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meadow-dusk · 6 years

Text

LONG LONG LONG

a music survey from livejournal days…

- TO TAKE THIS SURVEY, SIMPLY PUT YOUR MUSIC PLAYER ON SHUFFLE AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS WITH THE TITLE OF THE SONG THAT COMES ON - [it’s better if you don’t cheat and don’t skip any songs.]

What is your name?: Moby Dick • Led Zep

How is your life going?: Get on the Right Thing • Paul McCartney

What is your nickname?: The Day the World Gets ‘Round • George Harrison

What is your theme song?: Little Games • The Yardbirds

What is your best friend’s theme song?: Wait • The Beatles

How is your life going to turn out?: Communication Breakdown • Led Zeppelin

Will you get married?: Four Sticks • Led Zeppelin

Will you have kids?: For What It’s Worth • Haley Reinhart

What will your job be?: Rattled • Traveling Wilburys

Did you/will you finish school?: Good Times, Bad Times • Led Zeppelin

Who is your best friend?: Behind that Locked Door • George Harrison

Who is or will be your significant other?: Think Pink! • Beyond Pink

Who do you like?: We’re All in This Together • High School Musical Cast

How will you die?: Stairway to Heaven • Led Zeppelin (YAAAAAS)

How do you feel right now?: Sentimental Journey • Ringo Starr

What is your favorite song?: Matilda Mother • Pink Floyd

How could you describe your parents?: Pilate and Christ • Jesus Christ Superstar (you can’t make this stuff up yall)

Your best friend[s]?: Postcards from Paradise • Ringo Starr

Your teachers?: She’s Not There • The Zombies

Your significant other [or crush…]?: Riding on a Bus • The Beatles (an interview)

Yourself?: Brian Bathtubes • The Beatles (taking requests)

What is your best feature?: The Riddle • Five for Fighting

What will you be/should you be, profession-wise?: Desire • U2

How could you describe this survey?: I Told You So • Randy Travis

What makes you angry?: Moanin’ • Chris Farlowe ft. Jimmy Page and a random sitarist (this song is so interesting)

What makes you sad?: Everything I Know • Mandy Gonzalez

What makes you happy?: One • Bee Gees

What makes you dance?: I Still • Backstreet Boys

What is your favorite color?: Sundown • Gordon Lightfoot

How would you describe yourself?: Heart Attack • One Direction

Who is your worst enemy?: Little Soldier Boy • The Yardbirds

Who do you hate?: No Me Diga • In the Heights

Who do you love?: I Started a Joke • Bee Gees

Who do you lust after?: What Do You Want? • The Yardbirds Finish the Sentence I wish: Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 • Bob Dylan I want to: We’re on the Road Again • Ringo Starr I want to kill:. Money • The Beatles I want to eat: Spring Musical Medley • HSM3 yall with Kryan duet to open My head: Sometimes I’ll Be There • Naked Brothers Band (accurate) I am: Movin On • Rascal Flatts My best feature is: The Sad Bells of Rhymney • Fifth Avenue My eyes are: Safest Place to Hide • Backstreet Boys My hair is: Who Can See It • George Harrison My face is: Baby Come on Home • Led Zeppelin You should: Not This Time • 3Lw

Random Words of advice: And Here We Are Again • The Beatles How do others see me?: Rhythm of Love • Plain White T’s How do I see myself?: Knowing Me, Knowing You • ABBA *** For this first section, put down the first ten songs that play, and then rate them on a scale of 1 - 5 (5 being the best) in the next column. 1. I Have a Dream • Abba 2/5 2. Sounds of Silence • Simon and Garfunkel 5/5 3. In The Flesh • Pink Floyd 4/5 4. Ya-Ya • John Lennon (ft. Julian on drums) 4/5 5. Magic Bus • The Who Live at the Isle of Wright 4/5 6. Stomp • Steps 2/5 7. KICK DA DUST UP • Luke Bryan 4/5 8. Your Mother Should Know • The Beatles 5/5 9. Photograph • Ringo (2017) 3/5 he sounds great but it isn’t exciting also who’s the chick I didnt sign up for this 10. Piggies • The Beatles 5/5 good one George Now for a little fortune telling… 1. Who am I?: Tug of War • Paul McCartney 2. Why am I here?: Bet On It • Zac Efron (skittles and steak) 3. What’s my theme song?: American Beauty/American Psycho • Fall Out Boy 4. How’s tomorrow gonna be?: Behind Blue Eyes • The Who 5. What does ______ really think of me?: Let’s Go to Vegas • Faith Hill 6. What’s this school year going to be about?: Man on Fire • Andy Gibb 7. Is something bad going to happen in the near future?: Little Bitty • Alan Jackson 8. What’s the government going to do next?: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/The End • Paul McCartney Live at Citi Field 9. What’s my best friend doing right now?: Inutil • Carlos Gomez 10. What does my iPod/MP3 think about me?: American Girl • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Last section! These next questions are all about music 1. I absolutely LOVE this song!: The Look of Love • ABC Comments: This was in Start the Commotion and there was a clip art of eyes as the O’s in look 2. I have no clue why this song is still on my music player: Steppin’ Out • John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers Comments: It’s saved because I occasionally really try to get into Clapton 3. This song has AMAZING lyrics: Love Will Find a Way • Pablo Cruise Comments: I remembered his initials but not his name

4. The band that does this song is one of my favorites: Most Peculiar Man • Simon and Garfunkel Comments: I would not say favorites but I give them their due 5. My dad loves this song: Songs About Rain • Gary Allan Comments: he bought the CD and took it on road trips so probs 6. My mom can’t stand this song: The Hook (All My Love) • Led Zeppelin Comments: she probably can stand it more than me 7. I have a sibling who enjoys listening to songs by this band: When You See a Chance • Steve Winwood Comments: fair to say that cause once she asked me what the name of Valerie was 8. One of my best friends hates the band that does this song: Like Nobody’s Around • Big Time Rush Comments: NO FRIEND OF MINE! 9. I got this song off a mix CD: Got My Mind Set On You • George Harrison Comments: I learned how to do the mashed potato to this song 10. This song is on a movie soundtrack: The Freedom Song • Jason Mraz Comments: could definitely be but don’t hold this one down

11. Share a memory involving this song in comments: Friday On My Mind • The Easybeats Comments: running to it - how was there this much good music at one time 12. I’ve played this song on repeat before: You’re My Number One • S Club 7 Comments: Try this ALBUM back when we used to play S Club and have choreography 13. This song is on the band’s Greatest Hit’s CD: Ramblin’ Man • Allman Brothers Band Comments: if it isn’t they screwed up 14. I love dancing to this song!: If You Wanna Do a Dance • The Spinners Comments: seems like that was the idea 15. This song gets me every time I hear it: Bathroom Sound (Out on the Tiles early take) • Led Zeppelin Comments: I prefer the final version with vocals and silly quips but this version does just as well for Bonzo Appreciation Time 16. This song is great to listen to when you’re angry: Farmer Refuted (Instrumental) • Hamilton Comments: OH MY GOD tear this dude apart 17. I love the music video for this song: I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band) • Moody Blues Comments: if there is one it’s probably psychedelic so I’d dig it I bet 18. I’ve seen the band that performs this song live: The Boxer • Simon and Garfunkel Comments: I have not. This song is beautiful. 19. Is this song better to listen to at night, in the morning, or in the afternoon?: Let’s Get Rocked • Def Leppard Comments: morning, running. 20. I haven’t listened to this song in so long!: That’s the Way (Live Paris 1971) • Led Zeppelin Comments: not true it came on on the way to the gym barely a few weeks ago *** What were the first words to Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address?: What ya gonna do when it’s cold outside? (Keep It Hid • Robert Plant) What did Martin Luther King have a dream about, anyways?: You’ve got a cute way of talking, you got the better of me! (You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’ • Leo Sayer) Tomorrow’s newspapers will all have the major headline of: Out in the Rain Looking for Sunshine (Permanent Stain • Backstreet Boys) If someone offered you some free drugs, how would you respond?: Lord almighty, feel my temperature risin’...(Burning Love • Elvis) What kind of higher power do you believe in?: You need coolin, baby I’ ain’t foolin (Whole Lotta Love • Led Zeppelin) What do people really notice about you?: There’s a girl I know who makes me feel so good (Valleri • The Monkees) What do you notice first in the preferred sex of your choice?: Hey fellas, have ya heard the news you know that Annie’s back in town (Heartbreaker • Led Zeppelin) What do you look for in reading books?: They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town, with political connections to spread his wealth around (Richard Cory • Wings) What’s a must-have quality in a friend for you?: Meeting people along my way, seemingly I’ve known one day (Happenings Ten Years Time Ago • The Yardbirds) What scares the shit out of you?: Gat Kirwani • George Harrison (this has no words it’s just a sitar jam) How do you laugh?: Anna, you come and ask me, girl, to set you free girl? (Anna (Go To Him) • The Beatles) Why do you do these surveys?: When the night returns just like a friend, when the evening comes to set me free (If You Know What I Mean • Neil Diamond) Do you have anything you’d like to confess?: I can see you in the window waiting for my call (Untouchable • Big Time Rush) How do you feel about the person you cannot stand the most?: If ever you’ve got rain in your heart, someone has hurt you and torn you apart, am I unwise to open up your eyes to love me (Run To Me • Bee Gees) The best date ever, in your book, would consist of…: Dear Theodosia, what to say to you?(Dear Theodosia • Leslie Odom Jr. & Lin-Manuel Miranda) If you sent a random Hallmark card to a friend, you would write to them: Are we growing up or just going down? It's just a matter of time until we're all found out. (Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year • Fallout Boy) If you had the chance to speak to (a) God, what would you say?: Every time I see her, she don’t even look my way (Just My Style • Gary Lewis and the Playboys) Finish the sentence: “When the going gets tough…”: My friend came to me with sadness in his eyes and told me that he wanted help before his country dies (Bangla Desh • George Harrison) How do you deal with your stress?: I can almost remember their funny faces (Jet • Paul McCartney) What is your biggest burden in life?: Somebody’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell (Let Em In • Wings) What’s the coolest thing about your best friend?: Hands, put your empty hands in mine (Stand By You • Rachel Platten) Why do you love the one you do?: Sweet, wonderful you. You make me happy with the things you do (You Make Loving Fun • Fleetwood Mac) If a friend broke their arm and got a cast, what would you write on it?: Gonna build myself a castle high up in the clouds (Dance the Night Away • Cream) You see a stick and wet cement. What do you write?: It feels so right now hold me tight (Hold Me Tight • The Beatles) A guy just stole your (purse, car, etc)! What do you yell at him?: Welcome to the camp, I guess you all know why you’re here (We’re Not Gonna Take It • The Who) You pass a crack addict on the corner one day. Solemnly he tells you: Well now we’re respected in society, we don’t worry bout the things that we used to be, we’re talkin heroin with the president (Respectable • The Rolling Stones) What will your baby’s first words be?: He knows about you in every way, he's memorized every part of your face (Does He Know • One Direction) You are at your wit’s end, and decide to write a suicide note. It begins: The pound is sinking, the peso’s falling, the lira’s reeling and feeling quite appalling (The Pound is Sinking • Paul McCartney) Why can’t there be peace in the world?: Let’s talk about one, bay-bay, ya gotta hear me out (Get Another Boyfriend • Backstreet Boys)

How do you think people see you?: I walked in the band just started, the singer couldn't carry a tune in a bucket (Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo • Tracy Byrd) Inside, though, what kind of person are you really?: well the rain was a-fallin’ and the ground turned to mud, I was watchin’ all the people running from the flood (Deliver Your Children • Wings) If you wanted to comfort a friend, you’d say: Anytime, any day you can hear the people say that love is blind, well I don’t know but I say love is kind (Listen to What the Man Said • Wings) When you want to cheer someone up, you say: *I just make series of nonsense sounds* (Pow R. Toc H. • Pink Floyd) You’re unbelievably depressed because your friend just told you…: people say we’ve got it made, don’t they know we’re so afraid? (Isolation • John Lennon)

When you are incredibly bored, you start thinking about…?: I drive all alone, at night, I drive all alone, don’t know what I’m headed for. (Dead End Friends • Them Crooked Vultures) You’re a classy person, so instead of cursing when you’re mad, you yell…?: I met a gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis (Honky Tonk Women • The Rolling Stones) you’re writing a love letter, but what are you going to begin it with?: The theater’s so obsessed with drama so depressed, it’s hard to sell a ticket on broadway! (Keep It Gay • The Producers) If you were to write a letter to the President of the USA, it would say…?: It’s a boy, Mrs. Walker, it’s a boy (It’s a Boy • The Who) What would someone have to tell you to make you really angry?: No no no no, don’t phunk with mah haaahrt (Don’t Phunk with My Heart • Black-Eyed Peas) …To make you really depressed?: Cars and girls are easy to come by in this day and age, laughing joking drinking smoking til I spend my wage (Over Under Sideways Down • The Yardbirds) ...To make you sexually aroused?: Catch a star if you can, wish for something special (Are You Ready for Love • The Spinners) Your first thoughts waking up were…: Life is just a bowl of All-Bran, you wake up every morning and it’s there (Happydaystoytown • The Small Faces) Your last words before falling asleep will be…: the sun is shining in the sky, there ain’t a cloud in sight (Mr. Blue Sky • Electric Light Orchestra)

#music survey #wow that only took me half a month #kari

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Biden's agenda hinges on new Senate push for bipartisan deals amid distrust between the parties “If somebody tells you in their inaugural speech they’re for bipartisanship, and they go out and do everything but, it doesn’t engender trust,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who says he’s been invited to a White House meeting on infrastructure next week. Plus Democrats lack enough support within their own caucus to eliminate the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold altogether, putting even more pressure to find a bipartisan way forward in the next several weeks or risk seeing chunks of the Biden agenda falter in the narrowly divided Congress. “This month is our opportunity to show that we can actually legislate in a bipartisan way,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat who occupies Biden’s old US Senate seat in Delaware. Yet liberals are eager to see results and say that if bipartisan talks peter out, Democrats must achieve their goals by whatever means necessary — including potentially using the budget process up to six times in this Congress — with or without GOP support. “Whether it’s one piece of legislation or six pieces of legislation, is a less concern to me as to whether it goes done,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont. “What matters is it gets done and we can address the crises facing working families.” On some major issues, such as voting rights, there are no serious bipartisan talks occurring. It’s a sign that a sweeping Democratic proposal to increase voting access and overhaul the election process is almost certain to be blocked by Republicans as soon as next month. At a closed-door lunch on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told his caucus that he would give time for bipartisan talks to play out — but that Democrats would go a different route if negotiations stall, attendees said. “Schumer also cautioned that Senate Dems do not have the luxury of time,” a person in the room said. Gun talks intensify but face uphill climb Behind the scenes, bipartisan talks are beginning to pick up pace on some key issues. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, two Connecticut Democrats, have been quietly working the phones to court Republicans to see if there’s any support on gun violence legislation that could garner 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats hope this month will yield progress before trying to bring a bill to the floor next month, though they’ll need the backing of 10 Republicans to do that. Between the two Democrats, they’ve spoken to roughly half the 50-member Senate GOP Conference. They readily acknowledge that they will have to pare back the House-passed bill that would mandate background checks on firearm sales on commercial and private transactions, given the stiff opposition from GOP senators and skepticism from moderate Democrats to requiring checks on private transfers. Yet, it’s still a tall order to cut a deal even on a narrow measure — such as forcing all gun purchasers through the internet and at gun shows to undergo background checks, similar to a long-stalled proposal by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican. Still, senators are discussing ways to bolster the background check system, while seeking to find consensus on proposals to empower states and local authorities to remove firearms from those deemed mentally ill — known as red-flag laws. And while both Murphy and Blumenthal say they’re more optimistic than before that a deal could be reached in the weeks ahead, they plainly recognize the challenges ahead. Blumenthal said talks are going “better than I would have expected, much more productively than any other time.” But he added: “Realistically, it’s still very much an uphill effort, in part because Republicans are so spooked right now by Donald Trump and his base and the complete irrationality, almost paranoia, of that base when it comes to guns, the slippery slope becomes a cliff. If they take one step, it’s like the world ends.” Murphy said he’s spent recent weeks “cajoling” his Republican colleagues to support anti-gun violence legislation, and says he’s ready to compromise on “something that’s less than what the House passed.” But what that bipartisan plan looks like remains unclear. Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, a Republican who spoke with Murphy, said the focus should be on “keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.” But Braun said focusing on expanding background checks first means “you’re starting in the wrong place” and called on senators to instead “first focus on why some laws aren’t working.” Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said: “These people would pass background checks, which is why I proposed the red flag grants to incentivize more states,” a reference to grants to state and local governments that implement laws that allow the temporary removal of guns from people deemed at high risk of harming themselves or others. And the distrust looms large. Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota was skeptical when asked if there’d be an appetite for a bipartisan deal on background checks. “Most of the proposals the Dems come up with have something to do with making it harder for law-abiding citizens to get access to firearms,” Thune told CNN. Bipartisan group weighs police reform compromise Amid the attention around the Derek Chauvin trial on charges of murdering George Floyd last year in Minneapolis, the White House has shifted its focus to getting legislation through Congress, abandoning a Biden campaign pledge to create a commission on the issue. After the House passed a bill in March named after Floyd, without a single Republican supporter, there are now active conversations about a bipartisan Senate version of a police reform bill. Those involved in the bipartisan discussions include Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat and lead author of the House bill, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose version of police reform was blocked by a Democratic filibuster last summer. Scott told CNN this week that he and Bass had just spoken, adding he believed progress was being made since they first started their conversations in recent weeks. Bass told CNN in March the group was working through “some of the thorny issues” in their discussions over a potential Senate bill. One of the thorniest issues is how to deal with the issue of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil litigation. Democrats have pushed to gut the protections, a proposal that Republicans have resisted. But Scott indicated that the sticking point could be resolved. Asked if he sees a potential compromise on qualified immunity, Scott told CNN: “We’ll find out soon.” He added: “I’m optimistic still.” Democrats might go it-alone on infrastructure In order to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, there needs to be a bipartisan consensus in the 50-50 Senate since most bills are unlikely to meet the strict rules of budget reconciliation, a process that allows legislation to pass on a simple majority basis and that was employed to enact the sweeping Covid relief law with no Republican support. The Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, gave Democrats a boost last week when she ruled that it’s possible to use that process multiple times per fiscal year, meaning it could be employed six times in the current Congress — an unprecedented move. Schumer says he has not made a decision to go that route yet, as the White House has sought to engage Republicans on a potential bipartisan way forward on its $2 trillion-plus infrastructure-and-tax package. Yet in order for an infrastructure bill to pass the House by July 4, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she wants, Democratic leaders must make a decision soon about which route they want to pursue: A narrow bill that could win over Republicans, or a more sweeping measure that they could pass through the reconciliation process. On Wednesday, Schumer refused to say when he’d make that decision. But he made clear he wouldn’t let talks drag out. “We’re not going to repeat the mistake of 2009 and ’10 where for a year-and-a-half they negotiated and then nothing came of it,” Schumer said on CNN’s “New Day,” referring to the first two years under then-President Barack Obama when Democrats controlled all of Congress. “We’re not doing that.” But going the reconciliation route has its limits. For instance, MacDonough ruled this year that increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour is outside the bounds of the budget reconciliation process, dealing a blow to progressive Democrats. The ruling prompted bipartisan talks over the issue, with GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona putting together a middle-ground proposal to pitch to a group of 20 senators from both parties who are trying to craft compromises for the Senate to consider. And Manchin and some other moderate Democrats have resisted calls to use the reconciliation process on an infrastructure package, even though the prospects for a bipartisan deal seem slim — as Republicans reject Biden’s call to hike corporate taxes to help pay for the plan and seek a proposal with a much lower price tag. Manchin said bipartisan deals will happen, “but it might not happen at the scope some people want it to happen. You can’t do every social agenda and every pent-up issue that you might have.” But asked what he’d do if the bipartisan talks fall apart, Manchin demurred. “You just work a little harder until you massage it and make it happen,” Manchin told CNN. CNN’s Ted Barrett and Tara Subramaniam contributed to this report. Source link Orbem News #agenda #Bidens #Bipartisan #Bipartisandeals:Biden'sagendahingesonnewSenatepushamiddistrustbetweentheparties-CNNPolitics #deals #distrust #hinges #parties #Politics #Push #Senate

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dipulb3 · 3 years

Text

Biden's agenda hinges on new Senate push for bipartisan deals amid distrust between the parties

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/bidens-agenda-hinges-on-new-senate-push-for-bipartisan-deals-amid-distrust-between-the-parties/

Biden's agenda hinges on new Senate push for bipartisan deals amid distrust between the parties

“If somebody tells you in their inaugural speech they’re for bipartisanship, and they go out and do everything but, it doesn’t engender trust,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who says he’s been invited to a White House meeting on infrastructure next week.

Plus Democrats lack enough support within their own caucus to eliminate the filibuster’s 60-vote altogether, putting even more pressure to find a bipartisan way forward in the next several weeks or risk seeing chunks of the Biden agenda falter in the narrowly divided Congress.

“This month is our opportunity to show that we can actually legislate in a bipartisan way,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat who occupies Biden’s old US Senate seat in Delaware.

Yet liberals are eager to see results and say that if bipartisan talks peter out, Democrats must achieve their goals by whatever means necessary — including potentially using the budget process up to six times in this Congress — with or without GOP support.

“Whether it’s one piece of legislation or six pieces of legislation, is a less concern to me as to whether it goes done,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont. “What matters is it gets done and we can address the crises facing working families.”

On some major issues, such as voting rights, there are no serious bipartisan talks occurring. It’s a sign that a sweeping Democratic proposal to increase voting access and overhaul the election process is almost certain to be blocked by Republicans as soon as next month.

At a closed-door lunch on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told his caucus that he would give time for bipartisan talks to play out — but that Democrats would go a different route if negotiations stall, attendees said.

“Schumer also cautioned that Senate Dems do not have the luxury of time,” a person in the room said.

Gun talks intensify but face uphill climb

Behind the scenes, bipartisan talks are beginning to pick up pace on some key issues.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, two Connecticut Democrats, have been quietly working the phones to court Republicans to see if there’s any support on gun violence legislation that could garner 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats hope this month will yield progress before trying to bring a bill to the floor next month, though they’ll need the backing of 10 Republicans to do that.

Between the two Democrats, they’ve spoken to roughly half the 50-member Senate GOP Conference. They readily acknowledge that they will have to pare back the House-passed bill that would mandate background checks on firearm sales on commercial and private transactions, given the stiff opposition from GOP senators and skepticism from moderate Democrats to requiring checks on private transfers.

Yet, it’s still a tall order to cut a deal even on a narrow measure — such as forcing all gun purchasers through the internet and at gun shows to undergo background checks, similar to a long-stalled proposal by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican.

Still, senators are discussing ways to bolster the background check system, while seeking to find consensus on proposals to empower states and local authorities to remove firearms from those deemed mentally ill — known as red-flag laws.

And while both Murphy and Blumenthal say they’re more optimistic than before that a deal could be reached in the weeks ahead, they plainly recognize the challenges ahead.

Blumenthal said talks are going “better than I would have expected, much more productively than any other time.” But he added: “Realistically, it’s still very much an uphill effort, in part because Republicans are so spooked right now by Donald Trump and his base and the complete irrationality, almost paranoia, of that base when it comes to guns, the slippery slope becomes a cliff. If they take one step, it’s like the world ends.”

Murphy said he’s spent recent weeks “cajoling” his Republican colleagues to support anti-gun violence legislation, and says he’s ready to compromise on “something that’s less than what the House passed.”

But what that bipartisan plan looks like remains unclear.

Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, a Republican who spoke with Murphy, said the focus should be on “keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.”

But Braun said focusing on expanding background checks first means “you’re starting in the wrong place” and called on senators to instead “first focus on why some laws aren’t working.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said: “These people would pass background checks, which is why I proposed the red flag grants to incentivize more states,” a reference to grants to state and local governments that implement laws that allow the temporary removal of guns from people deemed at high risk of harming themselves or others.

And the distrust looms large.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota was skeptical when asked if there’d be an appetite for a bipartisan deal on background checks.

“Most of the proposals the Dems come up with have something to do with making it harder for law-abiding citizens to get access to firearms,” Thune told Appradab.

Bipartisan group weighs police reform compromise

Amid the attention around the Derek Chauvin trial on charges of murdering George Floyd last year in Minneapolis, the White House has shifted its focus to getting legislation through Congress, abandoning a Biden campaign pledge to create a commission on the issue. After the House passed a bill in March named after Floyd, without a single Republican supporter, there are now active conversations about a bipartisan Senate version of a police reform bill.

Those involved in the bipartisan discussions include Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat and lead author of the House bill, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose version of police reform was blocked by a Democratic filibuster last summer.

Scott told Appradab this week that he and Bass had just spoken, adding he believed progress was being made since they first started their conversations in recent weeks. Bass told Appradab in March the group was working through “some of the thorny issues” in their discussions over a potential Senate bill.

One of the thorniest issues is how to deal with the issue of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil litigation. Democrats have pushed to gut the protections, a proposal that Republicans have resisted. But Scott indicated that the sticking point could be resolved.

Asked if he sees a potential compromise on qualified immunity, Scott told Appradab: “We’ll find out soon.” He added: “I’m optimistic still.”

Democrats might go it-alone on infrastructure

In order to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, there needs to be a bipartisan consensus in the 50-50 Senate since most bills are unlikely to meet the strict rules of budget reconciliation, a process that allows legislation to pass on a simple majority basis and that was employed to enact the sweeping Covid relief law with no Republican support.

The Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, gave Democrats a boost last week when she ruled that it’s possible to use that process multiple times per fiscal year, meaning it could be employed six times in the current Congress — an unprecedented move.

Schumer says he has not made a decision to go that route yet, as the White House has sought to engage Republicans on a potential bipartisan way forward on its $2 trillion-plus infrastructure-and-tax package.

Yet in order for an infrastructure bill to pass the House by July 4, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she wants, Democratic leaders must make a decision soon about which route they want to pursue: A narrow bill that could win over Republicans, or a more sweeping measure that they could pass through the reconciliation process.

On Wednesday, Schumer refused to say when he’d make that decision. But he made clear he wouldn’t let talks drag out.

“We’re not going to repeat the mistake of 2009 and ’10 where for a year-and-a-half they negotiated and then nothing came of it,” Schumer said on Appradab’s “New Day,” referring to the first two years under then-President Barack Obama when Democrats controlled all of Congress. “We’re not doing that.”

But going the reconciliation route has its limits. For instance, MacDonough ruled this year that increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour is outside the bounds of the budget reconciliation process, dealing a blow to progressive Democrats.

The ruling prompted bipartisan talks over the issue, with GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona putting together a middle-ground proposal to pitch to a group of 20 senators from both parties who are trying to craft compromises for the Senate to consider.

And Manchin and some other moderate Democrats have resisted calls to use the reconciliation process on an infrastructure package, even though the prospects for a bipartisan deal seem slim — as Republicans reject Biden’s call to hike corporate taxes to help pay for the plan and seek a proposal with a much lower price tag.

Manchin said bipartisan deals will happen, “but it might not happen at the scope some people want it to happen. You can’t do every social agenda and every pent-up issue that you might have.”

But asked what he’d do if the bipartisan talks fall apart, Manchin demurred.

“You just work a little harder until you massage it and make it happen,” Manchin told Appradab.

Appradab’s Ted Barrett and Tara Subramaniam contributed to this report.

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whiteliesuk · 3 years

Text

White Lie: Kamala Harris is the progressive queen we have been waiting for; as the first black, Indian, female VP all things will inevitably change for the better! Sit upon your pedestal Madam Vice President!

The reality:

Should anyone doubt the effectiveness of the US political propaganda machine, they need only look at how successfully it whitewashed Kamala’s abysmal track record as prosecutor. Our Madam VP elect is very far from the progressive her campaign slogans and your Instagram stickers have made her out to be.

I’ve been holding back from writing this post: I didn’t want to put out the sordid details of Harris’ record before the election in case I inadvertently convince some undecided voter to go the wrong way (lol at me thinking I had any such influence!) Or have someone accuse me of being a Trump supporter, heaven forbid. I also didn’t want to write this post too soon after the election, as people rightly celebrate the result after days, even weeks, of anxiety and stress. I don’t want to be that much of a party pooper! But… I did spend much of the post-election evening grinding my teeth at the multitude of ignorant Instagram posts screeching ‘KamaLove’, ‘Yes we Kam!’ or of her shimmying some dance moves. Worst of all was the widely shared video of Kamala’s post-election victory speech, where she declared:

“I am thinking about… the generations of women – Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women – who, throughout our nation’s history, have paved the way for this moment.’

In Kamala’s case, women of colour paved the way in a very different sense: she figuratively stepped on them to make it as VP.

I fully acknowledge and appreciate the empowerment that comes from representation: it means a lot to have someone that looks like you rise to a position of power, especially when it is ground-breaking and breaks thick, bullet-proof glass ceilings. To be the first black, South Asian, daughter of immigrants to become VP in the US is huge. But representation only goes so far, particularly if said person has a track record of supporting or exacerbating systems that discriminate against minorities and the working class. We, in Britain, with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Priti Patel, and Saji Javid should really know this by now.

To eradicate any doubt, I invariably wanted the Democrats to win the US election; I am still rejoicing at seeing the physical embodiment of Agent Orange lose. But while I celebrate the end of the Trump administration, I am not necessarily looking forward to a Biden-Harris one. Biden’s shortcomings appear to be widely accepted; heck, with a slogan like ‘Settle for Biden’ even the Biden presidential campaign acknowledge he’s far from perfect. But what baffled me was the wholesale acceptance of the message that Kamala Harris was ‘IT’: there was such fervent feeling that she was a progressive saviour; a progressive queen, who’s reign would mark the beginning of a progressive new age. And all her campaign had to do was repeat the word ‘progressive’ enough times for everyone to believe it.

There is nothing that irritates me more than public figures being put on pedestals they don’t deserve. This hero-worship tends to arise from ignorance, often by design, of said person’s full history. As such, it’s another example of a dangerous white lie that serves to maintain a harmful status quo. This is certainly the case for Kamala: her presidential campaign, and later vice-presidential campaign, pedalled the incomplete and erroneous message that she is a through-and-through progressive. When in fact, she has a history of being another run-of-the-mill, tepid-in-the-face-of-injustice, neoliberal candidate that perpetuated the status quo, particularly within the sphere of criminal justice and actions against the police. I hope the events of this past year, particularly those arising from George Floyd’s death and the BLM protests, has made it self-evident that we really want to move on from the status quo.

Now, I’d hate to be hypocritical by painting her as entirely ‘bad’. Kamala has largely been on the right side of history during her time in the Senate: she introduced a bail reform bill with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) that would encourage states to reform or replace standing bail systems that currently jails hundreds and thousands of people for simply not being able to pay their bail; alongside Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC), she introduced a historic bill that made lynching a federal crime; Kamala has also signed on to Booker’s marijuana legalisation bill, in a drastic U-turn on her stance on the matter; she also voted for the First Step Act, a significant (although limited) federal criminal justice reform bill that would ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level.

Even before then, she started the ‘Back on Track’ program as District Attorney, which allowed first-time drug offenders to obtain a high school diploma and a job instead of doing prison time. Her handling of California’s ‘three strikes’ law as DA was also head of its time: under the law, someone who committed a third felony could go to prison for 25 years to life, even if their third felony is a nonviolent crime (America is a wild and incredibly draconian place). But Harris required that the San Franciscan DA’s office only charged for a third strike if the felony was a serious or violent crime. Harris also unveiled the Open Justice portal, a website that contained data on arrest rates and deaths in custody, going some way in addressing the lack of a national database for these figures and therefore accounting for the use of deadly force by law enforcement.

But then some of what she did was just tepid. When the BLM movement took off, for example, Harris introduced and expanded ‘first of its kind training’ to address racial bias within the police. However, officers had to sign up voluntarily and were only required to attend 8 hours of training – I somehow doubt this’ll do much in overturning a deep-seated and institutional racism problem within the police. As Attorney General, Harris made the California Department of Justice the first state-wide agency to require body cameras, but she stopped short of endorsing state-wide regulations on their use, leaving it free to local forces to decide how and when they could be used. Doesn’t really instil accountability, does it?

Then there are parts of Kamala’s track record as prosecutor that is plain old regressive; reminiscent of a ‘tough on crime’ era that subjected people of colour to heavy handed policing and insurmountable institutional road blocks throughout the criminal justice system. It’s not merely the fact that she was a prosecutor that’s problematic: although there are those like Briahna Gray (American political commentator and lawyer) who argue that ‘to become a prosecutor is to make a choice to align oneself to a powerful and fundamentally biased system’, I am open to the possibility that tangible and radical change can be effected from the inside. As Harris said in the New York Times Magazine in 2016, she wanted to work within a system she wanted to change, to be ‘at the table where the decisions are made’ (however, I am also equally open to the possibility that eradicating institutional racism requires a more drastic overhaul of the entire system). But rather, it’s what she did and enacted as prosecutor that makes Kamala’s image of progressive saviour so deeply hypocritical.

Kamala Harris was anti-sex work

There are people I know who would balk at this first point and think, so what? I’m anti-sex work. For a moment I thought I would give in to this sentiment and miss out this point. But that moment passed very quickly; because to do so would overlook the women of colour Kamala Harris harmed as District Attorney, and women of colour have been overlooked enough.

To address those who are choking on their tea: it is now a progressive stance to be pro-sex work, catch up with the times my friends! It’s long overdue we fully respect any man or woman’s choice to undertake sex work, as long as it’s consensual. “But but but uggghhh!!! It’s so vulgar! So unsavoury and demeaning!! How could you be for it! It’s so disrespectful to women!’ yada yada yada. Sex work is not invalid just because it’s not work you’d personally undertake. I, for one, respect and value myself and others too much to ever debase myself by becoming a management consultant, but there are people who do and they’re not criminalised for it (despite their exploitation of the working class). And you know what’s even more disrespectful to women? Telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies or how they should make their money.

While I accept the reality that some sex workers are vulnerable and, having grown up in Southeast Asia, I can’t deny that sex trafficking is a very real problem that needs to be addressed. But I do not believe that criminalising sex work is the answer to helping the marginalised and exploited. Rather, they should be protected and given safe options of redress. Moreover, there is a difference between exploitation and consensual sexual work. And that is fundamentally where Kamala got it wrong: although she presented herself as an advocate for victims of sexual exploitation, as District Attorney and prosecutor she often conflated ‘trafficking’ with consensual sex work.

For instance, she waged a war against Backpage.com, an advertisement website used by sex workers, during her time as District Attorney of San Francisco. Many in the industry argued that it made their work secure in more ways than one: the website not only provided a steady stream of more reliable income, but also meant sex workers no longer had to take to the streets to find clients, and provided a means by which they could vet clients or make complaints against them. Harris’, on the other hand, called the site ‘the world’s top online brothel’ and pursued pimping charges against the website’s operators even after a judge tossed out the initial case on free speech grounds. Backpage’s closure left many sex workers strapped for cash to pay for their housing and medicines and even forced some sex workers to turn to more precarious kinds of work to make up for lost income. Harris continued her opposition to the website as Senator and supported legislation that further criminalised sex work across the internet.

Harris made matters worse by making sex work unsafe more generally, most notably by voting against Proposition K – a bill that would’ve decriminalised prostitution in San Francisco. Prop K would’ve redirected city resources once spent on arresting prostitutes into education and health outreach for sex workers, providing access to an array of the city’s medical and legal services, therefore opening up avenues for sex workers to report violence committed against them and improve their public health.

Harris vehemently disagreed. In a public statement (video here) she equated Prop K to ‘roll[ing] out the welcome mat to prostitutes and pimps to come to San Francisco. It would impede and interfere with our ability to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking…’ Moreover, she claimed that ‘Proposition K pretends to be about compassion, when in fact it is completely the opposite… it is not compassionate to the families who live in the neighbourhoods where these activities are occurring… If you want to go see Pretty Woman, go rent it.’ That’s a very long-winded way of saying that outdated phrase we’ve come to hate so much: ‘tough on crime.’

Instead, the San Franciscan Police Department and DA’s office were using the presence of condoms as evidence of prostitution and other criminal activity, which in turn posed a significant barrier to the routine use of condoms by sex workers: to avoid criminal charges, many were reluctant to carry condoms or keep them at their place of work. Evidence shows that sex workers are more likely to use condoms and have lower rates of sexual transmitted diseases where payment for sex is permitted, as in Austria, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Thailand. In the early days of the AIDs epidemic, there was an agreement between the San Franciscan DA and Health Department not to use condoms as evidence for this very reason; but this was well and truly gone as Kamala waged her war against ‘Pretty Women’.

Besides the moral and public health standpoint, there was evidence to suggest that criminalisation of sex work was ineffective – only 9 cases went to trial in 2009, the year before Prop K was proposed, and no convictions resulted from them. Even more problematic was police culpability in the ‘crime’ Kamala was so staunchly against: a 2012 USFC medical study found that 1 in 5 sex workers in San Francisco reported that police officers paid them for sex. Horrifyingly, 1 in 7 were threatened with arrest by police officers unless they had sex with them. Kamala was directing her ire to the wrong place.

Prop K would have been a more humane and effective approach to sex work, but Kamala was so against it that she maintained her position even during her ‘progressive’ stint in the Senate. Our so-called progressive champion championed a policy that is already viewed by many as backwards and unethical.

Kamala threatened to jail parents of kids who missed school

The well-being of children is perhaps less controversial and a cause that the majority of society can rally behind… Well, unless you’re a Trump supporter who doesn’t mind seeing children caged; a Tory who initially allowed children to starve during their school holidays; or you’re Kamala Harris and implemented a program that threatened to jail parents in order to solve California’s truancy problem.

Throughout her political rise, Harris has upheld her anti-truancy program as an example of her ‘smart on crime’ approach. Before the implementation of this new program, parents could be cited and fined but never faced the threat of jail time. Harris, however, thought truancy was a problem that could only be solved with an iron first. She argued that truancy was a criminal justice issue, declaring that ‘if we don’t educate these kids in the classroom, they’re going to be educated in the streets’; stating that 94% of San Francisco’s young homicide victims and two thirds of prison inmates are high school drop outs. As such, rather repressively, her anti-truancy program upped the ante by threatening parents with prosecution and adding the possibility of jail time: parents of children who are chronically truant can be found guilty of a misdemeanour and face a series of fines and punishments, starting with $100 fine for the first conviction and ending with a $2,000 fine as well as a year of incarceration. She first implemented the program in 2008 as San Francisco’s District Attorney, but later implemented it as state-wide law in 2012 as California’s new Attorney General.

To Kamala’s credit as District Attorney, the threat of prosecution was only used in extreme truancy cases, involving weeks or months of missed classes, and only after parents had been offered help by relevant support providers. Typically, when a student was found to be regularly truant, the school district would first get involved by sending out letters to parents telling them that their child was missing class. The school would then invite parents to a meeting with school staff and, sometimes, support service providers would attend to get to the root of the truancy. The next step was a meeting with the school attendance review board – in which various government agencies and social services, as well as school staff, would attend – to better understand how to prevent the truancy issues. That meeting typically concluded with a contract that dictated who was going to do what to make sure the child could attend class. Harris’ supporters have emphasised how this framework ultimately helped families struggling with poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and substance abuse gain access to the supportive services they need.

Harris, in her memoir The Truths We Hold, argued that this was the point of the program all along: ‘even today, others don’t appreciate the intention behind my approach; they assume that my motivation was to lock-up parents, when of course that was never my goal. Our effort was designed to connect parents to resources that could help them get their kids back into school where they belonged. We were trying to support parents, not punish them – and in the vast majority of cases, we succeeded.’ There is indeed evidence to show that school attendance rates did rise in San Francisco after the program’s implementation: San Francisco Unified School District data showed that the percentage of chronically truant students had fallen to 2.5% from 4% from 2007/8 to 2010/11; habitual truancy rates and overall truancy rates also fell. However, it’s unclear if the program can be credited for the change, as the school district also carried out various other efforts at the time to improve attendance rates.

But there is so much wrong with Harris’ anti-truancy approach. Firstly and unsurprisingly, it disproportionately affected children of colour: Los Angeles implemented a ticketing version of the anti-truancy program, in which children outside of school hours were ticketed and fined $250 or more, with a mandatory court appearance, for their first offence. These punitive measures were not only drastic, economically costly, and caused students to miss more school for court appearances, but had also highly racialised consequences: a Latinx student in the Los Angeles Unified School District was twice as likely to be ticketed and arrested at school than a white student, and a black student is almost six times more likely to be ticketed and arrested than their white counterparts.

Worse still, Kamala Harris as District Attorney specifically targeted children of colour in implementing the program: her office spent $20,000 on a campaign advertising a hotline and urging San Francisco residents to call if they spotted kids ‘playing hooky’ during school hours. The ad campaign targeted three historically black and Latinx neighbourhoods. Big Sister, Kamala Harris, is always watching… But only if you’re black or brown.

Secondly, if the point was never to imprison parents or punish them, and to ultimately work towards reducing the number of people who pass through the criminal justice system, then why did the possibility of prosecution and imprisonment exist at all? It is illogical to me that one would use prosecution and imprisonment as a solution to the very thing that prosecution and imprisonment brings about: punishment and increasing those who pass through the criminal justice system. In fact, a punitive approach to truancy only threatens to fuel the prison pipeline. Moreover, it is after all possible to implement the positive elements of the program – namely the framework and processes that connected struggling families with the support services they needed – without prosecution or imprisonment being a possible end point. Indeed, this would’ve probably put the program outside of Kamala Harris’ remit as District Attorney and Attorney General, and it would’ve instead fallen to the leader of the San Francisco Unified School District to implement it, but so be it.

Harris and her supporters have made pains to highlight that no parents were jailed during her time as District Attorney. Katy Miller, who helped implement the program as prosecutor working under Harris, states that at most 20 parents are prosecuted in a typically year in San Francisco, and none have been jailed. But the implementation of the anti-truancy programme state-wide has meant more conservative (read: punitive) parts of the State have not been as considerate towards families’ needs: in Hanford, California for example, one mum was sentenced to 180 days in jail in 2012 for not sending her kids to school. This is an unwelcome outcome even by Harris’ standards.

This therefore begs the question as to whether truancy should be criminalised at all? Firstly, all involved, including Harris – the anti-truancy program’s very own architect – acknowledges that criminalisation is an undesirable and unwelcome outcome. Secondly and more principally, prosecutors, the criminal justice system, and criminal punishment are far from being the answer to many social ills, truancy being one of them.

Jyoti Nanda, a law professor who runs a youth justice clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she had been ‘deeply disappointed’ by Harris’ ‘fearmongering’ on truancy. And fearmonger Harris did: in a 2010 video, she boasted that a mum warned her kids, after seeing a letter from the prosecutor’s office, that ‘if you don’t go to school, Kamala’s going to put you and me in jail.’ Nanda has described the approach as ‘completely the opposite of best practices’ to help students. Furthermore, the way Harris framed truancy as the individual fault of poor parents fed into old, ugly, stereotypes about poor families and families of colour (which is, again, very reminiscent of a ‘tough on crime’ approach!) Nanda highlights that student truancy is not necessarily the problem of bad or neglectful parents, but a system of broader problems, the chronic underfunding of California’s State schools being one of them. ‘It’s using a crime lens to address what’s really a public health issue,’ Nanda says.

The reality is that more often than not issues stemming from or exacerbated by poverty are at the root of truancy – the program itself acknowledges this by putting families in much needed contact with the various support services they need. It’s therefore incredibly draconian to criminalise the issue: the threat of prosecution, imprisonment, or a fine could hurt an already struggling family financially, or take a parent out of a child’s home. A child who is a truant is probably not getting sufficient parental support or contact, because they or their parents are juggling multiple jobs, struggling with health issues and care, are homeless, in the criminal justice system already, and/or are generally struggling to make ends meet. As summed up by James Forman Jr, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Locking Up Our Own, in a series of tweets: ‘you’re essentially threatening people with prison when there’s underlying poverty issues that are potentially preventing them from having their kids show up to school on time.’ The last thing a child in these already difficult circumstances needs is for their parent to be prosecuted, jailed, and incur the financial and practical long terms costs associated with this. How is that mum from Hanford going to drive her kids to school if she’s in jail, or if she can’t afford transportation due to hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines? In the longer term, the criminal record she incurs could harm her future job prospects. These collateral consequences only inhibit a parents’ ability to support their children and get them to school; the program therefore carries the potential of hurting the children it intends to help. And it really need not to.

Kamala defended mass incarceration

In this time of greater awareness regarding the racism and brutality of the criminal justice system, thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, a defence of mass incarceration is unarguably a non-progressive stance. Credence must be paid to the fact that Harris’ put forward an ambitious criminal justice reform plan during her bid for the Democratic nomination – policies that aimed to end the war on drugs and, most notably, scale back on mass incarceration have now been adopted into Biden’s presidential campaign. However, this reformist stance is the antithesis of Kamala’s own track record as Attorney General, when she defied the US Supreme Court’s order to reduce overcrowding in Californian prisons.

California’s mass incarceration problem was both chronic and infamous: at its peak, the State’s prison system was at 200% of its designed capacity. The situation was so dire that in one prison, 54 prisoners shared a single toilet; suicidal inmates were locked in telephone-booth sized cages for 24 hours at a time; and beds and medical personnel were at such a shortage that preventable deaths due to substandard and overstretched medical care occurred every five to six days. Constitutional protections for prisoners against cruel and unusual punishment is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but for decades successive Republican and Democratic administrations ignored the problem.

It speaks to the seriousness of the problem that a federal District Court held in 2009 that no other plausible solution existed for getting the State to conform to a constitutionally reasonable standard other than prison release – federal courts are typically reluctant to consider prisoner release and see it as a measure of last resort. A pledge to quickly build new prisons was considered but found not credible in the midst of a recession and given California’s limited finances. The District Court therefore mandated that the State enact a series of decarceration measures to reduce the prison population to 137.5% of its designed capacity within two years (i.e. mass incarceration would continue, but at least to a lesser extent. Yay!)

However, the case (Brown v Plata) was taken to the US Supreme Court when the State appealed the District Court’s ruling. Again, the severity of California’s mass incarceration problem was highlighted when the conservative leaning Supreme Court’s judgement found California’s prison system to be in violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment Rights and identified prisoner release as the most effective method of ending the State’s constitutional violation in a timely manner. The verdict was split 5-4, with the conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the Court’s liberals: in upholding the lower-court mandate, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the case, adding gruesome details from inside California’s prisons, and condemning the State for facilitating “needless suffering and death.” I’ll keep mum of the hypocrisy of this coming from a judge who ruled in favour of the right to bear arms for now.

By the time this judgement was released on 23 May 2011, Kamala Harris was newly appointed California’s Attorney General and the ruling would therefore have to be enacted on her watch. Every six months, the State needed to show that it had decreased its prison population in compliance with a threshold overseen by a three-judge District Court panel: 167% of capacity by the end of 2011, 155% by June 2012, finally arriving at the target level of 137.5% by June 2013. But, with Harris at the helm, it soon became clear that the State would not easily comply with the judicial order.

It’s worth noting that Harris was acting on behalf on behalf of California State Governor Brown, who preceded her as State AG and was notorious for his position on the issue. I’m sympathetic to Harris for having to defend an unsavoury client in this case: all lawyers have experience of this and I have no doubt that I’ll have many a client I strongly disagree with; but so often our hands are tied behind our backs, due to regulatory and ethical codes, and despite strong vehemence to our clients’ stance we have to defend them nonetheless. But it’s the way she conducted the case, which lawyers do have scope in determining, that I take issue with: Harris, on behalf of Brown, acted in complete defiance of the Supreme Court ruling.

Little to no progress had been made on the decarceration mandate and, by 2012, a report surfaced that proved the State actually intended to increase its prison population. In May of that same year, Harris’ office ‘confirmed their intent to not comply with the Order but instead to seek its modification from 137.5% design capacity to 145%,’ a modification that was not granted to them. The District Court ended up extending the decarceration compliance deadline to the end of 2013. But by April 2012, just two months before the initial deadline given in the Supreme Court decision, California still had 9,636 prisoners more than the court-imposed ceiling. The State submitted a proposal that involved relocating inmates to fire camps to fight wildfires, and prevent out-of-state prisoners from being returned. But after reviewing these proposals, the three-judge panel found that that still left California’s prisons some 4,170 prisoners over the hard limit.

Again, the three-judge panel acquiesced and arrived at a solution: the expansion of ‘good time’ credits for nonviolent offenders, shortening stays often by just a handful of months. This effectively involved increasing the sentence reductions minimum-custody inmates can earn for good behaviour, instead channelling them into rehabilitation and education programs. The State’s own expert witness had testified years prior that he did not oppose good credit measures, and that there was no correlation between length of stay and recidivism, meaning that the public was not at risk. States such as Washington, Illinois, and even tough-on-crime New York had implemented these programs with success. The Court found that the expansion of good time credits would make some 5,385 inmates eligible for release and therefore solve the problem at hand.

But Governor Brown, with Harris steering the ship, did not agree. Harris’ office launched into a campaign of all-out obstruction, refusing to answer why they could not simply comply with the request to release low-risk, nonviolent inmates in order to conform with the Supreme Court’s request. Harris office relented further: they claimed on behalf of the State that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to even request such a release, refusing to answer questions as to how they would implement the Supreme Court ruling, and courting a constitutional crisis. Any lawyer reading this will be clutching their pearls right now – the audacity to refuse the final ruling of the highest court in the land, can you believe!!!!

Unsurprisingly, the three-judge District Court panel replied with a stunning rebuke in their June 2013 ruling: when asked by what date the State could provide a list of prisoners who are unlikely to reoffended, the judge wrote that the ‘defendants defiantly refused and stated, somewhat astonishingly, that our suggestion that we might order defendants to develop a system to identify low-risk prisoners, a system that the Supreme Court had suggested we might consider ordering defendants to develop ‘without delay,’ is a prisoner release order that vastly exceeds the scope of the Court’s prior orders.’ The Supreme Court had in fact ruled that the three-judge District Court panel had exactly that authority in its 2011 ruling. ‘In tortured logic, the defendants suggested that the Supreme Court’s statement ‘did not authorise the early release of prisoners, or even the consideration of that question.’ The ruling went on to say that Harris’ Attorney General’s Office ‘continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,’ to the point that the panel strongly considered holding the State in contempt.’ Ladies and gentlemen, gaslight tactics were indeed deployed by Harris’ office to the extreme.

The panel, however, did not hold the State in contempt, primarily because it would have delayed the release of nonviolent inmates further, and therefore aided the State’s obstructionist tactics. The manipulation! And all this to prevent the release of only 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom multiple courts and experts had presented as next to no risk of reoffending or threat to public safety. Instead, the State decided to spend the time seesawing back and forth between dubious legal fillings and flagrant disregard.

Harris’ legal tactics also drew rebuke from legal commentators, who saw her legal motions as obstructionist, done in bad faith, and nonsensical. Barry Krisberg, long-time president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said that ‘the legal arguments that the State was putting forward make no sense.’ Andrew Cohen, Senior Editor at the Marshall Project and fellow at the Brennan Centre for Justice, believes that Harris’ behaviour may have put her in breach of California’s legal and ethical standards, which forbid filing a motion ‘for an improper purpose, such as to harass or cause unnecessary delay.’

In an endorsement of the exploitative prison labour complex, the State at one point argued that nonviolent offenders needed to stay incarcerated, because they worked as groundskeepers, janitors, in prison kitchens with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour, and were needed in fire camps in the wildfire-plagued State. If they were released, then prisons would lose an ‘important labour pool’. Harris has recently distanced herself from these arguments, claiming that she had no knowledge of it and telling BuzzFeed News that she was ‘shocked’ by the argument. But Alexander Sammon, writer of The Prospect article ‘How Kamala Harris Fought to Keep Nonviolent Prisoners Locked Up’ casts doubt on the notion that Kamala was ignorant of legal arguments put forward in this case: generally, she was known to run an extremely centralised AG’s office, with few things coming in or going without her express sign off. Specifically, this was the highest-profile case she managed as AG, involving a ruling from the highest court in the land, concerning a decarceration order her office spent years resisting. As if any of the arguments put forward escaped her notice before they got to court.

This dogged and callous opposition to decarceration hardly conveys Kamala as being on the side of racial and justice reform. Moreover, as Sammon points out, ‘putting someone with a history of defying the Supreme Court on the Democratic ticket would significantly undermine the Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s pledge to return to the pre-Trump ear of governance, where the three branches of government are seen as coequal and the courts are respected.’

Kamala isn’t looking so progressive now, is she? A lot to take in, I know. And it’s gut wrenching to come to the realisation that someone you pinned so much hope on is disappointing in so many ways. So, let’s take a breather.

Or, are you not convinced yet? Fear not, next time we look into Kamala’s history of upholding wrongful convictions and inaction in the face of police brutality and prosecutorial misconduct.

#whitelies #kamalaharris #blacklivesmatter #vicepresident #joebiden

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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Biden’s delay in choosing a running mate intensifies jockeying between potential picks

The dynamic threatens to undermine Biden’s effort to use the vice-presidential search to spotlight some of the party’s brightest female stars during the highly public vetting process. And it’s already providing President Trump’s campaign an opening to dig up dirt and launch attacks on potential rivals.

“It’s been relentless. It’s been unfortunate. But I must say it’s been predictable,” said Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee. “It’s extremely disappointing, because many of these attacks . . . are being made by Democratic men who should know better.”

“I would hope that in this selection process, we are mindful that Black women — and women of color — deserve respect,” she added.

The increasing nastiness is fueled by a sense, even among Biden’s closest advisers, that Biden is entering the final phase of the search without a clear favorite. Rather than a traditional “shortlist” of three candidates, people close to the process expect him to interview five or six finalists for the position.

Several people interviewed said the delay has intensified currents, many of them sexist, that have been swirling for weeks. The resulting backbiting risks inflaming divisions within the party that complicated the 2016 campaign — but that Biden has worked to coalesce since locking down the nomination in the spring.

In recent days a Politico report surfaced that former senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is on Biden’s vice-presidential vetting panel, told donors that Sen. Kamala D. Harris “had no remorse” for her attacks on Biden while on a debate stage. One donor implied to CNBC that Harris has too much “ambition.” And former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a longtime Biden friend, told CNN that Harris can “rub people the wrong way.”

Some of the comments are being made by high-ranking Democrats pushing alternative candidates such as Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) and more recently Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), making some worry that women of color are being forced to kneecap one another.

“It bugs me that people want to pit these two Black women against the other,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key Biden confidant, referring to the burgeoning Bass vs. Harris narrative. “Nobody is trying to pit Sen. Elizabeth Warren against [Michigan Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer. And both of their names are being mentioned every day as being in the search.”

“It is messier than it should be because somebody is trying to create a story,” Clyburn added.

In recent days the negative attention has focused on Bass, who has gone out of her way to stress that she is unable to “envision” herself as president. In 2008, former president Barack Obama told Biden to view the vice presidency as the “capstone” of his career, and Biden has said that he sees his relationship with Obama as a model.

The Trump campaign immediately seized on Bass’s history with Cuba. “Joe Biden and Karen Bass Would Invite Castro’s Communism into America,” read a headline on a Trump campaign news release. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), in a press call with reporters, warned that if selected she’d be “the highest-ranking Castro sympathizer in the history of the United States government.”

Bass went on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to show how she’d address those accusations, saying “I don’t consider myself a Castro sympathizer” and she characterized her position on Cuba as “really no different than the position of the Obama administration.”

She’s also pushed back on the notion that she and Harris should be compared with one another. Bass and Harris spoke privately at a memorial service for the late congressman John Lewis last week. “It was good,” Bass said of the conversation during a Friday interview on “The Breakfast Club.” “She said ‘We ain’t doing that.’ It was fine.” Bass added: “I’m not the anti-Kamala.”

Biden’s decision to eliminate men from the selection process has meant that many of the candidates who would traditionally be considered for this role, like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), are off the table. There’s been no speculation about Andrew M. Cuomo, even as the New York governor’s star rose during his daily coronavirus briefings. Vanquished contenders like former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee or former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg have also faded from the national conversation as the spotlight shifted to women.

And many noted that the competition to become the second-most-powerful person in the country is always going to be fierce. “It’s natural that it’s competitive,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) “It’s historic regardless of who he chooses, so that probably adds to the intensity of it.”

For her part, Harris allies have been lobbying the Biden team in public and in private. Top racial justice lawyer Ben Crump, who represents the family of George Floyd, penned an op-ed for CNN supporting her candidacy. Behind the scenes, powerful allies like Glenda Baskin Glover, the head of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and president of Tennessee State University, wrote to Biden’s vetting team urging them to select Harris — a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

And Harris attempted to use the attacks on her “ambition” as a weapon.

“There will be a resistance to your ambition,” she said Friday during Black Girls Lead 2020, a virtual conference for young Black women. “There will be people who say to you, ‘You are out of your lane,’ because they are burdened by only having the capacity to see what has always been instead of what can be. But don’t you let that burden you.”

She also received an assist from Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon that came soon after Dodd’s comment. “Ambitious women make history, change the world, and win,” O’Malley Dillon said in a social media post.

Biden’s timeline for picking a vice president has slipped significantly. He initially said he would make the decision by Aug. 1, then said it would be the first week of August. Now the campaign is signaling that it will likely wait until the second week of August.

In an interview, Clyburn said Biden has only told him that he will make up his mind “before the convention.” In 2008 and 2012, vice presidential candidates were announced just days before the convention.

Clyburn also said he believes it would be a “plus” for Biden to select a Black woman, but added the former vice president does not like being told what to do — and he provided some hint that he can’t endorse one of the candidates.

“Of the 12 names out there, with one exception, I know all of them,” Clyburn said in an interview with The Post. “There’s one person that I don’t know.” Clyburn declined to say who on the list is unknown to him. (He made a similar comment on MSNBC last week, leading to speculation that he was throwing shade at former national security adviser Susan E. Rice, but Clyburn balked at that interpretation. “I know Susan Rice very, very well,” Clyburn said.)

He said that he’s trying to approach Biden carefully with his advice.

“Ultimatums are not good,” Clyburn said. “I’m not going to tell the vice president what he must do.” He warned that pushing Biden too hard can backfire. “Nobody wants to be forced,” Clyburn said.

Others are taking a far different approach in the final days. The Rev. William Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign, and roughly 50 other leading Black clergy members sent an open letter to Biden’s campaign Friday “insisting” that he select a Black woman.

“We are writing to caution the Democratic party that it takes Black enthusiasm, the key determinant for turnout, for granted at its own peril” according to the letter, which predicts that a Democratic ticket that includes a Black woman will result in Black turnout that exceeds Obama’s numbers in that community.

The decision will automatically elevate whichever woman is selected, either making history by installing her as the first female vice president or giving her a head start for the 2024 campaign should the ticket fail — which is a key reason that the stakes are so high.

The Biden campaign has been tight-lipped about its contenders. But that hasn’t stopped allies and friends from speculating.

“If I had to bet my life on who would be the candidate, I’d still bet Harris,” said Rendell, who is raising money for Biden and frequently talks to his top campaign officials. “She has the least negatives, she’s the most polished. She’s the person who can take on [Vice President] Pence in a campaign debate.”

But he also made it clear how volatile the process has been. “The buzz the in the last three weeks — not this week — but the last few weeks, the buzz was Susan Rice,” Rendell said last Thursday.

Her demeanor on television fueled the speculation, he said. “She was smiling on TV, something that she doesn’t do all that readily,” Rendell said. “She was actually somewhat charming on TV, something that she has not seemed to care about in the past.”

The interview process for these women has been unusually public. Nearly all of the women in contention have headlined a fundraiser with Biden and appeared during at least one virtual event with his wife, Jill — a strong signal that Biden will closely consult his wife as he makes his decision.

The exchanges give each potential vice president some time to develop a rapport with Biden. On Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) headlined a grass-roots fundraiser for him and at one point Biden apologized for going on too long.

“No! Don’t be sorry,” Warren said. “I love everything you had to say.”

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losbella · 4 years

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global-news-station · 4 years

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WASHINGTON: Months after her presidential campaign collapsed amid questions over her political identity, Kamala Harris suddenly and forcefully found her voice – and at a fortuitous time.

Harris, a 55-year-old U.S. senator from California, was chosen by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his running mate on Tuesday, making history as the first Black woman and Asian-American on a major presidential ticket.

Her selection came as little surprise. With the United States in the midst of a reckoning over its history of racial injustice, Biden had increasingly been pressed to select a woman of color. Harris, who became the Senate’s second Black woman in its history when she was elected in 2016, was always at the top of the list.

Let’s go win this, @KamalaHarris. pic.twitter.com/O2EYo6rYyk

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 12, 2020

But Harris did anything but keep a low profile while Biden was making up his mind. Instead, she emerged as a fierce advocate for police reform and social justice – in the Senate, in the streets, and on the airwaves, sparring with Republicans on the Senate floor and offering fiery critiques of Republican President Donald Trump.

“She has been very resolute,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, the longstanding civil rights and social justice advocacy group, which has worked with Harris on reform issues. “She has the ability to go toe-to-toe with anybody.”

For Harris, the barrier-breaking former prosecutor and California state attorney general, the moment provided a clarity of purpose that was often absent from her failed presidential bid.

After a strong start, Harris’ campaign quickly foundered amid strategic somersaults. First positioning herself as a progressive in the mold of reformers such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Harris then tried to tack toward the center. Her position on healthcare, for example, became a mishmash. She dropped out in December, before a single vote was cast in the Democratic nominating contests.

“She was trying to play the middle a little bit and trying to be all things to all people,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Now, Payne said, “There is a little more of a defined voice. There’s more clarity to her public persona.”

WINNING OVER FLOYD LAWYER, PAST DOUBTERS

Her background in law enforcement had been seen as a vulnerability early in the race for the party’s nomination. But her work of late has impressed some past doubters who say she did not do enough to investigate police shootings and too often sided with prosecutors in wrongful conviction cases in the past.

In the days after George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May, sparking a national conversation on race, Harris joined protesters in the streets of Washington.

On Capitol Hill, she, along with Senator Cory Booker, an African American who made his own bid for the presidency, became the drivers of the Democratic effort to battle police abuses and led the pushback against an alternative Republican police reform measure, which she blasted as “lip service.”

Her efforts received important recognition in early August when Ben Crump, the attorney for Floyd’s family, published an opinion article supporting her candidacy.

“The case for me is simple: She’s been a change agent at every level of government – local, state, and federal – for 30 years,” Crump wrote as the search for Biden’s running mate entered a final stage.

Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who last year assailed Harris’ record as a prosecutor and attorney general, said Harris has made an “important shift” on criminal justice. She now hopes Harris will become a leading adviser to Biden on the issue.

“She got a good, hard shove to the left. I really hope she seizes that moment and resists the urge to drift toward safety and the center,” Bazelon said.

The post How Kamala Harris found the political identity that had eluded her appeared first on ARY NEWS.

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womenofcolor15 · 4 years

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JUNETEENTH: FREE’ISH’ Since 1865 – Today We Commemorate The End Of Physical Slavery Of Blacks In America, And Celebrate Black Excellence

Happy Juneteenth! On June 19, 1865, the last enslaved African Americans were notified that they were finally FREE from slavery. Today, we celebrate this epic moment in history to remember our past and honor our ancestors. More inside…

Time to turn up for the culture!

Today is Juneteenth! It’s the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. It’s also called Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, and Cel-Liberation Day

On June 19, 1865 Union soldiers – led by General Gordon Granger - traveled to Galveston, Texas and informed the enslaved African-Americans the Civil War was over and they were now FREE, a whole two years after the Emancipation Proclamation (Jan. 1, 1863) was issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Due to the lack of technology and lack of white America wanting to give up their privilege and their slaves, the message took an unfathomable amount of time to actually get to the people who deserved to hear it the most.

Here’s a few other theories why it took so long for slaves to be informed of their freedom:

The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All of which, or none of these versions could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln's authority over the rebellious states was in question. Whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.

155 years later, blacks aren’t physically enslaved, BUT we are still not totally free. More like free”ish” with the way racism, systemic racism and social injustice plagues our country.

There’s still tons of work to be done to defeat the intentional barriers put in place after slavery was abolished, but, there's hope that things are (slowly) changing for the good. From police reform kicking into high gear around this country, to the current watershed moment of racists in corporate & everyday America - who uphold the systemically racist infrastructure - being called to the carpet and quickly abolished from their positions. It's the reversal we love to see, even though we've been preaching about these very things for 400 years.

This year several major companies - including Nike and Twitter - and states have declared Juneteenth as an official paid state holiday. Earlier this week, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam declared Juneteenth as a state holiday. He made the announcement alongside producer/Virginia native Pharrell Williams:

Check it:

youtube

We’re still fighting and it’s starting to look like our voices are starting to be heard. However, racism is still very prevalent in the United States and those people will stop at nothing to preserve their history.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced plans to remove the Confederate Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, VA earlier this month, which was a response to nationwide outrage over racial injustice and police brutality following the death of George Floyd. Robert E. Lee was commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War where he led the South's attempt at secession.

A Richmond judge pumped the brakes on the confederate statue being removed when he extended an injunction barring the state from removing the statue. Judge Bradley Cavedo said the statue is "the property of the people."

R&B crooner Usher penned an op-ed in the Washington Post about why it’s important Juneteenth becomes a national holiday. Below is an excerpt from his article:

“At the 2015 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, I wore a T-shirt that caught a lot of people’s attention. The design was simple. The words “July Fourth” were crossed out and under them, one word was written: “Juneteenth.” I wore the shirt because, for many years, I celebrated the Fourth of July without a true understanding that the date of independence for our people, black people, is actually June 19, 1865: the day that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached some of the last people in America still held in bondage.”

”I have no issue with celebrating America’s independence on July 4. For me, wearing the shirt was an opportunity to inform others who may not necessarily know the history of black people in America, and who are not aware that Juneteenth is our authentic day of self-determination. It is ours to honor the legacy of our ancestors, ours to celebrate and ours to remember where we once were as a people. And it should be a national holiday, observed by all Americans.”

”Recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday would be a small gesture compared with the greater social needs of black people in America. But it can remind us of our journey toward freedom, and the work America still has to do. We could observe it, as many black Americans already do, by celebrating both our first step toward freedom as black people in America and also the many contributions to this land: the construction of Black Wall Street; the invention of jazz, rock n’ roll, hip-hop and R&B; and all the entrepreneurship and business brilliance, extraordinary cuisine, sports excellence, political power and global cultural influence black Americans have given the world. And rather than observing Juneteenth as we do other holidays, by taking it off, we can make it a day when black culture, black entrepreneurship and black business get our support. A national Juneteenth observance can affirm that Black Lives Matter!”

”I proudly join the incredible people and organizations who have been working on this for years, among them the inspiring Opal Lee, a 93-year-old from Fort Worth, Tex., who has campaigned for the recognition of Juneteenth at the state and local level. There has never been a more urgent time than now to get this done. On Thursday, Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced that they are introducing legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Congress must pass this bill immediately.”

You can read his full piece here.

JEC Vice Chair Don Beyer (D-VA)—joined by Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA), the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-OH), the First Vice Chair of the CBC and a JEC member— re-released two recent committee reports that shed light on the racial disparities at the root of both the coronavirus and police misconduct.

“As a Black man in America, George Floyd—murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25—was more likely to die from the coronavirus, and more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement. But Floyd survived the coronavirus, a recent autopsy revealed, only to be killed by a police officer who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he suffocated,” said Congressman Beyer (D-VA).

Congressman Beyer (D-VA) continued, “The end of Floyd’s life illustrates a fact that many experts have pointed out: the community that is bearing the brunt of the coronavirus is the same community that is bearing the brunt of police misconduct—Black Americans. Ahead of Juneteenth, it is important that we remember and reflect on all the ways that Black Americans have fought and still fight for freedom in a country that is supposed to be the ‘land of the free’—especially now as people take to the streets in the name of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other Black Americans whose lives should have mattered to those they paid to protect and serve them.”

“This year’s Juneteenth celebration comes as our nation and the world confront the COVID-19 pandemic that has exposed deep inequities not just here at home but abroad," said Congresswoman Beatty (D-OH), First Vice Chair of the CBC and a member of the JEC. "The pandemic has disproportionately impacted the Black community and has laid bare disparities in healthcare, employment, housing, policing and our justice system. In fact, the unemployment rate for Black Americans is twice that for Whites, Black homeownership rates are approaching a 50-year low and the median wealth of Black families is one-tenth that of White families."

Congresswoman Beatty (D-OH) continued, "In this moment of crisis, it will take all Americans to work together to overcome the pandemic and to address the long-term systemic discrimination faced by the Black community which the pandemic has exacerbated. These reports issued by the JEC Democrats, under the leadership of Vice Chair Don Beyer, enumerate the many challenges Black Americans face due to structural and entrenched racism and show that the time is now to have a truth and reconciliation process to end racial disparities, unequal treatment and societal injustices that are the long-standing vestiges of slavery in America.”

Today, we send all of you good vibes and energy. The fight doesn't stop now, though. It never did. It took 2 years of our people to get the message in 1865. Despite all of the advancements in society here in 2020, it may take even longer now for the entire world to really get the message. We demand equality, not tolerance. We demand humanity, not pity. We demand respect, especially from those whose salaries we pay through our taxes and our hard earned income.

Celebrate Juneteenth to the fullest and continue fighting for justice for us all!

Photo: AllyTroops/Shutterstock.com

The REVOLUTION Will Be VIRAL: YBF Celebs Protest Across The Country!

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/06/19/juneteenth-free%E2%80%99ish%E2%80%99-since-1865-%E2%80%93-today-we-celebrate-the-ending-of-slavery-in-the-us

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thegoodthebadtheugly1-blog · 5 years

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before getting section 8, we moved into a two bedroom apartment in Fairfield California. Rachel and I shared one bedroom and my boys share the other one. Alex was going into the first grade and I wanted to make sure that he went to the best school in Fairfield. I found to school if you miles away in The richest part of Fairfield, called Rancho Salano. at that time, we were able to enroll our children into any school in the district as long as there was room. after a few years, Maxwell and Rachel went there also. Our apartment wasn’t really in the best part of town but we had nice neighbors. There were other kids live in the apartment building that were about the same age as my children so there was always kids for them to play with. Floyd was paying me $500 per month in child support and that didn’t even cover the cost of my babysitter. It seem like I just couldn’t get ahead. I was working more and more but also had to pay more and more for their daycare. It was very hard to make ends meet. I also felt guilty and hated leaving my kids for so long. My grandmother was put in a nursing home because of her advancing Alzheimer’s disease she was needing more and more care. My father started dialysis and can it work. My mother was stretched her limit. The kids and I and my mom and dad all moved into a large house that was also in Fairfield. I was able to keep my kids in the same schools. We decided this was the best idea because I could help my dad when my mother was at work and she would help me watch the kids while I was at work. this worked out well until my father got a bad infection in his leg and I had to get it amputated below his knee. This was a complication of his diabetes. My sister lived close by with her girlfriend at the time whom she is now married to. They were great.g Edye and Mary would come over all the time and do as much as they could to help. They would take my kids I little trips. They babysat when it was necessary. They even helped me with money. my mother was working full-time so they will also come over to help with my dad and give my mother a little break. gradually my father started stronger but still had to do dialysis three times a week and that took a lot out of him. after a little over a year of living together, my mother got a great job in San Francisco which she loved. San Francisco was over an hour commute from where we’re living so my parents moved into an apartment in the bay area. The kids and I stayed in the house and I rented out two bedrooms to a single mother with two sons. this lasted for a little less than a year when we realized we had very different. Hang styles and we weren’t getting along. That’s when she moved out. my sister and Mary are still helping me out as much as possible but I needed to find a way to afford to stay in the house. Edye was working with a woman that had a young daughter with a two year old child and they needed a place to live. She was 18 years old and a single mom. her name was Corey and I told her she could live in the house with us for free in exchange for her providing child care. this was great in the beginning. My kids loved her and she was a great babysitter. I also could go to work without feeling guilty, knowing that they were well taken care of. I thought this is great because our life was finally getting settled. But after a few months of living this way, her boyfriend started coming around while I was at work. I didn’t like him at all. He’s very abusive to her and was using drugs. I told her I didn’t want him around my children and this lasted for a while then I found out that he came over one night while I was at work. He and Cory got into a big argument. He put my kids in his car and started to drive away. The kids were terrified but luckily he brought them back to the house a few minutes later. when I came from work, my kids told me what happen and I immediately kicked her out of the house. here I was again, stuck without a babysitter and not knowing how I was going to pay my rent. we applied for section 8 I was on a very long waiting list. Al

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tanmath3-blog · 6 years

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Kenneth W. Cain first got the itch for storytelling during his formative years in the suburbs of Chicago, where he got to listen to his grandfather spin tales by the glow of a barrel fire. But it was a reading of Baba Yaga that grew his desire for dark fiction. Shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and One Step Beyond furthered that sense of wonder for the unknown, and he’s been writing ever since.

Cain is the author of The Saga of I trilogy, United States of the Dead, the short story collections These Old Tales and Fresh Cut Tales, and his latest Embers: A Collection of Dark Fiction. Writing, reading, fine art, graphic design, and Cardinals baseball are but a few of his passions. Cain now resides in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.

1. How old were you when you wrote your first story?

Five or six, I believe. It was an awful rendition of the whole Baba Yaga thing.

2. How many books have you written?

Written or published? Written, I would say, so far: 6 novels, 5 novellas, 4 collections of short stories, and maybe a hundred stories that aren’t in those books that will likely end up in other collections. As well as a bunch of poetry, a lot of which is in a themed collection, most of which is still unpublished. The most recent releases will be a novella titled A Season in Hell (due out September 7th) and my next collection, Darker Days (due out December 7th).

3. Anything you won’t write about?

No, I don’t believe in taboos. There are stories in every taboo. They say not to kill the dog, but there’s a story there as well. It’s been done, too. I have to tell the story I have to tell. If it’s in me, it’s going to get out, like it or not.

4. Tell me about you. Age (if you don’t mind answering), married, kids, do you have another job etc…

I’m 48, married to a wonderful woman with two kids. I write pretty much full-time, other than keeping up chores around the house and coaching my son’s baseball teams.

5. What’s your favorite book you have written?

It has to be A Season in Hell. This short book tackles many modern issues, things that matter to me. It’s hard-hitting, and a love story for the game of baseball.

6. Who or what inspired you to write?

If I had to put he onus on just one person, it would have to be my mom. She loved horror, and growing up, I saw several movies (The Omen, Psycho, etc). They fueled my passion, but so did discovering the stories in the various Writer’s Digest books my parents kept on their shelves. It’s there I discovered Poe. Or perhaps it was hearing that Baby Yaga story for the first time.

7. What do you like to do for fun?

Read. That’s fun for me. I also like to check out an original series now and then. Nothing that’s been rehashed or rebooted but something really original. Like Dark on Netflix. I also like gardening, fishing, coaching baseball, trying to play my guitars, drawing and painting, hanging with my family, and enjoying the beauty of this world.

8. Any traditions you do when you finish a book?

Wine! A bottle of Merlot, something like Smoking Loon.

9. Where do you write? Quiet or music?

I have an office…now, with a desk and all, though it’s more like a dungeon to me. As for music, it varies. Sometimes it’s music, which can be anything from Pink Floyd to Metallica to Sinatra. Other times, I listen to baseball games or baseball chat. Then there are the podcasts I listen to, sometimes chat about the craft and other times stories. My brain is usually able to separate the two, so I can write a story and still hear what I’m listening and process it. Kind of weird. But there’s also times I need silence.

10. Anything you would change about your writing?

Well, I would have started much earlier for one. I don’t know why I started so late, but it often feels like it’s too late. And I’d be far more patient, not taking the first offer, honing my craft before I rushed out there. I likely wouldn’t have hurried to get so much out there.

11. What is your dream? Famous writer?

I’m living my dream. At least I think I am. I get to write a lot, read a lot, do all the things I enjoy. I married an awesome woman who is SO supportive of all my endeavors and two really bright children who are blossoming into great adults. And sometimes, once in a very great while, someone will leave a kind review or contact me or make a post about something I wrote, and it will touch my heart deeply. Who could ask for more?

12. Where do you live?

Chester County, Pennsylvania.

13. Pets?

I recently got rid of all my reef tanks, but I’ve had several over the years, as well as many, many birds. Right now, though, I have two dogs, a Catahoula leopard mix named Iggy and a Labradoodle named Kady. They’re both sweet, loving dogs.

14. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

Getting it all out of my head. It’s cathartic; helps me sort my thoughts and feelings in a way I can deal with them. I’m putting myself out there for my readers, getting naked with my feelings. Hopefully they get something from my stories that elicits a similar feeling.

15. What is coming next for you?

A young adult novella entitled Shadows in the Storm where Nita faces off with Shade, leader of the Shadow People. Though I still have to work on finding a publisher for the book.

16. Where do you get your ideas?

My inspiration typically starts with a seed from something I know quite well. For instance, with A Season in Hell (due out September 7th from Crystal Lake Publishing) I drew from my long career playing baseball, as well as coaching. The story is about a woman playing baseball in the minor leagues back in the nineties and what she must endure just to play the game she loves. For that story I took from my own personal experience, even down to the smallest details like taping up a torn muscle with duct tape just so I could play the next game.

There’s another element to the process, what I call the “what if” moment. You’ll see a lot of that in my shorter work. For instance, there’s this story in my collection Fresh Cut Tales entitled “Split Ends.” I was sitting at a pool while on vacation watching a mother furiously brush the knots out of her daughter’s hair and thinking about the “what if.” In this case, what came to mind was a disease, one the mother and daughter thought was very real, and it was but only mentally in this case. So that story is about the struggle of a mother not to succumb to that mental disease.

Additional info:

I have three books coming out this year (all three through Crystal Lake Publishing). Details for all three books follow

The first is a novella entitled A Season in Hell. Due out September 7th. 

“Kenneth W. Cain takes timely social topics and explores them against the backdrop of America’s pastime. What begins as a baseball story quickly delves into something rich, deep, and dark.” – Mercedes M. Yardley, author of Pretty Little Dead Girls

Synopsis:

When Dillon Peterson is honored for his baseball career, he must face a ghost that has long haunted him. He is transported back through his memories to a single season in the nineties that broke his heart. That was the season he met Keisha Green, the first and only woman to play baseball in the minor leagues. He sees what she goes through, what she must endure just to play the game both of them love, and this struggle leads to their friendship. As matters escalate, Dillon finds himself regretting his role in it all, as well as his career in baseball.

“A Season in Hell is a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking story. You won’t soon forget Dillon or Keisha. Her struggle is as timely today as ever. A Season in Hell is also a love letter to baseball and how, despite everything, the game can still heal and bring people together who seemed impossibly far apart, and can do so through intimidating odds. A timeless story of true humanity.” —John Palisano, Vice President of the Horror Writers Association and Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author of Night of 1,000 Beasts

The second is Tales From The Lake Volume 5. Due out November 2nd.

Poetry:

“From the Mouths of Plague-Mongers” – Stephanie M. Wytovich

“Malign and Chronic Recreation” – Bruce Boston

“Final Passage” – Bruce Boston

Short stories: 

TBD – Gemma Files 

“In the Family” – Lucy A. Snyder 

“Voices Like Barbed Wire” – Tim Waggoner 

“The Flutter of Silent Wings” – Gene O’Neill 

“Guardian” – Paul Michael Anderson

 “Farewell Valencia” – Craig Wallwork

 “A Dream Most Ancient and Alone” – Allison Pang

 “The Monster Told Me To” – Stephanie M. Wytovich

 “Dead Bodies Don’t Scream” – Michelle Ann King 

“The Boy” – Cory Cone

 “Starve a Fever” – Jonah Buck 

“Umbilicus” – Lucy Taylor 

“Nonpareil” – Laura Blackwell 

“The Midland Hotel” – Marge Simon

 “The Weeds and the Wildness Yet” – Robert Stahl 

“The Color of Loss and Money” – Jason Sizemore

 “The Loudest Silence” – Meghan Arcuri 

“The Followers” – Peter Mark May 

“A Bathtub at the End of the World” – Lane Waldman

 “Twelve by Noon” – Joanna Parypinski 

“Hollow Skulls” – Samuel Marzioli 

“Maggie” – Andi Rawson

The third is my fourth collection, Darker Days. Due out December 7th. 

“Darker Days, the latest collection of short stories by Kenneth W. Cain, delivers on its title’s promise. From the very first story readers are dragged into seemingly ordinary situations that serve as cover for dark secrets. Ranging from subtle horror to downright terror, from science fiction to weird fantasy, Cain demonstrates a breadth of styles that keeps you off-balance as you move from one story to the next. There is something for everyone in this collection–as long as you don’t want to sleep at night!” – JG Faherty, author of The Cure, Carnival of Fear, and The Burning Time.

Now that you’ve warmed by the embers, submerge in darker days.

The author of the short story collections These Old Tales, Fresh Cut Tales, and Embers presents Darker Days: A Collection of Dark Fiction. In his youth Cain developed a sense of wonderment owed in part to TV shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond andAlfred Hitchcock Presents. Now Cain seeks the same dark overtones in his writing.

There’s a little something for every reader within this collection. These 26 short speculative stories arise from a void, escaping shadows that ebb and weave through minds like worms, planting the larvae that live just under the skin, thriving upon fear. These are Cain’s darker days.

In this collection, Cain features stories from the Old West, of past lives and future days, the living and the dead, new and unique monsters as well as fresh takes on those of lore. Once more he tackles themes of loss and grief, and the afterlife, always exploring the greater unknown. In “The Sanguine Wars,” Cain takes us to a future where soldiers are made to endure the horrors of war. He explores the complexities of global warming and what lengths men and women alike sink to in “The Reassignment Project.” And, as often is the case, he ends on a lighter note, with “Lenny’s New Eyes” and “A Very Different Sort of Apocalypse.”

When the darkness comes, embrace it. Let it wrap you up in cold. Don’t worry, it’s not your time…yet.

INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING STORIES:

▪“A Ring For His Own”

▪“Heirloom”

▪“Rust Colored Rain”

▪“Prey”

▪“Passing Time”

▪“What Mama Needs”

▪“My Brother Bit Your Honor Roll Student”

▪“Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 1 – Henry Wentworth”

▪“The Sanguine Wars”

▪“The Hunted”

▪“Her Living Corals”

▪“Puppet Strings”

▪“The Trying of Master William”

▪“By The Crescent Moon”

▪“Mantid”

▪“The Underside of Time and Space”

▪“Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 2 – Gemma Nyle”

▪“The Griffon”

▪“Adaptable”

▪“When They Come”

▪“The Reassignment Project”

▪“Presage”

▪“One Hopeless Night by a Clan Fire”

▪“Lenny’s New Eyes”

▪“Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 3 – Anna Kilpatrick”

▪“A Very Different Sort of Apocalypse”

You can connect with Kenneth W. Cain here:

Website: https://kennethwcain.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKennethWCain/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KennethWCain

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kennethwcain/

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Kenneth-W.-Cain/e/B004HHALF6/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Some of Kenneth W. Cain’s books:

Getting personal with Kenneth W. Cain Kenneth W. Cain first got the itch for storytelling during his formative years in the suburbs of Chicago, where he got to listen to his grandfather spin tales by the glow of a barrel fire.

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