Flaws and all, American democ­ra­cy was one many nations aspired to, but that will be gone soon…The unrav­el­ing of the American Democratic exper­i­ment was prob­a­bly des­tined to go the way it is going because when the thin veneer of equal­i­ty is peeled back, the world sees that it was a mirage. It was not built on equal­i­ty, jus­tice, and fair play, it was all a lie because it was only intend­ed to ben­e­fit white people.

Whether one believes there is a supreme deity (God), that the uni­verse is con­stant­ly on the alert, effec­tive­ly keep­ing things in bal­ance or that there is some­thing called luck, either way, one of the fore­gone may fac­tor into the midterm elec­tions sched­uled for November 8^th, 2022.
Cable news that every­one on the polit­i­cal rights insists is a cesspool of left­ist ide­ol­o­gy, has engaged in ²⁴⁄₇ inces­sant talk of reces­sion even as the Democratic admin­is­tra­tion in the white house has been pro­duc­ing jobs at a record number.
Sure, gas prices are high and have fluc­tu­at­ed over the last sev­er­al months. The Administration has tak­en sev­er­al steps to mit­i­gate the pain at the pump, includ­ing releas­ing some US reserves for even­tu­al­i­ties such as this.
The real­i­ty is that the admin­is­tra­tion has pre­cious lit­tle to do with the oil prices, which are deter­mined by mar­ket forces.
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is one such force.

Food prices, too, are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high as the mar­ket tries to find its way back to a sem­blance of nor­mal­cy after a dead­ly pan­dem­ic that has dev­as­tat­ed the world over the last two years.
Violent crime is up per police data; nev­er­the­less, over the last two decades, when crime trend­ed down dur­ing both Democratic and Republican admin­is­tra­tions, no one knew pre­cise­ly why crime trend­ed downwards.
Now that crime is on the upswing, the polit­i­cal right and its prox­ies ‑police unions are using ris­ing crime sta­tis­tics to blud­geon Democrats.
The argu­ments from the fas­cist right are that the small moves that have been made to cor­rect some of the grave injus­tices of police vio­lence after the mur­der of George Floyd and the release from prison of peo­ple locked up for non-vio­lent drug crimes; usu­al­ly mar­i­jua­na sales are the rea­sons for the uptick in vio­lent crime.

There is absolute­ly no data sup­port­ing that lie, but it is enough for the racist vot­ers that vote Republican to latch onto. The lies val­i­date the built-in bias­es and hatred their vot­ers har­bor for every­one, not pig­ment deficient.
The fact is that vio­lent crimes are high­er in states run by Republicans; that’s a fact. There is anoth­er fact they ignore, a large per­cent­age of the vio­lent crimes they are try­ing to pin on so-called defund­ing the police mea­sures with­in urban areas are straw­man accu­sa­tions. Funding has gone up for police since police mur­dered George Floyd, not down. Most of the dead­ly vio­lent crimes are not being com­mit­ted by Black men in urban areas but by white mass killers.
Republicans have tried to over­throw the almost two-hun­dred-and-fifty-year democ­ra­cy to replace it with auto­crat­ic rule by a failed real­i­ty tele­vi­sion personality.
Despite this, vot­ers will go out and, in all like­li­hood, elect elec­tion deniers to the house, sen­ate, gov­er­nor­ships, and oth­er trai­tors all the way down the ballot.
These are the very same peo­ple the cor­po­rate media and their talk­ing heads con­stant­ly referred to as work­ing-class Americans; I’m sure you remem­ber those char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, then they referred to them as blue-col­lar Americans. What a laugh, I have always insist­ed that those vot­ers were nei­ther of those char­ac­ter­i­za­tions but were dis­grun­tled whites who, despite being told that their rise to wealth was just around the cor­ner, could nev­er quite cut in under American cap­i­tal­ism, so they blame every one of a dif­fer­ent col­or for their inabil­i­ty to cash in their white priv­i­lege card.

They are afraid to live in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety where every­one has equal oppor­tu­ni­ties and rights. They are pre­pared to jet­ti­son democ­ra­cy to ensure con­tin­ued white dominance.
For their part, the Democrats make for a hor­ri­ble oppo­si­tion. It is bad on orga­niz­ing, bad on mes­sag­ing, and hor­ri­ble on fight­ing back against the cam­paign of lies and sedition.
Historically, when cit­i­zens betray their coun­try by attempt­ing a coup d’é­tat, they are arrest­ed, tried in a court of law, impris­oned, or exe­cut­ed for treason.
Not so in the United States; there are peo­ple who can com­mit trea­son and sedi­tious activ­i­ties and suf­fer no con­se­quence under the laws. They threat­en fur­ther actions against the state if they are held accountable.….In fact, they are free to run for office again and around the coun­try, endors­ing can­di­dates to ensure that a future gov­ern­ment over­throw will succeed.

Women vot­ers are in the major­i­ty in the United States. Though the Supreme Court saw fit not to add to the rights of Americans but to take away rights two gen­er­a­tions of Americans enjoyed for almost half a cen­tu­ry, women will go out and elect Republicans to con­gress claim­ing that gas prices are too high and that they are hav­ing a hard time with the price of food.
No one should fall for the lies that the cor­po­rate media feeds the pub­lic inces­sant­ly that so-called pock­et­book issues are why the trea­so­nous Republican par­ty is poised to win the house and maybe even the sen­ate despite attempt­ing to over­throw the two hun­dred and forty-six-year demo­c­ra­t­ic experiment…
It has noth­ing to do with pock­et­book or kitchen table issues, as they call it. Realistically, Americans live at an expo­nen­tial­ly high­er stan­dard than most peo­ple world­wide. The women in par­tic­u­lar that are vot­ing now and will go out and vote for Republican can­di­dates that have fought to turn back the clock on rights they enjoyed are not vot­ing kitchen table or pock­et­book issues; they are vot­ing for their race.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

By Eric Tucker

Former President Donald Trump once pre­dict­ed that a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor appoint­ed dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion would uncov­er “the crime of the cen­tu­ry” — a con­spir­a­cy to sink his 2016 campaign.

Yet here are the results of the three-year probe by pros­e­cu­tor John Durham: two tri­al acquit­tals — the lat­est on Tuesday — and a for­mer FBI attor­ney sen­tenced to probation.

That has fall­en far short of Trump sup­port­ers’ expec­ta­tions that Durham would reveal a “deep state” plot behind the U.S. government’s inves­ti­ga­tion into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial campaign.

The out­come has led to scruti­ny over the pur­pose of Durham’s appoint­ment by for­mer Attorney General William Barr, who tasked him with suss­ing out mis­con­duct in the Trump-Russia probe. It also has raised ques­tions about whether or when the cur­rent attor­ney gen­er­al, Merrick Garland, might move to rein in Durham’s work or has­ten its completion.

“You real­ly mea­sure the suc­cess of an inves­ti­ga­tion by what it uncov­ers in terms of per­ni­cious activ­i­ty, and he’s uncov­ered noth­ing,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law pro­fes­sor and for­mer senior Justice Department official.

Read the full sto­ry here: https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​-​c​l​a​i​m​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​c​e​n​t​u​r​y​-​f​i​z​z​l​e​s​-​2​0​4​7​2​7​9​2​0​.​h​tml

There are not many Democratic Governors and Mayors in red states, but there sure­ly are Republican Governors and Mayors in blue states. I nev­er under­stood the dynam­ics of Democrats choos­ing Republicans in the bluest of states like California, elect­ing Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or New York, elect­ing George Pataki, and New York City, elect­ing and re-elect­ing Rudolph Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg.
I’ve con­clud­ed that the American elec­torate is one that basi­cal­ly votes on their own per­son­al needs, not on seri­ous issues that affect the coun­try’s direction.

For exam­ple, in 1980, after eight years of the Michael Manley régime in Jamaica, the elec­torate rose against the People’s National Party and vot­ed them out in a tidal wave of anger.
The PNP was only able to retain nine seats in the then 60-seat leg­is­la­ture. The PNP retained nine seats arguably because of mas­sive bal­lot stuff­ing in the gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties of both parties.
Conversely, after the Bill Clinton pres­i­den­cy, which brought pros­per­i­ty to mil­lions of Americans, the coun­try elect­ed George Bush, a polit­i­cal and per­son­al goof­ball, instead of elect­ing Al Gore, Clinton’s Vice President.
We all know how that turned out for the United States: mas­sive eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion, two ille­git­i­mate wars, and the Patriot act result­ing in the ero­sion of rights Americans pre­vi­ous­ly held dear.
Again after the eight years of rel­a­tive peace and pros­per­i­ty of the Obama years in which Obama pulled the econ­o­my back from the brink of col­lapse in 2008, the coun­try elect­ed Donald Trump a car­ni­val bark­ing clown and con artiste, for­ev­er sul­ly­ing the majesty and mys­tique of the presidency.
“Winston Churchill once famous­ly observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried every­thing else.”
I am not so sure there is the intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty to do the right thing these days.

Other than North Carolina, a red state that elect­ed Roy Cooper a Democrat, there are no red states with a Democratic chief exec­u­tive. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008, so there is a case that North Carolina may not be as red as some would like us to believe.
On the oth­er hand, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Virginia, all blue states, have Republican governors.
Many Democrats and inde­pen­dents fall for the lies that Republicans are for low­er tax­es because they do not take the time to fig­ure out the math. Republicans do low­er tax­es for her rich cronies, which is, by default, a tax increase on every­one else.
Yes, these tax cuts have to be paid for by some­one, usu­al­ly the poor­est Americans.
The poor­est peo­ple in the coun­try live in states run by Republicans, and though I am for low­er tax­es, I am also aware that it requires mon­ey to pay for stuff. Democrats and Independents in blue states do not cal­cu­late the risk of elect­ing Republicans to run State gov­ern­ment while send­ing Democratic Senators to Washington, DC, to ensure a pro­gres­sive agen­da where all Americans’ rights are guaranteed.

One such risk is that if a Democratic US Senator is inca­pac­i­tat­ed or dies, the Republican Governor gets to send a Republican to Washington to fin­ish that Senator’s term or until a by-elec­tion can be organized.
Vermont is a blue state with two Senators. Democrat Patrick Leahy is 82 ‑years old, and Bernie Sanders is 81 years old.
Any per­son can fall ill or die at any time. However, Senator Leahy has fall­en ill before and is again not feel­ing well and was tak­en to the hospital.
If any­thing hap­pens to Patrick Leahy, Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott will send a Republican to Washington, and Mitch McConnell will be the major­i­ty leader. That would effec­tive­ly mean the end of the Biden pres­i­den­cy legislatively.
And God for­bid there is anoth­er vacan­cy on the supreme court; that vacan­cy would not be filled until there is anoth­er Republican in the white house.

Present-day pol­i­tics requires a sophis­ti­cat­ed and informed elec­torate. The Republican elec­torate may nei­ther be sophis­ti­cat­ed nor informed, but they vote as a mono­lith. Democrats and Independents claim to be more sophis­ti­cat­ed and informed, but when they vote the way they vote by elect­ing Republicans in the Blue States, there is a strong argu­ment against those claims.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The Georgia Senate candidate’s ex-girl­friend says he want­ed her to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy in 2011. She chose to have their son instead.

A woman who has said Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nom­i­nee in Georgia, paid for her abor­tion in 2009 told The New York Times that he urged her to ter­mi­nate a sec­ond preg­nan­cy two years lat­er. They end­ed their rela­tion­ship after she refused.

In a series of inter­views, the woman said Mr. Walker had bare­ly been involved in their now 10-year-old son’s life, offer­ing lit­tle more than court-ordered child sup­port and occa­sion­al gifts.

The woman dis­closed the new details about her rela­tion­ship with Mr. Walker, who has anchored his cam­paign on an appeal to social con­ser­v­a­tives as an unwa­ver­ing oppo­nent of abor­tion even in cas­es of rape and incest, after the for­mer foot­ball star pub­licly denied that he knew her. He called her “some alleged woman” in a radio inter­view on Thursday.

The Times is with­hold­ing the name of the woman, who insist­ed on anonymi­ty to pro­tect her son.

In the inter­views, she described the frus­tra­tion of watch­ing Republicans ral­ly around Mr. Walker, dis­miss her account and bathe him in prayer and praise, call­ing him a good man.

She said she want­ed Georgia vot­ers to know what kind of man Mr. Walker was to her.

“As a father, he’s done noth­ing. He does exact­ly what the courts say, and that’s it,” she said. “He has to be held respon­si­ble, just like the rest of us. And if you’re going to run for office, you need to own your life.”

The inter­views and doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to The Times togeth­er cor­rob­o­rate and expand upon an account about her abor­tion first pub­lished on Monday in The Daily Beast. The Times also inde­pen­dent­ly con­firmed details with cus­tody records filed in fam­i­ly court in New York and inter­viewed a friend of the woman to whom she had described the abor­tion and her even­tu­al breakup with Mr. Walker as those events occurred.

Mr. Walker’s cam­paign declined to com­ment about the woman’s account.

The woman reaf­firmed the key details of her account: She and Mr. Walker con­ceived a child in 2009 and decid­ed not to con­tin­ue the preg­nan­cy. Mr. Walker was not mar­ried at the time. She pro­vid­ed to The Times a $575 receipt she was giv­en after pay­ing for the pro­ce­dure at an Atlanta women’s clin­ic, and a deposit slip show­ing a copy of a $700 check that she said Mr. Walker gave her as reim­burse­ment. She also shared a “get well” card with a hand­writ­ten mes­sage — “Pray you are feel­ing bet­ter” — and signed sim­ply, “H.”

Mr. Walker has repeat­ed­ly denied her account, call­ing it a “flat-out” lie and the work of Democrats and the hos­tile news media. He has dis­put­ed that he signed the card. He told Fox News on Monday that he sends mon­ey “to a lot of people.

“I know this is untrue. I know it’s untrue,” Mr. Walker said on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” on Thursday. “I know noth­ing about any woman hav­ing an abortion.”

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Later on Thursday, he gath­ered reporters in a lum­ber yard 150 miles east of Atlanta for his first pub­lic event since the report first sur­faced and read a state­ment that did not direct­ly address it. Instead, he blamed his polit­i­cal opponents.

“You’re here because Democrats are des­per­ate to hold onto pow­er,” he said. “They are des­per­ate to make this race about my family.”

Mr. Walker is run­ning against Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in what is one of the year’s most expen­sive and com­pet­i­tive races as Republicans try to win con­trol of the Senate.

Mr. Walker and his for­mer girl­friend start­ed their rela­tion­ship around November 2008, accord­ing to her pater­ni­ty suit. She said they first met in Atlanta, where she lived and Mr. Walker reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ed. She would occa­sion­al­ly trav­el to the Dallas area, Mr. Walker’s home at the time.

The next year, when they con­ceived a child, the cou­ple agreed that she should end the preg­nan­cy, she said. Mr. Walker nev­er expressed any moral or reli­gious con­cerns about abor­tion, she said. He told her that it was “not a good time” for a baby.

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The two con­tin­ued their rela­tion­ship and, two years lat­er, the woman became preg­nant again. This time, she said, she told Mr. Walker she want­ed to have the child. But Mr. Walker did not, and again made the case that the time was not right. The rela­tion­ship end­ed on Sept. 16, 2011, accord­ing to her pater­ni­ty suit. Her son was born the fol­low­ing May.

In an inter­view, a friend who lived in Atlanta at the time described con­sol­ing the woman through her morn­ing sick­ness before her abor­tion and sup­port­ing her after­ward. Years lat­er, when the woman was preg­nant again, she dis­closed in phone and in-per­son con­ver­sa­tions that Mr. Walker had asked her to end the preg­nan­cy but she was adamant that she would not, accord­ing to the friend.

Mr. Walker also appears to have been involved with two oth­er women around this time. In an inter­view in the December 2011 issue of Playboy mag­a­zine, he iden­ti­fied Julie Blanchard, who is now his wife, as his fiancée. And in January 2012, Myka Dean, then a share­hold­er along with her moth­er in Mr. Walker’s com­pa­ny Renaissance Man, accord­ing to finan­cial records, filed a police report in Irving, Texas, in which she said that for 20 years she had been in an “on-off-on-off” rela­tion­ship with Mr. Walker. (Ms. Dean, who died in 2019, told the police that Mr. Walker threat­ened her after she told him that she want­ed to date oth­er peo­ple. Mr. Walker denied the alle­ga­tion through a spokes­woman in April.)

The woman inter­viewed by The Times said Mr. Walker nev­er phys­i­cal­ly abused her.

In April 2013, the woman filed for child sup­port in Manhattan when she was a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Columbia University and “strug­gling to make ends meet,” accord­ing to a state­ment from her lawyer at the time. Mr. Walker was ini­tial­ly ordered to make pay­ments, first of $2,500 a month and lat­er of $3,500 a month. The final order of child sup­port was not issued until July 2014, accord­ing to court records. Mr. Walker has made his pay­ments on time, the woman said.

Mr. Warnock has also been involved in a child cus­tody dis­pute. His ex-wife sued in April to adjust the terms of their agree­ment and increase pay­ments to account for the income he earns as a sen­a­tor and as lead pas­tor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. A spokes­woman for the Warnock cam­paign declined to com­ment for this article.

The woman said Mr. Walker hard­ly knew his 10-year-old son — she said he had “maybe only seen him three times” — and had not spo­ken to her in years. She said she and Mr. Walker com­mu­ni­cat­ed only through Ms. Blanchard, who the woman said some­times called her to ask her son’s size before send­ing gifts.

“And by ‘he,’ I mean ‘she’ sends him Christmas presents, birth­day presents,” the woman said.

As recent­ly as Friday, Ms. Blanchard reached out to com­plain about reporters inves­ti­gat­ing Mr. Walker, accord­ing to the woman.

Ms. Blanchard and the woman pre­vi­ous­ly appeared to have had a cor­dial rela­tion­ship, chat­ting over text about sum­mer camp and gifts for the child. In May, the woman wished Ms. Blanchard well on pri­ma­ry day, accord­ing a text pro­vid­ed by Mr. Walker’s cam­paign, say­ing she was “pray­ing for you guys!!”

The woman, a Democrat, said she had strug­gled to watch Mr. Walker cam­paign on pub­lic posi­tions so clear­ly at odds with his pri­vate conduct.

Mr. Walker has said he sup­ports abor­tion bans with no excep­tions for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

“The fact that I had a choice — now he’s in the pub­lic try­ing to say he wants to put a ban on abor­tion com­plete­ly,” the woman said, adding, “It appalled me.”

Mr. Walker also has assailed “absen­tee fathers,” par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Black com­mu­ni­ty. But the woman said Mr. Walker him­self had been so unin­volved in her son’s life that his absence was a run­ning joke between her and her fam­i­ly and friends.

The woman said she was giv­en no advance notice about Mr. Walker’s Senate can­di­da­cy and was shocked when she learned he had entered the race.

Mr. Walker’s per­son­al life has been a source of tur­moil in his cam­paign. He talked often about a 22-year-old son, Christian Walker, in ear­ly cam­paign mate­ri­als and appear­ances, but lat­er acknowl­edged three more chil­dren he had not pub­licly men­tioned, includ­ing the 10-year-old son, an adult daugh­ter and anoth­er young son. (Christian Walker, a con­ser­v­a­tive social media star in his own right, began open­ly attack­ing his father after The Daily Beast’s report was pub­lished, accus­ing him and his Republican allies of hypocrisy.)

Mr. Walker dis­put­ed that he had not acknowl­edged his chil­dren. “I just chose not to use them as props to win a polit­i­cal cam­paign,” he said in a state­ment in June. “What par­ent would want their child involved in garbage, gut­ter pol­i­tics like this?”

When those reports first appeared in June, the woman said, Ms. Blanchard asked her to pub­licly vouch for Mr. Walker’s on-time child sup­port pay­ments in an effort to make the case that Mr. Walker was a respon­si­ble father. The woman said she declined.

Maya King report­ed from Atlanta; Lisa Lerer and Jonah E. Bromwich report­ed from New York. Ken Bensinger and Alexandra Berzon con­tributed report­ing. Kitty Bennettcontributed research.

Maya King is a pol­i­tics reporter cov­er­ing the South. Prior to join­ing The Times, she was a nation­al polit­i­cal reporter at Politico, where she cov­ered the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. @mayaak­ing

Lisa Lerer is a nation­al polit­i­cal cor­re­spon­dent, cov­er­ing cam­paigns, elec­tions and polit­i­cal pow­er. @llerer

Jonah E. Bromwich cov­ers crim­i­nal jus­tice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan dis­trict attor­ney’s office, state crim­i­nal courts in Manhattan and New York City’s jails. @jone­sie­man.

Simply because peo­ple dis­agree with an opin­ion is not a basis for ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of the court,” Samuel Alito told a judi­cial con­fer­ence in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “The Supreme Court’s respon­si­bil­i­ty “doesn’t change sim­ply because peo­ple dis­agree with this opin­ion or that opin­ion or dis­agree with the par­tic­u­lar mode of jurispru­dence.”It goes with­out say­ing that every­one is free to express dis­agree­ment with our deci­sions and to crit­i­cize our rea­son­ing as they see fit. But say­ing or imply­ing that the court is becom­ing an ille­git­i­mate insti­tu­tion or ques­tion­ing our integri­ty cross­es an impor­tant line.”

Samuel Alito respond­ed to recent state­ments made by Justice Elena Kagan with­out nam­ing her; Kagan was appoint­ed by President Barack Obama. Justice Kagan said, “The worst moments have been when judges have even essen­tial­ly reflect­ed one party’s or one ideology’s set of views in their legal deci­sions.”The thing that builds up reser­voirs of pub­lic con­fi­dence is the court act­ing like a court and not act­ing like an exten­sion of the polit­i­cal process.”
Where is the lie?
Along with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito is eas­i­ly the most hyper-par­ti­san mem­ber of the 9‑member court. Alito, a Trenton, New Jersey native who is of Ivy league stock, grad­u­at­ed from Princeton University and Yale law school. He votes a straight Right-wing Republican line on every deci­sion that appears before the court.
Alito had aspi­ra­tions of being a supreme court jus­tice from his days in col­lege, and through the largess of both Republican pres­i­dents Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W Bush, Samuel Alito has been a supreme court jus­tice since 2005 when George Bush nom­i­nat­ed him, and he was con­firmed on a 52 – 48 vote in the Senate.

It is no sur­prise that a guy who was born with a sil­ver spoon in his mouth and had doors opened for him through­out his life believes that he has the right to rule by decree, which is what many jus­tices do base on their deci­sions in cas­es that come before them.
The court is not an abstract enti­ty that may be cri­tiqued on its own; the jus­tices make up the court. Their deci­sions, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, call into ques­tion the court’s legitimacy.
Alito can­not be so insu­lat­ed from real­i­ty, arro­gant, or just plain dumb that he believes his par­ti­san deci­sions do not decide how the pub­lic views the court, which just hap­pens to be the peo­ple’s last line of legal defense.
Recent polling shows a steep decline in pub­lic trust of the High Court. A Gallup poll con­duct­ed in June showed that just 25 per­cent of Americans report con­fi­dence in the insti­tu­tion, down from 36 per­cent in 2021.
It is fair to say that supreme court jus­tices gen­er­al­ly vote to reflect the ide­o­log­i­cal views of the pres­i­dents who appoint­ed them.
Arguably, through­out the court’s his­to­ry, the court has ruled not just along par­ti­san lines but reflec­tive of the gen­er­al mood of the pop­u­la­tion at the time, even though those deci­sions have run counter to the constitution.
On Slavery, inter­ra­cial mar­riage, On vot­ing Rights, and a raft of oth­er issues, the court has been dead wrong and was forced to reverse pre­vi­ous deci­sions that were bla­tant­ly and express­ly wrong.
Alito’s vot­ing pat­tern on the court since 2005 has demon­stra­bly been over­ly lop­sided and hyper-acqui­es­cent to the views of the ide­o­log­i­cal right. It is, there­fore, safe to say that Samuel Alito believes that the words enshrined in the con­sti­tu­tion may only be inter­pret­ed along Republican lines and points of view.
Apart from the votes cast, the legit­i­ma­cy of the supreme court has long ceased to be viewed favor­ably by the coun­try’s major­i­ty. Only a mea­ger one-quar­ter of the coun­try views the court as legit­i­mate. I imag­ine those who do are sup­port­ers of those who attacked the nation’s cap­i­tal on January 6^th, 2021.
In addi­tion, Samuel Alito and the Trump appointees to the court said they would respect Roe Versus Wade as set­tled law, then turned around and vot­ed to over­turn the 49-year prece­dent on prece­dent. How does that argue for legit­i­ma­cy when more than a third of the peo­ple on the court are known liars?
In a coun­try of laws, they would all be impeached and removed for lying to the Senate, but the United States is not a coun­try of laws; it is now an oli­garchy ruled by a small cabal who chose the under­lings that run the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the supreme court.
Alito’s Ivy league edu­ca­tion may have blind­ed him to the fact that one does not have to have an Ivy League edu­ca­tion to be a thinker. Not every­one has con­sumed the cool-aid.
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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

“I real­ly did not think that day would come, “one woman told a reporter at a John Fetterman ral­ly in Pennsylvania yes­ter­day; anoth­er retort­ed, “We fought for this right, dammit.” The women were old­er, gray-haired, and angry, and they were mad at the Supreme Court’s auda­cious deci­sion to over­turn Roe Versus Wade in the Dobbs decision.“
We did the march­ing. We did the talks. We did the ral­lies, and we won. And it has been the law that has been chal­lenged and defeat­ed a cou­ple of times already, and then just to come in with that and take it away, it’s unbe­liev­able to me. It is just unbe­liev­able.”
Only that it isn’t unbe­liev­able, for the forty-nine years that the Supreme Court affirmed the right of women to have an abor­tion, the Republican par­ty has waged a relent­less long-game cam­paign to over­turn it.
Right-wing groups such as the Federalist soci­ety came into exis­tence in 1982 by a group of stu­dents from Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School who sup­pos­ed­ly want­ed to chal­lenge lib­er­al or left-wing ide­ol­o­gy with­in élite American law schools and universities.
The truth is that the Federalist Society and oth­er right-wing groups’ sole inten­tion is to use the courts to estab­lish a per­ma­nent right-wing ide­ol­o­gy where the right can­not guar­an­tee con­trol at the bal­lot box.
The exis­tence of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney-Barrett, and Samuel Alito on the high­est court exem­pli­fies the pow­er and reach of the Federalist society.
All of the afore­men­tioned Jurists have either been rec­om­mend­ed by the Federalist soci­ety or have had some con­nec­tion to the group.

One of the things this writer has won­dered aloud is where are the left-wing advo­ca­cy groups that would counter the mas­sive num­ber of right-wing groups that have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly push­ing America fur­ther and fur­ther toward the right.
Not only are there no major groups coun­ter­ing the right­ward push there are hard­ly any indi­vid­u­als doing so either.
For its part, the Democratic par­ty seems con­tent to win pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in the most hos­tile envi­ron­ments-envi­ron­ments that the fas­cist Republican par­ty now sees fit to inject polit­i­cal vio­lence. What makes it hard­er each time for the Democrats is that each cycle, they will have to win a much larg­er share of the pop­u­lar vote and a wider spread in the elec­toral col­lege because of ger­ry­man­der­ing and, of course, the archa­ic elec­toral col­lege, one of the guard rails that guar­an­tees white minor­i­ty power.
Latching on to the idea of the great replace­ment the­o­ry, Several European Nations are now pass­ing laws and elect­ing out in the open fas­cists to high polit­i­cal office.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy polit­i­cal par­ty is described in CNN’s report as “the most far-right gov­ern­ment since the fas­cist era of Benito Mussolini.
The 45-year-old moth­er from Rome won by tar­get­ing Immigration as Donald Trump did before he won, she did the same, and she won in Italy. Right-wing fas­cism is on the rise in Sweden and Hungary, and even in France, the fas­cist right-wing Party of Marie Le Pen has made immi­gra­tion the cen­tral tenet of their agen­da, win­ning them more seats in the par­lia­ment than they ever held before.
Le Pen her­self chal­lenged Emanuel Macron and was defeat­ed by Macron, who was elect­ed on April 24^th, 2022.
It is now com­mon to see right-wing fas­cists who would pre­vi­ous­ly be shunned by both polit­i­cal par­ties in the United States as favored speak­ers at the Republican Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Repugnant racists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni’.
And lest we for­get, the British broke away from the European Union over the sin­gu­lar belief that too many peo­ple from Africa were enter­ing their country.

Giorgia Meloni

Donald Trump waged a racist, fas­cist, xeno­pho­bic cam­paign in the United States that pro­pelled him to the pres­i­den­cy in 2016. His relent­less stok­ing of racial ani­mus has kept him rel­e­vant after he left office in 2020 despite a pha­lanx of crim­i­nal accu­sa­tions that would have land­ed almost any­one else in prison years ago.
For the poten­tial vot­ers in places like Pennsylvania who are shocked that the reac­tionary Right-wing Supreme Court would reverse a 49-year-old prece­dent on prece­dent, I have news for them; this is just the begin­ning. The Republican par­ty is the Dog that chased the car every day and final­ly caught the car. Why would any­one doubt that they would over­turn a deci­sion they have fought tooth and nail since it was hand­ed down in 1973?
It’s not just about abor­tion, but about the idea that politi­cians would take con­trol of your body and decisions.
Black and Native peo­ple who have borne the brunt of white oppres­sion have nev­er had full auton­o­my and agency over their own lives. They under­stand all too well that noth­ing is guar­an­teed in the United States; even when guar­an­tees are memo­ri­al­ized in black and white, they have had those guar­an­tees ripped away from them.

I am pained for the white women who are now alarmed that five (5) unelect­ed bureau­crats could sum­mar­i­ly rip away guar­an­tees they have enjoyed for most of their lives.
Thankfully, some of them are now pay­ing atten­tion. While some are get­ting ready to man phone banks and knock on doors to orga­nize, there may be an equal num­ber or more who are orga­niz­ing to push them­selves and the coun­try fur­ther into the dystopi­an hand­maid­’s tale that the Republican par­ty is advocating.
It was only 102 years ago that women were not allowed to vote in the United States or make deci­sions with their own mon­ey inher­it­ed from their fathers. That deci­sion fell to the men they decid­ed to mar­ry, no mat­ter how poor they were.
On June 4, 1919, Congress passed the 19^th amend­ment to the Constitution; it was rat­i­fied on August 18, 1920.  The 19^th amend­ment grant­ed women the right to vote!!!

When the 14^th Amendment passed in 1868, it was intend­ed to give for­mer slaves equal pro­tec­tion and vot­ing rights under the law; it was not meant to pro­tect women. In fact, it spec­i­fied equal­i­ty for male slaves; female slaves were exclud­ed, as were all women, regard­less of race.
A year after the 14^th amendment’s pas­sage, Myra Bradwell tried to apply it to women’s rights. Bradwell, who grad­u­at­ed law school with hon­ors and had passed the bar, chal­lenged the Supreme Court of Illinois’ deci­sion pro­hibit­ing her from prac­tic­ing law in the state.
The Illinois Supreme Court had found Bradwell legal­ly “dis­abled:” As a mar­ried woman, she had no sep­a­rate legal exis­tence apart from her husband’s. She could nei­ther own prop­er­ty nor enter into legal agree­ments.
The case went to the United States Supreme Court with Myra Bradwell argu­ing that Illinois vio­lat­ed the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sion. The Supreme Court saw oth­er­wise, rul­ing that the amend­ment did not require states to open the legal pro­fes­sion to women. One jus­tice wrote: “The para­mount des­tiny and mis­sion of women are to ful­fill the noble and benign offices of wife and moth­er.”(erae­d­u­ca­tion­pro­ject)

There are more women vot­ers in the United States than there are male vot­ers; nev­er­the­less, despite their supe­ri­or num­bers and the his­to­ry of where they are com­ing from, white women, in par­tic­u­lar, have closed their eyes and vot­ed Republican-essen­tial­ly putting race over their very freedoms.
Arguably, though white women were treat­ed expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter than Blacks before the pas­sage of the 19^th amend­ment, they had no more guar­an­teed rights than the recent­ly freed blacks. In fact, one could say that had it not been for their col­or, white women would have con­ceiv­ably been below Blacks on the totem pole, at least as far as vot­ing went.
Women should be at the fore­front of the fight to pro­tect American Democracy, not just on the abor­tion front but on all fronts, includ­ing wom­en’s right to vote and female autonomy.
Discrimination was not only reserved for Blacks, Native Americans, and oth­ers; white women were also exposed to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry laws and practices.
It is up to white women to pro­tect Democracy and the gains that have been hard won over the cen­turies, yet it is Blck women who have con­sis­tent­ly orga­nized to save America.
But for Black women and California Governor Gavin Newsome, where are the voic­es that ought to be out in front push­ing back against Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s fas­cist agenda? 

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

the

Was there always cor­rup­tion in the jus­tice system?
You bet!!!
Black peo­ple have felt the brunt of the cor­rup­tion with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which has nev­er been a sys­tem that works for them and still does­n’t today.
The remain­der of Americans who are not under the spell of Donald Trump’s dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign will soon find out how a cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tem destroys lives and kills dreams.

Legal experts have long argued there was absolute­ly no need for a spe­cial mas­ter to eval­u­ate the doc­u­ments tak­en from Donald Trump’s Mara Lago estate weeks ago. Yet one Judge hear­ing the unusu­al request from Trump hint­ed that she [would] con­sid­er grant­i­ng one, much to the cha­grin of the Department of Justice, which already had a fil­ter team doing pre­cise­ly what the spe­cial mas­ter will be tasked with doing. Usually, a spe­cial mas­ter would be grant­ed to a lawyer whose offices were searched by law enforce­ment to fil­ter and iso­late priv­i­leged doc­u­ments between that lawyer and their clients.
Legal experts and his­to­ri­ans have argued that there is no prece­dent for a for­mer pres­i­dent to be grant­ed a spe­cial mas­ter; he is not a lawyer.
Trump’s dis­re­gard and con­tempt for the rule of law expos­es a seri­ous fault in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.‘It was not designed to hold rich, old, white men account­able for their crimes.
Donald Trump appoint­ed more judges to the fed­er­al bench in his sin­gle con­tentious twice impeached term than most pres­i­dents do in two. Donald Trump and Mitch Mcconnell knew exact­ly what they were doing. It was always a part of the plan to cor­rupt the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry, and we have seen what his three appointees to the supreme court have done to Roe V Wade and oth­er decisions.

District Judge Aileen Cannon gave Donald Trump an unprece­dent­ed vic­to­ry on Monday when she acqui­esced to Trump’s unusu­al demand that a spe­cial mas­ter is appoint­ed to review the FBI’s doc­u­ments from Trump’s estate in Florida last month.
Aileen Cannon was born in Cali, Colombia, she is of Hispanic descent, and her moth­er is report­ed­ly a Cuban refugee.
This should tell you all you need to know, Aileen Cannon is not just anoth­er Cuban Hispanic Republican syco­phant, she is an out of con­trol loose can­non. 

Addressing a crowd in Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden tried his best to frame to the American peo­ple the seri­ous­ness of the threat fac­ing the nation. Mere days before the November midterm elec­tions, it is an open ques­tion whether the vot­ers who will go to the polls in November remote­ly under­stand the seri­ous­ness of the threat posed by Donald Trump and the Republican party.
The threat Donald Trump and the Republican par­ty pos­es is not only to the revo­ca­tion of rights Americans once took for grant­ed; it goes expo­nen­tial­ly deep­er to the destruc­tion of the soci­etal norms that have set America apart from oth­er coun­tries over the last two centuries.
The threat posed by the right-wing supreme court Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell cre­at­ed will become inte­gral to the reshap­ing of America, arguably forever.
If you thought their attack on vot­ing rights, crim­i­nal­iz­ing giv­ing a scrap of food or a drink of water to a vot­er stand­ing in a vot­ing line they cre­at­ed, is out­ra­geous. Or the revo­ca­tion of autonomous rights two gen­er­a­tions of women have enjoyed as it relates to their bod­ies, be pre­pared for far worse.
The threat posed to the way we know America comes from trai­tors Russia has been cul­ti­vat­ing and embed­ding in the American body politic, under­stand­ing that the deep racism that plagues America is fer­tile soil for dis­in­for­ma­tion and, ulti­mate­ly, the inevitable unrav­el­ing of the republic.
Right-wing media out­lets have become the major dis­sem­i­na­tors of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion that have become poi­so­nous in the water. Unfortunately, that is what most Americans lis­ten to and watch; the pres­i­dent has an uphill bat­tle cut­ting through the dai­ly rou­tine of lies and disinformation.

On Sunday after­noon, while at brunch with mem­bers of my fam­i­ly and some friends, the ques­tion of what was news came up.
I was once again remind­ed that even among ratio­nal peo­ple who under­stand the dan­gers of what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try today, there was still a degree of what-about-sim.
For exam­ple, the dai­ly dose of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion that emanates from FOX, Newsmax, and the oth­er right-wing media out­lets is so out­ra­geous that the attempts at cor­rec­tion that MSNBC and CNN make are viewed as left­ist per­spec­tives rather than the truth.
The dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign has gained so much trac­tion that the pres­i­den­t’s address to warn the American peo­ple of the dan­gers was not car­ried by any of the broad­cast net­works in prime­time; they showed reruns. Only the cable net­works MSNBC and CNN car­ried the pres­i­den­t’s address.
Donald Trump dom­i­nates the news and dis­cus­sions 24 – 7; some would argue there is no such thing as bad expo­sure, yet the duly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States was denied prime-time expo­sure at a time when the nation is in seri­ous peril.

The end game for the right is to have a white soci­ety where all of the pow­ers are con­trolled by whites. Data point­ing to a decrease in white birthrates and an increase in the birthrates of minor­i­ty groups has led to pan­ic on the right. Ending the 49-year deci­sion of Roe ver­sus Wade, which gave women auton­o­my over their bod­ies on the one hand, and Republican intran­si­gence on immi­gra­tion ought to make sense to those pay­ing attention.
It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly that Republicans are opposed to democ­ra­cy; the cal­cu­lus is that if there is a toss-up between democ­ra­cy and white con­trol, democ­ra­cy will have to go.
If it means throw­ing out decades of wari­ness and appre­hen­son of an avowed mor­tal ene­my because it can help to enhance the cause of the white Anglo-Saxons in America, then so be it.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The American polit­i­cal right has some of the worst human beings any­where on plan­et earth; I expect­ed the despi­ca­ble stink behav­ior from Ron Johnson, Mitch Mcconnell, et al., but the ones that real­ly kill me are the likes of Raphael Cruz and Marco Rubio.
I have no idea why these two Hispanics rub me the wrong way and cause me to be so angry.
Oh hell, who am I fool­ing? I do know why I can’t stand either of those two fakes. They act white like they are more white than the stu­pid racist whites who still cling to the igno­rant idea that they are supe­ri­or to oth­er races.
Raphael Cruz is so despi­ca­ble that not even the peo­ple he tries to impress like him. What a piece of crap.
Raphael Cruz is an immi­grant born some­where in Canada. Rubio, on the oth­er hand was born in Miami, Florida, one of four chil­dren of Cuban immi­grants who came to America in 1956.
Despite their hum­ble begin­nings, these two Hispanic immi­grants are two of the most anti-immi­grant in the United States. At this point, it is rea­son­able to say that the United States of America would be a bet­ter coun­try with­out these two hate­ful Cubans.
Raphael Cruz hates his Hispanic her­itage so much that he calls him­self “Ted.” I hope none of you refer to him as Ted; his name is Raphael. 

We all know Raphael is a super douche, and we some­times over­look the fact that Marco Rubio may be an even big­ger douche-bag than old Raphael from time to time. It’s as if the two Cubans do and say out­ra­geous things to get attention.
For exam­ple, the recent announce­ment by the Biden Administration that it intends to grant some stu­dent debt relief to Americans who qual­i­fy by virtue of their earnings.
Most Republicans came out against the plan label­ing it unfair! I was shocked that the only char­ac­ter­i­za­tion the fas­cists in that par­ty would use such a mild word as ‘unfair’ and not some­thing more caus­tic like social­ist or communist.
Raphael Cruz argued that stu­dent-loan for­give­ness will ben­e­fit the “slack­er barista” who got a “use­less” degree. Many of those slack­er baris­tas undoubt­ed­ly live in the state of Texas and Florida and will be vot­ing for these two clowns when the time comes.
As I have said many times, this gives me seri­ous pause when it comes to the ques­tion of one man, one vote.
Rubio and the Florida Republican Governor Ron Desantis, a wannabe dic­ta­tor, mod­eled in Donald Trump’s image, came out against the plan.
But it is Marco Rubio that rubs me the worst of the two clowns. Rubio told FAUX dis­in­for­ma­tion chan­nel quote:
“I owed over $100,000 in stu­dent loans,” Rubio said. “The day I got elect­ed to the Senate I had over $100,000 still in stu­dent loans that I was able to pay off because I wrote a book. And from that mon­ey I was able to pay it, if not I’d still be pay­ing it.”
Conventional wis­dom dic­tates that, at the very least, the lat­ter part of Rubio’s state­ment would be rea­son enough that he should be hap­py that poor Americans are final­ly get­ting a break from oner­ous stu­dent debt. But Republicans do not care about any­one but them­selves. Everything is about them, and as soon as they claw their way out of the bar­rel, it’s to hell with every­one else.

Rubio said he thought the stu­dent-loan for­give­ness was “ille­gal” and that “the pres­i­dent does­n’t have the author­i­ty to do it.” He reit­er­at­ed his belief that can­cel­ing the debt was “unfair,” not­ing that 85% of Americans do not have debt from stu­dent loans because they paid them off or nev­er took them out.
The bot­tom line for the lit­tle grem­lin and his cohorts is that any­thing that ben­e­fits the poor­est Americans is a major issue for Republicans.
The irony is that, like most oth­er Scribes and Pharisees who pro­fess to be Christians, Marco Rubio has no love in his heart for any­one but themselves.
Marco Rubio often talks about faith and wrote about his reli­gious con­vic­tions in his 2012 book, “An American Son: A Memoir.” His par­ents bap­tized him Catholic, and he is now a prac­tic­ing Catholic — after explor­ing the Mormon and Southern Baptist faiths.
After a crush­ing defeat in his home state of Florida for the Republican Nomination for President in 2016, Rubio tried to prove he was the right elec­toral fit for the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion; he con­tin­u­al­ly gave all pow­er and praise to God and assured vot­ers: “There’s only one sav­ior, and it’s not me. It’s Jesus Christ, who came down to Earth and died for our sins.”
I seri­ous­ly won­der what God Marco Rubio was refer­ring to when he demon­stra­bly has zero com­pas­sion for the poor and less fortunate.
Marco Rubio is a fake and a fraud. He is the anthe­sis of what Yeshua the Christ stood for, car­ing for the poor and des­ti­tute, feed­ing the hun­gry, vis­it­ing the incar­cer­at­ed, and look­ing out for the chil­dren and the elderly.
On every charge that Yeshua left us, Rubio and his right-wing fas­cist ilk have failed the American peo­ple, yet as I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, poor whites and the Cubans down in Miami con­tin­ue to vote for Republicans.
The Cubans make me laugh; their hatred for the Castros still makes them slaves to their fas­cist Colonizers; maybe Marco Rubio and Raphael Cruz should do a lit­tle read­ing up on the his­to­ry of Cuba.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

A gen­er­al rule of thumb is that if Democrats announce a pro­gram to ben­e­fit the poor­er class, Republicans will be against it with­out fail.
In a White House release, the Biden Administration announced what it is doing about the bur­den­some stu­dent loan debt affect­ing tens of mil­lions of Americans..
Republicans pass tax cuts for the rich and the very rich when they hold the reins of pow­er. Democrats, on the oth­er hand, do their lev­el best to attend to the needs of the poor­est Americans.
One of the most con­found­ing things to under­stand is that poor white Americans — - and even those in the mid­dle class who vote Republican regard­less of their poli­cies tout that their par­ty pass­es tax cuts for the super-rich. None of this ben­e­fits any­one except the super-rich and their polit­i­cal tools in congress.

Though this may seem hard to wrap the mind around, it is not that hard to fig­ure out. During the 246 years of estab­lished enslave­ment of African peo­ple in the United States, poor and pover­ty-strick­en whites were indoc­tri­nat­ed into believ­ing they were genet­i­cal­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly supe­ri­or to the Black enslaved peo­ple work­ing under tor­rid con­di­tions for free.
The idea was to divide the poor white pop­u­la­tion from the bur­geon­ing black enslaved peo­ple using race as a line of demar­ca­tion. The planter class saw a real prob­lem devel­op­ing if the enslaved black pop­u­la­tion and the poor whites found com­mon cause in their dis­ad­van­taged status.
Divide and con­quer was born.
At the risk of sound­ing like a scratched record, poor white peo­ple have been duped into think­ing that they will be like the rich and pow­er­ful. That their time is just around the cor­ner. That if they only work hard and play by the rules. That gov­ern­ment is not sup­posed to work for them because gov­ern­ment is the problem.
These lies have been enforced and rein­forced into their psy­ches from the union’s ear­ly days to the present.
It is exact­ly why the poor­est white peo­ple vote Republican and live in the poor­est states. Is there any won­der that they would be the most closed-mind­ed, least intel­lec­tu­al, and most racist, xeno­pho­bic, and Islamaphobic?

Even as poor whites were con­di­tioned to believe their wealth was just around the cor­ner, enslaved Blacks were con­di­tioned to embrace a pie-in-the-sky ver­sion of Christianity that guar­an­teed streets of gold, milk, and hon­ey when they died if they remained sub­servient to their masters[sic].
The irony in that ide­ol­o­gy is that Blacks already had the gold, enough to pave streets. While they were work­ing as enslaved ani­mals, whites were busy steal­ing all of the gold and oth­er pre­cious gems from Africa.
Even though they indoc­tri­nat­ed their slaves to believe in a fan­tas­tic fairy­land after death, they were busy cre­at­ing gen­er­a­tional wealth for their offspring.
The phys­i­cal enslave­ment of Blacks may have end­ed, but the men­tal chains remain. Not to be out­done, many Black Christian preach­ers are still telling their con­gre­ga­tions that all they have to do is pray. Bring the tithes and offer­ings to the church, don’t wor­ry about your mort­gages and rental com­mit­ments; God will provide.
Whether one qual­i­fies for $20,000 or $10,000 relief from the bur­den of stu­dent loan debt, it is a big f*****g deal, as then Vice President Biden told President Barack Obama when he signed the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) into law. Now the poor­est Americans in the red­dest of states are some of the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the afford­able care act. Yeah, there is no wealth or health care just around the cor­ner when you are poor and sick. It is exact­ly why the idea of gov­ern­ment was broached in the first place, it is sup­posed to work exact­ly as the afford­able care act, and stu­dent loan debt for­give­ness is working.
Those of you with work­ing mem­o­ries will recall the vehe­mence with which Republicans fought that law even after its passage.
Rest in Peace, Senator John McCain.

Republicans are opposed to any form of relief from the gov­ern­ment that ben­e­fits the poor. The cal­cu­lus is that Black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or will benefit.
The irony is that there is a larg­er block of poor whites than there are Blacks, and so con­trary to their racist beliefs, as was the case when Newt Gingrich gut­ted social safe­ty nets for the poor dur­ing the Clinton years, it was poor whites who were the largest group of recip­i­ents of gov­ern­ment largess.
But Republicans nev­er cared about poor white peo­ple except when they need­ed their votes. They see poor whites as dis­pos­able col­lat­er­al. As long as they can con­tin­ue to con­vince the mass­es of the poor­er white peo­ple that they are fight­ing to retain their white priv­i­lege, they are assured of their votes.
As it was dur­ing slav­ery, poor whites still believe in the lie of white suprema­cy. Republican lead­ers are guar­an­teed of their sup­port as use­ful idiots for the fore­see­able future.
If you are Black and will receive some relief from the Biden Administration on your stu­dent load debt, say thank you, Lord. Say thank you, President Biden, and shut up about it not being enough!!!!!

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

WHITE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE

President Biden believes that a post-high school edu­ca­tion should be a tick­et to a mid­dle-class life, but for too many, the cost of bor­row­ing for col­lege is a life­long bur­den that deprives them of that oppor­tu­ni­ty. During the cam­paign, he promised to pro­vide stu­dent debt relief. Today, the Biden Administration is fol­low­ing through on that promise and pro­vid­ing fam­i­lies breath­ing room as they pre­pare to start re-pay­ing loans after the eco­nom­ic cri­sis brought on by the pandemic.

Since 1980, the total cost of both four-year pub­lic and four-year pri­vate col­lege has near­ly tripled, even after account­ing for infla­tion. Federal sup­port has not kept up: Pell Grants once cov­ered near­ly 80 per­cent of the cost of a four-year pub­lic col­lege degree for stu­dents from work­ing fam­i­lies, but now only cov­er a third. That has left many stu­dents from low- and mid­dle-income fam­i­lies with no choice but to bor­row if they want to get a degree. According to a Department of Education analy­sis, the typ­i­cal under­grad­u­ate stu­dent with loans now grad­u­ates with near­ly $25,000 in debt.

The sky­rock­et­ing cumu­la­tive fed­er­al stu­dent loan debt — $1.6 tril­lion and ris­ing for more than 45 mil­lion bor­row­ers — is a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den on America’s mid­dle class. Middle-class bor­row­ers strug­gle with high month­ly pay­ments and bal­loon­ing bal­ances that make it hard­er for them to build wealth, like buy­ing homes, putting away mon­ey for retire­ment, and start­ing small busi­ness­es.

For the most vul­ner­a­ble bor­row­ers, the effects of debt are even more crush­ing. Nearly one-third of bor­row­ers have debt but no degree, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Department of Education of a recent cohort of under­grad­u­ates. Many of these stu­dents could not com­plete their degree because the cost of atten­dance was too high. About 16% of bor­row­ers are in default – includ­ing near­ly a third of senior cit­i­zens with stu­dent debt – which can result in the gov­ern­ment gar­nish­ing a borrower’s wages or low­er­ing a borrower’s cred­it score. The stu­dent debt bur­den also falls dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on Black bor­row­ers. Twenty years after first enrolling in school, the typ­i­cal Black bor­row­er who start­ed col­lege in the 1995 – 96 school year still owed 95% of their orig­i­nal stu­dent debt.

Today, President Biden is announc­ing a three-part plan to pro­vide more breath­ing room to America’s work­ing fam­i­lies as they con­tin­ue to recov­er from the strains asso­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. This plan offers tar­get­ed debt relief as part of a com­pre­hen­sive effort to address the bur­den of grow­ing col­lege costs and make the stu­dent loan sys­tem more man­age­able for work­ing fam­i­lies. The President is announc­ing that the Department of Education will: 

• Provide tar­get­ed debt relief to address the finan­cial harms of the pan­dem­ic, ful­fill­ing the President’s cam­paign com­mit­ment. The Department of Education will pro­vide up to $20,000 in debt can­cel­la­tion to Pell Grant recip­i­ents with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt can­cel­la­tion to non-Pell Grant recip­i­ents. Borrowers are eli­gi­ble for this relief if their indi­vid­ual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for mar­ried cou­ples). No high-income indi­vid­ual or high-income house­hold – in the top 5% of incomes – will ben­e­fit from this action. To ensure a smooth tran­si­tion to repay­ment and pre­vent unnec­es­sary defaults, the pause on fed­er­al stu­dent loan repay­ment will be extend­ed one final time through December 31, 2022. Borrowers should expect to resume pay­ment in January 2023.
• Make the stu­dent loan sys­tem more man­age­able for cur­rent and future bor­row­ers by:
  
  • Cutting month­ly pay­ments in half for under­grad­u­ate loans. The Department of Education is propos­ing a new income-dri­ven repay­ment plan that pro­tects more low-income bor­row­ers from mak­ing any pay­ments and caps month­ly pay­ments for under­grad­u­ate loans at 5% of a borrower’s dis­cre­tionary income — half of the rate that bor­row­ers must pay now under most exist­ing plans. This means that the aver­age annu­al stu­dent loan pay­ment will be low­ered by more than $1,000 for both cur­rent and future borrowers. 
  • Fixing the bro­ken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) pro­gram by propos­ing a rule that bor­row­ers who have worked at a non­prof­it, in the mil­i­tary, or in fed­er­al, state, trib­al, or local gov­ern­ment, receive appro­pri­ate cred­it toward loan for­give­ness. These improve­ments will build on tem­po­rary changes the Department of Education has already made to PSLF, under which more than 175,000 pub­lic ser­vants have already had more than $10 bil­lion in loan for­give­ness approved.
• Protect future stu­dents and tax­pay­ers by reduc­ing the cost of col­lege and hold­ing schools account­able when they hike up prices. The President cham­pi­oned the largest increase to Pell Grants in over a decade and one of the largest one-time influx­es to col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. To fur­ther reduce the cost of col­lege, the President will con­tin­ue to fight to dou­ble the max­i­mum Pell Grant and make com­mu­ni­ty col­lege free. Meanwhile, col­leges have an oblig­a­tion to keep prices rea­son­able and ensure bor­row­ers get val­ue for their invest­ments, not debt they can­not afford. This Administration has already tak­en key steps to strength­en account­abil­i­ty, includ­ing in areas where the pre­vi­ous Administration weak­ened rules. The Department of Education is announc­ing new efforts to ensure stu­dent bor­row­ers get val­ue for their col­lege costs.

Provide Targeted Debt Relief, Fulfilling the President’s Campaign Commitment

To address the finan­cial harms of the pan­dem­ic for low- and mid­dle-income bor­row­ers and avoid defaults as loan repay­ment restarts next year, the Department of Education will pro­vide up to $20,000 in loan relief to bor­row­ers with loans held by the Department of Education whose indi­vid­ual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for mar­ried cou­ples) and who received a Pell Grant. Nearly every Pell Grant recip­i­ent came from a fam­i­ly that made less than $60,000 a year, and Pell Grant recip­i­ents typ­i­cal­ly expe­ri­ence more chal­lenges repay­ing their debt than oth­er bor­row­ers. Borrowers who meet those income stan­dards but did not receive a Pell Grant in col­lege can receive up to $10,000 in loan relief.

The Pell Grant pro­gram is one of America’s most effec­tive finan­cial aid pro­grams — but its val­ue has been erod­ed over time. Pell Grant recip­i­ents are more than 60% of the bor­row­er pop­u­la­tion. The Department of Education esti­mates that rough­ly 27 mil­lion bor­row­ers will be eli­gi­ble to receive up to $20,000 in relief, help­ing these bor­row­ers meet their eco­nom­ic poten­tial and avoid eco­nom­ic harm from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Current stu­dents with loans are eli­gi­ble for this debt relief. Borrowers who are depen­dent stu­dents will be eli­gi­ble for relief based on parental income, rather than their own income.

If all bor­row­ers claim the relief they are enti­tled to, these actions will:

• Provide relief to up to 43 mil­lion bor­row­ers, includ­ing can­celling the full remain­ing bal­ance for rough­ly 20 mil­lion borrowers.

• Target relief dol­lars to low- and mid­dle-income bor­row­ers. The Department of Education esti­mates that, among bor­row­ers who are no longer in school, near­ly 90% of relief dol­lars will go to those earn­ing less than $75,000 a year. No indi­vid­ual mak­ing more than $125,000 or house­hold mak­ing more than $250,000 – the top 5% of incomes in the United States – will receive relief.
• Help bor­row­ers of all ages. The Department of Education esti­mates that, among bor­row­ers who are eli­gi­ble for relief, 21% are 25 years and under and 44% are ages 26 – 39. More than a third are bor­row­ers age 40 and up, includ­ing 5% of bor­row­ers who are senior citizens.
• Advance racial equi­ty. By tar­get­ing relief to bor­row­ers with the high­est eco­nom­ic need, the Administration’s actions are like­ly to help nar­row the racial wealth gap. Black stu­dents are more like­ly to have to bor­row for school and more like­ly to take out larg­er loans. Black bor­row­ers are twice as like­ly to have received Pell Grants com­pared to their white peers. Other bor­row­ers of col­or are also more like­ly than their peers to receive Pell Grants. That is why an Urban Institute study found that debt for­give­ness pro­grams tar­get­ing those who received Pell Grants while in col­lege will advance racial equity.

The Department of Education will work quick­ly and effi­cient­ly to set up a sim­ple appli­ca­tion process for bor­row­ers to claim relief. The appli­ca­tion will be avail­able no lat­er than when the pause on fed­er­al stu­dent loan repay­ments ter­mi­nates at the end of the year. Nearly 8 mil­lion bor­row­ers may be eli­gi­ble to receive relief auto­mat­i­cal­ly because their rel­e­vant income data is already avail­able to the Department. 

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, this debt relief will not be treat­ed as tax­able income for the fed­er­al income tax purposes.

To help ensure a smooth tran­si­tion back to repay­ment, the Department of Education is extend­ing the stu­dent loan pause a final time through December 31, 2022. No one with fed­er­al­ly-held loans has had to pay a sin­gle dol­lar in loan pay­ments since President Biden took office.

Make the Student Loan System More Manageable for Current and Future Borrowers

Fixing Existing Loan Repayment to Lower Monthly Payments

The Administration is reform­ing stu­dent loan repay­ment plans so both cur­rent and future low- and mid­dle-income bor­row­ers will have small­er and more man­age­able month­ly payments.

The Department of Education has the author­i­ty to cre­ate income-dri­ven repay­ment plans, which cap what bor­row­ers pay each month based on a per­cent­age of their dis­cre­tionary income. Most of these plans can­cel a borrower’s remain­ing debt once they make 20 years of month­ly pay­ments. But the exist­ing ver­sions of these plans are too com­plex and too lim­it­ed. As a result, mil­lions of bor­row­ers who might ben­e­fit from them do not sign up, and the mil­lions who do sign up are still often left with unman­age­able month­ly payments.

To address these con­cerns and fol­low through on Congress’ orig­i­nal vision for income-dri­ven repay­ment, the Department of Education is propos­ing a rule to do the following:

• For under­grad­u­ate loans, cut in half the amount that bor­row­ers have to pay each month from 10% to 5% of dis­cre­tionary income.
• Raise the amount of income that is con­sid­ered non-dis­cre­tionary income and there­fore is pro­tect­ed from repay­ment, guar­an­tee­ing that no bor­row­er earn­ing under 225% of the fed­er­al pover­ty lev­el — about the annu­al equiv­a­lent of a $15 min­i­mum wage for a sin­gle bor­row­er — will have to make a month­ly payment.
• Forgive loan bal­ances after 10 years of pay­ments, instead of 20 years, for bor­row­ers with orig­i­nal loan bal­ances of $12,000 or less. The Department of Education esti­mates that this reform will allow near­ly all com­mu­ni­ty col­lege bor­row­ers to be debt-free with­in 10 years.
• Cover the borrower’s unpaid month­ly inter­est, so that unlike oth­er exist­ing income-dri­ven repay­ment plans, no borrower’s loan bal­ance will grow as long as they make their month­ly pay­ments — even when that month­ly pay­ment is $0 because their income is low.

These reforms would sim­pli­fy loan repay­ment and deliv­er sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings to low- and mid­dle-income bor­row­ers. For example:

• A typ­i­cal sin­gle con­struc­tion work­er (mak­ing $38,000 a year) with a con­struc­tion man­age­ment cre­den­tial would pay only $31 a month, com­pared to the $147 they pay now under the most recent income-dri­ven repay­ment plan, for annu­al sav­ings of near­ly $1,400.

• A typ­i­cal sin­gle pub­lic school teacher with an under­grad­u­ate degree (mak­ing $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans, com­pared to the $197 they pay now under the most recent income-dri­ven repay­ment plan, for annu­al sav­ings of near­ly $1,700.
• A typ­i­cal nurse (mak­ing $77,000 a year) who is mar­ried with two kids would pay only $61 a month on their under­grad­u­ate loans, com­pared to the $295 they pay now under the most recent income-dri­ven repay­ment plan, for annu­al sav­ings of more than $2,800.

For each of these bor­row­ers, their bal­ances would not grow as long as they are mak­ing their month­ly pay­ments, and their remain­ing debt would be for­giv­en after they make the required num­ber of qual­i­fy­ing payments.

Further, the Department of Education will make it eas­i­er for bor­row­ers who enroll in this new plan to stay enrolled. Starting in the sum­mer of 2023, bor­row­ers will be able to allow the Department of Education to auto­mat­i­cal­ly pull their income infor­ma­tion year after year, avoid­ing the has­sle of need­ing to recer­ti­fy their income annually.

Ensuring Public Servants Receive Credit Toward Loan Forgiveness

Borrowers work­ing in pub­lic ser­vice are enti­tled to earn cred­it toward debt relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) pro­gram. But because of com­plex eli­gi­bil­i­ty restric­tions, his­toric imple­men­ta­tion fail­ures, and poor coun­sel­ing giv­en to bor­row­ers, many bor­row­ers have not received the cred­it they deserve for their pub­lic service.

The Department of Education has announced time-lim­it­ed changes to PSLF that pro­vide an eas­i­er path to for­give­ness of all out­stand­ing debt for eli­gi­ble fed­er­al stu­dent loan bor­row­ers who have served at a non-prof­it, in the mil­i­tary, or in fed­er­al, state, Tribal, or local gov­ern­ment for at least 10 years, includ­ing non-con­sec­u­tive­ly. Those who have served less than 10 years may now more eas­i­ly get cred­it for their ser­vice to date toward even­tu­al for­give­ness. These changes allow eli­gi­ble bor­row­ers to gain addi­tion­al cred­it toward for­give­ness, even if they had been told pre­vi­ous­ly that they had the wrong loan type.

The Department of Education also has pro­posed reg­u­la­to­ry changes to ensure more effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of the PSLF pro­gram mov­ing for­ward. Specifically, the Department of Education has pro­posed allow­ing more pay­ments to qual­i­fy for PSLF includ­ing par­tial, lump sum, and late pay­ments, and allow­ing cer­tain kinds of defer­ments and for­bear­ances, such as those for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps ser­vice, National Guard duty, and mil­i­tary ser­vice, to count toward PSLF. The Department of Education also pro­posed to ensure the rules work bet­ter for non-tenured instruc­tors whose col­leges need to cal­cu­late their full-time employment.

To ensure bor­row­ers are aware of the tem­po­rary changes, the White House has launched four PSLF Days of Action ded­i­cat­ed to bor­row­ers in spe­cif­ic sec­tors: gov­ern­ment employ­ees, edu­ca­tors, health­care work­ers and first respon­ders, and non-prof­it employ­ees. You can find out oth­er infor­ma­tion about the tem­po­rary changes on PSLF​.gov. You must apply to PSLF before the tem­po­rary changes end on October 31, 2022.

Protecting Borrowers and Taxpayers from Steep Increases in College Costs

While pro­vid­ing this relief to low- and mid­dle-income bor­row­ers, the President is focused on keep­ing col­lege costs under con­trol. Under this Administration, stu­dents have had more mon­ey in their pock­ets to pay for col­lege. The President signed the largest increase to the max­i­mum Pell Grant in over a decade and pro­vid­ed near­ly $40 bil­lion to col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties through the American Rescue Plan, much of which was used for emer­gency stu­dent finan­cial aid, allow­ing stu­dents to breathe a lit­tle easier.

Additionally, the Department of Education has already tak­en sig­nif­i­cant steps to strength­en account­abil­i­ty, so that stu­dents are not left with moun­tains of debt with lit­tle pay­off. The agency has re-estab­lished the enforce­ment unit in the Office of Federal Student Aid and it is hold­ing accred­i­tors’ feet to the fire. In fact, the Department just with­drew autho­riza­tion for the accred­i­tor that over­saw schools respon­si­ble for some of the worst for-prof­it scan­dals. The agency will also pro­pose a rule to hold career pro­grams account­able for leav­ing their grad­u­ates with moun­tains of debt they can­not repay, a rule the pre­vi­ous Administration repealed.

Building off of these efforts, the Department of Education is announc­ing new actions to hold account­able col­leges that have con­tributed to the stu­dent debt cri­sis. These include pub­lish­ing an annu­al watch list of the pro­grams with the worst debt lev­els in the coun­try, so that stu­dents reg­is­ter­ing for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year can steer clear of pro­grams with poor out­comes. They also include request­ing insti­tu­tion­al improve­ment plans from the worst actors that out­line how the col­leges with the most con­cern­ing debt out­comes intend to bring down debt levels.
 

Since this video was done Roe Versus Wade, the 49-plus years of prece­dent on prece­dent have been upend­ed and reversed by the rad­i­cal right-wing Republican supreme court.
This is only the begin­ning as one of the right-wing zealots on the court, Clarence Tom-Ass, has said that oth­er cas­es, includ­ing Obergefell v. Hodges, which decid­ed that peo­ple of the same sex can legal­ly mar­ry, should be revis­it­ed by the court. 

Tom-Ass remained silent on Loving v Virginia, which struck down states’ bar­ri­ers to inter­ra­cial mar­riage. Clarence Tom-Ass is mar­ried to Virginia Tom-Ass a white woman and Trump-sup­port­ing activist who sup­port­ed the over­throw of the United States Government to retain Donald Trump as pres­i­dent illegally.

Colorado lawmaker leaves GOP citing Jan. 6 attack and Trump…

Citing alarm toward the Republican Party’s wide­spread embrace of 2020 elec­tion con­spir­a­cies, a mod­er­ate GOP Colorado state sen­a­tor Kevin Priola has switched his affil­i­a­tion to Democrat, enhanc­ing that party’s prospects to retain its major­i­ty in the cham­ber in the November midterms.

• It also deflates the GOP’s hopes of retak­ing the Democratic-con­trolled Colorado Senate, one of the most tar­get­ed leg­isla­tive bat­tles in the coun­try. Democrats now hold a 20 – 15 advan­tage, mak­ing a flip less likely.
• Priola went out of his way to advo­cate against his par­ty in the 2022 midterms, say­ing: “Democrats in charge because our plan­et and democ­ra­cy depend on it.“Democratic Gov. Jared Polis issued a state­ment wel­com­ing Priola to the party.
  • “We are a broad tent par­ty, always seek­ing good ideas from the left and right to move [Colorado] for­ward,” he said. “Senator Priola is a strong leader on cli­mate issues and will hope­ful­ly be even more effec­tive on the Democratic side of the aisle.

  The oth­er side: Sean Paige, a for­mer spokesper­son for the state Senate GOP cau­cus, said Priola’s switch is not sur­pris­ing. “He’s beyond just a big pho­ny; he’s a squir­re­ly and cal­cu­lat­ing oppor­tunist. But I’m glad, for his con­science, that he final­ly came out of the clos­et,” Paige said.

  • A promi­nent Republican activist said vot­ers should recall Priola after the switch.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Evil per­sists when good men remain silent, an old say­ing that res­onates sig­nif­i­cant­ly with much of what we see hap­pen­ing in Jamaica today and in oth­er larg­er, more pow­er­ful nations.
The rise of Donald Trump in America and the dystopi­an sce­nario his ascen­sion pos­es to the 246-year-old demo­c­ra­t­ic project high­lights the need for vig­i­lance and push­back against wrong.
The United States is a devel­oped soci­ety, so I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they pos­sess the abil­i­ty to sort through their prob­lems— or not. Jamaica is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The small Island Nation of under three mil­lion peo­ple at best claims to be independent.
Yet, six decades after its sup­posed inde­pen­dence and year­ly cel­e­bra­tions of such, the nation is still sub­servient to Britain, its old colonizer.
I have a few choice adjec­tives that I would like to use to char­ac­ter­ize the lev­el of stu­pid­i­ty that goes into the idea of a non-inde­pen­dent inde­pen­dence. Still, I am mind­ful that some read­ers find sharp lan­guage dis­taste­ful. This sense of pro­pri­ety may be traced to the fact that we still cling to the frock tails of the Brits who are fabled to be prop­er — Yup- prop­er while prop­er­ly main­tain­ing human beings as chat­tel property.
Oh, let me stop.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​n​e​e​d​s​-​n​e​w​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​s​-​s​t​r​o​n​g​-​l​a​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​r​e​a​l​-​j​u​d​g​es/

The faux sense of pro­pri­ety of which I speak may very well be an inte­gral part of the cul­tur­al dynam­ics at play in Jamaica today.
How, you ask?
Since our faux inde­pen­dence, Jamaica has progressed/​regressed, depend­ing on your point of view, with a vast chasm between those who con­sid­ered them­selves edu­cat­ed and every­one else.
How edu­ca­tion is quan­ti­fied today may also explain the divide between those deemed to have it and those who don’t; it may also explain some social behaviors.
Part of the pro­pri­ety ema­nat­ing from the edu­cat­ed class was an unex­plained need to be aloof and detached from the real­i­ties of what was hap­pen­ing on Spanish Town Road and Grass Yard as they mean­dered on their well-man­i­cured lawns in Cherry Gardens, Norbrook Jack’s Hill, and Beverly Hills.
Because they rubbed shoul­ders with for­eign dig­ni­taries who live in their com­mu­ni­ties and have a cer­tain lev­el of police pro­tec­tion, these pre­tenders got to exist in a bub­ble from which they spout all kinds of soft-on-crime bull­shit that the for­eign neigh­bors know is BS, but they remain silent.
They know it’s BS because regard­less of where they are from, they know that their gov­ern­ments do not allow crim­i­nals to dic­tate to them.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​e​i​g​h​t​-​h​o​u​s​e​s​-​f​i​r​e​b​o​m​b​e​d​-​o​n​e​-​d​e​a​d​-​f​i​v​e​-​w​e​a​p​o​n​s​-​r​e​c​o​v​e​r​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

Regardless, we have been forced to fol­low these so-called well-edu­cat­ed Jackasses for 60 years and now look where we are. Let us be clear: the sit­u­a­tion we find our­selves in as a nation with vio­lent crime may [not] be laid at the feet of the Brits, the Americans or any­one else but ourselves.
We did that!!!
As a nation, we suc­cumbed to the dic­tates of the fake peo­ple who live uptown; their ideas became pol­i­cy, and even when those poli­cies were demon­stra­bly fail­ing, we dou­bled down rather than change course. Lets us be real­ly clear-eyed about what I am say­ing here, the Jamaican peo­ple are extreme­ly resource­ful. We make some­thing out of nothing.
Whatever we put our hands to, we make it work.
The sad real­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that we have been gov­erned by frauds and fakes. Our Policies have been cre­at­ed by peo­ple with their heads in the sky rather than on the road.
Consequently, the aver­age Jamaican, the real Jamaicans, have tak­en flight to oth­er shores, and those who remain would large­ly rather leave if they had the chance.
Yet we have a new gen­er­a­tion of fakes and frauds who dare to sug­gest that Jamaicans who leave the coun­try to seek bet­ter lives for them­selves and their fam­i­lies are cowards.
That lev­el of igno­rance is not only unwor­thy of a response; it is rem­i­nis­cent that they’re the use­less sed­i­ments and trash that remains at the bot­tom of the pond after the water has been drained.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​f​t​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​c​e​l​e​b​r​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​l​e​t​s​-​t​a​k​e​-​s​t​o​c​k​-​w​h​a​t​-​h​a​v​e​-​w​e​-​a​c​c​o​m​p​l​i​s​h​e​d​-​r​e​a​l​ly/

Recent data com­piled by the web­site GlobalEcomomy​.com places Jamaica sec­ond out of 177 coun­tries on the 2022 edi­tion of the human flight and brain drain index, which speaks to the dilem­ma in which Jamaica finds itself. As I indi­cat­ed ear­li­er, giv­en a chance, most Jamaicas would leave.….
It speaks to what this writer con­tin­ues to argue that we must stop paint­ing the rot­ten walls and paper­ing over the holes instead of fix­ing them.
The mid­dle class has been hol­lowed out of our coun­try, leav­ing the fakes and frauds at the top who sees them­selves as the new Bucky-mas­sa and every­one else at the bot­tom scram­bling for crumbs.
In the hol­lowed-out mid­dle now sits the infor­mal econ­o­my dri­ven by hus­tlers and thieves, a bur­geon­ing econ­o­my in which mur­der for hire, extor­tion, lot­to-scam­ming, and all kinds of crim­i­nal­i­ty thrives.
For all intents ad pur­pos­es, our beau­ti­ful coun­try is now becom­ing a dystopi­an night­mare where the idea of Jamaica no prob­lem is an emp­ty slogan.
We can con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing nu weh nu bet­ta dan yaad, or we can hum­ble our­selves, look at the data and begin the ardu­ous task of course correction.
We have this sense of faux patri­o­tism, which comes from the rich telling us we are unpa­tri­ot­ic if we leave. Of course, they need an under­class, a Lumpenproletariat over whom to rule.
Sooner or lat­er, how­ev­er, like the Rabbit in the boil­ing caul­dron, the Lumpen will real­ize that it is the meat in the stew.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

You may won­der what hap­pened to that par­ty today if you are old enough to ere­mem­ber when Republicans wrapped them­selves in the stars and stripes.
Republicans gushed about patri­o­tism, which they tied to adher­ence to the rule of law; they gave total feal­ty to the police even when offi­cers com­mit mur­der, and they blamed the victims.
They treat­ed mil­i­tary ser­vice as a right of pas­sage, and any­one who did not serve in the mil­i­tary was con­sid­ered an un-American outsider.
Service in the mil­i­tary was seen as the num­ber one char­ac­ter­is­tic that a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date must have to be con­sid­ered for the high­est exec­u­tive office and com­man­der in chief of the nation’s military.
Until, of course, their peo­ple who did not serve came up to be considered.
People like Ronald Reagan, but when it was Bill Clinton’s turn, it was a major deal, and he was con­sid­ered a draft-dodger.
The absur­di­ty of that posi­tion obvi­ous­ly dawned on them as the all-vol­un­teer mil­i­tary is pulled from less than 10% of the US population.
According to the Pew Research Center, there were around 19 mil­lion U.S. vet­er­ans as of 2021, accord­ing to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, rep­re­sent­ing less than 10% of the total U.S. adult population.
Using their log­ic, well over 297 mil­lion peo­ple who did not serve in the mil­i­tary would have been con­sid­ered un-American.
That is not a win­ning strat­e­gy for them, so they no longer use it.

On the issue of polic­ing, they pro­ject­ed an image of being more law-abid­ing than every­one else, peo­ple who dared burn an American flag were wor­thy of the guil­lo­tine. Still, it was per­fect­ly fine for police to des­e­crate the American flag by chang­ing its col­or to suit their twist­ed agenda.
I mean, the rank hypocrisy is stun­ning. Their hatred of Black Lives Matter (BLM) right­eous pro­test­ers is stun­ning. Calls to defund the police wave were met with vicious out­rage.’ How dare any­one think of defund­ing the police? The luna­cy of their out­rage extend­ed to many in the Democrat par­ty as well. To add insult to injury, the ris­ing crime rate across the coun­try after a twen­ty-year low added fuel to the fire of their argu­ments, even though they have zero data that the rise in crime has any­thing to do with defund­ing the police.
The real­i­ty is that there has been lit­tle or no change to police bud­gets across the coun­try, and in most cas­es, police bud­gets have got­ten more bloat­ed than before, the calls for defunding.
The impor­tant take­away is that if mon­ey, size of police depart­ments, equip­ment, and the sheer num­ber of police depart­ments had any­thing to do with keep­ing crime low, America would be vir­tu­al­ly crime-free.
With over 18,000 police depart­ments across the coun­try and a whop­ping 123 bil­lion dol­lars spent last year, one would think the hyped-up aggres­sors who roam the streets to steal, kill and destroy would have crime under con­trol. Maybe they are the ones com­mit­ting the crimes.

So this is your friend­ly ques­tion­er here; you know I ask the ques­tions every­one else is too prop­er to ask.
So let’s begin.….….… Why do you think Donald Trump took high­ly clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al that he had no busi­ness hav­ing and kept at Mara Largo?
Okay, so I under­stand that the main­stream media is not going to dis­cuss it the way I do; they will tell you he prob­a­bly believes they are his because some of it may have been col­lect­ed dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy, and so he believes he has a right to them.
I am skep­ti­cal; I believe he took them for a spe­cif­ic rea­son. I’ll explain.
You will remem­ber that the sto­ry is that the Russians helped Trump get elect­ed, right? You also know that Special Counsel Robert Muller was not allowed to thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gate the Russian col­lu­sion that Donald Trump labeled a ‘hoax”.
You will also remem­ber that his guy Michael Flynn was under Federal inves­ti­ga­tion for being a for­eign agent, and Trump made him National Security Adviser notwithstanding.

You will also remem­ber the Trump-Putin Meeting in 2018 and the world’s response when Trump refused to speak out against Russian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 Presidential elec­tions, which made him pres­i­dent. Instead, Donald Trump chas­tised America’s secu­ri­ty agen­cies and laws for sug­gest­ing that the Russians had inter­fered in the elec­tions. But why would Trump chide Vladimir Putin for mak­ing him President of the most pow­er­ful nation in the world?

In fact, if Donald Trump is a Russian agent as a result of Putin’s help in mak­ing him pres­i­dent, does­n’t he owe Putin a large debt of grat­i­tude that is out­side with­hold­ing mil­i­tary help from Ukraine and bad­mouthing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? (NATO).
At the time Donald Trump emerged with Vladimir in Helsinki, Finland, he looked like a beat­en man who had just received a tongue lash­ing from his boss.
The German Foreign Office imme­di­ate­ly tweet­ed out the following.
“We can no longer ful­ly rely on the White House,” says Foreign Minister @HeikoMaas  In order to recal­i­brate our part­ner­ship with the US, we need a unit­ed, con­fi­dent, and sov­er­eign Europe!

Leading up to the Trump-Putin Helsinki meet­ing, Jonathan Chait writ­ing for New York Magazine, asked the per­ti­nent ques­tion; Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler?
I run the risk of bor­ing you with too deep a dive, so let us focus on the search of his estate by the FBI, a first for any for­mer American President.
Why would Trump not hand over the sen­si­tive doc­u­ments in full when he was asked?
Why did he keep those top secret doc­u­ments even after he was sub­poe­naed to hand them over? You do not believe that Donald Trump mere­ly want­ed to keep bor­ing paper­work he would cer­tain­ly nev­er read when he did not even read the brief­ing books while he was pres­i­dent and was required to read them.
Why did Donald Trump’s lawyers sub­mit a let­ter to the Department of Justice that they had turned over all the doc­u­ments Trump had?

Former Homeland Security advis­er Olivia Troye revealed that she once found a clas­si­fied doc­u­ment left in a women’s bath­room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where most White House offices are housed. Troye told MSNBC in an inter­view Sunday that she felt “pan­ic” when she dis­cov­ered the mate­r­i­al on a bath­room shelf in the build­ing next to the White House. She said she was ter­ri­fied but secured the doc­u­ment and hand­ed it over to security.
It is easy to brush some­thing like that off and say, ‘Oh, some staffer had the doc­u­ment and acci­den­tal­ly left it there after she used the restroom”. In fair­ness to Trump, Ms. Troye also said that it was com­mon in the Trump white house to see staffers mis­han­dle sen­si­tive documents.
But what if this was no acci­dent? What if the doc­u­ment was left there for some­one to retrieve?
As a mat­ter of fact, hard­ly any­one expect­ed Donald Trump to pick up the phone and call Vladimir Putin, “hey Vlad, I have some nuclear secrets for you; you want me to fax them over”?

How far-fetched is it to imag­ine that the top secret doc­u­ments Donald Trump took down the I‑95 to his pri­vate for-prof­it club where he also lives were tak­en for profit?
As a cour­tesy, past pres­i­dents are giv­en secu­ri­ty brief­in­gs, but President Joe Biden stopped those brief­in­gs to Donald Trump a year ago.
What does Joe Biden know that made him decide to break with prece­dent and pre­vent Trump from get­ting any fur­ther intel­li­gence briefings?
If a for­mer pres­i­dent can­not be trust­ed with sen­si­tive intel­li­gence brief­in­gs, why would he be allowed to keep sen­si­tive and top secret infor­ma­tion belong­ing to the gov­ern­ment? The short answer is that he should not have those documents.

Trump’s min­ions demand­ed that the search war­rant used to enter Mara Lago be unsealed. The Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, also asked a Federal judge to unseal the war­rant. So a Federal judge unsealed the war­rant, which revealed that Donald Trump is being inves­ti­gat­ed under the espi­onage act.
Shockingly, we also learned that some of the doc­u­ments Trump refused to hand over were nuclear-relat­ed, super secret infor­ma­tion that should have been in the vaults at the nation­al archives.
Donald Trump’s min­ions were not swayed by the sheer weight of what we learned; they switched gears and demand­ed the release of the affi­davits asso­ci­at­ed with that search.
The war­rant detailed what they were look­ing for and what they found.
The affi­davit would expose those who gave infor­ma­tion to the FBI that the doc­u­ments were, in fact, still at Trump’s club. Naturally, this is an absolute no, so the Justice Department object­ed, argu­ing that retriev­ing the doc­u­ments was not a one-off affair but part of an ongo­ing investigation.
That is bad news for Donald Trump.
The Daily Beast argued after the Mara Lago search; Donald Trump was, and is, a nation­al secu­ri­ty risk unlike any the United States has ever faced.
Writing for Lawfare, National Security Official John B Bellinger wrote; In December 2015, I wrote a post for Lawfare enti­tled “Donald Trump Is a Danger to Our National Security,” in which I argued that Trump not only lacked “the qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be pres­i­dent, he is actu­al­ly endan­ger­ing our nation­al secu­ri­ty right now by his hate-filled and divi­sive rhetoric.” I con­clud­ed Donald Trump not only would be a dan­ger­ous pres­i­dent, he is mak­ing us less safe as a can­di­date.” At the time, I may have been the first nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial to write pub­licly that Trump was and would be a threat to the United States. Tragically, more than five years lat­er, Trump is still a dan­ger to our nation­al security.

If it walks like a Duck, quacks like a Duck, and acts like a Duck, maybe, we need to accept that it is a Duck. The cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that sug­gests that Donald J Trump is a Russian agent that some believe Russia has been cul­ti­vat­ing for over 40 years is overwhelming.
The American major­i­ty ignores that evi­dence at its per­il. The fun­da­men­tal thing here is that America is being direct­ed by a white minor­i­ty that is will­ing, in the name of white suprema­cy, to destroy the 246 years of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance to main­tain white supremacy.
Donald Trump is only a vehi­cle towards that end.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.