EFTA01182245.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 5/08/2016 Date: Sun, 08 May 2016 07:07:20 +0000 Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png DEAR FRIEND Another Tool of the American Oligarchy How `ghost corporations' are funding the 2016 election Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal little about their workings. A day later, the entity dropped $1 million into a super PAC with ties to Jersey City, Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat considering a gubernatorial bid. The trust, whose owner remains unknown, is part of a growing cadre of mystery outfits financing big-money super PACs. Many were formed just days or weeks before making six- or - seven-figure contributions — an arrangement that election law experts say violates a long-standing federal ban on straw donors. But the individuals behind the "ghost corporations" appear to face EFTA01182245 little risk of reprisal from a deeply polarized Federal Election Commission, which recently deadlocked on whether to even investigate such cases. Many of the biggest super PAC donors have spread around their money, financing multiple super PACs that back presidential hopefuls and congressional candidates. They hail from various sectors, with many drawing on fortunes made in the energy industry, on Wall Street and in health care. The Washington Post tracked donations made through "ghost corporations" whose backers cannot be identified. See a list below of "ghost corporations" - corporate contributors to super PACs who have not yet been publicly linked to individual donors. 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The 2016 campaign has already seen the highest rate of corporate donations since the Supreme Court unleashed such spending with its 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision. One out of every eight dollars collected by super PACs this election cycle have come from corporate coffers, including millions flowing from opaque and hard-to-trace entities, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance filings. Ghost 'Au, MAIMS IDOPIOCT N< LUMP* commit Ctokkee of het LLD 0.06MOD CA II*Mg 57,0000 Decor Sent. LLC %toga 0( 5150000 *Tea 'rota" FrOnber Cola TX 5150000 Win fret Sterdeed lle SISO 000 Sat MC Lend • Dertoptal fanners Dont TS 5100 000 on LLC Toot. At 1100.000 Wikalikl, woo LLD Varkeett VA s100D00 WS* kW • ti c Nowort atom Co sIC0.000 Nigli* TA Group StOtes Inc. Nen York NY 'Ink $100.000 IN tromps SC Pet Yak WY PPS* S100-000 Otto Maoom LI La KO*. CA rili S30D00 Custom Managant Seat.. SW,FS SD INaW $50.00) K3 pnolopment I.I.0 AIISW. MA biME sncco is unt«nt. tlf BotanRasa IA $25 COO balE tun( tic fad* Sac % VA $10000 b - E So far, 68o companies have given at least $10,000 to a super PAC this cycle, together contributing nearly $68 million through Jan. 31. Their donations made up 12 percent of the $549 million raised by such groups, which can accept unlimited donations. That means corporations are on track to far exceed the $86 million they gave to super PACs in the entire 2012 presidential cycle, when such donations totaled 10 percent of the money raised by such groups, according to data from the nonpartisan Centerfor Responsive Politics. Many corporate givers this cycle are well-established hedge funds, energy companies and real estate firms. But a significant share of the money is coming from newly formed LLCs with cryptic names that offer few clues about their backers. Among the new players is Children of Israel LLC, a company formed in California last June by Shaofen "Lisa" Gao, a real estate agent in Cupertino, Calif., whose Happy Realty firm helps Chinese buyers find homes in Silicon Valley. On a form filed with the secretary of state's office in September, Gao listed Children of Israel's type of business as "Donations," according to a document found by a researcher for End Citizens United, a Democratic PAC that supports candidates in favor of stricter campaign-finance rules. Weeks after being formed, Children of Israel gave $50,000 to Pursuing America's Greatness, a super PAC supporting the presidential bid of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, FEC records show. EFTA01182248 In November, the LLC gave the pro-Huckabee group $100,000. And this January, it donated $250,000 to Stand for Truth, a super PAC backing Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Gao — who has no history of making political contributions in California or at the federal level — did not respond to repeated calls and emails seeking comment. Valerie Martin, a senior adviser to End Citizens United, said the blatant admission by the company that its purpose is to make contributions underscores the degree to which donors feel emboldened to hide behind such entities. "This goes to the heart of what's really wrong with the system and how it's broken," she said. "I think it really bothers Americans that people want to influence elections without fingerprints." Federal law requires political committees to confirm that a donation is legal before accepting it. Eric Lycan, the attorney for the pro-Cruz Stand For Truth, declined to address specific donations but said in a statement that the super PAC "at all times complied with the law" and investigated any potentially illegal contributions. "Contributions from an LLC to a super PAC are legal and permissible, and the fact standing alone that a contribution came from an LLC would not be reason to return the contribution," he added. The Little Rock-based treasurer for the pro-Huckabee super PAC did not respond to a request for comment about whether the group vetted Children of Israel. Some donors who have given through LLCs this year said they did so out of convenience rather than any effort to mask their identities. Frank VanderSloot, the chief executive of an Idaho nutritional- supplement company, said he used two corporations he owns to give $175,000 to a super PAC supporting Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in December because the group needed immediate donations to make its year-end deadline. "It's where I had the cash," said VanderSloot, who also gave the super PAC $150,000 in his own name. "These LLCs have been around forever — they are working operations. It takes 12 seconds to see my name. It doesn't take any great sleuthing." In other cases, it is much harder to pin down who is behind entities contributing large sums to super PACs. Little is known about Tread Standard LLC, which gave $150,000 to a super PAC supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush last June, weeks after an incorporation service set the company up in Delaware. Equally elusive is Decor Services LLC, which was incorporated in Delaware by a paralegal in a Milwaukee law firm in January — two weeks before donating $250,000 to a super PAC backing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. One of the largest mystery donations this cycle came from DE First Holdings, the trust that gave $1 million to Coalition for Progress, the super PAC allied with Fulop. Neither a spokeswoman for Fulop nor Bari Mattes, the Democratic fundraiser who runs the group, responded to requests for comment. Several campaign finance watchdog groups have filed complaints with the FEC against the recent pop- up LLCs, but the chances of the agency's looking into the cases appear slim. Last month, the agency closed a nearly five-year-old complaint about a limited liability company allegedly used to mask a donor's identity — unable to even agree whether it merited investigation. The LLC had been set up in Delaware shortly before making a $1 million donation to a super PAC supporting then-Republican EFTA01182249 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. A Romney associate later came forward to acknowledge he was the source of the donation. The FEC's inability to come to a decision "creates incentives for people to take some risks, on the theory that even if some liability materializes, it may not be that serious," said Bob Bauer, a veteran Democratic campaign-finance lawyer. "It is inconceivable to me that they wouldn't have taken the opportunity to clarify that at a very basic level, a donor cannot set up a LLC for the purpose of making contributions through the LLC and defeating the disclosure requirements," he added. Jan Baran, a longtime Republican election-law attorney, agreed that there is a need for the commission to weigh in, noting that the FEC has not issued any new rules regarding corporate donations since the Citizens United ruling made such spending permissible. The hundreds of millions of dollars that is currently being directed by companies and big donors through ghost corporations into politics through super PACs is subverting the democratic process in the United States. Yes, we know: money can't always buy an election. If it could, Mitt Romney would just be finishing his first term as president. Or Jeb! Bush, whose super PAC runneth over with $100 million in cash, would be leading the pack. So far he's not even been able to get his silver foot on the first rung of the ladder. But to the oligarchs, bankrolling an election campaign isn't all that it's about. They contribute now for the day when the electioneering is over and the governing resumes. That's when their investment really begins to pay off. In the words of the veteran Washington insider Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economic advisor to Joe Biden, "There's this notion that the wealthy use their money to buy politicians; more accurately, it's that they can buy policy." Environmental policy, for example, when it comes to energy moguls like the Kochs. And tax policy. Especially tax policy. Bernstein was quoted in one of the most important stories of 2O15 — an investigation by The New York Times into how tax policy gets written. Unfortunately, this complex but essential report appeared between Christmas and New Year's and failed to get the attention it deserves. Here's the heart of it. With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the `income defense industry,' consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means... Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily EFTA01182250 whittle away at the government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans. That "private tax system" couldn't have happened without compliant politicians elected to office by generous support from the donor class. As the right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife put it: "Isn't it grand how tax law gets written?" Sam Pizzigati knows how it happens. He's been watching the process for years from his perch as editor of the monthly newsletter Too Much! Reminding us in a recent report that "America's 20 richest people — a group that couldfit nicely in a Gulfttream luxury private jet — now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total 01152 million people," Pizzigati concludes that one reason these and other of America's rich have amassed such large fortunes is that "thefederal tax rate on income in the top tax bracket has sunk sharply over recent decades." So here's the real value of all that campaign cash and lobbying largesse: underwriting a willingness among legislators and government officials to bend the rules, slip in the necessary loopholes and look the other way when it comes time for the rich to hide their fortunes. America is no longer a democracy — never mind the democratic republic envisioned by Founding Fathers. Rather, it has taken a turn down elitist lane and become a country led by a small dominant class comprised of powerful members who exert total control over the general population — an oligarchy, said a new study jointly conducted by Princeton and Northwestern universities. One finding in the study: The U.S. government now represents the rich and powerful, not the average citizen — otherwise an oligarchy. In the study, "Testing Theories ofAmerican Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens," researchers compared 1,800 different U.S. policies that were put in place by politicians between 1981 and 2002 to the type of policies preferred by the average and wealthy American, or special interest groups. Researchers then concluded that U.S. policies are formed more by special interest groups than by politicians properly representing the will of the general people, including the lower-income class. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence," the study found. The study also found: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose." EFTA01182251 Former President Jimmy Carter also says that he thinks the United States is no longer a democracy, calling the nation an "oligarch? during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. "We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life," the go-year-old former president told Winfrey. For those who need a quick civics refresher, an oligarchy is a system of government where the leadership is held in the hands of a small group of elites. According to Carter, shifting systems of political influence have made it so that a rich few basically control the political process. So True Examples that Our Country is going to Pot.... EFTA01182252  ****** Horses for Courses? The Candidates and the Economy. Last month I ran across this an op-ed in the Huffington Post by David Coates who took a look at the economic programs of the five remaining Presidential candidates. Something that remaining three Republicans (Kasich, Trump, Cruz) have all but ignored and Bernie and Hillary are just paying lip service to as there are only a few differences, other than Bernie's proposed "Free College Tuition" which is more of a campaign promise than a real policy. At the same time the bulk of the media is EFTA01182253 offering a daily diet of who is ahead as if they were calling a horse race - across the entirety of the political spectrum — distracting us from the issues which are supposed to be the reasons why a voter will chose a candidate. But when the race is over, reconstructing/improving that course will be the over-riding task facing whoever wins. So can we please start talking now, in a systematic way, less about the candidates and more about their programs? When we do, a very early item will need to be the state of the US economy. For as the world economy slows down, and (as the IMF says) prospects for global economic growth dim, it is all the more essential that the US economy grows as quickly as possible and as effectively as it can. Economic growth eases all the resource constraints on public policy; whereas its absence erodes the capacity of individuals to prosper and social reform to flourish. So the strength of the US economy matters — it matters to all of us regardless of our politics — and currently that economy is not strong, certainly not as strong as it needs to be if full-scale economic recovery is to be both substantial and prolonged. There are many signs of present and future under-performance in the relevant data sets. The data on growth and trade record current net investment levels some 25% down on pre-crisis trends, labor productivity rising at only o.3% per year, the trade deficit with China at a record high, and net infrastructure spending at currently zero. The portents in the data on employment and job creation are likewise troubling. Even after 74 months of unbroken job growth, the ratio of job seekers to job openings is still 1.5:1; the jobs being created are more heavily low-paid than the ones being lost; and the number of those wanting full-time work but only getting involuntary part-time work remains around six million. For most workers, real wages remain stuck at little more than 2004 levels, and more than four workers in ten currently earn less than $15 an hour. Ethnic inequalities in wages and unemployment remain frozen; unemployment among young workers, workers over 55, and the long-term unemployed remains intractable; and the new time-bomb of student debt is currently running at the daunting total of $1.3 trillion and rising. There is anger in the land, and much of that anger has its roots here - in the large numbers of hardworking Americans who see troubled economic times ahead, and precious little economic improvement in their immediate conditions. I What political lessons should be drawn from these economic times? These three at least. 1. The fault does not lie primarily with the policies and practices of the Obama Administration, no matter how often that linkage is asserted by Republican presidential candidates as they campaign. On the contrary, if it is legitimate at all to attribute possession of a recession to a sitting president, the one from which we are still struggling to recover actually belongs to George W. Bush. It began on his watch, not on Obama's. The recession started in January 2008. The credit crisis occurred the following September. The President in both months was a Republican, not a Democrat; and the recession left to the incoming Democratic Administration by the outgoing Republican one was truly horrendous. EFTA01182254 The recession of 2008-9 was not a minor affair. On the contrary, it threw a huge shadow forward, constraining the Obama Administration as it did so. The US economy shed a million jobs in November and December 2008 alone, as the official rate of unemployment began its steep rise to 10% by the middle of 2009, and as many as one in six American workers experienced unemployment either side of the presidential handover of power. As the Obama Administration took office, there was one January day when more than 72,00o American workers were laid off in just 24 hours, with every likelihood of similar days to follow. Far from blaming the Obama Administration by making it responsible for the crisis, it is more appropriate to congratulate the incoming Obama team on eventually stopping the bleeding. Levels of economic growth and rates of job creation are significantly higher now than they were in 2009. Levels of unemployment and even poverty are lower. The Obama Administration can be faulted — on an honest day it might even fault itself - for not doing enough to lift the economy out of recession as quickly as it could have done. But it cannot, and should not, be blamed for putting the US economy into recession in the first place. Responsibility there lies on the other side of the aisle. 2. Which also means that the economic policies currently being advocated by leading Republican presidential candidates are more likely to return us to recession than to generate further economic growth. Those candidates tell us, on a very regular basis, that the economy is stalling because tax levels are too high (particularly on the rich) and because the business community is overburdened with regulations and controls. Yet it was precisely that mixture of trickle-down economics and business deregulation that the Bush Administration pursued between 2001 and 2007: a mixture that generated fewer jobs in the upturn of the US business cycle than any upturn since 1945: remember the widespread talk then of a "jobless recovery" under George W. Bush. It was also a policy-mix that the Bush Administration entirely abandoned in 2008: giving a tax break to low-income earners in early 2008 in an attempt to re-trigger economic growth (that is, replacing trickle-down economics with trickle-up ) and by the fall of that year abandoning light-touch regulation in favor of a bevy of stimuli packages, bank controls and bailouts. It was Henry Paulson, not Tim Geitner, who first introduced the Temporary Asset Relief Program (TARP). It was the Administration of George W. Bush not that of Barack Obama, which effectively nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (in September 2008) and introduced an emergency 8700 billion rescue package a month later. When Republican candidates these days criticize Obama's economic policies, and advocate a return to pre-Obama ones, they forget that the Obama Administration simply picked up, and carried on, from where Bush/Paulson had left off. They also choose to ignore that what they are advocating as an alternative economics to that of the current Administration spectacularly failed on the last occasion that it was attempted. 3. This much then follows: that the only public policies likely to lift the US economy onto a higher growth path are policies that directly tackle each of its weaknesses in turn: and that the two Democratic candidates are the only ones even attempting that type of agenda. The Republicans are not. They have a blunt "tax cuts solve all problems" approach to this issue. It is the Democrats who have the more nuanced policies. EFTA01182255 And for all that Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton disagree with each other, and are starting to clash sharply, the truth is that they share many similar policies and objectives. Indeed, their similarities here exceed their differences. Both argue that the best way to trigger sustained economic growth is to make the distribution of economic gains fairer and more equal. Both support equal pay for women, and the ending of gender and racial inequality. Both are advocating a substantial stimulus package based on infrastructure spending financed by closing corporate tax loopholes — one geared to the creation of a clean-energy future. Both are proposing the raising of the minimum wage, the curtailing of CEO pay, and a redistribution of income downwards: to simultaneously reinvigorate the American middle class and stimulate consumer demand at the bottom of the income ladder. Both are in favor of strengthening trade union rights and extending collective bargaining. Both want to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and both for the moment oppose the signing of the TPP as it is presently constituted. These are vital, necessary policies. There is sharp disagreement between them, of course: on whether the US banking system is best disciplined by making banks smaller or by regulating big banks more tightly; on how to handle issues of student debt and the expansion of health coverage; and on whether the export of manufacturing jobs is best solved by a fundamental break with free trade or with its careful extension. The debate on those should help settle which Democratic candidate is making the sharpest break with established neo-liberal orthodoxies, and so is best placed to deliver growth and prosperity in 2017. But it should not settle whether the next president needs to be a Democrat or not. The weakness of the Republican economic alternative should already have settled that in the minds but all but the most intransigent and myopic of undecided voters. II It is remarkable how issues that consumed the Republican Party when the Obama Administration was in its heyday now consume them not at all. Once the talk in Republican circles was all about the desperate impact of public debt on economic recovery, and of the vital need to prune that debt before all else. But not anymore: now leading Republican candidates outdo each other with their commitments to tax cutting, leaving the debt to sort itself out as the accidental bye-product of the growth and employment they claim that trickle-down economics will automatically and rapidly deliver. This is a sensible shift of focus, because the debt problem was always a false one. The rise in public debt was caused by the recession, not the other way round, and by public policy made necessary in response to it; and debt totals were always going to settle back to manageable levels just as soon as growth and prosperity returned - as indeed we have seen. The Republican problem — on the economic agenda at least - is that instead of learning the proper lessons of the last 12 months of the George W. Bush presidency, its leading candidates have instead merely replaced one set of nonsense with another. Ted Cruz talks of the need to return to the gold standard — the one that in the 193os helped trigger the Great Depression. Donald Trump brags of an ability — unique to himself — to eliminate the federal debt entirely in eight years, while simultaneously cutting taxation. But to do that would require an even more brutal version of the slash-and-burn approach to discretionary spending of the kind we have just seen from the Conservatives in London since 2015, with the same dismal impact on poverty and growth: increasing the first and lowering the second. EFTA01182256 The tragedy for the Republican Party is that their primary contests have already weeded out any Republican with a serious understanding of how modern economies work, and of the vital role of targeted public spending in generating sustain growth and competitiveness. But even with Kasich — he is still talking about cutting taxes, as well as cutting spending on transportation, education, and health care, while increasing military spending. And somehow during the entire primary season, none of the three remaining Republican candidates have tried to explain how they would address the country's crumbling infrastructure. The economic conversation between the eventual Democratic presidential candidate and a Marco Rubio, a Jeb Bush or even a John Kasich might have been one held on a level playing field. But combine any mixture of Sanders/Clinton on the one side and Cruz/Trump/Kasich on the other, and the evidence is clear. All the economic intelligence is on one side: which is why the one true way to send the economy into a tailspin will be to vote Republican in November. Happy i,Mether's Day ! We know moms are selfless and special. Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the months of March or May. It complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Father's Day and Siblings Day, which I have never heard of before reading it in Wikipedia. In the United States, celebration of Mother's Day began in the early loth century. It is not related to the many celebrations of mothers and motherhood that have occurred throughout the world over thousands of years, such as the Greek cult to Cybele, the Roman festival of Hilaria, or the Christian Mothering Sunday celebration (originally a commemoration of Mother Church, not motherhood). In some countries, Mother's Day has become synonymous with these older traditions. In the 185os Ann Reeves Jarvis, mother of Anna Jarvis, of West Virginia started a Mother's Day Work Clubs back to train women proper child-care and sanitation methods. Mothers Friendship Day was organized by these groups in 1868 for the purpose of reconciliation during the civil war time. After the EFTA01182257 death of Ann Reeves Jarvis in 1905 her daughter who never married and remained childless all her life worked tirelessly to make Mother's Day a national holiday. The modem holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Today St Andrew's Methodist Church now holds the International Mother's Day Shrine. Her campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died. Ann Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, and created Mother's Day Work Clubs to address public health issues. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother by continuing the work she started and to set aside a day to honor all mothers, because she believed that they were "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world". In 1908, the US Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother's Day an official holiday, joking that they would have to proclaim also a "Mother-in-law's Day". However, owing to the efforts of Anna Jarvis, by 1911 all US states observed the holiday, with some of them officially recognizing Mother's Day as a local holiday, the first being West Virginia, Jarvis' home state, in 1910. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating Mother's Day, held on the second Sunday in May, as a national holiday to honor mothers. Although Jarvis was successful in founding Mother's Day, she became resentful of the commercialization of the holiday. By the early 1920s, Hallmark Cards and other companies had started selling Mother's Day cards. Jarvis believed that the companies had misinterpreted and exploited the idea of Mother's Day, and that the emphasis of the holiday was on sentiment, not profit. As a result, she organized boycotts of Mother's Day, and threatened to issue lawsuits against the companies involved. Jarvis argued that people should appreciate and honor their mothers through handwritten letters expressing their love and gratitude, instead of buying gifts and pre-made cards. Jarvis protested at a candy makers' convention in Philadelphia in 1923, and at a meeting of American War Mothers in 1925. By this time, carnations had become associated with Mother's Day, and the selling of carnations by the American War Mothers to raise money angered Jarvis, who was arrested for disturbing the peace. Today, Americans spend billions in the gifts, flowers, meals and printed cards in observance of Mother's Day Today Jarvis' holiday has been adopted by other countries, and it is now celebrated all over the world. Motherhood is the highest and most selfless human connection, so with this said.... Happy Mother's Day to all of my friends who are Mothers or who have Mothers who is or was as special as my own Mother.... Happy Mother's Day! ****** Thank you Mr. Trump EFTA01182258  For The Newly Emboldened American Racist It wasn't too long ago that most white Americans was telling minorities that the country was living in a post racial society, confirmed they claimed by the election of Barack Obama as the first non-white President. Even after the murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric Gamer, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland who was pulled over for a routine traffic stop, which the deputy quickly escalated by removing Sandra from the vehicle and physically restraining her — She would later die in a jail cell under dubious circumstances. Because they live in a bubble, most white Americans don't understand why there was a Black Lives Matter movement. As Nico Lang wrote in November 2014: While the myth of a post-racial society is often seen as benignly deluded, an optimistic misreading of the times, the meaning is far more pernicious than you might think. The phrase took off during Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, following an unexpected win at the Iowa caucus and a strong showing in New Hampshire; the Economist referred to Obama's success as a "post-racial triumph," while the New Yorker waxed lyrically about the dawn of a "post-racial generation," unburdened by the sins of the past. They're nice sentiments, but in the six years of Obama's presidency, such wishful thinking has led to what's best a denial of How We Really Live Now, a time when we maintain the racial status quo while rolling back the clock on previous generations' civil rights gains. If we're post-racial, we don't need civil rights anymore, right? While Obama was heralded as "the Great Uniter" in 2008, AP poll data shows our country has become more divided during his tenure as president, though not by his doing. In 2012, researchers found that anti-black sentiment increased by three percentage points during Obama's first term, up from 48 percent to 51. As Patheos' Alan Noble describes, it gets worse from here: "When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell." Despite these numbers, a separate survey from Rasmussen Reports found that most Americans actually believed that blacks are more racist than whites. Even after the P.T. Barnum of Politics — Donald Trump speciously started his political ascension by vitriolically accusing President Obama of being a non-citizen Muslim born in Kenya with a fictional history of attending Harvard University — many Americans saw this as a type of entertainment. His EFTA01182259 popularity then boom after he promised to deport 11 million (mostly Hispanic) illegal aliens. It was further cemented when he proposed barring all Muslims from entering the country. Still many in white America believed that we are living in a post racial society, even after Donald Trump was anointed the presumptive Republican nominee after winning Indiana and the two remaining GOP contestants bowing out the race. ABC journalist Jennifer Sabin wrote this week in the Huffing-ton Post: I have to thank Mr. Trump for opening my eyes to the American ugly I didn't want to see. I needed a wake-up call. I'm not closed off in some strange, futuristic liberal world. I live in a diverse community with a mix of political and social viewpoints, and I consistently read newspapers and websites with differing ideologies. I know my American history and I know what racist people have been saying about President Obama for the last eight years. I've watched the videos of young black men shot by cops. And I've listened to the calls for racial justice on college campuses. I've worked on a college campus where I was the minority, and my students have spoken and written about their experiences. Throughout my life I've heard stories from my Jewish friends about the nasty comments they've endured. So yes, I understand how deeply racism and bigotry run through American culture — as much as any educated, white, Protestant person can really understand it — even if I don't hear it in my home or my backyard. But what I didn't understand until this election, until I started paying closer attention to the voices of ordinary Americans, is how terrifying it is to read what some of them write on public forums, or to hear them say out loud what they really think about other Americans. The racists and bigots of America have always been out there. There have always been hideous trolls on the Internet. But now they are emboldened in a big way by the bellicose Donald Trump. He's opened Pandora's Box, and nobody can shut it. Imagine if you will, for a moment, being Malia Obama this week, thrilled to be going to Harvard, excited about the prospects of a gap year. She's a 17-year-old high school senior, doing what millions of other 17-year-olds — like my own daughter — are doing now. They're deciding on schools and making plans for their futures. They have big dreams, and an optimistic outlook. I just hope Malia didn't read the comments following the story about her college plans on Fox's website. It got so bad Fox had to shut down the comments section. "Sounds like black privilege to me", One poster said. "Hopefully she gets cancer/AIDS or one of those colored diseases" ashes2dust. "Who gives a crap about little monkey" said Greg14. "I wonder if she applied as a muDslime..or a foreign student..or just a Ni@@," wrote another poster. That one got the most likes. EFTA01182260  The comments go on and on. This certainly isn't the first time the Obama family has had to deal with this kind of backward, ignorant nonsense, but it's incredibly shameful and unsettling. The astonishing thing is that some of the posters used what appeared to be their full names. No shame in being a vile, racist, pig. Not when the possible future leader of the free world doesn't know to disavow the KKK, shouts plans to build walls and keep Muslims out at every rally, calls other candidates nasty names and disparages women. The presumptive nominee for President of the United States eggs on the racists and the bigots. He gives them voice where they had none. If this should teach us anything, it's that racism is alive and well in the States. In today'