Just in case you thought that Trump went way off the reservation in virtually calling former San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick an SOB to loud crowd hoots at a campaign rally for Alabama Senate Republican candidate Luther Strange, he didn’t. The truth is that Trump has kept a vengeful close eye on the Kap-NFL debacle from day one. Last march at a post victory rally in Louisville, Trump virtually commanded NFL owners not to even think about bringing him back into the league. To quote, “they don't want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump.”Any owner who dared to sign Kap almost certainly would get that dreaded nasty tweet, and probably a lot more Trump bombast about betrayal, and disgust, at daring to sign him. Trump has got a thing about Kap for several reasons, to him, perfectly good reasons. The first is the owners. He really didn’t have to saber rattle the owners with the threat of a “nasty tweet,” not one was going to sign him anyway. Several owners played footsie with the press about considering him for a possible spot on their team roster. But they made it crystal clear that the fans would be in wholesale revolt against their team if they signed him.That’s another reason, the fans. There was just enough anecdotal stuff from informal polls, surveys, angry letters from fans and hostile talk about Kap from sports radio jocks to cement the owner’s tacit decision to make him NFL unemployable.To many, this duck for cover by the owners behind the fans, seemed ludicrous. Since when have billionaire owners and their GMs ever considered what the fans wanted in their player personnel decisions? The don’t, but Kap was totally different since there appears to be just enough antipathy and rage against him from a big swatch of the NFL fan base to make their claim of fan concern credible. Trump is aware of the legion of fans that disdain Kap, and felt comfortable shouting to the Alabama campaign rally that the NFL owners should give him and anyone else who disrespects the flag and the national anthem a swift boot out of the NFL. The crowd ate it up, because many of them are exactly the kind of fan that the NFL owners have in mind who would rebel against Kap on an NFL team.There’s something else. Trump understands this about the NFL. He and the majority of the 32 owners are literally on the same team politically. They are conservative Republicans who often generously bankroll GOP presidential candidates, and with some, that included Trump. So, when Cowboy owner Jerry Jones demanded that Cowboy players must stand, presumably at rapt attention, during the playing of the national anthem, it was in keeping with Trump and the NFL’s long standing, deep rah rah of the military, the flag, and endless ritual patriotic displays before games.Trump is holding Kap captive to the NFL’s rigid, unbending and unyielding arrogance of power, insular structure and mindset that is virtually immune from any outside influence. This was evident in every challenge to the NFL elite, be it the threat of player strikes, contract negotiations, the dust up over CTE trauma and dangers, the criticism it gets for shaking down cities and states to put taxpayers on the hook for everything from luxury boxes to new stadiums. Then there’s Washington owner Dan Snyder’s nose thumb at anyone who tells him he must drop the offensive “Redskins” moniker.The NFL has the muscle to keep their books hush hush, demand the players play two more games, thus radically increasing the hazard, knock down every chance it gets to slash the player’s revenue take, and not guarantee any long-term health benefits to the players.Trump hasn’t uttered a mumbling word of criticism about any of that. And he won’t. Because he is in lockstep politically and emotionally with the NFL and the way they do business. And they are with him. If Kap is an SOB to Trump, he’s an SOB to the owners, even if they’d never say it publicly. And since many fans aren’t shy about calling Kap that publicly, and much worse, that effectively seals the deal insuring that he’ll never play another down in the NFL.Trump will do everything he can to make sure it stays that way. His name call of Kap just punctuated that.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His latest book is, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

 Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders on Sunday, September 10 staged a mass Knee In for Colin Kaeprnick on the street in front of the L.A. Coliseum before the start of the L.A. Rams game. “The Kaepernick Knee In sent the strong message that thousands support Kaepernick’s right to protest,” says Hutchinson, “And are outraged at the NFL’s continued refusal to offer him a fair shot at playing in the league again.”See More

The Great Debate: Did Bernie Cause Hillary to Lose?OnThe Hutchinson Report Pacifica Radio Townhall of the Air Saturday September 9 9:00 AM PST Noon EST90.7 FM Streamed at kpfk.org FB LivestreamedCall In: 818-985-5735The Brutal Truth is that Sanders Did Damage ClintonEarl Ofari Hutchinson Hillary Clinton has finally taken the gloves off and spoke her mind about her Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders. She flatly charged that Sanders hurt her White House bid. She got very specific and claimed that the “lasting damage” he did to her campaign did much to put Trump in the Oval Office. She took the big broad side at Sanders in her new book, What Went Wrong.  Now that she has made that charge against Sanders, the question is, “Is she right? The brutal truth is there is more truth than vindictive hyperbole in her blame game assault on Sanders. It’s true that Sanders personally voted for Clinton, campaigned for Clinton, and urged his supporters to back Clinton. But, 3 recent surveys showed that in the 3 states that put Trump in the Oval Office, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, a number of voters who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary in those states crossed over and voted for Trump in the general election. They were registered Democrats. They did not simply stay home, cast a vote for a third-party candidate, Jill Stein, or write Sanders name in. They actually voted for Trump, the candidate who seemingly represented almost everything that Sanders’ abhorred. To take that step, a lot of these voters had to really, really, loathe Clinton to the point where they would do anything to keep her out of the White House. This included supping with the political Devil, in this case Trump. So, how much should Sanders, even though he firmly backed Clinton, be blamed for his most rabid backers breaking ranks and crossing the political Rubicon to vote for Trump? Clinton says he poisoned the political well with his drumbeat attacks on her as a war mongering, handmaiden for corporate interests, hard line beltway Democrat. This did give Trump some ammunition to con voters into thinking that he’d somehow be different from her and any other establishment politician, and really do something for the beleaguered, forgotten, hard pressed workers who watched as their jobs and livelihood and future fled to distant shores. No matter how much Sanders talked about the threat of Trump, and urged Democratic Party unity, thousands of Bernie backers didn’t hear any of that. The loud echo in their ears was that Clinton was just no good, and putting her in the White House would just be Trump by another name. This slammed the door hard on the lock down, requisite party unity needed to beat back the Trump onslaught. There’s the counter intuitive argument that says why pick on Sanders’ backers for the Clinton defeat, didn’t a lot of African-American voters stay home on Election day? And more disgracefully, almost 10 percent of Blacks voted for Trump. Isn’t this the voter demographic that Democrats absolutely must have come out in huge numbers to offset the GOP’s bread and butter conservative, blue collar, rural, white male voters? A big Black vote turnout certainly made the difference for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Yes, many Blacks did stay home, and many made their dissatisfaction, even bitterness, with and toward both Hillary and Bill plain on such things as Bill’s shove through of the draconian crime bill, this packed the jails and prisons with Black men, the gut of welfare, and the scrap of financial industry checks.  But the Trump Black voters were in the heavily minority cities and counties that went for Clinton overwhelmingly anyway so their vote was no factor in Trump’s win. The same could be said for the Black vote drop-off in 2016. The numbers were still high enough, though, not to be the causative factor in Clinton’s loss. The finger still points back to the legion of Sanders’ backers in the swing states whose bellyache over Clinton was severe enough to cause them to punch the fateful vote card for Trump. Clinton says she wanted to say that at the time and warn of this danger, but she was told by Obama and others in the party to keep her mouth shut about that. And instead of hitting back harder against Sanders in their debates and on the campaign trail as she wanted, she had to stay mute.Obama and other key Democrats said that this would further piss off Sanders supporters against her. As it turned out, she could have raged at Sanders during the campaign for sowing enough division to insure her defeat but it wouldn’t have likely changed anything. Many of those that turn-coated from Sanders to Trump would still have cast their vote for him.Is that Bernie’s fault as Clinton complains? No, if one believes that Sanders had no sway over his backers. Yes, if one accepts the reality that his attacks on Clinton were so fervent that they hit home hard with his most die-hard supporters. The problem for Clinton was that there werejust enough of them to tip the presidential scales to Trump, and that’s the brutal truth about Sanders.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.Blame Hillary Not Bernie for her FailureKirk TanterI cannot disagree with Hillary Clinton more about Bernie Sanders - nor anyone else - damaging Hillary’s candidacy for President. It was the Clintons that adopted the defunct Lee Atwater strategy of bashing the opponent to win an election.Hillary did not have a strong clearly stated platform on what she do for the American people. Many Black folks this 2016 Presidential race voted for Trump, or did not vote at all. The deciding Blue and Swing States that Trump won had low Black voter turnout. Blaming opponents and obstacles in her new book is irrelevant and have nothing to do with her defeat to Donald J. Trump. It is as if opponents should have fell in line with her Presidential aspirations.The Clintons are self-proclaimed ‘Half-Republicans’ aka ‘Blue Dogs’ or the 90’s term of ‘Tri-Angulaters’. Repealing the Crime Bill – important to Black Folks - was not of staunch interest to Hillary. Hillary never said that she would fight to repeal the bill, and further, if repealed, remove all of the people from prison receiving minimum maximum lengthy prison terms. And despite Black Lives Matter protesting at her speeches on the Crime Bill issue, all she could aggravatingly say to them, is that they should have ‘set up a meeting with her’. Colin Kaepernick nor the Black Lives Matter protestors are seemingly il-allowed to peacefully protest in America, like other Americans have the right to do.The historic “Tough on Black Folks” bills from Bill Clinton you mentioned in the article were all harmful to African-Americans. Why didn’t Hillary campaign in a tough manner to reverse these bills you referenced?Other bills and inactions were not forgotten. Bill Clinton did nothing to prevent, nor stop, the Rwandan ethnic-cleansing where an average of 10-thousand people a day for three consecutive months were slaughtered in Rwanda, Africa. Hillary Clinton was there as first lady - it was on the national news - and she could have cleared the air by verbally disagreeing publically with the former President. She could have denounced Bill’s lack of a response during her 2016 Presidential campaign.  The Minority Tax-Certificate in Broadcasting was repealed by Congress in our radio broadcast field Dr. Hutchinson during the Clinton Presidency, coupled with Bill’s signing of the Telecommunication Bill of 1996 forcing Black Broadcast owners to sell or else be ostracized advertisement-wise by new owners of multiple stations. There were 146 Black-Owned broadcast companies in 1995 compared to just sixty-eight Black Station owners in 2013. Hillary could have campaigned demanding a resurgence of more minority voices on the airwaves, fighting to level the playing field.I guess it was Bernie’s fault that near 10 percent of Black Folk supported Donald J. Trump for President, while the Clinton campaign advertising dollars were low to nil with the aforementioned 68 or so, to date, Black-Owned Broadcast Companies, taking our vote for granted again. Combining the near ten percent Blacks that voted for Trump with the surprising high non-voting African-Americans, reader polls can state that this “Disinterested in Hillary” voting block is the reason for Hillary’s Presidential demise. Is this because of Bernie Sanders, Russia, Comey, WikiLeaks, etc…?Conscience African-American voters from the Bill Clinton era and today’s next generation of even bolder conscience Blacks are having none of this Clinton-like ‘blue dog’ ‘take our vote for granted’ game playing anymore. The Sixties conscious Black folks are revoltingly proud of this new serious conscience generation.The demand was for Hillary to reverse those dangerous ‘Bill bills’ you mentioned Earl. The demand was also for new legislation that would benefit us directly, in exchange for vote of confidence. We did not hear this clearly stated enough with conviction by Hillary R. Clinton. Not even a ‘Hillary would fight’ this Republican Congress to make and attempt to get things done. Bernie Sanders seemingly impossible platform tasks were at least planned out meticulously, and you got the sense that ‘with our help’ he would fight for us ferociously.We are tired of choosing the lesser of two evils. Hillary wanted to run un-opposed as Obama did in 2012, but Bernie ran and had a greater-than-expected successful campaign. The DNC brass devised strategies to attack Bernie, his religion etc… via emails, while promoting positively for their chosen one Hillary Clinton. We thought the DNC represented Democrats.  Secondly, like Obama, Donald Trump drew more people at his campaign appearances. Trump drew Hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) more people in total. It was a simple S.T.P. (see the people) sales success. Trump campaigned personally those last few weeks of the Presidential campaign to the Swing and closely contested mid-western Blue States barely tilting voters his way to win the election.In a nutshell, Hillary Clinton promised absolutely nothing concrete, but did very well bash-campaigning against both Bernie and the Donald, receiving some bashing back, which is par for the course. Sanders and Trump though laid “their plans” out with strong base-platforms. Bernie consistently campaigned on making College more affordable (even Free), Free Health for All, and fighting the Corporate/Wealthy Powers-that-be. Trump campaigned on his Economic and Anti-Immigration platform, establishing himself as being a non-beltway ‘drain-the-swamp’ candidate, and yes, his popular Crooked Hillary bashing.Hillary LOST to Trump because Trump out campaigned her. And Mrs. Bill Clinton would have also lost to Bernie Sanders if he got into the race a year earlier. Bernie’s message and gritty fight was much more appealing to the Democratic and Independent voter. Hillary did win against Bernie Sanders, however later than expected in the Democratic Primary.Hillary Clinton failed at communicating a convincing platform appealing to the Democratic and Independent voters; over 50 percent of women voted for Donald Trump for President; and we hope that the Democratic Party does not ever again take voting blocks for granted nor crown a Democratic nominee for President just for showing up._______________________________________________________________________________________Kirk Tanter is a broadcast veteran, currently Director of Operations for the Reach Media News-Talk Network, a Member of the National Action Network, and blogs at kirktanter.blogspot.com.See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonThe reaction in many quarters to Hillary Clinton’s reflective, candid assessment in her book, What Happened, of her devastating loss to Trump tells a lot about why she lost. She’s still being raked over the coals. She’s still called too guarded, not honest enough, too stiff, and even “robotic.” This fits in with the almost set-in-stone depiction of Clinton as cold, aloof, and totally unable to connect with real people.This supposedly stands in stark contrast to Trump who appeared to be the consummate people person who spoke the common man and woman’s language. Then there’s the standard cherry pick at the most petty, and sensationalist quip in What Happened. That’s the one where she says during her October 2016 debate with Trump, that he was a “creepy” guy who made her extremely uncomfortable. This makes it appear that Clinton is a trembling terrified, whiner, and loser. In truth, Clinton doesn’t shrink from frank, straight talk criticism of her and the campaign’s missteps, spiced with important insights into what could and should have been done different. These are the kind of precious insights that are anything but would-a-could- apologetics from a sore loser. They offer much of value for Democratic candidates and incumbents in what will be a bruising mid-term election in 2018, with much at stake for the Democratic Party desperate to put a dent in the GOP’s number. This is their only hope to check Trump and the GOP’s drive to roll back the 20th century.The real answer to what happened to Clinton in 2016 won’t be found in her bare-her-chest book. You’d have to go back more than a decade when the GOP took dead aim at then Senator Clinton as a potential presidential contender. Its plan was pretty simple. It entailed digging up every scintilla of old and new dirt it could dredge up against her to torpedo her candidacy even before it was an official candidacy. The dirt were videos that continually harped on the old trumped up Clinton scandals from Bill’s days in the White House from Whitewater to the Lewinsky scandal; her support for healthcare reform, which was the prelude to the much-harangued Affordable Care Act. Then doubling down by mocking the Clinton’s finances, allegedly outrageous speaking fees, and painting their foundation as almost a RICO style shake down racket.Then tripling down with the never ending, almost soap opera harangue, hector, and pillorying of her for her alleged cover-up of Benghazi. The quadrupling down on her with the even more never-ending harangue of her for alleged recklessly irresponsible, even criminal, use of, and then cover-up of, her State Department emails.The aim was to render her a dangerously divisive candidate at best and at worst, a callous, conniving, cheat, and a crook. Trump wasted no time in picking up on that narrative. He cannily tarred Clinton in tweets, interviews, and stops on the campaign trail as “Crooked Hillary.” It paid big dividends for Trump and the GOP. It sunk her one time very favorable public approval ratings lower and lower as the campaign progressed. It gave Trump a veneer of respectability, even credibility, among many voters who had previously laughed him and his candidacy off. It energized and got more GOP voters to the polls in the key swing states.Worst of all, it soured many Democrats on her candidacy and made Bernie Sanders insurgent campaign more appealing than ever to many Democrats, especially young Democratic voters. This all added up to the numbers that Clinton absolutely had to have in the crucial must win states doing a vanishing act on Election Day.The one intangible that always loomed over her campaign was how much the doubt many voters had that her past, her views, and her political style would mark her as a relentless target for GOP attacks once in the White House and would hamstring her effectiveness in getting things done. The GOP openly and subtly rammed this point home, painting a horrendous picture of a Clinton White House that would be nothing but a virtual rerun of the rancor, infighting, and carping that was the singular feature of the GOP’s nonstop, unbroken assault on former President Obama. In short, as president, Clinton allegedly would not be able to get much done no matter her agenda with Congress, and the big loser would again be the country. The lines would be rigidly drawn. The brutal warfare between a Clinton White House and a GOP-dominated Congress would quickly spill over into the public and the media.Meanwhile, Trump’s train station load of baggage almost paled in comparison to Clinton’s as the media kept the harsh and relentless glare on her alleged mountainous liabilities. By that point, to a wide swatch of the public she simply was a horribly flawed candidate, who was just as worthy as Trump to have the voters say pox on both their houses.This is a sad, sorry, sordid history that Clinton had no control over. It ultimately cost her the White House. That’s what happened, and she need make no apologies for her beat down.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonIn 1927, one of California’s hot go-go real estate developers and entrepreneurs, Walter Leimert, had a brainstorm. He would buy land, parcel out tracts, and oversee the home building craze in a new subdivision to be called Leimert Park. Leimert had earlier developed home and commercial building projects in Northern California. He would use the same model in his new Leimert Park subdivision.The model for his success in the other developments, and now Leimert Park, rested on two simple ideas. One was to make the area, an upscale, toney, garden spot for home buyers. The other was to make sure those buyers, were white. The “whites only” Leimert Park that Leimert envisioned and would back up with the force of law, public policy, and solid white homeowner support for nearly three decades was not just a momentary, or a racially restrictive ownership characteristic of those times. For Walter Leimert, his Leimert Park, would be for white’s only forever. He made that clear in a big, bold, brazen, open letter in the very first sentence, “I am bringing to Los Angeles the Community Association Plan of protective restrictions -- new here, but well established throughout the Lakeshore Highlands property in Oakland and Piedmont. And in just in case, someone didn’t get the point, Leimert punctuated the open letter imposing his “whites only” ownership policy with the last three words stating in caps, FOR ALL TIME.”For the next two decades Leimert’s dream of a white’s only middle-class, home owner’s enclave in the center of Los Angeles was literally written in legal stone with his racially restrictive covenants firmly written into every deed. The white only barrier was so unyielding that black entertainers, athletes, and businesspersons, no matter how wealthy, knew that buying a home in Lemert Park was off-limits to them.In 1948, the Supreme Court finally declared that Leimert’s, and other white developer’s, racially restrictive covenants were not enforceable. However, a high court ruling was one thing, enforcing it was another. For nearly a decade after the court ruling, Leimert Park remained almost exclusively a whites only area. White homeowners used a myriad of subterfuges and dodges to ensure that no blacks bought homes in Leimert. However, the first trickle of black home buyers began in the mid-1950s. By the 1960s, white flight was in full stampede mode. Leimert Park, then, as other previously all-white neighborhoods in other cities, quickly turned from all-white to mostly black.But even as Leimert changed color, many of the black homeowners still noted that the racially restrictive covenants that Leimert had imposed for decades still were in their property deeds. They weren’t enforceable. But they were still there. Some took this as simply a reminder of a hideous by-gone past in which blacks were deliberately and legally kept out of Leimert Park while being walled into the oldest, most dilapidated, and worst kept areas of South Los Angeles with the highest unemployment, lousy public services and miserably, underserved failing public schools.They were wrong. Leimert’s racially restrictive covenants in Leimert Park were anything but a product of a far gone past. They are the foundation of a very real, and very present, racially engineered and subtly maintained home crisis of today. Repeated studies have found that L.A. is still one of the nation’s most racially segregated cities. With a big largely black and Hispanic, Central and South part of the city ringed by upscale white middle-class neighborhoods. The deeds on the homes in these areas do not, and can’t, have any racial restrictions on their sale, However, they don’t need them. Price, neighbor attitudes, and location, do the trick of insuring that the neighborhoods stay all or mostly white. This in effect accomplishes Walter Leimert’s vision in his open letter announcing racially restrictive covenants, “By this plan of restrictions the control of the property comes into the hands of the property owners themselves when the sub-divider steps out; and they can and do maintain the beautiful appearance of the property, both from an architectural and a landscaping point of view...”The call to rename Leimert Park Plaza in honor of a Los Angeles civil rights historical or prominent African-American notable such as Claude Hudson or famed Black architect Paul R. Williams can’t be separated from the battle to scrub the names of Confederates and others off monuments and public places who propagated racial hate, bigotry, and division. In Leimert’s case, his legacy is the legacy of building and maintaining whites only housing that still trap thousands of Blacks in poor, grossly underserved, still rigidly racial segregated neighborhoods in L.A. today. And in insuring that neighborhoods that were formerly white and middle class are quickly re-segregated when blacks in substantial numbers move in.The ultimate insult is that the area that he created and did all he could for decades to keep Blacks out of carries his name. This is the supremely enduring tribute to his very successful fight to institutionalize racial segregation. This is why it’s past time to take his name off the area’s centerpiece, Leimert Park Plaza.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More