Martin
Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN 50 years ago today.
Below are a couple of links that are worth looking into if you're
interested in MLK's larger story. The "Road to Memphis" PBS documentary
is especially worth watching.
Want to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.? Here are 50 ways, for starters (Miami Herald).
The real meaning of Martin Luther King, Jr's Mountaintop speech (Washington Post).
The best of our Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. resources (Teaching Tolerance).
MLK 50: 10 best portrayals of Martin Luther King, Jr. (BET).
There are a large number of Fox News viewers out there who are spreading a good deal of lies about DACA recipients, and DACA in general. You can click here for some of the most recent statistics and developments on DACA, courtesy of the Pew Research Center.
You can also click here for the Pew story that outlines how immigration from Mexico has actually declined since 2007.
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For the record, Trump didn't have to end DACA. He did that on his own. Click here for a brief national timeline on congressional incompetence when it comes to our budget woes and the immigration tie-in.
These sexist vintage ads really paint a picture of life in America before the civil rights and feminist movements. In many ways, our world was pretty much a non-stop Mad Men episode. No wonder white male conservatives want to return to the past, and embrace Donald Trump today. There was a time when colored folk knew their place, and women made the sandwiches, and liked it [cough**cough].
There's actually a lot more of these. For a look into the "good 'ol days" that conservatives like to wax nostalgic about, click here.
America's largest corporations and America's top richest 1% got a tremendous gift when the GOP and Donald Trump gifted them a tax program that was supposed to fix everything in our economic world. Instead, we're now looking at trillion dollar budget deficits, again, and just borrowed almost $300 billion in one day to fill in our financial cracks.
Impressive.
So, what did our corporate and financial elite do with their tax rebate windfall? Did they invest to boost production (like they said they would)? No. Is there a sudden hiring spree going on? No. Did they give raises to the rank and file? No. Did they give bonuses (even 'one time' bonuses) to the rank and file? No. Did they ... well, you get the point.
Instead of doing anything that would help the long term interests of America's working class, the aristocrats of corporate America decided they would make themselves richer with stock buybacks. Robert Reich explains how this happens ...
Check out the headline posted below. Then take a look at the quotes under the post, along with the bar graphs. It you have an open mind and want to understand the "terrorist" discussion we should be having in America, click here.
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"... According to a DHS-funded survey published in 2014 by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), law enforcement agencies considered sovereign citizen extremists the most dangerous terror threats in the United States — ahead of foreign Islamic extremists."
"... Al Qaeda killed almost 3,000 people on 9/11. The United States' subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — and more limited counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen — have meant the US public has spent over a decade imagining the enemy to be a foreign Muslim man with an AK-47 or a suicide vest. Combine that with a 24-hour news cycle that privileges simple narratives over nuance, and with policymakers who have too often shown a lack of knowledge about the history, politics, and cultures of the places where the US wages war and sees threats — and you're looking at some entrenched, perpetually reinforced stereotypes about Muslims, Islam, and terrorism."
"... the New York Police Department worked with the FBI and CIA to create a secret “Demographics Unit” tasked with monitoring and infiltrating mosques, spying on Muslim students and collecting data on Muslims living in the city. There was no probable cause, no reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. This was profiling, pure and simple. After six years, the NYPD closed the unit. It had never produced a lead or an arrest. "
For-profit prisons have become one of the largest lobbying groups in the nation, and should be considered a cancer on our nation's political soul. The prison industry's impact, in a time of declining crime (like murder), has been nothing short of scandalous. Think about it. There are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America (more than six million) than Josef Stalin ever had in Russia's Gulag.
This is due, in part, to our nation's for-profit prison industry's lobbying efforts, which helped double the private prison population between 2000 and 2010. Disproportionate drug sentencing laws, zero tolerance policing, and mandatory-sentencing laws all feed the bottom line. Today the for-profit prison industry earns well over $3.3 billion a year. Currently, "tough on crime" candidates and promoting harsh immigration and deportation policies are just part of what the industry looks to help increase profits (though the industry publicly denies they support either).
The real coup of the private prison industry - and a big part of the industry's growth projections today - is immigration detention. Over the past decade the industry has gotten the federal government to send nearly half of the nation's immigration detainees to their facilities.
This helps explain why part of the for-profit industry's "growth strategy" includes lobbying Congress to increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As well, because holding detainees for longer and longer periods is a good thing for the industry, congressional inaction on immigration means more profits. The industry's financial future is bolstered every day xenophobism, anti-immigrant posturing and racial scapegoating that currently divides our nation continues.
Because incarceration is their product, hate and fear feed the bottom line. Donald Trump has been a godsend for the industry.
Among the worst aspects of the for-profit prison industry is how it has been able to get Americans to support a series of policies that now place incarceration in the same league as colleges and universities when it comes to spending. In fact, over the past two decades "the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education."
While there is much more to this topic, what I want you to remember is how the for-profit prison industry is growing in a time of declining crime.
A second point to remember is that the industry will continue to thrive every day our nation is divided while Congress drags its collective feet on the "illegal immigration" issue.
Both of these developments are a cancer on America's political soul.
Here's a little known fact many don't know about California's "sanctuary law" (SB-54). It allows local law enforcement to communicate with ICE and other federal agencies. It also allows local enforcement to communicate with ICE about the release dates of undocumented law breakers who have committed serious or violent crimes, and are about to be released to the general public.
The goal of SB-54 is to prevent local law enforcement from unnecessarily using or wasting local resources to aid in the blanket transfer of detainees who have non-violent offenses, like traffic tickets or unpaid fines, to ICE. The idea is to allow undocumented populations who have not committed serious or violent crimes to breathe easier while Congress - who've been bungling the immigration issue for years - tries to get its act together.
Recognizing that immigrants in America have become unfair political targets because of the far rights xenophobism, and the inability of our Republican-led Congress to do the right thing, the state of California is simply trying to impose a degree of humanity in a very ugly national political moment. This is what makes Orange County's action yesterday so difficult to understand.
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Orange County's elected officials, who oppose California's sanctuary law, just announced they will release the names of all detainees who will be released to the general population, regardless of the infractions they may have committed.
Think about what this means. Orange County, in spite of being able to communicate with ICE about violent offenders who they are about to release, think it's their duty to reveal the names of everyone they have in custody, regardless of the status of their offenses. Failure to pay child support? Check. Warrants for fix-it tickets? Check. Unlawful assembly? Check.
The point to emphasize here is Orange County doesn't have to share the names of non-violent offenders they are holding and are about to release. But they will.
Orange County officials don't seem to care that Congress has dropped the ball on the immigration issue, which has made it easier to vilify people who look like me, or that SB-54 allows them to communicate with ICE (and other federal agencies) about pending release dates of violent offenders. Simply put, Orange County seems bent on contributing to our national climate of fear, which disproportionately impacts the weakest and most vulnerable populations in America.
It's as if Orange County, which claims a good deal of spirituality and Christianity as part of its political and social fabric, has lost all sense of what their faith means when it comes to justice and the treatment of foreigners.
It doesn't matter that immigrants have become political pawns in our ugly national political game.
It doesn't matter that local law enforcement can communicate with ICE in California.
It doesn't matter what the spirit of the law (SB-54) is in the immediate term.
Orange County, like many of America's ignorant bigots, has decided their unwarranted paranoia and fears justify punishing the foreigners congressional incompetence has helped turn into a suspect class.
Welcome to Trump's America, brought to you by Republican Jesus.
- Mark
For the record, Matthew 25:35 reads: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in ...".
Also, for your Republican friends, you might want to remind them that Reagan had a few things to say about immigration as well ...
