Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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Hillary versus Bernie: Who can accomplish more?

There is a difference between being a loyal Democrat and being a mindless follower.

While there are Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters that are being completely unreasonable and are spending too much time shooting friendly fire at each other, there are also those who are saying that we should not question either of them because, after all, we want one of them to win in November.hilbern

I have criticized both of them before — just like I have criticized Obama when he says and does things I disagree with. I don’t think anyone should be above reproach. I will still happily vote for whichever one gets the nomination over any of the Republican candidates.

We can debate which one would do better in November without attacking the other.

One of the biggest criticisms of Bernie that I am hearing from Hillary supporters is that she knows how to get things done and he won’t be able to accomplish anything — therefore, we shouldn’t aim too high.

I hate that for two reasons:  (1) This is politics. We should aim high. We should dream of great things we can accomplish;  (2) The idea that the GOP will work with Hillary is ridiculous.

Look, they hate her. They’ve hated her from the day she appeared on the scene. They’re not going to work with her. They never have in the past.

Not that they’re going to treat Bernie any better. Any Democrat is going to have to deal with a Republican congress that says “no” to everything.

People are forgetting what the GOP has become. They haven’t let Obama do anything. Remember Bill Clinton? They hated him, too — they freakin’ impeached him. The only way Bill accomplished anything was that he had more Democrats in Congress than we have now.

And that is the bottom line — voting for either Hillary or Bernie won’t make much difference unless we also elect more Democrats to Congress. We have the numbers on our side. All we have to do is show up and vote.

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Editorial cartoon: Emailed

Mike Lukovich

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Earth, Wind, Fire, and Racism

I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.  A memory that popped into my head when I read about the death of Maurice White, the leader of the band Earth, Wind, and Fire. ewf

Way back in the 70s, I was in High School in Richmond, Virginia, which Tom Robbins calls “The World’s Biggest Confederate Museum.” It was a turbulent time, with protests over busing and integration still going on.

I went to a high school in the suburbs where we maybe had ten black students total.

Now, my parents taught me to be a good, clean-cut kid. I never said a curse word, never drank or smoke or took drugs –I was a good, boring kid who was really into the drama club and music. My parents also were no bigots. They taught me that the “n” word was just as bad as the “f” word and there was no way I would ever say either.

Anyway, I remember listening to an Earth, Wind and Fire song on the radio and liking it (although I can’t recall which one right now). I had already been playing in bands and writing my own music, and I was really impressed with the musicianship and the complexity of the song.

And in my mind, I imagined the work that would go into it. And my mind conjured up an image of all the arrangers and composers working on that song.

And then I had a shock. An epiphany.

In my mind, all the people making the record were white. The black guys were just the singers. For some reason, my mind couldn’t imagine that the black guys could have accomplished such an ornate and complicated task of writing, arranging, producing and playing that song.

And I felt ashamed for my thought.

I certainly didn’t see myself as a racist, and I had thoughts like that? Me? I had been the campaign manager for one of the black kids who had run for class President and we won, making the local news and everything. I had black friends in the drama club. I had Funkadelic albums! How could I think something like this?

I realized how ingrained racism in our society could be. And I started thinking about it a lot. And then I thought about sexism in our society and how we take so much for granted and don’t question it.

It was an important first step for me. I still had a ways to go. For instance, it took many more years before I realized that gay people deserved to get married, but that was basically because society around me had not even gone in that direction yet.

Fortunately, the younger generation is growing up without the same environment I had. That kind of thinking is foreign to them. It’s us old folks that had to change (and that’s why, the older you are, the more likely you are to be racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Republican).

So thank you, Maurice White, for making me think about the biases we all have. And thank you for making me want to change them.

 

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Editorial Cartoon: “Together, we can accomplish mediocre things!”

Patrick Hendy Rodham Clinton

Ted Rall

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Iowa Caucus Predictions

Both Trump and Hillary will win the caucus for their parties, but not at the percentage that the polls show. Here’s why:

Caucuses are not like primaries. For a primary, you show up, vote, and leave. You could do it in a few minutes if the lines aren’t long. For a caucus, you have to show up on time in your local area and be there most of the night. Speeches are given and debates are held and if a candidate doesn’t get enough votes, then a second vote is held and so on. It’s democracy on a most basic scale.

While Iowans take it very seriously (since no one cares about Iowa except ovote_ballot_boxnce every four years), you still have the very real situation where only the most political and enthusiastic supporters even attend. And even then, it varies from place to place. A rural site where 20 farmers show up can have as much of an impact as an inner-city site where 100 students show up.

And all this hurts both Trump and Hillary.

Trump gets people to come to a rally to see the celebrity and listen to him spout his hatred. But many of his supporters are people who never vote — they’re not your normal political folks. I’m willing to bet that a large chunk of them will find something else more interesting to do that night.

On the Democratic side, you have the very enthusiastic Bernie supporters who will come out to the caucus meetings. They will give Bernie a much better showing than expected but it still won’t be enough to counter Hillary (who, despite a media attempt to turn this into a horse race, is pretty comfortably ahead of Bernie in all state polls except for New Hampshire, located next door to his home state of Vermont).

I’m not saying Hillary will run away with Iowa — it will be close, and the closer it is, the better for Bernie. He may even win the caucus, which could give him the momentum he needs to even the polling in other states. That’s how Obama did it when he was behind Hillary by about the same amount. Obama had the advantage though of being a great speaker and looking like a President, something you should never discount.

In the long run, Iowa is important only to show how good each candidate’s ground plan is. It in no way predicts the ultimate winner.  Just ask Presidents Mike Huckabee, Tom Harkin, and Richard Gephardt.

But then again, who really knows? Trying to predict the caucus is next to impossible. Anything can happen. My prediction is just a guess.  After all, in 2008, everyone was predicting Hillary to win and she came in third, behind Obama and Edwards.

 

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Editorial cartoon: voter fraud

Tom Toles

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What Libertarians don’t understand

There’s lots of things our government does that I disagree with. So I try to elect people who will pass laws that I agree with. Sometimes I lose and a bunch of laws are passed I don’t like.

I don’t claim then that those laws are “forced” against me and that my rights are being violated.all-cats-are-libertarians-mary-fanning

And that’s the reason why many of us just can’t debate some libertarians, because they have this double standard: If they like the law personally, it’s fine but if they don’t like it, they are being forced to obey it and that’s just evil!

I don’t think laws I don’t like are evil. They were passed through our democratic process and I can try to get that changed. I don’t always get my way. That’s what democracy is all about. Sometimes your side loses.

If libertarians said, “Well, we lost, but we’ll try to win next time” then we can discuss the merits of libertarian philosophy. But instead we often get “You people who won are taking away my right to not obey the laws I don’t feel like obeying!”

Well, suck it up. We all have laws we don’t like that we have to obey. That’s what being in a democratic society is all about.

The main problem I have with libertarian philosophy is that they see programs where we ask everyone to pitch in a little to help everyone a lot as “theft” and then complain that they are “forced at gunpoint” to pay taxes to support this stuff.

That’s where they lose me. Every society in the history of this planet has asked its members to support it in some way. Even the most basic society made you pick berries for the good of the tribe.

We can disagree on how much we should do — that’s a legitimate debate. We can discuss how to make taxation fairer.

But when libertarians say any program is a violation of their rights and all taxation is theft, then instead of looking principled, they just look, well, selfish.

Pick some berries, guys.

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Editorial cartoon: Acme tactics

roge160128

Rob Rogers

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Driving While Black

Let me tell you about a recent case I had.

My client is a young black kid in college.  He’s never been in trouble before in his life. His dad is a successful businessman.

Being a good kid, he was allowed to borrow Dad’s expensive car to hang out with his friends. He did.

On the way home, he gets pulled over by a cop, who cites as the reason an “obscured license plate,” meaning it was covered in mud or something and the officer couldn’t read it. They’re allowed to stop to make sure it isn’t a false plate or something. (Actually, these days, cops can pull you over for just about anything, but that’s a topic for another day.)

My client is cooperative and polite.police car

The officer then says to my client that he wants to search the car. Thanks to a recent decision by a Republican-run Pennsylvania Supreme Court,*  you have no privacy rights in your car and the police can pretty much search whenever they want to. So my client, not wanting to cause a fuss, agrees. The officer finds a small amount of marijuana, left there by one of my client’s friends.

It should be noted that the officer detected no sign that my client was under the influence of marijuana — because he wasn’t. My client says he never smokes, and I have no reason to doubt that. Officers look for things like the smell of burnt marijuana, glassy eyes, and you know, the kind of way stoned people act. Had the officer thought there was any sign of that he would have taken my client in for a blood test and then, if there was a positive result, charged him with Driving Under the Influence.

So my client gets charged with Possession of a Small Amount of Marijuana.

He continues on his way home.

As he nears home, he gets pulled over again. This time, this new officer says he’s pulling him over because the windows were too harshly tinted. Same thing happens — he doesn’t suspect my client of having committed any crime but demands a search anyway, and finds a grinder that the first cop missed. Now my client gets charged with Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and Possession of Marijuana (for the few seeds found in the grinder).

Notice that the first cop never mentioned tinted windows and the second cop never mentioned an obscured license plate. Note as well that my client was never charged with the supposed reasons for the stops.

Now, for all my white friends: How often has this happened to you? How often are you pulled over for tinted windows or an obscured license plate or something else that is solely based on the officer’s opinion? A light out is an objective thing that makes sense for a traffic stop; how much tint is too much? How much mud is too much? Those kinds of things are judgment calls.

In my job as a defense attorney, I see those kinds of stops all the time, and almost always for young, dark-skinned men in expensive cars. In fact, as I have written about before, my Office Manager’s husband — a dark-skinned Hispanic businessman — gets pulled over probably once every two or three months for these kinds of reasons. He stands by and waits while the officer searches his car and always finds nothing and then he either gets a warning or a minor ticket that is hardly worth fighting over.

And many of my clients have similar stories, the worst of which are when the police find money and no other sign of criminal activity but keep the money because “it must have come from drugs!” Often, the cost of hiring an attorney to fight to get the money back is more than the amount of money taken, so ca-ching! Free money for the police fund. (That’s where a lot of those police tanks and other military gear comes from, you know.)

Now, are all police profiling black drivers? Oh, of course not. But when you see it happen as often as those of us in the criminal justice system see, you realize that there’s something going on here.

Once I was discussing a case in chambers with a judge who said that the police clearly knew what they were doing since she sees so many cases where drugs have been found during these searches. “That’s because you never hear about the stops where nothing is found,” I countered. “It looks like 100% of all searches are successful to you, because those are the only cases that come before you.” To her credit, she nodded, as if she had never considered that fact before.

And I think that’s where a lot of white people are — they don’t personally see it, so they think it doesn’t happen.

Now back to my case: There were two different DAs assigned to this case because they happened in two different jurisdictions, but I got them to talk to each other. They saw what was going on agreed to give my client probation without a verdict — he doesn’t plead guilty, and as long as he stays out of trouble and doesn’t test positive for any drugs (not a problem for him) the matter will eventually be dismissed and wiped from his record.

And boy, has he learned not to let those particular friends ride in his car any more.

 

*The good news is that thanks to some of these judges now being forced to resign due to various scandals, including one judge who is now in jail, a bunch of Democrats were elected to replace them. So this policy may change in the future.

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Editorial cartoon: Separate but unequal

Mike Luckovich