Another Weekend, Another Racial Trump Tweet

You might think that a politician who spent the better part of the last two weeks defending himself against charges of racism would be careful about what he says. In the case of Donald Trump, you’d be wrong.

After drawing intense criticism for his tweets telling unnamed “’Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” to “go back” to their home countries, President Trump was at it again this morning with a series of tweets attacking Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). In the tweetstorm, Trump called Cumming’s Baltimore district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” To top the rant, Trump alleged that Cummings was a thief.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073964634517505?s=20

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073965880172544?s=20

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Where Trump’s “go back” seemed bigoted and tiptoed up to the line of racism, today’s tweets jump over the line with both feet. The statement that “no human being” would want to live in the district, which is 55 percent black, has clear racial overtones.

There are several accurate statements that President Trump could have made about Cummings’ seventh congressional district. It is the poorest district in the state with almost 18 percent of its residents below the poverty line per data from BiggestCities.com. It ranks dead last among Maryland districts for income per household. Crime is a problem in parts of the district. On the other hand, the Washington Examiner points out that the district is in the upper half of House districts nationally and also includes many upscale neighborhoods, including one named the safest place in the country in 2018.

I’m not going to call Trump a racist. I don’t pretend to know what is in his heart. What I am going to say is that Donald Trump says things sound bigoted on a fairly regular basis. He seems to relish the controversy and the attention that his outlandish statements bring, perhaps holding to the theory that any publicity is good publicity.

That doesn’t necessarily hold true in politics.

Trump’s antics regularly distract from the news cycle in a self-defeating way. His “go back” tweets unified Democrats who had been in the midst of a veritable civil war. The president’s attack on Cummings comes only hours after the Supreme Court handed him a victory on funding for the border wall. On a day when Republicans should have been gloating over their judicial triumph, they suddenly find themselves once again explaining why Donald Trump is not a racist.

If President Trump wanted to drive minority voters en masse from the GOP, he wouldn’t have to act very different from how he already behaves. After three years of Trump, the Republican Party has precious few minority voters to lose, but there are many white voters who will flee a party that they perceive to be headed by a racist. Trump’s long list of quasi-racist statements is akin to making Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comment a dozen times over.

If Republicans don’t want to be thought of as racists, the obvious solution would be to not say things that sound racist and to condemn and retract statements that break the first rule. However, Republicans are once again caught between a rock and a hard place by the president’s unforced error. They must explain away Trump’s statements by focusing on Baltimore’s crime and poverty and not the fact that the president singled out a black congressman representing a predominantly black district in a predominantly black city. If they break ranks from the president, Republican officials risk alienating the Trump base in their primary election. Republicans have the choice of tarring themselves with the racist brush in the eyes of moderates and minorities or looking like a squish to the Republican base.

Maybe Donald Trump’s defenders are right. Maybe he isn’t a bigot and only has a bad habit of making clumsy statements (although being a straight talker was supposed to be one of his big advantages over other politicians). On the other hand, when Trump keeps stepping into the same steaming pile of excrement over and over, it lends credence to the theory that he is saying exactly what he means.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck.

  
Originally published on The Resurgent

Four CEOs Desert Manufacturing Council As Trump Approval Sinks After Charlottesville

President Trump’s delayed condemnation of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville seems to be taking a toll among his more mainstream support. In the wake of this weekend’s riots, three corporate CEOs who had been a part of the president’s council on manufacturing jobs abruptly resigned and the president’s approval rating has plummeted to its lowest point ever.

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier was the first CEO to jump ship. In a tweet on Monday, August 15, Frazier explicitly linked his resignation to Trump’s silence on the Nazis who claimed to be part of the Trump movement.

In part, Frazier’s statement reads, “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.” He added, “As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.”

Later on Monday, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich both left the council as well. Business Insider quotes Plank in a statement that says Under Armour “engages in innovation and sports, not politics.”

Krzanich said, “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing. Politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America's manufacturing base.”

President Trump responded to the resignation of Merck’s Frazier with a tweet on Monday that attacked Merck for high drug prices: “@Merck Pharma is a leader in higher & higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!”

A second tweet on August 15 addressed the subsequent resignations of Plank and Krzanich. “For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place,” Trump tweeted. “Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

After the president’s second tweet, Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, tweeted that he too was leaving the council. “I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do,” Paul said.

At the same time, Gallup released a three-day polling average that showed President Trump’s approval rating at 34 percent, its lowest level ever, with 61 percent disapproval. The poll ran from Friday through Sunday so it partially reflected the events in Charlottesville.

The American Manufacturing Council was set up by President Trump to allow corporate CEOs to advise him on manufacturing policy. Twenty corporate CEOs remain on the council. One additional member of the council, Elon Musk of Tesla, had previously resigned to protest Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accords.

On Monday, two days after the Charlottesville riots, President Trump issued a more forceful and specific statement denouncing the white supremacist movement. It is interesting to note that his tweet attacking Merck came only 10 hours after Frazier’s resignation. The response time after Plank and Krzanich quit was even shorter.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Defending Charlottesville Nazis is Trap for Conservatives

In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, the equivocations among Republicans are already beginning, starting with President Trump. The president, who seldom fails to speak his mind on Twitter, offered an uncharacteristically judicious tweet in the wake of the violence.

“We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets [sic] come together as one!” the president tweeted.

If ever there was a time for President Trump to issue a strong message that parses no words, this is it. While the message of unity is appropriate, it is also appropriate to condemn the white supremacists who started the whole fracas.

While radicals on both sides deserve to be condemned, it should not be hard to single out neo-Nazis who march under the swastika flag for specific condemnation. The German Nazi flag cannot be considered to be part of our heritage. Far from it. We fought a world war to keep the swastika flag far from our shores.

Neo-Nazi radicals have the right to their opinion. They have the right to peacefully and lawfully assemble. That does not mean that they should not be criticized and condemned for their actions and the violence that they have instigated.

While all the groups involved in the Charlottesville skirmishing are worthy of condemnation, it is especially important for conservatives and Republicans to denounce the alt-right demonstrators for two reasons. First, in the minds of many people, the Republican Party is already associated with racism. Republicans should take every opportunity to distance themselves from that perception.

Second, the demonstrators explicitly claim to be associated with President Trump and the GOP. There are numerous reports of white supremacists wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and other Trump gear. Former Klansman and Republican candidate David Duke said at the rally, “We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump, and that's what we believed in, that's why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he's going to take our country back and that's what we gotta [sic] do.”

Failure to publicly renounce Duke’s words is a trap for conservatives. If Republicans do not rebuke racists claiming to act in the name of the Trump Administration it will be an implicit endorsement of their actions. For once, it would be to President Trump’s advantage to fire off an angry tweet specifically rebuking the Charlottesville Nazis in terms at least as strong as he reprimanded Jeff Sessions.

If President Trump fails to condemn the white supremacists in Charlottesville, it will be a break with the true traditions of the Republican Party. The GOP was founded as an anti-white supremacist party at the dawn of the Civil War with the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, as its first president. Another Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, ordered the 101^st Airborne to Little Rock to enforce school integration a century later.

More recently, President Reagan specifically excluded bigots from the big tent of the GOP in his second inaugural address. “In the party of Lincoln, there is no room for intolerance and not even a small corner for anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind,” Reagan said. “Many people are welcome in our house, but not the bigots.”

In modern America, what easier target for condemnation is there than white supremacists rallying under a Nazi banner? If the president cannot find words to denounce American Nazis, it will speak volumes about his Administration and the new Republican Party.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why isn't Trump attacking Hillary?

This week was perhaps the most damaging week of Hillary Clinton’s career. FBI Director James Comey’s decision to recommend that she not be charged for mishandling classified information was overshadowed by the facts that he laid out. Comey called her “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information and judged that her account, as well as email accounts that she was in contact with, were likely compromised by “hostile actors” that could threaten the security of the United States. How has Trump responded to the FBI assault on the basic competence of his opponent? He spent several days embroiled in a controversy over an allegedly anti-Semitic tweet and then came out of in favor of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi. Why isn’t Trump attacking Hillary?

To be sure, Donald Trump did accuse Clinton of offering a “bribe” to Attorney-General Loretta Lynch by floating the possibility that Lynch might keep her job in a Clinton Administration. The Washington Post noted that Clinton has never publicly stated that Lynch might be welcome in her White House, but that the New York Times had attributed the idea to Democrats close to Clinton.

NBC News also reported that Trump had criticized Director Comey’s decision at a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, July 5, the day of the FBI announcement. Trump used his pet name for Clinton, “Crooked Hillary,” and told the audience, “You didn't have to be careless. You didn't even have to really know that what you were doing was wrong, and you're guilty. The laws are very explicit. Stupidity is not a reason that you're going to be innocent, OK? It's not a reason.”

At that point, Trump seemed to veer off message. He became distracted by a controversy about a Trump campaign tweet that featured a six-pointed star that some associated with a Star of David. The tweet featured Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of cash and carried the logo, “History made: Most corrupt candidate ever.” The phrase, “most corrupt candidate ever” was inside a six pointed star that has been variously described as a “Star of David” and a “sheriff’s star.” CNN notes that the meme originally appeared “on an anti-Semitic, white supremacist message board.”

Trump said in a tweet that his campaign should not have removed the controversial meme and defended the star on Wednesday, July 6. CNN commented, “Trump's comments on Wednesday revived a controversy that appeared to be quickly fading under the weight of the news that Hillary Clinton's private emails included classified information, and that she will not face charges. On a day when Clinton's controversies dominated the airwaves, Trump resurrected his own.”

By Wednesday night, Trump was totally off message. Rather than spending time attacking Clinton’s judgement, Trump told a North Carolina crowd that Saddam Hussein was a great anti-terrorist.

“He was a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights. They didn't talk. They were terrorists. Over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism,” Trump said.CNN points out that Trump supported the Iraq War in 2003.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a state supporter of terrorism. The “9/11 Commission Report” stated that “Baghdad actively sponsored terrorist groups” and “Saddam used foreign terrorist groups as an instrument of foreign policy.”

Donald Trump not only is wrong about history, his comments further focused attention on himself and distracted attention from Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week. This is not the first time that Trump has gone easy on Clinton.

On June 2, Clinton sharply mocked Donald Trump on foreign policy. “Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent,” she said in Reuters. “They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.” She went on to speculate that Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because “somebody got under his very thin skin.”

One might expect a broadside against the Secretary of State who presided over the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the rise of ISIS, the bungling of the Arab Spring and the Iranian uprising, the implosion of Syria, the failed Russian reset, and, of course, the debacle at Benghazi. One would be wrong.

Rather than challenging Hillary on the substance of her speech or attacking her own record, Trump responded with tweets as Hillary predicted he would do during her speech. The first gave a general challenge to Clinton’s credibility while the second criticized her poise.

“Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!” Trump tweeted. “Reading poorly from the teleprompter [sic]! She doesn't even look presidential!”

In fact, Trump’s attacks on Hillary seem very restrained. Compare his criticism of Clinton to his concerted attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge assigned to his Trump University fraud case. Trump spent weeks and devoted large amounts of air time to attacking Judge Curiel’s Mexican heritage just after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. The time might have been better spent unifying the Republican Party or launching attacks on Hillary Clinton, who had yet to secure her own nomination.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, after clinching the Democratic nomination, Clinton ran 20,000 ads to get her message out to potential voters. For the same period, Trump ran none. Zero. Not a single commercial. This total shutout in advertising is almost certainly what allows Hillary to maintain a lead over Trump in spite of her seriously damaged campaign.

While Trump may be attacking Hillary at his campaign rallies, his criticisms are overshadowed by his own outlandish and rambling comments. Time and time again, Trump’s antics have distracted the news cycle from Hillary’s troubles. Whatever his strategy or motive, his anti-Hillary message is not getting out to voters. Trump is destroying his own campaign.

Read it on Conservative Firing Line

It's time to lower Confederate flag

In the wake of last week’s mass murder in Charleston, SC, amid the usual calls for gun control has come a secondary demand that South Carolina remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia. For perhaps the first time, conservative Republicans such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Lindsey Graham have joined the calls to remove the flag. As a lifelong Southerner and staunch conservative, I agree that the time has come to lower the Confederate flag.

I grew up respecting the heroes of the Confederacy. As a native Georgian, I learned family lore about my ancestors who had fought for the South, including one great-great-grandfather who was captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864 and then interned at the notorious federal prison camp in Elmira, NY. I still hold a great deal of respect for Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  

There is disagreement even on the nature of the flag in question. Some defenders of the South Carolina flag point out that it was not the national flag of the Confederacy. In reality, the rectangular “Southern Cross” was the Confederate navy jack and was similar to the Confederate battle flag. The flags of the Confederacy can be seen on USflag.org. Both the battle flag and the navy jack were a Confederate flags and, in the minds of most Americans have come to be the Confederate flag.  Photos of the South Carolina flag appear to be the Confederate battle flag, a square version of the Southern Cross carried by the Confederate army. In the end, the exact version of the flag is irrelevant.

Confederate apologists have long made the claim that the Civil War (which should more properly be called the War of Secession) was about state’s rights, not slavery. There is some truth to this argument. The rub is that the state right in question was the right to keep slavery, the South’s “peculiar institution,” legal. This is made abundantly clear in the declarations of causes passed by the seceding states. These declarations are available for review on CivilWar.org.

South Carolina, the first state to secede, cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as their reason for leaving the Union. More specifically, the Carolinians charged that “non-slaveholding States… assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”

In Georgia’s declaration, its delegates cite slavery as the reason for secession in the document’s second sentence: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

One must conclude not only that secessionists were leaving the Union to protect slavery, but that they were proud of their pro-slavery stance. Given that the Confederacy was born to protect slavery, it is also a given that the Confederacy was a racist institution. Therefore, the Confederate flag must be a racist symbol.

Proponents of the flag also argue that the United States flag must also be a racist symbol because Old Glory flew over legal slavery for longer than the Southern Cross. This statement is in error for several important reasons. First, slavery was never a federal matter. It was always subject to the individual states. A timeline of slavery by Mount Holyoke College shows that Vermont banned slavery with a constitutional amendment in 1777, one year after the Declaration of Independence. Other northern states had banned the practice by 1804.

Additionally, the Constitution itself reflects American uneasiness about slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise is often incorrectly interpreted to mean that the Constitution considered slaves to be three-fifths of a man. In reality, the Three-Fifths Compromise laid the foundation for the eventual abolition of slavery by providing a check to the power of the Southern slave states.

Likewise, the Constitution granted Congress the power to prohibit the importation of slaves after 20 years, an action that Congress took in 1807 when it passed the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves. In the South, even though slaves were no longer imported, the slave trade persisted as children of domestic slaves were separated from their families and sold to new owners. After the slave trade was declared to be piracy by Congress in 1819, the US Navy took an active role alongside the Royal Navy in bringing slave smugglers to justice and ending the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean.

In contrast with the Confederacy, the United States took strong action to hasten the end of slavery. Even though the American flag flew over slavery for almost 100 years, slavery was never the official policy of the United States. In the end, secession hastened the end of American slavery. The 13^th amendment, which abolished slavery, was ratified on December 6, 1865, much earlier than it is likely to have been passed without the war.  

The racist association of the Confederate flag did not end with the war. The flag was raised above the South Carolina statehouse in 1961 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Civil War according to Daniel Hollis, the last surviving member of the centennial commission. Hollis doesn’t recall a racial motive behind the raising of the flag, but South Carolina politicians, mostly Democrats, were fighting against desegregation at the time. In fact, South Carolina’s delegates seceded from the national Centennial Commission to protest President Kennedy’s decision to move the ceremonies to Charleston’s navy base rather than exclude black delegates who had been refused entrance to the segregated Francis Marion Hotel. The brouhaha was referred to as the Second Battle of Fort Sumter.

The South Carolina statehouse flag may not have been explicitly associated with segregation, but elsewhere the Confederate flag was adopted by anti-civil rights activists. The Georgia Encyclopedia notes that the inclusion of the Southern Cross on the Georgia state flag in 1956 was prompted by the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decisions in 1954 and 1955. Rep. Denmark Groover said, after the new Georgia flag was adopted, that it “will show that we in Georgia intend to uphold what we stood for, will stand for and will fight for,” a reference to preserving segregation.

The South Carolina flag was moved from the top of the statehouse to a different site on the statehouse grounds as part of a compromise in 2000. The Georgia flag was changed in 2001.

The best argument for keeping the Confederate flag is as a memorial for Confederate soldiers. An estimated 260,000 Confederate soldiers died in the war. This was almost five percent of the total non-slave population of the Confederacy. Another 194,000 were wounded and 31,000 taken prisoner. It is appropriate to fly Confederate flags at war memorials. It is not appropriate to give the flag a place of prominence on the state capitol grounds or on a state flag.

The bitter truth is that Confederate soldiers, even the majority who did not own slaves, fought to preserve a racist system, even as they were protecting their homes. After the fall of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, the flag became the symbol of racial segregation in the form of “Jim Crow” laws and “separate-but-equal” treatment of blacks. As such a racist symbol, the Confederate flag has no place in a modern American government.

This is not to say that the Confederate flag should be banned. Freedom of speech dictates that people should have the right to fly the flag on private property, wear it on their clothes or paint it on their cars a la “Dukes of Hazzard.” It would also be improper to attempt to erase all vestiges of the South’s Confederate history from society. Slavery, the Confederacy and the Civil War happened and that history should be openly acknowledged and discussed.

There is a vast difference, however, between a state government endorsing the Confederate ideals by prominent placement of the flag and flying the flag at a memorial or displaying it at a museum. By keeping such a divisive symbol, states marginalize 30-40 percent of their populations. If the flag keeps alive the memory of Confederate soldiers, it is fair to say that it also keeps alive the memory of slavery and Jim Crow for black Southerners. It hearkens back to the 1960s when Klansmen could murder a black army officer, as they did not far from where I grew up, and all-white juries would unanimously acquit the killers. Bringing down the Confederate flag would be an important step in putting this racist part of our past behind us.

An addition to being good for country, lowering the Confederate flag would be a good thing for conservatives. Democrats never miss a chance to imply (or state outright) that Republicans are racist. Quite often, conservatives step right into these liberal traps.

To many minority voters, defending the flag of a 150-year-old failed racist nation makes conservatives seem like racists themselves. Conversely, hauling down the flag would remove a roadblock to increased minority participation in the GOP. If Republicans want to win future elections, they must find ways to reach out to minority voters rather than alienating them over trivial issues. In 2015, the Republican Party can either spend political capital trying to rehabilitate the Confederate flag, a lost cause in itself, or wooing minority voters. It cannot do both effectively.

Opposition to the Confederate flag spreads across racial lines. Rasmussen found that by a three to one margin, voters oppose having the Confederate flag continue to fly in front of the South Carolina statehouse. Outside of white Southerners, themselves a minority, support for the Confederate flag is thin.

South Carolina’s Confederate flag will come down, whether now or in the not-too-distant future. If the flag, hoisted by Democrats in both 1861 and 1961, is taken down now, under the effort led by Governor Nikki Haley, a woman who is herself a member of an ethnic minority, today’s Republicans will be completing the job that was started by Republican Abraham Lincoln more than 150 years ago. The irony will be delicious. 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Photo credit: eyeliam/flickr

RINOs and modern McCarthyism

Everyone is familiar with Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). In the 1950s, McCarthy made a cottage industry of searching out and finding hidden communists throughout the federal government. In the post-WWII era, communism was a real threat. McCarthy, however, was a charlatan.

McCarthy’s inquisition began on Feb. 9, 1950 with a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, W.V. What McCarthy said wasn’t recorded, but, according to “The Politics of Fear” by Robert Griffith, the senator waved a piece of paper in his hand and proclaimed, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”

We now know that McCarthy was lying. His list of names, the number of which frequently varied, was never fully revealed. Many of the “communists” revealed by McCarthy were innocent of the charge, the victims of shoddy investigations, bullying tactics, and circumstantial evidence. In other cases, McCarthy specifically targeted his critics. People who were outspoken against his tactics might well find themselves being labeled as a communist in McCarthy’s next appearance.

McCarthy’s reign of terror came to an end after the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. At the height of the hearings, McCarthy accused a young lawyer of pro-communist sympathies. As recounted in “A Conspiracy So Immense,” Joseph Welch, a lawyer for the army, responded indignantly, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” When McCarthy tried to continue, Welch demanded that the chairman call the next witness, prompting applause from the gallery.

McCarthy’s tactics have been used more recently in American politics as well. Many times in the past, liberal politicians have accused conservatives of racism, a charge that, like that of being a communist, is easily made and not easily dispelled. Many conservatives, from Trent Lott to Shirley Temple, have been accused of racism. Often the charges are based on seemingly innocuous remarks, political “dog whistles” that only those in the know can decipher. (Ironically, pundits on the left are very adept at picking up these dog whistles.) Even discussing the health hazards of fried chicken can be construed as racist. To many liberals, any opposition to President Obama is rooted racism. Even Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was targeted with accusations of racism.

Now some conservatives have adopted the McCarthyistic tactic of making wild and unsubstantiated accusations toward political opponents. The new pejorative is the charge that a conservative is a “RINO,” a “Republican in name only,” or perhaps the equally dismissive term, “establishment.”

The term “RINO” is not new. A 2009 list of the top 10 RINOs on Human Events cited the American Conservative Union voting records as an objective standard upon which to gauge a Republican’s liberal tendencies.

The current RINO hunters reject this objective standard. In many cases, Republicans accused of RINO-ism are among the most conservative senators according to the American Conservative Union (Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain to name a few). Several are on the National Journal list of the 15 most conservative senators (Pat Roberts, Tom Coburn, and John Cornyn). One Tea Party Facebook user attempted to explain away this apparent inconsistency saying, “The ACU rating has become a joke since the ACU got infiltrated by the establishment.”

Anti-RINO activists claim that some Republicans “actually agree with the liberal position to some extent.” When asked who these Republicans are and on what issues they “agree with the liberal position,” they are typically able to only supply a generic list of alleged RINOs. The accusations are typically not specific.

In some cases, the RINO hunters base their accusation on procedural votes like the debt ceiling increase earlier this month. Senator Ted Cruz forced fellow Republicans into an unpopular and unnecessary vote to invoke cloture. Cruz then criticized the Republicans who voted for cloture without explaining how the GOP senators could have won a battle against majority Democrats according to the Washington Post. Other anti-RINO activists are similarly silent on how Republicans can force legislation through the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Other Facebook users indicate that some RINOs are so devious that they may even establish conservative voting records. One user commented that even though some Republicans, such as Mike Huckabee and John McCain had conservative voting records, he considered them RINOs because he doubted their sincerity and backbone.

As with charges of being a communist or a racist, an accusation of RINO-ism can be difficult to shake. The amorphous, subjective nature of the charge makes it difficult for targets to fight the smear. Any objective evidence, such as American Conservative Union ratings, is dismissed as biased or unreliable, tainted by “establishment” forces or the mainstream media.

Criticism of the RINO hunters is frequently met with attacks like those experienced by Drew Pearson. For example, many conservatives who have written columns critical of Ted Cruz have found themselves cast as “RINOs,” “establishment,” “progressives,” or even “closet Democrats.” Even conservative stalwarts such as Thomas Sowell and Charles Krauthammer are not immune.

Anyone who is not in total and enthusiastic agreement with the self-appointed “true conservative” mavins is subject to the RINO charge. This includes former Tea Party heroes such as Senator Marco Rubio, who made the mistake of proposing an immigration reform plan in 2013. Rather than debating the plan on its merits, Rubio was attacked for supporting “amnesty.”

Such bullying is not consistent with the conservative principles of truth and justice. Indeed, these tactics have more in common with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (numbers five, six, eight, and 12 in particular) than anything from the playbook of Ronald Reagan, a man who, some anti-RINO activists privately admit, might be considered a RINO today. Nevertheless, the attacks on alleged RINOs will likely continue until conservatives finally see through the baseless accusations and begin to ask, “Have you no sense of decency?”

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Who killed Trayvon Martin? An honest discussion of race and crime

Earlier this week on July 16, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP convention in Orlando in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. In the speech, Holder said that the “tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly – and openly – about the complicated and emotionally-charged issues that this case has raised.” In truth, the national conversation about the killing of Trayvon Martin has been anything but honest. 

George Zimmerman admits that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Even though Zimmerman pulled the trigger to fire the shot that ultimately killed Martin, he was not the only cause of Martin’s death. There seems to be plenty of blame to go around.

As noted in Examiner, Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, lived in a racially mixed neighborhood. In fact, Martin’s father’s girlfriend lived in the same neighborhood. It is unlikely that Zimmerman would have thought the mere presence of a black teenager would be alarming unless he was acting suspiciously. The Daily Caller reported in April 2012 that Zimmerman was one of few people in Sanford who pushed for justice in 2010 when the son of a white police officer beat a black man.

It seems likely that there is more to the case than the media narrative of a racist neighborhood watch captain killing an innocent black teenager. In many accidents, investigators point to a chain of events that lead up to the final incident. If any of the events that link together to cause the accident had not occurred the accident chain might have been broken. In the case of Trayvon Martin, there are several links in the chain.

The most obvious link in the chain is the string of burglaries that occurred in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood prior to his encounter with Trayvon Martin. According to CNN, there were at least eight burglaries within the previous 14 months. CNN notes that witnesses reported black males were responsible in three to four of the incidents while the other four had no witnesses or suspects. One resident said that George Zimmerman had called to alert police to a burglary in progress at his home on Feb. 2. Zimmerman’s call noted that the burglar in this case was also a black man.

According to the FBI, blacks represent 28 percent of arrests in the United States even though they make up only 13 percent of the population according to the Census Bureau. This means that they commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to other demographic groups. Half of all murder arrests and more than half of robbery arrests are blacks. Thirty-one percent of burglary arrests are blacks. The statistics are even higher for juvenile arrests. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks are “disproportionately represented among both homicide victims and offenders.”

None of this means that every black person should be automatically suspected of criminal behavior. However, it does show that if a black teenager is acting strangely and looking into houses as Zimmerman alleges, investigating further is not unreasonable. The very purpose for the existence of a neighborhood watch is to be alert for suspicious activity regardless of race.

The question is why crime and incarceration rates among blacks are so much higher than their share of the total population. The answer can likely be found in the destruction of the black family. Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that 67 percent of black children live in single-parent households. This is a far greater rate than for other races. Seventy-two percent of black children are born to unwed mothers according to NBC News.

The link between single-parent families and risky behaviors of children is well established. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, especially when the absent parent is the father, children are much more likely to become sexually active, use drugs, and have increased risk of juvenile delinquency.

The underlying truths represented by these statistics may have shaped Trayvon Martin’s young life. Martin’s step-mother, Alicia Stanley, raised him for 14 years until she and Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, divorced. Trayvon apparently changed after the divorce. In a CNN interview, Stanley said that he wasn’t a “thug” and that language like “creepy-ass cracker” was not used their home. Stanley said that she did not believe that race was a factor in the shooting.

Nevertheless, New York Times reported that, after the shooting, pictures and text messages found on Trayvon’s cell phone included guns, drugs, fighting and the fact that he had been kicked out of his mother’s house. One picture apparently shows Martin smoking marijuana, which has been shown to cause aggression, anxiety and paranoia. The Daily Mail reports that Trayvon was suspended from school three times in the months before his death. Reasons for the suspensions were possession of a burglary tool and jewelry, truancy, and possession of marijuana paraphernalia. Twitter messages refer to Trayvon hitting a bus driver. (Martin’s complete tweets can be viewed here.) ABC News also reported that Martin’s autopsy showed THC, the drug found in marijuana, in his blood.

In one eerily prescient exchange of text messages, reported in the Miami Herald, a friend asked Trayvon “so you just turning into a lil hoodlum [?]” and then warned “Boy don’t get one planted in ya chest.” Three months later, Trayvon was dead.

There were many links in the chain that led to Trayvon Martin’s death. George Zimmerman’s ill-considered decision to follow the teen is only the most obvious. Directly related to Zimmerman’s paranoia was the spate of burglaries that local police either could not or would not solve. The “broken windows” theory of policing holds that prosecution of small crimes can prevent larger, more violent crimes. In this case, if the police had solved the string of burglaries, they might have prevented an assault and killing. Likewise, if Trayvon’s parents and school administrators had reacted more strongly to the warning signs in his academic career, he might have been “scared straight.”

The biggest and most difficult link to break is the destruction of the black family. Trayvon Martin’s problems may have stemmed from the divorce of his father and step-mother. Like many children of divorce, Martin seems to have begun having trouble at school, become involved with drugs, and finally graduated to violence. Eyewitness testimony, reported by ABC News, supports Zimmerman’s story that he was pinned by Martin and screamed for help. If Martin had returned to his father’s girlfriend’s home rather than turning to confront Zimmerman, regardless of who threw the first punch, he would be alive today. His anger, resulting from anger at his parents’ divorce and compounded by drug use, may have played a role in his decision not to walk away.

Bill Cosby is one of the few black leaders who is willing to speak frankly about the problems facing the black community. In a 2011 interview with the Christian Post, Cosby decried the rise in single-parent families and the “media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent.”

The way to prevent more Trayvon Martins is not banning stand-your-ground laws, guns or hoodies. Preventing the deaths of more young black men and women starts with repairing the damage to the black family, a much more difficult task than demonizing George Zimmerman. Perhaps that is why so many choose to ignore the problem.

Originally published as Atlanta Conservative Examiner

The system worked for George Zimmerman

Although many Americans are upset about the not guilty verdict handed down by the jury for George Zimmerman, the case is actually proof that the judicial system still works and is not controlled by politicians and interest groups. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black man, on February 26, 2012. Although the circumstances of the killing were uncertain, many in the media rushed to judgment and fanned the flames of race almost immediately.

Media reports immediately claimed that Zimmerman was a racist who shot Martin because he was a black man who was walking in Zimmerman’s neighborhood. As Examiner reported at the time, Zimmerman’s neighborhood was racially mixed and had suffered a large number of burglaries in the months leading up to the shooting. Martin was staying at his father’s girlfriend’s house, which was in the same gated community where Zimmerman lived. Logically, Zimmerman would not have been shocked to see a black man in his neighborhood.

The only evidence that the shooting was racially motivated seems to be the color of the men’s skin and a telephone call that Zimmerman made to the Sanford police while he was following Martin. Originally described as a 911 call, Zimmerman actually called the police department’s nonemergency line. A recording of the call was edited by NBC’s Today Show to make Zimmerman appear racist.

According to Reuters, NBC deleted several seconds of the call to make it appear that Zimmerman initially volunteered information about Martin’s race. In reality, Zimmerman only mentioned that Martin was black when queried by police. An NBC producer was fired over the incident and George Zimmerman is suing the company. The complete transcript of the call is available on Document Cloud.

Zimmerman does not dispute that he followed Martin, but says that Martin confronted him and began assaulting him after he began to return to his truck after getting out to look for a street sign. No one knows for sure what happened because there were no witnesses to the start of the fight.

In a July 2013 CNN interview, Sanford police chief Bill Lee said that there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman on the night of the shooting because the evidence supported Zimmerman’s story. One investigator did favor arresting Zimmerman for manslaughter, but Lee says that the evidence did not even support that charge and that an arrest would have violated Zimmerman’s Fourth Amendment rights. Lee said that the investigation was “taken away from us.” The mayor released the telephone tapes before the investigation was completed and Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor in the case less than a month after the killing. Lee said that he was pressured by city officials to arrest Zimmerman, even without evidence of a crime, to placate the public. Around the same time, President Obama made a statement that, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Lee’s department presented a capias request to the state attorney to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to arrest Zimmerman, but was removed from the investigation before the request was answered.

The facts in the case must be judged on their own merit. The facts do not include sensational, and often erroneous, media reports. The skin color of the victim and his accused murderer are not relevant to the question of whether Trayvon Martin’s killing was justified. There is an old saying that “justice is blind.” Justice should also be colorblind.

The accumulated weight of hundreds of years of repression and discrimination of blacks cannot be placed upon George Zimmerman’s shoulders. Zimmerman is responsible for his own behavior and no one else’s. The banished institution of slavery was not on trial in Florida. Neither was the separate-but-(not quite) equal system of “Jim Crow” laws. In 1923, white mobs killed at least six blacks and destroyed most of the black town of Rosewood, Florida. George Zimmerman was not part of that mob. America has checkered past when it comes to race relations, but America was not on trial.

Many of Zimmerman’s critics are angry about the fact that he shot an unarmed man. Florida’s self-defense law does not require that an assailant be armed for someone to defend themselves with a gun. According to a survey by CNN, “nearly all states allow use of deadly force to protect yourself inside your home, based on the Castle doctrine,” a concept that dates back to Roman times. At least 33 other states have expanded the right self-defense to homes, offices and other areas as well. Zimmerman’s defense did not hinge on the Castle Doctrine according to Bill Lee. According to his testimony, Zimmerman could not retreat since he was pinned by Martin.

Florida law provides that a person is justified when they “reasonably believe that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” George Zimmerman told police that Martin attacked him and told him, “You’re gonna die tonight, mothaf____!” according to Business Insider. At that point, Zimmerman said that his gun became exposed and both men reached for it. Zimmerman was able to get the gun and shoot Martin. Zimmerman’s critics may disagree with the law as it is written, but the jury was required to decide the case based on current law, not what pundits believe the law should be.

In American jurisprudence, criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Jurors should not enter the trial with preconceived notions about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. It is up to the prosecutor to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that it is “beyond dispute that any reasonable alternative is possible” and “that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts” according to West’s law encyclopedia. In practice, this means that the American justice system defaults to a position where guilty men sometimes go free so that fewer innocent men will go to jail.

In the end, for both Bill Lee’s police investigators and the jury, there was simply not enough evidence to charge or convict George Zimmerman. The prosecution seems to have been pushed for political reasons to answer the media and public calls for Zimmerman’s arrest. The pressure may have emanated from as high as President Obama’s Department of Justice. The prosecution of George Zimmerman was an attempt to subvert justice for political reasons. In the end, in spite of the pressure, the system worked.

Originally published by Atlanta Conservative Examiner

A Klan killing in Georgia

In the early morning of July 11, 1964, three U.S. Army officers passed through Athens to their homes in Washington, D.C. from Ft. Benning where they had been training. At the wheel was Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, a veteran of WWII who had earned the Bronze Star for his service in the New Guinea and Philippines campaigns against the Japanese. All three officers were black.

Nine days before the men started their drive home from Ft. Benning, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. This landmark legislation banned racial discrimination in hiring and ended segregation in public places and many businesses. Local members of the Ku Klux Klan in Athens had heard rumors that Georgia might become a “testing ground” for the new law according a 2004 article from Online Athens.

Lemuel Penn and his two brothers-in-arms, Major Charles Brown and Lt. Col. John Howard, stopped to change drivers in Athens in the early morning hours of July 11. After Penn took the wheel, they resumed their journey, but caught the attention of a trio of Klansmen before they left town.

James Lackey, Cecil Myers, and Howard Sims were blue collar workers in their mid-twenties who were conducting a KKK security patrol in Athens with the intention of “scaring off any out-of-town colored people before they could give us any trouble.” They noticed the Washington, D.C license plate on Penn’s car and decided to follow it. Sims reportedly said, “I’m gonna [sic] kill me a nigger [sic]” as they began the chase.

It was about twenty miles before the Klansmen caught up with the army officers. They had driven through Colbert and then followed Ga. Hwy. 172 north toward Bowman. As they reached the Broad River, which serves as the line between Madison and Elbert Counties, the Klansmen pulled alongside Penn’s car. As Lackey drove, Sims and Myers both fired shotguns into the side of driver’s side of the car.

One blast hit clothes and luggage in the backseat, waking Brown and Howard. The other hit Penn in the jaw and neck. Brown later said, “I believe that Penn died before we managed to stop the car.”

Penn’s car ran against the concrete side of the bridge, helping Brown and Howard stop it. As they did, they saw headlights and thought the Klansmen were returning. Brown took the wheel and tried to turn around, but missed the road in the fog, causing the car to roll over.

The men got out and attempted to flag down another passing car. The driver did not stop, but apparently notified the Madison County sheriff who soon arrived with the coroner.

Almost immediately, the case received a high priority from the Johnson Administration. J. Edgar Hoover sent scores of FBI agents to crack the case. Georgia governor Carl Sanders told the public that he was “ashamed for myself and the responsible citizens of Georgia that this occurrence took place in our state” according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Suspicion quickly fell upon Lackey, Sims, Myers, Herbert Guest, the owner of Guest’s Garage, a Klan hangout, and Denver Phillips, a mechanic employed by Guest. Over the next few weeks, the FBI agents watched and followed their quarry in a friendly game of cat-and-mouse. At one point, the agents sent a birthday cake to Guest and the Klansmen invited their FBI tails to a meeting, offering to provide them with robes.

Finally, Lackey came in to talk to the FBI agents. When he complained of stomach problems, one of the agents said, “I know something's eating you, and your stomach is not going to get better until you tell me about it.” At that point, Lackey told the story of the murder.

What happened next is as shocking to a modern American as the murder itself.

Lackey agreed to testify for the prosecution and was not charged in the murder. Both Sims and Myers were brought to trial in Madison County on charges of first degree murder. At the trial in Danielsville, the men were found not guilty by jury composed solely of older white men.

The story did not end there, however. In the first case of its kind, based on the pattern of intimidation and violence by the Klan uncovered in their investigation of Penn’s murder, the FBI filed a federal case against Sims, Myers, Lackey, Guest, Phillips, and another local Klansman, George Hampton Turner. The charge was conspiring or threatening to abridge another person’s civil rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sims and Myers were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The other defendants were acquitted.

Lemuel Penn left behind a wife and three children. His wife, Georgia, died from lupus less than a year after her husband’s murder. Her daughter has little doubt that she actually grieved herself to death.

Lt. Col. Penn’s body was flown home to Dover Air Force Base, the same base where fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan often return to American soil. He was honored with a twenty-one gun salute. Penn is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia with more than 285,000 other American heroes of all races.

Epilogue

I grew up about 20 miles by road from the murder site. I have driven hundreds of times across the Broad River bridge on Hwy. 172 where Lt. Col. Penn died as I commuted to the University of Georgia and then to a job in Athens.

I was born a little more than seven years after the murder. In that time, Georgia changed dramatically and for the better. By the time I went to elementary school, my class included both black and white children and teachers. For the most part, race wasn’t something that we thought about much, if at all. For most of my life, I really had no idea how much the world had changed a few short years prior to my entering it.

After the murder of Lt. Col. Penn, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched an investigation of the Klan. As the Bible says, evil loves darkness. When the government shed light on the actions of the Klan, the domestic terror group entered a steep decline from which it has never recovered.

I can only remember seeing Klansmen once in my life. While I was in college, working part-time at a local drugstore, a small group of Klansmen, complete with white robes but without masks, got a permit to hand out literature on the town square in Hartwell, Ga. They were neither vilified nor ignored. Instead, people drove by to see the oddities, treating them with the curiosity that such moral relics are due in the modern world.

To learn more about the murder of Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, refer to the following sources:

“Murder at Broad River Bridge: A True Story of Murder and the Ku Klux Klan,” by Bill Shipp (1981), available on Amazon.com

Time magazine subscribers can view the link the trial coverage from Sept. 11, 1964: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,830636,00.html

Online Athens article from 2004 gives a detailed account of the killing and investigation: http://onlineathens.com/stories/071104/new_20040711120.shtml

New Georgia Encyclopedia: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/ArticlePrintable.jsp?id=h-3611

Findagrave.com has photos of Lt. Col. Penn’s grave at Arlington and allows users to add flowers in his memory: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2117

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

This article was originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/a-klan-killing-georgia

Woman who mailed pig foot shot by police in apparent jihad attempt

A Marietta grandmother who mailed a package containing a bloody pig foot to N.Y. Rep. Peter King and a Curious George doll to N.Y. State Senator Greg Ball earlier this year was killed by police on Christmas Day at her home. Her death came a few weeks after her indictment and plea of not guilty in federal court for mailing threatening communications. The federal judge had ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation according to WSB TV. She was reportedly out on bond.

According to reports of the incident, Jameela Barnette, 53, a self-described “Messenger of Allah,” was killed by Cobb County police officers responding to a panic alert triggered from her apartment. Barnette allegedly attacked the officers with a gun and a knife when they responded to the alarm. The officers shot her in the course of defending themselves.

Examiner readers may remember that the Atlanta Conservative Examiner published a series of articles on the mail incident beginning on April 18, 2011. The original article appeared on my personal blog, CaptainKudzu.com, simultaneously with its publication on Examiner.com. Barnette, herself a blogger who waged an internet campaign against people and websites that she perceived as anti-Muslim, read the article on Captain Kudzu and left several comments. I subsequently published some of these comments in a second Examiner article on April 19. Barnette also posted several comments on a Captain Kudzu Easter article, “In defense of miracles,” during the same time period.

I was able to obtain her email address through the comments she left and attempted to contact Barnette to learn why she sent the packages. Although she initially had no interest in telling her side of the story, she later consented to an email interview and provided me with the now-famous picture with Dustin Hoffman. The email exchanges culminated in an article simultaneously published on Examiner and CaptainKudzu.com on April 26.

After that article was published, she thanked me for my objectivity and “unbiased honesty” in another email. Other than occasionally receiving more of her messages “from Allah,” which were soon relegated to my spam folder, I had no other contact with her after that. Until her death made the news this week, I was not even aware that she had been indicted for her mailings. She had been confident that she would escape prosecution because she didn’t make any overt threats.

In our correspondence Jameela was always polite and respectful. It was only when she got up on her Islamist soapbox, that she spouted hatred. Her messages are some of the most vile, racist and profane missives that I have ever read. Although a former Jew, she unapologetically likened Jews to apes and pigs (Surah 5:60) and was no friendlier to Christians who worship “a bloodied, battered and partially-eaten and bled-out, rotting DEAD [emphasis hers] Jew.” She was not shy about her desire to turn the United States into a Muslim nation in which “white b-----s” [expletive deleted] name their children Mohammed and wear veils in accordance with Islamic law.

A major reason that I gave Jameela the chance to speak out in my column was that I felt that she provided a valuable insight into the minds of radical Muslims. Jameela might have been a loner in Marietta, but there are thousands of other Muslims in this country and millions around the world who share her beliefs. It was people who shared Jameela’s beliefs that carried out the 9/11 attacks. It is people who share Jameela’s beliefs that have been at war with the United States for decades, much longer than the United States has been in Iraq or Afghanistan.

While not all Muslims share Jameela’s fanatical and racist ideology, even a small percentage of them can add up to thousands of extremists in this country and millions around the world. A withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan will not change the attitudes of these radicals. For them, it was never about Iraq or Afghanistan. It is about spreading their brand of orthodox Islam around the globe and ridding the world of the Jews.

Even though I had not thought of Jameela in months, I cannot say that I was surprised to hear of her death. My initial thought was that the incident sounded like what is often called “suicide by cop,” in which someone who wants to die threatens police in order to get them to kill him. After more consideration, however, I no longer believe that to be the case.

My opinion is that Jameela launched her own terrorist attack against representatives of the United States. Lacking the knowledge and materials to build a suicide bomb vest, she summoned police with the intention of killing as many as possible and then becoming a martyr. In her twisted theology, she likely believed that the police were infidels who doing the bidding of their Jewish masters in tormenting her. In the end, she was no different from the terrorists in Iraq and Palestine who believe that sacrificing themselves to kill innocents is a worthy and noble cause that will secure their place in heaven.

To most of us, Jameela’s words and actions seem crazy. If she was crazy though, what does that make the multitudes of other radical Muslims around the world who share her beliefs and are also willing to martyr themselves?

I wish to extend my condolences to Ms. Barnette’s family, especially her grandchildren, who will now have to grow up with the shame of her actions on top of the loss that they will undoubtedly feel after her death. I also pray that God will have mercy on her poor misguided soul.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/woman-who-mailed-pig-foot-talked-to-examiner-before-police-shooting

Troy Davis and the minority death penalty

This week’s execution of convicted cop-killer Troy Davis in Georgia had sparked protests and appeals for clemency from around the world. Even many people who normally support the death penalty believed that with the recanted testimonies of several prosecution witnesses, there was too much doubt to allow the execution of Davis to proceed.

In many cases, the race of the defendant is a factor in opposition to the death penalty. Critics have long charged that there is discrimination in the application of the death penalty. According to census.gov, blacks make up about 12 percent of the US population and 30 percent of the population of Georgia. Hispanics make up 16 percent of the US population and eight percent of Georgia’s.

In contrast, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, the number of blacks on death row and who have already been executed is out of proportion the percentage of blacks in the general population. Recent statistics show that 44 percent of death row inmates are white and an approximately equal percentage, 42 percent, are black. Hispanics make up 12 percent of death row inmates. In the past, 56 percent of executed inmates have been white. Thirty-five percent of past executions have killed blacks and seven percent have killed Hispanics. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, blacks are imprisoned at a much higher rate than Latinos or whites.

Rather than racism, the racial disparity on death row and in our prisons can most likely be attributed to the disintegration of the black family over the past half century. President Obama recognized the problem in a Father’s Day address in 2008 when he said, “More than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children.” According to Politifact, the percentage of black single parent families has risen from 22 percent in 1960 to 54 percent in 2006.

Put another way, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 67 percent of black children grow in single-parent homes, as do 53 percent of American Indians and 40 percent of Hispanics. The percentage of white children in single-family homes, 24 percent, is much less but still significant.

Many of these fatherless children end up inside prisons. Troy Davis was one. According to the Savannah Morning News, Davis’ mother divorced his father when Troy was very young. The oldest of five children, Troy was forced to grow up at an early age.

Without positive male role models, many children from single-parent families get into trouble with the law according to statistics on divorcereform.org. Children who grow up without fathers are twice as likely to become juvenile delinquents or teenage mothers. Seventy percent of long term prison inmates, 60 percent of rapists, and 75 percent of juvenile murderers grew up without fathers. Children without fathers are more likely to drop out of school and are 40 times more likely to become victims of child abuse.

By the time children reach their teens or, as with Troy Davis, they are sent to prison or death row, it is often too late. Chuck Colson, himself a former inmate, started Prison Fellowship in 1977 as a ministry to reach out to prisoners and their families. The ministries of Prison Fellowship include Angel Tree, which gives Christmas presents to the children of prison inmates, and Innerchange, a faith-based program for prisoners that focuses on rehabilitation instead of merely punishing prisoners.

Much of the blame for the destruction of the black family unit can ultimately be traced to well-intentioned federal programs. As Walter Williams explained in the Wall Street Journal, “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family.”

The fatherless upbringing of Troy Davis does not excuse his shooting of Michael Cooper, his assault on Larry Young, or his murder of Mark MacPhail, but it does help us to understand why he committed those crimes. More importantly, it gives us clues about how to keep from raising another generation of violent criminals.

The answer to the problem of greater percentages of minorities on death row or incarcerated in our prisons is not to impose racial quotas on the death chamber or to release large numbers of convicted criminals back into society. The way to address the problem of crime by children from single-parent families is to address the problem of single-parent families. Steps must be taken to minimize divorce and promote stable marriages. This is the way to save the next Troy Davis.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/troy-davis-minorities-and-the-death-penalty

Obama and racism

Barack Obama (Elizabeth Cromwell)

It is inevitable that racism would become part of the discussion about Barack Obama’s presidency.  After all, President Obama is the first black president of the United States.  As the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother, he is an authentic African-American and that makes him unique among American presidents. 

Many liberals and Democrats present the flap over President Obama’s birth certificate as a racial issue.  This is partly true, but it is essentially a constitutional question.  Most black candidates would not be subject to the question of whether they were a citizen.  It was Obama’s unique background, and his refusal to provide the long form birth certificate for three years, that fueled the fire of the birther movement.  Further, a white president, Chester A. Arthur, was opposed by a similar birther movement that believed he was ineligible to be president because he was born in Canada.  (He was actually born in Vermont.)   

There are doubtless some Americans who do not want to accept President Obama purely or primarily on the basis of his skin color and ancestry, but these people are obviously a small minority in the United States today.  In an AP poll taken in April 2008, only eight percent of white Americans indicated that they would be uncomfortable with a black president.   

A useful comparison can be made by comparing exit polls for the 2008 presidential election between John McCain and Barack Obama and the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.  In 2004, white voters voted for George Bush by a margin of 58 to 41 percent.  This is almost exactly the same as John McCain’s margin of victory among white voters, 55 to 43 percent.  On the other hand, black voters supported Kerry in 2004, 88 to 11 percent.  In 2008, to no one’s surprise, the number increased markedly when black votes chose Obama by 95 to 4 percent.  Hispanics showed a similar increase.  In 2004, they were split almost evenly with 44 percent voting for Bush and 53 percent for Kerry.  In 2008, Hispanics chose Obama in a landslide with 67 percent voting Democrat and only 31 percent voting for the Republican, McCain.  Results are also similar for Asian voters.  In 2004, Bush won almost half of their vote (44 percent to Kerry’s 56 percent), but McCain lost by a wide margin (62 to 35 percent in 2008). 

In Georgia, the results were similar to national averages.  In 2004, President Bush won 76 percent of whites, leaving John Kerry with 23 percent.  The tally from 2008 is identical with John McCain winning 76 percent and Barack Obama 23 percent.  Among black voters, Kerry won with 88 percent to Bush’s 12 percent in 2004.  In 2008, Obama won 98 percent of Georgia’s black voters leaving John McCain with only 2 percent. 

These statistics would seem to indicate that race did make a difference for Obama, but not the way that most people would have thought.  White voters did not stay away from Obama in large numbers because he was black, but minority voters did flock to him.  Was this because of race?  The fact that the surge was not present among white voters lends credence to that idea.  Does this make minority voters racist?  Some probably are, but other factors, like the heated debate on immigration reform in 2007 undoubtedly pushed some minority voters into the Democratic camp.  Racial pride certainly played a role in boosting the black Democratic vote, which normally heavily favors Democrats anyway. 

As the Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto points out, “One other thing we expect is to start hearing about race again--not from the president himself so much as from his supporters, especially in the media. Here again, the message will be a negative one: not 'Wouldn't it be cool to have a black president?' but, 'If you vote to fire the first black president, you're racist.' "

Herman Cain (Gage Skidmore)

The argument that Obama’s opponents are racist assumes that President Obama was losing support primarily among white voters; however an April 2011 Gallup poll shows that this assumption is incorrect.  Obama’s support is falling among all racial groups.  Among whites his support has fallen from a high of 56 percent in January 2009 to 39%.  His approval has also fallen among Hispanics (54 percent from 73 percent) and blacks (85 percent from 93 percent). 

If Obama’s approval rating is falling among all racial groups then there are only two possibilities.  The first is that all racial groups, including blacks, are prejudiced against President Obama’s racial group.  It is conceivable that blacks and other racial groups would be prejudiced against Obama because of his mixed race heritage, but the statistics from 2008 do not bear this out.  The second possibility is that voters from all racial groups are turning on President Obama because of his job performance and the results of his policies. 

The second possibility is borne out in unemployment statistics.  Unemployment rates have been chronically high since the recession started in 2008 and have hovered just under ten percent since Obama’s inauguration.  Current statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the national unemployment rate is 8.8 percent for March 2011.  When broken down by racial groups, the unemployment rate among whites is 7.9 percent, 15.5 percent for blacks, and 11.3 percent for Hispanics. 

In Georgia, where the unemployment rate has been consistently higher than the national average, the total unemployment rate is 10.0 percent according to the Georgia Department of Labor.   Unemployment for black Georgians was not available on the DOL website, but a Huffington Post article citing statistics from the Economic Policy Institute put black unemployment in Atlanta at 15.7 percent, more than twice the unemployment rate of white Atlantans. 

Given these statistics it is no surprise that minority groups are starting to fall away from Barack Obama.  His policies, including the massive stimulus bill of 2009, have not only not reduced unemployment, but minority groups are demonstrably worse off than whites.  This is true at both the state and national level.

Moreover, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 72 percent of blacks are dissatisfied with the national economic situation even though 51 percent are satisfied with their personal financial situation.  These numbers are consistent with the opinions of both whites and Hispanics.  Further, blacks reported that their three largest economic concerns are the job situation, the rising cost of health care, and rising prices.  These three issues have all been negatively impacted by Obama’s policies.  Health care reform has actually increased the cost of health care and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing is fueling inflation.  If the economy does not recover, Obama’s large margins among minority voters are unlikely to be repeated in 2012.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

Also conflicting with the Democratic charges of racism is the success of Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.  Cain is a Georgia native and a successful businessman and talk radio host.  He is a supporter of the Fair Tax and a staunch conservative.  He also happens to be black.  Cain not only emceed a Tea Party in Douglasville, Ga. last year, he won a straw poll at a Tea Party summit in February 2011 in which he beat out such notables as Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin.  In addition to Cain, the ranks of black conservatives are beginning to grow. 

One of Obama’s lasting legacies may be a seismic shift in racial politics.  The Republican landslide of 2010 saw the first black Republicans elected to Congress in seven years.  Although there were numerous black Republican candidates in 2010, the two who won congressional seats were Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.) in Florida’s 22^nd district and Tim Scott in South Carolina’s first district.  West is an Atlanta native.  As the popularity of Obama and the Democrats continues to slide, there will doubtless be more black conservatives to join them in the halls of Congress as well as state capitols around the country. 

In 2010, there were other black Republicans around the country as well who did not win.  For example, in Colorado’s seventh district, Ryan Frazier lost to incumbent Ed Perlmutter, a white Democrat.  There were no charges of racism on the part of Democrats who voted against Frazier.

Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC)

In a historic moment, Georgian Ashley Bell, a Hall County commissioner, became the first elected black Democratic official to switch parties and become a Republican in December 2010.  According to Red County, Bell said, “I’m joining the Republican Party because I’m a conservative and simply feel more at home as a Republican.  I have worked to make government more efficient and less intrusive in citizens’ lives and plan to continue those efforts as a Republican.”  Bell was followed closely by Andre Walker, a member of Georgia’s Democratic executive committee.

This is fitting since the Republican Party was actually founded on the principles of abolition and racial equality.  For most of the last one hundred fifty years, the Republicans were the party of equality while the Democrats stood for Jim Crow laws, separate but equal, and the Ku Klux Klan.  Jefferson Franklin Long, a black Republican from Knoxville, Ga. became the first black congressmen to speak on the floor of Congress in 1871.  This only changed when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Since then, no Republican candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote.

If conservatives want to win in the future, they should reach out to minorities and point out that conservative policy will benefit us all.  As President Kennedy said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”  Electing conservatives, whether Republican or Democrat, who will keep taxes low and shrink the size of government.  This, in turn, will foster economic growth and lead to national prosperity for all Americans.  Many members of minority groups are business owners and entrepreneurs who would greatly benefit from an administration and congress that are more friendly to business. 

To that end, organizations such as the National Black Republican Association are attempting to reach out to minority voters.  Black conservatives who ran and lost in 2010 may try again in 2012 with the benefit of more experience and name recognition.  There will probably be many new black Republican candidates as well.

Rep. Jefferson Franklin Long (R-GA)

More importantly, conservatives should reach out to minorities because they are not a simply members of a voting bloc.  Minority groups are made up of real individuals who have much to offer and share many of our common goals and the American Dream.  If we work to erase racial distinctions and move toward a world where, as Martin Luther King said, people are judged not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” we will all be richer for it as we realize that the most important diversity is diversity of thought.

To see the author’s perspective on race relations, read “Race, slavery and the Bible”

http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/the-return-of-the-black-republicans"> 

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