Category Archives: Racism & Bigotry

We Won’t …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, education, Free Press Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

One of the Substack accounts I follow is Stop The Presses  by Mark Jacob.  Mr. Jacob is the former metro editor of the Chicago Tribune and former Sunday editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. He is the co-author of eight books on history and photography.  His post this morning caught my attention as he outlines the ways in which we will remain sane and whole during the next four years.  He has some good, yet commonsense and simple advice, I think.  Now if we can only follow it.

Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over

We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up

By Mark Jacob

16 December 2024

As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:

We won’t shut up.

We won’t retreat from the news.

We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.

We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.

We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.

We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.

We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.

We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.

We won’t forget to be kind.

We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.

We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.

We won’t trust anything that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says about public health.

We won’t let Christofascism make us forget the good acts of Christians. We’ll urge Christians who follow Christ’s teachings to publicly oppose people who call themselves Christians but follow Trump’s teachings instead.

We won’t forget that immigration makes our country richer, both culturally and economically.

We won’t backbite other pro-democracy advocates just because we disagree with them on style points and other minor issues.

We won’t lose our sense of humor, which sustains us in difficult times.

We won’t accept slander and disrespect toward public workers, who do jobs that benefit us all. In fact, we’ll celebrate any bureaucratic red tape they can create to stall the cruelties that Team Trump attempts.

We won’t pretend that anyone who voted for Trump is a “moderate.”

We won’t stop supporting public education, which creates a more cohesive and equitable society. And we won’t stop fighting against school vouchers that starve public schools while helping well-off parents pay for private schools.

We won’t call Trump “the leader of the free world,” and we’ll mock any journalists who do.

We won’t be irrational optimists. We’ll recognize the potential for the worst to happen, based on our understanding of the history of fascism. This will not cripple us – it will motivate us.

We won’t pretend racism is “economic anxiety.”

We won’t admire people simply because they assemble large piles of money. Instead we’ll admire people who do the right things with their money.

We won’t give up on American democracy. Instead we’ll remember a famous saying: “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing – after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”

We won’t dismiss the possibility that friends and family who voted for Trumpism will abandon it when they see the damage it does.

We won’t let the Republican culture of hate cause us to hate our fellow human beings.

We won’t give up our values – our sense of right and wrong.

And we won’t lose hope. Because if we stand strong, we won’t lose our country.

We won’t.

What Is Wrong With The United States?

Posted on by under Economic issues, education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, Social commentary

Y’know … I growl every time I hear people criticize common sense diversity.  DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” … and it has been so vilified by the Republican Party that it’s almost as if it were a really bad cussword.  WHAT THE SAM HELL IS WRONG with Diversity … or Equity … or Inclusion???  Apparently the incoming 119th Congress thinks there is something wrong with it, for they aren’t allowing women or people of colour to hold any leadership positions.

No women, no Blacks, no Asians or Hispanics.  The various committees (all 17 of them) in the U.S. House of Representatives will be led by white, straight males, the only class of people in this country who are recognized by Republicans as worthy of life.  Look at the tighty-whitey leadership clique…

I notice that Gym Jordan is one of them … let’s see … he’ll be chairing the Judiciary Committee … isn’t that a hoot!  Gym Jordan, for those who may not know, was part of the scandal a few years back at my daughter’s alma mater, Ohio State University, where a certain doctor, Richard Strauss, was accused of sexually abusing over 170 students.  Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach, so some of the students took their complaints to him, but he did nothing … nothing to help the students.  He doesn’t even belong in Congress, let alone at the head of the Judiciary Committee, but yet he is considered by the Republican leadership to be of far more value than a mere woman or a Black member of Congress.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

Where are the women?  Oh, right, I forgot that we have been relegated to 2nd class citizens and told to return to the kitchen … leave our shoes at the door.  Women have always struggled to have an equal say, but at least in this current session that will end on January 3rd, three women were committee chairs:  Texas Rep. Kay Granger chaired the Appropriations Committee, Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers chaired the Energy and Commerce Committee and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx chaired the Education and the Workforce Committee.

For centuries, women have fought for equality, not to be treated only as cooks, maids, and baby-making machines.  For the past 150 years, Black people have fought an uphill battle to be included in society as equals, to be treated fairly in the workplace, in housing opportunities and more.  And we made some progress in the 1960s-1970s and even more recently.  But ever since 2008, the United States has been backpedaling in the areas of women’s rights and racial equality.  Why?  What is it about the human makeup that some people, primarily white people, straight males, and Christians,  believe they are somehow ‘superior’ to the rest of us?

I know, I know … I’ve sung this song before, many a time, and I’ll probably sing it again a few dozen more times.  But today it seems worse.  Today it seems that the incoming government actually mocks diversity, equity, inclusion, and instead would like to return to the days of Jim Crow, the days where women were not welcomed in the workplace except as cooks, waitresses, and teachers.  And now, it gets even worse, for we have an incoming administration hellbent on destroying healthcare, destroying our children’s education, and destroying a large portion of our population, those who came here from another country.  Which is truly stupid when you think about it, for 95% of the people in this country have ancestors, usually grandparents or great grandparents, who migrated to the U.S. from “somewhere else”.  But those same people are nurturing hatred toward today’s migrants and would just as soon see them dead as give them an opportunity to live in and contribute to this nation.

So, when people ask me why I don’t ‘love’ this country, it’s because I can no longer respect the nation nor its government, and ‘love’ is based first of all on respect.  I fully anticipate that it will get worse before it gets better, and it won’t likely get better in my lifetime.  Has the work of such great people as Martin Luther King, Jr., John and Robert Kennedy (Sr.), John Lewis, Medgar Evers, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and so many others ultimately been for naught?  Or will the people of this country have the courage to stand up against the government, against the destructive Republican Party, and say, “Hell no, we won’t go backward!!!”?  We’ll find out soon enough.

Don’t Mistake ‘Homan’ for ‘Human’

Posted on by under History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I am appalled by the racism that bubbles over in the candidates who are being chosen to serve in the next administration, and at the top of that list is Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called “Border Czar”.  The words ‘humanity’ and ‘compassion’ do not exist in this man’s vocabulary.  Bill Lueders, writing for The Bulwark, sums it up well.  His piece is a bit long, but I think well worth the read — we need to know the people who will be running the incoming circus.

Trump’s Border Czar Is a Terrible Person

Tom Homan, bad human.

By Bill Lueders

13 December 2024

ON NOVEMBER 11, THE DAY AFTER President-elect Donald Trump anointed him “border czar” in the next administration, Tom Homan appeared on Fox News, where he has worked as a contributor, to offer up a peculiar assurance: “Frankly, I don’t care what people think about me.”

That’s good, because I think—and I know I am not alone in this—that Tom Homan is one of the worst people on earth. Even among the ideologues, extremists, and sycophants being pulled together as Trump’s 2.0 team, he stands out for his sheer ugliness, meanness, and pious phoniness.

As an architect and proponent of the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrants, Homan is eager to embrace his new opportunities to inflict pain and suffering on the huddled masses who, unlike him, are a vital part of what makes America great. He will be working with Stephen Miller, the administration’s newly named deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, to pursue the promised mass deportation of more than eleven million undocumented U.S. residents—parents, caregivers, taxpayers, and valued employees.

A former New York City police officer and Border Patrol officer, Homan was tapped by President Barack Obama to head up the deportation branch of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and by Trump 45 to serve as the agency’s acting director. He performed these roles with relish, carrying out record numbers of deportations under Obama—numbers higher, even, than those under Trump, thus cementing Obama’s reputation as the nation’s deporter-in-chief. (Obama was so appreciative he gave Homan the nation’s highest civil service recognition, a Presidential Rank Award.)

But there was one portal of pure cruelty that the Obama administration would not let Homan pursue: the mass separation of children from their families as a means of dissuading desperate people from seeking protection in the United States. In 2014, a year after Homan had been brought on board, he proposed using family separation as an immigration deterrent to Jeh Johnson, Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, who told the Atlantic he rejected the idea as “heartless and impractical.”

Trump, of course, had no such reservations. Under his watch, more than 4,000 children were separated from their parents, drawing massive backlash and as well as a visit to a migrant children’s shelter in Texas by First Lady Melania Trump, sporting a jacket that proclaimed, “I really don’t care, do u?”

In 2019, during a congressional hearing, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) got Homan to admit that he was the person who recommended a zero tolerance approach that included family separation. But being the slithery liar he was and probably always will be, Homan insisted it was no big whoop.

The policy, he contended, was “the same as it is when every U.S. citizen parent gets arrested when they are with a child.” When AOC reminded him that the policy consisted of separating children from their parents, Homan continued: “If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in a car, I will be separated. When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from the family.”

That effort to rationalize and minimize his monstrous inhumanity goes hand-in-hand with Homan’s self-delusion that he is driven by a high sense of moral purpose.

IN HIS 2020 BOOK, Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis, Homan, now 63, recalled his boyhood in West Carthage, a village in upstate New York not far from the Canadian border. His father was a police officer, his mother a homemaker.

“Our upbringing was very conservative and very Catholic,” Homan wrote. “We went to Mass every Sunday and sat in the same pew every time. God help anyone who arrived before us and sat in our seats!”

A recent article by Matthew McDonald in the National Catholic Register says that while Homan does not speak often about his Catholicism, he continually “portrays securing the border and removing people who are here illegally in moral terms, describing these actions as a humanitarian imperative.” In Homan’s view, the fact that truly bad things happen to people seeking to enter the United States from other countries makes stopping the flow of immigrants a truly good thing to do. As McDonald explains it:

He argues that a porous border enables cartels in Mexico to brutalize migrants, subjecting them to sexual assault, inhumane traveling conditions, torture (when they or their relatives don’t pay up) and sometimes death, and that it penalizes U.S. citizens and legal immigrants by lowering the wages of laborers, particularly poor people, while promoting disrespect for the law and chaos in communities.

The idea is that migrants, after enduring the expense, hardship, and suffering of trying to gain admission to the United States, will be made whole by being rounded up, separated (perhaps forever) from their children, and put into mass detention centers to await return to the frequently nightmarish locales they were fleeing.

Not everyone agrees that family separation is the sort of policy Jesus Christ might endorse. Pope Francis has opposed it, as have prominent American Catholic leaders. A few days after Trump won re-election, three prominent U.S. Catholic bishops released a statement noting the essential role that immigrants play in American society; it called for “fair and generous pathways to full citizenship for immigrants,” as well as a “system that provides permanent relief for childhood arrivals, helps families stay together, and welcomes refugees.”

During an interview he gave in late November to the New York Post, Homan reportedly “broke down” while speaking about a two-year-old migrant girl who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border alone, holding a piece of paper with just a first name and number on it. That led to his reminiscing about the horrors he’d seen in his 34 years with the Border Patrol.

I’ve held dying children and I’ve helped dead children. I’ve talked to girls as young as nine who were raped multiple times by members of the cartel. I saw 19 dead aliens at my feet, a five-year-old boy was baked to death. I’m tired of it. We’ve got to tell the truth about the tragedy on that border, about the women being raped by members of the cartel, about children being sexually assaulted. A child dies almost every fucking day on that border.

But why traumatize the surviving children by removing them from their parents? Why does he consider this an okay thing to do? In his recent star turn on 60 Minutes, Homan was asked whether there was a way to avoid breaking up families that include both natural born and undocumented members. (More than four million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an undocumented immigrant parent or guardian.)

“Of course there is,” Homan replied. “Families can be deported together.”

IN LAUNCHING HIS FIRST SUCCESSFUL BID for the presidency, Trump shocked many with his nativist accusations regarding immigrants from Mexico: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Such talk is pretty weak tea compared with the rhetoric that Trump deployed to secure Win Number Two. Gone is any reference to the possibility of immigrants being good people. Instead, they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, and engaging in unspeakable violence. They’ll “cut your throat and won’t even think about it the next morning,” Trump told a group of his followers in late September. “They grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents.”

It’s safe to say that Homan will offer no resistance to this tactic of just making shit up to justify cruelty to immigrants. In 2017, when he was acting director of ICE, Homan put out a press release suggesting that an immigrant named Jesus Fabian Gonzalez was to blame for a series of deadly wildfires that were raging at the time. This false claim spread like, well, wildfire, forcing Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano to take time off from fighting the fires and delivering relief to victims to publicly debunk these claims.

“There’s a story out there that he’s the arsonist for these fires,” Giordana stated at a press conference. “That is not the case. There is no indication he is related to these fires at all.” The sheriff also put out his own press release in which he said Homan’s claim was “inaccurate, inflammatory, and damages the relationship we have with our community.”

Homan is a contributor to “Project 2025,” a blueprint for Trump’s second term prepared by the Heritage Foundation, where he’s been a visiting fellow. The plan calls for the deportation on a mass scale through an expedited process. It would green-light raids in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions; allow the use of “military personnel and hardware” to prevent border crossings; expand the role of state and local police in enforcing federal immigration laws; curtail or eliminate popular visa categories; and repeal temporary protected status designations, among other things.

Homan can hardly wait to get started.

“We are going to have a historic deportation operation, because you’ve got a historic, illegal immigration crossing the southern border,” he said at a Heritage Policy Fest in July. And while these efforts would be focused on violent criminals and national security threats, Homan said, “No one’s off the table. If you’re in the country illegally, it’s not OK. If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

AMONG THE PLACES HOMAN WANTS people to be looking over their shoulders is at worksites, where he has affirmed that raids “have to happen.” The reason again relates to his self-image as a deeply caring and righteous person. “Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking?” Homan asked his Fox News friends. “At worksites.”

This drew a rebuke from Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, who pointed out that Homan is “conflating the traffickers with the people being trafficked” and “using public safety rhetoric to justify vicious tactics that tear families apart.”

Turns out we already know what workplace raids can accomplish, since this stratagem was deployed by ICE during the first Trump administration, albeit in a more limited way than what is now being contemplated. The results were horrific.

In August 2019, officials from ICE arrested hundreds of mostly Latino employees at a half-dozen Mississippi cities. An article at that time in the Jackson Free Press relates one such encounter, as described by the head of a state immigrant rights group: “In Canton, there was a young man who was working there that protested the arrests because he was an American citizen. And they tased him, knocked him to the ground, and put handcuffs on him before they finally figured out that he was an American citizen.”

This August, the paper reported that the reverberations from this onslaught were still being felt: “Many of the families that ICE broke up in 2019 remain separated half a decade later, some forced to reinvent themselves as single-parent households after the government deported their spouses.” The economies of these raided communities are still reeling.

A 2020 study by the Center for Law and Social Policy looked at the consequences of workplace raids in Ohio two years early, as well as those in Mississippi. It found: “The impact of raids on families, communities, and children—many of whom are U.S. citizens—was the complete devastation of family economic security and mental and physical wellbeing.”

“Immigrants were arrested in their neighborhoods, at work, and even during routine legal check-ins,” wrote Nikki Marín Baena, co-founder and co-director of a North Carolina immigrant rights group, in a recent op-ed for the Progressive magazine. “To stay under the radar, immigrants avoided any interaction with authorities, even in emergencies. Friends of mine who worked as painters, tutors, and in restaurants were arrested at random. These raids shattered communities and devastated businesses.”

Ruth Conniff, a Wisconsin journalist who wrote a book about the state dairy industry’s reliance on migrant workers, last week sized up the likely repercussions of Trump and Homan’s mass-deportation plans in a piece for the Madison paper Isthmus:

Immigrants comprise an estimated 70 percent of the workforce on Wisconsin dairy farms. Almost all of them are undocumented because Congress has not created a visa for year-round low-skilled farm work. The whole industry would go belly-up overnight without the immigrants who work around the clock milking cows and shoveling manure.

You think the price of eggs is high? Wait until you see what might soon happen to the price of milk.

But, as Conniff goes on to say, “the human toll is more appalling. In 2018, ICE staked out a Head Start center in Dane County [which includes Madison], waiting to grab parents as they arrived to pick up their preschoolers.” Some teachers rode the bus home with students “worried that their parents might not be there to meet them.”

But, happily, in Homan’s imagining, such horrific outcomes are easily avoided. Just deport entire families, U.S. citizen children as well as their parents. He considers it the right thing to do. And then Homan can rest easy in his church pew, after kicking out anyone already there, knowing in his heart that he is morally correct.

Hmmmm … Should I, or Shouldn’t I???

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, History, Idiot of the Week, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I’m giving serious consideration to reprising my “Idiot of the Week” series that I ran from mid-2016 thru the end of 2017.  It was a popular series and at the end of the year, I held a contest, letting readers vote from the prior year’s “idiots” to choose an “Idiot of the Year”.  It was a good way to shine the spotlight on some of the biggest fools of the day, such as Kellyanne Conway, Franklin Graham, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Sean Hannity and more.  I stopped the post after the end of 2017, not for lack of idiots, but … well, I’m not sure why I stopped it.  My concern with restarting it is that it might be the same bloomin’ idiots, week after week!  But then … I dunno … new idiots do seem to crop up, particularly on the right-wing of the country, almost daily, so I would probably have enough fodder for the gristmill!  What do you guys think?

Here’s a sample from back in 2017 … the week  Senator Chuck Grassley was honoured with my Idiot of the Week award.  Note that Mr. Grassley is still, some 7 years later, in the U.S. Senate!

Idiot of the Week — Senator Charles (Chuck) Grassley

Time Magazine’s Kool-Aid Addiction

Posted on by under Election 2024, Free Press Issues, Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Time magazine, once a well-respected news magazine, has sunk to the bottom of the dung heap.  I, for one, will never again buy a copy of Time, never even pick one up in the bookstore to browse through.  I once was a subscriber to Time, but no more.  I probably don’t have to tell you what they’ve done, you’ve likely already heard about it, but for any who don’t know, they have chosen Felon Trump for their “Person of the Year”.  I cannot honestly think of anything more offensive to the people of this nation, at least those of us who aren’t inebriated from drinking too much Kool-Aid, those of us whose brains still function.

From an article in the BBC (U.S. publications are too busy salivating to post anything remotely useful):

Time magazine’s tradition – which started in 1927 as “Man of the Year” – recognises a person or movement that “for better or for worse… has done the most to influence the events of the year”.

Other previous winners include climate change activist Greta Thunberg, former President Barack Obama, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Pope Francis and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Time Magazine editors ultimately decide who wins the award.

The outlet was considering 10 people for the person of the year award, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Princess of Wales and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, now a close confidante of Trump set to lead an advisory board called the Department of Government Efficiency.

In a description of Trump for the list of finalists, Time said he had won the 2024 election “in a stunning political comeback”.

“He has reshaped the American electorate, activating young male voters who propelled him to a decisive victory that saw him win the popular vote for the first time and turn every swing state red,” the outlet said.

“His 2024 win is history-making in multiple ways: he will be the oldest President in U.S. history, and he was convicted earlier this year by a New York jury of 34 counts of fraud, making him the first convicted felon to be elected President.”

It’s not the first time that Time has made the worst possible choice …

Personally, I would have picked Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a true man of courage.  U.S. journalism has hit an all-time low … it is mired in the muck.  So, when Trump follows through on some of his threats (or as he calls them, ‘promises’) will Time and others applaud the deaths of migrants, the increase in mass shootings, the skyrocketing prices that will lead to higher-than-ever inflation, deaths from lack of healthcare, and worse?

I fully support and have always supported a ‘free press’, but I refuse to support their out-of-control Kool-Aid habit!!!

When the ‘toon stash is overflowing …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, cartoons, Humour, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Trump's Staff Picks

Once again my stash of ‘toons is overflowing and thus I know it’s time to share them with you!  The current political environment in the U.S. is enough to keep the cartoonists busy, but then add in the situation in Syria, South Korea, Israel … and they are working overtime!  Ahhhhhh … how I wish I had just a tad of artistic talent.

F### Elon Musk!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

Posted on by under Economic issues, Global Issues, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I have zero respect for wealthy people who don’t use at least a substantial portion of their wealth to help those less fortunate.  Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, tops the list of such people.  Needless to say, my hackles were raised when I heard him claim that homelessness doesn’t exist, that it is a “lie” and “propaganda”.  Musk has what I call “ivory tower wealth” … he lives so high above the rest of us that he is literally blind to the way we live.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …  I say let’s force Mr. Musk to live on the streets without access to his vast wealth for about 3 months!!!

Judd Legum over at Popular Information sets the record straight for Mr. Musk …

5 facts Elon Musk should learn about homelessness

By Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims

11 December 2024

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Despite its name, DOGE is not a department or part of the federal government. But it appears that Trump will look to Musk and DOGE to determine what government programs are essential and what should be eliminated as unnecessary.

So it is notable that, on Tuesday, Musk posted on X that homelessness is a “lie” and a “propaganda word.” He suggested that most unhoused people are “violent drug addicts” who cannot be helped.

Musk was commenting favorably on a post that claimed providing shelter to unhoused people was counterproductive. The post ostensibly cited a San Francisco Chronicle article published in April 2022. The article does not support the contention that providing shelter to people who need it is fruitless or that all unhoused people are criminals. Rather, the article details how the converted hotels in San Francisco were “underfunded and understaffed,” leading to substandard living conditions. The city outsourced the management of the buildings to non-profit groups, but failed to provide any oversight. The safety issues resulted from inadequate maintenance and “a small group of tenants who do not receive the support they need.”

If Musk is going to advise the president on government spending, he should educate himself on the reality of homelessness. These are five key facts to get started.

17% of unhoused people are children

A reality that Musk did not mention in his post is that a significant percentage of unhoused people are children. According to the 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on a single night in 2023, “roughly 186,100 people” or almost “three of every 10 people experiencing homelessness” was “part of a family with children.” The same report found that in a single night in 2023, 17 percent of unhoused people were children under the age of 18, amounting to 111,620 unhoused children.

According to data from the National Center for Homeless Education, during the 2021-22 school year, “[n]early 1.2 million children were either literally homeless (living in a shelter, or in unsheltered locations such as a car or tent) or doubled-up (sharing housing with friends or family beyond a unit’s designated capacity)” nationwide. Studies have found that unhoused children are at greater risk for health conditions, including respiratory infections and asthma, and developmental delays.

Tens of thousands of unhoused people are veterans

Veterans also make up a significant portion of unhoused people. According to the HUD’s 2023 report, on a single night in 2023, “35,574 veterans were experiencing homelessness,” or “22 of every 10,000 veterans in the United States.” But, according to the report, the “actual number of veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness could be larger than reported.” Black veterans were disproportionately affected, and “comprised 36 percent of veterans experiencing sheltered homelessness and 25 percent of veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness,” despite making up “only 12 percent of all U.S. veterans.”

Veterans experience homelessness at a higher rate due to multiple factors. Frequent and extended deployment can make finding and maintaining stable, affordable housing more difficult. A large number of veterans also live with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggle with substance abuse. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, 70 percent of unhoused veterans have problems with substance abuse. Veterans can also be “at a disadvantage when competing for employment,” as specific military work and training do not always translate to civilian employment.

Unhoused people are much more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

In Musk’s post, he calls unhoused people “violent.” But, in reality, unhoused people are more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than to commit a violent crime. According to the Washington State Department of Commerce, an unhoused person “is no more likely to be a criminal than a housed person,” with the exception of camping ordinances, as unhoused people “break that law merely by being homeless.” In 2023, the New York Times reported that it is “relatively rare” for “homeless, mentally ill people” to commit a violent attack.

According to the Washington State Department of Commerce, unhoused people are in fact “more likely to be the victim of a violent crime,” especially unhoused women, teens, and children. Research found that approximately “14% to 21% of unhoused people are estimated to have been the victim of violence, compared with around 2% of the general population,” ABC News reported.

The false perception pushed by Musk that unhoused people are more violent can lead to stereotyping and dehumanizing of unhoused people, contribute to violence against unhoused people, and hurt efforts to help the unhoused.

Many people lose housing to escape domestic violence

While Musk implies that homelessness is the result of a moral failure by people with a mental illness or substance abuse disorder, the facts show that there are many factors contributing to homelessness that can affect anyone.

One of those factors is domestic violence. Each year, more than 7 million people in the U.S. experience domestic violence and among those people, 500,000 need to find new housing as a result. It can be difficult to accurately track how many victims of domestic violence end up experiencing sheltered homelessness because shelters that exclusively house domestic violence victims do not report information about their clients.

According to HUD, 11 percent of all beds in shelters that do track client information were designated for domestic violence victims in 2022.

Affordable housing is scarce, even for people with jobs

Another factor driving homelessness in the U.S. is a severe shortage of affordable housing.

For people making extremely low wages (either at or below the federal poverty line or 30 percent of their area’s median income), there are only 34 affordable rental options per 100 families in need of housing.

Working full-time, even for higher than minimum wage, is no guarantee that permanent housing will be attainable. In fact, according to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the average full-time worker would need to make over $32 per hour to afford to rent a modest two-bedroom home or over $26 per hour to afford a one-bedroom.

There is nowhere in the country where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford to rent a two-bedroom home at a regular market rate. Even accounting for states and localities that have set their minimum wage above the federal level, the average minimum wage worker would have to work 113 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom home or 95 hours to afford a one-bedroom home.

Justice For All, You Say???

Posted on by under guns, History, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

So, apparently law enforcement finally found someone who may be the man who shot and killed United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, last week.  Hours upon hours of manpower and many dollars were spent on the hunt for the shooter.  Police finally tracked down one Luigi Mangione, age 26, who they believe was the killer.  Last night he was charged with murder by New York prosecutors.  I have no idea whether he is guilty or whether he is a victim of circumstances and the real killer is still out there, but what amazes me is the effort that went into finding this alleged shooter.  What if …

What if Brian Thompson had been a homeless Black man?  Would the same amount of effort have been put forth?  I think not.  Brian Thompson was a millionare, likely a billionaire, whose compensation package alone totaled more that $10 million annually.  And he was white.  And male.  He checked off all the boxes required for being a “very important person”, unlike Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man who was murdered by a white man who just escaped justice yesterday when a jury decided that killing Neely was … an okay thing for him to have done.

In 2017, George Zimmerman, a white man, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black high school student … for no reason other than he was walking through a white neighborhood.  Zimmerman, also, was acquitted of the charges of murder and manslaughter.  If Zimmerman had shot and killed Brian Thompson, do you think he would have been acquitted?  Or what about Kyle Rittenhouse, a white boy who skated free of the charges when he shot three people, two fatally, at a protest event in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.

Our history is filled with cases where wealth and whiteness mattered more than murderous intent.  Our history is filled with guns in the wrong hands.  Just last week two children, ages 5 and 6, were shot at a school in California.  It did make the news, but … it was overshadowed by the great manhunt for Brian Thompson’s killer, because … well, Brian was wealthy, y’know?  The children, as far as I know, remain in critical condition, though updates are infrequent.  The shooter then turned his gun on himself, so no jury will have to be bothered to find grounds to exonerate him.

Funny, isn’t it, that throughout the entire news coverage about Mr. Thompson’s killing, nowhere have I seen mention of the possibility that unlimited access to guns in this country could maybe, just maybe be a part of the problem.  Perish the thought!

The “Pledge of Allegiance”, which I think is about the biggest bunch of malarky ever produced, starts out …

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Liberty and justice for all???  Seriously???  Where was the justice for Trayvon Martin, for Jordan Neely, for the hundreds, if not thousands of average Joes whose murderers went free?  No, folks, that “liberty and justice” is for white people, wealthy people … the rest of us better just try to stay out of harm’s way, ’cause nobody cares what happens to us.  Unlike with the murder of Brian Thompson, law enforcement will not spend hundreds of man-hours searching for our killer … they’ll just write it off as, “Oh well, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Close the books on this one.”

I’m not minimizing the tragedy of Mr. Thompson’s murder … he had a wife and two children who loved him, he was a human being.  However, he was no more important in this world than others who have not received the attention nor the dedication to justice that he has.  And this, only because he is white and wealthy.  It’s a damn shame, if you ask me.

Snarky Snippets Or Rambling Rants?

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I am growling this afternoon.  My stomach is also growling, because the Fagioli soup I started in the crock pot this morning is starting to smell really good!  But the rest of me is growling for other reasons …

So … let me get something straight here.  We work all our lives, every paycheck has a deduction for Social Security and another for Medicare, the intent being that the government will invest our money wisely and by the time we retire, we are able to get back in monthly payments the ‘fruits of our labours’.  Until we die.  But now, more and more I’m hearing Republican politicos calling for ‘cuts’ to Social Security.  Let me tell you something, Representative Mark Alford and any of the rest who think it’s kosher to rob from the elderly and the disabled:  Go to hell!!!

I started working full time at the age of 13.  Every paycheck, from the time I was 13 until I retired, I paid into Social Security and also Medicare.  I am now retired and the amount of money I get monthly from Social Security helps us be able to have a warm home, two cars (mine is 20 years old), pay our bills, buy food, and have a little bit left over.  Although daughter Chris makes a very good salary, we are not wealthy and without my Social Security we would not have what we have now, would not be able to do anything beyond paying the bills and buy groceries!

Why is it that the U.S. spends more on its military than any other nation on earth, yet the first place lawmakers on the right-hand side of the aisle start looking when they want to cut spending is programs that actually help the people of this nation???  Why don’t you damn fools look to cutting the military budget in half?  We could pay off our national debt and people like me could still survive!  Keep your grubby hands off my money … I EARNED THAT MONEY … I worked my ass off all my life!!!  I often worked more than 80 hours a week! I earned it far more than the dolts in Congress are earning theirs these days!

While I was typing the above, I received no less than four (4) breaking news announcements:

Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Homeless Man on New York Subway

I hope … well, I best not say what I hope, but you can probably guess.  I was fairly certain after the jury couldn’t reach a conclusion on the first charge, the charge of 2nd degree manslaughter, that they wouldn’t convict him on the negligent homicide charge, either.  Mr. Penny walks free, while his innocent victim, Jordan Neely, remains dead.  Justice?  HAH!  I think not.  Racism?  Oh yeah.  I still don’t know the composition of the jury, but I’d bet money it was mostly white.  Well, the jury may have spoken, but I find Mr. Penny guilty of murder and I hope his life is miserable from this day forward.

Yesterday, I shared with you Adam Kinzinger’s response to Trump’s empty threat to imprison the members of the January 6th committee, and today Liz Cheney also spoke out in a statement to The Washington Post:

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Both Adam and Liz have more courage in their little fingers than Felon Trump has in his 300+ pound body!

And on that note, I think I’ll go fold some towels and try to work off some of the angst.  Have a good rest-of-the-day!

This ‘Man’ Is NOT A Hero!!! — An Update

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, Social commentary

I am reprising this post from May 18, 2023 with an update from yesterday.  The man you are about to read about, a man, Daniel Penny, who killed a homeless Black man without cause on a subway last year, went to trial this week.  The charge was 2nd degree manslaughter, a crime for which he could have received up to 15 years in prison.  But the jury was deadlocked.  The judge sent them back to deliberate some more, and they came back again saying they could not reach a unanimous decision.  The judge has thrown out the manslaughter charge and ordered the jury to return on Monday to deliberate on a second, lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.  If he is found guilty on that charge, he could face up to four years in prison.  I’m sorry, but I cannot see how the jury could possibly be in doubt of this man’s guilt.  Oh, but wait … Daniel Penny is white while his victim, Jordan Neely was Black and homeless.  I keep forgetting that in the United States of America, white is considered superior to Black when it comes to skin colour.  It would be interesting to know the racial composition of the jury.

Two weeks ago, I was horrified by the murder of a Black homeless man, Jordan Neely, by a white man on a New York subway train.  But then, horror turned to rage when I saw some of the reactions, with people calling Mr. Neely’s murderer a “hero” and then when a GoFundMe account was established for his legal defense, it quickly amassed over $2 million!!!  WHAT THE SAM HELL is wrong with people in this country?  People whine and bitch about the economy, the price of fuel & food, but yet they’ve got money to throw away supporting a murderous white supremacist???  Well, rather than listen to me rant, here is what Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky, two writers/journalists I have a great deal of respect for, have to say on the topic …

Daniel Penny shows how much the right loves white vigilante violence

“Law and order” is often code for white supremacy.

Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky

17 May 2023

Daniel Penny leaves the 5th Precinct in Lower Manhattan on May 12. (Michael Nigro/LightRocket via Getty)

Republicans often present themselves as the law and order party — the ones committed to public safety and fighting crime. But when Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely to death May 1 aboard the New York City subway, the right did not call for police intervention.

Penny is white and a former Marine. Neely was Black and unhoused, and was talking loudly about how hungry and unhappy he was. Neely was not threatening or assaulting anyone, but Penny put him in a chokehold and killed him. Then when Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter, the right rose as one to condemn the law.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described Penny as a “Good Samaritan” and called on conservatives to “stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda” — though, again, DeSantis was the one defending a man who had allegedly broken the law and been arrested.

Even more crudely, Rep. Matt Gaetz called Penny a “Subway Superman.”

Political scientist and right-wing intellectual Richard Hanania said, referring to Neely and his defenders, “these people are animals” — less a dogwhistle than a dog siren. Meanwhile, New York Times opinion columnist David French, a supposedly reasonable conservative and anti-Trumper, justified Penny’s actions by musing, “What if Penny had done nothing? Would everyone — including Neely — have emerged from that subway car unscathed?” Neely did not threaten anyone or attack anyone. But French twists himself into knots to find a way to claim that the murder was a tragic necessity.

It’s not just politicians and faux intellectuals who have rushed to Penny’s defense. Penny’s legal defense fund has raised more than $2 million from right-wing donors —including from singer Kid Rock, who declared, “Mr. Penny is a hero.”

Not hypocrisy, but consistent racism

You could argue that this is an example of conservative hypocrisy: The GOP claims to support law and order, and then turns around and rallies behind homicidal violence when it’s convenient. They don’t abide by their own principles.

But I think in this case the GOP is upholding their core beliefs. That’s because the law they promise to uphold is the law of white supremacy and impunity, and the order they want to impose is one in which Black people are deferential, on pain of death.

Scholar Frank Wilderson III writes, “White people are not simply ‘protected’ by the police; they are the police.” White people, and whiteness, are the law; Black people are always on the wrong side of it. A white person subjugating a Black person is therefore doing the work of the law, and so of course the “law and order” party rushes to his defense.

For conservatives, racist vigilante violence undertaken by white people isn’t really vigilante violence, because white people are all, in Wilderson’s words, automatically “deputized.”

The law of Dirty Harry

Vigilante violence as white supremacist law has a long pedigree in American history. In the 1830s in New York City, for instance, kidnapping rings seized Black children and transported them into slavery. While these rings were technically outside the law and operated in semi-secret, often they were aided by New York marshals like Isaiah Rynders, and by police and judges who operated what historian Jonathan Daniel Wells referred to as a “reverse underground railroad.”

Like Neely today, Black people in the 1830s in New York were considered an affront to order merely by existing, and white people were empowered to remove them from the city with or without the direct collaboration of law enforcement.

A placard featuring an image of Jordan Neely during a demonstration at NYC’s Washington Square Park on May 5. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty)

As before the Civil War, so afterwards. Lynchings in the South in the Jim Crow era were technically illegal. But targets were generally accused of some crime — especially sexual crimes — and so their murders were carried out in the name of law and order. Executions of Black people were often staged on the courthouse lawn as a way of emphasizing their semi-official nature and their supposed enactment of justice.

When vigilante justice was less public during Jim Crow, officials would generally hurry to cosign it. The murderers of Emmett Till — a Black 14-year-old accused of whistling at a white woman in 1955 — were acquitted by an all-white jury in deliberations that took only an hour.

The Civil Rights movements of the latter 20th century couldn’t erase the subjugation of Black Americans by white authorities. In the 1970s and continuing for 20 years, Chicago police detective Jon Burge and some of his fellow officers used torture to elicit false confessions from more than a hundred Black men in Chicago. Suspects were beaten and shocked with cattle prods. Some were in prison for decades. Mayor Richard M. Daley, then Cook County state’s attorney, covered up the crimes.

In the Burge case, the police themselves were essentially engaged in a systematic, vicious, decades-long campaign of vigilante violence with the collaboration of overseers. That vision of law and order has often been celebrated and glorified in popular culture — as in the Dirty Harry movies, in which a rogue cop takes justice into his own hands, or in innumerable Batman stories, in which the Caped Crusader violently assaults whoever he feels has it coming — all with the enthusiastic support of police chief Jim Gordon.

Bernhard Goetz, George Zimmerman, Daniel Pantaleo, Derek Chauvin, Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny. Some were cops, some weren’t. But they all received right-wing support because they all were doing the work of law and order — defined as the violent suppression of Black people.

White supremacy Is white vigilante violence

But every once in a while, a different vision of law and order wins out in the United States — one that sees white supremacist violence as a threat to public safety, rather than as its apotheosis.

In 1996, an electronics specialist named Bernhard Goetz lost a $43 million dollar civil suit brought by his victims — four men he shot on a NYC subway in 1984. Burge eventually served two years in prison for perjury related to police torture; Chicago paid reparations to his victims. Derek Chauvin was convicted for his murder of George Floyd. Sometimes, to some degree, a different vision of law and order wins out in the United States — one that sees white supremacist violence as a threat to public safety, rather than as its apotheosis.

But conservatives are desperate to preserve the privilege of white violence, which is why the defenses of Penny sound so rabid and so unhinged. For conservatives, a world in which white men are held accountable for racist murder is a world without law, without order. It’s a world in which chaos (that is, equality) is let loose, and America’s essence (that is, white supremacy) is perverted.

Scholar Thomas Zimmer, in a thoughtful essay, argues that the right’s support of vigilantes is part of a deliberate plan to fight back against creeping egalitarianism and establish an authoritarian fascist state through widespread terror and intimidation. The celebration of Penny “encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to ‘fight back’ against anything and anyone associated with the Left by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence,” Zimmer says. It’s laying the groundwork for the next coup.

Zimmer isn’t wrong. I think it’s worth emphasizing, though, that legitimizing vigilante violence is the new tactic because it’s the old tactic. Whenever confronted with a threat to white supremacy — the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, the George Floyd protests — conservatives turn to the law and order of white impunity and white violence. White supremacy in the US has always been challenged, which means it’s always on the defensive, always insisting that extrajudicial violence is necessary and glorious.

The forces of white supremacy always deputize vigilante violence, because the right to vigilante violence against Black people is arguably what white supremacy is. The right is fighting for the right of white people to police Black people, and to inflict any extreme of violence upon them in the course of that policing. Black people “have no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” in the words of that bastion of law, the Supreme Court. That’s what American fascism looks like. It’s been around a long time, and we are not rid of it yet.