CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
09-07-17
By Cash Michaels
IRONIES OF IRONIES: At the time of
this writing (Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.), former Pres. Barack Obama had not written
a response to his successor’s ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program, which Obama stated during his administration, otherwise known
as “DACA.”
“DACA offered protection for young people
who were brought to the United States as young children, the vast majority of
whom know no other home than the United States,” NC Congressman G. K.
Butterfield (D-NC-1) said in a statement Tuesday. “Today, President Trump has
failed to “show great heart” to the hundreds of thousands of young people whose
lives are now in peril with the announcement that his Administration will end
the DACA program. All DACA recipients grew up in America, are registered
with our government, and have passed extensive background checks. More
than 95 percent of DACA recipients are in school or in the workforce.”
“I am saddened by President Trump’s
decision to end the DACA program because it will devastate lives, tear apart
families, and disrupt our local communities. I am an original sponsor of
bipartisan immigration reform legislation that would create a path to permanent
legal status for Dreamers, and I call on Speaker Ryan to do the right thing and
immediately bring it to the floor for a vote.”
Thus far we’ve heard a lot of lip service
from Republicans, who are supposedly up in arms about Trump’s dumping of DACA
too, so let’s see what happens. But back to Obama.
Recently there’s been a lot of desperate
talk about Pres. Obama climbing bad into the rhetorical political fray,
commenting from time to time about the outrageous and outlandish behavior of
Pres. Trump.
Lots of people now see Obama as a
principled man of reason who is highly respected. There are even some who wish
openly that he would come back as president of the United States (he can’t,
thanks to the US Constitution).
While some literally beg for Obama to come
back to the national limelight to sort of balance the scales, there are others
who counter that the 44th president of the United States should stay
out of the limelight, no matter how tempting it may be to want to cuss Donald
Trump out in that very special way that only an ex-president and a black man
could.
The naysayers say if Obama were to climb
right back into the lion’s den of political inequity, that might be exactly
what Trump wants. Outside of “Crooked Hillary” there’s no one Trump would love
to get into a public rumble with than the man Trump once openly accused of
having a phony birth certificate.
Having someone special to consistently
bash is Trump’s stock and trade. He’s got to have someone on a daily basis – be
it the media (specifically CNN), the Democrats, or of course, “Crooked Hillary Clinton.”
And that’s probably the reason why Barack
Obama, clearly a dignified man, should not publicly engage in a peeing contest
The Donald. What is there for him to gain? How would doing so be healthy for
his legacy? Who does Obama lead now who would benefit in the end?
More importantly, the former president has
earned his time off. He’s sacrificed tremendously for the eight years he spent
in office, and deserves, long with his wife Michelle, to live an enjoy life.
Sure Obama can tweet every once in a while,
even playfully bait Trump, to remind him who the real president is.
Oh look, it’s 3 p.m. Tuesday, and a
statement from the ex-president just came across the wire regarding Trump’s
dumping of DACA!
“What makes us American is not a question
of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray.
What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals – that all of us are
created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we
will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our
most cherished values for the next generation. That’s how America has
traveled this far. That’s how, if we keep at it, we will ultimately reach
that more perfect union.”
Amen, Mr. Former President. Amen.
And thanks!
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ATTY. ANITA EARLS
IGNORING RACE IN
REDRAWING
DISTRICTS BIG GOP
BLUNDER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
To
many legal experts, it’s hard to believe that Republican legislative leaders
deliberately redrew new voting maps for the state House and Senate – as ordered
by a three-judge federal court – without incorporating race as one of the nine
criteria guiding the process. Afterall, it was the abusive, and according to
the US Supreme Court, illegal use of race by Republican mapmakers in drawing
the 2011 redistricting plan that earned the ire of the federal court – namely
the stacking and packing of black voters into 28 of 170 districts across the
state in order to severely weaken their influence in legislative races, thus
giving the GOP super-majorities in both houses.
Legal
experts considered it “…the worst racial gerrymander in the country.”
So
unpacking the problem by totally ignoring the abused element does little to
render a satisfactory, let alone legal solution, many observers are saying, and
they expect to hear that from the three-judge panel now that the redrawn maps
have been submitted for review.
“It might be that you’re
sending a message to this three-judge panel that you don’t take judicial
letters very seriously, and that is not a message that I want to be part of,”
Dan Blue, Senate Minority Leader (D-Wake), told Republicans during Senate
debate last week. “If you haven’t solved [the racial gerrymander], the
three-judge panel will solve it for you.”
“The Voting Rights Act requires consideration of race
in certain circumstances so as not to ‘dilute’ the political power of racial
minorities,” Illya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies with the
Cato Institute, and editor-in-chief of the
Cato Institute Supreme Court Review, told the conservative Carolina Journal.
At least 40 counties in North Carolina are legally
under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, requiring that black voters in those counties
be able to elect their own representatives. Republicans say that’s what they
were making sure was done with the 2011 maps, but the courts countered that
they went too far.
Legislative Republican leaders, like Rep. David Lewis
(R-Harnett), co-chair of the House Redistricting Committee, insists that
federal court order on the redrawing of the districts was clear. "The only way to comply," Lewis
said, "is not to consider race in that process.”
“What the court said is in writing, and
it’s not really open to interpretation,” countered Anita Earls, founder and
executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and an
attorney representing the plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the GOP’s 2011
legislative maps in Covington v. the
State of North Carolina.
“The notion that [Republicans] have some
understanding that the court told them not to look at race, that’s just not
true,” she maintained. “It’s really just lying. It’s in this alternative
universe where we can say whatever we want to and facts don’t matter.”
Earls continued that in its order to draw
districts the court said, “Any district that you draw at greater than fifty
percent black, tell us why you believed it was necessary to draw the district
at that percentage black. There’s no way this legislature can comply with that
order unless they look at race. So this notion that we don’t want to look at
race because the court told us [not to]…that’s just open defiance of what the
court actually did tell them to do.”
“This theme that [Republicans] are going
to be “colorblind,” well we’re not foolish. Those of us who’ve been advocating
for racial justice have long known that this notion of “being colorblind is the
way that you remedy discrimination, and reverse the decades of racial
discrimination that black people have experienced in this country…,” well, we
know that that’s a lie,” atty. Earls
said.
“And that is the lie that they’re perpetuating, right now
today, as they try to assert that they’re not looking at race, and the court
told them not to look at race.”
Earls maintains that now even the redrawn
maps are “…illegal under the state and federal constitutions.”
Earls says Guilford and Cumberland
counties are at least two on the new Senate legislative maps where race
“…continued to dominate.” On the House side, both Wake and Mecklenburg county
districts were redrawn, but should not have been because there was no legal
authority to do so.
Atty. Earls is reluctant to predict what
exactly the three-judge federal court will ultimately do once it reviews the
newly submitted GOP maps for review (the court could order a special master to
redraw them), but she did promise one thing.
“What I can predict with certainty is that
the plaintiffs in this case, and the plaintiffs in the NAACP [redistricting]
case pending in state court, are committed to pursuing vindication of their
rights as long as they can.”
She added that the extreme partisan gerrymandering
the Republicans engaged in hasn’t been ruled illegal yet (the US Supreme Court
is scheduled to hear a Wisconsin case about that in October), but she’s glad
that a large coalition of progressive groups have come together to help fight
the North Carolina case on that same issue.
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ADAMS, BUTTERFIELD
SUPPORT
IMPEACHMENT OF PRES.
TRUMP
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Now
that Congress is back in session, there are plenty of issues that lawmakers
must address, including raising the national debt ceiling; financial relief for
Texas after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey; and paying for that wall Pres.
Trump still insists Mexico will ultimately underwrite…one way or another.
But
amid that spoken agenda, is intense behind-the-scenes strategizing on the part
of the 49-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to have Republican President
Donald J. Trump impeached.
“When
members return to Congress in September, the CBC will have a robust discussion
on #Impeachment,” an August 22nd tweet from the CBC announced.
Impeaching
a US president is the process in which a legislative body (constitutionally the
US House) formally levels serious charges (indictments) against a sitting
commander-in-chief. It is the first step towards the removal of a president
from office. If a president is to be removed (or effectively convicted of said
charges), then the US Senate votes accordingly. The most recent president to be
impeached was Bill Clinton in December 1998, but the Senate acquitted Clinton
in February 1999.
While
things went sour fast between the CBC and Pres. Trump shortly after he took
office in January, it was Trump’s moral equivocation between armed white
supremacists and mostly unarmed counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va. on
August 12th – a violent confrontation which resulted in the alleged murder of a
counter-protester with a car driven by a neo-Nazi – that convinced members of
the CBC, along with many Democrat and Republican colleagues, that neither Trump,
nor key officials in his administration, possessed the moral standing to lead
the nation.
And
several days later, when the president doubled-down on his position by calling
white nationalists “fine people,” the outrage from the CBC could not be
contained.
“You can make an
argument based on pure competency and fitness to serve, and that’s the
conversation the caucus will have,” CBC
Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), told reporters during a teleconference
two weeks ago, noting that the CBC was also committed to ridding white
supremacists from the federal government, and certainly from the Trump administration.
“I never thought I would see the day when the
president of the United States would openly defend white supremacists,” Rep.
Richmond later said in a statement. “I call on my colleagues on both sides of
the aisle to hold this president accountable.”
North Carolina’s two black congresspeople
were also outraged, and joined the CBC chair in saying so.
“President Trump has tragically
become the divisive demagogue we feared he would be,” said Congresswoman Alma
Adams (D-NC-12) in an August 16th statement, in which she also called Trump’s
comments “erratic and despicable.”
“Upon election, he took a sacred oath to represent every
American, regardless of race, religion, or creed yet sadly President Trump has
failed at this most basic responsibility. Instead of being a steady leader in a
time of national crisis, he has recklessly turned to the podium to once again make a mockery of the Presidency and
of the citizens he swore to serve.”
“We can no longer justify or tolerate these actions,” Rep. Adams
continued. “I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do what this
President has failed to do. It is time for us to stand united and resolute
in our efforts to fight racism, bigotry, and hate. In the absence of a
true leader, Congress must step up and defend our progress, unify our nation,
and hold this administration accountable.”
Rep. Adams’ Tar Heel colleague, Rep. G, K. Butterfield (D-NC-1), the
immediate past chairman of the CBC, was equally disturbed.
“I was disappointed that President Trump waited two
days before specifically condemning the Charlottesville terror attack and the
violence perpetrated by white supremacist groups,” Butterfield said in an
August 15th statement. “His failure to not immediately and
powerfully condemn these terror groups by name was a clear message that he is
supportive of or indifferent to their cause based on ideology or politics,
either of which is unacceptable for an American president.”
Members of the CBC had met with Trump in March after he
was inaugurated, but in June, they decided to cancel a followup meeting, saying
that not only did they not see any evidence that he had acted on any of the
important issues they had initially discussed, but that there was evidence of
White House policies that would “affirmatively
hurt Black communities.”
One such
example was a followup conference the president is planning to have with the
presidents and chancellors of historically black colleges and universities soon.
The first was held last February.
Both
representatives Richmond, and Adams, who is the co-chair of the HBCU
Bi-partisan Caucus in Congress, asked Trump to cancel that gathering in the
aftermath of his controversial comments about Charlottesville.
Richmond
said the president’s remarks showed he has little concern for the welfare of
black students or their communities.
“Not only do I think it should be postponed, it shouldn’t
have been happening in the first place,” Richmond told reporters. “This White
House isn’t serious about improving our HBCUs…They brought all those HBCU
presidents to town, they took a picture in the Oval Office, and then they did
nothing.”
Adams had equal condemnation.
"HBCU leaders came to the White House in February and
presented a substantive and well-thought-out agenda with specific action-items
for the administration to pursue immediately. Almost 180 days later,
nothing has happened and no response has been given. It would be more
productive to hear from the President directly or from his Secretary of
Education about what progress they are making on the HBCUs' request before
asking Presidents to come back to Washington for another photo-op.
Rep. Adams added, “I call on the President and [Education]
Secretary DeVos to postpone this year’s conference until a serious effort has
been made to advance issues important to HBCUs and their students.”
Apparently, due to a large number of cancelled appearances by
HBCU officials, the conference, while is still scheduled, has been “downsized,”
published reports say.
There
were Democratic Party calls for Pres. Trump to be shown the door long before
Chairman Richmond and the CBC joined the fray. Both Texas Rep. Al Green and
California Congresswoman Maxine Waters (who recently spoke to the Durham
Committee of the Affairs of Black People) have called for the impeachment of
Trump (Green has actually drafted articles of impeachment on charges of
obstruction), based largely on allegations of campaign collusion with the
Russians stemming from the 2016 presidential campaign. An ongoing US Justice
Dept. investigation is still probing those allegations.
“Am I concerned about high crimes and
misdemeanors? Absolutely,” CBC Chair Richmond told reporters two weeks ago. “Am
I concerned about this president’s fitness to serve? Absolutely.”
When asked last week if they agreed with
their CBC chairman about the need for Pres. Trump’s impeachment, Congresswoman
Adams said, “Like many people, I, too, am beginning to question if this
President has the moral compass and capacity to lead.”
And Rep. Butterfield added, “It seems
like a daily occurrence that Democrats, Republicans and the entire world are
shocked by the president’s impulsive, divisive and dangerous behavior. “
“As investigations move forward
regarding the Trump Administration’s ties to the Russian government,” Rep.
Butterfield continued, “the evidence of unlawful collusion and the need for
removal of this President appear to increase by the day.”
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 09-07-17
STATE SUES CHEMOURS;
EMAILS PROVE MCCRORY
ADMINISTRATION KNEW
OF GENX POLLUTANTS
[WILMINGTON] Gov. Cooper’s administration filed suit Tuesday
against Chemours, the Dupont-owned chemical company found to be allegedly
polluting the Cape Fear River with GenX and other pollutants, from its
Fayetteville plant upstream effectively poisoning the region’s water supply. It
is believed that both companies have been discharging chemicals into the Cape
Fear for nearly 40 years, though the practice was only made public this past
June.
Chemours
was informed by letter from the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that
its permit to operate will be pulled in 60 days unless it stops its “ongoing
misrepresentations and inadequate disclosures” pertaining to the dumping of
GenX and other chemicals into the
Cape Fear.
Researchers
are still trying to determine what the long-term effects of drinking the
contaminated water are.
While
in recent Special Session, the Republican-led NC General Assembly appropriated
$435,000 to help state agencies further investigate the GenX crisis. However
Democratic lawmakers blasted the move, suggesting that it wasn’t nearly enough
to adequately deal with the problem.
Ass
all of his was unfolding came evidence that the DEQ under then Gov. Pat McCrory
in fact knew about the GenX pollution problem as recently as November 2016, but
said nothing to the incoming Cooper Administration about it.
According
to published reports, Sec. Donald van der Vaart was in charge then before Gov.
Cooper appointed Michael Regan as his successor. According to an Aug. 14th
letter from DEQ and the NC Dept. of Health and Human Services to state House nd
Senate leadership in November of last year, ““the previous administration” received a
research report from the EPA and NC State University scientists regarding the
Cape Fear watershed. This study, conducted in part by NC State professor Detlaf
Knappe, showed GenX was present in the Lower Cape Fear and in untreated water
at the Cape Fear utility. In 2013, the researchers found average levels of 631
parts per trillion of GenX in 37 samples of untreated water,” NC Policywatch
recently reported. “The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority received the same
study in May 2016, according to the letter.”
Emails
between officials in the McCrory Administration about the GenX pollution report
have also been released.
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