Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/24/railroaders-r-us.html
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Of course it won’t.
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What I hate is that all these money launderers, tax cheats, and illegal lobbyists essentially getting away with their crimes.
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Does the Pope shit on the moon?
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Anything that is good for Republicans and is useful keeping dark-skinned people in jail is GOOD.
Anything that is bad for Republicans is BAD.
They can be the same thing. The only standard is who it helps and who it hurts.
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The only standard is who it helps and who it hurts.
For example: Welfare is bad. Unless it’s to farmers who tend to vote Republican. Then it’s good.
See? This is easy!
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weird thing is until recently most of those farmers usually voted democrat. My local democratic party is essentially the farmer party. All of their most successful candidates and longest serving members at the village, town, and county level are either farmers, fishermen, or teachers. Farm subsidies and “paying farmers not to grow food” have been a long time conservative bogieman.
Thats been shifting since the 90s. But a sizable chunk of those white voters that switched from obama to trump. The “working class” voters we’re all supposed to exclisively focus on now. Were farmers. So its even balder. Trump attracted record support from a new demographic. Immediately fucked them over. And is trying to avoid losing that demographic by throwing money at them.
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Yeah, Ken also did a twitter thread that broke down what would solve the issues around prosecutors using “flipping,” but also that Trump (and other Republicans) wouldn’t even begin to consider them, because they would apply to that vast population:
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That’s not exactly how it works. Today we’re discussing “welfare.” Tomorrow we’re discussing farmers. It’s your job to not notice the glaring inconsistency in the two positions, and very bad manners to point it out. If you are such a jerk you point it out and actually have tape to prove it, then you’re just playing “gotcha” politics.
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I wonder how much that varies state by state. Here in California, farmers have traditionally been pretty conservative. At this point farming areas are the conservative parts of the state.
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Yeah, here in Kansas and Missouri you can bet on a given random farmer being a Republican. Too much time spent listening to Rush for hours while in the tractor, I suspect.
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I would love them to find out how awful the prison system is, too!
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Its sort of a coincidence, sort of just complicated, and sort of regional variance.
Like i said it’s been shifting since the 90’s. Its not one of those clean demographics, like where 98% of Blacks vote DNC. Just that generally speaking more farmers tended to do so, so as a block they skewed dem. And they’ve skewed less and less dnc over the past 25 years.
It does vary by region. Like I dont think its been true of Southern farmers aince the 60’s and that whole Southern Strategy thing. But northeastern, mid western, and western farmers in a lot of regions or specific types of farming generally voted more for the dnc. Like for example I think ranchers specifically have long been a GOP block, dairy farmers tending toward DNC that sort of thing. But that may be a regional thing since specific types of farming dominate innspecific regions.
And then there’s the misunderstanding. When I say these were dnc voters I absolutely don’t mean these are liberals, progressives, or left wingers. These are your prototypical blue dog democrats. Center right Democrats, and the more right wing ones have long been pealing off to the GOP. And the less right wing ones have been becoming more right wing since the tea-party.
I’m in one of the most conservative parts of the NY metro area, our congressman is Lee Zeldin. Its a Trump strong hold, one of the places where there was dominant support for him really early. And he’s regularly held rallies here since he announced. Including some of his first, and some of his largest.
A lot of those life long farmer dems were pretty avid Trump voters. They’ve also been the only Trump supporters I’ve met to openly regret the decision.
Eta: oh and for the misunderstanding. Cali farmers are often called out specifically as one of the groups that “switched”. Enough of them voted obama then trump to have an identifiable effect. So while farmers are almost always in more conservative or even GOP locked areas. They arent neccisarily the driver of that. Not on their own. The close split in party affinity helps though.
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Point of pedantry: he’s a former Assistant US Attorney. There are (consults Wikipedia) only 93 US Attorneys, one per federal judicial district, each appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. There are thousands of Assistant US Attorneys.
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(Jeez, the first time I read your reply it did not sound like sarcasm.)
Inconsistency in the R’s positions? That’s just Deep State talking!
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It’s worth pointing out that white collar criminals will most certainly need more evidence to be prosecuted than will poor or black defendants, in addition to flipped testimony. And that’s if the white collar crime is even seriously pursued at all.
Rich + white = far more likely to actually be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
Or even innocent after being proven guilty.
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Incredibly, Manafort’s lawyers actually tried to use that as a defense:
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you if this were fraud, we would have courts across the country filled with bank frauds. People do not get prosecuted by typical Justice Department prosecutors when what they’ve done is had some issue about whether their property is being rented or personally owned and it changes.
Like, honey, I know what you’re trying to do but you’re indicting the wrong part of the system here…
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The police state loves the Drug War because it makes everything so simple. No victims to talk to. No evidence but this little bag of weed. No testimony except from the arresting officer. Checkmate, you lose.
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For example, just consider the leftish Minnesota party:
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John Gotti’s defense attorneys made a successful argument in his 1987 trial that the witness testimony against him was unreliable since most of the witnesses were lowlifes. They even provided the jury with a helpful chart.
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