California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

O Say Can You See That Francis Scott Key Was a Racist?

by John Lawrence

When Francis Scott Key wrote the "National Anthem," he was a slave holding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family who spent his life in court fighting against abolitionists. The third stanza of his song written aboard a British ship mentions "slaves and hirelings," a reference to the fact that escaped and emancipated slaves fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. The British promised refuge to any enslaved Black people who escaped their enslavers, raising fears among White Americans of a large-scale revolt. The final provocation was that men who escaped their bonds of slavery were welcome to join the British Corps of Colonial Marines in exchange for land after their service. As many as 4,000 people, mostly from Virginia and Maryland, escaped. They were later given land in in Trinidad and Tobago to resettle with their families. Their descendants, called “Merikins,” still live there today.

Who else fought on the side of the British and likely prevented Canada from being annexed to the US? Indians. They were later abandoned by the British, and, with the death of Tecumseh, the Indians' hopes for a confederation were largely dashed. Hero of the war, Andrew Jackson, later as President presided over the "Indian removal" as Indians were forced off their traditional lands onto the Trail of Tears. At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

Oppressed people of the young nation fought in a war that was fought over British "impressment", a practice of the British who captured American seamen and made them work on British ships. This practice was actually ended before the war started, but due to the fact that transatlantic communications took weeks, the war was started before word was received that impressment had been ended.

The third stanza of The Star Spangled Banner contains the words

                                                        "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
                                                        No refuge could save the hireling and slave
                                                        From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
                                                        And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
                                                        O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Many rewrite the last line as "the land of the oppressed and the home of the slave." When he wrote the poem that would, in 1931, become the national anthem and proclaim our nation “the land of the free,” Key not only profited from slaves, he harbored racist conceptions of American citizenship and human potential. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”

So was Colin Kaepernick right? Were Tommie Smith and John Carlos right when they raised their fists on the victory stand in the 1968 Olympics during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner? Did they even know about Key's racist past at that point? Recently, Gwen Berry, a contender for a medal at the Summer Olympics this year in Tokyo, has already raised her fist on a medal podium at a competition, and at the selection meet for the U.S. Olympic track team she turned away as the national anthem was played, drawing worldwide attention. When you consider Francis Scott Key's life of virulent racism, it's not hard to understand why.

The Smithsonian magazine reported:

Ironically, while Key was composing the line "O'er the land of the free," it is likely that black slaves were trying to reach British ships in Baltimore Harbor. They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Additionally, Key used his office as the District Attorney for the City of Washington from 1833 to 1840 to defend slavery, attacking the abolitionist movement in several high-profile cases.

In the mid-1830s, the movement was gaining momentum and with it came increased violence, particularly from pro-slavery mobs attacking free blacks and white abolitionists, and other methods to silence the growing cries for abolition. In a House of Representatives and United States Senate inundated with petitions from abolitionists calling for the ending or restriction of slavery, pro-slavery Congressmen looked for a way to suppress the voices of abolitionists.

In the same year, shortly after a race riot in Washington, D.C. when an angry white mob set upon a well-known free black restaurant owner, Key likewise sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists he believed were riling things up in the city. Key prosecuted a New York doctor living in Georgetown for possessing abolitionist pamphlets.

In the resulting case, U.S. v. Reuben Crandall, Key made national headlines by asking whether the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment. Key hoped to silence abolitionists, who, he charged, wished to “associate and amalgamate with the negro.”

Though Crandall’s offense was nothing more than possessing abolitionist literature, Key felt that abolitionists’ free speech rights were so dangerous that he sought, unsuccessfully, to have Crandall hanged.

During the Andrew Jackson administration, Key served as the district attorney for Washington, D.C., where he spent much of his time shoring up enslavers’ power. He strictly enforced slave laws and prosecuted abolitionists who passed out pamphlets mocking his jurisdiction as the “land of the free, home of the oppressed.” So is it fitting and proper to stand during the National Anthem when it's composer was a virulent racist? The Star Spangled Banner, although written in 1814 didn't become the National Anthem till 1931, over 100 years later primarily due to the efforts of the Daughters of the Confederacy. “The elevation of the banner from popular song to official national anthem was a neo-Confederate political victory, and it was celebrated as such,” according to Jefferson Morley, author of “Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835. “When supporters threw a victory parade in Baltimore in June 1931, the march was led by a color guard hoisting the Confederate flag.”

American history needs to be reexamined in the light of the atrocities perpetrated on African Americans and native American peoples. We can honor the lofty rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, but we must remember at the same time that its author, Thomas Jefferson, was the owner of 175 slaves and the father of some of them.  The composer who wrote the inspirational words of the Star Spangle Banner also spent his life as a lawyer defending white supremacy and fighting against the abolition of slavery.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Represent a Diasporized Ku Klu Klan

by John Lawrence

America First was also a credo of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization. This assertion rated true by Snopes. Now Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are embarking on an "America First" tour of the USA. It seems that the US can not get over its racist past. Republicans are basing their party on lies like that Trump won the election. Maybe the biggest lie was the one Thomas Jefferson wrote when he penned the preamble to the Constitution: All men are created equal. That was patently a lie because Jefferson himself was a slave owner as was George Washington and many of the other Founding Fathers.Obviously, Native Americans were not created equal. Neither were African Americans. So why did Jefferson create the first BIG LIE which Trump and the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene are only perpetuating. On the other hand the sentiments embodied in Jefferson's preamble can be seen as aspirational and that is the tack the Democratic party is taking at the present time. Let's make this a country where all men, women and children are in fact created equal.

The Ku Klux Klan has become normalized in the Republican party which pretends to exemplify our Anglo Saxon heritage. So let's just go back to the era of King George, why don't we? Republicans could change their name to the Tory party. The term Tory or "Loyalist" was used in the American Revolution for those who remained loyal to the British Crown. Since early in the 18th century, Tory had described those upholding the right of the King over Parliament. During the war of independence, particularly after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, this use was extended to cover anyone who remained loyal to the British Crown. The US has already become a neo-feudal society with great wealth concentrated in the upper one percent, and great poverty concentrated among black and brown people. "America First" is just a slogan for perpetuating the idea that those who are superior by dint of their having acquired great wealth should be the nobiity and the lesser among us should just be content with their lot of a few crumbs from the table. They surely shouldn't be given de facto equal rights despite the fact that the Constitution says that they were created equal.

A diaspora is a spreading out of a people or a philosophy. The Ku Klux Klan used to be concentrated mainly in the South. The Republican party is still based there, but the philosophy has metastasized to include white supremacists in the heartland as well. "Republican" is a more respectable name for a philosophy that bears an eerie resemblance to that of the Ku Klux Klan. "America First: really means "white people first." Let's just keep the example that white people were the ones that first officiated over the construction of a so-called democracy, one that denied women, African Americans and Native Americans the vote. The only reason they let in eastern and southern  Europeans was that they needed their labor power. Asians were discriminated against and even put in concentration camps during the Second World War. What has been consistent about America is the fact that white people have held the reins of power ever since the country began. African Americans, who have been here as long as white people have, were first enslaved and then subjected to Jim Crow laws. Native Americans were herded onto reservations.

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land using black slaves as labor power, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

So get the picture? All men, let alone women, were not created equal in fact despite Jefferson's words which he didn't really believe himself. At best they were aspirational. Well how long do some people have to wait for aspirations to become realized? Joe Biden's administration is trying to correct some of these historical wrongs which go back to the BIG LIE that was embodied in the US Constitution with the flowery words of Thomas Jefferson. Today Trump supporters like Marjorrie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz with their America First tour are only trying to perpetuate the BIG LIES that go back to the beginning of the country. They didn't start with Trump. He only exemplified them, and now Republicans are doing their best to carry on that American tradition.

Off the Top of My Head

The Trouble With Belief Systems

by John Lawrence, March 28, 2021

Belief systems lead to cults. A cult can be defined as a group of people who all fervently believe the same things although there is no objective proof for any of their beliefs. People who believe Trump won the election are members of a cult. People who believe their religion is the only correct and true religion and everyone who does not accept their belief system is going to Hell are members of a cult. A lot of wars have been fought because members of one cult dehumanized members of another cult. The European wars of the 16th century were fought because Catholics and Protestants could not accept that there were people who did not have the same cult beliefs as they did. The 30 years war was a war between Protestants and Catholics. The Crusades were wars between Christians and Muslims. People who hold belief systems fervently cannot accept the fact that there are other people in the world who don't hold their same belief system.

There are some things that are unknowable, at least at this point in time, and they form fertile ground for some one or one to develop a belief system around. Charlatans and manipulators realize that there is money to be made by claiming to assuage peoples' anxieties. One of the biggest unknowables is what happens to us after we die. Another is is there a God or, if there is, is He a judgmental or a loving God? The Founding Fathers of the US, cognizant of the European wars of religion, were mainly Deists. They believed that God created the universe, but was not involved with it after that, the so-called "watchmaker God." Founders who fall into the category of Christian Deists include Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was more influenced by the reason-centred Enlightenment than either Adams or Washington. Jefferson also created his own version of the Bible. This Bible was focused only on Jesus, but none of his mystical works. It didn’t include major scenes like the resurrection or ascension to heaven, or miracles like turning water into wine or walking on water. Instead, Jefferson’s Bible focused on Jesus as a man of morals, a teacher whose truths were expressed without the help of miracles or the supernatural powers of God.

Because of our existential anxiety caused by not knowing what's going to happen to us after death or even in this life, belief systems have grown up and attracted adherents. Fervent belief systems are really cults as they exclude and dehumanize people with alternative beliefs. There is no objective proof, but people are willing to kill those who aren't members of their cult. This is from Britannica:

"Deists argued that human experience and rationality—rather than religious dogma and mystery—determine the validity of human beliefs. In his widely read The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, the principal American exponent of Deism, called Christianity “a fable.” Paine, the protégé of Benjamin Franklin, denied “that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by…speech,…language, or…vision.” Postulating a distant deity whom he called “Nature’s God” (a term also used in the Declaration of Independence), Paine declared in a “profession of faith”: I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.''"

The problem with the Trump "true believers" is that they have been sold a bill of goods by those who shamelessly have made money off of feeding this cult a bunch of lies. These people have been conditioned by means of their religion to have a certain set of beliefs which they are willing to fight over. These beliefs coincide with a way of life predicated on an American version of history and an American narrative in which America is a shining city on a hill and a beacon of veracity and truth to the rest of the world. They believe in an America also which is fundamentally white like it's always been in their minds, but that's not the reality any more. American history is not all that noble. Indians were robbed of their lands and Africans were brought here and used as slaves. After they were freed, supposedly, Jim Crow laws made sure that they remained second class citizens. So there is  clash of belief systems. There are those who think the great and noble sentiments expressed by our Founding Fathers should not apply to everyone equally and those who point out the hypocrisy of not doing so.

The problem really is with belief systems which turn into cults. The way forward is really the one expressed by Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?" With deference to Mission Impossible: your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make the world a better place for this and future generations without regard to belief systems or ideology. Your vaunted way of life, as perceived to have existed in the past, is irrelevant.

Off the Top of My Head

Beyond Meat and Cow Farts

by John Lawrence, February 24, 2021

About 19% of the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted into the atmosphere each year comes from agriculture. There are roughly a billion cattle in the world raised for both meat and dairy. The 2 billion tons of GHGs they burp and fart account for 4 percent of global emissions each year. Also pig poop accounts for half of all poop related emissions with cows making up the other half. Industrial cow and pig farms create ponds full of poop which then sometimes break through to streams and rivers. In an article, "A million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms", we find the following:

"Fifty yards from Miller’s family graveyard is a massive open-air cesspool storing the pigs’ waste – a stagnant pool containing their feces, urine, blood and other bodily fluids – often referred to as a “lagoon”, one of about 3,300 lagoons across the state. When the cesspool reaches its capacity, its contents are liquefied and sprayed into a field across the street from Miller’s house via a large, sprinkler-like apparatus. The sprayer releases a mist of waste on to the field, which, according to court documents, is about 200ft from Miller’s home at its closest rotation."

In addition to the environmental, health and stench problems, pig shit lagoons are contributing major amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. “Air pollutants from the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation,” Wing and fellow UNC researcher Jill Johnston wrote in a 2014 study. They also found that the state’s industrial hog operations disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. That pattern, they concluded, “is generally recognized as environmental racism”.

The Guardian article continued: "North Carolina’s pork production industry has shifted dramatically since the mid-80s. Today’s industrial farms, often called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, raise pigs and other livestock in confinement until they are ready for slaughter. The hogs generally live in cramped quarters; Michelle B Nowlin, supervising attorney of Duke’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, estimates they typically get seven or eight square feet of space each." Chickens and cattle suffer the same fate of having to spend their meager existence in CAFOs.

As more people world wide become middle class, they want to eat more meat. This is not only a problem for the animals who suffer the most, but it is a problem for the GHGs that animal agriculture causes that contribute to global warming. But the nutritional aspects of eating animals are equally inefficient. A pig eats 3 times as many calories as we get when we eat it. Cows require six calories of feed for every calorie of beef that we eat. In China and other developing countries meat eating is becoming much more popular because of a growing and more affluent middle class.

There are several alternatives already on the market: plant based hamburgers called Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers. These burgers are a pretty good approximation of the real thing, but there are even more products being developed that don't only mimic the taste of meat. They actually are meat except they are created without having to pass calories through a cow and then slaughtering the cow. They use the same metabolic processes that a cow does to deposit meat on its bones. This meat though is created in a lab and is already on the market in Singapore according to The Guardian:

"Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

"The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.

"Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild."

If the world's consumption of meat can be converted to lab grown meat that looks, taste, and feels like the real thing, then we can eliminate the whole process of passing calories through a cow or pig or chicken first and still get the same end result. That alone will save about 10 billion tons of GHGs per year.

Off the Top of My Head

Where Will the Republican Party Go From Here?

by John Lawrence

The Republican party is having an identity crisis. Will it be dedicated to the adulation of Donald Trump or will it be based on conservative principles? What are conservative principles? Is the US a Republic or a Democracy or an Autocracy? This whole situation comes about because of the shifting demographics of the US. Historically, the US has been based on rule by white European Americans who have been able to keep minorities including chiefly African Americans in check by various means including slavery, Jim Crow laws, domestic terrorism, red lining, exclusion from education opportunities, even unemployment which has been used by the Federal Reserve to control inflation. That is changing because now there are more educated minorities including immigrants from all over the world gaining positions of political and economic power. 216 companies on the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children.

Is it any wonder then that poor and middle class whites want to tamp down immigration and keep black people in their place which they have always successfully been able to do until now. A lot of Trump supporters are effectively saying to hell with democracy if it means a multicultural society in which we have to tolerate multiple religions and multiple ethnicities and multiple shades of skin so it's not a question for them of having a democracy or a republic or any kind of society based on some version of popular rule. They want white European American rule like they've always had. There is also the added impetus that most of the once good paying manufacturing jobs have gone elsewhere which leads to even more insularity. So Trump supporters are the real conservatives in the respect that they want to conserve a way of life in which white people and European Americans have all the advantages. They abhor a democracy in which their lifestyle, their religion and their prerogatives are not paramount.

The Mitch McConnell conservatives overlap with the Trump conservatives, but the former stand for the privileges not of the white majority necessarily but of the white elite, of the white wealthy. They are even liberal enough to let wealthy people of different colors into their club while assuring less fortunate Americans that they too, if they work hard enough, may one day gain privileged positions of power and wealth. Basically, they represent rich people and abhor the white rabble. The problem is that this branch of the Republican party is increasingly irrelevant to the problems that America and the world faces. They stand for a strong defense which has morphed into endless wars which have gone nowhere and have only made matters worse in areas of the world in which the US has inserted itself. They stand for a bloated military-industrial-intelligence complex which has proven its incompetence in that it wasn't even able to predict an insurrection at the US Capitol, much less even defend against it once the attack was underway. They have proven to be focused on the wrong problems despite having been lavished with trillion dollar budgets.

What else do "principled" conservatives stand for? Low taxes but modern economic theory has proven that government spending need not be predicated on or limited by tax receipts. They stand for maximizing the private sector and minimizing the public sector at a time when dealing with climate change and even traditional infrastructure rebuilding demands the opposite. They stand for aiding and abetting the rich which has driven economic inequality to new heights. So what would be the role of a revamped and principled Republican party? Probably just to be a Democratic party lite or a party that criticizes Democratic programs. But that wouldn't assuage the interests of most power hungry politicians nor would it excite many members of their base who demand an entertaining leader who is focused by means of dog whistle diplomacy on white power.

The Trump party is similar to the Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party (at that time meaning descendants of colonists or settlers, rather than Indigenous Americans) before 1855 and the American Party after 1855. It was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s, originally starting as a secret society. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement. So naturally they would resent an Irish Catholic President even though now there have been two of them. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name. Qanon anyone? Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. Sure enough sounds like the Trump base to me.

The question is will the US become a full fledged democracy and live up to its vaunted principles finally even though it traditionally never has or will it revert to some version of white European American rule by electing another entertaining autocrat. That may not be Trump who has been deplatformed from Twitter, his chief propaganda tool, and faces mounting legal challenges, but there are others waiting in the wings who will offer bells and whistles instead of sound programs that really benefit the American people as a whole. But do Americans want government based on democratic principles or neverending campaign rallies with flags, banners and chants? As my Dad used to say, we shall see what we shall see.

Off the Top of My Head

A Job Guarantee Would Win Over Trump Voters and Also Address Black Lives Matter

by John Lawrence, February 14, 2021

Joe Biden can win over disgruntled Trump voters with a job guarantee. There has been a lot of research indicating that, if government were the Employer of Last Resort (ELR) at say a wage of $15.00 an hour, this would save money on unemployment as well as setting a minimum wage. It's also the minimum wage called for in Biden's COVID relief bill. Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary says:

"[G]ive Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

"White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

"A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his last letter requesting support for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”:

“It was obdurate government callousness to misery that first stoked the flames of rage and frustration. With unemployment a scourge in Negro ghettoes, the government still tinkers with half-hearted measures, refuses still to become employer of last resort. It asks the business community to solve the problems as though its past failures qualified it for success.”

It's clear that an ELT program would solve many problems not the least of which is wooing Trump voters to the Democratic party. Trump's appeal to them was partly that they had been left behind because jobs had been moved to China and Mexico and he was going to bring good paying manufacturing jobs back to America, something he never did or had a clue how to do. The ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer adding jobs during a recession and eliminating them during an expansion when jobs will shift back to the private sector. All private employers would have to do is pay a wage slightly higher than the program wage of the ELR program which would effectively set the minimum wage. It has been thought that a certain level of unemployment was necessary to fight inflation, but that's not necessarily the case as jobs in the ELR program would not compete with jobs in the private sector. The program wage would be a floor below which wages could not drop.

The so-called "Phillips Curve" maintained that there was a trade-off between employment and inflation, that to achieve lower inflation you had to increase unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines full employment as an economy in which the unemployment rate equals the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), no cyclical unemployment exists, and GDP is at its [full] potential. The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. So government economists have been willing to trade off the misery of approximately 16 million unemployed people in order to achieve stable money. Those 16 million are mainly composed of African Americans. However, Modern Monetary Theory claims that this is not necessary. There are other policy tools to fight inflation. Taxes, for example, mainly targeted on the rich. Other countries such as Argentine and India have implemented ELR programs. The money spent would eliminate the need for food stamps, unemployment insurance and other government programs necessary to deal with poverty and homelessness. Anyone wanting a job could have one, and these jobs would be in areas like child and elder care where there is a need for additional workers.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of American Consciousness

by John Lawrence, January17, 2021

Is it any wonder that a culture that celebrates the military and identifies patriotism with the American flag has generated a movement to over throw American constitutional government? Most of these people had their mindsets processed through the military establishment or through the military-industrial complex where the processing is just as military oriented. This combined with a perception that the US is becoming a multicultural, instead of a white oriented, society is enough to set them off. Also the state of American mental health is at a low ebb not least caused by the pandemic and the anger generated by the necessity of closing down small businesses or even with the perceived loss of freedom from a mandate to wear masks! The people chanting "USA. USA" and carrying multitudinous flags are the type of people whose notion of patriotism has to do with America being the Number One nation of the world, is identified with American power backed by the world's largest military. These are not people who served in the Peace Corps.

For example the Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia organization. The group describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath that all military and police take in order to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group as "heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists the group's founder as a known extremist and describes his announced plans to create localized militia units as "frightening". According to the SPLC, the group espouses a number of conspiracy and legal theories associated with the sovereign citizen movement and the white supremacist posse comitatus movement.

The bloated US military establishment is funded at a level that is ten times greater than the world's next largest militaries combined. In 2019, the United States spent $732 billion on national defense, which was more than the next 10 countries combined. So it's likely that the mindsets of the Capitol rioters have been processed through an American establishment that encourages their particular notion of patriotism which deemphasizes the idea of democracy and emphasizes xenophobia. It aspires to return to those days when the US was a white dominated country and rues the day that the demographics have changed toward a multicultural one. The American military establishment itself is an anachronism. When you add in the money spent on the US intelligence agencies and the nuclear program which is located in the Department of Energy, not in the Defense Department, the US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its defense establishment and yet it was impotent to prevent a mob of hooligans from taking over the US citadel of democracy - the US Capitol. Clearly our priorities are out of whack. Any ordinary 5th grader could have seen that a Trump rally numbering tens of thousands on the same day that Pence was supposed to legitimate the election results, after lies had been perpetrated ad infinitum that the results were not legitimate, could have been a disaster which it turned out to be.

Democracy cannot prevail without an educated citizenry yet the question must be asked: what kind of education? “If we needed a reminder of the fragility of our democracy, we got one,” said Andrew Delbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation, which promotes liberal arts education. “In the long run, the only force that can save democracy is an educated citizenry -- citizens, that is, who know enough to resist the kind of lies and incitements spewed out by the current president and his enablers.” But the US educational system does not emphasize an education in the humanities. It emphasizes the learning of technical knowledge and skills with an eye on innovation, entrepreneurship and potential profit. You too can invent some product and make a billion dollars. High school graduates are confronted with basically two choices: they can gain a college education while going deeply into debt or they can go into the military where they can get a free college education and even a pension after 5 years of service plus numerous other benefits. Which makes more sense? Young people are funneled into the military which is a command and control structure based on the most powerful leader at the top. Their mindsets are then prepared to want the same thing in civilian society. Trump gave it to them.

Clearly the people who carried numerous flags and chanted "USA. USA." are also of the mindset to chant "We're Number One. We're Number One." They are not the kind of people that want to live in a world where they cooperate with other people, perhaps of a different background or ethnicity, or a world based on US cooperation with other nations. They want to be part of a world in which the US dominates other nations, and the most powerful among us dominate and lead civilian life, just as the most powerful leaders are elevated to the highest ranks in the military and exert unquestioned command over those lower on the totem pole. This is the American mindset that the rioters demonstrate. This is a military consciousness based on American exceptionalism and white supremacy. They can't stand the fact that black and brown people are ascending into positions of power in American government and the world, that there has been a demographic shift in American society that does not favor them and that they will have to live in a more progressive society.

7 Ways 2020 Exposed America

by Robert Reich
Monday, January 4, 2021

If America learns nothing else from these dark times, here are 7 lessons it should take away from 2020:

1. Workers keep America going, not billionaires.

American workers have been forced to put their lives on the line to provide essential services even as their employers failed to provide them with adequate protective gear, hazard pay, or notice of when COVID had infected their workplaces. Meanwhile, America’s 651 billionaires – whose net worth has grown by over $1 trillion since the start of the pandemic – retreated to their mansions, yachts and estates.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sheltered in his 165,000-acre West Texas ranch while Amazon’s warehouse workers toiled in close proximity to each other, often without adequate masks, gloves, or sanitizers. The company offered but then soon scrapped a $2 an hour hazard pay increase for warehouse workers, even as Bezos’ wealth jumped by a staggering $70 billion since March, putting his estimated net worth at roughly $186 billion as the year came to an end.

2. Systemic racism is literally killing Black and Latino Americans.

Black and Latino Americans account for almost 40 percent of coronavirus deaths so far, despite comprising less than a quarter of the population. As they’ve borne the brunt of this pandemic, they’ve been forced to fight for their humanity in another regard — taking to the streets across the country to protest decades of unjust police killings of their community members, only to be met with more police violence.

Among Native American communities, the coronavirus figures are even more horrifying. The Navajo Nation has had a higher per-capita infection rate than any state but can’t adequately care for the sick, thanks to years of federal underfunding and neglect of its healthcare system.

Decades of segregated housing, pollution, lack of access to medical care, and poverty have left communities of color vulnerable to the worst of this virus, and the worst of America.

3. If we can afford to bail out corporations and Wall Street, we sure as hell can afford to help people.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to insist we can’t “afford” $2,000 COVID survival checks for Americans. But the latest coronavirus relief legislation doled out over $220 billion to powerful business interests that could instead have been used to help struggling working families.

Another way of looking at it: The total cost of providing those $2,000 checks ($465 billion) is less than half the amount America’s 651 billionaires added to their wealth during the pandemic ($1 trillion).

4. Health care must be made a right in America.

Even before the pandemic, an estimated 28 million Americans lacked health insurance. After it struck, an additional 15 million lost employer-provided coverage because they lost their jobs. Without insurance, a hospital stay to treat COVID-19 cost as much as $73,000. Remember this the next time you hear pundits saying Medicare for All is too radical.

5. Our social safety nets are woefully broken.

No other advanced nation was as unprepared for the pandemic as was the United States. Our unemployment insurance system is over 80 years old, designed for a different America. We’re one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t provide all workers some form of paid sick leave.

Other industrialized nations kept their unemployment rates low by guaranteeing paychecks during the pandemic. But Americans who filed for unemployment benefits often got nothing or received them weeks or months late. Under new legislation they get just $300 a week of extra benefits to tide them over.

6. The Electoral College must be abolished

Biden won 7 million more popular votes than Trump. But Biden’s margin in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin totaled just 45,000. Had Trump won these three states instead, he would have gained 37 more electoral votes, tying Biden in the electoral college. Under the Constitution, this would have pushed the election to the House of Representatives, with each state delegation getting just one vote. Even though Democrats have a majority in the House, more state delegations have Republican majorities. Trump would have been reelected.

The gap between the popular and electoral college vote continues to widen. The Electoral College is an increasingly dangerous anachronism.

7. Government matters.

For decades, conservatives have told us that government is the problem and that we should let the free market run its course. Rubbish. If nothing else, 2020 has shown that the unfettered free market won’t save us. After 40 years of Reaganism, it’s never been clearer: Government is in fact necessary to protect the public.  

It’s tragic that it took a pandemic, near-record unemployment, millions of people taking to the streets, and a near-calamitous election for many to grasp how broken, racist, and backwards our system really is. Biggest lesson of all: It must be fixed.   

Off the Top of My Head

Expand Habitat for Humanity in Honor of Jimmy Carter

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

The best way to build wealth among poor people is to expand a program that gets them into a house. The debt industry profits off of poor people whether it's Payday lenders, student loan debt, car loan debt, credit card debt or mortgage debt. The debt industry, aka the banking industry, profits off of poor people's debt. That's why the poor need to build wealth which will also close the economic inequality gap. Home ownership is the main way the middle class builds wealth which is then intergenerationally transferable. Habitat says "In fiscal year 2019, we helped more than 7 million people, and an additional 2.3 million gained the potential to improve their housing conditions through training and advocacy." It's not clear how many new houses that 7 million figure represents because they also help people by doing housing improvements. Looking at Habitat's Form 990 reveals some interesting data. They have annual revenues of approximately $300 million. Revenues less expenses for FY 2018 was about $13 million. Without doing an exhaustive analysis of this Form 990, it would seem that $13 million is a paltry amount of money to build new homes if in fact it all went to building new homes. It is to be noted that the CEO made about $400,000. They also seem to spend an enormous amount on advertising and fundraising.

A government program based on the Habitat model could magnify the number of new affordable homes built per year and could be combined with AmeriCorps which is already working with Habitat. Government service building affordable homes should be an alternative to military service with comparable benefits. One drawback of Habitat is that it does not serve homeless or low income families who can't afford a modest mortgage. So a government program based on the Habitat model should look at improving on the Habitat model. Another thing is that Habitat claims to be a "Christian organization." Does that mean that religiously nonChristian families are not eligible? A government program should not have connections to a particular religion but should be open to people of all or no religions. It should be nondenominational. The people who eventually own the homes have to put in a certain amount of "sweat equity." This is good because it makes the homes more affordable. A program based on FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps could employ youths in public service for 2 years building houses in return for free college education and other benefits. These homes need to be solarized and be built in such a way as to be non-emitting of greenhouse gasses.

The best way to co-opt Trump voters is to offer them economic opportunities. Promised economic opportunities (promised but not delivered) are the thing that pushed Trump over the top in 2016 in the rust belt states. A program of building houses ala Habitat not only would help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, but would tend to placate poor whites who are mainly Trump voters. That's why programs helping the poor can't be labeled "Black Lives Matter" programs. They can't be just for black people although black people would disproportionately benefit. To design a program only for black people would further alienate Trump voters. Bringing this country together, as Joe Biden has professed he wants to do, means that all programs to help people must of necessity be color blind. Another benefit is that people who contribute to public service in AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps will tend to vote Democratic because they will have seen how Democratic programs have benefited not only themselves but other people as well.

Many people who join the military do so for the benefits and because they have no better prospects after high school. Military service for 5 years gains them a free college education plus many other generous benefits, even a pension. They also get brainwashed to vote Republican. Even those working in the military-industrial complex are brainwashed to vote Republican. As a college graduate the jobs available to me were mainly in the military-industrial complex. Once there I was pressured to vote Republican because it was believed that Republicans would expand funding for the military and hence the military-industrial complex. It was thought that a Democratic administration would cut funding for the military-industrial complex and we could be RIFd (Reduction in Force). Expanding programs in the peace industry should have the opposite effect. I left the military-industrial complex many years ago fortunately, and my economic future doesn't depend on future funding it. Many others are not in the same position.

As the nation transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, it's important that workers in the fossil fuel industry have a path to transition to new jobs. The same holds true in transitioning workers in the military-industrial complex to the peace-industrial complex. It's also important to give young people the possibility of serving their country in a way that contributes to peace and economic stability with comparable benefits instead of serving in the military. The peace industry (like building houses here and abroad) needs to become more important than the war industry. The issue of global warming in particular means that all nations of the world must cooperate and foster a spirit of cooperation while putting their antagonisms aside. Peace, renewable energy, economic development for poor and middle class people need to replace a power structure that fosters political antagonism among the nations of the world. Jimmy Carter not only wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity in his nineties, but also put solar panels on the roof of the White House (which Ronald Reagan took down). If we had had Jimmy Carter for a second term and Al Gore instead of George W Bush (with his fossil fuel loving vice President, Dick Cheney), we would be further along the path toward replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and further along the path of dealing with global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

Robots Will Not Replace Us

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden wants to bring the country together. Here are 3 programs guaranteed to do it. 1) Guarantee that every worker who loses his job in the fossil fuel industry, as the energy industry transitions to renewables, is guaranteed a job in the renewable energy industry including free retraining if necessary. 2) Free apprenticeship programs for electricians, plumbers and other occupations for which no robot can replace them. Let's change that white supremacist chant to "Robots will not replace us." 3) A huge build-up of a Habitat for Black Humanity program (open to participants of all races) in honor of Jimmy Carter who famously wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.

Middle class Joe knows that the main way the middle class has built up wealth is through home ownership - equity in a home. This equity also facilitates the intergenerational transfer of wealth which the black community is notorious in lacking. Blacks are less likely to receive wealth transfers from parents than whites, and conversely, they’re under more pressure to transfer their own limited wealth to parents or relatives than whites. So whereas each white generation starts from somewhere above zero, each black generation is more likely to start from zero. A greater proportion of white adult children receive financial support from their parents than blacks in all three categories of parental support. The share of whites receiving financial support from their parents is 34% for higher education, 12% for home ownership, and 26% for other purposes. The comparable figures for blacks are 14%, 2%, and 19%, respectively.

Trump supporters in the Rust Belt could rest assured that their means of livelihood will not be taken away from them as the country transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. Biden has assured workers that he will not ban fracking. Then it's a logical next step to guarantee those workers a job as the country transitions away from fracking. Leave it in the ground should be our motto, but just because we do that, there is no necessity for workers to suffer. Biden has said that he will create millions of new jobs in infrastructure and green industries. Then let's guarantee that the first workers to get those jobs will be old fossil fuel workers. Let's transition the workers as well as the source of energy. This will go a long way towards placating Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and Texas and also adding supporters to the Democratic party which more represents the interests of workers than does the Republican party.

Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement should embrace the Black Home Ownership Matters movement. When we talk about creating wealth, it's not in the context of Lamborghinis or yachts or multimillion dollar houses. We're talking about wealth on the order of the price of a middle class house. Wealth distributed among a large number of people not just ridiculous amounts of wealth of the 1% and billionaire class. Reducing economic inequality starts with an ambitious program to create wealth among the 99%. Debt reduction and forgiveness is also important especially for student loan debtors. Joe Biden can redeem himself here. Formerly known as the Senator from MBNA (MBNA is now a subsidiary of Bank of America), Biden voted for a provision to take bankruptcy protection away from student loan debtors. The senator was a key supporter of a bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

Joe Biden will resuscitate America's reputation in the rest of the world as he had a wealth of experience in dealing with foreign policy for 8 years in the Obama administration. He has to be careful both in how he treats black citizens and how he treats white former Trump supporters in order to build a coalition for the Democratic party. If he does it right, the Democratic party will predominate for a generation or more. The US dodged the bullet of fascism by voting Trump out of office. The US was heading down the rabbit hole of fascism and a second 4 years of a Trump administration would have sealed the deal. By the way including a public option in Obamacare would practically be a guarantee of a transition to Medicare for All. Many of Joe Biden's positions amount to the same as Bernie Sander's positions but in a less stark and abrupt way and for more care placed in the transition process. Let's hope that Democrats take control of the Senate with the two yet to be resolved Senate races in Georgia. Working across the aisles is nice, but Republicans have never backed away from using raw power to get their way. Democrats should follow that example also.

Racism is Profitable

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Since the first colonizers arrived in the United States to this very moment, wealthy elites have used the tools of theft, exclusion, and exploitation to expand their wealth and power at the detriment of Black, Latinx, Indigenous people, and marginalized people of color.It all boils down to this simple truth: Racism is profitable.

The profitability of racism sparks a vicious cycle called the Oppression Economy:Elite institutions are motivated to keep suppressing the economic vitality of people of color. That economic oppression in turn hinders their political power, and that political oppression kneecaps their ability to change the system. 

This cycle plays out in every aspect of our economy and is particularly apparent in mass incarceration.The criminalization of people of color is a multibillion-dollar industry: In 2017 alone, mass incarceration cost $182 billion; trapping mostly low-income Black and Latinx people in a cycle of economic and political disenfranchisement. 

If we follow the money, we find that some of America’s largest banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, have all extended millions of dollars in credit lines to for-profit prison operators like GEO Group and CoreCivic. 

The unregulated operations of prisons has increasingly mandated cheap service for maximum profit. For example, bail bonds companies, telecommunications, food, and commissary companies gouge both those incarcerated and their families.The exploitation doesn’t stop upon release from prison. 

The suppression of economic vitality of people of color is just beginning. Because of discrimination, formerly incarcerated people face an unemployment rate of 27 percent — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including during this pandemic and the Great Depression. 

Fines and fees associated with the criminal “justice” system have placed $50 billion in debt on the shoulders of approximately 10 million people who have been through the system. To make matters worse, many states bar people convicted of felonies from receiving any government assistance.That’s just incarceration. 

Over the past four decades, the cost of policing in the U.S. has skyrocketed, almost tripling from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017. Of the 100 largest cities in America, the nine police forces that kill people at the highest rate per population all take up over 30 percent of their cities’ budgets — leaving paltry resources to invest in housing, education, or health care.

This deliberate economic oppression suppresses political power of people of color, weakening their constitutional right to change the rules of a system that regulates whether or not profit can be derived from racism. 

In our current system, the wealthy elite use their purchased political power to manipulate the system for their own gain at the expense of people of color.

Let’s turn back to people who are incarcerated. In 48 states, those who are currently or formerly incarcerated face restrictions on their right to vote. Yet, inmates count as residents of where they are incarcerated, rather than their hometowns. That means people in prison have no representation, and are used as pawns to skew representational power towards the largely white, rural areas that house prisons. 

This leaves incarcerated people’s hometowns under-represented. The restrictions on voting power don’t end upon release. 6.1 million people are prevented from casting a ballot due to a prior felony conviction, and 1 in 13 Black people have lost their right to vote due to felony disenfranchisement, compared to 1 in 56 non-Black people.

It’s a never-ending cycle that has been churning for centuries: the profitability of racism motivates elite institutions to continue economic oppression of people of color that in turn hinders their political power, and that political oppression kneecaps their ability to change the system in which racism is so profitable.

So how do we break the cycle?

Let’s start with supporting candidates and pressuring elected officials at every level of government who will support bold policies that dismantle the Oppression Economy and build a Liberation Economy — and remove those that don’t. 

To end the Oppression Economy, our government must end the criminalization of people of color, end their political suppression, and curb runaway corporate power.

And, to build a Liberation Economy our government must guarantee that all people of color have access to basic economic rights like guaranteed income and employment, universal health care, guaranteed housing, a free college education and generational wealth.    

This Liberation Economy is within our power to create. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “we are the government.” It does not belong to the corporations and the plutocrats that currently control them. It belongs to us, and it is within our power to take it back.

We can break this cycle, if we act together.

Let’s get to work.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Ain't A Gonna Matter if Trump Gets Reelected

by John Lawrence, September 5, 2020

Right now peaceful protesters need to get off the streets in the lead up to the election. Why? Because they act as human shields for the rioters, looters, arsonists, gun nuts and counter protesters who come right in behind them and who have more nefarious purposes. Getting the protesters off the streets takes away Trump's law and order issue. People sitting on the fence are going to vote for Trump if they see cities going up in flames. It's as simple as that. We need calmness to prevail in American cities. When people see visuals of burning buildings on nightly news, it plays right into Trump's playbook.

I don't dispute the fact that black people have been treated differently by the police than white people. There is no question that there needs to be police reform, that there should be no choke holds, no 'no knock' warrants, that more social workers need to be dispatched to deal with people with mental health issues. However, it's no secret that at least some of these black men who have been shot and killed by police would be alive today if they had simply obeyed the cops' orders. Resisting arrest, giving the cops verbal back talk, physically struggling, trying to run away - all these things tend to make it more probable that a black person or any person is going to get killed. Rayshard Brooks, the man shot and killed in a Wendy's parking lot in Atlanta, would be alive today if he hadn't struggled with police and then tried to get away. When a situation escalates, things can get out of hand. Cops don't always act in such a way as to deescalate the situation. They should of course, but they are human beings. They can lose their cool. There is no question that police need more training as to how to handle tense situations and how to better control their emotions.

Right now this situation is playing out in Rochester. Mainly peaceful protesters are acting as cover for a relative few to do more dastardly deeds. There are skirmishes with the police. Tear gas spews out. Bottles are thrown. Trump tweets the whole scene. He couldn't be happier. Trump compared the cop's shooting of Jacob Blake to a golfer "choking" over a 3 foot put. While this is a horrible analogy, there is a kernel of truth there. The cop in question probably wishes he had handled the situation differently. However, if Blake had obeyed his orders in the first place, he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

There are 2 sides to every situation, and a lot of people sitting on the fence about who to vote for are people who just want to go about their lives as peacefully as possible. They are not necessarily Trump's base supporters. In battleground states, Trump won in 2016 by just a handful of votes. These fence sitting voters are very important to the outcome of the election. All those concerned that black lives matter have already been convinced and especially by the example of John Lewis who represented non violence and working within the system to vote, take power and get results that way. At this stage of the game it is totally redundant to react with street protests over every questionable situation in which a black man is killed by police. We have seen this movie many times before. And Trump's counter protesters are getting very active because they know that the more violence that occurs, the more this is only going to help Trump's chances of being reelected.

Sorry to put it this way, but that's the truth as I see it. I am totally in favor of police reform, economic reform, universal health care and a Green New Deal. But first Joe Biden has to get elected. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders, but he would have been an easier target for Trump to take down. The importance of this election is not only for the future of America. It is important for the whole world. The US and China are the world's 2 leading greenhouse gas emitters, responsible for about 40% of total world emissions. If these 2 countries don't cooperate to reduce GHGs and get the world using renewables, nothing else will matter. If Trump is reelected, not only will the US go up in flames, the entire earth will burn and very soon. The tension that the Trump administration is creating with China makes it less likely that GHGs will be reduced especially in light of the fact that Trump does not even believe in global warming and is telling the fossil fuel industry, in effect "Full steam ahead!"

In short street protests are counter productive at this time. Someone other than me needs to tell the protesters that.

Off the Top of My Head

Protesters Better Get Off the Streets if They Want Biden to Win

by John Lawrence, September 3, 2020

Right now street protests are counterproductive. They are giving Trump his main 'law and order' issue. The visuals of street violence only work in Trump's favor. There is a high probability that armed protesters and counterprotesters will clash with deadly results as they already have. #BlackLivesMatter has made its point. Now the protest movement is just helping Trump win. And it's giving cover to those who are looting and burning. I'm with John Lewis. He was willing to be beaten and jailed to make his point without fighting back. His way has been more successful than that of the others who have advocated violence. The Black Panthers made a splash for a few years. Then they were gone. There was no lasting influence or presence. Co-founder Huey Newton was murdered on the street allegedly because of a drug deal gone wrong. Stokely Carmichael took over the leadership of SNCC from John Lewis because John was non-violent and Stokely wanted to be more militant.

Unlike Huey Newton Stokely Carmichael had a fairly long life. He created the slogan #BlackPower which was the #BlackLivesMatter slogan of the 1960s. He was allied with the Black Panthers for a period of time until Huey Newton accused him of being a CIA agent. This idea was probably planted by J Edgar Hoover's FBI which was actively trying to destroy black leaders with its COINTELPRO operation. In his writings Carmichael espoused a separate black and white America, but many of his criticisms are valid today. From Wikipedia:

He promoted what he calls "political modernization." This idea included three major concepts: "1) questioning old values and institutions of the society; 2) searching for new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems; and, 3) broadening the base of political participation to include more people in the decision-making process." By questioning "old values and institutions", Carmichael was referring not only to the established Black leadership of the time but also to the values and institutions of the nation as a whole. He criticized the emphasis on the American "middle-class." "The values," he said, "of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity."  Carmichael believed that blacks were being lured to enter the "middle-class" as a trap, in which they would be assimilated into the white world by turning their backs on others of their race who were still suffering. This assimilation, he thought, was an inherent indictment of blackness and validation of whiteness as the preferred state. He said, "Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism."

Today we can be sure that the FBI and other government agencies are following in the footsteps of J Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO operation. The power of the American government is vast, and this is one reason why the way forward as suggested by the life of John Lewis and Martin Luther King is he best way. Rather than alienate white America John Lewis was non-violent and non-threatening while at the same time altogether willing to get into "good trouble." Stokely was right about the need to search for "new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems." Who can argue that the gridlock and stalemate of the last 12 years in which one man, Mitch McConnell can block any legislation not to his liking represents an ideal democratic political system? Who can argue that an economic system in which 3 men have more wealth than half the American population represents an ideal economic system?

Solving poverty in the US would not only do the most to improve black lives, it would do the most to improve brown lives, Native American lives and poor white lives. The homeless situation in America is a disgrace and represents a dystopian American Dream. But even as important as making changes to the American political and economic systems are, even more important is the need to remedy and mitigate the issue of global warming or we will not have a planet and its resources to even fight over. That's why it's imperative to get Trump out of there and put someone and someones in who will address the global warming issue in a constructive way. That's why it's important to take away Trump's main issue - law and order - by getting peaceful protesters as well as rioters, counterprotesters and guns off the streets. The debate between capitalism and socialism will be moot if the earth becomes uninhabitable. It's no longer acceptable to go on peacefully protesting as long as this increases Trump's chances of being reelected.

Jacob Blake's Father Says His Son Is Paralyzed Below Waist After Being Shot From Behind by Kenosha Police

Published on Tuesday, August 25, 2020

by Common Dreams

Marches and demonstrations have been held nationwide demanding justice for the 29-year-old father of six, who is Black.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

39 Comments

A boy sits on his father's shoulders while holding a sign on August 24, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man whom police shot in the back multiple times in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday, is now paralyzed from the waist down and doctors do not yet know if the injury is permanent, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday.

"Those police officers that shot my son like a dog in the street are responsible for everything that has happened in the city of Kenosha."
—Jacob Blake's father

The younger Blake, a father of six, was reportedly trying to break up a fight before officers followed him to his vehicle and fired several shots at point-blank range as Blake opened the driver-side door. Blake's partner, Laquisha Booker, told a local television station that the couple's three children were in the back seat "screaming" when police shot him.

A video of the police shooting began circulating on social media Sunday, sparking protests in the Wisconsin city and other communities across the country. The incident came nearly three months after footage of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd led to nationwide demonstrations.

The Sun-Times reported that Blake's father is driving from Charlotte, North Carolina to be with his hospitalized son, who now has "eight holes" in his body. The 29-year-old grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina before moving to Evanston, Illinois during middle school. He has been living in Kenosha for about three years.

"I want to put my hand on my son's cheek and kiss him on his forehead, and then I'll be OK," said the elder Jacob Blake. "I'll kiss him with my mask. The first thing I want to do is touch my son."

Blake's father also addressed the protests and unrest in Kenosha, where vehicles and dozens of buildings were set on fire overnight, according to Newsweek.

"Those police officers that shot my son like a dog in the street are responsible for everything that has happened in the city of Kenosha," his father said. "My son is not responsible for it. My son didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a gun."

As ABC News reported:

 

The man who said he made the cellphone video, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, "Drop the knife! Drop the knife!" before the gunfire erupted. He said he didn't see a knife in Blake's hands.

The governor said he had seen no information to suggest Blake had a knife or other weapon, but that the case is still being investigated by the state Justice Department.

The officers were placed on administrative leave, which is standard practice in a shooting by police. Authorities released no details about the officers and did not immediately respond to requests for their service records.

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers activated 125 members of the National Guard for the Monday night demonstrations in Kenosha, where county officials imposed an 8:00 pm curfew.

Newsweek reported that "hundreds of people remained outside the Kenosha County Courthouse in the city after the curfew took effect, prompting police to fire the first of several rounds of tear gas at around 8:30 pm in a bid to disperse them."

Evers also said after the shooting that although all the details aren't yet known, "what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country."

Blake's family is being represented by civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, the lawyer confirmed in a statement Monday. Crump is also representing the families of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville police in March.

"We all watched the horrific video of Jacob Blake being shot in the back several times by Kenosha police. Even worse, his three sons witnessed their father collapse after being riddled with bullets," Crump said. "Their irresponsible, reckless, and inhumane actions nearly cost the life of a man who was simply trying to do the right thing by intervening in a domestic incident. It's a miracle he's still alive."

"We will seek justice for Jacob Blake and for his family as we demand answers from the Kenosha Police Department," the attorney vowed. "How many more of these tragic 'while Black' tragedies will it take until the racial profiling and undervaluing of Black lives by the police finally stops?"

Crump, co-counsels Patrick Salvi and B'Ivory LaMarr, and Blake's family will hold a news conference Tuesday at 3:00 pm local time at the Kenosha County Courthouse. According to the attorneys, "The family will address Jacob's current condition and their plans moving forward following the latest occurrence of excessive police force against the young Black man."

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Off the Top of My Head

How Many Dumb Cops Are There in America?

by John Lawrence, August 26, 2020

Now another black man has been brutally almost murdered. We'd never have heard of it but for the fact that another black man picked up his phone and videoed it. Any encounter between a white cop and a black man is fraught with tension just because of the history of these encounters. The point is that the cop is supposed to be a professional. He's supposed not to react with a chip on his shoulder although in truth both parties have chips on their shoulders. A cop cannot shoot someone if he disobeys the cop's orders, resists arrest, tries to get away, struggles physically, calls the cop names, insults the cop or spits on him. In all these cases the cop should have been trained to react professionally and not pull his gun. In the case of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the cops failed miserably with the result that a black man, father of 4 children, is paralyzed for life. There were at least 3 cops on the scene with at least 3 more squad cars on the way. You mean to tell me they couldn't have tackled this man without using their guns?

Have the cops learned nothing from all the previous incidents involving cops killing black men while being videoed? They are professionals. They have been trained how to react in these situations. The citizen they are encountering has not been trained. He or she may react irrationally. The cops don't have a right to react irrationally. What the cops did in Kenosha was even more culpable than what happened with George Floyd because the knee to neck restraint that Officer Chauvin used was a legal techniques according to the police manual. Shooting an unarmed man in the back 7 times is not something that is justified in any circumstances. Obviously, Jacob Blake was not dangerous to the cops or anyone else. Only if he were, would the cops be authorized to shoot him.

If Jacob Blake survives, and it looks like he will, he will be example A for the #BlackLivesMatter inditement of racist police. Also it will cost the Kenosha treasury millions of dollars for his support for the rest of his life because he won't be able to work. There will be a colossal mess just because a cop couldn't restrain himself and act professionally. What's wrong with these people? It's difficult for them if a citizen doesn't obey their orders and tensions are running high, but they need additional training as to how to deescalate the situation.

Resources need to be put immediately into retraining police to handle these situations. It would be more cost effective than the outcomes in which half the city is burned down and the resulting lawsuits which will bankrupts what's left of Kenosha and other affected cities.

The Neoliberal Looting of America

from the New York Times:

The private equity industry, which has led to more than 1.3 million job losses over the last decade, reveals the truth about free markets.

By Mehrsa Baradaran

Ms. Baradaran is the author of “The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap.”

July 2, 2020

George Etheredge for The New York Times

“It’s hard to separate what’s good for the United States and what’s good for Bank of America,” said its former chief executive, Ken Lewis, in 2009. That was hardly true at the time, but the current crisis has revealed that the health of the finance industry and stock market is completely disconnected from the actual financial health of the American people. As inequality, unemployment and evictions climb, the Dow Jones surges right alongside them — one line compounding suffering, the other compounding returns for investors.

One reason is that an ideological coup quietly transformed our society over the last 50 years, raising the fortunes of the financial economy — and its agents like private equity firms — at the expense of the real economy experienced by most Americans.

The roots of this intellectual takeover can be traced to a backlash against socialism in Cold War Europe. The Austrian School economist Friedrich A. Hayek was perhaps the most influential leader of that movement, denouncing governments that chased “the mirage of social justice.” Only free markets can allocate resources fairly and reward individuals based on what they deserve, reasoned Hayek. The ideology — known as neoliberalism — was especially potent because it disguised itself as a neutral statement of economics rather than just another theory. Only unfettered markets, the theory argued, could ensure justice and freedom because only the profit motive could dispassionately pick winners and losers based on their contribution to the economy.

Neoliberalism leapt from economics departments into American politics in the 1960s, where it fused with conservative anti-communist ideas and then quickly spread throughout universities, law schools, legislatures and courts. By the 1980s, neoliberalism was triumphant in policy, leading to tax cuts, deregulation and privatization of public functions including schools, pensions and infrastructure. The governing logic held that corporations could do just about everything better than the government could. The result, as President Ronald Reagan said, was to unleash “the magic of the marketplace.”

The magic of the market did in fact turn everything into gold — for wealthy investors. Neoliberalism led to deregulation in every sector, a winner-take-all, debt-fueled market and a growing cultural acceptance of purely profit-driven corporate managers. These conditions were a perfect breeding ground for the private equity industry, then known as “leveraged buyout” firms. Such firms took advantage of the new market for high-yield debt (better known as junk bonds) to buy and break up American conglomerates, capturing unprecedented wealth in fewer hands. The private equity industry embodies the neoliberal movement’s values, while exposing its inherent logic.

Private equity firms use money provided by institutional investors like pension funds and university endowments to take over and restructure companies or industries. Private equity touches practically every sector, from housing to health care to retail. In pursuit of maximum returns, such firms have squeezed businesses for every last drop of profit, cutting jobs, pensions and salaries where possible. The debt-laden buyouts privatize gains when they work, and socialize losses when they don’t, driving previously healthy firms to bankruptcy and leaving many others permanently hobbled. The list of private equity’s victims has grown even longer in the past year, adding J. Crew, Toys ‘R’ Us, Hertz and more.

In the last decade, private equity management has led to approximately 1.3 million job losses due to retail bankruptcies and liquidation. Beyond the companies directly controlled by private equity, the threat of being the next takeover target has most likely led other companies to pre-emptively cut wages and jobs to avoid being the weakest prey. Amid the outbreak of street protests in June, a satirical headline in The Onion put it best: “Protesters Criticized for Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” Yet the private equity takeover is not technically looting because it has been made perfectly legal, and even encouraged, by policymakers.

According to industry experts, 2019 was one of the most successful years for private equity to date, with $919 billion in funds raised. The private equity executives themselves can also garner tremendous riches. Their standard fee structure involves collecting around 2 percent of the investor money they manage annually, and then 20 percent of any profits above an agreed-upon level. This lucrative arrangement also lets them tap into the very favorable “carried interest” tax loophole, allowing them to pay much lower capital gains tax rates on their earnings, rather than normal income taxes like most people.

An examination of the recent history of private equity disproves the neoliberal myth that profit incentives produce the best outcomes for society. The passage of time has debunked another such myth: that deregulating industries would generate more vibrant competition and benefit consumers. Unregulated market competition actually led to market consolidation instead. Would-be monopolies squeezed competitors, accrued political power, lobbied for even more deregulation and ultimately drove out any rivals, leading inexorably to entrenched political power. Instead of a thriving market of small-firm competition, free market ideology led to a few big winners dominating the rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Intergenerational Transfer of Wealth

by John Lawrence, July 26, 2020

Too often when we talk about "family economics" it's all about budgeting, saving for the future, making payments on debts etc. It's never about wealth accumulation. It's as if the average person is not supposed to be accumulating wealth - just paying their bills. There are staggering differences in intergenerational transfers of wealth between black and white families. According to the Brookings Institute, "At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between Black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception." Most middle class families accumulate wealth by means of home ownership. Poor people, both black and white are usually renters who don't accumulate any wealth to pass on to their children. So each generation starts from scratch, from zero.

Government programs by and large, while supporting the poor at some basic level have nothing to do with putting them in a position to accumulate wealth. It is assumed that, if they can just pay their bills, they will be able to rise above the poverty level. But then the intergenerational transfer of wealth is zero. A good program would be not just affordable housing, but affordable ownership of housing. The government could have expedited this in 2008 by supporting mortgages instead of letting them be foreclosed on. It bailed out banks instead. Government sponsored programs which subsidize home ownership for black people would be an effective form of reparations. Not to mention that it would also be an effective means to lift poor white families not only out of poverty in the sense of being able to pay bills to support a comfortable lifestyle, but also as a means to create wealth so that, intergenerationally, children would be starting off from a higher level - not zero.

There are many ways that black families have been denied the ability to participate in the American Dream. Efforts by Black Americans to build wealth can be traced back throughout American history. But these efforts have been impeded in a host of ways, beginning with 246 years of chattel slavery and followed by Congressional mismanagement of the Freedman’s Savings Bank (which left 61,144 depositors with losses of nearly $3 million in 1874), the violent massacre decimating Tulsa’s Greenwood District in 1921 (a population of 10,000 that thrived as the epicenter of African American business and culture, commonly referred to as “Black Wall Street”), and discriminatory policies throughout the 20th century including the Jim Crow Era’s “Black Codes” strictly limiting opportunity in many southern states, the GI bill, the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act’s exemption of domestic agricultural and service occupations, and redlining.

Wealth was systematically taken from black families or impediments were placed in their way so that things that white people were able to do were not allowed to black families. Consequently, a legacy of poverty was passed down from generation to generation. A culture of poverty perpetuated itself with possibly some government help to obtain the bare essentials. Too often single parent families became the norm. Too often the discourse was kept at the level of paying for the necessities of life and not wealth creation. Being poor has even been thought of as something noble. It's even praised in the Christian tradition. The Bible says: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." And "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

I am not talking about "wealth" as the accumulation of things like expensive real estate, yachts and the playthings owned by the very rich. I am talking about wealth in the sense referred to earlier that a middle class family accumulates by virtue of home ownership and then passes on to their children when they die. So this might be a few hundred thousand dollars or more, but not enough to support a "lifestyle of the rich and famous." The point is that the cycle of intergenerational poverty can be broken by this transfer of wealth. Of course another way out of poverty is education but not when you have to go into hundreds of thousands of student loan debt in order to get it. That is a debt trap, and there are many others laid for poor people - payday loans, for example - in the same way that once the slaves were freed and became share croppers, they ended up indebted to their landlords who in most cases were their former owners.

Habitat for Humanity has a great program for building houses and then making a formerly poor famiiy the owner of the house. This makes it possible for wealth creation for that family in the traditional way that most white families have created wealth for themselves - home ownership. This is not merely the creation of affordable housing but the creation of the affordable ownership of housing. There's a big difference. This program should be greatly expanded and replicated by government if government wants to help black families in particular end the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

Reparations and Universal Basic Income

by John Lawrence, July 14, 2020

Old Chinese proverb: Give someone a fish, and they will eat for a day. Teach them how to fish, and they will eat for the rest of their life. This is how I feel about cash payouts for both reparations and Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). I am for reparations in the sense of guaranteeing a living wage job for people who are able bodied. If not the social safety net should provide food, housing and medical care free of charge. In kind welfare is always better than cash payouts which can be squandered, gambled away, spent on drugs and alcohol or other foolish items. Besides billionaires and millionaires, black or white, don't need reparations or UBI.

I am for reparations in the sense of affirmative action for minorities and poor people in the sense of providing jobs either in the private sector or by the government as a last resort. I believe government should be the employer of last resort. In Sweden they have a national employment database which tracks every job opening in the whole country. They will do their best to hook you up with one of those jobs. This is not a bad idea. Then if no matches can be found, the government should be employer of last resort. There sure is a lot of work that needs to be done that can only be done by government like infrastructure repair and development, not only in this country but around the world.

China has exported its expertise and workers to the rest of the world to build infrastructure. This creates future trading opportunities for China, but it also guarantees that there will not be an unemployed class in China. China by virtue of its Belt and Road Initiative is a full employment society. The US could do the same. There is much to be done in terms of sanitation, health, education and job development to bring the rest of the world up to even a minimally acceptable standard of living. At the same time everyone, in both developed and developing societies needs to adopt a sustainable standard of living. The New American Dream should encompass not unlimited consumption but reasonable and sustainable consumption. Otherwise, the planet's resources will be rapidly, at least in geological terms, exhausted, and the result will be resource wars, poverty of the majority and over consumption of the few.

There is much work that needs to be done, but the private economy is not concerned with necessary work. It is only concerned with encouraging consumption that produces the most profits. It is not concerned with what is good for the environment. It is only concerned with exhausting resources if that is what produces the most profit in the shortest period of time. We need to be concerned with husbanding the earth's resources so that they are there for future generations. Renewable energy is a must instead of exhausting earth's fossil fuels. The same can be said for agriculture and other consumable items. They need to be harvested in a sustainable way. Forests need to be maintained instead of being clear cut. The environment needs to be protected. Food needs to be grown without being sprayed with chemicals. There are good practices which will sustain, maintain and renew earth's resources in such a way that everyone can be employed and everyone can benefit including future generations.

In the meantime there is much necessary and essential work to be done here at home and around the world in eliminating poverty, building housing along the Habitat for Humanity model, growing organic food, eliminating factory food operations, providing health care. China is building infrastructure, but it is not directly eliminating poverty around the world. That's a niche the US could fill. A good step would be converting the 800 military bases in various countries to hospitals, schools and affordable housing for local and indigenous people, defunding the military and reallocating resources to helping poor countries become developed in a sustainable way rather than exploiting their resources.

Off the Top of My Head

The Monument

by John Lawrence, July 8, 2020

Perhaps replacing a statue of George Washington with a statue of Crispus Attucks, who was a black man and the first casualty of the Revolutionary War, would be an appropriate recognition of American history. Crispus Attucks (c.1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American stevedore of African and Native American descent, widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. Attucks was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Town histories of Framingham written in 1847 and 1887 describe him as a slave of Deacon William Brown, though it is unclear whether Brown was his original owner. In 1750 Brown advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispas.

My own American history on one side of my family goes back to about 1650 when Harman Hendricks Rosenkrans arrived from Bergen, Norway. A couple generations later Col. John B Rosenkrans was able to acquire a 1000 acre plantation in the Walpack area of Sussex County, NJ, on which he had African American and Indian slaves. He fought in the French and American War and later in the Revolutionary War. There is a monument to him in Sussex County which consists of a big boulder on which is a metal plaque near the Old Mine Road. I have never been able to find it, but, if anyone wants to topple it because Rosenkrans was a slaveholder, it would be pretty hard to do. Rosenkrans' life is well documented and his role in American history is as well. The New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution would probably be upset if it were to be toppled, however.

My American ancestors have probably been in this country for 10 generations. That means that I have about 1000 direct American ancestors of whom only one was a slave holder to my knowledge. At least he was an equal opportunity slave holder keeping Native Americans and African Americans as well. I don't even know who most of my American ancestors even are. I must have thousands of cousins, all but a handful, I know nothing of. My Grandmother, Alice Clark, born Alice Rosenkrans, was in the direct line of Col. Rosenkrans so I would be too. So would be my Grandchildren who are of African American as well as European American descent. So the American situation is very complicated. The plot thickens.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third President, is a case in point. He had six children with his wife, Martha, but only two survived to adulthood. Martha Jefferson died a few months after giving birth in 1782, and Jefferson's daughters, and later his grandchildren, became the focus of his domestic life supposedly. Jefferson also fathered six children with his slave Sally Hemings.

According to Wikipedia:

Jefferson became a widower at age 39 in 1782. He never remarried and died in 1826. Sally Hemings was his much younger slave and a likely half-sister of his wife. She accompanied his daughter Maria to France, where they are believed to have started a sexual relationship, and returned with him to Monticello. Most historians now believe that Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings that lasted nearly four decades, until his death, and that Jefferson fathered her six children.

Four of Hemings' children survived to adulthood. In the antebellum period, hers would have been called a "shadow family". Sally Hemings was also the child of a shadow family. Historians believe her father to be John Wayles, Jefferson's father-in-law, who as a widower had a 12-year liaison with his mulatto slave Betty Hemings and fathered six children with her. These children had three-quarters European, one-quarter African ancestry, and were, half-siblings to Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Sally Hemings is the youngest child of this shadow family. Issac Jefferson described Sally as "mighty near white ... very handsome, long straight hair down her back."

Of the four Hemings children who survived to adulthood: William Beverley, Harriet, Madison and Eston Hemings—all but Madison Hemings eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities. Under the Virginia law of partus sequitur ventrem, because Sally Hemings was a slave, her children were also born enslaved. But the children were seven-eighths European, one-eighth African by ancestry. If free, they would have been considered legally white in Virginia of the time.

Oh what tangled webs we weave. Thankfully, the issue of slavery has finally been settled. DNA analysis proved that Jefferson had six children with Sally Hemings who was half black or, evidently much less than half. Jefferson probably has more descendants who have African American blood than those that don't. The same probably holds true for many other slaveholders. So America is a composite of many races and combinations of races.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." At the time of this writing it was more wishful thinking than anything else. Jefferson goes on: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Jefferson said it best - whenever government is destructive of the ends of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, it is the Right of the People to alter it or abolish it and replace it with a government that is more conducive to their Safety and Happiness. Is the present American government conducive to the most Happiness for most of the people? I doubt it. The French Revolution enshrined "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite". As Americans we've left out entirely "Fraternite" or the notion that "we're all in this together." Instead we've enshrined the notion "every person for themself." Egalite also has been given a very twisted definition. Perhaps we should go back to the original writings of the French philosophes who inspired both revolutions.

Off the Top of My Head

Culture Wars: Neither Here Nor There

by John Lawrence, July 4, 2020

So they change a name of  a military base: is one black family any better off? Conservatives love it when the debate is confined to cultural stuff. It doesn't threaten their bank accounts one tiny little bit. But when you get down to anything substantive, anything concrete, like defunding the military-industrial complex and using the money for free public education from pre-school to college, well, wait a minute that's socialism. They already consider public education K-8th socialism. Well what about health care? When you start talking about free health care, or even reasonably priced health care, well that's socialism. Hey let's confine the discussion to whether or not we should allow confederate statues to exist. Taking one down does not make one black family any better off and doesn't threaten the white elite one bit. It doesn't cost them one dollar and it doesn't add one dollar to any black family's income.

So let's talk about concrete issues, ones that could really benefit the hoi polloi and take a few dollars out of wealthy peoples' pockets:

    1. Medicare for All

    2. A Financial Transactions Tax

    3. Forgiveness of student loan debt

    4. A Green New Deal that would create good paying jobs for millions of black, Native American and     Latinx people

    5. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage

    6. A wealth tax

    7. Defunding the military which is the police force of the world and increasing the budget of the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization

Instead of debating these concrete issues conservatives want to argue over symbols. That's where their mentality is at. Don't trample on my flag. Don't trample on my history. Don't burn my flag. None of these symbolic and cultural issues improve the life of any American. They just preserve the status quo and the economic inequality that is only getting worse and which will get worse at a faster rate due to the pandemic. In short the ones mired in these issues know that nothing really will change as long as they can keep the discussion at this level. And those who could profit by changing the system are too often persuaded by those who wouldn't just to argue about symbols. Eliminating all the statues of slaveholders will not change American history one bit and will not make one black person better off.

As long as they don't eliminate the military bases and reduce the inflow of money to the military, the big wigs would be happy to entertain changing the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Rosecrans. General Rosecrans whipped Bragg's ass in Tennesee. As Commander of the Army of the Cumberland, he fought against Confederate General Braxton Bragg at Stones River, and later outmaneuvered him in the brilliant Tullahoma Campaign, driving the Confederates from Middle Tennessee. So it's a logical change of name. But it won't do anything to improve the lives of blacks, native Americans or Latinx. All the government help given to whites like the GI bill after WW II effectively excluded blacks as did all the land given to whites by the Homestead Act. First slavery, then Jim Crow laws served to keep black wealth at a minimum even negative in many cases. Instead of gaining wealth as whites did, they were targeted to be debtors and kept there by PayDay loan operators charging exorbitant rates of interest. Native Americans were gypped out of their lands by Americans not honoring treaties and by outright theft. They were also killed by a pandemic the white man brought with him from Europe. Thus Montezuma's revenge and now maybe COBID will do the same thing to Trump's non-mask wearing base.

So Trump is getting his base excited about cultural issues. It's a total sideshow designed to keep the status quo intact and to let the rich keep on getting richer. The poor, especially blacks, need to be kept in their place. All the progressive legislation designed by Cory Booker to reform the police nationwide will never see the light of day as long as the Senate is controlled by Republicans. He might as well not waste his breath. It's meaningless and never has a chance in hell of passing the Senate and being enacted into law. So why don't the Democrats do something more productive instead of spinning their wheels with great ideas that will never see the light of day.

Off the Top of My Head

#GreenNewDeal + #BlackLivesMatter = #TheWayForward

Affirmative Action for Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans in a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, June 29, 2020

Living with the COBID pandemic could be the new normal. Assurances of a vaccine by the end of the year might be meaningless. Here's why: for many viruses including HIV, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis there are no vaccines available despite years of study and years of effort to develop one. It took 100 years from the first polio epidemic in the US until a vaccine wiped out polio. Just as the Trump administration misled the American people in minimizing the effects of COBID including that things would normalize after we "flattened the curve" and giving dates by which we could "open up", they misled us by raising expectations that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year. Read the book, "Spillover", if you want authoritative scientific information about viruses and how long vaccine development takes if ever.

So, if the pandemic is something we have to live with indefinitely which could well be the case, the economy, in the way it existed before the pandemic, would never be coming back. So how do we create a new economy which works for the American people which, arguably, it was not working before the pandemic despite quasi full employment. Number 1: we refund the CDC and WHO which are the major institutions dealing with viruses and pandemics. Trump tried to defund CDC, and he did defund WHO in the midst of the pandemic. Politifact reported: "As for funding, there’s no question that the Trump administration sought to cut key CDC budget categories. But thanks to Congress, that funding was restored and even increased in bills that Trump ultimately signed." He had better luck and actually did defund WHO.

The biggest thing that could be done to minimize the bad outcomes for this and future pandemics is to get rid of Donald Trump as President of the US. A Democratic President would refund the CDC and WHO. The second thing would be to take a page out of FDR's book by reinstituting the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which financed the New Deal including many infrastructure projects. In fact the Federal Reserve could finance a #GreenNewDeal without even tweaking the law. With the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) it is now resorting to, it is financing debt relief not only for banks but for hedge funds, private equity funds, bankrupt corporations and even rich individuals. It is taking trillions on its balance sheet with quantitative easing. The SPVs require deal making with the Treasury Department. It would be a very small step for the Fed using a SPV to fund a Green New Deal. The US is about $4 trillion in arrears on infrastructure rebuilding and development. Instead of just bailing out bankrupt institutions the Fed could take a more positive role and actually fund productive development. By the way the RFC actually made money on repayment of loans and user fees as opposed to the Fed which just swallows US debt.

If no vaccine is found for COBID in a timely manner, the whole economy should be restructured because many businesses are not coming back. Many including Herz, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus and Chesapeake Oil have already filed for bankruptcy. A Green New Deal could take up the slack reducing the GDP from 70% consumerism to 50% which would be in line with the EU consumption component of GDP while increasing government investment by 20%. That would represent a full employment economy but it would be reoriented from consumption to building green infrastructure.

Minority hiring for a Green New Deal could be along the lines of affirmative action with African Americans, Latinx and Native Americans being hired first. This would go a long way to reduce inequality in America while being a form of reparations in light of the fact that slave labor built much of this country and Jim Crow redlining was responsible for the fact that black families have not been able to accumulate wealth at the same rate as white families. #BlackLivesMatter plus a #GreenNewDeal could help to restore the balance while at the same time creating a full employment economy.

Off the Top of My Head

A House Built Upon Sand: the US Economy

by John Lawrence, June 26, 2020

The wise man built his house on rock, and it withstood the rains and the floods and the wind. The foolish man built his house on sand and it collapsed. An apt metaphor for the US economy in the midst of a pandemic that is only getting worse. Before the pandemic hit, it was a full employment economy in which half the people couldn't survive a $400. emergency. It was an economy built on consumerism. Consumerism was 70% of GDP. About half the economy was small business, but these jobs and this economic activity was vulnerable. Much of it was non-essential. It was bars (by the way you can drink at home); it was restaurants (by the way you can eat at home). It was travel and hospitality (by the way you can sleep at home if you're willing to make your own bed).

The essential parts of the economy continued to operate even when the pandemic hit. It isn't fair that minimum wage workers were more exposed to the coronavirus, but, be that as it may, with some exceptions these workers did not get sick in higher ratios than anyone else. If more of the jobs were essential, productive and less frivolous, there would have been fewer jobs lost and much less unemployment. The economic house was built on sand and when the pandemic hit, it collapsed. At the same time the fault line of black racism and inequality was fully exposed. It's as if the hurricane of the pandemic cut away the underbrush and exposed this situation for what it is thanks to #BlackLivesMatter.

The Homestead Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln which gave free land to white people allowed whites to build equity and wealth while blacks who were promised 40 acres and a mule after slavery were denied even that. They ended up in many cases working the same land as sharecroppers and living in worse poverty than when they were slaves. After World War II the G.I. Bill aimed to help American veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. African Americans did not benefit nearly as much as White Americans. Historian Ira Katznelson argues that "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow". In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.

Additionally, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the G.I. Bill even less effective for blacks. Once they returned from the war, blacks faced discrimination and poverty, which represented a barrier to harnessing the benefits of the G.I. Bill. So whites were able to build wealth through home ownership while blacks were denied that opportunity. Wealth from home ownership is the difference between the middle class and the poor. Home ownership became the means for the intergenerational transfer of wealth for white people. Each generation of black people started out from zero. There was an intergenerational transfer of poverty instead.

Blacks who were able to get manufacturing jobs after the Second World War did fairly well, but those jobs have by and large fled the country. In the financial crisis of 2008, the Great Recession, blacks were screwed as well. While the Federal Reserve bailed out the banks and mortgage companies hundred cents on the dollar, blacks who needed help paying their mortgages did not get it and were foreclosed on. The government could have bailed them out instead, but it didn't.

So now the country is faced with not only a public health crisis but also an economic, financial and racial crisis which would be much less severe if those manufacturing jobs still existed. The economy is not coming back as it was constructed pre-pandemic. There is no way that small business based on 100% occupancy is going to survive based on 50% occupancy. Many of the businesses like professional sports, cruises and even churches are predicated on high occupancy. People will not be comfortable with high occupancy unless a vaccine is found for COBID, but finding a vaccine is not a foregone conclusion. There are some viruses for which a vaccine has never been found including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

It takes a lot of money to develop a vaccine, and that money has been lacking from US budgets. There are two obstacles to faster progress, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, director of the vaccine research group at the Mayo Clinic. “One is scientific, and one is embarrassing,” he said. The embarrassing part is the lack of investment. It takes 10 years and more than $1 billion to develop a vaccine — a small fortune for a medical advance but a pittance for a weapons system. While defense research is driven by one mega-customer, the Pentagon, vaccine researchers face a confusing hodgepodge of potential backers. In short the US has spent its money on weapons of war instead of protecting its people from pandemics which are far more deadly than terrorist attacks. 405,000 Americans died in WW II. Over half that amount have already died in this pandemic, and it's getting worse due to American foolishness at the top levels.

There is a chance now for America to start out on a new path, and that path would be more or less what Bernie Sanders and other progressives have identified as their agenda: a Green New Deal would create good jobs for millions of unemployed Americans and it could give priority to black people so that they could get started on wealth building. Low cost housing loans and subsidies could give black people the same advantages they didn't get with the Homestead Act and the G.I. bill. At the same time a Green New Deal would be converting the country to renewable energy and rebuilding infrastructure, both of which are necessary if earth is to remain habitable for the human race. Medicare for All would only bring the US up to the level of most other civilized countries.

We have to reset our priorities, reduce the military-industrial complex and make peace and have cooperation with our so-called enemies. We can quibble about Russia's and China's internal affairs or we can cooperate with them as peers to forestall global warming and create a planet worth inhabiting. We can spend our money on war or we can spend it forestalling future pandemics. The solution to many of our myriad problems is clear, and it doesn't require a revolution necessarily. Reform is all that's necessary to implement Medicare for All. Reform is all that's necessary to implement a Green New Deal. But countries that do not do what's necessary and obvious to meet the needs of the people create a situation in which violence may ensue. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs socialism. Most countries of the earth including Russia and China are a combination of both. I started with a Biblical reference so I will end with one: "Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!" God bless the USA.

Who’s Really Looting America?

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

As hundreds of thousands take to the streets to protest ruthless police killings of Black Americans and centuries of systemic racism, Donald Trump and his enablers have been quick to cast the protesters as violent “looters” – and distract from the real looters of America.

So far, over 10,000 Americans have been arrested during the wave of protests. Yet a decade ago, after Wall Street bankers looted America through predatory lending and securities fraud – often preying upon people of color and causing American households to lose roughly $19 trillion in total wealth – not a single top Wall Street executive went to prison. Instead, they received billions in taxpayer bailouts, and executives took home massive bonuses.

Now, during the coronavirus pandemic and an unprecedented economic crisis, America’s billionaires have seen their wealth soar by $434 billion. How? Their corporations lobbied for and got $500 billion in bailouts and they got $135 billion in tax breaks. And the Treasury Department and the Fed are erasing the corporate debt they amassed over the last few years so their corporations could buy back their shares of stock. Meanwhile, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Walmart, and other corporate giants are using their vast market power to rack up record profits.

The corporate looting doesn’t stop there. Just look at the epidemic of wage theft through misclassifying employees as independent contractors and denying workers the overtime pay they are due. Every year, American employers steal a combined $15 billion in income from their workers, whether white, black or brown.

The most profitable corporations in America are also looting America of billions in taxes through loopholes, write-offs, and special exemptions they’ve successfully lobbied for. Amazon paid just a 1.2 percent tax rate on $13 billion in profit in 2019. Other companies, including Chevron, Halliburton, and Netflix, haven’t paid a dime in federal taxes in recent years. The United States loses nearly $70 billion a year in tax revenue because corporations loot America by shifting their profits to tax havens overseas.

Meanwhile, entire industries loot Black and brown communities. Predatory payday lenders, focusing on communities of color, offer loans with sky-high interest rates and hidden fees that trap borrowers in a never-ending cycle of poverty. The bail bond industry profits from mass incarceration and the failed war on drugs, as does America’s prison-industrial complex – keeping over 2 million Americans behind bars, disproportionately black and brown. All these corporations have platoons of lobbyists that keep their looting going.

Here’s what Donald Trump and his corporate cronies will never admit: The worst looting in America isn’t breaking windows at Target or Wells Fargo. It’s billions of dollars in wage theft, unjustifiable tax breaks for the top 1 percent, corporate tax havens, predatory loans, bail bonds, mass incarceration, and crooked Wall Street bankers who have never been accountable to anything but their bottom line. 

By pitting us against each other – blaming immigrants, blaming liberals, and especially blaming people of color, and Black people in particular – they’ve divided us, and gotten away with it.

This needs to end. Stand together, and know the truth about the real looters in America.

Off the Top of My Head

The Power Structure Wants the Discussion Circumscribed to Systemic Racism, Not Systemic Inequality

by John Lawrence, June 17, 2020

Let's just talk about systemic racism and not about an economic system in which a few people control all the wealth and the rest get crumbs from the table. The power structure does not want the discussion extended into that area. Let's just integrate black people into the system so that they are not disproportionately poor, only poor proportionally to their percentage of the population. Blacks compose 12% of the American population. 27% of black people are in poverty so the good old American way is to reduce the percentage in poverty to 12%. Then blacks would be proportionately and not disproportionately poor. That's the American way. Don't question systemic poverty and inequality; Confine the discussion to systemic racism.

The American way is to have a few rich people among every ethnic group and then to use this as an example that anyone can get rich in America. So what if the majority are poor. It's more important that you have examples of huge wealth among black people, and that is certainly the case today. American black billionaires on the 2019 Forbes list included American investor Robert Smith with $5 billion, businessman David Steward with $3 billion, media mogul Oprah Winfrey with a net worth of $2.5 billion and American sports executive Michael Jordan with $2.1. There are 615 billionaires in the US; only 6 are black so to be proportionate we'd need about 74 more black billionaires.

Blacks comprised 13.6 percent of the U.S. population according to the 2010 Census, but account for only 1.4 percent of the top 1 percent of households by income. Whites are the overwhelming majority of the top 1 percent of households by income, comprising 96.2 percent. There are 18.6 million total millionaires in the US, but only an estimated 35,000 are black. That may sound like a lot, but the U.S. population of millionaires is 76 percent White. Blacks, Hispanics and Asians make up about 8 percent each. So problem solved if we add another 4% to the black millionaires list. Then they would be proportionately rich at least at the million dollar level.

Many black athletes and entertainers are millionaires or multi-millionaires. Take the NBA, for example, in which 80% of the players are black. The total annual revenue of the NBA is $8.7 billion of which about 50% goes to the players. Since there are 30 franchises with 15 players per franchise, there are 450 active players. That means that the share of NBA revenues going to black NBA athletes is ($8.7 billion)x(1/2)x(.8) = $3.48 billion or an average of $7.7 million per black player. Bingo! The NBA has created way more black millionaires than it has created white ones. That's for sure.

This is the thinking of the power structure, mainly the Republican power structure which is not threatened by having a few more black millionaires and billionaires. However, they are threatened when you talk about everyone, black or white, having a living wage, everyone, black or white having decent housing, medical care and free public education from pre-school through college. They are threatened by talk of taxing the wealthy, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as it were. That would be socialism much like the People's Republic of France or the People's Republic of Germany or even the People's Republic of Sweden. The power structure can't tolerate that kind of debate. Let's just make black people equal in the number of millionaires, but not change anything else. Then all the poor blacks and whites, for that matter, can aspire to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps as many of their counterparts have done.

Whatever happens we can't change the system to make it inherently more equal, inherently more naturally producing of equal outcomes. Instead, it must produce inherently unequal outcomes so that those who make it in the system will feel like they have really accomplished something and can serve as role models for others to strive harder. Republicans recoiled at all the hippies in the 60s who were having too much fun and not working hard enough. They were even getting free tuition in the California University system and elsewhere. On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell wrote a memo to the US Chamber of Commerce entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist and anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America from the hippies and left wingers. It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of the power of private business and an ostensible step towards socialism.

So they changed the system to criminalize all sorts of behaviors mainly involving drugs so they could incarcerate mainly black people and so they could saddle mainly white people with a ton of student loan debt. Then they would have to work hard paying off their debt instead of partying, surfing, having free love and doing drugs. Well, it certainly has worked. In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population. About 1 in 3 black boys will have served some time in the penal system during their lifetimes. Profits are up for the private penitentiary corporations and American millenials are buckling at the knees from the weight of $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. So if the percentage of black people in prison gets down to 12%, then this should make the American system non-racist? Wouldn't it be better to eliminate the root causes of incarceration which have to do with poverty and get the incarceration rate down to zero for everyone?

Off the Top of My Head

How Important is the Culture of Poverty as a Determinant of Criminality?

by John Lawrence

Police reform is now being undertaken to some extent because of the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether it is sufficient to solve any problems is questionable. Most of the policing activities take place in poor neighborhoods both black and white because most street crime takes places in poor neighborhoods. In some families and neighborhoods there is not only a culture of poverty, there is a culture of crime. The two of them seem to go together. If your uncle or brother or father has spent time in jail or in prison, it seems to young people growing up that this is a normal part of life. Close to six million kids in America have experienced losing a parent to prison or jail at some point in their lives. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. 45.8 percent of young black children (under age 6) live in poverty, compared to 14.5 percent of white children. This says it all.

There is a culture of imprisonment in predominantly black families and neighborhoods. My contention is that the solution is the elimination of poverty in the black community, and that would go a long way to eliminating the need for police enforcement in the first place. The culture of poverty and imprisonment is cultivated by both black and white artists, playwrights and musicians. For example, take the play Porgy and Bess written by a white man, DuBose Heyward about a poor crippled black man. It was developed into an opera by George and Ira Gershwin, also white. Porgy and Bess started out as a novel, was converted into a play, then an opera and finally a movie. It contains many cultural stereotypes of black people. Wikipedia reported:

Another production of Porgy and Bess, this time at the University of Minnesota in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of the few black students then at the university, members of the local African-American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. The play was cancelled due to pressure from the African-American community, which saw their success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.

The belief that Porgy and Bess was racist gained strength during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As these movements advanced, Porgy and Bess was seen as more and more out of date. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African-American educator Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World."

One of the characters in Porgy and Bess is Sportin' Life, a pimp and dope peddler. This emphasizes the connection between black people and a traditional role model - pimp and dope peddler. Now Sportin' Life is one of the most successful members of the neighborhood. Why is this? Because most of the people were extremely poor. The lesson is, if you want to be successful, if you want to have money, be a pimp or sell dope. Or gamble like Porgy does in jail. So all the associations of black people with dope, prostitution, police and jail are reinforced by this work of art which has been praised as a brilliant story filled with brilliant music. Even Miles Davis, a black jazz artist, recorded a much praised album with orchestration by Gil Evans: the Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess.

In order to have street cred, even black men make up stories to make them seem bigger criminals than they really are. Then they peddle their art to make money. Take Akon. According to the Baltimore Sun:

The world of thug culture has its own perverse equivalent, in which middle-class men with minor legal transgressions exaggerate their bad behavior, claiming to be hard-core degenerates in order to impress youngsters looking for outlaw role models. In this destructive environment, the more violent and predatory you are, the more heroic you seem.

That helps to explain why a hip-hop star known as Akon wove a tall tale of malevolence and criminal activity, claiming to have spent three years in prison for running a "notorious car theft operation," a story he's been telling for years. In fact, he has apparently never served hard prison time. A Web site called The Smoking Gun recently exposed Akon as a thug wannabe, a "James Frey with ... an American Music Award.".

So the culture of criminality is perpetuated so that some black men can make money off of it, and young kids can grow up wanting to emulate them. This culture has to change in order that black and white kids grow up with more positive role models, but the root cause of this criminal culture is poverty so, if you want to change the culture, first change the culture of poverty. Give incentives for black men to stay with their families. Give them good jobs. It's not only black people who have lived in a crime culture due to poverty. Take the Mafia. White Italians looked up to the mafia dons because they were financially successful at a time when many Italians were in poverty. Black or white, poverty breeds a criminal culture. Problems with the police are going to persist as long as there is a huge amount of poverty and homelessness in the US. Progressive and enlightened government policy could start to change that for poor people, both black and white. Positive incentives to do the right thing go a long way to dispel poverty.

Off the Top of My Head

Defund the Police ... Defund the Military

by John Lawrence, June 11, 2020

Police have been given jobs social workers should be doing. They've criminalized everything from homelessness to mental illness to drug addiction. That's what defunding the police is all about. They should hire more social workers and less police. The police are asked to do a lot more than what police work should be all about. So has the military. Every problem overseas, many of which could be solved by teachers, social workers and doctors has been looked at as a problem for the military to solve. Many of these problems derive from the fact that people are in dire poverty. They need help building schools, houses, sanitation systems. Instead we send the military in to bomb them just as we send the police in at home to take them to jail by any means necessary.

We glorify police work with all kinds of TV shows just as we glorify the military. No one ever glorifies the Peace Corps though, and, if they were sent in more often, there would be more positive results. Instead of helping people, the first thought of American leaders is to send in the police or the military. The Washington Post reported:

To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.

Everything that could be said about the police could be said about the military. Instead of helping people overseas to escape from the poverty they experience, we police them instead. What a novel idea to spend less on the military and more on the Peace Corps. Let's reimagine the role they play in public safety. Policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. The military has been the primary vehicle to perpetuate American control over black and brown bodies in other parts of the world.

The Peace Corps budget is $410.5 million. The military budget is $934 billion. The military budget covers the DoD, overseas contingency operations, the VA, Homeland Security, the State Department, and many others that involve national security. By contrast in 2003, the military budget was less than half that - $437.4 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. If the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on the Cold War, the US is in danger of collapse from overspending on its military when it is not even engaged in a major war. Overspending on the military is just a jobs program that Congress will not curtail. Trump for all his bluster about wanting our NATO allies to spend more on defense, nevertheless, authorized a $34 billion increase in military spending for 2020. Meanwhile, China, the world's second largest spender on its military is spending $178.2 billion in 2020 while Russia spends a mere $70 billion.

The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget. Many major cities spend as much as 40 percent of their municipal budgets on policing, leaving a dwindling pool of resources for poverty prevention, infrastructure and everything else. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this dynamic: Cities facing steep revenue declines are trying to decide which services to cut to remain solvent, and mayors are often hesitant to cut law and order spending. Welfare spending has been on a long, uneven decline, while law and order spending ballooned almost unabated until about 2010, when it amounted to nearly 2.5 percent of national income. Since then, law and order spending has fallen to a hair under 2 percent, while welfare spending stands at about 0.8 percent of national income less than half what we spend on police.

The US domestic Peace Corps called AmeriCorps has a budget of $560 million. So the US spends a paltry $1 billion on its foreign and domestic Peace Corps while spending $180 billion on police and almost a trillion on its military. Without this spending the economy would surely collapse. Military and police jobs are jobs of last resort for non college educated youth. However, this could be turned around. This money could be spent on other pursuits like housing the homeless (Habitat for Humanity), social workers, teachers, sanitation systems in foreign countries lacking them, building green infrastructure (Green New Deal), eradicating poverty, education (giving "The Talk" as part of public school curriculum), sustainable agriculture, clean water, cleaning the oceans, cleaning the rivers and more.

While the US spends a huge amount of its budgets on police and military work, China is spending its budget building infrastructure all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Whatever you want to say about it, it represents peaceful development of countries outside of China while the US does nothing of the sort, preferring instead to police the world with its 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. So while the US presence outside the US is mainly military in nature, China's presence outside China is basically peaceful development. This development will also lead to economic advantages for China through increased trade.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

The US has sought to demonize China's BRI and to create a second Cold War to justify its military expenditures. Throw Russia into the mix as well. The US wants to line up its group of allies in a potential contest versus China and its allies. However, many US purported allies are jumping ship as they read the tea leaves and realize that the US sees its role in the world and at home as mainly police work. Poverty alleviation is something the US doesn't do. This needs to change if we are ever to combat our common enemy, the coronavirus and climate change, and forget about creating a Second Cold War which will only drain US resources while China goes ahead building infrastructure and increasing trade.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Is Police Reform Enough?

by John Lawrence, June 10, 2020

The people in power, the status quo, thinks they can contain the Black Lives Matter movement to just police reform. They just don't want any profound changes to the system that go beyond police reform. So let black football players kneel all they want, but they just need to keep playing so the profits keep coming. Remove a few Confederate statues, rename a few military bases, but don't challenge the trillion dollars a year spent on the military. Defund the police, but, whatever you do, don't defund the military. Don't remove any of the US military bases that exist in almost every country of the world. The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. Do we really need military bases in Germany and Japan?

So pass a few laws about police reform, but don't threaten the power structure in this country. Throw black people a few bones, and maybe the whole BLM movement will quiet down and just go away. Then we can get back to business as usual and rich people can get on with the job of getting insanely richer. Inequality will remain the same. Those in power will stay in power. Legal bribery in terms of lobbying will remain in effect. That's the way business is done in this country. Needless to say poor people can't afford to hire lobbyists. Political reform will be off the table as will economic reform.

The American version of capitalism will continue to reap rewards for the billionaires while the Chinese version of capitalism will continue to bring people out of poverty and build infrastructure in many parts of the world. While the US polices and sanctions, the Chinese are winning friends and influencing people, much as Dale Carnegie suggested. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs communism. Every country in the world, including the US is some combination of both. Some countries just implement their version more effectively. The US implements its economic system in such a way that it favors the rich and condones the rest to debt servitude including middle class people strapped with student loan debt which they don't have a prayer of paying off. Don't worry payday lenders are only reaping 400% interest.

So will the BLM movement just die away satisfied with the result of police reform - no more chokeholds, no more no knock warrants, a few other things if Republicans go along which they probably won't at the Federal level. The Democrats can pass all the legislation they want. It is meaningless if it never passes the Senate and gets enacted into law. It is just spinning their wheels. It's gridlock; it's not democracy. It's democracy hamstrung; it's democracy rendered impotent. It's a political system which will patronize the BLM movement and give it a few ineffectual reforms, more lip service than anything. The real profit making infrastructure will not change. Perhaps they will absorb a few black people into the power structure by giving them a few more positions on corporate boards, but the power structure itself will not change. Poor and homeless people will stay poor and homeless. even if a few escape their dire situations. The media will highlight some black person who escaped poverty and made a million dollars. See you too could do it if you only had the gumption. This is the message they will send. Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps as so many others have done. Systemic inequality will still remain even if systemic racism doesn't. The only mistake the recent looters made was not forming a hedge fund before they started looting.

Off the Top of My Head

Is the US a Democracy or a Gridlocracy?

by John Lawrence, June 9, 2020

How is the US a democracy when one man can vote against an antilynching law so that it never gets passed? The law that would make lynching a Federal hate crime passed the House almost unanimously, but failed to get passed in the Senate due to one man - Rand Paul. It only takes one Senator to quash a bill and prevent it from becoming law because of the filibuster. This is what makes the US not a democracy but a gridlocracy. There is another way that legislation passed by the House which is the people's chamber never sees the light of day and that is Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate. It is up to him whether legislation passed by the House even gets considered in the Senate. That is the antidemocratic power that one man has. How can you say that the US is a democracy when one man has the power to say which legislation is even considered? Even if it passes both Houses, the President can always veto it which makes the US system much more antidemocratic than a parliamentary system.

The bill called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. It comes to pass as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you see the US political system for what it is when one man can prevent anything from becoming law. That's precisely the reason there is no gun control legislation even though opinion polls show that a majority of the American people want it. In March 2018, 67% of Americans supported stricter regulation of firearms sales, according to a Gallup poll with a margin of sampling error of

+/- 4% at the 95% confidence level, the highest in any Gallup survey since 1993. We'd have it IF the US were a democracy. It's not. The gun control industry has bought the votes of at least one Senator, and that Senator or Senators will always filibuster. The US political system is archaic and needs to be changed. It's not that big a deal. You don't need a revolution to change a Constitution. Most advanced western democracies have done it to bring their political systems up to date. Instead, the US Constitution is treated as sancrosanct and must never be changed sort of like the Bible. Meanwhile, time marches on and other nations march past the antiquated United States.

The New York Times reported:

As Congress prepares to wade into a contentious debate over legislation to address police brutality and systemic racial bias, a long-simmering dispute in the Senate over a far less controversial bill that would for the first time explicitly make lynching a federal crime has burst into public view.

The bill, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act after the 14-year-old black boy who was tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, predates the recent high-profile deaths of three black men and women at the hands of white police and civilians that have inspired protests across the country. It passed the House this year by a vote of 410 to 4, and has the backing of 99 senators, who have urged support for belated federal recognition of a crime that once terrorized black Americans.

So the American political system is not only undemocratic, it's racist. It's the main reason that hardly any progressive legislation was passed during President Obama's 8 year term in office. Corporations lobby Senators - it's basically legalized bribery - to pay them off so that no meaningful legislation ever gets passed except if it's in their interests, and their interests are always about money. The article continued:

Kamala Harris rose to object, delivering a seething broadside against Mr. Paul as she noted that even as they debated, mourners were gathering to honor George Floyd, the African-American man who died last week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

“The idea that we would not be taking the issue of lynching seriously is an insult — an insult to Senator Booker and Senator Tim Scott and myself,” she said from across the chamber floor, referring to the South Carolina Republican who helped write the bill and is the party’s lone black senator.

“To suggest that lynching would only be a lynching if someone’s heart was pulled out and displayed to someone else is ridiculous,” she added. “It should not require a maiming or torture for us to recognize a lynching when we see it and recognize it by federal law and call it what it is, which is that it is a crime that should be punishable with accountability and consequence.”

American democracy has been hijacked by monied interests who can afford to pay off Senators and Congressmen and women as well for that matter. Legalized bribery insures that nothing of any consequence will ever get done in America whether it is racial justice, economic justice or political justice. Can this system be reformed? Perhaps it can, but the reform should start with the Senate and the role that the leader plays in deciding what legislation even gets considered and to the elimination of the filibuster.

Off the Top of My Head

Racist Economics

by John Lawrence, June 8, 2020

Is it racism when the schools in predominantly black neighborhoods are worse than schools in predominantly white neighborhoods? Schools in many parts of the country are funded with local property taxes. It stands to reason that property values in poor neighborhoods are less than property values in rich neighborhoods, and, therefore, property tax revenues and hence school funding is less. So the worse schools are found in poor "predominantly black" neighborhoods. A word you hear often these days is "predominantly". Nothing is totally black and white, but, when black people are affected in a way that is greater than their percentage of the population, one could say it is a "predominantly black" situation. When police arrest black people at a greater rate than they do white people, we could say that the police are a racist institution.

It has been said that the only mistake that the looters at the current protests made was that they didn't form a hedge fund first before they started looting. Martin Luther King said, “The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.” Republicans have breathed a sigh of relief that so far the Black Lives Matter movement has had little to say about poverty, economic inequality, militarism and materialism. Some though are getting to the heart of the problems in our society that affect us all but affect black people "disproportionately."

Writing in the New Yorker Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor said:

The [1992] uprising in L.A. shared with the rebellions of the nineteen-sixties an igniting spark of police abuse, widespread violence, and the fury of the rebels. But, in the nineteen-sixties, the flush economy and the still-intact notion of the social contract meant that President Lyndon B. Johnson could attempt to drown the civil-rights movement and the Black Power radicalization with enormous social spending and government-program expansion, including the passage of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which produced the first government-backed, low-income homeownership opportunities directed at African-Americans.

By the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, the economy was in recession and the social contract had been ripped to shreds. The rebellions of the nineteen-sixties and the enormous social spending intended to bring them under control were wielded by the right to generate a backlash against the expanded welfare state. Political conservatives argued that the market, not government intervention, could create efficiencies and innovation in the delivery of public services. This rhetoric was coupled with virulent racist characterizations of African-Americans, who relied disproportionately on welfare programs. Ronald Reagan mastered the art of color-blind racism in the post-civil-rights era with his invocations of “welfare queens.” Not only did these distortions pave the way for undermining the welfare state, they reinforced racist delusions about the state of black America that legitimized deprivation and marginalization.

The 1990s saw Democrats agreeing with Republicans that problems in the black community were largely caused by overly generous social programs. President Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it." Senator Joe Biden jumped right on board the push to reduce welfare programs by saying, "“the culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work. The culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. And the culture of permanence must no longer be a way of life.” Biden championed the 1994 “crime bill” that pledged to put a hundred thousand more police on the street, called for mandatory prison sentences for certain crimes, increased funding for policing and prisons, and expanded the use of the death penalty. By the 1980s Ronald Reagan decried "welfare queens."

Taylor continues:

So, though Biden desperately wants us to believe that he is a harbinger of change, his long record of public service says otherwise. He has claimed that Barack Obama’s selection of him as his running mate was a kind of absolution for Biden’s dealings in the Democrats’ race-baiting politics of the nineteen-nineties. But, from the excesses of the criminal-justice system and the absence of a welfare state to the inequality rooted in an unbridled, rapacious market economy, Biden has shaped much of the world that this generation has inherited and is revolting against.

More important, the ideas honed in the nineteen-eighties and nineties continue to beat at the center of Biden’s political agenda. His campaign advisers include Larry Summers, who, as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, was an enthusiastic supporter of deregulation, and, as Obama’s chief economic adviser during the recession, endorsed the Wall Street bailout while allowing millions of Americans to default on their mortgages.

Biden was chiefly responsible for the 2005 bill that took away bankruptcy protection from student load debtors (presumably disproportionately black). Credit card companies, many of whom are headquartered in Biden's state of Delaware, have been major Biden campaign contributors. Biden was known as the Senator from MBNA. Biden should just turn over the Democratic nomination to Bernie Sanders who has been on the right side of issues which are now coming to the forefront in American life.

Taylor continues:

In 1968, King, in the weeks before he was assassinated, said, “In a sense, I guess you could say, we are engaged in the class struggle.” He was speaking to the costs of the programs that would be necessary to lift black people out of poverty and inequality, which were, in and of themselves, emblems of racist subjugation. Ending segregation in the South, then, was cheap compared with the huge costs necessary to end the kinds of discrimination that kept blacks locked out of the advantages of U.S. society, from well-paying jobs to well-resourced schools, good housing, and a comfortable retirement. The price of the ticket is quite steep, but, if we are to have a real conversation about how we change America, it must begin with an honest assessment of the scope of the deprivation involved. Racist and corrupt policing is the tip of the iceberg.

We have to make space for new politics, new ideas, new formations, and new people. The election of Biden may stop the misery of another Trump term, but it won’t stop the underlying issues that have brought about more than a hundred thousand COVID-19 deaths or continuous protests against police abuse and violence. Will the federal government intervene to stop the looming crisis of evictions that will disproportionately impact black women? Will it use its power and authority to punish police, and to empty prisons and jails, which not only bring about social death but are now also sites of rampant COVID-19 infection? Will it end the war on food stamps and allow African-Americans and other residents of this country to eat in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Will it finance the health-care needs of tens of millions of African-Americans who have become susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus, and are dying as a result? Will it provide the resources to depleted public schools, allowing black children the opportunity to learn in peace? Will it redistribute the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to rebuild devastated working-class communities? Will there be free day care and transportation?

In short we need good paying union jobs (Green New Deal) that will deal with the issue of climate change (Green New Deal), forgiveness of student loan debt (the least Biden can do since he was largely responsible for creating the situation), Medicare for All (since hospitals in black neighborhoods compare unfavorably with those in white neighborhoods), public housing (to end homelessness and guarantee everyone the right to have a roof over their head). If we want to solve the problem of institutional racism in this country, we need to address the fundamental problems of economic inequality. Where do we get the money? Not only by defunding the police which claim the lion's share of local budgets, but by demilitarizing the bloated military-industrial complex and taxing the rich at 1955 levels (91%). The Federal Reserve can always take a few more trillion on its balance sheet; it has taken trillions on its balance sheet already and given the money to the big banks. How about Quantitative Easing for the people? Economic inequality is a problem which affects black people disproportionately (there's that word again), but the solution of which will contribute to the benefit of white people as well.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Matter: Police Reforms Benefit Whites as Well

by John Lawrence, June 7, 2020

No more "carotid restraints" or chokeholds is a police reform caused by the Black Lives Matter movement, but obviously it applies to whites as well. We don't know how many of the 237 times Minnesota police used chokeholds, blacks were targeted, but probably like all police violence it was disproportionate. Police reforms such as ending "no knock warrants" also obviously apply to whites as well as blacks. The point is that what black people are demanding in terms of police reform doesn't just affect black lives. It affect all lives.

So why stop with just police reform? How about prison reform.Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. Although only a small percentage are in prison for minor drug offenses, marijuana possession in small quantities should be made legal on a national basis. Many are in jail awaiting trial. Every day, 465,000 people are held in local jails even though they have not been convicted; legally, they are presumed innocent. Many are there because they cannot afford bail.

Let's not stop at prison reform. How about political reform? Mail-in ballots should be legalized and encouraged in every state. How many poor people can afford to take time off from work to go and vote? These people are probably disproportionately black, but it would help poor people who are white as well. Let's make the election of President be based on popular vote and not the electoral college. Let's do away with the filibuster which prevents legislation from being passed democratically. Let's limit the power of the leader of the Senate to even stop legislation from being introduced. Make it mandatory that legislation created in the House be debated and voted upon in the Senate. Let's outlaw lobbying which lets the richest and most powerful individuals and corporations determine the political agenda.

How about economic justice? That was basically Bernie Sanders' agenda. Let's eliminate poverty and homelessness in the US. Blacks are disproportionately poor and homeless, but there are plenty of poor and homeless whites as well. Instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military and military-industrial complex, instead of wasting money on fruitless wars, let's have a Green New Deal and rebuild American infrastructure while at the same time creating hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs. Let's cancel student loan debt which disproportionately affects blacks, but whites will benefit too. Let's have Medicare for All instead of an outrageously expensive health care system which is twice as expensive as any other country's while producing only half as good results.

You get the picture? All the reforms which could come from the Black Lives Matter movement will also bring those same reforms for whites, browns and any other colors. Let's protest to change the course of this whole country for all citizens. Then we have to help the rest of the world with a Green New Deal if we want to create a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren. Black people are leading the way for social justice, for political and economic justice, justice which will turn this country around and help turn this planet around. Let's keep on going.