Author Archives: RolandoRoland

Chart of the Day: Here’s How Trump Really Did Among Black Voters

Mother Jones

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As part of his touching remarks about Black History Month this morning, President Trump boasted that he “ended up getting substantially more” of the African-American vote than past Republican candidates. Glenn Kessler briefly picks this apart here, but everything is better with a chart. So here’s a chart. It shows the share of the black vote since 1972 for Republicans running against white Democrats:

Trump really kicked ass, didn’t he?

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Chart of the Day: Here’s How Trump Really Did Among Black Voters

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Sean Penn on Sony Pulling "The Interview": This Sends ISIS an "Invitation"

Mother Jones

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Actor and activist Sean Penn, no surprise, has some thoughts about the Sony hacking and the movie studio’s decision to pull The Interview after cyber-saboteurs linked (by the FBI) to North Korea threatened moviegoers and theaters. Here’s a statement Penn sent me:

It’s not the first time culture has been threatened by foreign interests and corporate caution. See then Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s interview with Charlie Rose in 1997, when Disney was dealing with pressure from China about Martin Scorcese’s Tibet film, Kundun. Eisner said, “we do not take, as a company, a position either in human rights or not in human rights. We are a movie company. We’re an entertainment company.” That was a pretty shocking statement. (Disney, which was looking to expand its ventures in China, did end up distributing the film, but distribution was limited and the advertising budget was low—and despite these concessions, Disney was largely frozen out of the Chinese markets for years.) This week, the distributors who wouldn’t show The Interview and Sony have sent ISIS a commanding invitation. I believe ISIS will accept the invitation. Pandora’s box is officially open.

The damage we do to ourselves typically outweighs the harm caused by outside threats or actions. Then by caving to the outside threat, we make our nightmares real. The decision to pull The Interview is historic. It’s a case of putting short term interests ahead of the long term. If we don’t get the world on board to see that this is a game changer, if this hacking doesn’t frighten the Chinese and the Russians, we’re in for a very different world, a very different country, community, and a very different culture.

I’m not sure the world has come to terms with all the implications of the hacking. I was in Liberia and Sierra Leone right at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in April. It did seem to those of us there that the response was neither coming swiftly or with a true sense of urgency. This feels the same. This matter should be before the UN Security Council today.

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Sean Penn on Sony Pulling "The Interview": This Sends ISIS an "Invitation"

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The Financial Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know About Its Lack of Diversity

Mother Jones

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It’s not unusual for the banking industry to challenge a new government rule. Ever since Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the banks have sent forth their army of lobbyists any time federal regulators try to enforce a new restriction, often resorting to the courts if they don’t get their way. But their latest objection is particularly galling: they don’t want the government or public to know about the diversity—or lack thereof—within their industry.

When Congress went about reforming the banking industry in 2010, Democrats made a specific point to encourage the financial industry to diversify its workforce. It has long needed a fix. The financial trade is controlled by old, rich white dudes, a cohort that doesn’t accurately reflect the country’s shifting demographics. The problem only gets worse when you look higher up the chain of command. Overall management in the financial services industry is 81 percent white as of 2011. African-Americans only account for 2.7 percent of senior-level staff in the financial industry, while women hold just 28.4 percent of upper management jobs.

Dodd-Frank, the Democrats’ bill to reform Wall Street following the crash, included a provision that creates Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion in each branch of the federal regulatory regime, such as the Department of Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. (The provision doesn’t touch sexual orientation.) These new offices are tasked with boosting diversity within their own ranks and analyzing hiring practices of the businesses in their purview. Late last year, regulators from six of these offices wrote a rule, still in the proposal stage, to enforce the second half of that mandate. It’s a modest measure—a simple request that the banks conduct self-assessments based on a few best-practice guidelines, but it was enough to rile up the banks.

Complaint letters sent from the main lobbying arms of the financial industry to regulators show a concerted effort to avoid changing their hiring practices and to dissuade regulators from revealing the lack of diversity in the banking sector. “In an otherwise good-faith effort to utilize the joint standards and meet certain standards or metrics relating to ‘diversity,’” the Chamber of Commerce wrote in its letter, “regulated entities may inadvertently run afoul of federal workplace requirements by, for example, engaging in ‘reverse’ discrimination.” Smaller regional banks shared those concerns. The Missouri Bankers Association likened the agencies’ proposal to a “government mandated affirmative action program.”

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The Financial Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know About Its Lack of Diversity

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