Racial bias is an everyday reality for Black American shoppers. Cassi Pittman Claytor is studying how to end it.


mstone@businessinsider.com (Madeline Stone)
28/9/2020

© Provided by Business Insider A sign on a closed Sephora store during companywide racial bias training in June 2019. Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images

Cassi Pittman Claytor is an assistant professor of sociology at Case Western University whose research focuses on how racism plays out in many different aspects of Blacks' lives, including when they visit retail stores. 

She is working with Sephora to inform a national study the retailer is conducting about racial bias in store environments, pertaining to both customers and employees. The goal is for the research to be applied to all kinds of retailers. 

"There's the idea that it's a toll, but not everyone pays the same toll," Pittman Claytor said in a recent interview with Business Insider.

Back in April 2019, SZA said in a viral tweet that she was racially profiled at a Sephora store in Calabasas, California.

The music artist, who is Black, said a Sephora employee she identified as "Sandy" called security on her, to make sure she wasn't trying to steal anything from the store.

"We had a long talk. U have a blessed day Sandy," SZA tweeted.

Two months later, Sephora closed all of its US stores, distribution centers, and corporate offices for an hour of diversity training informed by experts on race.

Around the same time, the beauty retailer commissioned a national study on racial bias, in collaboration with Cassi Pittman Claytor, an assistant professor of sociology at Case Western Reserve University, and David Crockett, a marketing professor at the University of South Carolina.

Their research examines the entire process of buying a product, from the moment a consumer realizes they need to make a purchase to the moment they complete it, and how racism played a role in each phase.

"For example, the market might privilege white male consumers, and their experience is more pleasant or more favorable, more satisfactory, if they are perceived as the ideal or most favored," Pittman Claytor said in a recent interview with Business Insider. "Race can positively impact consumers, and it may negatively impact others."

The goal for the ongoing Sephora-commissioned study is to reach conclusions that could apply to consumer experiences no matter the retailer, helping businesses to reduce the possibility that racial bias would happen in stores.

Pittman Claytor said that racial bias would be nearly impossible to eliminate altogether, but that retailers can pinpoint strategies to make sure that all of their customers, no matter their race, can have a better experience.

Sephora once again closed its stores for racial-bias trainings in July. The two-hour trainings took place on Blackout Day, when Black people and other people of color were encouraged not to spend money except at Black-owned businesses.

Sephora was also the first retailer to publicly announce its support of the 15% Pledge, which asks businesses to devote 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. West Elm and Rent the Runway are among the companies who have since joined the movement.

Pittman Claytor said signing the pledge is a good first step, but it needs to be part of a broader strategy.

"A lot of companies can do a lot better," she said.

© Provided by Business Insider Cassi Pittman Claytor. Da'Shaunae Marisa for Business Insider

'Not everyone pays the same toll'

A retail store is unique in that it's a place where people of different races and statuses come into contact with each other. That mismatch means that shoppers tend to make snap judgments about others based on how they look and dress, Pittman Claytor said.

She said that Black consumers report experiences like not being greeted when they enter stores, receiving inferior service, and feeling that they are being associated with theft and that they are being watched by store workers.

On the other side of the equation, Black retail workers say they have been bullied or referred to in derogatory terms by customers.

"It's a pervasive problem," she said. "There's the idea that it's a toll, but not everyone pays the same toll."

Pittman Claytor said that in addition to the financial toll — leading Black people to often end up paying more for the same product, including cars — there's also an emotional one, "the stress and strain" that comes from being treated as if you were inferior "when you're just trying to spend your hard-earned money."

And during the time of the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately affected Black Americans, wearing a mask in public has complicated interactions further.

"People of color do a lot of work with their body language to convey that they belong, that they're not going to steal anything," Pittman Claytor said. "[A mask] effectively makes it more difficult to communicate with your smile ... It's often a tool we use to disarm people."

Racial bias also shows up in the types of products that are made and how they are advertised. In beauty, for example, there may be dozens of shades of beige makeup marketed but only two of brown.

"Questions about who the store is for need to begin at the corporate level," she said, adding that companies need to be getting insight and feedback from a diverse set of people.

© Carlo Allegri/Reuters People sit with shopping bags outside of Macy's Herald Square store in New York City. Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Black buying power is on the rise

Blacks' economic clout continues to grow in America. According to the most recent study on Black consumer habits by Nielsen, Black buying power has grown from $320 billion in 1990 to $1.3 trillion in 2018. It grew 114% from 2000 to 2018, compared to 89% growth in white buying power.

Pittman Claytor, who was named to Business Insider's list of the 100 People Transforming Business for 2020, examines how middle-class Blacks navigate historically white spaces in her new book, "Black Privilege." Her sociological research touches on topics like how Blacks navigate the corporate world, how they choose where to live, and why buying from Black-owned businesses is important to them.

She said that middle-class Blacks often experience racism more frequently than those of a lower socieconomic status because they're more likely to be only one of a few in their position.

"Unlike whites, no matter how high blacks climb, they continue to confront societal racial hierarchies that place blacks at the bottom, preventing them from capitalizing and cashing in on all the benefits that their credentials and class status should afford them," she writes in her book. 

Read the original article on Business Insider

Trump 2016 campaign 'targeted 3.5m black Americans to deter them from voting'


Dan Sabbagh THE GAURDIAN 28/9/2020

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump during a 2016 debate. The Trump campaign’s goal was to dissuade black Americans from backing Hillary Clinton by targeting them with ‘dark adverts’ on their Facebook feeds.

Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election campaign has been accused of actively seeking to deter 3.5 million black Americans in battleground states from voting by deliberately targeting them with negative Hillary Clinton ads on Facebook.


The secret effort concentrated on 16 swing states, several narrowly won by Trump after the black Democrat vote collapsed.

The claims have come from an investigation by Channel 4 News, which was leaked a copy of a vast election database it says was used by the Trump campaign in 2016.

Comprising the records of 198 million Americans, and containing details about their domestic and economic status acquired from market research firms, the investigation claimed voters were segmented into eight categories.

One was marked “deterrence”. Those placed in the special category – voters thought likely to vote for Clinton or not at all – were disproportionately black.

According to the investigation, the Trump campaign’s goal was to dissuade them from backing the Democrat entirely, by targeting them with “dark adverts” on their Facebook feeds, which heavily attacked Clinton and, in some cases, argued she lacked sympathy with African Americans.

The effort is said to have been devised in part by Cambridge Analytica, the notorious election consultant that ceased trading last year following revelations that it used dirty tricks to help win elections around the world and had gained unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles.

In Michigan, a state that Trump won by 10,000 votes, 15% of voters are black. But they represented 33% of the special deterrence category in the secret database, meaning black voters were apparently disproportionately targeted by anti-Clinton ads.

In Wisconsin, where the Republicans won by 30,000, 5.4% of voters are black, but 17% of the deterrence group. According the Channel 4, that amounted to more than a third of black voters in the state overall, all placed in the group to be sent anti-Clinton material on their Facebook feeds.

Attacks ads that were used by Trump’s digital campaign included one known as the “super-predator” commercial, featuring a video clip of controversial remarks made by Clinton in 1996, which the Republicans claimed referred to African Americans.

Arguing that it was necessary “to have an organised effort against gangs”, and their members Clinton said: “They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators – no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.”

The Democrat apologised for using those words shortly after being confronted by Black Lives Matter activists about them in February 2016, but the language was picked up by Trump during the campaign and heavily recycled online.

Another attack ad reportedly came from a political action committee also run by Cambridge Analytica. It features a young black woman who appears to be a Clinton supporter abandoning her script to say: “I just don’t believe what I’m saying.”

When reminded that she is an actor, she replies that she is “not that good” of an actor

Jamal Watkins, the vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said it was shocking and troubling that there was a covert attempt to suppress the black vote in 2016.

“So, we use data – similar to voter file data – but it’s to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don’t use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it’s a shift from the notion of democracy,” Watkins told Channel 4.

It is estimated that 2 million black voters across the US who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Hillary Clinton. In Wisconsin, Trump’s vote matched Mitt Romney’s in 2012, but Clinton lost because her vote collapsed. The Democrat polled 230,000 votes fewer than Obama.

Key to the Trump victory was putting off black voters in cities like Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In one city ward, where 80% of its 1,440 voters were black, almost half or 44% of the ward was marked as for deterrence, a total of 636 people, 90% of whom were black.

Many other factors accounted for Clinton’s defeat, including legislation that was accused of suppressing the black vote.

Again, in Wisconsin, the Republican-run state has introduced measures requiring citizens to produce valid voter identification, which it was argued disproportionately affected poor and black voters.

The Trump campaign spent $44m (£34m) on Facebook advertising and generated 6m adverts overall. But the passage of time has meant that only a handful of the attack ads used by the Trump campaign have been recorded, and Facebook will not say how many or which ads were used at the time.

The company said that “since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today”. It added that it now has “rules prohibiting voter suppression” and was “running the largest voter information campaign in American history”.

The Trump campaign, the Republican national committee and the White House all declined to comment.

A senior official in the the Trump campaign has previously denied any targeted campaigns against individual groups.

Mexican women demanding legalization of abortion clash with police

28/9/2020

© Reuters/CARLOS JASSO Abortion rights campaigners clash with police in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Women charged police lines and threw Molotov cocktails at officers in Mexico City on Monday during protests demanding the legalization of abortion in the majority Roman Catholic country.

The protesters, clad in the green bandanas that have become the symbol of the pro-choice movement in Latin America, gathered in Mexico's capital to mark International Safe Abortion Day, which is celebrated each year on Sept. 28.

© Reuters/CARLOS JASSO Abortion rights campaigners clash with police in Mexico City

Police, many of them female officers, responded by spraying plumes of tear gas at the women, some of whom wielded hammers, and threw bottles and paint.

At least one officer was briefly engulfed in flames after being hit by a Molotov cocktail, before colleagues doused the fire with an extinguisher, television images showed.

Abortion is illegal in Mexico outside the capital city and the southern state of Oaxaca, which legalized the medical procedure last year. In the rest of Mexico, abortion is banned except under certain circumstances, such as rape.

© Reuters/CARLOS JASSO Abortion rights campaigners clash with police in Mexico City

Abortion law has been receiving renewed attention after the death in the United States of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a pioneering women’s rights advocate, which has cast doubt over the future of legal abortion there.

© Reuters/CARLOS JASSO Abortion rights campaigners clash with police in Mexico City

(Reporting by Carlos Jasso in Mexico City; Writing by Laura Gottesdiener; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Matthew Lewis)  

© Reuters/CARLOS JASSO Abortion rights campaigners clash with police in Mexico City

Minimal risk to wild salmon from viruses on farmed B.C. salmon: Fisheries Department

© Provided by The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — The Department of Fisheries and Oceans says nine pathogens from farmed salmon in British Columbia's Discovery Islands pose a minimal risk to wild salmon, based on its scientific assessments.


It said Monday the department will consult with seven First Nations on the islands, which are near Campbell River, in deciding whether to renew the licences of area fish farms before they expire in December.

Meetings with the First Nations, which have raised concerns about three salmon farms, are expected to begin in October.

Jay Parsons, the department's director of aquaculture, said the risk of the viruses transferring from farmed to wild stocks in the Fraser River is less than one per cent.

The federal government has been conducting a series of assessments based on a recommendation from an inquiry into dwindling salmon stocks in the Fraser River.

Inquiry commissioner Bruce Cohen said in his final report in 2012 that salmon farms along the sockeye migration route in the Discovery Islands could potentially introduce exotic diseases and aggravate endemic disease that could affect sockeye.

He recommended that the Fisheries Department put a freeze on net-pen salmon farm production on the islands if it could not confidently say by Thursday that the risk of serious harm to wild stocks is minimal.

Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan said a promise by the Liberal party before the 2019 election to transition from open-net salmon to another system of salmon farming by 2025 is in the works and the studies on the nine pathogens are part of that process.

However, she did not commit to whether a new system would be in place by 2025 beyond developing a plan for it.

Jordan said four weeks of consultation will be done with the seven First Nations in the Discovery Islands.

"These particular farms may not be a good fit in this location for the First Nations communities, so we want to make sure that we consult with them to see what it is that they see as the best path forward," she said.

Conservation groups including Living Oceans and the Watershed Watch Salmon Society criticized the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for not doing an assessment of sea lice. That suggests the department did not fully fulfil the recommendation in the Cohen report, even after eight years, the Watershed Watch Salmon Society said in a statement.

Jordan said the department has made changes based on the available science and aims to increase salmon stocks while restoring more habitat.

"There are a number of things that are impacting the wild Pacific salmon stock," she said, adding that includes climate change. "There is no one silver bullet that's going to deal with the challenges that we're seeing."

Chief Clint Williams of the Tl'amin First Nation, one of the seven that the Fisheries Department will be consulting, said he has not heard about any meetings with federal officials.

Williams said that as part of a joint fisheries committee with the department, the Tla'amin would like more information on a regular basis to learn why salmon stocks have been shrinking to the point that no fish could be saved over the winter for the past three years.

"If we're trying to manage this resource together, then I think it needs to really appear and feel that way and be moving in that direction," he said from Powell River.

"I think when they release their science, they need to have it viewed through the First Nations' lens as well."

The BC Salmon Farmers Association said the findings from the assessments show that scientific research supports the way the industry operates.

"Working closely and openly with Indigenous Peoples is how salmon farmers in B.C. are working to create a shared future of economic opportunity and environmental stewardship," it said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020.

Camille Bains, The Canadian Press

Trudeau urges largest countries in the world to support UN biodiversity plan

© Provided by The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is calling on countries with the largest land masses to do more to protect the biodiversity of their land and water.


Trudeau made that call on Monday at a special session of the United Nations via video conference, on the sidelines of a virtual General Assembly meeting.

Trudeau was taking part in the Leaders Event for Nature and People that also included the leaders of Costa Rica and Norway.

The prime minister was pledging Canada’s support for a UN initiative that aims to protect 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030.

But Canada is the only country in the top-10 largest countries by land mass that has joined the initiative, Trudeau said.

"Every country will find it difficult to protect 30 per cent of their land and protect biodiversity. So, it’s not about who is doing better," the prime minister said.

"In terms of sheer acreage of the world, we need to get those other nine largest countries in the top 10 to do their part and step up as well."

Canada will be working with Indigenous Peoples as necessary partners because they "understand how important it is to be good stewards of these lands and these waters that sustain us," Trudeau said.

One Indigenous leader welcomed Trudeau’s statement and said it could also help Canada’s ongoing efforts with reconciliation.

"Respecting this leadership will also advance reconciliation and build a more equitable and sustainable future. Much of the recent progress in conserving lands — including forests and wetlands that store massive amounts of carbon — has come from Indigenous Nations," said Frank Brown, a member of the Heiltsuk Nation and senior leader with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, in a statement.

"Now, by placing Indigenous-led conservation at the heart of its approach to protecting both nature and climate, Canada can lead the world in promoting a new model of ethical conservation — one rooted in respect, responsibility, and reconciliation."

Trudeau also said the government will move forward with its plans to plant two billion trees, ban many single-use plastics and protect wetlands, saying he wants "Canadians once again to connect to their nature."

The initiative is known as the "high ambition coalition," and it was started late last year by Costa Rica and France.

The government said in a statement that Canada is "uniquely positioned" to take part because it has the second-largest land mass in the word, one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, and the longest coastline in the world. Taken together, Canada's natural features play a critical role in fighting climate change, it said.

"Our forests, grasslands, and peatlands absorb enormous amounts of carbon pollution and are our best ally in protecting our climate," the statement said.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a statement that expanding protected areas is "critical not just for stopping the loss of nature and biodiversity but also to fighting climate change and helping prevent future pandemics."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020.

Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press

COMMENTARY: Canadian women are ‘disillusioned and disengaged’ with COVID-19 political response


globalnewsdigital
53 mins ago

© Adrian Wyld/CP Gov. Gen. Julie Payette and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wait during the throne speech in the Senate chamber in Ottawa on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020.

The pageantry of last week’s almost surreal throne speech, and the subsequent televised address by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, may have left Canada’s political classes with much to dissect and discuss.

Yet Canada’s women and moms were simply left rolling their eyes at a big theme in those speeches — that the pandemic has hit women worse than men, and most of all, those women with children.

READ MORE: Trudeau dangles national childcare system in throne speech with few hints of fiscal restraint

This is a disconnect that is causing women in general, and moms in particular, to feel disengaged and disillusioned. Many have little faith in our political leaders to make things better for them in any practical way, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And it shows up in the numbers.

Ipsos recently asked Canadians which federal party leaders best fit the bill on a series of traits. Women were consistently more likely than men to say that none of our leaders could be described as best at anything, whether managing the COVID-19 crisis, steering the ship during tough economic times or taking action against climate change.

Most damning of all, nearly four in 10 women (37 per cent), including 38 per cent of moms, say that no major federal party leader’s values best represent their own (just 27 per cent of men feel the same).

READ MORE: Liberals, Tories in dead heat ahead of throne speech but neither in majority territory, Ipsos poll says

Think about that for a moment: despite real progress made in female representation at the highest levels of elected office, many women simply don’t see themselves reflected in the leadership of this country.

What they do see is another acute health-care crisis just around the corner. Women are significantly more pragmatic than men about a second wave of COVID-19: eight in 10 (81 per cent) expect a second wave to hit their community in the fall, compared to 71 per cent of men.

Moms, who are best placed to see what’s happening in schools, are even more likely to expect things to get worse: 84 per cent expect their community to be affected this fall.

READ MORE: 75% of Canadians approve of another coronavirus shutdown if second wave hits, Ipsos says

Women also see a good deal of personal risk, at a time when they are expected more than ever to be the glue that keeps their families together. Ipsos polling has shown for a long time that women tend to worry more about health issues than men, and that continues to be the case as this second wave gathers pace: 72 per cent of women (and 71 per cent of moms) are personally concerned they will catch the virus, compared to just over half of men (55 per cent).

It follows, then, that women are also more supportive of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. If a second wave hits — and Prime Minister Trudeau confirmed last week that it is undeniably underway — women (80 per cent) are significantly more likely than men (71 per cent) to support shutting down most non-essential businesses quickly like we did in the spring.

Eight in 10 moms agree – particularly if doing so means avoiding the closure of schools again. Why shouldn’t they, when so many have so much at stake if we end up with a spiralling COVID-19 situation like the one playing out south of the border?

There are systemic reasons behind these sentiments.

COVID-19 is a bigger threat to women because of our increased chance of exposure: we are more likely to be front-line health-care workers, and more likely to be living in long-term care homes — one of the worst places to be during a pandemic, as we all saw to our horror in the spring.

Women’s financial health and housing security are more at risk because we are more likely to be in the precarious employment situations that led to more than three million jobs being lost around the country in the first two months of the pandemic alone.

At home, women are disproportionately at risk of gender-based violence from their partners, a situation exacerbated by punitive lockdown conditions.

When kids enter the picture, moms are the ones who tend to shoulder the child-care responsibilities, including decisions about education. From keeping them busy when schools closed early to debating the safety of sending them back in the fall, it’s been a tall order for the average mom, and the new school year is barely a month old.

In his address on Sept. 23, the prime minister said that “by creating a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system, we’ll ensure that kids have access to care, and that no parent, especially no mother, will have to put their career on hold.”

That’s a measure that will no doubt be welcomed by those who need it most.

Despite it, most Canadian women are still feeling stuck at the crossroads, unsure which way to turn.

Mitra Thompson is a senior account manager at Ipsos

Brazil prosecutors bring graft charges against Bolsonaro's son: report

© Reuters/ADRIANO MACHADO Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro is seen after an inauguration ceremony of the new Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) President at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia

RIO DE JANEIRO/BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian state prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro on Monday brought charges against the president's son, Flavio Bolsonaro, for alleged embezzlement, laundering and running a criminal organization, domestic newspaper O Globo reported.

The indictments ratchet up pressure in a long-running probe into the son of right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro. The younger Bolsonaro, 39, is a federal senator who has been under investigation for accusations that he orchestrated a corruption scheme in which employees would kick back part of their salary to him while he was serving in the Rio de Janeiro state legislature.

Flavio Bolsonaro did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his cabinet office.

O Globo, one of Brazil's leading dailies, cited a more than 300-page indictment detailing the charges.

The Rio prosecutors office, however, said in a statement that no charges had yet been filed against Flavio.

"The institution regrets and repudiates the disclosure of news related to sealed investigations," it said.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Jake Spring; Editing by Matthew Lewis)


Video: Former Clerk To Ruth Bader Ginsburg Recalls Late Supreme Court Justice's Fight For Equality (CBS New York)

WE SHOULD TOO
Barbados to become a republic: What it means for the Crown, the Commonwealth and Canada


Crystal Goomansingh

© (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File) FILE - In this Wednesday, May 9, 2012 file photo, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sits next to Prince Philip in the House of Lords as she waits to read the Queen's Speech to lawmakers in London.

It was a historic throne speech.

On Sept. 16, Her Excellency Gov. Gen. Dame Sandra Mason told the world Barbados was removing Queen Elizabeth as its head of state.

"Having obtained independence half a century ago, our country can be in no doubt about its capacity for self-governance," Mason said.

The small island nation in the Caribbean was one of the oldest English colonies in the West Indies dating back to the 17th century, however it had also been claimed by the Spaniards and Portuguese.

Arawaks and Caribs were the original inhabitants.

In 1966 Barbados gained independence from the United Kingdom but kept the Queen as head of state.

Read more: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle call on Commonwealth to acknowledge its past: ‘Right those wrongs’

The country was shaped by its history of exploited people.

During the so-called Sugar Revolution, an estimated 387,000 Africans were captured and shipped to the island against their will to work on plantations.

As Barbados moves to become a fully sovereign country, Prime Minister Mia Mottley says it will allow young boys and girls to not only dream about one day becoming the head of state but now they will be able to make it a reality.

"We respect our heritage but who we are as a people today, (we) are proud Barbadians who are not better than anyone else but as good as anyone else," Mottley said.

Read more: Succession to British throne: Quebec professors ask Supreme Court to hear appeal

Other Caribbean nations have also left the monarchy to become republics including Trinidad and Tobago but the last country to remove the Queen as head of state was Mauritius in 1992.

With Barbados out, that leaves 15 Commonwealth countries which have the Queen as their monarch, including the United Kingdom.

Nathan Tidridge is the vice-president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada.

"I don't think others will be jumping and following Barbados. I think it's going to be a much more nuanced discussion, if there is a discussion at all," said Tidridge. "And I don't see Canada having that sort of discussion. I mean, no prime minister ever wants to open up the Constitution and try and create a new constitutional arrangement for Canada."

Read more: How Canada could break up with the monarchy

The Constitution sets a balance between the provinces, territories and the federal government. And to do away with the monarchy, experts say, is to do away with that infrastructure.

"You would have to get the provinces to agree to give up on the Crown and ask P.E.I., who is an equal partner to Ontario in our federation, if they'll ever give up the Crown. So as an institution for provincial independence, I don't ever see them wanting to get rid of it," said Tidridge.

Then there are there the historic treaties between the Crown and 364 First Nations.

The government of Canada currently recognizes 70 of these treaties signed between 1701 and 1923 and another 25 modern treaties which form agreements with 97 Indigenous communities.

If Canada was to remove the Crown, new agreements would be needed.

Read more: Supreme Court will not hear appeal challenging British royal succession law

"Canadians need to understand that it's intrinsic to understanding the very foundations of the country. That, to me, is the most important," said Tidridge.

Information on the website for ​Citizens for a Canadian Republic acknowledges there would be challenges when it comes to amending the Constitution but encourages the discussion to be had regardless.

It offers suggestions to move the country away from the Queen.

One idea shared on the website focuses on citizenship ceremonies saying, "New Canadians should not be subjected to swearing an oath to a monarch who not only isn’t a Canadian citizen herself, but also, in some cases, represents many aspects of what prospective citizens are trying to leave behind. They’re coming to Canada to embrace a way of life that emphasizes equality and the rights of the individual, not peerage, royalty and classism."

Mottley says in Barbados much of the work has already been done as the country has two constitutional reviews and those will be used by the transition team.

"We've been having this discussion for more than 20 years," said Mottley.

The president's role will be similar to the head of state with an elected prime minister leading the government.

The transition process is set to be completed by November 2021, in time for Barbados 55th anniversary of independence.

 

Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden releases new ad targeting Trump’s alleged tax avoidance

*Within 24 hours of news that President Trump allegedly paid less taxes than regular working folk on millions of dollars in income, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign has responded with a new ad.

The video posted on Twitter compares the amount of taxes that regular folk like teachers, firefighters and nurses typically pay compared to Trump’s alleged tax bill.

“Teachers paid $7,239. Firefighters paid $5,283. Nurses paid $10,216. Donald Trump paid $750,” the 30-second spot points out. As of Monday morning at 9 a.m. ET, the video had more than 2.2 million views on Twitter.

There’s no word from the vice president’s campaign if they plan to put money behind the spot to run on digital or TV.

Watch below or view here on Twitter.

Trump’s Seventy-Three-Million-Dollar Tax Refund Is the Biggest Outrage of All

By John Cassidy

September 28, 2020

To avoid paying taxes, the President has exploited his many business failures, including losses of more than three hundred million dollars from his fifteen golf courses since 2000.Photograph by David Moir / Reuters

After doggedly pursuing the story of Donald Trump’s taxes (or non-taxes) for years, the New York Times has hit the motherlode with its latest investigation, which revealed that the self-proclaimed billionaire paid a grand total of seven hundred and fifty dollars in federal income taxes in 2016, when he was elected President, and the same sum in 2017, his first year in the White House. In ten of the fifteen years before 2016, he paid no federal income taxes at all. If you haven’t yet read the lengthy Times report, I won’t spoil it by spilling all the juicy bits. Instead, I’ll focus on one that is arguably the most Trumpian of all.

Because of previous reporting, including a couple of significant Times pieces in October, 2016, and May, 2019, as well as contributions by Trump biographers, such as David Cay Johnston, we’ve known for a long time that the President is a serial tax avoider. Between 1984 and 2004, he used actual losses, loss write-downs from previous years, and other accounting dodges to pay virtually nothing in federal income taxes. From 2005 to 2007, this latest Times scoop reveals, he did finally pay about seventy million dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. But then, in 2010, he demanded a full refund for those tax payments. And the I.R.S. acceded to his request: it paid him $72.9 million, including interest. This 2010 refund seems to be at the center of an auditing dispute between Trump and the tax authorities that has dragged on for almost a decade. It also appears to be the money that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was referring to in his 2019 testimony to Congress, when he recalled Trump showing him a huge check from the U.S. Treasury and remarked that Trump “could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back.”

How could a person who doesn’t pay taxes get a big refund? As always with Trump, the details of his financial shenanigans are a bit complicated, but the basic outline is fairly easy to grasp. He hates paying taxes. To avoid doing it, he will resort to virtually anything—and that includes exploiting his many business failures.

In the late nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties, Trump’s businesses, some of which he had greatly overpaid for when he bought them, racked up more than a billion dollars in losses, and four of them ended up filing for bankruptcy: three casinos in Atlantic City and his Plaza Hotel, in New York. In 1995, as he emerged from this wreckage, he declared a tax loss of more than nine hundred million dollars, which the I.R.S. allowed him to use in subsequent years as an offset against any profits his businesses made. So even in years when the Trump Organization did well, his loss carryovers reduced his tax bill to zero.

According to the new Times investigation, this basic pattern of heavy losses in parts of the Trump empire offsetting substantial earnings in other parts of it has continued for the past decade and a half. Since 2000, for example, Trump’s fifteen golf courses have together generated losses of $315.6 million, even as other Trump enterprises—including Trump Tower, overseas licensing deals, and an investment in two office towers operated by Vornado Realty Trust—have generated substantial revenues. In 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, Trump paid no federal income taxes at all. In 2016 and 2017 combined, he contributed enough to the U.S. Treasury for it to buy a new love seat from Pottery Barn.

The only notable exceptions to this pattern of minimal tax payments were the years 2005, 2006, and 2007, when “The Apprentice,” which Trump co-produced with NBC, was doing very well, and the big accounting loss that he had carried over from the nineteen-nineties had run out. “With no prior-year losses left to reduce his taxable income, he paid substantial federal income taxes for the first time in his life: a total of $70.1 million,” the Times report says. This money didn’t stay in the coffers of the U.S. government for very long.

In 2010, Trump declared to the I.R.S. that, during 2008 and 2009, his businesses had lost another $1.4 billion. Exploiting a little-noticed clause in a piece of legislation that Barack Obama had signed into law as part of the efforts to stimulate the economy after the Great Recession, Trump claimed that this huge loss entitled him to a full refund of the income taxes he had paid in 2005, 2006, and 2007. The I.R.S. quickly paid out Trump’s claim pending an audit. The refund “would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,733,184 in interest,” the Times reports. “He also received $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which often piggyback on federal filings.”

Trump has never been short on chutzpah. At some point, though, someone in the auditing department of the I.R.S. seems to have decided that this latest maneuver was over the line. Under tax law, refunds of more than two million dollars require approval from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, which also got involved. In 2014, an agreement between Trump and the I.R.S. appeared to have been reached, “but the audit resumed and grew to include Mr. Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013,” the Times report says. “In the spring of 2016, with Mr. Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the [congressional] committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.”

It isn’t clear why the dispute has dragged on for so long, but the Times highlights one intriguing possibility. In 2009, Trump finally gave up ownership of his financially stricken casinos in Atlantic City, which had filed for bankruptcy again. In the same year, his tax returns included “a declaration of more than $700 million in business losses that he had not been allowed to use in prior years,” the Times says. Proprietors who abandon loss-making businesses are allowed to claim some of the losses they incurred for tax purposes, but they have to give up the businesses entirely and not receive anything of value in return. Trump got something. When Trump Entertainment Resorts was restructured and placed under new ownership, he received five per cent of the stock in the successor company. “The materials reviewed by the Times do not make clear whether Mr. Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment,” the report says. “If it did, that 5 percent could place his entire refund in question.”

Including the interest that has accumulated since 2010, it could cost Trump about a hundred million dollars to repay the I.R.S., the Times calculates. If he were a genuine billionaire, he could raise this sum without very much trouble. But given the evidence that many of his businesses, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., seem to make substantial losses, could he even afford to pay out a hundred million dollars?

Trump’s businesses “reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40 percent from five years earlier,” the Times report says. In theory, he could take out another bank loan to pay a big tax bill. During the past decade, though, he’s already incurred heavy borrowings. He “is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years,” the Times notes. “Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”

Should Trump lose the election, which opinion polls suggest is a more likely outcome, he will have to deal with the I.R.S. and his bank creditors as a private citizen. Could this, perhaps, be one reason that he won’t commit to accepting the election result and leaving the White House without protest if it goes against him?

Whatever happens on November 3rd, the Times story confirms that Trump has been playing the I.R.S. for decades. It also shows that, in the U.S. tax framework, there is one set of rules for the majority and another for the very rich. A confidence trickster from the get-go, Trump exploited this setup to denude the U.S. Treasury, enrich himself, and make a mockery of the entire system. If anything good comes out of the whole thing, it’s that the arguments for meaningful reforms of the tax laws and tougher enforcement are now stronger than ever. Of course, Trump will have to be voted out of office for change to happen.

John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He also writes a column about politics, economics, and more for newyorker.com.