US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1705

On March 06 2015 23:52 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Black people and White people.

This was a weird test. It felt like they were conditioning me what to think and not trying to find what i actually think. But then the results were what i felt my results would be based on what i think so i just donno.

edit: I would also like to add I'm so sick of all this black or white nonsense. We're all humans for goodness sake.

On March 06 2015 23:52 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Black people and White people.

This was a weird test. It felt like they were conditioning me what to think and not trying to find what i actually think. But then the results were what i felt my results would be based on what i think so i just donno.

edit: I would also like to add I'm so sick of all this black or white nonsense. We're all humans for goodness sake.

On March 07 2015 00:36 heliusx wrote:

There are significant challenges blacks face in America. At the top of the list is the toxic culture young black males have crafted.

On March 07 2015 01:26 xDaunt wrote:
I'll just leave this thought out there as it pertains to Hillary: there's a significant chunk of democrats that really don't want her to run for president. There's a reason why she was so easily torpedoed by Obama in 2008. I don't see why she'll do better this time around. Her quality as a politician is no where near the same as her husband's. She is not equipped to deal with her ever-growing baggage train, and many democrats know it, which is why the defense of Hillary on this email issue has been so tepid. Just watch and wait.

When Joyce Coltrin emails local customers of her wholesale garden nursery, she makes sure to keep her messages brief and doesn’t attach photos or documents. “I try not to write lengthy emails, because people here are using very expensive ways of reading them,” she says. With no reliable broadband service available, many residents of this small community in rural Bradley County, Tennessee, rely exclusively on 3G cellular networks for Internet access. “People are paying in the range of $300 a month using their cellphones,” she estimates, and service can be slow. “Students have to go all the way into town to a McDonald’s or Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi networks just to do schoolwork.”

Even more frustrating for Coltrin and her neighbors is that just down the road, in the same county, communities have access to a publicly owned fiber optic broadband network that delivers speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. That network is financed and operated by EPB, a local electric utility that has been selling affordable high-speed broadband to residential and business customers since 2009.

EPB has a fiber optic line just half a mile from her office Coltrin, said, so she was surprised to learn that they can’t sell their service to her. That’s because a 1999 Tennessee law prohibits a public operator like EPB from expanding broadband services beyond its utilities footprint. EPB’s network may be offered only to its electricity customers.

Tennessee is hardly an outlier when it comes to limiting what’s known as municipal broadband, networks run by public entities or in public-private partnerships like Google Fiber. Nineteen states have laws significantly restricting or effectively banning municipal broadband. And each year new bills surface in statehouses across the country in attempts to increase that number. Supporters of these laws argue that capital-intensive projects like fiber broadband are too risky for local communities to pursue, given that taxpayers are left to foot the bill should a project fail.

A look at the legislative process in some of these states, however, reveals very close collaboration between the cable industry and lawmakers where the primary goal is simply to protect private companies from public competition.

In May 2011, North Carolina passed H129, a bill that effectively blocks new municipal broadband efforts with strict limits on financing methods and minimum retail pricing while requiring municipal broadband networks to pay state and local taxes as if they were for-profit businesses. The bill’s House sponsor was Rep. Marilyn Avila, R-40th District. In February of that year she arranged a meeting to bring opponents and proponents together for negotiation over the legislation. Avila, according to multiple people who attended that meeting, shocked opponents of the bill by quickly handing over the proceedings to Marcus Trathen, a lobbyist for Time Warner Cable whose law office also houses the North Carolina Cable Telecommunications Association, the industry’s trade group.

“Everybody on our side was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” says Catherine Rice, a community broadband advocate. “[Trathen] ran the meeting, asked what was in the bill that people didn’t like and justified all the different pieces of it that he thought were fine. He was doing this without even looking at the bill, reciting it from memory. So we knew he was deeply involved in it.”

A second person that attended the meeting corroborated Rice’s account, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On March 07 2015 03:51 GreenHorizons wrote:


Toxic culture is a significant challenge but it sure wasn't crafted by young black males.




As was said she would need a viable competitor, Warren is the only one who would stand a chance and I'm pretty sure a deal has already been cut there.

The 'tepid' defense is because Democrats recognize it's a shady thing to do and are more inclined to be consistent about it. As opposed to the "Freedom Caucus" that couldn't have less to say about the freedom of Americans being stripped by the people they pay to protect them in Ferguson and elsewhere around the country. "Freedom Caucus" my ass.

Republicans have done nothing to try to close the gap on anyone who isn't a white male. In fact they have alienated more minorities and women since 2012. Looking at turnout and minority support models it's hard to see how Republicans could win. Expect more efforts to do whatever to reduce the minority vote. Republicans have no plan to get minority voters so their only options are to lose them and the election handily or try to keep minorities from voting en mass.

On March 07 2015 04:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

How can they? Democrats violated blacks' constitutional rights in Ferguson and still got 80%+ of the black vote.

GOP leaders to skip Selma event

Scores of U.S. lawmakers are converging on tiny Selma, Alabama, for a large commemoration of a civil rights anniversary. But their ranks don’t include a single member of House Republican leadership — a point that isn’t lost on congressional black leaders.
None of the top leaders — House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy or Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was once thought likely to attend to atone for reports that he once spoke before a white supremacist group — will be in Selma for the three-day event that commemorates the 1965 march and the violence that protesters faced at the hands of white police officers. A number of rank-and-file Republicans have been aggressively lobbying their colleagues to attend, and several black lawmakers concurred.
Story Continued Below

“It is very disappointing that not a single Republican leader sees the value in participating in this 50th commemoration of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. I had hoped that some of the leadership would attend, but apparently none of them will,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina. “The Republicans always talk about trying to change their brand and be more appealing to minority folks and be in touch with the interests of African-Americans. This is very disappointing.”

Former CBC Chair Marsha Fudge (D-Ohio) agreed.
“Not only do they have an opportunity to participate in something that is historic in this country, but certainly they’ve lost an opportunity to show the American people that they care,” she said. “Their loss.”

GOP leaders to skip Selma event

Scores of U.S. lawmakers are converging on tiny Selma, Alabama, for a large commemoration of a civil rights anniversary. But their ranks don’t include a single member of House Republican leadership — a point that isn’t lost on congressional black leaders.
None of the top leaders — House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy or Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was once thought likely to attend to atone for reports that he once spoke before a white supremacist group — will be in Selma for the three-day event that commemorates the 1965 march and the violence that protesters faced at the hands of white police officers. A number of rank-and-file Republicans have been aggressively lobbying their colleagues to attend, and several black lawmakers concurred.
Story Continued Below

“It is very disappointing that not a single Republican leader sees the value in participating in this 50th commemoration of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. I had hoped that some of the leadership would attend, but apparently none of them will,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina. “The Republicans always talk about trying to change their brand and be more appealing to minority folks and be in touch with the interests of African-Americans. This is very disappointing.”

Former CBC Chair Marsha Fudge (D-Ohio) agreed.
“Not only do they have an opportunity to participate in something that is historic in this country, but certainly they’ve lost an opportunity to show the American people that they care,” she said. “Their loss.”

On March 07 2015 05:09 GreenHorizons wrote:
See I must of missed this effort to reach out to the black community from Republicans....



Source

It's impressively disturbing. I mean Mitch McConnell was of voting age at the time the damn law was passed.

Republican's leadership is pathetic (something both sides agree on, although for different reasons).

You can't just slap a black face on shitty policy and think that's "Trying".... That mentality is paper thin and seen right through.