Donald Trump’s Not So Great Relationship With “The Blacks”
In an episode early in Donald Trump’s career, his New York real estate company was sued by the federal government for discriminating against potential black renters. After a lengthy legal battle, it ultimately agreed to wide-ranging steps to offer rentals to nonwhites.
The little-remembered case provides crucial context for the current discussion centering on Trump and race. The celebrity businessman made news last month when he declared, “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”
He has recently come under fire for attacks on President Obama that critics have described as racially tinged. CBS anchor Bob Schieffer, for example, said Wednesday there is “an ugly strain of racism” in Trump’s recent (baseless) accusations that President Obama should not have been admitted to Columbia. Also yesterday, Trump told a black reporter, unprompted, “Look I know you are a big Obama fan.”
The discrimination case began in the earliest days of Trump’s career, when he was still in his 20s.
Fred Trump, Donald’s father, was, unlike his son, a self-made man. He made his fortune by building thousands of units of middle-class housing in Brooklyn and Queens. But in the early 1970s, Donald was made president of the family company.
One of Donald’s first challenges came in October 1973, when the Justice Department hit the Trump Organization with a major discrimination suit for violating the Fair Housing Act. The Times reported:
… the Government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals “because of race and color.” It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.
The journalist Gwenda Blair reported in her 2005 Trump biography that while Fred Trump had sought to combat previous discrimination allegations through “quiet diplomacy,” Donald decided to go on the offensive. He hired his friend Roy Cohn, the celebrity lawyer and former Joseph McCarthy aide, to countersue the government for making baseless charges against the company. They sought a staggering $100 million in damages.
A few months after the government filed the suit, Trump gave a combative press conference at the New York Hilton in which he went after the Justice Department for being too friendly to welfare recipients. He “accused the Justice Department of singling out his corporation because it was a large one and because the Government was trying to force it to rent to welfare recipients,” the Times reported. Trump added that if welfare recipients were allowed into his apartments in certain middle-class outer-borough neighborhoods, there would be a “massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole.”
A federal judge threw out Trump’s countersuit a month later, calling it a waste of “time and paper.”
Writes Blair in her book:
Donald testified repeatedly that he had nothing to do with renting apartments, although in an application for a broker’s license filed at the same time he said that he was in charge of all rentals.
In 1975, Trump ultimately came to a far-reaching agreement with the DOJ in which he and the company did not admit guilt but agreed not to discriminate and to take steps to open its housing stock to more nonwhites. The company agreed to submit a weekly list of vacancies to the Urban League, which would produce qualified applicants for a portion of all vacancies.
But it didn’t end there. In 1978, the government filed a motion for supplemental relief, charging that the Trump company had not complied with the 1975 agreement. The government alleged that the Trump company “discriminated against blacks in the terms and conditions of rental, made statements indicating discrimination based on race and told blacks that apartments were not available for inspection and rental when, in fact, they are,” the Times reported. Trump again denied the charges.
It’s not clear what happened with the government’s request for further action (and compensation for victims), but in 1983, a fair-housing activist cited statistics that two Trump Village developments had white majorities of at least 95 percent.
At the very least, the case is something for reporters to ask about next time Trump touts his “great relationship with the blacks.”
By: Justin Elliott, Salon War Room, April 28, 2011
We Don’t Have A Spending Problem, We Have A Fraud Problem
Conservatives seem to have a knack for changing the subject whenever their backs are up against the wall. Over the last several weeks, there has been an orchestrated chorus by the House Republicans in particular to define the so-called “deficit problem” in terms of a wild spending binge by the federal government and the Obama administration. They seem to have easily forgotten who got us into this mess in the first place. That aside, everyone from Speaker John Boehner to Sen Mitch McConnell have been bellowing throughout the halls of Congress and at every available microphone that “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem”.
It’s amazing how we all have bought into this line. The media, in its usual rush to get a headline or sound bite, immediately picked up this line and has been the waterboys for the GOP by enabling this hoax on the American people. The focus in most circles has been on spending cuts. Well, we need to re-characterize what is actually going on here. We don’t have a spending problem..we have a fraud problem.
This fraud has been played on the American people by an ideologically depraved Republican party for at least the last ten years. They have made everybody believe that if we just make the wealthy wealthier, somewhere down the road, we will all benefit. There would be job creation with full employment, small businesses would thrive, home prices would fall, gas would cost less than two dollars a gallon and there would be a chicken in every pot. And we believed it hook, line and sinker. Now we are back to square one. None of these things have happened except the fact that we have indeed made the wealthy wealthier. In 2010, the 400 Americans with the highest adjusted gross revenue incomes averaged $345 million. The average federal income tax was 17%, down from 26% in 1992. The income gap just keeps getting wider. Why does this continue to happen? Because we let it happen.
Just last week, Standard and Poor’s accentuated the Republican clarion that the sky is falling. This call comes from the same S&P who supported every toxic waste subprime security under the sky, the same S&P who sold its ratings to the highest bidder. Regulators have also assisted the GOP in their fraud. The Office of the Currency has gone out of its way to protect its clients, ie the banks. Efforts to reign in the banks and stop their predatory loan practices have been foiled at every turn. Even the banks are too big to fail. Profits for banks, corporations, CEO’s, Wall St and the wealthy just keep soaring. There is a lot of back scratching going on here, by and for a lot of wealthy people.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, all of these wealthy people are trying to figure out a way to take the spot light off themselves. They are beginning to see that they may not be able to stave off demands any longer that they pay their fare share. People who have been adversely affected for so many years are now demanding that this fraud be stopped. Teachers and other low wage earners, the poor, seniors, students and union members have all come to believe that they have sacrificed enough. Even some tea party members are beginning to see the light.
For too many years, the Republicans and their wealthy friends have had their hands in everybody’s pockets. Your pocket was the revenue stream for them. General Electric and the Koch Brothers were probably happier than anyone. The Republicans were also happy because their happy friends provided the cover that allows them to do whatever they want to in terms of policy. Being the ideologues that they are, this protection gives them unimpeded opportunity to push forward with their agenda, from dissolving women’s rights, overturning the Affordable Care Act, union busting, replacing Medicare with vouchers and completely eliminating any sense of environmental protection just to name a few. With happy and contented wealthy backers behind you for so many years, how could you go wrong. My, how things are changing.
The revenue stream that the Republicans have depended on for so long is now drying up…that stream is you. They are finding that when they put their hands in your pockets now, they are feeling the seam of the sewn pocket. There just isn’t any more money there. They become flushed and filled with extreme panic, finally realizing that they are going to have their taxes raised after all these years. Their backs are against the wall. So what do they do now? Change the debate..”Let’s raise taxes on everybody”. Nice try!
It’s well past time that shared sacrifice mean exactly what it says. It is no longer acceptable that the poor, under privileged, seniors and the disenfranchised continue to carry the load for corporations, Wall St and their deadbeat tax-evading friends. No, let’s not raise taxes on everybody. Let’s end the fraud and insist that the wealthy start paying taxes just like everyone else. This being Easter Sunday, this may be a good symbolic time to increase taxes only for the rich. We should leave that rate in place for oh say, the next 40 years. Besides, they have accumulated a fair amount of wealth over the years and should easily be able to live off that profit during that time. Perhaps take a trip or two or just wander around the world enjoying their spoils. We will pledge to re-visit this issue after that time. If, and only if, the middle class has reached a level playing field, then we can talk about lowering the tax rate for the wealthy. I think Moses and the Pharaoh’s would be happy with this compromise. So it is written, so let it be done.
By: raemd95, mykeystrokes.com, April 24, 2011
Insuring The Elderly, Insuring The Poor
Democrats, Republicans and Independents all believe the government is responsible for providing health care to the elderly. Democrats and independents, but not Republicans, believe the government should also provide health care to the poor:
All groups are more likely to favor guaranteed health care for the elderly than for the poor. But the dropoff between the two policies is very different. Democrats by a plus 77% margin favor covering the elderly, but only favor covering the poor by a 52% margin. That’s a 25 percentage point gap between covering the elderly and covering the poor. For independents, the falloff is a very similar 28 percentage points. For Republicans, the falloff is 61 percentage points, from a +15 point margin for covering the elderly to a -46 point margin for covering the poor.
The best way to understand this is by grasping the link between ethnocentrism and support for universal entitlements and both opposition to means-tested entitlements. Ethnocentric attitudes among whites, controlling for all other beliefs, correlate with support for universal programs and with opposition to programs for the poor. White racial conservatives favor programs that benefit people like them — and hey, everybody gets old — and oppose programs for people unlike them — the poor being disproportionately non-white, and even more proportionately so in the white imagination.
Toxic Misfits: Donald Trump, Birthers And Other Hazardous Materials
It seems that there is no end in sight. You can’t turn to any television channel or listen to any radio station without hearing something that has to do with Donald Trump and his vile birther rants. One wonders when will it all end. Some have given Trump a pass in this regard. Many believe that he is simply doing it for the attention while others, for some odd reason, see his actions only as a joke.
It seems that this whole “birther” issue began with Jim Geraghty, a conservative blogger for National Review and National Review On-line. The spark for the birther campaign began by Geraghty suggesting that President Obama’s first and middle names were not the same as listed on his birth certificate. The embers were kindled by Jerome Corsi in an interview on Fox News where the idea that Obama’s birth certificate was fake. This quackery has been non-stop since.
This birther theory was elevated to a different level of insanity by Orly Taitz, who not only believes that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, but also believes that Hawaii cannot be considered part of the United States “unless it can produce an authentic statehood certificate”. Taitz, mind you, emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel and then to the United States and is a dual citizen of Israel and the U.S. In her view, “the islands of Hawaii appear to be colonies of Kenya”. As such, “everyone born in Hawaii is legally not an American but a Kenyan”. Never mind that these assertions have no basis of fact. Joshua Wisch, Attorney General of Hawaii has repeatedly noted that the presidents certificate of live birth is on file in the archives of the Department of Health of Hawaii.
Then you have the likes of Andy Martin, Michael Savage, G. Gordon Liddy, Lars Larson, Bob Grant and…. oh yes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Chuck Norris, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Roy Blunt and David Vitter.
The latest participant in this land of make believe is none other than Donald Trump. Over the past several weeks, Trump seems to have gone out of his way to etch his place in history as the “birther of all birthers”. He has been given numerous opportunities by the media, often unchallenged, to espouse again and again what he surely knows to be flat out lies. Despite “prima facie” evidence, Trump has chosen to continue down a path that can be best described in every category as bigoted, racist and divisive.
I have been trying to figue out why this gang of “misfits” continue to propagate this charade on the American people. Surely they cannot believe that actions of this nature will endear them to the majority of the American people, or do they? It really makes you wonder if they are merely front persons for the real behind the scenes “power players” whose goal is to completely alienate and isolate certain segments of the population. This idea seems to have worked very well in the past with groups such as the teaparty and the christian right. Could it be that they are attempting to expand their grasps to include even more radical segments?
Power, radicalism, extremism, racism, bigotry, hate, fear…they all work, but at what cost to the rest of the country. There is a bigger picture here…one larger than Trump or Bachmann or Newt. The “power players” are all about the preservation of an aggressive, radical and dangerous conservative ideology…an ideology that is appealing more and more to the fringe and most noxious elements of our society…nothing more and nothing less.
Continued unfettered tolerance of these types of behavior is merely an assent of their vile actions and intents. That is just not acceptable. At some point, good people will have to take a stand and put a stop to the shananigans of these toxic misfits.
By: Raemd95, April 20, 2011
John Boehner Thinks We’re “Broke” But He’s Willing To Splurge
When the Obama administration announced that it no longer considers the Defense of Marriage Act constitutional, and would stop defending the law against court challenges, officials told Congress it could step in and defend DOMA if it wants to. Soon after, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the House would gladly to just that.
Yesterday, Boehner’s office announced it has hired former Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the discriminatory law, which seems like a wise choice. Clement is an accomplished attorney with extensive experience who’ll no doubt do a capable job.
But Clement is also a very well paid D.C. attorney, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would like to know what Boehner expects this little culture-war endeavor to cost. For that matter, Pelosi found it curious that the Speaker hired an attorney to represent the House, but hasn’t shared the contract with other congressional leaders.
Today, the picture started coming together.
House Republicans plan to pay former Solicitor General Paul Clement and his legal team from King & Spaulding as much as $500,000 of taxpayer money to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on behalf of House of Representatives, according to a document obtained by the Huffington Post.
“The General Counsel agrees to pay the Contractor for all contractual services rendered a sum not to exceed $500,000.00,” the Contract for Legal Services obtained by The Huffington Post says. The cap could be raised “by written agreement between the parties with the approval” of the House, the document states.
The hourly rate that King & Spaulding will be receiving is $520 per hour — which could actually be considered a deal. Some reports say that the firm’s top attorneys receive as much as $900 per hour.
Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill told Amanda Terkel, “The hypocrisy of this legal boondoggle is mind-blowing. Speaker Boehner is spending half a million dollars of taxpayer money to defend discrimination. If Republicans were really interested in cutting spending, this should be at the top of the list.”
That seems more than fair. After all, Boehner has been running around for months, falsely claiming, “We’re broke.” It’s how he justifies proposed cuts in critical areas like education, medical research, infrastructure, job training, and homeland security, even if it makes the jobs crisis much worse.
But if we’re actually broke, shouldn’t House Republicans want to save $500,000 of our money, and not give it to one high-priced lawyer to defend an anti-gay law?
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly, Political Animal, April 19, 2011
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 