scientific american's predictions from just 10 years ago are all wrong...,

gizmodo |  Recently, we did an experiment: We took an outdated issue of a respected popular science magazine, Scientific American, and researched exactly what happened to the highly-touted breakthroughs of the era that would supposedly change everything. What we discovered is just how terrible we are at predicting the long arc of scientific discovery.

The daily churn of science news tends toward optimism. You know what I’m talking about: New cure! New breakthrough smashing Moore’s law! New revolutionary technology! I write about science, and I am always uncomfortable trying to predict how a new piece of research will change the future. 

That’s because science can be wrong. It can go down dead ends. And even when it doesn’t, almost everything is more complicated and takes longer than we initially think. But just how wrong and how long? 

We can’t very well time travel to the future for those answers, but we can look backward. I recently dig up the 2005 December issue of Scientific American and went entry by entry through the Scientific American 50, a list of the most important trends in science that year. I chose 2005 because 10 years seemed recent enough for continuity between scientific questions then and now but also long enough ago for actual progress. More importantly, I chose Scientific American because the magazine 

publishes sober assessments of science, often by scientists themselves. (Read: It can be a little boring, but it’s generally accurate.) But I also trusted it not to pick obviously frivolous and clickbaity things.

Number one on the list was a stem cell breakthrough that turned out to be one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud ever. (To be fair, it fooled everyone.) But the list held other unfulfilled promises, too: companies now defunct, an FBI raid, and many, many technologies simply still on the verge of finally making it a decade later. By my count, only two of its 16 medical discoveries of 2005 have resulted in a drug or hospital procedures so far. The rosy future is not yet here.

Science is a not a linear march forward, as headlines seem to imply. Science is a long slow slog, and often a twisty one at that. That’s obvious in retrospect, when we can see the dead ends and the roadblocks. It’s less obvious looking ahead, as we’re being bombarded with promising new drugs and wondermaterial breakthroughs. So let’s take a look together.

english spoken here...?

kunstler |  Of course, the Freddie Gray riots in Baltimore last week prompted the usual cries for “an honest conversation about race,” and countless appeals to fix the “broken” public school system. So, in the spirit of those pleas, I will advance a very plain and straightforward idea: above all, teach young black kids how to speak English correctly.

Nothing is more important than acculturating ghetto kids out of their pidgin patois and into real English with all of its tenses, verb forms, and cases. It’s more important initially than learning arithmetic, history, and science. I would argue that it is hardly possible to learn these other things without first being grounded in real grammatical English.

When these kids grow up, their manner of speech will identify them and their prospects for success at least as much as the color of their skin — and probably more, in my opinion. Their ability to speak English correctly will be the salient feature in how others assess the content of their character

I’m sure by now that the racial justice hand-wringers are squirming over this proposal. All dialects are equally okay in this rainbow society, they might argue. No they’re not. Have you noticed that TV news, business, show biz, education, and politics increasingly employ people whose parents came from India and other parts of Asia. Do they speak in a patois lacking in complex verb forms? Apparently not. Are they succeeding in American life, such as it is? Apparently so.

Notice that the speech issue — how people talk — is never part of the “honest conversation about race” that we are supposed to have. Has anybody noticed that in his public speeches Martin Luther King spoke regular English correctly, if with a Southern inflection? Has anybody noticed how important that was in his role as “a communicator?” Why is this crucial question of language absent from the public conversation about “the intractable problems of race in America?” Is it because both blacks and whites are too fearful, too cowardly, to face this particular problem of how English is spoken?

Perhaps this raises the specter of IQ. I’d like to know how any IQ test can be meaningful when the person taking it can’t speak the language that the test is given in. I’m sure that any ghetto kid drilled in English for two years would show substantial improvement in such a generalized test. But, of course, first the American people of all skin tones would have to admit that this is important.

We don’t want to. We’d rather wring our hands over “structural racism” and other canards.

james baldwin's report from occupied territories 1966

thenation |  This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.

* * *

On April 17, some school children overturned a fruit stand in Harlem. This would have been a mere childish prank if the children had been white—had been, that is, the children of that portion of the citizenry for whom the police work and who have the power to control the police. But these children were black, and the police chased them and beat them and took out their guns; and Frank Stafford lost his eye in exactly the same way The Harlem Six lost their liberty—by trying to protect the younger children. Daniel Hamm, for example, tells us that “…we heard children scream. We turned around and walked back to see what happened. I saw this policeman with his gun out and with his billy in his hand I like put myself in the way to keep him from shooting the kids. Because first of all he was shaking like a leaf and jumping all over the place. And I thought he might shoot one of them.”

He was arrested, along with Wallace Baker, carried to the police station, beaten—“six and twelve at a time would beat us. They got so tired beating us they just came in and started spitting on us—they even bring phlegm up and spit on me.” This went on all day in the evening. Wallace Baker and Daniel Hamm were taken to Harlem Hospital for X rays and then carried back to the police station, where the beating continued all night. They were eventually released, with the fruit-stand charges pending, in spite of the testimony of the fruit-stand owner. This fruit-stand owner had already told the police that neither Wallace Baker nor Daniel Hamm had ever been at his store and that they certainly had had nothing to do with the fruit-stand incident. But this had no effect on the conduct of the police. The boys had already attracted the attention of the police, long before the fruit-stand riot, and in a perfectly innocent way. They are pigeon fanciers and they keep—kept—pigeons on the roof. But the police are afraid of everything in Harlem and they are especially afraid of the roofs, which they consider to be guerrilla outposts. This means that the citizens of Harlem who, as we have seen, can come to grief at any hour in the streets, and who are not safe at their windows, are forbidden the very air. They are safe only in their houses—or were, until the city passed the No Knock, Stop and Frisk laws, which permit a policeman to enter one’s home without knocking and to stop anyone on the streets, at will, at any hour, and search him. Harlem believes, and I certainly agree, that these laws are directed against Negroes. They are certainly not directed against anybody else. One day, “two carloads of detectives come and went up on the roof. They pulled their guns on the kids and searched them and made them all come down and they were going to take them down to the precinct.” But the boys put up a verbal fight and refused to go and attracted quite a crowd. “To get these boys to the precinct we would have to shoot them,” a policeman said, and “the police seemed like they was embarrassed. Because I don’t think they expected the kids to have as much sense as they had in speaking up for themselves.” They refused to go to the precinct, “and they didn’t,’’ and their exhibition of the spirit of ’76 marked them as dangerous. Occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered, and it is axiomatic, in occupied territory, that any act of resistance, even though it be executed by a child, be answered at once, and with the full weight of the occupying forces. Furthermore, since the police, not at all surprisingly, are abysmally incompetent—for neither, in fact, do they have any respect for the law, which is not surprising, either—Harlem and all of New York City is full of unsolved crimes. A crime, as we know, is solved when someone is arrested and convicted. It is not indispensable, but it is useful, to have a confession. If one is carried back and forth from the precinct to the hospital long enough, one is likely to confess to anything.

overseers struggling with their loss of privilege..,

NYTimes |  Early this year, Megan E. Green, a St. Louis alderwoman, met with officials of a local police union to discuss a proposal for a civilian oversight board that would look into accusations of police misconduct. After Ms. Green refused to soften her support for the proposal, the union backed an aggressive mailing campaign against her.

But Ms. Green won her primary with over 70 percent of the vote, and the Board of Aldermen approved the oversight board by a large margin. “All that stuff backfired,” Ms. Green said. “The more they attacked me for it, the more people seemed to rally around me.”

During the urban crime epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s and the sharp decline in crime that began in the 1990s, the unions representing police officers in many cities enjoyed a nearly unassailable political position. Their opposition could cripple political candidates and kill police-reform proposals in gestation.

But amid a rash of high-profile encounters involving allegations of police overreach in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., the political context in which the police unions have enjoyed a privileged position is rapidly changing. And the unions are struggling to adapt.

“There was a time in this country when elected officials — legislators, chief executives — were willing to contextualize what police do,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And that time is mostly gone.”

Granny Goodness' Top Contributors

opensecrets | Senator Hillary Clinton

Campaign Finance Cycle:

Citigroup Inc	$782,327	$774,327	$8,000
Goldman Sachs	$711,490	$701,490	$10,000
DLA Piper	$628,030	$601,030	$27,000
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$620,919	$617,919	$3,000
EMILY's List	$605,174	$601,254	$3,920
Morgan Stanley	$543,065	$538,065	$5,000
Time Warner	$411,296	$386,296	$25,000
Skadden, Arps et al	$406,640	$402,140	$4,500
Lehman Brothers	$362,853	$359,853	$3,000
Cablevision Systems	$336,288	$306,900	$29,388
University of California	$329,673	$329,673	$0
Kirkland & Ellis	$311,441	$294,441	$17,000
Squire Patton Boggs	$310,596	$305,158	$5,438
21st Century Fox	$302,400	$302,400	$0
National Amusements Inc	$297,534	$294,534	$3,000
Ernst & Young	$297,142	$277,142	$20,000
Merrill Lynch	$292,303	$286,303	$6,000
Credit Suisse Group	$290,600	$280,600	$10,000
Corning Inc	$274,700	$256,700	$18,000
Greenberg Traurig LLP	$273,550	$265,450	$8,100

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in 1999-2014. The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Why (and How) We Use Donors' Employer/Occupation Information

METHODOLOGY

NOTE: All the numbers on this page are for 1999-2014 and based on Federal Election Commission data available electronically on Monday, March 09, 2015. ("Help! The numbers don't add up...")

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center.

old stinky-fingered arkansas possum to blame for divorce rates among america's poor

WaPo |  The first question people ask me when they learn that my husband lost his job, our house went underwater and we went from middle class to barely working poor during the 2008 economic crash is: How did you stay together?

It always struck me as a strange question. But it’s actually a reasonable one. Overall, America’s divorce rate has fallen. But like many things, the poor have not reaped the benefits of this trend. The number of married, college-educated couples splitting by their seventh anniversary has dropped from more than 20 percent in the early 1980s to just 11 percent today. But among the poor, those numbers are stagnant. According to the New York Times, 17 percent of lower-income couples (pairs making no more than twice the federal poverty line of just over $30,000) get divorced, about the same rate as it was in the 1980s.

Why this discrepancy?

To start, money is a major source of tension for all couples (they fight more about it than about anything else, including sex and child care). And less money can equal more problems. Raevan Zayas stays at home with her 1-year-old baby in California while her husband struggles at a low-paying job. 

“I can’t afford child care to go to work. We can barely afford groceries. Our kid needs new shoes and clothes, and I can’t remember the last time Isaac and I did something nice together,” she said. “Our relationship is so strained. How are you supposed to work through the problems in your relationship when you’re worried about how you’re going to buy milk for your kid?”

University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers said he’s also found that working-class families have more stringent views about men as providers. The economy has shifted so that those without college degrees have more trouble finding such work, which contributes not only to financial hardship but also to relationship stress. As Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherbin explains: “I’ve looked at the marriage gap between men with high- and low-earning occupations, and it varies directly with the amount of economic inequality in the country. The more unequal the earning opportunities, the greater the marriage gaps between the classes.”

clintons can't tell you what they're peddling, but the ex hon.bro.preznit just got the good negroe franchise...,

NYTimes |  In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

the despicable overseer brand is a clinton legacy...,

NYTimes |  “In a democratic society, people have a say in how they are policed, and people are saying that they are not satisfied with how things are going,” said Sean Whent, the police chief in Oakland, Calif. The city has a troubled history of police abuse and misconduct, but some policy changes and a new approach to training have led to sharp declines in the use of force, Chief Whent added.

Like the 21-foot rule, many current police practices were adopted when officers faced violent street gangs. Crime rates soared, as did the number of officers killed. Today, crime is at historic lows and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for residents and officers alike. This should be a moment of high confidence in the police, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group. Instead, he said, policing is in crisis.

“People aren’t buying our brand. If it was a product, we’d take it out of the marketplace and re-engineer it,” Mr. Wexler said. “We’ve lost the confidence of the American people.”

Mr. Wexler’s group will meet with hundreds of police leaders in Washington this week to call for a new era of training, one that replaces truisms such as the 21-foot rule with lessons on defusing tense situations and avoiding violent confrontations. While the Justice Department and chiefs of some major police departments are supportive, the effort has not been widely embraced, at least so far. Some police unions and others have expressed skepticism, saying officers are being unfairly criticized.

“All this chatter just increases the idea that these encounters are avoidable and law enforcement is at fault,” said Jeff Roorda of the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association, who said officers already thought about ways to avoid confrontations.

The typical police cadet receives about 58 hours of training on how to use a gun and 49 hours on defensive tactics, according to a recent survey by Mr. Wexler’s group. By comparison, cadets spend just eight hours learning to calm situations before force is needed, a technique called de-escalation.

“Everything now is: You get there, you see a guy with a knife, you resolve it,” said Mr. Wexler, a former senior Boston police official. In many situations, he said, officers who find themselves 21 feet from a suspect can simply take a step backward to buy themselves time and safety.

overseers not about to de-escalate a dayyum-thing anywhere...,

LRC |  I was made aware of the “Interim Report of the President’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing” via an email in response to my post regarding recent incidents in Baltimore. The emailer suggested a false flag operation in Baltimore.

The president established this commission several months ago, in response to similar incidents that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri.  What is found in the report are dozens of recommendations and action items to involve the US Department of Justice further into local law enforcement, further consultations and studies, significant federal funding, etc. In other words, using events such as those in Baltimore as an opportunity for significant expansion of federal power and encroachment at the local level; and, if a false flag, even fomenting those events.

I am not in any position to make a statement regarding the false flag part of the discussion; however I found the report worthy of some interest.  It is this that I explore here.

What is the motive force behind this report?

Trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve is essential in a democracy. It is key to the stability of our communities, the integrity of our criminal justice system, and the safe and effective delivery of policing services.

True, true and true.

In light of the recent events that have exposed rifts in the relationships between local police and the communities they protect and serve, on December 18, 2014, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

But to the observant, “recent events” were not necessary to bring this lack of trust to light.

In establishing the task force, the President spoke of the distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities—the sense that in a country where our basic principle is equality under the law, too many individuals, particularly young people of color, do not feel as if they are being treated fairly.

The report offers six “Pillars” and a recommendation for implementation of the entire program.  I will briefly introduce these.  Each “pillar” is followed by several recommendations and action items – none of which will solve the underlying problems; instead all will only expand the bureaucracy behind the problems – opportunities for hundreds of millions of dollars for consulting contracts, billions of dollars in funds transferred from the federal government to local agencies, and the pretense that something is being done.

In other words, fertile ground for a false flag event.  Or, maybe, just making lemonade out of lemons.

There is little to no mention of recommendations and action items that will most quickly and efficiently improve the situation, for example:

• Eliminate all laws regarding victimless crimes;
• Ensure everyone is equal under the law – having a badge confers no special privilege;
• Eliminate minimum wage laws;
• Eliminate federal and state programs that subsidize behavior destructive toward personal responsibility and the family as the fundamental building block of a civilized society.

Of course, each of these would reduce government power, so they won’t be found in the report (with one tepid exception).

deutorestemes in texas

Stonekettle Station | Jade Helm.

Martial Law.

FEMA Death Camps.

Oh, it’s coming, Folks. It’s a comin’.

This is it. This is the big one. Obama is about to make his move. Martial law, you betcha, FEMA death camps and secret tunnels under Wal-Mart. Oh they warned us, they did, the powdered wig wearing Patriots of the Tea Party, they warned us. Grab the wimen’ folk, load yer guns, hoist the Confederate Battle Flag! To the bunkers! To the bunkers!

"Just because you're paranoid," said Ted Cruz, "doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Right.

And just because you have the word "Senator" in front of your name doesn't mean you're sane, rational, qualified to run the country, or have an IQ higher than that of a sea cucumber.

Seriously, somebody help me out here: what the fuck happened to Texas?

What the fuck happened to Texas?

There’s just no polite, no non-profane way to ask. What. The. Fuck. Happened to Texas?

H/T Prometheus 6

race, class, neglect...,

NYTimes |  Lagging wages — actually declining in real terms for half of working men — and work instability have been followed by sharp declines in marriage, rising births out of wedlock, and more.

As Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution writes: “Blacks have faced, and will continue to face, unique challenges. But when we look for the reasons why less skilled blacks are failing to marry and join the middle class, it is largely for the same reasons that marriage and a middle-class lifestyle is eluding a growing number of whites as well.”

So it is, as I said, disheartening still to see commentators suggesting that the poor are causing their own poverty, and could easily escape if only they acted like members of the upper middle class.

And it’s also disheartening to see commentators still purveying another debunked myth, that we’ve spent vast sums fighting poverty to no avail (because of values, you see.)

In reality, federal spending on means-tested programs other than Medicaid has fluctuated between 1 and 2 percent of G.D.P. for decades, going up in recessions and down in recoveries. That’s not a lot of money — it’s far less than other advanced countries spend — and not all of it goes to families below the poverty line.

Despite this, measures that correct well-known flaws in the statistics show that we have made some real progress against poverty. And we would make a lot more progress if we were even a fraction as generous toward the needy as we imagine ourselves to be.

The point is that there is no excuse for fatalism as we contemplate the evils of poverty in America. 

Shrugging your shoulders as you attribute it all to values is an act of malign neglect. The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources — which we can afford to provide — and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages. Baltimore, and America, don’t have to be as unjust as they are.

what's killing poor white women?

americanprospect |  Everything about Crystal’s life was ordinary, except for her death. She is one of a demographic—white women who don’t graduate from high school—whose life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years. These women can now expect to die five years earlier than the generation before them. It is an unheard-of drop for a wealthy country in the age of modern medicine. Throughout history, technological and scientific innovation have put death off longer and longer, but the benefits of those advances have not been shared equally, especially across the race and class divides that characterize 21st--century America. Lack of access to education, medical care, good wages, and healthy food isn’t just leaving the worst-off Americans behind. It’s killing them.

 

The journal Health Affairs reported the five-year drop last August. The article’s lead author, Jay Olshansky, who studies human longevity at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a team of researchers looked at death rates for different groups from 1990 to 2008. White men without high-school diplomas had lost three years of life expectancy, but it was the decline for women like Crystal that made the study news. Previous studies had shown that the least-educated whites began dying younger in the 2000s, but only by about a year. Olshansky and his colleagues did something the other studies hadn’t: They isolated high-school dropouts and measured their outcomes instead of lumping them in with high-school graduates who did not go to college.

The last time researchers found a change of this magnitude, Russian men had lost seven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when they began drinking more and taking on other risky behaviors. Although women generally outlive men in the U.S., such a large decline in the average age of death, from almost 79 to a little more than 73, suggests that an increasing number of women are dying in their twenties, thirties, and forties. “We actually don’t know the exact reasons why it’s happened,” Olshansky says. “I wish we did.”

Most Americans, including high-school dropouts of other races, are gaining life expectancy, just at different speeds. Absent a war, genocide, pandemic, or massive governmental collapse, drops in life expectancy are rare. “If you look at the history of longevity in the United States, there have been no dramatic negative or positive shocks,” Olshansky says. “With the exception of the 1918 influenza pandemic, everything has been relatively steady, slow changes. This is a five-year drop in an 18-year time period. That’s dramatic.”

sistah sold-yah is 360 degrees of EE-ville personified....,

theatlantic |  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crime rates hit their peak, the issue enjoyed a salience in American politics that is hard to comprehend today. And for Democrats, the consequences of appearing soft were devastating. In 1988, the George H.W. Bush campaign’s most effective (and notorious) ad slammed Michael Dukakis for furloughing murderers in Massachusetts. (A separate ad, by a pro-Bush PAC, made African American furloughed murderer Willie Horton a household name).

The most important moment in that year’s debates came when Dukakis, after being asked how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered, gave a bloodless, and politically catastrophic, answer. In January 1994, 37 percent of Americans said crime was the most important issue facing the country. And that fall, Mario Cuomo lost the governorship of New York State to a little-known Republican, George Pataki, who had made Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty central to his campaign.

In 1992, Bill Clinton faced a far tougher electorate than Hillary will this time around. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, who constituted almost 25 percent of the voters in 2012, and Millennials, who also lean disproportionately left on cultural issues, were either in school or in diapers. There’s a reason Clinton reminded voters that year that his nickname was “Bubba.” It’s because in 1992, far more than today, a Democrat who didn’t appeal to Bubbas couldn’t win. And in 1992, being “tough on crime” was critical to getting most Bubbas to give a Democrat a second look.

Was electing Bill Clinton worth it? It’s the kind of question that separates reformist, “pragmatic” progressives from their more revolutionary, anti-establishment brethren. It can’t be answered empirically. It depends on your worldview.

imitating what worked for others without all the parts and against all competitive odds...,

wikipedia |  Leon Mercer Jordan (May 6, 1905, Kansas City, Missouri - July 15, 1970, Kansas City, Missouri) was an American police officer, politician and civil rights leader who was assassinated on July 15, 1970.^[1][2] He was "one of the most influential African Americans in Kansas City's history"^[3] and, at the time of his death, the "state’s most powerful black politician".^[1]

Jordan attended Lincoln High School in Kansas City, served in the U.S. Army,^[3] and graduated from Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio in 1932.^[4] He married fellow Wilberforce student Orchid Irene Ramsey^[5][6] on August 10, 1932.^[4] After graduation, he worked as a school teacher.^[2]

Jordan joined the Kansas City Police Department in 1938, became a detective, and in 1952, became the first African-American police lieutenant in that department's history. He took a leave of absence in 1947, and spent eight years training the police forces of Liberia.^[6] A pilot, he flew his own plane around the country.^[3] In 1948, he helped coordinate the rescue of the French High Commissioner of West Africa and 16 other French officials after their plane made a forced landing. He was awarded the Chevalier of the Star of Africa by Liberian President William Tubman in 1948.^[4]

In 1951, Jordan became a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.^[4] He returned to Kansas City in February, 1952, and was promoted to police lieutenant. However, he discovered that he had little power, so he resigned and went back to Liberia for three years.^[3] He returned to Kansas City for good in the mid-1950s, and purchased the Green Duck Tavern.^[3]

In 1958, Jordan became a Democratic Party committeeman for the 14th Ward of Kansas City.^[3] In 1962, Jordan co-founded Freedom, Inc.^[7] along with Bruce R. Watkins.^[4] The organization advocated political awareness among African-Americans in Kansas City, organized a massive voter registration drive, and developed African-American political candidates. In 1963, Jordan and Watkins helped pass an accommodations ordinance, desegregating all public facilities in the city.^[6]

In 1964, Freedom, Inc. put forward eight candidates for office, and seven of them won.^[8] Among them was Jordan, who was elected to the first of three terms in the Missouri House of Representatives. He was campaigning for a fourth term at the time he was murdered. Shortly before his death, he described himself as a "radical", adding "I'm not a conformist but there are bounds of reason."^[2]

At about 1:00 a.m. on July 15, 1970, he was killed just outside his Green Duck Tavern by three shotgun blasts. Eyewitnesses reported that the three killers were African-American. The shotgun had been stolen, and was abandoned immediately. When it was recovered, it was traced to a burglary five years earlier in Independence, Missouri.^[9]

Three men were arrested for the murder, at least one of whom affiliated with a criminal group called the "Black Mafia". One was acquitted, and charges were dropped against the other two.^[10]

In 2010, reporters with the Kansas City Star began investigating the assassination while preparing for coverage of the 40th anniversary of Jordan's death. This led to discovery of the missing murder weapon and some old fingerprint cards, and that motivated the Kansas City Police Department to re-open the official investigation of the department's oldest cold case. Civil rights leader Alvin Sykes pressed the department for a complete investigation.^[11] In trying to determine who was responsible for the assassination, the newspaper reported that Jordan and his Freedom, Inc. political movement had been opposed to the "North End" faction in Kansas City politics, a group under the influence of La Cosa Nostra, and which had previously controlled black voting blocs. In 1965, Jordan had punched Frank Mazzuca, a fellow state legislator who was alleged to have supported mob interests in Jefferson City, Missouri, and death threats against Jordan were reported in the aftermath.^[9]

The newspaper reported that police informants associated with the Black Mafia had described the killing as a favor to North End mob interests, and that it was organized by "Shotgun Joe" Centimano, owner of a local liquor store. The informants said that Centimano had supplied the murder weapon and recruited the killers. The newspaper reported that one informant said the assassination had elements of both a "contract killing" and a "revenge killing", and that another said it was "all about politics".^[10] News coverage said that a 900-page police report finished in 2011 had concluded that mob boss Nick Civella had given his "blessing" to Jordan's assassination.^[12] No one was indicted because all of the main players were dead by then.

 

building fortunes, dynasties, cultures through politics like a BOSS!

wikipedia |  Thomas Joseph Pendergast (July 22, 1873 – January 26, 1945) was a political boss who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from approximately 1925 to 1939. "Boss Tom" Pendergast gave workers jobs and helped elect politicians, becoming wealthy in the process. He was eventually convicted of income tax evasion and served 15 months in a Federal prison.

Pendergast was a patron of the early political career of Harry S. Truman, a fact that caused some controversy after Truman became Vice President and then President.

In the 1890s young Tom Pendergast worked in his older brother James Pendergast's, West Bottoms tavern. The West Bottoms were at that time an immigrant section of town located at the 'bottom' of the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, above which spread the more prosperous sections of Kansas City. James Pendergast, an alderman in Kansas City's city council, tutored him in the diversities of the city's political ways and systems and in the strategic advantages of controlling blocs of voters. Jim retired in 1910 and died the next year, naming Tom his successor. Following his brother's death, Pendergast served in the city council until stepping down in 1916 to focus on consolidating the factions of the Jackson County Democratic Party. After a new city charter passed in 1925, placed the city under the auspices of a city manager picked by a smaller council, Pendergast easily gained control of the government.^{[citation needed]}

Pendergast married Caroline Snyder in January 1911 and raised three children, two girls and a boy, at their home on 5650 Ward Parkway.

Pendergast ruled from a simple, two-story yellow brick building at 1908 Main Street. Messages marked with his red scrawl were used to secure all manner of favors. He was unquestionably corrupt and there were regularly shootouts and beatings on election days during his watch. Some apologists have tended to be kind to his legacy since they allege that the permissive go-go days gave rise to the golden era of Kansas City jazz (now commemorated at the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Vine) as well as a golden era of Kansas City building. In addition he spotted the talent of Harry S. Truman (dubbed derisively at the time as "the Senator from Pendergast"). Pendergast tried to portray a "common touch" and made attention grabbing displays of helping pay medical bills, provide "jobs", and hosted famous Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for the poor. Often due to fraud and intimidation Kansas City voter turnout tended to be close to 100 percent in the Pendergast days.^[1]

Despite Prohibition, Pendergast's machine and a bribed police force allowed alcohol and gambling. Additionally many elections were fixed to keep political friends in power. In return, Pendergast's companies like Ready-Mixed Concrete were awarded government contracts. Under a $40 million bond program the city constructed many civic buildings during the Depression. Among these projects were the Jackson County courthouse in downtown Kansas City, and the concrete "paving" of Brush Creek near the Country Club Plaza. (A local urban legend, that bodies of Pendergast opponents were buried under the Brush Creek concrete, was finally put to rest when the concrete was torn up for a renewal project in the 1980s.) He also had a hand in other projects like the Power and Light Building, Fidelity Bank and Trust Building, Municipal Auditorium, and the construction of inner-city high schools.

Pendergast was able to place many of his associates in positions of authority throughout Jackson County. Pendergast handpicked Harry S. Truman, the 1934 candidate for U.S. Senate, and Guy Brasfield Park as governor in 1932 when the previous candidate, Francis Wilson, died two weeks before the election.

Pendergast also extended his rule into neighboring cities such as Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas where members of his family had set up branches of the Ready-Mixed Concrete company. The Pendergast stamp was to be found in the packing plant industries, local politics, bogus construction contracts and the jazz scene in those cities. Many of Truman's old war buddies had veterans' clubs in Omaha.

sistah.soldya ducking questions on how influence peddling made clinton richest ex-preznit OF ALL TIME!!!

BostonGlobe |  An unprecedented ethics promise that played a pivotal role in helping Hillary Rodham Clinton win confirmation as secretary of state, soothing senators’ concerns about conflicts of interests with Clinton family charities, was uniformly bypassed by the biggest of the philanthropies involved.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative never submitted information on any foreign donations to State Department lawyers for review during Clinton’s tenure from 2009 to 2013, Maura Daley, the organization’s spokeswoman, acknowledged to the Globe this week. She said the charity deemed it unnecessary, except in one case that she described as an “oversight.”

During that time, grants from foreign governments increased by tens of millions of dollars to the Boston-based organization.

Daley’s acknowledgement was the first by the charity of the broad scope of its apparent failures to fulfill the spirit of a crucial political pledge made by the Clinton family and their charities. The health initiative has previously acknowledged failing only to disclose the identity of its contributors, another requirement under the agreement.

The failures make the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which is headquartered on Dorchester Avenue in South Boston, and goes by the acronym CHAI, a prominent symbol of the broken political promise and subsequent lack of accountability underlying the charity-related controversies that are dogging Clinton as she embarks on her campaign for president.

The charity defended the lack of some disclosures on the grounds that the donations in question were simply passed through the charity to fund an existing project. Previously, it has acknowledged that mistakes were made. But loopoholes and legalistic explanations about what new foreign donations should be excluded from disclosure were not publicly discussed in the initial deal. In 2009, the incoming Obama administration, Clinton, and then-Senator John F. Kerry all publicly touted the Clinton charities’ “memorandum of understanding’’ as a guarantee that transparency and public scrutiny would be brought to bear on activities that posed any potential conflicts of interest with State Department business.

“Transparency is critically important here, obviously, because it allows the American people, the media, and those of us here in Congress . . . to be able to judge for ourselves that no conflicts — real or apparent — exist,’’ Kerry said during a Senate floor speech on Jan. 21, 2009.

The memorandum, which did not outline a penalty for failing to comply, was signed in December 2008 by Valerie Jarrett, co-chairwoman of the Obama transition team, and Bruce Lindsey, a longtime Clinton aide who at the time was CEO of the Clinton Foundation and sits on the board of the CHAI.

Jarrett and Lindsey declined to be interviewed about CHAI’s repeated failures to disclose major increases in foreign grants.

The White House and the State Department also declined to take a firm stand on the apparent violations of the agreement.

Bro.Constructive Feedback lays 2nd/3rd line inheritors of the CRM to waste...,

Tony Brown simply explained the exodus of black professional and managerial classes as the root cause of the collapse and utter ghettoization of the black underclass.
    SCIENTIFIC PROOF TESTING time

    THEORY: The Exit Of The "Talented Tenth" From Highly Concentrated so-called "Black Communities" allowed a DESTRUCTIVE CULTURE to become THE PREVAILING CULTURE, thus misdirecting the UPWARD THRUST of the subjects.

    A) My Initial Response: ACCURATE PHENOMENON. DOES NOT FULLY MODEL THE TRUTH

    MY "20 YEARS A METRO ATLANTA CITIZEN - WATCHING Confidence Men Who Claim Their SLAVE BLOOD"

    1) They used to ATTACK those exiting Blacks (Who I call "Black Flight Progressives") as SELLOUTS who vacated the Black community to live with THE WHITE FOLKS

    2) My analysis is that these "Black Flight Progressives" Got In Where They Fit In - FIGHTING the WHITE ESTABLISHMENT in the original area, raised up the NEW ESTABLISHMENT, yet when they had to LIVE UNDER these NEW PROGRESSIVE PUBLIC POLICIES - they realized that FIGHTING WHITE FOLKS is not the same as YIELDING YOUR BLACK PERMANENT INTERESTS and your family interests to the ACTIVISTS was not in their best interests

    2a) IRONICALLY they leveraged the Anti-Housing Discrimination Laws to MOVE AWAY in pursuit of their BLACK FAMILY INTERESTS

    3) TO-DAMNED-DAY The Civil Rights Pharisees have changed course. Most of these Suburban/ Ex-Urban areas that the "Black Flight Progressives" now live in have NAACP chapters. The core city MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ZONE activists are invited out to the NAACP Fundraising Banquets as featured speakers. They now see the Black Flight Progressives WHO THEY USED TO ATTACK as PROGRESSIVE FOOTHOLDS in formerly LILY WHITE Republican dominated areas.
    4) The Black Newspapers (NNPA syndicates) are the VOICE OF THE BLACK RACIAL SERVICES MACHINE voicing THEIR AGENDA to everyone. AGAIN PROGRESSIVE EXPANSION in the guise of DIVERSITY is the NEW TUNE THAT THEY SAY.

    4a) These Sycophants ARE NEVER GOING TO STAND UP FOR THE "BLACK LEAST OF THESE" in the Mission Accomplished Zones by STANDING UP AGAINST THE BLACK RACIAL SERVICES MACHINE, demanding that they COME THROUGH for the "Under-Developed Blacks" AS PROMISED. (See Baltimore)

    5) (The Professional Skills) EDUCATION IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER ----- WRONG - The EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS THE SOURCE OF CONTRACTS AND PERCEIVED POWER for the "Embedded Confidence Men".

    They call these the "BLACK SEATS OF POWER THAT MUST BE PROTECTED"

    5a) Many of you don't understand what you are seeing with the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Trial results. (Today) They STILL are talking about BLACK TEACHERS BEING LOCKED UP and they will FIGHT WITH THEM TILL THE END - while their CONGREGATION can't see that THESE ARE THE EMBEDDED CONFIDENCE MEN THAT FOMENTED THE CORRUPTION in all of the key "Mission Accomplished" Metro Atlanta public school systems that were recently in trouble (Atlanta, Clayton County, Dekalb County)

    5b) THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GETTING USED suffer from an "Abused Spouse Syndrome". Even though it is CLEAR that in order to find their own footing and best interests they need to PUT UP A REGULATORY WALL OF SEPARATION from these forces that are EXPLOITING THEM.............IF THEY were to set up a COMMUNITY MEETING - the EMBEDDED CONFIDENCE MEN would be the ONE'S taking the stage and LEADING IT. Or have SPIES to document THE INSURGENCY

    6) (Managerial) OWNERSHIP - a NEGRO CONFIDENCE MAN WOULD PUT A BANK THAT CATERS TO HIM OUT OF BUSINESS!! HE IS ON THE 'RIGHT SIDE OF BLACK HISTORY' COMING AND GOING

    6a) A Top financial services institution that KNOWS THIS HORNETS NEST and seek to avoid it is called a RED LINER. The activists will PROTEST OUTSIDE OF THEIR DOWNTOWN OFFICES demanding that THEY DO BUSINESS in their community or face GOVERNMENT SANCTION

    6b) (See the former "Bank South" before they got acquired) If a bank changes its lending practices but then offers mandatory but free FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT EDUCATION COURSES for its HIGH RISK CUSTOMERS - the CIVIL RIGHTS PHARISEES WILL CHARGE THEM WITH DISCRIMINATION - because THE WHITE FOLKS IN THE RICH AREAS don't have to take these classes. (When the Pharisees GET THE CONTRACT to do the training - they pipe down)

    6c) WHEN the banks start lending in these areas and the "House Flipping Market" gets out of control as home values rapidly accelerate - and EVERYONE HAS BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS......

    The local Black media operations who
    A) Made big time ad money from companies who flipped homes
    B) Had their own "Real Estate Investing" radio programs
    C) DID RADIO REMOTE BROADCASTS featuring FREE HOT DOGS And A "TI / Young Jeezy Concert" _ "WE HAVE MORTGAGE SPECIALISTS STANDING BY. WHY RENT WHEN YOU CAN OWN? WE CAN GET YOU IN A HOUSE TODAY. COME ON BY BEFORE THE CONCERT ENDS AND THE HOT DOGS RUN OUT!!!"

    6d) WHEN THE MARKET CRASHED ON IT ALL AND FORECLOSURES AND HOME PRICES PLUMMETED - THEY BLAMED BUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Logically FOR FAILING TO STOP THEM)

    7) As Black students of "Black Flight Progressives" had problems in formerly LILY WHITE SCHOOL DISTRICTS - the CIVIL RIGHTS PHARISEES jumped into their cars and HELD THE PROTEST RALLIES FOR JUSTICE against the WHITE FOLKS that you NEVER see them do around the FAILING PREDOMINATELY BLACK SCHOOLS

    * A teacher makes a SLAVE reference in a math problem

    * A White teacher makes a "White Narrative" of a "Black Historical Event" so as to not make the WHITE FOLKS appear as evil oppressors

    * A would-be black valedictorian who lost points because he took too many college level courses OFF the high school campus and these discounted credits pushed a WHITE KID a fraction of a point higher

    ALL OF THESE DREW PROTESTS FROM PEOPLE WHO DROVE PAST THEIR FAILING SCHOOLS TO CONFRONT "RACISM" AND THE LOCAL NEWS VANS PROVIDING VIDEO FOOTAGE

    ******************************************************************************************************
    SO TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION -

    The MOVEMENT OF THE TALENTED 10TH out of the highly concentrated Black Areas - IN AND OF ITSELF is not the grand cause that you speak of.

    THERE IS A FULL SERVICE ACCOMPANIMENT OF OPERATIVES AND OPPORTUNISTS that looked to TAKE ADVANTAGE of the NEGROES WHO MOVED and the NEGROES WHO STAYED - all with the goal of RETAINING ENTRENCHED PROGRESSIVISM AND FOMENTING ITS EXPANSION.

    THE PROPER REBUTTAL IS TO ASK YOU:

    Since You INFER that there is a particular form of DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE that produces UNFAVORABLE OUTCOMES............................can you point us to ANY "Black Racial Services Machine" agents who SEE THE THREAT of this CULTURE taking more widespread root and STOP THEIR PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS from SECULARIZING:

    * Marriage - which provides structure and stability
    * School Discipline - which tries to retain THOSE WHO WANT TO LEARN (See Anna Julia Cooper and the selective "High School For Colored Children" in DC)

    * They have Progressive Partnerships with the "Friends" and "Unitarians" , which promote simple, clean living, but for some reason you never see this "Theory Of Living" being promoted via the partnership - ONLY SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISM on behalf of Oppressed Blacks

    AGAIN THE QUESTION (Do you see any push back to prevent this culture from taking root, as a mandate that TRUMPS PROGRESSIVE SECULARIZATION?)

what happens when your professional and managerial leadership covet the status but aren't up to the task

pitch |  Beginning in 2005, James served as director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security. He found his way into higher education via a 2007 task force on campus security that he co-chaired with Robert Stein, commissioner of the Missouri Department of Higher Education. The two hit it off. When Stein learned that there was an opening at MCC for a vice chancellor of administrative services, in 2009, he recommended James as a candidate. The MCC board of trustees — a six-member body, elected by the public — approved. When Jackie Snyder stepped down as chancellor of MCC the next year, James was recommended for the job. Despite less than a year's experience working in higher education, he got the appointment.

One of James' first acts as chancellor was to turn MCC's campus security into an official, state-commissioned police department. Today, MCC boasts a force of 35 uniformed officers, plus another six uncertified public-safety officers. Though it patrols only five small campuses, MCC's police department numbers nearly as many cops as that of Gladstone, Missouri — an 8-square-mile suburb with a population of 28,000.

If you're measuring MCC's success in non-law-enforcement terms, however, James' tenure as chancellor has been a shaky four years. According to faculty surveys and outside studies, the district is in disarray — a condition confirmed by more than a dozen current and former staff, faculty and administrators, many of them longtime MCC loyalists, interviewed by The Pitch in recent weeks. The beefed-up police department, they say, is merely the most visible way that James has shifted resources away from educating students.

"You'd think a guy with a police background and basically zero higher-ed experience, chosen to lead a community-college district, would bend over backward to familiarize himself with academia and not focus on all the law-enforcement stuff," says a longtime faculty member who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. "Instead, it's been the complete opposite. He's consistently shown disdain toward the academic traditions that have been in place at these schools for 100 years."

Such criticisms might be easier to dismiss as the grumblings of change-averse academics, were it not for the growing body of data indicating that MCC is underperforming. A 2014 report, commissioned by MCC and prepared by CLARUS Corp., a community-college marketing-research firm, concluded:

"Nationally, over the last four years, the number of applicants to community colleges has been increasing. But at Metropolitan Community College, from 2010 to 2013, the number of applicants has been in decline (from 14,600 to 11,500)." The report goes on to note that the school's conversion rate — the percentage of applicants who end up enrolled at MCC — has held steady at 40 percent, though "the typical conversion goal for a community college is 60 percent."

James' tenure has also been marked by a significant exodus of high-ranking, long-serving administrators, including several vice chancellors and presidents with decades of the kind of higher-education experience that James lacks.

Shake-ups are common when new administrations take command, and unpopular moves are often necessary to ensure the long-term viability of an institution — particularly at community colleges, where state funds are ever-depleting and donations add up to a fraction of what four-year universities comfortably rely on.

But many of MCC's critical positions — vice chancellors, directors and, as of last month, a school president — remain unfilled. And several of the past administrators who spoke with The Pitch indicated that most of those who have left MCC in recent years toughed it out under James' leadership as long as they did out of a sense of duty to the students, whom they believe are getting shortchanged as a result of changes that James has made.

Kathy Walter-Mack first arrived at MCC in 2007, when she was part of a two-person consulting team hired by the school to investigate racial-discrimination complaints, brought by several black students, against two teachers and a staff member. Walter-Mack's conclusion was that the allegations were unsubstantiated but that a systemic environment of intolerance existed at MCC. One of the recommendations of the report was to establish a diversity-0x000Acoordinator position at MCC. Walter-Mack was subsequently hired for that position.

Her pedigree included a stint in the 1990s working in the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, which was then still mired in a decades-long desegregation battle. She had by then been the executive director of the Desegregation Monitoring Committee, a court-ordered governing body through which the district had to clear virtually all of its decisions. Walter-Mack later went to work for Sam's Town, where she oversaw compliance with city quotas for minority- and women-owned businesses. Later, she returned to Kansas City Public Schools and served as its general counsel.

According to a 2001 Pitch story ("Taylor Made," October 4, 2001) chronicling leadership problems in KCPS, Walter-Mack attempted to consolidate district power in her office and was subsequently fired by Superintendent Benjamin Demps.

"Really and truly, she [Walter-Mack] was running a large part of the district," Jack Goddard, chief of staff to the KCPS superintendent at the time, told The Pitch. "A lot of everyday decisions, principals were reporting up through her as much as they were through the superintendent. ... You had a really confused chain of command."

That characterization is likely familiar to staff and faculty at MCC, who now know Walter-Mack in a variety of roles.

When James became chancellor, in 2010, he created a new position — chief of staff — and installed Walter-Mack in it. In 2013, Walter-Mack took on the additional role of vice chancellor of human resources. Owing to her background as a lawyer — she's licensed to practice in Missouri and Illinois — Walter-Mack is also highly involved in all legal matters pertaining to MCC.

James has grown increasingly reliant on Walter-Mack, "abdicating daily decision making to her so he can focus on community visibility and fund raising, leaving the running of the academic institution to others," according to notes from the faculty emergency meeting.