July 17, 2016

To Be Equal 

Dallas Tragedy Debunks Every Anti-Safety Myth Blocking Common Sense Gun Reform
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “We can’t tolerate this anymore.  These tragedies must end.  And to end them, we must change.  We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true.  No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.But that can’t be an excuse for inaction.  Surely, we can do better than this.” – President Barack Obama, Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil,  2012

One of the more unsettling revelations about the tragedy in Dallas is that the mentally unbalanced gunman was rejected, after a background check, for membership in an extremist group but was legally able to purchase a high-capacity assault rifle.

According to media reports, Micah Johnson was labeled “unfit for recruitment” among a network of extremist groups, including some designated as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Yet within months of that rejection, Johnson was able to meet in a parking lot with a gunseller he contacted online, and take possession of a military weapon designed to slaughter human beings as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In what kind of a world do we live when hate groups that actually encourage violence against law enforcement officers are more circumspect than our current firearm safety laws?

The man who sold Johnson the AK-47 said Johnson appeared during their 15-minute meeting – as though dangerous mental instability is written across someone’s face.

“It’s my belief he would have passed a background check,” the man said. But it wouldn’t have mattered, not in Texas. Federal law requires only licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks. Millions of guns are sold each year online or at gun shows through private sellers. Felons, domestic abusers, the violently mentally ill are able to acquire firearms and the law does nothing to stop them.

More than 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks. Legally-required background checks have blocked more than two million gun sales to dangerous people since the system was instituted.

Maybe Micah Johnson’s background would have slipped past the system. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people and wounded 17 on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, was banned from buying guns because a court found him severely mentally ill. But he passed a background check because his records never made it into the system. And if the current system wouldn’t have deemed Johnson’s bizarre behavior a red flag for a gun purchase, it certainly should have.

The background check database must be complete, and the types of incidents that warrant prohibition must be thoroughly examined.

Prior to the attack in Dallas, each mass-shooting incident in the United States has prompted a bizarre chorus calling for even more guns in our society. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” as the saying goes.  Setting aside the impossibility of distinguishing a “good guy” from a “bad guy,” there were plenty of people with guns at the scene of the Dallas massacre and not one of them was able to stop the sniper. The police were armed. About 30 of the marchers at the demonstration where the attack took place were armed. Not one of them managed to stop Micah Johnson with a gun.

Every modern study concludes that more guns equal more crime.  Right-to-carry laws are associated with significantly higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder. American children are sixteen times more likely than children other high-income countries to be killed in gun accidents, with as many as 100 children dying each year.

Our firearm safety system is broken – tragically, fatally broken. Lobbyists for the firearm industry hold our lawmakers in an almost literal death grip, blocking commonsense reform at every turn. Call your U.S. Senators and Congress member and demand action on gun violence. Learn the truth about gun violence in America and educate your friends and family. And work for a nation that puts the safety of its citizens ahead of profits for the gun industry.

July 17, 2016

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - After Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Falcon Heights, Minnesota there was Dallas.  After rouge cops unceremoniously killed two black men, there were five police officers killed by a deranged sniper who reportedly said he wanted to kill white police officers.  Too many commentators attempted to characterize the sniper, Micah Xavier Johnson (referring to his middle initial X, as opposed to his whole name, to be racially provocative) as a “revenge” killer connected to the Black Lives Matter movement.  Too many, like the unrepentant racist and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, used the sniper’s actions to excoriate the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The phrase Black Lives Matter is not racist because it simply reflects our nation’s history.  From our founding until today, there have been too many opportunities to legalize the facts that black lives do not matter.  The fact that our constitution reduces enslaved African Americans into a fraction of a person suggests that black lives did not matter, at our nation’s founding, as much as white lives did.  The differences in the terms and conditions of indentured servitude for whites and enslavement for Afrodescendents further cemented the notion that black lives did not matter as much as white lives did.  The persistence of enslavement, and the contradictions that came from the practice of “breeding” (i.e., treating black people as animals to increase “stock”) heightened contradictions because people were selling their children and siblings.  What did they think of themselves if they felt they had to couple with people they found “subhuman”?

Has former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ever read a history book?  Does he understand that if revenge were ever a motive in black/white interactions it would have been all over but the shouting between 1865 and 1876?  Formerly enslaved people were hopeful about emancipation, but caught between hope and despair when Black Codes were imposed, when people were lynched for simply asserting the right to walk on the sidewalk, when soldiers were lynched, in uniform, because they did not defer to fellow citizens.  Even though Constitutional amendments were passed to abolish enslavement, rigid Southern attitudes imposed a quasi-enslavement that persisted until the civil rights movement, and white supremacist attitudes that that persist until toady.

When our Constitution was written, John Adams lamented that the issue of enslavement was a conundrum that his generation was imposing on subsequent generations.  When the 13^th Amendment was passed, there was no playbook to detail how our nation would transcend enslavement.  We have never taken the time or energy to condemn racist attitudes, assuming they would simply go away.  They have not.  And millions of African Americans have righteous resentment about the many micro-aggressions (not to mention murders) that our community experiences.   The micro aggressions of white skin privilege are minor compared to the macro aggressions of a rouge police officer. Have any of these people ever read a history book?  Do they even understand that if revenge were a motive, it might have been extracted in 1866, not today?

The process for ending enslavement was imperfect.  Too many Southerners cleaved to the notion that people of African descent were inferior, and then they passed laws to enforce unequal status.  Jim Crow laws and Black Codes, prohibitions against property ownership and voting, unequal access to education, not to mention the constant nightriders, the granddaddies of contemporary rogue police forces, all existed to enforce subjugation and fear. 

Through halting action and corrupt compromise, the Reconstruction of the United States never happened.  We are sowing the bitter fruit of a broken Reconstruction today, with too many racial attitudes ossified.  Black Lives Matter is not a racist phrase.  It is the manifestation of the conversation that should have taken place after the passage of the 13th Amendment.

To be sure, we have come a long way since 1865, since 1876.  But the fact that, in contemporary culture, you still have white people who will wrap themselves up in a Confederate flag suggests we have not come quite as far as we must.  People are talking about an “honest conversation” about race now, but the conversation should have taken place more than a century ago.  Now, there is far too much denial for an “honest conversation”, and I despair that conversation is grossly insufficient if it is not coupled with action.

July 17, 2016

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Like millions, I am shocked and appalled by the needless killing of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and 5 Dallas police officers.  Respect for humanity requires that we reject, in the strongest terms, the unwarranted and unjustified taking of life.  I search earnestly for answers to the "Why?" of their executions and the reason that, after 240 years, our nation still sustains a level of racial hatred and intolerance that fuels these acts of violence.

Anyone giving an honest look at our national tragedy of racial violence, especially the recent epidemic of cop-on-citizen homicide, will agree that we, as a nation, have a conflict of major proportion that must be addressed and resolved if any of us are to live with the assurance of even a modicum of peace.  The back and forth response of violence and retaliation can only lead to our mutual destruction.

As an attorney and counselor, I’m not unfamiliar with the mediation process and the genuine effort it takes to accomplish conciliation between aggrieved parties.  Accomplishing a successful negotiation between conflicting entities is, more often than not, a monumental task. Those who practice this type of negotiation will usually identify 3 essential requirements for success: 1.) There must be agreement between parties as to the nature of the conflict; 2.) the conflicting parties must communicate in a "common" language; and 3.) the conflicting parties must communicate honestly without ulterior motive or deceit.  Although I don't profess to offer an empirical evaluation of these elements of resolution as they apply to our "national disgrace," I can offer a personal evaluation based upon years of observation.

First, there appears to be insufficient understanding and agreement as to the nature of our problem among those with the authority and responsibility to make constructive change.  My assessment is that few, with the exception of those experiencing racial discrimination, understand the cumulative effect of discriminatory acts.

I'm reminded of the old adage that one can only beat a dog for so long before he’ll attack out of the rage and frustration of receiving needless beatings.  Unlike the time when some of us were conditioned into accepting the indignities of discrimination just "as a matter of the way things were," most Black people are no longer willing to accept these indignities that accumulate in our psyches and eventually distort our relationships with others and our place in the world. Some of us are more inclined to strike back in ways, as futile as they might be, that we believe will express the full scope of our rage and frustration, and bring some measure of justice and retribution against those who harm us.

Too many whites feign ignorance of racial discrimination impacting our community and that these acts are more than isolated incidents which have little or no connection to a larger reality.  They don’t see that with each act of racial injustice or violence, there’s a corresponding increase in the level of anger in our communities.  They see our communities disconnected by geography, but fail to see that we’re connected by an understanding of our common potential as victims of the same injustice.

Lacking a common understanding of the problem, there’s little hope that we can establish reasoned dialogue. We’re speaking uncommon languages to each other.

I refer to those who listened to Rudy Giuliani attempt to explain that, instead of police violence, the real problem in our community is Black-on-Black violence.  Failing to acknowledge multi-generational practices that’ve left many of us unable to compete economically or to maintain minimal parity with whites, Giuliani doubled-down on justifying disparate and unethical policing practices in Black communities.  His motives are clear.  Giuliani, like too many others, wishes to maintain the social status quo--so nothing changes.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President of the National Congress of Black Women.  www.nationalcongressbw.org. 202/678-678)

July 17, 2016

Give Consumers Their Day in Court: Hold Financial Services Accountable

Poll finds bipartisan support for consumers to challenge finance contracts

By Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Whenever consumers open a new credit account, borrow a loan or begin contract financial services, it’s a sure bet that there will be a lot of terms and requirements that appear in print so small one would need a magnifying glass to read it. Others may become bewildered by the legal jargon embedded in these agreements.

If you’ve had that kind of experience, keep reading.

Within all the fine print and legal nomenclature, you may very well have agreed – without knowing – to give up your right to sue. This practice known as ‘forced arbitration’ denies dissatisfied consumers the right to sue for suspected illegal financial services.  Instead consumers must take up their problems with a mediator who is selected and paid by the financial provider. Whatever the mediator decides, the consumer must accept. Further, forced arbitration denies any judicial review of the arbitrator’s decision.

These arbitration clauses are often found in credit agreements for a wide range of services including mobile wireless, private student loans, credit cards and checking accounts.

If you think consumers deserve better, you have a lot of company. A new national poll found that nearly two-thirds of likely voters – 63 percent – support reforming consumers’ rights to take legal action against banks and other financial service providers that break the law. After hearing arguments for and against consumers’ rights to sue, respondents were largely united across partisan lines.

The release of findings coincided with a July 6 floor action in the House of Representatives that decided a multi-agency appropriations bill. The bill also included riders to strip the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) of its authority to act on forced arbitration.

Representatives Keith Ellison (MN-5th) and Hank Johnson (GA-4^th) jointly proposed an amendment to strip the forced arbitration language from the bill. Unfortunately, the pro-consumer amendment failed. At press time, a full House vote had not yet been taken.

Additionally, in 2010 and as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, Congress directed CFPB to conduct a study and provide a report on the use of pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts.  Dodd-Frank also banned the use of arbitration clauses in most residential mortgage loans. Even earlier in 2007 the issue of arbitration’s effects on consumers was brought before Congress when it enacted the Military Lending Act.

In preparation for the proposed rule, CFPB extensively studied the effects of forced arbitration. Checking accounts, credit cards, mobile wireless providers, payday loans and prepaid cards were the six financial markets that CFPB analyzed. Its study findings revealed that:

• Credit terms are seldom negotiable.  Only in a few instances are consumers given a one-time chance to opt out of these terms;

• From 2008-2012, 34 million consumers received a total of $2.2 billion in cash payments from $2.7 billion of gross relief in class actions; the balance of monies went to pay attorneys’ fees and litigation costs; and

• Without the option to join together in a class action, only 25 consumers with claims of less than $1,000 pursued arbitration annually.

The new consumer poll, commissioned jointly by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), was taken by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting.

“We are glad to see such clear bipartisan support for consumers’ right to come together to take on widespread abusive practices,” said Lisa Donner, Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform. “Forced arbitration and bans on class actions give Wall Street a ‘get out of jail’ free card, and these findings reinforce other data showing widespread support for corporate accountability.”

“Any consumer who believes that the financial services they received were illegal,” said Mike Calhoun, CRL president, “deserves to have their day in court. Currently, many do not have that option.”

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Charlene Crowell is a communications manager with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..