Feds will retry ex-Sheriff Lee Baca on corruption charges
/Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca will be retried on federal corruption charges that stem from his alleged involvement in trying to thwart an investigation into inmate abuse within Men’s Central Jail, prosecutors announced in court Tuesday.
The announcement came about three weeks after a six-man, six-woman jury deadlocked on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice against the 74-year-old Baca.
U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson declared a mistrial last month after learning that jurors were split 11-1 in favor of acquitting Baca.
Federal prosecutor Brandon Fox said Tuesday the government would like to try Baca again on three counts, the charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct as well as a third charge for allegedly making false statements.
Anderson ruled earlier last year to allow a separate trial to be held for the third charge. He agreed with prosecutors that testimony from a defense expert who is expected to say Baca was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease while being investigated would result in juror confusion and unfair prejudice to the government because Baca would appear sympathetic.
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Prosectors backed away from that argument on Tuesday, saying they are willing to move forward and take a risk on trying him on all three charges at once.
“We understand the prejudice,” Fox told Anderson. “We may suffer from the prejudice. We’re prepared to move forward.”
About 30 witnesses testified during the nearly two-week trial in downtown Los Angeles in December, when the jury heard prosecutors argue that Baca tried to hinder an FBI investigation in 2011 into inmate abuse at the Men’s Central Jail by hiding an informant and threatening a federal agent.
Baca’s defense team rebutted those claims, saying that the former sheriff knew nothing of the plan to derail the investigation but instead was open to improving conditions for inmates. Both sides repeated those themes throughout their lengthy closing arguments.
Last summer, federal prosecutors had no intention of putting Baca on trial on conspiracy charges. Instead, they had negotiated a plea deal with the retired sheriff. He pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators, and that admission would have included a six-month jail sentence. The plea was rejected by Anderson, who had presided over the convictions of about a dozen of Baca’s former deputies and Undersheriff Paul Tanaka. [MORE]
Baltimore & [the Appearance of] Justice Department Reach Agreement on a Consent Decree
/From [HERE] A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh says the city and the U.S. Justice Department have reached agreement on a consent decree that will require the city to reform its police department.
“Negotiations are done,” Anthony McCarthy said Wednesday. “The final document has gone to the principals” to be signed.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected to speak on community policing Thursday at the University of Baltimore Law School, as well as meet with community members, law enforcement and other local officials.
At a news conference before McCarthy spoke, Pugh stopped short of confirming that an announcement would be made Thursday, but said the city is “very very close” to finalizing the agreement.
“We are going to get it done,” she said.
The Justice Department opened a formal investigation of the department’s patterns and practices after the death in police custody of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray. Six police officers were charged but none were convicted in the arrest and death of Gray, whose neck was severed inside a police van.
The Justice Department opened similar investigations into about two dozen local law enforcement agencies under President Obama, including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Chicago; Cleveland and Ferguson, Missouri.
In Baltimore, one of the largest departments to come under such scrutiny, the city agreed to enter into a binding consent decree when a Justice Department report released in August found pervasive civil rights violations by the police department.
The report found that officers routinely used excessive force, discriminated against African-Americans and made unlawful arrests. It found that officers stop large numbers of people - mostly in poor, black neighborhoods - with dubious justification and unlawfully arrest citizens for merely speaking in ways police deem disrespectful.
It also found that physical force was often used unnecessarily, including against the mentally disabled, and that black pedestrians and drivers were searched more often than people of other races.
It also identified serious training deficiencies, accusing the department of “systemic failures” that violated the Constitution and the rights of citizens.
The federal investigation found that blacks accounted for 95 percent of the people stopped at least 10 times by Baltimore police, and roughly 84 percent of all pedestrian stops, between 2010 and 2015. Some individual black residents were stopped 30 times or more.
The report also said officers use unreasonable and excessive force, including against juveniles and civilians who aren’t dangerous or pose an immediate threat. Force is often used as a retaliatory tactic in instances where officers “did not like what those individuals said,” the report concluded.
The details of the agreement have not been made public, but will likely mandate reforms to the way officers handle sexual assault complaints and how they respond to juveniles and individuals suffering from mental illness. The agreement also will likely outline new requirements for training officers and ensuring oversight.
The police department has already begun addressing some issues outlined in the report and equipped officers in the field with body cameras.
Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Tuesday that officers are now required to undergo 80 hours of in-service training - twice the time required by the state - and that new technology will ensure that officers receive, review and understand rules and policies.
Cory Booker takes stage to rail against Jeff Sessions nomination
/New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker gave an impassioned and unprecedented plea to the Senate on Wednesday to vote against Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general and his fellow senator, Jeff Sessions.
Booker, civil rights legend Georgia Rep. John Lewis and Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond each delivered emotional testimony that Sessions' record on civil rights disqualifies him from serving atop the Justice Department under President-elect Trump.
"The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it," Booker said. "America needs an attorney general who is resolute and determined to bend the arc. Sen. Sessions record does not speak to that desire, intention or will."
Booker became the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow sitting senator at a confirmation hearing for a Cabinet position. His panel with other lawmakers and supporters of Sessions was added to the hearings at the request of the top Democrat on the committee, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, though Democrats criticized Chairman Chuck Grassley for scheduling the members of Congress at the end of all proceedings. [MORE]
Texas Exoneration Review Commission calls for electronic recording of interrogations
/Texas tops the country with 229 wrongful convictions that led to exonerations in the last 25 years, an issue lawmakers are expected to take up when they meet next month.
Researching lynching cold cases, Northeastern University law students restore history
/The document is more than 85 years old, handwritten and hard to read. Many death certificates from this period are ambiguous or euphemistic: the victim died from a “broken neck.” Not this one. The cause of death, recorded in loopy cursive, is “hanged by mob.”
Robert Appleberry, 22 and known as Hollie, was murdered in 1930 in the tiny Mississippi town of Wahalak, in a time and place where lynchings were so common the county was called “Bloody Kemper.” Appleberry was one of three black men lynched in Kemper County that day. When law student Kellie Ware-Seabron got her hands on his death certificate this fall, it was “equal parts gratifying and horrifying,” she said. She had set out to research the other two victims — dragged from sheriffs’ cars and hung after being accused of robbing a white couple — and inadvertently discovered a third.
During the reign of racial terror that lasted from the end of Reconstruction through the 1950s, thousands of African-Americans were killed by mobs, mutilated, kidnapped from jails and hung from trees. Historians have tried to catalogue these deaths — a recent report by the Equal Justice Initiative includes a list of 4,075 names — but Appleberry does not appear on any of the lists. His name might have been lost to history but for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, run out of Northeastern University’s law school.
The project aims to create an archive of documents, photographs, news clippings, and interviews about as many of these deaths as possible — particularly the overlooked and unnamed among them. The idea is to create a record of each murder, a trove for historians and researchers and family members to plumb in years to come.
“Restoring these stories to history is a piece of restorative justice,” says Rose Zoltek-Jick, the program’s associate director. “The work of the archive is to prevent closure, to lift them up out of the silence.”
Law students who enroll in the project’s semester-long “clinic” are each assigned a dossier of death: a list of a half-dozen murdered African-Americans, some with little more to go on than a newspaper headline reading “unknown Negro found in swamp.” In 11 weeks, the students learn as much as they can about the victims’ lives and deaths. They unearth news reports, NAACP files, birth, death, and marriage certificates. They submit records requests to the FBI and to local courthouses. They locate witnesses and relatives.
Many of these deaths have never before been investigated, let alone tried. Sometimes documents listing the perpetrators as “persons unknown” coexist in Northeastern’s archive side-by-side with striking black and white photographs of the murderers posing with the lynched man’s body. In some instances, the perpetrators were tried in pro forma legal proceedings in which all-white juries acquitted them in a matter of minutes.
The project focuses on the years 1930 to 1970 — “not all that distant,” yet fast fading from view, says Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern and the founder and director of the project. “The persons who have knowledge about these events — the family members, the witnesses — are aging. The documents are disappearing. And if we don’t do this now, this piece of our history will be lost to us and to future generations.”
The project began in 2007, the same year that Congress passed the Emmett Till Act, named for the 14-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955; his mother’s decision to invite the national media to the open-casket funeral of her mutilated son catapulted the reality of racial violence into the consciousness of white Northerners. The law directs the Justice Department to re-investigate unsolved civil rights–era cases. Initially, Burnham envisioned the archive as a resource for the lawyers and family members working on these cases, and to provide support and fodder for reparations initiatives that had sprung up around the country during the previous decade.
One of the project’s first major undertakings was a 2008 civil suit against Franklin County, Miss.; the Justice Department had, the previous year, successfully prosecuted a former Klansman in the 1964 kidnapping, torture, and murder of two black teenagers who disappeared while hitchhiking in the tiny town of Meadville. Evidence from that case suggested the sheriff knew enough of the Klansmen’s plans to have prevented the murders but did nothing, and did not investigate it after the fact. In support of the case, Northeastern students interviewed surviving witnesses, analyzed FBI files, and gathered other evidence.
In 2010, Franklin County agreed to a settlement for the victims’ families. The amount was confidential, but Burnham says the attorneys’ portion was enough to ramp up the project, which had emerged as a powerful teaching tool for her law students. With this new financial footing, they decided to move away from legal actions in favor of investigating the many hundreds of murders that had never been studied. Most lacked enough evidence for court, but Burnham felt they deserved the same dogged research too often reserved for prosecutions.
“We’re not looking for a legal solution, but we are trying to understand something about how law operates — what the absence of law creates, what impunity looks like,” says Zoltek-Jick. [MORE]
Parents of Black teen strangled in jail cell in East Baton Rouge Parish file wrongful death suit
/Hosey and Shantita Colbert, parents of 17-year-old Tyrin Colbert who was strangled by his cellmate in East Baton Rouge Parish prison in February, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday that claims his death was the result of the "unconstitutionally violent and dangerous" way the prison is run.
The Colberts claim in the lawsuit their son died "as a result of both explicit and de facto policies and practices" in the prison and because of the indifference to "serious medical and mental health needs of all prisoners," including their son.
His cellmate at the time of his death, 17-year-old Kermitrius Thomas, has been indicted on second degree murder in Tyrin Colbert's death and is awaiting trial.
Tyrin Colbert was arrested in November 2015 on a warrant that he tried to rape two boys that summer. He was never charged with the crimes, according to court records, though the required 60-day window in which prosecutors are supposed to file felony charges had passed.
At the time of the 17-year-old's killing, the lawsuit claims fighting and yelling could be heard from their cell, but no staff intervened. Tyrin Colbert was found face down with a blanket around his neck and was transported to the hospital, where he died the next day. [MORE]
Brazil has one of the most violence police forces in the world
/Extrajudicial executions and torture sessions carried out by police officers perpetuate the violence cycle in Brazil, according to organization Humans Right Watch. The institution released its World Report 2017, reflecting on public safety issues of more than 90 countries.
“A cooperative environment between the police and the community is essential,” said Maria Laura Canineu, a director at Human Rights Watch Brazil. Police brutality makes it less likely that gang members surrender in a pacific way when approached by law enforcement. It also refrains members of impoverished communities from helping the police.
According to the report, Brazil has one of the most violent police forces in the world. In 2015 alone, police officers killed 3,345 people (on and off-duty). It is a 52 percent increase over 2013. This number, however, includes cases when the use of force is legitimate.
Brazilian policemen also face high levels of exposure to violence: 393 died in 2015 alone. [MORE]
Senate Puppeticians Vote Down Amendment to Allow Sale of Cheaper Canadian Drugs
/During Wednesday night’s Senate session, more than a dozen Democrats voted against an amendment that would have allowed pharmacists to import drugs from Canada—often at a fraction of the cost paid in the U.S. The amendment was proposed by Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "We are the only major country not to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. So you can walk into a drugstore today, and the price could be double or three times what you paid a year ago, and there is no law to stop them. They can and they will raise prices as high as the market will allow. And if people die as a result of that, not a problem for them. People get sick, not a problem for them."
Among the 13 Democrats who voted against Sanders’s amendment was New Jersey’s Cory Booker, who earlier on Wednesday testified against Sen. Jeff Sessions’s nomination to become attorney general. Campaign filings show Sen. Booker received more than a quarter-million dollars in campaign funds from pharmaceutical companies between 2010 and 2016.
Sensitive Public Servants in their Feelings about “Black Lives Matter” Written on Box of Krispy Kremes
/In Smyrna, GA, a Krispy Kreme box of donuts purchased by a police officer on Wednesday, January 11, displayed the words, which have become the rallying cry for those seeking accountability in what they see as unjustified killings of African Americans at the hands of police, and quite the commotion ensued between the department, the corporation, and a pro-police blog.
“As a company, we value both our customers and employees and respect all viewpoints,” said Krispy Kreme spokeswoman Sarah Roof. “[This] experience did not live up to these high standards we set for ourselves.”
The corporation investigated and took action quickly after the story got out and apparently apologized and met with the police department to discuss the matter.
Roof said they intend on using this opportunity to “train the staff at all of our U.S. shops to reinforce mutual respect between employees and customers.”
Louis Defense, spokesman for the Smyrna Police Department, said in a statement, “While it is clear this behavior was egregious in nature, Krispy Kreme did take responsibility for the incident.”
But pro-police blog Blue Lives Matter was not content, saying they appreciate the apology but what happened was “extremely disrespectful to law enforcement” and their response “sucked” because they didn’t “publicly voice support for law enforcement.”
DOJ Recommends That All Federal Law Enforcement Agencies & Prosecutors Follow Science-Based Eyewitness Identification Best Practices
/[NPR] & Innocence Project
The Justice Department is issuing new guidance to federal agents on how to secure eyewitness identifications, an initiative designed to reflect decades of scientific research and bolster public confidence in the criminal justice system, NPR has learned.
The policy has two major components: It directs U.S. investigators to document or record an eyewitness's confidence in an identification at the very moment the ID is made, and it encourages federal agents to conduct "blind" or "blinded" photo arrays of suspects in which the agent leading the session doesn't know which photo represents the prime suspect.
"We view this as an important step in doing everything we can to ensure the greatest reliability possible for the evidence we're using at trial," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates said.
Yates said the department based its guidance on research that supports the idea "of just how important it is to get as much detail as possible about just how sure that witness is that this is the guy" long before any trial or court proceeding begins.
Authorities also are leery of the idea that a person leading a photo array could, intentionally or not, provide cues to an eyewitness about whom they should select out of a photo lineup. Such practices have been blamed for encouraging faulty eyewitness identifications and contributing to the problem of wrongful convictions.
That's why DOJ is urging law enforcement to conduct so-called blind photo displays.
"If you don't know, it's virtually impossible verbally or nonverbally ... to potentially be able to cue the witness," Yates said.
The guidance from Yates marks the first departmentwide policy for DOJ agencies, and it applies to such law enforcement components as the FBI, DEA, ATF and the U.S. Marshals Service.
"This DOJ memo reflects a series of best practices recommended by scientists based on research conducted over the past," said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia and author of a book about wrongful convictions. "It adopts the recommendations of the 2014 National Academy of Sciences report. And it sends an important message that accuracy matters in criminal cases."
Garrett added that the procedures for lineups "are well designed to be practical and to apply in many different types of criminal cases where eyewitnesses are important."
You can read the guidelines here.
White nationalism normalized: Politico co-founder offers praise for Racist Breitbart
/From [HERE] During an interview with Breitbart News Saturday, Mike Allen, Politico co-founder and a journalist characterized as one of the most powerful in D.C., offered effusive praise for Breitbart, saying he “admire[s] so much of what’s been built at Breitbart.”
Allen, who appeared to promote his new Axios project, said Breitbart readers “benefit” from the “illumination” the outlet provides about “this ‘New World’” and characterized Breitbart’s coverage as “very smart.”
The interview provides a stark example of how Breitbart — an outlet that recently featured a “Black Crime” vertical, published a piece last year equating feminism with cancer, and is currently under fire for running a fake news story about a Muslim mob setting fire to a church in Germany — is becoming normalized in Donald Trump’s America.
In August, Trump tapped former Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon to be his campaign CEO. Bannon presided over a campaign whose closing ad included dog-whistles about “blood suckers” who back international trade, a scheming “global power structure,” and warnings about how Hillary Clinton allegedly “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” — comments that drew a rebuke from the the Anti-Defamation League for featuring “tropes that historically have been used against Jews.” Following Trump’s victory, Trump appointed Bannon to be his “chief strategist and senior counselor.”
Shortly before he started working for Trump, Bannon described Breitbart as “the platform for the alt-right” — a euphemism popularized by Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism.
During the Breitbart interview, Allen — who was criticized by the Washington Post in 2013 for providing sponsors of his Politico Playbook with fawning coverage — praised Breitbart for being “ahead of the curve” when it comes to understanding “the silent majority” who voted for Trump. (Trump, in fact, lost the national popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes.)
Describing how he approached a speaking engagement in front of a Trump-friendly audience in Wyoming shortly after the election, Allen said he decided to “shut up” so he could “listen to you about what you liked about Trump, how you came to your decision, what your inputs were.”
“A lot of it is also psychic and sociological and social. The anti-PC thing I think is a huge part of it,” he said, before going on to recount a conversation he had with a Trump-supporting friend on a train shortly after the election.
“People in America [were] just living their lives as they always have, and things were just changing too fast. ‘I’m living my life the way I always have and all of the sudden I’m the bigot, I’m a bad guy,’ and I think that was a huge part of this red wave.”
Surveys conducted shortly before the election found that 38 percent of Trump supporters think minorities have too much influence in American society, and 21 percent think white people don’t have enough (only 9 percent of U.S. senators and 22 percent of representatives are non-white, compared with 38 percent of the U.S. population.) Other polls found 65 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.
During an off-record confab with journalists at Mar-a-Lago last month, Allen shared photos showing that attendees were treated to cold cuts, potato chips, and Trump-branded champagne. He used his access to promote his new outlet.
Axios’ first morning newsletter, authored by Allen and published on Monday, contains lots of praise for Trump, who he describes as having “done more than any POTUS-elect ever.”
“So the early betting among Republicans on the Hill is he will be wildly unpredictable, episodically reckless and perhaps MORE successful in terms of legislative wins than Bush or Obama were with full party control of Washington,” Allen writes, neglecting to mention that Trump’s accomplishments during the transition period include using his Twitter account to bully a labor leader, misrepresenting corporate giveaways as victories for workers, and nominating a cabinet full of white men who have a history of working against people of color, leading companies that foreclosed on vulnerable homeowners in ways that may have been illegal, and who seek to dismantle the very agencies they’re now nominated with leading.
The Mar-a-Lago gathering occurred days after Trump canceled a news conference where he was supposed to address his conflict of interest problems — problems he still hasn’t addressed.
Trump hasn’t held a press conference since last July 27, when he took questions from reporters in Miami and brazenly encouraged Russian hackers to “find” tens of thousands of emails deleted from Hillary Clinton’s server, adding that media coverage would result in the hackers being “rewarded mightily by our press.”
“Boy, that Wikileaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?” -Trump mentioned Wikileaks 164 times in October, now claims it didn’t impact one voter
/President-elect Trump says that information published by Wikileaks, which the U.S. intelligence community says was hacked by Russia, had “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” This was not the view of candidate Trump, who talked about Wikileaks and the content of the emails it released at least 164 times in last month of the campaign.
ThinkProgress calculated the number by reviewing transcripts of Trump’s speeches, media appearances and debates over the last 30 days of the campaign.
Trump talked extensively about Wikileaks in the final days of a campaign that was ultimately decided by just 100,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania combined.
For months, Trump insisted that Russia was not responsible for hacks targeting Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. In a December interview on Fox News, for example, Trump called intelligence linking Russia to the hacks as “ridiculous,” adding “I don’t believe it.” During the campaign Trump had suggested that the hacks could have been the work of “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 lbs.”
On Friday, Trump received a classified briefing from the FBI, CIA, NSA and the DNI laying out the case that Russia was responsible for the hacks and then funneled the information through Wikileaks as part of a propaganda campaign intended to swing the election to Trump. (A declassified version of the report was released to the public.)
After the briefing, Trump moderated his stance. In a statement, Trump did not explicitly say the hacks were the work of Russian operatives, but also did not deny their involvement.
Instead, Trump honed in on a different argument: Whoever was responsible, the information that was hacked and then distributed through Wikileaks had “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.”
Trump claims this is the view of the intelligence community. That is false.
The intelligence report said that election machines and vote tallying were not compromised by Russia. In their declassified report, however, the intelligence agencies said that “[w]e did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” [MORE]
Fresno Settles lawsuit for $675,000 After Cop Ran Over Latino Man Riding Bike
/The city of Fresno has agreed to pay $675,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit over a case in which a Fresno police officer ran over and killed a bicyclist who was fleeing from a traffic stop in August 2013.
The settlement in U.S. District Court in Fresno means the city admits no wrongdoing or liability in the death of Angel Toscano, 39, of Fresno. In court papers, the city contends Toscano’s death was an accident; that Toscano fell in front of a patrol car and Officer James Lyon was unable to avoid hitting him.
But a lawyer for Toscano’s family said Friday that if the case had gone to trial, the evidence would have shown that Lyon intentionally bumped the rear wheel of Toscano’s bicycle, causing him to fall. Lyon then ran over Toscano, killing him.
“The family wanted vindication for an egregious act,” Fresno attorney Andrew B. Jones, who represents four of Toscano’s six children, said Friday. Toscano’s two other children are represented by Visalia attorney John Rozier.
The settlement will be divided by the six children and their attorneys upon approval from the court, which is scheduled to happen later this month, Jones said.
Police Chief Jerry Dyer said an investigation by the department’s accident reconstruction unit, which had assistance from the California Highway Patrol, determined that Lyon “did not intentionally strike Mr. Toscano’s bicycle and that this was an unfortunate vehicle accident resulting in the tragic loss of life.”
Lyon was pursuing Toscano through an alleyway when Toscano suddenly fell off of his bicycle in front of the patrol car, the chief said. Lyon attempted to stop his vehicle “but due to the loose gravel he was not able to and unintentionally struck Toscano,” he said.
If the settlement is approved in court, Dyer said, the funds would come from the Police Department’s budget, or from a risk management fund that can be utilized to pay for settlements.
Lyon is still employed with the department, he said.
The payout is the latest in a long string of civil rights lawsuits facing the Fresno Police Department over allegations of excessive force and wrongful death.
In November, the city agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by the parents of a Fresno man who was fatally shot by police in June 2012.
Jaime Reyes Jr., 28, was shot while climbing a fence at Aynesworth Elementary School in southeast Fresno.
If the lawsuit had gone to trial, the evidence would have shown that Officer Juan Avila shot Reyes near the top of the fence. Once Reyes toppled to the ground, Avila shot him three more times in the back as he lay wounded, face down on the ground, court documents say.
On the horizon, the city will have to deal with wrongful death, civil rights lawsuits against the Fresno Police Department filed by the families of Dylan Noble, Joseph Ma, Freddy Centeno, and Casimero “Shane” Casilla, to name several. [MORE]
Newly empowered Republicans are rewarding themselves by delivering death blows to a longtime enemy: organized labor
/REPUBLICANS STORMED TO power in state elections across the country in November on a promise to take on the establishment and return government to the average citizen.
But in state capitals where they gained control, they moved quickly to do something else entirely: They’ve consolidated their newfound power — and rewarded their corporate donors — by delivering death blows to a longtime enemy: organized labor.
In Kentucky, Missouri, and New Hampshire, three states that flipped to unified Republican control, legislators have prioritized passing Right to Work, a law that quickly diminishes union power by allowing workers in unionized workplaces to withhold fees used to organize and advocate on their behalf.
That might seem odd to voters who heard promises to “drain the swamp,” but its what Republican partisans and business lobbyists have been demanding for years.
Business interests helped win new Republican victories, now legislators are paying them back.
In Kentucky, Republicans won the legislature for the first time in 95 years with strong campaign support from Americans for Prosperity, the group founded and funded by the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch that is deeply focused on undermining union influence. Americans for Prosperity maintained a major presence in the state, funding campaign expenditures attacking state and local Democrats in swing districts, fielding a large voter canvassing effort, and providing specialized technology for campaign workers. No one knows how much Americans for Prosperity spent on local Kentucky races because the group is not required to disclose state-based campaign expenditures or its donors.
Along with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, the Koch-funded group demanded that the new GOP majority in Kentucky pass Right to Work. On Thursday, Kentucky state House legislators passed the union-busting measure, and the senate Senate is expected the follow suit on Saturday, with Republican Gov. Matt Bevin prepared to sign it.
Democrats in Kentucky are notably reliant on labor unions for political support. The largest group spending on behalf of local races for Democrats in Kentucky, a Super PAC called Kentucky Family Values, was nearly entirely funded by labor unions. In New Hampshire and Missouri, records show, unions similarly provide a bulk of campaign funds for local Democratic races in competitive districts.
Though advocates for Right to Work claim the measure is designed to boost job growth, studies suggest that the law may correlate with less pay for workers. Business groups dispute this finding, but no one disagrees that the law generally leads to a steep decline in union membership and union political power.
“We’re not anxious to be in a state where they have that much political muscle, the unions do, organized labor does,” said Woody Cozad, a lobbyist in Missouri, previewing the Right to Work bill scheduled for next week, which is also expected to pass now that Republicans control both the governor’s office and the state legislature.
The same thing happened after Republicans won the legislature and the governor’s office in Wisconsin in 2011, as well. They ran on dissatisfaction over the economic recovery, and with the help of groups like Americans for Prosperity — they then consolidated power by passing laws to weaken public sector unions in the state, a measure openly designed to undercut the largest donors to Democratic politicians. They followed up the changes to public sector unions with a Right to Work law.
Wisconsin union membership, once one of the highest, plummeted to below the national average after labor laws were changed by Republicans. In 2015, only 8.3 percent pf Wisconsin workers were union members. The changes have been bleak for Democrats, as the party failed to win any of the major contests last year, and Trump trounced the Hillary Clinton campaign in the state, one of the main drivers of his victory.
As Republicans gained electoral ground across the Rust Belt, Right to Work and similar measures designed to weaken unions were passed in Indiana, West Virginia, and Michigan as well.
Nationally, the incoming Trump administration may continue this trend. Analysts expect Trump to attempt to roll back Obama administration rules that make labor organizing easier for franchise restaurants such as McDonalds. Trump is also expected to appoint a Supreme Court judge who will strike down mandatory fees paid by nonunion members in organized workplaces. Congressional Republicans have also agitated for a national Right to Work law that could turn the tide in Democratic-trending states like California.
Dr. Cornel West: Niggerization
/The fundamental irony of American history is that we follow the better angels of our nature when we honestly and compassionately confront the devilish realities we would like to ignore or deny. The founding of this most American of periodicals was motivated, in part, by a courageous resistance against the American institution of white- supremacist slavery. We must never forget that when this grand intellectual forum was established, the precious U.S. Constitution was, in practice, a pro-slavery document. To put it clearly yet crudely, the deep democratization of America was pitted against the ugly niggerization in America.
Democratization is the best of the American idea—in principle and practice. The sublime notion that each and every ordinary person has a dignity that warrants his or her voice being heard in shaping the destiny of society remains a revolutionary force in the 21st century—in the face of the power of autocratic empires, plutocratic states, and xenophobic communities. Niggerization is neither simply the dishonoring and devaluing of black people nor solely the economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement of them. It is also the wholesale attempt to impede democratization—to turn potential citizens into intimidated, fearful, and helpless subjects.
Since the ugly events of 9/11, we have witnessed the attempt of the Bush administration—with elites in support and populists complacent—to promote the niggerization of the American people. Like the myopic white greed, fear, and hatred that fueled the niggerization of black people, right-wing greed, fear, and hatred have made all of us feel intimidated, fearful, and helpless in the face of the terrorist attacks. And, as in the 19th century, we’ve almost lost our democracy.
The future of the American idea—both then and now, here and abroad—depends on the vision, courage, and determination of decent and compassionate people to engage in Socratic questioning of the powers that be, to take the risk of prophetic witness, and to preserve a hope for democratization. Our nation and world now have the blues, so we must learn from our blues people—from the grand examples of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Myles Horton, and Muriel Rukeyser. The American practice of niggerization must die for the American idea of democratization to live—yet again.
