How Did Obama Know About 'Fast And Furious' Before Holder?

Nec Spe, Nec Metu

An associate of mine who I have grown sincere admiration and respect for and a friend used twitter yesterday to foster a discussion regarding President Obama and why people would or would not decide to support him during the 2012 election. What I noticed was that people, in particular African Americans have a real strong conviction and evince such with passion. In addition, I also noticed that it was frequent that people would challenge individuals to “check their facts” or charge “racism” if one disagreed with the President or ANY of his policies.

As you may or may not know, I am a free thinker and a habitual call-it-like-I-think-it-err. Just stating this because regardless of race or political affiliation, or rather one is a racist or a punk (synonymous in my purview) - I call them as I see them. I was reminded of this when a fellow blogger called in on my radio show and indicated that it was funny to him how when I was writing about George W. Bush, my post obtained anywhere from 80 to 100 comments daily but that when I held Obama to the same critical standard, they dropped to less than 5 comments a post.

Getting back to my associate, the results of his forum indicated just how much as a populous we 1] neglect significance in being politically astute, 2] how defensive we get when the person (especially if he is black) is the politician we support and 3] how quick all logic is disregarded when the information or point of contention has a negative impact on African Americans in particular and is accurate.

For example, for me to openly criticize the economic approach of President Obama is tantamount to being an uncle tom, racist or something even worse. Albeit it has nothing to do with the person, his race and/or political affiliation, and more a dissonance with Keynesian economic philosophy, because I am an African American my position is untenable and unreasonable.

Even if I state what I agree with and approve of that the President has implemented thus far, I am still considered against the President just because I am in disagreement with a single policy. I was supportive of the administration’s efforts to implement tougher regulations that would have reduced the amount of federal financial aid flowing to for-profit colleges that prey on mainly low income African Americans. However, I eventually became disappointed when his administration caved to the industry’s lobbyists and their campaign against the Obama administration. I was able to applaud the first bill he signed into law on approving legislation that expands workers' rights to sue over discrimination and the fact that so far he is setting records for the number of women and minorities nominated to lifetime appointments at the level of the Federal Courts. Nearly half of the 73 candidates he has tapped for the bench have been women. In all, 25% have been African Americans, 10% Hispanics and 11% Asian Americans. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships, far exceeding the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent).

I was also supportive of President Obama’s $1.15 billion measure to fund a settlement for African American farmers reached more than a decade ago via the 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Agriculture Department over claims of discrimination. This made it possible for approximately 70,000 African American farmers to receive cash payments and debt relief from the federal government. However when I question the decision to pander to #ocupywallstreet protesters and the same night attend an upper East Side DNC $35,800 a plate fundraiser resulting in $2.4 million added to his rer-election campaign from Wall Street financiers and call it hypocrisy, my position was vilified. When I spoke out against the President’s policy decision to ask Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other debt owed the federal government using robo calls I was condemned.

If I speak out and say I disagree with the Obama’s administration decision to waive legally mandated penalties for countries that use child soldiers and provide those countries U.S. military assistance, just like he did last year I am a hatter. The White House will issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars, for Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last year, the White House didn't even tell Congress when it ended the Child Soldiers Prevention Act penalties. Their rational was suspect at best.

The truth is that I have problems with the policies and not the man. I would have had the same problems if they were implemented by a man or woman, republican or democrat of any race and ethnicity. The problem is to be an African American and voice these concerns means accepting the vilification asserted in the opening paragraphs. Unfortunately, like politicians the people who support selected candidates do not use binary decision to make responses that respond to logic gates like computers and tend to ignore transient memory for better or for worse. As in football, they will accept a holding called missed by a referee if their team scores but scorn and excoriate the same referee that misses the same call on the other team.

This is the world of the astute and adroit individual of color who examines the etiology of the political actions (especially if they pertain to President Obama). For being objectives means we can examine and understand this dystopian political frontier as the malicious state it is. It portends a dark future in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a few turning our nation into an oppressive state. The sad reality is that the voting populous and pundits in their sciolism do not have a clue that for us it is “Nec Spe, Nec Metu” - Without hope, without fear. For we know that Bacillus cannot live with antibodies.

Obama Panders to Cantor’s Mob

With the recent protest across America, one single observation that can be drawn is the level of two-faced hypocrisy evident in the elected leadership residing in Washington, D.C. The only consistent factor is the irony that both President Obama and the Tea Party Republicans were elected to implement change. Unfortunately neither has produced and continue to serve the oligarchs and plutocrats that fill their campaign coffers instead of the common citizenry of this once great nation.

Obama has done every shuck and jive dance move to pass his jobs bill that he only needs to wear black face to complete his vaudvillesque act. The Republicans namely Eric Canto and John Boehner have done everything in their power to make it seem as if they are actually working for the people when they are not, seeming to always leave their white sheets hanging in the closet at home as opposed to showing their true colors.

Eric Cantor and Barack Obama are both bought and paid for by the people they claim to dislike on behalf of Obama, and protect on behalf of Cantor. From the recent discussion on Israel, it is obvious that they care and want to give more loot without any query to Israel equally than they do the American people. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu who Eric Cantor tried to play against the President. The problem is that American voters, in particular black folk do not understand that people like Eric Cantor or Barack Obama do not represent mainstream American interests or the interest of the American citizenry in generally.

Obama talks a better game about main street and the common man but all the ambassadors he has appointed and the majority of his cabinet members all gave his campaign $500,000 or more. He as cantor, have stood by and enabled America's Wall Street and Corporate criminal elite resulting in this economic imbalance in our nation. Do not get me wrong, this includes every national politicians since Andrew Jackson since in my locution, he was the last President who genuinely understood the plight of the people albeit he was a crooked white supremacist. The sad reality is that with the assistance of the media, both the leadership of the democratic and Republican Party’s act as if their only public duty is to tell us regular folk what and how to think.

We on the ground level see what our elected leadership does not – that our social structure only is efficient and works to service the desires of a few and is inequitable for the majority. In addition it is more than obvious that this approach they foster is not sustainable forever, unless they intend to rule by brute force.

These, our elected official via policy are more concerned with the views and support of the market manipulators on Wall Street than the American people. The same Wall Street that has bought our Congress and the President for they are merely corrupted element within an otherwise legitimate system. So what he have learned from the occupy Wall Street protest is that the America police will do what these oligarchs of wealth and power desire before they serve the poor and middle class. They will arrest, beat and pepper spray regular Americans who only desire to exercise their constitutional rights to assembly and free speech although they are paid to protect and serve the innocent.

To Eric Cantor and the police departments around the USA we are mobs and in the eyes of Obama, we only deserve to be pandered to in an effort to be re-elected. Mobs as opposed to Americans protesting injustice, political corruption and corporate fascism. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, who openly states that flood, hurricane and tornado victims must pay for their own recovery by cutting social programs so his party and their supporters can continue to rape the middle class. It is clear that Eric Cantor, from his voting record and spends without repute his donations, that he represents big business, executives on Wall Street, and those who have power no differently than the democrats who go to Washington.

Cantor serves to helps companies abuse their employees by opposing unemployment benefits. He has consistently with banks that fund his campaign even voting to bail out a bank that his wife works for, and sits on the board of directors. A bank in which the minimum account balance for its wealth management division is $40 million. He has side with big oil and is one of the best fund raisers in the Republican Party. Open records indicate that he spent $7,400 of donor money on gourmet chocolates last year alone. But that is possible when you are getting money from lobbyist for Genworth Financial and AstraZeneca PLC. When asked if he would pass any elements of the Obama Jobs bill, he said yes - a provision that allows government contractors to collect all the money that is due to them rather than have 3% withheld for taxes (costing US tax payers $14 million over next ten years).

Obama is just as bad. As I wrote earlier this year, “ though Obama vowed to end “special interests” from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, and/or won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests. Just for raising $50,000 to $500,000 for his campaign. In total, 184 of 556, or about one-third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. In fact, 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took key administration posts. Also, President Obama's appointment of William Daley as his chief of staff is another example. Daley was an executive at JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank that received a $12 billion bailout during the financial crisis”

As I write this, forty-six states are trying to keep the poor, elderly and minorities from voting in the next election by putting up roadblocks to them getting a "valid" photo ID, all under the guise of republican leadership. Just last night, Obama, after he said he understood the protestors, attended an Upper East Side DNC fundraiser to wine and dine Wall Street big wigs that cost attendees $35,800 each. An event that raised him $2.4 million from more than 60 financiers running the top funds on Wall Street. Yes, our current President claims to be for change and the people but he gives billions to Banks and corporations like Solyndra.Wall Street has trampled the American dream and politicians on both sides of the aisle are the reason us regular folks continue to have night mares.

America’s Celebration of Disease and Genocide

It is not uncommon for people to offer praise to individuals for their historical impact. The consternation however begins when we applaud these individuals in complete absence of their entire body of work. The case can be made for example with Confederate General and the mass murdering founder of the Ku Klux Klan Nathan Bedford in several states across the south. But more prescient is the inchoate historical record of Christophoro Colombo , who we know better as Christopher Columbus.

Americans the descendent of the first illegal immigrants will give national praise to this man today for reasons I cannot ascertain, although the excuse is that he discovered America – a place where people had already occupied and had been living for centuries prior to his first voyage.

A holiday in theory is a day of celebration or honor.If this is the case, let us be clear of what there is to honor or celebrate Columbus for. Outside of making Europeans happy and proud, the only reality was that his voyage to the new world was a “harbinger of genocide” to non Europeans. We honor a ruthless slave master and a plundering megalomaniac. He schemed support from the Spanish crown in a manner that would make Wall Street Bankers seeking a bailout proud.

History informs us he discovered America in October 1492, but it was that month on the 12^th in the Bahamas’ and from their sailed his three infamous ships to the coast of Cuba and Hispaniola (I always wondered why the people already there renamed their island after Spain). I called him a megalomaniac because his fellow Europeans of the time, his main interest was women, conquest and gold. In fact, among the individuals he called “Indians” in Hispaniola, he decreed that they must offer tributes of Gold to him or suffer death. His options were either convert and accept Christianity or be exploited or enslaved. Ironically he did not convert as many to Christianity for it reduced the number of folks he could make slaves.

Way I see it, giving Columbus a holiday means you should give one to the man who enslaved, killed and stripped inhabitants of their flesh in Mexico and feed them to the dogs – Bartolome de Las Casas a holiday too. The celebration of this man is merely a celebration of greed and the near total annihilation of the indigenous people of the places he landed. Thus this Columbus day as all of the ones before and in the future is just another way for America to honor and celebrate disease and genocide in what they termed the new world.

Non-Performing Papers

The present global economic crisis is the result of black market economics. By black market, I mean the same economic practices that allow the criminal underworld to function. A world in which few if any records exist regarding their profits – a shadow economy.

The new business of America and much of Europe operates without standards or oversight and the known value of most paper assets or financial instruments. Such to the extent that they cannot even be used to guarantee credit, a consistent observation in plain view in the US market and those in Europe. If one was to ask what were these papers and why they cannot be given accurate value, I could not answer because there are so many and no regulation for them that the only proof that they exist is reduced to growing unemployment, homelessness and protestors in the streets worldwide. I can say this because it has been “estimated” there combined value to be between $600 and $700 trillion – ten times the GDP of the entire world.

We see their weight on all markets. Take America for example, it is difficult not to see the impact of derivatives, mortgage backed securities, interest rate swaps or credit default swaps on the destruction of our economy. Both nongovernmental credit and private lending has dropped and contracted more than 20 percent since 2007. Namely because regulations that once existed that may have prevented this crisis have been reduced to nonexistent. Used be a time when people knew who own a mortgage for a house. Now such is impossible because the paper trail does not exist since most have been pooled and packaged into liquid Mortgage backed securities that allowed for them to get around the usual means to record the owners of said mortgages. Now most are hidden in a “shell company (MERS)” instead of banks or companies that have an actual interest in reclaiming the mortgage debt. This means that the value of even the bonds backed by mortgage backed securities will always be questionable and housing prices will continue to fall.

The same is true with default swaps. In an effort to avoid the tedious processes involved in recording and tracking the value of paper products and the foolish leveraging practices that created MBS’s, credit default swaps were invented. These “made out of thin air” papers were created so that lenders could insure the risk of papers with no know value and sell them to others. Now it is impossible for anyone to know who bears the risk for these instruments they are supposed to guarantee. This overlapping of paper means that no one can even accurately say what is owed or what their value are.

I intentionally did not include “off-balance sheet accounting “because it would show how our current fiscal crisis is truly the consequence of criminal activity, although our President says there are now laws to suggest that criminal activity was conducted by large Wall Street banks. I would disagree.

It is criminal because their actions has resulted in the number of Americans on food stamps increasing 74 percent since 2007 and 77 percent of US citizens now living from pay check to paycheck to date. Yet no such increases have proffered by bankers and corporate big wigs and their precious hedge funds created around these complex papers although most are none performing – not worth their stated value.

It is criminal when we question the rationale for the intense dislike for Wall Street when the President and Congress, who are recipients of large donation from this group and their K street lobbyist, are connected at the hip. We are a nation where the ratio of household debt to personal income is 154 percent. Yet the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.

Yes it is criminal and unfortunately the President, Congress and Senate are criminal as well if they cannot see or understand such. But what can one expect when the percentage of millionaires in congress is more than 50 times those in the general public? Yes our crisis is the result of lawmakers who made money from rules that created these non-performing papers. Papers that obviously perform for politicians, CEOs and Wall Street bankers, but not for us.

Global Financial Meltdown In 2 To 3 Weeks says IMF Advisor

Obama and the Congress: Returning America to Hooverville

Riddle me this, what will it take for Obama groupies to take their heads out the sphincter of the President and what will it take for Tea party groupies to take their heads out of the same opening of the Tea Party? Is it just me or am I the only one who see that no matter what, Obamafied folk hate all the Tea party supporters and the Tea Baggers hate without though or question, all who support President Obama. The least common denominator both conglomerates fail to observe is that regardless of republican or democrat, male or female, gay or straight, or black or white, these people all represent the same thing from their K-street lobbyist influence to wealthy campaign donors. Yes, republicans and democrats are the same inside the beltway political party crooks. Some may take issue with this and their feeble thought processes may still wish to make delineations between the two but the math will prove unflappable.

Just this week, employers announced plans to shed 115,730 workers from their payrolls in September, making it the worst job cut month in over two years.Telling me if this is September, and what we know from history, which the President and the Congress seem not to be able to learn from, it is only going downhill from here given the federal government penchant for across-the-board cuts in spending put in place by President Obama and the congress during their debt ceiling debate. September job cuts were 126% higher than the 51,114 announced in August and 212% higher than September 2010, making it the highest since April 2009. Telling us regular no politician and non-wealthy political party donors what we already know – it’s hard out here. But what does the president do? He wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to robo-call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government via a hidden clause in his $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan Obama submitted to Congress. It should have been expected given how close the President is to campaign funders including the private debt collection industry – strange since he wanted Elizabeth Warren to fight these same folk, ACA International (the collection industry trade association).

It is apparent that neither Obama nor the congress care to solve our present economic crisis nor are they adult enough to tell the American people the truth regarding the severity of what we encounter from an economic perspective. Instead, they would prefer to bicker and move our nation towards Hooverville.

During the great depression of the 1930s, camps of dispossessed and destitute people grew across the nation after the stock market crash of 1929. These camps, comprised of homeless men, women and children who were forced to take up residence in shacks as a result of the Great Depression became known as Hooverville's in honor of President Herbert Hoover.
Policies of the federal government were so inept and out of touch with the seriousness of the economic forlornness most of America was experiencing (as now) that the little resources that the federal government made available often did not go to the hungry and homeless but rather to corrupt politicians and corporations who and kept those valuable resources to themselves (Wall Street Bailout and loans for big corporations).

As the economy continued to get worse, more people and families were impoverished due to rising unemployment and mortgage foreclosures. In fact estimates suggest that between 1929 and 1933, more than 100,000 businesses failed across the nation. Like Obama currently, by the end of President Hoover tenure in 1933, there were at least 13 million unemployed (around 25% of America's work force).

The Obama Administration and the congress are heading toward turning America into a country of Hooverville’s. The stock market crash in October 1929 helped trigger a devastating depression that led to massive homelessness and joblessness once the economy began to crumble in the early 1930s, resulting in these make shift shanty towns springing up across the nation. Seattle's main Hooverville covered nine acres and lasted from 1931 to 1941. One of the largest Hooverville's in the U.S. sprouted along the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri in 1930. In New York City’s Central Park, a Hooverville existed from 1931-33. There was even one in Washington, D.C. on the Anacostia flats south of the Capitol in the spring and summer of 1932.

The problems were similar to now. As today, during the Great Depression the Federal Government’s did not deal head on in terms of their response to the economic collapse since all of their Depression-era policies failed to alleviate unemployment and address the social crisis led to the creation of Hooverville’s. The real problem was the Federal Reserve banks and their practice of fractional banking.

Prior to 1913, there had only been two other times the Unites States had a federal reserve bank. The first central bank was created in 1791 amidst major dissent against such in the Congress and chartered for 20 years. Like the Federal Reserve Bank of today, it used its control of the currency to defraud the public and establish a legal form of usury. Its practice of fractional lending at a 10:1 rate (ten dollars of loans for each dollar they had on deposit) caused so much public outrage that the charter was not renewed and the bank ceased to exist in 1811.

The second central bank of the US came to fruition after the war of 1812. European and American bankers used this tumultuous time to influence Congress to charter the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. President Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 with the promise to end the national debt and eliminate the Second Bank of the United States and during his second term as President he withdrew all government funds from the bank and on January 8, 1835, paid off the national debt allowing the charter to end in 1836.

The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913 was designed “to provide for the establishment of Federal Reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes.” The tricky part was the “for other purposes,” which basically meant it could create money from nothing and collect interest on it.

The Federal Reserve Act, which was passed without discussion during the Christmas recess, transferred all the rights and profits from the creation of money from the citizens and the U.S. Government to private banks. Basically giving private banks the right to create money out of thin air and turn us regular folks into slaves of debt. This debt is the result of fractional banking. Fractional banking or fractional lending is the ability to create money from nothing, lend it to the government or someone else and charge interest.

It is clear that President Obama, his administration and the congress do not understand our problems as a nation and ergo do not see the negative role the Federal Reserve Bank and it fractional banking approaches have played in what we are experiencing now.

Historically we have seen banks deciding on their own to shut off the debt/money, citing the need to control inflation resulting in massive bankruptcies, unemployment and foreclosures. They singularly have the power to engender both prosperity and depression. All wealth that is created in America is eventually transferred to the central bank and becomes what we poor folks view as a process of consolidating the wealth. The basic math is that the FRB creates inflation, and then restricts credit and the market’s collapse while the rich get richer – just look out ours and across the pond in Europe.

When we as a nation did not have a central bank to manipulate the supply of money, the US experienced unprecedented growth for 60 or 70 years. Consequently in 1910 Senator Nelson Aldrich (originator of the Sixteenth Amendment - income tax), then Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, in collusion with representatives of the European central banks, devised a plan to pressure and “deceive Congress into enacting legislation that would covertly establish a private central bank.”

Obama and congress are in the pockets of the wealth oligarch of Wall Street. They have jobs and benefits. Their wages continue to increase while ours do not. They are not interested in how we are supposed to live and survive. All they want to do is allow the Federal Reserve Banks to print more money so we can sell the only thing we make – weapons. To grow our economy it is simple, end the Federal Reserve and bring production back to America. We must end fractional banking system. There was time when a person could walk into a bank and exchange a dollar for gold. We can’t do such any more. They President and congress will bailout banks to the tune of billions but not us. Soon there will be no middle class.

Thomas Jefferson said, "If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Sad thing is nothing will change because we too stupid to see this. Nothing that is until we get money out of politics in the form of the Koch Brothers, George Soros and warren Buffet and end the fractional banking practices that got us in this mess. But like I said it is against the interest of the wealthy, even those in politics from Obama to Ryan. They will be better served financially when America once again becomes a country of Hooverville’s.

America for Dummies

One thing you can say about us Negroes is that most of us care and know more about the 2-pac sex tape, the Michael Jackson voluntary manslaughter trial and the BET hip hop awards than events that actually have an impact on our present and future lives such as the European sovereign debt crisis.

Not to be sarcastic, but the economic crisis in Europe is tenfold more important and impactful on the lives of African Americans because it directly impact how much money we have in our pockets, more so even than the supposed jobs plan proposed by the president. Like our economy, the major participants in the European Union, mainly Germany, have implemented another temporary fix to stop the hemorrhaging via a new bailout package. We tried a bailout here under Bush and Obama, the second of which resulted in a loss of 2.5 million more jobs and more paper money added to the economy albeit liquidity was never at issue.

In theory, the goal is to calm markets and to isolate the problems of Greece from the rest of the EU and subsequently the rest of the world, most importantly the US. But this can never happen when you add Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and even France into the mix. The simple truth is no matter how much money stronger European nations throw onto the already massive debt, it will not help and result in more debt, like any pyramid scheme does.

Seeing the unrest in Greece, the demand for additional collateral from Finland and backroom deals that want bankers to take a large reduction of the value of their Greek bond holdings to reduce their national debt, what we may see in the next coming weeks may be more problems for global markets. It hard for at least me to see why hasn’t dumping all of this bailout money on the problem has not resulted in a drop in the credit rating for countries like France and Italy, especially when countries like Venezuela, who have 60 billion or more in surplus, have lower ratings than the aforementioned.

It is apparent that Greece will eventually default and Germany will be put in a position to protect its banks first and for the record, we do not know or at least I cannot discern how much loot French, Spanish and Italian banks have on hand to do the same let alone how much US exposure exist with our big insurance corporations and all. If this does happen, it would not be unreasonable for one to speculate bank failures in Europe leading to a global sovereign debt and banking crisis simply due to not knowing the value of all the varied derivatives and complex papers banks around the world hold.

And back to Germany, if rumors hold true and they reinstate the Mark, debt will continue to accrue because without the existence of a single EU bond, there is no mathematical way to support the massive debt in the EU’s struggling markets. We may see some evidence of such now for just this week we saw France and Belgium guarantee the financing of the troubled cross-border bank Dexia, as its shares plunged just on reports that it will be broken up.

I could go one for days but in simple terms several things are true. The people of the bailout giving nations from Germany to Finland do not want to bail out Greece and other struggling national economies in the union. Second, all that is being done is to the benefit of creditors and foreign investors and not to address the structural impediments at the root of the current crisis. Last, if a bank like Dexia cannot survive, which is the leading provider of local government financing in France, the it will be only a matter of time before other French banks, who currently buffer the crisis nations from the rest of the EU will become insolvent. Why, because the worsening of the European sovereign debt crisis and the tensions on the interbank market means that all of the world will have a clear picture of how troubled non-strategic assets weigh on EU banks as a whole regardless of what country they are located in.

I admit I am no economist, just a reader and a free thinker. Math is my tool and although I cannot say who is the rapper of the year, or who is brought out in the Jackson trial, I don’t need too because it does not and will not impact my life more than what I see occurring in Europe. Maybe someone should write a book for me and call it “America for Dummies” to help me out. Or better yet, I should write that book, for only a nation of dummies would pay more attention and be more knowledgeable of pop culture garbage that doesn’t have a real significance on their survival than event that do.

Six Supreme Court Cases African Americans Should Follow Closely

It is ironic, that after the death of Troy Davis, this upcoming Monday, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) returns to the bench to address many issues, most of which deal with the criminal justice system. This may the first time in a while such a docket has presented itself in which outcomes may serve to deal with inequalities in criminal law that impact African Americans disproportionately. Three cases in particular may have greater impact on African Americans than any other racial ethnic group in America.

The United States v. Jones: In this case, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, without securing a search warrant. The question is whether or not the police need a warrant to attach a tracking or GPS device to a car and track its movements over extended periods of time.

Florence V. Board of Freeholders: This case will examine whether a correctional facility violates the Fourth Amendment rights of arrestees charged with minor and non-indictable offenses by conducting strip searches and visual body cavity searches prior to being admitted to the general prison population. Albert Florence was arrested on a bench warrant from Essex County, New Jersey. The warrant charged Florence with the non-indictable offense of failure to pay a fine. Florence protested indicating that he had paid the fine and, after his arrest and detention, the charge was, in fact, dismissed. Florence was strip searched and subjected to a visual body cavity search upon his arrival at the Burlington County Jail, immediately after his arrest, and was strip searched and subjected to a visual body cavity search six days later upon his transfer to the Essex County Correctional Facility

Maples V. Thomas: Maples v. Thomas is an Alabama death penalty case. Cory R. Maples was a death row inmate who lost his chance to appeal a decision against him because his lawyers had missed a filling deadline. The two lawyers from the prestigious New York law firm who had agreed to represent him had quit some time before, without informing Mr. Maples. A clerk attempted to notify the lawyers of the court’s action, but the letters were returned unopened; Maples discovered that he had missed the deadline for appealing to the next level. The court will determine if the missed deadline due to the law firm and not the inmate should be suspended, when a representative of the court in the form of a clerk did nothing to inform other the court mail had be returned marked “return to sender.”

Perry V. New Hampshire: This case will deal with the question of what the Constitution has to say about the use of eyewitness evidence and due process protections against unreliable identification made under suggestive circumstances. Barion Perry is in prison for breaking into a car in 2008. A woman informed Nashua, N.H., police that she saw Perry from the window of her apartment taking things out of a parked car. She identified Perry at the scene but later could not pick him out of a photo lineup or describe him to police. Perry filed a motion to suppress the photo identification because it was "unnecessarily suggestive" that he was a criminal because he was in handcuffs. The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld his conviction.

Connick V. Thompson: In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case. He decided not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial and was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison of which 14 he was in isolation on death row. A month before his scheduled execution, a lab report was discovered proving his innocence that the prosecutor withheld during his trial. Withholding exculpatory evidence is a criminal act thus a reviewing court vacated both convictions, and Thompson was found not guilty in a retrial on the murder charge. The issue and question the court will address regards does imposing failure-to-train liability on a district attorney's office for a single Brady violation?

Missouri V. Frye: In this case, Missouri prosecutors offered Galin E. Frye two deals while seeking his conviction for driving while his license was revoked. However, Frye’s lawyer never told him about the offers. Frye pleaded guilty to a felony charge and was sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed, saying his lawyer should have told him about the previous deals. A Missouri appeals court agreed. Prosecutors contend that not knowing about the deals they offered doesn't mean that Frye didn't know what he was doing when he decided to plead guilty. The question will be whether or not a defendant who validly pleads guilty asserts a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel by alleging that, but for counsel's error in failing to communicate a plea offer; he would have pleaded guilty with more favorable terms?

Occupy Wallstreet: Marines are Coming to PROTECT the Protesters