Righting a Wrong for Washington, DC

Good to great news today. The House of Representatives in Washington passed statehood for Washington,DC today.

Could you imagine living in Washington, DC and paying taxes, everything but YOU HAVE NO REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS? Really? Greater population than Wyoming but zero representatives in Congress. So wrong. Obscene.Let's do this. #DCStatehood #DCStatehoodNow

Quote of the Day -- On Kindness. And Hope

“I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?” —Langston Hughes

Republicans' Real "Cancel Culture"

Here it is, folks. In all its ugliness. (Click on picture for larger view, easier reading).

Vote them out. Vote them all out.

Contact Your Senators

What's in the #ForThePeople Act?

--Automatic voter registration --All states allow online updates --Limits voter purges --Same-day Voter registration --Universal vote by mail with online tracking --15 days of early voting --Nonpartisan redistricting Oh, yeah. #PassFTPA

One Week In

 One week into this new Joe Biden Presidential Administration. This is where we are. Already.

1. We can now ignore Twitter
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism
4. We are not paying for golf trips
5. There are no presidential relatives in government
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around
13. Manners are in, bullying is out
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House
17. We have seen the president’s tax records
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America
21. We have a national covid-19 plan
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
27. The Muslim ban is gone
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously
49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote
50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not perfect, certainly. But it's good. It's very good. It's a huge, huge improvement.

Good on you, America. 

No, great on you.

So Proud of Our Kansas City Star

Wow.

What can you say but "Wow"?

Our own local paper, the Kansas City Star stunned me and I feel, probably lots of us this week. Their report, their reporting, their confession was just that, stunning. You likely know of what I'm writing. It's this.

The truth in Black and white: An apology from The Kansas City Star

Today we are telling the story of a powerful local business that has done wrong.

In it, rather famously now, the paper confessed and admitted to racism, horrible racism from them over the years when reporting on minorities in the area--specifically, Black Americans.

I'll only post the beginning of the editorial.

Today we are telling the story of a powerful local business that has done wrong.

For 140 years, it has been one of the most influential forces in shaping Kansas City and the region. And yet for much of its early history — through sins of both commission and omission — it disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians. It reinforced Jim Crow laws and redlining. Decade after early decade it robbed an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice and recognition.

That business is The Kansas City Star.

To repeat, there's no word that describes this any better than stunning.

This took guts. This took courage. Just freaking wow.

They could have recognized their past faults internally and vowed to never repeat such things, sure. But this? Confessing to the supporting of Jim Crow laws and redlining and segregation and other obscenities, however legal?

Stunning. Nothing short of stunning.

It went national, too, it was that big a story. This was from the New York Times.

Kansas City Star Apologizes for Racism

NBC News.

Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist coverage

Daily Kos.

'We don’t need stories about these people': Kansas City newspaper confesses to tradition of racism

You get the idea. It was covered nationally from virtually every media outlet.

I think there are two huge things to take from this, too, besides the fact that, as I said above, they didn't have to do this cleansing so publicly like this. 

The first is that this was an important move for them, the Star, the newspaper, to own up to but it's much more than that. We all need to own up to what and how we've gotten to where we are. We all, as a people and as a nation, need to know how we got here, where we are today. We need to know our nation's history, our full national history. We need to really know all the details about slavery and our Civil War, sure. But that's for starters.

We all need to also know about our Reconstruction and the failure of it, our failure and how that impacted African-Americans then.

We all need to know, really know about Jim Crow laws, what they were, what they did, the fact that they were legal and the deep, deep damage that they did to those same Americans, African-Americans. That's a great deal to know there alone.

Then there's the "redlining" the Star's story mentions and its corresponding segregation, legalized, thank you very much.

If, as a people, you are kept away, legally, from the best housing and jobs, good education and so, consequently and understandably, also kept away from better paying jobs and careers?  Is it any wonder the wealth of Black Americans today is, still, to this moment, a fraction of white America?

And that's how we got now, here to where we are. It's why still, to this day, so many Black Americans do not and even, for a lot of them, cannot still live wherever they wish. It only makes sense. It's a natural outgrowth of all that then-legalized racism and hate and ugliness. It's why do many cities in the United States--including, of course, our own Kansas City on both sides of the state line--are still so very, very segregated even though that legal segregation was made illegal decades ago now.

So, again, wow. Kudos to the Star.

In their article, they made a great and important point of saying that their paper, over the years, highlighted white people's accomplishments but virtually never Black people's.

In the pages of The Star, when Black people were written about, they were cast primarily as the perpetrators or victims of crime, advancing a toxic narrative. Other violence, meantime, was tuned out. The Star and The Times wrote about military action in Europe but not about Black families whose homes were being bombed just down the street.

Even the Black cultural icons that Kansas City would one day claim with pride were largely overlooked. Native son Charlie “Bird” Parker didn’t get a significant headline in The Star until he died, and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong.

It reminded me of a KCPT PBS broadcast on Kansas City's own Charlie "Bird" Parker. Lonnie McFadden made the very fair and important point that Winston Churchill, of all people, is on our Country Club Plaza.

But not Bird.

How else can we heal? How else can we repair centuries long wrongs and racism if we don't examine ourselves, see where we are, see what we did, see what those ramifications are and then apologize for them and look to rectify them? We must do this as a society. We're long, long overdue.

Anyone, any American who thinks we don't owe Black Americans reparations should, again, study our national history.

And read this article, too.

Quote of the Day -- Equality Edition

Equality.

Justice.

Equity.

Fairness.

In America.

Whodathunkit?

 

This Pandemic and Male vs Female Leadership

 Compare. What does that tell you?

This is also playing out, statistically and factually, I believe, between Kansas and Missouri just now with Kansas' Governor Kelly vs Missouri's Governor Parson, too.

On Facebook, search and join at More Women Need to Lead the World.

Quote of the Day: Black/White in America

From Southern writer William Faulkner, and decades ago, describing white American fear that lasts even unto today. The reason for Black Lives Matter.

That’s what the white man in the South is afraid of: that the Negro, who has done so much with no chance, might do so much more with an equal one that he might take the white man’s economy away from him, the Negro now the banker or the merchant or the planter and the white man the sharecropper or the tenant. That’s why the Negro can gain our country’s highest decoration for valor beyond all call of duty for saving or defending or preserving white lives on foreign battlefields, yet the Southern white man dares not let that Negro’s children learn their ABC’s in the same classroom with the children of the white lives he saved or defended.

© 2017 Faulkner Literary Rights, LLC. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Literary Estate of William Faulkner, Lee Caplin, Executor.

From “On Fear,” which appeared in the June 1956 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

The Two Political Parties, In a Nutshell

The two political parties, ladies and gentlemen, broken down.

Dems: We'd like cops to stop killing minorities.

Reps: Dems hate police.

D's: Women should have the right to choose.

R's: Dems want to kill babies.

D's: We need reasonable immigration policies.

R's: Dems want open borders.

D's: We kneel in protest of inequality.

R's: Dems hate the flag, soldiers and America.

D's: We should wear masks to protect others.

R's: Dems want to take away your freedom.

D's: We should have background checks.

R's: Dems want to take your guns.

D's: Feds should not be policing in cities.

R's: Dems encourage rioting.

D's: People should have a living wage.

R's: Dems want to give everyone free stuff.

D's: We want religious freedom for everyone.

R's: Dems want Sharia Law.

D's: Taxes should be used for the benefit of everyone.

R's: Dems want socialism.

D's: We want people to be able to vote safely during a pandemic.

R's: Dems want to rig the election.

D's: People need more unemployment assistance.

R's: Dems blocked unemployment assistance.

D's: Listen, we just want to find ways to help people.

R's: Listen, we just want to find ways to misrepresent everything you say in order to scare people into voting for us, even though we offer zero solutions.

More Equality Breaking Out In America Today

You maybe saw or heard about this today. It broke this morning, in the last hour or 2.

SCOTUS rules LGBT people protected 

from job discrimination

And sure, it's good news, certainly, but...

It's 2020 and women still don't have equality in the workplace, equality in pay.  In America.  And that's not all.

18 Ways Women Still Aren't Equal to Men 

And check this out.x

Only six countries have equal rights 

for men and women

No real surprise here. The 6 countries?  With equal rights for men and women? Yeah.  All Socialist.  Go figure.

Why the US needs to pass 

the Equal Rights Amendment

Why?  Why the US needs to pass the Equal Rights Amendment?

How about because we think ourselves to be a nation of equality.  And justice. Both.  How about that?

And unbelievably, we aren't even TALKING about the Equal Rights Amendment now, as a nation. It's not even a topic of discussion presently.

And here's some more bad news.

Only one more state needs to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to finally get it ratified. 

Here are the 13 that haven't

Yeah. Missouri is one of the sad, pathetic 13 states that HAVEN'T passed the Equal Rights Amendment.

Pitiful.

Unfortunately, they also did this.

Supreme Court won't consider limiting police immunity from civil lawsuits

They also let stand that police can be and are immune from prosecution.

Then, they ruled basically for Sanctuary Cities--or at least that they can still exist and be supported.

Supreme Court turns aside Justice Department, won't hear California sanctuary cities case

So we got two out of three good rulings today, for the people, from the Court.

We'll get there one day, to equality, full equality and fairness for all Americans.

Some day.

Additional Link:

Liberals have a good day on a conservative Supreme Court

On This Day, June 12, 1963

On this day, June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of  his home in Mississippi by a white supremacist.

How long, Amerca?

How long?

No Justice. No Peace

God
It's my face man
I didn't do nothing serious man
please
please
please I can't breathe
please man
please somebody
please man
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please
(inaudible)
man can't breathe my face
just get up
I can't breathe
please (inaudible)
I can't breath sh*t
I will
I can't move
Mama
Mama
I can't
my knee
my nuts
I'm through
I'm through
I'm claustrophobic
my stomach hurt
my neck hurts
everything hurts
some water or something
please
please
I can't breath officer
don't kill me
they gonna kill me man
come on man
I cannot breathe
I cannot breathe
they gon kill me
they gon kill me
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please sir
please
please
please I can't breathe

What Do You Suppose It Will Take To Get KCPT To Recognize There Is a Hispanic Community Here?

Really, this puzzles me.

It took far too long to get KCPT to get one token black person reliably, week after week, on their weekly news programs, "Ruckus" and "Week In Review" and even now, they still get left off some weeks.

That was bad enough but the station still hasn't recognized or accepted or something there is a Hispanic Community in the metropolitan area.

Sure, we still get loads and loads o' white folk what with Right Wing, Republican Mike Shanin and his also Right Wing, Republican buddy Woody Cozad (don't get me started) but the shows are heavily, heavily weighted with bleached white people.

As I've said before, their commercials are all the time putting up minorities in them, asking people to send their money like so many Christian churches but what is it going to take to get a token Hispanice on both these shows each week?

They've recognized there is the Dos Mundos newspaper, having one of their staff on not long ago. You'd think they could--and would--maybe call them up once a week and ask if someone would show up for the program.

At least they let women---one, usually, each week, another token--on the program but once again, it's usually a white woman to round out that very varied group.

This week on Ruckus, they had 3 white people---ONE WOMAN!--and Terry Riley, a former City Council person.

And forget about "Week in Review" this week. The entire show was bleached white people. Every one of them.

Minorities??

Bah!

They don't live here in Kansas City!

Right, KCPT?

I would like to now take this time and place to formally challenge KCPT---a PBS station, after all--to please, for the love of God and fairness and decency and all that is good, to start having, reliably, one Hispanic, one member of the black community, one woman and one---ONLY ONE--white guy on these two programs each week, going forward, indefinitely.

Seriously.

It just doesn't seem like too much to ask.

They say they rely on our contributions in order to survive, exist.

How about including ALL of us?

KCPT?

Have you no shame whatever?

Fairness? Balance? Decency in journalism?

Any of that?

100 Huge Years Ago Today--Celebrating Progress, Working for More

First, the good news.

19th Amendment Guaranteeing Women the Right to Vote was Passed 100 Years Ago Today

Yes sir, 100 years ago today, June 4, 1919, the 19th Amendment, giving women of the United States the right to vote was passed. Great as that was, it's sad it had to take that long but at least they got it done.

Now the bad news.

Women still aren't equal. No way are they equal, as we know. Check out just some of the facts.

Women Still Don’t Make as Much Money as Men

And then there are Neanderthals out there in the world, still spewing this ugliness, inequity and nonsense like this. I found this today, accidentally, in a search.

Why Women Don’t Deserve Equal Pay

And this:

Why women don’t need to earn the same as men

And this, from, of course, a Republican:

GOP Lawmaker Says Women Don't Deserve Equal Pay

The entire Republican Party, supporting the already-wealthy and corporations, of course, not the people, have voted down equal pay for women and repeatedly. The following was from 2008.

Senate GOP blocks Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill

This was from 2012.

Senate Republicans Block Pay Equity Bill

This was 2014:

Senate Republicans Block Bill on Equal Pay

Senate Republicans reject equal pay bill

This took place this year.

187 Republicans Vote Against Bill to Close the Gender Wage Gap

Also this year. Not only are Republicans against women being paid fairly, justly and equally with men, they're also against keeping women safer.

House Republicans, at NRA's Urging, Vote Against Violence Against Women Act

So sure, let's celebrate this 100 year old breakthrough, sure, definitely.

But let's work to get more of them, needed ones, soon as possible.

It reminds me of the protest sign for women I saw some time ago.

An Open Letter to Davis Hammet, KCUR, KCPT, Steve Kraske, The Kansas City Star and All Kansans

So yes, first of all, this is going to be an open letter and it's to several entities so thanks for your patience and I'll do my best to be brief but first, an introduction.

Davis Hammet is a young man living in Kansas, Topeka, to be exact, who moved here--from Florida, I believe--because he felt like it was important and there was work to do. So move he did.

He was and is a political science student (not unlike yours truly) so he knows a bit of what should and should not and can and cannot happen in government.

So he came here and began his work.

His work is educating now-fellow Kansans on their state government at all levels, trying to get more "average people" involved and by so doing, getting to more justice, fairness and some equality in the state.

Noble goals.

With that brief introduction, the open letters.

Mr. Hammet,

Thank you, first, for coming to Kansas.

I don't know how you picked this state or how you came here but thank you and thank goodness you did. Your work, already, in the presumably short time you've been here has been pretty monumental. With your research and time spent at the State Capitol in Topeka and writing and videos you have gotten a great deal of information out to Kansas and Kansans they wouldn't otherwise have and in a very quick, informative, palatable and apparently complete format.

I thank you and I don't even live in Kansas.

What you're doing is extremely important---and helpful. You're making big changes and all for the people.

So now to KCUR, KCPT, Steve Kraske, The Kansas City Star and all the Kansans out there.

You media sources need to have Mr. Hammet on your programs AND BADLY. All one need do is see his brief, concise, very informative YouTube videos (see some below) on his organization, LOUD LIGHT, and you can tell he is a serious young man doing some terrific work and he's extremely informed. This man is headed places.

So please, please have him on your programs, Interview him, write about him, let him speak. He is a voice of the people. Whether Right Wing or Left, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent, it's difficult to be against someone who is merely reporting good, hard, timely information on the state government and who wants justice for his fellow citizens.

So again, Mr. Hammet, thank you. Thank you very deeply and sincerely. Thank you for your work, your energy and the information you give us. Thank you for your intentions. Thank you for coming to Kansas and the Midwest.

Missouri badly needs someone very like you in Jefferson City.

Heck, every state in the nation does.

And Kansas, you are very, very fortunate. Congratulations on your "acquisition." You are very fortunate indeed. You need to know and follow this young man.

Links:

Just some of his YouTube videos, reporting on the Kansas Statehouse.













Additional links:

Loud Light

Loud Light - Home | Facebook

Loud Light (@loud_light) | Twitter

Loud Light - YouTube

A Few Reasons I'm a Democrat

This leaves out, of course, all the things Republicans do and have been doing, in Congress, across the states, across the nation, to their respective states, to their constituents and so, to the nation so yes, it's a long but partial list.

Those Rotten Libruls

Quote of the Day -- On America, Justice, Injustice, Inequality and the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.

--Chris Hedges

From his article:

The Coming Collapse - Common Dreams

We Should Have This National Conversation For and About Women, Equality and Our Nation

I proposed/asked this earlier tonight out on Facebonkers:

Can you imagine how different, how likely radically different our country would be, our legislation, our laws, if 50 percent of our government legislators were women?

Honestly, we should have this conversation. A national conversation.

I'd love to hear it, first of all, and then I'd like to hear it at least locally and then go nationally.

On the issues of health care and child care and schools and, heck, war and our war machine?

And then there's equal pay for equal work, along with really an untold list of what would be different and changed.

Can you imagine how different even the legislative conversations would be, let alone the results of their legislation

I'm no fool on this. I don't for a minute think we'd hit some Nirvana.

I just think we would be a radically different society and nation. Our government would be radically different and so, our nation would, as well.

Scotland is ahead of us on this. They even have an organized group, pushing for 50% of their representatives to be female.

Women 50:50

There are more  people out there in the world, proposing this idea, this framework and working on and for and toward it than I knew, before today. Here's another example.

Can We Create Planet 50-50 by 2030? 

The UN is in on it, too.

Get involved: Step It Up for gender equality: 

About Step It Up

Think about it.

How insane is it that we're still so horribly unequal, that there is still so much gross inequality, not just in the world but here in the US in the 21st Century? We agreed the part about "All men...created equal" meant men and women long ago, I think most of us agree.

Imagine.

I'd love to hear at least one show, one full hour out on KCUR, maybe on Steve Kraske's show.

It would be perfect for that station, him and his program.