AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

I don't know Beth or where she lives. However I do know unions very well and from long direct experience dealing with them and overseeing the negotiations of CBAs with them. One must be a sap to willingly endure them.

It's not a matter of knowing her, it is a matter of assuming the 'right' to insult her.

You appear to assume that right with great abandon. Why should I be subject to a higher standard?

Only if your a business man trying to screw all your employees out of their share of their productivity.

I see that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) said last night that he will schedule a vote in the Senate on Rep Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget bill which passed the House a few weeks ago. It is popular with many conservative Repubs but contains spending curbs on Medicare, which is largely not popular with many moderate Repubs.
It looks like Reid may be doing this in order to drive a wedge between the wings of the GOP.
It is likely that all Dems will vote to defeat this. The Repubs will likely split. It could be that the Dems will vote "present" allowing the Ryan budget to pass and Obama to keep it in the media spotlight before vetoing it after a week or so.
It is also possible that moderate Repubs will try to introduce so-called "save the puppy" amendments.
It should be interesting. Reid didn't schedule a date for opening discussion. It appears he will wait for the new Republican from Nev takes office, filling the seat held by the resignation of John Ensign after a sex scandal.

From Salon:

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.

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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."

(Hat tip to reader Linda Reynolds)

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott

For many of us who are familiar with racial discrimination, we don't need to go into Trump's background to know he's a racist pig. Current events tell us enough about this bigoted racist who thinks he's smart enough to fool the masses. He's wrong.

What has Trump done to make him a racist?

He had the audacity to question Obama's birth certificate, thus causing Obama to release his long form birth certificate.

Yes, the audacity. Anyone who criticizes BO is a racist. I don't think that's gonna work this time. BO's approval rating was at it's highest on inauguration day. It's been going down ever since.

It was worse than that, Renaldo. It was insinuated that anyone that simply opposed Obama or voted against him, it was probably because they were racist. Democrats love to use the race card to get their way. Sort of reminds of a child in a tantrum, they will resort to anything to have their way.

Heard the piece on speeches delivered by five republicans yesterday at an event in NH with Tim Pawlenty leading off with a brag nearly as self-serving but not quite as stupidly crude as donald trump's I'm-so-proud-of-me sputtering.

Pawlenty bragged about his vetoes. What seems interesting is that here was a person bragging about being difficult, of using a governmental position to cause government to grind to a halt. Seems irrational.

Good. He deserves to be proud of trying to stop a monumental financial train wreck. Somebody needs to. Pawlenty would probably get my vote if he ends up being the candidate, but there is a long way before that point. Unlike the Dems, the Repubs will have a healthy and very beneficial process of selecting the best candidate.

When the top 400 represent the same wealth as 150,000,000 people, the situation is Medieval. The republicans want to bring back serfdom.

What do you mean, bring back? We're already there!

Haven't you noticed? Our politics is bought and sold with $$$$$$$.

True.

When I saw the film Fahrenheit 9/11 and watched the footage of Flint, MI with its important labor union history, I thought that both the democrats and republicans are responsible for reducing this city to one that might have existed in early modern Britain or in a Third World nation today.

okie says.
Given the present Republican field, or any likely future entrants, there is no such thing as "the best candidate". I can't even see "the adequate candidate" or "a capable candidate". "Dumb and dumber" is the phrase that springs to mind.

Palin and Trump are good examples of who you are talking about; dumb and dumber, and Trumps in the lead.

It's more than dumb and dumber. It's crude and cruder. Trump is vulgar. He's also egotistical. I've known people with strong egos who have a great deal of which to be proud. Trump has nothing.

Palin is vulgar as is bachmann and that Arizona governor. No one trumps trump when it comes to vulgarity, however.

The vulgarity is something I have difficulty reconciling with the old image of the drab republican party of the 50s. The old republicans of the Eisenhower era would have nothing to do with the gang kids immortalized by West Side Story yet so many of them today act like gang veterans. Crude.