My *friend* [*used loose­ly] stopped by to see me yes­ter­day, I had not seen him in quite a while.
He has had some health issues, in fact, that was large­ly what we talked about. He told me his Doctors are sug­gest­ing a pace­mak­er to aug­ment the per­for­mance of his heart.
He lament­ed the fact that even if he was placed on a donor list he would like­ly die before he could receive a new heart.

He had been liv­ing a long time with a bad heart, it had been bad enough for his employ­ers to allow him to retire long before he was of the age to do so.
Additionally, he has been hav­ing mar­i­tal prob­lems, and to com­pound his woes, his only child a boy who just turned six­teen years old does not lis­ten to any­thing he says. These things he argues brings on an addi­tion­al lay­er of stress.

Wanting to take his mind off his prob­lems I asked so how do you think your pres­i­dent is doing?
It was small talk, just a fee­ble attempt to get his mind off what he is going through, at least for a minute or two.
My friend over the last sev­er­al years had also giv­en his life to Christ, [or so he says] and is now a devot­ed Seventh Day Adventist, * more to appease and change the atti­tude of his wife toward him, than any burn­ing reli­gious con­vic­tion he harbors*.

My com­ment was expect­ed to at least elic­it a snarl, a con­temp­tu­ous laugh at the prospect that he a black man born in England to Jamaican par­ents and a long-time immi­grant to the United States, would claim the present occu­pant of the White House as his president.
He quick­ly respond­ed, ” (mi vote fi him because mi wah him fi check de gay dem”!) my mouth fell open, this was news to me.

People are free to vote for whomev­er they chose, but wow! I was dumb­found­ed by his response.
And so my mind began to race. Ok, I get the idea that as a Christian he is opposed to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, but what about the peo­ple them­selves, you know hate the sin but love the sin­ner? I guess not, “mi neva like di way dem a gi di gay dem sta­tus”, he dou­bled down.
It seems that as far as con­tem­po­rary Christian ortho­doxy goes these days there are some sins which are far more egre­gious than oth­ers, but that is way above my pay grade to decide.

(1)Donald Trump bragged about grab­bing women by the pussy.
(2) Donald Trump bragged about walk­ing in on young women while they were in a state of undress.
(3) Donald Trump bragged about just kiss­ing beau­ti­ful women, he talks about his inabil­i­ty to restrain him­self but tells Billy Bush that whey you are a star they let you do get away with it.
(4) Donald Trump spent hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars smear­ing the cen­tral park five and nev­er apologized.

(5) Donald Trump refused to rent to peo­ple of col­or and lied about it.
(6) Donald Trump had unpro­tect­ed sex with a porn star while his wife was at home with their four-month-old baby.
(7) Donald Trump lied in order to dodge the draft.
(8) Donald Trump said that there were decent peo­ple on both sides in response to the racist tiki-torch march in Chorletsville.
(9) Donald Trump has been accused of laun­der­ing Russian dirty money.

(10) Donald Trump and his cam­paign have been accused of con­spir­ing with a hos­tile for­eign pow­er to rig the American elections.
(11) Donald Trump went to Puerto Rico and threw paper tow­els at the peo­ple after the ordeal of the hurricane.
(12) Donald Trump rips chil­dren from their par­ents, deport the par­ents and keep the babies locked in cages, defy­ing court orders in the process.
(13) Donald Trump led a birther smear cam­paign against the nations first African-American President, only stat­ing that Obama was an American cit­i­zen just before the elec­tions of 2016.
(14) Donald Trump hates Blacks, Mexicans. oth­er Hispanics, Muslims, and every­one not a white male.

This list just begins to scratch the sur­face of the degen­er­a­tive char­ac­ter of Donald Trump, but my friend’s ani­mus against “the gays” [sic] far out­weighed all of them.
This is the men­tal rot which has tak­en over the mind of peo­ple through the vehi­cle of reli­gious indoctrination.
Let me be clear, I will not pur­port to know what God wants except my read­ing and under­stand­ing of what the Bible says.
If that is our guide­book which it is, then its rather dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy such ani­mus on one hand, while show­ing such tol­er­ance for a long litany of trans­gres­sions on the other.
Remarkably, the views expressed by my friend has been the dom­i­nant view which has come out of Trump’s base of support.

Many experts more qual­i­fied to speak on this sub­ject, than I ever could be, have labeled this kind of think­ing a“cult fol­low­ing.”
The argu­ments of Trump’s cultists hard­ly makes sense, will­ful igno­rance maybe, I have no idea? Yet it seems strange to hear them say “yes I know he did these things but the econ­o­my is good.” (nev­er mind that the econ­o­my has been on an upward trend since 2009 under President Obama and has seen high­er growth num­bers than any­thing which has hap­pened under Trump so far}.

For oth­ers, it’s “yes but he is putting judges on the courts” “yes but we don’t like abor­tion” “yes but he is send­ing home those ille­gals.”
It’s an insane sense of blind igno­rance and alle­giance to a deviant nar­cis­sis­tic liar, shroud­ed in a cloak of reli­gious apostasy.
It is a new order which rede­fines and changes tra­di­tion­al ideas of Christian prin­ci­ples, replac­ing them with a more elas­tic inter­pre­ta­tion, which san­i­tizes what­ev­er Trump does as long as he fights against the peo­ple they hate.

The cult fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly less about Donald Trump and more about pow­er. Who has the pow­er to take on the things they want to fight against?
The brown­ing of America has ini­ti­at­ed a freak out among the white polit­i­cal right. They see the fore­casts, peo­ple of col­or will become a major­i­ty of the American work­ing class by 2032. This esti­mate, based on long-term labor force pro­jec­tions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and trends in col­lege com­ple­tion by race and eth­nic­i­ty, is 11 years soon­er than the Census Bureau pro­jec­tion for the over­all U.S. pop­u­la­tion, which becomes “major­i­ty-minor­i­ty” in 2043. According to the Economic Policy Institute.

So it is no acci­dent that even though Republican dar­ling, Ronald Reagan, grant­ed Amnesty to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, the word “Amnesty” is now tan­ta­mount to trea­son in Republican cir­cles. In fact, based on their recent love fest with Russia trea­son is no longer a prob­lem for them.
Trump is not the prob­lem as Obama right­ly said, he is mere­ly a symp­tom of a deep­er prob­lem. Trump under­stood that there was a dis­af­fect­ed por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion which feels itself under-rep­re­sent­ed in today’s politics.

The medi­a’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of them over the years has evolved sub­stan­tial­ly. During the Reagan years, they were called “Reagan Democrats”, since then they have been known as “white work­ing class blue col­lar work­ers”, “The tea par­ty,” and now they are “Trumper’s”.
The sin­gle thread which runs through these so-called dis­af­fect­ed peo­ple is vic­tim­hood. Experts say they are for­got­ten peo­ple who have found it hard to fit into the eco­nom­ic boom of the last sev­er­al decades.
I call [BS], the vast major­i­ty of them are Racist under­achiev­ers who want to blame oth­ers for their own per­son­al failings.

They are old­er and less edu­cat­ed(Trump famous­ly said I love the poor­ly edu­cat­ed). These peo­ple have become his base, their dis­af­fec­tion, sense of vic­tim­hood and hatred, is the fuel to his ascen­den­cy to the presidency.
By appeal­ing to their Racism and fear, Trump has used dem­a­gog­ic rhetoric to stir up the hatred which was already with­in them. The kind of racial hatred only a few still alive has seen in their lifetime.
These Trump sup­port­ers may not all be racist loafers, but they damn sure aren’t demon­strat­ing the vaunt­ed can-do American spir­it we’ve heard so much about.

To sug­gest that one is from a long line of Miners and as such Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure that coalmines stay open to facil­i­tate this gen­er­a­tion of min­ers is asinine.
If the world is evolv­ing from burn­ing dirty fos­sil fuels like oil, coal, and gas, to nuclear, wind and solar why would any intel­li­gent per­son refuse to adapt to the chang­ing times?

That is the essence of vic­tim­hood. Their atti­tude is that the times should stay still for them and if it does­n’t, those who have evolved through skills train­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic edu­ca­tion are either elit­ist if they are white, wor­thy of depor­ta­tion if they are peo­ple of color.
That is the ran­cid dis­af­fec­tion which runs through the entire Republican South, the Midwest and oth­er parts of the country.
In many instances, a look at the elec­toral map, [Republican in red], depicts where this mind­set is centered.
In these parts of the coun­try, there is more pover­ty despite the fact that they are heav­i­ly white and vote over­whelm­ing­ly Republican.

As a con­se­quence these peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly a drain on the Federal Government for goods and ser­vices, their states send less mon­ey to Washington than they receive.
Yet lis­ten­ing to them the peo­ple liv­ing in Democratic states are some­how depen­dent on the largess of the Government despite the facts, facts do not mat­ter to them.
Their sense of being left behind is not based on facts but on their own refusal to adapt to the chang­ing times.
And so they hitch their wag­ons to Donald Trump and here we are. A patho­log­i­cal lying nar­cis­sist is their sav­ior but wait he is bet­ter than “the gays”.[sic]
Right?

People are asked to speak at events for any num­ber of rea­sons. Usually, because they may have some­thing impor­tant to say or that they may rep­re­sent the orga­ni­za­tion in a good light, based on who they are and what they are like­ly to say.
From Presidents to recov­er­ing drug addicts, speak­ers of all kinds grace stages to deliv­er their mes­sage. Some are paid hand­some­ly, oth­ers not so much and even oth­ers noth­ing at all.
Shoot, even I have been asked a time or two to speak to a cou­ple of peo­ple, though I nev­er knew if any­one both­ered lis­ten­ing to any­thing I said.

And so I will nev­er ques­tion the moti­va­tion of the People’s National Party ‘s deci­sion to have Mr. Bakari Sellers as keynote speak­er on open­ing night at their 80^th annu­al par­ty conference.
No one should doubt the bona fides of the 33-year-old Mister Sellers. He is an accom­plished attor­ney, for­mer state leg­is­la­tor, a CNN ana­lyst and sits on the boards of sev­er­al com­pa­nies and organizations.

Naturally, a young up-and-com­er like mis­ter Sellers is an incred­i­ble draw for Organizations look­ing to deliv­er a mes­sage from some­one young influ­en­tial and even good look­ing who can poten­tial­ly attract young peo­ple to their cause.
It behooves those who would sum­mar­i­ly dis­miss Mr. Sellers as a know-noth­ing for­eign­er, to rethink that strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when one con­sid­er the res­o­nance the words of for­eign­ers gen­er­al­ly have with our ordi­nary folks.
A well-deliv­ered speech from some­one like Bakari Sellers, a young edu­cat­ed, accom­plished and per­son­able for­eign­er is hard to coun­te­nance with a lazy dismissal.

Members of the JLP, and fol­low­ers of the par­ty can ill-afford to make the mis­take of sim­ply dis­miss­ing, as an absur­di­ty, some­one like Mister Sellers can have on local politics.
I read today, Fabian Lewis’ bril­liant arti­cle in the local Observer in which he did a point by point rebut­tal on why Bakari Sellers would do bet­ter stick­ing to American politics.
In his arti­cle, Fabian Lewis did a mas­ter­ful artic­u­la­tion of the rea­sons he feels that Mister Sellers was either mis­led or bam­boo­zled by the PNP (my words).

1. Furniture scan­dal 2. Shell waiv­er scan­dal 3. Sandals Whitehouse scan­dal 4. Operations PRIDE scan­dal 5. Motor vehi­cle scan­dal 6. Finsac 7. Foreign exchange scan­dal 8. Trafigura scan­dal 9. Cuban light bulb scan­dal 10. National Housing Development Corporation scan­dal 11. Rollins land deal scan­dal 12. Sand min­ing 1 scan­dal 13. Sand min­ing 2 scan­dals 14. Montego Bay street peo­ple scan­dal 15. Zinc scan­dal 16. Telecoms scan­dal 17. Net-Serv scan­dal 18. Outameni scan­dal 19. Bad gas scan­dal 20. EWI Scandal.

There is real­ly no need to yell at Bakari Sellers, except to say that if the young mis­ter Sellers intends to have cred­i­bil­i­ty going for­ward, he must pay keen­er atten­tion to the caus­es to which he lends his voice. Not only will he be embar­rassed by fail­ing to do so, but his speech­es will undoubt­ed­ly come back to haunt his career.
Mister Sellers whom I’m sure is right back here in the United States, hav­ing col­lect­ed his speak­ing fees, did not do due dili­gence in ensur­ing that the his­to­ry of the polit­i­cal par­ty to which he was lend­ing his voice was not anti­thet­i­cal to his own worldview.

As a Democrat who sup­port­ed President Barack Obama, the only President in our life­time who has had two terms in office with­out a scan­dal, I do under­stand how Sellers would have ” cor­rup­tion” at the top of his con­cerns before deliv­er­ing a speech in a devel­op­ing Jamaica.
The only prob­lem is that Sellers deliv­ered that speech in front of the wrong audience.
Clearly, Mister Sellers had not done the prepa­ra­tion nec­es­sary. Had he scratched the sur­face, it is less like­ly he would have gone to a PNP ral­ly to speak out against cor­rup­tion against the still rel­a­tive­ly new JLP Administration.

The PNP has been a cesspool of cor­rup­tion since it’s incep­tion. It is stun­ning that the Dinasours who have illic­it­ly fat­tened them­selves at the expense of the poor Jamaican peo­ple, still sit in wait­ing to once again hold state pow­er. That they would have the temer­i­ty to talk about cor­rup­tion is absolute­ly Trumpian.

Let me be clear, how­ev­er, Prime Minister Holness is doing a ter­rif­ic job as Prime Minister, nev­er­the­less, the incre­men­tal gains he’s man­aged will be swept away in a Tsunami of dis­af­fec­tion if he does not ensure that the Government he heads exer­cis­es full fideli­ty to the inau­gur­al address he gave upon being sworn in as PM on the sec­ond occasion.
There can be no mis­take about what the Jamaican peo­ple expect when it comes to the judi­cious exe­cu­tion of poli­cies and the effec­tive and trans­par­ent process which ought to exist as it per­tains to state funds.
The Prime Minister as head of the Government and leader of his par­ty has a respon­si­bil­i­ty and indeed a duty to act with utmost alacrity and dis­patch to head off any neg­a­tive press which would emerge as it per­tains to cor­rup­tion in his government.
As a con­se­quence, where there is any sliv­er of evi­dence that there may be unto­ward behav­ior by any of his sub­or­di­nates they must imme­di­ate­ly be removed until an exhaus­tive inves­ti­ga­tion is done to ascer­tain the facts.
No mem­ber of Parliament or Minister has a right to be in any posi­tion of pow­er. Public ser­vice is an hon­or, no one is enti­tled to it.

In the same way that mis­ter Sellers did not ful­ly acquaint him­self with the facts before address­ing the PNP’s 80 annu­al con­fer­ences, so too have many Jamaicans, [many with­in the JLP], hitched their wag­ons to the American Republican Party. They do so with­out the ben­e­fit of a full appre­ci­a­tion of the ways in which the two major Political par­ties have crossed ide­o­log­i­cal paths after the 1964 civ­il rights act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.[https://​www​.loc​.gov/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​s​/​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​c​t​/​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​c​t​-​o​f​-​1​9​6​4​.​h​tml]

The sign­ing of the civ­il rights act was fol­lowed by a mass exo­dus of white male Americans from the Democratic par­ty, the par­ty of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to the Republican party.
 It was Nixon who devised and pur­sued what came to be called the Southern strat­e­gy. This was, in the admirably con­cise word­ing of Wikipedia, an appeal “to racism against African-Americans.” Nixon was hard­ly the first Republican to notice that Lyndon Johnson’s civ­il rights leg­is­la­tion had alien­at­ed whites both in the South and else­where — Johnson him­self had fore­cast that Southern whites would desert the Democratic Party[http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/nixon-bigger-crime-southern-strategy-article‑1.1891611]

The evo­lu­tion and jux­ta­po­si­tion of the two major par­ties and how the Democrats, the par­ty of the Dixiecrats and the Klan, came to be the par­ty of black Americans as a result of the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts is a good case study.
Sufficing to say that what­ev­er affin­i­ty blacks both in the United States and across the Globe may have had with the GOP, it must now be reex­am­ined against the back­drop of what that par­ty has become.
A far right-wing par­ty which ped­dles Racism, Xenophobia, Misogyny, Religous intol­er­ance, and hatred.

The roman­tic ideas some shared about the par­ty of Lincoln who freed the slaves must be tem­pered with the slave-own­ing Lincoln stat­ing ” If I could save the union with­out free­ing a sin­gle damn slave I would do it”.
The roman­tic ide­al­ism about Ronald Reagan’s hav­ing Seaga as his first head of state vis­i­tor to the White House and lat­er sign­ing an amnesty bill which gave legal sta­tus to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants must be care­ful­ly scru­ti­nized against Reagan’s advance­ment of Nixon’s south­ern strategy.
Sometimes the roman­tic notions and ide­al­ism we have about a per­son or a coun­try is just that, roman­tic ide­al­ism. Before we hitch our wag­ons to some hors­es we bet­ter make damn sure we know where they will drag us.

Senate major­i­ty leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee chair­man Charles Grassley have repeat­ed­ly sig­naled that they are more inter­est­ed in seat­ing President Trump’s nom­i­nee on the Supreme Court than in per­form­ing their sworn duty to pro­vide advice and con­sent as part of a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances. But, as the con­fir­ma­tion process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been rocked by alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault and pro­found ques­tions about whether this nom­i­nee has been prop­er­ly vet­ted, McConnell and Grassley can no longer be allowed to reject the basic stan­dards for Senate con­sid­er­a­tion of Supreme Court picks.

It is now abun­dant­ly clear that, in their rush to con­firm an excep­tion­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial nom­i­nee, McConnell and Grassley dis­re­gard­ed their oaths of office and the man­dates of the Constitution. They shamed them­selves and the cham­ber they have occu­pied for most of their adult lives — McConnell since 1985, Grassley since 1981.

With just days to go before Thursday’s sched­uled vote by the Judiciary Committee on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion, McConnell and Grassley have been tripped up in their rush to posi­tion Trump’s man on the bench in time for the October term of the high court—and, of far more con­se­quence in McConnell’s fierce­ly par­ti­san cal­cu­lus, before November elec­tions that might upset dom­i­nance of the Senate by cor­po­rate-aligned Republicans.

California col­lege pro­fes­sor Christine Blasey Ford has alleged that Kavanaugh sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her more than three decades ago, when they were high-school stu­dents. She has told her sto­ry in a let­ter to California Senator Dianne Feinstein and a com­pelling inter­view with The Washington Post. She has pro­vid­ed details of a poly­graph test and ther­a­pist notes that cor­rob­o­rate her account.

Key Republican sen­a­tors, includ­ing Maine’s Susan Collins, who is con­sid­ered an essen­tial swing vote on court picks, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, a mem­ber of the Judiciary Committee, say fur­ther action on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion should be delayed until Ford is giv­en a hear­ing. “If they push for­ward with­out any attempt with hear­ing what she’s had to say, I’m not com­fort­able vot­ing yes,” Flake said Sunday. “We need to hear from her. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.” Even White House coun­selor Kellyanne Conway says, “This woman should not be insult­ed and she should not be ignored.”

“Let me make very clear: I’ve spo­ken with the pres­i­dent, I’ve spo­ken with [South Carolina Senator Lindsey] Graham and oth­ers,” says Conway. “This woman will be heard. She’s going to… I think the Senate Judiciary Committee will decide how and through which forum.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have asked that Thursday’s planned vote on the nom­i­na­tion be put off until “seri­ous ques­tions about Judge Kavanaugh’s record, truth­ful­ness and char­ac­ter” can be “thor­ough­ly eval­u­at­ed and answered.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D‑RI) explains that this is about much more than a sim­ple time-out. “I admire the courage Ms. Ford has shown in com­ing for­ward with her sto­ry. This requires a pause, at a min­i­mum, in the unseem­ly, spe­cial-inter­est-fund­ed rush to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Court,” says Whitehouse, a vet­er­an pros­e­cu­tor and for­mer state attor­ney gen­er­al. “Kavanaugh’s blan­ket denial can­not be rec­on­ciled with her spe­cif­ic rec­ol­lec­tions, and the FBI needs time to take prop­er wit­ness state­ments. Lying to an FBI agent in a for­mal inter­view is a crime, and an impeach­able offense.”

If the Republicans insist on advanc­ing the nom­i­na­tion with­out a prop­er review by the FBI, the Judiciary Committee has to tem­per the excess­es of par­ti­san­ship that have so far been on dis­play in the approach of McConnell and Grassley to this process.

Ford must be afford­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tes­ti­fy to the full com­mit­tee in a for­mal ses­sion that is orga­nized with an eye toward pro­vid­ing her with a fair and respon­si­ble hear­ing. Kavanaugh should also be called to tes­ti­fy. Witnesses who can pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and insight should be heard.

Fatima Goss Graves, the pres­i­dent and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, out­lines some basic stan­dards for how the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate, can pro­ceed: “Christine Blasey Ford nev­er asked to come for­ward and share her sto­ry about the sex­u­al vio­lence she says she expe­ri­enced at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh. She was dragged into the spot­light against her will. But now that Ford’s sto­ry is pub­lic, the Senate is oblig­at­ed to take these alle­ga­tions seri­ous­ly and give them the care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion they deserve — while pro­tect­ing the pri­vate cit­i­zen who many will now tar­get for per­son­al destruc­tion because she has named her expe­ri­ence. The Senate has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get it right this time and not repeat the wrongs that were done to Anita Hill in 1991. Anita Hill’s tes­ti­mo­ny and the wit­ness­ing of all who have come after her — espe­cial­ly over the past year — have made it indis­putable: sex­u­al harass­ment and sex­u­al vio­lence are behav­iors that must nev­er be excused or explained away. If the charges are true, Kavanaugh’s behav­ior makes clear that he is not fit for a seat on the Supreme Court, or any court.”

This must be seen as the point at which the Judiciary Committee begins the seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion that McConnell and Grassley thwart­ed with their hyper-politi­cized attempt to has­ten the process. Revelations regard­ing Kavanaugh that have emerged since the ini­tial Judiciary Committee ses­sions with the nom­i­nee must be reviewed. Christine Blasey Ford is pre­pared to tes­ti­fy, and sen­a­tors have a duty to con­sid­er that tes­ti­mo­ny. Emerging evi­dence that Kavanaugh has repeat­ed­ly lied to the com­mit­tee must also be con­sid­ered—in order to pro­vide con­text for his response to Ford’s account and, more broad­ly, to give sen­a­tors per­spec­tive when con­sid­er­ing a nom­i­na­tion that demands the over­sight McConnell and Grassley have tried to avoid. (Story orig­i­nat­ed here) https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​o​w​-​i​s​-​t​h​e​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​h​o​l​d​-​r​e​a​l​-​h​e​a​r​i​n​g​s​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​k​a​v​a​n​a​u​g​h​-​n​o​m​i​n​a​t​i​on/

In local pol­i­tics, right here in our neigh­bor­hood many in the Democratic machin­ery, act as Republicans and vote with Republicans on some of the most con­tro­ver­sial issues includ­ing the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar jail com­plex right here on Hamilton street in the city of Poughkeepsie.
Local Democratic Council rep­re­sen­ta­tives say the bond was approved to build the jail with­out the req­ui­site envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies and the effect the com­plex will have on the local environment.

Here in the city of Poughkeepsie, it is only a three- minute dri­ve across the mid-Hudson bridge and you are in Ulster County, a coun­ty which is laud­ed as one of the most lib­er­al coun­ties in the entire Country.
Yet the sor­did sto­ries of and the unend­ing tales of racial pro­fil­ing, and the ille­gal search­ing of peo­ple of col­or vehi­cles by the Ulster County’s Sheriff’s office, The State Police and the Town of Lloyd’s police are far too many to be ignored.

In this Article, our friends at the Nation talks about the Democratic Sherriff of Ulster coun­ty and how the race is shap­ing up in this one of the most lib­er­al coun­ties in the age of Trump.

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Some say Ulster County’s long­time sher­iff sees him­self as “above the law” — but pri­ma­ry vot­ers have a chance to show him otherwise.

In the Hudson Valley, a dis­tinct­ly Trump-like Democrat is fac­ing an unex­pect­ed pri­ma­ry chal­lenge in a key local race — one that’s most­ly flown under the nation­al radar.

At a can­di­dates’ forum in Woodstock last week, Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum, who is seek­ing his fourth term in office, raised eye­brows when he told the crowd, “It’s out there that I’m a racist, and that the sheriff’s office is racist. Am I get­ting sued by four black offi­cers? Yes. But let me tell you this: They’re suing me for not get­ting pro­mot­ed. Two out of the four nev­er even took a pro­mo­tion­al exam. The third one took the exam and failed. The fourth per­son took the exam, and passed, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was arrest­ed for steal­ing from the sheriff’s office. So that makes me a racist and I don’t under­stand it.”

He added: “As far as the oth­er law­suits against me, we’ve won every one of them.” (A female cor­rec­tions offi­cer who sued the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office in fed­er­al court for on-the-job harass­ment was award­ed a large set­tle­ment in 2014.)

Norman James, who retired from the sheriff’s office in April after 30 years work­ing at the Ulster County jail, is one of the plain­tiffs in the case Van Blarcum men­tioned in Woodstock (there are five in total, and two are no longer with the depart­ment). He said he and the oth­ers are suing the sheriff’s office in fed­er­al court for sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion against the department’s small num­ber of black cor­rec­tions officers.

“The white offi­cers get a lot bet­ter treat­ment than the black offi­cers do,” said James. “If you’re a black offi­cer and you com­mit some sort of infrac­tion, you’re dealt with much more harsh­ly by the admin­is­tra­tion than if you’re white. If you’re white, you may get a 30-day sus­pen­sion, but it’s eas­i­ly for­giv­en and for­got­ten and you’re still able to advance. You also get eas­i­er job assignments.”

“There’s an old-boy net­work,” he said, “and it’s all white.” Van Blarcum didn’t respond to an inter­view request.

ames told me about a white offi­cer who threw a glass at a woman in a bar, caus­ing a facial injury that required 150 stitch­es. He faced a 30-day sus­pen­sion and then went on with his career. The black cop who was “arrest­ed for steal­ing from the sheriff’s office” was a vet­er­an with a clean record who ran out of gas one night and filled up his per­son­al vehi­cle with the department’s gas. He offered to pay resti­tu­tion. According to James, that inci­dent occurred 15 years ago, and that offi­cer has been repeat­ed­ly passed over for pro­mo­tions ever since. “Twenty-two years on the job, and he’s still work­ing on the hous­ing units like a rook­ie,” he said.

“I have no inter­est in pro­mo­tions,” said Tyrone Brodhead, a 19-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment and anoth­er plain­tiff in the suit. “My issue is that I’m con­stant­ly being accused of bring­ing in con­tra­band and sub­ject­ed to inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tions. I’m sub­ject­ed to lock­er search­es, vehi­cle search­es, and per­son­al search­es. They’ve nev­er sub­stan­ti­at­ed any of these charges, but I’ve been labeled a drug dealer.”

“I’ve been on the coun­ty­wide swat team, but I’ve been held back from oper­a­tions when­ev­er they involve nar­cotics,” Brodhead observed. “I’ve nev­er been involved in drugs, I don’t use drugs, and there’s no rea­son for this oth­er than the col­or of my skin. It’s a hos­tile work environment.”

The attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cers didn’t respond to an inter­view request by press time.

In 2014, Van Blarcum ran unop­posed for his third term in office. He was reelect­ed eas­i­ly, tak­ing 90 per­cent of the vote. According to the Times Herald Record, Van Blarcum’s vote total in the coun­ty that year exceed­ed that of both the Democratic and Republican guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­dates combined.

But in May, as sev­er­al oth­er local incum­bents sailed to easy vic­to­ries at the Ulster County Democratic nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tion, Van Blarcum faced an upris­ing among local Democratic offi­cials and activists. He report­ed­ly left the venue before his bid for the nom­i­na­tion was reject­ed by a lop­sided, 85 per­cent to 15 per­cent margin.

What shift­ed in the inter­ven­ing years? Andrew Zink, pres­i­dent of the Ulster County Young Democrats, said, “The elec­tion of Donald Trump changed the equa­tion.” (Local Democrats were furi­ous when Van Blarcum and sev­er­al of his deputies appeared in a pho­to-op with the pres­i­dent in the Oval Office.) “Trump’s elec­tion woke peo­ple up,” said Zink. “Trump made us look at these local issues and eval­u­ate our local elect­ed offi­cials and ask our­selves, ‘is this what we want?’ And when the Democratic vot­ers of Ulster County looked at that ques­tion in that race, they said, ‘no, we don’t want our own Donald Trump.’”

Since his last, easy reelec­tion in 2014, Van Blarcum has made a series of head­lines, some going nation­al, that alien­at­ed restive Democrats. Local activists said Van Blarcum’s ten­den­cy to use his office to ampli­fy hard-right mes­sages became intol­er­a­ble after the 2016 election.

In the days fol­low­ing a 2015 mass shoot­ing that left 14 peo­ple dead in San Bernardino, California, Van Blarcum urged coun­ty res­i­dents with gun per­mits to car­ry firearms at all times. The appeal was post­ed on his office’s offi­cial Facebook page. The fol­low­ing year, he trashedlocal “sanc­tu­ary city” ordi­nances, and said that his deputies, who, accord­ing to Van Blarcum, have long coop­er­at­ed with the fed­er­al Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, wouldn’t change the way they did busi­ness. Shortly before his last elec­tion, he’d angered gun safe­ty advo­cates by urg­ing his deputies to “use dis­cre­tion” when con­sid­er­ing charges against peo­ple who vio­lat­ed the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act, a gun-con­trol pack­age that New York state passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

“The sheriff’s made it very clear that he’s above the law,” said Dan Torres, a New Paltz City Councilor and a fierce crit­ic of Van Blarcum. “He’s done that by cam­paign­ing with coun­ty resources, thumb­ing his nose at com­mu­ni­ties that want to pro­tect their immi­grants, mak­ing wild state­ments about guns, and then get­ting the coun­try sued mul­ti­ple times because of his actions. He’s a wingnut with a real dis­re­gard for the US Constitution.”

Van Blarcum’s Democratic chal­lenger, Juan Figueroa, said that it was the sheriff’s deci­sion to weigh in — again, on the Ulster County Sheriff’s offi­cial Facebook page — on NFL play­ers tak­ing a knee to protest racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing that first drew his inter­est in the race. The post, which echoed tweets about the issue from Donald Trump, claimed that the play­ers had “show[ed] an utter lack of patri­o­tism and total dis­re­spect for our vet­er­ans — liv­ing and dead — and every­thing that they put their lives on the line for!” It called for Ulster County res­i­dents to “boy­cott all foot­ball tele­casts [and] refrain from attend­ing or view­ing any NFL games.… let the NFL play to emp­ty stadiums.”

Figueroa, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, said the post was part of a “pat­tern of that sort of behav­ior” that “just shows [that Van Blarcum] has been in office a lit­tle too long and doesn’t real­ize what his job is sup­posed to be. When you use your office for some­thing like that, you’re abus­ing your office. The sher­iff is elect­ed by the peo­ple, and he’s sup­posed to rep­re­sent all of the people.”

Figueroa was also incensed by Van Blarcum’s prac­tice of con­duct­ing “sus­pi­cion­less war­rant checks” on peo­ple enter­ing the local social-ser­vices office, a prac­tice that was only dis­con­tin­ued after then – New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent coun­ty offi­cials a let­ter clar­i­fy­ing that the pol­i­cy was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and “in vio­la­tion of civ­il rights law.” Story orig­i­nat­ed here( https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​h​o​w​-​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​i​e​s​t​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​g​o​t​-​a​-​s​u​r​p​r​i​s​i​n​g​-​c​h​a​l​l​e​n​g​er/

Since this sto­ry was pub­lished: Van Blarcum was defeat­ed­ly in an over­whelm­ing repu­di­a­tion by the vot­ers who chose Figueroa by a land­slide 80% to 20% drubbing.

This is how the New York Times saw it sev­en­teen years ago.