July 9, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-virginia-sen-jim-webb-enters-democratic-presidential-race-1435862733

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb Enters Democratic Presidential Race -- Webb is fifth major candidate to compete for party’s nomination
By PETER NICHOLAS
Updated July 2, 2015

Photograph -- Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, announced he was entering the 2016 presidential race on Thursday. PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb on Thursday announced he was entering the 2016 presidential race, the fifth major candidate to compete for the Democratic nomination and a decided underdog in a campaign dominated thus far by Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Webb, who set up a presidential exploratory committee in November, released a statement promising a “fresh approach” and saying the country needs to “shake the hold of these shallow elites on our political process.”

He conceded he is a long shot. A Wall Street Journal-NBC poll last month showed Mr. Webb commanding the support of only 4% of registered voters who said they planned to vote in the Democratic primary. That put him 11 points behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 71 points behind front-runner Hillary Clinton. The survey offered some encouragement for Mr. Webb: He was two points ahead of former Gov. Martin O’Malley, who entered the race more than a month ago and who has been aggressively courting the party’s major fundraisers.

Former Rhode Island Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee has also declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.

“I understand the odds, particularly in today’s political climate where fair debate is so often drowned out by huge sums of money,” Mr. Webb said in the statement.

Mr. Webb, 69 years old, faces other candidates who have already gained significant ground. Mr. Sanders has developed a strong following among liberal Democrats who relish his attacks on big banks and billionaires. He drew about 10,000 people at a rally Wednesday night in Madison, Wis., far eclipsing the audiences that even Mrs. Clinton as attracted.

Mrs. Clinton has also sounded a populist note since entering the race, but she has long been identified with some of the more centrist positions taken by her husband when he served in the White House in the 1990s. That doesn’t leave much room for Mr. Webb to distinguish himself when it comes to policy ideas.

“It’s not like there are people out there screaming for him to get into the race. I just don’t see his candidacy being really viable. He’s not going to have grass roots energy, he’s not going to have base energy, he’s not going to have moderate energy,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said of Mr. Webb. “So where do the money and the bodies come from? It’s one of those candidacies where he wants to be heard, but I’m not sure anyone is going to listen.”

What may separate Mr. Webb from his Democratic rivals is his eclectic resume. He earned two Purple Hearts, among other medals, while serving as a Marine in the Vietnam War. He was named secretary of the Navy under Republican President Ronald Reagan and is the author of 10 books.

A potential concern for Mrs. Clinton is Mr. Webb, who can be a powerful speaker, has the ability to perform well in the Democratic debates.

At a campaign rally for President Barack Obama in 2012, Mr. Webb took issue with then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s remarks at a private fundraising event that Mr. Obama’s base included “47%” of people who are “dependent upon government.”

Veterans, Mr. Webb said at the event, “are not takers. They are givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: ‘All gave some, some gave all.’ That’s not a culture of dependency. It’s a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence.”

Mr. Webb can on occasion sound a contrarian note.

As Democrats were largely united in their calls to do away with public displays of the Confederate flag following the massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Webb put out a statement that was at odds with the party’s collective message.

On his Facebook page he wrote, “we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army from states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and that many non-slave holders fought for the South.”



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb
Jim Webb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in Vietnam, the second highest decoration in the Navy and Marine Corps. Webb also was awarded the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts.[21] After returning from Vietnam he was assigned to Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, as an instructor for OCS. Deep selected for Captain, he was then assigned to the Secretary of the Navy's office for the remainder of his active duty. His war wounds left him with shrapnel in his knee, kidney, and head. The injury to his knee led to a medical board that decided on medical retirement.

Webb is married to Hong Le Webb, a Vietnamese-American securities and corporate lawyer, twenty-two years his junior. Hong Le was born in South Vietnam and escaped to the United States when she was seven, after the fall of Saigon. She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. They married in October 2005.[14] Webb was married twice previously, and has four grown children. Hong Le and Jim Webb also have one child together, Georgia LeAnh, born December 2006. Webb is also a stepfather to Hong Le's daughter from a previous marriage.[15] Jim Webb speaks Vietnamese.[16] …. In 1964, Webb earned appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. At Annapolis, Webb was a member of the Brigade Honor Committee and the Brigade Staff. When he graduated in 1968,[12] he received the Superintendent’s Letter for Outstanding Leadership.[13] After his medical retirement from the Marine Corps due to injuries received in Vietnam, Webb enrolled in law school at Georgetown University where he earned a Juris Doctor and received the Horan Award for excellence in legal writing.[12] …. James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. (born February 9, 1946) is an American politician and author.[2][3] He has served as a United States Senator from Virginia, Secretary of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of Defense, congressional staffer, and Marine Corps officer. In the private sector he has been an Emmy-award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. In addition, he taught literature at the United States Naval Academy and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. As a member of the Democratic Party, Webb announced on November 19, 2014, that he was forming an exploratory committee to evaluate a run for President of the United States in 2016.[4][5] On July 2, 2015, he announced that he would be joining the race for the Democratic nomination for President.[6]




Wall Street Journal -- “He conceded he is a long shot. A Wall Street Journal-NBC poll last month showed Mr. Webb commanding the support of only 4% of registered voters who said they planned to vote in the Democratic primary. That put him 11 points behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 71 points behind front-runner Hillary Clinton. …. Mr. Webb, 69 years old, faces other candidates who have already gained significant ground. Mr. Sanders has developed a strong following among liberal Democrats who relish his attacks on big banks and billionaires. He drew about 10,000 people at a rally Wednesday night in Madison, Wis., far eclipsing the audiences that even Mrs. Clinton as attracted. …. “It’s not like there are people out there screaming for him to get into the race. I just don’t see his candidacy being really viable. He’s not going to have grass roots energy, he’s not going to have base energy, he’s not going to have moderate energy,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said of Mr. Webb. “So where do the money and the bodies come from? It’s one of those candidacies where he wants to be heard, but I’m not sure anyone is going to listen.”

“On his Facebook page he wrote, “we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army from states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and that many non-slave holders fought for the South.” One of the problems in the way the South is viewed in America by Northerners is that those folks feel Southerners are all ignorant, racist, and ultraconservative. I came from the piedmont area of North Carolina, whose incomes are more likely to come from factories than farming, and my home town was relatively peaceful in regard to racial conflicts. Eastern NC has more farmers -- and wealthy farmers -- whose great-grandparents may have been slaveholders. The truth is that many or most parts of the South were absolutely devastated and ravaged by the Civil War, and there is deep hatred among many whites there of the overbearing treatment by a rush of Northern “Carpetbaggers” who moved in locally to make money off them. They also enforced the rise of the slaves from a destitute group with few marketable skills to voters and officeholders. I don’t believe all Southern whites hated the newly “uppity” blacks (some of whom would no longer step off the sidewalk when a white person came by!!), but I think most of them feared serious reprisal at the hands of blacks. Rumors that blacks had raped white women were enough to cause a lynching party to gather where some unfortunate black man had been captured near the scene of the crime. True justice has been slow to develop here, not by intention but by default.

Webb in his statement above is not defending the mistreatment of blacks nowadays that occurs too often, but simply stating that the image of Southern “rednecks” and “poor white trash” is an inaccurate one -- of white Southerners as the natural inferior of the Northern city bred people who often owned the factory or sawmill where the poor people white or black people earned their sustenance. I can vouch for that, as my family on both sides came from farms during the Great Depression, and while they were not wealthy enough to go to college, they were readers and loved to discuss issues at mealtime. Both my parents knew some poems “by heart” and would entertain us all by reciting them. My father knew four or five long poems such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Poe’s “The Raven.”

In addition, I didn’t find any information showing Webb to be racist, ultraconservative, ignorant or greedy, but he was described as a middle of the road Democrat rather than a liberal, so I’m still watching him. The article also said the same thing of Hillary Clinton, however, so I don’t think he would be a terrible person to have in the presidency, so if he is nominated as the official Democratic candidate I would vote for him. He was on TV this morning, and spoke well.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-doctor-farid-fata-victims-unnecessary-chemo-whistleblower/

Whistleblower on how he exposed cancer doc's fraud
CBS NEWS
July 9, 2015

Dr. Soe Maunglay started working for Dr. Farid Fata at his private cancer practice in 2012, and realized something bizarre was going on
Dr. Soe Maunglay started working for Dr. Farid Fata at his private cancer practice in 2012 and realized something bizarre was going on.

"I discovered a patient receiving treatment without actual diagnosis of cancer," Maunglay told CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds.

Maunglay reviewed the patient's record and saw "there was nothing really to support that the patient has active cancer."

He asked the patient "in a very sarcastic way" who diagnosed her disease because he knew who had.

"I was enraged so I asked her the question," Maunglay said.

After the discovery, Maunglay alerted the practice manager during the summer of 2013 who then contacted the feds. Fata was in handcuffs less than a week later.

When Maunglay found out Fata had been arrested, he said he felt "very satisfied that at least this has stopped."

"I think he's guilty of the most cruel thing that a human being can do to another human being," Maunglay said.

Fata was back in a Detroit courthouse again on Wednesday and have to face more victims of his health care fraud. Prosecutors say cancer Fata gave unnecessary chemotherapy to patients, and some of Fata's 553 victims were never sick. Fata pleaded guilty to 23 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Expert: Doc in insurance scam gave patients "stunning" doses of extreme drug

Former federal prosecutor and Wayne State University law profession Peter Henning said Fata was "looking people in the eye and telling them you need to have this treatment when it was completely unnecessary."

He said he has never expected that out of a doctor.

"Who's more trusted then your own doctor, especially when you get a cancer diagnosis?" Henning said.

Former patient Teddy Howard went through rounds of chemotherapy after Fata's diagnosis. Howard doesn't have cancer and now needs a lifetime of medicine to stay healthy.

"What really makes me angry is the fact that he lied. He knew he was lying, he gave the drugs to me anyway and I had no knowledge of it and now my life is turned upside down," Howard said. "I can't do anything about it. I don't know how long I'm going to live."




"I discovered a patient receiving treatment without actual diagnosis of cancer," Maunglay told CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds. Maunglay reviewed the patient's record and saw "there was nothing really to support that the patient has active cancer." …. After the discovery, Maunglay alerted the practice manager during the summer of 2013 who then contacted the feds. Fata was in handcuffs less than a week later. When Maunglay found out Fata had been arrested, he said he felt "very satisfied that at least this has stopped." …. . Fata pleaded guilty to 23 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Expert: Doc in insurance scam gave patients "stunning" doses of extreme drug …. "What really makes me angry is the fact that he lied. He knew he was lying, he gave the drugs to me anyway and I had no knowledge of it and now my life is turned upside down," Howard said. "I can't do anything about it. I don't know how long I'm going to live."

Physicians and dentists are known for making very large sums of money through a number of ways. One of those ways is to enter into unethical relationships with drug and equipment suppliers, often going to their offices and making speeches about how useful their drug is. The pharmaceutical company then gives the doctor a high fee for his praises. Many doctors give lots of those speeches very well paid for each one, and they can also get kickbacks from pharma for simply prescribing the drugs. That in addition to Medicare and Medicaid fraud has been in the news during this last year.

If this story sounds so outrageous that it must be a rarity, it’s not. There is a pediatric dentist here in Jacksonville who was recently hounded out town for physical abuse of children including pulling teeth unnecessarily while the kids were strapped down. That was done mainly to reap the benefits from their insurance companies, but it is also thought that he was like the horrific dentist in Little Shop Of Horrors – simply a sadist. He voluntarily gave up his FL license when threatened with many lawsuits and to get rid of the parents who were marching around outside his office with signs speaking against him. I personally think he’s getting off much too lightly, though, because he wasn’t even fined (or the amount wasn’t mentioned), and he still has a license in Georgia. This is probably a situation in which the two states have dominion over the licensing of dentists, and there is no way to force him out of Georgia, too. I think, though, that he should have been charged with assault and cruel treatment of minors and sent to prison. If there isn’t such a law, there should be!





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-gop-pulls-spending-bill-after-confederate-flag-controversy/

House GOP pulls spending bill after Confederate flag controversy
By REBECCA KAPLAN CBS NEWS
July 9, 2015

Play VIDEO -- House debates National Parks ban on Confederate flag

The House Republican leadership had to pull a seemingly innocuous spending bill from the House floor on Thursday after it became mired in controversy over whether the National Park Service could allow the Confederate flag to be displayed in federal cemeteries.

The controversy began Wednesday night after Rep. Ken Calvert, R-California, offered an amendment to the Interior Department spending bill, which would have ensured the Confederate flag could be displayed on the gravesites of Confederate soldiers buried in federal cemeteries. Just a day earlier, the House of Representatives agreed to ban the practice by adopting a Democratic amendment to do so, seemingly without objection.

"This was an attempt to codify the Obama Administration's own directive to our national cemeteries and it is unfortunate that it has devolved into a political battle. It is our hope that we can have a thoughtful discussion on this matter that is free of politics," a GOP leadership aide said after the bill was pulled.

During his weekly press conference on Thursday morning, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "I want members on both sides of the aisle to sit down and have a conversation about how to deal with what has frankly become a very thorny issue."

Asked whether he believed the Confederate flag should be displayed in federal cemeteries, Boehner said, "No."

In a statement, Calvert said the amendment was brought to him by the House GOP leadership at the request of "some southern Members of the Republican caucus" in order to codify existing National Park Service policy set by the Obama administration that bans the sale and display of the Confederate flag on National Park Service properties -- except when it is in a historical or educational context.

"To be clear, I wholeheartedly support the Park Service's prohibitions regarding the Confederate flag and the amendment did nothing to change these prohibitions," he said. "Looking back, I regret not conferring with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, especially my Ranking Member Betty McCollum, prior to offering the Leadership's amendment and fully explaining its intent given the strong feelings Members of the House feel regarding this important and sensitive issue."

McCollum, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, was quick to criticize the amendment Wednesday night after Calvert introduced it.

"After the murder of nine black parishioners, I never thought that the U.S. House of Representatives would join those who would want to see this flag flown," she said, in reference to the shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina last month. "I strongly urge every member to stand with the citizens of all races and to remove this symbol of hatred from our National Park Service."

She also called the amendment "shameful" in a tweet.

GOP amendment just offered to lift ban on selling Confederate flags in National Parks. GOP support for symbol of racism & hate is shameful.
— Betty McCollum (@BettyMcCollum04) July 9, 2015

Calvert's amendment, which he offered with little commentary, would ban funds from being used to prohibit the display of the U.S. flag, POW/MIA flag or "the decoration of graves with flags." The decoration refers to a an order the National Park Service (NPS) director adopted in 2010 that permits a sponsoring group to decorate the graves of Confederate veterans with small Confederate flags in states that celebrate a Confederate Memorial Day. The flags are supposed to be placed and removed as soon as possible after the day is over at no cost to the NPS.

The amendment, Calvert says, would also codify a June 24 NPS memorandum that requests its third-party concessionaires to voluntarily stop selling items that show the Confederate flag as a standalone feature, especially on items like t-shirts that can be worn. The memo also said Confederate flags should not be flown inside National Park System sites, except where it would would [sic]provide historical context.

Calvert's amendment would have reversed an amendment from Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, that would ban NPS from allowing groups to place Confederate flags in federal cemeteries, no matter the circumstance. It had been adopted about a day earlier with seemingly no objection.

The issue with that amendment, Calvert said in his statement, was that it did not maintain exceptions for displays in a historical and educational context.

"The intent of the Leadership's amendment was to clear up any confusion and maintain the Obama administration's policies with respect to those historical and educational exceptions," he said.

Calvert said that was not a problem with another amendment from Huffman that would have banned NPS from contracting with concessionaires who sell items depicting the Confederate flag, nor was it a problem with an amendment from Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, that bans NPS from using federal funds to purchase or display the confederate flag, "with exception of specific circumstances where flags provide historical context."

In the early hours of Thursday, the South Carolina House of Representatives approved a bill removing the Confederate flag from state Capitol Grounds after more than 13 hours of contentious debate.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest compared the House Republicans to the South Carolina lawmakers in his briefing Thursday, saying the values of Republicans in Congress "lie elsewhere."

"These are the same House Republicans who voted for a party leader who once described himself as once described himself as, 'David Duke without the baggage.' These are the same Congressional Republicans who have declined to criticize the race-baiting rhetoric of a leading Republican presidential candidate. That's to say nothing of the Senate Republican who saluted that candidate," Earnest said. "So when you hear me say that Congressional Republicans have an agenda that is out of step with the vast majority of Americans, this record, at least in part, is what I'm referring to."




“The controversy began Wednesday night after Rep. Ken Calvert, R-California, offered an amendment to the Interior Department spending bill, which would have ensured the Confederate flag could be displayed on the gravesites of Confederate soldiers buried in federal cemeteries. …. Asked whether he believed the Confederate flag should be displayed in federal cemeteries, Boehner said, "No." In a statement, Calvert said the amendment was brought to him by the House GOP leadership at the request of "some southern Members of the Republican caucus" …. Asked whether he believed the Confederate flag should be displayed in federal cemeteries, Boehner said, "No." In a statement, Calvert said the amendment was brought to him by the House GOP leadership at the request of "some southern Members of the Republican caucus"…. The decoration refers to a an order the National Park Service (NPS) director adopted in 2010 that permits a sponsoring group to decorate the graves of Confederate veterans with small Confederate flags in states that celebrate a Confederate Memorial Day. …. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest compared the House Republicans to the South Carolina lawmakers in his briefing Thursday, saying the values of Republicans in Congress "lie elsewhere." "These are the same House Republicans who voted for a party leader who once described himself as once described himself as, 'David Duke without the baggage.' These are the same Congressional Republicans who have declined to criticize the race-baiting rhetoric of a leading Republican presidential candidate.”

“Congressional Republicans have an agenda that is out of step with the vast majority of Americans.” I assume the “leading Republican candidate” is Donald Trump. Of course, in my opinion he is an idiot. Interestingly, though, a poll was done which indicated that Trump’s popularity has actually gone up since his recent statements about Mexicans, so I am still not so sure about “the vast majority of Americans.” I think it remains an issue that needs to be resolved. We in the US look like a more stable country than Israel and the Palestinian areas, but sometimes I’m not so sure. I’ll just keep promoting Democrats and liberals of all kinds as often as I find these shocking and scary news articles about the racist turn of mind here.





http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/08/420913118/does-it-matter-that-95-of-elected-prosecutors-are-white

Does It Matter That 95 Percent Of Elected Prosecutors Are White?
Amita Kelly
July 8, 2015

Photograph -- A new report counted the race and gender for more than 2,400 elected prosecutors and found that 95 percent are white.
Cultura RM/Matelly/Getty Images

Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore's African-American state's attorney, took the spotlight earlier this year when she filed charges against six police officers in her own city. The officers were charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died while in custody.

"There's a new sense that African-American prosecutors can make a difference. We can call that the Marilyn Mosby effect," law professor Paul Butler said of the Baltimore state's attorney. Alex Brandon/AP

It was a powerful image to some Baltimore residents — an African-American woman who said she heard where the city's protesters were coming from, but also that she came from a family of police officers and needed the public to let her do her job.

"Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of Freddie Gray," she said.

It turns out, that image is an extreme rarity among elected prosecutors like Mosby. A report out this week found that 95 percent of the country's elected prosecutors are white, and 83 percent are men. Only 1 percent are women of color, according to the findings from the Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the left-leaning Women Donors Network.

The report counted the race and gender for more than 2,400 elected public prosecutors — including many state, county and district attorneys — as of the summer of 2014, just before Mosby was elected.

States started electing prosecutors as early as 1832. Back then, political reformers believed that electing prosecutors, rather than appointing them as many still are, would remove them from partisan politics and force them to be accountable to voters and local communities. Today, all but four states, according to the report's data, have some elected prosecutors.

The proportion of white elected prosecutors is higher than that of attorneys in general. According to the American Bar Association, 88 percent of lawyers are white.

"The group of people who are really the managers of the criminal justice system in America are concentrated among one demographic group: white men," said Brenda Choresi Carter of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, who led the study.

That demographic, she said, "really just does not have the kinds of life experiences that most of the population has. If you're a person of color, you know what it is to be treated with suspicion from a policing perspective."

She added that male prosecutors could, for example, see and handle cases related to pregnancy, abortion rights, sexual harassment and domestic violence differently than cases.

"Having women and people of color represented more fully in these positions is no guarantee of equality in the criminal justice system, but I do feel very confident that we're not going to get equality with these numbers," Choresi Carter said. "These are numbers that if we saw them in any other country, or pretty much any other context, we would say, 'Wow, something is really seriously wrong with the system.' "

The prosecutors studied were elected by voters. But there doesn't seem to be much choice at the ballot box — another study found that a majority of incumbent prosecutors, 85 percent, run unopposed.

The discrepancy in race, according to Paul Butler — a law professor at Georgetown, a former federal prosecutor and author of Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice — comes in well before the voting booth.

Before running for office, most prosecutors work as staff prosecutors. And many African-American law students Butler meets, he said, "have concerns about going into prosecution because they don't want to be part of a system that locks up so many African-American people."

Blacks are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, according to the NAACP.

Butler, who is black, said he expects to see more African-Americans consider going into prosecution after recent cases involving the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island and Baltimore, as well as the high profile of Baltimore's Mosby.

"There's a new sense that African-American prosecutors can make a difference," Butler said. "We can call that the Marilyn Mosby effect."

But not everyone agrees that the racial disparity in elected prosecutors translates to unequal justice.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney now at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the under-representation of African-Americans in prosecutor roles should be addressed, but he "totally rejects" the idea that "justice depends on your race."

Prosecutors that are not doing a good job or are too severe, he said, should be voted out of office. The lawyers he worked with at Justice, he pointed out, "were interested in prosecuting and seeing that justice was done; they didn't give a damn about the particular race of the people they were prosecuting or the victims. They saw people as people."



http://www.womendonors.org/tag/reflective-democracy/ --

“WDN’s Who Leads Us Campaign Seeking Pilot Project Proposals
Programs to be funded will focus on structural barriers preventing us from having a truly reflective democracy
Published: February 10, 2015 | By: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Reflective Democracy

WDN Drives Conversation About Gender, Race and Power with WhoLeads.Us
New resource launches with major national media coverage
Published: October 09, 2014 | By: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Reflective Democracy

WDN Members Support New Reflective Democracy Campaign
The initiative is focused on dismantling structural barriers that are keeping women and people of color from attaining equal representation in the halls of power
Published: April 28, 2014 | By: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Reflective Democracy

Who Leads Us? Story of a Successful Campaign Launch
Video highlights broad press coverage of Who Leads Us
Published: November 17, 2014 | By: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Reflective Democracy

We think outside the box. Through collaborative learning and cooperative action, WDN contributes to a more just and fair world.

WORKING TOGETHER TO DO MORE GOOD

Women Donors Network helps women invest their voices – and much more – in the demand for progressive change. Through collaboration and innovation, we accomplish more together than we ever could separately. …. Through major programs such as our annual conference and WDN on the Hill DC lobby trip, network-wide strategic initiatives, member-led donor circles, and regional events and trainings, WDN members connect with key leaders in the social change movement, deepen collaborations across issues and sectors, and participate in strategic grantmaking opportunities. WDN helps donors maximize their impact in the world. Through their individual and collective philanthropy, WDN members give away more than $150 million a year. …. Our work is organized in three main strategies that inform our programs: Be Inspired and Connected: WDN members build and expand relationships with fellow progressive women donors committed to structural change, and with cutting-edge leaders whose work is rooted in the perspectives of women, people of color, low-income communities and other underrepresented groups.

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Leverage Your Resources and Access: WDN members multiply impact by giving collectively, harnessing the power of our networks and our power as investors and shareholders to advance change.”






“Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore's African-American state's attorney, took the spotlight earlier this year when she filed charges against six police officers in her own city. The officers were charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died while in custody. "There's a new sense that African-American prosecutors can make a difference. We can call that the Marilyn Mosby effect," law professor Paul Butler said of the Baltimore state's attorney. Alex Brandon/AP. …. A report out this week found that 95 percent of the country's elected prosecutors are white, and 83 percent are men. Only 1 percent are women of color, according to the findings from the Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the left-leaning Women Donors Network. …. States started electing prosecutors as early as 1832. Back then, political reformers believed that electing prosecutors, rather than appointing them as many still are, would remove them from partisan politics and force them to be accountable to voters and local communities. …. The proportion of white elected prosecutors is higher than that of attorneys in general. According to the American Bar Association, 88 percent of lawyers are white. "The group of people who are really the managers of the criminal justice system in America are concentrated among one demographic group: white men," said Brenda Choresi Carter of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, who led the study. …. If you're a person of color, you know what it is to be treated with suspicion from a policing perspective." She added that male prosecutors could, for example, see and handle cases related to pregnancy, abortion rights, sexual harassment and domestic violence differently than cases. …. . "These are numbers that if we saw them in any other country, or pretty much any other context, we would say, 'Wow, something is really seriously wrong with the system.' "The prosecutors studied were elected by voters. But there doesn't seem to be much choice at the ballot box — another study found that a majority of incumbent prosecutors, 85 percent, run unopposed. …. Before running for office, most prosecutors work as staff prosecutors. And many African-American law students Butler meets, he said, "have concerns about going into prosecution because they don't want to be part of a system that locks up so many African-American people." Blacks are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, according to the NAACP. Butler, who is black, said he expects to see more African-Americans consider going into prosecution after recent cases involving the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island and Baltimore, as well as the high profile of Baltimore's Mosby. …. But not everyone agrees that the racial disparity in elected prosecutors translates to unequal justice. Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney now at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the under-representation of African-Americans in prosecutor roles should be addressed, but he "totally rejects" the idea that "justice depends on your race." Prosecutors that are not doing a good job or are too severe, he said, should be voted out of office.

“ … they didn't give a damn about the particular race of the people they were prosecuting or the victims. They saw people as people." (Nod, nod, wink, wink….) I wish I believed that to be the case. The word that comes to mind more than hatred, which is a strong feeling that most people are fully aware of when they feel it, is “intellectual bias” or simply “prejudice.” That’s the precondition for the cold dismissal of a group of people as “inferior,” “dangerous,” or “undesirable.” That’s what happened to the Jews in Europe when Hitler came on the scene and whipped up the common folk into a psychotic and super patriotic population who did not lift a finger when those atrocities occurred. It’s what people feel before they begin to attack an opponent, hitting with extra force because their body is pumped full of adrenalin. Before they know it the other guy lies bloody and unconscious at their feet. In most cases they didn’t actually intend to do that, and then they are left to wonder how they ended up in prison. That just wasn’t their intended plan in life.

What I think we have in this country is some mental and philosophical stances that haven’t grown with our economic/technological progress except for some generally well educated and emotionally enlightened individuals. Luckily some humans are actually born gentle rather than hostile and aggressive. Yet, some educated people are just as racially and culturally biased as the poorest of the poor. It makes a difference, too, when the general population in a small environment like some small town areas without a college, a concert hall, a little theater, works at the local factory because they dropped out of school or never went beyond high school, so they wouldn’t enjoy a concert in the first place. Needless to say, when it comes to a chance to vote in a known black person for some office – any office – they are less likely to do that. When too large a percentage of the population are in that social and economic category, then they are more prone to things like highly prejudiced views.

The Reflective Democracy Campaign, from www.WomenDonors.org, is did a very important thing with its study of just exactly how many women and people of color are in power at this time. Soon they might need to count how many Unitarian Universalists, gays and lesbians have been elected, too. That study accumulated data proving the inherent bias in the electoral public. Of course, if the prosecutors were appointed, they too could be chosen in a prejudiced way because those in power tend to get as many of their cronies as they can so they will have more power by acting together. My father said that he always votes for a Democrat because whoever is elected as President will always bring in a large number of people just like them, so if the fiscally tightfisted Republicans are elected, a depression won’t be far behind. That was his viewpoint, but I think it’s basically true. The theory that more money in the working people’s pockets will “raise all boats” much faster than gifting a massive amount of money on the business leaders and the wealthy and hoping for that money to “trickle down.” I think if organizations like this one would get behind black, female, nonreligious candidates with TV ads, town meetings, etc. to cause their names to become familiar and popular, there would be a change in the electoral situation. I’m really glad to see that this group exists because who we elect to offices small and large is a vital influence on what kind of society we will become.