Everyone's Blog Posts - The Hutchinson Report News

Blacks for Trump 2020—Trump’s Latest Con?

2017-02-19T21:07:56.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

They had the best, closest and most visible spot in the crowd behind Trump at his much-touted recent pep rally in Melbourne, Florida. They being the handful of blacks that enthusiastically waved the “Blacks for Trump” signs behind him. The black Trump boosters didn’t stop there. They promoted and ballyhooed their website primping Trumps presumed re-election campaign in 2020, complete with a re-election website Gods2.com.

Now in case one thinks this is a recent Trump stunt or stunt by some black odd balls to get their 15 minutes in the bask of Trump’s presidential glow, it’s a little more involved. This bunch popped up at a Trump rally in Florida back in October a couple of weeks before his win. There very conspicuous appearance on the political scene has prompted more than a few conspiratorial musings about whether and how much they’re being paid by Trump operatives, what does Trump know about them. This is coupled with some murky, even unsavory, facts about the one identifiable cheerleader of the Trump cause in the group, Michael the Black Man.

He’s got a shadowy past that once garnered a lot of media attention when a few years back he emerged as head of a fringe black nationalist/religious cult in South Florida. He, and more than a dozen other members of the group, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder (not convicted). Since then he and other group members have been hauled into court several times on various charges, but nothing has stuck. He’s parlayed this notoriety into one of the biggest scams or beliefs depending on how one wants to look at Blacks for Trump on the political stage.

This still doesn’t answer the dangling question just what Trump really knows about his vocal and suddenly media grabbing coterie of black boosters? Trump certainly didn’t have any problem snatching one of their placards at the rally last October and waving it around. Whether he knows or cares about the shady history of the principal organizer is unknown. However, the group isn’t slithering under the public radar. Its website is chock full of racial rants, homespun bizarre conspiracy concoctions about war, religion, and the secret global cabal that supposedly runs the planet.

This stuff seemingly would be more than even a Trump could stomach. But that’s probably less important than the fact that they are out front, visible, and imminently promotable as being supposed proof that he’s got some blacks beyond the handful of ex-jocks and entertainers he’s met with who are willing to wave signs backing him.

This also kind of, sort of, boosts the case that he makes that he’s got much more black support and votes than anybody ever believed he could possibly get. He actually did edge close to getting into double figures with black votes. His talk of blacks being used and spit out when no longer needed for votes by Democrats, underserved black neighborhoods that are supposedly a mess with lousy public schools, high crime and violence, and chronic joblessness and poverty got some traction. His non-stop trash of Hillary Clinton played to the latent and not so latent loathing by some blacks of the Clintons for allegedly there being the architects of mass incarceration, and the welfare gut.

Trump also can trot out a bunch of black apologists and spokespersons to toot his line that he genuinely wants to be an inclusive President and harbors no racial animus toward blacks. This ploy finds a soft spot with more than a few blacks, most notably black conservative evangelicals, who are always deeply susceptible to GOP conservative pitches on some issues such as abortion.

Now there is no evidence as of yet that any money has changed hands between anyone, or any group, connected with Trump to get black placard wavers into the stands in well-positioned posts behind Trump at public appearances. The only thing that really counts for the moment is that by being there they add an odd, curious, element to the usually overwhelming crowd of fevered shouting white Trump acolytes we see. This is exactly the kind of element that would appeal to a Trump who revels in doing everything humanly and politically possible to ensure that his presidency is the most bizarre, contentious and controversial in the annals of American politics. Blacks for Trump 2020 fits neatly into that mold.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of In Scalia’s Shadow: The Trump Supreme Court ( Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Just What the Congressional Black Caucus Should Say to Trump

2017-02-17T19:35:38.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

At his recent combative press conference, Trump raised eyebrows and hackles with his answer to a black reporter who demanded to know when he would meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. Trump abruptly tossed it back to her and cavalierly asked if she could arrange it. It was a galling presumption and a variation on the old racist crack, “Well they’re black so they must all know each other.” It was even more galling to presume that a capitol hill beat reporter could simply pick up the phone and arrange a meeting with a group of congressional leaders. But that was Trump. And notwithstanding him being who he is, almost certainly he will eventually meet with the Caucus. His showy, worthless, photo-op meetings with a handful of handpicked Black entertainers, preachers, and washed up athletes have worn thin. So, if for no other reason than to keep up the façade that he wants to hear what blacks have to say about his administration and policy issues, he’ll meet with the Caucus.

The question is what will he say to them and more importantly what will the Caucus say to him? A few days after the election, last November, Trump scribbled a few policy points on paper dealing with what purports to be a “black agenda.” It was mostly a warmed over, conservative mish mash of talk about combatting urban crime, boosting business, stopping illegal immigration, cutting taxes, and expanding charter schools and vouchers. Nearly every one of his policy points are anathema to most CBC members. Their opposition is based on much more than just the deep racial polarization Trump has done more than any presidential candidate in living memory to fan. It’s also about party loyalty and two wildly divergent political world views.

The Congressional Black Caucus’s loyalty to the Democratic Party has been unshakeable for four decades. It has backed and often taken the lead in the fight for every piece of substantive legislation on education, health, employment, and even foreign policy that has had major impact on the nation’s well-being. The Caucus has refused to be bullied, badgered, and steam-rolled by the GOP. It has prodded, cajoled, exhorted, and rallied black voters to keep the faith with the Democratic Party, despite the monumental sense of apathy, alienation and even hostility from many black voters that the Democrats have been weak, tepid, and at times non-existent when it comes to fighting for Black interests. In the Trump era, the CBC will be more than just ornamental window dressing. Democrats will need the CBC to play a key role in holding the line in Congress against Trump and the GOP’s assault on Obamacare, voting rights protections, and job and education program funding. Democrats will also need the Caucus to play an even more aggressive role in revving up the party’s African-American base for the 2018 mid-term election and to gain or at least not lose any more Democratic congressional seats.

This means next to nothing to Trump. But what does mean something is what, if any, political advantage he can get out of trying to neutralize the Caucus and making at least some of its members less pugnacious in hammering him. The two points that even remotely offer any semblance of a negotiating chip between him and the Caucus would be on jobs and how to create more of them in inner city neighborhoods and his bold declaration that he believes in and wants to promote equal justice under the law. The Caucus will have to revamp an argument that it repeatedly used with former President Obama and that that’s to do more, spend more, and create more job and skills training programs that target the one group that has chronically suffered more than any other group from poverty and unemployment, and that’s young African-American males.

The Caucus can tie that directly into poverty and pariah status of young Black males in America’s economy. This has fueled the very crime and violence that Trump rails against in Chicago and other inner city areas. They’ll have to tell him that his saber rattle threat to send the feds into Chicago to quash the murder violence there won’t do anything to solve the problem as long as young black males are jobless, rootless, alienated, and embittered, and see gangs, guns, drugs, and murder as the only outlet for that anger and frustration.

The Caucus could also demand that Trump do something that he absolutely refused to do during the campaign. And that’s to go to an impoverished big city Black neighborhood and listen to what the residents have to say about crime, police abuse, and joblessness. And do it in the company not of his handpicked Blacks, but members of the Caucus. Sound farfetched, of course, but it really shouldn’t for a President who did publicly say that he wants to be President of all the people. The Caucus can remind him of this and demand that he act like the President he claims he wants to be. He can start by meeting with the Caucus and listening to what it has to say.

President Pence

2017-02-11T23:48:04.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The much-respected Public Policy Polling group in a recent poll blared the headline “Americans now evenly divided on Impeaching Trump.” This is no surprise. The presidential election results were barely finalized in November when the furious talk, speculation, and outright calls began for Trump’s impeachment. Since then, not a moment has passed without an article, a petition, a constitutional or ethics expert, or a Democratic congressperson musing about or demanding impeachment. Trump hasn’t committed any act yet that even remotely rises to the high bar of impeachment offenses. And even if he had, or in the future does, the GOP controlled House and the GOP controlled Senate would have to approve it and then try and convict him. The chances of that happening are slim to none—at this point.

If the point is ever reached where Trump is deemed expendable by the GOP the presidential succession is clear; you get VP Mike Pence. Now some of the more conspiratorial minded think that this was the GOP game plan all along. Elect Trump, let him stumble, and bumble, make a complete buffoon of himself, and then trip over some shady business deal or blatant obstruction of justice or some falsehood that endangers national security, and then he’s toast. At that point, Pence who knows the legislative process through and through, is tightly connected to the GOP establishment, and is a proven administrator steps in.

The conspiracy angle is a colossal stretch. However, the desirability of Pence running the White House show is not. Pence in fact would be the ultra-conservative’s dream come true. Every major civil liberties, civil rights, and education, and environmental groups have consistently given him straight Fs on their report cards for elected officials. While every conservative and ultra-conservative group has given him straight As on their legislative report card.

The checklist of Pence positions on the issues reads like a what’s what of the Heritage Foundation and ultra-conservative think tank positions. His anti-position on same sex marriage, public school emphasis, union protections, hate crimes laws, corporate checks, and equitable corporate taxing, separation of church and state are well known and were well-honed during his stint as Indiana governor. Unlike Trump in the White House, he was able to translate his fixed-in-stone believes into law and public policy. He did it because he knew how to skillfully work the levels of political power, made no wildly inflammatory statements, and was personally pleasant and affable. In other words, he worked stealthily, quietly, and largely under the media and public radar scope to do his political dirty work. Pence’s crafty, under public view style was on full display when with no fanfare, public statements, or defiant tweets, cast the tie-breaking voted to confirm the atrocious Betty DeVos as Trump’s Education Secretary.

On issues, such as building a border wall, immigrant restrictions, Obamacare, and public education, Pence would not do or say anything inflammatory to stir tens of thousands to immediately sprint to the streets in anger, or have Hollywood celebrities thundering at him from nationally televised film award ceremonies, or have legions of advocacy groups furiously taking out ads and sending out action alerts on something outrageous that came of his mouth. However, the result would be the same. He’d figure out a way to get the money and the congressional support to build a border barrier. He’d institute tighter immigration controls with the full support of Congress. He’d come up with a plan that the GOP and maybe even some Democrats could agree on to dump Obamacare. He’d gradually increase funding and resources, and shape policy directives for vouchers, religious schools, and charter schools. He’d get rid of the Common Core requirement along the way.

He’d do it all very quietly and with a bland smiling face. He’d do what Trump only talks about doing, and that’s manipulate the political process to get rid of political enemies while changing the policies of his they oppose. A textbook example was his spat with Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction during his tenure as Governor. She opposed many of his education policies. So, what did he do? He simply created a new education agency, funded it, and then reworked the Superintendent position to where the superintendent had to be appointed by the Board of Education. Now guess who appointed the members of the Board? That person was not someone not named Governor Pence.

President Pence would not instantly and perpetually mobilize millions here and abroad against his policies. There would be no juicy, media pandering, sensational sound bites. His speeches would be tightly scripted, carefully calibrated, and strictly on policy emphasis. He would be continually closeted with the GOP House and Senate leadership to insure the smooth and coordinated radical administrative, judicial and legislative changes that ultra-conservatives have long pined for on everything from abortion to climate change to unlimited Wall Street and Corporate giveaways to public education to the SCOTUS.

So, remember, impeach Trump, and you get President Pence. But, unlike Trump, he’d do it all with a bland poker face, and a smile.

The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestream--Impeach Trump and Get Pence

2017-02-10T18:00:00.000Z

Saturday February 11

9:00 AM PST Noon EST

The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestream

Polls Now Show Americans are Evenly Divided on Impeaching Trump.

The Hutchinson Report Livestream Asks

Would You Impeach Trump to Get Pence?
The demand and cry to impeach Trump has been relentless since he took office. But what if Trump would or could be impeached? Would you want Pence? Weigh in on the pros and cons of the Trump impeachment demand.

The DNC’s Challenge –How to Win Again in the Trump Era

2017-02-07T16:41:24.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The Democratic National Committee was by any standard a wreck and a ruin during the 2016 presidential campaign. It got pounded for misstep after misstep that included: poor, and disconnected leadership, leaked emails, gross favoritism, petty infighting, blatant manipulation of the primaries, and gross cluelessness about the Trump threat. How much of this is past history in the Trump era is the big question that will in part be answered when the Democrats pick a new DNC head in late February.

The jockeying for the top spot has been ferocious with one time front runner Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison the early betting favorite. He has Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and every progressive behind him. He has their loud warnings that if the Democrats continue to be the centrist, compromising, top heavy corporate backed and run party, it can kiss millions of progressive voter’s good-bye again. It will have about as much energy as a burned-out battery in trying to rev up voters for the crucial 2018 mid-terms. The counter is that the Democrats flopped precisely because Trump bagged a big chunk of the angry, alienated, and frustrated blue collar and rural whites. The Democrats can get most or many of them back by crafting a message to them about runaway jobs and economic security. This supposedly requires a Democrat in the mold of Obama not Sanders to do it. There are two truths behind the clashing views of what a DNC chair should be and where he or she should take the party.

The Democratic National Committee is tasked with the chore of spotting and recruiting able talent to run as Democrats for office, then helping to raise money for the Democratic candidates and incumbents, putting volunteer and paid professional boots on the ground for their campaigns, and mounting an all-out get out the vote blitz in the weeks leading up to the election to put Democrats locally and nationally over the top.

This takes a well-oiled, well-coordinated ground game to put as many Democrats as possible in Congress and to keep the ones who are there there.

That’s only the start. It also takes someone who can inspire, cajole, and engage legions of Hispanics, blacks, and youth voters who were MIA from the polls in 2016. An even greater number of them have been chronic no-shows in mid-term elections. Ellison is the progressive’s progressive who says that he’s the man who can do what Sanders did in the Democratic primaries and fire-up a big chunk of these potential voters.

The other bitter truth is that Trump won many disconnected and frustrated white voters because he welded their latent racist, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, pseudo patriotic sentiment to their loathing of, and alienation from, the GOP and the Democrat’s beltway, out of touch with Main Street crowd. That’s a tough hurdle for a progressive or a centrist Democrat to overcome. The better option for the DNC remains padding the number of Hispanics, blacks, women, and youth in the five or six states that elect presidents.

The gaping disparity between the GOP and Democrats in voter turnout in the primaries was not in the tens of thousands but millions. The GOP energized its base like it hadn’t been done in years, as well as firing up lots of young persons who in years’ past would likely not have been caught dead voting for a GOP presidential candidate. At the same time, the Democratic turnout has been to be charitable tepid and this in the face of the spirited, impassioned face-off between Clinton and Sanders whose populist, hit wall Street hard message, touched a huge nerve among legions of young and not so young voters.

The universal consensus is that future elections will come down to which party can get the greatest number of voters to the polls to vote for their candidate in every race from the White House to congressional and statewide offices. It’s a numbers game pure and simple. In the 2014 midterms and in the states Trump needed to win in 2016, the GOP showed that it could get those numbers out. The Democrats can do the same. After all, despite the GOP’s well-tuned ground game and Trump’s phony man-of-the-people, anti-Washington establishment hucksterism, the Democrats still had a voter edge of several million over the GOP. This is huge for whoever winds up in the top spot at the DNC.

The DNC chair will also have the anger of millions at Trump’s outrages to build on. However, if the DNC is just more warmed over soup of the past, then the numbers won’t mean much. The question is can and will the Democrats be able to make their numbers bulge over the GOP and the rage at Trump mean something? That’s the big question and challenge for the Democratic National Committee and its next chair.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of In Scalia’s Shadow: The Trump Supreme Court (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Civil Rights Leaders Call Out African-American Leaders Who Met With Trump

2017-02-05T19:27:47.000Z

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders on Sunday, February 5 listed the names and organizations of those Black leaders who met with President Trump for the recent Black History Month celebration. They demanded that as leaders who purport to represent a wide segment of the African-American communities they use their influence with, and access to, Trump to hold him accountable for his past and present offensive racial actions.

“Trump’s hostile stance on issues of voting rights, job and housing discrimination, Obamacare and health care, police abuse, and immigrant rights are extreme sore points for millions of Blacks and are a litmus test on Trump’s sincerity about bridging the gap with Black voters,” says Hutchinson,” The Blacks who met and will meet with Trump have his ear and if they are true leaders in the Black community will use their position to demand an end to racial polarization and division his administration has and is fostering.”

The Black Leaders and Their Affiliations Who Met With Trump:

Mr. Armstrong Williams, Howard Stirk Holding Broadcast Group
Mr. Darrell Scott, Pastor, New Spirit Revival Council
Ms. Belinda Scott, Wife of Darrel Scott
Mr. James Davis, National Diversity Coalition
Mr. Gerard T. Robinson, American Enterprise Institute
Mr. Earl Matthews, Lt. Col US Army (Retired)
Mr. Paris Dennard, Thurgood Marshall's College Fund/ CNN Contributor
The Honorable Bill Cleveland, Former Vice Mayor of Alexandria, VA, Retired Capitol Hill Police Officer
Mrs. Ruth Cleveland
African American Members of the Trump Administration
Ms. Omarosa Manigault, Director of Communications, OPL
Mr. Landon Davis, Department of the Interior
Mr. Ashley Bell, Department of State
Ms. Lynne Martine Patton, Department of Housing and Urban Development
Mr. Daris Meeks, Director of Domestic Policy, OVP
Mr. Ja'Ron Smith, Domestic Policy, Urban Development and Revitalization
Ms. Mary Elizabeth Wells, Political Affairs
Ms. Leah LeVell, Communications
Ms. Monica Alexander, OPL
Ms. Kara McKee

The GOP Has the Gall to Scream About Obstructionism

2017-02-03T16:49:56.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

“I don’t remember us treating their nominees this way,”

This is what an apoplectic Utah GOP Senator Orin Hatch raged at his Democratic Senate colleagues when they had the temerity to boycott confirmation hearings on two Trump appointees. Hatch, of course, had to feign righteous anger, indignation and disgust at what be branded the Democrat’s obstructionism in refusing to show up for a possible vote on the nominations. That’s tantamount to a bank robber railing with indignation at their bank account being plundered by an identity thief.

Hatch knows full well how the obstruction game is played. The moment that former President Obama set his toe in the White House in January, 2009, Hatch’s titular arty leader, Senate Minority and later Majority leader Mitch McConnell, openly and loudly boasted that he would make him a one term president. The GOP’s far more telling aim, though, was to make his presidency a failed presidency. To do that, the GOP wielded the one formidable weapon that it had. That was the power to say no to any and everything that Obama proposed. That especially included his appointees. If the GOP screeched loud and long enough and muddied the stream with much misinformation and disinformation about a top Obama pick it might get the nominee canned.

The near textbook example of that was the GOP’s full-throated assault on the possible nomination of UN ambassador Susan Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Rice was lambasted from pillar to post as too weak, too conciliatory, and too dovish on the issues of military defense and terrorism. Obama withdrew her name. Many of Obama’s picks fared no better, the GOP controlled Senate in 2015 confirmed fewer of Obama’s picks for all positions then it did for any other president in the previous thirty years.

This was child’s play, however, compared to the GOP’s massive just say “no” to Obama’s judicial picks. Here’s some embarrassing numbers. In George W. Bush’s last year in office, 2008, the Democratic Senate majority confirmed 23 federal district court and four appeals court judges. This was pretty much the norm through every year of Bush’s two term tenure. He would nominate judges as vacancies occurred just as all presidents have done and they would be with routinely confirmed. In fact, Reagan, Bush Sr. and even Democrats Jimmy Carter and Clinton had nearly twice the number of their judicial picks confirmed with the Democrats with almost no dissent to any of them approving their confirmation then Obama toward the end of their tenures

Hatch and the GOP radically changed the game with Obama. He got the grand total of one circuit judge confirmed in 2015 and 2016, and a paltry number of district courts judges. The GOP slowed the Obama appointment and judicial train to a virtual halt by using every parliamentary trick at its disposal--filibuster, the threat of filibuster, endless time and scheduling delays, Senate holds, absenteeism, or just simply turning the nominee into the proverbial invisible man, and ignoring him or her. The numbers result: Bush got more than 90 percent of his judges confirmed while Obama checked in with less than 50 percent.

Even this doesn’t tell the entire grim story. The judges that Obama got through had to be virtually as pure as Cesar’s wife. There couldn’t be the slightest speck of perceived liberal judicial activism in their opinions and rulings. They had to be the epitome of judicial décor and legal straight-lacedness. Obama made sure of that. The GOP’s flagrant and outrageous obstructionism to Obama’s nominees had a dire unintended consequence that has come back to bite the Democrat’s in the backside with the GOP in the Senate driver’s seat.

The tactic forced a plainly frustrated then Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to go nuclear with the filibuster tactic. He scrapped its use by a Senate minority on any nomination other than a Supreme Court nomination. If the 60-vote rule were in effect now the Democrats would have enormous leverage in having their say over some of Trump’s more odious nominees to cabinet posts. But the GOP’s obstruction gall may even turn that rule inside out. Trump demands that the GOP leaders go nuclear on the 60-vote confirmation rule for a Supreme Court judge to get his Scalia clone SCOTUS pick, appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, through. If that happens, the slender wisp of an opposition tool to slow down Trump and the GOP would be blown away in the wind.

The GOP set a hideously unenviable record for obstructionism by not only getting rid of every Obama appointee it could but also blocking any initiative or legislative initiative he put forth at more than twice the rate of any previous Congress. The GOP takes pride in that record and feigns righteous disgust in at the mere thought of the Democrats trying to match it.

Countering Trump's Scalia Clone Supreme Court Pick Livestream

2017-01-31T05:03:52.000Z

Counter Trump Supreme Court Pick Livestream Broadcast

Tuesday January 31 5:30 PST 8:30 EST

The Supreme Court is the Jewel in the crown for Trump and the Right Wing in America. Trump has made clear he will pick another Antonin Scalia type to the High Court. Give Your Reaction to His Pick. And What Must be Done to Stop a Pick that will Devastate America for Decades to Come.

The Hutchinson Report Will List and Continually Give Out During the Broadcast the Names and Contact information for the 48 Democratic Senators and Demand they Filibuster the Pick.

Next Up--Getting Another Scalia on the Supreme Court

2017-01-29T22:29:38.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

“I encourage you to consider seriously, for example, the repeal or amendment of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which is an affront to federalism and an expensive burden that has far outlived its usefulness, and consider modifying other provisions of the Act that have led to extraordinary abuses of judicial power.”

This is what then Alabama Attorney General William Pryor Jr. told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee in 1997 looking at the impact of alleged “judicial activism” meaning opinions by moderate jurists that the right never likes. In 2005 he was confirmed as a federal appellate court judge. On the bench, Pryor has been the hardest of hard right-wingers in his rulings and opinions on abortion, gay rights, state’s rights, and countless crime and punishment issues.

Despite his impeccable hard right position, even Pryor may not pass muster as Trump’s ideal Scalia clone on the Supreme Court. His cardinal sin is that in two 2011 cases he actually upheld the rights of gays and a transgender woman in two discrimination cases, albeit on very narrow grounds. No matter, this made him suspect with the ultra-right. Now if Pryor flunks the hard right’s litmus test for Trump’s SCOTUS pick, then it takes no imagination to figure just what type of justice Trump might pick.

The names on his short list are cut from the same ideological cloth as Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who Trump also raved about as his kind of judge. They all have an impressive body of conservative rulings and opinions on hot button court cases. They all carry the good seal of conservative approval from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. They are almost all white males, and hard line opponents of abortion, same-sex marriage, voting rights expansion, and increased federal regulations.

There are two, and only two, faint possibilities to slow down the hard-right takeover of the High Court. One is that the GOP Senate leaders want to get a justice on the court with as little political bloodshed as possible. And to do that Trump would have to dig into his short list and find a judge whose court record is the least odious, has a light paper trial of rulings and opinions, and has made no polarizing public pronouncements. This directly ties to the other possibility which is to get the widest backing from Democrats to forestall any chance of a filibuster. The meetings that Trump has had with GOP and Democratic Senate leaders have been geared to get consensus on a pick who will not send everyone to their respective barricades in open warfare.

The problem with both possibilities is that hard right activist groups and the Heritage Foundation loudly demand another pristine, unabashed, ultra-conservative from his list. Their willingness to go public in attacking an outspoken rightist judge such as Pryor sent the loud signal that compromise on the SCOTUS choice is not in their playbook. The Scalia replacement is only the start of the GOP’s SCOTUS long game.

Trump may have the chance to pick one maybe two more justices during his term replacing the two-aging liberal and a moderate judge on the court. If the right gets its way with a hardliner on the court the first go around, those picks will not just be garden variety strict constructionists, but activists and influencers on the bench too. They will be judges who won’t just base their rulings on the standard conservative playbook, but will cajole, hector and badger other judges to toe the hard-conservative line in their rulings.

This underscores a brute truth about the high court. Since the 1960s, the SCOTUS has been the right’s main prize since the tenure of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The right-wing routinely railed at the Warren court for its liberal rulings upholding and expanding civil and voting rights, labor, environmental and civil liberties protections, abortion, and reining in the corporate abuses. Conservatives viewed the Supreme Court as an unapologetic advocate of activist liberalism, and loathed it for it. The right plainly wanted more judges on the bench who would rigidly toe the ultra-conservative line. The court became even more important as a political tool for the conservative remake of the country when it became clear that just having more conservatives in the Senate and the House was not enough to roll back the gains in civil, women’s and labor rights of the past half century.

The criticism by the right of Pryor fits into the plan to insure total rightist ideological purity on the court. Getting another Scalia on the court is the key to making that a reality. Or as Trump bluntly put it when he spoke at a construction site for his new hotel in Washington, D.C., last May, “I’m not appointing a liberal judge.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of Scalia 2: The Trump Supreme Court ( Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Civil Rights Leaders Call on Mississippi Attorney General to Bring Perjury Charges in the Emmett Till Murder

2017-01-29T00:12:35.000Z

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Project Islamic Hope President Najee Ali and other civil rights leaders on Saturday, January 28 called on Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to file perjury charges against Carolyn Bryant in the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. Ms. Bryant has now publicly admitted that she lied in claiming Till made improper sexual advances toward her. As a result of her claim, Till was brutally murdered and his murderers were acquitted in a farce of a trial. The case shocked the nation and focused national attention on the issue of racial violence and the gross racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

There is no statute of limitations on murder and perjury related to a murder case, a capital case, is still a prosecutable offense. The age of a defendant who perjured their testimony should not be a factor in whether charges should be brought. The only consideration should be equal justice under the law.

“The Till murder for more than a half century has been the one murder case that symbolized the gross racial inequities in the criminal justice system and the continuing failure of Southern prosecutors to prosecute the many heinous racial murders and violence of the past,” says Hutchinson, “The admission by Bryant that she lied and her lie lead directly to the horrific murder of Till presents Mississippi prosecutors with an opportunity to close the book on a heinous crime and restore public confidence in a criminal justice that has so grossly and shamelessly failed African-Americans past and present.”

Here’s How the Democrats Can Stop Trump—If They Have the Guts

2017-01-25T17:33:49.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The political doomsday wisdom is that there’s almost nothing the Democrats can do to stop Trump and the GOP from steamrolling any piece of legislation and his cabinet and administration team picks through. The only weapon that Democrats supposedly have to halt or at least slow down Trump say plopping an Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas type clone on the Supreme Court is the filibuster. And that’s shaky at best. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Democrats are far from impotent when it comes to fighting Trump. The Senate is one of the world’s most elitist, insular, clubby institutions. To keep it that way, the Senate has a telephone book size set of some of the most convoluted and arcane rules ever devised by any legislative body. The idea is to preserve its exclusive, good ole boy’s status. But buried in those rules are powerful weapons that the Democrats can wield to dither, dodge, duck, and even derail some of Trump’s worst outrages. Here are six of them.

The filibuster. Yes, it’s the most obvious, and popular, and has drawn a lot of attention when used in times past especially by Southerners to try and stop civil rights bills. It only takes one Senator to keep the debate on a bill going until he or she runs out of verbiage. But that’s only part of how it can be used. The same Senator can propose endless motions or amendments to a bill. The filibuster can be ended by cloture. That’s the magic sixty vote majority rule.

However, even that might not end the matter. Debate on an odious Trump bill or appointee can continue for up to thirty more hours and even this can be extended subject to another three-fifths vote to end it. But even this might not end it. When the bill or confirmation is put to a voice vote, a Senator can challenge the tally and demand that the names of who voted for what be put on paper. It must be granted if it is seconded by one-fifth of the senators present. The idea is to make every senator’s vote visible and open to the public, and thereby accountable; nowhere to hide, in other words

The Hold. A single Senator can block a motion from heading to the Senate floor for a vote simply by telling the Democratic Party leadership that he or she intends to take the action. It can be a secret hold or a public hold.

Unanimous Consent. Most Senate bills don’t go to an actual vote. A bill in more cases than not simply gets passed by unanimous consent after it clears the assigned committee for consideration. However, Democrats can upset the apple cart here by merely objecting to that and that means time, delay, more debate, and an opportunity for much more media and public scrutiny of the odious Trump or GOP sponsored bill.

Talk. A Senator can make not one, but two speeches on a motion or a bill on the same day. There is generally no formal limit on how long the Senator may speak. The same Senator can double down the next day with again one or two speeches on the same motion or bill.

Closed Session. It doesn’t happen very often. However, when it does the Senate chamber is closed. The public and the media are barred, and so is anyone else not sworn to secrecy. This is usually reserved for sensitive issues such as national security matters, or private communications from the President. Any Senator can call for a closed session. The only thing needed is a second to the motion. This is strictly a tactic to extend a confirmation hearing or discussion of a bill or motion. It buys time, and time with anything Trump proposes is worth its weight in political gold.

30 Hour Debate. This is a weapon that can be used with the supposed unstoppable Trump cabinet picks. Democrats can force a Trump pick to go through 30 hours of debate on his or her qualifications, background, and fitness for the post. It is jarring, acrimonious, and can keep the heat and public attention on the dubious qualifications and nefarious views of the choice.

These are only the most obvious weapons that Democratic senators have in their arsenal to slow down the Trump onslaught. The X factor in all of this is not the tactics the Democrats have at their disposal but the Democrats. The GOP gave Democrats and the nation a six-year template on how to use every Senate ploy to hector, harass, stall, and in many cases, kill proposals former President Obama put on the legislative table. The question is do they have the stomach to do what the GOP did with Obama and use the labyrinth rules of the Senate and Congress to check Trump. The nation’s fate depends on how the Democrats answer that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of The End of Obamacare? and The End of Obamacare 2? Amazon Kindle. He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Author Exposes Fraud of GOP Repeal and Replace Obamacare Plan

2017-01-22T19:57:07.000Z

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBWJSBW

President Donald Trump flatly declared at a press conference three days before his January 20 swearing in as the 45^th president of the United States that he would provide "insurance for everybody” in his replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. He made a passing reference to getting tough on drug companies and making them deal directly with Medicare and Medicaid to drive down prices. But that was that. He provided absolutely no details as to just what this replacement plan would do to insure nobody was left out in the health care cold. Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson in his second in a series on Obamacare, The End of Obamacare 2?, provides a laser analysis of the GOP’s plan to replace Obamacare, and why it is designed to fail.

Hutchinson notes, “This colossal vagueness about an Obamacare replacement plan was par for the course for Trump, and the GOP, when it came to answering the perennial question: “OK, you get rid of Obamacare, now what do you put in its place that’s any better?” That question has been repeatedly asked from the moment that GOP leaders screamed loud and long that Obamacare must go.”

This question was asked the dozen or more times that the GOP controlled House voted to repeal Obamacare in the six-year span from 2010 through 2016,” says Hutchinson, “It was asked again of Trump when he demanded a quick repeal in 2017. And, again, the answer was a hodge-podge of piece work, patched together, proposals that didn’t come close to answering the question: what does the GOP have that’s better and will do what Trump claims, “provide insurance for everybody”?

The End of Obamacare 2? is part of a series that examines what the GOP claims it has that’s better than Obamacare, why and how the GOP kept alive its war against Obamacare in the years after it became law, how the issue was not about Obamacare but Obama, and what many Americans really think about Obamacare. The End of Obamacare 2? is an impassioned challenge to preserve and cherish the one law that has literally made the difference between life and death for millions of Americans. It has brought them in out of the health care cold.

Nail Obama’s Executive Orders, Nail Obama’s Legacy

2017-01-21T18:30:46.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A year before his swearing in as President, Trump vowed that he would go after what he called then President Obama’s executive orders. Or, as he crudely put it, his “illegal and overreaching executive orders." He repeatedly came back to that threat on the campaign trail, echoing the standard GOP hit line that Obama supposedly went way overboard and usurped his presidential authority by using his pen to make law. On day one of his swearing in, he wasted no time in doing exactly what he told an interviewer he’d do.

His first act was to sign an executive order nailing the one law above all others that he made a campaign mantra to nail, that is Obamacare. His executive order directs agencies to “waive, defer, grant exemptions” to any part of Obamacare they choose. Getting rid of many of Obama’s executive orders won’t be so easy. Some are firmly ensconced as law and will require extensive public comment, hearings and review. That’s a long, tedious, drawn out process. Others have been in place long enough that government agencies have made them part of their compliance requirements.

Still, nothing, and I mean nothing, drove GOP leaders to fits of anger faster than Obama’s touch of his pen to an executive order. They were hot because he had the power to wield the executive pen in defiance of, and as an end around, every congressional roadblock and obstacle they tossed up to block any and everything that he proposed in his second term. And because his executive orders had the force of law behind them. So, for instance, when there was zero possibility of getting even the faintest, most tepid, gun control measure through Congress, Obama signed a few executive orders that put some peripheral checks on gun sales. In all, Obama, signed a couple hundred orders.

That was more than enough for the GOP to threaten to file lawsuits and even drop loud hints that his actions may even warrant impeachment.

The GOP’s hysterical ire at Obama wasn’t lost on Trump. There was absolutely no doubt that he’d move with breakneck speed to hit back, and hit back hard, at Obama by going after his executive orders.

Conservative advocacy groups and GOP leaders had a dizzying array of Obama’s executive orders that they demand be immediately wiped off the books. Clean power plant regulations, transgender bathrooms, overtime pay for federal contracted work, immigration restrictions easing, and the gun control orders were high on their hit list. In fact, every single one of Obama’s executive orders has been listed, checked off, and targeted for “review” by Trump. Some may survive, but many won’t, and among the many will be those such as gun control, environmental, immigration and work place controls that will soon become ancient history.

Despite the GOP’s rage at Obama for wielding his executive pen, the truth is that he was near the bottom on the list of presidents in the number of executive orders issued. The last president that issued orders at a lower rate than Obama was Grover Cleveland. GOP Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush issued far more executive orders per day in office than Obama. It’s not really the number or rate of executive orders, however, that Obama has issued that has raised the hackles of the GOP. It’s the executive orders that he issued that gave the GOP ammunition to attempt to intimidate and politically bash Obama.

Now that Obama is out of office, Trump and the GOP’s frontal attack on his executive orders is much more than an angry and indignant party going after executive orders it didn’t like, or restoring what it considers its proper congressional law making authority. It’s revenge, pure and simple, against a former president’s legacy. Much of that legacy is intertwined with his willingness to use the power of his office whenever and wherever he thought he could to frontally challenge the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, denial, and obstructionism to anything that had the White House stamp on it. The executive orders on gun control were a textbook example of that. Another was the executive order that required prospective federal contractors to disclose labor law violations and give federal agencies more guidance on how to consider labor violations when awarding federal contracts. This was a measure that was long past due given both the rampant nepotism, cronyism, game-playing and outright racial and gender discrimination by an untold number of businesses that grab federal contracts.

These two orders drove home that Obama was determined to make a lasting mark by using federal power in the fight against the gun related carnage that wracked the nation as well as the blatant racial and gender bias in the workplace. The executive orders on environmental, immigration, and LGBT issues were also landmark measures that would have lasting imprint for his administration. This is what is anathema to Trump and the GOP and this is why they must go.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the The End of Obamacare 2? Amazon Kindle. He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Trump Counter Inauguration Facebook Livestream

2017-01-19T14:30:00.000Z

Trump Counter Inaugural Livestream Broadcast

Trump is scheduled to be officially sworn in as America’s 45^th President and give his inaugural speech at Noon EST 9:00 AM PST on Friday, January 20. The Hutchinson Report will go live with a FB Livestream Broadcast at exactly that time. It will be both a counter and an alternative to listening and watching Trump. Post your comments observations and thoughts at that time about the what Trump’s inauguration means to you and for the country.

Lewis Called Trump’s Presidency Illegitimate, But So Did Trump About Obama

2017-01-17T17:36:47.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The attacks by Trump, Trump’s Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, and some GOP leaders on Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis for flatly calling Trump’s presidency “not legitimate” was predictable. What wasn’t expected was the criticism from a few Democrats who voiced some dismay at Lewis’s broadside against Trump. There were two glaring problems with this. The first is that this feeds the deep suspicion that more than a few Democrats, especially Democratic senators, are more than willing to make nice with Trump and the GOP on vital legislative and public policy issues ranging from his jaded cabinet picks to their big-ticket assault on the Affordable Care Act.

The fear level jumped when the GOP fast tracked the confirmation hearing of Trump’s Justice Department head pick, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, and HUD pick, Ben Carson, that brought only a tepid challenge from Democratic senate committee members. The fear level jumped even higher when some Democrats talk about seeking compromise measures to soften the GOP’s gut or outright scrap of Obamacare.

The other problem is the collective amnesia some Democrats exhibit when they stoop to criticizing Lewis for hammering Trump. Trump first ran for president in 2012, not 2016. Initially, his candidacy was widely regarded as a cross between a media oddity and PT Barnum self-promotion stunt. That is until he managed to figure out the one angle that was a surefire way to get attention. That was to dredge up the birthers’ lie about President Obama citizenship.

Trump knew it would get the tongues wagging and oodles of attention and invites on network talk shows. Trump’s revisit to the bogus issue in 2012 did not mark him as a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination then. However, it did put a quasi-public figure, who had become something of a household name, on record that the birther issue had enough merit to become a campaign issue. No matter that it had been thoroughly debunked and discredited that it soon joined the pantheon of politically correct no-no’s for any of the pack of would-be GOP presidential contenders to raise. Trump knew that but that was partly why he blurted it out. He also knew that while it was a taboo subject to raise in polite political circles, a significant number, if not majority of Republicans, actually believed or wanted to believe that Obama’s birth was a legitimate issue to dump back on the political table.

The point was really not Obama’s birthplace or citizenship. The point was to tag Obama’s presidency as illegitimate. If Trump and the GOP could drive that notion deep into the thinking of millions, then it could become a backdoor way to destabilize the Obama administration on any and every policy initiative he pushed on health care, the economy, and a softer foreign policy outreach. It worked to perfection in the 2014 mid-term elections. The GOP took back the Senate and tightened its grip on the House. With the Congressional numbers in its favor, it now could keep the issue of repealing the Affordable Care Act alive long enough to hope that a GOP president could win the White House in 2017 and deal the final coup de grace to the law.

Even after Trump withdrew from the GOP presidential hunt in 2012, he did not back away from still taunting Obama as an illegitimate president. Whenever he did, it stirred media attention and kept the Trump name out there. That was just enough for him to mount a serious run from the White House in 2016. This time he didn’t need to make an issue of Obama’s alleged illegitimate presidency to get attention. He was a household name and could cloak his presidential bid with respectability by playing the angry champion of the poor put upon working man candidate. This was more than enough too mark him, and his campaign, as a political horse of a different color from the established pack of established GOP candidates. Even better for Trump, he got a total pass from the press and worse, Democrats, in not waving his past of assailing Obama’s presidency as illegitimate in his campaign face. And reminding all how he used that to first make a presidential name for himself.

It was almost as if this issue was never an issue with Trump. So, when Lewis had the temerity to call out Trump’s presidency as not legitimate it seemed more than fitting to turn the table on the man who made his bones on calling another president not legitimate. Democrats shouldn’t forget that ploy by Trump when he officially takes over the Oval Office. After all this was an office that he, of all people, felt the president that occupied it before him didn’t legitimately belong in and he made his political reputation by saying so.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the forthcoming The Obama Legacy (Middle Passage Press) He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Talk to Steve Harvey--The Trump Meeting!

2017-01-16T17:02:39.000Z

Talk to Steve Harvey-The Trump Meeting

Entertainer and TV Host Steve Harvey on Friday, January 13 met with Trump. The Hutchinson Report on Sunday, January 15 contacted Steve Harvey Through his Foundation and Media Representatives. They will be closely monitoring this Hutchinson Report Livestream. Here's your chance to post your comment on the Harvey meeting with Trump, its appropriateness and importance for African-Americans.

The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestream Broadcast

Monday, January 16 6:00 PM PST 9:00 PM EST

Talk to Steve Harvey-The Trump Meeting

The Dreadful Truth about the GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Plan

2017-01-13T17:13:21.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

GOP Kentucky Senator Rand Paul airily dismissed the prevailing notion that the GOP doesn’t have any plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, as simply untrue. There are many plans floating around, he claims, that have been put on the table to replace the law after it is repealed. He’s right. There are a lot of proposals that have been floated to replace after repeal and all of them are equally dreadful.

Here in a nutshell is what the GOP has tossed out as a replacement: scaled down subsidies, tax credits, the expansion of high risk pools, health savings accounts, give insurers the right to peddle insurance in any state they choose, and create Association Health Plans to small businesses and risk pools. The subsidies would scrap the income based measure that Obamacare imposes and substitute instead age as the basis for the subsidy. The subsidy to the poorest and neediest was the linchpin of Obamacare. This made it possible for millions who couldn’t afford insurance at any price to purchase it for the first time. To get the tax credits a low wage worker would still have to come up with the cash to purchase insurance. For many that would be problematic.

The high-risk pools supposedly would plop thousands of medically indigent persons in pools to insure low cost, access to coverage. It would do just the opposite. The bulk of those in the pool would be the sickest and most in need of continuous medical treatment. They would pay more not less for that coverage. To cover the high cost of maintaining these pools, states would have to pony up more tax dollars or impose premium assessments on insurers who in turn would simply hike their prices to cover the assessments. It would be a never-ending cost increase cycle with absolutely no guarantee that the sickest and neediest in the pool would get the coverage they need.

The Health Savings Accounts, as with tax credits, would be a bonanza for the rich and high income persons, but would do nothing for low income persons. They would still have to pay for the high deductibles needed to get insurance at anything that faintly resembles affordable cost. They’d still have to come up with thousands of dollars to salt away in the accounts to pay for the deductibles and to get the tax write offs.

Insurers have long sold insurance wherever they please. However, they had to comply with tough state regulations and consumer protection requirements in some states. Now insurers would simply market their product in states that have the weakest controls and consumer protection standards. There they could charge whatever they want without any pesky interference from state regulators. Even better, they no longer need worry about getting penalized for denying coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition or someone whose treatment would cost tons of money.

This right to pick and choose who an insurer can cover or not is forbidden under Obamacare. However, no Obamacare, no requirement to cover all, means untold thousands are out in the health coverage cold again. The Association Health Plans has a catchy and even impressive ring to it. The gaping flaw, though, in the plans is with no tight consumer protection controls in place, insurers in the plan could pick and choose the healthiest ones to provide affordable coverage to while making coverage so expensive for the sickest that it would be prohibitive for them. This would create a two-tier system of health care with the sickest and neediest again out in the cold.

No Obamacare, also means no mandates requiring everyone to have health coverage. The mandate requirement drove the GOP to fits railing that it was a gross violation of individual freedom, and had to go. However, the mandate, along with the fed subsidies, and the scrap of pre-exiting denials, was the engine that drove Obamacare. This insured that Americans across the board had to have health coverage. The young, old, the healthy and unhealthy made up the broadest pool for health coverage, and this kept overall costs from skyrocketing. Now with the mandate dumped, insurers have free rein to charge what they want, insure who they want, with costs of that coverage continuing to climb.

Three years before Obamacare became law, a staggering 90 million Americans either had no insurance or went without coverage for a period of time during the course of a year or years. Many of them that got coverage also lost that coverage, almost always because they couldn’t pay for it, or the insurer dropped them because of a medical condition that the insurer considered too costly to pay for. The state of American health care was worse than abysmal for millions. This was the point of Obamacare, and why it attained the success it did.

Yet, Paul and the GOP claim that its replacement plan will do much better than that. The dreadful truth is it will do far far worse.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of The End of Obamacare (Amazon Kindle) He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

New EBook Examines The Colossal Impact of the Obamacare Wars

2017-01-12T15:00:00.000Z

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY7537M

President-elect Donald Trump in a telephone interview with the New York Times days before his inauguration delivered a blunt message to Congress, “We have to get to business, “Obamacare has been a catastrophic event.” Trump demanded that Congress immediately repeal and replace President Obama’s signature and landmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

But what happens if, and when, Congress does repeal it? Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson in his latest ebook, The End of Obamacare? (Amazon Kindle, 2017) Takes a hard look at the colossal impact repeal of the law will have on millions of Americans who have benefited from Obamacare.

Hutchinson insists, “The outcome of the Obamacare wars will have as its greatest beneficiaries or, in the case of repeal, its greatest victims, the poor, low income workers, and most importantly, African-Americans and Hispanics.”

The stakes in the wars, then, have been monumental, even one of life and death for many, Hutchinson says. The End of Obamacare? walks the reader through what it took to get the law, what it took to keep it, why it was needed, and who the law has literally has been a life saver for. It’s a compact, no-holds-barred Obamacare political advocacy guide that tells why the fight for health care has stoked such fierce, white hot passions, hysterical opposition and aroused such hard-nosed efforts from the White House down to maintain it.

Hutchinson notes that the cost of repealing Obamacare would be enormous, “The taxpaying public which would pay in the form of higher taxes and higher insurance coverage costs.” But, he says, there’s more, “It has also been a bonanza for just about any business even remotely related to health care: pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical device manufacturers and suppliers, home palliative care and mental health care providers, medical billing services, physicians, hospitals, and many insurers. That’s tens of thousands of more individuals who have profited from Obamacare.”

Hutchinson concludes that the plan then to repeal Obamacare would toss health care back into the wild and wooly free market, accompanied by deep slashes in Medicaid funding, voucher plans to the states, and tax credits for low income persons that would amount to only a pitiful handful of dollar savings. This nightmare scenario would once again tag America as the one nation among the world advanced nations that tell millions of Americans that health care is anything but a right, unless your pockets are deep enough to pay for it.

The End of Obamacare? presents a riveting look at the ferocious Obamacare wars and the monumental stakes involved in the outcome of those wars for millions of Americans.

Here’s What Happens When Sessions is in the Saddle at Justice

2017-01-10T16:15:47.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In 2008, the Alabama Policy Institute published a position paper on what it considered a dangerous trend by the courts and attorneys general. The trend was the court’s approval of consent decrees. For decades, consent decrees have been major weapons wielded by the Justice Department to go after cities, states, and corporations that engage in blatant abusive practices on everything from consumer fraud to police abuse.

The institute compiled a lengthy position paper that railed against the use of consent decrees to right wrongs. It demanded that attorneys general and state legislatures act to limit, if not outright do away with, the use of consent decrees. The Institute asked the one attorney general whom it was certain would back its conclusions to the hilt to write the introduction. U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions got right to the point in the very first two sentences, “One of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed exercises of raw power is the issuance of expansive court decrees. They have a profound effect on our legal system as they constitute an end around the democratic process.” He boasted that as Alabama Attorney General he rushed to the courts to scrap a consent decree approved by his predecessor. He succeeded. Sessions heartily cheered the Institute for leading the charge to curtail the use of consent decrees.

GOP senators, conservative bloggers, and legal shills have launched a charm campaign to paint Sessions as a guy who has been misunderstood. His racially demeaning quotes supposedly were taken out of context and, as Alabama Attorney General and later, U.S. Attorney, he urged vigorous prosecution of a Klan murderer, backed school desegregation efforts, filed lawsuits against voting rights discrimination, and backed the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.

But that’s simply PR puffery and window dressing to mask the extreme peril Sessions poses once in the saddle at the Justice Department. There were glaring signs that he would not play by the legal and public interest book as Attorney General. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he claimed that he didn’t see any criminal act in Trump’s boast that he grabbed women in their private parts. This struck to the heart of whether Sessions’ Justice Department would deal impartially with vital Department gender enforcement issues such as support for marriage equality, pay equity for women, and domestic violence and sexual assault.

He also didn’t object when Trump said he’d prosecute Hillary Clinton and investigate Black Lives Matter. Then there’s the question of just what types of crimes Sessions would prosecute. There are an estimated 4000 federal criminal statutes on the books that could be subject to prosecution. It’s up to the Attorney General to decide which crimes to make a priority for prosecution. Holder and Lynch put the department spotlight on immigration rights, voting rights, police abuse, drug and criminal justice system reform, and doing away with the use of private prisons for profit. Sessions chomps to get rid of voting rights enforcement, calling the Voting Rights Act “intrusive.”

As for private prisons, under former Attorney General Eric Holder, the Bureau of Prisons issued a memo that it would phase out the use of private, for-profit prisons, citing grave problems in safety, security, and oversight. During the campaign, Trump disagreed, calling for even more privatizations and private prisons. Geo Group is one of the largest private prison corporations. Four months after Trump pitched private prisons, in October, 2016, the GEO Group saw the pro privatization handwriting on the wall and hired two former Sessions aides to lobby in favor of outsourcing federal corrections to private contractors.

There’s still another sign of the shape of things to come at the Justice Department under Sessions. In 1997, when he was Alabama’s Attorney General, a state judge went after him, calling him and his office an example of perpetrating the “worst case” of prosecutorial misconduct he had seen. The case that got the judge up in arms against Sessions was a prosecution of a trucking company for allegedly submitting fraudulent billings and taking kickbacks. Specifically, the charge was that his office failed to turn over evidence, gave false testimony, and abused the defendant’s rights. Subsequent rulings and an ethics commission investigation found no wrong doing on Sessions’ part. However, there was a taint with the public charge that Sessions, as the judge noted, was willing to “disregard the lawful duties of the Attorney General.”

There are certainly precedents where prior Attorney Generals went against the prevailing philosophy and wishes of the man who appointed him or her, namely the President. However, Sessions has been in public life for decades. There’s absolutely no hint, based on his Senate voting record, public statements and actions, and ties to hard right-wing groups, that once in the Justice Department saddle, that he will suddenly be a fair and impartial enforcer of civil rights laws, criminal justice reforms, and go after corporate abuses. The evidence is just the opposite.

How Obama Should be Remembered

2017-01-03T20:06:36.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On January 14, 2014, a plainly worried President Obama convened a meeting of his cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House. The cabinet meeting had extra special, even, grave, importance. The Democrats had lost control of the Senate which meant that Congress was now completely dominated by the GOP. Obama boldly announced to the cabinet, “We’re not going to be waiting for legislation. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions to move the ball forward.”

However, Obama’s liberal use of the executive pen to skirt Congress raised two thorny questions and posed two perils. The first: Would his successor in the Oval Office, Trump, make good on virtually the first promise he made after being elected in November, 2016 which was to repeal many, most, if not all, of Obama’s executive orders? The other more far reaching question and peril was what impact would this have on sullying Obama’s legacy of accomplishments?

The iffy questions had a deep impact on the significance and reach of his presidency, both during his White House years and afterwards. From the start to make his presidency work, he had to cling closely to the centrist blueprint former President Bill Clinton laid out for Democrats in the 1990s to win elections, and to govern after they won office.

It meant that he had to emphasize strong defense, prosecute a vigorous war against terrorism, wind down the Iraq War, push for mild tax reform for the middle-class, and a workable plan for affordable health care and advocate tougher regulations to rein in Wall Street, back comprehensive gun control legislation, jumpstart climate control measures, put the obligatory Democratic Party stress on strengthening LGBT, women’s and civil rights, and make moderate and balanced Supreme Court picks and administration posts.

He walked the narrowest of tightropes in this balancing act. Every step of the way he faced a GOP that made it clear its primary goal was to make him a one term president, and, failing that, cripple his presidency by blocking his proposed initiatives and legislation.

Obama’s careful, center-governing, non-racial staff and cabinet picks and his policies were plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats, especially one branded a liberal Democrat, inherently pander to special interests, i.e. minorities, are pro expansive government, and anti-business. During every moment of his eight years in the White House, the GOP watched him hawk like for any sign of that.

Yet, the Obama White House was a historic and symbolic first. It was a White House that kept a firm, cautious, and conciliatory eye on mid-America public opinion, and corporate and defense industry interests in making policy decisions and determining priorities. Obama would and could not have attained the White House if he hadn’t done the same. This had nothing to do with race, or attaining the historic first of being the nation’s first black president. It had everything to do with the requirement of White House governance.

Obama would be praised in the inevitable historic assessment of a president for his signature successes from the Affordable Care Act to the elimination of bin Laden and criticized on the places where his administration fell short. Those places were foremost, the absence of comprehensive gun control legislation and an unfinished war in Afghanistan. That historic assessment must be made with the full recognition that Obama, as all presidents, was constrained by the inherent limit of the power of the office, the checks imposed on him by his foes, and the lofty, but often unattainable, expectations imposed on him by friends. The Obama legacy must not be defined solely by his historic first, but rather by his successes and shortcomings. Despite the much restricted and tightly defined parameters under which presidents must operate. There is more than enough in the way of accomplishment from Obama’s presidency to say that his legacy is secure.

Still, Trump’s win stirred much talk and much anxiety about Obama’s legacy being wrecked and that somehow Trump’s win was a repudiation by Americans of his legacy. This was nonsense. Hillary Clinton got nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump. She made it clear throughout the campaign that she would keep, and even expand on, his programs if elected.

There is, though, real danger that Trump and the GOP controlled Congress will gut some, or try to gut, all of Obama’s program. Obama is well-aware of this possibility. Two weeks after Trump’s win, he spoke at a conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Peru. He made it clear that he would not be a mere sideline silent spectator if there is an attempt to dismantle his programs.

The clear and loud warning from this is that the one who would fight hardest to safeguard the Obama legacy, is Obama.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of The Obama Legacy (Middle Passage Press) He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

Be Careful What You Wish For, Impeach Trump, and You Get Pence

2016-12-30T16:45:50.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Put this in the category of be careful what you wish for. The instant that Trump won the White House, the chatter about impeaching him has been non-stop. The reasons many legal scholars, ethics experts, and political analysts give boil down to this. He has business dealings with foreign governments, most notably Russia, his family management arrangement still presents business conflicts, his possible violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from buying influence with federal officials or receiving special treatment, and influence peddling and gift taking from foreign governments. These are all sticky points that Trump hasn’t done much to address.

But even if he doesn’t, the move to impeach is a congressional call, and the chance of a GOP controlled House and Senate making that call is virtually nil at this point. However, Trump’s business entanglements could continue to run afoul of federal law about money, gifts and influence with foreign entities. This could plop Trump on the congressional hot seat. But it’s a seat that would be disastrous. Because with Trump out you get Vice President Mike Pence. Trump is bumptious, obnoxious, and clownish. Pence is the prototypical ultra conservative in the gray flannel suit. He is business like, efficient, and knows how to run a political office. Trump will lean on him hard to do the behind the scenes, in the trenches work with Congress to get his initiatives through.

This will present no problem for Pence. He knows Congress, and the GOP establishment is comfortable with him. But Pence has his own agenda. It’s an agenda that’s been honed over time as an arch conservative Indiana governor and congressperson. Civil liberties, civil rights, and education, and environmental groups know him too. They consistently gave him straight Fs on their report cards for elected officials. He got straight As on every conservative and ultra-conservative report card, including, unsurprisingly, the report card of the National Rifle Association.

The checklist of Pence positions on the issues reads like a what’s what of the Heritage Foundation and ultra-conservative think tank positions. His stance on abortion and same sex marriage is well-known. He’s rabidly against both and every time he’s had the chance to vote on the issues or propose initiatives when he was Indiana governor such as defunding Planned Parenthood and forcing most of its clinics to close or signing the most abortion-restrictive regulation in the nation, banning abortion even in cases where the fetus has a “genetic abnormality to do away with both, he’s done it with gusto. His fondest wish in his words, “I long for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history.”

Pence waged a take no prisoners war on LGBT advocates by backing the nation’s harshest “religious freedom” law as governor and as a congressman trying to torpedo federal funding that would support treatment for people suffering from H.I.V. and AIDS. He flatly opposed expanding hate crime laws to include violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Pence would move fast to smash the firewall between religion and patriotic displays and the schools by mandating prayer in schools, reciting the pledge of allegiance, and making campuses a wide-open recruiting ground for ROTC and other military recruiters.

While Trump talks about building a wall on the border, Pence would figure out a way to get the money and the congressional support to do it. He’s been at the anti-immigrant bash game a lot longer than Trump. In 2006 he was calling for guest workers to self-deport, and slammed the door on the relocation of Muslim refugees in his state from Syria and other war torn countries.

Public schools would be almost a thing of the past if Pence had his way. He cut millions from Indiana public schools and poured the money into vouchers, religious schools, and charter schools. He even tried to scrap the Common Core requirement as governor and as a congressperson joined a handful of rabidly conservative GOP congresspersons in opposing George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative. The one area of education that conservative GOP presidents, presidential candidates, and most GOP congresspersons tout is more funding for Historically Black Colleges. Not Pence, as a congressperson, he said “no” to a measure that would have earmarked nearly $100 million in funding to HBC and Hispanic colleges.

A Pence run White House would be one that denies climate change, demand that God be put in every aspect of American life, water down hate crime laws enforcement, wipe out public schools, wall build at the border, pump massive spending into the Pentagon, toss out all regulations on Wall Street, slash corporate taxes to nothing, knock out abortion, back unrestricted expansion of the Patriot Act, pack the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary with Antonin Scalia clone judges, and put guns in just about anyone’s hands..

Trump is lambasted for the nightmarish America he’d usher in. Pence, though, as Indiana Governor and in Congress, didn’t just talk about this kind of America. He worked hard to bring it about. In the White House, he could finish the job. Impeach Trump, and he’d get that chance.

The Hutchinson Report Christmas Eve Special

2016-12-23T16:30:00.000Z

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Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable Building Self-Sustaining Communities Awards Announced

2016-12-20T21:35:48.000Z

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable on December 20 announced an array of awards made in December to support organizations and individuals that have a proven track record of commitment to building community sustainability projects, activities, service, and accomplishment. The December awards were the Shero and Hero Award to former Buffalo Police Officer Cariole Horne for her valor in protecting and serving her community and defying the blue code of silence, the Scholar-Athlete Award to three South L.A. High School students, Brandi Crawford, Ashley Rojas, and Deavon Rector, and the Arts Award to the Inner City Youth Orchestra of L.A. The awards were a commemorative plaque and cash award.

“Budget cutbacks, the sharp increase in poverty, and the on-going struggle of small community service groups for funding have made it more imperative that we help fill the funding gap to boost those individuals and organizations that are enriching the life of their community and achieving the heights of success in their endeavors,” says Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “The Awards aim to further community self-reliance and independence, and achievment. This is the pathway to citizen empowerment.”

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable will make its next Awards in April, 2017.

Information and nominations for the L.A. Urban Policy Roundtable Awards

323-383-6145

[email protected]

“I Fell in Love with Trump”

2016-12-16T18:31:16.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

“I fell in love with him because he really talks about helping black people.” The “he” is President-elect Donald Trump. The man that spoke of his love fest with Trump was legendary football great Jim Brown. Brown had barely got the loving words of praise about Trump out his mouth before the predictable debate raged. The critics tore into Brown as being an opportunist, a hustler for his at-risk youth foundation, and a photo-op chaser. And these were the more charitable digs at him.

Brown is hardly the only prominent black to meet with Trump before, during and after the campaign and his election. In fact, the parade of black preachers, businesspersons, professionals, athletes and entertainers that have either trooped to Trump Tower, or met with him in highly staged and orchestrated venues, has been nothing short of breath taking. Breath taking, because Trump ran the most vicious, unabashed, race baiting, Muslim, and immigrant baiting campaign since state’s rights Alabama governor George Wallace in 1964.

But Brown and the parade of blacks that have met with Trump make the case that he is the president and that it is foolhardy to do the Ostrich head in the sand routine and deny this brutal reality. They say that there are millions in contracts, business and professional opportunities, administration appointments, vital federal job, education, health and civil rights protection programs at stake with the Trump administration. There’s simply no way to ignore that. There’s an unarguable point to that. Trump will be at the federal helm for at least four years and that’s a lot of time to wreak irreparable program and institutional damage to those programs.

The problem, actually two problems, that Brown has, is first, after marching out of Trump Tower he made absolutely no mention of anything that Trump specifically said or did to assure that he’d commit to any specific program or initiative, or resources that would say boost Brown’s at risk program, amer-I-Can. This also applies to dozens of other programs in poor, inner city neighborhoods that mentor, tutor, and provide family support services to these youth as well. The bulk of these programs are run on a shoe string budget and are one step away from closing their doors. Other than Brown gushing over Trump, there was stone silence from Trump about what, if anything, he had to offer in return for the black lovefest. That’s even more strange since Trump never tires of boasting that he’s a negotiator. So, if Brown, and the other blacks that flock to him do some hard bargaining with him to get his administration to commit to specific programs to aid the black poor and black businesses, then meeting him makes some sense. This will have put Trump on the record and on the spot to deliver on the commitment. If he reneges he will be shown up for the congenital liar that many lambaste him as. As it now stands, the record of the Brown meeting with Trump is that it got Brown a few second’s face time on the news, and for Trump a chance to boast again that there are a lot of blacks that like, even some as Brown declared, love him.

The other problem with Brown and the forays other blacks make to Trump is that they’re meeting with him at a time when he’s fast stuffing his administration with the greatest array of generals, military guys, and billionaires of any administration in American history. His picks to head the Education Dept., Labor, HUD, HEW, SBA, and especially the Justice Department have warred against the very programs that these departments administer. They provide the vast array of program resources, support, and protections for poor, working class blacks. A textbook example is that the day after Brown met with Trump, it was revealed that Commerce secretary-designate billionaire Wilbur Ross cheer led 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney’s ill-informed, and racial pandering quip in 2012 that 47 percent of Americans are free loaders on the government presumably at the expense of the tax paying middle and upper class.

Now keep in mind that the Commerce Department is charged with overseeing the Minority Business development Agency tasked with providing resources and support for minority businesses. These are the businesses that Brown and other blacks endlessly talk of boosting. If you have a Commerce head that thinks most non-whites sole role in life is to have their hand out at the government trough, then it doesn’t take much imagination to see what minority entrepreneurs might expect from his department.

During the campaign, Trump tailored the few pitches he made to blacks for their votes to reflect the stock GOP pro-business, free enterprise, and the healthy economy line as something that blacks also could and should embrace. Brown and the other black Trump admirers took that message to heart. The problem is did Trump? Neither he or Brown didn’t say, so we must ask, what’s love got to do with it?

The Never-Ending Ben Carson Nightmare

2016-12-06T21:49:59.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

When Ben Carson emphatically declared that he has no government experience that would qualify him to run a federal agency, most took this to mean that he would quietly recede if not fade from public attention. We should have known better. Trump saw to that when he brushed aside Carson’s momentary candid admission and plopped his name down as the Secretary to be of HUD. This was a remarkable but not surprising return from the political dead for Carson.

Now we’ll have a man who self-admits he has no government experience running a crucial agency that ladles out billions annually in public housing subsidies, rental assistance, and housing finance activities, employs more than 8000 workers and administrators and operates more than 100 subsidy programs. If that’s not bad enough, Carson doesn’t even like what HUD does. He has a long and well-documented track record of lambasting housing discrimination suits, over-dependence on “social safety net” programs, getting government out of competition with private enterprise, and denouncing anything that supposedly deadens individual initiative.

This was the stuff of snickers, chuckles, and lampooning when Carson was simply private citizen Carson, or, the mercifully brief, failed GOP presidential candidate Carson. Few then could ever imagine that Carson would ever be in a position to actually act on any of his rabid antique ultra-right notions of how a government should be run. However, with the Trump HUD post offering, Carson now can give free rein to his basest impulses about government.

HUD has been a long standing favorite whipping boy of ultra-conservatives. They have repeatedly ripped HUD for its alleged corruption and cronyism, and complained long and loud about the high cost and waste of public housing projects and vouchers for low income renters. But HUD’s biggest sin to them has been that it supposedly shackles private housing developers by putting the federal government directly in the business of subsidizing home ownership. They don’t stop here. They ave made the totally unsupported and outlandish claim that HUD’s butting into the housing business was one of the biggest reasons for the 2008 financial meltdown.

The only thing missing from the conservative hit plan on HUD was finding the right someone to do the dirty work to totally defrock the agency. And who better than Carson? He is black, and he and other conservatives never tire of repeating his woeful tale of rising from the hard scrabble streets of an urban ghetto to the pinnacle of success in the medical profession. He even lightly played on it again when he said with hopefully his tongue deep in his cheek that he had great expertise on poor people living in public housing because he once lived in a ghetto.

The trotting out of Carson to deliver the right-wing gospel from on high this time in the hacking up of HUD fits in with yet another by now familiar ploy used by ultra-conservatives during the Obama years. And that was to float Carson as a GOP presidential contender. It worked twice in 2012 and 2016. And as always, some in the media took the bait and actually treated Carson as a serious contender for the nomination. That absurdity only got too much when Carson made ever more bizarre statements about anything that came to his mind. However, it was more than political theater of the absurd. It got even more attention for the GOP. But more importantly, it touched a deep, dark, and throbbing pulse among legions of ultra-conservatives who fervently believed that Obama and many Democrats are communists, gays are immoral, and that the healthcare reform law was exactly what Carson likened it to “slavery,” meaning the tyrannical intrusion by big government into their lives.

In the past, mainstream GOP leaders couldn’t utter these inanities. They had to always give the appearance that they were above the dirt, mud, and hate-slinging fray. So, they left it to a well-paid stalking horse like Carson to do their dirty work for them. This, of course, all changed with Trump. He openly, and unabashedly, said what many conservatives thought about Obama, Muslims, immigrants, and minorities. He cynically, but masterfully, crafted this hate and bigotry into a winning campaign. It was no accident that his biggest and most visible black cheerleader was Carson. He was ever dependable to be trotted out on talk shows to defend and even praise Trump.

Carson, though, has another kind of shelf value for Trump. He gives the illusion that his administration will be race neutral and that African-Americans could have access to him. Putting Carson in the top spot at HUD fits neatly into the script. He is black, is admired for his saga in some circles, and as such he can do as much damage as conservatives want to do to HUD with maybe minimal attention to it.

That’s why Carson is around and will continue to be our never-ending nightmare.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of The Obama Legacy, Middle Passage Press. He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.

L.A. Civil Rights Leaders Call on USC President and USC Athletic Director to Demand Prosecution in the McKnight Slaying

2016-12-04T19:16:06.000Z

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders on Friday, December 2 called on USC President C.L. Max Nikias and USC Athletic Director Lynn Swann to join in the call by civil rights leaders for the prosecution of Ronald Gasser who shot and killed former USC football player Joe McKnight. McKnight was unarmed, and there is no evidence that McKnight physically threatened the alleged assailant, Gasser.

McKnight was a proud Trojan who represented the school on and off the athletic field with dignity and pride. He was the first Athlete Awarded the Frank Gifford Endowed Football Scholarship”, which is given out annually by the USC athletic department to an incoming freshman running back, quarterback or wide receiver who best emulates Gifford's life, success and spirit. Gasser was released immediately, without bond. There is as yet no indication that any charges will be filed in the dubious killing.

“Joe McKnight served USC with distinction on and off the athletic field, his slaying and the release of alleged assailant without charges is a blatant travesty and sends the dangerous message that gun violence to settle dispute is acceptable,” says Hutchinson, “We have called for a prosecution and given the honorable record McKnight had at USC, it’s only fitting that USC’s President and USC’s Athletic Director join in our call to the Jefferson County Prosecutor for fairness and equal justice for McKnight.”

BET Founder Bob Johnson Urges African-Americans to Give Trump a Chance, Does He Have a Point?

2016-12-02T02:35:54.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There was fury when former BET founder and financial mogul Bob Johnson urged African-Americans to give President-Elect Trump a “shot” and “the benefit of the doubt.” Johnson was lambasted with a slew of printable and unprintable epitaphs from many blacks who raged at him for daring to say such a thing. Johnson didn’t damp down the anger when he claimed that that he turned down a Trump offer of an administration post. The check list of anti-Trump reasons for their rage at Johnson for his “benefit of the doubt” admonition is by now well known.

In the weeks since his election Trump’s done absolutely nothing to change the perception that his administration will be a relentless foe of civil rights, public education and expanded health programs. He’s nominated a sworn enemy of civil and voting rights to the Attorney General post, an avowed foe of public education to the education post, and has only slightly backed away from his plan to repeal Obamacare. So, what then what possesses Johnson to say Trump deserves a chance? Start with Johnson, he gave lots of money to Clinton. He made it clear that he backed her for president. But he’s rich, influential and corporate and politically well-connected. He’s among the one percent of businesspersons who Trump feels comfortable with, and surrounds himself with. He has the kind of access to Trump that few blacks or anyone else not in the mogul’s class could even in their wildest dreams imagine.

The proof was Johnson’s face to face with Trump and a purported offer of a job in his administration. It’s easy for Johnson to imagine that since Trump was willing to meet and talk with him he might be willing to do the same with other blacks. While that’s not exactly anyone’s idea of a diverse administration, it at least seems to hold out for Johnson anyway that future possibility.

Johnson didn’t say it, but Trump did put on the policy table during the campaign what he brands a ten-point plan for blacks promising greater job creation, safe communities, business investment, and equal justice. Whether Trump means any of this is less important than that he put it on paper. This gives the appearance that he’s at least thinking about the problems of the inner cities and poses what he considers solutions to those problems. There’s just enough there for Johnson and an undetermined number of other African-American, particularly businesspersons, professionals, and ministers, to take a step back and wait and see if Trump goes anywhere with this plan. This is even more plausible considering that Trump made a better showing among black voters than Romney or McCain in their presidential bids. Legions of other blacks either didn’t vote for or raged at Clinton for her alleged political sins.

The far bigger reason that Johnson’s wants blacks to go easy on Trump for now is the brutal political reality. He’s the President. He will be in the Oval Office for at least four years. This is a classic case of real politick for Johnson; railing against Trump won’t make that go away. Some Democrats including reinstalled House Minority leader Nany Pelosi and other Democrats have admitted this blunt reality and have publicly announced that they will work with Trump on policy issues where there’s agreement and room for compromise rather than go to the barricades against him on every issue.

This brings it back to Johnson’s contention that Trump’s the president and he’s not going away. Therefore, its incumbent on African-American leaders and organizations to find possible areas of agreement with him on some issues. The greater goal being, if not to get an increase in job, health and education spending, then at least to prevent Trump from a wholesale hack up or scrap of these programs. This is not a new conundrum. Civil rights groups faced the same problem and dilemma with Reagan and W. Bush. Both were conservative Republicans who stacked their administration deck with many ultra-conservatives who had their sights set on gutting programs and were bent on a conservative overhaul of the federal government and the courts.

Civil rights groups had a dual approach to Reagan and Bush. They waged relentless battle with both administrations on voting rights, Supreme Court appointments, and against draconian slashes in health, education and jobs programs. At the same time, when the opportunity presented itself, they met with both presidents to keep the lines of communication open.

Johnson’s point here is that if you war with Trump or put your hands over your eyes and pretend he doesn’t exist, then that insures he’ll do the same with African-Americans. It’s certainly a valid point. The problem is that no matter how much of a chance Johnson and African-Americans give Trump, there’s no guarantee he’d ever return the favor. And much reason to think he won’t.

What a Clinton Recount Will Do

2016-11-27T21:10:03.000Z

Monday November 28 10:15 AM PST 1:15 EST

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What a Clinton Recount Will Do

Hillary is Right to Demand a Recount, But....

Why Hillary is Right to Back a Recount, But…..

2016-11-27T20:26:59.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is right to back a vote recount in the three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that gave Trump the White House. But there’s a big but after that. First, here’s why she’s right to support the recount and how it will work. She conceded too quickly on Election Night. Yes, President Obama reportedly urged her to concede in part because it appeared that she had little chance to win the three contested swing states and in part because the established and near sacrosanct truism in American presidential politics is that there must be a quick, fast and orderly transition to the Oval Office. The horror of what happened in Florida in the Gore versus Bush tiff in 2000 still hung in the air. However, 2016 is not 2000. There’s a cloud over how the vote totals were gathered in some precincts in Wisconsin. Michigan is still up in the air with the state yet being too close to call. As for Pennsylvania, it’s one of a handful of states that still use electronic voting machines that are old, outdated, and with no paper ballot back-ups to cross-check the totals.

It’s true that the bulk of the two to three million popular vote bulge that Clinton got over Trump came from the two-big lock down Democratic states, California and New York. The fact is that the pre-election projected vote differentials between Trump and Clinton were skewed heavily toward the Democrats. Put simply, more Democrats were projected to vote than Republicans in these states and not one of them had voted majority for a GOP presidential candidate in recent presidential election cycles.

This doesn’t mean that that didn’t change this election. And that the GOP got more of its voters out than the Democrats. That’s certainly what the GOP and Trump claim, and they may be right. But Clinton did get a record breaking majority of popular votes over Trump and that makes it imperative for Clinton to ensure that the vote count was as fair and accurate as possible. The recount will also continue to stir the healthy debate and discussion over how America elects presidents. If Democrats keep getting popular vote majorities as is almost certainly the case in future presidential elections, the great danger is that this will permanently jade voters, deepen the perception that the process is unfair, even “rigged”, and badly taint the notion of what and how a true democracy should work when it comes to elections. Nearly one hundred million adults didn’t bother to show up at the polls this election. That number could swell even higher in coming presidential contests if men or women keep winning the presidency with a minority of the nation’s votes. All the exhortations in the world about being a good citizen, doing your civic duty, and guilt tripping people about how many died for the right to vote, will fall on deaf ears with millions who will continue to shrug off going to the polls.

Now here’s the “but” part of the recount call. It almost certainly won’t change anything. Clinton campaign officials have pretty much said as much. The number of votes Trump got over Clinton in Pennsylvania appear to be too great to overcome even if irregularities are found in some voting districts. This means the electoral vote win Trump got in the state will stand. Though there is suspicion about the vote in some precincts in Wisconsin, there as yet is no tangible evidence of theft, tampering, or hacking with and of the vote total to fraudulently boost Trump’s numbers there.

Clinton is also bumping up against deadlines in the three states for the recount to proceed. She’s also bumping against the deadline of December 19 when the Electoral College voters will formally meet and vote to make Trump’s win official. Just how many, if any, electoral voters will have second thoughts about Trump is anybody’s guess. The betting odds, though, are that barring any colossal evidence of fraud or vote improprieties such as the starry-eyed hope that Russians or some shadowy intel operatives hacked the vote machines in state after state, Trump will be the legally constituted president. There would have been no Clinton talk of recount if Green Party candidate Jill Stein hadn’t quickly hauled in a few million dollars to pay for a recount. She was honest in saying that she had no chance of changing the outcome of the contest, with the paltry 1 percent of the vote she got. But she was on to something when she said that the recount was one way to make sure that the vote was really what it purported to be. A reluctant Clinton agreed, there were just too many millions who backed her and who want genuine assurance that Trump really got the votes he appeared to get for her to ignore this perfectly reasonable request to make sure America really got it right about its next president.

The Supreme Court is Trump and the Right’s Jewel in the Crown

2016-11-25T01:13:30.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

President-elect Donald Trump has made no utterance since his election about who he will tap to fill the Antonin Scalia vacancy on the High Court. However, this hasn’t stopped others from endlessly speculating about just who that might be. Names have been tossed out all over the place. The consensus being that it could be a moderate conservative who would have the best chance of getting confirmed with a minimum of rancor. That’s certainly a possibility. But it’s not likely. Trump has already tipped his hand once when he said his ideal justices are Clarence Thomas and Scalia. He lionized Scalia during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention and again in a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton.

The other tip is the list of nearly a dozen names of his potential court picks he got with lots of help from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation that he made public last May. He added a few more names in September that include a woman, a Hispanic, Asian, and an African-American judge. But this is mostly for cosmetic and image massaging purposes. Those on the original list were almost all white males, and hard line opponents of abortion, same sex marriage, voting rights expansion, and increased federal regulations. The names that he added as a sop to diversity are cut from the same cloth as those on his first list.

Trump’s pick will be another judge exactly as he said in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. Said Trump,” This list is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future justices of the United States Supreme Court.” This is just the start. Trump almost certainly will have the chance to pick one maybe two more justices during his term replacing the two aging liberal and a moderate judges on the court. They also will not just be garden variety strict constructionists, but activists and influencers on the bench. They will be judges who won’t just base their rulings on the standard conservative playbook, but will cajole, hector, and badger other judges to toe the hard-conservative line in their rulings. And who will have the gall when it suits their purpose not even to try and hide it. GOP Vice Presidential contender Mike Pence made the Trump-Scalia axis official when he vowed to a campaign crowd in Michigan during the campaign that Trump’s High Court pick would hit the bench with the practically sworn duty to slam down the curtain on Roe v. Wade. Pence didn’t stop there. He repeatedly vowed that Trump would appoint strict constructionists in his appointments and not just for a Scalia type judicial hit on abortion rights.

Pence reflected the brute truth that the Supreme Court has since the 1960s been the political jewel in the crown for staunch conservatives. The court became the right’s main prize during the tenure of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The right-wing routinely railed at the Warren court for its liberal rulings upholding and expanding civil and voting rights, labor, environmental and civil liberties protections, abortion, and reining in the corporate abuses. Conservatives viewed the high court as an unapologetic advocate of activist liberalism, and loathed it for it. The far right repeatedly screamed for Warren’s head with signs that popped up along the highways throughout the South and the Heartland, “Impeach Earl Warren.”

The right plainly wanted more judges on the bench who would rigidly toe the ultra-conservative line. The court became even more important as a political tool for the conservative remake of the country when it became clear that just having more conservatives in the Senate and the House was not enough to roll back the gains in civil, women’s and labor rights of the past half century. Democrats even as the minority in Congress could obstruct or outright kill legislation through the filibuster. And with the nation’s population and voter demographics rapidly changing with more minorities, women, same sex, and youth, who were mostly Democrats, and implacably hostile to conservative positions, this could put more spine in Democrats to stand firm against the machinations of conservatives in Congress.

The right correctly saw the Supreme Court not just as a neutral arbiter to settle legal disputes. It was a lethal weapon to skirt congressional gridlock and serve a dual role as a judicial and legislative body. This meant scrapping the long-standing tradition on the court where justices based their legal decisions solely on the merit of the law, constitutional principles and the public good, and not ideology. Trump and his hard-right conservative backers are fully aware that the court’s power to be de facto legislators could last for decades. After all presidents and congresspersons come and go, but justices can sit there until death if they choose. Scalia and Thomas are proof of that. Scalia sat for 30 years and Thomas has sat on the bench for a quarter century.

Trump will be as good as his word in picking another Scalia for the high court. The Supreme Court is to much the right’s jewel in the crown not too.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Obama Legacy (Middle Passage Press). He is an associate editor of New America Media. 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.