December 29 and 30, 2017


News and Views


GO TO THE WEBSITE BELOW FOR TWO GREAT “UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL” PHOTOS OF A PUMA, SO CLOSE TO THE LIGHT THAT HIS EYES GLOW LIKE A SPECTRE IN A HORROR MOVIE. AS LONG AS ANIMALS DON’T GET TOO CLOSE TO HOUSES OR BECOME SIMPLY TOO NUMEROUS SO THAT THEY DO POSE A DANGER, I REALLY LOVE HAVING THEM IN THE CITIES.

MY ADOPTED HOME OF JACKSONVILLE, FL HAS HAD A NUMBER OF BLACK BEARS IN STAID MIDDLE-CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS. THEN THERE ARE THE RACCOONS, OPOSSUMS, DEER, COYOTES, FOXES, PIT VIPERS AND CORAL SNAKES, HAWKS AND EAGLES, BEAUTIFUL LONG LEGGED WADING BIRDS, ALMOST CERTAINLY FLORIDA PANTHERS, AND OF COURSE MANY ALLIGATORS. JACKSONVILLE IS BUILT ON THE RIVER DELTA OF THE ST. JOHNS, AND WILD UNDERBRUSH FOLLOWS THE WATER UP INTO PARTS OF THE CITY. THAT’S CALLED “HABITAT,” IN THE ZOOLOGY TRADE, AND ANIMALS LOVE IT.

ACCORDING TO THE ARTICLE BELOW, DON HENLEY OF THE EAGLES, CO-WROTE THE SONG 'DESPERADO' IN THIS VERY CALIFORNIA AREA. MAYBE THE “DESPERADO” OF THAT BEAUTIFUL AND HAUNTING SONG WAS PART HUMAN AND PART PUMA. I THINK THAT’S WHY WE HUMANS LIKE TO GO INTO THE WILD, BEAUTIFUL, AND DANGEROUS PLACES OF THE EARTH – TO SATISFY THE ANIMAL SPIRIT WHICH IS AT THE CORE OF OUR BEING. WE LONG TO BE HUNTER-GATHERERS AMONG SABER TOOTHED CATS. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE KINDRED SPIRITS WITH ME IN THAT WAY, I SUGGEST YOU READ THE JEAN AUEL EPICS OF THE EARTH’S CHILDREN SERIES. START WITH THE FIRST – “CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR.”

THE AUTHOR JEAN AUEL WAS MARRIED TO AN ANTHROPOLOGIST, AND INCORPORATED RESPECTABLE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION ON THE NEANDERTHAL AND THEN THE CRO-MAGNON INHABITANTS OF THE REGION AROUND THE DANUBE, OR “THE GREAT MOTHER.” IT IS SET AROUND 30,000 BP. IN MY HUMBLE VIEWPOINT, IF YOU DON’T FIND THESE BOOKS FASCINATING AND MOVING, YOU JUST DON’T HAVE MUCH IMAGINATION. GOTO HTTP://WWW.FAMOUSAUTHORS.ORG/JEAN-M-AUEL.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hollywood-mountain-lion-laurel-canyon-wildlife-habitat-land-purchase/
CBS NEWS December 30, 2017, 8:19 AM
Hollywood pumas to roam in wildlife habitat after land purchase

TWO CLOSEUP PHOTOS

High in the Hollywood Hills, conservationist Tony Tucci was curious about the wildlife still thriving in the urban jungle of Los Angeles. For months, his camera captured all kinds of animals roaming the ridge.

"All the animals that are native, indigenous to this area, they're still living among us?" CBS News correspondent Carter Evans asked.

"We're still living among them. They were here first," said Tucci, chair of Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife (CLAW).

The most surprising discovery was a mountain lion, also called a puma. It has no GPS collar.

"An elusive celebrity, obviously. He's kind of old Hollywood," Tucci said.

CLAW is part of an alliance of preservation groups that's been raising money to protect the last few wildlife corridors in L.A. from development. With the Laurel Canyon Association, they successfully purchased a 17-acre parcel for $1.6 million this week.

"The puma absolutely helped us cross the finish line … but there was also an angel who soared like an eagle, and we can't be more thankful for Don Henley's contribution to this," Tucci said.

Rock legend Don Henley, one of founding members of The Eagles, donated $100,000 in memory of his friend and collaborator, Glenn Frey.

"Don Henley and Glenn Frey wrote the song 'Desperado' when they lived here in this canyon," Tucci said.

In a statement Henley said: "These resources are precious, both in terms of wildlife habitat, and in terms of the human history that resides there."

For the mountain lion in particular, the land is critical "because this is potentially his living room or his den," Tucci said.

"It needs to be preserved. And the hallways, the wildlife corridors also need to be preserved. So this animal can thrive," he added.

Several pumas are known to inhabit the Santa Monica Mountains. Most are tagged and well-documented. One called P-22 became something of a celebrity when he was caught on camera near the Hollywood sign. With a little more open space now set aside, this will continue to be "where the wild things are."

"We are jumping for joy that we can actually protect something like this for generations to come," Tucci said.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.



THE MORE I HEAR WHAT FLAKE HAS TO SAY THE MORE I THINK HE WOULDN’T MAKE A HORRIBLE PRESIDENT, DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE IS A REPUBLICAN. THE PROBLEM WITH SO MANY REPUBLICANS IS THAT THEIR SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM IS LIKELY TO BE SOMETHING THAT I WILL CONSIDER “DRACONIAN.”

“@JEFFFLAKE
WE CAN FIX DACA IN A WAY THAT BEEFS UP BORDER SECURITY, STOPS CHAIN MIGRATION FOR THE DREAMERS, AND ADDRESSES THE UNFAIRNESS OF THE DIVERSITY LOTTERY*. IF POTUS WANTS TO PROTECT THESE KIDS, WE WANT TO HELP HIM KEEP THAT PROMISE.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-dreamers-wont-be-protected-without-a-wall-first/
CBS/AP December 29, 2017, 11:47 AM
Trump says Dreamers won't be protected without a border wall

President Trump says there won't be protection for young immigrants brought into the country illegally unless he gets funding for a border wall and other items.

Mr. Trump said on Twitter Friday: "The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc."

He added: "We must protect our Country at all cost!"


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration* & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!

8:16 AM - Dec 29, 2017
28,813 28,813 Replies 23,818 23,818 Retweets 93,136 93,136 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy


The battle over immigration has been delayed until 2018. Democrats want protections for the young immigrants, who are referred to as "Dreamers." DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Mr. Trump also told The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview at his club Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach that no wall means no plan for Dreamers.

"Look, I wouldn't do a DACA plan without a wall. Because we need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall," the president said.

Later Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, tweeted that he thinks they can find a way to fix DACA while improving border security, and help Mr. Trump "keep that promise."


Jeff Flake
✔
@JeffFlake
We can fix DACA in a way that beefs up border security, stops chain migration for the DREAMers, and addresses the unfairness of the DIVERSITY LOTTERY*. If POTUS wants to protect these kids, we want to help him keep that promise.

2:31 PM - Dec 29, 2017
547 547 Replies 187 187 Retweets 954 954 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

But while there is significant bipartisan sympathy for these immigrants, GOP demands for Mr. Trump's border wall and for more immigration agents have proved difficult to resolve.

Whatever happened to Trump's new border patrol officers?

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to hire 15,000 new border security agents and immigration officers, and was given a two-year window by the Office of Personnel Management to do so. But hiring that many skilled workers so quickly is proving to be a challenge, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General was unsure whether those new agents and officers are even necessary.

The president continues to emphasize at rallies that the wall will be built. But nearly one year into his presidency, the construction of such a wall continues to lag behind the president's original expectations and Congress has yet to pass any meaningful funding for it.

Meanwhile, time is running out for a DACA fix before protections for those Dreamers end. The president announced the effective end of DACA in September, telling Congress they had six months to come up with a fix. That deadline is March 5.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


[CHAIN MIGRATION -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_migration
Chain migration
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chain migration is the social process by which immigrants from a particular town follow others from that town to a particular city or neighborhood, whether in an immigrant-receiving country or in a new, usually urban, location in the home country. The term also refers to the process of foreign nationals immigrating to a new country under laws permitting their reunification with family members already living in the destination country.

Chain migration can be defined as a “movement in which prospective migrants learn of opportunities, are provided with transportation, and have initial accommodation and employment arranged by means of primary social relationships with previous migrants.”[1] Or, more simply put: "The dynamic underlying 'chain migration' is so simple that it sounds like common sense: People are more likely to move to where people they know live, and each new immigrant makes people they know more likely to move there in turn."[2]

. . . . Many groups have immigrated to the United States throughout history via chain migration. These social networks for migration are universal and not limited to specific nations, cultures, or crises. Chain migration is an overarching theme of many of the immigration experiences in American history. One group of immigrants to the English colonies in North America (and later the United States) was African slaves brought over forcibly; the circumstances of their migration do not fit the criteria of chain migration of free labor.

. . . . From 1942 to 1964, the American government sanctioned BRACERO PROGRAM allowed hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrant workers to “familiarize themselves with U.S. employment practices, become comfortable with U.S. job routines, master American ways of life, and learn English,” thereby creating social and human capital.[8] After the HART–CELLER ACT OF 1965 disbanded the Bracero Program, the incentives and effects of chain migration perpetuated undocumented immigration to the United States.

Absent any of the economic incentives, the Mexican American immigration relationship has a longstanding history and the effects of chain migration are pervasive when considering the number of Mexican American citizens, legal residents, and undocumented residents. Social capital provided by chain migration has helped perpetuate Mexican migration, whether it is undocumented or legal.

While immigrants from European nations during the period before the McCarran–Walter Act of 1952 were able to immigrate legally if with relative levels of ease depending on country of origin, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred almost all Chinese from immigrating to the United States. Nonetheless, many Chinese immigrants arrived in America by obtaining false documents. The Chinese Exclusion Act allowed the Chinese Americans already settled in America to stay and provided for limited numbers of family members of Chinese Americans to immigrate with the correct paperwork. This loophole and the fateful 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco’s public records provided Chinese immigrants, almost entirely men, with the potential to immigrate with false documents stating their familial relationship to a Chinese American.[9] These Chinese immigrants were called “paper sons,” because of their false papers. “Paper sons” relied on networks built by chain migration to buy documentation, develop strategies for convincing authorities on Angel Island of their legal status, and for starting a life in America.”

Ethnic enclaves

The information and personal connections that lead to chain migration lead to transplanted communities from one nation to another. Throughout American history, ethnic enclaves have been built and sustained by immigration. Different ethnic groups claimed distinct physical space in city neighborhoods to provide a reception for chain migration and maintain the community network it created. Examples of this trend include the many neighborhoods called Kleindeutschland, Little Italy, and Chinatown throughout the United States.

. . . . The effects of Chinese Exclusion and discrimination prevented Chinese residents from assimilating into American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Those factors, as well as social and cultural ties, precipitated the rise of Chinatowns as ethnic enclaves for Chinese Americans. Chain migration and the pseudo-familial nature of “paper sons” produced a relatively cohesive community that maintained ties with China.



[DIVERSITY LOTTERY* SEE –

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-diversity-visa-lottery-program/2017/11/01/69f3f422-bf15-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html
Immigration
Here’s what you need to know about the diversity visa lottery program
By Maria Sacchetti November 1]

From Romania to Nepal, they call it the “golden ticket,” a diversity visa lottery that offers citizens of countries with low immigration rates a chance to come to the United States.

Among the winners are a family of software engineers from Bulgaria, a physician and his lawyer wife from Romania, and hundreds of thousands of others from around the world.

On Wednesday, the program became best known as the entrance portal for Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan who came to this country on a diversity visa seven years ago and is accused of mowing down pedestrians and cyclists on a Manhattan bike path this week.

President Trump — who along with some Republican lawmakers had previously called for ending the diversity visa lottery program — doubled down Wednesday, saying before a Cabinet meeting, “We need to get rid of the lottery program as soon as possible.”

“We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems,” the president tweeted.

Moments earlier, he took a jab at Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who helped create the program in 1990.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty,” Trump tweeted. “I want merit based.”

The visa program, also known as the green-card lottery, issues up to 50,000 visas a year to people from dozens of countries, a tiny fraction of the roughly 1 million green cards the government issues annually. The aim is to mix up the nation’s melting pot.

The lottery is unusual because it does not require foreigners to obtain a sponsor — such as an employer or a relative — to come to the United States. Originally conceived as a way to help Irish citizens fleeing an economic crisis back home, the only requirement is that entrants be adults with a high school diploma or two years of recent work experience. Winners can bring their spouses and minor children. There is no application fee.

Millions apply each year, and fewer than 1 percent are randomly selected to undergo background checks. If they pass, they receive a green card, which grants them permanent residency in the United States and puts them on a path to citizenship. About 500,000 people have come to the United States through the program since 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

Supporters say the lottery enhances the nation’s diversity, presents a welcoming face to the world and, overwhelmingly, brings law-abiding, productive residents to the United States. For immigrants, it can be a life-changing experience.

Africa and Eastern Europe account for two-thirds of the lottery winners in recent years. Citizens of countries that have sent at least 50,000 people to the United States in the past five years — such as Brazil, Canada, China and Mexico — cannot participate.

Livia and Adrian Lungulescu, a married couple in their 30s from Romania, came to this country on visas for his medical residency, applied for the lottery to stay permanently and won in 2009. Now they are both U.S. citizens. He treats patients from an office in New Hampshire and she represents immigrants in Boston.

“It helps the professionals and the high school graduates, not somebody that’s coming here to destroy America,” Livia Lungulescu said. “It’s something that helps people.”

The lottery, which has been managed by the State Department since it began operating in 1995, has raised concerns in the past, including in a 2007 Government Accountability Office report that said it was vulnerable to scams. The report also cited concerns from federal officials that the lottery allowed applicants from countries whose governments are sponsors of terrorism.

Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, who shot and killed two people at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002, came to the United States after his wife won the visa lottery. Mohamed Atta, another Egyptian and one of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide pilots, applied for the lottery twice before entering the United States on a different visa to study aviation.

Winners undergo intense vetting, including criminal background checks and medical examinations. In the 2007 report, the GAO “found no documented evidence that DV immigrants from these, or other, countries posed a terrorist or other threat.

Immigration legislation that passed the Senate but died in the House in 2013 would have ended the program in exchange for legal residency for millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States. A bill proposed in August that would slash legal immigration levels in half over a decade also would eliminate the lottery program.

The fiscal 2019 visa lottery is currently taking applications, with a deadline of noon Eastern time Nov. 22. Winners are scheduled to be chosen in May.

Michael E. Miller contributed to this report.


“BUT BEING SELECTED IN THE LOTTERY PROCESS DOES NOT MEAN AN AUTOMATIC VISA FOR PARTICIPANTS; INSTEAD, IT ALLOWS THEM TO APPLY FOR ONE.” IF AFTER BEING SELECTED ON THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD OF A RANDOM CHOICE METHOD, WHOEVER THEN CHOSES TO APPLY MUST DO AMONG THE VERY BEST ON THE TESTS THAT WILL BE ADMINISTERED TO HIM/HER. THAT INCLUDES A PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PRESUMABLY IQ TEST. PEOPLE WITH HIGH IQS ARE USUALLY MORE LOGICAL, AND THOSE WITH EMOTIONAL BALANCE AND NO BRAIN DISORDERS WILL CERTAINLY BE LESS LIKELY TO BOMB A SYNAGOGUE OR A WOMEN’S CLINIC.

BUT DO ONLY ISLAMIC BELIEVERS BOMB SYNAGOGUES? NO. RADICAL AND FUNDAMENTALIST CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, AND ISLAMIC PEOPLE ALL DO. NOT ALL ISLAMIC INDIVIDUALS DO THAT EITHER, THOUGH – ONLY MENTALLY UNBALANCED PEOPLE DO – OF ALL RELIGIONS. IT’S THE HATERS WHO DO THAT, WHO IN TURN COME FROM ALL RELIGIONS, INCLUDING THE “CHRISTIAN IDENTITY” ALT-RIGHT GROUPS. HOW CAN WE SEPARATE THE AGGRESSIVE, THE XENOPHOBIC AND THE MENTALLY ILL FROM THE SANE AND EMPATHETIC? THAT’S WHAT WE NEED TO TRY TO DO.

I KEEP TALKING ABOUT EMPATHY, BECAUSE “LOVE” IS RELATIVELY HARD TO COME BY; BUT MOST HEALTHY PEOPLE DO HAVE SOME EMPATHY AND THAT IS THE PART OF OUR PERSONALITIES THAT WILL STOP US FROM COMMITTING MURDER OR – MORE COMMONLY – EMOTIONAL ABUSE. AS I SAID A FEW WEEKS AGO, AND I THINK IT’S SUCH A GOOD PHRASE THAT I’M GOING TO SAY IT AGAIN: “NO LOVE IN, NO LOVE OUT.”

THE PRIMARY WAY WE LEARN, ESPECIALLY OUR EMOTIONAL SETUP, IS BY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. IF IT WAS POSITIVE, WE WILL BE HEALTHIER AND MORE LIKELY TO CARE ABOUT THINGS LIKE KINDNESS. IF WE THINK THAT IT’S PERFECTLY OKAY TO BULLY A MENTALLY CHALLENGED BOY, THAT’S WHAT I CALL “FRIGIDITY,” AND IT’S A CLEAR SIGN OF MENTAL ILLNESS. I PERSONALLY BELIEVE IN ENVIRONMENT OVER GENETICS ON THAT MATTER, UNLESS A PSYCHOLOGIST PROVES SOUNDLY THAT MOST MENTAL ILLNESS IS DUE TO AN INHERITED PHYSICAL FLAW. I THINK IT IS , MAINLY THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES, AND THAT IT’S LEARNED. I BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS TO DETECT A LACK OF EMPATHY, AND ALONG WITH THE IQ TESTS, APPLICANTS SHOULD ALL TAKE THOSE. WE TEND TO JUST A PERSON BY THEIR CLOTHES OR JEWELRY, ETC. A PERSON LACKING EMPATHY SIMPLY HAS NO PERSONAL INTEREST IN HOW THE ABUSED PERSON FEELS, OR WHETHER WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS DAMAGING TO THEM. THEY DON’T HAVE WHAT I RELIGIOUSLY CALL “A CONSCIENCE;” SO OUR TEST AND PERSONAL INTERVIEW NEEDS TO DESELECT THOSE PEOPLE.

https://www.snopes.com/2017/11/11/diversity-visa-lottery-program/
News Political News
What is the Diversity Visa Lottery Program?
President Donald Trump criticized the program and called for its dismantling after a fatal terror attack in New York City in October 2017.
By Arturo Garcia

In the wake of a 31 October 2017 fatal terror attack in New York City, President Donald Trump and his administration are seeking to eliminate the visa program that reportedly let the suspect immigrate to the United States.

On 2 November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined the president in calling for the elimination of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, through which the suspect in the attack, Sayfullo Saipov, entered the country in 2010 from Uzbekistan. Eight people were killed and at least 12 others injured when Saipov drove a truck onto a Manhattan bike path three days earlier.

Sessions said of the lottery-based program, which makes 50,000 permanent resident visas available each year:

We don’t use random chance in college admissions and we don’t roll a die to hire people. By the same token, a lottery tells us nothing about who is entering this country.

Trump has accused the program of contributing to “chain migration” and called for it to be dismantled and replaced with a merit-based system. But being selected in the lottery process does not mean an automatic visa for participants; instead, it allows them to apply for one. Interviews are conducted during fiscal year 2019.

As the State Department makes clear on its web site:

If you receive notification through the Electronic Diversity Visa (E-DV) website that you have been selected for further processing in the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program, you must successfully complete the steps on the following pages before a consular interview can be scheduled to determine if you will receive a visa. You should complete these steps as soon as possible.

It is important to remember that selection does not guarantee you will receive a visa. In order to receive a DV to immigrate to the United States, selectees must still meet all eligibility requirements under U.S. law.

The department also states that eligible applicants “will only be scheduled for an interview when and if there is a visa number available.”
. . . .”


AIRPORTS ARE VERY BUSY PLACES, BUT EVEN SO, AIRPORTS NEED TO TAKE CARE OF SITUATIONS LIKE THIS. IF THE LADY DOTH PROTEST, TAKE HER DOWN THE HALL PERSONALLY ANYWAY. IT IS FAR EASIER TO GET LOST IN PLACES LIKE THAT THAN IT IS TO SAFELY FIND YOUR WAY. THE FAMILY WILL NOT BLAME THE AIRLINE FOR BEING “UNNECESSARILY” HELPFUL, BUT THEY WILL FOR THIS MISERABLE CASE OF NEGLECT. IF I WERE IN THAT POSITION, I WOULD CHAT WITH HER IN A FRIENDLY MANNER, SHOW MY ID AS A AIRPORT WORKER, AND THEN SHE’LL AGREE TO HAVING HER WHEELCHAIR PUSHED, ALMOST CERTAINLY. I’M SORRY SO MANY AIRLINES ARE BEING SUED, BUT IN THIS CASE, THEY DESERVE IT!

http://www.kgw.com/news/family-sues-alaska-airlines-contractor-over-pdx-airport-fall/503229281
Family sues Alaska Airlines, contractor over PDX airport
KGW 2:24 PM. PST December 29, 2017

Video -- Bernice Kekona, June 2017. Video provided by Kekona's attorney. KGW

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The family of a Spokane, Wash. woman is suing Alaska Airlines and another company in connection with a woman's fall down a Portland International Airport escalator in June. The woman died four months after the fall, and family members allege that neglect at the airport contributed to her injuries.

According to the wrongful death lawsuit, filed earlier this week in King County Superior Court, Bernice Kekona, 75, was traveling from Hawaii to Spokane with a transfer of planes in Portland. The grandmother was disabled with an amputated leg and other health issues.

At the Portland airport, while trying to get to the gate to her connecting flight, she fell down an escalator, resulting in significant injuries that led to her death, the suit states.

The suit also names Huntleigh USA, which contracts with Alaska Airlines to help assist passengers in transit. Kekona's family said that they had requested gate-to-gate service for their mother, who was disabled and needed wheelchair assistance.

According to the complaint, Huntleigh USA gate agents met Kekona as she deplaned in Portland and provided her a wheelchair ride to the top of the skybridge. She then was left alone and became confused, leading her to tumble in her wheelchair down an escalator, an incident captured on surveillance video.

Kekona was assisted by emergency workers after her fall and was transported to a Portland hospital for treatment. In September, she entered a Spokane hospital and for care of a leg wound, caused, her lawyers contend, by the initial Portland airport fall. She died two weeks later.

Huntleigh USA declined to comment Wednesday, according to news reports.

Federal law requires that airlines assist disabled passengers in transit. Alaska Airlines confirmed that Kekona received initial assistance but said she declined additional aid while navigating through the Portland airport.

In a statement to KING 5, KGW's sister station in Seattle, Alaska Airlines issued the following response:

"We’re heartbroken by this tragic and disturbing incident. We don’t have all the facts, but after conducting a preliminary investigation, it appears that Ms. Kekona declined ongoing assistance in the terminal and decided to proceed on her own to her connecting flight. After landing in Portland, Ms. Kekona was assisted into her own motorized scooter by an airport consortium wheelchair service provider Huntleigh. Once in the concourse, she went off on her own."

Kekona wrongful-death lawsuit against Alaska Airlines, contractor by KGW News on Scribd

© 2017 KGW-TV


YA DON’T SAY !! IT’S NOT SURPRISING THAT TRUMP HAS GONE OUT OF HIS WAY TO ABUSE RUBIO. RUBIO VOCALLY DISAGREES WITH HIM – NOT GOOD!! I PERSONALLY LIKE RUBIO. HE’S A REPUBLICAN, BUT HE HAS HEART AND SENSE.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rubio-says-tax-bill-probably-went-too-far-in-helping-corporations/
By KATHRYN WATSON CBS NEWS December 29, 2017, 4:23 PM
Rubio says tax bill "probably went too far" in helping corporations

The GOP tax bill "probably went too far" in helping corporations, Sen. Marco Rubio told Florida's News-Press in a recent interview published Friday.

Asked for his overall view of the legislation —which the Florida Republican voted for and Mr. Trump signed into law last week — Rubio said the bill would have looked different if he were "king for a day." The legislation "probably" gave too much in benefits to corporations, he said, but noted the new law doubles the Child Tax Credit and is significantly better than the previous tax code.

Rubio and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, had suggested a corporate tax rate of 22 percent instead of the originally proposed 20 percent, in order to increase the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 per child, and Rubio threatened to vote against the bill if the Child Tax Credit didn't improve. The final legislation left the new corporate tax rate at 21 percent, down from the previous rate of 35 percent, and increased the Child Tax Credit to $2,000 per child, per year.

"If I were king for a day, this tax bill would have looked different. I thought we probably went too far on (helping) corporations," Rubio told the publication. "By and large, you're going to see a lot of these multinationals buy back shares to drive up the price. Some of them will be forced, because they're sitting on historic levels of cash, to pay out dividends to shareholders. That isn't going to create dramatic economic growth. (But) there's a lot of things in the bill that I have supported for a long time (such as) doubling the Child Tax Credit. And it is better — significantly better — than the current code."

"You all just got a lot richer," Trump tells friends at Mar-a-Lago

Rubio also told the publication many in the think tank and donor world described the Child Tax Credit to him as "welfare." So, Rubio said he had to spend a lot of time educating people about the credit, pointing out that it's tied to work.

"I had numerous people in the think tank world, and the donor world and even in the member world who said to me, 'This is welfare. It's for people who don't pay taxes,'" Rubio said in the interview. "So, we had to spend a lot of time educating people on the reality about the Child Tax Credit. It isn't welfare. It's directly tied to work. You can't get it if you don't have a tax return. You can't get it if you don't have earned income."

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


THE FACES OF DISASTER -- INTERVIEWS

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/survivor-describes-escape-from-deadly-bronx-fire-nyc/
By DON DAHLER CBS NEWS December 29, 2017, 6:05 PM
Survivor describes escape from NYC's deadliest fire in decades
10-year-old describes escape from NYC's deadliest blaze in decades
In all, 170 firefighters were called in to fight the fire, but the cold weather made things worse

NEW YORK - New York City's deadliest fire in decades happened three days after Christmas, on one of the coldest nights of the year. Twelve people, including four children, are dead, and four others are critically hurt.

It took first responders only three minutes to arrive, but not in time to prevent a tragedy caused by a 3-year-old toddler playing with the stove.

"The mother was not aware of it, was alerted by the young man screaming," said Daniel Nigro, commissioner for the New York City Fire Department. "She exited her apartment with her 2-year-old, and 3-year-old and left the door open."

bronx-ny-fire-2017-12-28.jpg
Multiple people were killed in a fire in NYC on Dec. 28, 2017. TWITTER/FDNY

That was a fateful mistake, according to the commissioner. Like smoke up a chimney, the fire was sucked into the hallways, and the entire five-story building was engulfed within minutes.

Crisbel Martinez, 10, escaped with her brother.

1229-en-nyfire-dahler.jpg
Crisbel Martinez escaped the deadly Bronx fire CBS NEWS

"I got scared and freaked out because I thought I was going to fall off the fire escape, but I tried my best," Martinez said.

The victims range in age from one to 63. Among the dead: a mother and her two daughters and niece. A family member didn't want to go on camera, but the heartbreak was obvious.

"Oh my God, those two little babies," they said. "God rest their souls, they're beautiful."

In another apartment, a woman and infant were found huddled in a bathtub.

FDNY personnel work on the scene of an apartment fire in New York
Fire Department of New York (FDNY) personnel work on the scene of an apartment fire in Bronx, New York, U.S. December 28, 2017. AMR ALFIKY/REUTERS

In all, 170 firefighters were called in to fight the blaze, but the cold weather made things worse, since crews had to battle the flames with freezing hoses.

According to city records, the 100-year-old building has a number of open safety violations, including a defective smoke detector on the floor where the fire began. The fire department is investigating whether that played any role in the tragedy.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


THIS IS SAD NEWS. GRAFTON IS ONE OF MY VERY FAVORITE WRITERS. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sue-grafton-mystery-writer-dead-at-77/
AP December 29, 2017, 2:49 PM
Sue Grafton, mystery writer, dead at 77

LOS ANGELES - Mystery writer Sue Grafton has died in Santa Barbara, California. She was 77. Her daughter, Jamie Clark, posted news of her mother's death on Grafton's Facebook page Friday.

Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books - Day One
Author Sue Grafton poses with a copy of her book "R is for Ricochet" on April 23, 2005 in Los Angeles. MICHAEL BUCKNER/GETTY IMAGES

She says her mother passed away Thursday night after a two-year battle with cancer and was surrounded by family, including including husband Steven Humphrey.

"Although we knew this was coming, it was unexpected and fast. She had been fine up until just a few days ago, and then things moved quickly," the post said.

Grafton began her "alphabet series" in 1982 with "A is for Alibi." Her most recent book, "Y is for Yesterday," was published in August.

"Many of you also know that she was adamant that her books would never be turned into movies or TV shows, and in that same vein, she would never allow a ghost writer to write in her name," her daughter wrote. "Because of all of those things, and out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y."

Humphrey said Grafton had been struggling to find an idea for "Z'' while undergoing treatment for rare and usually fatal cancer of the appendix, which was discovered in a routine colonoscopy.

"Nothing's been written," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "There is no Z."

He added with a laugh, "Nobody in this family will ever use the letter Z again."

The fictional heroine of the series, Southern California private detective Kinsey Millhone, was Grafton's alter ego, she told The Seattle Times earlier this year.

"I'm an introvert, so doing half of what Kinsey is beyond my poor capabilities," Grafton said. "But it's fun to get to live her life without penalty."

Her husband agreed that Grafton was Kinsey.

"Yes, as Sue said, 'We're one spirit in two bodies, and she got the good one,'" Humphrey said.

While Grafton aged, her heroine didn't quite as much.

"So when I started, she was 32, and I was 42. Now, she is 39, and I am 77. So there's a little bit of injustice there, but she is single," she told NPR in an interview earlier this year. "She's been married twice. She has no kids, no pets, no house plants."

She said she was looking forward to reaching the end of the alphabet with "Z is for Zero."

Lisa Scottoline, author of legal thrillers, tweeted that she was sad to hear of Grafton's passing.

"She forged a path for women in crime fiction, and all of us followed and adored her," she said.

Crime writer Lawrence Block called Grafton a wonderful writer "graced with vision and integrity and a generous spirit."

"That never-to-be-written Z book is the least of what we've just lost," Block tweeted.

Grafton began writing at 18, and completed her first novel at 22. "A is for Alibi" was the eighth novel she wrote, and the third she had published.

On her blog, she said her ideas come from everywhere.

"I read newspapers, textbooks on crime. I talk to private investigators, police officers, jail administrators, doctors, lawyers, career criminals. Ideas are everywhere," she said.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Grafton stayed tied to her roots, dividing her time between a home there and in California.

"The world has lost a great talent and prolific author in Sue Grafton - and in Louisville we have lost a citizen, friend, neighbor, a master gardener and hometown hero," Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted. "Her legacy will live on through her words, which will entertain and thrill readers for generations to come."

In addition to her husband and daughter Jamie Clark, she is survived by another daughter, Leslie Twine, and her son, Jay Schmidt.

Grafton's remains will be cremated and the family will hold a private memorial Sunday. Memorials also will be held in Louisville and New York City.

© 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


MADDOW VIDS

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/27/17
Sensing advantage, Democrats hone 2018 messaging, priorities
Karine Jean-Pierre, senior adviser at MoveOn.org, talks with Joy Reid about how Democrats intend to turn the raw political energy Democrats are displaying into electoral success.
Duration: 7:41


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/27/17
Conditions favorable for Democrats in 2018 (if rules still apply)
Steve Kornacki, national political correspondent for MSNBC, talks with Joy Reid about how the political conditions in 2018 compare with those of past midterm elections. Duration: 7:19


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/28/1728242/-Mueller-probe-expands-to-RNC-digital-operations-overlapping-Russian-Hacking
ERIC NELSON Blog Stream Groups Following Profile
Mueller probe expands to RNC digital operations overlapping Russian Hacking
2017/12/28

From Rachel Maddow & team with Joy-Ann Reid at the helm is this report out yesterday:
Mueller Probing Republicans Work With Russian Hacking | Rachel Maddow
Published on Dec 28, 2017
Natasha Bertrand, political correspondent for Business Insider, talks with Joy Reid about a report that the Mueller investigation is expanding to look at the extent to which RNC digital operations overlapped with Russian hacking activity

It appears that Mueller is now expanding the investigation into the republicans in congress along with various GOP operatives to determine the extent that the targeting of Russia hacked / stolen data (Guccifer 2.0 eg.) that wound up in republican tv commercials and on both twitter and face-book was made possible by that help in disseminating the stolen (hacked) data.

Guccifer 2 cut out
Guccifer 2.0
Several key down ballot races were targeted

At some point the Russian hacking campaign was discovered. Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to republican House speaker, Paul Ryan, requesting that republican congress Not use the data stolen from DNC and individuals.

Republicans refuse to respond to warnings about Russian hacking
down-ballot Dems were also targeted
Paul Ryan did not respond to Nancy Pelosi’s letter. No republican politician responded.
Some of the hacked material made it into Paul Ryan’s campaign advertisements.

investigation into republican politicians
Michael Isikoff | 12, 27, 2017
Republican politicians under investigation
Michael Isikoff | 12, 27, 2017

In the last few weeks, prosecutors have begun questioning republican national committee staffers about the party’s digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states.

Experts have posited that the granular information needed in targeting voters in key races in swing states was information that the Russian hacking operations would have sought to be most effective Michael Isikoff | 12, 27, 2017


NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mueller-probe-outgrows-witch-hunt-phase-100045988.html
Mueller probe outgrows its ‘witch hunt’ phase
Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News • December 27, 2017

VIDEO – Russia Investigation Continues to Heat UP

Steve Bannon’s eyes lit up. Several months before he left his job as a senior White House adviser last August, Bannon was talking to President Trump about the brewing political storm over the Justice Department investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. Suddenly, Trump had an inspiration. He looked straight at Bannon, jabbed at him with his finger and uttered the phrase that would become the slogan of the White House pushback against the Russia probe: “Witch hunt!”

Brilliant, thought Bannon, as he later related the exchange to colleagues.

Ever since, it is a phrase Trump has returned to time and again — and repackaged with typical Trumpian hyperbole. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Trump tweeted last May after ex-FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as Justice Department special counsel to oversee the probe.

But now, as Trump prepares to end his first year in office, the witch hunt narrative may have outlived its usefulness. Mueller’s investigation has expanded and gained serious traction: The president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s chief deputy, Rick Gates, have been indicted. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty and is now a cooperating witness. So too is a former foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, who has admitted lying to the FBI about repeated contacts with alleged Russian cutouts* who had offered the Trump campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”


[NOTE -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-out*_(espionage)
Cut-out (espionage)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“In espionage parlance, a cut-out is a mutually trusted intermediary, method or channel of communication that facilitates the exchange of information between agents. Cutouts usually know only the source and destination of the information to be transmitted, not the identities of any other persons involved in the espionage process (need to know basis). Thus, a captured cutout cannot be used to identify members of an espionage cell.]”

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, leaves Federal District Court in Washington on Nov. 2, 2017. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

As described by sources familiar with various aspects of the investigation, the Mueller probe is fast approaching a critical crossroads. The president’s lawyers, Ty Cobb and John Dowd, are pressing Mueller to wind down the investigation and exonerate their client, which they have assured the president will happen by early next year.

But the sources familiar with the probe say that such a rapid conclusion is — as one put it — “fanciful.” Mueller and his team, they say, are pursuing new leads, interrogating new witnesses and collecting a mountain of new evidence, including subpoenaed bank records and thousands of emails from the campaign and the Trump transition.

In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.

In what is potentially another ominous sign for the White House, the lawyer for Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law and senior adviser who was in charge of the campaign’s digital operation, recently began searching for a crisis public relations firm to handle press inquiries — a step frequently taken by people who believe they may be facing criminal charges. (Kushner has denied all wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said he is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.)


White House senior advisor and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner arrives at the Hart Senate Office Building on July 24, 2017, in Washington, D.C., to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Even if the new lines of inquiry don’t result in additional indictments — something unknowable at this point — the new material all but guarantees the Mueller investigation will stretch on for months, if not years, likely provoking Trump to revisit his decision not to fire the special counsel.

And if the president does take that step, many lawmakers and legal veterans say, it will cause a political explosion unlike any the capital has seen in decades. “It will be cataclysmic,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor who lived through the so-called Saturday night massacre when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox. “It will create a constitutional crisis.”

In the meantime, the president’s allies are mounting a ferocious attack on Mueller’s team — pointing to tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats by the special counsel’s prosecutors, and to text messages disparaging Trump by FBI agent Peter Strzok, whom Mueller has since moved off the investigation. They are also gunning for top FBI officials, especially deputy director Andrew McCabe, who they believe began a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s links to the Russians last year based in part on the controversial dossier prepared by a former British spy and funded as “opposition research” by the Clinton campaign.

“Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from being the next president of the United States,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a recent television interview in which he vowed to subpoena senior FBI agents about the origins of the probe.

FBI acting director Andrew McCabe listens during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 7, 2017. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

But for Democrats, the attacks on Mueller and the FBI are a distraction tactic meant to obscure how much has already been uncovered about the Trump team’s contacts with the Russians. Back in January, when the issue first starting getting political traction, the president and his top aides denied that he and his campaign had any connections to Moscow. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” Trump tweeted at the time.

Since then, Mueller’s team and congressional investigators have detailed numerous contacts, meetings and email exchanges between Trump’s campaign and Russian-connected operatives and officials that were unknown to the public when voters went to the polls in November 2016. Jeff Sessions, the Trump campaign’s chief national security adviser, met with the Russian ambassador at a hotel reception and later in his Senate office. Papadopoulos met with a Russia-connected professor and a woman introduced as “Putin’s niece” in an effort to set up a summit between Trump and the Russian president. And most famously, Donald Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort all met in Trump Tower with a delegation of Russians who they believed had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton — including “official documents” — that came straight from the highest levels of the Kremlin.

“Just from what’s been made public, it’s pretty clear the Trump campaign and family were willing and eager to work with the Russians,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “They showed almost no restraint in engaging with the Russians to see what they had to offer on their opponent. It was a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality.”

Photograph -- President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the FBI National Academy graduation ceremony on Dec. 15, 2017, in Quantico, Va. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Whether all this adds up to “collusion” — the sensational charge of active collaboration between the Trump campaign and Moscow that was first laid out in the controversial dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign — is far from clear. But for Swalwell and quite a few others, it is already clear that the Russian probe has been far more than a witch hunt.



SOMETIMES I WONDER IF AMERICANS ARE BECOMING TOTALLY UNAWARE OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL? THIS IS DISGUSTING, FIRST, BUT IT ALSO MUST BECOME THE NEXT CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION IN MY VIEW. THERE ARE SO MANY PIECES MISSING HERE THAT I CAN’T HELP WONDER IF THERE ISN’T SOMETHING INTENTIONAL GOING ON, THOUGH IT’S PROBABLY “UNDER THE TABLE.”

DURING THE LAST YEAR, MULTIPLE POLICE DEPARTMENTS AROUND THE COUNTRY WERE FOUND TO HAVE DONE THE SAME THING. ODD COINCIDENCE, NO? ERRORS, YES, BUT THE SAME ERROR? IS IT COLLUSION, BRIBERY, INABILITY TO THINK THINGS THROUGH TO THE END, OR SIMPLE LAZINESS. IN AT LEAST TWO OF THE CITY PDS THE STATEMENT WAS MADE THAT WHILE THERE WAS A RULE TO THAT EFFECT, THERE WAS NO SPECIFIC POSITION IN THE DEPARTMENT WHO HAD BEEN NAMED BY THE LAW TO CARRY OUT THAT TASK, SO NOBODY DID IT. THIS IS UGLY. SOMEBODY HIGHER UP THAN THE LOWEST LEVEL OF OFFICER SHOULD LOSE HIS JOB, HIS DECORATIONS AND HIS PENSION. MAYBE IT’S ALSO A CRIME.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/three-cities-sue-defense-department-over-poor-reporting-to-gun-check-database/2017/12/26/8e284a62-ea82-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html
National Security
Cities sue Defense Dept. over gun-check system failures
By Associated Press December 26

NEW YORK — Three large U.S. cities filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Defense, arguing that many service members who are disqualified from gun ownership weren’t reported to the national background check system.

New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia said in court papers that the military’s broken system for relaying such information helped spur the massacre of 26 people inside a Texas church last month.

“This failure on behalf of the Department of Defense has led to the loss of innocent lives by putting guns in the hands of criminals and those who wish to cause immeasurable harm,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “New York City is joining Philadelphia and San Francisco to stand up to the Department of Defense and demand they comply with the law and repair their drastically flawed system.”

Local law enforcement officials rely on the FBI’s database to conduct background checks on applications for gun permits and to monitor purchases. It must be up to date to prevent people from wrongly getting guns, the cities’ attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., seeks an injunction and judicial oversight to ensure ongoing compliance with the Defense Department’s obligation to submit records.

Military officials previously acknowledged problems with their reporting.

A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that he couldn’t comment specifically on the lawsuit.

“The department continues to work with the services as they review and refine their policies and procedures to ensure qualifying criminal history information is submitted to the FBI,” said Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Defense Department’s failure to report “significant numbers” of disqualifying records to the FBI’s national background check system allowed former Air Force member Devin P. Kelley to buy a rifle with which he shot 26 people to death Nov. 5 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., the lawsuit said. Kelley had been convicted of assaulting family members in a 2012 court-martial and should not have been allowed to purchase a gun.

Air Force leaders already acknowledged that the service failed to alert the FBI to Kelley’s criminal history and that they discovered “several dozen” other such reporting omissions. Army leaders have said their service also has similar gaps.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon’s watchdog agency said it found a “troubling” number of failures this year by the military services to alert the FBI to criminal history information. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered a review of the FBI database.



WATCH THESE NEXT TWO:

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/28/17
Trump asserts 'absolute right' to do what he wants with Justice
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Joy Reid about Donald Trump's apparent belief that the attorney general should protect the president and that he has the right to do what he wants with the Justice Department. Duration: 4:01


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/28/17
Trump DoJ assertion more than Nixon would have dared: Beschloss
Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Joy Reid about the historical context for Donald Trump's assertions about his power over the Justice Department and its investigations. Duration: 4:21


FARR AND THE PIONEER FUND

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/28/17
Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm*
Rev. William Barber talks with Joy Reid about his concerns about the racism of Donald Trump judicial nominee Thomas Alvin Farr. Duration: 5:58

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-on-trump-and-the-women-he-hates-980073539893
6/29/17
Lawrence on Trump and 'the women he hates'
President Donald Trump once again showed his true character in a vulgar attack on Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski, another self-inflicted problem as he struggles to implement his agenda. Duration: 9:09


HOW TO DECIDE AN ELECTION BY THE MOST NONSENSICAL WAY POSSIBLE

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/27/17
Mueller probing Republican non-Trump work with Russian hacking
Natasha Bertrand, political correspondent for Business Insider, talks with Joy Reid about a report that the Mueller investigation is expanding to look at the extent to which RNC digital operations overlapped with Russian hacking activity. Duration: 13:00

A CHAIN OF IDEOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
DECEMBER 29, 2017


PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAS APPOINTED A KNOWN RACIST TO A FEDERAL JUDGESHIP, THOMAS ALVIN FARR. THE NAACP AND SPLC HAVE SPOKEN OUT AGAINST THIS CHOICE FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. I WONDER IF THAT WAS JUST A NAME THAT WAS RECOMMENDED TO HIM, OR A PURPOSEFUL CHOICE TO PULL THE WHITE SUPREMACY ISSUE FURTHER WITHIN HIS CHAIN OF RELATIONSHIPS IN THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.

THE GOOD OLD BOY CHAIN LINKS US ALL, LIKE IT OR NOT, EVEN YOU PIOUS NORTHERNERS. LOTS OF HATERS LIVE OUTSIDE THE SOUTH AND WEST ALSO. PAINFULLY, AS IT IS BASIC TO THE SOUTHERN SOCIAL STRUCTURE, WHITE PRIVILEGE IS UNAVOIDABLE. IF YOU GREW UP AS I DID IN THE SOUTH, YOU PROBABLY HAVE BEEN HEAVILY INDOCTRINATED, ESPECIALLY IN AREAS THAT ARE OUTSIDE LARGE CITIES. I PERSONALLY LIKE COUNTRY PEOPLE UNTIL THE CONVERSATION COMES TO THIS SUBJECT, AND THEN I HAVE TO DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CONTINUE AS CLOSE AN ASSOCIATION WITH THEM, ACCORDING TO HOW STRONGLY THEY DISAGREE WITH ME AND HOW POLITICALLY ACTIVE THEY ARE.

THAT GOOD OLD SOUTHERN TRADITION – WHY DO “GOOD” SOUTHERN PEOPLE LET THIS GO BY WITH NO COMPLAINT OR CRITICISM? DO THEY THINK THAT SPEAKING OUT AGAINST EVIL IS NOT AN AMERICAN RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY, OR PERHAPS THAT SUPPRESSING HUMAN BEINGS IS NOT DEEPLY IMMORAL? I KNOW A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THIS CATEGORY PERSONALLY, AND IT SADDENS ME.

THE LINKS IN THIS CHAIN SEEMINGLY HAVE NO END. SEE THE RACHEL MADDOW REPORT ON DONALD TRUMP’S NOMINATION FOR FEDERAL JUDGE. IN MY EARLIEST DAYS AS A VOTER, I USED TO SEE JESSE HELMS ON A NEWS SHOW. I DESPISED HIM THEN AND I STILL DO NOW, AND HERE IT IS AGAIN AS A LINK BETWEEN DONALD TRUMP AND THE ALT-RIGHT.

IF YOU HAVE STRONG, COURAGEOUS POSITIVE VIEWS ON THE AMERICAN CULTURE SUCH AS THE IMPORTANCE OF ENSURING THE FULFILLMENT OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE, DON’T LET ANYBODY TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE TOO “ANGRY.” HANG ONTO THOSE VIEWS. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’LL NEED THEM TO FACE DOWN NATIONAL NEGATIVITY AND DOWNRIGHT EVIL AGAIN, AND THAT MAY BE SOON.

HIGH RANKING MEMBERS OF THE PIONEER FUND, THOMAS F ELLIS AND JESSE HELMS OF NORTH CAROLINA, FIRST MET AS AIDES DURING A 1950 NORTH CAROLINA SENATE CAMPAIGN THAT WAS NOTORIOUS FOR ITS RACISM AND INCLUDED ADS THAT STATED, “WHITE PEOPLE, WAKE UP BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.” THAT SHAMES “THE GOOD OLD NORTH STATE,” IN MY VIEW, AND SADDENS ME.

THERE WAS YET ANOTHER TRUMP NOMINEE WHO WAS “YANKED” BECAUSE OF THE BAD PUBLICITY THAT IT GENERATED -- TIM KELLY: HTTPS://WWW.EDWEEK.ORG/EW/ARTICLES/2017/11/09/TRUMP-NOMINEE-FOR-CAREERTECH-POSITION-BEING-PULLED.HTML. “BUT KELLY TOLD THE DETROIT NEWS THAT HIS BLOG REFLECTED MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT.”

" . . . . Tim Kelly, a Michigan state representative who President Donald Trump tapped to lead the office of career, technical, and adult education at the U.S. Department of Education, after it surfaced that he was the author of a personal blog that made offensive statements about Muslims, Head Start parents, and federal efforts to recruit women into the sciences, a source said.

"It became clear that Mr. Kelly had made a series of statements that were not reflective of the secretary's values," said an administration official. Sources characterized this as a decision that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos made when she was presented with the information. The blog should have been caught in the White House vetting process, one source said. And Kelly should have disclosed it with his application, but failed to do so, this source added.

Kelly did not respond to an email from Education Week, and his state legislative office declined to make him available. But Kelly told the Detroit News that his blog reflected mainstream conservative thought.”


THE TIM KELLY BLOG – APPARENTLY NOBODY TOLD KELLY THAT WHEN WE “ASSUME,” WE MAKE AN ASS OUT OF U AND ME. THE WHOLE POINT OF SCHOOLING IS TO TEACH EACH PERSON, AND THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE CHILDREN OR SUPREMELY INTELLIGENT. TEACHING, NURSING AND CERTAIN OTHER PROFESSIONS ARE OFTEN CALLED “THE HELPING PROFESSIONS.” THAT IS DONE FOR ALL, EQUALLY, AND AS AN ACT OF HOPE AND FAITH. IT IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.

I BELIEVE THAT OUR JOB AS A TEACHER IS TO PROVIDE A FOUNDATION FOR AN EVER-FULLER LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN EVERY PERSON, ON THEIR OWN. TWO THINGS THAT MUST BE PLANTED IN EACH KID IS CURIOSITY AND THE JOY OF LEARNING. IF WE DO THAT, WE’VE SUCCEEDED. IT’S LIKE THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. JUST THROW OUT THE SEEDS. IT WOULD HELP IF YOU WOULD ADD SOME WATER AND LOOSEN THE SOIL WITH YOUR TRUSTY HOE BEFORE YOU START, THOUGH. AFTER THAT, IT’S UP TO THE HIGHER POWER. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

JUST BECAUSE NOT EVERY KID WILL BE ABLE TO LEARN OR WILL EVEN BE INTERESTED IN IT, DOESN’T MEAN AT ALL THAT, AS DECENT TEACHERS WHO DESERVE OUR SALARY, WE SHOULDN’T DO OUR BEST TO TEACH AND EXPLAIN AND ENCOURAGE EACH AND EVERY ONE, AND WITH NO NEGATIVE “ASS”UMPTIONS AT ALL. I ALSO RESENT THE ASSUMPTION THAT “LOW INCOME KIDS” MEANS BLACK KIDS, AND EVEN IF IT DOES, A TEACHER WORTHY OF THE NAME WILL NOT MAKE ANY NEGATIVE “ASS”UMPTIONS ABOUT THEM AT ALL. JUST DO YOUR DAMN JOB.

WHAT PEOPLE THINK IS OBVIOUS TO CHILDREN – THEY’RE SMALL, NOT STUPID -- AND THAT SORT OF DEVALUATION IS TERRIBLY DAMAGING TO A CHILD. THEIR ARE A NUMBER OF VITALLY IMPORTANT THING A CHILD NEEDS TO LEARN AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE, AND TO ME THE MOST IMPORT ARE TO LOVE THEMSELVES AND ALSO LOVE OTHERS. IF THEY’RE TREATED LIKE A FRESH COWPATTY THEY WON’T LEARN THOSE THINGS. THEY’RE VERY FRAGILE, AND IF THEY JUST “CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING,” THEIR CHANCES ARE LESS THAN AVERAGE IN EVERY WAY.

NOW, AS FOR THIS DISGUSTING STATEMENT, “INSTEAD OF ASSUMING THAT ALL PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN, LET ALONE CAPABLE OF, BLOWING UP WESTERN, CHRISTIAN, OR JEWISH THINGS, LET’S ASSUME ALL MUSLIMS ARE.” FOR ANYONE WHO WOULD THINK THAT, MUCH LESS BE FOOLISH ENOUGH SAY IT ALOUD, THAT IS REASON ENOUGH NOT TO HIRE THIS MAN. HE ISN’T BRIGHT.

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/11/10/these-blog-posts-about-muslims-and-women-cost-tim-kelly-an-education-department-nomination
These blog posts about Muslims and women cost Tim Kelly an Education Department nomination
Nov 10, 2017 7:45 pm
Aaron Colen
STAFF WRITER

Photograph -- Michigan Rep. Tim Kelly had his nomination for a Department of Education post pulled by the Trump administration for blog posts he wrote several years ago. (Image source: WKAR YouTube video screenshot)

President Donald Trump nominated Michigan State Representative Tim Kelly for a high-level career and technical education position in the Department of Education, but the administration pulled that nomination after some comments in Kelly’s blog from years ago gained public attention.

“It became clear that Mr. Kelly had made a series of statements that were not reflective of the secretary’s values,” said an administration official.

THE COMMENTS

From 2009, after a Nigerian man attempted to board a Detroit-bound plane with explosives in his underwear:

“Forget for a moment, that this young man from Nigeria purchased his one-way ticket with cash, had no luggage, or that his father had warned the authorities of his radicalism. He should have been on anybody’s no-fly list because his name is UMAR FAROUK ABDULMUTALLAB! Zenaphobic [sic]? No, I’m being pragmatic … Instead of assuming that all people are interested in, let alone capable of, blowing up Western, Christian, or Jewish things, let’s assume all Muslims are.”

Another, about women in STEM fields:

“Research shows that bias against women in the sciences is extremely weak. Studies point to data that indicate men and women simply have different tastes when it comes to areas of study. For instance, women may be underrepresented in the fields of engineering, but thrive in the areas of sociology and biology. … For my money, this kind of ridiculousness in academia should not be rewarded and certainly not paid for by the American taxpayer.”

From 2011, about low-income parents using federally funded early-childhood education programs:

“As I said, there have been a number of independent studies over the years that have concluded that these program children come to school with no more social or cognitive abilities than their non-program counterparts. So why then do we continue to pay for this failure? … In other words, we pay the very same people, the parents of these children, who are often themselves academically and socially needy, to teach their own not to emulate the destructive and debilitating behavior and practices they witness everyday in their own homes and neighborhoods. Yeah, that’s gonna work.”

Kelly defends himself

Kelly blamed the “deep state” and Trump haters for digging up and leaking the questionable blog posts to sabotage his nomination.

“If people read the [blog] posts, people will think … this guy got a bad deal,” Kelly said. “I’m appalled that people would take this out of context. … I wrote this blog several years ago. Someone from inside leaked this. I wasn’t ever hiding it. I was forthcoming with it from the get-go.”

After having his nomination pulled, Kelly said he didn’t think it would be good to work for the Trump administration anyway.

“I don’t see why anybody with any sense wants to go there,” Kelly said. “They take good people and ruin them.”
i>


Pioneer Fund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with The Pioneer Fund, a Denver-based charity founded by Helen M. McLoraine.

“PIONEER FUND IS AN AMERICAN NON-PROFIT FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN 1937 "TO ADVANCE THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HEREDITY AND HUMAN DIFFERENCES". THE ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS RACIST AND "WHITE SUPREMACIST" IN NATURE,[1][2][3] AND AS A HATE GROUP BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER.[4]

From 2002 until his death in October 2012, the fund was headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton. THE FUND STATES THAT IT FOCUSES ON PROJECTS IT PERCEIVES WILL NOT BE EASILY FUNDED DUE TO CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT MATTER. As of October 2013, Richard Lynn is the primary contact for Pioneer Fund.[5]

Two of the most notable studies funded by Pioneer Fund are the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart[6] and the Texas Adoption Project, which studied the similarities and differences of identical twins and other children adopted into non-biological families. PIONEER FUND HAS ALSO BEEN AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR RESEARCH ON THE PARTLY GENETIC HYPOTHESIS OF IQ VARIATION AMONG RACES.

THE FUND'S GRANTEES AND PUBLICATIONS HAVE GENERATED CONTROVERSY INCLUDING THE 1994 PUBLICATION OF THE BELL CURVE, WHICH DREW HEAVILY FROM PIONEER-FUNDED RESEARCH. THE FUND HAS ALSO BEEN CRITICIZED FOR ITS TIES TO EUGENICS.[7]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws
Nuremberg Laws
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime, see Nuremberg principles. For the set of research ethics principles for human experimentation, see Nuremberg Code.

The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany. They were introduced on 15 September 1935 by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Gypsies as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.

Out of foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did not commence until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, they began to implement their policies, which included the formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race. Chancellor and Führer (leader) Adolf Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April, excluded non-Aryans from the legal profession and civil service. Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide book burning on 10 May. Jewish citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.

The Nuremberg Laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle class business owners and professionals were forced to take menial employment. Emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to take them. Mass deportation schemes such as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.

Background[edit]
Main articles: Nazi eugenics and Nazism and race

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) was one of several far-right political parties active in Germany after the end of the First World War.[1] The party platform included removal of the Weimar Republic*, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.[2] They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.[3]

[http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/definitions/weimar-republic-45 –
“Weimar Republic]

The Weimar Republic was the democratic government founded in Germany following Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication near the end of War World I. It continued in name until 1945, but actually ended with Hitler's seizure of dictatorial powers in 1933. From the beginning, the Weimar Republic suffered from the financial and psychological effects of the Treaty of Versailles, including the requirement to pay "reparations" to France and England, several military occupations, and its famously crippling inflation. Additionally, controversy surrounding that treaty and the manner of Germany's defeat in World War I led to increased support for extremist nationalist groups, such as the Nazi party, which won the largest majority in parliament in 1932 and soon thereafter established a dictatorship.”

While imprisoned in 1924 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.[4] The book is an autobiography and exposition of Hitler's ideology in which he laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. In it he outlined his belief in Jewish Bolshevism, a conspiracy theory that posited the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination in which the Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. Throughout his life Hitler never wavered in his world view as expounded in Mein Kampf.[5] The NSDAP advocated the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") with the aim of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).[6]

Nazi Germany

Discrimination against Jews intensified after the NSDAP seized power; following a month-long series of attacks by members of the Sturmabteilung (SA; paramilitary wing of the NSDAP) on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession, on 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses.[7] By 1933, many people who were not NSDAP members advocated segregating Jews from the rest of German society.[8] The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service.[9] Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise.[9] In 1934, the NSDAP published a pamphlet titled "Warum Arierparagraph?" ("Why the Aryan Law?"), which summarised the perceived need for the law.[10] As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on 10 May.[11] Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country.[12] Legislation passed in July 1933 stripped naturalised German Jews of their citizenship, creating a legal basis for recent immigrants (particularly Eastern European Jews) to be deported.[9] Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews.[13] Throughout 1933 and 1934, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks.[14]

Other laws promulgated in this period included the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (passed on 14 July 1933), which called for the compulsory sterilisation of people with a range of hereditary, physical, and mental illnesses.[15] Under the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (passed 24 November 1935), habitual criminals were forced to undergo sterilisation as well.[16] This law was also used to force the incarceration in prison or Nazi concentration camps of "social misfits" such as the chronically unemployed, prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics, homeless vagrants, and Romani people.[17]

Reich Gypsy Law[edit]

The Central Office for Combatting Gypsies was established in 1929.[18] In December 1938 Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order for "COMBATTING THE GYPSY PLAGUE". Romani people were to be categorised in terms of their Roma ancestry as a racial characteristic, rather than their previous association as 'anti-social' elements of society.[19] This work was advanced by Dr Robert Ritter of the Racial Hygiene and Population unit of the Ministry of Health, who by 1942, had produced a scale of ZM+, ZM of the first and second degree, and ZM- to reflect an individual's decreasing level of Romani ancestry.[20] This classification meant that one could be classified as Roma and subject to anti-Roma legislation on the basis of having two Roma great-great grandparents.[21] Dr Zindel of the Ministry of the Interior prepared a draft of a Reich "Gypsy Law" intended to supplement and accompany the Nuremberg Laws. According to Zindel, the "Gypsy problem" could not be dealt with by forced resettlement or imprisonment within Germany. He recommended identification and registration of all Roma, followed by sterilisation and deportation. In 1938, public health authorities were ordered to register all Roma and Roma Mischlinge.[22] Despite Himmler's interest in enacting such legislation, which he said would prevent "further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation",[23] the regime never promulgated the "Gypsy Law".[24] In December 1942, Himmler ordered that all Roma were to be sent to Nazi concentration camps.[19]

. . . .

Persons suspected of having sexual relations with non-Aryans were charged with Rassenschande (racial defilement) and tried in the regular courts. Evidence provided to the Gestapo for such cases was largely provided by ordinary citizens such as neighbours, co-workers, or other informants.[58] Persons accused of race defilement were publicly humiliated by being paraded through the streets with a placard around their necks detailing their crime.[59] Those convicted were typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps.[58] As the law did not permit capital punishment for racial defilement, special courts were convened to allow the death penalty for some cases.[60] From the end of 1935 through 1940, 1,911 people were convicted of Rassenschande. Over time, the law was extended to include non-sexual forms of physical contact such as greeting someone with a kiss or an embrace.[58]

For the most part, Germans accepted the Nuremberg Laws, partly because Nazi propaganda had successfully swayed public opinion towards the general belief that Jews were a separate race, but also because to oppose the regime meant leaving oneself open to harassment or arrest by the Gestapo.[61][62] Citizens were relieved that the antisemitic violence ceased after the laws were passed.[63] Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores.[64] Wholesalers who continued to serve Jewish merchants were marched through the streets with placards around their necks proclaiming them as traitors.[65] The Communist party and some elements of the Catholic Church were critical of the laws.[56] Concerned that international opinion would be adversely swayed by the new laws, the Interior Ministry did not actively enforce them until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that August.[31][61]

The Interior Ministry estimated there were 750,000 Mischlinge as of April 1935 (studies done after the war put the number of Mischlinge at around 200,000).[56] As Jews became more and more excluded from German society, they organised social events, schools, and activities of their own.[66] Economic problems were not so easily solved, however; many Jewish firms went out of business due to lack of customers. This was part of the ongoing Aryanization process (the transfer of Jewish firms to non-Jewish owners, usually at prices far below market value) that the regime had initiated in 1933, which intensified after the Nuremberg Laws were passed.[67] Former middle-class or wealthy business owners were forced to take employment in menial jobs to support their families, and many were unable to find work at all.[68]

Although a stated goal of the Nazis was that all Jews should leave the country, emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country.[69] Anyone caught transferring their money overseas were sentenced to lengthy terms in prison as "economic saboteurs".[70] An exception was money sent to Palestine under the terms of the Haavara Agreement, whereby Jews could transfer some of their assets and emigrate to that country. Around 52,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine under the terms of this agreement between 1933 and 1939.[71]

By the start of the Second World War in 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, Great Britain, and other countries.[72][73] By 1938 it was becoming almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country that would take them.[74] After the 1936–39 Arab revolt, the British were disinclined to accept any more Jews into Palestine for fear it would further destabilise the region.[75] Nationalistic and xenophobic people in other countries pressured their governments not to accept waves of Jewish immigrants, ESPECIALLY POVERTY-STRICKEN ONES.[76] The Madagascar Plan, a proposed mass deportation of European Jews to Madagascar, proved to be impossible to carry out.[77] Starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.[78] The total number of Jews murdered during the resulting Holocaust is estimated at 5.5 to 6 million people.[79] Estimates of the death toll of Romani people in the Porajmos range from 150,000 to 1,500,000.[80]


ON FARR AND HIS BACKGROUND, INCLUDING THE FAR-RIGHT PIONEER FUND, SEE THE ITEMS BELOW. THIS MSNBC VIDEO INTRODUCES THE SUBJECT OF THE PIONEER FUND GROUP IN HISTORY.

VIDEO
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/28/17
Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm*
Rev. William Barber talks with Joy Reid about his concerns about the racism of Donald Trump judicial nominee Thomas Alvin Farr. Duration: 5:58


https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/12/04/eugenics-voter-id-laws-thomas-farrs-connections-pioneer-fund
From eugenics to voter ID laws: Thomas Farr's connections to the Pioneer Fund
December 04, 2017
By Alex Amend

Over the summer, President Donald Trump nominated Thomas Alvin Farr to be a federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. For good reason, his nomination has earned universal opposition from the civil rights community.

In a September letter to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argued that Farr "does not possess the temperament necessary to serve in an impartial judicial position.” What Farr does possess, according to Barber, “is a long record as an advocate for hyper-partisan, segregationist causes.”

Farr’s record of fighting advances in black political participation spans decades. It includes his involvement in drafting and then defending the 2013 North Carolina “monster” voter restriction law struck down by a federal court because it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.” “Because of race, the Legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” the court ruled.

And just recently, Farr was reported to have misrepresented his role in voter suppression activity directed at black voters conducted by the Jesse Helms Senate campaign in 1990 against Charlotte’s first black mayor, Harvey Gantt. A former Justice Department lawyer placed Farr in the center of the unlawful conduct.

This record should be disqualifying on its own. What’s missing and more disquieting in Farr’s story, however, is his early connections to one of the most influential racist hate groups of the 20th century: the Pioneer Fund. Founded in 1937 to pursue “race betterment” for those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution,” the Pioneer Fund was the “primary source for scientific racism” well into the 2000s and one of the key funders of the fight against civil rights in the South from the 1950s onward.

Farr’s connection to the Pioneer Fund comes principally through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms. Ellis was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from the Pioneer Fund to a tax-exempt foundation called the Coalition For Freedom that was under Ellis’ control and represented by Farr.

thomas-ellis-thomas-farr
Thomas Ellis (left) was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee, and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. Ellis hired Thomas Farr (right) at his law firm in 1983 where they both worked until 2003 before leaving together for another firm where Farr is currently a shareholder.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder ruling that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act — a ruling that gave Farr and his allies a free hand to introduce their “monster” law — Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker wrote that “Americans tend to imagine that the racial history of their nation is a steady line sloping upward; in truth, it looks more like an EKG.”

Americans also tend to imagine organized racism as the province of hooded Klansmen. In reality, Farr stands as a direct descendant of one of the most sophisticated segregationist projects in American history.

The Pioneer Fund

The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937 by Wickliffe Preston Draper, a reclusive heir to a textile fortune. The Pioneer Fund’s first president Harry S. Laughlin was the most prominent American eugenicist of his era. One of Draper’s early investments was in the work of white supremacist Earnest Sevier Cox, who helped draft an amendment to Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act that outlawed interracial marriage. Cox wrote that he was seeking to prevent “near-white negroids” from being able to “marry into the white race.”

William H. Tucker described the Pioneer Fund’s legacy in his definitive 2002 history of the hate group:

Despite attempts to sanitize Pioneer’s image, it is undeniable that the fund was established to use science to pursue the goals of its founder: the preservation of white supremacy and white racial purity from the threat posed by blacks and undesirable immigrants, especially Jews…

For decades, the Pioneer Fund did this by supporting like-minded scholars; publishing or republishing racist tracts and research and sending them to opinion leaders, institutions of higher learning, and elected officials; and bankrolling lobbying efforts against civil rights legislation and affirmative action policies.

Aside from Draper, the most important figure at the Pioneer Fund was Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., who first became friends with Ellis when they were both undergraduates at the University of North Carolina.

“[A]ll the segregationists’ projects intersected on Harry Weyher’s desk,” wrote Tucker, and Weyher decided which projects received funding. After Draper’s death in 1972, Weyher ran the Pioneer Fund until his own death in 2002, as Tucker summarized:

Weyher would make Draper’s cause his own, heading the Pioneer Fund through the rest of the [20th] century, disbursing his mentor’s acknowledged and unacknowledged donations to the campaign against equality for blacks, organizing many of these efforts, monitoring their results, and becoming the heir not just to much of the Colonel’s fortune but also to his social policy agenda. If Pioneer was originally “Draper’s Fund,” it was to become Weyher’s.

One example of Ellis and Weyher collaborating occurred in the 1950s. According to Tucker, Ellis likely sent Weyher the work of University of North Carolina professor Wesley Critz George, including a pamphlet titled “The Race Problem from the Standpoint of One Who Is Concerned with the Evils of Miscegenation.” In it, George decried the “protoplasmic mixing of the races” which would “destroy our race and civilization” because African Americans were “genetically unacceptable.” Weyher would fund George on the basis of this recommendation.

Around the same time, Ellis echoed George in his role opposing integration as special counsel to the Pearsall Committee, set up by the North Carolina governor to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. “[T]he present integration movement in the public schools is but a part of a planned social revolution in the South, fostered, directed and financed by non-southern whites...[whose] eventual goal…is racial intermarriage and the disappearance of the Negro race by fusing into the white,” Ellis said.

Ellis and Weyher were both deeply involved in the fight against integration throughout the 1960s. The Pioneer Fund dumped millions into the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which The New Republic called “the largest state-level spying effort in U.S. history,” while Ellis in North Carolina considered legislation that would eliminate the tax-exempt status of black churches in order to target the spaces where the NAACP met to strategize integration efforts.

Pioneer Fund grantees were just as hostile to the idea of extending voting rights to African Americans as they were to the desegregation of public schools and interracial marriage. For instance, one major grantee, Carelton Putnam, wrote in 1967 that “the unlimited suffrage concept is marginal [even for] an advanced and experienced race like the Anglo-American [but] to apply it to states or communities with high percentages of a retarded race is suicidal.”

Farr Joins the Ellis Network

By 1973, Ellis officially joined the Pioneer Fund as a director on an invitation from Weyher. This fact only became public following a New York Times exposé in 1977 which revealed a number of grant recipients, including Stanford University Professor William Shockley and Dr. Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California — two towers of scientific racism — as well as Dr. Roger Pearson, a racist extremist who maintained ties with former Nazis.

Ellis recruited Helms to run for Senate in 1972 and remained a top aide into the 1990s.

At the same time, Ellis and North Carolina’s new Senator Jesse Helms, were creating a powerful political empire designed to influence both politics and policy against the rising tide of integration and civil rights. That venture further extended the reach of the Pioneer Fund in the political world. While a Pioneer director, Ellis developed a set of interlocking directorates and associations that shared leadership with the Pioneer Fund and relied, in part, on its funding. These relationships would continue even after Ellis resigned from the Pioneer Fund after his association was made public.

Ellis and Helms first met as aides during a 1950 North Carolina Senate campaign that was notorious for its racism and included ads that stated, “White people, wake up before it’s too late.” After Helms’ first senate victory in 1972, a campaign which Ellis managed, Ellis created and chaired the North Carolina Congressional Club, a vehicle initially designed to retire the campaign’s debt. Ellis turned the state-based organization into the National Congressional Club, an incredibly powerful national political action committee that served the conservative movement for decades. A longstanding director of the Congressional Club, Marion Arendell Parrott, also served as a director of the Pioneer Fund.

(Left) Ellis at the North Carolina Congressional Club headquarters in 1979. (Right) Ellis and Helms first met working as aides for a 1950 North Carolina Senate campaign notorious for its racist appeals including this "White People Wake Up" flyer. Ellis would perfect racist appeals in campaigning over the decades.

By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Ellis had developed a suite of organizations — both for-profit and tax-exempt — to complement the National Congressional Club and perform functions that it could not without running afoul of campaign finance or tax laws. These entities provided research and analysis to support legislative proposals, raised political money to elect like-minded candidates and developed messaging and communications.

In 1983, Farr became intricately engaged with this network of organizations when he joined the Raleigh, North Carolina-based law firm that bore Ellis’ name, Maupin, Taylor & Ellis. (William W. Taylor, Jr. worked with Ellis to staff the Pearsall Committee).

Farr worked with Ellis at Maupin, Taylor & Ellis until 2003, and then followed Ellis to another firm where Farr is still a shareholder.

Only months before Farr joined Ellis’ firm, Ellis’ connections to the Pioneer Fund resurfaced following his nomination to the Board for International Broadcasting. When asked during his hearing before a Senate Committee if the concept of racial inferiority intellectually offended him, Ellis first replied, “I don’t know how to answer that question.” Ellis added "I do not believe in my heart that I'm a racist." His Pioneer Fund association and other strong indicators of Ellis’s racist views forced Ellis to withdraw his nomination.

After his racist associations and political activities were examined by a Senate committee, Ellis withdrew his nomination to the Board for International Broadcasting* in 1983, the same year Farr joined his law firm.

[*BIB -- BOARD FOR INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING, PARENT COMPANY OF RADIO FREE EUROPE AND VOICE OF AMERICA.]

Despite national condemnation of his ties to the group, Ellis was shortly back in business with Weyher, and the money he controlled through the Pioneer Fund. Upon joining Maupin, Ellis & Taylor, Farr assumed the role of lawyer for many of Helms’ organizations, including those either bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund or, in the case of Marion Parrott, one that shared a board member. Farr’s answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire lists his representation for the Helms for Senate Committee in 1984 and 1990 and the National Congressional Club for the same years.

>Farr also represented the component organizations of the network, although he failed to list these on his Senate Judiciary questionnaire. Jefferson Marketing, Inc. was a political advertising and consulting for-profit corporation that generated direct mail fundraising solicitations and performed consulting services for right-wing candidates. Ellis served as director, and Douglas Davidson — who would later join forces with Farr in the 1990 Helms campaign’s voter suppression activity — was president. In the 1980s, Jefferson Marketing and the National Congressional Club were the subjects of a complaint by the Federal Elections Commission alleging that they operated as one organization in violation of campaign finance laws. Farr represented Jefferson Marketing and the National Congressional Club in defending the complaint, which resulted in financial penalties and a restructuring of the companies.

In 1985, Farr represented both Jefferson Marketing and the National Congressional Club after the FEC alleged that the organizations had violated campaign finance laws. That same year, Pioneer Fund director Marion Parrott—who had joined the Pioneer Fund at the same time as Ellis in the early 70s—was also on the board of the National Congressional Club.

Farr’s law firm also represented the Coalition For Freedom, a tax-exempt organization within the network. Ellis was its principal director. This organization received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Pioneer Fund throughout the 1980s.

The Coalition For Freedom relied on Farr’s law firm for organizing the interlocking entities to maximize their monetary and political influence. The Coalition For Freedom ended up making the contributions, resulting in an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service about whether the tax-exempt organization served a private interest to Jesse Helms, the Helms for Senate Committee and the National Congressional Club. The IRS ultimately revoked Coalition For Freedom’s tax-exempt status because it had engaged in political campaign activities and provided a private benefit to the group's "insiders."

The network had other ties to the Pioneer Fund. After President Ronald Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984, Ellis organized an attempted conservative shareholder takeover of the CBS television network with a new front group called Fairness In Media, Ellis enlisted Weyher to serve as its lawyer. Jesse Helms sent letters to his base across the nation urging them to purchase CBS stock, which garnered Helms enormous publicity. When CBS fought back with litigation, it pointed to Ellis and Weyher’s connections to the Pioneer Fund and noted Ellis’ opposition to racial integration in North Carolina.

"[Weyher] and Tom Ellis have been acquaintances for years, and we were interested in legal counsel [Weyher] who was one, competent, and second, even more importantly, understood what our concerns were philosophically," said another member of Fairness in Media in 1985.

Farr’s Success in Racist Politics and Suppressing the Black Vote

In 1984, Helms, Ellis and Farr used their vast political network to suppress African American votes and scare up white resentment in Helms’ campaigns for senate. With Farr as lead counsel, the campaign circulated photos of opponent Governor Jim Hunt with African American leaders such as Jesse Jackson and cited Hunt’s support of voter registration, the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday — the vote for which Helms infamously filibustered in the Senate — and the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. The campaign was even mentioned by the Supreme Court in a redistricting case, Gingles v. Edmisten, as evidence of continued racism in North Carolina politics.

Farr also served as lead counsel for Helms’ senate campaign in 1990. The opponent was Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte. In its final days, the campaign ran an ad showing white hands crumpling a rejection letter with the announcer stating: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Farr’s mentor Ellis was credited with authoring the ad.

Farr’s mentor Ellis was credited with authoring the notorious "white hands" ad.
That same campaign engaged in voter suppression so egregious that the Justice Department under President George H.W. Bush filed a complaint for intimidating black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the campaign mailed over 100,000 postcards to mostly black voters in North Carolina one week before the election. The postcards suggested the voters were ineligible to vote and threatened jail time. The Justice Department complaint found that the mailing was undertaken to influence the senate election and had the purpose and effect of intimidating and threatening black voters from exercising their right to vote. A North Carolina voter who received the postcard recently told a reporter: “We were looking at it, and it just seemed like you would basically be afraid to go vote, in case you would do something wrong…And the wording on the card just gave you a chill.”

The Justice Department’s voting rights complaint identified familiar faces within the organizations and persons connected to Helms and Ellis’ empire. Among those named as defendants were the Helms for Senate Committee; Jefferson Marketing and three of its wholly owned subsidiaries; and Douglas Davidson who had served as president of Jefferson Marketing and was identified as an agent of the Helms for Senate Committee and having supervisory control over Jefferson Marketing company personnel.

The complaint alleged that in the summer of 1990 representatives of defendant Helms for Senate Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party had discussed whether to conduct a “so-called ballot security program,” in conjunction with the 1990 general election.

The complaint continued:

“On or about October 16 and 17, 1990, Defendant Locke attended a series of meetings at which the 1990 ballot security program was discussed. Among those attending such meetings were defendant Davidson; Peter Moore, the campaign manager of Helms for Senate Committee; Mark Stephens, president of Jefferson Marketing; and an attorney who had been involved in past ballot security efforts on behalf of Senator Helms and/or defendant North Carolina Republican Party. During the meeting, some of the participants formed a tentative outline for the 1990 ballot security program, which included a mailing targeted to voters who may have changed residences.” [Emphasis added]

The postcards were mailed on October 26 and 29 to selected households using voter registration lists maintained by Jefferson Marketing and utilized by the Helms for Senate Committee.

During his hearing this fall, Farr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he had no role in the mailing and heard about it only after being contacted by the Justice Department. Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Farr: “Did you provide any counsel, or were you consulted in any way, about the content of or the decision to end [sic] these postcards?” Farr responded, “No.”

But a former Justice Department lawyer, Gerald Hebert, who worked on the case, places Farr squarely in the center of the activity. According to Hebert’s contemporaneous notes, Farr was the unnamed attorney who was also the primary "ballot security" person for the 1984 campaign. “I don’t think [Farr] can really claim that the first he heard of it was from a Justice Department letter,” Hebert said.

Farr’s Praise for his Mentor: An Unrepentant Racist

William H. Tucker, the author of the history of the Pioneer Fund, uncovered correspondence between Senator Jesse Helms, Pioneer Fund president Harry Weyher and Marion Parrott, a board member of both Pioneer and Helms’ Congressional Club, yucking it up as late as the 1990s:

More contemporary correspondence in the genealogy indicated that even in the 1990s, in the clubby atmosphere characterizing the exchanges between North Carolina political insiders, Weyher and his friends — Senator Jesse Helms and fellow Pioneer board member Marion Parrott, a relative of Weyher’s — still referred to white Southerners who voted for a black candidate as “scalawags” and, only partially in jest, joked about how “the Indians didn’t get enough of them.”

Helms never apologized for his crusade against civil rights. In fact, his crusade never stopped. Helms fought until nearly the end of his time in the Senate to resist the appointment of a black judge to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

The same can be said of Helms' right-hand man and Farr’s mentor, Thomas Ellis. In 2001, Ellis was interviewed by The New York Times following the news that Helms was retiring from the senate. Asked about his time at the Pioneer Fund, Ellis was unmoved:

He has been pilloried for serving in the 1970s as a director of the Pioneer Fund, which financed research on the relationship between race and intelligence. He said it remained an open question in his mind whether one race was genetically superior. ''I have no idea,'' he said, seated beneath a portrait of Robert E. Lee. ''I've never tested it, don't know whether it's a valid argument or not. Because there is such a huge cry about the thing, you can't have a legitimate, intelligent argument about it.''

Six years later, in 2007, Farr spoke at a private event at the North Carolina Museum of Art “in honor of Tom Ellis.” The occasion was Ellis receiving the Freedom Leadership Award from Farr’s alma mater Hillsdale College, a deeply conservative college located in Michigan which long ago decided to forgo federal funding to avoid compliance with civil rights laws. A short reflection from the late Christian Right leader Howard Phillips is all that exists as a record of the event and notes that Farr and the Hillsdale College president delivered remarks. In his Senate questionnaire, Farr said he did not have a copy of his speech to share with the committee.

For more than 30 years Farr worked side-by-side with Ellis in an escalating war against voting and labor rights that predominantly targets black North Carolinians. Together they fought on behalf of Helms, and perfected the potent political appeal to white racial grievance. Their North Carolina network included people like the Pioneer Fund’s Weyher and Parrott, men who provided funding and guidance to their efforts for decades. It served them well. And for Ellis and Helms, neither paid a price.

Indeed, with the election of President Trump, the Ellis and Helms approach to politics returned and with it came a resurgent white nationalist movement. Ideas long relegated to the fringe, especially those kept alive by groups and individuals supported by the Pioneer Fund, found massive new audiences on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.

The legacy of the Pioneer Fund, however, is not best measured by the number of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville this past August. Rather, it should be measured by the legal and policy approaches that, like the “monster” voter suppression law in North Carolina, target black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Farr was groomed as part of a project long in the making. In a low irony, if Farr is confirmed to the bench, it will extend the record to 143 years that the Eastern District of North Carolina has been without a black judge.



I RESPECT THE SPLC MORE THAN THE ACLU. ACLU SOMETIMES DEFENDS PEOPLE OR GROUPS WHO ARE INDEFENSIBLE IN MY VIEW. THIS BUSINESS OF TAKING DRIVERS LICENSES FOR NON-PAYMENT OF FINES IS UNFAIR. PEOPLE NEED THEIR CARS TO GET TO WORK AND TO THE DOCTOR OR THE GROCERY STORE. ALSO, THESE PENALTIES ARE VERY FREQUENTLY USED DIFFERENTIALLY ON THE BASIS OF RACE. THERE IS SO MUCH OF THAT STILL LEFT IN THE USA – THE GREAT USA – THAT IT IS GETTING BORING. YET, TIME AND AGAIN MORE STORIES COME OUT ABOUT IT IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/12/19/splc-reaches-agreement-mississippi-reinstate-over-100000-driver%E2%80%99s-licenses-suspended-non
SPLC reaches agreement with Mississippi to reinstate over 100,000 driver’s licenses suspended for non-payment of fines
December 19, 2017

Mississippi will reinstate more than 100,000 driver’s licenses that were suspended for non-payment of traffic tickets and will no longer suspend licenses for failure to pay fines, under an agreement that was announced today between the SPLC, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS) and another organization.

Under the new procedures, DPS will also waive its $100 reinstatement fee, will notify these drivers that their licenses are no longer suspended and – if their licenses have expired since they were suspended – will instruct motorists how to reinstate them.

The new policies could have far-reaching effects in Mississippi, where nearly 95 percent of residents travel to work by car. Low-income people with suspended licenses were often forced to choose between paying fines or using money for food, housing and health care – or to choose between driving with a suspended license and losing a job.

In a state where 22 percent of the population lives in poverty – the highest percentage in the nation – the new procedures could spare many people from further impoverishment.

Previously, DPS would automatically suspend a license, without asking people why they could not pay and without giving them extra time to pay or an alternative punishment like community service.

“We commend the state of Mississippi for taking steps to ensure that in the future, no one will lose their license if the only reason they failed to pay a traffic ticket is that they simply did not have enough money,” said Sam Brooke, SPLC deputy legal director. “We also welcome Mississippi’s decision to reinstate licenses that had been previously suspended because people were unable to pay.

Brittney McCardle faced license suspension after she was unable to pay a $155 fine and court costs related to her traffic case.

“Poverty is not a traffic crime,” Brooke said. “There is a growing recognition across the country that people should not face additional punishment just because of their poverty, and that includes taking away their driver’s licenses when they can’t pay fines.”

The agreement makes Mississippi the fifth state to require an ability-to-pay determination before suspending a driver’s license. Other states with a “willfulness” determination include Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oklahoma, according to a recent analysis from the Legal Aid Justice Center.

Additionally under the agreement, DPS will no longer enforce a statute that authorizes license suspension for non-payment without first determining whether the person willfully failed to pay. Drivers with multiple reasons for suspension will have suspensions for non-payment removed from their driving records, and DPS will notify them why their licenses remain suspended, as well as how to resolve the suspensions.

The policy changes came about after the SPLC and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center raised concerns about the practices last year.

The settlement will help people like Vicki Smith of Columbia. Her license was suspended because she could not afford to pay two traffic tickets from 2013. She was working as an accounts payable specialist but had to leave her job when her doctor ordered her onto pregnancy bed rest soon after the tickets were issued.

Vicki Smith, of Columbia, had her license suspended because she could not afford to pay two traffic tickets from 2013.

“My suspended license made it very difficult to get on my feet again and to find a job,” said Smith, whose only source of income is food stamps and her autistic son’s Social Security disability checks. “I recently lost my job as a health aide because I don’t have reliable transportation and there is no mass transit. I would have paid the tickets if I could, but I can’t afford it. I struggle to pay for my son’s medical expenses and basic necessities.”

Brittney McCardle of Petal, who is unemployed and receives food stamps to support herself as well as Social Security disability benefits for her autistic daughter, was facing license suspension after she was unable to pay a $155 fine and court costs related to her traffic case.

“I live on a fixed income and told the judge I couldn’t afford to pay for the traffic ticket by the deadline,” said McCardle, who also donates blood plasma for $45 to help pay for her living expenses. “I was worried that I was going to lose my license, which would have made it more difficult for me to find a job, go to the store, or take my daughter to the hospital if she couldn’t breathe because of her bad asthma.

“I have been applying for jobs, but most require proof that I have a driver’s license to get to work. Hopefully, this is something I won’t have to worry about now with the state’s new policy.”

The SPLC and the MacArthur Justice Center say that Mississippi courts have not been following the law regarding collection of fines and fees, and both entities have been pursuing litigation throughout Mississippi, addressing the rights of indigent defendants.

For example, the SPLC has filed a lawsuit against the city of Corinth and Municipal Judge John C. Ross for operating a modern-day debtors’ prison, unlawfully jailing poor people for their inability to pay bail and fines.

SPLC Logo Facebook Twitter
THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIAL CENTER
Thomas Alvin Farr PIONEER FUND