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Category Archives: Trumpedation

10 Ways the Trumps Are Eating Through Your Tax Dollars


• Sam Becker

• September 04, 2017

President Donald Trump has created logistical headaches at the taxpayers’ expense. Under normal circumstances, Americans would assume a Republican president would usher in an era of fiscal responsibility. Of budget slashing. Of belt tightening and more efficient government programs. But these are not normal circumstances, and Donald Trump is not a typical Republican president. Although changes are coming and some people are going to benefit, taxpayer money has been flowing rather freely on Capitol Hill since the election.
A report from The Washington Post outlines that the taxpayers are fronting a lot of money to pay for the Trumps and their “elaborate” lifestyles. Trump and his family have a complicated web of business interests, investments, and properties. And life in and around the Oval Office is quite different from what they’re used to.
The resulting “logistical nightmare,” as the Post calls it, comes at the expense of the taxpayers. That means you, the American people, are paying for Trump’s trips to Florida. And you’re paying for the security of Trump Tower in New York in addition to many other things. You might not like it, but there’s little you can do about it — at this point, at least, with Republicans in Congress unlikely to tell Trump to cool it on the expenditures. Just how is Trump and the rest of his family burning through your tax dollars? Here are 10 ways that we know of — so far.

1. Securing Trump Tower

One of the most obvious and expensive ways in which taxpayers are getting nailed concerns Trump Tower in Manhattan. The first lady and Trump’s son Barron are living there, and that requires round-the-clock security and Secret Service protection. That amounts to roughly $500,000 per day in expenses — all paid for by the American people. The people of New York City are also fronting the bill for an extra 200 police officers.
2. Weekends at Mar a Lago

You might have heard that Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, has the unofficial moniker of “White House South.” Trump likes it and has been spending his weekends there at the beginning of his presidency. But it’s not cheap. With just three visits, he’s burned through more than $10 million in taxpayer money. It’s unclear as to whether Trump plans to continue his weekly journeys. But what’s important is it’s mighty expensive.
3. Golf
Trump likes to golf. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great way to get some exercise and escape the pressures of the office. Former President Barack Obama liked to golf, too, as did George W. Bush. Obama was also criticized for it — and quite often. Now Trump has been golfing on the taxpayers’ dime, even if it’s with foreign dignitaries. It’s important to give our leaders a break, but if you’re going to criticize one president for hitting the links, you’ve got to get them all.
4. Attacking businesses

The Trumps have had several public spats with big companies, and it’s not only troublesome in terms of ethics violations. Trump, while drawing a salary from the taxpayers (along with others, such as Kellyanne Conway), has gone after Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line, as well as many media companies. So far, there’s a list of more than 60 companies Trump has targeted on Twitter, all as the American people pay him as president.
5. Re-election events

The president likes to get out among his fans. He’s already held a big rally in Florida. And with the 2020 race set to heat up sooner than we all would like, Trump will get to be back on the campaign trail in full force. He was able to bill his own businesses more than $8 million during 2016. Given that he’s the sitting president this go-around, taxpayers will be fronting some of that money for security and transportation.
6. Promoting the Trump brand abroad

One particularly maddening way in which the Trumps seem to be profiting off of the presidency is by paying for members of the family to fly around the world to promote the Trump brand. Case in point: Eric Trump recently took a trip to Uruguay to look over the family’s business interests. That single trip, which, by law, required Secret Service protection, cost taxpayers almost $100,000.
7. Trump’s D.C. hotel

The Trumps recently opened a fancy new hotel in Washington, D.C., a location they lease from the government. This has been tagged as a big conflict of interest, with a report from a Republican senator’s office showing Trump was granted $40 million in tax credits. It doesn’t look like anyone’s going to press for changes on this front.
8. Rallies

We brought up re-election expenses, but most of that stuff is down the road. That hasn’t stopped Trump from holding a big rally in Florida, only a few weeks into his tenure. That rally, and any future rally, comes with a hefty price tag. And like it or not, you’re fronting the money to put them on — or at least for elements within them. Security, transportation, and other costs add up quickly.
9. Questionable appointments

“Questionable appointments” aren’t really an expense. But the American people expect competent, qualified people to fill Cabinet and senior staff positions. So far, Trump has given those jobs to some questionable people — all of whom will be getting paid by the taxpayers. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is one example, with many wondering about his qualifications. The same goes for Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Rex Tillerson, and more.
10. Renting office space (from the Trumps)
The Pentagon might need to lease space in Trump Tower for when the president spends time in New York. We’ve already discussed expenses related to keeping Trump Tower as “White House North.” But it appears the Pentagon might actually need to lease space for when the president spends time there. That could cost as much as $1.5 million per year — money paid to the Trumps.

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Jeff Sessions reveals deadly misunderstanding of what public safety actually is A twisted portrayal of what police reformers want — and why they want it.


Apparently it is OK to disassociate the Law Enforcement Agencies from the communities they serve and live in. Mr. Sessions is as anti American as any enemies of the U.S. MA.

Alan Pyke

Aug 29, 2017, 8:53 am
Attorney General Jeff Sessions struck a new blow in his war against police reform on Monday, announcing that President Donald Trump will rescind an executive order from his predecessor restricting local cops’ access to hardware designed for war zones.
The long-predicted move puts grenade launchers and bayonets back on small-town police department shopping lists. It also guts accountability measures for a much longer list of defensive equipment and  military tools which had remained available to police  under President Barack Obama’s reforms.

But the most striking thing in a speech riddled with falsehoods was Sessions’ presentation of the thinking behind the administration’s move — dismissing police reform efforts as harmful to public safety.
“These restrictions that had been imposed went too far,” the attorney general said before the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in Nashville. “We will not put superficial concerns over public safety.”
Sessions was speaking to a receptive audience. Tennessee’s Commissioner of Safety and Homeland Security, David Purkey, opened by characterizing police as soldiers in a war for decency.
“You, my young friends, stand in the gap for this country. This country offers inspiration, and intimidation. We offer intimidation through our military,” Purkey quoted Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis as having told soldiers in the field. “When I look out on this crowd,” Purkey went on, broadening the warzone sermon to include the police audience in Tennessee, “I see a group of men and women who stand in the gap for this country.”
Sessions later characterized the new Trump order as part of its broader rejection of civilian complaints about police.
“We will always seek to affirm the critical role of police officers in our society, and we will never participate in anything that will give comfort to radicals who promote agendas that preach hostility rather than respect for police,” he said.

The rise of these so-called “radicals” and the spread of distrust for police from minority communities to a wider band of the American public is directly connected to the kinds of abuses of force that Sessions ignored in his remarks. While a new wave of public attention to individual police killings of unarmed black and brown people in recent years helped galvanize reform efforts, the drive for change draws on a long-running conversation about systematic rights violations by police.
Obama’s order came out of a deliberative process informed by input from police, civic leaders, private researchers, and Pentagon officials. Its new controls on military materiel were modest, flexible, and grounded in decades of police violence and unnecessary death.

Pentagon tried to give $1.2 million in guns and bombs to a fake police department
The military is so eager to put war machines in cops’ hands that it doesn’t bother making sure they’re, you know, actually cops.
Protests and violence in Ferguson, Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown provided the immediate motivation for Obama’s reforms. The heavily armored police response in St. Louis County provided striking visuals of cops as an occupying military force — the tip of a counter-insurgency spear, not a shield that protects and serves.
But mass-protest crowd control is almost a more appropriate use of such heavy equipment  than has been typical over the 25-year history of the “1033” program modified by Monday’s order. When a police agency obtains a new tool or stands up a new unit, its mere existence creates an imperative: Leadership must find some reason to use the new toys, send out the new tactical team. As paramilitary-style police thinking, tactics, and equipment found their way into even the smallest towns in America, where situations that actually require armored vehicles are rare, the imperative to justify equipment and personnel bred monstrous outcomes.
Sessions repeatedly depicted the now-canceled restrictions on Pentagon equipment dispersals to police as a cosmetic move born of a misguided focus on perceptions over reality. In his telling, concern about militarized policing inside U.S. borders is feckless posturing that endangers police and harms public safety.
Sessions was roasting a straw man. The actual argument is that police should act from a sense of unity with those they serve rather than from the mindset of an occupying military force. The claim Sessions sidestepped is that the cop-as-conquistador mentality actually brings more violence into communities, not less.

So-called “dynamic entry” police raids – the type of GI Joe police activity encouraged throughout the War on Drugs and enabled by Pentagon equipment  – are deadly and prone to error. More than 120 civilians and dozens of police officers have died in such raids since the 1990s, including 94 such deaths from 2010 to 2016 alone. These numbers are almost certainly low, as statistics about police violence always are thanks to lax recordkeeping.
Raids that don’t go deadly can still inflict gore on innocents. When Georgia police burst into a family home before dawn in 2014, 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh was sleeping in his playpen. An officer chucked a flash bang grenade in with him, tearing a massive hole in the toddler’s chest. The child survived, and the officer was acquitted on federal charges after state officials declined to prosecute any of the police involved in the raid.
When officers are trained to think like soldiers on foreign soil, they  learn to regard the “natives” around them with constant suspicion. That disposition makes investigators sloppy, eager to have their gut belief that something fishy is going on confirmed by any means possible. It only takes one cunning jailhouse snitch, familiar with the rewards of giving an officer the basis for a warrant he wants, to get a SWAT team  dispatched to a sleepy family home.

Florida sheriff cuts tough-guy video with masked SWAT team
Guilty people aren’t the only ones who should fear nighttime raids.
Sessions never mentioned actual paramilitary tactics like these drug raids in his speech. Instead, he pretended that the Obama restrictions had kept life-saving gear like bulletproof vests and helmets out of police officer hands. That is a lie.
Only five categories of equipment were flat-out prohibited from the police recycling system: grenade launchers, bayonets, high-caliber ammunition, track-driven armored vehicles, and certain types of camouflage.
All other materiel covered by the 1033 redistribution program – including the safety gear Sessions cited in Monday’s remarks – remained accessible to local cops as “controlled equipment.” Departments were required to provide specific justifications for their requests, to establish training and use protocols for the gear, and to more closely track how officers actually use controlled equipment.
“These guidelines were created after Ferguson to ensure that police departments had a guardian, not warrior, mentality. Our communities are not the same as armed combatants in a war zone,” Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights head Vanita Gupta said in a statement. The rules would have meant greater scrutiny for the kinds of reckless assaults on civilian homes that lead to flash bangs in baby cribs and needless firefights between startled, sleeping homeowners and the black-clad invaders they do not realize are police. They would not have sent first responders into harm’s way in flip-flops and Jimmy Buffett tee-shirts as Sessions insinuated.

Still, the FOP convention crowd ate it up.
The most prominent U.S. leaders are not just walking back policies that curb law enforcement’s institutional instinct toward dominance and hard power. They are actively decrying police critics as radical cop-haters, diminishing their nuanced observations about the incentive structures in our criminal justice system into simplistic notions of good and evil.
The remilitarization of American policing — seen in both Sessions’ speech on Monday and in Trump’s blithe endorsement of police brutality in July —  is sold by the administration as simply deferring to what police say they need.
Yet the portrayal of Trump as an open ear and blank check for cops doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. When police’s experience in the field leads them to conclusions opposite to Trump’s own preferences, he is happy to ignore them. Cops across the country have made clear that the administration’s push to deputize them into immigration enforcement work does grave harm to public safety in communities where people fear deportation. They reject Trump’s desire to enlist them into his crackdown on undocumented immigrants, specifically because it makes people less likely to call 911 or cooperate with investigators.
If the administration were serious about promoting public safety, it would listen to the people who disagree with them about where safety comes from and what role police play in ensuring it.

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Posting from Colorado


This was sent to me from a friend in Colorado. MA

I pulled this from

We condemn the pardon of Joe Arpaio

This lady is angry, but she is eloquent and gives a perfect summary of
the situation.

#######
It is hard to imagine anyone less worthy of a pardon or of mercy of any
kind than Joe Arpaio. He repeatedly flouted the law by engaging in the
highly publicized and self-serving harassment and abuse of millions of
his constituents at the expense of actual law enforcement and public
safety. He thumbed his nose at the Department of Justice, the court
system and every other legal attempt to get him to cease and desist his
unconstitutional racial profiling of citizens and noncitizens alike. He
has yet to serve a day in jail or pay any other legal price for his
crimes. And he has demonstrated not one ounce of remorse or repentance,
or made any amends to the people he terrorized for more than a decade.

By pardoning someone who has done nothing to earn it, President Trump
has further cemented his upending of both presidential norms and common
decency. And it is obscene for the president to pardon someone who has
been a gleeful and unrepentant bigot and a scourge of all communities of
color in his state just days after he defended White supremacists,
neo-Nazis and their despicable acts in Charlottesville. And that this is
his very first use of this presidential privilege tells you all you need
to know about which Americans matter to him and which don’t.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio was the instigator of racial profiling and made
official a policy of harassment and abuse based on the color of one’s
skin in Maricopa County. SB1070 codified those policies in the state.
President Trump gave the blessing of his administration to pursue those
disgraceful and unlawful policies in every state and locality in the
land. Every person of color in this nation has been put in harm’s way
because of this action and that is unconscionable.

-Janet Murguía (President and CEO of UnidosUS, previously known as NCLR
(National Council of La Raza)

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Before Harvey Hit, Trump Voided A Federal Rule To Protect Infrastructure From Future Flooding


Trumped again!! MA

Marina Fang,HuffPost 17 hours ago

President Donald Trump, who will visit Texas on Tuesday for a first-hand look at Hurricane Harvey’s deluge of rainfall, flooding and destruction, may have already made preparedness for similar natural disasters more difficult.
Less than two weeks ago, Trump rescinded an Obama administration federal rule that required federal, state and local agencies to take steps to enhance buildings, highways and other infrastructure with protections from flooding.
Trump’s rollback of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard was part of his executive order billed as a plan to streamline infrastructure projects. He signed the order earlier this month at Trump Tower in New York, minutes before the fiery press conference during which he blamed “both sides” for the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, incited by a white supremacist rally.
Flanked by cabinet officials and aides, Trump heralded the order as part of his administration’s efforts to rid industry of what he sees as onerous and unnecessary regulation. He called such rules “a massive, self-inflicted wound on our country.”
“No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay,” Trump said at the Aug. 15 signing.
The rule, signed by Obama in 2015, cited the growing risk of flooding from rising sea waters caused by climate change, which Trump has claimed is a “hoax.”
Yet flooding intensified by climate change has become a dire concern in coastal areas like the southern United States. For years, scientists have warned that the threat of extreme storms like Hurricane Harvey will only worsen because of climate change, and that many U.S. cities and states are ill-prepared for large-scale flooding.
“Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge,” climate scientist Michael Mann wrote on Monday. He said that scientists know “with great confidence” that climate change “worsened the flooding.”
The storm, which federal officials have called a “historic” and “landmark event,” dumped at least 30 inches of rain over the weekend, with even more on the way. Recovery efforts on Monday focused on rescuing tens of thousands of displaced people, amid water-filled highways and homes.

 

Shadow Government?


Recently there was a report suggesting that Vice President Pence is setting up a “shadow” campaign for a 2020 run for the Presidency. This has been vehemently denied by the VP and Kellyanne Conwoman/ Since these two have gone on record denying the report, it’s plausibility has been greatly increased. This administration  is built on lies and implausible deniability, so it is no big stretch to believe the report to be true or plausible at the least. The current administration is no more than a barely cohesive group of non descript talking heads serving at the pleasure of an adoration maniac. The GOP has flowed along with the machinations and unrealistic utterances of the White House with little or no reactions since they hope their own nefarious activities will be hidden. The turnstile actions of the administration’s press liaisons serves only to show the disarray in this White House. Looking at the fact that Mr. Trump really did not want this job but now has to do it gives rise to the question of “what Now?” Recent events in South Carolina show the impact of Trumps Presidency, the thugs of the alt- right, Neo Nazi’s and other aligned White supremacy groups feel they have the right to issue their non-American message with impunity. Donald aka TOTUS is too busy to perform the duties of his office since there is no adoration in it. The TWEETER in Chief reluctantly and begrudgingly  denounced the unrest in Charlottesville. His primary minion  ( Steve Bannon) has tacitly denounced the followers of his former entity (Breitbart) and that shows his lack of loyalty to anything or anyone that is not Steve Bannon). This situation is slowly coming to a head along with the Head of DJT aka TOTUS. As an added message to the members of the Alt Right, Neo Nazis and White supremacists- The Native Americans were here first and you stole the country from them! 

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The Reason


America has become the country that we have defended against and revolted against over 200 years ago. The reasons, we have elected a child as President whose sole objective is to undo anything done by the Former President.  This undoing is not done in a context of  having a better way  or getting knowledge of the laws or orders he is undoing. It appears that he is seeking adoration much like Hitler and Caligula. There is no substance to his speeches as he is still on the campaign trial rather than schooling himself in governing and the issues that affect that governance. His cabinet picks are wealthy people (for the most part) whose experiences do not relate to the American public so cannot make judgements or decisions that do any good for us. This President has one source of information (more uninformed opinion than fact) and that is the Fox news network. He seemingly pays no heed to his cabinet so gives no guidance to them. This method of governing is a formula for disaster as we are beginning to see with a Congress that is using his ignorance as a reason to unleash their worse on the American people. Our European and Asian partners are looking at this and have decided that they no longer have a strong ally or trading party. This situation has given rise to the Russian surge in conflict areas and the radical sectors of many areas. Mr. Trump  has used Twitter as his primary communication media but gives no substantive meaning or background to his tweets. His Whitehouse staff have spent much of their time parsing his tweets rather than issuing meaningful information (which appears to be lacking). His ”command staff” have gone from parsing to outright lying about his meanings and offering “alternate facts”. If the signal for liars were truly flaming pants then the White house as well as the Congress would be burned to the ground.

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The Presidency Of Intolerance


The current administration has demonstrated the worst of America, we have a Congress for the most part That has no moral compass and they are set on removing healthcare from millions while attempting to convince the people that what they are doing is for their own good. We have a Commander in Tweet who is no more than a ego driven bully. Our prime drive should be to carefully vet anyone we vote for from the local level up to the Federal level. We as voters need to ignore campaign rhetoric as these “speeches” are just talk. Researching the record and background of current servers and aspiring candidates is the best option for choosing who you vote for. The toughest job we have is responsible voting , that is look at the representatives we currently have and deciding if they are standing up for you. Lies fall easier on the ears than the truth but we need a lot of truth now? The backers and spokespeople for the White house are now attempting to persuade us that vetting candidates , as stated below:

Top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday on “Fox & Friends” that having to complete financial disclosure forms demoralizes qualified people from serving in government. “There are so many qualified men and women who wanted to serve this president, this administration and their country, who have been completely demoralized and completely, I think, disinclined to do so based on the paperwork that we have to put forward divesting assets, the different hoops you have to run through,” Conway said.

Meanwhile TOTUS is issuing tweets as policy and executive orders rather than do the work of governing, that is ask questions , research the legality of what he wants to do. Instead he gets his information from Faux news and his close aides who have a goal of creating a antebellum nation. The President is using these tweets as a way of Governing yet nothing of substance is coming out the Oval office. We are in the grips of a small man who through the lack of voter involvement got into office.

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America


 

The state of hate in America
19 / 19

USA TODAY
Alia E. Dastagir

It feels like nearly every week, America is rattled by a new incident of hate.

In June, a white man in a Chicago Starbucks was filmed calling a black man a slave, and a white woman in a New Jersey Sears was videotaped making bigoted comments against a family she believed was Indian (they were not). In May, two men on a Portland train were stabbed to death trying to stop a white supremacist’s anti-Muslim tirade against two teenagers.
Hate symbols are showing up around the country: nooses in the nation’s capital, racist graffiti on the front gate of LeBron James’ Los Angeles home, a banner with an anti-Semitic slur over a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, N.J. On Saturday, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Charlottesville, Va., less than two months after white supremacist Richard Spencer — who coined the term “alt-right” — led a similar protest in the city against the removal of a Confederate monument. Several white nationalist groups are planning another rally for Aug. 12.
In an America where deep divisions exposed in the presidential election have only intensified in the past eight months, these incidents take on new meaning as they become more widespread.
“They’re increasing not only in number but in terms of their ferocity,” said Chip Berlet, a scholar of the far right.
Groups that track these incidents — including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the non-profit news organization ProPublica, which is creating a national database of hate crimes and bias — say hate incidents are a national problem whose scope we don’t fully grasp. Tracking them is notoriously difficult:
Not all law enforcement agencies send hate crime data to the FBI.
Five states don’t have any hate crime protections.
Many states don’t include protections for LGBTQ people.
Incidents of public harassment motivated by hate bias may not meet the legal definition of a “hate crime.”
While a patchwork of data means we don’t have a complete picture of the problem, the SPLC and the ADL say available numbers show disturbing trends. In its most recent hate crimes report, the FBI tracked a total of 5,818 hate crimes in 2015, a rise of about 6.5% from the previous year, and showed that attacks against Muslims surged. The SPLC documented an uptick of hate and bias incidents after the presidential election, tracking 1,094 in the first month alone. The organization also says the number of hate groups in the U.S. increased for a second year in a row in 2016. In April, the ADL reported anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. rose 86% in the first quarter of 2017.
“Even though the data is incomplete, we still think it’s statistically significant, and in that it’s troubling to see more manifestations of prejudice than we’ve seen in the past,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL.
Minorities feel less safe
By 2055, the U.S. will not have a single racial or ethnic majority, a change driven by immigration, according to the Pew Research Center. An analysis conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic — based on surveys taken before and after the election — reveals that members of the white working class concerned about immigration were more than 3.5 times more likely to vote for President Trump. Nearly half of white working-class Americans said, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”
Heidi Beirich, leader of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project — which publishes the organization’s Hatewatch blog — said right now minorities feel less safe, particularly Muslim and immigrant communities. According to the Pew Research Center, 41% of Hispanics say they have serious concerns about their place in America since the presidential election.
“People feel like they could be attacked at any moment,” she said. “Often, they also don’t trust the police to help them.”
While the FBI’s data typically show 5,000 to 6,000 hate crimes a year, the Department of Justice’s estimates are much higher. A report out this month from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, show Americans experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004 to 2015. About a quarter of hate crime victims who didn’t report said they feared police wouldn’t be able to help them.
Us vs. Them
For years before he ran for president, Trump roused the “birther” movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president. During the presidential campaign, Trump said an Indiana-born federal judge was biased because of his “Mexican heritage.” Since becoming president, Trump has taken a hard stance on immigration, instituting a travel ban on immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, which the Supreme Court partially reinstated in late June.
Trump’s ascendance, Berlet said, was built upon a narrative of “us vs. them,” language that resonates with many Americans who fear cultural shifts brought on by changing demographics.
After the deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in June 2016, then-candidate Trump said, “The Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn’t turn them in. And we had death and destruction.”
“When a public figure with a high status identifies a group that is described as threatening to the stability of the community or the nation, in certain conditions this can lead people to conclude that they have to defend their way of life from these ‘others,'” Berlet said. “These scapegoated or demonized others have to be either silenced or eradicated.”
Trump has been repeatedly asked to do more to denounce hate associated with his name. Expressions of bigotry among his supporters were well-documented during his campaign and Trump himself has been accused by civil rights groups of using hateful and violent rhetoric, as well as being too reticent in condemning it. Just this month, Trump posted a CNN smackdown clip on Twitter that was taken from a Reddit troll who the ADL says has “a consistent record of racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry.”
Of the 1,094 hate and bias incidents the SPLC counted in the month after the election, 37% of them directly referenced either Trump, his campaign slogans or his remarks about sexual assault.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has denied that such hate incidents have increased since Trump’s election victory. And many Americans who support Trump — though they admire his bluntness and tendency to eschew political correctness — say they don’t condone racism or violence either.
“It doesn’t make one racist to have voted for Trump, and I’m sure many didn’t pay that much attention to the campaign,” Beirich said. “That said, Trump’s rants against Mexicans, Muslims and women were widely reported. So clearly Trump’s views on these matters weren’t disqualifying for many Trump voters. For those Trump voters bothered by this racism, I hope they will speak out against it. It could help increase civility in the U.S.”
A nation divided
Increased political polarization is part of what moves hate from the margins to the mainstream, Greenblatt said. Sentiments once considered extreme become validated and “people feel the pain of prejudice in a manner that is really beneath our values as a country,” he said.
The Pew Research Center found about half of Democrats and Republicans say the other party makes them feel “afraid.” More than 40% of Democrats and Republicans say the opposite party’s “policies are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”
“I don’t think either side of the ideological spectrum is exempt from intolerance,” Greenblatt said. “Whether it’s the U.S. president, or a university president … I think we should expect our leaders to stand up and speak out against manifestations of hate.”
And the rest of us? We remain where we always have, Greenblatt said, capable of moving the country away from cruelty and toward greater justice.
When the approximately 50 KKK members converged on Charlottesville this weekend to protest what Klan member James Moore called “the ongoing cultural genocide … of white Americans,” more than a thousand counter protesters showed up to decry hate in their city. The Klan members were heavily outnumbered, chants of “white power” drowned out by “racists go home.”
“I think all of us have an obligation to interrupt intolerance when it happens and to be an ally when we see others being subjected to harassment and hate,” Greenblatt said. “We owe it to ourselves to make sure we call upon our better angels when we see people that we know, or don’t know, who are being treated unfairly because of how they look or how they pray or who they love. Every one of us is capable of rising to that occasion.”

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Drinking The Koolaid


Everything coming out the white house is riddled with almost and alternate facts. No “poor people” in the cabinet, these are rich people who have nothing in common with the neediest people who are and have been under represented by Congress (the people they elected to serve them) , now they (the “poor people”) are served by Rich people who have no interest in serving people they have exploited for years and now have even less interest in serving them. All of the past administrations have been attempting to better the conditions of the oft cited “American people” but instead the long serving Congress has short circuited those efforts whenever they could and making the American People drink the “poison Kool-Aid” while telling us it is good for us. If you are an ardent Trump supporter it may be too late for an antidote. The campaign for the office is over , it is time to govern not tweet us into more problems. Most people who do not know something, will look it up, ask for help and learn what needs to be done but that cannot be done on social media from possibly a Loo. The main issue is that many Americans with justification are fed up with Government’s lack of or poor administration. This issue has been around d for many years before President Obama yet the blame was placed on him because of skin color. Too many people have allowed their personal bias to get in the way of facts and these biases were stirred up by the lesser an among us who have not gotten past post civil war feelings. If we as Americans do not or chose not to understand that we are the actual “illegal aliens” since we decimated the Native American populations through wars, disease and attrition. It is time that we as Americans understand that our “leaders (on)” will mouth any homilies or quotes that will get them what they need , whether it’s a political office or just the purchase of their products. The loss of jobs has more to do with the involved Companies need for maintaining revenue than anything else. The coal companies did not want to upgrade facilities to insure the safety of the workers and allow for pay increases to insure the workers ability to care for families. Think about the runoff or slag that pollutes the air and water supplies. This administration is a dream come true for industries but a larger boot on the backs of Americans. Do not drink the Kool-Aid!

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I would Like To


I would like to write about someone or something else besides the current administration and the majority party however the TOTUS continues to be a child who has not the wherewithal to govern and cannot or will not learn what his job actually entails. The majority party is busily trying to use the President’s ego to pass legislation that benefits them while telling the public that what they are doing is good for us. Looking at historical facts: A man named Adolph used the tactic of telling the same big lies on a regular basis to sell the public on the idea that someone else (the Jews and non Aryans) was responsible for their problems. People were so desperate for some relief that they accepted the lies as fact even though many of them saw no improvement especially once the war really started. Once the war got into full swing in Poland and then the attack on Russia at a cost of millions of German soldiers lives (and money). This Russian front drained the treasury which in turn reduced funds available for the pubic services. Thereafter the attacks on the rest of the world began in earnest with the cooperation of Italy and Japan according to history. What we now have is the assumption of power by a known personality with megalomania as a trait whose sole purpose is to be lauded for his sake not for what he has accomplished. I would like to write about something like former coal miners retrained into other energy jobs, Puerto Rico considered for Statehood, US-Cuban relations being normalized or common sense budgets including infrastructure repairs (job creator), proper immigration rules or perhaps a condemnation of other country’s interference in US affairs. A first giant step towards actually Governing would be truthful reporting of personal interest divestiture.

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