As a reminder:

Twice on video, I’ve seen White people bash another White family on WalMart premises for receiving welfare benefits. The first family was loading their food into a van in the WalMart parking lot at night when the guy rolled up to them and recorded the family on video while he yelled at them for using his “hard-earned money” to buy food. The second family was a father in the checkout lane being bashed by a woman behind him in front of his toddler daughter, for the same reason (“you’re just gaming the system, ain’t ya?”).

You know what? That HURT me to watch.

Because if that’s how White Americans treat worse-off White Americans at WalMart in front of their children for the temerity to receive SNAP and TANF, imagine what mendacious coarsities those same individuals express among their kinfolk about African-Americans who do the same.

#classism #bigotry #welfare

Black America Measured as the Next U.S. State

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

I remember reading this article from The Atlantic from a while back which thoroughly measured the economy and infrastructure of Black America as its own nation-state.

However, I don’t know if anyone has ever thought about if Black America were its own state within the Union – a majority-minority state demographically dominated but never self-governed at the state level by people of African descent.

But what if it were? What would be the prevailing politics of this state?

Let’s call it the 52nd state in the Union – the State of New Afrika. The 51st would be Puerto Rico.

In the State of New Afrika, how would Black Democrats govern and represent their districts? How would Black Republicans?

What would be the state of law enforcement in New Afrika? How much control would the majority-Black state government have over its majority-Black cities?

State governments have perhaps more control over the function of cities and their residents than the federal government does. The provision of funding for public schools, for law enforcement, for prisons (public or private), for water resources, for roads, for recreation, for environmental protections and so on. No city in the United States except for the District of Columbia (subject to Congress) has such a broad control over their infrastructure. The federal government is also hobbled in its ability to reach cities because of state government control.

So if Black America lopsidedly dwells in metropolitan areas, but these metropolitan areas’ statuses are ultimately determined at the state level where the majority of leaders are not of the same economic, ethnocultural or regional background, what does that say about how much control we actually have over our local communities and our welfare?

 

pre-touch for touchscreen

I was reading that Apple has secured a patent for adding Force Touch to desktop mouses (which may see it added to the Magic Mouse 3), but then I see that Microsoft’s Research department has amazingly demonstrated “pre-touch” for touchscreen.

So now we’re talking about even more layers of multitouch interaction, both for touchscreens, trackpads and multitouch mice. 3D Touch, a more advanced version of Force Touch, is already in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and adds a layer of shortcuts and actions to touchscreen actions.

Force Touch is already featured in the Apple Watch, MacBook Retina 2015, MacBook Pro Retina, and Magic Trackpad 2. But now “pre-touch” for touchscreens? Maybe we’ll finally get a hover function for alt-text on touchscreen browsers? Maybe we’ll be able to pinch and zoom without touching the screen? I can even imagine that pre-touch could enable 6DOF navigation of 3D interfaces, akin to 3dconnexion’s SpaceNavigator 3D mouse.

This will be the bee’s knees. What a time to be alive.

Stop telling us to “stop focusing on the past”.

Everything that exists is from the past. Everything that you like and celebrate about this country comes from the same past which created the things you dislike and find annoying.

The past is all we have. You can’t have it both ways.

For Those Who Still Don’t Have a Choice

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

Thinking about The Movement for Black Lives’ Vision for Black Lives manifesto and its inclusion of a pro-Dreamer/anti-Deportation plank.

One can argue this:

The ancestors of most slave-descended African-Americans did not choose to come here willingly. Legally, neither did Dreamers who were brought here as children.

I understand that Dreamers can more readily identify their country of ancestry. But their entire memory has been cultivated here in this country.

I understand that Dreamers have more of an opportunity to go back to their country of origin. But forcefully deporting someone who did not choose to come to this country is gratuitously cutting someone off from their de facto adoptive country.

The 14th Amendment was crafted to apply citizenship to people who didn’t end up here “the right way”, the most privileged way. It established birthright citizenship, which has now become a feature of naturalization for most countries in the Americas.

Some would want to eliminate or curtail birthright citizenship. I think it should be expanded to automatically naturalizing those who arrived in the U.S. as minors and have spent at least 5-10 years of their lives here.

That is the humane thing to do. #Vision4BlackLives

Two memes that I wonder about: the racial draft and the race card.

The first is used as a collective building of power and influence by bartering people for their perceived benefit and affinity (or lack thereof) to an ethnic group, and the second is frequently criticized as being used by those who use and flex the perceived power of one’s identified ethnicity as rhetorical self-defense.

The race card and the racial draft are both rhetorical components of ethnic power. We use both in conversation regarding almost-entirely-imaginary scenarios.

Larry Sanders Tearfully Casts Vote for Brother Bernie Sanders at DNC 2016

Factoid:

Larry Sanders, a social worker and academic who is a citizen of the UK and the U.S., is a member of both the Green Party of England and Wales and the U.S. Democratic Party. He has served as a Member of the Oxfordshire County Council (2005-2013) and ran for a seat in Parliament in 2015 on the Green ticket, coming in fifth to the Conservative winner. Larry’s son Jacob has also served on the Oxford City Council and ran in 2005 for Parliament as a Green.

I am very glad that Larry, who is 82, has lived long enough to cast this vote. I also feel that Larry is more free in the UK to vote his conscience than he is here in the US.

Looking Forward After the DNC

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

I will continue to be proud of the work I did and the vote I cast for Bernie Sanders, but I look forward to what we can do under a Clinton presidency and a better-run Democratic Party. I’m proud of the work that David Smith has done on behalf of the Sanders campaign in Columbus and as a Sanders delegate to the DNC. I’m glad that Sanders delegates on the platform committee were able to make progressive lemonade out of what could have been a very moderate, weak lemon for the next four years.

Susana et al at the DNC who are aggrieved by the conduct of the contest and its result, the next four years present an opportunity for you. Take a cue from Ronald Reagan: when his candidate Goldwater lost in a landslide to Johnson in 1964, he and several other party activists – including Richard Viguerie, who used Goldwater’s direct mail list for years to come to support conservative causes of the day – fought to clear out the moderates – along with Nixon and Ford – and make the party into a hardcore, free-market, religious-conservative force. Reagan used this to win the governorship of California and then mount three candidacies for president.

If Clinton’s win is the last straw for you, then continue the work that Sanders fought for. Make Sanders’ platform viable on the downballot. Speak for harder-left progressive politics across the country. Fight for those values in places where single payer and public options have not penetrated the public mind. Appeal to those who have something they want to protect and serve. Change county party leadership. Distribute pamphlets, free booklets, direct mail and email newsletters to your friends – be they urban or rural – which explain your case for a progressive America. Change moderates and liberals into progressives and Democratic socialists.

Sanders awakened a progressive energy which was dormant for the time that President Obama has been in office. But that energy must now be flexed to change America for the foreseeable future. Our lives, our quality of life, our peace, our social justice, and our environment depend on what we do after this convention.

Let’s do the work.

Why Jill Stein is Not My Choice

Uncategorized, ,

I’m a Bernie Sanders primary voter, and I don’t feel that Jill Stein is a realistic candidate for president. It has nothing to do with her being a third-party candidate or being a potential “spoiler” because I don’t believe in the premise that votes only belong to two parties. This has everything to do with the optics and mechanics of Stein’s proposals, as well as with her lack of political experience as an electoral liability.

Jill Stein’s Green Party has never won a single Congressional seat since their foundation in 1992. On the Green ticket, only 7 senate candidates and 1 House candidate are running in 2016, when 34 Senate and all 435 House seats are open for election this year. The Republicans are favored to retain the majority in the House this year while the Senate majority is up for grabs. With a party list being this paltry and dry, if the Green Party leadership intended for this year to be a watershed for a left-wing exodus from the Democrats to the Greens, all seven co-chairs of the Green National Committee are sorely mistaken.

So many of Stein’s policies could pass muster with none but a number of the Democratic minority in either House. That will effectively render about 60% of her platform moot in the face of not only Republican far-right hostility but also moderate Democratic reticence. A president Jill Stein faces far worse hostility to her policies than the current officeholder has faced in 8 years, 6 of which have been lame ducks filled with deft executive self-control against reactionary legislative havoc. Stein could not, under any known or possible circumstances, institute an effective presidency in this oh-so American, oh-so counterintuitive political reality.

With the sole exception of her time as a member of the Town Meeting of Lexington, Massachusetts (2005-2011), Jill Stein does not have any degree of downballot political experience. 40 out of all 44 presidents in the history of the United States have held any combination of at least one of these seats of office prior to their election as president: Vice President, Senator, Member of the House, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Member of the President’s Cabinet. Three other presidents – Taylor, Grant and Eisenhower – had only held military leaderships prior to their presidency, and the remaining one – Washington – was a delegate to the Continental Congress and the leader of the U.S. Army during the Revolutionary War.

So where does Jill Stein fit in that expectation of experience? Similarly, where does Donald Trump fit in that expectation of experience?

By comparison, the person who she has sought to woo over to running with her as a Green Party candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has held elected office since 1981 as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, representative of Vermont’s at-large district in Congress and Senator for Vermont. Hillary Clinton, who Jill Stein has browbeat for her arguably non-progressive record, served as Senator for New York from 2001-2009 and as Secretary of State from 2009-2013. By comparison to 40 out of 44 other presidents in U.S. history, both candidates for the Democratic nomination are significantly more qualified than Jill Stein, who has never held state or federal level office, and Donald Trump, who has never held elected or appointed political or military office.

Even Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party right-wing candidate in 2016 who previously gained more popular votes than Jill Stein’s last run in 2012, is more qualified for the presidency than Jill Stein or Donald Trump by way of serving as the Republican Governor of New Mexico. Seeing how Johnson browbeat Stein and her Green Party in a third-party debate on RT America, Stein seems to largely be out of her depth when it comes to confronting a cottage industry of the most inane right-wing arguments and rebuttals directed against her policies. If I were to protest-vote without concern to political ideology, I would vote for Johnson over Stein.

Even Gayle McLaughlin, the former two-term Green Party mayor and current councilwoman of Richmond, California who has been lauded for her progressive, far-left-to-the-Democrats policies, is somewhat more qualified to run for higher state or federal office of some type, if not president, than Jill Stein. I would vote for Gayle McLaughlin over Jill Stein in any state or federal office if I were a California resident. Unfortunately, it seems that the Green Party only runs a decent ground game in California, and only in local races. Outside of California, the Green Party seems to mostly attract politically-aware but ill-tempered, non-serious malcontents as candidates. I wish the Green Party were a more serious, more self-aware rival for left-wing votes at all levels, seeing that they are the largest left-wing political party in terms of membership which is not named the “Democratic Party”.

Finally, to pivot back to the separation of powers, so much of Jill Stein’s agenda (and Bernie’s and Hillary’s) is not accomplishable by one person or by the executive branch as a whole. About 60-80% of Stein’s platform is the remit of Congress. About 60-80% of Stein’s agenda cannot be accomplished by executive order and would be slapped down by the courts if tried through EO. Separation of powers guarantees that the Congress will always act to hold the executive to account. Even under the G.W. Bush presidency, a Republican Congress held his presidency in check on the Real I.D. Act, which scared many libertarians of the left and White-right varieties over the usurpation of state-level privilege over identification.

Why do we demand so much of the presidency that cannot be realistically accomplished by the presidency? Why have we lost so much of our cognizance regarding what power Congress has in the implementation of federal government? Is this a popularity contest over who can be the bigger strongman or strongwoman? I don’t think so many of us, especially Democrats, care about Congress and its powers anymore (to our peril), and we set ourselves up for massive disappointment when we treat one person as the leader of a political cult of personality as so many of us have done with Bernie Sanders. I believe in competent presidencies, not strong presidencies, and no matter how progressive or liberal a platform can be, it has little to no legitimacy if it is not backed by a legislative mandate. Jill Stein does not have a legislative mandate by way of her party having no members in Congress, or even a progressive majority to consider and pass her proposals.
That is how woefully inadequate Jill Stein seems to me as a candidate. This is why I backed away from Bernie Sanders after I voted for him. This is also why I’m conceding to voting for Clinton in the general, in that she has the votes, the basic experience as an officeholder that at least 40 other presidents have had prior to their elections, and the legislative mandate to carry so many of the policies that Sanders supported in his candidacy’s platform.

But whether Democrats, or progressives and liberals in any party, even care about getting a majority in both houses of Congress anymore remains to be seen.