The Official Rand Paul Thread

[Greed]

Rand Paul's troubling ties to racists
The libertarian senator's new media guy has a pro-Confederate past filled with controversial comments
By Jon Terbush
July 9, 2013

A close aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is a former member of a pro-secessionist group who used to wear a luchador mask emblazoned with a Confederate flag under the moniker, "Southern Avenger."

Jack Hunter, Paul's director of new media, who also co-wrote Paul's 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington, is a former radio shock jock and former member of a neo-Confederate organization, according to a report in the Washington Free Beacon. Hunter is the second Paul staffer to have his troublesome views on racial issues revealed.

In the decade before he joined Paul's campaign, Hunter provided conservative commentary on the radio and on his website under the guise of his pseudonymous Southern character. In a 2004 article posted to his site and uncovered by the Free Beacon, titled "John Wilkes Booth Was Right," Hunter argued that "Wilkes Booth's heart was in the right place," and that Lincoln was, in fact, "one of the worst figures in American history."

Here's how Hunter described the Civil War:

Imagine you entered into an agreement with a friend. Your friend then decides to gain the upper hand at your expense. For your own good, you decide to back out and go your own way. But instead of letting bygones be bygones, your friend burns your house down, rapes your sister and forces you to re-enter the agreement at gun point. This is pretty much what Lincoln did to the Southern people. [Southern Avenger]​

And here he is discussing race in another piece, called "Are White People Out of Style?":

Hispanics indulge in an even more nationalistic form of racial identity by flying Mexican flags, listening to a foreign music that both black and white Americans have never even heard of, and turning everywhere they settle into northern outposts of their Mexican homeland.

And then there are white people. Not only are whites not afforded the same right to celebrate their own cultural identity – but anything that is considered "too white" is immediately suspect. Nobody talks about rap music being "too black." No one would dare suggest that the agricultural work force is "too Hispanic." But let something like NASCAR, country music or the Republican party become patronized mainly by white Americans, and you can bet your ass someone is going to scream racism. [Southern Avenger]​

Prior to his days as the Southern Avenger, Hunter was a prominent member of the League of the South, a pro-Confederate, pro-secession group. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the League of the South as a hate group, and said it has become more "explicitly racist" throughout the years.

Along with its academics, the league included racist hard-liners from the start. One founding member who still sat on the board of directors in 2007 is Jack Kershaw, a lifelong segregationist who once was an official in the anti-integration White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. Kershaw has never hidden his racist views. "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery," Kershaw told a reporter in 1998. "Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?" [Southern Poverty Law Center]​

Hunter told the Free Beacon that the group was not racist when he was a member, adding, "I was a young person, it was a fairly radical group — the same way a person on the left might be attracted in college to some left-wing radical groups."

During Paul's 2010 Senate bid, he forced out his then-spokesman, Christopher Hightower, after a reporter discovered a note posted to Hightower's MySpace page on Martin Luther King Day that read "HAPPY N****R DAY!!!" alongside an image of a lynching.

Those controversies echo the same criticisms that dogged Paul's father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), during his presidential campaigns. In each of those bids, old newsletters bearing Paul's name and containing overtly racist messages surfaced. The elder Paul said he didn't write the newsletters.

Both Pauls have publicly condemned racism, and Rand has urged his fellow Republicans in recent months to embrace minority voters. Yet that recurring pattern of racism in their political partners is not mere coincidence alone, many argue, but rather a reflection of some shared political ideals.

"The deep connection between the Pauls and the neo-Confederate movement doesn't discredit their ideas, but it's also not just an indiscretion," New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait wrote. "It's a reflection of the fact that white supremacy is a much more important historical constituency for anti-government ideas than libertarians like to admit."

Indeed, during his 2010 Senate campaign, Rand suggested he would have voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not for any race-based reason, but because he thought it was an infringement on the freedom of speech of private businesses.

http://theweek.com/article/index/246600/rand-pauls-troubling-ties-to-racists

 

[Greed]

Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns

Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns
By Elspeth Reeve | The Atlantic Wire
16 hrs ago

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul defended his aide Jack Hunter for his neo-Confederate writings last week, dismissing them as youthful indiscretions that were part of his shock-jock persona. ("It was a shock radio job. He was doing wet T-shirt contests. But can a guy not have a youth and stuff?" Paul said.) But Hunter's former editor at the Charleston City Paper, Chris Haire, claims they weren't youthful indiscretions, but what Hunter truly believed then and what he believes now. Chris Haire says Hunter contacted him long before the Washington Free Beacon broke the story of his neo-Confederate past and asked the City Paper to delete "dozens" of his old posts. Hunter wanted to protect Paul, who's openly said he wants to run for president in 2016. Haire thinks this makes Hunter a chicken.

Haire writes:

While I told him that I would have removed one or two posts—it’s not uncommon for writers to hastily pen a column they later regret—I found the breadth of the request to be excessive, and to be honest, quite cowardly. Doing so, I told Jack, was a repudiation of the very persona he had created as a writer and radio personality. It was a denial of the very views that had made him a local media celebrity and a rising star in the so-called liberty movement, and as such, a slap in the face to all those who had ever supported him.​

In responding to the Free Beacon story, Hunter said he no longer believes the stuff he did when he belonged to the secessionist League of the South in the 1990s. But Haire says that in the late 2000s, when Hunter was writing for the City Paper he believed in the same kind of stuff: defending racial profiling and racist ex-baseball player John Rocker, blasting Abraham Lincoln as Hitler-esque as well as the House of Representatives' apology for slavery.

Haire says that while Hunter never said racial slurs or joined a lynching, "it was my opinion then and it is my opinion now that Jack is the most common kind of racist, the one that doesn’t realize that he is one." Which raises an interesting question, as The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein notes: If Hunter was such a racist, why did Haire publish him? In a way, Haire supports Hunter's own defense—that he was only saying this stuff because it sells. "The role of a radio host is different from that of a political operative. In radio, sometimes you’re encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory," Hunter said in a blog post. That apparently worked for the City Paper, too. Keep that in mind when you read about how the South has changed.

In 2016, Haire warns, more will come out about how libertarians like Rand Paul and his dad, Ron Paul, "courted the racist wing of the GOP." (The elder Paul made quite a bit of money off of racist newsletters he says he did not read what was printed under his byline.) When they issue inevitable denials, Haire says, "the racists and anti-Semites and secessionists will have a good laugh knowing that one of their own had to lie to protect himself but underneath that protective cloak of political convenience he’s still one of them." Yes, and then maybe they'll sit back and relax and read a column in the Charleston City Paper.

http://news.yahoo.com/rand-pauls-neo-confederate-aide-asked-editor-delete-182740087.html

 

[QueEx]

Re: Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns

Where's the <s>beef</s> neo-Confederate writings ???

 

[Greed]

Re: Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns

The original webpages have multiple links embedded.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns

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[QueEx]

Re: Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide Asked His Editor to Delete Columns

​

 

[thoughtone]

source: Think Progress

Rand Paul: ‘I Don’t Think There Is Any Particular Evidence’ Of Black Voters Being Prevented From Voting

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a tea party senator with a long history of opposition to civil rights laws, told an audience in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday that there is no evidence of black voters being excluded from the franchise. According to local NPR host Phillip Bailey, Paul said that he does not believe “there is any particular evidence of polls barring African Americans from voting,” during a speech to the non-partisan Louisville Forum.

If Paul is not aware of the evidence indicating widespread efforts to prevent African Americans from voting, then he must not be looking very hard. During the 2012 election, black and Hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to cast a ballot as white voters. In Florida, lines of up to six hours led an estimated 201,000 people to become frustrated and leave the polls. These lines existed largely because of a voter suppression bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) which reduced early voting hours in the state. After the election, top Republicans admitted that the purpose of cutting early voting was to reduce Democratic turnout. One Republican operative conceded that early voting was cut on the Sunday proceeding Election Day because “that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves.”

Meanwhile, voter ID laws are rampant in states led by conservatives, despite the fact that these laws cannot be justified by any legitimate purpose. Although their proponents routinely claim that an ID requirement is necessary to prevent voter fraud at the polls, such fraud barely exists. According to one study, just 0.0023 percent of votes are the product of in person voter fraud. Meanwhile, even conservative estimates suggest that 2 to 3 percent of legitimate voters will turn turned away by a voter ID law — and these voters are disproportionately African American.

It is certainly true that some forms of voter suppression, such as poll taxes or sham literacy tests, are now prohibited. But lawmakers determined to keep African Americans from voting have always been highly adaptive and capable of devising new ways to suppress the vote. Indeed, President Lyndon Johnson warned that this was the case when he proposed the Voting Rights Act to a joint session of Congress — “every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny” the right to vote, Johnson told Congress. The rise of new techniques of preventing disfavored groups from voting is not the least bit surprising in the wake of Roberts Court’s recent hostility to voting rights, which has made it far easier for voter suppression laws to go into effect.

In any event, it is not at all surprising that Paul has not taken the time to educate himself on the subject of voting rights before claiming that African American voters are not being targeted. During his initial race for the U.S. Senate, Paul admitted that he opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination and whites-only lunch counters. Denying African Americans’ their equal rights, Paul explained, “is the hard part about believing in freedom.”

 

[QueEx]

​

 

[Greed]

Prominent African-American Leaders Discuss Rand Paul's Outreach to Black Voters

Prominent African-American Leaders Discuss Rand Paul's Outreach to Black Voters
By PHILLIP M. BAILEY
4:29 PM WED NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Two prominent African-American leaders in Louisville want voters to pay close attention to Republican Rand Paul’s outreach to minorities as Kentucky's junior senator gears up for a possible presidential bid.

Jones and Cosby differ on dealing with Paul, but discussed ways a new black agenda can be formed as GOP lawmakers begin to discuss ways to gain support from minority communities.

Cosby says it is strategic suicide for the African-American community to support Democrats automatically.

"I don't think that we should be endorsing politicians, I think that we should have an agenda and a politician should be endorsing our agenda," he says.

Earlier this year, Paul did introduce a bipartisan measure aimed at reforming U.S. drug laws while citing racial disparities in sentencing. He has also made comments indicating support for restoring felon voting rights in the state.

Reaction to Paul's overt attempts have been somewhat mixed among local leaders and activists.

Louisville Councilwoman Attica Scott has said she is willing to have conversations with Paul about ways the federal government can help deal with the rise of the city's vacant and abandoned properties. Others such as Kentucky state Sen. Gerald Neal point to continued controversies regarding Paul and race, such as a former aide who once belonged to a neo-Confederate group.

"Republicans will very quickly tell you or black folk anyway, 'You should be a Republican. This is the party of Lincoln. This is the party that freed the slaves,'" says Jones. "And if you don't know your history and the progression of that party, then you cannot come back effectively and say to them, this isn't the same party of the 1860s."

Paul visited Cosby's west Louisville church as early as 2010, and the senator was at the city's historically black university—Simmons College of Kentucky—this year to discuss his reforms and other issues such as charter school legislation.

Cosby hasn't withheld praise for Paul, and at one point compared the senator's filibuster against the Obama administration's use of military drones to the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some such as civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis disagreed with that assessment, telling WFPL that Paul is no Dr. King.

But Cosby says those comments aren't meant to be an endorsement of Paul for any public office, but that he believes the Tea Party affiliated senator is catching up with black constituents.

"Rand Paul has only been in politics and public service for two years. I've been the pastor of St. Stephen Church since Abraham Lincoln was a precinct captain," he says. "If you look at any of my writings or any of my positions, or if you listen to any of my sermons these are positions that I have held before Rand Paul. It just so happens that Rand Paul, instead of me endorsing him, took some positions that affirm positions that I had. And I applauded him for doing that."

Jones called for the public dialogue after writing a column disagreeing with Cosby's assertions about the senator. He hopes the two will continue to hold these discussions in order to educate and show black leaders can disagree while forging an agenda.

Both agreed that African-Americans should be free to engage with leaders of either political party, and that Democrats are taking black voters and their interests for granted.

But Jones says he remains wary of Paul's views and controversial remarks against historic civil rights legislation.

"Overall I think Rand Paul is dangerous. The brand of libertarianism that's practiced right now by libertarian politicians is dangerous when you talk about minimal government or especially folks who talk about state’s rights," he says. "State’s rights is a code word for the old Confederacy and usually that’s coming out of someone who has a racist agenda. Now I'm not saying that Rand Paul has a racist agenda, but when I hear those code words I kind of perk up."

http://wfpl.org/post/prominent-african-american-leaders-discuss-rand-pauls-outreach-black-voters

 

[Greed]

Paul Pitches Flat Tax, Immigration as Remedies for Detroit

Paul Pitches Flat Tax, Immigration as Remedies for Detroit
By Chris Christoff & John McCormick
Dec 6, 2013 1:44 PM CT

U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a potential presidential candidate who has said a bailout of Detroit would occur “over my dead body,” told a business crowd there that cutting taxes and luring immigrants would turn the city’s fortunes.

The 50-year-old Kentucky Republican wants federal legislation to create “economic freedom zones” in distressed cities like Detroit, which has filed the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy. He said he would cut income taxes to a flat 5 percent in areas of the U.S. with unemployment more than 1.5 times higher than the national average. He would cut payroll taxes and eliminate capital-gains taxes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...immigrant-influx-as-remedies-for-detroit.html

 

[QueEx]

Re: Paul Pitches Flat Tax, Immigration as Remedies for Detroit

Largely White Audience Turns Out
To Hear Rand Paul Speak At African-
American Outreach Event




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WASHINGTON -- The Michigan Republican Party is seeking to increase its visibility in Democratic- and minority-heavy Detroit, and last week, it brought Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to the city to open the party's African-American Engagement Office. But if anything, the launch event put into stark relief just how much work the GOP has to do, when a largely white audience turned out to hear the senator speak.

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus has said that attracting more minorities to the GOP is crucial for the party's future. He visited Michigan last month, hired radio personality Wayne Bradley to head the African-American Engagement effort in the state and launched the Michigan Black Advisory Council.

In the 2012 election, President Barack Obama earned the support of 90 percent of the black voters who turned out at the polls.

Paul initially spoke at the new African-American Engagement Office on Livernois Avenue in Detroit for about four minutes on Friday. According to the progressive site Eclectablog, "The seats in the tiny space were filled with well-dressed supporters, most of whom were African-American."

“Today’s opening of this office is the beginning of a new Republican Party,” Paul said. “This is going to be a Republican Party that is in big cities and small cities, in the countryside, in the city. It’s going to be about bringing a message that is popular no matter where you’re from, whether you're rich or poor, whether you’re black, white or brown.”

Paul then went to a larger grassroots event at the Grace Bible Chapel, where there were protesters from the civil rights group National Action Network outside. The online invitation said the event was intended to "celebrate the opening of our African-American Engagement Office in Detroit."

Tracking footage from the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, however, shows an overwhelmingly white audience ended up turning out:​

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0GVOPMLcf-Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Detroit is approximately 83 percent African-American.

Paul also spoke Friday at the Detroit Economic Club, where he proposed a plan to revitalize U.S. cities through the creation of "economic freedom zones," which would cut federal taxes in communities that have an unemployment rate of 12 percent or higher.

The Michigan Democratic Party rejected Paul's advice for Detroit.

"Sen. Paul was a vocal opponent of the auto rescue, which saved over a million jobs, and led the Republican effort to shut down the government, costing Michigan's economy hundreds of millions," said party spokesman Joshua Pugh. "His special interest tax handout plan is nothing new. Here in Michigan, Rick Snyder gave $1.8 billion to wealthy special interests, and paid for it with billions in devastating cuts to our local communities and public schools. It's time for our elected leaders to stop the tax giveaways, invest in communities and improve education."

Paul has been trying to do more minority outreach in recent months. In April, Paul spoke at the historically black Howard University, becoming the first Republican elected official to speak on campus in years.

Still, he continues to generate skepticism, in part due to his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 2010, he said, "I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant, but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership."

On Sunday, Paul said he opposed extending long-term unemployment benefits, because doing so would be a "disservice" to workers. African-Americans have consistently had a significantly higher unemployment rate than whites.

Neither Paul nor the Michigan GOP returned a request for comment.
​

SOURCE

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Paul Pitches Flat Tax, Immigration as Remedies for Detroit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...immigrant-influx-as-remedies-for-detroit.html

Enterprise Zones; Jack Kemp lives again. Like it worked the first time around.

I got a better idea, just send your tax money directly to business because that's what this scheme is essentially doing.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Paul Pitches Flat Tax, Immigration as Remedies for Detroit

Rand Paul: GOP ambassador to black America
Chris Hayes looks at the Rand Paul’s outreach to African American voters



<iframe src='http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/EmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_hayes_3randpkg_131209' height='500' width='635' scrolling='no' border='no' ></iframe>


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[thoughtone]

source: Fact Check.org


Rand Paul, Obama & Black Unemployment


Sen. Rand Paul says “black unemployment in America is double white unemployment” and “hasn’t budged” under President Obama. Actually, the black unemployment rate is lower now than when Obama took office, and the gap between the races is below the historical average. The black unemployment rate has averaged more than double the white rate for several decades.

Paul discussed black unemployment on “Fox News Sunday” when asked if he supports Obama’s call to extend additional unemployment benefits. The Kentucky senator told host Chris Wallace that he opposes the extension, adding that Obama’s policies have not worked for African-Americans.

Paul, Dec. 8: When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really — while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you’re trying to help.

You know, I don’t doubt the president’s motives. But black unemployment in America is double white unemployment. And it hasn’t budged under this president.

Wallace: But, senator –

Paul: I think a lot of African-Americans voted for him, but I don’t think it’s worked. I don’t think his policies have worked.
​

It is true that the black unemployment rate for November was double the white unemployment rate. The rate in November was 12.5 percent for blacks and 6.2 percent for whites, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, this is not new. In a February 2010 article in the Population Association of America journal Demography, authors Kenneth Couch and Robert Fairlie wrote that “[t]he unemployment rate among blacks in the United States has been roughly double that of whites for several decades.”

Couch and Fairlie, February 2010: In the period from 1972 to 2004, the average rate of unemployment was 12.4 percent for black males versus 5.4 percent for whites. The ratio of these two rates, 2.3, is consistent with the observation that unemployment among blacks typically doubles that of whites.
​

Not much has changed since then. In an Aug. 31 blog post, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center wrote that “the unemployment rate for blacks has averaged about 2.2 times that for whites” since 1954 — which is the earliest that BLS has reliable unemployment data by race.

The current 12.5 percent unemployment rate for blacks is unquestionably high. But by historical standards the current black unemployment rate is consistent with the average from 1972 to 2004, and the ratio of black-to-white unemployment rates is actually below the historical average.

We looked at the average rate of unemployment for blacks and whites in the first 58 months of the last four presidents who were reelected to a second term: Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. (We averaged the monthly unemployment rates from the first February in office to the first November in their second term.)

Obama had the lowest average ratio (1.9), followed by Bush (2.1), Clinton (2.2), and Reagan (2.3).

Paul was talking about the November unemployment rates and ratio — not the 58-month average unemployment rate and ratio — but even by that measure the black-to-white unemployment ratio is lower under Obama (2) than it was under Reagan (2.6), Clinton (2.4) and Bush (2.5) at this point in their second terms.

​

Paul also said that the black unemployment rate “hasn’t budged” under Obama, but it has. It reached a high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 and dropped to a low of 12.5 percent in November — lower than the 12.7 percent rate when Obama took office. That wasn’t the case for two of his recent predecessors, Reagan and Bush.

Under Reagan, the black unemployment rate went up a full percentage point from 14.6 percent in January 1981 to 15.6 percent in November 1985 — even as the white unemployment rate fell from 6.7 percent to 5.9 percent.

Under Bush, the rates went up for both blacks and whites. But it went up faster for blacks, from 8.2 percent in January 2001 to 10.6 percent in November 2005 — the biggest increase in the black unemployment rate of any of the four presidents at that point in their second terms. The white unemployment rate went up more than a half percentage point, from 3.6 percent to 4.3 percent.

(We did not compare Obama to George H.W. Bush, since he did not serve two terms. But, for the record, the average black unemployment rate was 12.4 during the elder Bush’s four years in office, while the white rate was 5.5 percent. That’s an average black-to-white ratio of 2.3 to 1 — identical to the historical average from 1972 to 2004.)

Few would disagree with Paul that the black unemployment rate is unacceptably high and he is entitled to his opinion about the president’s policies. But to blame Obama for the black unemployment rate being double the white rate ignores decades of data and fails to put this president in historical context.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Fact Check.org


Rand Paul, Obama & Black Unemployment


Sen. Rand Paul says “black unemployment in America is double white unemployment” and “hasn’t budged” under President Obama. Actually, the black unemployment rate is lower now than when Obama took office, and the gap between the races is below the historical average. The black unemployment rate has averaged more than double the white rate for several decades.

Paul discussed black unemployment on “Fox News Sunday” when asked if he supports Obama’s call to extend additional unemployment benefits. The Kentucky senator told host Chris Wallace that he opposes the extension, adding that Obama’s policies have not worked for African-Americans.

Paul, Dec. 8: When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really — while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you’re trying to help.

You know, I don’t doubt the president’s motives. But black unemployment in America is double white unemployment. And it hasn’t budged under this president.

Wallace: But, senator –

Paul: I think a lot of African-Americans voted for him, but I don’t think it’s worked. I don’t think his policies have worked.
​

It is true that the black unemployment rate for November was double the white unemployment rate. The rate in November was 12.5 percent for blacks and 6.2 percent for whites, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, this is not new. In a February 2010 article in the Population Association of America journal Demography, authors Kenneth Couch and Robert Fairlie wrote that “[t]he unemployment rate among blacks in the United States has been roughly double that of whites for several decades.”

Couch and Fairlie, February 2010: In the period from 1972 to 2004, the average rate of unemployment was 12.4 percent for black males versus 5.4 percent for whites. The ratio of these two rates, 2.3, is consistent with the observation that unemployment among blacks typically doubles that of whites.
​

Not much has changed since then. In an Aug. 31 blog post, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center wrote that “the unemployment rate for blacks has averaged about 2.2 times that for whites” since 1954 — which is the earliest that BLS has reliable unemployment data by race.

The current 12.5 percent unemployment rate for blacks is unquestionably high. But by historical standards the current black unemployment rate is consistent with the average from 1972 to 2004, and the ratio of black-to-white unemployment rates is actually below the historical average.

We looked at the average rate of unemployment for blacks and whites in the first 58 months of the last four presidents who were reelected to a second term: Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. (We averaged the monthly unemployment rates from the first February in office to the first November in their second term.)

Obama had the lowest average ratio (1.9), followed by Bush (2.1), Clinton (2.2), and Reagan (2.3).

Paul was talking about the November unemployment rates and ratio — not the 58-month average unemployment rate and ratio — but even by that measure the black-to-white unemployment ratio is lower under Obama (2) than it was under Reagan (2.6), Clinton (2.4) and Bush (2.5) at this point in their second terms.

​

Paul also said that the black unemployment rate “hasn’t budged” under Obama, but it has. It reached a high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 and dropped to a low of 12.5 percent in November — lower than the 12.7 percent rate when Obama took office. That wasn’t the case for two of his recent predecessors, Reagan and Bush.

Under Reagan, the black unemployment rate went up a full percentage point from 14.6 percent in January 1981 to 15.6 percent in November 1985 — even as the white unemployment rate fell from 6.7 percent to 5.9 percent.

Under Bush, the rates went up for both blacks and whites. But it went up faster for blacks, from 8.2 percent in January 2001 to 10.6 percent in November 2005 — the biggest increase in the black unemployment rate of any of the four presidents at that point in their second terms. The white unemployment rate went up more than a half percentage point, from 3.6 percent to 4.3 percent.

(We did not compare Obama to George H.W. Bush, since he did not serve two terms. But, for the record, the average black unemployment rate was 12.4 during the elder Bush’s four years in office, while the white rate was 5.5 percent. That’s an average black-to-white ratio of 2.3 to 1 — identical to the historical average from 1972 to 2004.)

Few would disagree with Paul that the black unemployment rate is unacceptably high and he is entitled to his opinion about the president’s policies. But to blame Obama for the black unemployment rate being double the white rate ignores decades of data and fails to put this president in historical context.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Fact Check.org


Rand Paul, Obama & Black Unemployment


Sen. Rand Paul says “black unemployment in America is double white unemployment” and “hasn’t budged” under President Obama. Actually, the black unemployment rate is lower now than when Obama took office, and the gap between the races is below the historical average. The black unemployment rate has averaged more than double the white rate for several decades.

Paul discussed black unemployment on “Fox News Sunday” when asked if he supports Obama’s call to extend additional unemployment benefits. The Kentucky senator told host Chris Wallace that he opposes the extension, adding that Obama’s policies have not worked for African-Americans.

Paul, Dec. 8: When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really — while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you’re trying to help.

You know, I don’t doubt the president’s motives. But black unemployment in America is double white unemployment. And it hasn’t budged under this president.

Wallace: But, senator –

Paul: I think a lot of African-Americans voted for him, but I don’t think it’s worked. I don’t think his policies have worked.
​

It is true that the black unemployment rate for November was double the white unemployment rate. The rate in November was 12.5 percent for blacks and 6.2 percent for whites, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, this is not new. In a February 2010 article in the Population Association of America journal Demography, authors Kenneth Couch and Robert Fairlie wrote that “[t]he unemployment rate among blacks in the United States has been roughly double that of whites for several decades.”

Couch and Fairlie, February 2010: In the period from 1972 to 2004, the average rate of unemployment was 12.4 percent for black males versus 5.4 percent for whites. The ratio of these two rates, 2.3, is consistent with the observation that unemployment among blacks typically doubles that of whites.
​

Not much has changed since then. In an Aug. 31 blog post, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center wrote that “the unemployment rate for blacks has averaged about 2.2 times that for whites” since 1954 — which is the earliest that BLS has reliable unemployment data by race.

The current 12.5 percent unemployment rate for blacks is unquestionably high. But by historical standards the current black unemployment rate is consistent with the average from 1972 to 2004, and the ratio of black-to-white unemployment rates is actually below the historical average.

We looked at the average rate of unemployment for blacks and whites in the first 58 months of the last four presidents who were reelected to a second term: Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. (We averaged the monthly unemployment rates from the first February in office to the first November in their second term.)

Obama had the lowest average ratio (1.9), followed by Bush (2.1), Clinton (2.2), and Reagan (2.3).

Paul was talking about the November unemployment rates and ratio — not the 58-month average unemployment rate and ratio — but even by that measure the black-to-white unemployment ratio is lower under Obama (2) than it was under Reagan (2.6), Clinton (2.4) and Bush (2.5) at this point in their second terms.

​

Paul also said that the black unemployment rate “hasn’t budged” under Obama, but it has. It reached a high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 and dropped to a low of 12.5 percent in November — lower than the 12.7 percent rate when Obama took office. That wasn’t the case for two of his recent predecessors, Reagan and Bush.

Under Reagan, the black unemployment rate went up a full percentage point from 14.6 percent in January 1981 to 15.6 percent in November 1985 — even as the white unemployment rate fell from 6.7 percent to 5.9 percent.

Under Bush, the rates went up for both blacks and whites. But it went up faster for blacks, from 8.2 percent in January 2001 to 10.6 percent in November 2005 — the biggest increase in the black unemployment rate of any of the four presidents at that point in their second terms. The white unemployment rate went up more than a half percentage point, from 3.6 percent to 4.3 percent.

(We did not compare Obama to George H.W. Bush, since he did not serve two terms. But, for the record, the average black unemployment rate was 12.4 during the elder Bush’s four years in office, while the white rate was 5.5 percent. That’s an average black-to-white ratio of 2.3 to 1 — identical to the historical average from 1972 to 2004.)

Few would disagree with Paul that the black unemployment rate is unacceptably high and he is entitled to his opinion about the president’s policies. But to blame Obama for the black unemployment rate being double the white rate ignores decades of data and fails to put this president in historical context.

 

[QueEx]

“Young people, they don’t really associate with Republicans
on taxes and regulations. Not that they oppose us, they just
don’t have any money so they don’t care much about those issues,”

- Rand Paul, on “The Laura Ingraham Show

​

SOURCE

 

[QueEx]

​

 

[Greed]

Why is Rand Paul reaching out to black voters?

Despite the convenient lapses of memory of some people on this board, I've openly said black people shouldn't vote Republican and Republicans don't want your vote. No matter how much you, absolutely, give it away for free in Mississippi.

There is no such thing as Rand Paul and the black vote. That's a dream for desperate black people. Rand Paul is helping white people feel good about voting Republican. Rand Paul has adopted the Democratic model.


Why is Rand Paul reaching out to black voters?
By Matt Bai
7 hours ago
Yahoo News

You've got to give this much to Rand Paul: Kentucky's junior senator is willing to do something almost unheard of in modern presidential politics, which is to make arguments that not everyone in his party already cares about. For this reason alone, Paul is probably the most interesting presidential hopeful out there, if not the most likely to succeed.
Paul's latest gambit, as you may have seen, involves an appeal to black voters, who generally have about as much attachment to the Republican Party as Donald Sterling has to his wife. This unusual courtship, which included a speech to the Urban League in which Paul actually quoted Malcolm X, led to a spate of media stories in the past week about a new contest between the parties to win over black voters in closely divided states.

All of which raises a couple of questions. First, do Democrats really have anything to worry about when it comes to the African-American vote? And second, is Paul really trying to steal those voters away?

The answers are yes and no, for more complex reasons than most of the analysis would have you believe.

Let's first consider this issue of whether Democrats could be considered vulnerable when it comes to the black vote. On the surface, the suggestion seems pretty absurd.

In any given election, after all, a Democrat can expect to corral something like 9 out of 10 votes cast by African-Americans. That's an outrageous percentage when you're talking about anything competitive in American life. I mean, if Apple had 90 percent of the phone or tablet market locked up, would anyone be jittery about the stock price?

The problem for Democrats is that their formula for success isn't like Apple's or any other company's, for that matter. It's more precarious than recent elections would suggest, and it relies on some highly unreliable trends.

Consider this: If exit polls can be believed (and this is not a given), Al Gore claimed about 90 percent of the black vote in 2000, and John Kerry won 88 percent in 2004, and yet neither man had any success in broadening the party's map of winnable states. Nor was that enough for either candidate to win some critical states with sizable African-American populations, like Ohio and Florida. (Yes, I know, Gore really won Florida and the Diebold machines stole Ohio from Kerry, but let's just stay in our little part of the space-time continuum for the moment.)

That's because neither candidate took more than 42 percent of white voters or 44 percent of men overall, or even 60 percent of traditionally Democratic union households. In other words, their wildly disproportionate share of the black vote wasn't enough to counteract their limited appeal in rural and exurban counties where large numbers of electoral votes are decided.

Then along came Barack Obama, who won an astounding 95 and 93 percent of the black vote in his two elections while also boosting turnout to all-time highs. For the first time ever, African-American turnout in 2012 was higher, in terms of percentage, than it was for white voters.

The difference between getting 90 and 95 percent of a market wouldn't be all that significant if you were selling iPads. But as a practical matter, that was the difference in making states like North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Virginia more competitive than they'd been in many years. This was especially true in Obama's second election, after the luster of "hope and change" among independent white voters had long since faded.

The problem for Democrats is that the spike among African-Americans almost certainly belonged to Obama personally and not to them; the party's otherworldly percentages in 2008 and 2012 were always going to return to being merely overwhelming after Obama left the scene. (The same thing is probably true, by the way, for Obama's historic turnout numbers among young voters.)

What this means for future Democratic candidates — even with other demographic trends working in their favor — is that the party is still reliant on a level of black support that might well prove unsustainable. Any Republican candidate who can muster 15 percent of the black vote can fundamentally shift the electoral math in a handful of the most competitive states.

This leads us to the second question, which is whether Paul seriously aspires to become that candidate. I don't know the guy, and I'm not going to suggest he isn't sincere about wanting to woo black voters should he become the nominee. But his more immediate audience here, I'm betting, is the segment of the Republican primary electorate — including the crucial independents who can vote in some states — that is worried about the party's ever-narrowing appeal.

Paul is nothing if not sharp, and he knows that pendulums always swing in party politics. Despite all the extremist rhetoric of the tea party crowd, there will be a hunger among Republican voters in 2016 to somehow recalibrate and mainstream the party — just as there was in 2000, when George W. Bush and John McCain battled over who was the more inclusive and reform-minded candidate.

This is a party, after all, that in the last presidential election, running against a vulnerable incumbent at a time of severe economic stress, lost women by something like 11 percentage points, Latinos by 44, Asians by 47, young voters by 23, gay voters by 54, self-described moderates by 15, and those making under $50,000 by 22. (Hey, it's not like Latino and Asian populations are growing at all. Oh, wait…)

Most Republican voters don't warm to the image of a whites-only, male-dominated, radicalized party any more than most Democrats would. And Paul's chief vulnerability as a candidate, despite his impressive showings in early and meaningless polls, is that, like his father before him, he's associated with a more fringe kind of conservatism. He's the guy who publicly doubted the constitutionality of the Civil Right Act. He's the guy who thinks the federal government should get out of the governing business.

Paul needs to demystify himself a little, to show Republicans that he won't lead the party off the electoral cliff on which it's already teetering. He needs to reassure the less ideologically pure in his own party, just as Ronald Reagan masterfully did in 1980, when a lot of conservatives worried that he was too extreme for the rest of the country.

And this, aside from some principle in which I'm sure he genuinely believes, is why Paul is going out of his way to team up with Democrats like Cory Booker on reforming the criminal justice system, while giving speeches to black audiences that may never vote for him. It's not simply or even mostly about redefining his party; it's about redefining himself within it.

None of us knows, of course, just where Paul or the primary electorate will be by the end of 2015. But if you ask me, he's headed in the right direction for the coming Republican moment. If nothing else, black voters and Rand Paul have this much in common: You'd be ill-advised to take either of them for granted.

http://news.yahoo.com/why-is-rand-paul-reaching-out-to-black-voters-082701361.html

 

[thoughtone]

source: Media Matters

Wash. Post Recasts Rand Paul As Civil Rights Ally, Forgetting Their Own Reporting

The Washington Post reporter Dan Balz portrayed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as a key figure who can help GOP outreach to racial minorities, following Paul's criticism of Ferguson, Mo., law enforcement and their role in the Michael Brown killing. But Balz ignored Paul's previous opposition to the Civil Rights Act, despite having reported on it in 2010.

In his August 14 article, Balz highlighted Paul's opinion piece in Time decrying the response of Missouri police to protests in the wake of the police shooting of the 18-year-old Brown. Paul acknowledged in his piece that race skews "the application of criminal justice in this country" and criticized the "militarization of our law enforcement" -- which Balz characterized as "a shift away" from typical conservative rhetoric. According to Balz, Paul's acknowledgement of racial disparities in particular "sets him apart from others in his party," allowing him to help expand the GOP's base (emphasis added):

Paul is a prospective 2016 presidential candidate and the leading proponent of libertarian philosophy among elected officials. In Ferguson, he has found circumstances almost tailor-made to advance his worldview. In doing so, he continues to set himself apart from others in the Republican Party with the hope of expanding the party's coalition and advancing his own political future.

In this case, he blames the militarization of local police on big government and especially Washington's willingness to provide such materiel to local communities. His comments on race mark another moment in which he is trying to show an openness to the issues affecting African Americans that sets him apart from others in his party.
​

But in 2010 Balz himself reported that Paul had "embarrassed the GOP establishment" by "questioning parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act."

In an interview while running for his Kentucky Senate seat, Paul had said that while he supported portions of the Act, particularly in regards to ending discrimination by the government, he also believed "in freedom" and "private ownership." When asked if "it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworth's," Paul responded that such action would be "abhorrent" but implied he would support the private owner's right to discriminate.

Racial discrimination by private actors is prohibited by both Title II and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

As Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler noted, Paul also came to a similar conclusion in a 2002 letter to a newspaper, saying "Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate." Kessler also drew attention to Paul's 2010 interview with Rachel Maddow, where the congressman was the most explicit in his reservations about crucial parts of the Civil Rights Act:

There are ten different titles to the Civil Rights Act and nine of ten deal with public institutions and one that deals with private institutions and had I been around I would have tried to modify that. ...When you support nine of ten things in a good piece of legislation do you vote for it or against it and sometimes those are difficult situations. ...I do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. But had I been there, there would have been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights and I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion.
​

In 2013, Paul attempted to recast the facts by claiming he supported the Civil Rights Act and was merely questioning "the ramifications beyond race." Kessler wrote that Paul was "rewriting history," finding no evidence of Paul discussing anything beyond race in his remarks, and gave him three Pinocchios for attempting to change the record.

While Paul's most recent Time piece may signal personal growth on issues of racial injustice, former president of the NAACP Benjamin Jealous told Politico that Paul still needs to account for his apparent shift in tone before he can be his party's standard bearer on the issue:

[Jealous] said he found Paul's remarks "genuine" and well-timed politically -- but the black community will need more from the senator.

"At some point, he's going to have to really go there and show a little bit of emotional vulnerability ... about what's converted him," Jealous said in an interview. "He can't really say that's what he's always felt when he said he wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act."
​

 

[Greed]

Rand Paul calls out Jeb Bush on marijuana

Rand Paul calls out Jeb Bush on marijuana
2 hours ago
Yahoo News with Katie Couric

Sen. Rand Paul slammed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for hypocrisy on marijuana in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric. Responding to recent revelations that Gov. Bush smoked pot during his teen years at Phillips Academy, Paul pointed out the flaws in Bush’s opposition to medical marijuana in his home state.

Sen. Paul, who has hinted about his own wild college days, was quick to clarify that he did not fault Bush for having “made mistakes growing up.” Instead, he took issue with Bush’s inconsistent views on the drug. “If you’ve got MS in Florida, Jeb Bush voted to put you in jail if you go down to a local store or a local drugstore and get medical marijuana ... and yet he was doing it for recreational purposes.”

To Paul, it was Bush’s privileged upbringing that spared him the harsh penalties many Floridians still face when they entangle with marijuana. “It was a different standard for him,” the presidential hopeful explained, “because he was from a wealthy family, going to a very wealthy school, and he got off scot-free.”

http://news.yahoo.com/rand-paul-calls-out-jeb-bush-on-marijuana-213742228.html

 

[thoughtone]

 

[thoughtone]

source: ABC News

Feb 16, 2015, 5:47 AM ET

Rand Paul Pushes Kentucky Rule Change to Pursue Presidency and Senate

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 10, 2015


Rand Paul is actively looking for ways to run for both president and re-election to the U.S. Senate, something standard in many states, but not legal in his home state of Kentucky. However, the state GOP has some serious concerns about his desired scenario.

Paul wrote a letter last week to the state party hoping to convince its members to create a presidential caucus, over a primary in 2016, the Lexington Herald-Leader first reported and the Kentucky GOP state party chairman confirmed to ABC News. Paul’s letter argued it would make Kentucky more relevant in the primary process, but it also deals with the prohibition on candidates appearing on the same ballot twice.

Paul and his supporters have been strategizing a work-around since he announced his intention to seek re-election and is also considering a 2016 run for the White House. Another potential 2016 candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio has said he will not run for both.

In the letter, he cites Rep. Paul Ryan, who lost the vice-presidency in 2012, but was re-elected to his House seat. There are other examples of victories and losses in states where it’s legal including then-Senator Joe Biden in 2008, amongst others, something Paul notes in the letter writing "My request to you is simply to be treated equally compared to other potential candidates for the presidency.”

Steve Robertson, the Kentucky State GOP chairman and executive chairman told ABC News it’s an option Paul wants the “party to explore,” but he said his members have “a lot of questions” about a caucus and the process.

Most pressing, Robertson said, is their concern that it’s unclear what would happen if they move to a caucus and Paul were to become the GOP presidential nominee. Under state law, there is no way to substitute a candidate on the ballot after the filing deadline. After a hard-fought 2014 battle to keep Sen. Mitch McConnell in office, Robertson said their biggest concern is losing that seat in the general election because they couldn’t field another Republican and state law would still prevent Paul’s name from appearing on the ballot twice.

Robertson called this question a “major league struggle for members of the committee,” and something they are “very conflicted about,” but they also have questions about a caucus since they’ve never had one in the state before and whether a caucus could “potentially disenfranchise Republican voters from the process.” And, he says, it’s a question of both “cost and convenience.”

“How long does someone theoretically have to drive [to caucus]…how is this going to be a process that is open and convenient and accessible to Republicans, including older Republicans?” Robertson asked, adding they also wonder how it affects absentee voting for service members overseas and they are worried it could have a “depressing effect on the number of people who could be able to take part in the process.”

“We are very supportive of Sen. Paul,” Robertson said. “This is a very big decision with a lot of ramifications.”

Robertson said the 54 members of the executive committee will get a chance to meet with Paul on March 7 and he looks forward to hearing Paul make his “case” then and to “better understand it.” He said it won’t be the “last conversation” on the topic. There are other possibilities Paul has to get around the issue. Last year, the Kentucky Senate passed a bill that would allow Paul to be on the ballot twice, but it went nowhere in the Democratic-led House.

State Sen. Joe Bowen, a co-sponsor of last year’s legislation, said they have not “soured on the issue” and they “still support Sen. Paul,” but legislation this year looks unlikely as the state House of Representatives remains in Democratic hands.

Another avenue would be the courts. Paul’s political spokesman said they were not commenting beyond the letter, but Paul and his allies have stated publicly before they believe the state law doesn’t apply to federal elections and this is likely the argument they would take to court.

Joshua Douglas, an election law expert and professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, says as it stands right now the “law is absolutely clear.”
“You cannot be a candidate for more than one office in the state of Kentucky,” Douglas said. “He cannot run for two offices at the same time.”

Douglas stressed the issue Robertson brought up is a real one and that changing a primary to a caucus just “delays the issue” until “November 2016.”

Another possible scenario is that Paul “runs for the president in 49 states,” skipping over Kentucky, though Douglas says that's a “significant imaging problem" and thus unlikely.

Douglas believes Paul will go to court to try and get the law declared unconstitutional, after waiting to see what the state party does in March, but predicts “ultimately he loses the lawsuit” and he will be faced with having to choose from one of these other options.

If one key state figure has her way, Paul won't bend the rules.

The Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes failed to beat Sen. Mitch McConnell in the 2014 midterm election, but she has vowed to stop Paul if he does try to get on the ballot twice, telling ABC affiliate WHAS she won’t be “bullied” by Paul and the “law is clear.”

“Kentucky law has prohibited a candidate's name from appearing on the same ballot for more than one office for more than 50 years,” Grimes said in a statement to ABC News. “As Kentucky's chief election official, I will continue to administer Kentucky's election laws and ensure that all eligible Kentuckians have their voices heard."

 

[QueEx]

​

 

[thoughtone]

 

[Upgrade Dave]

 

[QueEx]

Yes, Rand Paul wants black votes.
Here’s why​

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, soon before announcing his run for president last month, stood before an audience at historically black Bowie State University and echoed Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 message that there are “two Americas.”

That phrase about the nation’s haves and have-nots was also employed a decade ago by liberal Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, as he courted black voters for his own run for president. But this spring the rhetoric came from a self-described constitutional conservative, a Republican senator from Kentucky who’s hoping to attract one of the most liberal voting blocs in the nation, African-Americans – only 5 percent of whom identified themselves as Republicans in a 2012 Gallup poll.

Reaching out to black voters is a core part of Paul’s strategy to become a front-runner in a crowded Republican presidential field by building a broad coalition beyond traditional party lines. But national polling shows he’s struggling to win black support, and he’s about to get a rival in the effort, Ben Carson, who’ll announce his own Republican presidential campaign Monday in Detroit.

The latest national Quinnipiac University poll suggests Paul would gain just 3 percent of the black vote in a potential head-to-head matchup in the general election with Democrat Hillary Clinton. A Bluegrass Poll in Paul’s home state last year, though, gave Paul reason for hope, with 29 percent of black voters surveyed in Kentucky saying they’d vote for Paul over Clinton .

Elroy Sailor, Paul’s senior adviser and strategic planning director, said in an interview that it could be crucial if Paul could pick up just a small percentage of the black vote in a primary state such as Michigan.

“In such a crowded primary field of candidates, a couple of points could be the difference,” Sailor said.​

He’ll be competing against a Republican field that includes Carson, who’s African-American, grew up in poverty and became a renowned neurosurgeon, now retired. The 2016 Committee, a “super PAC” supporting Carson, plans to target the black vote specifically.

“I absolutely applaud Rand Paul for reaching out to the black community, but I think in this case, up against Dr. Carson, Dr. Carson has that vote hands down,” said John Philip Sousa IV, chairman of the super PAC.

They’ll work against each other especially hard for black voters in states such as Michigan and South Carolina where people don’t have to be registered Republican to vote in the party’s primary election.



Such states will be a special target for Carson’s super PAC, Sousa said. South Carolina is crucial as an early primary state that can help make or break a campaign for the Republican nomination.

South Carolina Republican consultant David Woodard, though, said he didn’t think Paul or Carson would succeed in attracting many black votes.

“African-American voters in South Carolina vote Democratic,” Woodard said. “They are just an infinitesimally small turnout in a Republican primary.”

That’s a problem across the country for Republicans, despite Paul’s suggestion last year that a third of the African-American vote is open to the Republican message.



Republican presidential nominees have won 4 to 12 percent of the black vote in the past 20 years, according to exit polls compiled by the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut.

The Republican Party, in a blistering postmortem of the 2012 presidential election, conceded it has to do a better job of attracting minority voters in order to be viable.

Paul has so far made the only major effort among Republican presidential candidates to attract black votes. The past two years he’s spoken at black colleges, met with NAACP leaders, called for police demilitarization, criticized the criminal justice system as biased and visited Ferguson, Mo., the scene of racial unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager last summer.

Paul has also stumbled. At Howard University he had to defend 2010 statements in which he’d questioned whether the Civil Rights Act should ban discrimination by private businesses (Paul told the Howard students he’s “never wavered” in supporting the 1964 act.)

This week when speaking with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham about the turmoil in Baltimore prompted by the death of a black man in police custody, Paul said he’d come through Baltimore the previous night and was “glad the train didn’t stop.” He also suggested the cause of the unrest was a lack of fathers and lack of a moral code.

Some of Paul’s black advisers, a team that includes former Oklahoma Republican U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts and Sailor, CEO of the lobbying firm J.C. Watts Companies, spoke to the senator about the radio show Wednesday after the remarks drew fire .

“You can always look in the rearview mirror and say, ‘Could I have done something this way or could I have done something that way,’ ” Sailor said.



Paul has said that for Republicans to win, the party needs to look like America. “White, black, brown, rich, poor, with tattoos and without tattoos, with earrings and without earrings,” he said in February. “We need to take our message where it’s not been taken before.”


His outreach has won praise, even beyond those who’ve seen him in person. Travonn Bond, an African-American senior at Bowie State University in Maryland, said word had spread about Paul’s talk at the college, and Bond said he’d consider voting for the senator.

“From the feedback that I heard, it was pretty good. It was pretty positive,” Bond said.


Paul spokesman Sergio Gor said Paul had been “actively engaging” African-Americans since he’d been elected to the Senate in 2010. He said Paul had introduced criminal justice bills, such as revamping the juvenile justice system and limiting mandatory sentencing. While the senator has struggled with getting such bills to move, few pieces of legislation make it through the current gridlock of Congress.

“Showing up in locations such as Detroit, Chicago and Ferguson has worked for Sen. Rand Paul because he brings a message of reform through his proposed legislation,” Gor said. “Mandatory minimums, economic freedom zones and dozens of other ideas resonate especially well in these communities.”

Andra Gillespie, an expert in African-American politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said she didn’t think any Republican would get much more than 10 percent of the black vote in this presidential race. Gillespie said Paul needed to see his effort as a long game.

“I acknowledge what the Republican Party has tried to do. I acknowledge what Sen. Paul has tried to do. But it isn’t going to turn itself around in a couple of years,” she said.​

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/05/01/265181/yes-rand-paul-wants-black-votes.html#storylink=cpy

 

[Greed]

‘Detroit Republican’ Rand Paul a no-show at the annual Urban League conference

‘Detroit Republican’ Rand Paul a no-show at the annual Urban League conference
Meredith Shiner
Political correspondent
July 31, 2015

At last year’s National Urban League conference, no one made more headlines than Sen. Rand Paul — not for the substance of his speech or even how many people attended it, but just by virtue of the fact that he showed up.

That’s how low the bar was for a Republican politician doing outreach to African-Americans in the wake of President Obama’s consecutive elections to the White House with more than 90 percent of the black vote. Until Paul, few Republicans had reached out to the National Urban League, which advocates for the black community, let alone addressed it, since Obama took office in 2009.

Urban League President Marc Morial said that the rightward shift of the GOP combined with Obama’s dominance among black voters created less incentive for a Republican to speak before its members. But he expressed optimism about the meaning of Paul’s attendance at the conference last year, calling it “the beginning of what we hope is going to be an ongoing dialogue” with the black community. Paul has since positioned himself as a “Detroit Republican,” concerned with urban issues and criminal justice reform questions. A year ago, Paul was addressing students at historically black colleges and winning plaudits for being “willing to do something almost unheard of in modern presidential politics, which is to make arguments that not everyone in his party already cares about.” Paul even suggested that, with enough attentiveness and the right message, “a third of the African-American vote” could be up for grabs in 2016.

All of which made Paul’s absence at the Urban League’s annual conference and Friday presidential panel a surprise. Instead of continuing his courtship of an urban constituency often hostile to Republicans, on Friday Paul was “touring” eastern Iowa, according to a campaign spokesman.

Why might Paul be cooling on reaching out to black voters? The answer has a lot do with how the 2016 contest, once joined, has actually shaped up.

Paul has failed to gain traction in the Republican primary, hovering between three and six percent over the last few weeks amid a field that has ballooned to 17 candidates. He also has struggled to fundraise, bringing in just $13 million, as frontrunner former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who did speak at the Urban League Friday, raked in almost nine times as much money through all his affiliated groups.

That makes it all the more critical for Paul to go all in on reaching potential primary voters in the first two voting states, both of which are overwhelmingly white and not known for their major cities.

Issues such as abortion are more exciting to the conservative GOP base right now, and Paul has shifted his attention accordingly: This he week announced he was a co-sponsor of a bill in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of controversial videos attacking the group on the issue of fetal tissue donations.

On Friday, Paul’s campaign sent out an email with the subject line “an immediate DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD Money Bomb.”

“The Abortion Lobby is fighting back with everything they have to ensure they keep their bloody hands on our tax dollars,” the campaign’s email said.

The anti-Planned Parenthood campaign is likely to get much more attention, and positive reception, on Paul’s current tour of Iowa than any speech on criminal justice reform to the Urban League could.

And when a candidate is up against 16 competitors, going with the pack might just help in trying to break ahead of it.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/detroit-republican-rand-paul-a-no-show-at-the-125521473936.html

 

[QueEx]

November 05, 2017

Rand Paul recovering from multiple broken ribs after assault: report


Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is reportedly recovering from five broken ribs after he was attacked while doing yard work on Friday.

Doug Stafford, a top aide to Paul, told The Associated Press on Sunday that it is unclear when Paul plans to return to work as he deals with searing pain that prevents him from traveling and flying.

Three of the five broken ribs are displaced fractures, which pose a risk for life-threatening problems, the aide told the news wire.

His injuries could cause the senator lasting pain for months, according to the report.

Rene Boucher, Paul's next-door neighbor, has been charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault.



http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/358878-paul-recovering-from-multiple-broken-ribs-after-assault



.

 

[QueEx]

Rene Boucher, Paul's next-door neighbor, has been charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault.

Dr. Rene Boucher, DO
Anesthesiology
Female |
Age 59
(1)Save

Dr. Rene Boucher, DO is an anesthesiology doctor who practices in Bowling Green, KY. She is 59 years old and has been practicing to 33 years.

https://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-rene-boucher-2nwcb



???

 

[QueEx]

Authorities said Paul's neighbor in Bowling Green, Rene Boucher, tackled Paul from behind Friday while he was mowing his lawn, and Paul had difficulty breathing and had cuts around his mouth. It's unclear what triggered the altercation.

http://theweek.com/5things/735527/rand-paul-recovering-from-5-fractured-ribs-following-assault



.

 

[thoughtone]

Authorities said Paul's neighbor in Bowling Green, Rene Boucher, tackled Paul from behind Friday while he was mowing his lawn, and Paul had difficulty breathing and had cuts around his mouth. It's unclear what triggered the altercation.

http://theweek.com/5things/735527/rand-paul-recovering-from-5-fractured-ribs-following-assault



.

Chickens coming home?