Is It a Crime to Be Black in America in 2008? DOJ’s War on Black Folks Heats Up

[McCamy Taylor]

I. If You Are Black, Your Case Never Grows Cold

Back in 2006, the last big election year, I wrote FBI Wages War on Black Folks: Southern Strategy Rises Again
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2692635
because I thought that I detected a pattern of persecution and prosecution of African-Americans designed to create fear and outrage in the heart of the nation’s bigots. The goal? Increase turn out of Republican voters intent upon keeping Democrats from gaining control of Congress. Pat Buchanan had spelled out the strategy on Countdown . Make American fear committees chaired by Rangel and Conyers. How do you do that? Paint Cynthia McKinney as a scary woman with bad hair and a loaded cell phone.



Funny how many of the media circus cases which the feds were splashing across the headlines in 2006 are now back in the news in time for the 2008 elections. Boy, the wheels of justice sure turn slowly if you are Black and famous and the GOP needs to keep you on a hook so that it can portray all African-Americans as crooked. William Jefferson was scheduled to go on trial early this year for the crime of being a Black congressman targeted in a FBI sting---while the Bush administration was doing things like firing federal prosecutors who wanted to investigate Jack Abramoff. Now, Jefferson has had his trial delayed so who knows if Bush and Co. will be able to score political points from it.

Guess who else is still in the news? Years ago, Barry Bonds was told that his grand jury testimony would be secret. Never trust the feds. His grand jury testimony was leaked to two reporters who then wrote a book about it calling him a liar and a perjurer. This enabled the same feds who leaked his testimony to start a case in the court of public opinion which allowed them to do things like jail a friend of Bonds’ for a year (shades of Ken Starr and Susan McDougall). Now, we have a 15 felony count indictment against Bonds
http://barrybondstrial.blogspot.com/
But not a word about Roger Clemens, even though back in February, at the request of Congress, the FBI said that it would investigate whether or not Clemens lied to Congress.
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2008/02/29/clemens_probed_by_fbi/
We have not heard screeds about how Clemens has destroyed baseball from the non-sports press. We haven’t heard his name equated with cheating. Why? Because he isn’t Black.

The ongoing investigation of every Black office holder in the City of Dallas? Turns out that the FBI managed to get an informant to offer some cash to one of the many people being investigated, so now the DOJ has a case that they can splash across the newspapers. If only the Bush administration had invested this much time and money into capturing Osama Bin Laden. If the FBI offered cash to enough white folks, one of them would probably take it , too.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042008dnmetfbicityhall.3ab78ae.html

The Sears Catalog Terra-ists? The guys trying to get free stuff from an FBI informant? They have had two trials already and two juries were unable to convict them. The DOJ is hoping that the third time will be the charm. At least it keeps these guys in the news, which is all that the Bush administration really wants, because here are their photos.


II. Welcome to the Club

What do Wesley Snipes, Willie Nelson and Spiro Agnew have in common? They did not pay their taxes. Which of the three did other crimes? Willie Nelson uses weed and has been arrested for possession. Agnew also engaged in money laundering. Whom did federal prosecutors decide to “make an example of”? You guessed it. The Black man.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-wesley-snipes-080425-ht,0,2873470.story

Being a member of the Bush administration will not protect you, if you are African-Americans and the DOJ needs more sacrificial victims for its War on Black Folks. Indeed, the current administration is all too willing to throw minority and female supporters to the press as distractions in order to protect higher ranking white males from scrutiny. Therefore, we have the case of Alphonso Jackson formerly of HUD, who was just doing what everyone else in the Bush administration was doing----handing out government contracts to Republicans, his buddies and people with whom he had financial ties. The only difference between him and Cheney is Jackson did it while being Black . And that is a big crime in the Bush-Cheney administration, especially when it is an election year and the Democratic nominee is an African-American. The White House will close ranks when Congress goes after Karl Rove, but when questions are asked about the Alphonso Jacksons, they are only too happy to join in the dogpile.
http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/649839.html
Note that in the War on Black Folks, there is always a photograph of the perp.

We can also look forward to another media circus OJ trial in which the former football star will be on trial for getting away with murder after the LAPD compromised their case by tampering with the evidence (pay no attention to what the actual charges are). Only rich white guys like Cullen Davis are allowed to shoot their wives and children and hire fancy lawyers and try to hire hitmen to kill the judge and get away with it.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/not_guilty/t_cullen_davis/4.html


III. Guilty of Being Black

Remember Tulia? The Texas community where federally funded law enforcement officers arrested and sentenced 15% of a town’s African-American population to prison on drug charges on the say-so of a racially biased cop? That is not an isolated case. There is also Hearne, Texas, another town where a civil lawsuit was filed and won over the exact same police misconduct. Moral: The white cop is always believed over the Black defendant, no matter how screwy the white cop’s story is.
http://www.mapinc.org/newscsdp/v05/n766/a07.html

Here is another horror statistic. African-American juveniles arrested for murder in California are six times more likely to be sentenced to life without parole than white juveniles arrested for murder. That is why there are 10 Black kids given LWOP sentences for every one white in this country. Moral: Black crime is “scarier” than white crime.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/02/27/usdom18163.htm

And if you want to be thoroughly horrified, read this document, Texas Tough?: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State. Texas has a small nation of people within its prisons and yet its crime rate is not dropping like it is in states which have sensible criminal justice systems. In Texas, if you are Black you go to jail, directly to jail, without probation, drug rehab or any of the opportunities for second chances afforded to whites. This is the type of mentality that the Bush administration took with them to Washington.
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/texas/texas.html


IV. Sometimes You Will Know Them By the Acts They Neglect

Like the neglect of the Voting Rights Act for seven long years. Republicans have stripped Blacks from voting rolls, targeted Black soldiers serving in Iraq for caging operations, told Blacks that it was a crime for them to vote, passed laws that clearly violate the Voting Rights Act---unless your name is Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and sometimes Kennedy. And then, they rub salt into the wound by filing a reverse discrimination suit to protect the voting rights of whites, because lord knows they have to jump through so many hoops to make their voices heard it is a wonder a white man can get elected dog catcher in this country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/29/AR2007062902092.html?hpid=moreheadlines

That last was all about encouraging even more Republican election fraud in 2008. You see, up until now simply assuring the GOP operatives on the ground that they did nor have to worry about being prosecuted was enough. Since no one paid for the RICO Act violating raid on the vote recount in Florida or for the illegal bogus “felon’s list” that Katherine Harris drew up and since Ken Blackwell never had to pay for his illegal voter suppression in Ohio 2004, Republicans figured that they could get away with election murder.

Not this time. If the Democrat’s win the presidential race, the new Attorney General who might just be John Edwards could send some Republican precinct chairs to jail.

So, the Black voter suppression of whites case above was designed to make Republicans mad, the way that the old stories about dead men voting made them mad. Too enraged to think straight, they will get up to their usual precinct level election fraud tricks this fall, even if it means they might go to jail.

I am expecting at least one FBI investigation stemming from the Democratic Primary, even though I doubt that the federal government has any jurisdiction over the party primaries. It would fit into the way they do business at the DOJ. Maybe the FBI has been handing out cash. It isn’t as if they have any real work to do, like catching the criminals who do it all on their own without anyone in federal law enforcement having to pay them to do it. All the worst criminals in this country seem to work for the government these days. And if one of them gets caught, the Washington Post can be counted upon to whine like a baby until he gets a pardon.



Need to get angrier. From 2006, Election Projection or how the Ohio GOP used the 2004 election to make it harder for minorities to vote.

http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/Flash/060326/060326.htm

This year, we have the poll tax, because Georgia Rep. state Sen. Don Balfour got his wish.

[defendandprotect]

1. We need to more clearly talk about discrimination as EXPLOITATION . . .

It begins based on myths of inferiority --- sexist, racist, homophobic myths --- but it is really about EXPLOITATION for the profit of the few. We really need to more often make that clear.

Racism, sexism, homophobia have to continue to be taught, because when the fear lessens people often
begin to think for themselves.

All of these discriminations/oppressions were, of course, put in place by violence ---
the violence of white males who very much have tried to convince us over hundreds of years
that it is the "African" in America who has the potential to be violent, to rise up against
their former oppressors. Yet, none of that has ever happened. Rather, it is the white male
whose violence we continue to fear.

Like their wars on nature, natural resources and animal-life, these violent white men seem to be
at war with intelligence greater than theirs; spirituality greater than theirs.

Anyone who seeks freedom from exploitation/oppression is a threat to them -- a threat to
their hold on power over others for profit.

The African-American in delivering themselves from this oppression are a great threat to
this system -- and their struggles have produced not only greater freedoms for themselves,
but for all of us. Their examples of courage have inspired others --
Their talents and intelligence continue to inspire and uplift our society ---

[L. Coyote]

2. Voting While Black

I'm still waiting for a thorough investigation of the 2004 election,
especially with respect to racial issues and civil rights violations.

We did our part on DU. When will the political officials catch up?

Voting While Black
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x502722

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Little remembered fact. Rep. Bob Ney PROMISED investigations into Ohio 2004

back before W. got sworn in for his second term when people were rioting in the streets of the Ukraine and 25% of the American public believed that the election here had been stolen too (that with the virtual media lock down on coverage).

After W. got sworn in for a second term, the "hearings" that Ney promised never materialized--unless you count the mock hearings which I describe in "Election Projection"---the ones in Ohio in which Bill Frist's attorney told the bogus story about the NAACP handing out crack cocaine to get people to vote. He later recanted the story, but only after Ohio's GOP legislators used it as an excuse to make it more difficult for people to vote. I guess they were worried about how hard to was for them to steal the 2004 election.

Having studied the people of Ohio and their reaction to Grand Theft Election Ohio, I pretty much predicted what their reaction would be in the 2006 elections, despite the new laws.



I did not predict that Bob Ney would now be in jail, but he deserves to be there.

[L. Coyote]

4. ACVR's OHIO Report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH, Prisoner No. 28882-016), & Jive F. Turkey, Sr.

FROM: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1159656#1163192

OHIO ELECTION ACTIVITIES AND OBSERVATIONS
Report to the United States House of Representatives
Committee on House Administration, Representative Robert W. Ney, Chairman
Submitted by The American Center for Voting Rights, March 21, 2005
http://web.archive.org/web/20060209215847/www.ac4vr.com/reports/032405/OhioElectionReport.pdf

Contributors (aka Felonious Bob's Jive Turkey List):
Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II, William M. Todd, Mary C. Mertz, James E. Burke, Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Charles H. Gerhardt, III, Drew M. Hicks, Douglas G. Haynam, Mark R. Weaver, Mark Landes, Jeffrey Stankunas, Jack Morrison, Jr., Thomas M. Saxer, Thomas R. Houlihan, Tim A. Greenwood, James P. Silk, Jr.

The American Center for Voting Rights, in association with various law firms and legal
counsel involved in the conduct of the Ohio presidential election, has assembled this report of
events that occurred during the 2004 election. This investigation found the following:

Third party organizations, especially ACT, ACORN, and NAACP engaged in a
coordinated “Get Out The Vote” effort. A significant component of this effort appears to be
registering individuals who would cast ballots for the candidate supported by these
organizations. This voter registration effort was not limited to registration of legal voters but,
criminal investigations and news reports suggest, that this voter registration effort also involved
the registration of thousands of fictional voters such as the, now infamous, Jive F. Turkey, Sr.,
Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins. Those individuals registering these fictional voters were
reportedly paid not just money to do so but were, in at least one instance, paid in crack cocaine.

The fraudulent voter registrations, however, appear to be only part of the effort of these
organizations to influence the election. There was an apparently coordinated national litigation
strategy to manipulate election laws in battleground states and, specifically, to eliminate the
provisions of election law that would prevent vote fraud. ....

=================
More on that thread. You have to wonder if they didn't "create" the felonious registrations
in the first instance (a la the fake Florida recount demonstration).

[theHandpuppet]

5. I also think some these new voter ID laws...

... were enacted specifically to suppress voting among minority populations and the poor.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. And elderly. Yep. They are all poll taxes if there is a fee. Worse yet, some citizens

are afraid of the government and may hesitate to get photo ID even if allowances are made for poverty. And the elderly may have no transportation to get to the place that makes IDs.

[NOLALady]

7. .

:kick: