Conservatives programed to trigger at words "Black Lives Matter" by Russian trolls.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

and yet there are several of us here that seem to be able to resist it with minimal effort.
i think perhaps the typical magat has nothing higher than the lizard part of their brain...i feel that if you did autopsies on most magats, you would find that their cortexes never folded, they're smooth as eggs.

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cannabineer said:

I posted about this a while back. I posited a bistable equilibrium, like a soup can which is stable on its base or on its side, but nowhere between.

It takes a fair input of energy to tip or right the can. I think that once someone has chosen a belief system, changing it requires a pulse of great and focused effort. Once done, the new perspective stabilizes.

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JACKSON, Miss (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Monday released his response to a congressional investigation of the crisis that left 150,000 people in the state’s capital city without running water for several days in late summer.

Reeves said Jackson has received a disproportionate amount of funding for its water system based on the city’s size. He also said local officials only have themselves to blame for the water woes.

“(M)y administration is deeply committed to ensuring that all federal funds received by Mississippi for drinking water systems upgrades have been in the past and will continue to be in the future made available and distributed among Mississippi’s more than 1,100 water systems on an objective and race-neutral basis,” Republican Reeves said in a letter dated Oct. 31 and addressed to Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Carolyn Maloney of New York.

The two Democrats sent Reeves an Oct. 17 letter requesting details of where Mississippi sent money from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including “the racial demographics and population sizes of each” community that received aid. They also requested information on whether Jackson, which is 80% Black, has faced “burdensome hurdles” to receive additional federal funds.

Comparing census data against the recipients of state water loans, Reeves wrote “there is no factual basis whatsoever to suggest that there has been an ‘underinvestment’ in the city or that it has received disproportionately less than any other area of the state.” In 2021, Jackson accounted for 68% of all loans dispersed, Reeves wrote.

Mississippi received about $1.8 billion in ARPA money, and the Legislature put $750 million of that toward competitive grants for Mississippi’s water systems. Officials announced last week that they approved Jackson’s request for $35.6 million in federal funds to help pay for seven water and sewer projects.

Thompson and Maloney said in a joint statement Monday that recent federal aid to Jackson can be traced to more federal involvement. They said they received the governor’s letter Monday.

“The Governor’s response to our letter is a clear acknowledgment that the City of Jackson, and its water systems, are in desperate need of resources to supply clear water to the city’s residents,” Thompson and Maloney said. “Democrats have passed infrastructure funding for this exact purpose, and the Biden Administration has orders in place to maximize the delivery of these resources to communities of greatest need — including Jackson — to overcome generational disinvestment in communities of color from every level of government.”

They also pointed to an ongoing EPA civil rights investigation into whether Mississippi state agencies discriminated against Jackson in the distribution of water infrastructure funds.

Reeves wrote that Jackson tax collections increased from 2003 to 2020, but numbers cited by the governor did not account for the decreased buying power because of inflation. Reeves wrote that Jackson’s property tax collections were about $60 million in 2003 and $79 million in 2020. An inflation calculator shows that $60 million in 2003 would be worth about $84 million in 2020 — so, although the numbers were up, the buying power was down.

Reeves also wrote that Jackson sales tax collections increased during those years, but he did not mention that part of the increase was because Jackson residents voted in 2014 to approve an additional 1% sales tax to help pay for infrastructure improvements.

“Enforcement efforts” against Jackson by federal regulators are proof of city mismanagement, he said. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice in January that Jackson’s water system violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

In September, federal attorneys threatened legal action if the city did not agree to negotiations related to its water system. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said last week that negotiations are continuing. While the EPA said current samples indicate Jackson’s water quality meets federal standards, testing continues and legal action against the city is still a possibility.

Through a spokesperson, Lumumba declined to comment on the governor’s letter Monday.

Jackson has had water problems for years, and the latest troubles began in late August after heavy rainfall exacerbated problems in the main treatment plant, leaving many customers without running water. Jackson had already been under a boil-water notice since late July because the state health department found cloudy water that could make people ill.

Reeves said the city has been unable to run its billing system and hire enough skilled personnel to manage the system.

Running water was restored within days, and a boil-water notice was lifted in mid-September, but Thompson and Maloney’s letter to Reeves said “water plant infrastructure in the city remains precarious, and risks to Jackson’s residents persist.”

Thompson and Maloney said their letter marked “the start of a joint investigation” by the House Homeland Security and the Oversight and Reform committees into the water crisis. If Democrats lose their majority in the midterm elections, it is unlikely the probe would continue without bipartisan interest.

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Veterans Day arrives this year with troubling information about the unpaid debt the nation owes Black veterans.

A nationwide study of more than 1 million military discharges finds that Black veterans are significantly more likely to “bear the stigma” of a less-than-honorable discharge.

More than a stigma, those with other-than-honorable discharges “can be shut out of benefit programs ranging from housing, education, vocational training, and health care,” according to a new report, “Discretionary Injustice,” scheduled for release by the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center on Friday, Veterans Day.

That follows a March report from the Brandeis Institute for Economic and Racial Equity that says the GI Bill, often vaunted for its substantial financial assistance to those who served, actually “contributed to the racial wealth gap” and negatively impacted African Americans through its racist implementation.

Some Democratic lawmakers are trying to fix that. Their legislation, the Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Jr. and Sgt. Joseph H. Maddox GI Bill Restoration Act, would extend certain benefits to African American vets and their families, if they can prove racism affected their benefits. Woodward, a World War II veteran, was beaten and blinded in uniform by South Carolina police who dragged him from a bus in 1946. Maddox, another World War II vet, was accepted by Harvard University, but was denied Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) financial assistance because the agency wanted to “avoid setting a precedent,” according to the bill’s sponsors, who plan to reintroduce the proposal next year.

Consistent with President Biden’s equity emphasis in federal programs, VA recognizes the racial bias and pledges to rectify it.
“We fully understand that there are disparities in discharge status due to racism, which unfairly disadvantage Black Veterans and, sometimes, wrongly leave Black Veterans without access to VA care and benefits,” VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said by email.

Hayes says the department is trying to address the problem by reevaluating its policies on veterans wrongly given other-than-honorable discharges, seeking to eliminate institutional racism in the claims process and contacting veterans with other-than-honorable discharges to inform them about VA benefits and health care options.

For its report, researchers at the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center looked at all Defense Department discharges from fiscal year 2014 through 2022. They found African Americans are about 1.5 times more likely than White service members to receive other-than-honorable discharges, but uncovered “no similar pronounced disparity” with other racial and ethnic groups.

“VA presumes that all veterans with an [other-than-honorable] discharge were released from service under dishonorable conditions and are therefore not legally ‘veterans,’” according to the legal center. That “presumptively excludes” those vets from certain benefits unless the veterans convince officials otherwise. Many vets believe their exclusions are final and don’t appeal a denial of benefits, according to the report.

The GI Bill does not mention race. But it was racially implemented through “localized discriminatory practices” that the Brandeis report says led to:

• African American vets receiving only 40 percent of the value of benefits that White veterans received.

• An annual average increase in income of $16,000 for White veterans, while, “for Black men, service in World War II is estimated to have had a negative effect,” although one not statistically significant.

• Black veterans with an average net wealth of $45,650, compared to $147,500 for White veterans.
Despite the bill’s race-neutral language, “segregation and systemic racism limited the ways in which Black veterans were able to use their benefits,” said the Brandeis document, which is an interim report on a larger study. “Black people could not use their money to buy education in White-only schools, or real estate in White-only neighborhoods. Money is only valuable because it can be used to buy things, and Black veterans could use their money to buy fewer things.”

Black vets and their families would have more money if the GI Bill Restoration Act, which was first introduced on Pearl Harbor Day 2020 and again before Veterans Day last year, is approved. The legislation says VA “denied African Americans access to educational benefits at certain universities” and “adopted the Federal Housing Administration’s racial exclusion programs, also known as redlining.”

It would extend housing and educational benefits to Black WW II vets, their surviving spouses, children, grandchildren and other direct descendants if they can certify they were “denied a specific benefit … on the basis of race.” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), the bill’s author, acknowledged that could be difficult to prove, but said the clause was needed to protect against fraud, while also securing benefits for those who deserve them. It’s also a “political concern,” he said, to encourage support from Republicans who might fear cheating.

Now the struggle is to get Republican co-sponsors for the legislation with an estimated $80 billion price tag. “It’s going to take some real work to get it passed because it costs a lot of money,” Moulton said in an interview. But, he added, that pales in comparison to the greater, “massive” loss to the country and African American veterans specifically from the discriminatory behavior they suffered.
The legislation also is sponsored by Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.).

Moulton said he used veterans benefits to help finance his first home and his graduate education, wealth-building advantages many Black vets were denied because of the dual challenges of racism in discharge classifications and benefits availability.

“As the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of our military looms” in July 2023, said Richard Brookshire, co-founder of Black Veterans Project, “the devastating legacy of bad paper discharges — proliferating in World War II through the present day, has stripped generations of Black troops of the social and economic benefits of military service.”

Moulton wants that to stop.

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hanimmal said:

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hanimmal said:

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MIAMI (AP) — Republicans had placed hopes on a roster of Latina candidates around the country as they looked to make gains with Latino voters in a midterm election that some had predicted would yield sweeping GOP victories.

The verdict was mixed.

While Republican House candidates made modest inroads among Latino voters in 2022 compared with 2018, several GOP Latina candidates in high-profile races lost.

Overall, the House will see a net gain of at least eight Latino members, with seven of them being Democrats, according to a tally by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

With the additions, the Republican Party will now have 11 Latino House members, while Democrats will have 35, with one race featuring a Democratic Latino still undecided, NALEO said. That will bring the total Latino representation in Congress to 11%, lower than the 19% Latino population in the U.S.

“It obviously is not the outcome many of us were expecting, but it still brings hope,” said Wadi Gaitan, communications director for the conservative group Libre Initiative, which mobilizes Latino voters to help get Republicans elected. “Inroads inspire Latinos and Latinas to look for office.”

The blows were felt in Texas and in Virginia, where Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger prevailed over Republican Yesli Vega, a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, in one of the country’s most expensive and competitive races. Vega, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is a former police officer who co-chaired Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Latino voter coalition last year.

In South Texas, Democrats held on to two of three heavily Latino districts aggressively targeted by Latina Republican candidates, who dubbed themselves the “spicy tacos” after a comment by first lady Jill Biden that Latinos were “as unique” as San Antonio breakfast tacos. She later apologized for the remark.

The GOP scored a victory with Latina businesswoman Monica de la Cruz winning a newly redrawn district there. But in a rare race between two sitting members of Congress — both Latinos — in a Democratic-leaning district, Republican U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores was ousted.

Flores, who made history in a special election earlier this year by becoming the first Mexican-born congresswoman, said the heavily Hispanic region has always been conservative, with a focus on faith and family values, leading to a growing GOP impact.

“The future of South Texas is Republican. We didn’t go backwards,” Flores said. “Little by little, we are going to make bigger impacts.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earned a slightly larger percentage of Latino voters in 2022 than he did four years ago, 42% now vs. 35% then, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of almost 3,400 voters in the state.

Dorian Caal, director of civic engagement research at NALEO, cautions against making wide assumptions, saying the real breakdown of Latino support needs to be analyzed down to precincts, which can take time.

“It really comes down to not taking the Latino vote for granted,” Caal said.

In Florida, Republicans invested heavily and gains were pronounced, according to AP VoteCast. More than half of Latino voters backed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, compared with fewer than half in 2020 supporting Trump. DeSantis earned a somewhat higher percentage of Latino voters this year than he did in 2018. He also became the first Republican governor since Jeb Bush in 2002 to win Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county and one with an influential immigrant population.

Many analysts highlighted the landslide victory in Florida, saying the GOP needs to replicate the model around the country. While aligning with Trump may have hurt candidates in other areas, it helped them in Florida.

Republicans increased their Latino representation in the House by adding Anna Paulina Luna, who has Mexican ancestry and won a newly redrawn district. Luna has said she believes Trump won the 2020 election and earlier this year promoted a film that has been discredited that claims people were paid to travel among drop boxes and stuff them with fraudulent ballots during the 2020 presidential vote.

Another victory scored by the GOP turned into a milestone in Oregon when Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer flipped a district red. She and Democrat Andrea Salinas, who won in another district, will be the first Latina congresswomen from Oregon.

In Nevada, Democrats held on to Senate control with the victory of incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, the first and only Latina in the Senate.

Melissa Morales, founder of Somos PAC, a group that mobilizes Latino voters for Democrats, said Latinos were key in getting Cortez Masto reelected. Cortez Masto won 60% of Latino votes, according to AP VoteCast.

“We are not a sleeping giant. We are strategic giant,” said Morales. “At the end of the day, there can always be more investment. That’s what we will be pushing for.”

Back in South Texas, Democratic U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who defeated Flores, shares the sentiment, saying the party must increase its investment in Latino communities and prioritize the “meat and potatoes” issues that are important to local voters.

“The only way to turn more of Texas blue is raising large amounts of resources,” Gonzalez said.

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-miami-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-cbf587e647900019b502a9cfbf93ac6d
View attachment 5229225

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

this is just proof of god not existing...a kind compassionate god would never allow hate filled pieces of shit to fuck up the entire world this way

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

i'm starting to think the republican party serves a necessary purpose...
morons and insane people still feel like they should have a right to vote, even though they're morons and insane people...the republican party gives them something to identify with, a group of like minded dimwits, gathering together for mutual protection. the problem is predatory morons and insane people, who prey on the more docile of their own breed, and exploit them for their personal gain.
if we could cull out the more aggressive republicans, the party could become a safe haven for dumbasses and psychos across the nation, where they could feel like they're contributing, without fucking things up for everyone.

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In a court fight over school anti-bias initiatives in Virginia, an attorney for a conservative advocacy group representing the plaintiffs quoted one of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s most famous proclamations: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Roberts made the comment in 2007 as part of a decision that struck down voluntary school desegregation plans in the states of Washington and Kentucky. And some might assume that the three Republican-nominated appellate court judges in Richmond weighing the Virginia case could be a receptive audience for the comment.

But Judge Paul V. Niemeyer took the opportunity to opine on why he thought Roberts’s formulation fell short.

“That’s a cute phrase,” the Reagan appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said. But in cases where juries identify racial discrimination, he said, “we provide remedies that … take race into account. … When you have discrimination and you create a particularized remedy, it necessarily has racial aspects to it.”

The exchange came last week in a lawsuit involving anti-bias initiatives in Loudoun County’s public schools. Parents in Loudoun are suing over “student equity ambassadors” tasked with sharing examples of racial discrimination and bias with administrators, saying the initiative discriminates against White conservatives and chills free speech.

The lawsuit reached the federal appellate court after a district court judge ruled in January that there was no constitutional violation in the matter, only a disagreement over priorities that should be handled within the school system.

The case is part of a backlash across the country against school programs intended to combat racism, with similar cases finding success at the collegiate level in multiple states.

The Loudoun program was created after a districtwide audit found that Black, Latino and Muslim students “were particularly affected by racial insults or slurs, and even racially motivated violent actions,” in the words of a court filing from the school board.

“The question is … how far back do you go” in looking at what constitutes racial discrimination, Niemeyer said. “That’s not an easy issue for us to tackle.”

In pushing back against Roberts’s assessment on race in the desegregation case, Niemeyer referenced laws governing workplace discrimination by private employers, something experts say conservatives on the Supreme Court and in lower courts have not moved to undo while rolling back broader racial protections in other realms. The Supreme Court in 2020 expanded its reading of workplace discrimination to include transgender people, a decision Roberts joined.

Some fear that the Supreme Court could upend interpretations of protections that have been in place for decades.

“This extremely aggressive Supreme Court could revisit that precedent,” said Kenji Yoshino, a constitutional law professor at New York University. “But for now, lower courts are bound by it, not by the chief justice’s statement.”

Miranda McGowan of the University of San Diego School of Law said similar precedent to the workplace protections applies in a school context.

“When a court finds that the government has indeed discriminated on the basis of race [then] the government can (and indeed must) fashion a race-conscious remedy to cure the racial discrimination,” she wrote by email. “What the Supreme Court has foreclosed is action to address broader societal discrimination.”

The Loudoun case may be decided on narrower grounds. All three judges on the appellate court panel expressed skepticism that the parents could challenge the program as racially discriminatory when none of their children had applied to be ambassadors. In a draft announcement that became public, Loudoun County Public Schools described the ambassadorship as “specifically for students of Color.” But by the time the program was implemented, White students could serve — and since then have served — as ambassadors, the judges noted.

“I haven’t seen where you have pled that you have been denied admission or excluded or even wanted to … become a student equity ambassador,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr., a Trump appointee, told the plaintiffs’ attorney at oral argument. “You just have a disagreement with it.”

The program website says the students should have “a passion for social justice.” Daniel Suhr of the Liberty Justice Center said the students he represents for the plaintiffs “did not apply because they knew they would not be accepted.”

But the judges were more open to the idea that school investigations of alleged student bias might chill free speech by, in Niemeyer’s words, encouraging “student-on-student snitching” about “heated” school discussions.

Suhr said after the hearing that it was “encouraging that … the court consistently recognized the importance of those free speech rights in the school context as much as in any part of our society.”

Andrew Selman, arguing for the school board, said there was no evidence of students being disciplined over allegations of bias: “The chill has to be reasonable.”

In January, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ruled that the parents failed to show that the school system’s diversity initiatives violate the First Amendment and the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“While the specific course chosen by the [Loudoun County School Board] to promote a more inclusive, non-discriminatory environment can be reasonably debated, addressing the effects of invidious discrimination within the educational environment is clearly a legitimate pedagogical concern,” Trenga wrote. “Local school boards, not the courts, have the responsibility and obligation to assess how best to advance those pedagogical concerns.”

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hanimmal said:

https://www.rollitup.org/t/sinema-leaves-democratic-party.1083472/post-17191944
I actually posted the below story right before reading a perfect post that it could be a response to.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/11/loudoun-niemeyer-roberts-race/View attachment 5236448

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hanimmal said:

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

...i'm not particularly impressed...i usually feel quite sympathetic, but i've had the same thing happen to me, and i'm as white as a fucker can be...
i've had to produce a key or would have been escorted off the property...they may have been rude to him, but they've been rude to me in exactly the same way.

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hanimmal said:

Was there a reason that they singled you out when it happened to you? That is when it gets placed into the shitty category when there isn't a reason other than you are different.

I agree that it can happen to anyone, when someone gets it in their ass to single someone out, humans can be dicks. And we don't have the full context (like was he stumbling around drunk causing a scene just before the camera got turned on) or was it just a case of hoteling while black and caused someone to get nervous, or any of the infinite reasons that it could have started.

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