have a heart attack and die before I have to go into a home. Heart attacks hurt, but they are quick. I have thought about the fact that I may end up in a home, since I have no children to let me stay in their home and my overall health is good, so I may end up living a long time. If I go to a home I hope I have a friend on the outside who will go to the public library and bring me books to read, and that I have a working television. I have seen the activities that they set up for their patients, and they are pretty bland. Bingo, anyone?



'Daily Show' interview leads to GOP official resigning over 'offensive' remarks
A Republican precinct chairman in North Carolina has resigned one day after an interview he gave to "The Daily Show" aired.
Don Yelton spoke with the Comedy Central show's Aasif Mandvi in a discussion that aired Wednesday, in which he defended his state's voter ID law and referred to "lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything." He said the law was not racist, but said that he's "been called a bigot before."
Buncombe County, N.C., GOP Chairman Henry Mitchell told WRAL.com that Yelton's statements were "offensive, uninformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party."
Mitchell said in a press release, "Let me make it very clear, Mr. Yelton's comments do not reflect the belief or feelings of Buncombe Republicans, nor do they mirror any core principle that our party is founded upon. This mentality will not be supported or propagated within our party."
Yelton resigned on Thursday, but was unrepentant in an interview with the Asheville, N.C., Citizen-Times. "There's nothing I said that I would take back. So be it," he said.
He also claimed that the interview was edited from a two-hour discussion, and that the quotes were "cut and pasted" together by a show he already believed leaned to the political left. 
"I knew going in what was going to happen, and nothing happened that I was surprised at," said Yelton. "If you and I disagree and we never communicate, are we ever going to accomplish anything?"
Halfway through the clip, Mandvi eyeballs the camera as he waits for Yelton to finish one sentence, in which he says, "One of my best friends is ... black." That leads into a montage of racially charged quotes from Yelton and concludes with Mandvi asking, "You know that we can hear you, right?"
Mitchell's release said that Yelton had clashed with local members of his party before, and was removed from his position in 2012, but was re-elected by two votes: His own and his wife's. The statement also said that Yelton had not sought nor received approval to speak on behalf of the GOP in the interview. 


Yelton's own statement pretty much sums up my opinion about the attempts by several states to get black people off the voter rolls. They are based in racist thinking. I would like to know what other things he said in the interview --- the article only provided one quotation. Clearly the GOP contains moderate members, though, or he wouldn't have been fired. North Carolina is my home state and I love it, but it is what it is –- the South and full of “Jim Crow” laws until they were outlawed in 1965. I well remember the whites only bathrooms and water fountains, plus you never saw a black person in a restaurant sitting down. They could often order food, but they had to stand and wait for their food to be prepared, and then take it home to eat it. Below is a summary about the Jim Crow laws taken from Wikipedia.

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern United States. Northern segregation was generally de facto, with patterns of segregation in housing enforced by covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory union practices for decades.
Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated.
These Jim Crow Laws followed the 1800–1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans with no pretense of equality. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.




Hundreds of Baby Tarantulas Released Into Wild: Preserve in Lewisville wants to restore population of Texas brown tarantulas, a species native to North Texas

The "spider queen" is releasing hundreds of tarantulas into the wild in North Texas.
Local spider expert Leah Patton has been collecting and raising baby spiders for the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area.
"We've been very, very careful to make sure that what we used in our breeding program is native to this direct area," she said.
The first group of 3-month to 1-year-old Texas brown tarantulas was set free at the preserve on Thursday night.
"We're planning on releasing about 200 at this time," Patton said.
One of LLELA's main goals is to preserve and restore wild species -- even down to these tiny crawlers.

"Not too many people think of tarantulas, but they're important in the ecosystem, and they're another element of these ecosystems that are local to North Texas that are disappearing, and they're not near as common as they used to be," LLELA Director Ken Steigman said.
The group hopes that the babies, which are no bigger than a fingernail, will grow into large tarantulas that can contribute to the ecosystem by feeding on grasshoppers and other insects.
Patton has rescued tarantulas from several sites throughout North Texas where they lost their homes to development or invasive species such as fire ants, some of the main reasons why the spiders aren't as common in the Metroplex as they once were.
"The numbers are severely, severely declined," she said.
LLELA is also inviting the public to "adopt" a tarantula and personally set it free at their next round of releases, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
And Patton and LLELA hope to release more of their eight-legged friends next year to continue to boost the population and educate the public about tarantulas.
"We're making some effort to go ahead, because we know this is the right species, because we know this is its native area, that they might be able to make a comeback," Patton said.


This story reminds me of another story about 15 years ago in which a group of scientists were studying brown recluse spiders in North Carolina. Unfortunately the spiders escaped their enclosures, probably when they were very small and could go through wire mesh, and grew to adulthood, then bred freely and produced many babies inside the house that the scientists were using as a lab. It was on the TV news and the spiders were shown crawling everywhere. It was horrible. In the end the house had to be razed by fire. Science isn't foolproof, and some of their experiments do cause danger to society.


Goodbye for today. Enough!