Critical Race Theory And Terry Mc Auliffe Postmortem

 

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is, among other things, a label. Labels matter. When Terry McAuliffe brushed off complaints about the Dept. of Ed. in his state teaching CRT, he did so with unequivocal statements like, "It [CRT] is not taught in Va. and never has been taught in Va.," adding, "“And as I’ve said this a lot, it’s a dog whistle. It’s racial, it’s division and it’s used by Glenn Youngkin and others, it’s the same thing with Trump and the border wall, to divide people. We should not be dividing people in school.” Based on this one would not expect the label CRT to be recommended in Dept. of Ed. memorandums, lesson plans, reading lists, etc. So when a single-minded conservative activist, Chris Rufo,  with investigative skills took the time and trouble to unearth evidence contradicting McAuliffe, he was stupidly ignored. I won't profile Rufo here, though he's been profiled by New Yorker and WaPo, and though they judged him to be only partly reliable and plenty ideological, Dems should have been much more prepared to deal with the allegations and evidence this man marshaled in making the case against CRT in our schools in various states, not least Va. 

 

According to exit polls, https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/02/politics/virginia-exit-polls/index.html    ~25% of voters considered education to be the number 1 issue. For most it was among the top issues, coming after the economy which another 33% pegged as the top issue. Now, if you only read the NYT, WaPo and watch only MSNBC and CNN; and if you systematically avoid Fox News, conservative radio, and local newspapers (e.g. in my city the NY Post which covered this election and the CRT issue), you will hear only McAuliffe's line that this is race-baiting based on fake information. I've seen it on this blog, "CRT is only taught in grad schools," and so on. Paul Krugman, an economist and opinion columnist I happen to like, seems to have assumed this talking point is correct as he dismissed the CRT issue as "bogus" and "a lie wrapped in a scam." But how many of us broadly left-leaning folk get out of the echo-chamber and do what even a good opposition researcher in a campaign does, viz., assess the evidence the other side has amassed?  Well, here are a few inconvenient facts for team McAuliffe (in retrospect) and a warning to all of us determined to defeat the GOP who plan to make this a major wedge issue next year and beyond..

Three days before the people of Va. voted, Fox News ran this story (reiterating other stories and claims they had made previously). 

 

Published October 30

Virginia Dept. of Education website promotes CRT despite McAuliffe claims it's 'never been taught' there

Virginia voters will decide their next governor in three days

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-dept-of-education-website-promotes-crt-despite-mcauliffe-claims-its-never-been-taught-there

 

Is it bullshit?  A lie within a scam? No. It is embarrassingly true. The article states, 

"On the Virginia Department of Education website, several examples of the department promoting Critical Race Theory can be found, including a presentation from 2015, when Terry McAullife was governor,  that encourages teachers to "embrace Critical Race Theory" in "order to re-engineer attitudes and belief systems."

 

Click on presentation, and you'll be brought to a 30 page memo from the Commonwealth of Virginia Dept. of Ed. (DoE).  https://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/virginia_tiered_system_supports/resources/2015_fall_institute/Legal_implications_of_discipline.pdf  After several pages identifying problems regarding race relations and inequities targeted for rectification, there is a section on "Culturally Responsive Alternatives" to the status quo  approaches to school discipline (suspensions, expulsions, penalizing various behaviors-- all of which are described in terms of institutional racism). Starting on p. 22 we read the following:

_

Culturally-Responsive
Alternatives (Continued)
 

 Incorporate Critical Race Theory (CRT) Lens
 

 Critical Race Theory
Townsend Walker, 2015

 

Culturally Responsive Teaching
(CRT)
 

Teaching practices that use:
cultural knowledge
prior experiences
performance styles
 

CRT makes learning more appropriate and effective for students
from diverse backgrounds
(Gay 2000).
 

Townsend Walker, 2015 Culturally responsive
strategies
 

 Engage in self and institutional critiques

  Reconstruct imagery of African American males
Re-engineer attitudes and belief systems [emph. added, as Fox quoted this]
 

Adopt ethics of care and respect
Raise expectations and motivation
Use strength-based teaching and
communication techniques
Townsend Walker, 2015

 

Now, Fox shows like Tucker, and their regular news shows, as well as local newspapers, radio et al., point out, this memo a) comes from the Superintendent Virginia's DoE, and b) was written and circulated to K-12 educators throughout the state while McAuliffe was Governor. When parents who know that their kids are being taught about white privilege, internalized racism, and the need to "do the work" to become anti-racists hear these denials, and when there is objective evidence that CRT IS an element in K-12 education in the state, how should they feel towards the candidate making flat-out denials, despite archival evidence contradicting his claims? And then when that candidate goes on to say "I don't think parents should be telling schools what to teach," at a time when school-boards have become loci of parental activism, what might be an expected outcome at the polls? It's a gaffe. He was clearly unprepared to answer these questions, even though Rufo's campaign against CRT (which is what got Trump's attention when he wrote an executive order "banning CRT," had been identified months earlier (he advises multiple members of congress, and is the "point man" on the issue.

I know, I know. The GOP takes this information, and then on that basis starts to ban books by Toni Morrison. Yes. That's why I despise today's GOP (never liked it that much to be honest, but esp. now it's the political dregs). But there is something going on in the schools that is upsetting a lot of parents, and it does have something to do with contemporary applied CRT which overlaps with the so-called "Anti-Racist Movement" speer-headed by Ibram X. Kendi, among others. But this is not really a piece on what CRT today looks like, and its relation to Antiracism (that would require a whole separate piece). Even assuming it is all great stuff, the question is WHY DENY THE LABEL IS BEING USED IN K-12 PEDAGOGY MEMOS??? A few more examples (from Va., as there are plenty of other examples from other states too) just so you don't think this one memo is a fluke.

 

In 2019, the State Superintendent, James Lane,  sent a memo to all school districts in Va.,   promoting critical race theory, and describing it as  “an important analytic tool” for addressing “power and privilege” in schools. See https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21084733-resources-to-support-student-and-community-dialogues-on-racism

 The document ends with Lane's Recommended readings, including his blurbs endorsing 5 or 6 of the books he considers most important for people in the DoE to read. The first entry is Beverly D'Angelo's controversial, and largely hated book, White Fragility (plenty of liberals have criticized that book. A WaPo book critic complained about the concept itself writing, 

"As defined by DiAngelo, white fragility is irrefutable; any alternative perspective or counterargument is defeated by the concept itself. Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point." https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/18/white-fragility-is-real-white-fragility-is-flawed/

This is a very common criticism of the book. Nevertheless, this book which asks students and employees in Diversity and Equity workshops to face and admit to their internalized racism, a sort of ongoing "soul-search" according to DiAngelo, heads the list of readings in the document. Even more troubling, in terms of McAuliffe's denial of CRT having no place in Va. public schools, is  the inclusion of the title, Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education, by Edward Taylor, et al. Lane writes:

"Dr. Lane’s February Reading List:I have received several inquiries and requests for the latest literature that examines the issues associated with racial inequities in education. Below are several pieces that I and other members of the VDOE staff are reading this month based on recommendations that we have received. 

-White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo. Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility. Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively....

 

Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education, by Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings The emergence of Critical Race Theory (CRT) marked an important point in the history of racial politics in the legal academy and the broader conversation about race and racism in the United States. More recently, CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling. This groundbreaking anthology is the first to pull together both the foundational writings in the field and more recent scholarship on the cultural and racial politics of schooling. A comprehensive introduction provides an overview of the history and tenets of CRT in education.  [emph. added as Fox quoted this secction]Each section then seeks to explicate ideological contestation of race in education and to create new, alternative accounts. In so doing, this landmark publication not only documents the progress to date of the CRT movement, it acts to further spur developments in education."  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21084733-resources-to-support-student-and-community-dialogues-on-racism

 As I said at the outset, labels matter. If a politician says unequivocally "CRT has never been taught in Va." and documents like these surface predictably (as Rufo's research is well known among political strategists right now), you better have your defense well-prepared or it may cost you. The issue in this piece is not the value or lack of value attached to CRT, but rather the fact that in Va. (and also several other states including my own) CRT pedagogy and antiracist offshoots of it are fairly pervasive. One of the more controversial practices of Diversity/Equity training for classrooms today includes "affinity groups." This involves getting whites to discuss their internalized racism only amongst themselves, while blacks discuss the trauma of living in a racist society in a separate, all-black group, often in a separate room. These "safe spaces" for "doing the work" have offended many teachers and others who then contact Rufo with leaked documents. I'm not sure that came up in Va.,  but I can promise you it WILL be coming up in the 2022 elections, and we better be prepared. Perhaps in another post I can (if anyone is interested) discuss the actual content of earlier and contemporary CRT, related antiracism and Diversity/Equity/Inclusion models of social justice, as I believe the general public have been misled by the media on this. These are not simply accurate historical descriptions of racist practices in the past (i.e. history), but very much on the ground, and ongoing forms of racial justice activism, the contents of which are controversial and deserve to be aired out in public. But for now, I'm pointing out what happens when you tell voters that there's nothing to see or know; and that anyway, it's not your place to question curriculum, as McAuliffe ineptly said in a debate. Evasion and denial of facts in the face of contradicting evidence is always a losing strategy.

Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream

Protestors at the Arizona state capitol last September

The vaccine wedge issue: It's about politics, not public health

For a long time, it has been obvious to some that mainstream Republican rhetoric and policy has turned dark, authoritarian, and openly menacing to democracy, truth and expertise. That is true among most of Republican elected politicians and other elites, radical right propagandists (Fox News), major donors, and rank and file supporters. Some people saw threat from the radical right immediately after the 2016 elections. Some saw it years sooner. Some still do not see the threats. Few or none in the FRP (fascist Republican Party) see any threats from themselves. The authoritarians consider the real threat to be evil Democrats, their tyrannical socialism, Nazism, critical race theory and/or various other dark things. 

The New York Times published an article, Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream, as another of its periodic warnings about the bad intent and tactics of the modern FRP.

Threats of violence have become commonplace among a significant part of the party, as historians and those who study democracy warn of a dark shift in American politics.

At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats.

“When do we get to use the guns?” he said as the audience applauded. “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a “fair” question.

In Ohio, the leading candidate in the Republican primary for Senate blasted out a video urging Republicans to resist the “tyranny” of a federal government that pushed them to wear masks and take F.D.A.-authorized vaccines.

“When the Gestapo show up at your front door,” the candidate, Josh Mandel, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, said in the video in September, “you know what to do.”

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

Political violence has been part of the American story since the founding of the country, often entwined with racial politics and erupting in periods of great change: More than 70 brawls, duels and other violent incidents embroiled members of Congress from 1830 to 1860 alone. And elements of the left have contributed to the confrontational tenor of the country’s current politics, though Democratic leaders routinely condemn violence and violent imagery.

But historians and those who study democracy say what has changed has been the embrace of violent speech by a sizable portion of one party, including some of its loudest voices inside government and most influential voices outside.

In effect, they warn, the Republican Party is mainstreaming menace as a political tool.

From his earliest campaigning to the final moments of his presidency, Mr. Trump’s political image has incorporated the possibility of violence. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to “knock the hell” out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter, and in a recent interview defended rioters who clamored to “hang Mike Pence.” 

Such views, routinely expressed in warlike or revolutionary terms, are often intertwined with white racial resentments and evangelical Christian religious fervor — two potent sources of fuel for the G.O.P. during the Trump era — as the most animated Republican voters increasingly see themselves as participants in a struggle, if not a kind of holy war[1], to preserve their idea of American culture and their place in society.  

Notably few Republican leaders have spoken out against violent language or behavior since Jan. 6, suggesting with their silent acquiescence that doing so would put them at odds with a significant share of their party’s voters. 

In that vacuum, the coarsening of Republican messaging has continued: Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, this week tweeted an anime video altered to show him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging two swords at Mr. Biden.

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning group New America who has studied political violence, said there was a connection between such actions and the growing view among Americans that politics is a struggle between enemies.

“When you start dehumanizing political opponents, or really anybody, it becomes a lot easier to inflict violence on them,” Dr. Drutman said.

“I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that’s happened now,” he added. “I don’t see the rhetoric turning down, I don’t see the conflicts going away. I really do think it’s hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse.” 

Violent talk has tipped over into actual violence in ways big and small. School board members and public health officials have faced a wave of threats, prompting hundreds to leave their posts. A recent investigation by Reuters documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states.

By now, it is unlikely that warnings about the rise of violent authoritarianism from experts will change many minds. The FRP has been a significant factor in the successful poisoning of the reputation of experts, both in the party and apparently among at least some people outside the party. 

Minds open to this warning are aware of the threat by now. Minds not open are going to stay closed. Minds of deceived cultists and fascists who know better rarely change in the face of inconvenient facts, truths or reasoning. That some yahoo can seriously ask a crowd “When do we get to use the guns? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” and the audience applauds should be a wake up call for nearly all Americans, but it isn't. 

That exemplifies how malicious and dark that FRP rhetoric and politics have become.

The role of Christianity

The NYT article asserts that white racial resentments and evangelical Christian religious fervor are two sources of discontent the FRP has played on to radicalize the entire party. Both racial resentment and religious fervor are core aspects of Christian nationalism and the focus of much of its divisive propaganda, lies and slanders. Some of the FRP really does believe they are fighting a holy war and the ends justify all means, including shooting Democrats dead. Some evidence suggests that FRP politicization of Christianity is driving some Americans away from Christianity. The Guardian wrote in April of 2021:  

Just 47% of the US population are members of a church, mosque or synagogue, according to a survey by Gallup, down from 70% two decades ago – in part a result of millennials turning away from religion but also, experts say, a reaction to the swirling mix of rightwing politics and Christianity pursued by the Republican party.

The evidence comes as Republicans in some states have pursued extreme “Christian nationalist” policies, attempting to force their version of Christianity on an increasingly uninterested public.

This week the governor of Arkansas signed a law allowing doctors to refuse to treat LGBTQ people on religious grounds, and other states are exploring similar legislation.  

“Many Americans – especially young people – see religion as bound up with political conservatism, and the Republican party specifically,” Campbell said.

“Since that is not their party, or their politics, they do not want to identify as being religious. Young people are especially allergic to the perception that many – but by no means all – American religions are hostile to LGBTQ rights.”

Questions: 

1. If dehumanizing a group or political party makes it easier to inflict violence, how should the FRP be treated? Is the label authoritarian or fascist too dehumanizing to be more helpful than not, e.g., it won't change many or any minds now even if the label is accurate?

2. The NYT suggests that FRP leadership does not speak out against violent language or behavior to avoid being at odds with the rank and file, but how much of the silence comes from their support for violent language or behavior, e.g., Gosar's unprovoked video showing him killing Ocasio-Cortez and trying to kill Biden?

3. Given decreasing public participation in Christian religion, is it reasonable to believe that Christian nationalism is still a potent force in the FRP, more or less on a par with special interest money? 

Footnote: 

1. The NYT wrote this on Jan. 11, 2021:

A potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war. 

Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus.

The group, whose participants have espoused misogynistic and anti-immigrant views, prayed for God to bring “reformation and revival.” They gave thanks for “the wonderful nation we’ve all been blessed to be in.” They asked God for the restoration of their “value systems,” and for the “courage and strength to both represent you and represent our culture well.” And they invoked the divine protection for what was to come.

Then they rose. Their leader declared into a bullhorn that the media must “get the hell out of my way.” And then they moved toward the Capitol.

Are the 1/6 insurrectionists generating some Karma at the D.C. jail?

Karma (informal): destiny or fate, following as effect from cause

In a strange article about the jail where some of the 1/6 traitors are being held, Problems at D.C. Jail Were Ignored Until Jan. 6 Defendants Came Along, reports of prisoner abuse, sewage leaks and other nasty things are being reported. State and local jail conditions in the US tend to range from bad to awful. Arguably, the situation is immoral, a national disgrace and definitely not Christian. Something is amiss and has been for a long, long time.

Jail cell at a for-profit facility in Mississippi[1]

(that's human blood on the floor)

The New York Times writes:

For several months, a few dozen men being held without bail in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have loudly and repeatedly complained about conditions at the District of Columbia jail.

Some, through their lawyers, have raised concerns about threats from guards, standing sewage, and scant food and water. A federal judge recently held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medical care for a Capitol defendant in their custody. Just last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, visited the jail and later likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” suggesting that they had been mistreated because of their politics.

None of these allegations of neglect came as a surprise to local Washington officials, many of whom have complained about conditions at the jail for years.

“Recent reports about squalid conditions in the district jails are unfortunately not new,” Karl A. Racine, Washington’s attorney general, said at the hearing. Mr. Racine went on to say that “concerns about conditions at the jail received little attention until they were raised by mostly white defendants accused of perpetrating the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

While the 40 or so Capitol rioters housed at the jail are only a fraction of the roughly 1,400 inmates being held there altogether, their complaints about the place — which began almost immediately — have received outsize publicity. 

In September, as complaints about the jail increased in volume, a onetime campaign aide for former President Donald J. Trump held a rally in Washington in support of the defendants, billing the event as “Justice for J6.” But even though many on the right routinely refer to the rioters in custody as “political prisoners” (and to the section of the jail where they are kept as “the patriot wing”), few people — and almost no top Republican officials — attended the gathering in their honor.

After a report by the marshals was released, complaints by the riot inmates, if anything, got louder. In late October, a “cry for help” by one of the defendants, Nathan DeGrave, was released on Twitter. It referred to the D.C. jail as “Gitmo” and accused jail officials of subjecting the “Jan 6ers” to “psychological and mental abuse.”  

Patrice Sulton, the executive director of the DC Justice Lab, an organization that advocates criminal justice reform, said she was particularly frustrated that it took complaints from the recently arrived Jan. 6 defendants, most of whom are white, to get the authorities to focus on the plight of detainees at the jail, almost all of whom are Black.

“It just doesn’t sit well,” Ms. Sulton said.

Those poor 1/6 anti-patriots, being held as political prisoners and psychologically and mentally abused at the American Gitmo slammer facility in D.C. The horror. The horror. But on the bright side, maybe some Karma will flow from the traitor's complaints, causing D.C. jail conditions to improve somewhat for the Black detainees. Or maybe not. 

The NYT article also points out that officials in D.C., who have been fully aware of the situation for years, are feigning surprise and ignorance about the rotten conditions in their jail facilities. It is sort of like the cockroaches scrambling for cover with the light switch is flipped on. 

What?? Bad conditions in my jail??

Impossible! I'm shocked!

Questions: 

1. Should bad jail conditions be improved or, as the company comments below, prisons are meant to be tough environments, like those shown in the photos?

2. Why might it be that a few 1/6 traitors in the D.C. jail seem to have been able to get some attention drawn to the conditions they are being held in, but for years efforts by others to get attention to this failed? (systemic racism, maybe?)

Footnote: 

1. That facility has been sued over the disgusting conditions there. The company running this hell hole defends itself:

Lawyers for the state and representatives of Management & Training say prisons are meant to be tough environments, and that East Mississippi is no worse than most others.

“We can say — unequivocally — that the facility is safe, secure, clean, and well run,” Issa Arnita, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement released during the trial. “From the warden on down, our staff are trained to treat the men in our care with dignity and respect. Our mission is to help these men make choices in prison and after they’re released that will lead to a new and successful life in society.”

I bet that the East Mississippi hell hole is no worse than most others in that state, maybe in most or all other states too. From the photos that accompanied that article (see below and above), one can safely say that the facility is extremely dangerous, not secure, filthy, and barely run at all. The prisoners there have to make crude weapons to defend themselves from attacks by other prisoners because the guards are nowhere on the scene (coffee and donuts time for the guards!).

East Mississippi correctional facility

(that does not look to be very correctional)

It speaks for itself

Transparency and the rule of law under attack

Fungi are inherently happy

due to their ignorance 

Corruption and sleaze in government require sufficient opacity to stay under the press and public’s radar and plausible deniability for the bad guys when some of the badness does pop up and become public. This is the case everywhere. In the US, there are signs that the desire for secrecy is bipartisan and getting more aggressive. The New York Times discusses a recent example of abuses in law enforcement that government wants to be kept in secrecy. The NYT writes in an article, They Publicized Prosecutors’ Misconduct. The Blowback Was Swift.:

Grievances against 21 Queens prosecutors shared publicly online prompted a rebuke from the city, and has led to a lawsuit that raises questions about accountability in the justice system.

When three men convicted of murders they did not commit were exonerated in March, a group of law professors saw an opportunity to shed light on the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that had put the men in prison for decades.

Prosecutors working the men’s case had failed to turn over important evidence and had made false statements at trial, a judge found — textbook misconduct. And they were far from alone in the Queens district attorney’s office.

Normally, accusations of misconduct are handled out of public view by a little-known state committee. But the professors wanted to make some noise. They filed grievances against 21 Queens prosecutors, and instead of keeping their complaints quiet, they built a website and published everything online — and made plans to expand the effort to other boroughs.

The blowback from New York City was swift. A city lawyer called the grievances an abuse of the system and said that they had “concerned” local prosecutors. He accused the professors of politicizing the process and violating the law in a letter sent directly to the grievance committee responsible for disciplining lawyers.

The city’s pushback against the professors included the threat of further action if they continued to file grievances, according to a lawsuit filed publicly on behalf of the professors and their partner organization, Civil Rights Corps, in federal court in Manhattan this month.

Now, according to the professors’ lawsuit, New York City is arguing that the process of seeking consequences for prosecutorial misconduct should effectively be shielded from public view.

Ellen Yaroshefsky, a distinguished professor in legal ethics at Hofstra University who submitted an affidavit about prosecutorial misconduct in Queens in an unrelated case, said that the actions of the city’s lawyer, officially known as the corporation counsel, were “shocking.”

“These plaintiffs have ruffled the feathers of very powerful actors,” said Ms. Yaroshefsky, who was not one of the professors who filed the grievances.

Asked about the lawsuit, a spokesman for the city’s law department, Nick Paolucci, said that while prosecutors who committed misconduct should be held accountable, the professors’ attempted use of the grievance process was contrary to the law.

“Their frustration with their lack of progress to increase accountability through advocacy and the legislative process does not entitle them to misuse the attorney grievance process or bring a frivolous lawsuit to bring attention to their goals,” he said.  

The city has argued that the professors’ actions violated a New York law that requires that complaints related to lawyers’ conduct be kept private unless judicial authorities decide otherwise. The professors are asking that a judge declare that law to be unconstitutional, a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Vindicating the law is optional

Think about that for a minute. NYC says the whistleblowers broke the law and threatened to take “further action” if they didn't stop. Back in the days when the rule of law used to mean something after it was broken, assuming those days ever actually existed, it was supposed to be vindicated by prosecution, conviction and punishment. Nowadays, vindicating it is optional at least for white collar criminals. If the whistle blowers broke the law they would be prosecuted if the law had real teeth.

Obviously, if the prosecutors that got the whistle blown on them broke the law, they should also be prosecuted. The whistleblowers arguably did a public service by accusing corrupt prosecutors of hideous criminal acts. 

Keep the public in the dark and feed it BS

Equally concerning is New York City arguing to keep prosecutorial misconduct proceedings shielded from public view. Why? One can reasonably assume that if misconduct proceedings are done in secrecy, the bad prosecutors will not face much or any punishment. In effect, that would condone the sleaze of prosecutors screwing defendants by keeping exculpatory evidence hidden from them. 

Questions:

1. Why would or should a corrupt attorney or prosecutor who breaks laws, e.g., to put innocent people in jail, be afforded a secret prosecution, while other criminals are tried in public?

2. Is the argument that vindicating the rule of law is optional for white collar crooks overblown, e.g., Merrick Garland refuses to prosecute the ex-president for the multiple obstruction of justice felonies that he clearly committed[1], and NYC wants to keep prosecutor misconduct proceedings in secret? 

Footnote: 

1. There is no question about obstruction of justice. The ex-president did it multiple times. Mueller's investigation made that clear and undeniable. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors signed a public letter stating that they would have prosecuted, but for the lunacy of a quasi-rule that says a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. Nonetheless, US Attorney General Garland has opted to not prosecute the scumbag because he is rich, a White politician and/or powerful. Any one of those three “qualifications” would be sufficient for a white collar crook to face optional exposure to the rule of law. From the rest of us who commit the same crimes, the rule of law would be vindicated. Us regular people have no sleaze shield.

Quinta Jurecic at Lawfair analyzed the matter of obstruction. She wrote this in April of 2019 shortly after a still-redacted version of the Mueller Report was made public. To thus day and still in open contempt of transparency in the public interest, the full Mueller report remains hidden from the public and AG Garland is still just fine with it.

The Mueller report describes numerous instances in which President Trump may have obstructed justice. A few days ago, I threw together a quick spreadsheet on Twitter to assess how Special Counsel Robert Mueller seemed to assess the evidence. Unexpectedly, that spreadsheet got a fair amount of attention—so I thought I would delve back into the evidence to provide a revised visualization with a little more nuance, which will hopefully be helpful to people attempting to parse a legally and factually dense document.

The key question is how Robert Mueller and his team assessed the three elements “common to most of the relevant statutes” relating to obstruction of justice: an obstructive act, a nexus between the act and an official proceeding, and corrupt intent.

Her analysis found solid evidence of all three elements of obstruction at least four times. That amounts to four felonies.

A hearty thank you…

 

                                                                    My Great Niece

Thanks to all the veterans and active service members who have walked the walk of serving our country, the U.S.A.

You are much appreciated by many of us (yes, even us Dems)!

                                                                    My Great Nephew
 

Is Liberal Hypocrisy Fueling American Inequality?

 

The following NYT video asks why Democrats who argue for increased equality consistently fail to make the kinds of changes in state and local laws and regulations that are necessary to rectify the very inequalities they oppose. It is pointed out that in blue states with solid democratic majorities, the very inequalities opposed in the Democratic Party Platform are rampant, and, worse, perpetuated by a NIMBY mentality.  For example, zoning laws would have to change to build affordable housing.  Laws determining funding for school districts would have to change to allow the less privileged to enjoy equal opportunities and life chances. State and local tax codes would have to be reformed (some blue states have very regressive tax codes https://itep.org/whopays/  ). The video shows that such bottom-line changes are resisted consistently when democrats discuss the laws and regulations governing their own backyards. Is it unfair to call these local politicians and board members "hypocrites?" Are there good reasons for their reluctance to act in these areas that the video journalist neglects to mention? What do you think?

(Also, for those interested in this topic, I recommend the slim paperback, Dream Hoarders by Richard Reeves (2017), which claims that we should think of the main divide in this country not as the 99% vs. the top 1%, but the top income quintile (top 20%) vs. the rest (the "80%"). The reasons have much to do with the facts in the above video, which show these upper middle class households protecting their privileges relative to the rest of society, thus effectively stifling upward mobility in less affluent groups.You can read more about Dream Hoarders here, if interested: https://www.brookings.edu/experts/richard-v-reeves/  Reeves also heads up the Brookings Inst. Future of the Middle Class Initiative, which  deals with the issue of inequality and obstacles to upward mobility: https://www.brookings.edu/project/future-of-the-middle-class-initiative/  )