The Individual Mandate – A Modern Fairy Tale

Posted on June 28, 2012, by blogger Al Davis at Seriously Left

One of the world’s oldest and most successful hustles is insurance. “What?” you say. What do you mean hustle? Well, imagine you and a few of your friends — lets call them pirates — are sitting around a table after a full day of pillaging the local town, killing the farm animals, and raping the women. The drunken stupor is finally wearing off, and you are ready to go out and do it all again. 

However, you have already sacked this town, destroyed it so that there is barely anything left to take away and sell. Nothing to sell, except, FEAR.

Yeah, that’s it! You and your friends will sell fear. You’ll make the townspeople fear that nothing they own is secure — not their farm, not their farmhouse, not the stuff in the house — including the people. Mayhem is lurking just around the corner! The folk will want to protect their stuff, their health, their very lives. And that’s where your gang comes in. You tell the townspeople that, for a monthly fee, you will promise to pay a PORTION of the replacement cost of anything they decide to insure. Even their wife and children — after all, don’t the husbands own their wives and children … uh, wait, that’s a different fairy tale. 

Anyway, as we all know, stuff happens. There could be a storm that destroys the crops, we tell them. Or the King and his staff (also referred to as your elected representatives) could raise your taxes and — wait a sec, thats a roving band of marauders … that’s what we do. Well, anyway, you get the picture: stuff happens. You just never know.

So the townspeople, having just come through a very difficult situation through no fault of their own, decide they like our idea. So people start signing up in droves to insure their stuff. Not everybody, but many. Other pirates from all around the world hear about the great business opportunity where you don’t have to produce ANYTHING, just make people nervous about losing their stuff, ask them to give you some just-in-case money — AND PEOPLE DO IT! Willingly and proudly. And the best thing about it is that since raping and pillaging is against the law, you don’t have to do that anymore and risk going to jail. Just tell folks it COULD happen. Sweet.

What do we do with all this money? We take it and buy gold! We invest in pharmaceutical companies. We make scary television commercials. We sell more insurance. Then we buy gold! We invest in… you get the picture. We just won’t tell them THAT. So, this goes on for many years. The new King of this (by now) VERY wealthy land, decides that it is a good thing for his subjects to have some protection against the unknown so that when times get hard they can at least remain marginally productive and continue paying taxes, making this an even WEALTHIER land. He (and most of the people) decide: “Insurance for everybody! Halleluia!” Great idea. Really! Except for one little glitch.

Instead of the King using some of his subjects’ hard-earned tax money to provide the insurance, he decides that little ‘ole you MUST go to THE PIRATES (you know, the ones who did the raping and pillaging in the first place) and BUY it from them. And if you don’t do business with THE PIRATES, then the King will FINE you a pound of flesh. Now, in fairness, the King SAID he didn’t initially want to FORCE you to buy from them. The devil — I mean, THE PIRATES and their cabin boys, also known as lobbyists — made him do it.

Whatever.

“Still waiting for our first black president.” Really…?

Posted on June 3, 2012 by blogger Al Davis at Seriously Left

Just read an article in the June 1 edition of the  Washington Post Opinions by Frederick Harris, a professor of political science and director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. The title of the essay is “Still waiting for our first black president.” In order to be sure I approached it with an open mind, I read it twice. After the second reading, I was sure it was a crock (in my humble opinion). But not wanting to be a bomb thrower, I mustered up the gumption to read it a third time. Just to be sure.
Now, I’m sure.
When are our academicians going to stop seeing black folks as a special-interest group? The key problems affecting African Americans are the same problems affecting everybody else: economic and social class-ism. African Americans are citizens, fully and completely. Anything any president does on a national level to address economic and social injustice should be done to benefit us and everybody else.
There are white folks living in abject poverty in Appalachia, and it would be great if someone were paying attention to their plight. Imagine what the reaction among blacks would have been if George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, or any other president, had announced that the economic situation of white Appalachian folks was so much worse than everyone else’s and the government was going to do something to help them — just them.
No, President Obama hasn’t let down black folks. All politics is local.
Black folks have been let down by their pastors, elected officials, and other recognized leaders who have had nothing to say about the economic discrimination happening right in black communities. These leaders have had nothing to say to the African-American drug dealers who run amok in African-American neighborhoods. They have nothing to say to their neighbors when resources intended for local services ended up lining their own pockets.
Religious leaders don’t hold vigils until after the blood is in the street. They won’t stand up and say, “Let’s run out the drug dealers. Let’s have a prayer vigil every night on this corner until they are gone. Let’s tell the police who the dealers are, who is sporting guns, and who is breaking into folks’ homes.”
No, the churches won’t do this. Instead, they busy themselves raising money to build bigger barns, I mean churches, or whatever they call them these days. ”Oh, bless me Lord, bless ME, Lord.” That’s all I ever hear.
Why point the finger at Obama when Black elected officials keep on dropping the ball right in their front yards? When it comes time to get elected, they are all over the community. But when it comes time to get into the community, to bring together the community to start affecting change, they are silent and invisible. Local policy makers continue giving us the same sorry excuses for their failures. In the school system, they point the finger at the easy target: teachers. But it can’t possibly be just the teachers. No, it’s a fact that there are leadership deficiencies at the top tiers of our local governments. We can look at the District of Columbia, Newark, Baltimore, Atlanta and Prince George’s County, Maryland, just to name few.
Perhaps, like Harris, local black leaders are looking to Obama to fix their communities’ problems. I sure hope not. If Mr. Obama doesn’t win in November (although, he most likely will), then there goes that plan. If Mr. Obama does win in November, there will be only four years left to get anything done for black America, if we rely on Harris’ logic. After those four years are up, it will be back to business as usual — unless our local leaders are counting on America electing a black man or woman president in 2016. If we don’t elect a black president in 2012 or 2016, then the best-laid plan of these mice and men — the hold-somebody-else-responsible plan – will have gone astray. And we will be screwed.
Then who would be our Moses? I can just hear the the crying, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. “Lawdy, lawdy, who gon’ save us now?”
Harris writes, “The key question is not why Obama, as a black man, isn’t doing more for the black community. Rather, what is he doing for the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, a constituency that just happens to be black, and just happens to be in need of policies that are universal as well as targeted to address long-standing inequalities?”
I want to know what President Obama being a black man has to do with doing the right thing for all Americans. I expected every president I ever voted for to do the right thing for all Americans. Segregationists in the south were a loyal constituency. If we follow Harris’ logic, doing what the loyal constituency wanted as opposed to doing the right thing would have resulted in Black folks being disenfranchised even longer than we were.
Black Americans, as well as all Americans, are in this economic and inequality mess  because few want to acknowledge the real  issue. The issue is class. Pure and simple. While the oligarchs steal the cake and run off, the rest of us fight over the crumbs.
The Godfather of Soul said, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing. Open up the door, and I’ll get it myself.” A couple of generations later, Tupac said, ”If you won’t open the door, that’s okay. We’ll just take it off the hinges … but we comin’ in.”
You want to get serious about addressing social and economic issues in the black community? Deal with the locals. Create change on that level. Hold those on the local front lines responsible. Put their feet to the fire. Success on that level will rise to the national level. If it can’t or won’t get done locally, it won’t get done nationally.
I’m not waiting for a black president. We have one. I’m waiting for some local leadership with backbone, integrity, and guts — in our churches, in our city halls, and in our local governments.

Baker's school system plans less than exciting

Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker announced today that he was NOT taking over the county school system, so the Washington Post reported in "Baker unveils plans for school system." 

Not a takeover? But a takeover is exactly what we need! So, what's going on here?

According to the Post, "Baker, who has limited authority over the school system, named a 12-member board, made up of educators, parents and business leaders, to advise him on ways to improve the schools.

"He said that he wants residents to 'judge this administration' on what happens with the school system," wrote reporter Ovetta Wiggins.

Indeed, the schools problem in Prince George's County cannot be downplayed. The nucleus of the problem is leadership -- plain, simple, and obvious. Yet, it seems like Baker is operating business as usual. These appointments appear to be politically influenced, friends of friends, names we've heard before, including Bridgette Blue, the only PGCPS educator on the panel. There are two appointees from Cheverly. At least Kathleen Teaze of the public library system is not neck-deep in school system and county politics.

Baker continues to play favorites and to play it safe. Haven't we seen enough of this? Where is the radical change? Who will save our schools from the choking grip of the Brode foundation? When will we see the beginning of the end to this destruction of a once solid and reputable school system?

Is this panel ready to take that great, long stride?

Update: After Tucson, 1/8/11

Keep hope, humanity, kindness, understanding, humility ... in memory of Trayvon Martin, 17. William McQuain, 11, of Maryland. Christina-Taylor Green. Emmitt Till. Four little girls in Birmingham. Matthew Shephard. All the children gone. All the children taken. In wars declared and wars being waged in people's minds.

The Washington Post

The Root DC Live

Posted at 09:44 AM ET, 01/13/2012

Jack Johnson, MLK, Barack Obama: owning our citizenship in 2012

By Avis Matthews Davis

As we settle in and start to get comfortable with 2012, I find myself trying to temper a still-simmering anxiety over several 2011 events that got under my skin, leaving this nagging question pounding inside my head: What is going on with my people?


Jack Johnson (C), former Prince George's County Executive, walks to the U.S. District Courthouse before sentencing in Greenbelt, MD on December 6, 2011. (Sarah L. Voisin - THE WASHINGTON POST) 

First, there was the criminal conviction of Jack B. Johnson, the two-term executive in Prince George’s County. Putting aside Johnson’s thievery and his blow-off of the public’s trust, I submit the reaction of the many Prince Georgians who defended Johnson with sanctimonious clichés about forgiveness and redemption, even while Johnson continued to present a non-repentant and deceptive public posture.

Then there was the happy-hour sage who suggested to my brother that criminal corruption by elected leaders was a fair trade for the political power African Americans have enjoyed. Without full support, the sage advised, “we” could lose the county executive’s office, and “we can’t have them telling us what to do!”

It’s hard to know where to begin picking apart that warped thinking. At the very least, this individualistic rhetoric ignores the legacy of family and community that gave black Prince Georgians a strong sense of culture and connectedness long before Jack Johnson resided within our boundaries – and which could move us beyond the money-worshipping, status-seeking limbo we now symbolize. The legacy of the Jack Johnson administration is not to be treasured or honorably memorialized.

Which leads me to Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama. On October 16, the National Park Service dedicated the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. On two visits to the monument, I watched the proud and respectfully subdued reactions of visitors as they posed for pictures, reverently circled the stone image and read King’s words inscribed on the statue and surrounding wall.
“What is it grandmommy? came an inevitable question. I thought about how we as a people will answer that question in the years ahead, and of what this monument will become to African Americans. With King preaching to us from this hallowed plaza, I got excited at the thought that he might again spur us into action.

Only a few weeks earlier, Troy Anthony Davis had been unjustly executed in Georgia. Occupy Wall Street protests were blasting the nation’s shameful economic disparities, even while being dismissed by some blacks as irrelevant. A number of states were advancing legislation to undo hard-won voting rights.
Now, with King’s powerful presence on the National Mall, would we at last be shaken out of our civil rights movement reverie, out of our false sense of having arrived, and spurred into action to push further for peace and social justice? Or would King’s monument become just another stop on the black history tour?

During the dedication, as one of the speakers addressed the crowd from the podium, the jumbo screen showed a live shot of the Obamas taking a private tour of the monument, which was out of view of the crowd. Reacting to the image on the screen, a few in the crowd began to chant: “Four more years, four more years!”drowning out the speaker, who had been invited to the ceremony to honor King.

Granted, the Obama presidency has brought to fruition the hopes, dreams, and perseverance of King and probably every single person of African descent who ever called America home. Yet, as the chants waned, another question surfaced: Are we so enraptured with President Obama that we are making this presidency itself a monument? Among black folks, sensitivity to criticism of the president’s positions and policies is constant and increasing. A frequently expressed fear is that black criticism of the president will cost him re-election.

However, those of us who cried, hugged, and fell on our knees the night of the Obama election should not let this demonstration of our electoral power be the complete victory. This could be the era not only of the first African-American president but also of unprecedented engagement in democracy among African Americans, a time when we fully take hold of our democratic privileges to speak up, engage, and dissent. Electing a black president and placing the full weight of progress on his shoulders robs him of the benefit of an aware and engaged citizenry. Our history in America notwithstanding, it is time to own our citizenship, not just in symbolic ways but in the tangible, change-making things we do to keep humanity moving forward.

I am worried and hear myself lamenting, What is going on with my people? So, a few weeks ago when radio station WPFW asked its morning listeners to call and share their thoughts on the question, “What‘s on your social justice agenda for 2012?” I thought, You should say something. This is where I start.

Avis Matthews Davis is a high school history and government teacher in suburban Maryland. She has been a public relations director in local government and was an editor at the former Journal Newspapers.