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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Cops Shouldn’t Write Tickets – How to Fix the Broken Relationship Between the People and the Police

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Ted Rall
After years of no one – at least not the white people who control the media – giving a damn about what happens to black people at the hands of white cops, suddenly the terrible relationship between people and the police is a huge problem. This is what happens when the power dynamic gets reversed, when aggressors find themselves in the unhappy role of victims. First, five policemen were assassinated in Dallas, as payback for police violence in general. Now three more have been killed in Baton Rouge, apparently to retaliate for the murder of another unarmed black man, Alton Sterling, by local police. Cops are getting shot. So the media is finally paying attention. Airing the issue is long overdue, but as usual it’s playing out in hackneyed catchphrases that are unlikely to lead to meaningful improvement. What we need, liberal wise men of the media tell us, is more community policing. Cops and the community need to get…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Violent, Racist Cops Protect a Violent, Racist System

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Ted Rall
Racism is complicated. When America’s most brilliant thinkers set out to explain its nature in terms as clear as the English language allows, as Michael Eric Dyson did in his searing July 7th essay “Death in Black and White,” even the relatively sophisticated readers of the New York Times didn’t get it. Commenters didn’t understand that Dyson wasn’t criticizing every white person, but “white America” — shorthand for a dominant power structure that is fundamentally racist while (of course) not every white person is. If anti-racist white people take writing as straightforward as Dyson’s personally, if they take offense at his passion and so miss his message, is there any hope of “black America” and “white America” just getting along? It’s been a hell of a week. Two more black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, were gunned down by the police under the usual incomprehensible circumstances — events the media, and thus the government, are paying attention to only…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Hillary Cheated

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Ted Rall
Who are you going to believe: us, or your lying eyes? That’s the good word from Democratic Party powers that be and their transcribers in the corporate media, in response to the “allegations” by Bernie Sanders supporters that the nomination was stolen by Hillary Clinton. I used scare quotes around the word “allegations” because the truth is plain to see and undeniable by anyone with a microgram of honesty: Hillary Clinton cheated. If the rules had been followed, Bernie Sanders would be the nominee. As with all things Clinton, of course, definitions matter. It depends on what the meaning of “cheat” is. To most people, “cheating” means breaking the rules of a contest. By this standard definition, there’s no doubt that the Clinton campaign, its political allies and the Democratic National Committee cheated in favor of Clinton and against Sanders. They broke the law. They disenfranchised voters. They broke party rules. And they violated long-standing customs that are so widely…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Who’s Really To Blame for Brexit (and Trump)

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Ted Rall
At this writing, securities markets and the international community are reeling at the news that British voters have opted to leave the European Union. The “Brexit” has provoked angry reactions from the pro-Remain camp, who accuse Leave voters of stupidity, shortsighted ignorance and, worse, thinly-disguised racism and nativism posing as nationalism. Political analysts point out that British voters were divided geographically – Scotland wanted to stay, England wanted to leave – as well as demographically. One chart that managed to go semi-viral online displayed high support for the Brexit among older voters, opposition among the young, alongside the actuarial average years remaining that each age group would have to live with the consequences of the vote. The smartest of these pundits focus on the class divide between shiny expensive youth-oriented cities like London, where pro-European sentiments are strong, and England’s version of the Rust Belt, abandoned hellholes where citizens barely subsist in a ruined landscape of shut down factories and…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Mass Shootings Are The New Normal. Get Over It.

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Ted Rall
What is wrong with Americans? Okay, that’s a very open-ended question with many potential answers. What I’d like to talk about this time is: why is it that Americans only begin to get serious about a problem after it’s too late to solve it? Currently, I’m thinking about the latest, depressingly predictable response to the Orlando massacre. As usual, right-wingers like Donald Trump want to restrict immigration. But even setting aside the obvious moral and practical economic objections to nativism, how would that prevent future mass shootings (in part) in the name of the Islamic State? Orlando shooter Omar Nateen wasn’t an immigrant. He was born in Queens, New York; his parents were from Afghanistan. If the Republicans’ goal is to get rid of potentially self radicalized Muslims, it’s too late. There are 3.3 million Muslims in the United States. Many are full-fledged citizens. Any group of people that numbers in the millions includes some who are mentally ill, some…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: What Hillary Must Do to Win Over Bernie Voters

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Ted Rall
   Unless you follow politics closely, you could be forgiven for thinking that Hillary Clinton has locked up the Democratic presidential nomination. This is not true. She still doesn’t have the requisite number of delegates. That could, and probably will, happen next month when her lead in superdelegates puts her over the top at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia – when the superdelegates actually, you know, cast their actual votes. The media, however, doesn’t want you to know that Bernie Sanders is still in the race. And so, based on that flimsiest of measures – an opinion survey of superdelegates who are allowed to change their mind at any point before July’s DNC – they’ve called the Democratic race for Clinton. This completely illogical reasoning logically leads pundits to the question of the month: how can the Hillary Clinton campaign convince progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders – whose race was largely based on the assumption that Clinton is so…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: How the Media Manipulated the Democratic Primary

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Ted Rall
Though it might not always seem like it, the news media is composed of human beings. Humans aren’t, can’t be, and possibly shouldn’t be, objective. Still, there’s a reasonable expectation among consumers of political news that journalists of all political stripes strive to be as objective as possible. At their minimum, media outlets ought to be straightforward about their biases. They certainly shouldn’t have, or appear to have, their thumbs on the scales. Unfortunately, all too often, it appears that the political system is rigged – and that the major media companies play an important role in gaming the system. That’s what has happened throughout this year’s Democratic primaries, in which the vast majority of corporate media outlets appear to have been in the bag for Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate, against self-described “democratic socialist” insurgent Bernie Sanders. Examinations of coverage have confirmed the impressions of cable news junkies that Sanders has been the victim of a blackout, thus depriving…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Trump or Hillary: We’re Screwed Either Way

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Ted Rall
After disaster strikes, it often turns out that there were several contributing factors behind it. Looking back, though, there was usually one key moment when One Really Bad Decision was made — when catastrophe might have been avoided had the people in charge done something different. This feels like that moment. Unless something dramatic happens soon, either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will win the presidency this fall. Either candidate would be a disaster. Yes, either. You already know why Trump is dangerous. He’s savagely ignorant of politics, history and, surprisingly considering his profession, economics. He advocates violence on a vast scale: against protesters, against other countries, against millions of children whose only crime was to be brought to the United States by parents who snuck them over the border. He’s a rude, boorish, hostile, aggressive jerk — not a personality you want in charge of nuclear launch codes, or talking to other people in other countries who have their…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Why I am #NeverHillary

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Ted Rall
Hillary Clinton’s coronation at the Democratic national convention is likely but not a foregone conclusion. Since the superdelegates won’t vote until July, and neither she nor Bernie Sanders will arrive in Cleveland with the requisite number of pledged delegates to clich the nomination, there is still the possibility that the party bosses will see sense, internalize the polls that show she’s weaker than him against Trump, and push the superdelegates to support the populist senator from Vermont. But sense is in short supply in American politics, especially this year. So I’m preparing for the worst: Hillary versus Trump. It’s one hell of a choice. The more I delve into Donald Trump and his past (to research my biography, which comes out in June), the more scared I get. Nevertheless, there is no way I’ll vote for Hillary. I won’t vote for her if she stops shaking down rich right-wing Republicans for donations. I won’t vote for her if she adopts…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN:
Donald Trump Isn’t Bluffing About Deporting 11,000,000 People

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Ted Rall
During the run-up to America’s war against Iraq, I told audiences that Bush would certainly win reelection. Some people broke down in tears. That’s my job: telling people things they prefer not to hear, especially about the future. Being Cassandra isn’t much fun. Because we live in a nation in decline and yielding to incipient fascism, the more I’m right — i.e., most of the time — the more I annoy my readers. So please believe me when I say this gives me no pleasure: Donald Trump isn’t bluffing when he threatens to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Are you undocumented? Prepare to go underground. Are your papers in good standing? Are you a good person? Prepare a hiding place in your home. Dark days are ahead. Do not take comfort in the fact that Trump flip-flops on all sorts of issues. Contrary to his initial, typically strident position on abortion, the master demagogue…
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