December 11, 2016


News and Views


MOTHER JONES, BELOW, CONCERNS THE AGE-OLD REPUBLICAN GOAL, OF HOW TO STRIP THE FEW REMAINING DOLLARS OUT OF THE HANDS OF AN EVER-GREEDY POOR AND REDUCE US ALL TO A STATE OF NEO SERFDOM. AFTER THAT ARE SEVERAL ARTICLES ON RACISM IN SEVERAL FORMS. THOSE ARTICLES, TOO, LEAVE ME ALMOST HOPELESS ABOUT THE ACCEPTABILITY – AND PERHAPS THE VIABILITY – OF THE HUMAN RACE.


http://www.motherjones.com/contributor/2016/12/republicans-want-to-cut-social-security

The House GOP Just Revealed Its Plan to Cut Social Security
BEN DREYFUSS
DEC. 9, 2016 2:20 PM

Late Thursday, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee, introduced a bill to "reform" (i.e., cut) Social Security.

Josh Marshall warns, "Republicans apparently aren't going to be satisfied with phasing out Medicare. They're going to try to pass huge cuts to Social Security this year too. Not Bush-style partial phaseout but just big, big cuts. And you're out of luck even if you're a current beneficiary. "

The Washington Examiner describes it thusly:

The bill…would reduce costs by changing the benefits formula to reduce payments progressively for high earners. It would also gradually raise the full retirement age from 67 to 69 for people who are today 49 or younger. Lastly, it would change the inflation metric used to calculate benefits to one that shows lower inflation, essentially slowing the growth in benefits, and eliminate cost of living adjustments for high earners.

You can read the full bill below. Democrats are not pleased.

DOCUMENT -- GET THE SCOOP, STRAIGHT FROM MOTHER JONES.
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Page 1 of 54 of the PDF.
»



CBS NEWS -- KKK IS GETTING SHY THESE DAYS: WHITE SUPREMACY IS TOO DEFAMATORY A TERM, APPARENTLY. SEE ALSO WIKIPEDIA DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT AT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy BELOW.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kkk-insists-theyre-not-white-supremacists/

KKK members insist they’re not “white supremacists”
AP December 11, 2016, 8:59 AM

Related: The KKK today
17 Photos -- In this Friday, Dec. 2, 2016 photo, two masked Ku Klux Klansmen stand on a muddy dirt road during an interview near Pelham, N.C. AP PHOTO/JAY REEVES
Play VIDEO -- Hate, harassment on the rise since Election Day


PELHAM, N.C. - In today’s racially charged environment, there’s a label that even the KKK disavows: white supremacy.

Standing on a muddy dirt road in the dead of night near the North Carolina-Virginia border, masked Ku Klux Klan members claimed Donald Trump’s election as president proves whites are taking back America from blacks, immigrants, Jews and other groups they describe as criminals and freeloaders. America was founded by and for whites, they say, and only whites can run a peaceful, productive society.

But still, the KKK members insisted in an interview with The Associated Press, they’re not white supremacists, a label that is gaining traction in the country since Mr. Trump won with the public backing of the Klan, neo-Nazis and other white racists.

“We’re not white supremacists. We believe in our race,” said a man with a Midwestern accent and glasses just hours before a pro-Trump Klan parade in a nearby town. He, like three Klan compatriots, wore a robe and pointed hood and wouldn’t give his full name, in accordance with Klan rules.

Claiming the Klan isn’t white supremacist flies in the face of its very nature. The Klan’s official rulebook, the Kloran - published in 1915 and still followed by many groups - says the organization “shall ever be true in the faithful maintenance of White Supremacy,” even capitalizing the term for emphasis. Watchdog groups also consider the Klan a white supremacist organization, and experts say the groups’ denials are probably linked to efforts to make their racism more palatable.

Still, KKK groups today typically renounce the term. The same goes for extremists including members of the self-proclaimed “alt-right,” an extreme branch of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism.

“We are white separatists, just as Yahweh in the Bible told us to be. Separate yourself from other nations. Do not intermix and mongrelize your seed,” said one of the Klansmen who spoke along the muddy lane.

The Associated Press interviewed the men, who claimed membership in the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, in a nighttime session set up with help of Chris Barker, a KKK leader who confirmed details of the group’s “Trump victory celebration” in advance of the event. As many as 30 cars paraded through the town of Roxboro, North Carolina, some bearing Confederate and KKK flags.

Barker didn’t participate, though: He and a Klan leader from California were arrested hours earlier on charges linked to the stabbing of a third KKK member during a fight, sheriff’s officials said. Both men were jailed; the injured man was recovering.

Like the KKK members, Don Black said he doesn’t care to be called a white supremacist, either. Black - who operates stormfront.org, a white extremist favorite website, from his Florida home - he prefers “white nationalist.”

“White supremacy is a legitimate term, though not usually applicable as used by the media. I think it’s popular as a term of derision because of the implied unfairness, and, like ‘racism,’ it’s got that ‘hiss’ (and, like ‘hate’ and ‘racism,’ frequently ‘spewed’ in headlines),” Black said in an email interview.

The Klan formed 150 years ago, just months after the end of the Civil War, and quickly began terrorizing freed blacks. Hundreds of people were assaulted or killed as whites tried to regain control of the defeated Confederacy. During the civil rights movement, Klan members were convicted of using murder as a weapon against equality. Leaders from several different Klan groups have told AP they have rules against violence aside from self-defense, and opponents agree the KKK has toned itself down after a string of members went to prison years after the fact for deadly arson attacks, beatings, bombings and shootings.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, which monitor white extremist organizations and are tracking an increase in reports of racist incidents since the election, often use the “white supremacist” label when describing groups like the Klan; white nationalism and white separatism are parts of the ideology. But what exactly is involved?

The ADL issued a report last year describing white supremacists as “ideologically motivated by a series of racist beliefs, including the notion that whites should be dominant over people of other backgrounds, that whites should live by themselves in a whites-only society, and that white people have their own culture and are genetically superior to other cultures.”

That sounds a lot like some of the ideas espoused by today’s white radicals, yet they reject the label. That’s likely because they learned the lessons of one-time Klan leader David Duke, who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana this year, said Penn State University associate professor Josh Inwood.

“(There was) this peddling of kinder, softer white supremacy. He tried to pioneer a more respectable vision of the Klan,” Inwood said.

Extremist expert Sophie Bjork-James, a scholar at Vanderbilt University, prefers the term “racist right” to describe today’s white supremacists.

“They are not simply conservative or alt-right, but actually espousing racist ideas and racist goals,” she said. “They won’t agree with this label, but I think it is important to be clear about what they represent and what their goals are.”

Whatever you call them, the muddy-road Klansmen said their beliefs have gained a foothold. The popularity of Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border - an idea long espoused by the Klan - is part of the proof, they said.

“White Americans are finally, most of them, opening their eyes and coming around and seeing what is happening,” said a man in a satiny green Klan robe.


I was intrigued by this term "muddy-road Klansmen," so I searched it. I found it in only a few places put together as in this case, so it's either uncommon or unique in origin to CBS. It's fairly poetic to me.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy

White supremacy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White supremacy or white supremacism is a racist ideology centered upon the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior in certain characteristics, traits, and attributes to people of other racial backgrounds and that therefore white people should politically, economically and socially rule non-white people.

The term is also typically used to describe a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial domination by white people (as evidenced by historical and contemporary sociopolitical structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws in the United States, and apartheid in South Africa).[1] Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy.[2] White supremacist groups have typically opposed people of color and Jews.

In academic usage, particularly in usage drawing on critical race theory, the term "white supremacy" can also refer to a political or socio-economic system where white people enjoy a structural advantage (privilege) over other ethnic groups, both at a collective and an individual level.

History of white supremacy[edit]

White supremacy has ideological foundations that at least date back to 17th-century scientific racism, the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international and intra-national relations from the latter part of the Age of Enlightenment (in European history) through the late 20th century (marked by the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country's first multiracial elections in 1994).

United States

White supremacy was dominant in the United States even after the American Civil War and also decades after the Reconstruction Era.[3] In large areas of the U.S. this included the holding of non-whites (specifically African Americans) in chattel slavery with four million denied freedom from bondage.[4] The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy cited as a cause for state secession[5] and the formation of the Confederate States of America.[6] In an editorial about Native Americans in 1890, author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."[7]

In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white were disenfranchised, barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Since the founding of the United States, when the right to vote was restricted to white men of property, professor Leland T. Saito of USC writes: "Throughout the history of the United States race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."[8] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.[9]

The denial of social and political freedom continued into the mid-20th century resulting in the Civil Rights Movement.[10] On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg cited the law as clearly declaring "that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race."[11] The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and as a result would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S.[11] Many U.S. states banned interracial marriage through anti-miscegenation laws until 1967, when these laws were invalidated by the Supreme Court of the United States' decision in Loving v. Virginia. Additionally, white leaders often viewed Native Americans as obstacles to economic and political progress with respect to the natives' claims to land and rights.

The term's recent rise in popularity among leftist activists has been characterized by some as counterproductive. Specialist in language and on race relations, John McWhorter has described its use as straying from commonly accepted meaning to encompass much less extreme issues which thereby cheapens the term and can shut-down productive discussion.[12][13] Political columnist Kevin Drum attributes the term's recent popularity to frequent use by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and describes it as a "terrible fad" which fails to convey nuance and should be reserved for those who are trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks and not used for for any type of less severe racist belief or action.[14][15] In an opinion piece in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf has said that the usage of the term by activists creates confusion because it strays from the common definition.[15]

Germany

Nazism promoted the idea of a superior Germanic people or Aryan race in Germany during the early 20th century. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining that white people were members of an Aryan "master race" which is superior to other races, particularly the Jews who were described as the "Semitic race", Slavs and Gypsies, which they associated with "cultural sterility". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancient régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the purity of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish cultures.[16]

In order to preserve the Aryan race or Nordic race, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later between Germans and Romani and Slavs.

The Nazis used the Mendelian inheritance theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behavior.[17]

Many modern-day white supremacist groups around the world reuse Nazi symbolism, including the swastika, to represent their beliefs.[citation needed]

According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6000 Neo-Nazis.[18]

Southern Africa

A number of Southern African nations experienced severe racial tension and conflict during global decolonization, particularly as white Africans of European ancestry fought to protect their preferential social and political status. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under the Dutch Empire, and continued when the British took over the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. Apartheid as an officially structured policy was introduced by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party after the general election of 1948. Legislation divided inhabitants into four racial groups—"black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which were divided into several sub-classifications.[19] In 1970, the Afrikaner-run government abolished non-white political representation, and starting that year black people were deprived of South African citizenship.[20] South Africa abolished apartheid in 1991.[21][22] In Rhodesia, a predominantly white government issued its own unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom during an unsuccessful attempt to avoid immediate majority rule.[23] Following the Rhodesian Bush War which was fought by African nationalists, Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith acceded to biracial political representation in 1978 and the state achieved recognition from the United Kingdom as Zimbabwe in 1980.[24]

Ukraine and Russia

Neo-Nazi organisations embracing white-supremacist ideology are present in many countries in the world. It has been claimed in 2007, that Russian Neo-Nazis accounted for "half of the world's total".[25]

Academic use of the term

The term white supremacy is used in academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or absence of racial hatred. White racial advantages occur both at a collective and an individual level (ceteris paribus, i. e., when individuals are compared that do not relevantly differ except in ethnicity). Legal scholar Frances Lee Ansley explains this definition as follows:

By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.[26][27]

The eugenicist Madison Grant argued in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and that admixture was "race suicide".[38] In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be a Nordic admixture and suitable for Aryanization.[39]

In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the group most associated with the white supremacist movement. Many white supremacist groups are based on the concept of preserving genetic purity, and they do not focus solely on discrimination based on skin color.[40] The KKK's reasons for supporting racial segregation are not primarily based on religious ideals, but some Klan groups are openly Protestant. The KKK and other white supremacist groups like Aryan Nations, The Order and the White Patriot Party are considered antisemitic.[40]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

Scientific racism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

***"Scientific racism" is a term that has been used historically. With the existence of human races being a source of controversy today, it is referred to as pseudo-scientific racism in some literature.
***"Racial biology" redirects here. For for the biological concept of race, see Race (biology).


Scientific racism is the use of ostensibly scientific or pseudoscientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority;[1][2][3] alternatively, it is the practice of classifying[4] individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. This practice is now generally considered pseudoscientific, yet historically it received credence in the scientific community.[2][3]

As a category of theory, scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, that might be asserted to be superior or inferior. Scientific racism was common during the New Imperialism period (c. 1880s – 1914) where it was used in justifying White European imperialism, and it culminated in the period from 1920 to the end of World War II. Since the later 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and has historically been used to support or validate racist world-views, based upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.[5]

After the end of the Second World War, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO's early antiracist statement "The Race Question" (1950): "The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of 'race' has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering."[6] Such "biological fact" is no longer considered to exist as developments in human evolutionary genetics showed that human genetic differences are nearly totally gradual.[4]

There is considerable debate whether the term "scientific racism" is pejorative as applied to more modern theories, as in The Bell Curve (1994), which investigated racial differences in IQ, concluding that genetics explained at least part of the IQ differences between races. Critics argue that such works are motivated by racist presumptions unsupported by available evidence. Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly, founded as an explicitly race-conscious publication, have been accused of scientific racism for publishing articles on controversial interpretations of human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race subjects.[7] The label "scientific racism" is used to criticize studies claiming to establish a connection between, for example, race and intelligence, and is used to argue that this promotes the idea of "superior" and "inferior" human races.[8]



https://www.laprogressive.com/our-racial-divide/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e549f5f6f1-LAP+News+-+11+August+16+PC&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9f184a8aad-e549f5f6f1-286822829

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
BY JOHN PEELER
POSTED ON DECEMBER 8, 2016

Photograph -- Emory University professor Carol Anderson protesting.


In White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson, Professor and Chair of the African American Studies Department at Emory University, here gives us an exquisitely pointed polemic. While she leaves no room for subtlety or nuance, she is on to something as important for white readers as it is probably obviously for blacks. That is that every time blacks have managed to advance in American society, whites have moved systematically to drive them back.

Her chapters tell five stories:

**the rolling back of Reconstruction after the Civil War,
**systematic Southern efforts to obstruct the black migration to Northern cities after World War I,
**undermining the impact of Brown v. Board of Education,
the long effort starting with Nixon to undercut the gains from the civil rights movement and the legislation of the 1960s, and
**the denial of legitimacy to President Barack Obama.

The deeper truth that she calls to our attention is this: that many or most whites, North as well as South, are not comfortable with black advancement and will support measures that will contain that advancement.

The stories are told as if there was centralized leadership and planning in the white community. There is little acknowledgement of white dissent or white support for blacks. She does demonstrate that there was indeed a good deal of coordination, if not always centralized leadership, at each stage. . . . .

As a white Southerner by upbringing and a renegade liberal by conviction, I have recognized for some time that this is true. It is most obvious in the resurrection of the old racist Solid South under Republican auspices after Goldwater carried the Deep South in 1964, after Nixon and Wallace campaigned on the white backlash to Civil Rights in 1968. But though this book was written and published before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the success of his xenophobic campaign with a strong majority of white voters nationwide is good evidence for a white backlash in the North.

What should be our response to this “white rage”? Paradoxically (I think Anderson would disagree with me about this) the best way forward now for African Americans and other minorities, the best way to combat this cultural racism, may be to deemphasize red flags like affirmative action and emphasize straight equal opportunity for access to programs aimed to benefit all. This was the genius of the New Deal (however flawed it was in application).

john peeler

The book ends with a short epilogue entitled “Imagine,” in which Anderson urges us to look optimistically to a future when this culture of racism no longer dominates American society. But how can this be when from our earliest colonial origins our society was founded on white racism (toward Native Americans as well as African Americans). As a culture, we will never be rid of it. We can only keep struggling against it.

John Peeler
POSTED ON DECEMBER 8, 2016


About John Peeler

John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. After growing up in Florida and Georgia, he moved north as a teenager, and began a lifelong leftward migration. He’s been writing primarily for LA Progressive since 2008. He continues to live in central Pennsylvania.


COMMENTS

Ed Gentner says
December 10, 2016 at 9:24 am

One more article that pre-supposes that whites inherently want to keep minorities in their “place” in order to preserve the “old order”. If the Democratic party focused less on dividing the community pandering to various groups based on race and ethnicity and focused more on looking to improve the lives of all of the people who are struggling to maintain the party would not be where it is today.

This election cycle voters were treated by the Clintons and their supporters to castigation as racists if they did not buy into the notion of a borderless country that ignores the fact that those who entered the country without permission, overstayed visas, entered the workforce illegally using forged documents, should be treated as having the same rights and standing as naturalized citizens, rather than complying with our well established immigration laws and regulations or facing consequences for not following the laws. While arguably there are racists and bigots to be found in every neighborhood and by racial and ethnic group, it is hardly exclusive to the white community or white men in particular.

Reply
Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner says
December 9, 2016 at 2:45 pm

She’s right about Affirmative Action. For 40+ years, government agencies, particularly local and state governments, have met their minority quotas by hiring white women or recent immigrants from India and the Middle East. I am neither African-American nor female . . . but over and over and over again, I saw it happen.

When archaeological firms in the Southeast came under pressure to put more minorities in executive and professional positions, what did they do? Husbands gave their firms to their wives and then the firms began advertising themselves as “Minority Owned” or “Female Owned.” . . . counting a white female as a minority.

When is the last time that you saw a Native American archaeological firm getting a contract to work on a Native American archaeological site? NEVER

I am not an archaeologist either, but I work with such firms from time to time.

Reply
Ryder says
December 9, 2016 at 7:39 pm

Show me your data…

Though only 12 percent to 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks hold 18 percent of all federal jobs. African-Americans are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of State Department employees, 37 percent of the Department of Education, 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the Government Printing Office, 82 percent of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.

According to The Washington Post, blacks hold 44 percent of the jobs at Fannie Mae and 50 percent of the jobs at Freddie Mac.

Reply
Arica L. Coleman says
December 9, 2016 at 2:22 pm

I totally disagree with the conclusion that people of color should ” deemphasize red flags like Affirmative Action and emphasize straight equal opportunity for access to programs aimed to benefit all. This was the genius of the New Deal (however flawed it was in application).”

First, the New Deal created the white middle class after WWII while denying the same opportunities to Blacks and other minorities. That’s not genius, that’s business as usual.

Second, whites, mainly white women, have benefited from Affirmative Action more than people of color. And to advocate for “straight equal opportunity” (whatever straight means) is to deny that equality has and continues to be denied based on race. This is merely asking people of color to ignore the persistence of racism and the privilege of whiteness. It also places the onus of America inequality on people of color rather than were it belongs, on the shoulders of white America.

The problem as demonstrated by Anderson and by Ibram X. Kendi’s recent book Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas is the ideology and pathology of white supremacy. The type of logic put forward in this conclusion is a blatant example of the problem with white liberal thought. Instead of telling people of color what they ought to do, you should be telling white people what they ought to do!



THE FOLLOWING IS TODAY’S PARTICULAR EXAMPLE OF RACE-BASED POLITICS IN OPERATION, AND IT IS DIRECTLY LINKED TO DONALD TRUMP.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cajun-john-wayne-clay-higgins-congressional-seat-louisiana-john-kennedy-senate-race/

"Cajun John Wayne" Clay Higgins wins congressional seat in Louisiana
CBS/AP
December 11, 2016, 7:25 AM

BATON ROUGE, La. - The 2016 campaign season has finally ended, with Louisiana’s runoff election cementing Republican control of the U.S. Senate. The GOP also is holding onto the two U.S. House seats that were undecided going into the state’s runoff election.

Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy’s victory Saturday gives the GOP a 52-48 edge in the Senate starting in January. His runoff campaign focused on his support for President-elect Donald Trump and opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Voters also chose Republican Clay Higgins, a former sheriff’s captain known as the “Cajun John Wayne,” in the 3rd District representing southwest and south central Louisiana. Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson won the 4th District, covering northwest Louisiana.


Play VIDEO
How the "Cajun John Wayne" calls out suspects

Higgins had gained national fame for hosting a weekly “Crime Stoppers” segment for a local news show, where his tough talk earned him the “John Wayne” nickname.

Higgins resigned from the Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office earlier this year, after causing controversy with his viral online videos. He said he resigned as a captain in the Sheriff’s Office “as a matter of conscience,” citing his faith as a primary motivator for moving on.

“I begin each day on bended knee, but I kneel to our savior,” he said. “I will not kneel to violent street gangs, I will not kneel to murderers or the parents who raised them. I will not kneel to a discredited wannabe black activist that doesn’t really have the best interest of his people in mind. I will not kneel to bureaucrats from Washington, Baton Rouge or anywhere else.”

In one of his famous earlier videos, Higgins spoke directly to thieves who robbed a store for cigarettes.

“If you’re one of these idiots, pay attention son, and try to focus and listen to your elder,” he said in the video. “What you fellas are is the Virginia Slim gang cause you’re certainly not Marlboro men.”

Higgins’ home base is in Opelousas, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country, famous for its music, cooking and culture.

But Higgins said there’s not a drop of Cajun in him.

Before he was chasing suspects, the New Orleans native was chasing money.

“I had the trapping of success. I was -- I had money,” he said. “I was a very successful businessman, but wasn’t fulfilled in my spirit and I knew there was another path for me.”

That path, he said, led him to law enforcement.

“I went from a job making $144,000 a year to making $8 an hour as a cop,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kennedy entered the senate race as the front-runner and never relinquished the position, even when the field swelled to two dozen contenders in November. In the runoff, he defeated Democrat Foster Campbell, a state utility regulator who was such a long-shot that national Democratic organizations gave him little help.

It was Kennedy’s third U.S. Senate run since 2004 and this time he won in a landslide, taking 61 percent to Campbell’s 39 percent in the low-turnout election.

“With 52 seats in the U.S. Senate, we are excited for Republicans to confirm a conservative Supreme Court justice and begin working with President-elect Trump to pass an agenda of change for the American people,” a statement from Republican National Committee co-chair Sharon Day said.

Kennedy declared that he represents change in Washington.

“I believe that our future can be better than our present, but not if we keep going in the direction the Washington insiders have taken us the last eight years,” he said. “That’s about to change, folks.”

Louisiana’s open primary system pits all candidates against each other and sends the top two vote-getters into a runoff when no one gets more than 50 percent.

Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence both traveled to Louisiana to rally for Kennedy, and despite Campbell’s slim chances, he did get donations from around the country, aimed at bolstering resistance to the Trump presidency.

“We worked as hard as possible. We left no stone unturned,” Campbell said in his concession speech. “I make no excuses. We did everything humanly possible.”

The results keep Louisiana with one Democratic representative among its six congressman and two senators.

The Senate seat was open because Republican David Vitter decided against running for a third term after losing the governor’s race last year. Both Kennedy and Campbell have been involved in Louisiana politics for decades.

Kennedy, an Oxford-educated lawyer from south Louisiana, is in his fifth term as treasurer, and has repeatedly been in the headlines while clashing with Louisiana’s governors over state finances.

He sprinkled campaign speeches with examples of government-financed contracts he considered outrageous, like money “to study the effects of Swedish massage on bunny rabbits.”

Campbell, a cattle farmer and populist former state senator from north Louisiana who railed against “Big Oil,” talked openly about man-made climate change and argued for increasing the minimum wage. Though a Democrat, he opposed abortion and ran as supportive of gun rights.

Two House seats were open because Republicans Charles Boustany and John Fleming unsuccessfully sought the Senate seat instead of re-election.

The 3rd District race’s presumed front-runner had been Scott Angelle, a Republican member of the Public Service Commission and well-known public official for nearly 30 years. But Higgins - who made attention-grabbing Crime Stoppers videos as a sheriff’s captain - capitalized on disenchantment with career politicians to trounce Angelle with only a fraction of his money and a bare-bones organization.

In the 4th District, Johnson defeated Democrat Marshall Jones in a competition that largely steered clear of attacks.


RELATED: Will Russian Bombshell Derail Trump Juggernaut?
Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary, and the Looting of Public Education


https://www.laprogressive.com/combatting-trump/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+Newsletter&utm_campaign=11b4db3879-LAP+News+-+11+August+16+PC&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9f184a8aad-11b4db3879-286822829

Connect The Dots: Combatting Trump
BY LILA GARRETT
POSTED ON DECEMBER 7, 2016

Welcome to Connect the Dots. Today, we want to review two ways to stop Donald Trump and his team of racist thugs from taking over the country if not the world. Just to mention a few of them:

Tom Price:
Head of Health and Human Services opposes anything that relates to either Health or Human Services. He’s against Medicare, Social Security, programs for women’s health including providing contraception for poor women. He’s the exact opposite of what the job calls for.

Jeff Sessions:
Attorney General, former Ku Klux Clan supporter, lost a judgeship because of his virulent racism against blacks.

Michael Flynn:
In charge of of Homeland Security, openly hates Muslims, but likes torture….especially water boarding & forced rectal feeding.

Myron Ebell:
Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t believe in climate change.

Steven Mnuchin:
Goldman-Sachs billionaire, Trump’s pick for Sec of the Treasury made his fortune by foreclosing on the homes of 36,000 people.

Betsy deVos:
Trump’s pick for Education Secretary doesn’t believe in public education.

Ben Carson: Proposed new head of HUD says “poverty is a choice.”

Steve Bannon: This notorious anti-semite is Trump’s chief advisor. Famous for his extreme right politics, he’s widely regarded as the most powerful of Trump’s “team.”

The list goes on. Trump’s choices really spit in the eye of “We The People.” He and his grotesque transition team are arguably the most dangerous takeover that has ever threatened our country.

One way to stop them is to see to it that Trump is not inaugurated on January 20th. That can be done through the Electoral College, which votes on Dececember 19th. 38 electors must change their vote from Trump to Clinton and the Trump nightmare will be over. Just 38.

And particularly after the vote recount that’s going on now in Wisconsin and Michigan it can happen. It’s nothing really new. The Electoral College has changed the winner of the presidency five times in the past. Five times they’ve disagreed with the vote of the people and selected his opponent instead.

This included John Adams, who was replaced by Thomas Jefferson. Then John Adams won the people’s vote, but the Electoral College overrode him. This time the electoral college can agree with the vote of the people…Hillary Clinton has by now over 2.6 million more votes than Trump. The Electoral College can do the right thing by changing the winner from someone who basically lost the election to the person who actually won it. Hillary Clinton.

Five million people have already signed a petition demanding that the Electoral College make that change. You can find that petition on my Facebook Page, or online. Its called Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President. That’s when the electors vote. December 19th. Our future is riding on that day.

And the timidity of the Democratic Party has to change. Nancy Peloisi, who again was voted in as Leader of the Democratic minority, said the Democrats should work with Trump and his team.

Can she be serious? If you are familiar with the toxicity of the Trump agenda, you know there is no way to work with it. That’s like asking Congress to drink arsenic hoping they’ll get to like it.

The Trump racist, pro-war, pro-climate change agenda must be opposed every step of the way. The Republicans used that approach when Obama was elected. Mitch McConnell, Senate leader of the Republicans, publicly announced that the Republicans in the Senate and House would oppose Obama at every turn. McConnell stated firmly that he and the Republicans would see to it that Obama got nothing through. And that became the prophesy that has haunted us for the last 8 years. It worked, for them. Let’s take a page from their playbook. Let it work for us.

There’s a great new petition out sponsored by CredoAction.Com. It quotes Elizabeth Warren, who in short, said, if “Democrats don’t stand strong, our government will be under the control of hatemongers, and corporate cronies whose only qualification is their loyalty to an authoritarian president-elect.”

You can find this exciting petition at act.alternet.org or CredoAction.com. And, again, you can find a copy of it on my Facebook page. Sign on, share it, send it out to your entire list and to your Representatives. Let the Democratic Party know that if they have any spine at all this is the time to show it. There may be no other time.

lila-garrett-200 That’s what we’re going to talk about today. That and a lot more. Congressperson Barbara Lee is with us as is Congressman Alan Grayson and activist Marcy Winograd. On the subject of Trump and Company, let’s begin with Congressperson Barbara Lee. Her time is limited because she is between votes in the Congress. So let’s get to her right now.

Lila Garrett
Connect The Dots