Politics

NumbersUSA’s Three Branches of Financial Shadiness

Written by Stephen Piggott

NumbersUSA, the grassroots mobilizing arm of the John Tanton Network, has had a long history of lies and deceit. Executive director Roy Beck has long denied his connections to white nationalists. Beck spoke at the 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens National Conference, a fact he denied on numerous occasions until recently. At a recent event in Glenarden, Maryland, Beck told the crowd that he hadn’t been invited back since, in reference to the 1997 Conference.

NumbersUSA’s financial information is as murky and misleading as its leader. The group itself is split into three arms: NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and Americans for Better Immigration. According to financial documents,… Read more

News

Biggie Smalls and Lil Wayne

Written by Jessica Acee

Yesterday was a sad day for many hip-hop fans. It was the 13th anniversary of the death of Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls. It was also the first day of rapper Lil Wayne’s one-year prison sentence for attempted gun possession.

Both men represent the huge success of commercial hip-hop over the last 15 years. The Hip-hop of MTV and BET has a very different façade than it did 20 or even 40 years ago coming up out of urban Black communities. Today, hip-hop makes billions for the major record labels and influences nearly all popular music in ways Biggie Smalls probably never imagined.

Who else would we turn to but MTV for a… Read more

Politics

Center for Immigration Studies Manipulates Poll Results from African Americans

Written by James E. Johnson Jr.

It’s hard to swallow when others are putting words in your mouth. But that is exactly what the Tanton Network has been doing with African American communities. In its latest attempt to twist the views of African Americans, the Tanton Network through The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a poll titled ‘An Examination of Minority Voters’ Views on Immigration’.

It is not unusual for CIS to twist and skew facts to fit its extreme agenda. Anti-immigrant leaders are using this poll to convince the public that their view is race neutral and that ‘Minority Voters’ agree with their fringe views.

The press statement released with the poll downplayed the fact that a… Read more

Immigration

Racism Rampant in Food Production

Written by Axel Fuentes

Traveling in western Kansas, where the bad odor from big feed lots and meat processing plants is present in several communities, I held conversations with immigrant workers who mainly work in feed yards, dairy, land fields, restaurants, and processing plants.

Several times they expressed that they feel racism is present in their workplaces and how they’ve been discriminated against because of the color of their skin.

They comment that at some companies, having dark skin automatically put them at a disadvantage when it came to distribution of jobs. This, they say, is the case in meat processing plants where the most dangerous and difficult jobs are given to immigrants or refugee workers of color, and… Read more

Politics

Cross-post: Pentagon Shooter Was Right-Wing, Anti-Government Terrorist

Written by Imagine 2050 Editors

Think Progress contributor Alex Seitz-Wald gives a run down on Pentagon shooter, John Bedell, and the increase in right-wing domestic terror.

Last night, a California man armed with two semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition opened fire on police officers at the entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two before being killed by police. The shooter, 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell, was “well dressed in a suit” and “very calm,” walking “very directly to the officers” before engaging them, a police spokesman said.

Bedell “appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings,” the Christian Science Monitor reports, who traveled from California specifically to attack the Pentagon. While police were

… Read more

Politics

Congressman Trent Franks: Good Time to Pick Up Foot, Insert in Mouth

Written by Amy Spicer

Rep. Franks, a virulent anti-abortion activist and extreme right-wing conservative from Arizona, suggested in an interview with blogger Mike Stark that the Black community was better off under slavery than it is today.

“In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say what was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible. And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more

… Read more

Immigration

Tanton Network Uses E-verify to Terrorize Immigrant Communities

Written by Jill Garvey

The John Tanton Network is more interested in terrorizing immigrant communities than helping employers.

Nothing else can explain its recent response to a comprehensive report on the failure of E-verify. Rather than accept the program’s failures and promote more effective ways to fix the immigration system, the network of anti-immigrant groups led by John Tanton is attacking the report and trying to discredit hard facts. The anti-immigrant trifecta of the Tanton Network – FAIR, Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA – came out swinging against the report which effectively debunks their data on E-verify.

Mark Krikorian of Center for Immigration Studies said, “Nevertheless, it’s certainly true that E-Verify isn’t tight enough… Read more

Politics

Anti-immigrant Bill Dies in Mississippi

Written by Chris Bober

So what’s got me smiling today? Could it be the “surprised kitten” YouTube clip floating around the office? No, as sweet as that is, I’m most excited about Tuesday’s civil rights victory in Mississippi which saw the state’s legislature kill the so-called “Immigration Reform Act of 2010” (SB2032).

The bill, which initially passed the senate, died in a house committee despite being promoted by the anti-immigrant group, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) and a last minute endorsement by the white supremacist hate group, Council of Conservative Citizens.

Politics

Peter Brimelow Starts New Anti-immigrant/White Nationalist Website

Written by Stephen Piggott

On March 1, a new white nationalist online magazine, AlternativeRight.com was launched. Peter Brimelow announced the move at VDARE.com where he stated that “Alternative Right is currently a project of the VDARE Foundation and donations are tax-deductible.”

This marks an attempt to forge a new right-wing publication that is a direct challenge to the more intellectual magazines out there such as the anti-Semitic Occidental Dissent, white nationalist Chronicles, and The American Conservative, a magazine founded by white nationalists.

AlternativeRight.com’s ‘about us’ page states that it is “an online magazine of radical traditionalism.” The website features blogs, videos, radio interviews, the magazine itself, and even an online store. It is obvious that the website’s content is… Read more

Politics

The Food Trusts: A Call for Backbone

Written by Rev. David L. Ostendorf

Next week the Departments of Justice and Agriculture will jointly convene the first of five national hearings on “competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture industry.” If the first gathering in Ankeny, Iowa is any indicator, the Departments will have to go to the meat counter soon to buy some backbone to take on the food trusts they want to “hear” about.

Monsanto—the seed giant that brings us all those pastoral TV ads from “American farmers”—has a place at the table next week to address (the utter lack of) competition in the seed sector which it dominates. Politicians of all stripes have the first say of the day. Then come all the academics,… Read more