Oct. 28, 2013

Rising National Star Killed in Atlanta Car Accident
Was scheduled for Tom Joyner Show Oct. 25

By Avis Thomas-Lester

Sheila Stewart

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

Oct. 27, 2013

In Medicaid Fight, GOP Governors Stand in Hospital Door
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The tea party effort to torpedo health-care reform at the federal level has been repelled, but only after the campaign shut down the government, threatened default on the U.S. debt and cost the country billions. But that victory should not blind us to how destructive the rejectionists have been at the state level. In the name of states’ rights, right-wing governors and legislators will leave some 8 million impoverished and low-wage Americans uninsured and ineligible for any assistance.

The reason is that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority resuscitated the pernicious doctrine of “states’ rights.” When they found Obamacare constitutional, the majority ruled that states had a “right” to refuse to expand Medicaid. Medicaid expansion was designed to cover the poorest half of those now without health insurance.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid would be expanded to cover those with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (now $19,530 for a family of three). The federal government would pay the full cost until 2016, when states would be asked to pick up only 10 percent of the cost of expansion.

Led by Republican governors and legislators, 26 states, including every state in the deep South outside of Arkansas, have thus far refused to support expansion of Medicaid, turning their backs on literally billions in federal subsidies to cover health-care costs for the uninsured (although recently Republican governors in Ohio and Pennsylvania ended their opposition).

This is the modern version of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to reject integration. The states rejecting Medicaid expansion have about one-half the nation’s population, but over two thirds of the uninsured poor who’d be eligible under the law. The leading targets are people of color. Two thirds of otherwise eligible and uninsured poor African Americans will be barred from getting affordable health care. Once more, we see the harsh reality behind “states’ rights.”

From the Civil War to the civil rights movement, from slavery to segregation, the argument of states’ rights has been unfurled as the banner of those looking to punish black people. And once more, right-wing leaders are acting against the best interests of their own people and their own states to keep people of color locked out.

They would allow poor whites to suffer rather than allow the black poor to benefit. These governors are not standing up for the Constitution. They’re playing the race-bait politics of division once more. And not surprisingly, this reversion to states’ rights is accompanied by systematic state efforts to suppress the vote.

Many of the same governors who’ve led the fight against health-care reform are pushing measures that make it harder for poor and working people — disproportionately people of color — to vote. They’ve reduced early voting, ended voting on Sundays, added new ID requirements, closed down convenient polling booths, opposed same-day registration and more. The only way to keep people down is to lock them out. Republican governors, of course, don’t admit the racial poison at the root of their policies. They say their states can’t afford the expansion (even though the federal government picks up the entire tab until 2016 and 90 percent thereafter).

They rail against health-care reform as “socialism,” even though every industrial nation in the world except the U.S. provides affordable health care to its citizens. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas says the Affordable Care Act would reduce Texas to a mere “appendage of federal government.” (Perry apparently doesn’t understand that Texas is a part of the union.)

Historically, there has only been one remedy against the use of states’ right to inflict racially poisonous policies, and that has been forceful federal intervention. It took a Civil War and constitutional amendments to end slavery. It took a civil rights movement and federal legislation to end apartheid in the South.

And now poor and working people will need to rise up once more and insist that the federal government step in to make certain that all American have access to affordable health care, no matter what the color of their skin, the amount of their income or the state they live in. The Democratic governors who stood in the schoolhouse door against integration — George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett — are remembered in infamy. Now the Republican governors who stand in the hospital door — Rick Scott of Florida, Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana — will surely end up in the same hall of shame.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. is president/CEO of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Oct. 27, 2013

The Fable of the Long Term Federal Budget Crisis
By William Spriggs

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Washington elite are returning to their obsession with the long term budget crisis which means extremists are once again calling for benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare.  Last week as the government reopened, President Obama called for cooler heads to prevail and warned elected leaders to ignore the bloggers and paid activists who have been distracting lawmakers from the real task of growing our economy.  The president's warning should also apply to so-called moderates who continue to succeed in creating a fable to convince rational people to agree to make sacrifices of family sustaining programs, rather than ask the rich to pay their fair share of taxes.

The plotline of the fable is that the growing share of elderly in our population creates a growing share of "non-workers" the rest of us must "support" through Social Security and Medicare.  In this warped tale, as the elderly become a bigger share of the population, they will take away from resources the rest of us need.  In particular, the rapid increases in medical costs mean the elderly will consume a disproportionate share of resources, because they tend to have more expensive health care needs than the rest of us.  According to current Congressional Budget Office projections, in 2038, when about 21 percent of our population will be older than  65, we would spend 14 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP, all the goods and services produced in the economy) on Social Security and Medicare.

But using the argument that Social Security and Medicare will become a rising percent of GDP is irrelevant.  If the government gets totally out of the business of Social Security and Medicare, and the elderly paid out of pocket for everything on their own, as 21 percent of the population they would still consume the same 14 percent amount of the nation's income.

The solution from Republicans, and those like Pete Peterson (an 87 year old billionaire) who has personally invested his fortune in perpetuating this fable, is that the government needs to get out of assuring the elderly that the benefits they paid for will be honored to support Social Security and Medicare.

The "smart" people in the Washington elite think we should compromise by lowering the lifestyle of the elderly-or as they euphemistically say "slow the growth of their lifestyle" as the president has proposed by letting the costs of living outstrip the benefit levels by reinventing the formula for adjusting for inflation.

Why do I call this a fable? Because it creates the "evil" grandma to scare rational people to sacrifice the elderly while ignoring the real culprit behind our economic issues. Since 1997, the richest 5 percent got 284.7 percent of the nation's income growth so they now eat up 22.3 percent of the nation's income.  The bottom 95 percent lost income and income share, leaving us with less money for our retirement and children's education and a lower share of the nation's resources.

Meanwhile the Peterson publicity machine has frightened us into believing that we will all be working to pay taxes to keep the elderly alive.  But their fascination with the growing financial burden of seniors doesn't extend to the bigger problem of growing income inequality.  Inequality worsened by continued lowering of real wages and less retirement security for the 95 percent of us, higher CEO pay for corporate executives, bigger profits for multinational corporations and more money to Wall Street speculators.  Let's also be clear that future seniors Peterson wants us to fear are currently around 40 years old and living through a nightmare of an economy. Today's 40-year-old saw one of the lowest median income growth's over a decade.  They also have inadequate retirement savings, so except for Social Security, they face a very uncertain future.

Rather than sacrifice current 30 and 40-year-olds to save the rich, we need to move away from fables to solving real economic problems.  The real governing challenge is how to govern in an age of rapidly growing inequality.  Rather than fear the elderly eating up too much resources, we need to fear accepting story lines that reinforce the current path of growing inequality.

We need to look at policies from the perspective of what our nation needs first, and the best policy designs to achieve those goals, rather than what the rich will accept.  Because the tea party and the shutdown of the government and the threatening of the United States' standing tells us the rich are too greedy to accept anything less than more sacrifice from the rest of us. 

Oct. 27, 2013

Reality Check

Confronting the Divineness of Whiteness
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In 1991, I read an editorial in the Richmond Afro-American newspaper commenting on a survey conducted by Professor Howard Schuman, a University of Michigan sociologist and research scientist.

"According to Dr. Schuman," the editorial noted, "White Americans think of integration as meaning one Black in a group of 15 Whites where the Whites are in complete control. Black Americans, on the other hand, think of integration as meaning a ratio of 50 to 50 where either a White or Black person could be dominant."

The editorial quoted Dr. Schuman as saying "It is not that survey respondents say one thing and secretly believe another. But, when White Americans say they favor integrated schools or neighborhoods, what they really mean is a few Black students or families in a predominately White environment."

If one knows the above, the reaction of many key party members and others who share their intense hostility toward President Obama is not surprising. This is especially nerve-wracking to White males from working class and middle income backgrounds who have been told all their lives that they are superior to any black man, no matter what his accomplishments, because of their Whiteness. It explains the near-paranoid hostility toward the President by white males such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Larry Klayman, and others of their ilk. How can they explain a Black president to their sons and grandsons? It's a flagrant violation of the concept that integration means a White person - preferably a White male - always being in charge.

This doesn't mean that Hannity, Limbaugh, Cruz, Klayman and their co-horts will object if their brothers and sisters from another mother - Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Star Parker, Thomas Sowell, Allen West, and Dr. Ben Carson - live in their neighborhoods or attend their schools. That would be cool as long as there aren't too many of them and they accept the position that Whites must always be in charge.

It is abundantly clear that Black folks can't negotiate anything with people with this mindset. What we must do is to organize in ways that will advance and protect our cultural, economic and political interests from the hostility and venom that comes from those who believe in the divineness of Whiteness.

The last two chapters of Chancellor Williams' book, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 BC to 2500 AD; the goals and objectives of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in the book, Malcolm X: The Man and His Time and sections of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? provide concrete guidelines on how to organization in such a manner.

A. Peter Bailey's latest book is “Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, The Master Teacher”. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..