Dr. Stein, a Massachusetts medical physician, ran for president in 2012 and the two mainstream parties did everything in their power to silence her message, including arresting her and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, to prevent them from attending restricted debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Governor Mitt Romney at Hofstra University. Despite that, according to her Wikipedia page.
She received 456,169 votes for 0.36% in the election, making her the most successful female presidential candidate in U.S. history. Stein received over 1% of the popular vote in three states: 1.3% in Maine, 1.1% in Oregon, and 1.0% in Alaska.
Dr. Stein also sat down with Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman to talk about her platform and her differences with the Democratic Party candidates.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Recently Hillary Clinton joined Nancy Pelosi and many others in Congress to call on the president to reorient our trade policy so that it produces a good deal for all Americans – not just for a handful of big corporations. Here’s a realistic starting point: Fix the way we enforce trade agreements to ensure a level playing field for everyone. Many of our close allies – major trading partners like Australia, Germany, France, India, South Africa, and Brazil – are already moving in this direction. American negotiators should stop fighting those efforts and start leading them.
We live in a largely free trade world. Over the past 50 years, we’ve opened up countless markets, so that tariffs today are generally low. As a result, modern trade agreements are less about reducing tariffs and more about writing new rules for everything from labor, health, and environmental standards to food safety, prescription drug access, and copyright protections.
Even if those rules strike the right balance among competing interests, the true impact of a trade deal will turn on how well those rules are enforced. And that is the fundamental problem: America’s current trade policy makes it nearly impossible to enforce rules that protect hard-working families, but very easy to enforce rules that favor multinational corporations.
“Laudato Si,’ ” Pope Francis’s stunning encyclical, has earned much deserved attention for its ringing declaration that climate change poses a real and present danger and is caused “mainly as a result of human activity.” But Pope Francis’s text is far broader. He grounds his call for action on climate change within a fierce critique of the false doctrines of market fundamentalism, calling on us to “reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.” The pope, as the Wall Street Journal summarized, issues “an indictment of the global market economy” for “plundering the Earth at the expense of the poor and of future generations.” [..]
The pope condemns the current global economy “where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked.”
Wall Street comes under particular criticism: “Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated.” As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which become the only rule.”
Black Lives Matter and the push to raise the minimum wage show how racial and economic justice are intertwined
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a national hero for helping end racial segregation in the United States. Yet he spent the last years of his life working as much for economic justice as for racial justice.
When he was shot and killed in Memphis in April 1968, King was in the city on behalf of striking sanitation workers who were trying to organize a union and win higher wages. The predominantly black labor force had to work seven days a week with no vacations, carrying 80 pound crates of rotting garbage. They were being paid wages so low that many were forced to supplement their income with public assistance programs.
Dr. King always understood that the fight for labor rights was integral to attaining true social, political and economic equality. In a speech at the May 1961 AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, he linked the aspirations of African-Americans in the United States with organized labor’s cause.
The Charleston Massacre is a product of simmering racial tensions that elites continue to deny. Will the attack be a turning point for change?
On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed, killing four African-American girls. The incident shocked people around the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, making leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. even more determined to end segregation. Just as that horrific attack was a reflection of racist violence and became a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, so too should the Charleston shooting be seen as a seminal moment, indicative of simmering racial hatred. However, right-wing conservatives like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham want us to believe that the massacre of nine African-Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week was about religion more than race, a sentiment repeatedly echoed on Fox News. But in fact, the Charleston massacre has much more in common with the 1963 Alabama church bombing. Nine people lost their lives because of a pathology in American society that we continue to be unwilling to address. Will we seize this moment and change history before more terror strikes?
What is different now is that the resurgence of white supremacist attacks on African-Americans comes at the same time that the U.S. government is fighting a “war on terror” against radical Islam. The hypocrisy of calling Boston marathon bomber Dhozkar Tsarnaev a “terrorist,” while labeling the Charleston perpetrator Dylann Roof as a “shooter” who may have been “mentally ill,” has raised the ire of many. And yet almost no politician has used the word “terrorist” as yet to describe Roof. FBI Director James Comey has explicitly ruled out calling it a terrorist act. On his website Roof referred to “black on white crime,” which he googled and then confessed that “I have never been the same since that day.” His statement to one of the survivors of the Charleston massacre that “you rape our women, and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go,” exemplifies a long-standing racist paranoia that African-American men are preying on white women.
News that Earl Holt, president of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, has donated $65,000 to Republicans, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum, has ricocheted around the media since The Guardian broke it last night. No wonder: It reveals a mere two degrees of separation between the racist murderer Dylann Roof, who says the CCC helped inspire him, and the GOP. It might be unfair to make this link if the support only went one way-after all, politicians can’t be held responsible for the views of everyone who gives them money. But the entanglement between the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Republican Party is longer and deeper than just a few checks, and for many years, it was mutual.
“The public sees the CCC and wants to think of it as an extremist group, which it is, but it’s also a group that’s had a foothold historically in mainstream politics,” says Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The green economy was chugging along at the Nevada paper recycling plant that morning in June 2012, feeding an oversized mound of waste toward a conveyor belt. But when the machine got jammed, the worker who tried to unclog it suddenly got flattened by a 2.5-ton mass of paper. A coworker rushed to extract him using a front-end loader, but according to a government report, the worker died at the hospital two days later, smothered by the dead trees he had been tasked with salvaging.
The industries that pride themselves on being friends of the earth are often hostile to workers, according to new research on the safety conditions in recycling plants. Published by Massachusetts Council for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH), National COSH, and other advocacy groups, the analysis of the industry shows that despite the green sector’s clean, progressive image, workers remain imperiled by old school industrial hazards. Workers face intense stress, dangerous machinery and inadequate safeguards, while toiling in strenuous positions amid constant toxic exposures.
The Department of Agriculture may be able to protect chicken farmers from industry retaliations in 2016, and satirical news anchor John Oliver may be part of the reason.
A draft of the 2016 Agriculture Appropriations Bill was unanimously approved by a House subcommittee Thursday.
It passed without any amendments that might prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture from punishing meatpacking companies if they use deceptive practices against contract livestock and poultry farmers.
Part of the credit goes to the host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” some members of Congress said.
On his show last month, the comedian criticized contracts that poultry producers, including Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, and Perdue, have their chicken farmers sign. [..]
These contract farms take out loans to build facilities, buy equipment and chicken feed – usually from the meat processing companies. The farmers are paid to raise the chickens, but they don’t get to sell them. The company owns the animals. Some farmers say they don’t make enough money in this system, but are usually in so much debt they can’t leave it.
The companies also force farmers to compete with each other. Lower-performing farms get less money. [..]
But Oliver also took a jab at members of Congress, who he said, have “fought efforts to protect chicken farmers” by adding riders to appropriations bills.
He told viewers that anyone on the House Appropriations Committee who votes against an amendment giving USDA power to protect farmers was a “chicken f–.” Oliver said this while flashing images of each of the committee members with their states and party affiliations.
The clip has gotten nearly 3 million views on You Tube. [..]
It’s still a long way from passage. The bill still has to pass the full House Committee on Appropriations, where it could be amended. It then must pass the full House and go through the same process in the Senate. If it weren’t fro John Oliver, the bill would never have been written. It’s good to know that someone in Congress watches these left wing programs.
The Senate on Tuesday voted to advance President Obama’s trade agenda, approving a measure to end debate on fast-track authority.
The 60-37 motion sets up a vote on final passage on Wednesday. If the Senate approves fast-track or trade promotion authority (TPA), it would then be sent to Obama’s desk to become law.
Fast-track authority would allow Obama to send trade deals to Congress for up-or-down votes. The White House wants the authority to conclude negotiations on a sweeping trans-Pacific trade deal.
Thirteen Democrats backed fast-track in Tuesday’s vote, handing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a major legislative victory. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) voted against the procedural motion.
The bill will then go to President Obama’s desk for his signature. However, the bill is being moved forward does not contain the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) measure that would provide financial aid and job training to workers who lose their jobs due to foreign competition. TAA, in truth, is a sucker deal
For starters, the money in TAA is a pittance, compare to the direct damage that this deal will do to American workers. And it does nothing to protect consumers and citizens from the other elements of the deal that weaken regulatory standards.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is not really about doing much for workers. Mainly, it’s about giving Democrats who are in bed with corporate elites some political cover. The cover is pretty threadbare.
It also stands little chance of passing in the House, even if the Senate manages to pass it, as House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised. The president has said the he would no sign TPA without the TAA.
Many Senate Democrats insisted their vote on Wednesday was conditional on the passage of separate TAA legislation. The Senate will likely pass that legislation on Wednesday, but the bill faces steeper challenges in the House, where Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it. Obama has said he wants both TAA and the fast-track bill to be enacted. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he will deliver the votes necessary for its passage.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Obama expects Congress to send him the TAA bill this week, but didn’t say whether the president would sign the TPA bill before that happened. House Democrats could join Republicans to vote down TAA, potentially daring Obama to sign fast-track without the program. [..]
(Sen. Patti) Murray, on her way to the Senate floor, told reporters she’d been given assurances by McConnell and Boehner that Congress would take up assistance to workers displaced by the deal. In the prior Senate vote on TPA, which took place in May, Murray had urged Democrats not to vote with McConnell without major concessions from the GOP leader. She and Cantwell ultimately cut a deal with McConnell to get a vote reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. McConnell embarrassed Murray by delivering only a nonbinding vote on the measure.
Democrats now hope to attach a reauthorization to a highway bill as an amendment.
Wyden said Tuesday that Boehner’s late promises helped win votes.
While, eventually, the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement will most likely pass the Senate, its fate in the House is unknown sonce the Tea Party caucus opposes any agenda proposed by Pres. Obama. GOP presidential candidates Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) are also opposed to the bill and are reliant on the Tea Party votes of their base. Both voted against TPA passage today. If you’re shaking your head in wonder that the sane Democrats would have to rely on the GOP lunatic fringe, you’re not alone
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
There are many serious issues raised by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the one that may have the greatest long-term impact is its provisions on drug patents. The explicit purpose is to make patent protection stronger and longer. While these provisions are likely to lead to higher drug prices in the United States, they will have their greatest impact in the developing world.
In most developing countries, drugs are far cheaper than in the United States. This is especially the case in India. The country has a world-class generic industry that produces high-quality drugs that typically sell for a small fraction of the price in the United States. For example, the generic version of the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi can be purchased in India for less than $1,000 a treatment. The patent protected version sells in the United States for $84,000.
The U.S. drug industry desperately wants to eliminate this sort of price gap, which can exceed a ratio of one hundred to one. While India is not in the TPP, the goal of TPP proponents is to expand the pact over time so that India would eventually be included and therefore be subject to its strong patent rules.
In response to a white supremacist’s massacre of nine black citizens of Charleston in a historic black church, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on Monday finally answered the question, “Should the Confederate flag be taken down from state house grounds?” In the pantheon of gimme questions, it is one of the gimmiest, somewhat more difficult than “Should we have a do-over of the Iraq War” and only barely easier than, “Do I want to be drowned in a sack with rats?”
The suit-fillers of Beltway media passed an energetic “She said yes!” through the Twitter-madding crowd with the enthusiasm of a lummox who proposes to his girlfriend on the ballgame Jumbotron and thumbs-up at 30,000 people after she bows to the peer pressure. Chris Cilizza thinks Nikki Haley has “potential”, and whomever wrote the headline for his piece quoted the language of Hubie Brown calling the NBA draft. Someone will spend today calling her brave. It is the faintest of praise for the faintest of gestures – a politician putting her convenient brand on an issue that already threatened to be inevitable – and it is one Haley herself was happy to undermine even as she was making it.
For all the congratulation Haley will doubtless garner, she still tooted the whistle of southern Lost Cause rhetoric loud and hard enough to send a few terriers home with burst eardrums.
“With cat-like tread upon our foes we steal.” So boasted Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as they decided to try a little burglary for a change. And “steal” is the appropriate word.
It’s hardly a surprise that Republican congressional leaders and their cadre of Democratic allies spurred on by Barack Obama are resorting to a bagful of parliamentary tricks to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership on a “take it or leave it but you can’t change it” fast-track to enactment by Tuesday.
No sooner had the first round gone to pro-democracy forces than Speaker Boehner — forever remembered as the man who handed out tobacco lobby checks to members on the House floor — promptly scheduled a new vote allowing time to bring pressure on naysayers.
I think I speak for many black people when I say that I’m wonderfully bored with white people’s obsession with policing whether or not it’s ever appropriate for a black person to use “nigger” and all its variances. The majority never really has a right to question the marginalized-but particularly when context is key. And yet, they do it anyway, again and again. This time President Obama is the target, but the intent is the same: to be caught up in a word rather than the crux of an argument about systemic racism. [..]
I wish I could be amused by mass media’s disingenuousness. President Obama is not the first president to use “nigger,”-he’s merely the first one not to use it as a slur. For all his work on passing civil rights legislation, former Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson let the word fly freely and routinely from his mouth. The same goes for former Republican president Richard Nixon, and for Harry Truman, when he called Adam Clayton Powell “that damned nigger preacher.”
And, you know, all those other presidents who owned slaves and expressed deep contempt for black people.
So, with that in mind, what purpose does it serve asking whether or not the first black president’s use of “nigger” in the context of a larger reflection on covert versus overt racism relevant? Because a few white people will object? Who cares? How much longer are we going to entertain thoughts of whether or not there is a double standard at play? This is a ruse of the highest order. Even if you don’t agree with the approach, black people use “nigga” in a different context than “nigger.” Whites have every other advantage over blacks; they can take the “L” on this one word.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
America is a much less racist nation than it used to be, and I’m not just talking about the still remarkable fact that an African-American occupies the White House. The raw institutional racism that prevailed before the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow is gone, although subtler discrimination persists. Individual attitudes have changed, too, dramatically in some cases. For example, as recently as the 1980s half of Americans opposed interracial marriage, a position now held by only a tiny minority.
Yet racial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.
Of course, saying this brings angry denials from many conservatives, so let me try to be cool and careful here, and cite some of the overwhelming evidence for the continuing centrality of race in our national politics.Of course, saying this brings angry denials from many conservatives, so let me try to be cool and careful here, and cite some of the overwhelming evidence for the continuing centrality of race in our national politics.
Investment bank takes page from Michael Milken playbook, seeks to profit from high-risk loans
Goldman Sachs, the investment manager of choice for the super rich, is about to pursue new profits by lending to the merely prosperous.
This is an epochal change on Wall Street worthy of the Tuesday morning placement at the top of the New York Times front page, even though the news actually broke a year ago.
Potentially Goldman will make it easier, faster and cheaper for people and businesses to take out loans from a few thousands of dollars to a few tens of thousands of dollars. But in doing so, it just may weaken retail banking, resulting in less competition and more power for Goldman. It also is not without risk to taxpayers and Goldman customers, not least because the law has yet to define the relative rights and duties of such borrowers, lenders and investors in the new banking trend that Goldman said it will join next year.
So while this new venture may be an economic and social good, we should be wary, given Goldman’s long and troubled history of taking advantage of customers and taxpayers alike. Keep in mind that Goldman tarnished its reputation for decades because it took care of itself first in 1929, ruining the fortunes of many famous clients.
Thanks to a last-minute deal last Thursday between President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress, the fast-track bill is still alive. Its passage depends on whether a handful of Senate Democrats can be persuaded to go along. [..]
Republicans have tried to frame the legislative situation as a fair trade-off: if they can get their reluctant caucus to vote for adjustment assistance, Democrats are somehow honor-bound to support the whole package. (Republicans don’t like TAA both because of its budget impact and their ideological belief that the free market will take care of displaced workers.)
But if Democrats fall for this ploy, they are dupes. For starters, the money in TAA is a pittance, compare to the direct damage that this deal will do to American workers. And it does nothing to protect consumers and citizens from the other elements of the deal that weaken regulatory standards.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is not really about doing much for workers. Mainly, it’s about giving Democrats who are in bed with corporate elites some political cover. The cover is pretty threadbare.
What exactly does it mean for a big Wall Street bank to plead guilty to a serious crime? Right now, practically nothing.
But it will if California’s Santa Cruz County has any say. [..]
The county’s board of supervisors just voted not to do business for five years with any of the five banks felons.
The county won’t use the banks’ investment services or buy their commercial paper, and will pull its money out of the banks to the extent it can.
“We have a sacred obligation to protect the public’s tax dollars and these banks can’t be trusted. Santa Cruz County should not be involved with those who rigged the world’s biggest financial markets,” says supervisor Ryan Coonerty.
The banks will hardly notice. Santa Cruz County’s portfolio is valued at about $650 million.
But what if every county, city, and state in America followed Santa Cruz County’s example, and held the big banks accountable for their felonies?
What if all of us taxpayers said, in effect, we’re not going to hire these convicted felons to handle our public finances? We don’t trust them.
Over the past few months, I’ve introduced three gun safety bills and fought for a proposal by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to keep cop-killing bullets off the street.
The ATF’s proposal was shelved before its comment period even ended because of the uproar from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, and my own proposals have triggered a wave of invectives and false attacks in an attempt to get me to back down and scare off others from supporting responsible gun safety reforms. [..]
I’m doing this because more children die in the United States from bullets than from cancer, and it’s a scandal that the federal government hasn’t done more.
But instead of a reasoned and measured debate about how to reduce gun violence, the response has been an onslaught of gun-obsessed fanatics who strongly – and wrongly – believe that the second amendment guarantees unregulated access to anything that anyone might wish to add to their own personal arsenal. The armchair-constitutionalists among them can make the case against pretty much any regulation of guns, and the courts be dammed.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Charleston, SC Mayor Joseph Riley; the New Yorker‘s Jelani Cobb; author Charlayne Hunter-Gault; and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
The roundtable guests are: Democratic strategist Maria Cardona; Republican strategist Sara Fagen; and host of NPR’s Morning EditionSteve Inskeep.
Face the Nation: The guests are: NAACP President Cornell William Brooks; Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole; and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The panel guests are: PBS’s Gwen Ifill; David Ignatius and Michael Gerson from the Washington Post; and radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC); and Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR).
The roundtable guests are: David Brooks, The New York Times; Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; and Gerald Seib, The Wall Street Journal .
“Terrorism is act of violence done or threatens to in order to try to influence a public body or citizenry, so it’s more of a political act and again based on what I know so more I don’t see it as a political act,” Comey said at a press conference Friday in Baltimore.
Authorities arrested Dylann Roof, 21, earlier this week in connection with the killing of nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Some have called the incident an act of terror. The FBI’s official definition of terrorism is: “The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Federal officials are investigating the shooting at a historic black church in South Carolina as a potential “act of domestic terrorism” as well as a hate crime.
“The department’s investigation of the shooting incident in Charleston, South Carolina, is ongoing,” Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said in a statement Friday.
“This heartbreaking episode was undoubtedly designed to strike fear and terror into this community, and the department is looking at this crime from all angles, including as a hate crime and as an act of domestic terrorism,” she added.
Someone needs to tell the Director to rad the law. Here is the legal definition of “domestic terrorism” from 18 U.S. Code § 2331:
(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that –
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended –
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion ; or
(iii) to influence the policy of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
What part of that law did Comey miss? The assassin, Dylann Roof made it abundant;y clear in his manifesto what his intentions were. On, wait, it’s a white guy that’s not a Muslim.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Last night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for an hour, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol-the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag-the flag of Dylann Roof-still flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia.
The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree-the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act-it endorses it. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…
This moral truth-“that the negro is not equal to the white man”-is exactly what animated Dylann Roof. More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded-with human sacrifice.
In February 2010, a man named Joseph Stack deliberately flew his small airplane into the side of a building that housed a regional IRS office in Austin, Texas, just as 200 agency employees were starting their workday. Along with himself, Stack killed an IRS manager and injured 13 others. [..]
The attack had all of the elements of iconic terrorism, a model for how it’s most commonly understood: down to flying a plane into the side of a building. But Stack was white and non-Muslim. As a result, not only was the word “terrorism” not applied to Stack, but it was explicitly declared inapplicable by media outlets and government officials alike. [..]
By very stark contrast, consider the October 2014, shooting in Ottawa by a single individual, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, at the Canadian Parliament building. As soon as it was known that the shooter was a convert to Islam, the incident was instantly and universally declared to be “terrorism.” Less than 24 hours afterward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared it a terror attack and even demanded new “counter-terrorism” powers in its name (which he has now obtained). To bolster the label, the government claimed Zehaf-Bibeau was on his way to Syria to fight with jihadists, and the media trumpeted this “fact.”By very stark contrast, consider the October 2014, shooting in Ottawa by a single individual, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, at the Canadian Parliament building. As soon as it was known that the shooter was a convert to Islam, the incident was instantly and universally declared to be “terrorism.” Less than 24 hours afterward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared it a terror attack and even demanded new “counter-terrorism” powers in its name (which he has now obtained). To bolster the label, the government claimed Zehaf-Bibeau was on his way to Syria to fight with jihadists, and the media trumpeted this “fact.”
Maybe it was white rage that provoked a young man to kill nine innocent worshipers as they prayed. Maybe it was mental illness or some other twisted motivation. The one thing about which there can be no debate is that he had a gun.
The gun is what ties the unspeakable atrocity in Charleston, S.C., to the long and apparently never-ending list of mass shootings in this country. We know them by their place names-Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Navy Yard. They rivet the nation’s attention for days or weeks-then they fade, and we do nothing. Perhaps this time will be different. I want to be hopeful, but I’m not optimistic. [..]
What we can do, if we have the will, is make it harder for those who want to kill innocents to obtain firearms. After 20 young children were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Congress took up two modest pieces of legislation: a ban on military-style assault weapons, which no hunter needs; and a requirement for universal background checks before buying guns. Both had overwhelming public support. Neither became law.
Can this time be different? Only if we hold Congress, Obama and the presidential candidates of both parties accountable. Only if we remember Mother Emanuel.
It was not a matter of if, but from where, some disgusting and barbaric reaction would come to Wednesday night’s terror attack at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. in which nine people died. Not surprisingly, Fox News was among the first out of the gate.
The “No More Mister Nice Blog” captured a segment Fox and Friends aired this morning in which the shooting was branded as an “attack on faith.”
“It didn’t matter that, by the time of the broadcast, the police chief of Charleston had already declared the shooting a hate crime, or that a reporter had interviewed a survivor who said that the shooter had told victims, ‘You rape our women and are taking over our country and you have to go,'” the blog author wrote. “The prime directive on Fox & Friends was not to report the truth – it was to establish a counternarrative that shifts blame away from Fox’s ideological allies and toward Fox’s ideological enemies.”
If some of the other writing of the right – and there was actually remarkably little from the right-wing media that I saw as of mid-afternoon Thursday – was less hell-bent on driving a narrative counter to the plain facts of the case that a white supremacist went into a historically African-American church known for its civil rights advocacy and for that reason killed nine people, it was certainly notable that the coverage steered clear from any notion of a connection between the incident and America’s continuing legacy of racism and violence.
There is a peculiar form of insanity in which a veneer of rationality distracts attention from the madness lurking just beneath the surface. When Alice dove down her rabbit hole to enter a place where smirking cats offered directions, ill-mannered caterpillars dispensed advice, and Mock Turtles constituted the principal ingredient in Mock Turtle soup, she experienced something of the sort.
Yet, as the old adage goes, truth can be even stranger than fiction. For a real-life illustration of this phenomenon, one need look no further than Washington and its approach to national security policy. Viewed up close, it all seems to hang together. Peer out of the rabbit hole and the sheer lunacy quickly becomes apparent.
Consider this recent headline: “U.S. to Ship 2,000 Anti-Tank Missiles To Iraq To Help Fight ISIS.” The accompanying article describes a Pentagon initiative to reinforce Iraq’s battered army with a rush order of AT-4s. A souped-up version of the old bazooka, the AT-4 is designed to punch holes through armored vehicles.
Taken on its own terms, the decision makes considerable sense. Iraqi forces need something to counter a ]fearsome new tactic http://www.theguardian.com/wor… of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS): suicide bombers mounted in heavily armored wheeled vehicles. Improved antitank capabilities certainly could help Iraqi troops take out such bombers before they reach their intended targets. The logic is airtight. The sooner these weapons get into the hands of Iraqi personnel, the better for them-and so the better for us.
As it turns out, however, the vehicle of choice for ISIS suicide bombers these days is the up-armored Humvee. In June 2014, when the Iraqi Army abandoned the country’s second largest city, Mosul, ISIS acquired 2,300 made-in-the-U.S.A. Humvees. Since then, it’s captured even more of them.
If racism, as many right wingers are claiming, is a mental illness, there a lot of mentally ill people in the world and too many of them are given access to guns. But the Republicans who can’t seen to admit that the murder of nine black women and men in a church in Charleston, South Carolina by a 21 year old male, white supremacist is an act of racial terrorism of the black community, not mental illness. Racism is taught. You have to be taught to hate and fear, you have to be carefully taught. The United States has a problem racism that a good many prominent whites are refusing to admit.
In the 24 hours after the massacre inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, GOP politicians and members of the conservative commentariat have tried to explain Dylann Storm Roof‘s motivations on a spectrum that runs from merely murky to the explicitly anti-religious.
They have taken pains to avoid the abundant evidence that Roof was a sadly familiar figure: a young man motivated by racism to violence.
Louisiana Governor and passive presidential aspirant Bobby Jindal inserted the shruggie icon into the debate, averring that we should defer to the expertise of police detectives in sussing out the connection between Roof’s documented history of racist sympathies and his perhaps coincidental murdering of black people: “Law enforcement will figure out what his so-called motivations were.”
South Carolina Senator and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham pointed out that it’s Christians who are the serial killer flavor of the month: “It’s 2015, there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them.” His fellow campaign traveler Rick Santorum opined that the slaughter was part of a larger “assault on religious liberty.” And Rand Paul blamed the massacre on “people not understanding where salvation comes from.”
Fox & Friends couldn’t help dumbing down the debate by framing it simply as an “Attack on Faith,” while anchor Steve Doocy wondered aloud how people could “unbelievably” “call it a hate crime.”
Police are investigating the shooting of nine African Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston as a hate crime committed by a white man. Unfortunately, it’s not a unique event in American history. Black churches have long been a target of white supremacists who burned and bombed them in an effort to terrorize the black communities that those churches anchored. One of the most egregious terrorist acts in U.S. history was committed against a black church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Four girls were killed when members of the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, a tragedy that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.
But listen to major media outlets and you won’t hear the word “terrorism” used in coverage of Tuesday’s shooting. You won’t hear the white male shooter, identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, described as “a possible terrorist.” And if coverage of recent shootings by white suspects is any indication, he never will be. Instead, the go-to explanation for his actions will be mental illness. He will be humanized and called sick, a victim of mistreatment or inadequate mental health resources. Activist Deray McKesson noted this morning that, while discussing Roof’s motivations, an MSNBC anchor said “we don’t know his mental condition.” That is the power of whiteness in America.
U.S. media practice a different policy when covering crimes involving African Americans and Muslims. As suspects, they are quickly characterized as terrorists and thugs, motivated by evil intent instead of external injustices. While white suspects are lone wolfs – Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston already emphasized this shooting was an act of just “one hateful person” – violence by black and Muslim people is systemic, demanding response and action from all who share their race or religion. Even black victims are vilified. Their lives are combed for any infraction or hint of justification for the murders or attacks that befall them: Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie. Michael Brown stole cigars. Eric Garner sold loosie cigarettes. When a black teenager who committed no crime was tackled and held down by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Tex., Fox News host Megyn Kelly described her as “No saint either.”
Along with Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Butler discussed the double standard with Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman.
Racism is not a mental illness. Unlike actual mental illnesses, it is taught and instilled. Mental illness was not the state policy of South Carolina, or any state for that matter, for hundreds of years — racism was. Assuming actions grounded in racial biases are irrational not only neutralizes their impact, it also paints the perpetrator as a victim.
Black people, on the other hand, do suffer actual mental health issues due to racism. Here are a few things to keep in mind as the media digs into Roof:
Black people are often expected to “shift” away from our cultural identities, which can heighten our vulnerability to depression and other psychological issues, as well as cause us to internalize negative stereotypes.
Racial discrimination, according to The Atlantic, increases the risk of stress, depression, the common cold, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, hypertension and mortality — all of which exist at high rates in my community.
Race-related stress is a stronger risk factor for mental duress than stressful life events are.
Black people’s physical health takes a hit as well due to the perception that whites want to keep us down.
Racism created socioeconomic barriers that also can be detrimental to black mental health.
For black women, the common “strong black woman” trope leaves no room for mistakes, which can force black women to internalize perfectionist tendencies in terms of our professional and academic work, our bodies (which are held to European standards) and our social lives. This leads to a tendency to not seek help and, in turn, heightened suicide rates. [..]
Racism isn’t a mental illness, but the psychological, emotional and physical effects on those who experience it are very real. And I’m exhausted.
It is long past time that American and the news media stopped skating around the issue that racism has gotten worse in this country. Racial hatred needs to be confronted not buried under the guise of mental illness.
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