Last Call For A Big L On Your Forehead

Now presenting Concerned White Guy Theater, starring Bill and Don, just two regular guys.

“The jobs have been taken out of the United States like we’re a bunch of babies,” Trump said. “I’m telling you, it’s an economic message. If you look at President Obama, he’s been a President for almost 8 years, it will be 8 years, you have with black youth, with African American youth, you have a 59 percent unemployment." 

“But how are you going to get jobs for them?” O’Reilly cut in. “Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it's true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren't qualified for jobs?” 

Trump replied, “We’re going to have Apple computers made in this country, not just…” 

“But you have to have skills to make Apple computers," O’Reilly interjected again. 

“We will get the skills and we’ll develop the skills,” Trump replied, saying jobs are going to China and Mexico because of incompetent politicians. 

“It’s more challenging for a poor child in Harlem without parental guidance in a school that’s falling apart than it is for some white kid out in Garden City," O’Reilly pushed back. "You say you can bring jobs back, but if the kid isn’t qualified to do the job and can’t do the work. I mean, you’ve got to get into the infrastructure of the African-American community." 

“Well, it is true. It’s about education, but it’s also about spirit. A lot of people don’t have spirit,” Trump responded. “Not only African-Americans, they don’t have spirit in our country.”

We're all just tattooed, skill-free kids with no spirit anyway, so who really cares if a classy, yooge Trump presidency doesn't fix 59% unemployment (which is actually 22.9% by BLS March 2016 standards but hey, you can't expect Trump to be a numbers guy, he's a big picture guy that creates jobs for numbers guys without tattoos on their foreheads) or whatever.

Still can't understand why people think I'm too hung up on race here in 2016 but at least we replaced the dog whistle politics with easy-to-understand full-blown racists Bell Curve garbage for simplicity's sake.

Make America Overtly Racist Again.

Back To The Driving Range

A reminder today that driving while black or brown isn't just a problem in the South, but in diverse blue states like California too.

African Americans and Latinos in California are more likely than others to lose their driver's licenses because of unpaid tickets and then to be arrested for driving with suspended licenses, according to a report released Monday. 

The report, by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, examined U.S. Census Bureau data, records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and information from 15 police and sheriff's departments in the state to document by race the impact of unpaid traffic fines. 

"Individuals who cannot afford to pay an infraction citation are being arrested, jailed and prosecuted, and are losing their licenses and their livelihoods," the report said. "The communities impacted by these policies are disproportionately communities of color." 

Black drivers were found to be arrested at higher rates than whites for driving with licenses suspended because of unpaid tickets, the report said. The highest suspension rates in 2014 were found in poor neighborhoods with large percentages of black and Latino residents.

It's not just selective actions like this, but police culture as a whole, even in places like LA and San Francisco.

In Los Angeles County, black people make up 9.2% of the population but accounted for 33% of those arrested for driving with a suspended license from September 2013 to September 2015, the report said. 

Whites represent 26.8% the county but accounted for only 14.8% of those arrested at that time for driving with a suspended license. During that time, 85% of 20,000 people arrested by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for driving with suspended licenses were black and Latino, according to the report. 

In San Francisco, 5.8% of the population is black, but 48.7% of those arrested for traffic warrants in 2014 and 2015 were African American. Whites make up 41.2% of the city's population but accounted for only 22.7% of the arrests, according to the lawyers' group.

And guess what?  It's not just places like Ferguson, Missouri that made money off of traffic ticket fees, fines and warrants.

Monday's report, based on data gathered in the last year, follows anearlier study by the group that found more than 4 million Californians had their licenses suspended for unpaid tickets since 2006. The cost of tickets soared during the state's budget crisis because a variety of fees were added to the fines to pay for state programs. 

In response to the earlier report, the state created a traffic ticketamnesty program to make it easier for drivers to get their traffic fines reduced and licenses reinstated. Court leaders also ended requirements that required drivers to pay the tickets before they could contest them. 

"While these actions represent significant progress, they fail to adequately address the underlying racial and economic injustices of California's debt collection and license suspensions policies and traffic court practices," the new report said.

What a surprise.  The biggest blue state in the nation has one of the biggest problems in police racial bias. I'm very interested to see what California Attorney General Kamala Harris has to say about this, considering she's the prohibitive favorite running for Sen. Babara Boxer's seat in November.

Harris has one ugly mess to clean up before she goes to Washington, that's for damn sure.

Operation Robar Mi Voto

The more you take a look at former Kansas GOP chair and current Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the more you realize just how pervasive the Republican plan is to disenfranchise Democratic voters in red states truly is.

The Spanish-language voter guides from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's office include two errors about registering to vote in the state, while the English guides do not include the same errors. 

The Spanish-language guides said that voters could register up to 15 days before the election, while the English version included the correct deadline, 21 days before the election, as the Daily Kos flagged last week. And while the English guides told voters they could use their passport as a photo ID, the guides in Spanish did not include a passport in the list.

Kobach is notorious for his push to enact strict voter ID laws in the state, impose other voting restrictions, and pursue criminal prosecutions of alleged voting fraud. Kansas faces several challenges to its law requiring proof of citizenship for residents to register to vote. 

Craig McCullah, the official in charge of publications for the Kansas secretary of state, claimed responsibility and said that the office would correct the errors, according to the Kansas City Star. 

"It was an administrative error that I am diligently working to fix," he said.

If you believe for a microsecond that this was an "administrative error" well I've got some coastal property in Kansas to sell you.   Remember the only reason this was caught at all was because Daily Kos pointed it out.  Otherwise this would have been an "unfortunate oversight" if it had been noticed after the voter registration period.

I'm sure it was an honest screw up coming from the biggest single proponent of "preventing voter fraud" in the Republican party, too...

StupidiNews!

• Peruvian tax agents have raided the home of one of the representatives of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the international "Panama Papers" tax avoidance scandal.
• Police arrested more than 400 demonstrators at the US Capitol Monday over "Democracy Spring" protests against corruption in American politics and voter-suppressing ID laws.
• Top US health officials say the mosquito that's responsible for spreading the Zika virus is present in about 30 US states and could become a serious health issue for pregnant women.
• Subsidies for US farmers are the highest in a decade as crop surpluses and lower energy prices are leading to cheaper food and lower biofuel payments.
• Republican lawmakers will again attempt to strip net neutrality regulation authority from the FCC, as well as cutting funding for providing internet service to low-income households.