It has been over 50 years since the
evil, unjust assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK made
mistakes and he learned from him. The JFK in 1963 was radically different from
the JFK from 1961. Now, he was killed as his motorcade made its way through
Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. He wanted to win the election in 1964. Millions
of Americans still remember the horrendous event like it was yesterday. He was
the fourth American President to be assassinated Abraham Lincoln was
assassinated in April 1865. Both assassinations resonate in the consciousness
of Americans. The killing of JFK was caught on national TV including the murder
of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. The evil assassination of President John F.
Kennedy caused many to see the internal social contradictions of American
society and the reactionary agenda of extremists (who wanted America to have
an imperialist agenda). John F. Kennedy entered the White House in January
1961. That was only 16 years after the end of World War II. When JFK
was inaugurated, there was the growth of anti-imperialist movements in the
world. America wanted to have containment to deal with the foreign policy
issues of the day. American foreign policy even back then involved
counterinsurgency operations as a means to try to prop up pro-American puppet
regimes (even when those regimes had anti-democratic measures). Just days
before he left office, President Eisenhower—perhaps frightened at the monster
whose growth he had abetted—delivered a televised “Farewell Address” in which
he warned the American people that the growth of the “military-industrial
complex” posed an immense danger to the survival of American democracy.
President John F. Kennedy said in his January 20, 1961 inaugural address that
the “torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans” who would be
willing to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, and oppose any foe." His words inspired many Americans, especially
the youth to embrace public service. Yet, he dealt with the contradiction of
the democratic pretensions of the United States with American imperialism (and
the denial of basic human rights of African Americans). The repression from the
McCarthy era was disgraceful. John F. Kennedy was once more reactionary in terms
of foreign policy and then changed to be more progressive by 1963. He had
disagreements with the ruling class over international policy matters. He refused to invade Cuba, he signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he refused to invade Laos, and he spoke in favor of world peace via his American University speech of 1963. New
documents show that Kennedy wanted to withdrawal troops from Vietnam. The coup
of Diem weighed deep on Kennedy and he wanted to fire folks over it. Lyndon
Baines Johnson was the President after his assassination. He wanted Jackie
Kennedy to be with him when he was sworn in as President.
The assassination on November 22, 1963 caused the military
industrial complex to grow their power and to cause a reactionary foreign
policy to fester. Most of the American public reject the lone gunman story completely. We
know that a 1979 House of Representative special Select Committee on
Assassinations. Folks have the right to agree or disagree with its conclusions.
It found that scientific acoustical evidence finds a high probability that two
gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not
preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific
evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations. That committee believes
that the evidence that they found available that President John F. Kennedy was
probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify
the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy. We know that JFK had a
continuous relationship with the CIA. The CIA was trying to kill Fidel Castro
and JFK did not want this to occur. JFK wanted to disband and he hired the
former head of the CIA Allen Dulles. Dulles ironically was a member of the
Warren Commission, which was a conflict in interests The CIA back then was
provoking WWIII with Russia. President John F. Kennedy made an agreement with
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to
create a nuclear test ban treaty. The CIA feared a premature end to the Cold
War as JFK wanted. The CIA was actively undermining the foreign policy of the
USA. This has been called treason by some. JFK was clear about what he wanted.
In his American University speech of June 10th, 1963, JFK said the following,
eloquent words: "...I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to
discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too
rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world
peace...What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax
Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of
the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the
kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men
and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their
children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not
merely peace in our time but peace for all time." After the Cuban missile
crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the rejection of Operation Northwoods plans,
JFK had an epiphany. We know about the CIA coups, assassination, spying,
infiltration, and their other crimes for years and decades. The crimes of the
CIA include Operation MOCKINGBIRD, Operation Ajax, Operation MK-ULTRA,
Operation Phoenix, etc. We should continue to investigate the information of
the assassination. We have the right to develop a society that is based on the
needs of the people and the general welfare of the people too.
One of the most controversial
reports in American history was the one from Patrick Moynihan from 1965 called,
"The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." The report makes
the silly notion that the legacy of slavery forced black matriarchy to exist in the world, so black matriarchy (and other factors) caused unstable family structures (and black families must be modeled with Eurocentric nuclear families as a means for the survival of the black family). He
blamed black matriarchs for the tangle of pathology, which is
offensive. Many scholars, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists
disagree with Moynihan. The report has sparked debate and it has been exploited by many
reactionaries as a means to take stats out of context or try to scapegoat the
black community for the evils done by evil modern power structure in the world
today. The report is very slick and starts on a false premise and continues
with more falsehood. The report claims that the culture of matriarchy in the
black household automatically contributes to the harm of the Black family. That
is false since back when the report was finished, black males were mostly in the households
of African American families. The massive harm done to the black family has nothing to
do with single black mothers. It has everything to do with socioeconomic
factors and the system of discrimination including oppression (from the system of white supremacy). After deindustrialization, jobs being restricted from black males and from
black females, the War on Drugs, mandatory sentences for non-violent drug
offenses, continued discrimination, continued economic exploitation, the growth
of the prison industrial complex (which caused many even innocent black men to
be in prison now in 2013), etc. came about in the black community, then the
Black family has been heavily harmed. These events have harmed many fathers and
many mothers. Our issues have nothing to do with the essence of black culture. It
has to do with oppression and economic conditions. There are still strong black
human beings in nuclear families, extended families, single families, or
otherwise. Also, he or Moynihan refuses to acknowledge the need of gender
equality, but says that matriarchal societies relate directly to juvenile
delinquency, etc. which is silliness. The report ignores the gender gap among
both genders. It ignores that black women also suffer discrimination in
education, employment, and political life. So, black men need respect and job
opportunities, but black women also need the same as a means to fight poverty
and racial inequality. Black women have always had a great role in our struggle
for black liberation. Their role should be honored. Poverty is complex and it
is related to structural, institutional, and economic reasons. If someone
ignores the economic, structural determinants of poverty, then that person has
an issue. Cultural pathology has been used by some as a coded phrase to over
simplify poverty and scapegoat blacks for issues collectively. A real man can
never be emasculated by a strong, independent, and intelligent Black Woman at
all. A black woman having progress in schools, in the workplace, and in
positions of our community are an asset not a detriment to the progress of
Black Men. Black Men doing the same is also an asset in our community too.
Black men and Black women should have jobs not just Black Men mostly (as the Moynihan
report implies). The report have been exploited as a means to advance false
stereotypes about single black women being heavily promiscuous, domineering in nature,
and emasculating of black men, which are all lies. This has been proven by the
historian Deborah Gray White. Now, there is nothing wrong with gender
egalitarianism. Husbands and wives sharing breadwinning and caregiving
responsibilities are fine. Community groups and the government should advance
employment for men and women, improve education, grow job training, etc. In
other words, men and women rise and fall together. Jim Crow discrimination and
the legacy of slavery have harmed many black human beings. Yet, black women
collectively have nothing to do with massive poverty in the black community at
all. We should look at social and economic factors that harm our community (not
to mention that back then, the black community was not even mostly matriarchal
at all). Also, is being a black matriarch immoral? The answer is no. Single
mothers and single fathers are not monolithic at all. We still have issues in
our community. They have grown since the great recession hit in 2008.
Everything is not perfect, but we should confront our issues, we shouldn't
sugarcoat them, and we should not scapegoat single black mothers for our
problems either. That is the point. We need economic justice and real,
revolutionary solutions in our community. We need justice. When both genders
realize that they need each other and each gender is not the enemy, then
massive progress will come about.
The Detroit bankruptcy is an
important issue in our community and in the world in general. One report came
about by the New York City based liberal think tank called Demos. It was a
refutation of the arguments used by the Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to throw
the city of Detroit into bankruptcy. The Demos report charged that the
financial numbers used by Orr and other advocates of bankruptcy were grossly
inflated. They found that the real causes of Detroit's economic issues were
parasitic loans and other financial schemes that were pushed on the city by the
banks and other powerful creditors. The data in the report makes the case
clear that the city of Detroit's July 19 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing was not
driven by economic necessity but by political considerations. The Demos
findings are interesting. Orr filed for Chapter 9 as a means to use the
bankruptcy courts to get the pensions of 21,000 retired municipal workers,
privatize services and sell off public assets (even the artwork of the Detroit
Institute of Arts). The goal of the elite is to pay off the same financial
institutions clearly responsible for the city's crisis that grew after the
2008 economic crisis. U.S. Judge Steven Rhodes is expected to rule soon on
whether the city is eligible for bankruptcy. The whole political and
media establishment in Detroit and nationwide have respected the view that
Detroit is facing inescapable financial distress (because of pension
obligations and other costs, which is inaccurate). The Demos report shows that
the surge in legacy costs used by to justify the filing “was driven heavily by
the city’s complex financial deals, not retiree benefits.” Detroit is facing
cash flow problems, because of the conditions of deindustrialization, mass
unemployment, the growth of poverty, and huge tax giveaways to corporations.
This has nothing to do with the pensions and benefits owed to workers. “Contrary to widely held belief,
Detroit does not have a spending problem,” the report states. “Since the onset
of the Great Recession, the city’s total expenses have actually decreased by
$356.3 million… although its financial expenses have gone up.” Summing up its main conclusions, Demos writes, “The City of
Detroit’s bankruptcy was driven by a severe decline in revenues (and,
importantly, not an increase in obligations to fund pensions.) Depopulation and
long-term unemployment caused Detroit’s property and income tax revenues to
plummet. The state of Michigan exacerbated the problems by slashing revenue it
shared with the city. The city’s overall expenses have declined over the last
five years, although its financial expenses have increased. In addition, Wall
Street sold risky financial instruments to the city, which now threaten the
resolution of this crisis.” The report points to the bad social conditions in
the wake of the 2008 crash as a primary factor behind the collapse in city
revenue. The number of employed Detroit residents fell by 53 percent from 2000
to 2012. Half of the decline occurred in the year of 2008 as the Great
Recession took hold. That is a true, inescapable fact. The Great Recession
harmed Detroit. Detroit lost hundreds of millions of dollars in state revenue
sharing as Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his Democratic predecessor two
term governor Jennifer Granholm cut more than $700 million in transfer payments
from the state government in Lansing to the city. From 2008 to 2013, as the
impact of the crisis hit hardest, annual revenue sharing fell 27 percent, from
$249.6 million to $182.8 million. The Democratic Party aligned think tank
mentions that it only tangentially, federal aid from the Obama administration
(that deals with anti-poverty, public education, Head Start and other programs)
has also been slashed precipitously since 2009. The White House has cut funding
to cash strapped states. That is reducing funding to cities. Tax concessions to
powerful corporations have depleted the city's revenue stream as well. The more
than $20 million per year awards to companies included gifts to DTE Energy,
Comerica Bank, Quicken Loans, Compuware, the Farbman Group, and Detroit Medical
Center according to the report. The report says that the $18 billion for the
city's deficit was irrelevant to a municipal bankruptcy, which is based on
immediate cashflow considerations and not on speculative estimates of long term
solvency. “That figure is irrelevant to an analysis of Detroit’s insolvency and
bankruptcy filing, highly inflated, and in large part, simply inaccurate,” the
report claimed. “In reality, the city needs to address its cash flow shortfall,
which the emergency manager pegs at only $198 million, although that number too
may be inflated because it is based on extraordinarily aggressive assumptions
of the contributions the city needs to make to its pension funds.” Detroit
experience brutal cuts as a result of the 2008 crash. The report said
that: “Between FY 2008 and FY 2013, the city drastically cut operating
expenses by $419.1 million. This was accomplished in large part by laying off
more than 2,350 workers, cutting worker pay, and reducing future healthcare and
future benefit accruals for workers… The city reduced salary expenses by 30 percent
between FY 2008 and FY 2013. Total operating expenses have been reduced by
nearly 38 percent during that same time.” Operating expenditures decreased and
debt servicing and other financing cost radically increased. Wall Street have
benefited from interest rate swap agreement and more monetary arrangements. The
creditors harmed the city even after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates
in the wake of the 2008 crash. The case of the Detroit Water and Sewerage
Department illustrates the scale of these losses. For fiscal years 2011 and
2012, the city took on more than $1.16 billion in debt to pay for expenses
related to the DWSD. Nearly half of this debt total, $547 million, went to
cover “swap termination payments” imposed on the city after its credit was
downgraded. Orr is now pushing for the city to accept a proposed $350 million
loan from the international finance house Barclays to pay off the debts
incurred to Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch and UBS as a result of these swaps.
This means that the debt burden has increased while cuts against the working
class have grown (in order to pay off the criminal elements that harmed the
city into swaps). “A strong case can be made that the banks that sold these
swaps may have breached their ethical, and possibly legal, obligations to the
city in executing these deals,” Demos reported. The Demos report has great
evidence of the conspiracy behind the Detroit bankruptcy. There is a bigger
issue of the assault on the working class. The New York Times and the Washington
Post ignored the Demos report. So, Detroit should be defended. Its workers, its
poor, its homeless, and its infrastructure should not be harmed as an excuse to
advance some austerity agenda in Detroit.
The new OECD (or the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development) report says that the United States is
now lower than the average in the 34 countries of the OECD. The OECD report
said that while life expectancy in the U.S. has been growing in the last several
decades, it has grown more slowly than in other countries. This has been shown
in their Health at a Glance 2013 report. The lag in U.S. life expectancy is
contributed to social and economic factors. The reason is that we have a large
uninsured population, poor access to physicians, poor health behavior, social
inequality, and poverty. These factors have been exacerbated and no ameliorated
even with the implementation of the ACA. The ACA keeps the for profit health
care system intact. The OECD’s report shows that life expectancy in the US has
increased by about eight years since 1970, rising to 78.7 years in 2011. Other
OECD countries, however, saw an average 10-year gain over the same period.
While in previous decades the US achieved better than average gains, it now
stands more than a year below the OECD average life expectancy of 80.1 years.
U.S. life expectancy in 2011 is ranked below that of every Western European
country in the study. It hovered just above Chile, the Czech Republic, Poland,
Estonia, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and Turkey. It was below Greece,
Portugal, South Korea and Slovenia. The US fell significantly behind Switzerland, which has a
life expectancy of 82.8 years, as well as Japan and Italy, both of which have a
life expectancy of 82.7 years. Mexico is the only other OECD country beside the
U.S. without some form of universal or quasi-universal health care system.
Mexico ranked lowest in 2011 at 74.2 years. The study also included data from
Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and South Africa. The
latter ranked below all of the OECD countries in life expectancy, excluding
Mexico. The U.S. spends more by far on health care per capital, but it has not
a greater life expectancy. Life expectancy is a key indicator of the quality of
life. We have a high per capita of health care spending in America, but the
issue is that higher profits for private insurers, giant hospital chains, and
drug companies have not improved health care services. We have a worsening social
inequality. The tiny minority control even more of the wealth while the vast
majority of the people are either treading water or growing poor. We must
improve our medical care as a means to improve our health care including our
life expectancy. The report explains that most OECD countries have
government-sponsored coverage of health care costs for a core set of services,
usually including doctor consultations, tests and examinations, and surgical
and other procedures. In the States, we have 53 percent of the population
having coverage with private health insurance in 2011. About 32 percent receive
their coverage via a government program like Medicare or Medicaid. So, that
leaves a staggering 15 percent of the population uninsured. The best-case
scenario under the ACA, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will
still leave 31 million Americans, 10 percent of the population, without health
insurance. The OECD ranked the U.S. above average for out of pocket costs. An
average household spends 2.9 percent of its income on health care. The report
also found that in the US “richer people are significantly more likely to visit
doctors” than in other countries. Besides the US, countries showing sharp
inequities in doctor visits in line with income were Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
The OECD report deals with exposing the fact that a lower proportion of U.S.
doctors overall are primary care physicians (in dealing with the gynecologists
and psychiatrists). Many doctors in America are over 55. So, the OECD shows that
our health care system has many troubles. The reason for this is income
inequalities and other reasons despite the advances in medical technology.
Also, medical care in the U.S. is driven by corporate profit. This profit will
intensify with the advent of the ACA. The key provision of the ACA—the
so-called “individual mandate”—is aimed at forcing millions of uninsured people
to purchase health coverage from private insurers. There are no
government-imposed restrictions on what the insurance companies can charge for
their premiums, and people shopping for coverage are discovering that the
cheapest policies carry huge out-of-pocket costs, including thousands of
dollars in deductibles and other “cost-sharing” expenses. Many choices of
doctors, hospitals, and patient services for millions of Americans are a
reality now. Corporate profits and big business will grow. There has been a
slashing of health care spending, reduction in access to health care and
limiting treatment for decades in the States. This issue existed long before
the Obama administration came into existence. So, I want to make that clear.
So, we should use the OECD report as a means to inspire us to fight more for
universal health care in the States and throughout the world.
By Timothy
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