Bend Over Rural Whites! Trump Has Something For You!

It is a matter of fact that those counties with voted for Trump in the highest levels, are also the counties with the highest percentage of their residents on the Government Dole.

Ergo – the REAL Welfare Queens of America. In some of those counties nearly 80% of the population receive some sort of Government assistance. Whether it’s Meals on Wheels or Welfare, Obamacare, Medicare, or disability – a high number of white folks (up to 80%) are receiving Government Assistance in one way or another in these rural areas.

Now these folks are in, usually racist, denial. But the proverbial shit is getting ready to hit the fan in Trump country.

Not only is Trumpcare going to throw 24 million, mostly Trump voting rural folks off of having any healthcare…And that doesn’t even include the destruction of Medicare.

But those monthly checks are going to dry up. There will be no “Meals on Wheels” for the rural white, over 60 Chumph voter, no Medicare, no Health Insurance, and none of the other programs supporting wither jobs creation or heating assistance.

I hope this is as good for them as it is for the Chumph’s billionaire and Wall Street buddies

In the following softball interview with Tucker Carlson on Faux News, the Chumph admits his Tax Plan and Trumpcare screw his voter at the 7:51 mark.

As usual the dumb arsed white wingers are draining the wrong swamp and fucking their constituents.

 

“Oh, I know that”: President Trump shrugs off the devastating impact repealing Obamacare will have on his base

Trump admits to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that “a lot of things aren’t consistent” with his campaign promises

In the face of a barrage of scrutiny from what he has deemed the “fake news,” President Donald Trump on Wednesday night turned to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson for refuge and attempted to repair some self-inflicted political wounds in the battle over health care reform.

Far from giving the president a chance to knock softball questions out of the park, however, the Fox News host confronted Trump about inconsistencies between his campaign pledges and the House Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare recently endorsed by the White House. In a stunning admission, Trump appeared to openly acknowledge that he knows the proposed legislation, dubbed by some as Trumpcare, would devastate his voters and actually do the exact opposite of what he promised voters during the campaign.

“This bill has as one of its centerpieces a tax cut for investors that would primarily benefit people making over $250,000 a year,” Carson said. “They’ve already done pretty well in the past 10 years, as you know,” he said to Trump, adding a “Bloomberg analysis showed that counties that voted for you — middle-class and working-class counties — would do far less well under this bill.”

“Oh, I know,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “I know. It’s very preliminary.”

Trump’s budget cuts hit his base — rural voters

 

Some of the biggest losers in President Trump’s proposed budget are the rural communities that fueled his stunning White House victory.

Funding that keeps rural airports open, grants that help build rural water and sewer projects, and money for long-distance Amtrak lines that serve rural communities would all disappear under Trump’s budget blueprint released Thursday.

Trump also wants to kill the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps people, including seniors on fixed incomes and the working poor, to pay their heating bills. It’s a particularly prized resource in New England, with its brutal winters.

Also on the chopping block: funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, which seeks to boost economic development in a region that strongly supported Trump. Into the dustbin, too, would go the US Chemical Safety Board, an agency that has open investigations in Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Kansas, and last September wrapped up a probe of a West Virginia chemical spill that left more than 300,000 people without usable water for a time.

“The twisted irony here is that the people and the communities in this country who are going to be the hardest hit by Trump’s budget are the very rural and small town counties that Trump won. That’s true through and through and through this budget,” said Rebecca Vallas, managing director of the Poverty to Prosperity program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank.

Overall, rural residents are more likely to need financial help from programs that Trump wants to put on the chopping block. The Center for American Progress estimates that one-third of families in the rural and small town counties that Trump won in November are living paycheck-to-paycheck — a level of economic distress that is 24 percent higher than in urban counties, Vallas said.

The Trump administration says it is targeting programs that it believes don’t work or are wasteful and its overriding concern is making sure taxpayers’ money is spent responsibly. For example, Trump’s budget proposal justifies the cut to the heating assistance program, saying it “is a lower-impact program and is unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes.”

Administration officials defended the spending choices, saying the budget amounted to Trump’s campaign promises translated into numbers.

“Folks who voted for the president are getting exactly what they voted for,” White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday morning.

“One of the questions we asked was can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia, or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs; the answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Mulvaney said.

But — much like the proposed health care legislation that would repeal and replace President Obama’s health care law — the new president’s budget document falls heavily on rural and lower income voters. Lawmakers were already objecting on Thursday, a sure sign that this president’s budget — like other presidents’ budget proposals— would be significantly changed on Capitol Hill.

Critics of Trump’s budget argued that ending funding for public broadcasting would hurt rural areas disproportionately, too: Public TV and radio stations in “affluent communities like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco no doubt will survive with help from generous private donors. In the nation’s heartland however, this budget will force stations to eliminate vital local news, entertainment, and cultural programming,” said Michael Copps, a former Federal Communications Commission member and now an adviser to Common Cause, an advocacy group.

In fiscal 2016, funding for public broadcasting was $445 million.

Trump’s budget would also eliminate federal funding to legal aid programs, which advocates say could particularly hurt rural areas since it’s often hardest for low-income residents to get access to lawyers in these places. It would scrap the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds numerous programs at community groups across the country, as well as eliminate funding for the independent agency known as NeighborWorks America, which helps, among other things, low-income families achieve stable homeownership.

In rural New England, the proposal to scrap the home heating program landed particularly hard.

Mere hours after the budget document went public Thursday, Robert Boschen, chief executive of Tri-County Community Action Program, based in Berlin, N.H., was on the phone with an aide to Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Boschen said the aide assured him the Democratic senator would be working on ensuring continued funding for heating.

Tri-County CAP is one of several organizations in New Hampshire that funnels these funds to needy households, including in largely rural areas of Grafton and Coos counties. The group distributed heating assistance to about 6,000 households from July 2015 through June 2016, which helped about 12,600 individuals. Among other features, the money helps seniors living on fixed incomes to stay in their homes, with money to spend for groceries and medicine, even when heating bills spike unexpectedly, and it helps stabilize families squeezed by other expenses, the group said.

Just last weekend, the group saw a jump in emergency applications – for situations when less than five days of fuel-help is needed — after temperatures dropped below zero for several days, the group said.

New Hampshire’s share of the heating assistance has slid $10 million since 2010, amid broader cuts to the program.

“We personally hear the struggles that clients go through, [and] could not imagine if it were not available,” said Sarah Wight, who oversees Tri-CAP’s fuel assistance program.

Congress spent a little more than $3.3 billion on the program in the fiscal year that ended in September, with more than 6 million households receiving assistance, according to figures shared by the Campaign for Home Energy Assistance and the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association.

More than 70 percent of those getting help were considered vulnerable – meaning they were elderly, disabled, or families with young children.

In Massachusetts, about 160,000 households received the heating assistance in fiscal 2016. About 32,000 got help in New Hampshire, and a similar number of households received such funds in Maine, where senior Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, has long sought more funds for the program.

“It’s needless and cruel to eliminate this lifeline for low-income families and seniors,” Senator Shaheen said. “Without home-heating assistance, tens of thousands of Granite Staters will have to choose between heating their homes and other necessities like food and medicine. It’s remarkable that candidate Trump never discussed leaving these Granite Staters out in the cold during his many campaign events in the state.”

While praising some aspects of the bill, Collins said she had “a number of serious problems with this proposed budget,” including the elimination of the block grant and home-heating programs.

Candace Sanborn, chief marketing officer for Community Concepts in Lewiston, Maine, worried about proposed block grant cuts. Her group — which primarily serves three rural counties — uses those grants to help fund transportation to bring people to medical appointments, to run more than a dozen Head Start programs, and to pay for a parenting program for families in troubled circumstances.

“If those [dollars] are removed entirely in the way they are looking to strip those programs, then those things will simply go away,” Sanborn said.

The cuts targeting rural areas sparked some concern among Republican lawmakers Thursday.

West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito pushed back against the proposed elimination of the Appalachian Regional Commission. A Capito spokeswoman said the program “is essential to redeveloping economically distressed regions of West Virginia, especially the coal communities that have been devastated by years of regulatory overreach. The commission also plays an important role in Senator Capito’s efforts to expand critical broadband infrastructure.”

 

Why Conservatism is a Failure

Real easy now to see the failure of conservative philosophy…

 

The conservative formula is wrong: Why liberal states won America’s tax experiment

Conservatives have been telling us that a healthy economy depends on low taxes, few regulations and low wages

This originally appeared on Robert Reich’s blog.

For years, conservatives have been telling us that a healthy business-friendly economy depends on low taxes, few regulations and low wages. Are they right?

We’ve had an experiment going on here in the United States that provides an answer.

At the one end of the scale are Kansas and Texas, with among the nation’s lowest taxes, least regulations and lowest wages.

At the other end is California, featuring among the nation’s highest taxes, especially on the wealthy; lots of regulations, particularly when it comes to the environment; and high wages.

So according to conservative doctrine, Kansas and Texas ought to be booming, and California ought to be in the pits.

Actually, it’s just the opposite. For years now, Kansas’s rate of economic growth has been the worst in the nation. Last year its economy actually shrank. Texas hasn’t been doing all that much better. Its rate of job growth has been below the national average. Retail sales are way down. The value of Texas exports has been dropping.

But what about so-called over-taxed, over-regulated, high-wage California? California leads the nation in the rate of economic growth — more than twice the national average. In other words, conservatives have it exactly backwards.

So why are Kansas and Texas doing so badly? And California so well?

Because taxes enable states to invest in their people — their education and skill-training, great research universities that spawn new industries and attract talented innovators and inventors worldwide, and modern infrastructure.

That’s why California is the world center of high-tech, entertainment and venture capital.

Kansas and Texas haven’t been investing nearly to the same extent.

California also provides services to a diverse population including many who are attracted to California because of its opportunities.

And California’s regulations protect the public health and the state’s natural beauty, which also draws people to the state — including talented people who could settle anywhere.

Wages are high in California because the economy is growing so fast employers have to pay more for workers. And that’s not a bad thing. After all, the goal isn’t just growth. It’s a high standard of living.

Now in fairness, Texas’s problems are also linked to the oil bust. But that’s really no excuse because Texas has failed to diversify its economy. And here again, it hasn’t made adequate investments.

California is far from perfect. A housing shortage has been driving rents and home prices into the stratosphere. And roads are clogged. Much more needs to be done.

But overall, the contrast is clear. Economic success depends on tax revenues that go into public investments, and regulations that protect the environment and public health. And true economic success results in high wages.

So the next time you hear a conservative say “low taxes, few regulations and low wages are the keys to economic business-friendly success,” just remember Kansas, Texas and California.

The conservative formula is wrong.

 

US Collects Taxes on Those Olympic Gold Medals

Go to the Olympics representing the United States and win a Gold, Silver, or Bronze?

Well…There’s a tax for that.

For US Olympians, gold medals come with a hefty tax bill

She has flipped, tumbled and leapt her way into the hearts of millions over the course of the Olympic games. But when Simone Biles returns home she will be in for not just a major celebration but also a hefty tax bill.

The 19-year-old has won five Olympic medals – four gold and one bronze. She has cemented her title as the world’s best gymnast by taking home the gold in the all-around after three successive world championship titles – a feat only accomplished by three others in history.

But all that winning will cost her. On 21 August, Biles could be slapped with a tax bill close to $43,560 (£33,479)

That estimate is based on the $2m that she has accumulated in endorsement deals and assuming she is charged in the highest income tax bracket in the US – 39.6%.

Biles is not alone, her fellow US medallists will be slapped with tax bills for their victories as well.

American Olympians are subject to a so-called “victory tax” – a tax on both the money they receive from the Olympic committee for winning and on the value of the Olympic medal.

What are they taxed on?

US athletes who win a medal at the Rio games will take home the hardware and a cash bonus from the US Olympic Committee.

Gold medallists will receive $25,000, silver medallists get $15,000, and bronze winners earn $10,000.

Those winnings are taxed as income, the same way Americans are taxed on other prize money, like lottery winnings. Most countries exempt their athletes from these taxes.

But there’s more, the medals are also given a value and taxed. The value is based on the value of the materials the medals are made of.

Gold medals – which are mostly made of silver with a gold plating – are worth roughly $600 based on current commodity prices, silver medals are worth close to $300, bronze medals – which consist mostly of copper – have barely any monetary value, approximately $4.

How much is the tax?

Assuming the athlete was already a high-income earner, paying the top bracket of US taxes, they would be paying 39.6% on the combined value of the medal and cash payout.

Americans for Tax Reform calculated the bills to be: for a gold medallist $9,900, for silver $5,940, and for bronze $3,960.

That’s also assuming the athlete only won one medal.

 

Yet Another Tea Bagger Trumpazoid Busted

Another typical lowlife Teabagger criminal. Just like the Chumph – who is now looking down the barrel of a possible Felony Fraud charge for stiffing his various “charities”. Maybe he will get to share a cell with the Chumph…

Tea Partier who nearly destroyed Kentucky’s libraries busted for selling opiates

A Tea Party activist who frequently argues against anti-drug measures at government meetings has been arrested for illegally selling prescription drugs.

John “J.R.” Roth was arrested Thursday night in Highland Heights, Kentucky, and charged with felony trafficking in a controlled substance after police said he sold 10 oxycodone pills to an informant, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The 60-year-old Roth, who is a Donald Trump supporter and promotes “birther” conspiracy theories, is a fixture at local government meetings in Campbell County, where he complains about government spending for almost anything.

He was one of three plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in 2012 to repeal the property tax that funds the county’s libraries.

Roth and two other members of the Northern Kentucky Tea Party hired a lawyer the year before, when the county library was considering a plan for a new branch, to investigate whether the library board was violating a state law regarding its debt level.

The lawyer determined the library had not exceeded its debt limit — but he found another statute that appeared to prohibit the library board from raising taxes without voter approval.

Roth filed a lawsuit, along with Erik Hermes and Campbell County Commissioner Charlie “Coach” Coleman, seeking to repeal the property tax that funds libraries in Campbell County.

Similar lawsuits were filed in other counties throughout the state.

The tax repeal would have dramatically cut library funding and would have resulted in branch closures, reduced hours and services, and the loss of jobs.

Tax opponents argued that library patrons wouldn’t miss much because books and movies are readily available online sellers such as Amazon — although many patrons rely on libraries for free computer and Internet access.

The lawsuit ultimately failed, after the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed two circuit decisions last year that had found library districts in Campbell and Kenton counties had improperly raised taxes for decades.

The appeals court ruled that libraries may raise taxes without voter approval as long as the amount does not bring in 4 percent more revenue than the previous year.

Roth, who has been previously cited for animal cruelty and accused of domestic violence, was released from jail on bond.

If convicted, the Tea Party activist faces up to five years in jail.

 

Big Money Republican Donors Desert Trump

A Presidential race i today’s terms costs about $1 billion. Much of that money comes from the uber-rich. When that group bails on a candidate, life in terms of television ads and door-to-door campaigning gets tough. It seems that some of the big money players – the guys whop drop $10 or more million have headed out the door on the Drumph…

The bad news for the Drumph (and good news for the country) is that the presumptive nominee, Hillary already has a strong organization in place. Further – Drumph is worth only a small fraction of the $10 billion he claims, and by evidence released recently has avoided paying any taxes.

Several Big Republican Donors Refuse to Contribute to Trump’s Candidacy

Donald Trump may have sealed the peace with the Republican Party and a few of those who once criticized him. Yet his ability to raise $1 billion before November is in doubt, as several powerful donors who have given tens of millions to the GOP over the years refuse to get behind Trump’s presidential candidacy. The New York Timesgot in touch with 50 of the GOP’s largest donors or their representatives and found “a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics.” More than a dozen of them flat out refuse to back Trump.

Some of those who are refusing to back Trump will surely come around. Others, however, speak in terms that make it clear they want nothing to do with the real estate mogul and reality television star. “If it is Trump vs. Clinton,” hedge fund manager William Oberndorf said, “I will be voting for Hillary.” He’s hardly alone. “He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” investor Michael K. Vlock said.

The resistance from the megarich may be a sign that Trump could very well become the first Republican presidential candidate to be outspent by a Democrat in decades. Some, however, are vowing to stand by Trump. One of them is Foster Friess, who sent an email to the Hill on Saturday explaining his reasoning for supporting the presumptive nominee. “I believe that as Republicans continue to unite behind Donald Trump, he’ll become an even better candidate,” he said.

 

Louisiana May Have to Close State Universities Due to Republican Deficit Disaster

Republicans signing the Grover Norquest tax reduction plan have now failed utterly and disastriously in at least 3 States. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal took a state budget surplus to deficit levels never seen before. Things got so bad under Jindal and his Republican led legislature, they had to pawn the state owned vehicles at auction to keep the lights on.

Faced with a cash flow issue as the legislature tries desperately to recover funds through tax increases and revenue proposals back to the level required for basic services – the current proposal to cover the massive shortfall includes the decision to close the State Colleges and Universities, the largest of which is Louisiana Tech. Further – shutting down some hospitals in the state.

This sort of tax-slashing myopia and adherence to Republican Orthodoxy has now had serious impacts in 3 states, including Kansas, which had to shut down the Public School System last year, and Michigan where thousands were poisoned by the water in Flint.

Watch Rachel Maddow’s summary below – and the emergency speech by Louisiana’s new Democrat Governor, who has been in office less than a month.

Governor John Bel Edwards who has an uphill battle to get his Republican led legislature to see the light…

 

 

No Police Accountability in Philadelphia Either

One o the things conservatives constantly squeal about is taxes. They prefer to shut down public schools to find the money from which to do so – even though there is a more sensible solution. Out of control Policing is costing major cities huge amounts of money. Chicago alone has paid over half a billion dollars in settlements because of police misbehavior over the last 10 years, with settlements in 2013 topping $85 million. Los Angeles, which has a similar-sized police force, paid out $20 million in brutality-related legal claims last year, less than a quarter of Chicago’s outlay. Baltimore has spent $5 million a year since 2011. And then there is Philadelphia…

Logically it would seem conservatives would be in alignment with BLM and other organizations seeking better, less-corrupt, and accountable police. It is not only good for the community, it is good for the bottom line. But then, common sense never got in the way of racism.

How Philadelphia prosecutors protect police misconduct: Cops get caught lying — and then get off the hook

In Philadelphia, widespread allegations of corruption and perjury against members of the nation’s fourth largest police department have in recent years shaken the criminal justice system.

Currently, the Defender Association of Philadelphia is seeking to have more than 500 convictions involving Officer Christopher Hulmes reopened and tossed out. In 2011, Hulmes admitted to lying in open court in a drug-and-gun case against two black men who claim they were framed. He did so in front of a judge and prosecutor. But he was not charged with perjury until this April, in the wake of reporting by this reporter when he was employed at the now-defunct Philadelphia City Paper.

Worse yet, police and prosecutors had failed to address prior evidence that Hulmes was a liar.

In 2008, an Assistant District Attorney reported that Hulmes had admitted that he had lied about where police had discovered a gun, allegedly to benefit a defendant who had provided him useful information. The prosecutor reported the lying. But the police internal affairs unit failed to sustain the charges. The District Attorney’s Office likewise apparently did nothing. And so, despite one serious allegation of lying and a separate admission of perjury, officials in the D.A.’s Office did nothing to stop him: Hulmes continued to make narcotics arrests on the street, and prosecutors kept putting him on the stand to testify. And now, many of his cases, meritorious or otherwise, will very likely be thrown out.

In recent weeks, Salon has been reporting on police lying in Chicago, where false statements underpin a culture that protects everything from physical abuse to illegal searches. But reviewing cases from around the country show that Chicago is far from alone.

Brad Bridge, an expert in police misconduct at the Philadelphia public defender, says that it may take a while to reopen Hulmes’ old cases: First, they have to deal with 1,300-odd petitions seeking to reopen convictions related to six allegedly rogue narcotics officers who, earlier this year, beat federal charges that they rampantly abused and robbed drug dealers.

“Police perjury has a corrosive effect upon the entire judicial system,” emails Bridge. “This has happened in Philadelphia where over 600 convictions had to have been vacated over the past two years where significant doubts have arisen about the truthfulness of the police officers involved.”

There is little evidence that D.A. Seth Williams Office, the Police Department and the city do much to root out police perjury.

The city discusses civil rights cases with the Police Department, says Chief Deputy City Solicitor Craig Straw, who handles civil rights cases against officers. But neither the Police Department nor the city’s understaffed Police Advisory Commission could point to any proactive measures that are taken to tackle perjury. D.A. Williams’ Office has long hostile to reform despite hopes that he would usher in progressive change, and is currently enmeshed in salacious political controversies. His office did not respond to a request to explain its program to tackle police lying.

In the recent past, even overwhelming video evidence that police were lying wasn’t enough to convince Philadelphia prosecutors. In 2010, the extraordinarily brutal police beating of Askia Sabur on a West Philadelphia sidewalk went viral on YouTube. Prosecutors nonetheless charged Sabur, who remained jailed awaiting trial, with assaulting the officer. Police claimed that Sabur had beaten an officer with his baton and reached for his gun—an allegation that was not supported by video evidence. A jury finally acquitted Sabur, but there were never any charges filed against the officer, Jimmy Leocal, who had beaten him most viciously.

“Unfortunately, in some situations even when prosecutors have very good reason to disbelieve the police officer,” they still put him up to testify, says University of Pennsylvania law professor and leading civil rights attorney David Rudovsky. “But the larger problem, I think, is just the uncritical acceptance of what the police say…In a culture in which most people think police tell the truth…the natural reaction of many people is to believe the officer.”

Williams’ prosecutors long took a similarly hands-off approach to lying in the Philadelphia Prison System. Last year, City Paper reported that guard Tyrone Glover was accused of assaulting two inmates. In both cases, however, the inmates were charged in connection with assaulting Glover. In one case, however, City Paper obtained video evidence showing Glover assaulting the inmate….Read More Here…

 

How Conservatives Re segregated American Universities

The Old Jim Crow, just like the New Jim Crow – just under a different name

A lot of lies flying around about black students in “Flagship” State Universities.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” – Republican Political Strategist Lee Atwater

The conservative attack on Affirmative Action is just one of those things Atwater mentions which hurt minorities worse than whites.

The issue in my mind, is that as a citizen of the state, we are paying our tax dollars for these institutions. In Virginia, black folks are paying 22% of the tax to support State Universities., to only have 7% of the benefit. Not any different than the Old Jim Crow, where black folks paid taxes, and couldn’t get a road built in their neighborhood. That is like going to the local convenience store to buy a bottle of water, and the bottles for black folks only being 1/3rd full even though you pay the same price as everyone else.

That is called racism and discrimination. which is exactly what the conservative 5 on the Supreme Court want to do.

Black Students Are Being Shut Out Of Top Public Colleges

And the Supreme Court could soon make it even worse.

As racial unrest sweeps across major college campuses, and African-American students demand more equitable treatment, college administrators need look no farther than their own admissions offices to find one root of the problem.

The nation’s flagship public universities — large, taxpayer-funded institutions whose declared mission is to educate residents of their states — enroll far smaller proportions of black students than other colleges, and the number appears to be declining, according to federal records and college enrollment data analyzed by The Hechinger Report and The Huffington Post.

On average, just 5 percent of students at the nation’s flagship public universities are black. As recently as a decade ago, that figure was higher, although changing methods of counting racial categories makes a precise comparison difficult.

Even here at the University of Virginia, which prides itself on the diversity of its campus, just 8 percent of students are black. Just 5 percent are black Virginians, in a state where 22 percent of public high school graduates are African-American. (Low-income students are also underrepresented at top schools).

Virginia is hardly unusual. At most flagships, the African-American percentage of the student population that is black is well below that of the state’s public high school graduates. Typical are the University of Delaware, with a student body that is 5 percent African-American in a state where 30 percent of public high school graduates are black, and the University of Georgia, where it’s 7 percent compared with 34 percent.

Flagships matter because they almost always have the highest graduation rates among public colleges in their state — especially for black students — as well as extensive career resources, well-placed alumni networks, a broad range of course selections and high-profile faculty. For state residents, these colleges also offer the most affordable top-quality college education, and usually a path toward better opportunities after college. (Low-income students are also underrepresented at top schools, according to an analysis by the Hechinger Report and HuffPost ).

Virginia says it ranks among the best flagships in graduating black students.

Black enrollment could decline even further if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Abigail Fisher, a white woman who says she was rejected from the University of Texas at Austin because of her race. The Justices seemed skeptical of the benefits of race-conscious admissions when they heard arguments in the case, on Dec. 9. Justice Antonin Scalia made comments interpreted as favoring the idea that underprepared black students would do better in “lesser colleges” rather than struggling to keep up at the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s flagship.

In the firestorm that followed Justice Scalia’s comments, advocates of affirmative action pointed to research that shows a near doubling of graduation rates for those African-American and Hispanic students who move from colleges with no academic admissions requirements to more selective ones. After the University of Texas at Austin began guaranteeing admission to the top 10 percent of students in the state’s high school classes, a move that admitted more supposedly less prepared students, graduation rates went up…

Black and Latino students who have above-average SAT scores go to college at the same rate — 90 percent — as whites. But once enrolled, white students are more likely to finish, in part because they attend more selective colleges, where the resources are better and overall graduation rates are higher.

When black and Latino students with above-average SAT scores go to those selective colleges, their graduation rate is 73 percent, compared to only 40 percent for these above-average-scoring nonwhite students at other colleges…

“One of the main reasons I wanted to come here was the diverse student body,” said Danielle Campbell, a junior at Norfolk State University, a historically black public college in Virginia. “I didn’t want to be the only one who looked like me.”

NSU has a proud history and a devoted student body, but last year struggled with a $16.7 million budget deficit causing it to cut staff by 9 percent. It is the least expensive four-year public college in the state, but its graduation rate for black students is 35 percent over six years, compared with 86 percent at UVA, according to federal data.

In Petersburg, about 90 minutes southeast of UVA’s campus, the high school is 92 percent African-American and sends more than half of its 800 students to college each year. But none have gone UVA since 2010…

“One of the things that black students have historically and continue to push for at UVA is that at the flagship the demographics be at least as representative as the demographics of the state,” said Frazier, who is a junior at UVA. “The flagship is meant to be the main force educating that state, so every group should be educated at a similar rate.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Candidates Draw Straws for Seat After Electoral Tie in Mississippi

Turns out that in the event of an electoral tie, where equal votes are cast for both candidates – some state allow a coin toss or drawing a straw to decide the matter. It is a lot less expensive than holding an entire new election. Perhaps an Act of God, or just sheer luck will save the state from going down the rabbit hole like Kansas and Louisiana with failed conservative economic policy. Mississippi is already the poorest state in the Union…At least the Rethugs don’t get to turn it into a 3rd world hell hole….Yet.

Democrat Wins Mississippi House Race After Drawing Straw

Candidates Tullos (l) and Eaton (2nd from l) Drawing Strawa

Sometimes American politics is about ideas, powered by Jeffersons and Adamses and Reagans. Sometimes it is about strategy, with races determined by the chess-match machinations of Axelrods and Roves.

But every once in a while, the fate of governments is determined by a considerably less eminent character, one usually found lurking in back-alley craps games and on the Vegas strip: Lady Luck.

In Mississippi on Friday, luck smiled on a Democratic state representative, Blaine Eaton II, who had been forced, by state law, to draw straws for his seat after his race for re-election ended in a tie. On Friday afternoon, in a short, strange ceremony here presided over by Gov. Phil Bryant and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, Mr. Eaton and his Republican challenger, Mark Tullos, each removed a box from a bag. Mr. Eaton opened his box to reveal a long green straw.

And with that, a mathematically improbable tie for the House District 79 seat — each candidate had received exactly 4,589 votes — had been broken, though not by the voters.

Moments after winning, Mr. Eaton, who raises cattle and grows timber and soybeans, attributed his win to a farmer’s luck. “There’s always happiness in a good crop year,” he said.

An attorney for Mr. Tullos said that a challenge had been filed with the State House of Representatives. Mr. Tullos, a lawyer, declined to comment but had said he planned a challenge if he lost the draw. He had cited concerns about the way a county election board handled nine paper “affidavit ballots” filed by voters who believed their names were erroneously left off the voter rolls.

Resorting to a game of chance to break an electoral tie is common in many states, and coin tosses are often used to settle smaller local races. But in few instances had the pot as rich as this: If Mr. Tullos had won, his fellow Republicans would have gain a three-fifths supermajority in the State House of Representatives, the threshold required to pass revenue-related bills.

At stake, potentially, was hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. The three-fifths requirement has allowed the Democratic minority to block Republican tax-cut proposals in the past on the grounds that Mississippi needs the revenue to finance schools and other services. Republicans, who also control the State Senate and governor’s mansion, say the cuts, including a proposal to phase out the state’s corporate franchise tax, will jump-start the economy and promote job growth….Read the Rest Here…

 

Free “Blade”. Wesley Snipes Leaves Prison

Actor Wesley Snipes can now begin the process of putting his acting career back together… A “Blade” sequel?

Repeat after me, Wesley…”1040…1040…1040″.

Actor Wesley Snipes released from prison

 Actor Wesley Snipes has been released from a federal prison where he was serving a three-year sentence after being convicted on tax charges in February 2010.The release to a supervised residential location in New York occurred Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons told CNN.

Snipes, 50, who starred in the “Blade” action movies and “White Men Can’t Jump,” had been serving time at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. A jury convicted him of willfully failing to file tax returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001. Snipes was acquitted of felony tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of his sentence, which he had argued was too harsh for a misdemeanor conviction.

 

Why Republicans Are Afraid of Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren was brought in by the Obama Administration to develop the Consumer Protection Agency. Once it was set up – Republicans went to war to keep her from running it.

They were scared…Here’s why –

 

Republicans Cripple American Credit Rating

Conservative Screw America... Again.

In a continuing effort to save corporations and rich individuals from paying their fair share of taxes under the misguided conservative maximum that making the rich richer makes them buy more Bentlys …

Republicans have already damaged America’s Credit Rating. Moody’s has announced it will downgrade the US’s credit rating based on the fact that irrational whackjobs like the Tea Baggers can cause a default – even if there is not actual underlying or precipitating crisis.

I hope it was worth driving your average American’s Mortgage interest up a point for conservative “principles”.

Moody’s: Abolish the debt limit

The United States should do away with the debt ceiling altogether to bring greater certainty to investors in U.S. Treasury bonds, Moody’s suggested Monday.

With the August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling barely more than two weeks away, the bond-rating agency issued a report Monday noting that the U.S. is one of just a few countries that has a statutory borrowing limit and saying that the limit creates “periodic uncertainty” for investors, Reuters reported.

Moody’s threatened last week to downgrade the AAA rating of the U.S. government if it is unable to meet its debt obligations next month and perhaps even if Congress and the White House are able to reach a deal.

In the past, Moody’s has considered the risk of U.S. default on its debts very low because Congress has routinely approved hikes to the debt limit, but with negotiations between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans at an impasse, the agency is less confident.

“The current wide divisions between the House of Representatives and the Obama administration over the debt limit creates a high level of uncertainty and causes us to raise our assessment of event risk,” analyst Steven Hess wrote in the report.

But, he said, “We would reduce our assessment of event risk if the government changed its framework for managing government debt to lessen or eliminate that uncertainty.”

Rather than continuing to use the debt ceiling in an effort to keep U.S. borrowing down, the government should look toward Chile, Moody’s suggested. There, “the level of deficits is constrained by a ‘fiscal rule,’ which means the rise in debt is constrained though not technically limited.” Chile is considered to be Latin America’s most fiscally sound country.

And, the report noted, it’s not like the debt ceiling has been effective in keeping U.S. debt down: Congress has in the past raised it often and has not linked it to spending levels.

This from the other major rating firm, Standard and Poor –

U.S. warned of possible downgrade

U.S. lawmakers got another stern warning from a leading credit rating agency on Thursday that there is now a very real possibility that the country’s top-notch credit rating could be downgraded in the next three months.
Standard & Poors said in a statement it was placing the United States’ sovereign rating on “CreditWatch with negative implications.”
“[O]wing to the dynamics of the political debate on the debt ceiling, there is at least a one-in-two likelihood that we could lower the long-term rating on the U.S. within the next 90 days,” the agency said in a statement.

 

Small Business Owners Leave Republican Plantation Over Tax Cuts For the Rich

It is becoming ever more painfully obvious that the Republican Tax Giveaway to the Rich is a major element in the country’s finances being in freefall. The Chamber of Commerce has increasingly become noting but a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, much like Faux News.

Small Business Owners Demand Repeal Of Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich

Michael Teahan, like his father, mother, and uncles before him, is a small business owner. The 52-year-old has spent most of his adult life running his own businesses: a restaurant, a coffee bar and various companies involved in the espresso machine business.

“I was the only person in my family to go to college, because that’s not what we did — we all opened up businesses,” Teahan says. “For some people, that’s a big hurdle … for us, it was like having lunch.”

Teahan currently operates Espresso Resource, a company that imports espresso machine parts from Europe to sell to U.S. restaurants and coffee shops. And he’s doing very well for himself: The two-man operation clears about $1 million a year in total sales, Teahan says — enough to secure himself annual income in excess of $250,000.

That makes Teahan one of the few small business owners to actually benefit from the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy. He says the cuts save him about $12,000 a year, compared to what he paid before they were enacted. But as debates over the federal budget deficit have intensified, Teahan has found the political discussion increasingly divorced from the reality of his experience as a small business owner.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Teahan, will do nothing to bolster his firm. They won’t affect his hiring decisions, they won’t encourage him to buy new equipment or help him move into a bigger warehouse. He says all of those decisions — the nuts and bolts of actually running a small company — depend on the his customers’ economic conditions, not his personal tax rate.

“What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources — that has very little to do with tax policy,” Teahan says. “I map my business based on my customers, and what my customers want to buy, and what they can afford to buy.”

 

The Billionaires Speak

Interviews of Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Ted Turner –

This group are pretty much on the same page. I think it would be interesting to add the Koch brothers into this mix, and perhaps have a roundtable. The Koch brothers are among the principal financiers of the Tea Party, and right wing in this country.

My personal belief is that the economy will not come back until two things happen:

First, we have to somehow defeat and eliminate the culture of corruption which infests Wall Street, the Banks, corporations, and Congress. Until you get a handle on that, there just isn’t any reason to believe the system isn’t gamed to the advantage of the already rich, and the corrupt – driving the small investor who is the backbone of the economy out.

The next thing is to get back to the metaphorical economic relationship of the car to the windshield wipers.  The car is what drives the market. The windshield wiper is an accessory, which wouldn’t exist without the car. You don’t build a car around a fancy new windshield wiper design – it’s the other way around. The economic mavens in this country have spent far too much time and money investing in technologies which can only be described as windshield wipers – while pawning the ability to make cars to China.

Until you get back to owning th car – there won’t be another American Bill Gates, whose operating system has been the vehicle for which countless accessories dance the tune.

Nor will there be meaningful jobs.

 

How Conservatives Killed The American Dream

Folks who have been reading my blog for a while know that it is my position that the most destructive force in America the last 50 years or so has been conservatism. Especially that brand of conservatism evinced since Raygun, which for all intents and purposes has gutted the American Economy and destroyed the American Dream.Republican intransigence, lunacy, and ignorance may well have doomed the US to a repeat of the Great Depression.

Upward Mobility. The US now lags much of Europe.

Source here.

Almost all of that precipitous fall has occurred, beginning on Raygun’s watch. Finally – a Republican ‘fesses up –

Reagan insider: ‘GOP destroyed U.S. economy’

Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy

Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”

No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”