Going Back to School in Trump's America

 

Legacy of Slavery Still Permeates Louisiana's Criminal Justice System

 

More than two decades ago, police in Shreveport, Louisiana, stopped Fair Wayne Bryant on the side of the road for allegedly stealing a pair of hedge clippers. His vehicle looked like one that had been used in a recent home burglary, they told the Black 38-year-old moments before arresting him.  Bryant insisted the clippers police found in the van belonged to his wife, but he did make a confession to the officers: After his vehicle had broken down on an unfamiliar road, he had entered a carport in search of a tank of gas.

That disclosure would eventually land Bryant life in prison, a sentence that has effectively been rubber-stamped by the state’s highest legal authority.  Last week, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied a request from Bryant to hear a review of his life sentence. Six of the seven justices backed the decision, which was first reported by The Lens NOLA, a nonprofit news site based in New Orleans.

The lone Black judge on the bench was the only one to disagree. In a searing dissent, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson said Bryant’s sentence was only due to Louisiana’s harsh habitual offender laws, a “modern manifestation” of the “Pig Laws” designed to keep Black people in poverty during Reconstruction.  “Mr. Bryant has already spent nearly 23 years in prison and is now over 60 years old,” she wrote. “If he lives another 20 years, Louisiana taxpayers will have paid almost one million dollars to punish Mr. Bryant for his failed effort to steal a set of hedge clippers.”

The decision from the state Supreme Court gives Bryant few, if any, options for recourse to leave Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the country’s largest maximum-security prison, which is also the site of a former slave plantation.   In her dissent, Johnson — the court’s first Black chief justice — drew a straight line from slavery to the laws that she said enabled Louisiana prosecutors to send Bryant to Angola for the rest of his life.

In the years following Reconstruction, she wrote, Southern states introduced extreme sentences for petty theft, such as stealing cattle and swine, that criminalized recently freed African Americans who were still struggling to come out of poverty.  Much like Black Codes before them, they allowed states to sentence people to forced labor. Under these laws, the Black prison population in the Deep South exploded starting in the 1870s.  “Pig Laws were largely designed to re-enslave African Americans,” Johnson wrote.

Those same laws, she argued, evolved into Louisiana’s habitual offender laws, which allows prosecutors to seek harsher sentences for lesser crimes if a defendant has previous convictions.  Those laws have drawn heavy scrutiny for allowing excessively harsh sentences and driving mass incarceration. Almost 80 percent of people incarcerated in Louisiana prisons under the habitual offender laws are Black, the Lens reported.

Federal Court Smacks Down Trump Administration's Attack on LGBTQ Rights

The myth that Donald Trump would be just fine on LGBTQ+ issues because he congratulated Elton John on getting married was one of the most irresponsible reporting spread by irresponsible journalists in 2016. The Trump administration has in fact spent the last three and a half years steadily attacking the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.

Trump’s attacks on the freedoms of LGBTQ+ Americans have in fact been carried out with an intentional cruelty. When the administration this past summer announced a new rule eliminating Obama-era healthcare protections for transgender Americans, it didn’t just do it during Pride Month-- but on the actual  anniversary of the Pride nightclub shooting.  In addition, the Trump administration also denied embassy requests to fly the flag during last year’s Pride Month.

Trump officials have also decided to attack the rights of LGBTQ+ families, too. Last year, Trump’s State Department refused to recognize the U.S. citizenship of a child born to a married same-sex couple, even though both men “are U.S. citizens and children born abroad to heterosexual married U.S. citizens are automatically considered U.S. citizens themselves,” Lambda Legal said. The couple was forced to take the administration to federal court, where they won their case this week.

Even though Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg have been married since 2015 and are both listed on Simone’s birth certificate, Lambda Legal said Trump’s State Department “disregarded” their marriage “[b]ecause only one of Simone’s fathers has a biological connection to her” (the girl, now 2-years-old, was born via surrogacy in England).  The administration instead “treated Simone as though she was born out of wedlock-- a classification which requires more stringent requirements for recognition of her citizenship.”

The couple then sued last year. “The Immigration and Nationality Act states that children of married U.S. citizens born abroad are U.S. citizens from birth so long as one of their parents has lived in the U.S. at some point, but the State Department routinely denies that right to same-sex couples and their marital children,” Lambda Legal said. “While different-sex couples are presumed to both be parents of their children, same-sex couples are subjected to invasive questioning about how they brought their child into their family.” 

Last year, another same-sex couple sued Trump’s State Department for also refusing to recognize their daughter’s U.S. citizenship.  Roee and Adiel Kiviti had no issues when their first child was born via surrogacy in Canada in 2016-- but they ran into trouble when they followed the same procedure in 2019, Kiviti told CNN last year. “We did the exact same process with our [second child] Kessem, and then received a phone call indicating that this was being treated as an out-of-wedlock birth, and as such, there are additional requirements that need to be met.”

“We are so relieved that the court has recognized our daughter, Simone, as the U.S. citizen she has been since the day she was born,” Mize said following the court’s decision, which orders the administration to issue her a passport. “When we brought Simone into this world, as married, same-sex parents, we never anticipated our own government would disrespect our family and refuse to recognize our daughter as a U.S. citizen.”  The Kivitis also won their case this past summer.

“This is the second federal court this summer to rule against the State Department’s policy to treat children of married, same-sex parents as children ‘born out of wedlock’ and not entitled to birthright U.S. citizenship,” Lambda Legal’s Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said. “It is time for the federal government to stop defending this unlawful and unconstitutional policy.  No family should have to face the fear and uncertainty of having their child’s citizenship status be held in limbo.”

 

Trump Convention Speech Fails to Top Biden in Ratings

 

 

Donald Trump pulled out all the stops to deliver a big spectacle for the finale of the Republican National Convention — but it seems to have been a flop in the TV ratings.

Via Fox Sports Executive Vice President Michael Mulvihill, Trump’s speech at the White House scored a rating of 14.1 across six different networks: NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.

In contrast, Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention scored a rating of 17.5 across those six networks. 

 

 

Miley Cyrus - Midnight Sky

GOP Convention Was a Never-ending Stream of Bullshit

I decided to take a look at the RNC last night, and it was non-stop delusions and lies.  What follows is only a short list, since I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with all the malarkey:

 Burgess Owens, the Republican nominee in Utah’s Fourth Congressional District, said that  popular members of congress "promote the same socialism my father fought against in World War II."  The U.S. was NOT fighting any kind of socialism in WWII-- they were fighting the Nazis.  Yes, the Nazi's may have had the word "socialist" in the name of their party, but their policies were NOTHING like those of Bernie Sanders.  Did these morons even pass high school history?

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Trump's impeachment illegal.  Come on, sweet pea-- impeachment is in the Constitution; it's legal.

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas said that Trump brought troops home from overseas like he promised.  Except for the fact that there are 10,000 more troops in the Middle East now than there were during the Obama administration.  Ooops!

Former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz said that protesters blame others for problems--  they don't have pride in our country.  He also said, "[Protesters] no longer ask "what can i do for my county?"-- only what the country  should be doing for them.  They don't have pride in themselves."  I can hardly comment on this tone-deaf nonsense-- America was built on political protests!  People who risk injury and arrest standing up for their beliefs are more courageous and proud of their county than most Americans.

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst said that Joe Biden would ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars.  WTF?!!!

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that "Trump stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions."  Another prime piece of bullshit.  Trump has repeatedly tried to get bills through Congress to weaken Obamacare, and the Trump administration is currently in court trying to OVERTURN Obamacare.

Lara Trump said that 4.3 million jobs have been created by Trump during his presidency.  Incorrect-- as of July, women have suffered a net 3 million LOSS in jobs during the Trump presidency.

Lara Trump also claimed that the 19th Amendment gave every woman the right to vote.  That was incorrect-- States were still allowed to use poll taxes and other voter suppression tactics (already used across the country to deny voting rights to Black men)  to keep Black women from voting. They could, and did, use those same tactics against Hispanic women.  I'll give her a pass on this one, as most people make the same mistake.

A terribly confused Clarence Henderson said that Donald Trump has done more for African Americans in four years than Joe Biden has done in 50.  You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Richard Grenell trotted out on old conspiracy theory-- that the Obama-Biden administration secretly launched a surveillance operation on the Trump campaign.

And finally Mike Pence.  He first said that four years ago, Trump inherited an economy struggling to break out of the slowest recovery since the great depression.  Fact:  Economic numbers show that average quarterly economic growth under Trump, 2.5 percent, was almost exactly what it was under Obama in the second term, 2.4 percent.

Pence also promised that "We will have law and order on the streets of America."  We are currently in Trump's America, are we not?  Is Pence admitting  that we don't have law and order now?

Pence also tried again to claim credit for passing Veteran's choice.  This is one of Trump/Pence's most obvious lies-- Obama is the one who actually signed the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act in 2014.

Pence also claimed (for the umpteenth time) that Trump suspended all travel from China.  In actuality, Trump implemented only a partial ban-- which still allowed tens of thousands from China to get through.

Pence also claimed that Biden wants open borders-- another widely and repeatedly disproven lie.  Biden does NOT support unrestricted immigration.

For an administration that has done such a poor job managing the coronavirus crisis and has tanked the economy in the process, I guess living in fantasyland is the only thing that will help them sleep at night.   I hope all these GOP toadies are updating their resumes!

 

Continued Uptick in Bleach Poisonings Following Trump Comments on Ingesting Disinfectants

Months after Donald Trump’s idiotic suggestion that disinfectants could be a possible treatment for the coronavirus, some people are still ingesting disinfectants, including bleach.  Officials with the North Texas Poison Center at Parkland Hospital had to remind people in the area not to drink bleach following an increase in cases.

At least 46 cases of bleach ingestion were reported in North Texas in August alone.. "Ingesting bleach or other cleaning products is downright dangerous and can lead to serious injury, including burns," a spokesperson for the North Texas Poison Center said.

The Texas Poison Center Network has also seen a significant increase in calls related to ingesting cleaning products. According to an infographic shared by the network, the Texas Poison Center Network has seen a 71% increase in cases involving bleach and a 63% increase involving other household cleaners from the start of the pandemic compared to the same time period in 2019.

"We certainly are not used to seeing bleach ingestion, at least that frequently in such a short amount of time, and we do know in general this year compared to last we’re seeing a whole lot more of bleach exposures,"  said Cristina Holloway,  the public health education manager at North Texas Poison Center. 

While household cleaners, like bleach, can potentially reduce the spread of coronavirus on surfaces like tables, doorknobs, desks, countertops—they are not to be ingested. Hours after Trump’s comments in April, at least five states across the country saw an increase in calls to poison control prompting popular disinfectant companies, like The Clorox Company and Reckitt Benckiser, the parent company of both Lysol and Dettol, to quickly release statements confirming that their products should not be consumed.

 As always, Trump refused to take responsibility for people acting upon his statements and deemed his comment sarcastic. When asked why he thought Americans were ingesting cleaning products, Trump replied: “I can’t imagine why,” during a White House news conference.  

While it is sad that poison control centers across the country must remind us of the obvious—what’s even sadder is how the Trump administration continues to ignore the severity of this virus and encourage such dangerous actions.

Rose Garden Massacre

 

Storied End For a Homophobic Former President of Liberty University

The beginnings of Jerry Falwell's sordid personal life involving good-looking young men first came to light when the Miami Herald and The New York Times both published reports last summer, outlining the details of a bizarre scandal involving a lawsuit between a Miami Beach “pool boy” and the Fallwells. The scandal also involves President Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who claims to have helped Falwell Jr. stop racy and “personal” photos from leaking in 2016 just months ahead of Falwell’s endorsement of Trump in 2016.

According to the Miami Herald, the national evangelical leader struck up an “unusual partnership” with Giancarlo Granda, a handsome, 20-something pool attendant whom Jerry and his 52-year-old wife, Rebecca, befriended at the Fontainebleau hotel in 2012,.  Granda soon began traveling with the Falwells, both to their home of Virginia to hike and water ski, and to the Cheeca Lodge in the Florida Keys.  Just months after the friendship commenced, the Falwells offered to help Granda, who had practically no business experience, set up a venture in Miami with Falwell's son Trey.  Falwell ponied up $1.8 million to set up Granda as part-owner and manager of a $4.7 million South Beach hostel.  It was quite incongruous that the president of the largest Christian university in the world, a school that prohibits gay sex, would agree  to operate a Miami Beach hostel, regarded as gay friendly, in conjunction with a “pool boy” with virtually no hotel management experience. 

The relationship between Falwell, his son, Granda and their silent partners in the hostel deal eventually went sour, resulting in a lawsuit against Falwell.  Multiple compromising photos of the Falwells became a central element of the legal battle, and Falwell denied their existence— though many sources could confirm they showed Falwell’s “wife in various stages of undress.”  In 2015, as the potential release of the compromising photos was becoming a problem for Falwell (and just before his game-changing endorsement of Trump in the presidential race), Falwell enlisted the help of Michael Cohen.  Cohen reportedly then flew to Florida to meet with the attorney of the mystery figure who possessed the photos. The issue was resolved, and the attorney told Cohen that the photos were destroyed. 

Soon after going into business with Giancarlo Granda,  Fallwell and his son Trey were photographed attending a party at the Wall nightclub, a popular stop on the Miami gay party circuit.  The photos were shared online by World Red Eye, an outlet that documents Miami’s nightlife scene, and Jerry and Trey Falwell were visible in some of the pictures—the outlet even identified Trey by name.  In a statement, Jerry Falwell denied the existence of any photo of him at the club.

Liberty University frowns upon co-ed dancing and prohibits alcohol on- and off-campus.  To remedy the problem of the embarrassing photos, Liberty staffers said Falwell went to John Gauger (whom they characterized as his “IT guy”) and asked him to downgrade the photos’ prominence on Google searches.  A mere two years later, Gauger was promoted to be the university's chief information officer, and 18 months later named deputy CIO. To several university sources, his rapid rise to the executive suite was shocking.  “I’m not being disrespectful, but John was a nobody,” one longtime Liberty official said. “And the next thing you know, he’s high up in IT.”

It seems that Falwell couldn't help not getting himself in trouble with other types of racy photos.  It is widely known  that Falwell has repeatedly shown or texted his male confidants—including at least one employee who worked for him at Liberty—photos of his wife in provocative and sexual poses.  At Liberty, Falwell is “very, very vocal” about his “sex life,” in the words of one Liberty official.  In a car ride about a decade ago with a senior university official who has since left Liberty, “all he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn’t handle [his penis size], and stuff of that sort,” this former official recalled.

More than simply talking with employees about his wife in a sexual manner, on at least one occasion, Falwell shared a photo of his wife wearing what appeared to be a French maid costume, according to a longtime Liberty employee with firsthand knowledge of the image and the fallout that followed.  Falwell later explained that he intended to send the image to his and Becki’s personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite, as a “thank you” for helping he and his wife achieve her fitness goals.  

Falwell's personal relationship with the Crosswhite also raised many eyebrows.  For the two years Crosswhite was paid by Falwell to be his personal trainer, Liberty University rented space for Crosswhite to use as a fitness center for Falwell.  The hunky Crosswhite would also accompany the Fallwells on their private jet to provide training sessions away from the university.  Over the course of the Falwells' private training, Liberty began to pay for expensive upgrades to the fitness facility.  In 2015, Falwell ordered university officials to sell the property to Crosswhite at a significant discount, paying him up front for Liberty’s use of the facility for the next seven years.  The agreed-upon rent was even raised to help cover Crosswhite's personal investment in the property, according to one senior university official said. “Nobody else was allowed to bid on it.”

Alternative gay news sites later uncovered an unusual Instagram video showing Crosswhite and Falwell working out together.  “Come on!” Crosswhite can be heard ordering Fallwell as he pushes him on a sled from behind. “Faster! Come on! Push it-- Let’s go!” Crosswhite demands. “Come on!”    The site also uncovered a curious interaction the two had on Instagram:.  On March 13, 2013, Falwell posted a picture of a rainbow without a caption. The post received only one comment, which came from Crosswhite and simply reads, “I love rainbows ;)”

 Of course, it was another curious social media post that eventually led to Falwell's downfall. In early August, for no apparent reason, Falwell tweeted a photo of himself on a yacht with his fly unzipped and his pants wide open. Beside him was a woman, not his wife, also with her pants wide open.  Politico reported that the woman’s name is Kathleen Stone and her Facebook page lists Liberty University as her employer. The photo was purportedly taken during a costume party on a private yacht.  The image was shared across Falwell’s social media platforms, but was only up for a few minutes before he deleted it, though not before a screenshot was taken and widely circulated across the internet.

Only a few days later, a video from the yacht party surfaced, showing young shirtless young men,  inebriated guests dancing, lounging around, and pretending to smoke cigarettes. In the background of one shot are a bunch of empty red Solo cups one might find at a college house party.  Liberty University prohibits alcohol consumption for all students on or off campus.

In an interview with a local radio station in Lynchburg, Virginia, Falwell explained the story behind the viral photo, saying the woman he is pictured beside is his “wife’s assistant,” adding, “She’s a sweetheart and I should never have put it up and embarrassed her.”  In explanation of the shirtless men in the background, Fallwell said they were doing a parody of the show Trailer Park Boys.   Parody-- right.  Got it, Jerry.

It was only a few weeks until the bombshell revelations from Giancarlo the pool boy that finally led to Falwell's ouster.  Falwell initially tried to get ahead of the pending disclosures by issuing a statement saying that an unnamed person had been blackmailing him and his wife and that the person’s behavior had reached a level that they "have decided the only way to stop this predatory behavior is to go public."

Soon thereafter,  in an interview with Reuters, Granda let loose with all the sordid details that everyone had suspected from the very beginning.  Granda disclosed that not only did Falwell know about his affair with his wife, but Falwell was an active participant in it, and Granda had text messages and FaceTime screenshots to prove it.

Grando said that he first met the Falwells when he was 20 years old and that their relationship involved him having sex with Becki while Jerry watched.  “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda, now 29, claimed, adding that they did this “multiple times per year” in hotel rooms in Miami and New York, as well as at the Falwells’ house in Virginia.

The material Granda showed Reuters includes screenshots from what Granda said was a FaceTime conversation he had with the Falwells in 2019. During that call, Granda said, Becki was naked as the two discussed their relationship while Jerry peeked from behind a door. Reuters was able to verify Granda’s description of the screenshots.

Charmed by a pool boy, investor in a gay-friendly hostel, attending circuit parties, giving sweetheart deals to a hunky personal trainer, drunken parties with semi-naked men, voyeuristic cuckolding-- it's certainly been an eventful fall from grace for a hypocritical religious leader.   

 

 

DeJoy Accused of Perjury After Release of USPS Documents

Over the weekend, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, released new internal Postal Service documents warning Postmaster General Louis DeJoy about steep declines and increasing delays nationwide over the last two months as a result of his drastic operational and organizational changes.

 

According to Maloney, the Postmaster General only acknowledged a ‘dip’ in service after he was confronted with the new reports, and has never publicly disclosed the full extent of the alarming nationwide delays caused by his actions and described in these new documents.  “To those who still claim there are ‘no delays’ and that these reports are just ‘conspiracy theories,’ I hope this new data causes them to re-think their position and support our urgent legislation today.  We have all seen the headlines from every corner of our country, we have read the stories and seen pictures, we have heard directly from our constituents, and these new documents show that the delays are far worse than we were told," Maloney said in a press release.

The new documents show there has been a significant drop in service standards across the board since the beginning of July — including in First-Class, Marketing, Periodicals, and Priority Mail.    Senator Elizabeth Warren accused DeJoy of perjury, saying on social media, "Louis DeJoy flat-out lied to the Senate today about the changes he’s implemented at the USPS, refused to cooperate with requests for documents, and rejected the idea of fixing his damage. Enough is enough: the Board of Governors must remove DeJoy & reverse his acts of sabotage."

There are also accusations of perjury regarding DeJoy's testimony on overtime. “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said today during his testimony that he has not cut postal workers’ overtime,” according to an MSNBC report. “But an internal USPS document show how policy changes prohibit ‘extra’ or ‘late’ trips and mandating that carriers ‘return on time.'”

 

 

Voter in Trump's America

Batshit Crazy News Recap From "Showercap" at DailyKos

I came across a spectacularly off-the-rail post from a blogger named "Showercap" at DailyKos this week.  So good, I thought I would share a portion of it with you all- he/she regularly blogs at showercapblog.com.  Strap yourselves in:  

Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot’s first Katrina was Hurricane Maria, when he abandoned thousands to suffering and death,because in addition to their lack of clout in the Electoral College, they had the audacity to be non-white. But we barely even noticed the additional mini-Katrina unfolding in Iowa, where thousands remain without power following a derecho storm that hopped on 2020’s Let’s Fuck America’s Shit Right Up bandwagon. Regrettably, your federal government is in more of an “ignoring problems and hoping they go away on their own” place than a “fixing shit” place, Iowa, but please keep sending tax money.

Chief Thuglomat Mike Pompeo tried to strong-arm the United Nations Security Council into extending sanctions on Iran, but the world simply said, “gonna pass on that one, champ,” because it’s tough playing strongman without, y’know . . . strength. This was an unprecedented, deeply humiliating repudiation of U.S. leadership on the global stage, and you’d probably wonder why the fuck Team Turdmaggot forced the issue at all, if the last three and a half years hadn’t taught you at every turn that they are cud-brained buffoons who don’t understand anything about anything, hopelessly out of their depth at essentially all times.

Fat Q*Bert’s brother died, in what felt like the universe’s latest desperate attempt to reveal to the American electorate the seeping, moldy, wildebeest turd their President possesses in lieu of a soul.  Joe Biden offered simple, sincere condolences to his rival, as any halfway decent person would, but it came off like trolling, on account of how everybody knows Littlefinger is incapable of feeling human emotions. Indeed, the callous bastard went golfing (why should one death stop his fun when 175,000 haven’t?) before offering such a deranged, self-centered, eyeblink of a eulogy that you’re starting to think the writers are hitting this whole “narcissist” thing a little too hard, aren’t you?

Seems the Manchurian Manchild is desperate for one last face-to-face meeting with Papa Putin before his imminent firing, because he sure as shit doesn’t want anybody listening in on that particular conversation. Can you imagine the advice he’ll be seeking? “But I tried tear gas, everybody got mad at me! What if use napalm?”

So, COVID-19 keeps running rampant through the United States, because the incumbent president still believes it’s in his political interest to pretend nothing particularly serious is occurring, and because I was naive as the newborn foal, I thought that was as bad as shit could get.

Yes, the world’s most famous con man remains the world’s easiest mark, and now the fucking MyPillow guy is whispering in Doctor Dotard’s ear about the latest bullshit miracle elixir he oh-so-coincidentally just purchased a financial stake in. Look, I know the grownups have been exiled and the Oval Office is just a blanket fort made out of Klan robes these days, but can we please set up just enough gatekeeping to prevent the pandemic profiteers from setting federal policy? Like, we can all laugh along as  Anderson Cooper takes this freak down on live television, but the joke’s on us, MPG’s the one with access. Sweaty creep could probably get a city in Europe nuked, if he buttered Donnie up just the way he likes and it wasn’t one of the big ones.

Former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor cut an anti-Trump ad targeting the elusive The President Shouldn’t Be a Psychotic Toddler demographic, sharing super-fun stories like one where Dorito Mussolini tried to cut off wildfire aide to California because they didn’t vote for him. Why yes, I am writing this from month six of quarantine during a pandemic that spiraled out of control because our leadership initially viewed it as a “blue state problem,” why do you ask?

Hey, speaking of which, across the country, we’re doing this weird thing where schools try to re-open in unsafe conditions, leading to coronavirus outbreaks and, inevitably, swift re-closings, a truly demented ritual that’s apparently necessary because our country’s conservatives require periodic human sacrifices to prove that scientists aren’t playing tricks on them. I hate it here.

Sing a dirge for the Resistance, for President Crotchrot, with a single stroke of his wee pen, made all his political woes disappear! Susan B. Anthony has been pardoned, and thus all the “suburban housewives,” as he refers to them, have swung swooning back into his tiny, inadequate arms, for women are simple creatures, who can surely be distracted from the INESCAPABLE FUCKING PANDEMIC by meaningless, misguided symbolism. I believe “checkmate, libtards!” is the phrase you’re looking for.

Somebody in the Shart House finally realized that photographs of kidnapped mailboxes and headlines about elderly veterans waiting anxiously for their life-saving, Trump-delayed medications would be counterproductive to the re-election effort, and thus PostStooge General Louis DeJoy pledged to cease the democracy-wrecking fuckery he’s been perpetrating.  I imagine the avalanche of lawsuits had something to do with DeJoy’s sudden evolution on postal efficiency, but we’ll be hearing from him, under oath, soon enough.

Still, forgive us if we don’t take your word for, well, fucking anything, Louis. We’re gonna need you to put all those mailboxes and sorting machines back, by the way, it’s not really a “dang it ya caught me, sure is a shame all that electoral infrastructure got destroyed” sort of scenario; you’re staying after class to clean up your fucking mess.

Well, the Democratic National Convention launched to great acclaim by our covid-adjusted standards. Bernie Sanders and John Kasich are best friends now, they’re opening an artisanal ferret food shop together and of course a Michelle Obama speech emits enough goodness and hope to light a million lanterns in these dark times, which was just what we needed.

Across the River Styx, the RNC is taking shape. The big news is that white nationalism’s suburban dynamic duo, Captain Nimby and Privilege Lass, will be speaking, because pointing firearms at Black people is how one ascends to national prominence in the Republican Party these days. Gross.

A new report issued by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed the Shitgeyser Campaign colluded with th’Russians to attack an American election and steal the White House, meaning the Republicans on that committee fully understood the extent of Donald Trump’s treasonous crimes when they voted to acquit him of a separate-but-similar set of treasonous crimes in his impeachment trial. For the love of all that’s holy, fire these enabling clowns.

On top of the more sinister, treacherous details, the report also informed America that Weehands McNodick sent Putin this sad, cringey, submissive-as-fuck letter congratulating him on “winning” Time Person of the Year. Can we impeach him for embarrassing us this hard?

Becky's Going to Jail!

Lori Loughlin, the actress at the center of the nation-wide college admissions scandal, has been sentenced to two months in prison after admitting to paying thousands of dollars to get her two daughters into top colleges.

The sentencing came hours after her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, was sentenced to five months in prison for his role in getting the couple’s daughters admitted to the University of Southern California by falsely portraying them as elite athletes.

During the hearing, the 54-year-old actress, best known for playing Aunt Becky on Full House, sat silently as prosecutors argued she should receive the maximum sentence her plea deal allows because she was “fully complicit” in the scheme.  Loughlin issued a brief apology, saying she’s “ready to face the consequences.”

In addition to the prison sentence, Loughlin will have to pay a $150,000 fine and perform 100 hours of community service, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton ruled.  Giannulli will pay a $250,000 fine and perform 250 hours of community service.  Before sentencing Loughlin, the judge admonished the actress for her role in the college admission’s scandal, stating that while he believes she is remorseful he does not understand why somebody who already had a “fairytale life” needed to “grab even more.”

“You have participated in the corruption of the system of higher education in this country,” Gorton said. “I hope you will spend the rest of your charmed life making amends for the system you have harmed.”  Gorton also tore into Giannulli, stating that the designer’s crime was “motivated by hubris” and stressed that his prison sentence for wire and mail fraud offenses will send a message to other parents that buying their children’s way into college is “not the way it works in this country.”

Today's sentencing marks the end of a nearly 17-month saga for the celebrity couple, who pleaded guilty in May after originally denying their roles in what was described as the “largest college admissions scam prosecuted by the Justice Department,” dubbed Operation Varsity Blues.  Loughlin, 55, and her husband, 56, paid Singer $500,000 to get their two daughters admitted to USC as rowing recruits, even though neither teen had participated in the sport. The payment was made out to Key Worldwide Foundation, a non-profit organization run by Singer.

In detention memo released Tuesday, prosecutors argued Giannulli should get a longer sentence than his wife because he “engaged more frequently with Singer, directed the bribe payments to USC and Singer, and personally confronted his daughter’s high school counselor to prevent the scheme from being discovered, brazenly lying about his daughter’s athletic abilities.”  But while Loughlin took “a less active role,” prosecutors stressed she was “fully complicit” and eagerly enlisted Singer a second time to help the couple’s younger daughter “and coaching her daughter not to 'say too much' to her high school's legitimate college counselor, lest he catch on to their fraud.” Neither of the couple’s daughters, who are no longer enrolled in USC, have been charged in the scheme.

Don't worry, Becky-- orange is the new black.

Thomas Rhett - Be a Light

Keeping it Real on Unemployment

 

Coronavirus Art - Croydon, Englad

 

Cautionary Tale from the New York Times on the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

 In the lead-up to the centennial the 19th amendment, some historians have warned against celebrations and proposed monuments to the suffrage movement that seemed destined to render invisible the contributions of African-American women like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells — all of whom played heroic roles in the late 19th- and early 20th-century struggles for women’s rights and universal human rights. In addition to speaking up for Black women of the past, these scholars have performed a vital public service by debunking the most pernicious falsehood about the 19th Amendment: that it concluded a century-long battle for equality by guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Americans who imbibed this fiction in civics classes are caught off guard when they hear the more complicated truth — that millions of women had won voting rights before the 19th Amendment was ratified, and millions more remained shut out of the polls after ratification. Indeed, as middle-class white women celebrated ratification by parading through the streets, African-American women in the Jim Crow South who had worked diligently for women’s rights found themselves shut out of the ballot box for another half century — and abandoned by white suffragists who declared their mission accomplished the moment middle-class white women achieved the franchise.

As the distinguished historian Nancy Hewitt has shown, a lengthy campaign and a range of subsequent laws was required to fully open ballot access to others, including Black women, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, Chinese-Americans and Korean-Americans. Among those necessary laws were the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and the adoption of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the 24th Amendment in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, along with its amendments of 1970 and 1975. In other words, the 19th Amendment was one step in a long, racially fraught battle for voting rights that seemed secure a few decades ago but face a grave threat today.

In the forthcoming book “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All,” the historian Martha S. Jones offers a version of the suffrage and voting rights story that begins well before the fabled 1848 meeting at Seneca Falls. The history she recounts continues into the 1960s and ’70s with the work of revered African-American civil rights organizers like Septima Clark and Fannie Lou Hamer.

Ms. Jones argues that the elided Black women were at the forefront of the quest for women’s rights and were overlooked in history because they achieved their victories in civic and political organizations on the Black side of the color line. Invisibility aside, she writes, African-American women “pointed the nation toward its best ideals. They were the first to reject arbitrary distinctions, including racism and sexism, as rooted in outdated and disproved fictions. They were the nation’s original feminists and antiracists, and they built a movement on these core principles.”

The ever-broadening story of the women’s rights struggle is opening public awareness to other standout Black women as well. One of them is Mary Ann Shadd Cary, who received a belated Times obituary two years ago. Cary was one of the first female lawyers in the country and is described as the first Black woman in North America to edit and publish a newspaper. The paper, known as The Provincial Freeman, was founded in Canada in 1853 and became a forum for women to discuss their lives.

Among the rising stars Cary championed in The Freeman was the African-American poet and anti-slavery orator Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who would go on to an illustrious career. In 1866, Harper rattled the white suffrage elite in a prophetic speech delivered at the founding conclave of the American Equal Rights Association. She argued that the destinies of Black and white, rich and poor, were “all bound up together” — and that racism was in fact a white women’s issue. Ticking off the abuses Black women suffered daily, she thundered: “You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs.”

Harper did not live to witness the unsettling contrast between scenes of middle-class white women celebrating the 19th Amendment with ticker tape parades and Southern Black women being driven from the polls under threat of bodily harm. A half-century after ratification, when African-Americans were still being beaten and murdered for seeking the vote, the charismatic organizer Fannie Lou Hamer did not stand on the 19th Amendment. As Ms. Jones writes: “Yes, she was a woman. But she did not see the terms of the Nineteenth Amendment — the one that constitutionalized women’s voting rights — as protecting her.”

The 19th Amendment can fairly be seen as an important milestone in an unfinished journey. It is morally repugnant and counterproductive to mythologize it as a triumph of egalitarianism at a time when the voting rights Hamer and others paid for in blood are under attack in the courts and in state legislatures all over the United States. This disturbing fact needs to remain uppermost in mind as the country unveils its new suffrage monuments and holds its celebratory events.

 

Trump and the Postmaster General Begin Their Attack on Mail-in Voting

Louis DeJoy is the former GOP lackey that Trump selected to be the new postmaster general-- as the president embarks on an overt campaign to mess up the post office so it can't handle the ballots that will be mailed in for the November election.   It was only last Thursday that Trump vowed to withhold USPS funding to restrict Americans’ ability to vote by mail during the pandemic.

However, the groundwork for this assault on the post office and mail-in voting was laid by Mitch McConnell, who blocked all of Barack Obama's nominations to the Postal Service Board of Governors.  By the time Trump came to office, there was only one remaining member of the board.  Trump nominated enough GOP-leaning members of the board to make a quorum, which McConnell then quickly had confirmed by the Senate.  The GOP-dominated board then pressured civil servant Megan Brennan to decline a second term as Postmaster general, with the Deputy Postmaster General retiring from his post soon thereafter.

DeJoy, a former Republican fundraiser is invested heavily in companies competing against the post office- which means he would personally and financially benefit if the post office fails under his leadership.  He was installed at the post office back in May and immediately instituted changes that would deliberately slow down mail delivery, admitting there would be consequences as a result  of the changes he was implementing.  DeJoy instituted cost-cutting measures that banned postal workers from making extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery and cracked down on overtime that local postmasters often rely on to clear mail backlogs.

He was soon summoned by congressional leaders  to explain what he was doing to slow down mail delivery.  Although Trump recently told reporters that he had never spoken with Lousi DeJoy as Postmaster General, the Washington Post reported that right before DeJoy went to that meeting with congressional democrats, he met with Trump in the oval office.  Another Trump lie-- what a surprise.

After the meeting with congressional leaders, DeJoy unexpectedly removed over two dozen executives from their jobs late on a Friday night-- including the top two officials in charge of day-to-day operations.  The sudden move to sideline career postal service executives and managers is widely believed to concentrate the power and control of mail delivery in DeJoy himself.

Then observers started to learn it wasn't just policy changes that DeJoy intended to slow down mail.  Reports also began to leak from postal workers that DeJoy had also ordered the removal of sorting machines from post office across the country.  In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by the new Postmaster General that the USPS had “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.

Further reporting revealed that DeJoy had ordered over 670 of its letter sorting machines be decommissioned.   As it turns out, the majority of the machines being removed is concentrated in high-populated areas-- that is, places where democrats live.

Soon, local press across the country (here, here, and here) disclosed that notification letters had been sent by the USPS, warning the states that ballots won't be delivered on time in order for them to be counted.   So when it comes to mailing ballots-- it appears that the postal service expects the states to figure out something on their own-- the USPS can't be counted on this time around.

The slow downs in the mail are already having a material effect on peoples lives-- bills aren't arriving on time and payments are not being transmitted timely, so consumer are getting hit with late fees; prescriptions are arriving late; social security checks are being delayed; small business owners have been reporting that their business operations are getting screwed up by chronic postal delays.  Retired three -star Army General Russel Honore, the man who led the troops who restored Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, went public with his  anger over the Trump-ordered post office slow-down, which he said is preventing him from getting his utility bills-- which he said will be turned off, if they're not paid on time.  He was also forced to leave his home during the COVID crisis to pick up medications because mail deliveries are running dangerously behind.

And this isn't a temporary mail delivery glitch due to the COVID--- this is a deliberate sabotage of the constitutionally-mandated mail delivery by an ill-intentioned or incompetent Trump appointee.    Even worse, Louis DeJoy  himself admits that what he is doing is the cause.   Lots of people are getting pissed.  We all pay for mail service-- with our taxes and with the postage we buy-- so it's understandable that people are getting mad about their postal service getting screwed with, and they are even volunteering to help out any way the can. 

But it didn't stop there.  The NBC affiliate in Montana reported last Friday on plans to virtually steal mailboxes from under voters' noses.  They documented efforts that were underway to remove 40% of the mailboxes in Missoula and over 50% of the mailboxes in Billings.

Jon Tester wrote a letter to the post master general over the scandal, which was instrumental in garnering public support against the removals.  The potential removal of mailboxes, which would further threaten election turnout, generated social media panic and high-profile blowback from state officials and other congressmen.

After much pressure, the removal of collection boxes was put on hold statewide.   Later, the USPS unintentionally confirmed that the subversive effort was designed to be rolled out across many other states- but that the effort had been put on hold nationally.  “We are not going to be removing any boxes,” USPS spokesman Rod Spurgeon said. “After the election, we’re going to take a look at operations and see what we need and don’t need.”

Delivery of mail is constitutional mandated and is fully integrated into our lives-- it is uncontroversial, affecting both liberals and conservatives.  It is how we get our letters, bills, payments, essential goods (during the COVID crisis) and our election ballots.  Hopefully, this will generate widespread condemnation from all citizens and generate further pressure on the Senate and the White House to fully fund our postal service and quit screwing around with absentee/mail-in voting.  

In know somebody that's already taking it seriously.  New Jersey congressman Bill Pascrell made a criminal referral to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal seeking a grand jury to look at electoral subversion by Donald Trump and Louis DeJoy in their attack on the Postal Service.  Let's hope the Senate takes this as seriously.

EU Takes a Stand Againt State-Promoted Homophobia in Poland

 The European Union will denying funding to six Polish towns that have declared themselves “L.G.B.T.-free zones,” in a rare financial sanction of a member nation over a human rights issue.  “E.U. values and fundamental rights must be respected by Member States and state authorities,” Helena Dalli, the European Union commissioner for equality, as reported by the New York Times.  The Polish authorities that adopted “L.G.B.T.-free zones” or “family rights” resolutions failed to protect those rights, she wrote, and their funding applications had therefore been rejected.

Poland (like its neighbor Hungary) has steadily chipped away at some of the bedrock institutions that allow for a healthy democracy, including a free press and a judicial system free of political influence.  Poland has been threatened with having their voting rights in the EU bloc suspended-- but has faced little in the way of concrete punishments.

Even by the often brutal standards of Polish politics, however, the demonization of gay men and lesbians by government officials over the past two years has been ferocious.  Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the governing party, has repeatedly told supporters that Poles will not be forced “to stand under the rainbow flag.” He has said that homosexuality represents a “threat to Polish identity, to our nation, to its existence and thus to the Polish state.”  He has led a campaign amplified by state television, which has been turned into a propaganda arm of the government, and by prominent members of the Catholic clergy.  

Nearly 100 local governments, representing a third of Poland’s territory, declared themselves “free from L.G.B.T. ideology.”  Although the declarations do not have legal force, they are viewed by many as menacing. And the heated rhetoric has been blamed for violence against gay men and lesbians.

When marchers tried to take part in a gay pride parade in the conservative city of Bialystok last summer, opponents threw bricks, stones and fireworks at them.  Some protesters were attacked and as the violent clashes escalated, with dozens wounded, the police had to deploy tear gas.  A few months later, in December, the European Parliament condemned discrimination against the L.G.B.T.Q. community and called on the Polish government to take action to revoke the declarations by local authorities. Nothing was done.

During Poland’s July presidential election, the governing party once again targeted gay men, lesbians and transsexuals.  President Andrzej Duda said “L.G.B.T. ideology” was more dangerous than communist doctrine and he made it the central issue of his campaign.  He narrowly won a second term, but the close fight and divisive rhetoric polarized Polish society even further.  And the anti-L.G.B.T. invective has come at a cost.  According to a 2020 survey by ILGA, an international gay rights organization, Poland is now the most homophobic country in the European Union. 

The Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro has said that the EU funding decision was “unfounded and unlawful,” arguing that European institutions should respect the national identities of all member countries.  Ziobro denounced the European Commission, saying that some of its members were “ideologically obstinate” and wanted to impose “the agenda of homosexual activists” on others.

But Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, which distributes European Union funding, defended the decision to reject sending money to the Polish towns.  “Our treaties ensure that every person in Europe is free to be who they are, live where they like, love who they want, and aim as high as they want,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I will continue to push for a union of equality.”

 

Canada Looking at the U.S. Right Now

 

Demi Lovato - I Love Me

Rare First-Hand Evidence of Chinese Persecution of Uighars Has Surfaced

As a model for the massive Chinese online retailer Taobao, the 31-year-old  Merdan Ghappar was once well paid to flaunt his good looks in promotional videos for clothing brands.

But a recent video of Ghappar is different. Instead of a glitzy studio or fashionable city street, the backdrop is a bare room with grubby walls and steel mesh on the window.  Ghappar sits silently with an anxious expression on his face.  Holding the camera with his right hand, he reveals his dirty clothes, his swollen ankles, and a set of handcuffs fixing his left wrist to the metal frame of the bed - the only piece of furniture in the room.

The video of Ghappar, along with a number of accompanying text messages, together provide a chilling and extremely rare first-hand account of China's highly secure and secretive detention system - sent directly from the inside.

The material adds to the body of evidence documenting the impact of China's fight against what it calls the "three evil forces" of separatism, terrorism, and extremism in the country's far western region of Xinjiang.

Over the past few years, credible estimates suggest, more than one million Uighurs and other minorities have been forced into a network of highly secure camps in Xinjiang that China has insisted are voluntary schools for anti-extremism training.

Thousands of children have been separated from their parents and, recent research shows, women have been forcibly subjected to methods of birth control. 

In addition to the clear allegations of torture and abuse, Ghappar's account appears to provide evidence that, despite China's insistence that most re-education camps have been closed, Uighurs are still being detained in significant numbers and held without charge.  It also contains new details about the huge psychological pressure placed on Uighur communities, including a document he photographed which calls on children as young as 13 to "repent and surrender".  

Ghappar's family, who have not heard from him since his messages stopped five months ago, are aware that the release of the four minute, thirty-eight second video of him in his cell might increase the pressure and punishment he faces.  They hope that the public release of the video and messages will help galvanize public opinion over the Chinese abuse of the Uighurs-- which, to date, has failed to resonate deeply in the Western media.

In August 2018, Ghappar was was arrested and sentenced to 16 months in prison for selling marijuana, a charge his friends insist was trumped up.   About a month after his release in November 2019, Chinese police knocked on his door, telling him he needed to return to Xinjiang to complete a routine registration procedure.  According to reports, authorities simply stated that "he needed to do a few days of education at his local community" - a euphemism for the camps.

Friends and family were allowed to bring warm clothes and his phone to the airport, before he was put on a flight from Foshan and escorted by two officers back to his home city of Kucha in Xinjiang.  There is evidence other Uighurs were similarly forced to return home, either from elsewhere in China or from abroad, and Ghappar's family were convinced that he had disappeared into the re-education camps.

But more than a month later they received some extraordinary news-- somehow, he had managed to get access to his phone and was using it to communicate with the outside world.

Merdan Ghappar's text messages paint an even more terrifying picture of his experience after arriving in Xinjiang. Written via the Chinese social media app WeChat, he explains that he was first kept in a police jail in Kucha.

"I saw 50 to 60 people detained in a small room no bigger than 50 square meters, men on the right, women on the left," he writes.  Ghappar was eventually forced to wear the leg shackle device described in his first message and-- with his fellow inmates-- found there was no room to lie down and sleep in the caged area where they were kept.

"I lifted the sack on my head and told the police officer that the handcuffs were so tight they hurt my wrists," he writes in one of the text messages.  "He shouted fiercely at me, saying 'If you remove your hood again, I will beat you to death'. And after that I dared not to talk," he adds.  "Dying here is the last thing I want."

The BBC has reported in detail about how Ghappar heard the constant sound of screaming, coming from elsewhere in the jail.  He also described squalid and unsanitary conditions - inmates suffering from lice while sharing just a handful of plastic bowls and spoons between them all.

It is impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the text messages. But experts say that the Ghappar's video footage appears to be genuine, in particular because of the propaganda messages that can be heard in the background.  James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and an expert on China's policies in Xinjiang, translated and analysed Ghappar's text messages.  He says they are consistent with other well documented cases, from his transportation back to Xinjiang and the initial processing in crowded, unsanitary conditions.

Another layer of credibility is provided by a photograph of a document that sources say Mr Ghappar sent after finding it on the floor of one of the epidemic control centre toilets.

The document refers to a speech made by the Communist Party Secretary of Aksu Prefecture, and the date and location suggest it could well have still been circulating in official circles in the city of Kucha around the time of Mr Ghappar's detention.

The document's call for children as young as 13 to be encouraged to "repent for their mistakes and voluntarily surrender" appears to be new evidence of the extent of China's monitoring and control of the thoughts and behaviours of the Uighurs and other minorities.

"I think this is the first time I've seen an official notice of minors being held responsible for their religious activity," says Dr Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who has researched and written extensively about the Uighurs.

The Chinese government continues to deny that it is persecuting the Uighur population.  After heavy criticism over the issue recently from the U.S., a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, invoked the death of George Floyd, saying that Uighurs in Xinjiang were free in comparison to African Americans in the U.S.

But for Merdan Ghappar's family, haunted by the image of him chained to a bed in an unknown location, there is a connection between the two cases.  "When I saw the George Floyd video it reminded me of my nephew's own video," says Merdan's uncle Abdulhakim.  "The entire Uighur people are just like George Floyd now," he says. "We can't breathe."

 

Hops Flop

 A Canadian brewery has apologized for unwittingly naming one of its beers after a Maori word that is commonly used to mean pubic hair.

Hell's Basement Brewery said it released its Huruhuru pale ale in New Zealand two years ago, thinking it meant "feather".  The brewery used the Maori term they believed meant "feather" to reflect its light citrus taste for a summer brew.   Former Maori TV personality Te Hamua Nikora recently posted a Facebook video to explain "huruhuru" was more commonly used in Te Reo Maori to refer to pubic hair, and said it would have been prudent and respectful to have consulted an expert on the language.

The brewery's founder said the product would now be re-branded.

"We acknowledge that we did not consider the commonplace use of the term huruhuru as a reference to pubic hair, and that consultation with a Maori representative would have been a better reference than online dictionaries," Mike Patriquin told Canadian network CBC.

Planning for Failure

Trump's re-election chances aren't looking good.  He keeps changing strategies, as each plan fails to make traction, he pivots to another.  It's been pretty hard tracking his game plans, but so far this is what we've seen:

Plan A: Get the Ukrainians to investigate Biden
Plan B: Call Biden "Sleepy Joe"
Plan C:  Run on the economy
Plan D: The virus is contained
Plan E: The virus will disappear
Plan F:  We should re-open the economy
Plan G: We should re-open the schools
Plan H:  Send federal troops to Portland to scare people into thinking Biden is against law and order
Plan I:  A vaccine will be here by election day
Plan J:  Sabotage the Postal Service and slow down the mail
Plan K:  Demonize voting by mail
Plan L:  Question Biden's cognitive abilities
Plan M:  Brag about your own cognitive abilities
Plan N:  Claim bidden will hurt the bible and god
Plan O:  Get Kanye West on the ballot to steal votes from Biden
Plan P:  Have William Barr leak details on 2016 election investigation

Who knows what else he'll come up with?  Trump seems to be getting a bit unhinged, so you never know . . .

Wealthy Residents of Houston Don't Like Fairness for Infrastructure Spending When It Means their Neighborhoods Don't Get Funding First

Pleasantville, a few square miles of bungalows and industrial sites stuck between Houston’s railways and freeways, was always quick to flood-- like much of the city. But as a neighborhood with large Black and Hispanic populations and low property values, it never qualified for the pricey flood-control projects that protected wealthier parts of Houston. Flood control projects in Pleasantville “would be put on a list, and that’s where they would go to die,” said Bridgette Murray, who is president of the Pleasantville neighborhood association and whose house got five feet of water during Hurricane Harvey.

Faced with countless complaints like these, officials in Harris County, which manages flood control in and around Houston, threw out their old approach for spending billions of dollars on flood defenses after Harvey. Instead of prioritizing spending to protect the most valuable property, which benefited wealthier and whiter areas, they decided to instead prioritize disadvantaged neighborhoods that would have the hardest time recovering, including communities of color.

The New York Times recently documented how wealthy opponents have criticized the program as social engineering. Advocates have lauded it as long overdue. And for flood-prone cities nationwide, the controversial plan has become a test case for grappling with the overlapping challenges of racial inequity and climate change.

Community groups supporting the change call it both necessary and humane. Opponents (mostly in rich, white neighborhoods) see the new program simply as a way for Democrats to channel public funds to Democratic leaning voters, rather than using an approach they prefer, called “worst first” — the idea that the first priority for spending should be places facing the worst flood risk. “They want the money for their neighborhoods. They don’t care about ours,” said Dave Martin, who represents the wealthy community of Kingwood on the City Council. “Using any mechanism other than worst first is ludicrous.”

Environmental policy experts say it makes no sense to decide which people get protection based on which property is more valuable. That approach reinforces historical discrimination, which contributed to minority neighborhoods having lower property values in the first place. And it doesn’t address the deeper question of who needs the most help, or why.

“The benefit-cost approach has a false transparency, a false rigor,” said Earthea Nance, an associate professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. That approach has a similar effect to redlining, she said, referring to the practice in decades past whereby governments and banks would deny mortgages to Black home buyers. “Is that really what we want?”

A sequence of unlikely events pushed Harris County to reconsider its approach. First, in 2017, Hurricane Harvey dropped more rain than any storm in U.S. history, flooding more than 166,000 homes countywide. The following summer, voters approved a $2.5 billion bond to fund more than 500 flood-control projects over several years, the largest such initiative in the county’s history. A few months later, in November 2018, came a third surprise. For the first time in three decades, Democrats, buoyed by the county’s changing demographics and their party’s midterm wave, won control of the Harris County commission, called the Commissioners Court, and with it, the chance to decide just how that $2.5 billion would be spent. They vowed the focus would be on fairness. The problem was, nobody knew exactly what that meant.

After Democrats took control of the commission, they eventually decided to rank projects based in part on the “social vulnerability” of the communities they protected — an index created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that reflects what share of residents are minorities, can’t speak English, lack a job, are older, live in mobile homes, don’t have cars or face other challenges. The goal, according to Ms. Hidalgo, was to reflect how hard it would be for a neighborhood to recover from the next disaster, and prioritize flood-control projects in those areas — what she described as a more comprehensive version of the worst-first approach. “That means elevating some of the communities that had gone overlooked,” she said. The commission passed that new approach along party lines, which in Harris County also means racial lines. The three Democrats who voted in favor are African-American or Hispanic, while the two Republicans who voted against it are white.

Twenty-five miles north of Pleasantville, in the wealthy neighborhood of Kingwood (at the edge of Lake Houston) Beth Guide’s house flooded last year. When the county said it would prioritize flood-control projects based in part on social vulnerability, she objected. The only criterion, she said, should be who faces the greatest flood risk. “I don’t care if your house is a million-dollar house or a $30,000 hovel in the middle of nowhere,” said Ms. Guide, who runs a digital-marketing agency. “This literally should be, ‘Whose life is in the most danger?’” What Guide conveniently forgets is that if poor families can't afford to protect their homes against hurricanes, then their lives are more in danger.

Greg Travis is a Republican member of Houston’s city council for a wealthy district that straddles Buffalo Bayou, a waterway whose flood-control projects have mostly been pushed to the end of the queue under the new system. He said the Democrats’ approach endangers the region’s tax revenues by letting flooding continue to threaten the values of his constituents’ homes. Travis conveniently forgets that residents of his neighborhood can like afford to recover from a hurricane (and preserve their homes' values).

Other community groups look at it differently thaan Beth Guide and Greg Travis. “This is the same public investment that’s been going to whiter and more prominent areas for decades,” said Chrishelle Palay, who leads the Houston Organizing Movement for Equity, a group that sought the change. “They just call it their ‘tax dollars hard at work.’”