Quantcast
Channel: Gawker
Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live

The street artists who “engineered a graffiti hack” of an episode of Homeland in October have produc


A Dirty Corner of Warren Buffett's Empire

0
0

A Dirty Corner of Warren Buffett's Empire

Despite controlling Scrooge McDuck-levels of wealth, Warren Buffett enjoys a reputation as a caring, down-home fella who is better than most other Scrooge McDucks. A new report may put at least a slight ding in that reputation.

Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, which is not a single coherent company so much as a vast and sprawling collection of companies that Buffett chose to invest in. One of those companies is Clayton Homes, the nation’s biggest mobile home dealer. The day after Christmas, the Seattle Times and Buzzfeed dropped an investigative story that finds that Clayton Homes employees engaged in “a pattern of deceptions” in which the company “systematically pursues unwitting minority homebuyers and baits them into costly subprime loans, many of which are doomed to fail.” It is the tactics that led to the subprime mortgage crisis all over again, with an extra dose of discrimination.

In essence, the report identifies a pattern of Clayton Homes salespeople soaking the poor. Here is one way to build a profit center in America:

In minority communities, Clayton’s grip on the lending market verges on monopolistic: Last year, according to federal data, Clayton made 72 percent of the loans to black people who financed mobile homes.

The company’s in-house lender, Vanderbilt Mortgage, charges minority borrowers substantially higher rates, on average, than their white counterparts. In fact, federal data shows that Vanderbilt typically charges black people who make over $75,000 a year slightly more than white people who make only $35,000.

Clayton Homes also has a majority share of the Latino and Native American mobile home markets. Read the full report for a raft of data that shows exactly how America’s wealth gap is perpetuated, one horrible subprime loan at a time.

Clayton Homes issued a long and unconvincing statement disputing the report. Much of the subsequent coverage has explored the questions: Will this tarnish Warren Buffett’s reputation? Did he know? The answers are that it should, and he did (he personally defended their lending practices after an earlier story), and, furthermore, that this highlights exactly why one man should not control $67 billion.

http://gawker.com/5974796/do-the...

Warren Buffett is folksy! Warren Buffett is lovable! Warren Buffett lives in a modest home and speaks about fairness and has pledged to give away his money! All of this is beside the point. It is impossible to accumulate and control $67 billion without presiding over many sorts of repugnant business practices. Yes, “Behind every fortune is a crime.” But more accurately: The fortune is the crime.

[The full report. Photo: AP]

Ranking the Shittiest Local Powermongers in America: The Biggest Small-Time Dicks of 2015 

0
0

Ranking the Shittiest Local Powermongers in America: The Biggest Small-Time Dicks of 2015 

Welcome to Big Time Small-Time Dicks, a regular column on The Slot that explores local politicians, small-town scandals and everything else making life miserable on a local level. This week: The year in dicks, remembered.

Know a small time person who is a big time dick we should feature? Email us.

This year of our Lord 2015 introduced us to a number of memorable dicks, whose abhorrent behavior made them stand out from the veritable sea of other dicks that comprises state, local and, national politics. Here are the ten worst of the small-timers, ranked from least to most dickish.

10. South Carolina State Representative Christopher A. Corley, who celebrated the holiday season with a furious Christmas card about the Confederate flag:

He seethed for a good few months, and now he’s back: as Fits News was first to report, Corley went ahead and sent out a Christmas card featuring a photo of said Confederate flag to his fellow Republicans inscribed with a super cheery missive about the reason for the season: feeling bad about taking down that flag. It reads:

“May your Christmas be filled with memories of a happier time, when South Carolina’s leaders possessed morals, convictions, and the principles to stand for what is right.”

9. Marion County Circuit Court Judge Vance D. Day, who in an ethics complaint was accused of refusing to marry gay couples, allowing a felon to handle a gun, and hanging a picture of Hitler in the courthouse, for some reason:

Day’s spokesperson told news station KOIN 6 he gave up doing weddings this spring. He’s previously admitted to directing his staff to “screen” the couples applying for marriage licenses with him, so he wouldn’t “embarass” a same-sex couple by turning them away if they appeared before him.

That controversy was followed this week by a press release from the Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability, which says it’s investigating a broad and bizarre set of additional allegations against Day.

8. Michigan State Representatives Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat, who lost their jobs in the midst of a sex scandal and then both ran in the special elections designed to replace them. Less dickish, more just really sad:

Courser, as is his wont, is campaigning mainly through the use of lengthy, self-pitying Facebook posts. In his latest one, he once again suggested that he was targeted for being just too principled in his stance against the “leftists who now control the Republican party.”

7. Joe Dunne, the Maine landlord who printed up hundreds of signs identifying an Asian-American mayoral candidate as “Ho Chi Chin” because he objected to being identified as a bad landlord:

In the deranged spirit of overreaction beloved by alleged slumlords everywhere, Dunne has admitted he’s the one who put up blaring red signs all over town. The signs feature a bunch of tiny little hammer-and-sickle insignias above a caricature of Ho Chi Minh and the words, “Don’t vote for Ho Chi Chin. Vote for more jobs, not more welfare.”

6. Larry Barton, mayor of Talladega, Alabama, and/or Benny J. Green, the man who allegedly beat Barton with a bat for having sex with his wife. We could have a fun and lively debate about who’s the bigger dick here, or whether men aged 71 and 74 maybe ought to know better about a thing or two:

In a masterful use of understatement, police initially said that the beating was due to “domestic issues.” That was before Green’s former lawyer told AL.com that the whole thing started because Green saw Barton on tape having what he described as “full blown” sex with his wife, Charlotte Green. The Greens are reportedly in the midst of a divorce.

The attorney, Stewart Springer, told the Daily Home the sex tape took place in the back of a liquor store that Charlotte owns.

5. Mark Gremaud, Perry County School Board, Perryville Missouri, for telling a female colleague all about her place:

Mark Gremaud of the Perry County School Board in Missouri is being censured for telling his female colleague Kathy Carron in a closed meeting: “Kathy, you are just a woman. The only thing you know is laying on your back with your legs in the air splayed.”

Not only is that sentence grammatically unwieldy (“splayed in the air” would’ve worked far better), but the board wasn’t discussing sex education, yoga positions, biological determinism, or anything else that might warrant that comment, according to board president Nancy Voelker. In a statement reported by KVFS 12, Voelker called Gremaud’s comments “unprovoked.”

4. Drew Hastings, Mayor of Hillsboro, Ohio, who has bad opinions on Facebook:

On Friday, Hastings added Facebook Pundit to his skill set, offering up his essential thoughts on the Planned Parenthood shooting by comparing it to the race war he sees as imminent:

“When are people going to figure out that we are in a Revolution in this Country. Blacks have all but formally declared war on whites, ideological types are fighting with Planned Parenthood, there’s violence over immigration, Muslim extremism, and our own Government at war with its citizens.”

He added, “This isn’t ‘lone wolf’ stuff. It isn’t a crazy with a gun. It isn’t ‘domestic terrorism,’ these are all skirmishes in a Revolution that’s here. Pick your side and pick your battles, we are about 3 steps away from All bets are off.”

3. City Commissioner Amos Newsome of Dothan, Alabama, who slap-scratched a reporter on camera for asking about voter fraud allegations:

WTVY reporter Ken Curtis approached City Commissioner Amos Newsome of Dothan, Alabama to ask if he was planning to resign. Newsome, a Democrat, has been facing calls from fellow city commissioners to resign after three of his campaign workers were convicted of voter fraud. Newsome, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, has not been charged with fraud himself.

Newsome’s response to Curtis’s questions was, some face-shoving, some yelling, and then, finally, some hitting, hard enough that Curtis staggered backwards.

2. Jim Brownback, brother to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, accused of relentlessly terrorizing his neighbors for years:

A thirdhand conversation relayed to the Topeka Capital-Journal alleges that Brownback behaved himself until his brother won re-election, then took up firing guns outside the Peine’s place immediately afterwards...

Another local farmer says Brownback stole two of his cows in 2012. The farmer, Ben Katzer, claims that Brownback brags openly that he’ll use his brother to get out of any tight legal spots.

1. Finally, perhaps “dick” is insufficient to describe Arkansas State Representative Justin Harris, who an Arkansas Times investigative series revealed in February gave away two of his three adopted children to a sexual abuser.

Harris and his wife reportedly did this in part because he believed the two little girls, aged 4 and 2, were possessed by demons and able to communicate telepathically. They also “re-homed” the girls’ older sibling, 6, and were vocally unhappy about having “had” to adopt her in the first place along with her siblings.

Harris faced no criminal or professional consequences. He continues to both serve in the Arkansas House and operate a state-funded preschool, Growing God’s Kingdom. In September, the state investigated the school after a three-year-old was left in a van for five hours. Mercifully—and certainly no thanks to Harris or anyone connected to him—the little girl survived.


Contact the author at anna.merlan@jezebel.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 67B5 5767 9D6F 652E 8EFD 76F5 3CF0 DAF2 79E5 1FB6

Image via AP, screenshot, AP

Can These Micro-Units Fix New York City's Housing Problems?

0
0

Micro-unit developments—new apartments that are 400 square feet or smaller—are sprouting up all over the country as cities try to cram more housing into their neighborhoods. New York City’s first micro-unit development opened this month and it’s controversial—even in a city where people already pay top dollar to live in tiny apartments.

We recently took a tour of a new micro-unit development called Ollie that just opened in Manhattan. Although Mayor Bill de Blasio is behind the most recent campaign to bring 80,000 affordable housing units to New York City, the push for this particular housing typology originally came from the previous city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who hosted a micro-unit design competition in 2012. The winning concept by Brooklyn-based Monadnock was this 55-unit tower, which was prefabricated in a Brooklyn factory to save money and energy.

Fast forward to 2015 and behold Ollie at Carmel Place, located in the rather sleepy mid-Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay. The unit we toured with Ollie’s design director Jacqueline Schmidt was 302 square feet—made to feel even bigger with extra tall ceilings, shiny new appliances, and lots of blonde wood. In fact, the units come furnished with an array of shape-shifting built-ins and customized furniture that allow residents to make their living space feel bigger and more flexible. Plus all residents get free access to an app, Hello Alfred, which acts as a type of virtual concierge for tasks like pet-walking or picking up dry cleaning. The units range from $2000 to $3000 per month.

But wait, you’re saying, I already know people who pay way more than that to live in apartments much smaller than 302 square feet. Yes, New York has its fair share of shoebox-sized apartments, but you couldn’t build those from the ground up today. Technically the city requires all new apartments to be larger than 400 square feet, mostly to prevent developers from replicating tenement-type living conditions. But these apartments at Ollie are exempt, as part of this attempt to add more affordable housing to the local stock. (Some cities like Seattle are allowing units as small as 90 square feet.)

Now wait another second, you’re saying, $2500 to $3000 for a studio in Kips Bay is not affordable! That’s only the market rate (which is actually about the median Manhattan rent for a studio). The rents for the 22 affordable housing units are set at different rates based on income and need. Prospective tenants apply through a lottery and might pay anywhere from $1000 to $1500. 60,000 people applied.

So yeah, no one can deny that the demand isn’t there for these types of units. But the bigger question is if these units are actually the right kind of new housing for cities to be building. If we’re talking big picture here, the building as a whole is far more responsible than tacking yet another megadevelopment on the edge of sprawl, forcing all its residents to drive. But the worry is that these tiny spaces will become the new slums of the city, mostly occupied by lower-income residents who don’t have much of a choice about where to live, further stratifying inequality problems. In cities like Los Angeles, for example, micro-units are still mostly being used as transitional housing for formerly homeless individuals.

Living in microscopic spaces has become almost a cultish badge of honor for some big city residents (and some rural folks, ahem, tiny house movement) who will probably be very excited about these units. And with the help of some very smart interior design, like at Ollie, a micro-unit can appeal to someone who might not have previously considered the option. For the right person—say, a baby boomer looking to downsize from a bigger apartment or a millennial who’d rather live close to work than commute—this sounds like the ideal living situation.

Whether we’re ready for it or not, it’s important to note that this is the future. In fact, the US is lagging far behind many other countries which already have micro-units as a vibrant part of their urban fabric. In a few decades most of the world’s population will be living highly urbanized lifestyles and US cities need to start preparing for this reality now. It will take time to close the gaps in already-dense, transit-served neighborhoods so that the people who want to live there can find affordable homes. Embracing this way of micro-life is an inevitable reality, as tough as it may be for some Americans to confront.

Follow the author at @awalkerinLA

Charleston Marriott: Don't Include Our Hotel in Same Photo as Massacre Church

0
0

Charleston Marriott: Don't Include Our Hotel in Same Photo as Massacre Church

If you happen to be in Charleston, S.C. today, please make sure you do NOT take a picture that includes both the Marriott Courtyard Charleston Historic District hotel and the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in the same frame, because this is against the rules and you will be censured on Twitter.

http://gawker.com/brands-are-not...

Yesterday, Charlestonian and YouTube interview host Quintin Washington posted the following extremely innocuous tweet:

It is, as he says, a picture of a street on a warm Sunday afternoon in December. In it, you can see the steeple of Emanuel A.M.E, a beautiful, 200-year-old Gothic Revival church. That’s all it is. But to the craven ad hustlers at Marriott, the picture was more than that—a contamination of their brand:

“We respectfully ask you not to include the hotel in mother AME photos. TY.” An insane message in our insane era. The implicit thought here is that, because a white supremacist killed nine people inside that church, the church is now toxic for the purposes of conducting commerce and promoting tourism to the extent that its very existence should be denied. Unfortunately for the Marriott, reality says that the church is actually just down the street from the hotel, and so it will often be hard to photograph one without the other:

Charleston Marriott: Don't Include Our Hotel in Same Photo as Massacre Church

(I assume a takedown notice from Marriott International, Inc. to Google is forthcoming)

In order to not offend the Marriott brand, Washington ought to have uploaded a photo such as the following using one of many phone-compatible image editing apps:

Charleston Marriott: Don't Include Our Hotel in Same Photo as Massacre Church

Or, if you absolutely must depict the Marriott Courtyard Charleston Historic District, please consider an option like this:

Charleston Marriott: Don't Include Our Hotel in Same Photo as Massacre Church

Thank you for your understanding. Or, as the Marriott put it so sweetly when Washington acknowledged their request:

:)

Contacted by phone, the front desk said “the hotel does not have a comment on that.”



Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7

The Brilliant Simplicity of a Guaranteed Minimum Income

0
0

The Brilliant Simplicity of a Guaranteed Minimum Income

The working poor need more money. “But retail stores can’t raise wages very much—their profit margins are too small,” say conservatives. Aha—but there is a solution!

All types of people across the political spectrum agree that people who work hard should not have to live in poverty. Movements like The Fight for 15 have focused on raising the incomes of the lowest-paid workers by forcing low-paying industries like fast food to raise their hourly wages. Which is fine. They need a higher income. But the most common response from corporations that employ lots of low wage workers is simply: we can’t afford it. Our profit margins are too thin. A prime example of this genre appears in the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, in a piece written by Andy Puzder, who is the CEO of a fast food restaurant chain. He calculates the average profit per employee at a major American retail or restaurant chain to be $6,300 per year. Then comes some back-of-the-envelope math:

How would a minimum-wage increase affect the retail industry? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hours worked a week in the retail trade sector is 31.5. Assuming an employee earns the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and works only 30 hours a week, an increase to $9 an hour would result in an annual wage increase of $2,730...

At $10.10 an hour, these employee would make $4,446 more a year, decreasing profit per employee by 71%. At this level, the CBO found that the economy would lose about 500,000 jobs.

In essence, Puzder argues that the service industries that employ most low wage workers operate on small profit margins, cannot easily raise their prices significantly, and therefore will be impacted so negatively by minimum wage increases that the will begin to busily lay off workers. Leaving aside the question of whether minimum wage increases cause job losses (a point that is hotly disputed in economics), the broad outlines of this argument have at least some truth to them: these industries are not currently constructed in a way that would enable them to implement large wage increases without digging into (or destroying) profits.

Poverty level wages are a key part of the service industry’s business model.

Hardcore free marketeers believe this is the end of the argument. “Businesses can’t afford to pay people more, the end.” But that is backwards. The purpose of human existence is not to service the bottom line of ethereal corporations. On the contrary, corporations exist to serve humans. The proper way to begin this conversation is to accept that no just and functional society can afford to pay people who work hard poverty wages. That constitutes a broken system. The question, then, is: How can we get more income to the poorest workers while retaining as many of the advantages of the current model as possible?

You do not have to be an economist to grasp the fact that forcing hundreds of millions of Americans to rely for their basic needs on the good graces of corporations is not a wise system. Corporations are machines built for making money. They are not programmed to care about human needs unless those needs directly impact the bottom line. A corporation is not the thing you want overseeing your welfare. We live in a democracy, which means that (if we could ever make it function correctly) the state is a much better choice for looking out for people’s needs.

Fortunately, there is a way to reconcile the needs of people to earn a living with the desire of greed-centric corporations not to pay higher wages. It is to provide everyone with a basic income. The state takes in tax money; everyone is granted a certain sum to provide for their basic needs; and everyone can then work without feeling that they must beg a faceless corporate monster for enough income to cover rent and food and child care. And what do you know: the idea of providing a minimum income is catching on. It is somewhere near the realm of reality in Canada; it’s been instituted in a Dutch city; it’s being tried in Germany; it’s popular in Finland and Switzerland. In other words, the most civilized nations in the world, with the highest standards of living and strongest social safety nets, are leading the way on the minimum income issue.

A minimum basic income would allow us to dismantle vast bureaucracies that exist to police welfare recipients, and just cut everyone a check. And it would take a great deal of pressure off the movement to raise the minimum wage, because everyone’s income would have a floor already, meaning even low-paid workers would be less vulnerable to financial disaster. It’s a large-scale way to smooth out some of the inequality that plagues our nation. And it would allow fast food CEOs to stop bitching.

How would we pay for it? Partly by redirecting money we already spend, and partly by taxing the rich, like fast food CEOs, and by taxing corporations, like fast food corporations. Well. At least they could bitch about something novel.

[Photo: Flickr]

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

0
0

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

The Anti Violence Project responded to 22 homicides of transgender/gender-nonconforming people in America in 2015. In 2014, the number was 12, as Zach Stafford pointed out in The Guardian in November. He wasn’t alone in highlighting that astronomical number this year, especially in accordance with the Trans Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20. The New York Times, The Melissa Harris Perry Show, The Advocate, Mother Jones, MTV.com, Fusion, and the Daily Dot are just a few of the outlets that have highlighted this epidemic.

That this spate of murders comes during a seemingly banner year for trans visibility in pop culture might read as discordant. Caitlyn Jenner’s every public move was watched and analyzed, Laverne Cox remains a source of knowledge and warmth, the Amazon series Transparent was binged on by fans and won several major Emmys, and the sex-worker comedy Tangerine was an indie sensation. When thinking about these homicides, though, I wondered whether the elevated number marked an actual uptick in murders, or in the reporting of these murders. Do these 22 known homicides of trans and gender-nonconforming people (the vast majority of them—19—people of color), in a year in which life seemed to be getting better for American trans people, put the lie to that surface reading? Or are they completely in step with the higher all-around visibility of trans people, which acknowledges not just the traditional narratives of achievement but the tragic reality of disparity?

By phone this month, I asked a number of officials and leaders—many of them trans women of color themselves—that sort of chicken-or-egg question: Whether this highly publicized number means more crime or that more crimes are being reported. Here are their responses:

Emily Waters, Research and Education Coordinator at the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs:

That is the question for us, as well. NCAVP has been monitoring the homicides of LGBTQ people for a long time now. This year, obviously, was the highest amount of homicides of trans and gender non-conforming people that we’ve ever recorded. We’ve learned a lot this year in terms of just how big this problem is, and ways to start addressing it, but we know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We don’t actually know if this is an increase in violence, but we can’t rule that out completely. What we do know is that the media has gotten better at reporting it, and we’re just hearing about these cases more often on a local and national scale. We can’t say that for sure because we know this violence has been happening for a long time, and we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. But for the first time, people are starting to pay attention to it.

Victoria Rodriguez-Roldan, Trans/Gender Non-Conforming Justice Project Director at the National LGBTQ Task Force:

These are the numbers we know about. In essence, we’re talking mainly of the people who are out and identifiable as trans, who other trans people knew about, or for that matter, were sufficiently active in the trans community for their murders to be noticed as such. I am certain—sadly, heartbreakingly—that the number is higher, probably much higher at a nationwide basis than what we actually have. I’m not sure if it’s been a spike in murders as much as it has been more and more people that we’re becoming aware of. There may be spikes and ebbs and flows, but I don’t think we know that.

Isa Noyola, Director of Programs at Transgender Law Center:

It’s definitely an uptick in the reporting and in the capturing and in the community, I think, just being fed up that our lives and these incidents of violence and murder are not acknowledged. We’ve seen a groundswell of trans leadership, and trans organizing in the last several years. Just within the last year, I’m thinking about the amount of public outrage and trans people taking the streets to say, “Trans lives matter,” to say, “Stop trans murders,” and to really push for our lives being valued in larger society. Seeing that activism has then pushed media, has pushed communities, has pushed agencies that have traditionally not included trans folks and the issue of violence on the table.

Beverly Tillery, Executive Director at NYC Anti-Violence Project:

Any of these homicides is too many. Unfortunately in this country, we get caught up in the numbers so much. I want people to understand that each of these numbers represents a real person who had a real life and real opportunity that was struck down when they were way too young, when they had a life before them. Their life was taken away because of hate. The combination of transphobia and racism are what we need to address and make sure that if this number is 5 [in 2016], we don’t say, “Phew, we’ve overcome.” We have a long way to go to really address those root causes and to make sure we’re dealing with them collectively in our society.

Lourdes Ashely Hunter, Executive Director of Trans Women of Color Collective, and Interim Executive Director and Chief Operations Officer of Casa Ruby.

I have been involved in working in transgender/gender non-conforming communities of color specifically since 1993, and it’s not that more violence is happening. More brutal violence is being reported. And that’s primarily due to connectivity through the internet, as well as media. Even still many murders are not reported. I think we see these numbers and people are having reactionary responses, as if the violence in our community is something that’s new, and it’s not.

I will go even further to say that so much focus on the physical violence that happens in our community is almost a distraction to the structural violence we face. In 34 states, it’s legal to discriminate against trans people’s access to housing, employment, and education. That’s also violence that goes under-reported. They’re inextricably linked.

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Ty Underwood, 24, was killed by gunshot in Tyler, Texa, on January 26. Her boyfriend Carlton Ray Champion was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life last week.

The bigger picture

Hunter makes a point echoed by everyone I talked to: These murders aren’t isolated incidents, but part of a bigger system of structural discrimination. We see repeated instances of police refusing to classify these crimes as hate crimes. Broadly’s Diana Tourjee reported multiple instances of police refusing to classify homicides of trans women as hate crimes, despite ample contrary evidence she uncovered. We see widespread misgendering, a major thread in the bigger narrative of trans murders, as in the case of Papi Edwards, whose misgendering led to the police’s refusal to classify her murder as a hate crime. (Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, Tamara Dominquez, Elisha Walker, were among other murdered trans women who were misgendered by the police and/or press, at least initially, as well.) We see this structural disparity even in cases of intimate-partner violence, since, as Waters contends, such disputes are often more complicated than a lovers’ spat that goes too far. “We know working with trans survivors that oftentimes their trans identities are used against them by their abusers, to obviously belittle them and their experiences,” she says. Even when there aren’t immediately apparent signs of hatred in the crimes—no name-calling, no reported reference to gender identity by the attackers—the system can contribute to these crimes in ways that aren’t necessarily visible by the general, cisgender public.

“We have to acknowledge the situations that lead trans women, especially trans women of color, to end up being murdered,” said Rodriguez-Roldan. “We’re not just talking about them being trans, we’re talking about when, due to their being trans, they end up being discriminated against, and unable to find employment, and thus being forced to end up in risky situations, such as sex work, such as being homeless. One in five trans people has experienced homelessness at one point or another in their lives. In fact, in a recent New York State study, that went as high as 30 percent of trans New Yorkers. These are all very risky situations where the odds of your being hurt, of being killed, are much higher.”

“Sex work is complicated,” explained Noyola. “It’s not just about saying that they’re being victimized. There’s a lot of folks who are making deliberate choices around sex work and their bodies. And I also know the context of trans folks and employment. Just working here at the Transgender Law Center, we’re seeing high rates of discrimination, even for folks that have been at companies for years and they transition and now they’ve been fired or told they have to delay their transition because of XYZ reason—violations of people’s human rights, essentially. I know for my community, the issue of employment is a huge concern, because of the discrimination and stigma that is perpetuated.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, 36, was found stabbed in a stairwell in San Francisco on February 1.

Tillery cautions against relying only on these reports of murders as a means of understanding the violence perpetuated against trans women. “We’re not talking about the numbers of trans people who are survivors of violence, who have made it through but are really experiencing all kinds of violence daily—violence and discrimination.”

Waters says that survivors, who have often found themselves in a system that puts them at danger, are faced with even more systemic discrimination when they attempt to get help.

“They end up hitting a lot of barriers,” said Waters. “They have to identify with the sex they were assigned at birth to access services, or they go to a shelter and shelters are sex-segregated, and they aren’t able to stay at shelters. It’s all tied into discrimination and transphobia, historically.”

Noyola said that after attending many rallies for the trans women murdered during the early part of 2015, she often saw the conversations end when the demonstration disbanded. “There was no policy ask from Social Services to think about how we prevent the violence, or how we support trans women so that they’re not placed in vulnerable situations,” she explained. “How are we including them in our case-management programs? How are we including them through our domestic violence work? Because we also know that a lot of these incidents of violence come from intimate partners or people the trans women have known. There’s a lot of work that still needs to happen. The [domestic violence] funding world doesn’t have a set strategy to include trans women.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

London Chanel, 21, was found stabbed to death on May 18 outside the abandoned North Philadelphia rowhome she shared with her roommate, Raheam Felton. Felton was arrested soon after.

A banner year

“Greater trans visibility is a major thing because it’s providing for the first time a certain view of, ‘Hey we are people, we are human, we are here, we aren’t freaks or something you only hear about in jokes and stereotypes,’” said Rodriguez-Roldan, regarding the pop cultural resonance of trans women in 2015. “However it needs to be done in the context of ensuring that everybody doesn’t perceive that everything is OK just because some trans people have been able to become a major actress or a celebrity figure.”

“My reality is that trans people are still very much in survival mode,” said Noyola. “I think there’s a dangerous narrative being formed around ‘trans people have made it now’ because we’re now on the covers of media and because Barbara Walters chose Caitlyn Jenner as the most fascinating person of the year. Our communities are still very much under attack and not being supported or resourced in a way that’s meeting the level of need.”

Hunter seemed less impressed with the visibility overall.

“Heteronormative narratives are gaining visibility, so that really does not help when we’re talking about communities that are disproportionately impacted by structural oppression,” she said. “You have Caitlyn Jenner going to the U.N., saying she’s comfortable with the way issues are handled in the United States. I bet she’s not aware that the average age of a trans woman of color is 35 years old, the average income of a trans person of color is less than $2,000. How can she be comfortable with that? No one hears those stories because mainstream attention is drawn to particular narratives that are hegemonic, that are from dominant culture, or that mirror heteronormative existences, or the binaries.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Mercedes Williamson, 17, was murdered May 30, and her body was found two days later in Rocky Creek, Alabama. On June 1, Josh Brandon Vallum, who Wiliamson knew, confessed to killing Williamson and burying her body. He was charged with murder.

I also wondered about a backlash effect that may be taking place. Rodriguez-Roldan told me that, indeed, backlash is a reality for the U.S.’s trans citizens.

“We can see it in state legislatures all over the country,” she said. “We have seen it in the form of legislators proposing all sorts of bills that would literally criminalize trans people for using the bathroom. In some cases, those bills go after children, as we have seen Wisconsin, Kentucky—trans children try to use the right restrooms in their schools, basically. We have see in it in Houston where an ordinance that would have protected many other classes of people, in areas such as disability and race, was defeated just out of a fear campaign induced around the theory that trans people are going to be sex offenders who go into bathrooms and rape people. In reality, we have not heard of trans people arrested for using restrooms. More members of Congress in the last few years have been arrested in the bathroom basically, as Larry Craig in the Minneapolis Airport a few years ago demonstrated. These are all fear tactics to try to criminalize the trans community, in many ways, for existing.”

I wondered, too, what her thoughts were about the murders having something to do with a backlash, understanding that it’s practically impossible to say for certain, given the open question of whether these homicides are more numerous than before, or more reported.

Nonetheless, Rodriguez-Roldan didn’t rule out the backlash being manifested in physical violence toward trans women, and again, it’s impossible to extract these murders from the system that fosters them.

“When you hear your legislator talking of trans people in the most dehumanizing and horrible way, as basically freaks and sex offenders, that has consequences on society,” explained Rodriguez-Roldan. “And at the same time, this very process that seeks to marginalize and discriminate against trans people is only heightened by this legal and political backlash we’re seeing to further criminalize trans people and banish them into the margins of society and make them more vulnerable to violence and to being profiled to by the police.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Amber Monroe, 25, was fatally shot August 26 in Detroit’s Palmer Park area, the location of three separate alleged hate crimes against transgender women in 2014.

The complexity of it all

During the discussions that I had for this piece, I was repeatedly struck by the complexity of the issues we discussed: the sophistication of carrying a trans identity through a cis-centric world, the way disenfranchisement wraps itself around itself repeatedly, the gains and losses in trans rights this year, and the simultaneous tragedies and sign of progress signified by this list of 22 dead trans/gender non-conforming people.

“That visibility is bringing more attention to how trans people interact in the world, and the biases they experience,” said Waters. “We’re talking about a really sad thing, that these people are being killed, but at the same time, it brings more visibility and attention to the issue, which leads to things like more resources, and better services for trans people, and hopefully a decrease in transphobia in general.”

“I think that part of the heightened media attention puts it at the top of people’s minds: This is something that I have to pay more attention to now because it’s something that’s important that’s happening in our country,” added Tillery.

But the tragic image of the dead trans woman, as crucial as it is to acknowledge, joins the system and helps color the overall notion of trans experience.

“It’s always this shock value, this victim narrative. The media plays a big part in that,” explained Hunter. “They choose to exploit and sensationalize our existences, so no one expects to see trans women of color in leadership roles.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

The remains of Elisha Walker, 20, were found August 11, in a “crude grave” behind a house in Smithfield, North Carolina. Walker was reported missing by her mother on November 11, 2014. After the discovery, Angel Dejesus Arias, reportedly a member of the Latin Kings gang, was charged with murder.

What is being done

Hunter, though, is a leader, and at both Trans Women of Color Collective and Casa Ruby, she advises several trans people, particularly trans people of color, who face enormous employment discrimination elsewhere.

“We wake up everyday understanding that we live in a world that’s designed to erase us off the face of the earth,” said Hunter. “It is designed to tell us that we don’t belong, our existences are in our heads. We are working to shift that narrative. We’re shifting from victimhood to personhood. We’re shifting from surviving to thriving by creating environments where trans and gender-nonconforming youths can heal from trauma and ascend to leadership”

Hunter, who received a master’s degree in public administration from Rutgers in 2014, often works with homeless trans youth, and in doing so, provides them a model for a life path, just like the one that inspired her.

“It wasn’t until I saw another trans woman of color with a degree running a program that I even began to think that that could be something that I could actually do,” she said. “Society tells me that if I’m not thin or beautiful or passing then my existence doesn’t matter. If I’m not here to exist for the commodification of men and to be fetishized, then my life doesn’t matter. And even still, it doesn’t matter. We have to shift that narrative.”

Last month, Noyola spoke at the first-ever Congressional Forum on Violence Against the Transgender Community. There, she had only a few minutes to pack years of work and strife into a few easily digested minutes. She speaks around the country, and says in her view, the support and resources for trans leadership are “abysmal.”

“My community is doing this work out of their living rooms or out of their cars, or in a church once a week,” she explained. “They’re meeting, they’re organizing trans women to have a space for them to organize themselves, to kind of check in with how they’re doing. [I’m] helping them to identify resources and then bringing them together to help build their leadership.”

Many people that I talked to agreed that social media has had a huge impact on the movement, particularly in the reporting of these murders, which is often informed by friends and family of the victims speaking up (such as in the case of police and/or media misgendering). Rodriguez-Roldan pointed to the Task Force’s #StopTransMurders hashtag and initiative in being instrumental in helping ensure these stories get told and shared.

“A big part of that publicity is, in many ways, part of the effort the Task Force has been doing to publicize this, to make sure that those names are remembered, that they’re in the media, that there is a greater public awareness of the crisis that so many people in the trans community are experiencing,” she said.

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Tamara Dominguez, 36, died August 13, in Kansas City, Missouri, after being struck repeatedly by an SUV she had reportedly just exited.

What is to be done

“For non-trans people, I would like for them to actively engage in the elevation of their consciousness,” said Hunter. “I want them to think beyond allyship. When you think about being an ally, you’re othering oppression. We are all impacted by oppression. We’re impacted differently, but the system of oppression manifests in all our lives. I need for non-trans people to really engage themselves and other people like them, so that they can understand that we have more in common than we don’t.”

“People want to feel off the hook,” says Noyola. “I think there’s a certain amount of listening that non-trans people and policy folks and agencies and executive directors and funding streams and foundations [need to do]. That is the name of the game right now.”

“Certainly what we know is that the more people in our society personally know someone who’s trans, the more accepting and understanding they are, and the more willing to support their rights,” said Tillery. “I think that there are also a lot of ways that organizations that will be looking to specifically help groups do that kind of learning. I think we’ll see many more educational campaigns coming forward in the next couple of years that are really about that. There will be even more resources and tools for people, so there will be very little excuse for people to say, ‘I don’t know what to do,’ or, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ It’s just like anything else: If you really want to learn something, you’ll figure out how to get that information.”

In terms of policy, Noyola doesn’t envision upheaval, but inclusion—which makes sense, since trans people are people, and are long overdue for being seen as such by the greater culture.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “There’s already existing services that need to include us. That need to think about how they are either providing transgender people specific kind of care, or housing, or mental health support, or health support—being able to work with those community leaders that are already doing this work. There’s a lot of policy conversations already moving, and it’s important to me that they be framed in a way where it’s translating into resources for our community and not necessarily empty policies that are going to need organizations to really hold agencies or departments or the police or institutions accountable.”

22 Trans/Gender Non-Conforming People Were Found Murdered in 2015: Were There More Murders or Better Reporting?

Zella Ziona, 21, was found in an alley in Montgomery Village, Maryland, on October 13. She had been shot in the head. A witness said an argument with five teenagers preceded the shooting.

A moment of truth

“I think we have to decide as a society what we’re gonna do in this moment,” said Tillery. “Are we going to take this moment to really learn about the trans members in our community and figure out ways to support them and honor them, or are we going to continue business as usual? I think there’s a lot of movement and work moving in the positive direction. I’m very heartened by that.”

“I know that there will still be murders. That’s just going to happen. We’re not going to end murders—anywhere,” said Hunter. “We live in a culture that enjoys violence, that celebrates violence. And so for us to think that we’re going to end the violence that is happening to trans women of color in this country today or tomorrow, or next year, is just not going to happen. Even if we do, I’m still black. Are we going to end murders of black people, too? I’m still a woman. It just doesn’t end there. We can’t just focus on ending murders.

“We have to focus on: How do we create environments that give opportunities to our young people to navigate the systems of oppression that they have to exist within? And at the same time how do we also dismantle those systems so no one has to live in a world where there’s a prestige threat of violence or otherwise, not just for trans people, but for all oppressed people?”

Rodriguez-Roldan says she and the Task Force have already received pushback regarding their endeavors, including their recent call to decriminalize sex work. But she, like everyone else I spoke to, remains hopeful.

“We’ve been asked if any of this is realistic,” she said. “I think of a story collected by the Brothers Grimm, which says that a young boy was asked by a king, ‘How many seconds are in an eternity?’ The boy replied, ‘There is this mountain made of the hardest diamond. A little bird comes and sharpens his beak on that mountain every 100 years. Once that mountain has been ground away to nothing, then the first second of eternity will have passed.’ As advocates, we have a duty to be like that bird. Sometimes it takes a long time, other times we won’t get to see the end result, but we have to have the patience and determination to keep grinding away at it, even if it takes a whole second of eternity.”

[Note that the collage at the top of this post was assembled using the NCAVP’s list of trans/gender non-conforming homicides in 2015. That list may deviate slightly from other reports. Image source list is as follows: Papi Edwards photo via Buzzfeed; Lamia Beard photo via the Washington Blade; Ty Underwood photo via dallasvoice.com; Yazmin Vash Payne photo via KTLA; Taja Gabrielle DeJesus photo via SFGate; Penny Proud photo via The Advocate; Kristina Gomez Reinwald photo via CBS Miami; London Chanel photo via Philadelphia Magazine; Mercedes Williamson photo via Buzzfeed; India Clarke photo via Tampa Bay Times; Amber Monroe photo via LGBTQ Action Michigan; Shade Schuler photo via The Guardian; Ashton O’Hara photo via Facebook; Kandis Capri photo via Facebook; Elisha Walker photo via Towleroad; Tamara Dominguez photo via New York Daily News; Keyshia Blige photo via Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents; Jessie Hernandez photo via KDVR; Kiesha Jenkins photo via Philly.com; Zella Ziona photo via Huffington Post; photos of K.C. Haggard and Jasmine Collins were not available on the internet.]

Former KKK Grand Wizard: Donald Trump Is a Lot More Radical Than Me

0
0

Former KKK Grand Wizard: Donald Trump Is a Lot More Radical Than Me

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and man who once said, “It’s really the Jew Marxists who see the nigger as their bullets by which to destroy our society,” shared some thoughts on Donald Trump this past week. Grand Wizard Duke’s overall assessment? Great guy, a little too racist.

In the interview, which Buzzfeed notes is labeled “Fox interview” despite not having any clear affiliation with the network, Duke elaborates on why he (along with countless other white supremacists) is endorsing Trump in 2016:

As far as what I see, according to the candidates that are out there now, Republicans and Democrats, I think he’s head and shoulders right now above the rest. I don’t agree with everything he says, he speaks a little more, actually he speaks a little more, a lot more radically than I talk. And I think that’s a positive and negative.

Duke went on to say that he disagrees with Trump’s (already lukewarm) support of Israel, considering the Zionist conspiracy currently controlling our on once-great nation.

You can watch the interview in full below.

[h/t Buzzfeed]


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com. Image via Getty.


Grand Jury Will Not Indict Cleveland Cops For Killing 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

0
0

Grand Jury Will Not Indict Cleveland Cops For Killing 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

In a decision that was grimly inevitable, a grand jury has declined to indict the Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park in November of last year, and his partner, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced in a press conference this afternoon.

McGinty told the press that he recommended to the jury that the cops not be indicted, and they followed his lead:

The city has worked overtime to wash its hands of Rice’s death in the 13 months since it happened. It almost certainly leaked Rice’s father’s arrest history just days after the boy was killed, and in response to a wrongful death suit argued that Rice was responsible for his own death. Though a coroner ruled his death to be a homicide and a local judge found probable cause to charge the responding cops, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office commissioned several reports that unsurprisingly found Rice’s killing to be “reasonable.” Two reports commissioned by Rice’s attorneys disagreed with those findings. In his press conference today, McGinty says that Rice should not have been playing with a toy gun because he “looked older.”

Video of the incident shows officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Carmback driving their car into a Cleveland park just feet from where Rice is standing. Two seconds later, Loehmann fired at Rice, striking and killing him. Loehmann testified that he demanded Rice show his hands three times in those two seconds. Rice’s hands were empty, and he was left to die on the ground as Loehmann and Carmback went to tackle and subdue his sister.

http://gawker.com/if-police-are-...


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

The Year in Sad Jeb

0
0

The Year in Sad Jeb

It hasn’t been an easy year to be Jeb Bush. He peaked in July, lost his groove, recovered his groove, realized he’d borrowed his new groove from a child predator, quietly phased it out again, and pet a stuffed moose. Fortunately, social media was there to chronicle every godforsaken gloomy minute.

So just how bad was Jeb’s 2015? We created this handy color-coded chart (ranging from vaguely off-white to deep beige) to let you know how worried you should be about Jeb’s well-being as we journey through his downward spiral.

It’s a dark tale, a cautionary tale. It’s Jeb’s tale—and there’s no end in sight.


The Year in Sad Jeb

June 15. Threat Level: LOW

Polls say: First place with 10.8 percent.

Jeb says: I can’t wait to make Dad proud.


The Year in Sad Jeb

July 16. Threat Level: LOW

Polls say: First place with 15.5 percent.

Jeb says: Hello, youths.


The Year in Sad Jeb

September 13. Threat Level: GUARDED

Polls say: Third place with 8.3 percent.

Jeb says: Reagan reagan. Reagan? Reagan.


The Year in Sad Jeb

September 17. Threat Level: GUARDED

Polls say: Third place with 7.8 percent.

Jeb says: Keepin’ it cozy.


The Year in Sad Jeb

September 22. Threat Level: ELEVATED

Polls say: Fourth place with 7.7 percent.

Jeb says: There’s probably enough chairs.


The Year in Sad Jeb

October 25. Threat Level: ELEVATED

Polls say: Fifth place with 7.2 percent.

Jeb says: I’m Jeb.


The Year in Sad Jeb

October 30. Threat Level: ELEVATED

Polls say: Fifth place with 6.5 percent.

Jeb says: Fuck Marco.


The Year in Sad Jeb

November 6. Threat Level: ELEVATED

Polls say: Fifth place with 5.3 percent.

Jeb says: Friends are forever.


The Year in Sad Jeb

November 9. Threat Level: GUARDED

Polls say: Fifth place with 6.0 percent.

Jeb says: I’m fine!!!!


The Year in Sad Jeb

November 19. Threat Level: HIGH

Polls say: Fifth place with 5.4 percent.

Jeb says: Help.


The Year in Sad Jeb

November 24. Threat Level: GUARDED

Polls say: Fifth place at 5.5 percent.

Jeb says: I, too, enjoy popular culture and leisure.


The Year in Sad Jeb

November 30. Threat Level: HIGH

Polls say: Fifth place at 5.3 percent.

Jeb says: I’m not fine.


The Year in Sad Jeb

December 22. Threat Level: HIGH

Polls say: Fifth place at 4.5 percent.

Jeb says: Mom, I know you’re home.

Jeb also says: Mom?


The Year in Sad Jeb

December 23. Threat Level: SEVERE

Polls say: Fifth place at 4.4 perecent.

Jeb says: I didn’t want to win anyway.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Homeless in Public

0
0

Homeless in Public

Homeless people are sleeping on public property. What shall we do?

For the past two weeks, homeless person blanket and tabloid newspaper The New York Post has been on an important story: shaming one Manhattan homeless woman as she moves about the city in an attempt to live. On December 14, under the bizarrely mundane headline “Police roust homeless woman in Greenwich village,” the paper ran a short story that exists mostly as a pretense for mocking her appearance. Then, today, the Post ran an important follow up: “Residents fume after homeless woman moves into West Village bus stop.”

It seems our PROTAGONIST—a woman, who is homeless—is sleeping out in public! Not only that, but she has now had the nerve to take shelter somewhere sheltering! What is it about homeless people that makes them oddly want to find shelter somewhere other than a private home? A moral failing, no doubt.

Look: it is not optimal to have people living long-term at bus stops. It makes the bus stop inconvenient, yes, but more importantly it means that a person is homeless. So here is a very brief quiz for the reactionary readers of the New York Post:

What Should We Do About All These Homeless People?

1. Subsidize long-term housing for them so that they can get back on their feet. With my tax dollars?? Fuck off!

2. Build more homeless shelters as a temporary measure. With my tax dollars?? Fuck off!

3. Put them in jail. Yes!

Option three is the most expensive option of all—with your tax dollars.

So call your elected officials and demand more long-term housing for the homeless, or stop fucking whining about people sleeping at the bus stop.

[Photo: Flickr]

Britney Spears's Instagram Has Become a Fascinating Journey Through Her Mind

0
0

Britney Spears's Instagram Has Become a Fascinating Journey Through Her Mind

In its infancy four years ago, Britney Spears’s Instagram was a boring place filled with overly filtered photos of her posing with The Wanted (remember The Wanted?), filming The X Factor, and performing during her Femme Fatale tour. Like many celebrity Instagrams, it was a place for shameless and impersonal promotion. Here’s her cover of Elle—on newsstands now! Here are the dates for her next shows—on sale next week! Here’s her list of upcoming TV appearances—she’s doing Kimmel!

But over the past seven months, Instagram.com/BritneySpears has changed. What was once a place to find photos reaffirming things we’ve all known for over 15 years has become a window into a part of Britney we’ve never seen before. The relatively slow transition began roughly 28 weeks ago, when she posted this selfie:

This image (which looks to have been taken with a front-facing camera) is what I believe to be the first actual selfie Britney ever posted to Instagram, and suggests an ownership of the account that wasn’t there before. “This is really me,” she seems to be saying in the green-tinted darkness of her bedroom. The power to upload is now literally in her hands, and she would like you all to see her new haircut.

Soon after the selfie, Britney began posting more and more screenshotted images of silly and/or inspirational quotes she had found elsewhere. “Don’t let idiots ruin your day,” read one of them. “All you need is love...And a tiara. And maybe a cookie,” read another. Then, four months ago, came this one-two punch:

It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that Britney Spears loves unfunny memes that feature Minions, but it does surprise me that she uploaded them to Instagram right after a photo of her doing yoga, and just before a photo of a donut she happened to be craving at the time. The days when refreshing her feed meant seeing a new professionally photographed image from an ad campaign were over. Britney Spears had finally begun letting us in.

And once she started, she didn’t stop. The inspirational quotes kept coming. Photos of her childrenthe true loves of her life—increased in quantity, she posted another selfie, and eventually she took us even further behind the curtain—revealing a philosophical side to herself with posts like:

And:

Her Instagram was becoming an unfiltered feed of her thoughts, seemingly bound to no social media manager’s posting schedule. The occasional sponsored post suddenly felt wildly out of place in a way it wouldn’t have just a year earlier.

In caption-free posts like this image of what appears to be the Louisiana brush, she told us where she was. And in other posts, she told us where she wanted to be:

There is a surprising—if perplexing—openness to Britney’s Instagram that’s refreshing each time it pops up in my feed. And though it doesn’t always make sense, I still feel as though I’ve learned more about her in the past six months than I’ve learned about some people after years of friendship.

What does she love? The water.

What does she want to learn? Math.

How does she feel? Anxious.

What does she dislike being? Single.

Who does she pray to? Mary.

Who else does she pray to? Never mind, it’s still Mary.

Is her father great at basketball? Yes.

What is as good as it gets? Fudge.

Whom does she love enough to post two photos of in a row? Kate Hudson.

The newfound sincerity to Britney’s Instagram is lacking in most accounts of non-celebrities, let alone famous ones. She has begun sharing pieces of herself—sometimes several times a day—in a way that feels unforced and almost fearless. What began as a place to promote her has become a place to know her, and that’s as beautiful as this photo of Mars:


Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.

Images via Instagram.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 337: Kristin Met Trump

0
0

500 Days of Kristin, Day 337: Kristin Met Trump

Just one year ago, Kristin Cavallari met fellow author and reality TV star Donald Trump at the Miss Universe pageant. Things were different, then—Trump was the owner of the pageant, and Kristin served as one of the judges.

A simpler time.

This year, neither Trump nor Kristin participated in the pageant. Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe organization in September after making racism against Mexican immigrants a central facet of his presidential campaign. Kristin was not invited to be a judge this year because...who knows? She was replaced by former Miss Universe winner (and friend of Lauren Conrad) Olivia Culpo.

Though Kristin seemed excited to meet Trump last year, she has yet to offer any support for his campaign. The last time Kristin said anything political was in 2008, when she made the following observation about our current president: “Obama seems like a really cool genuine guy, which I think is hard to find nowadays in a president.”


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Ted Cruz Supporters: Crazy in Their Own Words

0
0

Ted Cruz Supporters: Crazy in Their Own Words

You’ve seen Donald Trump supporters speak, in so many ways. To pick a single example at random, when one called for a public lynching of a black protestor. Or remember this woman who would throw a spear into your chest if Donald Trump ordered it? But there is a segment of America who has not yet been given a national platform to advertise their pathetic delusion: Ted Cruz supporters.

Thankfully, as The Daily Beast’s Andrew Kirell pointed out on Twitter today, some folks from CSPAN—the only network that allows you to ask a sitting representative if you can shit in his mouth—recently went to a Ted Cruz rally in Mechanicsville, Va., proving that there is very little difference between the two. He calls our attention to a clip of a woman who says that Obama has banned Santa Claus from schools because it offends Muslims:

You should watch the entire thing here. My favorite is the guy who baits the CSPAN host into asking why he fled liberal northern Virginia only to say that it was because of the traffic, but they’re all superstars, from the spritely young teenager at the beginning on down to the man in the fedora who says that America needs a president who is “of godly character but also warlike” (Ted Cruz).

One way to look at the current race for the Republican nomination for president is that it’s Donald Trump versus everyone else. Another way to look at it is that it’s Donald Trump and Ted Cruz versus everyone else.

This is partly because Cruz’s poll numbers have risen sharply over the last month or so: He is now in second place nationally and leading in Iowa. But it’s also because Trump and Cruz are running on more or less the same platform: fuck immigrants, murder ISIS, and flop America’s dick all over the world. If Donald Trump or Ted Cruz died of congestive heart failure tomorrow, all of the dead guy’s supporters would immediately flock to the other one. When one of them eventually drops out of the race, that will happen anyway, because they’re all one group of people in search of the same salvation.


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Hillary Clinton has pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class, defining “middle class” as any h


Iraqi Military Reclaims Ramadi from ISIS After Months-Long Siege

0
0

Iraqi Military Reclaims Ramadi from ISIS After Months-Long Siege

Following several months of fighting, Iraqi forces, supported by a U.S.-led airstrikes, drove Islamic State fighters out of the center of Ramadi, military officials said Monday. Ramadi is the provincial capital of Anbar province. It fell to ISIS in May.

http://gawker.com/iraqi-provinci...

Since then, the city, located about 80 miles west of Baghdad, has been the site of some of the heaviest fighting in the country since the U.S. invaded eight years ago. Even on Monday, military officials issued contradictory statements.

On state television, the Guardian reports, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a military spokesman, said, “Ramadi has been liberated and the armed forces of the counter-terrorism service have raised the Iraqi flag above the government complex.”

However, Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of military operations in Anbar, told the Associated Press that ISIS fighters still controlled 30 percent of the city. “The troops only entered the government complex,” he said. “We can’t say that Ramadi is fully liberated. There are still neighborhoods under their control and there are still pockets of resistance.”

One Iraqi military officer told the AP that Iraqi forces had only gained control of the government complex as ISIS fighters retreated to other parts of the city. They left behind hundreds of bombs and other booby traps. From the AP:

“We were totally surprised today,” the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press.

“We didn’t expect them to retreat from a number of Ramadi areas today, where we entered without any resistance, as if they evaporated,” he said.

Al-Belawi said the fighters retreated mainly to the eastern neighborhoods of Sijariya and Sufiya. Authorities did not provide casualty figures from the fighting.

The recapture of the government complex should lift the morale of Iraqi forces, who were badly shaken by the fall of the city in May, which came despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes and advances against IS elsewhere in the country.

ISIS “has planted more than 300 explosive devices on the roads and in the buildings of the government complex,” Brig. Gen. Majid al-Fatlawi of the army’s 8th division said.


Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Trump Flip-Flops on Wages After Sanders Makes a Pass at His Supporters

0
0

Trump Flip-Flops on Wages After Sanders Makes a Pass at His Supporters

Donald Trump has apparently changed his mind about economic inequality, lamenting on Twitter Monday that wages are to low. This weekend, Bernie Sanders suggested that he might be able to lift the spell cast over the white, alienated masses who have flocked to Trump’s supremacist banner.

http://gawker.com/bernie-sanders...

As the Guardian points out, in November, at the fourth Republican debate, Trump said, “[T]axes too high, wages too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave [the minimum wage] the way it is...People have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we cannot do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can’t do it.”

On Monday, however, he appeared to reverse course. “The middle-class has worked so hard, are not getting the kind of jobs that they have long dreamed of - and no effective raise in years. BAD,” he tweeted.

Speaking on the Sunday talk shows this weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suggested that much of Trump’s appeal was reliant upon the economic anxiety of an American working class struggling to make ends meet in a globalized economy.

“What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears which are legitimate and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims, and in my view that is not the way we’re going to address the major problems facing our country,” Sanders said.

Trump’s Twitter essay continued:

Later on Monday, while reading off poll results at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, Trump called for the election to be held immediately.


Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Speed metal legend Lemmy Kilmister is dead at 70.

Whole Foods Must Drop Policy That Forbids Employees From Recording Work Conversations

0
0

Whole Foods Must Drop Policy That Forbids Employees From Recording Work Conversations

A new federal ruling says that Whole Foods must drop its policy that forbids employees from recording workplace conversations (otherwise known as gathering proof of worker mistreatment).

Last week, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that “smartphone pics and videos in this day and age are particularly ‘essential’ to proving an employee’s rights have been violated,” Grub Street reports. This is a win for Whole Foods workers, who’ve been trying to unionize since 2014, despite the company’s continued wage cuts and layoffs.

Naturally, John Mackey, co-CEO of a company I prefer to call Whole Check, says the overpriced grocery chain isn’t anti-union as much as it is “beyond unions.” The NRLB disagrees and has sided with the two unions (the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago) that brought forward the recording complaint.

The chain has also recently agreed to pay $500,000 in settlement fees following a Department of Consumer Affairs investigation that found they were overcharging New York City customers earlier this year. According to Business Insider, this agreement comes with continued in-store audits to keep Whole Foods honest in upholding their pledge to stop marking up items.


Contact the author at Hillary@jezebel.com.

Image via Getty.

Bakers Who Refuse To Make Cake for Gay Couple Must Finally Pay the Bigot Fine

0
0

Bakers Who Refuse To Make Cake for Gay Couple Must Finally Pay the Bigot Fine

The owners of a bakery in Oregon have finally agreed to pay state-ordered damages after they refused to serve a same-sex couple last year.

Aaron Klein, a co-owner of the Portland-based bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa, paid $136,000 on Monday, after a two-year battle over the issue. He and his staff had refused to make a wedding cake for same-sex couple Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer, saying that it was against their religious beliefs.

The fine was ordered by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI), which claims that the owners’ refusal violates the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal,” BOLI said in its ruling.

On the Sweet Cakes website, the owners cite a Bible passage that reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” In their eyes, that world that God loved so much, apparently, just did not include gay people.

[Image via YouTube]


Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images