Sanders and White Poverty:19.7 Million Ways to Be Wrong

Ben Kasimar reports at The Hill:

Bernie Sanders stumbled on a question at Sunday's debate over whether white Americans can empathize with blacks, stating that white people don't know what it's like to be poor.

"When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, you don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you are walking down a street or dragged out of a car," Sanders said when asked about his personal racial blind spots. "We must be firm in making it clear that we will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system."

The poverty rate among African Americans is disproportionately high, the result of a long history of racial prejudice.  No serious person believes otherwise.  But it absurd to suggest that no white people know what it is like to be poor.

In 2014, the Census reports (Table 3), 46.7 million Americans lived below the poverty line.  Of this number, 19.7 million were non-Hispanic whites. 

Scandalabra: Email Edition

While the political world focuses on the bombastic billionaire, potential trouble looms for Clinton. CNN legal analyst Danny Cevallos writes

The Department of Justice has granted "immunity"to a former State Department employee who worked on Hillary Clinton's private email server. Bryan Pagliano initially invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and would not testify. Of course, the Department of Justice, known to defense attorneys simply as the "government," has many ways of getting people to talk.

The big question is whether there is a grand jury convened. The smart bet is yes. After all, the fact that there are immunity agreements logically means there's a grand jury investigation in some district. The grand jury is typically the genesis of the government's subpoena power. The next, bigger question, is whether anyone will be indicted.

...
While Pagliano is surely in an unenviable, nail-biting position, we can draw some inferences from recent events. Whether he had zero potential liability, or some liability, he's probably not a "target." Why? Because if he were, his attorney would probably not let him talk to the government, and the government would probably not give him immunity. Remember, the government is parsimonious with immunity deals. Another, less reliable inference may be drawn not about Pagliano, but others who are not Pagliano.

The person who often has to worry the most during this process is the person who hasn't been approached at all by the government. That's a chilling indicator that you may be the target.

Trump and Criminals

American Future Fund is going after Trump over his connections to the Mafia and various shady characters.

Meanwhile, Our Principles has posted a CNN interview with a journalist talking about Trump's mob ties.




PolitiFact reports:

Cruz said, "There have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia."

While it’s important to note that these connections were not atypical in the real estate and casino businesses in the 1980s, Cruz’s statement is accurate. Media reports have linked Trump to mafia bosses and mob-connected business associates for decades.

We rate the claim True.

Republican War on Donald Trump

Thomas Gibbons-Neff report at The Washington Post:

In a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump’s likely nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate for president, a group of more than 50 conservative foreign policy experts have banded together in an open letter condemning the real estate magnate as unfit for the office.

From stating that he’ll make Japan — a close U.S. ally — pay for its longstanding American support, to declaring generational warfare on terrorists, Trump’s rhetoric appears to have finally crossed a line for those conservatives that have made their careers in foreign policy.

The letter’s signatories include former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff, former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick, former homeland security adviser Frances Townsend and former undersecretary of defense Dov Zakheim. The letter was published Wednesday night on the foreign policy site War on the Rocks.

From the letter:

Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world. Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States. Therefore, as committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office. 

MSNBC and The Hill have lists of Republicans coming out against Trump.

Trump Wins Super Tuesday, But...

Jonathan Last writes at The Weekly Standard:

The single most shocking number from Super Tuesday might have been this poll showing voter awareness about various aspects of Trump: Only 27 percent had heard about his reluctance to denounce David Duke and the KKK; 20 percent about Trump University and the fraud lawsuit; 13 percent about the failure of Trump Mortgage.

At some point, those numbers will all be at 90 percent because someone will spend a lot of money putting ads about them all over television in battleground states. The only question is whether it will be conservatives or Hillary Clinton who expose voters to this information. Either way, it suggests that Trump still has the potential for downward mobility if conservative donors are serious about stopping him.

Andrew Kaczynski reports at Buzzfeed:

In his speech after his victory on Super Tuesday Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said he’d American jobs from moving overseas and win minority votes by bringing jobs back.

“I’m going to do great with virtually every group,” stated Trump. “The reason is I’m going to bring jobs back.”

Back in the days of Trump’s blog on the website of his now-defunct Trump University website, however, he wrote a post in defense of outsourcing titled, “Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run.”

“We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses,” wrote Trump. “But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.”

“I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs,” continued Trump. “Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture.”

 

Left Behind

The Economic Innovation Group reports:

Most American communities are not distressed, but they are far from flourishing. Jobs grew at less than half the national rate in the median U.S. zip code over the recovery years. The number of businesses in the median community remained flat. The country’s top zip codes, meanwhile, are in the midst of an economic boom. Zip codes mere miles apart occupy vastly different planes of community well-being—and few people are truly mobile between them. It is little surprise that many Americans feel they have been left behind.

Planning to Run Against Trump

At The New York Times, Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy report on how Democratic groups are planning to run against Trump:

The plan has three major thrusts: Portray Mr. Trump as a heartless businessman who has worked against the interests of the working-class voters he now appeals to; broadcast the degrading comments he has made against women in order to sway suburban women, who have been reluctant to support Mrs. Clinton; and highlight his brash, explosive temper to show he is unsuited to be commander in chief.

American Bridge, a pro-Clinton “super PAC,” has formed a “due diligence unit” of tax and business experts who are poring over Securities and Exchange Commission documents and court records related to Mr. Trump’s business career.

A staff member for an affiliated group, Correct the Record, which coordinates with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, has collected footage of comments that have not hurt Mr. Trump’s standing among Republican primary voters, but that could be stitched together in what the group’s founder, David Brock, described as a montage of hateful speech that would appall a general electorate.
...

“They’ll flip their top, and they’ll flip their panties...” read the subject line of a recent news release from Emily’s List, a group that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. The quote came from comments Mr. Trump made about women on “The Howard Stern Show” in the 1990s, unearthed by BuzzFeed last month.
Those types of comments, spoken by Mr. Trump over the years as he served as a tabloid regular and reality TV star, could help Mrs. Clinton excite suburban women and young women who have been ambivalent or antagonistic toward her candidacy.

Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily’s List, said that an expanded research shop at the organization had compiled “an endless amount of misogynistic and outrageous comments towards women.”

The strategy highlights a concern among Mrs. Clinton’s allies that her chance to become the first female president has not led to widespread excitement among young women. Mr. Trump is the perfect solution to the enthusiasm gap, many Democrats say.