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There is the rally among some from across the political spectrum that deals with protesting against the policies of the NSA. Glen Greenwald is teaming up with groups like Stop Watching, Demand Progress, the Libertarian Party, and Freedom Works to create this protest. Glenn Greenwald is famous for working with Edward Snowden or the exile living in Russia. The mass surveillance of the civilian population across the board is evil and wicked. Freedom Works is a backer of this action. The issue is that it is linked to the likes of Verizon and Big Tobacco. It gets funding form ATandT. How can you be against NSA spying and you are funded by groups that benefit financially from NSA spying explicitly. Other FreedomWorks donors include Philip Morris and foundation controlled by the Scaife family. Freedom Works advances the nefarious Tea Party movement. Tax filings and other records document that they receive funding via the sale of insurance policies via which policyholders automatically become members of Freedom Works. Freedom Works is linked closely to its founder named Dick Armey. Dick Armey is a corporate lobbyist and former Republican Congressman. His former lobbying firm DLA Piper from which he resigned in August 2009, represents Bristol Myers Squibb, among other pharmaceutical companies. Some want the end of mass surveillance of the population, but not the end of the mass collection of the data in the world. There is a difference. You see, CISPA was all about having Big Telecom collect and store all that data, that same data, and then hand it over to various agencies as needed. With all the anti-NSA rhetoric out there right now, it looks like that is going to be the “transparent fix” to the problem. The evil of CISPA is that it allows the Big Telecom to act on suspicious activity themselves. It will grant them the ability to slow or even shut down entire sites based on their suspicion of illicit activities. It granted Big Business immense power over the internet, almost total control, which is why 800 major corporations pushed for it last year and this year as well (coincidentally, right before the “Snowden Leaks”). Now, we know that great wealth, the big corporations, Wall Street, and the major banks have dominated the mainstream political system. One person may have one vote, but a billionaire — by virtue of funding certain candidates — has the equivalent of thousands of votes on Election Day and in the federal and state legislatures and executive offices thereafter. This more closely resembles an oligarchy (or rule by a small group of powerful people and interests) than genuine democracy. We see a weakening of our civil liberties and privacy rights of Americans via many unjust laws spanning years and decades (not just found during the Bush and Obama administration). We need checks and balances not abuses. Even the Democrats should have a responsibility since they have failed to issue an effective counterattack against the reactionaries. Both parties have loved the private enterprise system based on economic inequality at home and imperialist wars abroad. So, we should be independent ideologically and fight for the truth justly in society. We have every right to invest in social programs that can enrich the lives of humanity.  We have the right to advance environment justice. We have the truth on our side. We will never give up. We will win. We will be heard.

The government shutdown taught us valuable lessons. One lesson it taught was about the extremism found in the Tea Party Republicans. Many Republicans were involved in shutting down the government. The shutdown caused real pain to hundreds of thousands of families whose members work for various government agencies (and who have been furloughed doesn't matter to some). There are hedge fund managers who receive perks. Regardless of one thinks about the ACA, the ACA doesn't need to be used as a bargaining chip to end the government shutdown or the debt crisis at all. There are many independent voices that respect the President and his wife as human beings (I love how the Brother loves his Beautiful wife including his family. Both President Barack Obama and First Lady are very strong and very intelligent Black Human Beings who ought to be treated with dignity and with respect), but do not agree with the administration on all issues (like me). The ACA has been passed by Congress, and it has been uphold by the Supreme Court. So, folks should just advocate universal health care via more constructive means without holding the nation hostage.   I am not some Republican. I believe in workers' rights, human justice, and environmental protection. There are strengths and weaknesses with the Affordable Care Act. The law is right to cover those with preexisting medical conditions. There are weaknesses with the law as well. It is a mixed bag system that will still leave millions uninsured. It will leave millions more underinsured. At the same time, healthcare advocates raise concerns. Cash only medicine perhaps will end up excluding many less well-off patients. Everyone should have equal access. Universal single-payer alone provides it. A single payer health care system eliminates red tape and doctors are given true access to patients. Enormous savings are achieved. Universal coverage assures comprehensive affordable care. Predatory middlemen are excluded. Doing so saves $400 billion or more annually. Using it for care instead of profits covers everyone. Powerful interests blocked earlier US healthcare reform efforts. In 1917, 15 states introduced health insurance coverage for all legislation. Eight other human beings established commissions to study the situation. Proposals were weak and confusing. They were dead on arrival. We know that in the 1930's and in the 1940's, government sponsored health insurance resurfaced. The issue was contentious and industry giants blocked change again. Medicare and Medicaid came about with strong effort. It came after WWII when retirees, the disabled, and the unemployed were heavily uninsured. Private insurers and Big Pharma influenced the creation of the ACA. That is just a fact. There should be no corporate domination of the health system. The status quo is evil too. The current health care system as it is now is not working fiscally, medically, socially, or morally. We should never be satisfied with just the ACA. We should fight for something better than that. So, the fight for single payer health care universally for all Americans continues.

Poverty is America is a serious issue still. We know that U.S. food stamp assistance is about to be slashed more. By November 1, benefit payments from the SNAP or the U.S. government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs will be slashed drastically. SNAP is another word for food stamps. The cuts will amount to $5 billion per year. It will be a total of $11 billion through 2016. The average household of three will receive a benefit cut of $29 a month, or $319 per year. 
“The depth and breadth of the SNAP cuts that take effect in November are unprecedented,” wrote Dottie Rosenbaum and Brynne Keith-Jennings of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). “Past cuts have affected specific states or groups, but they have not affected all participants nor been as large as these cuts.” The CBPP noted, “The cut is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three based on the cost of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s ‘Thrifty Food Plan.’” Once the cuts go through, SNAP assistance will amount to less than $1.40 per person per meal, according to the CBPP. One in seven Americans receives food stamp assistance up from 9 percent of the population in 2008 to nearly 14 percent in 2012. The program helps feed 48 million human beings up from 23 million in 2007. The cuts come as a result of the expiration of the 2009 Recovery Act's temporary increasing in food stamp assistance. The Democrats nor the Republicans (in their leadership) proposed serious plans in trying to prevent this at all. The expiration of the extension was not scheduled to take place until 2015. That is when SNAP benefits are slated to increase. Yet, congressional Democrats used $14 billion that was set aside for food stamps to fund other legislation. In 2010 the Democrats promised to restore the funding before the aid extension expired. The Democrats have largely kept silent about the slated cut to food stamp aid, and the White House has made no official mention of the benefit cuts in the past week. The media is heavily ignoring this issue. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal are not readily showing stories on the scheduled cut to food stamp aid during the same period. Over 80 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes below the federal poverty line. That is an abysmally low $19,530 annually for a family of three, and 40 percent of recipients live in deep poverty, defined as below $9,765 annually for a family of three. There has been a radical growth of those with the share of food stamp recipients. Almost one third of SNAP recipients are working in 2010. That is up from less than 20 percent two decades before. Of those that do not work, most are disabled, elderly, or under age. Many folks who receive food stamps rise throughout 2014 according to the projections of the Congressional Budget Office. According to the Congressional Budget Office, three quarters of households who receive SNAP benefits “included a child, a person age 60 or older, or a disabled person.” An average household with SNAP had an income of $731 per month. That is about 8,800 per year, not counting SNAP benefits, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The average SNAP payment per household that year was $287, or $4.30 per person per day. Over 21 million children—more than 1 in 4—live in a household that receives SNAP benefits, according to the CBPP report, and nine million people with disabilities receive SNAP benefits. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are planning more draconian cuts to SNAP. The Democratic budget passed in the Senate earlier this year cuts over $4 billion from the program over ten years. The Republican proposal will make adults between 18 and 50 to either work or attend work training as a means to reapply for benefit. They will institute drug testing for recipients, which is fascist. It will cut 3.8 million people off the program in 2014. The farm bill compromise will harm more social programs. The real incomes of the bottom 40 percent of income earners fell 6 percent between 2009 and 2012. The super-rich get richer while cuts are sent against food stamps, Medicare, and Social Security. The top ten highest-paid CEOs in the United States each received more than $100 million in 2012, according to a survey by GMI Ratings released this week. Two chief executives—Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Kinder of energy firm Kinder Morgan—each received over $1 billion, and the combined pay of the top ten CEOs was $4.7 billion.

 

 

 

Bill de Blasio is poised to be the first Democratic New York City mayor in 20 years. He came from behind to win the Democratic primary election. He has a 50 percentage point lead over his Republican opponent Joseph Lhota. He or Blasio wants to appeal to working people, black Americans, Latinos, and middle class professionals. De Blasio criticized the stop and frisk of blacks and Latinos in NYC. The controversy is what we will do on economic issues if he is elected mayor? Will he confront the finance capital of Wall Street and the plutocrats who run the city economically? His commercials show his unique family. His 16 year old son Dante is right to expose Bloomberg's racist stop and frisk campaign in NYC. De Blasio’s promise to tax the rich and reform the police is being denounced as “class warfare” by Lhota and his press reactionary agents at the New York Post, who summon the specter of New York returning to the fire-swept, crime-ridden 1970s. Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson have used fear mongering to say that even minimal justice for the poor and workers will cause bankruptcy for New York City. It is interesting that now; De Blasio is trying to get money from the same bankers and Wall Street lawyers whose excesses that he has bemoaned frequently. de Blasio recently told a meeting of business moguls in Midtown Manhattan: “Wall Street is our hometown industry.” Wall Street has received record profits while massive poverty still exists in this nation. While Bloomberg’s personal fortune grew from $5 billion to $27 billion during his tenure, today 1.7 million New Yorkers, including 31 percent of children 17 and younger, live below the official poverty line. Approximately 50,000 people across the city–including some working two full-time jobs—spend the night in homeless shelters; over 21,000 of these are children. More than 167,000 families are on waiting lists for public housing, many for as much as ten years. The South Bronx, just a subway ride from Wall Street, is home to the Congressional district with the highest poverty rate in the country. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s beloved Manhattan is home to the widest income gap of any large county in the country. The facts speak for themselves. The NYPD have executed a siege of ghettoes of NYC and other locations. They have used police brutality. Even federal Judge Shira Scheindlin condemned police racial profiling and stop and frisk in general. It is a shame that de Blasio received an ovation when he called himself a fiscal conservative (in desiring some balanced budget as he negotiates with municipal unions). We know the racism of Bloomberg and reactionary Rudolph Giuliani’s 1990's message of being a man of the people. De Blasio wants to reform the police terror without banning stop and frisk outright. De Blasio’s campaign calls for putting more cops on the streets with greater resources. De Blasio loves New York real estate development. We need affordable housing. Early this year, de Blasio used his Public Advocate office to clamor for an end to a strike by school bus drivers. The popular strike was called off by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 leaders the day after they received a letter from de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, former Comptroller William Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn—all of whom ran in the Democratic mayoral primary—calling on them to end the walkout. Now, the Republicans are filled with union bashers, racists, etc. So, reformism from the Democratic Party never worked neither the reactionary aims of the Republicans. Only revolutionary solutions can work to help society.

 

 

The bigots thrive on hate and fear. One thing that they hate is the exposure of their wicked white supremacist system. They thrive on pettiness and evil divisions. One thing that the enemy cannot shut down is the truth. The truth persists. It persisted during the Maafa, it persisted during the 1960's, and it still persists today. The truth is that we as black human beings have every right to advance our interests and to love Africa. The truth is that our BLACKNESS is superior to white racism and white supremacy. The truth is that all through the centuries, dedicated black men and black women stood up and fought for human justice. These truths inspire us. It is the way of oppressor to bash black males and especially black females. Yet, we will never take their bait. We will defend our dignity, fight for the truth, and build in our communities. Morality, righteousness, and justice are in our African DNA. We are Africans as Kwame Ture has said. We are of black African descent. Our ancestors were warriors then and we are warriors now. Our ancestors in spirit give up inspiration and strength to carry forward. We are moving forward not backwards. The white supremacists' deceptive religious lies could not stop us, their crooked police officers cannot stop us, and surely their agenda will surely fail. Black beauty is wonderful. Today, many black human beings are scholars, teachers, lawyers, activists, mathematicians, engineers, athletes, musicians, and a wide spectrum of excellent human beings. The truth is powerful and that is why the enemy can't stand it. Nature is even in opposition to the wickedness of these supremacists. So, it just for us to adhere to Black Love, Black Unity, and Black Power. Our enemy is not each other, but white supremacy. Our enemy is white supremacy. More Brothers and Sisters are waking up. We are learning more about our history, our culture, and our struggle for liberation. We are all black and beautiful with our beautiful black melanin, our great hair, our great creativity (or swag), our great intellects, and our great souls. Folks like Ida B. Wells, my relatives, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Fannie Lou Hamer, Cynthia McKinney, etc. give me great inspiration in my life. We are on the right side of history and we will win at the end of the day. I appreciate the words and insights from real human beings. We have every right to stand up strongly against injustice. Those who commit egregious injustices will reap what they sow.  Thinking together, working together, believing in each other, and fighting together for justice are joyful actions to execute. Our freedom is tied up with human freedom as well. I feel more mature about life. I feel more spiritual and we are a great people like always. I will defend black males and black females. A black woman gave me my life via birth and I know many black males who inspired plus educated me on true justice as well. Black women are great human beings just like Black men. BLACK UNITY IS A VERY STRONG FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE. RBG 4 LIFE.

 

 

By Timothy