How stupid does it have to get?

February 20, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

fix stupidA child in Oklahoma who insists humans existed alongside dinosaurs can still get an A on a science test under a newly introduced bill. Creationism is allowed to be taught as fact in Tennessee schools, and Missouri is still trying to pass a bill.

In Kansas, a bill has been introduced allowing teachers to refute climate science.

A legislator in Missouri has sponsored a bill to make it a felony for anyone to propose any new gun safety legislation.

A legislator in Alabama, a woman, has called the fetus “the largest organ in the body.” Uh, that would be the skin, honey.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg denies that any homeless people are sleeping on the streets.

This doesn’t even include the petty, vindictive bills and laws that would deny millions of people access to health care through Medicaid expansions or reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits, slash taxes on the rich while increasing them on the working class, slash unemployment benefits for people whose jobs are shipped overseas …

I’m just talking stupid here, not immorality.

I thought we had reached the depths of stupid when Senate candidate Todd Akin from Missouri insisted that in a “real” rape a woman could just “shut that whole thing down” and avoid pregnancy.

It seems we’re still descending, though. Denying scientific fact has become the fashionable thing for the Right to do. It doesn’t matter what kind of proof there is, science is wrong and they feel disrespected when you tell their their religious belief might be metaphor and not fact.

We have come to the point where claims of religious freedom are allowed to trump science in schools and in legislatures. Where does it stop?

Your religion is called faith, and the definition of faith is a belief in something you can’t see or touch or even prove. I understand faith because I’m a Christian.

But I also believe in science, and the two exist nicely side-by-side. The creation story is metaphor. God has no sense of time, so each “day” is an era in the evolution of life. See? It fits, unless you insist God didn’t inspire the Bible but wrote it.

“Well, evolution is just a theory,” they say.

So is gravity. Get over it.

As for the fetus as organ thing and the magical lady parts, I just don’t know what to say except that when someone says something that stupid no one should ever vote for them again.

 

 

Attacks from every direction

February 14, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments
Here I am waiting to be introduced at HKonJ 7 last weekend in Raleigh. The turnout for the event was about 10,000.

Here I am waiting to be introduced at HKonJ 7 last weekend in Raleigh. The turnout for the event was about 10,000.

No longer content to just badmouth and vilify hardworking Americans, it seems the right has started actively trying to kill them.

In NC, the legislature has voted to deny 600,000 people access to health care by refusing to expand Medicaid, even though it would bring down billions in federal dollars and create 25,000 jobs, not to mention save lives.

This move will mean more suffering among the more than half-million people who can’t gain access to health care. We’re talking about more heart attacks and strokes, more complications from diabetes — kidney failure, blindness, limb amputations — more advanced cancers, more intractable mental illnesses, more asthma emergencies … the list goes on.

The legislature’s choice of a twisted ideology over compassion and decency will increase medical costs and people will still suffer and die unnecessarily.

And if you’ve been unlucky enough to have your job shipped overseas, that’s too bad too because the legislature has voted to overhaul unemployment insurance by slashing benefits and the amount of time people are eligible to receive them. North Carolina now has the shortest compensation time in the country — in some cases just 12 weeks.

Not to mention that when people lose their jobs they also lose their health benefits, but our legislators don’t care about that.

My inbox is full of e-mails begging me to sign one petition or another to prevent the North Carolina GOP from de-funding education, raping the environment, rigging taxes so the rich pay less and the rest of us pay more, punishing workers for wanting to make a living wage, making a naked power grab by firing everyone on state regulatory commissions …

I can’t keep up with it all, and that’s just in North Carolina.

In Washington, the GOP is still refusing to cooperate with anything the President wants to do.

They’re filibustering against Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Secretary of Defense; they’re saying they’ll block a minimum wage increase, they’re slowing down gun safety laws, and the House GOP is still trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

I’m exhausted from e-mailing and calling and traveling to try and get these people to listen to reason about the Medicaid expansion, but I’m just met with a stone wall. My own representative doesn’t answer my e-mails, not does Gov. Pat McCrory.

McCrory did answer an e-mail from my friend, Eileen McMinn, though. He sent her a form e-mail asking if she would donate money to him.

They’re ignoring us, and I suppose they have reason to believe they can get away with it because we seem to be lying down and playing dead.

How many of us have e-mailed, called or snail-mailed our state representatives or governor over these issues? How about our federal representatives? Have we thanked the ones who are doing the right thing? I e-mailed Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, to thank him for voting in favor of the Violence Against Women Act.

There’s a lot at stake here. You may not think you’ll ever need Medicaid, but if your job gets shipped overseas and you get just $350 a week for 12 weeks, what then? How long can you keep making house and car payments? What if you get sick on top of all that?

We are all at risk here, and we all need to take action. Democracy is participatory. If we don’t participate — and by that I mean becoming educated about the issues and voting according to our convictions — this is what we get.

If you don’t know who your representative is in the US House, visit www.hoismyrepresentative.com.

If you don’t know who your state senators or representatives are, you can visit www.ncleg.net or call your county’s board of elections.

If you’re one of those who say, “I’m just not interested in politics,” shame on you! You’re part of the reason we’re in this mess.

 

The great over-reach and how we can fight it

February 6, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

wrongRepublicans in North Carolina are convinced they will hold power forever, and that it means they should take us all back to Medieval times, where they seem to prefer to live as lords.

First the NC House voted to cut unemployment compensation and make it more difficult to qualify, ensuring more North Carolina families will lose everything when they get laid off. The top weekly compensation will be just $350 a week if this becomes law.

Then the NC Senate voted to reject the expansion of Medicaid, which would bring in nearly $15 billion from the federal government to insure more than a half-million people, including those unemployed people who are about to get royally screwed. Estimates of the number of people who will not gain access to care range as high as 650,000. The Senate also voted to reject partnering with the federal government on a health benefits marketplace, which will cost even more money.

This state ranks 38th in health outcomes (cancer deaths, heart disease, low-birthweight babies, infant mortality, etc.), and we’re about to drop even lower as federal money to reimburse hospitals and other providers gets cut (the expansion of Medicaid was designed to replace this money by covering low-income people with Medicaid).

So now, more than a half-million people in this state are at risk of dying from preventable causes. We will see more advanced cancers, more heart attacks and stroke, more serious complications from diabetes (blindness, kidney failure, limb amputations), more intractable mental illness, more life-threatening, antibiotic resistant infections … And more funerals for people who shouldn’t have died.

It will cost us dearly in both money and human lives.

Now the NC Senate has voted to fire every public servant on several critical boards and commissions to they can be replaced with like-minded ideologues who will rape the environment and offer big business everything it wants. We will see less safe workplaces, more food-borne illnesses, more corruption and much, much less protection of any kind for the people of this state.

The reason the terms on these boards are staggered is to prevent them being stacked with ideologues by corrupt politicians. But a few appointments wasn’t enough for the Teapublicans in  the Senate; they want it all. They want to run everything with no opposition from anyone.

Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran as a moderate, has a chance to veto all of this, but he hasn’t indicated whether he will. He likely will sign the raid on unemployment and he has said he doesn’t think now is the right time to expand Medicaid (When IS the right time, Governor?).

I hope he sees that this power grab is unconscionable.

We need to let our legislators know how important these issues are to us. To e-mail a legislator, it’s firstname.lastname@ncleg.net (example: tim.moffitt@ncleg.net). You can go to www.ncleg.net for more contact information Their phone numbers are listed there. To contact Gov. McCrory, visit http://www.governor.state.nc.us/contact, tweet @PatMcCroryNC, call  919-733-5811 or snail-mail:

Office of the Governor
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301

Do it now and then do it every day until the issues are resolved. If these things go through, e-mail every day to let them know they’re going to be unemployed in 2014 (or in the governor’s case, 2016).

 

Let them know you care

January 31, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments
The mindset of the American Tea Party.

The mindset of the American Tea Party.

The Tea Party-infused North Carolina General Assembly lost no time on the opening day of the legislative session letting us all know just how far-right they are.

Without consulting the new governor, who also is a Republican, they voted to go back on the decision by the previous governor to form a partnership with the federal government to build our health benefits exchange (the marketplace where people will buy insurance starting next year). They also voted to reject the Medicaid expansion, even though the state will pay nothing for the first three years and then just 10 percent thereafter.

North Carolina has 500,000 people who would benefit from the expansion and who otherwise will have no access to health care. Some will die.

Not that NC legislators care.

Fortunately, this decision is not up to them; it is up to Gov. Pat McCrory.

Which leaves us a little hope since he has not announced his decision yet.

So, we have to move quickly. Here’s what you can do. Visit http://www.governor.state.nc.us/contact and e-mail or call the governor to let him know you take this issue seriously.

The lives of a half-million people could be at risk if McCrory decides against expanding Medicaid to everyone whose income falls below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

What’s worse is that move is financially foolish. The federal government will foot the entire bill for the first three years and 90 percent thereafter. Compare that to the cost of more heart attacks, more strokes, more amputations, more kidney failure, more asthma, more advanced cancers and more intractable psychiatric illnesses among these 500,000 people.

There’s no compassion in the decision not to expand Medicaid, just a backward ideology.

Please let the governor know we need to expand Medicaid. If he hears from enough of us, he might listen.

 

Hunker down, NC folks

January 30, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living One comment
Now, wait just a minute. What do you mean you'll just do what you want?

Now, wait just a minute. What do you mean you’ll just do what you want?

On Day One of the new legislative session in North Carolina, it’s clear who will be in charge of the asylum, and it’s not the governor.

I never thought of Pat McCrory as a moderate, but I suppose “moderate” is relative when you’re talking about the right-wing nuts in the General Assembly and their agenda.

I e-mailed McCrory last week and the week before, asking for him to agree to expand Medicaid. But now it appears that the nuts in the Assembly are considering a law that would make it illegal to comply with the federal Affordable Care Act.

Now, they can’t do that, of course. I mean, they can pass a law, but it won’t be legal because state law can’t supersede federal. Still, it sends the powerful message that these people are extremist and we won’t be able to reason with them.

What’s worse is that we’re stuck with them for the next two years because North Carolina has no provision for recalls.

And it’s not just anti-healthcare laws they want to promote; they want to enshrine the state’s regressive right-to-work laws in the Constitution the way they did with their anti-marriage-equality stance.

They want to reduce unemployment compensation to the point people who lose their jobs will have no means to pay their bills, even for a couple of months.

Apparently, they’re introducing these bills without even talking to Gov. McCrory.

I foresee a really nasty couple of years ahead, and I can only hope we can unseat the bastards then.

 

 

Thanks a lot, Harry

January 25, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

filibusterHarry Reid sold us out. It’s as simple as that.

He let filibuster reform slip away, claiming he didn’t have the votes.

He should have called for a vote so we all could know which Democrats didn’t support ending the gridlock and obstructionism of the Republicans in the Senate. Then we could direct our anger at them instead of Hapless Harry.

A disappointed Sen. Tom Harkin said President Obama might as well take a four-year vacation, and I’m afraid he’s right.

The GOP holds the House, thanks to their gerrymandering and even though the Dems have a majority in the Senate, they will get nothing done because the GOP won’t allow it — and Harry Reid has just let that happen.

I didn’t even have to read the headline when I saw the creepy, lipless smile on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s face. He has every reason to be happy — he just got the best gift he could ever wish for.

In the last six years Republicans have used the filibuster nearly 400 times to grind progress to a halt, and it doesn’t even take any effort on their part. I single senator can say, “I don’t like this. FILIBUSTER!”  and it’s done unless the Democrats have 60 votes to overcome it.

They have ruled by minority ever since the Dems took control of the Senate and they’re not going to stop now.

Thanks a lot Harry. You really screwed us this time.

 

Where were they when …?

January 24, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

hillaryI was thrilled with Hillary’s outrage yesterday, especially when she scolded Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).

Where was this outrage when more than 40 people died at embassies and consulates during the Bush Administration? I believe it was just waiting for a Democrat to blame it on, and all the better that it’s a “gal” Democrat.

And, Rand Paul saying he would have fired her if he was president. Well, the fact that she kept a straight face as he said those words is to her credit.

Really, Rand? And who was it that refused to increase funding for security at Benghazi and other US State Department outposts? Why, it was the GOP. For even more hypocrisy, let me say Rand Paul has advocated slashing State’s already tight budget by almost half.

So this GOP outrage, if indeed it is real, is misdirected. Hillary’s outrage, despite what the Right is claiming, was very real and well deserved.

Secretary Clinton was right to lose her cool with Sen. Johnson. When there’s chaos at an embassy and no one is sure what is going on, we need time to find out. I’m sure if someone had picked up the phone to call the consulate, no one would have answered to say, “Oh, it’s not a protest.”

That is not what matters at this point. What matters is that an attack against an American outpost succeeded. Would it have succeeded if there had been more security? Possibly not. And why wasn’t there more security? Secretary Clinton had requested it, so why wasn’t it deployed?

Oh, that’s right, the GOP cut funding for security at overseas outposts. Secretary Clinton has taken the blame. When Ronald Reagan said he took the blame for the Beirut bombing in 1983 that killed 241 US service members, the GOP seemed happy to accept it. But they’re not happy this time. Could it be hypocrisy? I think so.

They’re looking for a way to blame Secretary Clinton because she’s a Democrat and a female. They just hate that.

The power of nonviolence

January 21, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

rush-johnSome 55 years ago, the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans began in earnest in Montgomery, Ala., when Rosa Parks sat in a bus seat and refused to give up her seat to a white person.

Parks was arrested and the African-American community began a boycott of the city bus system. They organized carpools and they walked. They endured the elements in the worst weather to prove the transportation company needed their business more than they needed the buses.

They didn’t throw rocks or shoot anyone; they just did what they needed to do to prove their point. Eventually, they won a Supreme Court decision saying they were free to sit where they pleased on buses.

Later, an integrated group of people boarded buses to cross the Deep South and use the bus terminals. In Anniston, Ala., one of the two buses was met by a mob that threw rocks at the bus and slashed its tires. The bus managed to get out of town, but six miles outside of town, the mob caught up and firebombed the bus and attempted to keep the passengers inside.

In Birmingham, Ala., “Bull” Conner, the director of public safety had a mob ready and waiting to greet the second bus. Again, people were beaten.

But national news cameras were there to capture the mayhem. When not one of the Freedom Riders fought back, the nation’s sympathy turned to the Civil Rights warriors. Images of brutal beatings and bloodied faces horrified viewers.

These were among the first images I recall vividly of the Civil Rights Movement. Among the others were the marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., being attacked by police as they attempted a peaceful march to Montgomery in 1965. I have walked that bridge on a Civil Rights tour alongside African-Americans. It was sacred ground. I felt the courage of those people who risked their lives for equality.

Andrew Young, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, said later that several people wanted to go home and get their guns to retaliate, but they realized before taking that action that it would only cause the movement to fail.

They attempted the walk again two weeks later with Martin Luther King Jr. at the head of the column and walked the more than 50 miles to Montgomery under the protection of the National Guard.

I remember seeing marchers attacked by dogs and by powerful water cannons, causing them to skitter down the street like trash or cower against buildings as the water beat against them with the power of a battering ram.

And I remember the outrage of so many Americans who saw the powerful abusing unarmed, nonviolent people. The violent overlords looked evil, as does Rush Limbaugh today.

The fight was a battle for dignity and respect, and one who possesses dignity does not stoop to the level of the ignorant when seeking respect.

King’s work made possible today’s inauguration of Barack Obama. Although there still is racism, it is dying out with the people who fought against civil rights. Nonviolence won.

Martin Luther King was inspired by Gandhi and Christ when he decided to lead a nonviolent movement. Nonviolent civil disobedience moves nations in the right direction. It is the only way to achieve real and lasting peace.

Violence begets violence and love begets love. It is time for society to learn that lesson.

 

The GOP’s priorities

January 7, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

repealOK, so it’s the new Congress and there’s a lot of really urgent work to do. So, what do Michele Bachmann and her cronies do first? They try for the 34th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

No matter that they’ve tried 33 times and haven’t been able to succeed (thank God). No matter that they have fewer votes now than they did before the election. No matter that the American people want Congress to work on more urgent problems like getting aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy or renewing the Violence Against Women Act. Nope, they have to make the statement that they’re just a bunch of spoiled, selfish children.

Apparently, 33 attempts at repeal using 80 hours of House time and costing taxpayers $43 million wasn’t enough for Bachmann et al; they have to keep trying to take away health reform.

Victims of the Sandy have waited 10 weeks now for some help and this hopelessly tired effort to repeal health care reform takes precedence. And this comes after House Speaker John Boehner shut down the 113th Congress without allowing a vote on relief for the victims of one of the worst storms in American history.

And when the House finally did take up relief for the people in New York and New Jersey who have lost everything, they didn’t vote on the entire $60 billion package; they only passed $9.7 billion, which allows FEMA to try to find housing for people who lost everything more than two months ago.

And dozens in the GOP even voted against that.

So, what will happen when the rest of the funding comes up for a vote on Jan. 15? Republicans will act as though Sandy victims somehow brought all this upon themselves and therefore don’t deserve the help.

That’s right, the victims of Hurricane Sandy are just a bunch of moochers looking for a free ride from the government, but their corporate friends deserve every break, even if it costs American lives.

And if votes mean priorities, the safety of women means nothing. The renewal of the Violence Against Women Act was never even brought up for a vote and one doesn’t appear likely anytime soon.

After all, we women are usually asking for it when we get beaten up and raped. We were sassy or we dressed wrong or otherwise provoked the poor men in our lives who aren’t supposed to control their own violent urges.

You knew he would get furious if you walked in front of the TV or if the baby cried when he was trying to nap. He told you a million times dinner has to be on the table by 6 and here it is 6:15. And where the hell did you drive the car? It has 100 more miles on it than it should. You know that pisses him off.

And women are fair game to satisfy a man’s sexual urges if they wear anything attractive or if they allow a man to buy them a drink or to kiss them. These girls were called “prick tease” when I was younger because they didn’t understand that boys have to go all the way if they start. They deserved what they got and apparently still do. Apparently, just crossing a horny man’s path is reason enough, and we ought to know better.

So, like the victims of Sandy — more than the victims of Sandy — we women get what we ask for, so we don’t need no stinkin’ laws to protect us.

Why the hell does the US House of Representatives have to spend good time and money on our safety when there’s health reform to repeal?

How’s that for priorities?

 

Roadblocks to redemption

December 27, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

food stampsOur laws aren’t supposed to punish children for the deeds of their parents, but 32 states ban people who have been convicted of a drug felony from receiving government assistance.

Last week, Dr. Emily Wang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and the Associate Director of the Transitions Clinic Network, posted a piece in The American Prospect about a 23-year-old woman named Carla who served a sentence for a drug-related crime and now can’t get food stamps for herself and her children.

Carla is out of prison, but few people want to hire an ex-convict, so she’s having a hard time finding a job. And even though she’s going back to school and staying clean, she can’t get food stamps for her children.

The ban came from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. It was an effort to keep people from trading food stamps for drugs, even though that wasn’t a huge problem.

My question would be why the law didn’t make it a felony to trade food stamps for drugs and leave it at that.

In this country, people who have served their time are supposed to be able to rebuild their lives, but laws like this make it damn near impossible. How can you stay out of trouble when the rules keep you from providing food to your children? What parent wouldn’t get frustrated enough to commit a crime to put food on the table?

Carla, because she has been playing by the rules, has regained custody of her children, but she can’t feed them. What kind of a society sets people up for failure on that scale?

Young people who use drugs can be redeemed, and many are — as long as they’re not caught and convicted, apparently.

People like Carla deserve a second chance. Bad decisions made in one’s youth shouldn’t mean the punishment continues for their lifetime, and for the lifetimes of their children.

Efforts to change the law in Congress have died in committee, and in Georgia, which has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country, the legislature won’t even consider removing the bad.

So people are left with the choice to violate the law or watch their children go hungry.

Which would you do?

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