Thursday, June 18, 2015

Entertainment Overnight -- Haunt Me

On the Charleston Shooting (guest post)

This was put out quickly today on and by Esquire magazine. I thought it too important to not post.

Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable

In which we confront the dark heart of America. Again.

What happened in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unthinkable." Somebody thought long and hard about it. Somebody thought to load the weapon. Somebody thought to pick the church. Somebody thought to sit, quietly, through some of Wednesday night bible study. Somebody thought to stand up and open fire, killing nine people, including the pastor. Somebody reportedly thought to leave one woman alive so she could tell his story to the world. Somebody thought enough to flee. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unthinkable is not one of them.

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unspeakable." We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. This was the church founded by Denmark Vesey, who planned a slave revolt in 1822. Vesey was convicted in a secret trial in which many of the witnesses testified after being tortured. After they hung him, a mob burned down the church he built. His sons rebuilt it. On Wednesday night, someone turned it into a slaughter pen.

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed. We should speak of all these things. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unspeakable is not one of them.

Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them. Let Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, look out her window at the flag of treason that is flown proudly at her state capitol and think about these things, and speak of them, before she pronounces herself so puzzled at how something like this could happen in South Carolina, the home office of American sedition.

Let Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom want to lead this troubled country, consider what it meant to absent themselves from campaign events in Charleston and think of these things and speak of them before they turn to their consultants about whether or not staying in a grieving city was what a leader should have done.

Let the elite political media that follows the two of them, roughly thrown into a maelstrom of actual news, look out onto the streets of Charleston and realize that politics exist for the purpose of governing a country, and not simply to entertain it.

Let Squint and the Meat Puppet think about these things and speak of these things before inviting Donald Trump, who is a clown and a fool, to come on national television and talk about his hair. Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them.

Think about what happened. Think about why it happened. Talk about what happened. Talk about why it happened. Do these things, over and over again. The country must resist the temptation present in anesthetic innocence. It must reject the false comfort of learned disbelief and the narcotic embrace of concocted surprise. There is a ferocious underground fire running through American history. It rages unseen until it flares again from the warm earth. It has raged from the death of Denmark Vesey in 1822 to the death of the Reverend and state senator Clementa Pinckney on Wednesday night.

This was not an unspeakable act. Sylvia Johnson, one of only three survivors of the massacre, is speaking about it.

"She said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.'"

There is a timidity that the country can no longer afford. This was not an unthinkable act. A man may have had a rat's nest for a mind, but it was well thought out. It was a cool, considered crime, as well planned as any bank robbery or any computer fraud. If people do not want to speak of it, or think about it, it's because they do not want to follow the story where it inevitably leads. It's because they do not want to follow this crime all the way back to the mother of all American crimes, the one that Denmark Vesey gave his life to avenge. What happened on Wednesday night was a lot of things. A massacre was only one of them.

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Quote of the Day -- On Paths Forward

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Entertainment Overnight -- New

Posted only yesterday.

We Must Get the Big Money Out of Our Elections and So, Government

We must fight to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision which opened up the financial coffers of the wealthy and corporations. It made it possible to pour unlimited amounts of money into election campaigns in the nation.

Additionally, we must fight to end campaign contributions, completely, totally. We must fight to Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government.

If we don't do these things, nothing will change. We won't get our government back for the people.

And this must come from us.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Governor Brownback and Kansas Republicans Keep Making Things Worse

Everyone knows, a few years ago, in Kansas, very Republican Governor Sam and all his Republican, Right Wing cohorts at the Topeka State Capitol slashed taxes on the already-wealthy and corporations in that state and raised them on the working-, middle- and lower-classes.

Terrific.

We all also know that, since those actions were put in place, Kansas' credit rating has been downgraded and income for the state has dropped horribly, leading to cuts in state budgets, including, tragically, the schools.

Bad and getting worse.

Now, these same rocket scientists in Topeka want and need to raise money for the state, for those budgets, rather naturally, so what do they do?

Why, raise taxes on purchases, of course.

And who does that hurt most, precisely? Look no further than Dave Helling and the Kansas City Star today for the answer:

Analysis: Kansas workers with low to moderate incomes will feel the greatest pain from tax increases

The stupid, it burns.

A little from the article:

Every Kansan will feel the sting of the budget and accompanying tax hikes passed at the end of the state Legislature’s marathon 2015 session. Homeowners, workers, businesses, smokers — all will pay more.

But no group, experts believe, gets hurt more than the state’s low- and moderate-income workers, those earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.

They now face higher taxes on essential purchases without most of the subsidies that protect poorer Kansans from government’s bite.

Low-income workers, unlike those with significantly higher earnings, must watch their pennies carefully to pay for other essentials such as transportation and housing. Soon, more of those pennies — which quickly grow to dollars — will be on their way to Topeka.

“There’s only so much you can squeeze from the lowest end of the scale,” said Annie McKay, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth. She called the tax bill deeply disappointing.

“We’ve moved up the food chain,” she said. “This looks to pick the pockets of lower- and middle-income Kansans.”

Kansas will soon collect 6.5 cents on every dollar that residents pay for food. That’s among the highest sales tax rates on food in the country.

And then there's this irony and screw-up for the Kansas "small government", "low tax" chuckleheads in Topeka:

Some lawmakers in the Kansas City area now think shoppers will take their grocery business to Missouri, where food sales taxes are dramatically lower. At $200 a week, a Kansas grocery shopper can save almost $550 a year in sales taxes just by crossing the state line.

For someone earning $600 a week, those savings are probably critical.

And then it gets worse here, with this tax increase, too:

The tax hit for low- and moderate-income Kansans isn’t limited to food purchases.

That higher sales tax will now be embedded in clothing purchases, cars, nonprescription medicines and more, costing taxpayers cash. Businesses might raise their prices to cover their own higher taxes. An increase in the cigarette tax will now cost a pack-a-day Kansas smoker $471 a year. (The Missouri tax of 17 cents a pack translates to $62.)

And the new tax bill contains other hikes, unrelated to purchases, that will pinch the state’s residents. The package reduces the state deductibility of local property taxes and mortgage interest, driving up most Kansans’ income tax payments. The 2012 income tax rate cuts — which studies have shown actually increased tax liabilities for poor and low-income residents — have been locked in place, at least for the time being.