Coming Soon: 1964, Revisited

In April 1964, Anne Newman attempted to walk into one of Maurice Bessinger's BBQ restaurants and sit down for a meal. She was barred from doing so by the owner on religious grounds.

Maurice Bessinger was a pretty scummy guy as you can read about here among other places. Although, to be fair, his barbeque sauce is terrific. What he was first and foremost, was an evangelical who attempted to refuse service to African Americans on the grounds that it was against his religious beliefs.

So Anne Newman did what people of the time, and to some extent today, still do, she sued. And won in an 8-0 shutout (It should be noted that Thurgood Marshall abstained). The case, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, is really more noteworthy in legal circles for establishing the ground work by which people who sue and win Civil Rights cases can have the defendant pay their attorney's fees, but I mention it because I think, ultimately, it's going to come into play on fairly short order for another reason.

On the fringes of the news recently are those private business owners, the cake bakers, photographers, florists and pizza places, who refuse to serve gay couples. They do so due to religious objections.

Clearly,  some states, such as Oregon, address this type of discrimination already, and we see certain well deserved victories when state legislatures attempt to push anti-gay measures  in places such as Indiana and Louisiana.

But if you're looking for proof that while history doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme, get ready for another visit from Good Ole Boy and virulent racist Maurice Bessinger, because the parallels between how people like him treated African Americans in the wake of the Civil Rights Act are likely to manifest themselves in the wake of Obergfell v. Hodges. Only this time, there is no sweeping Civil Rights Act to defend against.

My own personal opinion that you shouldn't be able to refuse to do any aspect of your job due to religious reasons, and that includes pharmacists and the Morning After Pill aside, I do think the legal minefield we're likely to end up walking through in the post gay marriage Equal Protection Clause enforcement world will be an interesting one. It's one thing to gain equal protection under the law, it's another to gain it within your own community. Rather than one sweeping Civil Rights Act, what we're likely to see are dozens of state legislative fights over the coming years, and lawsuits around those fights, unless and until we have a Congress willing to step in and codify anti-discrimination measures for the LGBT community. (And I wouldn't look for that until after 2020).

While the moral arc of the universe is long, ultimately, it does bend toward justice. Just ask Maurice Bessinger's kids.

So About All Those Criminal Illegal Aliens

So it occurred to me the other day that the key to getting ahead in a Republican primary is to be the most effective carnival barker at stoking the perpetual state of righteous indignation that the increasingly aging, white and rural isolationist suckers who make up what remains of the party (you know, the ones the richer wing grift off of) live in.

Right now, of course, the best barker is Donald Trump. Now, the Donald knows a thing or ten about grifting, one need look no further than Jim Byrne's The $1 League for a view of just how he operates among people at his economic level and above.

So, now that the Republican Party has been more or less neutered in treating gays and African Americans as the evil other to be feared (not that some candidates aren't trying, ahem, Piyush Jindal) we're back to race bating illegal immigrants.

“They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists,” Mr. Trump said about Mexican immigrants, adding, “some, I assume, are good people.”

Which should sound familiar to anyone who has to put up with the crazy elderly uncle/aunt/grandparent/cousin who comes in from the sticks at holiday dinner (I'm assuming you've set their Fox News based e-mail forwards to go directly to your Junk folder and weeded them out of your Facebook feed at this point.)

But it does open the question, just what is the crime rate among illegal immigrants, anyway, and how does it compare to the non illegal population at large?

Well, I'm glad you asked that. I wanted to find that answer myself, and to at least get some statistical background on it, I had to dig through some research courtesy of another, even dumber, race bater, former Texas Governor and stem cell treatment recipient Rick Perry.

The Texas Department of Public Safety estimates that 1.7 million illegal immigrants reside in the state. Over the period of October 2008 to July 2014, there were roughly 204,000 arrests of immigrants, or 34,000 per year.

That's an arrest rate of 2% annually.

If we examine Texas arrest statistics,  and you can pick your period here but I'm going to use 2013, of the 26.5 million legal residents, there were 967,470 arrests.

That's an arrest rate of 3.66% annually.

Now, you can slice or dice numbers as finely as you want, but if we focus on violent crimes, and take those numbers at face value, despite Politifact and the FBI telling us we shouldn't bother, the percentage of overall crimes committed by illegal aliens (defined as homicide, sex offenses and sexual assault) constitutes just 7.7% of the overall arrests of illegal aliens over that same time frame.

For legal Texas residents, violent crime arrests constituted 10.9% of all arrests in 2013.

I'm sure you aren't surprised that Trump and his ilk are wrong. But it's interesting to see just how wrong.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

But He Said He'd Stop Drinking.....

There are very few editorials funnier than this one.

In it, the Houston Chronicle "regrets" its endorsement of Ted Cruz for Senate. Here's the money quote:

When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November's general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation - that he follow Hutchison's example in his conduct as a senator.

 Making a statement like this is akin to marrying an alcoholic and then being shocked he didn't quit drinking. There was more than ample evidence that Ted Cruz was a moron. The Chronicle either didn't do its research prior to the endorsement, or is just trying to cover its ass before its readers.

Either way, no sale. When you lie down with dogs, you get to scratch at the fleas. You own it, Chronicle. Good luck with that.

Rick Perry - hypocrite!

Yes! I said it! Governor Rick Perry of Texas is the biggest piece of shit hypocrite there is! His stance of pro-life but executed Kimberly McCarthy on the same day? This guy is the biggest piece of crap. He knows you can't be pro-life and pro-death penalty at the same time. That is why his is a scumbag... Rot in hell Rick Perry!

We Never Hate Saying We Told You So

Score one for the voters. Even Scalia was on the right side of this ruling.

The Demand Economy, or Lack Thereof

Supply side economics. Austerity. Cutting our way to prosperity. The perpetual application of the Laffer Curve.

All bullshit.

But you knew that already, right?

Corporate America may finally be catching up to this novel idea. One that was so novel that it dates back at least as far as Henry Ford.


The money quote, if you find this article too long to read:

Freeze says that revenue presents a more accurate picture of Corporate America's health. "You can play with the earnings numbers and have them skewed," he says. "But you can't mess with the revenue numbers - they are what they are. If people are not coming in droves to buy your products, your revenue's going to miss even if your earnings beat projections."

Demand based economies. How do they work again?

Cleaning the Santorum from Our Schools

Since this seems to be a bit of a hot button issue in the Detroit area, let's have an adult discussion about what it's like when a right wing sugar daddy decides he's going to use his kids to shotgun one of modern society's most delusional speakers/politicians into a local high school.

First, it's important to ask, what are the core issues here? The first issue is that no district, regardless of the speaker, whether it's the valedictorian speech, the speech of district officials or the speech of the featured speaker at a graduation ceremony, allows that speaker to speak in front of the group of students without that speech being vetted. At a minimum, administrations do this to create plausible deniability in the event the speaker deviates from their script and does something offensive. (Do a quick Google search on Bradlee Dean to see how it works out for districts when they don't do this). Santorum wanted to do so without providing the district a speech and, within that context, I would have cancelled his appearance also. You do not have the right to walk in off the street and scream fire, shout obscinities, or tell students they're going to hell if they have pre-marital sex in a crowded school unvetted. Neither does Rick Santorum. This is why speeches from outside participants or at formal ceremonies are vetted to begin with.

88 years ago, people flocked in droves to Dayton, TN to see the Scopes trial. The majority of that audience were adamantly opposed to the teaching of evolution, but they actively embraced the idea that they should engage in semi-respectful intellectual discourse with those they disagreed. They actively sought out ideas in opposition to their own. We are four generations removed from that time, and we live firmly in an era of obsessive confirmation bias. Any district, it would seem to me, would need to acknowledge this fact and treat a controversial speaker such as Santorum accordingly, by issuing opt in/opt out forms.

Because it's a pre-requisite for sustaining their belief system, the Republican true believers crying foul once again exhibit short memories. 3.5 years ago, the "liberal" President made a speech available to schools nationwide, the prepared remarks for which were made available a week in advance. Let's take a look at their reactions to this,shall we?:

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/09/presidents-speech-schools-pep-talk-or-politics
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=6999019
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/05/opinion/oe-rutten5
http://voices.yahoo.com/boycott-president-obamas-speech-school-children-4190807.html
http://patterico.com/2009/09/03/who-is-boycotting-obamas-speech-to-students/

A strong educational system, in an ideal world, would present a disparate set of views that challenged their students to consider the points being made. An accommodating school district that strives to be inclusive would find a corresponding speaker, Keith Ellison, an elected Muslim liberal who is originally from Detroit comes to mind, to offer a counterweight of ideas, and plan out both, well in advance of an event like this.

Would I let my child see Santorum speak? A responsible parent probably would. Even if he's the intellectual equivalent of the mangled cars they put on the school lawn during MADD awareness week. Every bit of exposure helps to help a child grow intellectually.

But this has not been handled well by anyone.

Santorum doesn't know that you can't make a speech in front of a school district without it being vetted.

The district should know better than to think it can present a person on one side of the political spectrum in this day and age without offering an alternative point of view, and should have planned accordingly before approving the speech, if for no other reason than to mitigate some pretty significant blowback from parents.

The district should know better than to think it can compel students in this day and age to view a speech from a politically charged speaker on one side of the spectrum without offering an opt-in choice for their students.

Everyone has handled this poorly except for the people fronting Santorum's appearance fee (and why is he charging $18k for an appearance in front of a high school when the travel expenses for the trip can't run more than $2k), who thrive on this type of publicity.