(Introducing Bryan Case, candidate for the Travis County 167th District Court. We invite all candidates to post diaries and introduce themselves to our readers! - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Formation of a Passion for Justice (Part 1 on Why I am running for 167th District Court)
My commitment to fairness and equal treatment for all our people is rooted in my family's values of legal and social justice. It was during my Junior High days in the piney woods of Rusk, Texas that I first remember taking a strong stand for principle-- when I first personally encountered the ugliness of racism and bigotry of which I had not been aware existed in the small, East Texas town. Seeing racism from afar does not prepare one for the personal and emotional close-up experience. My own budding awareness of right and wrong in the 7th grade led me to slap an "LBJ for the USA" sticker on my school notebook. It had never crossed my mind that this would prompt some of my friends to throw racial slurs my way. Too ridiculous to warrant reply, I thought.
After weeks of laughing at them, one morning waiting for the bell to ring near the end of recess three friends and I were together. One started it, then the next, and the next; the laughing taunt, then the taunt followed by a quick jump and retreat, with me turning toward each in turn. This incident ended with quick dispersal of the taunters upon the hardest blow a skinny sixth-grader could land on a kid's shoulder/chest. It is to this day the only time I have slugged someone with all my strength out of anger. Later, in the 8th grade with the first black kid in our classroom, these same 100 students nominated and elected me class president, and thereafter through the 12th grade. Seems as though my class wanted someone with principle, willing to risk exclusion and friendship in order to get us through the coming tumultuous years. Several Democratic Clubs have heard this little story, thinking it quite quaint, I imagine, but never really understanding its significance.
Now, the rest of it. My father was a pastor in the small community of St. Amant, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in the summer of 1955 when I was 3½ years old. Dad's family had all grown up about four miles from the small community of Caseyville, in western Lincoln County, Mississippi, 100 miles south of St. Amant.
Recently there has been a national conversation about race and racism, but this conversation has been inadequate at best and detrimental at worst. The problem is that the conversation has not been about racism as a systemic and institutional problem, but the conversation has been about whether or not individual acts of prejudice constitute racism. This conversation then completely ignores the structural problems that create racial disparities, and therefore completely misses the point of what our national conversation about race should be about. Perhaps the most significant source of structural racism is the United States justice system, where justice is not always blind.
According to a recent study, a defendant accused of killing a white person in North Carolina is nearly three times as likely to get the death penalty than someone accused of killing a black person. This study looked at death sentence in North Carolina over a 28 year period, and examined 15,281 homicides in the state of which 368 resulted in death sentences. The results of the study where that the odds of receiving a death sentence in cases where the victim was white were 2.96 times as high as the odds in cases with black victims. This finding is not unique. According to another study, blacks who kill whites are significantly more likely to face the death penalty in Maryland than are blacks who kill blacks or white killers
Race is not only one of the determining factors in who receives the death penalty, but in who is stopped by the police, especially when police are racially profiling. In New York 575,304 people stopped and frisked by the New York Police Department last year, and information was gathered on individuals being detained to build a database on citizens who had not committed any crime. According to a report by New America Media, 87% of those who where detained where people of color. While Governor Paterson recently signed a law that made it illegal for police to randomly detain and frisk individuals and to compile their private information, this illustrates another example of the structural racism that exists in the justice system.
The debate over immigration has been pushed into the national conversation since the Arizona state legislature passed Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, otherwise known as SB1070. Since Arizona Governor, Republican Jan Brewer, signed SB1070 into law there have been seven separate lawsuits filed against the law, including a lawsuit filed by the United States Department of Justice. In federal court last week Judge Susan Bolton heard arguments from both sides of Salgado v. Brewer, and this week Judge Bolton will hear arguments in the case brought by the Justice Department. These lawsuits argue that the law is unconstitutional on different grounds including that it violates civil liberty, that it causes racial profiling and that it is an unlawful regulation of federal immigration law.
This law has come at a significant price to Arizona. While the state is facing a budget deficit of more than $4.5 billion dollars, the law is going to cost the state millions of dollars. In addition to the $10 million in initial cost of implementing the law, county and municipal law enforcement agencies will be forced to spend millions of dollars enforcing the law. According to the Immigration Policy Center law-enforcement agencies in Yuma County alone will have to spend between $775,880 and $1,163,820 in processing expenses; jail costs would be between $21,195,600 and $96,086,720; attorney and staff fees would be $810,067-$1,620,134; and additional detention facilities would have to be built at unknown costs. Arizona will also be affected by Latino and immigrant populations that may migrate to states with less hostile environments towards these populations. According to a 2008 study by the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, the Latino and immigrant generated $10.2 billion in state economic output, and generated tax revenues of roughly $776 million.
The economic downturn has had devastating effects on all Americans, and economist are predicting that there are long to be long term affects and that the economy will not recovery fully for a significant amount of time. According to the last report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 14.6 million people are currently unemployed, 9.5%. The long term unemployed, those who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, make up 6.8 million of the jobless Americans. However, the economy has had a disproportionate effect on people of color, in an economy where people of color have already long been at a disadvantage. The latest statistics show that while the overall unemployment rate for whites is 8.6%, the unemployment rate for Latinos is 12.4% and the unemployment rate for blacks is 15.4%. While white America may be in the middle of the Great Recession, people of color in America are in the middle of a prolonged depression.
The loony fringe of the Texas GOP continues to fall all over itself standing by their big sugar daddy, BP. Louie Gohmert took extremism to a new level when he compared President Obama's demand to BP for $20 billion to who else but Hitler.
Is there a head doctor in the house? President Obama's demands for accountability and responsibility from BP seems to have driven the Texas GOP stark raving mad.
There they go outing themselves again. Republicans are the ones that are easily led idiots who will believe anything a demagogue says. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are perfect examples. And as I recall, W. whined about how much easier it would have been to rule as a dictator instead of a democratically elected President.
As we continue to watch the horror unfold before our eyes in the Louisiana region of the Gulf of Oil, thanks to decades of the federal government's efforts to deregulate the corporate sector, another form of political terror and racism continues to whisper rather loudly from the extreme right.
Rand Paul (R-KY), the latest rising star of the GOP, asserts it is un-American for the children of undocumented workers, born right here in the U.S. of A. are American citizens.
Rand Paul must have reading the by-laws for the KKK because he sure as hell did not consult the U.S. Constitution before opening his mouth.
For you have torn off the mask and have unveiled the thinly shrouded southern Republican Party strategy, since the 1950's.
The GOP strategy, of course, includes blatant racism, exclusion, xenophobia, intolerance and hate. The toxic witches brew is mixed with an irrational hatred for big government.
Thank you, Rand, for shining a bright and stark light on your party's deeply racist and crony capitalism ideology.
When Rand and his Republican Party members shriek about how they must
Take our country back
It tells us that Republicans yearn to return to an era before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sarah Palin has the same message when she refers to
Real Americans.
GOP scorched earth politics strategist and opportunist, Karl Rove, and his side kick, the hate talker and snake oil multi-millionaire manipulator Rush Limbaugh must be so very proud of Rand Paul.
My post tonight is written in response to a comment posted below in a previous diary. I had charged (and continue to charge) the nationally syndicated cable TV "news" talk show host, Glenn Beck, with unrestrained and unabashed bigotry.
The video clip that I had posted below drew criticism from one who, like Rick Perry, stands by Glenn Beck.
The Beck supporter demanded that I show proof of Becks' bigotry and unfiltered racism.
At first I thought the Beck supporter was joking because one only has to view the Beck show on FOX cable TV for 10 seconds to understand the obvious. One can also view the you tube clips of Beckian bigotry and racism that pervade the Internet, many of which are uploaded on a vast number of blog sites, including those that shine a bright light on the cable and mainstream media hosts, pundits and their invited guests.
If none of the above could prove my point, I thought, surely Jon Stewart's renditions of the Glenn Beck show should have done the trick.
Wrong.
Jon Stewart cannot help a group that does not do nuance, indirect language or political satire.
Lamar Smith, undistinguished Representative from not-very-close to where I live, supports racial profiling by supporting the new Arizona immigration law which requires persons to present proof of their citizenship upon request, and requires law enforcement offices to ask for it upon "reasonable suspicion".
Is Mr. Smith ready to put himself in the shoes of thousands of legal darker-skinned citizens in this country and carry around his own citizenship papers and surrender them upon request?
Caught Red Handed. Sen. Grassley Voted for "Death Panels" in 2003
Oh those lying liars and the lies they tell.
According to Amy Sullivan at Time many of the very same death panel liars voted in favor of end-of-life counseling in 2003.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Yes, that's right. Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
