What ‘s Open and Closed in a Government Shutdown

The following is a list of what will shut down tomorrow if and agreement is not reached on the debt ceiling… Something between 1.5 and 2 million people will be laid off.Only about 800,000 of that is Federal workers. The bulk of the layoffs will be in the 3 million or so federal contract workers, affecting small, medium and large companies. Estimated costs to taxpayers will be in the $50 million to $100 million a day range, not counting what happens in financial markets.

U.S. Postal Service – OPEN

Mail will continue to be delivered, as the U.S. Postal Service is an independent agency.MORE INFO

National parks – CLOSED

“Effective immediately upon a lapse in appropriations, the National Park Service will take all necessary steps to close and secure national park facilities and grounds.”MORE INFO

Passport offices – PROBABLY OPEN

“Consular operations domestically and overseas will remain 100% operational as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations. However, if a passport agency is located in a government building affected by a lapse in appropriations, the facility may become unsupported.”MORE INFO

National zoo, all Federal Facilities (National Aquarium, National Arboretum, National Archives, Smithsonian, National Gallery of Art    etc) – CLOSED

The Smithsonian-run National Zoo will close, and none of its live animal cameras will be broadcast, including the popular baby panda feed.MORE INFO

Social Security,  Medicare and Medicaid – OPEN

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and unemployment insurance — benefits considered mandatory spending — would be paid. But new applicants might not have their applications processed until the government reopened.MORE INFO

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission      – CLOSED

Export-Import Bank of the United States – CLOSED

Federal Communications Commission – CLOSED

FDIC Office of Inspector General – CLOSED

Federal Election Commission- CLOSED

Federal Labor Relations Authority – CLOSED

Federal Trade Commission – CLOSED

Millennium Challenge Corporation – CLOSED

National Science Foundation – CLOSED

U.S. courts – Open for 10 Days

Civilian military workers (Department of Defense) – CLOSED (About 800,000 will be furloughed)

Commodity Futures Trading Commission – CLOSED

Consumer Product Safety Commission – CLOSED

Department of Education – CLOSED

Department of Interior – CLOSED

Department of Justice – Partially CLOSED

Department of Labor – Partially CLOSED

Department of Commerce Partially CLOSED

Department of Energy – Partially CLOSED

Department of Transportation – Partially CLOSE

Department of Homeland Security – Partially CLOSED

Environmental Protection Agency – Partially CLOSED

Executive Office of the President – Partially CLOSED

General Services Administration – Partially CLOSED

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Partially CLOSED

Treasury – Partially CLOSED

Small Business Administration – Partially CLOSED

Public schools – OPEN

While public schools will remain open, the U.S. Education Department will stop most of its operations. Among other things, payment of Pell Grants and Direct Student Loans could be delayed.MORE INFO

Government Contractors – Many Closed

Anyone with a T&M type contract will not be able to do work for the gvernment, Whether the companies decide to furlough workers is up to them. Even if a contract is fully funded, contractor employees might be in a jam if they work in a federal building that is closed or with federal workers who are furloughed because of the shutdown.MORE INFO

U.S. Capitol – CLOSED

Public tours of the U.S. Capitol will be suspended in the event of a government shutdown.MORE INFO

Federal courts – OPEN

According to Judge John D. Bates, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, federal courts could continue to operate for approximately two weeks with reserve funds.MORE INFO

Immigration procedures – PROBABLY OPEN

The Department of Homeland Security will no longer operate its E-Verify program, which means that businesses will not be able to check on the legal immigration status of prospective employees during the shutdown. Other fee-based immigration services should continue.MORE INFO

WIC program – CLOSED

The WIC program, which provides food to 8.9 million low-income women and children, would be out of money, its supporters say.MORE INFO

VA disability claims – CLOSED

All VA medical facilities would remain open for inpatient and outpatient care, but benefits programs overseen by the VA would probably be affected by a shutdown.MORE INFO

Federal prisons – OPEN

Federal prisons would be staffed. MORE INFO

SNAP – OPEN for 30 days

USDA said funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — formerly known as food stamps — will continue in October under authority granted by the 2009 stimulus bill.MORE INFO

Airports – OPEN

Air traffic controllers and baggage screeners are considered essential, so planes will fly.MORE INFO

IRS – PROBABLY CLOSED

Tax filers facing an Oct. 15 deadline would find the phone lines at the Internal Revenue Service dead.MORE INFO

Food inspectors – OPEN

Meat and poultry inspectors will keep working.MORE INFO

Patent and Trademark Office – OPEN

The Department of Commerce will maintain patent and trademark application processing during the shutdown.MORE INFO

Amtrak – OPEN

Amtrak officials have said trains will continue to run.MORE INFO

Congressional Budget Office – CLOSED

Merit Systems Protection Board – CLOSED

 

 

Motive Emerges in Pastor Shooting

A motive has emerged as the cause of the Pastor hooting in Lake Charles, Louisiana… Turns out the Reverend and the shooter’s (Woodrow Cary) wife had been in some sort of sexual relationship. It is unclear at this time whether that relationship was voluntary on her part.

Woodrow Cary, the accused shooter of Pastor Ronald J Harris

Sexual relationship between pastor, gunman’s wife being investigated as motive for shooting

Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Tony Mancuso addressed the media today regarding the case of a pastor who was shot and killed in front of his congregation.

“This is a shooting that took place in front of 60 some people, so it’s going to take time to come to a conclusion,” he said. “It will not just take days but several weeks to get to the truth and the bottom of this.”

Sheriff Mancuso explained that the high-profile and public nature of this crime has led to a number of rumors and interest from the media. He also noted that those rumors prompted a phone call from the FBI.

“There’s a lot of speculation as to what took place and the motive in this case and I’m going to tell you that we are going to proceed with great caution in this investigation,” he said. “You have so many rumors going on that it sometimes clouds the water for our investigation.”

The incident took place on Friday, Sept. 27 at the Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center. Woodrow Karey, Jr., 53, walked into the church and shot Pastor Ronald J. Harris, Sr., twice. He then fled the scene and called law enforcement shortly thereafter.

“It’s my understanding that they were great friends at some point,” Sheriff Mancuso explained. “I’m sure we’re going to get responses from both sides saying that they are great people.”

The possible motive investigators are currently working to confirm is that Pastor Harris was involved in some sort of sexual relationship with Karey’s wife.

“[A week before the actual shooting, Karey] stated that he had received some inappropriate images from his wife to Pastor Harris,” Sheriff Mancuso said. “Then, evidently, he confronted his wife and she filed a rape charge against Pastor Harris on Wednesday, September 25.”

Deputies were unable to interview Pastor Harris regarding the rape allegation before he was shot and killed on Friday.

“That’s where we are in this investigation,” he said. “At this time the charges against Mr. Karey are appropriate based on the information we have.”

Karey is being held in the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center for Second-Degree Murder. His bond was set at $1 million.

 

Pastor Shot…During Sermon

Yeah…There is something wrong in this country…

And it isn’t just the medically “crazy” people.

When you were talking about “Some of our Church Members,,,” You weren’t talking about me, were you Rev?

Pastor Ronald J. Harris Sr. Shot, Killed While Preaching During Church Service In Lake Charles Louisiana

A Louisiana pastor was fatally shot as he preached to a crowd of more than 60 during a revival service Friday night, and a suspect has been arrested, law enforcement officials said.

The shooting occurred about 8:20 p.m. Friday at Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center in Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kim Myers said Saturday. Sixty-five people were inside at the time, including the victim’s wife, Chief Deputy Stitch Guillory said.

Deputies have no information on a motive or on whether the two men knew each other, Myers said.

A gunman walked into the church and shot Pastor Ronald J. Harris Sr. “as he was preaching,” Myers said. Harris was pronounced dead at the scene.

Woodrow Karey, 53, of Lake Charles is charged with second-degree murder and was held in the parish jail Saturday, Myers said. Meyers said Karey’s bond has been set at $1 million.

The gunman fled the church, but Myers said Karey called the Sheriff’s Office and surrendered without incident.

Myers added Saturday that deputies were busy “interviewing everybody who was there at the church.”

Family members who answered the telephone Saturday at the Harris home in Lake Charles said there would be no comment. There was no answer at a telephone listing for Karey or at Tabernacle of Praise.

 

SYG In Florida Only Applies to Some People

Different Laws for different folks in Florida…

Fresh on the tail of the release of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin comes this travesty. Where is the NRA? Where are the legions of conservative whites who only want to defend the law? This woman didn’t kill anyone – yet is sentenced to 20 years in jail?

You betcha…

Marissa Alexander, Woman Sentenced To 20 Years For Firing Warning Shot, Gets New Trial

A Florida woman serving 20 years in prison for firing a shot at her estranged husband during an argument will get a new trial, though she will not be able to invoke a “stand your ground” defense, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The case of Marissa Alexander, a Jacksonville mother of three, has been used by critics of Florida’s “stand your ground” law and mandatory minimum sentences to argue that the state’s justice system is skewed against defendants who are black.

The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that Alexander deserves a new trial because the trial judge handling her case did not properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed to prove self-defense.

The ruling, written by Judge Robert Benton, said the instructions constituted a “fundamental error” and required Alexander to prove self-defense “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But the court also made it clear in its ruling that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state’s “stand your ground” law as a way to defend her actions. That law generally removes people’s duty to retreat in the face of possible danger and allows them to use of deadly force if they believe their lives are in danger.

Faith Gay, one of the attorneys representing the 33-year-old Alexander, said she was grateful for the “thorough consideration” provided by the appeals court.

“We are looking forward to taking the case back to trial,” Gay said.

Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her. Nobody was hurt, but the judge in the case said he was bound by state law to sentence her to 20 years in prison after she was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Alexander has maintained that the shot fired was a warning shot.

The sentencing sparked criticism from the local NAACP chapter and the district’s African-American congresswoman, who said blacks more often are incarcerated for long periods because of overzealous prosecutors and judges bound by mandatory minimum sentences.

State Attorney Angela Corey, who oversaw the prosecution of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, has stood by the handling of Alexander’s case. Corey said she believes that Alexander aimed the gun at the man and his two sons, and that the bullet she fired could have ricocheted and hit any of them.

Jackelyn Barnard, a spokeswoman for Corey, said that the conviction was reversed on a legal technicality and that the office was gratified that the “stand your ground” ruling was upheld.

Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, called the ruling a “welcome development in a case that represents the double standards in our justice system.”

“From the streets to the courthouse, race continues to influence the judicial process, and it certainly seemed to have played a role here,” Jealous said in a statement issued by the civil rights organization.

The state’s “10-20-life” law was implemented in 1999 and credited with helping to lower the violent crime rate. Anyone who shows a gun in the commission of certain felonies gets an automatic 10 years in prison. Fire the gun, and it’s an automatic 20 years. Shoot and wound someone, and it’s 25 years to life.

On Aug. 1, 2010, Alexander was working for a payroll software company. She was estranged from her husband, Rico Gray, and had a restraining order against him, even though they’d had a baby together just nine days earlier. Thinking he was gone, she went to their former home to retrieve the rest of her clothes, family members said.

An argument ensued, and Alexander said she feared for her life when she went out to her vehicle to get the gun she legally owned. She came back inside and ended up firing a shot into the wall, which ricocheted into the ceiling.

Gray testified that he saw Alexander point the gun at him and looked away before she fired the shot. He claimed that she was the aggressor, and that he had begged her to put away the weapon.

The judge threw out Alexander’s “stand your ground” self-defense claim, noting that she could have run out of the house to escape her husband but instead got the gun and went back inside. Alexander rejected a plea deal that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence and chose to go to trial. A jury deliberated 12 minutes before convicting her.

Alexander was also charged with domestic battery four months after the shooting in another assault on Gray. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced to time served.

Supporters of Alexander have asked Gov. Rick Scott to pardon Alexander, but her case has not yet been taken by the state’s clemency board.

 

The Redskins, Leroy Jackson…And Jack Johnson

For those unfamiliar with sports history, Jack Johnson was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion around the turn of the last century. His life and experiences were chronicled in a movie – “The Great White Hope”.

Unable to find anyone who could defeat Johnson, he was jailed for his relationship with a white woman.

Now, allegations have surfaced that the Washington Redskins, an NFL Football team which was the last in the NFL to bring on black players, because of then owner George Preston Marshall’s racism – fired one of their first black payers for the same “crime”.

Now, to be honest – growing up in the Washington area, during the time before the Redskins recruited Bobby Mitchell – most black folks rooted for and followed the Baltimore Colts with Johnny Unitas, and running back Lenny Moore. while the team had several black players before Bobby Mitchell, it was the thrilling combination of Sonny Jurgensen’s long “bombs” to Mitchell which turned things around.

Leroy Jackson, Former NFL Player, Cut For Getting Caught With White Woman: Nephew

A relative of a former NFL player who was a pioneer for civil rights in sports made a bombshell allegation.

David Irons, the nephew of former Redskins running back Leroy Jackson told Yahoo Sports that his uncle was cut from the team “because they caught him in a hotel room with a white woman.”

“Can you believe that?” Irons said, “They cut him for something that’s so common today. It’s unreal.”

In the Yahoo Sports interview, Jackson seemed to confirm Irons’ claim.

When asked why he was cut, Jackson said, “I think it probably was about a woman… interracial things and not being able to hold onto the ball.”

Jackson made history for being one of the first black players to be drafted for the Washington Redskins. While other teams in the NFL integrated much earlier, the Redskins held out until 1962. Yahoo Sports points out that owner George Preston Marshall was dead-set against hiring any black players until the Kennedy’s administration pressured them to do so.

Jackson wasn’t the first black player drafted, but he was the first to actually play a game.

The NFL has a long history of racism that extends far beyond the Redskins. James Harris, the first black quarterback in the NFL, described the alienation and humiliation he suffered. In once instance, he told 60 Minutes, all of his fellow teammates were put up in a hotel– except for him. He stayed at a YMCA and was asked to clean the equipment.

Today, out of 32 teams, only nine havestarting quarterbacks who are black.

Former Redskins Running Back, Leroy Jackson

 

The Last Colony (Washington, DC) Vows to Ignore Shutdown

Washington DC is unique among all principalities in the United States in that Congress – specifically the House – must approve all spending for the city. This means, if there is a Government shutdown the non-emergency city services would be shut down as well. This is particularly galling to DC Residents as it is their tax money paid to the city which operates the government, not Federal monies as is not uncommon in the rest of the country. So Congress has the authority to tell the DC Government how to spend it’s own tax money…

This has led to any umber of disasters as the Republican Congress has forced the city to adopt their confederate policies, such as school vouchers and limits on health care.

The Libraries are toast, too!

So…What happens if there is a shutdown in DC?

1. Parks, museums, and the Zoo closed: All Smithsonian museums, federal monuments, the National Zoo, and public facilities in National Parks like Rock Creek Park would be closed. Because tourists probably won’t realize it in advance, they’ll probably flood downtown Starbuckses and Potbellies with bored out-of-towners.

2. Libraries and recreation centers dark: All D.C. libraries and recreation centers will be closed, giving kids fewer places to hang out after school, which means who knows what kinds of trouble.

3. Department of Public Works off duty: Trash collection would be suspended for a week, as well as street sweeping, which this time of year means some very clogged drains.

4. Circulator offline: While the Metro would stay open and WMATA buses would keep running, D.C.’s super-convenient Circulator buses would have to stay in the garage.

5. Permit offices and the DMV shut: The Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs are closed, meaning even longer lines for licenses, permits, and car registrations when the shutdown eventually ends.

6. No parking enforcement: Okay, you probably don’t mind that so much, but it does cost the city money and could lead to shortfalls down the road.

7. University of the District of Columbia shuttered: You might not be the one with your academic year interrupted, but at least sympathize with the poor students who’ll likely have to make up the class time later.

8. Potential loss of city equipment and buildings: The city has a master lease on pieces of equipment like traffic lights, computers, and public safety vehicles, as well as a contractual agreement to use facilities like the Unified Communications Center, which controls all the city’s emergency systems — as long as payments are made on time. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton warns that they could be repossessed if the city lacks the budget authority to do so. And in any case, ongoing worries about the city’s ability to use its own money could make it more expensive to borrow, which the city has to do every year for capital expenditures.

Yeah…This stops, too!

Mayor Gray designates all of District government ‘essential’ to avoid shutdown

Mayor Vincent C. Gray moved Wednesday to designate the entirety of the District government as “essential to the protection of public safety, health, and property,” in a bid to allow city services to continue during a federal shutdown.

Gray announced his position in a letter to the federal Office of Management and Budget, which is handling preparations for a shutdown that could take place if congressional leaders fail to reach an accord by Oct. 1.

“I am writing to inform you that I have determined that all operations of the government of the District of Columbia are ‘excepted’ activities essential to the protection of public safety, health, and property and therefore will continue to be performed during a lapse in appropriations,” the mayor wrote to budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

Gray’s posture is unprecedented for the District government, whose budget comes largely from locally raised taxes and is set by locally elected officials but is ultimately appropriated by Congress. During past shutdowns, in keeping with federal guidance, the city has designated public safety and some other crucial functions as exempt from shutdown but curtailed many city services, including libraries, recreation centers and trash pickup.

The letter comes a day after Gray and D.C. Council members openly debated ways to defy the federal shutdown and keep the city government operating.

On the good side – these guys are out of work!

It is unclear how President Obama’s budget office will respond to Gray’s broad definition of “essential.” Requests for comment made to the agency Tuesday and Wednesday have gone unreturned.

In a statement issued with the letter, Gray said it is “ridiculous” that the District “cannot spend its residents’ own local tax dollars to provide them the services they’ve paid for without Congressional approval.”

“Congress can’t even get its own fiscal house in order; they should be taking lessons from us rather than imposing needless suffering on us,” he said. “I will not allow the safety and well-being of District residents to be compromised by Congress’s dysfunction.”

 

A Long Overdue Change At U of Alabama

When Libertarians say they support private organizations making their own choices of whom to associate with…

This is what they really mean.

I really don’t see where the black women in this instance needed any validation whatsoever from a white Sorority…And my departed mother who was a lifetime AKA would be truly upset at losing these women to another Sorority (there was a major family “crisis” when one of her grand-nieces pledged Delta!)…

But, overall – in the long term…This is a good thing.

One would have hoped, however – that sans the social pressure from fellow students…The Sorors had the intelligence and morality to have figured this out on their own.

A Turnabout at Traditionally White Sororities, in Nine Days at Alabama

Nine days after the University of Alabama’s campus newspaper detailed chronic racial discrimination within the campus’s Greek system, the university’s president said on Friday that six minority students had accepted offers of admission to traditionally white sororities.

The announcement marked the first time since 2003 that those organizations said they had added minority students to their memberships. Other new minority members could follow, said the president, Judy L. Bonner.

“I am confident that we will achieve our objective of a Greek system that is inclusive, accessible and welcoming to students of all races and ethnicities,” Dr. Bonner said in a videotaped statement. “We will not tolerate anything less.”

Dr. Bonner said the sororities had extended 72 bids this week to students, including 11 black women.

By Friday afternoon, six women who are minorities had agreed to join the sororities, including Halle Lindsay, who accepted an offer of admission from the Alpha Gamma Delta chapter in Tuscaloosa.

“This is all so surreal and exciting,” Ms. Lindsay wrote on her Twitter account. “I love my sisters already and happy to be an Alpha Gam!”

The national headquarters of Alpha Gamma Delta did not respond to a request for comment.

News of the admissions capped a tumultuous week for the university, the site of a Wednesday demonstration by hundreds of students and faculty members who demanded an end to long-running racial biases on the campus.

In marching to the Rose Administration Building, the protesters recalled the actions of Gov. George Wallace, who 50 years ago tried to bar African-American students from enrolling at the university, where blacks now make up more than 12 percent of the student body.

Although segregation in Alabama’s Greek system had been the subject of periodic anger and conversations through the years, the issue resurfaced last week when The Crimson White published an interview with a woman who described the conduct inside the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house during August’s recruitment process.

According to the woman, Melanie Gotz, the sorority’s alumnae forbade current students from offering bids to two black women, one of them the stepgranddaughter of a member of Alabama’s board of trustees.

After days of escalating pressure, Dr. Bonner, in an abrupt reversal of the university’s longstanding contention that the privately run Greek organizations should fashion their own membership standards, ordered the sororities to engage in a protracted recruitment process.

On Friday, she said that step was “already yielding positive results,” and she expected the sororities to continue to broaden their membership throughout the academic year.

 

Racism, Conservatism, Slavery, and the South

A long term criticism of the Congressional Black Caucus is that they have a seeming inability to move past the 60’s Civil Rights struggle. Since many of their districts exist because of racial gerrymandering by Republicans to produce reliably white, Republican districts by concentrating black and Minority voters – about half of the districts held by black Congressmen are in the South. The reverse Great Migration of black folks back to the South has resulted in the majority of black folks in the United States being located in the region.

African-American Population Percentage by County US in 2000 Census

Growing up and living in an extremely diverse region, Northern Virginia – where black professionals are common, leads to a view of the status of race relations, and the relationships between races is decidedly different from that of folks from the Deep-South. Folks from the Deep-South are more likely to see racism as a major issue. The flip answer has been that such belief is based on historical experience and not modern.

Turns out the flip answer, as usual… is wrong.

Former Slavery Strongholds Harbor Majority Of Nation’s Racists, Study Shows  – What they found: That a “slavery effect” persists among white Southerners who currently live in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy thrived from the late 18th century into the 20th century. Residents of those counties are much more likely today to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves; are more likely to identify as Republican; and are more likely to express opposition to policies like affirmative action, the study authors concluded.

Conservatism is racism.

Slaves were concentrated in counties where cotton thrived, as shown in the above map based on the 1860 census. White Southerners in these same areas today express more racial resentment and are more likely to be Republican and oppose affirmative action, than other Southerners.

Legacy of Slavery Still Fuels Anti-Black Attitudes in the Deep South

Although slavery was abolished 150 years ago, its political legacy is alive and well, according to researchers who performed a new county-by-county analysis of census data and opinion polls of more than 39,000 southern whites.

The team of political scientists found that white Southerners who live today in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy dominated are much more likely to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves. Residents of these former slavery strongholds are also more likely to identify as Republican and to express opposition to race-related policies such as affirmative action.

Conducted by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen from the University of Rochester, the research is believed to be the first to demonstrate quantitatively the lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South. The findings hold even when other dynamics often associated with racial animosity are factored in, such as present day concentrations of African Americans in an area, or whether an area is urban or rural.

“Slavery does not explain all forms of current day racism,” says Acharya. “But the data clearly demonstrates that the legacy of the plantation economy and its reliance on the forced labor of African Americans continues to exacerbate racial bias in the Deep South.”

The findings are reported in a working paper that will be presented for the first time at the Politics of Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity Consortium at the University of California at Riverside on Sept. 27.

The study looked at data from 93 percent of the 1,344 Southern counties in the Cotton Belt—the crescent-shaped band where plantations flourished from the late 18th century into the 20th century. The researchers found that a 20 percent increase in the percentage of slaves in a county’s pre-Civil War population is associated with a 3 percent decrease in whites who identify as Democrats today and a 2.4 percent decrease in the number of whites who support affirmative action.

The “slavery effect” accounts for an up to 15 percentage point difference in party affiliation today; about 30 percent of whites in former slave plantation regions report being Democrats, compared to 40 to 45 percent white Democrats in counties that had less than 3 percent slaves, according to the authors. Despite the region’s similarity in culture and its shared history of legalized slavery and Jim Crow laws, “the South is not monolithic,” says Blackwell.

Their analysis shows that without slavery, the South today might look fairly similar politically to the North. The authors compared counties in the South in which slaves were rare—less than 3 percent of the population—with counties in the North that were matched by geography, farm value per capita, and total county population. The result? There is little difference in political views today among residents in the two regions.

“In political circles, the South’s political conservatism is often credited to ‘Southern exceptionalism,'” says Blackwell. “But the data shows that such modern-day political differences primarily rise from the historical presence of many slaves.”

But how is it possible that an institution so long outlawed continues to influence views in the 21st century? The authors point to both economic and cultural explanations. Although slavery was banned, the economic incentives to exploit former slaves persisted well into the 20th century. “Before mechanization, cotton was not really economically viable without massive amounts of cheap labor,” explains Sen. After the Civil War, southern landowners resorted to racial violence and Jim Crow laws to coerce black field hands, depress wages, and tie tenant farmer to plantations.

“Whereas slavery only required a majority of (powerful) whites in the state to support it, widespread repression and political violence required the support and involvement of entire communities,” the authors write.

Again comparing the county-by-county data, the researchers found evidence of the relationship between racial violence and economics in the historical record of lynchings. Between 1882 and 1930, lynching rates were not uniform across the South, but instead were highest where cotton was king; a 10 percent increase in a county’s slave population in 1860 was associated with a rise of 1.86 lynchings per 100,000 blacks. “For the average Southern county, this would represent a 20 percent increase in the rate of lynchings during this time period,” says Blackwell.

By the time economic incentives to coerce black labor subsided with the introduction of machinery to harvest cotton in the 1930s, anti-black sentiment was culturally entrenched among local whites, the authors write. Those views have simply been passed down, argue the authors, citing extensive research showing that children often inherit the political attitudes of their parents and peers.

The data, says Sen, points to the importance of institutional and historical legacy when understanding political views. Most quantitative studies of voters rely on contemporary influences, such as education, income, or the degree of urbanity. The findings are also in line with research on the lingering economic effects of slavery. Studies have shown that former slave populations in Africa, South and Central America, and the United States continue to experience disparity in income, school enrollment, and vaccinations.

For the study, the authors drew on publically available data, including the 1860 census and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large representative survey of American adults. No external funding was required for the analysis.

 

The Invisible Man Banned in North Carolina…

The long standing problem with conservatism is the belief that striking a bell from the right will stop if from ringing. If it rings, the solution to achieve the desired goal of striking the bell without it ringing is to strike it further from the right.

There are obviously some folks on the school board down there in North Carolina who haven’t enjoyed the benefit of an education.

Invisible Man Banned: Ralph Ellison’s Landmark Novel Banned From School Libraries

A lack of “literary value” has apparently left Ralph Ellison’s landmark 1952 novel, Invisible Man banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C., the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reports.

According to the Tribune, a parent of an eleventh grader wrote the school district expressing her disapproval of the book’s availability to students stating:

The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing his individual experiences and his feelings about the events portrayed in his life. This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers. You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.As the school district’s policy requires, the parent’s complaints lead to votes on the school and district levels. Both held that the book should remain available to students in the library. However, in a 5-2 vote, the school board voted to ban the book, with one board member, Gary Mason, stating, “I didn’t find any literary value.”

Mason’s blunt assessment however, runs counter to decades of intellectual criticism of the novel, which won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction, beating out Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

In 1995, writing for the New York Times, Roger Rosenblatt praised the novel as a masterpiece.

“Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” which won the National Book Award in 1953, was instantly recognized as a masterpiece, a novel that captured the grim realities of racial discrimination as no book had, ” Rosenblatt wrote. “Its reputation grew as Ellison retreated into a mythic literary silence that made his one achievement definitive.”

Including the book in its list of 100 Best English Language Novels since 1923, Time literary critic Lev Grossman also expressed great admiration for Ellison’s work.

“Evenhandedly exposing the hypocrisies and stereotypes of all comers, Invisible Man is far more than a race novel, or even a bildungsroman. It’s the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century.”

Still, this kind of high praise wasn’t enough to prevent the book from being banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C.

 

Stand Your Moron! Road Rage Incident With CCW Gun Holders

Sometimes, there is justice in the world…

All on 3 now…1..2…

Drivers Shoot Each Other Dead in Road Rage Spat

Two people died Wednesday night after shooting each other following an apparent road rage incident in Ionia.

“In follow up to yesterday’s shooting, the two deceased men are James Pullum, 43, and Robert Taylor, 56, both of Ionia,” according to the Ionia Department of Public Safety Facebook page Thursday morning.

The men were pronounced dead at Sparrow Ionia Hospital later in the evening.

The incident happened just before 7 p.m. in the parking lot of the Wood’s Wonder Wand car wash, 426 S. Steele St. The men apparently got out of their vehicles and began arguing. Both men eventually took out their guns and opened fire.

Witnesses said they heard about seven or eight gunshots.

Ionia Department of Public Safety Director Troy Thomas told 24 Hour News 8 both men had valid concealed carry licenses.

Photos: Police investigate apparent road rage deaths

“I think it’s crazy that a small town has to have two people die,” witness Allen Daggett, who arrived at the scene just as first responders did, said Wednesday night. “I feel sorry for the people that died. I feel sorry for the families and everyone’s [who is] acquainted with them,” he said.

Daggett told 24 Hour News 8 he saw a good Samaritan from a nearby business run to the scene to try to help. He said the man had to kick guns out of the way to begin CPR on the drivers.

“I watch [the first responders] pick one guy up and take him to the hospital,” said Daggett. “[They] did CPR on the guy for 45 minutes and the guy I doubt was alive at the time.”

At least one handgun remained in between the vehicles late Wednesday night as police investigated.

Another witness, who was at the Family Video across the street from the shooting, told 24 Hour News 8 she heard a sound like firecrackers and then screaming. She said emergency crews, including two ambulances, arrived a short time later.

A Michigan State Police mobile crime lab arrived around 11 p.m. at the scene, which was still very active.

 

Foreign Adoption of American Children

Usually people think of Americans adopting children from other parts of the world. Increasingly…

It’s the other way around.

Seventy Dutch families who adopted U.S. kids gather for an annual Fathers Day picnic in June. The majority of the children being adopted are African American.

Overseas adoptions rise — for black American children

 Elisa van Meurs grew up with a Polish au pair, speaks fluent Dutch and English and loves horseback riding — her favorite horse is called Kiki but she also rides Pippi Longstocking, James Bond, and Robin Hood.

She plays tennis and ice hockey, and in the summer likes visiting her grandmother in the Swiss Alps.

“It’s really nice to go there because you can walk in the mountains and you can mountain bike … you can see Edelweiss sometimes,” said the 13-year-old, referring to the famous mountain flower that blooms above the tree line.

It’s a privileged life unlike that of her birth mother, a woman of African American descent from Indianapolis who had her first child at age 15. Her American family is “really nice but they don’t have a lot of money to do stuff,” said Elisa, who met her birth mother, and two siblings in 2011. “They were not so rich.”

Elisa van Meurs with her adoptive parents Bart and Heleene van Meurs on vacation in Switzerland.

While the number of international adoptions is plummeting — largely over questions surrounding the origin of children put up for adoption in developing countries — there is one nation from which parents abroad can adopt a healthy infant in a relatively short time whose family history and medical background is unclouded by doubt: The United States.

“I thought it was so strange. I’m here in Holland and they’re telling me I can get a baby” from the U.S., recalled Elisa’s father, Bart van Meurs, who originally planned to adopt from China or Colombia but held little hope of receiving an infant. “This can’t be true.” But less than 18 months later, van Meurs and his wife Heleene were at an Indiana hospital holding four-day-old Elisa.

While the typical tale of international adoption is U.S. families adopting a child from abroad, foreign families like the van Meurs adopt scores of U.S. children each year. The numbers are far lower than the thousands of overseas children adopted each year by U.S. families, but over the past decade the number of U.S. children adopted by foreign parents has been steadily rising — and almost all of the children are of African American descent like Elisa, say attorneys who facilitate international adoptions.

U.S. laws that allow birth mothers to choose the adoptive family of their children feed that growth, as some prefer to see their kids grow up in an exotic overseas locale rather than the U.S., experts say.

“A family from Indiana might talk about taking their child on vacation to Florida, to Disneyworld. A Dutch family talks about taking their child on vacation to the south of France or the Alps,” said Steven Kirsh of Kirsh & Kirsh, an Indianapolis law firm that has helped place hundreds of children with families in Europe.

Escape from racism

When Susan, a Florida resident, chose to place her son for adoption in 2006, the social worker gave her three binders with information about three prospective families. But she only needed to see the first binder of a couple from the Netherlands to make her decision. “If my mother had lived, she’d look just like (the prospective Dutch mother),” recalled the 37 year old, who asked that her last name not be used. Her own mother died when she was two months old.

Susan also wanted her son to grow up far away from the life she knew. She was a 30-year-old prostitute addicted to crack beginning a prison sentence when she learned she was pregnant. She did not know whether the child’s father was a man who raped her “for hours” or a drug dealer whom she “had done something with” one time, she said. But both men were African American, and she believed the child would face discrimination growing up in the United States.

“There’s too much prejudice over here. The white people are going to hate him because he’s half black, and the majority of black people are going to hate on him because he’s half white,” said Susan, who is Caucasian. “And then he’ll have to do extra things to prove what kind of a Negro he is, and extra things to prove what kind of a honky he is and I don’t want that. I did not want that for my kid.”

Even her own daughter, then aged 11, said “she would never accept that n***** child.”

Susan is not alone, says Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute and author of “Adoption Nation.” Many birth mothers have a perception that their black or mixed-race children will not face the same race issues in the Netherlands as in the United States.

“In the United States, as much as Americans want to believe it’s not true, we are still a country where there is a least some degree of racial prejudice. The birth mothers’ perception of Holland, in particular, was that the same was not true in Holland. There’s that feeling that maybe we can escape those issues if (the child is) somewhere else.”

This past June on Father’s Day, about 70 Dutch families who have adopted children from the U.S. gathered at a park outside Amsterdam. The picnic is a time for the children to celebrate their American heritage: “The kids are dressed with a red, white and blue beret in her hair, if it’s a girl, (or) they’re wearing New York Yankees t-shirts,” said Michael Goldstein, a New York attorney who facilitated the adoptions of the picnic attendees.

Among the families were Marielle van den Biggelaar, a stay-at-home mom and her husband, Marnix, a sales manager for a women’s clothing brand, who adopted their two children, Eva, four, and two-year-old Norbert as babies from Florida and New York, respectively. “For the kids it’s really important to see that they’re not alone and that all these kids have the same history, and they’re all adopted and they’re all from the same country,” Marielle said.

“It’s really nice to see them all together and to talk to each other about experiences — with their hair and with their skin — and they’re all the same people with the same mindset, so it’s really fun for the kids and for us, as well.”

The couple encourages their children to embrace their American origins, celebrating Thanksgiving each year with other families who adopted children from the United States. “We try to tell them about their culture and about their background,” said Marielle, who decided to adopt after years of unsuccessful fertility treatment. “We would love them to (start speaking) English when they’re really young because if they want to go back (to America) and if they want to see where they’re born, it would be nice if they can speak to … their parents if they are going to meet them.”

Their children stand out in Het Gooi, a village about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Amsterdam. “They’re famous here, where we live, because it’s a really white society,” Marielle said…. (more)

 

 

The New Miss America…And Predictable Racism

Go to any conservative network publication and read the comments when the subject of race comes up…

And you will invariably see a bunch of racism. Some sites like the Old Free Republic site were literal sewers of white racists spewing forth all kinds of vitriol and hate.

white Supremacist organization regularly troll such sites, because it is a rich target area for new recruits.

And it really doesn’t matter whether the site is Brietbart or the Wall Street Journal. Not being “PC” has long been an excuse to tolerate and support racism and racist talk.

Freed from the blowback from others in normal face to face social commerce, the hidden bigots feel free, and invincible to consequence on the Internet.

Obviously anyone claiming that racism is no longer a problem in America…doesn’t own a computer.

The most recent occasion for the race baiters to come out was the Miss America contest where an Indian-American, Nina Davuluri won the contest.

Nina is a knockout by any non-conservative heterosexual male’s standards (except maybe you guys who like them extra “plump” women)…

Miss America: Why Racism Thrives Online

Some things evolve and some things don’t. Such is the case with this weekend’s wins of Nina Davuluri and Floyd Mayweather and the tsunami of racism that overtook Twitter in response.

Ladies first. Nina Davuluri is the second consecutive New Yorker to be crowned Miss America and the first Indian-American to win the title. Though Davuluri’s platform was “Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency,” like all of us she is more than the sum of her racial and ethnic identities.

According to CNN, “the 24-year-old Fayetteville, New York, native was on the dean’s list and earned the Michigan Merit Award and National Honor Society nods while studying at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science.” Her goal is to become a physician. Davuluri plans to invest her time as Miss America working with the U.S. Department of Education as an advocate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These are fields where women, regardless of racial or ethnic background, are sorely underrepresented.

Davuluri’s feel-good story took a racist turn in the Twitterverse, where some were outraged by the fact that 2014’s Miss America isn’t white. As in 2010, when the Lebanese-American beauty queen Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA, racism was expressed not just explicitly in the form of tweets, but also in the level of ignorance those tweets exposed. For example, Jezebel reports that some tweeps seemed confused over whether the new Miss America was Indian-American, Arab, Muslim or Latina. They could all agree, however, that she didn’t deserve the title based on whom they thought she was.

Something similar happened to African-American boxer Floyd Mayweather after he won Saturday night’s fight against Mexican fighter Canelo Alvarez. Mayweather first caused a stir on Twitter when he entered the ring alongside Lil’ Wayne and Justin Bieber. Many wondered whether Mayweather and his team accessorized with the stars because of their social media reach into different racial communities. But that meme was nothing compared with the outpouring of racist epithets tweeps typed in response to Mayweather’s amazing win. According to a report from Latino Rebels, online bigots concluded that Mayweather didn’t win because of his talent, skill and training. Rather, he won because he is black and that’s definitely not a characteristic to be praised, from a racist point of view.

Although reports are right to highlight and challenge these expressions of online racism, particularly in this weekend’s cases, the tone of surprise is a bit misleading.  Ebony’s Jamilah Lemieux had said it seems as if “the Internet just met the Internet” in recent weeks and that by now we shouldn’t be shocked by online racism. Lemieux is right. Online racism is entirely consistent with offline racism and demographic shifts.

For instance, the number of U.S. hate groups has more than doubled in the last 10 years, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, up to 1,007 active hate groups in the United States in 2012. Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, has said that thousands of hate websites are live, “more than we can possibly keep track of.” Survey research indicates that the rise in active hate groups is correlated with census projections stating that white people will no longer be the U.S. racial majority by 2042. The hate surges online when achievements by people of color are noted and interpreted as taking away something to which a white person “should be” entitled. So people like Davuluri and Mayweather become targets because they represent demographic change and new opportunities for people of color, while challenging stereotypes about who Americans are and what they can achieve.

Racist ignorance in virtual spaces may often be misspelled and factually incorrect, but it should be taken seriously because its effects on the recipient can be powerful. According to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health by Dr. Brendesha Tynes, a professor of Education at USC, of 264 Midwestern high school students, approximately 20 percent of whites, 29 percent of blacks and 42 percent of “other” or multiple races reported being personally subjected to racial epithets or other discrimination online. These young people were more likely to become depressed, anxious and, possibly, less successful academically. What’s more is the effect on race talk in general. The danger of online racism is that people seem to get away with it and public disapproval in the form of reports like this one do not appear to have the same effect in lessening racist speech as disapproval does in face-to-face encounters. For evidence of this, check out the many YouTube testimonials from online gamers via the Gambit Hate Speech Project by MIT-Singapore Game Lab.

The Internet we have is not the safe space it was promised to be. But the good news is that we can do something about it. As digital citizens we can make the Internet safer. We can engage in self-reflection and deal with criticism from others in a way that makes real race talk possible. That’s means fighting racism with truth about who we are and how the world is really changing. After all, racism 2.0 is not a foregone conclusion. We, the people, have made it seem that way. And we have the power to make it different.

As to the tattooed Miss Kansas, who lost – Miss America is about beauty and to a lesser extent class, talent, and intelligence…

Not about looking trashy by screwing up that beauty covering yourself in ink.

 

Bill Cosby…Again

Not sure how Bill got conned into appearing on Don Lemon’s show (senility?), but here he is. The first clip is about the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Church Bombing. And on a day like today, where we suffered through yet another of the seemingly weekly mass murders by gun at the Navy Yard in Washington DC – It’s a good time to reflect…

Now the second clip is the Cosby of a few years ago. The money line for conservatives to misinterpret what is saying is “No-groes” which he spouts at the 5 minute mark.

Now, Cosby makes a very good point about the juvenile incarceration system in this country – and it’s systemic failure.You can bet that isn’t what is going to be quoted…

 

 

Condo Remembers Denise McNair, 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in 1963

Interesting – because prior to now, I don’t remember seeing anywhere that Condo talked about any of this. Condo’s father was not in the Civil Rights Movement, choosing instead to take a back seat. The ethics of that are up to debate…

As well as Condo’s ethics in working for the Bush Administration. While I don’t believe there is any evidence that GW is a bigot, there is more than a little evidence that some of the folks he brought to Washington were and are. The nuances of whether she could have done more not taking the job, or accomplished more by taking the job are also open to debate. Calling Condo a latter day Hattie McDaniels is unfair. Calling her a failure because of her role in a failed Presidency..isn’t.

I think this reaction is because of he Trayvon Martin murder. Like the George Zimmerman trial, initial efforts to convict the murderers were stymied, with the first conviction not coming for another 14 years, with others not being convicted until 30 years later. Justice in some parts of America moves much more slowly for some people.

American actress Hattie McDaniel (1895 – 1952) with her Academy Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement, circa 1945. McDaniel won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in ‘Gone With The Wind’, making her the first African-American to win an Academy Award.

Condoleezza Rice Recalls Birmingham Bombing That Killed Childhood Friend

When a church bombing killed four young black girls on a quiet Sunday morning in 1963, life for a young Condoleezza Rice changed forever.

The racial attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church, in the former secretary of state’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, rocked the nation and led to sweeping changes in laws governing civil rights.

But for Rice, just 8 years old at the time, the tragedy meant the death of a little girl she used to play dolls with, and the loss of her own youthful sense of security.

“As an 8-year-old, you don’t think about terror of this kind,” said Rice, who recounted on Friday her memory of the bombing and its aftermath in remarks to a gathering of civic leaders in Birmingham as part of several days of events leading up to the 50th anniversary of the bombing on Sept. 15.

Rice’s hometown had become a place too dangerous for black children to leave their own neighborhoods, or go downtown and visit Santa Claus, or go out of the house after dark.

“There was no sanctuary. There was no place really safe,” she said.

Rice’s friend, 11-year-old Denise McNair, died in the blast along with 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley. Their deaths at the hands of Ku Klux Klan members garnered national support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Events for the 50th anniversary of the bombing will include a screening of filmmaker Spike Lee’s new documentary, “Four Little Girls,” and a memorial service on Sunday scheduled to include U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Rice has a treasured photo of her friend accepting a kindergarten certificate from Rice’s father, who was a pastor at another church. McNair had gone to preschool there. McNair’s father was the community photographer, documenting birthday parties and weddings in happier times.

“Everyone in the black community knew one of those girls,” Rice said.

Her father told her the bombing had been done by “hateful men,” she said, but it was an act that later uncovered something ultimately good.

“Out of great tragedy, people began to recognize our humanity, and it brought people together,” said Rice.

The bombing left its mark on her even as an adult, when as U.S. Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, she used the experience to understand the plight of Palestinian and Israeli victims of bombs and attacks during peace negotiations.

“I told them I know what it is like for a Palestinian mother, who has to tell her child they can’t go somewhere,” Rice said, “and how it is for an Israeli mother, who puts her child to bed and wonders if the child will be alive in the morning.”

But with all of the progress made in civil rights during the 50 years since the blast, Rice cites education as the biggest impediment to equality in modern times.

She expressed dismay at racial disparities in the quality of education for minorities and criticized the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in a system she said challenges black students less than others.

“Even racism can’t be an excuse for not educating our kids,” she said. “If a kid cannot read, that kid is done. A child in a bad school doesn’t have time for racism to be eradicated. They have to learn today.”

A Stained Glass window in the 16th Street Baptist Church after the bombing.

 

Oakland, Tired of Gun Murders – Tries Gun Control

The NRA has a new target – Oakland, California. Unfortunately for the NRA, this one isn’t as easy as Colorado.

Backing the city’s approach a recent study –

A new study of gun violence published by the American Journal of Public Health found that states with greater levels of gun ownership tend to have higher rates of gun-related murder.

The study, conducted by Boston University professor Michael Siegel and coauthors Craig S. Ross and Charles King III, examines this relationship in all 50 states from 1981 to 2010. The researchers found that “for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent.”

The authors note that, though they can’t prove a causal relationship between higher levels of gun ownership and homicide, “states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.”

Their findings echo past studies about the relationship between gun ownership and homicide, though Siegel, Ross and King look at the relationship over a larger window of time than previous research.

According to a fact sheet from the Harvard School of Public Health:

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

Gun Control in the US, may well break down into Urban versus Rural laws – based on the reality that cities tend to have more violent crime. To make this work may take some creative thinking, beyond just the knee-jerk reaction of either side of the argument. Control of guns has a long history in the US, where it wasn’t uncommon for the local Sheriff to confiscate guns within the city limits to protect the relative peace of the community.

Perhaps, instead of some sort of outright ban – that could be a solution for cities. Regulated, privately owned arsenals operating at the city limit, which would keep or store firearms for city residents or visitors until they leave the urban confines of city. It isn’t clear at this point whether this type of nuanced approach is acceptable to either side.

It will be interesting to see where this one goes, as if it is successful – it may be a model for other cities.

Pallbearers carry the casket of Alaysha Carradine, 8, who was shot to death at a slumber party in Oakland in July. A 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy were wounded. Last year, 12 children were among the city’s 130 homicides — 90% of them gun-related.

Oakland, reeling from gun violence, aims for unprecedented solution

City seeks exemption from the California law that bars local governments from regulating the registration or licensing of firearms.

As a City Council member here, Libby Schaaf is notified each time someone is shot. That, it turns out, occurs several times each day.

It is a relentless reminder of Oakland’s sweeping public safety crisis: So far this year there have been 3,026 gun crimes in this city just shy of 400,000 residents, which tops the list of the state’s most dangerous.

Extreme conditions, reasoned Schaaf — among the public officials who recently attended the wrenching funeral of an 8-year-old girl strafed with gunfire at a slumber party — require exceptional measures.

And so was born an unprecedented effort to seek an exemption from the California law that bars local governments from regulating the registration or licensing of firearms.

“Since the moment I came into office I’ve been on a quest to understand … the tools that Oakland could use to reduce the bloodshed in any way,” said Schaaf, who tapped academics in criminology and law for ideas.

The legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) has passed both legislative chambers and is sitting on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, an Oakland resident and two-term mayor here. It joins a dozen other gun control measures awaiting the governor’s decision, including bills that would outlaw the sale of rifles with detachable magazines, expand the list of crimes that result in a possession ban and crack down on straw purchasers of firearms.

No municipality has previously received such an exemption, yet Bonta called the “targeted approach” to hand this regulatory decision-making to local officials “good policy,” noting that 12 children were among Oakland’s 130 homicides last year — 90% of them gun-related.

This year has also seen the slaying of several children, among them Alaysha Carradine. Known to her family as “Ladybug,” she was slain at a July slumber party when an unknown suspect knocked on the door and opened fire. A 7-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy were wounded.

California does not require registration per se but rather a “dealer record of sale,” provided to the state Department of Justice at the point of purchase. That data can quickly become out of date.

Oakland officials say a city licensing and registration program would help police better track local gun patterns, including thefts; locate straw purchasers; remove firearms promptly from the hands of those barred from possessing them; and allow for better gun safety education.

The gun lobby is opposed, saying the state Department of Justice already tracks gun purchases and that local interference would layer undue costs on law-abiding firearms owners.

“The bill does nothing useful and is just going to make it more difficult for poor people in Oakland to defend themselves and their families,” said Brandon Combs, president of the California Assn. of Federal Firearms Licensees, which lodged its formal opposition to the bill.

But some experts say Oakland could prove a worthy test case for local control for larger cities, such as Los Angeles, which tend to face the greatest crime concentrations. Home rule, they note, allows faster local access to better data in high-crime areas without imposing the same controls on rural areas, which would likely fight them most and arguably need them least.

“It doesn’t isolate the big cities in California, it isolates one city in California,” said UC Berkeley law professor and criminologist Franklin Zimring. “It says, ‘OK, Oakland, you’ve got a big problem now, let’s see what you want to add to the existing California policy that responds to the nature of firearms violence Oakland-style.'”

The Oakland experiment, Zimring said, could serve to “test the waters of local control and to see whether the political process that produces city-level gun policy can get inclusive and responsible, and whether it can get specific and selective in ways that can solve the problem.”…