This column appears in the February 11 – 18 edition of the Hartford News…
Community Party Radio on So-Metro Radio
Commentary on urban issues from a grassroots perspective. First and third Tuesday of each month. NEW TIME 8:00 PM Eastern Time 7:00 PM Central 5:00 PM Pacific. Tune in! Replays the following Wednesday, same time. Next show February 16. http://sometroradio.com/ Check out our No Sellout blog for info on the rest of our lineup, including False Choice: the Bipartisan Attack on the Working Class, the Poor and Communities of Color. https://hendu39.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/community-party-media-3/
Meagan Hockaday Act
Meagan Hockaday was murdered by Oxnard, California police officer Roger Garcia in front of her children on March 28, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/meaganmatters/timeline Garcia has not been charged. Coming in 2016: The Community Party’s Meagan Hockaday Act will include enhanced criminal penalties for excessive use of force by the police against mentally ill people and individuals in crisis, in addition to whenever children are present. Our legislation will implement a new international approach to policing, based on a successful model in the United Kingdom and Canada that emphasizes de-escalation and treatment. Public Health Committee co-chair Rep. Matt Ritter is collaborating with us on this bill. Stay tuned for updates. Meagan Matters! https://hendu39.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/meagan-matters-police-murder-of-black-women-ignored-by-corporate-media-activists/ Check out CP’s 2016 legislative package at our No Sellout blog. https://hendu39.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/community-party-2016-legislative-package/
State Budget
Another year, another corporatist budget from Gov. Dannel Malloy. The formula remains the same: Malloy is calling for across the board cuts to human services, and threatening layoffs if he doesn’t get more concessions from state employees (I’m a state worker). This is after he promised not to go after more concessions when he was running for re-election. Malloy also wants to cut funding for public schools, while putting more money into charter schools.
Meanwhile corporations and the rich remain protected. I’ll have more to say about Malloy’s budget in the coming weeks. Don’t fall for his Town Hall Propaganda Tour. Malloy will tell everybody why they’re wrong, then tell his media lackeys that he proved he can take the heat. Malloy gets his marching orders from his corporate masters.
Race for the White House: The Republicans
“The world is a business.” ~ Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty), chairman of the fictional Communications Corporation of America, in the 1976 movie Network. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9XeyBd_IuA
A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a concise response to a CNN reporter who asked why she backs Trump’s candidacy. The woman said that Barack Obama, who has gone out of his way to do nothing for Black people during his presidency, is “pro-Black”. She went on to say that “white people founded this country, now we’re being pushed aside”. Blacks make 60 cents for every dollar whites make, and possess 10 cents of net wealth for every dollar whites have. The Black unemployment rate is at Depression era levels. Poverty, gun violence, addiction, mass incarceration, underfunded public schools and disparate health problems plague low income communities of color. Yet this woman thinks she’s the one who’s being “pushed aside”. Trump is playing on white fear, as he runs on a platform of white nationalism. Trump supporters yap about Trump refusing to be ‘politically correct’, which is coded language meaning that he openly expresses racist views.
While Trump bashes Mexicans and Muslims, orders Black protestors to be assaulted at his events and does everything but burn a cross in his quest to Make America White Again, Ted Cruz, Trump’s nemesis, is just as dangerous. Cruz, who pulled an upset of Trump in the Iowa caucuses but was defeated by Trump in the New Hampshire GOP primary, promotes the same extremist ideology as Trump, just much more quietly (with the aid of the corporate media). Right Wing Watch, a website that closely follows the movements and associations of conservative politicians, media personalities and assorted wackos, has kept track of Cruz’s allies. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/ While Trump rides a wave of racism, Brian Tashman reported that Cruz is using virulent homophobia as the fuel for his campaign.
“Ted Cruz is already boasting of the endorsements he has received from activists who have linked homosexuality to Ebola, violence, terrorism and train derailments, so it came as no surprise to see the Texas senator’s presidential campaign release a statement yesterday touting his latest endorser: Paul Blair. ‘Pastor Blair has been a leader for life and marriage in Oklahoma and beyond,’ Ted Cruz said. ‘I am honored to have the support of Pastor Blair, who has been a friend of natural marriage and an advocate for unborn life. He set out to walk in the footsteps of the colonial pastors who fought for ‘liberty from tyranny,’ and he has done so. I’m grateful for Pastor Blair’s willingness to be a ‘watchman on the wall.’ Blair, the pastor who leads the group Reclaiming America for Christ, is one of the most vitriolic gay rights opponents in the country. He has likened his anti-gay activism to the work of slavery abolitionists and anti-Nazi dissidents, while painting the gay rights movement as a Satanic, communist conspiracy to bring down the U.S. and replace it with a world government.”
Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla reported on another Cruz supporter, Mike Bickle. “Bickle is the founder of the International House of Prayer, a controversial missionary for engaging an organization in Kansas City, Missouri, that some critics have labeled a cult and which is best known for engaging in nonstop 24-hour-a-day prayer in preparation for the End Times and for its anti-gay activism in Uganda. Bickle, unsurprisingly is a demon-fighting radical who believes that gay marriage is ‘rooted in the depths of hell,’ that homosexuality ‘opens the door to the demonic realm’ and that Oprah Winfrey is a forerunner of the Antichrist. Back in 2004, Bickle declared that as the End Times approach, all Jews will be given a chance to accept Jesus, warning that if they do not accept ‘the grace’ of Christ, God will then ‘raise up a hunter’ who will kill two-thirds of them ‘and the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler’.”
Cruz, not wanting undocumented immigrants to feel left out, told New Hampshire voters that he will cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities like New Haven. Undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than the rich. http://www.care2.com/causes/undocumented-immigrants-pay-more-in-taxes-than-wealthy.html
Predictably, Trump is receiving support from white supremacists. Aaron Morrison of International Business Times provided details. “William Daniel Johnson, (is) a white nationalist activist and author who regularly appears in media espousing nationalist ideas. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based organization that monitors hate groups, said that Johnson claimed racial mixing and diversity in the U.S. has led to social and cultural decline. Johnson gave $250 to the Donald J. Trump for President Inc. organization in September, according to the Republican candidate’s campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission, Media Matters reported. The contribution is listed as coming from white nationalist organizations run by Johnson. As of Monday, the latest campaign report didn’t show that Trump had refunded the contribution.”
Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire were inundated with robocalls from white supremacists urging them to vote for Trump. Johnson is featured on the calls. Anti-immigrant Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced his endorsement of Trump. Two Black women,
Diamond and Silk aka Step and Fetch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVd5HFIk_uU have become an internet sensation as they express their support for Trump. Trump’s choice of these idiots to be his token Blacks is telling: they act like they walked straight out of an episode of What’s Happening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apv9Kgkf-z8 During the New Hampshire Republican debate Fuhrer Trump defended the “really fantastic” police, who killed 1,134 people last year. Young Black males were nine times more likely to be killed by police than other Americans.
Sexism continues to be another issue for Trump. A female former Trump campaign staffer alleges that she was a victim of discrimination.
“NEW YORK (Reuters) — A 26-year-old former campaign staffer for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has accused the campaign of sex discrimination, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
Elizabeth Mae Davidson, who worked as an organizer in Iowa for the New York businessman, filed a complaint with the Davenport, Iowa, Civil Rights Commission, claiming female staffers were paid less than male staffers, according to the report.
She claimed her requests to plan and speak at Trump’s campaign rallies were ignored while her male peers were allowed to do so, it said.
Davidson also claimed that Trump had addressed her and a young female volunteer with a remark that referred to the women’s appearances, saying ‘you guys could do a lot of damage,’ the Times report said.
According to the Times, Trump, in an interview on Sunday, denied having made the remark to the two women. He did not address the other two allegations, the Times said, and he said he did not remember Davidson but had been told she had done ‘a terrible job’ while working on the campaign.”
Cruz knocked Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ single payer (Medicare for all) health care plan during a rally in Iowa and at the New Hampshire debate. He went on about how the government would decide who would be covered. Yeah, that’s much worse than having a profit driven corporation decide. Insurance companies make money by NOT covering people! Health insurance companies have employees whose job is to find a reason to deny claims. The United States is ranked 37th in quality of health care by the World Health Organization. France, which uses a single payer system, is ranked #1. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have free health care.
Former health insurance industry executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter talked to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman about the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare, and the ruthless tactics of health insurance companies including Cigna, his former employer.
“It’s kind of ironic, but the one thing that the Republicans and conservatives are saying they want to repeal is the provision that we all have to buy coverage from private insurance companies. They’re citing or they’re saying that that’s unconstitutional. That’s also all for show, because it is just an effort to try to, in a sense, turn people away from the idea of reform. It sounds complicated, but it’s part of the insurance companies’ strategy. They want to have more Republicans in Congress because they thrive in an environment in which Republicans are controlling one house, or both, in Congress, or state houses and state governorships.
Actually, the idea of a mandate is something that Republicans in the past have embraced. And it’s been — it was a central of tenet of the insurance companies’ ideas for reform. And they — it was their biggest need in this legislation, the other being the — making sure that the public option was not included in the legislation. But they want this to go forward with that provision. They just don’t like some of the consumer protections in the bill.
What we have now is a system in which insurance companies, if they don’t want to pay your claims and you’ve bought your insurance through what’s called the individual market, if you get sick and you have medical claims coming in, they can go back and cancel your policy. And they’ll return your premiums, but they will refuse to pay for any of your medical care. There was a woman who testified before Congress about this practice. It’s called ‘rescission.’ And she was in the midst of treatment for breast cancer when she got notice that her insurance was being covered, and she was going to be left to have to pay for all of her cancer care. And the reason was because she presumably had forgotten to note on her application for coverage that she had been treated for acne in the recent past. And they felt that that was justification enough that she had not disclosed everything about her medical care. And so they used that.
People in the insurance companies were paid and have been paid bonuses for being able to find reasons to cancel people’s coverage. The legislation will outlaw that, and it already has, unless someone — unless someone actually intentionally lies in their application, which points out something else about our healthcare system: people are so desperate to get coverage, if they have been sick, that often they will lie. They will either leave something out or make some intentional misrepresentation, because otherwise they can’t get care. That doesn’t happen in any other developed world. It’s insane that we have a system in which people are afraid to tell the truth because they’re afraid they won’t get coverage.”
Trump, Cruz and the Republicans use bigotry and religion to maintain the power of the corporate state. Their god is money. Unfortunately for the working class and the poor, corporations also control the Democratic Party. We need a third party movement.
Resources
Information Clearing House – It’s the Corporate State, Stupid:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm
2016 presidential candidates campaign finance profiles:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/
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