Tag: detroit
Detroit mob

Rowdy Trump Mob In Detroit Attempts To Stop Vote Count

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

A crowd of protesters demanding that vote counting in Detroit cease formed at the TCF Hall, a local election center, Steve Patterson of NBC News reported on Wednesday.

He posted video of the event where the protesters crowded around the entrance to a room where votes were being counted:


"Step back! Step back!" a law enforcement official yelled as he tried to leave the room. The crowd was press up against the door.

Another official identified himself as a member of the Detroit Health Department, drawing jeers from the crowd. He instructed the crowd to spread out if they're going to be inside, presumably because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

Other videos appeared to show the protesters at the center cheering "stop the count." President Donald Trump has falsely declared victory in his re-election, despite the fact the official counts are not yet complete, and the odds seem to favor Joe Biden's chances at this time. But the protesters demands were deeply ironic, because the current Michigan count has Biden leading — stopping the count now wouldn't save Trump in the state.


This scenario — with Trump disputing the ballot counting, and his supporters trying to cause chaos at election centers — is exactly the circumstance that many political observers have warned could take place for months in the event of a tight race.

How To Talk To Black People In Eight Easy Lessons

How To Talk To Black People In Eight Easy Lessons

Today’s column is presented as a public service.

It is for serious politicians both Democratic and Republican — and also for Donald Trump. The urgent need for this service has been painfully obvious for many years and never more so than today. So, let’s get right to it. This is: How to Talk to Black People in Eight Easy Lessons.

1. Go where we are.

You’d think that pretty obvious. Then you remember Trump purporting to speak to black people whilst addressing audiences whose aggregate melanin wouldn’t fill a Dixie cup.

2. Don’t act as if going where we are requires machetes and a supply line.

“Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul once told a black audience. He said this at Howard University, which is about 15 minutes from the White House. They have cell service there and everything.

3. Stop confusing the NAACP with the Nation of Islam.

Donald Trump recently snubbed an invitation to address the venerable civil rights group. Bob Dole once did, too, claiming they were trying to “set me up.” Right. Because the NAACP has such a long history of incendiary rhetoric. As one of its founders, the great scholar W.E.B. DuBois, never really said, “I’m ’bout to bust a cap on these honkies if they don’t give me my freedom.”

4. Don’t use Ebonics unless you are fluent.

I still have nightmares about Hillary Clinton crying out, “I don’t feel no ways tired” in that black church in Selma. Stick to Ivorybonics. Most of us are bilingual.

5. Don’t make a CP time joke unless you are a CP.

When candidate Obama sauntered onstage about 15 minutes after the start time of a black journalists’ event and quipped, “I want to apologize for being a little bit late — but you guys keep on asking whether I’m black enough,” it was cool and funny. When Bill de Blasio joked in a scripted exchange with Hillary Clinton about running on “CP Time” — “cautious politician time” — it was, well, not.

6. Don’t make a slavery joke, period.

Joe Biden once warned a black audience that Republicans are “going to put y’all back in chains.” Can you imagine him warning a Jewish crowd how the GOP is “going to put y’all back in the gas chambers”? Can you imagine how offensive that would be?

7. Don’t talk to the black people in your head.

This is what Donald Trump was doing when he told black people they lived in the suburbs of hell and had nothing to lose by voting for him. He was speaking, not to black people, but to black people as he imagines them to be, based on lurid media imagery and zero actual experience. In this, he was much like Bill O’Reilly, in whose world black folks all have tattoos on their foreheads.

8. Know what you don’t know.

“I’m here to learn,” said Trump at a black church in Detroit a few days ago. It was a powerful expression of humility — or would have been, had it been said by someone who wasn’t an OG of the birther movement, a serial re-tweeter of supremacist filth and the star of David Duke’s bromantic fantasies. Still, he had the right idea. Politicians too often purport to lecture us about us without having the faintest idea who we even are.

The truth is, How to Talk to Black People isn’t all that difficult.

The candidate who wants African-American support should pretend black folks are experts on our own issues and experiences — because we are. He should learn those issues, tap that experience, formulate some thoughtful ideas in response. Then he should do what he would for anyone else:

Ask for our vote. Tell us what he’d do if he got it.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attends a church service, in Detroit, Michigan, September 3, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Republicans Blitz Trump At Presidential Debate

Republicans Blitz Trump At Presidential Debate

DETROIT (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump came under withering attack from rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz at a debate on Thursday as the party’s establishment sought to unite behind a last-ditch anti-Trump effort.

The Fox News Channel debate became a mud-throwing fracas from the outset with tensions mounting over the New York billionaire’s ascendancy and his drive to be the presumptive nominee should he win nominating contests in Florida and Ohio on March 15.

When the Fox questioners showed Trump changing his mind on a variety of topics from the Iraq war to whether to allow Syrian refugees into the United States, Trump shrugged. “You have to show a degree of flexibility,” he said.

At center stage, Trump, 69, defended himself from criticism earlier in the day from 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney and faced further questions about his business record. Trump called Romney a failed candidate.

U.S. senators Rubio, of Florida, and Cruz, of Texas, questioned Trump’s immigration policy and his use of foreign workers at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Cruz, 45, demanded Trump release the audiotape of an off-the-record session he had with New York Times editorial writers on Jan. 5.

Cruz and others have suggested that in the session Trump might have been more flexible on immigration than in public statements insisting he would build a wall between the United States and Mexico and deport 11 million illegal immigrants.

Trump refused to release the tape but said he would be flexible, for instance, on the height of the wall. He also abruptly changed his position on foreign workers, saying more of them who are highly skilled should be allowed to remain in the United States.

 

FOREIGN WORKERS

Rubio, 44, pressed Trump on the foreign workers he has imported to work at his Palm Beach resort, jobs he said could go to Americans. Trump said the workers were for a short November-to-March season.

“People don’t want a short-term job,” Trump said. “So we bring people in and we send people out.”

Rubio asked Trump why he does not bring his clothing-making operations to the United States from China and Mexico if he is so interested in bringing jobs home, a central tenet of his unconventional campaign.

“This little guy has lied so much about my record,” Trump said in response to Rubio, adding that he had begun bringing some clothing operations home from overseas.

But Rubio persisted: “The answer is he’s not going to do it … The reason he makes it in China and Mexico is because he can make more money on it.”

“Don’t worry about it, little Marco, I will,” Trump said dismissively.

“Well, let’s hear it, big Donald,” Rubio responded.

Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly, who famously clashed with Trump at the first Republican debate last August, generated a fresh exchange in pressing Trump to explain his involvement with Trump University, a now-defunct online education company that has faced lawsuits from people who feel they paid out money for Trump U and got nothing in return.

“Give me a break,” said Trump. “Let’s see what happens in court. This is a civil case. It’s very easy to have been settled.”

Rubio accused Trump of fleecing everyday Americans for personal gain.

“He’s trying to do to the American voter what he did to the people who signed up for this course,” Rubio said.

Trump called Rubio a “con artist” for missing a lot of Senate votes.

The debate went down a negative path early on when Trump responded to Rubio’s contention last month that Trump had “small hands.”

“Look at these hands,” Trump said, flashing his two hands to the crowd. To the suggestion that he might be small elsewhere, Trump said: “I guarantee you there is no problem.”

 

SUPPORT FOR CLINTON

Cruz suggested Trump would be the wrong candidate to send into battle against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton because he has supported her financially in the past.

“Actually it was for business,” Trump replied. “Let me tell you something, Ted, the last person that Hillary Clinton wants to face is Donald Trump.”

Trump was joined on stage at the Fox Theatre by his three remaining rivals, Rubio, Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, 63, who again presented himself as rising above the squabbling of his rivals.

It’s a far smaller field than the 17 Republican candidates that began the race for the 2016 presidential nomination, but one that is still splintered between the incendiary New York businessman and three experienced politicians.

The debate was the candidates’ first face-to-face gathering since Super Tuesday nominating contests this week gave extra momentum to Trump but did not knock out his rivals.

Mainstream figures in the party are seeking a strategy to halt Trump’s march to the nomination for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

Some party leaders and donors are critical of Trump’s positions on trade and immigration, including his calls to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

 

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Howard Goller)

Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump remains standing at the front of the stage as rivals Marco Rubio (L), Ted Cruz (2nd R) and John Kasich (R) head to their podiums at the start of the U.S. Republican presidential candidates debate in Detroit, Michigan, March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

In Detroit, Parallels With Obama’s Broader Economy

In Detroit, Parallels With Obama’s Broader Economy

By John T. Bennett, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama jetted Wednesday to an American city whose economic revival mirrors both the U.S. economic comeback under his watch and the often negative perception of it.

Like the ongoing recovery in Detroit and across Michigan, the U.S. economy’s comeback often has been called sluggish and uneven. And like the revival of the Motor City and surrounding areas, economic recovery and healing in the nation has been called too slow.

Speaking Wednesday at the annual auto show in Detroit, Obama declared the American auto industry “all the way back.” He hailed the automobiles that U.S. companies are producing, and said the sector’s comeback has slashed the area’s unemployment rate.

“Folks aren’t writing off Detroit anymore,” Obama declared as a crowd of auto workers cheered. “What’s true of Detroit is true of the country.”

The economic trend lines for Detroit and all of Michigan are not that dissimilar to those of the national economy. After the Great Recession, Detroit was at “rock bottom,” Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., said last week after Obama’s address to Congress. “Someone had a headline, ‘Last one out of Detroit turn the lights out.’”

“And now there has been this resurgence, based on, our auto industry is back,” Lawrence said. “Our economy has come back to life.”

But it won’t be back on its feet when Obama leaves the Oval Office next year. “We still have some clouds and some things we need to work on,” Lawrence said.

Just like the broader U.S. economy, as Obama himself pointed out last week during his final State of the Union address.

“For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works also better for everybody,” he said. “We’ve made progress. But we need to make more.”

Gabriel Ehrlich, an economic researcher at the University of Michigan, said, “There’s a lot of truth to the characterization” that there are parallels between the Detroit and Michigan economies and that of the entire country since the 2008 collapse.

“Nationally, growth has been slower than in historical recoveries,” Ehrlich said Wednesday. “And the impact has been particularly severe here in Michigan.”

Still, the latest economic data on categories such as the unemployment rate and income levels show Detroit and the entire state “has been on a roll in recent years,” Ehrlich said. But inside economic categories such as per capita income and educational attainment, Michigan ranks among the worst. “So, while progress has been made in Michigan, there is still a ways to go,” Ehrlich said.

Just as Obama said last week about the broader national economy.

Economic projections show other parallels, as well. In Detroit and Michigan and across the rest of the country, the construction sector is expected to pick up steam. “We’re expecting the Michigan unemployment rate to run neck and neck with the national rate,” Ehrlich said. “It had been running higher.”

During its worst-performing period on jobs, the national unemployment rate hit 9 percent for the first time in April 2009 and stayed above that mark — approaching 10 percent during several months — until October 2011, when it fell to 8.8 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Since then, the unemployment rate has steadily declined, falling below 7 percent in November 2013 (6.9 percent) and 6 percent in October 2014 (5.7 percent). A similar escalator-shaped drop has occurred since the worst month of Detroit metro area unemployment, from May 2009 (16. 9 percent) to last month’s preliminary level (6.2 percent), according to the bureau. Notably, the Motor City area’s unemployment trend line features more spikes of unemployment than does the national one.

“When you hear people saying, ‘America is in decline,’ they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Obama said. “They’re peddling fiction in a political year.” He tied the national recovery to Detroit’s economic awakening, saying those presidential candidates who are offering gloomy assessments of the U.S. economy are the same individuals who would have let Detroit “fail.”

He declined to name specific candidates, but Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump began slamming Obama’s economic record in late 2014. Trump first called it “a disaster” in October of that year, a line he has repeated.

Just last week, Trump kept up his attacks on the president. “You know he’s trying to justify the economy,” he said. “It’s the slowest recovery in our history, and it’s not a recovery.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who leads Trump in Iowa but is running second to the billionaire businessman nationally, has charged that during Obama’s tenure, “We have seen the lowest labor force participation since the late 1970s.”

“Families, small businesses, minorities and young people are being crushed by rising premiums and fewer good-paying jobs due to Obamacare, vast costs from new agency regulations, and a byzantine tax code,” Cruz said late last year.

The state of the national economy ranks near the top of most Americans’ priority lists in prominent polls. One reason is wage stagnation, according to Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a member of the Joint Economic Committee.

“Part of the problem is the perception over a long period of time is wages haven’t grown over 40 years,” Casey said in a brief interview. “I think that is a reality that, no matter what economic news shows progress, it isn’t always persuasive.”

Still, Obama and national Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, his former secretary of state, seem eager to tout the Obama economic record as the campaign cycle begins heating up.

Obama on Wednesday declared the U.S. economy the “strongest, most durable economy in the world,” adding, “We’ve added more jobs than almost all the advanced countries combined.” He repeated a State of the Union theme, saying more work needs to be done to further revive the national and Detroit area economies.

And that’s just what Ehrlich and his University of Michigan colleagues anticipate.

“This has been a slow-and-steady recovery, here and nationally,” he said. “And we expect that to continue.”

(Melinda Henneberger contributed to this report.)

©2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama checks out an all-electric Chevrolet Bolt at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan January 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst