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National Review Tries To Distance Itself From Derbyshire, But Silent On Calls For Firing Him

By Faiz Shakir on Apr 6, 2012 at 11:46 pm

After the National Review’s John Derbyshire penned an unbelievably offensive and racist screed in Taki’s Magazine advising white Americans to stay away from black Americans, a firestorm has predictably erupted over whether his views will be sanctioned by the larger conservative movement. Derbyshire told ThinkProgress that his column urging the majority of Americans to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally” was not satire, but in fact a “social commentary.”

On the National Review’s website, editor Rich Lowry called Derbyshire’s column “appalling” and asserted that “no one at National Review” shares his views. But Lowry did not indicate whether Derbyshire would continue to be employed. Does the National Review have a no tolerance policy for racism?

For the National Review, which has frequently complained about unfair accusations of racism, this ugly moment provides an opportunity to demonstrate leadership. As National Review contributor Josh Barro writes in Forbes:

[T]his is the problem for Lowry and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously by broad audiences when they write about racial issues. Lowry wrote a column containing advice for black Americans. Why should black Americans take him seriously while he’s employing Derbyshire? If Lowry wants NR to be credible on race, he should start by firing John Derbyshire.

National Review staff have been taking turns trying to distance themselves from Derbyshire. Here’s senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru:

And National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg said a similar thing (National Review contributor Robert George retweeted this):

The New York Daily News’ Alexander Nazaryan writes, “An editor at the supposedly esteemed National Review, [Derbyshire] is a perfect poster boy for what conservatism has degenerated into.” The National Review can begin to change this perception if it takes action.

Update

Over at RedState, diarist Leon Wolf notes that in 2003, Derbyshire called himself a proud “racist.”

Alyssa

What to Watch This Weekend

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 6, 2012 at 6:07 pm

New In Theaters:

-The American Pie franchise wraps up this weekend with American Reunion: the humor’s as gross as ever, but there’s some real pathos there. And Alyson Hannigan in fetishwear.

-Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope: Morgan Spurlock’s latest is more sizzle reel than introspection, especially on issues of race and gender in the fan community. But there’s some fun to be had there, especially following aspiring artists and a costume designer for whom Comic-Con is a giant job fair.

On Television

-Starz debuts a new original series at 10 PM on Friday, Magic City, full of Jewish families, union busting subplots, Cuba’s fall to Castro, the arrival of casino-running gangsters in Florida, and gorgeous architecture—and people. The show’s uneven in the early going, but there’s potential there.

-Game of Thrones is back on HBO on Sunday with the second episode of its second season, and there are lots of fascinating gender politics on tap. Catch up, and we’ll discuss on Monday.

Economy

Corporations Hoard Cash Overseas In Anticipation Of Congress Giving Them A Huge Tax Break

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 6, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Politico noted today that the overseas piles of cash being sat on by the same multinational corporations that are pushing for what’s known as a repatriation tax holiday — which would allow companies to bring overseas money back at a low tax rate — grew throughout 2011:

Overseas cash and earnings stockpiles for 12 of the United States’ biggest businesses — from Microsoft to Merck — grew by about 20 percent in 2011, as most of them lobbied hard in Washington for a “tax holiday” to bring that money home at a steep discount.

A POLITICO review of annual reports and Securities and Exchange Commission filings shows that a dozen of the most vocal corporate critics of U.S. tax policy finished 2011 with more than $455 billion in cash, investments and other earnings held by foreign subsidiaries — up from $381 billion the year earlier.

As economists have noted, this is exactly what happens when Congress grants companies one-time tax breaks to repatriate money: they hoard more money offshore in the hopes that Congress can be enticed into providing yet another holiday. As research from Northwestern showed, following a 2004 repatriation holiday, “companies rationally concluded that if they were granted one special one-time tax break, they might very well be granted another. That gave them the incentive to attribute even more of their profits to foreign operations, like a shopper waiting for an end-of-season sale.”

Last month, Apple admitted it was hoarding money offshore in the hopes that Congress would commit to another tax holiday, starting the cycle all over again. Plus, the country’s effective corporate tax rate is already at a 40-year low, while a repatriation holiday would cost the U.S. $80 billion over the next decade.

Justice

New Orleans Prison Inmate Alleges He Was Beaten In Retaliation For Revealing Abusive Conditions To The Press

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 6, 2012 at 5:40 pm

According to a recent lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Orleans Parish Prison is a hellhole. “Rapes, sexual assaults, and beatings are commonplace. Violence regularly occurs at the hands of sheriffs’ deputies, as well as other prisoners . . . . People living with serious mental illnesses languish without treatment, left vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.” Which is why former inmate Josh Hobson says he went to the press while he was incarcerated on a domestic violence charge that was eventually dropped. According to Hobson, prison guards soon found out he was speaking to reporters, and they retaliated with violence:

The guards took him off his bunk in the middle of the night, he said, dragging him outside and viciously beating him, pounding his kidneys so hard he urinated blood the next day.

“The night they smacked me around and dragged me out, all I could think of in my head was, ‘Great, I’m a f—ing dead man.’ They were already telling me they were going to kill me so I figured that’s it. This is a wrap. Lights out. When I got the knee to the head, I figured it was a done deal.” . . .

When the guards were beating him, Hobson said they warned him between punches, “This will teach you to talk to people.”

Neither Mr. Hobson’s allegations, nor those in the SPLC lawsuit have been proved in a court of law, but there is good reason to believe that allegations of widespread abusive conditions in the New Orleans prison are credible. The U.S. Marshall’s service recently removed all federal inmates from the prison, and the Department of Justice released a report in 2009 detailing unconstitutional conditions such as widespread violence and neglect of the mentally ill.

Climate Progress

Nucor Exposed: Corporation Bankrolling Climate Denial Claims ‘Global Warming Not Taken Lightly’

By Guest Blogger, Josh Israel and Brad Johnson on Apr 6, 2012 at 5:12 pm

Our guest blogger is Shauna Theel, a researcher at Media Matters for America. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Media Matters. With reporting by Josh Israel and Brad Johnson.

According to leaked documents, Nucor Corporation (NUE), one of the largest steel producers in the United States, is the top named funder of the Heartland Institute’s climate denial efforts, which consist of smearing scientists, distorting climate science, and teaching children that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”

Nucor gave over half a million dollars to the Heartland Institute specifically for the Environment and Climate News (ECN) project in 2010 and 2011, internal documents reveal. Edited by Heartland fellow James M. Taylor, ECN promotes conspiracy theories about climate scientists, distorts climate science, and attacks regulation of air and water pollution.

Nucor’s support for climate denial is in conflict with the company’s branding campaign as an environmentally friendly corporation, deeply concerned about “issues concerning climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.” Nucor has called itself a “Green Company” and even registered the slogan “It’s Our Nature” in order to promote its “promise to be environmentally conscious” and its practice of primarily using recycled scrap metal.

Why the contradiction? It turns out Nucor’s green credentials may be more talk than action. A closer look at Nucor’s website reveals unscientific claims that the climate is experiencing a “natural recovery” from a relatively cold period in the 19th century and that “scientists still debate whether man is impacting the climate.” The company’s source for these claims? The Heartland Institute.

Additionally, Nucor has a spotty environmental record. In December 2000, Nucor paid nearly $100 million to settle an EPA lawsuit that alleged Nucor polluted groundwater and failed to meet air pollution limits. Based on Nucor’s 2006 air pollution emissions, the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute ranked the company the 24th most toxic large corporation in the United States.

In official filings, Nucor sees regulation of carbon pollution, not the impacts of climate change as a material financial risk. Its 2010 annual report cautioned that “onerous” legislation or regulation of greenhouse pollution could cause legal and business costs from the “alleged impact of our operations on climate change.” A Nucor iron plant in Louisiana was the first project to have a permit for greenhouse gas pollution, granted in the beginning of 2011. Months before, Heartland argued the permit program “will stifle innovation and choke off job growth.”

A Nucor spokeswoman told ThinkProgress Green that the company has not released a statement on its support of the Heartland Institute and had no comment on this story.

NOTE: One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. ThinkProgress is among several publications to have published documents attributed to the Heartland Institute and sent to us from an anonymous and then unknown source. The source later revealed himself. Heartland Institute has issued several press releases claiming that one document (“2012 Climate Strategy”) is fake and asserting other claims regarding the other documents. ThinkProgress has taken down the “2012 Climate Strategy” document as it determines the document’s authenticity.

Health

New Hampshire Considers ‘Pro-Life’ Bill That Puts Health Care System At Risk

By Guest Blogger on Apr 6, 2012 at 5:04 pm

The New Hampshire House recently passed a bill which would prohibit the state from contracting with any organization that performs abortions. While supporters claim that their goal is to stop public funds from paying for abortions, the bill could put the overall health of lower-income women in jeopardy:

The state’s largest hospitals are suing the Department of Health and Human Services over reductions in provider payments, said Lisabritt Solsky, deputy director of the state Medicaid program, calling into question whether Medicaid patients have adequate access to medical services. “Our concern is a bill like this pours gasoline on that fire,” she said.

She said 24 of the state’s 26 acute-care hospitals perform abortions as defined in the bill. Only Catholic Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital do not. If the bill became law, the 24 hospitals would either have to create separate facilities and affiliates to provide those services, or they could not contract with Health and Human Services. [...]

Solsky said the issue is adequate access to medical services for Medicaid patients. If the hospitals cannot contract with the state to provide services, where are Medicaid patients going to receive care, she asked.

As Health and Human Services Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas wrote, the bill could cause “dis-enrollment from the Medicaid program potentially resulting in significant disruption to the acute care system.” A group like Planned Parenthood, which claims abortion makes up only three to five percent of the medical services it provides, would not qualify for any government assistance and would not be able to provide the same level of assistance to lower-income women. As Jennifer Frizzell, policy director for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, put it, “For six out of 10 women, we are the primary source of their medical care.” Frizzell claimed that no other group could take their place if their funding was cut.

The bill is currently before a Senate committee, which has not made a recommendation. Its fate is unclear; Gov. John Lynch (D), an abortion-rights advocate, has not commented on the bill as of yet.

-Zachary Bernstein

NEWS FLASH

Support For Marriage Equality In Maine Climbs To 58 Percent | A new poll shows that 58 percent of Maine voters now support marriage equality with only about 40 percent opposed, suggesting great promise for November’s referendum to legalize it. Though still within the margin of error, this is greater approval than the measure had just last month at 54 percent. Maine’s ballot initiative represents the first time U.S. voters will ever have the opportunity to vote YES for the freedom to marry, and there are still seven months before the election to raise enthusiasm even higher.

Economy

Young People Lead A Drop In Driving, As The GOP Looks To Cut Mass Transit Funding

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 6, 2012 at 4:50 pm

According to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, the last few years have seen the first drop in miles driven annually by Americans since World War II, in large part thanks to a reduction in driving by young people:

From World War II until just a few years ago, the number of miles driven annually on America’s roads steadily increased. Then, at the turn of the century, something changed: Americans began driving less. By 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004.

The trend away from driving has been led by young people. From 2001 to 2009, the average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita — a drop of 23 percent.

“America’s transportation preferences appear to be changing. Our elected officials need to make transportation decisions based on the real needs of Americans in the 21st century,” said Phineas Baxandall, Senior Transportation Analyst for U.S.PIRG Education Fund. However, it’s quite clear that House Republicans in Congress aren’t quite caught up to speed.

The House GOP has been squabbling for months over a bill to reauthorize the nation’s transportation funding, with more conservative members of the caucus wanting to gut funding and send it back to the states to deal with. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), in the transportation bill that he proposed, called for ending the government’s dedicated stream of funding for mass transit, and instead implementing a cockamamie scheme that the Congressional Budget Office said would cover just five percent of mass transit needs.

The New York Times called the GOP’s plan “uniquely terrible,” and as the research organization PolicyLink found, it would have a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, who depend upon mass transit in greater numbers. The Senate, meanwhile, has had none of these problems, passing a bipartisan transportation bill that the House GOP refuses to take up.

Alyssa

‘Magic City’ Is Good For the Jews, But Enough With the Gangsters

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 6, 2012 at 4:37 pm

At the beginning of Knocked Up, when a group of nerdy Jewish dudes find themselves unexpectedly admitted to a nightclub, schlubby Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) tells his friends that “If any of us get laid tonight it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich.” Magic City, Starz’s next attempt to burnish its reputation as a provider of high-quality drama along with its standard doses of reasonably explicit sex and violence, follows the noble and recent pop culture trend of portraying Jews as something other than nebbishes. It stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ike Evans, a recently-remarried widower who built his dream hotel, the Miramar Playa, on Miami Beach, just in time for Castro to take Havana and kick out the casinos, creating a hot new market for a Caribbean vacation spot. It’s the first of the current crop of period shows to put Jewish characters at the center of the frame, and it’s one of the best decisions Mitch Glazer, the show’s creator, made in standing up this gorgeous-looking but uneven drama.

Magic City‘s a personal story for Glazer, who in a conversation with me in January described starting out as an “assistant engineer”—or janitor—a job his father, a lighting engineer who ordered the chandelier for the Eden Roc and put in gambling machine hookups below the floor of the Fountinbleau lobby, got him. Living in the city was also his introduction to both Cuban immigration and the Civil Rights movement. “My parents, I was 7, dragged me to Civil Rights marches in Flagler Street, and we had rotten garbage thrown at us. I remember, because they were very active in what was then a very Southern town,” he told me. “Most of my friends when I was in sixth grade, the first-wave of Cubans, were the white-collar Cubans who came to America, guys who had been lawyers who became short-order cooks. Those were my best friends’ parents. I tried to pass for Cuban for about six months. They just seemed cooler. My high school was 60 percent Jewish, 40 percent Cuban, and Mickey Rourke.”

Magic City is at its best when the show reflects that transition. Ike’s second wife, Vera (Olga Kurylenko) contemplated converting to Judaism on the eve of Ike’s daughters bat mitzvah, and Ike and his father squabble over which of them is the worse Jew. Older Russian emigrees play balalaika on the beach and a louche State Senator from Tallahassee goes on at length about the “Aryan” charms of a potential beauty queen. We’ve had Jews at the margins of Mad Men for years, and with the arrival of Michael Ginsburg in the office, we’ll finally have one at the center of the frame. But I enjoyed how Magic City puts Jews and Jewishness at the forefront of the show, giving a Florida Jewish community far richer than the stereotype of retirees we have today. And Jews aren’t the only community Magic City examines. Work in the Miramar Playa kitchens grinds to a halt as word comes over the radio of Castro and Che’s advance on Havana. And Ike plays off the black residents of Overtown against white picketers who want to unionize the hotel, busting up the picket line by violence. It’s that kind of conflict that shows how perceptive characters are of how the world around them is changing, and how bold they are about taking advantage of shifting power dynamics.

It’s less good when it overreaches in search of drama. Starz’s existing viewers may depend on a heavy dose of nipples and killings, but the gratuitousness of both elements in shows like Magic City or Boss seems more likely than not to turn off the new subscribers Starz would like to woo. There’s a troika of characters in Magic City that should have been recast and rewritten: Steven Strait as Ike’s oldest son Stevie, a sullen seducer whose charms are inexplicable to me but appear to turn every woman around him stupid, Jessica Marais as Lily Diamond, the wife of mobster Benny Diamond (an insanely over-the-top Danny Huston), who begins an impossibly foolish affair with Stevie that serves only to fulfill the sexual quotient, and Huston himself, who lurks around killing dogs and threatening to feed people to sharks. Maybe these things really happened. But I wouldn’t mind if Glazer appeared to trust the power of his memories a bit more.

Justice

National Review Writer Pens Racist Screed: ‘Avoid Concentrations Of Blacks,’ ‘Stay Out Of’ Their Neighborhoods

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Apr 6, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Popular conservative columnist and National Review writer John Derbyshire topped all of his previous racist screeds (and sexist rants) today by posting a long breakdown of all of the important lessons he has taught his children about race — and he’s outdone his own racism with this one.

Derbyshire wrote the column in the second person, as a list of lessons to his kids about race. The lessons are his response to “the talk” that black parents have with their children — conversations they are forced to have because of real, persistent racism. After spending a few minutes bemoaning that he can’t say a racist slur (“What you must call ‘the ‘N’ word’ is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks”) and opining on the hostility he believes all black people feel toward white people like himself (though he says he isn’t white before calling himself white several times), he cuts to the heart of his lessons for his children:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”

While they are not included in the quote above, Derbyshire peppers the post with links to news stories of crimes, a few random videos, and his own columns. The only “fact” included in the entire piece (and just a small image, at that) is from the offensive book The Bell Curve. Every other hateful, racist claim is based on a one-off story or his own foregone conclusions.

Update

ThinkProgress reached out to Derbyshire to verify that the column was not meant to be satire. “I’d call it ‘social commentary,’” he said.

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