DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LAWS ARE FINALLY CHANGING (2018 ELECTION ISSUE)

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LAWS ARE FINALLY CHANGING:

MORE WOMEN ARE SPEAKING OUT, SO IS THE MEDIA.

2018 ELECTION ISSUES SHOULD INCLUDE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

IT'S NOT ABOUT HATING MEN, IT'S ABOUT NOT BLAMING THE VICTIMS WHEN MEN BEAT WOMEN.

WOMEN WHO TRY TO DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST ABUSERS SHOULD NOT BE LABELED AS "CRAZY".

"NICE" MEN DON'T BEAT THEIR WIVES.

"NICE" MEN DON'T PUNISH THEIR WIVES FINANCIALLY TO FORCE THEM INTO ADULTERY OR OPEN MARRIAGES.

"NICE" MEN GO TO THERAPY WHEN THEY HAVE AN ANGER PROBLEM.


Sources: WBUR, NY Times


******* Deadlock, Delay Mark Explorations Of Mass. Public Records Law Changes


Lawmakers should continue to study the possibilities of requiring daily arrest logs from the state police and removing or modifying public record exemptions for domestic violence incidents, according to a working group created by a 2016 law.

An overhaul of the state's public records law that Gov. Charlie Baker signed on June 3, 2016 established a pair of panels to study additional measures and gave both deadlines of Dec. 30, 2017. The law also set a ten business day response window for records request responses, required state agencies and municipalities to designate records officers, and limited how much money public entities can charge to fulfill a request, among other measures.

One of the groups the law created — a 14-member commission tasked with examining "the accessibility of information concerning the legislative process" and the constitutionality of extending the public records law to the Legislature, the governor and the Judiciary — has until Dec. 1, 2018 to report findings. Lawmakers last month quietly pushed back the original Dec. 30, 2017 reporting date by adding language to a Cannabis Control Commission spending bill. The co-chairs of the State Administration Committee - Rep. Jennifer Benson of Lunenburg and Sen. Walter Timilty of Milton - are leading that group.

The other group, which filed its final report with the House and Senate clerks on Friday, was charged with exploring the topic of police department records.

"While the group could not reach consensus on proposed legislation, it highlighted areas of concerns in current statutes and recommended further examination of these laws," state supervisor of records Rebecca Murray, who chaired the working group, wrote in a message accompanying the report.

Murray wrote that she hopes the report "sets the groundwork for the Legislature to ensure the laws of the Commonwealth reach the necessary balance between the transparency of law enforcement in Massachusetts and the privacy of individuals."

Specifically, the law instructed the working group to review the exemption to the public records law that covers "investigatory materials necessarily compiled out of the public view by law enforcement," as well as the "the public interest" in releasing police documents such as arrest reports, and related privacy and confidentiality concerns.

The group was deadlocked on whether to recommend adding the state police into the law that requires all municipal police department to maintain a daily log of complaints, crimes and arrests, according to meeting minutes included in the report.

Entries in such logs are considered public records, with exceptions for incidents involving certain handicapped individuals, domestic violence, rape or sexual assault, and arrests for assault against a relative or household members.

Murray, Sen. Joan Lovely, attorney Jeffrey Pyle of Prince Lobel, Foxborough Town Clerk Robert Cutler, and Randall Ravitz, chief of Attorney General Maura Healey's appeals division, voted in favor of extending the log requirement to state police.

Voting against were Shannon Sullivan, a designee of Public Safety and Security Secretary Daniel Bennett; Capt. Michael Lyver, president of the state police Commissioned Officers Association of Massachusetts; Robert Ross, general counsel at the Executive Office of Administration and Finance; Jessica Katon, Sen. Richard Ross's constituent services director; and Salisbury Police Chief Thomas Fowler.

A 2014 law aimed at curbing domestic violence made it so police reports about domestic violence and rape were not deemed public records, and therefore not subject to disclosure requirements. Supporters said the move would increase confidentiality for victims.

The group voted 10-0 to not recommend changes to the disclosure exemption for reports of abuse involving household members, and 10-1 not to recommend changes to the exemption relating to domestic violence, with Robert Ambrogi of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association dissenting.
Instead, the panel suggested that the Legislature should study those issues, as well as the question of whether the state police should be subject to the daily log requirements and how that requirement would be fulfilled if so.

BLACK OLDER DEMOCRATS HATE CHANGE - 2016 ELECTION (INSANITY POLITICS)

BLACK OLDER DEMOCRATS HATE CHANGE - 2016 ELECTION:

(INSANITY POLITICS)

The late Scientist Albert Einstein once defined the word "INSANITY" as doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting DIFFERENT results.

The word "CHANGE" is defined as Being DIFFERENT.

However for most BLACK Democrat voters the word "CHANGE" is a dirty word especially as it relates to Politics.

Most older BLACK Democrats appear to be resistant to CHANGE and lack Objectivity in their thinking.

Perhaps this explains why Pres OBAMA targeted Younger voters in 2008 and 2012.

In fact most Older BLACK Democrats would rather DIE from a terrible disease then to consider supporting a REPUBLICAN candidate, even if voting for that GOP candidate is in the best interest of BLACK voters.

Will Older BLACK Democrat voters open their minds to CHANGE?

Or will they allow their Stubbornness to Silence and Devalue the voices of future BLACK Democrat voters?

~ Blacks, Democrats, and Republicans (CIRCA 2011)

Thomas Sowell discusses Black voters’ allegiance to the Democratic party and the failure of the GOP to make a robust case for black votes.

Blacks have been the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc for the last 50 years.

And let’s face it, with Barack Obama in the White House, that’s not going to change in the near future.

On the national level, Democrats typically get around 90 percent of the black vote, even when a black man isn’t running for president as a Democrat.

Al Gore got 92 percent of the Black vote in 2000; John Kerry got 88 percent in 2004.

These percentages aren’t just impressive; for Democrats, they’re imperative.

Since 1980, the percentage of white votes received by the Democrats’ candidate for president has usually hovered around 39 percent.

Unless Democrats maintain a vise grip on at least 90 percent of the black vote, the party’s presidential prospects usually fade to oblivion. Both parties know this.

If the GOP peeled off just 5 or 10 percent of the black vote, Democrats would be in perpetual electoral jeopardy, and not just at the presidential level.

Dr. Sowell discusses a few of the reasons why blacks who support Democrats are voting against self- interest (and makes a more persuasive case than Thomas Frank did in What’s the Matter with Kansas? regarding Kansans’ support of the Republican party).

There are many more reasons. Consider just the following: Large, Arbitrary Minimum Wage Increases.

Milton Friedman once said that “We regard the minimum wage as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.” (A good argument can be made that the minimum wage vies for this title with the Davis-Bacon Act — uniformly supported by Democrats — mandating that prevailing wages be paid on government construction projects and passed for the express purpose of preventing blacks from competing with whites on public-works jobs.)

Sharp increases in the minimum wage price unskilled workers out of the labor market, a dislocation that falls most heavily on young black males.

Such increases impair the ability of unskilled workers to get the entry-level jobs that are the first rungs on the ladder of upward job mobility.

As someone once said, a wage, minimum or otherwise, presumes a job. Public Education and School Choice. Millions of black kids are trapped in medieval public schools that are insulated from competition and suffocated by union rules.

Yet Democrats resist meaningful choice, insisting instead on that infallible remedy, “full funding.” ‪#‎more‬#They’re encouraged, apparently, by how well that solution has worked in places like Newark, which spends $18,000 per student — among the most of any major public school system — but where only 30 percent of 8th graders can pass the annual proficiency test in math.

Or perhaps they’re brightened by the example of the D.C. public-school system, which also has among the highest per-pupil expenditures in the nation yet perennially returns among the lowest test scores.

Less than 25 percent of black 17-year-olds can read as well as the average white 17-year-old. 

Nearly 90 percent of black 17-year-olds score below the average white 17-year-old in math.

More than 90 percent of black 17-year-olds score below the average white 17-year-old in science.

The average black 17-year-old has the academic proficiency of the average white 8th grader.

These figures have proven impervious to increased spending. In fact, in some cases the gap has widened as public school spending — in constant dollars — has increased.

But Democrats, beholden to unions, continue to oppose school choice and meaningful reform, thereby consigning another generation of blacks to educational purgatory. Affirmative Action.

Democrats are champions of racial preferences (see Eric Holder’s directive to the Dayton Police Department).

Since racial preferences in, e.g., college admissions most heavily favor blacks, it would appear, at first blush, that black votes for Democrats are indeed self-interested.

But evidence continues to accumulate that affirmative action may be one of the greatest scams perpetrated on blacks.

Studies by, for example, the Center for Equal Opportunity show that the racial preferences employed by some college admissions offices boost a black applicant’s odds of admission over a similarly-situated white comparative by a factor of 200, often much more.

This results in what UCLA law professor Richard Sander calls the “mismatch effect” — i.e., black students being admitted at schools in which they’re poorly qualified to compete.

Consequently, black students are more likely to perform poorly and flunk out.

For example, Prof. Sander found that 50 percent of black law students settle in the bottom 10 percent of their respective classes.

Black law students are two and a half times more likely than whites not to graduate, four times more likely not to pass the bar exam. Welfare and the War on Poverty.

Were this a shooting war, the Democrats would have surrendered in 1965.

As it stands, after 45 years and several trillion dollars, misguided if well-intended liberal policies have contributed to a toxic culture of grievance and dependency that, while not confined to a particular race, has been especially damaging to the black underclass.

The list of issue conflicts between Democrats’ policy positions and the interests of black voters goes on and on: illegal immigration, abortion, Social Security reform, to name a few.

But don’t expect any noteworthy changes in black voter allegiance in the near term.

A comment made by a black law student after an affirmative-action debate in which I participated a few years ago illustrates just one of the many obstacles faced by Republicans.

The student acknowledged that affirmative action often harms its purported beneficiaries and that its proponents are, as he put it, “condescending and insulting.”

Even so, he asked. “How can we (blacks) support Republicans given the Republicans’ history toward blacks in this country?”

I pointed out that it wasn’t the GOP that had opposed Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Nor was it Republicans who opposed the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery or the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection or the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing voting rights.

It wasn’t Republicans who opposed Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-lynching legislation, or that filibustered or otherwise opposed more than a dozen anti-lynching bills in the last century.

Republicans didn’t institutionalize Jim Crow or implement school segregation, poll taxes, or literacy tests. Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, and George Wallace weren’t Republicans.

A higher percentage of Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act than did Democrats.

The student and the other black students gathered around looked surprised.

One confessed that she would’ve bet that “Democrats” should be substituted for “Republicans” in each of the examples.

The GOP’s record concerning blacks is far from unassailable, but that doesn’t explain Black allegiance to Democrats.

That allegiance won’t change — Allen West and Tim Scott notwithstanding — as long as President Obama is the Democrats’ standard bearer.

And as long as Republicans don’t make an effort for the vote.

Sources: National Review, Mediaite, Youtube