Thursday, May 28, 2015


News Clips For The Day


PROGRESSIVE IDEAS FOR 2016

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-enough-is-enough/

Bernie Sanders: "Enough is enough"
By STEPHANIE CONDON CBS NEWS
May 26, 2015

Photograph -- Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) waves to supporters before he speaks during the kick off of his presidential campaign on May 26, 2015 in Burlington, Vermont. WIN MCNAMEE, GETTY IMAGES

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont running for the Democratic presidential nomination, officially launched his campaign on Tuesday with a populist message for the "billionaire class."

"Enough is enough," the self-identified socialist said to his supporters gathered on the shore of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. "This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires."

Promising to "build a movement," the 73-year-old warned the crowd that "now is not the time for thinking small."

Sanders has recruited some high-profile figures to join his "movement," including environmental activist Bill McKibben, as well as Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of the Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's ice cream. All three spoke ahead of Sanders at Tuesday's rally, while the crowd enjoyed free Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

The senator laid out his liberal agenda, including ideas like raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, implementing a Medicare-for-all health care system, investing $1 trillion in infrastructure, make tuition in public universities free, combating climate change, and rolling back the impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

While he enters the race for the Democratic nomination far behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sanders insisted, "This campaign is not about Bernie Sanders. It is not about Hillary Clinton. It is not about Jeb Bush or anyone else. This campaign is about the needs of the American people."

While he promised to promote ideas that would meet those needs, he also said, "This campaign is going to send a message to the billionaire class."

"And that is: you can't have it all," Sanders continued. "You can't get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can't continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can't hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. To the billionaire case, I say your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America, if you refuse to accept your responsibilities."



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/are-democratic-voters-angry-enough-to-support-bernie-sanders-for-president/

Are Democratic voters angry enough to support Bernie Sanders for president?
By STEPHANIE CONDON CBS NEWS
February 10, 2015

Play VIDEO
Who is presidential candidate Bernie Sanders?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-identified socialist from Vermont, has met plenty of angry people in recent years.

"Some of them are in the Occupy Wall Street movement and consider themselves progressives," Sanders said Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. "Some are in the Tea Party movement and consider themselves conservatives."

Whatever their political bent, he said, "They have every right in the world to be angry."

"They're seeing an explosion of technology. They're watching TV and seeing all the great benefits, supposedly, of the global economy," the senator said. "And they're working longer hours for lower wages. And they're scared to death as to what is going to happen to their kids, what kind of jobs are their kids going to have."

Who would Americans like to see on the campaign trail in 2016?
Should the 73-year-old senator decide to run for president in 2016, this will be the crux of his pitch to the American people -- that it's time for a grassroots-driven movement to significantly shift the nation's economic priorities.

The question is whether voters -- particularly Democratic primary voters -- are angry enough over the uneven distribution of wealth to support Sanders' campaign.

Most recent polls would suggest they're not. Democratic voters are largely supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's potential 2016 nomination, indicating that they're satisfied with the economic trajectory set by the Obama administration.

"If Sanders was going to be serious about the nomination, there's got to be widespread discontent with Clinton, and I think, with Obama as well," Dante Scala, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, told CBS News.

Still, if there was ever a moment for the nation to embrace a left-wing populist like Sanders, it's now.

"The issue of income inequality... has finally bubbled to the top of the agenda," said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont who's known Sanders for nearly 40 years.

Sanders' "number one issue is now an issue that Mitt Romney is talking about," Nelson said. That's when "you know it's an issue that concerns a rather wide span of Americans. In some ways, the agenda has caught up with Bernie rather than the other way around."

Sanders the Socialist

Sanders has been talking about income inequality for decades. His political views were shaped as a college student in the early 1960's, though Nelson clarified, "He's not a cultural radical of the 1960's variety." Instead, the senator is more of a "1930's radical" and a "labor union lefty."

"As far as lefties go," Nelson added, Sanders is "pretty vanilla."

He first ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981, winning by 10 votes. He served four terms, and in 1991 joined the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Independent elected to the House in 40 years. The Boston Globe wrote at the time, "Big business and its practitioners are just as antithetical to the good of the poor and working masses as they ever were, in Sanders' view."

In his first year in the House, Sanders and four other congressmen established the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now one of the largest caucuses in the congressional chamber. One of his first votes was against the first Gulf War, and he became known in the House for his confrontations with then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

"I will never forget having Alan Greenspan up there visiting the committee, telling us how great deregulation was. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now," Sanders said Monday.

Sanders was elected -- again as an Independent, with the support of Democrats -- to the Senate in 2006. As chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Sanders last year helped shepherd through Congress a bipartisan bill to reform the embattled VA health care system.

Nelson said Sanders' success in Congress has been impressive, given that he's not known for being the most personable lawmaker.

"I never thought Bernie would be a good team player, but he proved me wrong," he said. "He has shown an ability to cobble together coalitions that one would never believe possible, given his ideological stance."

Where he stands on the issues

Sanders would need to be an effective leader to implement his ambitious, left-leaning agenda. For instance, President Obama hasn't been able to enact comprehensive tax reforms, but Sanders says it's necessary to help pay for infrastructure.

"We are losing about $100 billion every single year because corporations and wealthy people are stashing their money in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere," he said Monday. "Real tax reform can generate a significant sum of money which should be used for infrastructure and education."

Jobs and the economy

To address the issue that Americans are most concerned with -- jobs and the economy -- Sanders recently introduced a bill, along with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure.

"We need a major federal jobs program to put millions of Americans back to work," Sanders said at Brookings. "The fastest way to do that is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, airports, railroads and schools... A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could support 13 million decent-paying jobs and make our country more efficient, productive and safer."

The senator has also said the minimum wage should be raised over a period of years to at least $15 an hour, and he has called for federal legislation to ensure overtime pay and equal pay for men and women.

Education

While President Obama has proposed making two years of community college free, Sanders said Monday, "We have got to go further."

"What we have got to learn is that in countries like Germany, Scandinavia, many parts of the world, people who are competing against us, they are smart enough to understand that the future of their countries depends on the education their young people get," he said. We have got to learn that lesson. Free public education does not have to end at high school."

Health care

Sanders has commended the "modest success" of the Affordable Care Act, but he is an strident supporter of single-payer health care systems, or what's known in the U.S. as "Medicare for all."

"We have got to grapple," he said, "with the fact that we remain the only country, major country, without a national health care program."

Social Security

While lawmakers often talk about ways to curtail spending on this large government program, Sanders wants to expand Social Security benefits.

"In my view, at a time when senior poverty is increasing, when we have millions of seniors -- and I meet them in Vermont all the time -- people are trying to get by on $12,000, $14,000 a year," he said. "We should not be about cutting Social Security benefits, we should be about expanding those benefits."

To pay for that expansion, he proposes lifting the income cap on Social Security taxes.

Foreign policy

With respect to defeating ISIS, Sanders said Monday that he doesn't want to see "endless war" in the Middle East. "And, having said that, you know, I don't have any magical solution, but I think at the heart of it has got to be regional activity on the countries who are most impacted by ISIS," he said, referencing Saudi Arabia's large defense budget.

"But, you know, I think it's fair to say I do not disagree with the air attacks that the United States is coordinating," he said. "What I just don't want to see is a ground presence and never ending war."

More than just a spoiler?
Should he decide to run for president, Sanders says he'll be in it to win.

The "decision that I'm going to have to reach is whether there is that willingness to stand up and fight back," he said. "And if there's not, I don't want to run a futile campaign. If I run, I want to run to win."

One thing he will not do, Sanders said, is serve as a spoiler in the general election as an independent candidate.

"I will not, I will not be a spoiler," he stressed. "There are ways to do this, but let me make it very clear. I will not be a spoiler and elect some Republican."

Sanders also promised he wouldn't run any negative campaign ads against Hillary Clinton. "It is not my style to trash people," he said. "It is not my style to run ugly, negative ads. Never have; never will."

The senator would, however, hope to have "a real serious debate" with Clinton -- "a very intelligent person who I think is interested in issues, by the way," he said.

"I think we would have a debate about how you rebuild the crumbling middle class," Sanders continued. "A debate about how you reverse climate change. A debate about the foreign policy and the wisdom of the war in Iraq, and how we deal with what we deal with. A debate about trade policy. A debate about Wall Street. And that would be I think good for the American people, to be honest with you."



Condon article, dated May 26, 2015 -- "Enough is enough," the self-identified socialist said to his supporters gathered on the shore of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. "This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires." Promising to "build a movement," the 73-year-old warned the crowd that "now is not the time for thinking small." …. Sanders has recruited some high-profile figures to join his "movement," including environmental activist Bill McKibben, as well as Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of the Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's ice cream. All three spoke ahead of Sanders at Tuesday's rally, while the crowd enjoyed free Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The senator laid out his liberal agenda, including ideas like raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, implementing a Medicare-for-all health care system, investing $1 trillion in infrastructure, make tuition in public universities free, combating climate change, and rolling back the impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. …. While he promised to promote ideas that would meet those needs, he also said, "This campaign is going to send a message to the billionaire class. And that is: you can't have it all," Sanders continued.”

From the Condon article dated February 10, 2015 -- “Whatever their political bent, he said, "They have every right in the world to be angry. They're seeing an explosion of technology. They're watching TV and seeing all the great benefits, supposedly, of the global economy," the senator said. "And they're working longer hours for lower wages. And they're scared to death as to what is going to happen to their kids, what kind of jobs are their kids going to have." …. The question is whether voters -- par-ticularly Democratic primary voters -- are angry enough over the uneven distribution of wealth to support Sanders' campaign. Most recent polls would suggest they're not. Democratic voters are largely supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's potential 2016 nomination, indicating that they're satisfied with the economic trajec-tory set by the Obama administration. "If Sanders was going to be serious about the nomination, there's got to be widespread discontent with Clinton, and I think, with Obama as well," Dante Scala, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, told CBS News. …. "The issue of income inequality... has finally bubbled to the top of the agenda," said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont who's known Sanders for nearly 40 years. Sanders' "number one issue is now an issue that Mitt Romney is talking about," Nelson said. That's when "you know it's an issue that concerns a rather wide span of Americans. In some ways, the agenda has caught up with Bernie rather than the other way around." …. In his first year in the House, Sanders and four other congressmen es-tablished the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now one of the largest caucuses in the congressional chamber. One of his first votes was against the first Gulf War, and he became known in the House for his confrontations with then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "I will never forget having Alan Greenspan up there visiting the committee, telling us how great deregulation was. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now," Sanders said Monday. …. Sanders was elected -- again as an In-dependent, with the support of Democrats -- to the Senate in 2006. As chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Sanders last year helped shepherd through Con-gress a bipartisan bill to reform the embattled VA health care system. …. Sanders has been talking about income inequality for decades. His political views were shaped as a college student in the early 1960's, though Nelson clarified, "He's not a cultural radical of the 1960's variety." Instead, the senator is more of a "1930's radical" and a "labor union lefty." …. In his first year in the House, Sanders and four other con-gressmen established the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now one of the largest caucuses in the congressional chamber. One of his first votes was against the first Gulf War, and he became known in the House for his confrontations with then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "I will never forget having Alan Greenspan up there visiting the committee, telling us how great deregulation was. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now," Sanders said Monday. …. Sanders was elected -- again as an Independent, with the support of Democrats -- to the Senate in 2006. As chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Sanders last year helped shepherd through Congress a bipartisan bill to reform the embattled VA health care system. Nelson said Sanders' success in Congress has been impressive, given that he's not known for being the most personable lawmaker. "I never thought Bernie would be a good team player, but he proved me wrong," he said. "He has shown an ability to cobble together coalitions that one would never believe possible, given his ideologi-cal stance." …. For instance, President Obama hasn't been able to enact comprehen-sive tax reforms, but Sanders says it's necessary to help pay for infrastructure. "We are losing about $100 billion every single year because corporations and wealthy people are stashing their money in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere," he said …. Sanders recently introduced a bill, along with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. "We need a major federal jobs program to put millions of Americans back to work," Sanders said at Brookings. "The fastest way to do that is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, … The senator has also said the minimum wage should be raised over a period of years to at least $15 an hour, and he has called for federal legislation to ensure overtime pay and equal pay for men and women. …. While President Obama has proposed making two years of commu-nity college free, Sanders said Monday, "We have got to go further." "What we have got to learn is that in countries like Germany, Scandinavia, many parts of the world, people who are competing against us, they are smart enough to understand that the future of their countries depends on the education their young people get," he said. We have got to learn that lesson. Free public education does not have to end at high school." …. "We have got to grapple," he said, "with the fact that we remain the on-ly country, major country, without a national health care program." …. . "We should not be about cutting Social Security benefits, we should be about expanding those benefits." To pay for that expansion, he proposes lifting the income cap on So-cial Security taxes. …. "But, you know, I think it's fair to say I do not disagree with the air attacks that the United States is coordinating," he said. "What I just don't want to see is a ground presence and never ending war." …. "I will not, I will not be a spoiler," he stressed. "There are ways to do this, but let me make it very clear. I will not be a spoiler and elect some Republican." Sanders also promised he wouldn't run any negative campaign ads against Hillary Clinton. "It is not my style to trash people," he said. "It is not my style to run ugly, negative ads. Never have; never will."

These two articles about Sanders and his views, thoughts and suggestions, show him to be the exact kind of Democratic presidential candidate I would like to see, keen-eyed, courageous and a sharp shooter but fair, and I am planning at this point to vote for him. He also strikes me as being the “squeaky clean” candidate that we need. He also swears he won’t become a spoiler “and elect a Republican. I hope he will willing switch his loyal voters to the next Democrat if his poll ratings turn out to be too hopeless. Hillary Clinton, unfortunately, is not as honest in my opinion, and probably not as progressive either. I have not forgotten that she gave in to political pressure and voted for the US to invade Iraq when that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and didn’t have WMD. Sanders is progressive, aware of environmental problems, intelligent, well educated, honest, ethical, and from what I can tell, a leader. He, unfortunately, hasn’t had the press coverage that I would like and therefore is less well-known of Hillary or Biden, and worse, he proudly bears the moniker “Socialist.” I say worse, because Americans have been fed a hardline fear and hatred of “pinkoes” of all stripes, so that could work agfainst him as much as Hillary’s refusal to bake cookies, and for the same idiotic reasons.

Even so, it is time the Democratic Party defined themselves as “progressive” because their stances today are too often safe rather than relevant to the problems we face as a society. I say “themselves,” because I am definitely drifting toward a Socialist position myself, though not Marxist. . That makes him the kind of Democratic Party leader and candidate that we need -- strong on unions, education, fair and well-paid jobs, equal pay for women, full free education at state universities and full medical coverage for all citizens, and even increased social security benefits paid for by raising the ridiculous ceiling on SS taxes, which at present, according to Google, is at $118,500.

After that point the income recipients no longer have to pay any social security taxes. A good Forbes article on that stated that employee benefits are up 1.7%, while the Tax cap is only up 1.3%. The article states that the maximum SS tax rate is “linked to a different measure”. I would like to see what that measure is, since it’s clear that only the wealthy profit from it. Just how many people make the $118,500 cutoff point? See 2013 income figures for US households at the following article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States. It states, “The median household income in the United States was $51,939 as of 2013.[21] The median income divides households in the US evenly in the middle with half of all household earning more than the median income and half of all households earning less than the median household income. According to the US Census Bureau, the median is "considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation."[41] Those people can clearly afford more houses, cars, college degrees, diamonds, furs, country club memberships and of course more clearly legitimate household expenses such as food, clothing and medicine.

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/policybriefs/pb2011-02.html, a government article, gives info on the Cap, which is very technical. Of course, the cost of living measure is also technical. Some rightists have suggested another formula should be used, which would reduce SS benefits. Natch! For an all round good article on SS, see Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2014/10/22/social-security-benefits-rising-1-7-for-2015-top-tax-up-just-1-3/.





http://www.npr.org/2015/05/24/409286733/in-new-england-recognizing-a-little-known-history-of-slavery

In New England, Recognizing A Little-Known History Of Slavery
EMILY CORWIN
MAY 24, 2015

Photograph -- U.S.
Black Burial Site Paved Over in Portsmouth, N.H.

Two men are sliding nine pine coffins into a vault in the ground on Chestnut Street in downtown Portsmouth, N.H. The remains were disinterred in 2003, part of a long-forgotten burial ground for African slaves discovered during routine road work. Now, they are being reburied among 200 other long forgotten men and women as part of Portsmouth's new African Burying Ground Memorial Park.

One coffin contains the remains of a woman who would have been free in West Africa at the turn of the 18th century. But when she stepped off the boat into what is now Prescott Park in Portsmouth, she was likely sold to a white New Hampshire family.

At least, that's the best guess of principal archaeologist Kathleen Wheeler.

"There's one individual who had only her lower jaw, and she had the incisors removed from the lower jaw, probably as a teenager, and this is a rite they do commonly in West Africa," Wheeler says.

The others may have been free or enslaved people. What Wheeler can see from the remains is that they all had African origins, their bodies were worn from toil — and few survived past their twenties.

But slavery in New Hampshire? Onlookers like Jack Panopoulos are surprised. "Generally, you tend to think — or I did — that it was more of a Southern problem," he says.

That's a misconception that Georgia-based artist and sculptor Jerome Meadows, who designed the memorial, says he hopes his work will recast. "The setting creates a context in which to reimagine or shift your focus from the misrepresentation into the reality of what actually is here," he says.

The $1.5 million memorial park was built with support from federal grants and community donations. Many are proud of the effort. But some, like lifelong resident Dan Mayo, wonder why a relatively prosperous city like Portsmouth didn't fund the memorial with property tax revenue.

"They built over all these graves and profited for hundreds of years," he says. "They collected taxes on all these properties that line these streets. And at the very least, they could have footed the bill to pay for this park."

Kelvin Edwards is the president of the local African American Cultural Center, which makes him a prominent member of a very small community: Fewer than 2 percent of Portsmouth's 20,000 residents are black. "It hasn't been exactly easy living here as an African-American in such a non-minority community," he says.

He says he is proud of the memorial for acknowledging and recognizing the contributions of those buried there: "I think it helps to validate me as an individual, to relate to these souls that have long gone, and that have done so much — and not to be recognized [until now]."

Building a memorial on a long-forgotten burial ground won't fix today's social struggles. But it can, Edwards says, help us recognize that we share the past.




NPR article -- “Two men are sliding nine pine coffins into a vault in the ground on Chestnut Street in downtown Portsmouth, N.H. The remains were disinterred in 2003, part of a long-forgotten burial ground for African slaves discovered during routine road work. Now, they are being reburied among 200 other long forgotten men and women as part of Portsmouth's new African Burying Ground Memorial Park. …. "There's one individual who had only her lower jaw, and she had the incisors removed from the lower jaw, probably as a teenager, and this is a rite they do commonly in West Africa," Wheeler says. The others may have been free or enslaved people. What Wheeler can see from the remains is that they all had African origins, their bodies were worn from toil — and few survived past their twenties. …. That's a misconception that Georgia-based artist and sculptor Jerome Meadows, who designed the memorial, says he hopes his work will recast. "The setting creates a context in which to reimagine or shift your focus from the misrepresentation into the reality of what actually is here," he says. The $1.5 million memorial park was built with support from federal grants and community donations. Many are proud of the effort. But some, like lifelong resident Dan Mayo, wonder why a relatively prosperous city like Portsmouth didn't fund the memorial with property tax revenue. …. That's a misconception that Georgia-based artist and sculptor Jerome Meadows, who designed the memorial, says he hopes his work will recast. "The setting creates a context in which to reimagine or shift your focus from the misrepresentation into the reality of what actually is here," he says. The $1.5 million memorial park was built with support from federal grants and community donations. Many are proud of the effort. But some, like lifelong resident Dan Mayo, wonder why a relatively prosperous city like Portsmouth didn't fund the memorial with property tax revenue. …. He says he is proud of the memorial for acknowledging and recognizing the contributions of those buried there: "I think it helps to validate me as an individual, to relate to these souls that have long gone, and that have done so much — and not to be recognized [until now]." Building a memorial on a long-forgotten burial ground won't fix today's social struggles. But it can, Edwards says, help us recognize that we share the past.”

See also the Net article below from “www.blackpast” on slave graveyards Mark Auslander as it adds a great deal of information on the subject, and also Wikipedia’s several articles on the history of the Methodist Church in the US. According to that article, the Northern Methodist Church was strongly abolitionist while a segregationist group in the South during the 1840s began to call itself “Methodist Episcopal Church South.” In 1939 this church joined the Methodist Church, but in 1940 reemerged as the Southern Methodist Church. The Southern Methodist Church based in South Carolina remains a separate entity and bears the Segregationist doctrine.

The Methodist Church, which was not segregationist, was the denomination which was my first church home. A related black denomination is called the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The United Methodist denomination was founded in a merger in 1968 with the Methodist Church and the EUB or Evangelical United Brethren. I can bear witness that our church of the 1950s was not exclusively fundamentalist in its orientation, and never spoke against black people or the evils of the doctrine of Evolution. I was one of several liberal Christian thinkers. By the time of my graduation from high school, I drifted away from the church, mainly because I was not a literal believer in most of the core Christian views. I do, however, to this day believe that Jesus himself was more than likely a real preacher in Roman days, which some liberal thinkers deny. In my opinion there are a very great many sayings of his for him to be completely a mythological figure.

www.blackpast.org -- “Among other things, I worked extensively on the sacred symbolism of trees and burial grounds. Years later, teaching in rural Georgia, I found myself increasingly drawn to local African American cemeteries, which reminded me, often in ways I could not quite articulate, of comparable locales in central and southern Africa. …. Since 1965, the town’s white-dominated city council had channeled fees paid by bereaved African American families to an all-white foundation, which exclusively maintained the white half of cemetery. In the spring of 2000, my students and I at Emory University’s Oxford College partnered with local African American congregations to restore the historic African American cemetery, document previously unmarked graves, and campaign for the cemetery’s desegregation. By 2001, the city and the cemetery foundation agreed to provide perpetual care for all burial plots in the entire cemetery, irrespective of race. …. In 1844, Bishop Andrew’s ownership of Kitty and other enslaved persons became a matter of national controversy, as antislavery northern Methodists protested that a Bishop could not legitimately own slaves; in the resulting tumult, white southern Methodists seceded from the national church to found the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which remained separate from the northern church for nine decades. For many whites in Oxford, Georgia, the story of Kitty, as a “loyal slave” still evokes the grace and “mutual understanding” between the races that, to their minds, exemplified the Old South. White residents renamed the slave quarters in which Kitty had resided, “Kitty’s Cottage,” and lovingly restored it as a heritage site without consulting their African American neighbors. They assert that the Bishop had been morally blameless and was simply an “accidental slaveowner.”



http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/remembrance-cemetery-search-accidental-slaveowner

Remembrance in the Cemetery: In Search of “The Accidental Slaveowner” - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/remembrance-cemetery-search-accidental-slaveowner#sthash.oTyQUMGU.dpuf

Mark Auslander

In the account below Central Washington University anthropologist Mark Auslander describes why he wrote The Accidental Slaveholder, which describes the curious ways in which the legacy of slavery extend into the contemporary era.

I grew up in Washington D.C. in a secular Jewish family in a predominantly white neighborhood, with only a limited sense of the richness and complexity of African American D.C. It took me a long time to find my way back, as it were, to my hometown.

In graduate school at the University of Chicago, I was trained as an Africanist anthropologist, and spent over two years doing ethnographic fieldwork in a village of the Ngoni people of eastern Zambia. My studies concentrated on ritual performance and changing popular perceptions of landscape amidst neoliberal economic conditions. Among other things, I worked extensively on the sacred symbolism of trees and burial grounds. Years later, teaching in rural Georgia, I found myself increasingly drawn to local African American cemeteries, which reminded me, often in ways I could not quite articulate, of comparable locales in central and southern Africa.

One burial ground in particular fascinated me. The segregated cemetery of Oxford, Georgia-- the birthplace of Emory University--had long been a political flashpoint. Since 1965, the town’s white-dominated city council had channeled fees paid by bereaved African American families to an all-white foundation, which exclusively maintained the white half of cemetery. Gradually, the African American ceremony became overgrown and its graves, many dating back to the time of slavery, became inaccessible to black families.

In the spring of 2000, my students and I at Emory University’s Oxford College partnered with local African American congregations to restore the historic African American cemetery, document previously unmarked graves, and campaign for the cemetery’s desegregation. By 2001, the city and the cemetery foundation agreed to provide perpetual care for all burial plots in the entire cemetery, irrespective of race.

In the course of this project, I became fascinated by a monument in the heart of the historically “white’ cemetery; a large stone tablet, erected by white segregationists in the late 1930s, celebrated the story of the enslaved woman known as “Kitty,” owned by Methodist Bishop James Osgood Andrew, first president of the Emory College board. The tablet declared that Bishop Andrew had tried to free Kitty when she turned nineteen in 1841, but that she had willingly remained in slavery; to reward her for her loyalty the Bishop built her a small house behind his own and allowed her to live in virtual freedom for the rest of her life. In 1844, Bishop Andrew’s ownership of Kitty and other enslaved persons became a matter of national controversy, as antislavery northern Methodists protested that a Bishop could not legitimately own slaves; in the resulting tumult, white southern Methodists seceded from the national church to found the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which remained separate from the northern church for nine decades. For many whites in Oxford, Georgia, the story of Kitty, as a “loyal slave” still evokes the grace and “mutual understanding” between the races that, to their minds, exemplified the Old South. White residents renamed the slave quarters in which Kitty had resided, “Kitty’s Cottage,” and lovingly restored it as a heritage site without consulting their African American neighbors. They assert that the Bishop had been morally blameless and was simply an “accidental slaveowner.”

For generations African American families in Oxford and Covington have quietly told a very different story of “Miss Kitty” (unlike their white neighbors, they insist on referring to her with a courtesy title). They insist Miss Kitty was the coerced mistress of Bishop Andrew, that he most likely fathered at least one of her three children, and that no white man ever could have been an “accidental” slaveowner. The large stone tablet is seen as an outrageous instance of white supremacist myth-making, fraudulently representing slavery as benevolent. Kitty’s Cottage, regarded nostalgically by most whites, is regarded by African Americans as a site of painful violation, to be avoided at all costs.

I began to write about how these competing narratives had been told and retold in white and African American families across 160 years. It struck me that these acts of story-telling represented what anthropologists call the “mythic imagination,” the endlessly inventive ways in which human beings poetically dramatize and meditate upon the central mysteries of existence. In telling these intertwined stories about Miss Kitty and Bishop Andrew, African American and white families came to reflect, at times indirectly, upon the core enigmas of American history and culture--race and difference, bondage and liberation, love and kinship, fidelity and betrayal.

At first I planned only write to about these competing mythologies of race, to excavate the divergent shadow memories of slavery that still haunt Americans of all backgrounds. Yet, when I gave an initial presentation on my work to the community, my African American friends were troubled. Norah Simonson, a member of the Mother Board at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, said, “we are not just ‘myths.’ We are real families..families who were torn apart, but who endured.” She and others insisted that it was insufficient for me just to trace the “myths’: I needed, as well, to trace the long-lost descendants of Miss Kitty, to find out what had become of her three children, who had been taken as slaves away from Georgia by Bishop Andrew after their mother’s death in 1851. “We have been praying on those children all these years,” the African American community historian Emogene Williams told me. “Did they come to a safe harbor? Find those descendants, and bring them back to us.”

After several years of archival research, I succeeded in tracing Miss Kitty’s children. Her daughter Emma settled in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where her son became a prominent dentist. Her second son, Russell Nathan Boyd, became a librarian in the US Department of State in Washington D.C., where he served as senior trustee in Rev. Francis Grimke’s 15th Street Presbyterian Church. In tracing the remarkable story of Russell Nathan and his family, I found myself re-discovering African American Washington D.C. a city I had both known and not known.

Emma and Russell Nathan left no living descendants. I despaired of ever fulfilling the community’s request to ‘bring the children home.” Luckily, two years ago, Freedmen Bank records led me to Miss Kitty’s eldest son, Alford Boyd, who escaped from slavery in Alabama, made his way to Iowa, and become an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. My wife Ellen and I travelled through the Midwest, locating the congregations he had pastored, and were finally led to Allen Chapel AME in Rockford, IL, where Rev. Boyd’s 84 year old great-grandson, Lee Caldwell, was senior trustee. Meeting Mr. Caldwell was one of the great thrills of my life, soon equaled by meeting his adult daughters, Darcel and Cynthia Caldwell in Philadelphia. Together, we traced the Boyd line from the 1790s to the present and determined that Miss Kitty had most likely referred to herself as “Catherine Boyd”

Following their father’s death in November 2010, the Caldwell sisters traveled to Georgia in February 2011 to attend a conference at Emory on slavery and universities. Their visit was eased by the Emory Board of Trustees’ statement of regret for the university’s historical entwinement with slavery. Cynthia and Darcel were warmly greeted by the Emory and Newton County communities. The congregation of Grace United Methodist Church, where many descendants of the early enslaved families of Emory still worship, partnered with artist Lynn Marshall Linnemeier to create a beautiful large memory quilt to “welcome home” the long lost descendants. Into this Yoruba-inspired work they sewed family photographs, reuniting through art families long torn asunder through slavery and Jim Crow.

In December 2011, Emory University officially celebrated its 175th anniversary by naming its 175 leading “history makers.” One of the 175, we were thrilled to learn, was Miss Kitty/Catherine Boyd herself. The Caldwell sisters were brought down to Emory and Darcel was given a university medal in remembrance of her ancestral mother. At the award luncheon, a white great grandson of Bishop Andrew warmly greeted Darcel. He explained he’d been reading my book. “You know,” he said with a smile, “We might be cousins!”

Earlier that Fall, on Sunday, October 23, the Oxford City Council moved to honor the family as well, commissioning a headstone that used the full appellation of Catherine “Miss Kitty” Andrew Boyd, and performing a beautiful multiracial dedication ceremony in the heart of the long-contested cemetery. Darcel and Cynthia were joined by Emory and Oxford city officials and by many other local whites and African Americans in a joyous celebration of reflection and reconciliation. One week after the dedication of the MLK memorial in Washington D.C., this grassroots dedication, in a small town Georgia cemetery signaled in a quiet way that for all the great work that remains to be done, our nation is taking significant steps towards healing the vast wounds of slavery and its legacies.


Sources:
The above material is adopted from Mark Auslander’s new book, The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding and American Family (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011). Those interested in political struggles over historical African American cemeteries may also want to read China Galland’s Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves (New York: HarperOne 2008)

Contributor(s):

Auslander, Mark
Central Washington University, Ellensburg

- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/remembrance-cemetery-search-accidental-slaveowner#sthash.oTyQUMGU.dpuf





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/martin-luther-king-jr-s-bible-and-nobel-peace-prize-legal-battle-headed-for-mediation/

Judge takes action in dispute over MLK Bible, Nobel Peace Prize
CBS/AP
May 27, 2015

Photograph -- Bernice King (L) and Martin Luther King III speak at the Michael Jackson public memorial service held at Staples Center on July 7, 2009, in Los Angeles, California. KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES

ATLANTA -- A legal battle over the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s traveling Bible and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize is headed for court-ordered mediation.

King's estate, which is controlled by his sons, last year asked a judge to order their sister to surrender the items. In a board of directors meeting last year, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King voted 2-1 against Bernice King to sell the two artifacts to a private buyer.

The two sides on Wednesday told Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney they are close to an agreement but not quite there.

A lawyer for Bernice King asked the judge to order mediation, and the estate's lawyer did not oppose that.

McBurney said he would issue an order outlining the terms for mediation early next week. He wants the parties to agree on a mediator or to submit names from which he can choose by June 30 and for mediation to be complete by Sept. 30, he said.

Both items had long been in Bernice's possession, and lawyers for the estate filed a lawsuit just over a week later asking a judge to order Bernice to surrender both items.

Speaking from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father and grandfather preached, Bernice in February 2014 denounced her brother's intentions, saying the Bible and peace prize medal were among their father's most cherished possessions and shouldn't be sold.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. His widow, Coretta Scott King, died in 2006. Yolanda King, the Kings' eldest child, died in 2007.

A letter written by President Lyndon Johnson to Coretta Scott King the day after the civil rights leader was assassinated hit the auction block in March after a long legal battle. It sold for $60,000, according to Reuters.

The case was set to go to trial in February, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney in late January temporarily halted all action at the parties' request to allow them time to settle. The judge ordered the parties to appear before him in late March if they hadn't reached an agreement by then. He later extended that deadline to Wednesday.




“McBurney said he would issue an order outlining the terms for mediation early next week. He wants the parties to agree on a mediator or to submit names from which he can choose by June 30 and for mediation to be complete by Sept. 30, he said. Both items had long been in Bernice's possession, and lawyers for the estate filed a lawsuit just over a week later asking a judge to order Bernice to surrender both items. Speaking from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father and grandfather preached, Bernice in February 2014 denounced her brother's intentions, saying the Bible and peace prize medal were among their father's most cherished possessions and shouldn't be sold.”

“Money, money, money! Money, Money!” I only hope the mediator can bring the parties to agree not to sell King’s Bible and Peace Prize. Those things should go into a museum rather than being sold to a private buyer. The family already sold a letter to Dr. King from Pres. Johnson and it brought $60,000. If the family is in need of money, I can see the temptation, but it really does make the brothers look mercenary, which King himself certainly wasn’t. I would like to know who the buyer is, what his monetary offer was and what he or she wants with them. I’ve heard the term “national treasure,” and I think these two things should qualify for that status. Maybe the government would even agree to pay for them a reasonable amount. Background on the King brothers is found below. The likelihood that the brothers may be in need of money can be seen in in the biographies of both. I would like to know whom Coretta Scott King supported most, her daughter or the two sons, and whether she would have supported this sale.



Martin Luther King III
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Luther King III, or MLK3 (born October 23, 1957) is an American human rights advocate and community activist. He is the eldest son and oldest living child of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

After he attended The Galloway School, he attended Morehouse College, the same school his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather attended. Martin Luther King III is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, as was his father. He received his B.A. degree in political science from Morehouse in 1979.[6] King lived with his mother in his childhood home until his adulthood.

Adult life and career

King has been described as a shy man who rarely socialized, and friends have claimed he tends to overwork, in part due to the pressure to live up to his father's name. One friend, Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn, said of King, "Watching him is like watching somebody trying to outrun themselves. It’s like there’s a ghost in front of him and he’s always trying to catch it."[1]

On June 26, 1985 Martin Luther King III was arrested, along with his mother and his sister Bernice, while taking part in an anti-apartheid protest at the Embassy of South Africa in Washington, D.C.[7] On January 7, 1986 Martin Luther King III and his sisters were arrested for "disorderly conduct" by officers deployed to a Winn Dixie supermarket, which had been the subject of some protesting since September of the previous year.[8] On June 9, 1986 He announced his candidacy for the Fulton County Commission, becoming the first of his father's immediate family to become involved in politics.[9] Alongside Kerry Kennedy, King opposed the death penalty in 1989, stating "If we believed in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, most of us would be without eyes and without teeth."[10] In 1990, He apologized to all homosexuals for mentioning that "something may be wrong" with them during a meeting with some middle school students, both meeting with some gay-rights leaders to hear their concerns and referring to his remarks as "uninformed and insensitive".[11]

King served as an elected county commission member in Fulton County, Georgia, the county encompassing most of Atlanta, from 1987 to 1993. He was defeated for reelection after revealing that he owed the federal government more than $200,000 in back taxes and fines.[12] Also in 1993, King helped found the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., the company that manages the license of Martin Luther King Jr.'s image and intellectual property. King remains a commissioner in the company as of 2008.[13] During his service as a commissioner in Fulton County, King expressed appreciation to an officer who potentially saved his mother from harm from a crazed man.[14] In February 2009, King and his wife traveled to India, fifty years after his father and mother made the trip. During his stay in India, King led a delegation, which included John Lewis and Andrew Young. In New Delhi, King visited museums on Mahatma Gandhi's life and answered questions from students. King denounced the war in Iraq and the Mumbai attacks during a lecture at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.[15]

Southern Christian Leadership Conference[edit]
In 1997, King was unanimously elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization his father founded. King was the fourth president of the group, which sought to fight police brutality and start new local chapters during the first years of his tenure.[12] Under King's leadership, the SCLC held hearings on police brutality, organized a rally for the 37th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech and launched a successful campaign to change the Georgia state flag, which previously featured a large Confederate cross.[1]

Within only a few months of taking the position, however, King was criticized by the SCLC board for failing to answer their correspondence or to take up issues important to the organization. The board also felt he failed to demonstrate against national issues the SCLC would previously have protested, including the disenfranchisement of black voters in the Florida election recount and time limits on welfare recipients implemented by then-President Bill Clinton.[12] King was further criticized for failing to join the battle against AIDS, allegedly because he feels uncomfortable talking about condoms.[1]

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference suspended King from the presidency in June 2001, concerned that he was letting the organization drift into inaction. The group's national chairman at the time, Claud Young, sent a June 25 letter to King that read, "You have consistently been insubordinate and displayed inappropriate, obstinate behavior in the (negligent) carrying out of your duties as president of SCLC."[12] King was reinstated only one week later after promising to take a more active role. Young said of the suspension, "I felt we had to use a two-by-four to get his attention. Well, it got his attention all right."[12] After he was reinstated, King prepared a four-year plan outlining a stronger direction for the organization, agreeing to dismiss McMorris and announcing plans to present a strong challenge to the Bush administration in an August convention in Montgomery, Alabama.[12] In a rally on August 5, 2001, in Montgomery, SCLC leaders, including Rev. Joseph Lowery, former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young and Rev. Jesse Jackson all pledged their support for King. "I sit beside my successor, to assure him of my love and support," said Rev. Lowery.[18] King said he also planned to concentrate on racial profiling, prisoners' rights and closing the digital divide between whites and blacks.[1] However, King also suggested the group needed a new approach, stating, "We must not allow our lust for 'temporal gratification' to blind us from making difficult decisions to effect future generations."[12]

Lawsuits involving Dexter King[edit]
In July 2008, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King filed a lawsuit against his brother Dexter King, accusing him of improperly taking money from the estate of their late mother and transferring it to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., where Dexter King serves as president. According to the suit, Dexter failed to keep Martin and Bernice informed about the company's financial affairs. It alleged the company's assets were being "misapplied or wasted,"[13] and demanded that Dexter produce documents pertaining to the 2006 sale of some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s documents.[13] In response, Dexter King accused his siblings of continuously using their parents' legacy for their own benefit and "to further their own personal and religious agendas."[19] Although critics said the lawsuit was at odds with their father's message and legacy, King III maintained it was in keeping with his history of negotiation and nonviolent direct action, claiming, "My father also used the court system."[24]

Dexter filed a similar countersuit against Martin and Bernice on August 18, 2008, claiming they breached their duties to the King Center and their father's estate, misused assets belonging to the center and kept money that should have gone back to the center and estate. Among the claims in the suit were that Martin improperly kept a $55,000 Lincoln Navigator SUV donated to the King Center for his own personal use, and that he "commandeered a reception"[19] being held at the King Center and "turned it into his own wedding reception."[19] Dexter claimed he made numerous attempts to get his siblings to stop such misuses of power but was unsuccessful. King III's lawyer, Jock Smith, denied the allegations as petty and misguided, and said the suit demonstrates Dexter King's misuse of power and his history of making poor decisions involving the Center without seeking proper input from his siblings.[19]

Ferguson, Missouri[edit]

In August 2014, King addressed the shooting of Michael Brown and reported that he would come to Ferguson, Missouri.[37] King was present at a rally with Michael Brown's parents on August 17.[38] On an interview with Fox News, King said his father would be "greatly disappointed" with the violence that occurred in Ferguson after the grand jury verdict.[39] King attended Brown's funeral on August 25.[40]



Dexter Scott King
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Early life[edit]

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and named after the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where his father was pastor before moving to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His eldest sister Yolanda watched after him.[2] He was seven years old when his father was assassinated. King and his siblings were assured an education thanks to the help of Harry Belafonte, who set up a trust fund for them years prior to their father's death.[3] King attended the Democratic National Convention in 1972, which led him to gain an interest in politics.[4]

Schooling[edit]

King went to Douglass High School, where he played the trumpet.[5]

King attended Morehouse College, his late father's alma mater. He studied business administration, but did not graduate. He later became an actor and documentary filmmaker.

Activities[edit]
King splits his time between Atlanta, Georgia, where he serves as chairman of the King Center, and Malibu, California.[6]

In May 1989, King's mother named the twenty-eight-year-old as her successor as president of the King Center. Before his mother's choice, King openly expressed interest in changing the King Center into "a West Point of nonviolent training."[7][8] Dexter Scott King served as president of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, but resigned only four months after taking the office after a dispute with her. He resumed the position in 1994, but the King Center's influence was sharply reduced by then.[6] As President, he cut the number of staff from 70 to 14 and shut down a child care center among a shift from conventional activities to prioritizing preserving his father's legacy. Reflecting, King admitted that the time was not right since he was "probably moving faster than the board was ready to."[9]

Support of conspiracy theory[edit]

Main article: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. § Conspiracy theories
Twenty-nine years after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, Dexter met with James Earl Ray, the man imprisoned for his father's 1968 murder. When confronting him, King asked Ray, "I just want to ask you, for the record, um, did you kill my father?" Ray replied, "No-no I didn't." King then told Ray that he along with the rest of the King family believed him.[11][12][13] King and Ray had then discussed the latter's health and the actions of J. Edgar Hoover.[14] King also told him that his family believed in his testament of innocence and were seeking to help him. The two spoke privately after 25 minutes with reporters, and King asserted to reporters that he did not know and it was the cause of their request for a new trial.[15] As he asserted that he did not believe Ray had any role in his father's death, he brought up evidence taken from the scene such as the murder weapon and concluded that Ray would not have disposed of it near the scene of the crime, calling his belief as having been in his "gut."[16]

At a 1999 press conference, Dexter was subsequently asked by a reporter, "there are many people out there who feel that as long as these conspirators remain nameless and faceless there is no true closure, and no justice." He replied:

"No, he [Mr. Lloyd Jowers] named the shooter. The shooter was the Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark who he named as the killer. Once again, beyond that you had credible witnesses that named members of a Special Forces team who didn't have to act because the contract killer succeeded, with plausible denial, a Mafia contracted killer".[17]

His belief towards a conspiracy extended to President Lyndon B. Johnson.[18] He believed that with the evidence he was shown, there would be difficulty "for something of that magnitude to occur on his watch and he not be privy to it."[19] King pursued Andrew Young to get him involved, and Young changed his position on the assassination of his father after being visited by Dexter in the spring of 1997. His position had always been "that it didn't matter who killed Dr. King but what killed him."[20]

Lawsuits[edit]
On July 11, 2008, 'Dexter King was sued by his sister Bernice Albertine King and brother Martin Luther King III; in addition, he was sued by Bernice King on behalf of the estate of Coretta King. The lawsuit alleged that Dexter King improperly took funds from the estate of Coretta King and his father Martin Luther King, Jr.. On August 18, 2008, Dexter King filed a countersuit stating his siblings had "breached their fiduciary and personal duties to the King Center in Atlanta and their father’s estate, misused assets belonging to the center, and kept money that should have been channeled back into the center and the estate."[25]






http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nato-and-russia-watch-one-another-closely-in-eastern-europe/

NATO and Russia watch one another closely in Eastern Europe

By HOLLY WILLIAMS CBS NEWS
May 21, 2015

Video -- Play VIDEO -- Russian hackers exploit software flaw to spy on Ukraine, NATO
Play VIDEO
Russia flexes military muscle off U.K. shores
Video -- Sweden scrambled fighter jets to intercept two Russian military planes that flew too close to Swedish airspace.

With Russia flexing its muscles, three of its Baltic neighbors -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have asked NATO to permanently deploy ground troops as a deterrent.
On Europe's Eastern frontier, NATO F-16s and Eurofighters drill for something they're doing more and more, intercepting Russian military aircraft flying too close for comfort to European airspace.

A cockpit video shows NATO jets shadowing Russian planes, which often try to stay invisible by turning off their transponders.


We watched the NATO pilots practice from a military transport plane. But last years in the Baltic states, they did this for real more than 150 times, a nearly four-fold increase on 2013.

If the NATO fighter jets don't intercept and identify the Russian military aircraft, the fear is they could cause a crash with a commercial airliner.

With its dangerous tactics, Russia seems to be probing NATO's air defenses, and testing how the West will react.

"Let's put it this way," said General Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Commander of NATO in Europe. "It's certainly not the kind of behavior you would see between two partners."


And nor is this. In Ukraine last year, Russia seized Crimea and gave its military backing to armed rebels in the east of the country.

The U.S. accuses them of shooting down a Malaysian airliner in July.

Lithuanian Captain Ieva Gulbiniene told us many here fear their former Soviet overlords.

"Occupation - this is what they are afraid of," she said. "Nobody wants to go back to the ages what was 25 years ago."

If Russia did what it's done in Ukraine to a NATO ally in Eastern Europe, how would NATO respond?

"NATO is committed to defending its allies," said Breedlove. "We will defend any NATO nation that's attacked by any nation."




“A cockpit video shows NATO jets shadowing Russian planes, which often try to stay invisible by turning off their transponders. …. With Russia flexing its muscles, three of its Baltic neighbors -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have asked NATO to permanently deploy ground troops as a deterrent. …. We watched the NATO pilots practice from a military transport plane. But last years in the Baltic states, they did this for real more than 150 times, a nearly four-fold increase on 2013. If the NATO fighter jets don't intercept and identify the Russian military aircraft, the fear is they could cause a crash with a commercial airliner. With its dangerous tactics, Russia seems to be probing NATO's air defenses, and testing how the West will react. …. "NATO is committed to defending its allies," said Breedlove. "We will defend any NATO nation that's attacked by any nation."

“…-- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have asked NATO to permanently deploy ground troops as a deterrent.” To me, it is essential that we shore up the Western European boundaries against Russia, which persistently tries to influence or over-whelm it’s old Cold War territories. They are also trying to demoralize free nations with these spy and harassment incursions in Europe, and Russian planes and/or submarines have been exploring the US borders as well within the last couple of years. I still don’t think they plan to attack anyone except Ukraine in the near future, but when these three nations ask for help I think NATO should supply it. Putin in my opinion wants to “push the envelope” but doesn’t want to get involved in a World War III. If they could insert ground forces into such countries as they did in Ukraine with the intention of destabilizing their internal politics, it seems to me to be exactly their pattern. They want the cake, but they don’t want to bake it.





http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/27/410024375/nebraska-governors-veto-of-death-penalty-repeal-sets-up-override-vote

Nebraska Governor's Veto Of Death Penalty Repeal Sets Up Override Vote
Krishnadev Calamur
MAY 27, 2015

Lawmakers in Nebraska will try today to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of their vote to repeal the death penalty in the state.

As we reported Tuesday, Ricketts, a Republican, vetoed the legislation flanked by law enforcement personnel, murder victims' family members and state lawmakers who support capital punishment. Opposition to the death penalty in the conservative state comes from Republicans who are against it for religious or fiscal reasons, as well as from Democrats and independents. Those who oppose capital punishment in Nebraska point out that the state hasn't executed a prisoner since 1997.

But writing today in the Omaha World-Herald, Ricketts said:

"Even without executions in recent years, the death penalty in Nebraska has continued to play an important role in prosecuting criminals, protecting our families and ensuring that criminals remain locked behind bars. The death penalty allows prosecutors to get stronger sentences which keep dangerous criminals off our streets.
"In Nebraska, there are only 10 inmates on death row. Unlike California or Texas, which have hundreds on death row, we use the death penalty judiciously and prudently.
"Retaining the death penalty is not only important to the integrity of criminal prosecutions but also vitally important to good prison management and protecting our prison officers."
Lawmakers in Nebraska's unicameral Legislature need 30 votes to override Ricketts' veto. Under state law, all bills go through three votes. The vote last week was 32-15. In the previous rounds, it was 30-16 and 30-13.

But as Fred Knapp of member station NET reports, at least one senator says he will now vote with the governor. He cited Ricketts' announcement earlier this month that new lethal injections had been bought to resume capital punishment. The vote is expected to be close.

If lawmakers succeed in overriding the veto, Nebraska will become the first Republican-controlled state in the U.S. to repeal the death penalty since North Dakota in 1973. The previous attempt in 1979 to repeal capital punishment failed when the measure was vetoed by then-Gov. Charles Thone.

The death penalty is legal in 32 states; the 18 states that have banned recently it include Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011) and New Mexico (2009).

We will update this post after lawmakers vote.




If all citizens sentence to death row were there legitimately, I would have less concern about the death penalty. There are criminals who are so dangerous to society or whose crimes are so egregious that I do see the use of a death penalty. The failure of one after another of chemical concoctions to deliver a speedy and painless death also bothers me a great deal. Some states, in frustration, have been looking into going back to the electric chair, and worse, hanging and firing squads, and that is simply barbaric. Primarily because so many people are convicted by faulty evidence or very poor legal representation, and because there does seem to be a larger number of poor people or members of dark-skinned ethnic groups who end up being sentenced at the maximum sentencing range, and I feel sure there is bias there. The so-called ‘three strikes” rule is also not good, because giving the death penalty should not be done on a legal technicality.

It seems to me that there are more legal protections for suspects during trials than there are with the sentencing phase. Some judges have long been known as “hanging judges,” which should be a characteristic that would open them to loss of their position in the courts. Some of them are locally elected and can be voted out at the next election, but the public doesn’t usually know that much about their conviction and sentencing patterns, and if they are appointed they can only be impeached for cause. I wonder if they can be sued for damages over harsh, unfair or simply silly sentencing. There have been a number of weird, bizarre sentences in the news, usually described as being “creative.” There is no room for that kind of creativity in the justice system, in my opinion.

All in all, I would like to see the death penalty eliminated nationwide and the prisoners who are taking up cell space for committing minor crimes turned loose and never jailed for more than a few months. Drug users should be forced by courts more often into treatment programs, and drug pushers, muggers, sexual abusers, wife beaters, rapists and other violent types should be sentenced to the real hard time, as they rarely can be fully rehabilitated. They are among the dangerous and egregious cases. They can be helped in very long-term group therapy and psychiatric talk therapy, but most of them aren’t willing to work on making internal personality changes. They have had a lifetime of gaining status through violence and doing it any other way doesn’t feel “masculine” enough to them. Worse still, it would involve not getting everything they want. If that type of treatment were more often administered in prison with intensive psychotherapy that would be another thing, but political conservatives don’t want to pay for that kind of prison program in too many cases.

About drug/alcohol abuse related crimes, jail is not effective at all, and good old-fashioned AA and NA are free of charge, after all, and are more effective over the long term than quick fix drug solutions or spending time in some of the spa-like treatment centers which are preferred by the wealthy. Three months in any treatment center is not going to wipe the desire for a drug of choice out of a user’s mind, and drug treatments tend to be discontinued as soon as the abuser leave his “spa.” Actually changing the psychology of anyone, especially someone who has an addition is simply not possible over a thirty day of period.





http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/27/409999722/federal-appeals-court-blocks-arkansas-ban-on-abortion-at-12-weeks

Federal Appeals Court Blocks Arkansas Ban On Abortion After 12 Weeks
Bill Chappell
May 27, 2015

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has blocked an Arkansas law that bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy. The case was filed by two doctors on their own and their patients' behalf.

The court's ruling notes:

"By banning abortions after 12 weeks' gestation, the Act prohibits women from making the ultimate decision to terminate a pregnancy at a point before viability. Because the State made no attempt to refute the plaintiffs' assertions of fact, the district court's summary judgment order must be affirmed."

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that:

"Arkansas' law required doctors to test for a fetal heartbeat, then banned abortion after 12 weeks if a heartbeat was present. But the law's opponents noted that all fetuses at that stage have a heartbeat, yet none is considered viable outside the womb.

"The Eighth Circuit ruling notes that the Supreme Court gives women the right to an abortion up to the point of viability, generally considered to be around 24 weeks. The ruling goes on at length about how technology is pushing the point of viability earlier and earlier. But it says the state of Arkansas presented no evidence that a 12-week-old fetus is ever viable."

NPR's Nina Totenberg notes that "a three-judge panel of judges all appointed by President George W. Bush permanently barred the ban on abortions after 12 weeks from going into effect." she adds:

"Arkansas' law is the second-most restrictive in the country. North Dakota has the most restrictive law, banning abortions after six weeks gestation, but that law too has been blocked by the courts. And both states have backup laws banning abortions after 20 weeks and making them more difficult to obtain. In all, 10 states now have laws banning abortions after 20 weeks."

The Arkansas legislature approved the strict law in 2013 — and then voted to override a veto by then-Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat. The state's governor is now Asa Hutchinson.

As we reported in 2013:

"The bill, whose main sponsor is Sen. Jason Rapert, would require anyone who provides abortions in Arkansas to "perform an abdominal ultrasound test necessary to detect a heartbeat of an unborn human individual according to standard medical practice."

"If a heartbeat is detected and the pregnancy is at 12 weeks or greater, an abortion would be forbidden. Exceptions are provided for cases of medical emergency, rape, and other situations."

In recent weeks, Arkansas lawmakers have approved a bill banning most abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy as well as a bill that doubles the period a woman must wait before undergoing an abortion, to two days.




"By banning abortions after 12 weeks' gestation, the Act prohibits women from making the ultimate decision to terminate a pregnancy at a point before viability. Be-cause the State made no attempt to refute the plaintiffs' assertions of fact, the district court's summary judgment order must be affirmed." …. "Arkansas' law required doctors to test for a fetal heartbeat, then banned abortion after 12 weeks if a heart-beat was present. But the law's opponents noted that all fetuses at that stage have a heartbeat, yet none is considered viable outside the womb. …. . The ruling goes on at length about how technology is pushing the point of viability earlier and earlier. But it says the state of Arkansas presented no evidence that a 12-week-old fetus is ever viable." …. "Arkansas' law is the second-most restrictive in the country. North Da-kota has the most restrictive law, banning abortions after six weeks gestation, but that law too has been blocked by the courts. And both states have backup laws ban-ning abortions after 20 weeks and making them more difficult to obtain. In all, 10 states now have laws banning abortions after 20 weeks." …. . Exceptions are provid-ed for cases of medical emergency, rape, and other situations." In recent weeks, Ar-kansas lawmakers have approved a bill banning most abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy as well as a bill that doubles the period a woman must wait before un-dergoing an abortion, to two days.”

This is encouraging, but of course the article says that Arkansas has a “backup law” set at 20 weeks, and that a number of other states already have 20 week legislation. I suppose lawsuits have to be filed at that limit, too. As for those requirements for a two day waiting period, that strikes me as nothing more than personal harassment to the women involved. Viewing women as second class citizens and even hated rivals to many men is behind these laws, though that is a part of their religious views based on the Bible. We should remember that Jesus stopped a crowd from killing a woman by stoning because she had been caught in adultery. He simply said to them, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone,” and the crowd melted away. He was liberal, but the Jewish society of that time period was no more liberal than radical Muslims are today. There are therefore things found in the Bible which are inapplicable to a modern egalitarian and civilized society.






http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dog-who-lost-both-eyes-gets-help-from-seeing-eye-dogs/

Dog without eyes gets help from "seeing-eye dogs"
By JENNIFER EARL CBS NEWS
May 22, 2015

Photograph -- Keller (right), Kiaya (center) and Cass (left) nap in the living room after a long day. COURTESY JESSICA VANHUSEN

On a rough day, Kiaya collapsed on the cold living room floor, unable to make it to her queen-sized dog bed.

Within minutes, her two "brothers" snuggled up on each side of her.

The sight brought tears to pet owner Jessica VanHusen's eyes. That's because life hasn't been easy for the 10-year-old Akita, who lost both of her eyes to glaucoma over the course of 15 months.

Not only can the 100-pound dog not see, she also has a hard time walking -- that is, without help from her "seeing eye dogs."

The special needs dog didn't have too much trouble adjusting to her new normal with 8-year-old Cass and 2-year-old Keller by her side. Without any commands, the dogs decided on their own to be her guides.

"The boys both respect her fully," VanHusen told CBS News. "[They] allow her to eat first, they lean her up against the side of the car when we are traveling to stabilize her."

Wherever Kiaya is, "middle-child" Cass is not far behind.

The dog has been by Kiaya's side ever since her first eye was removed in July 2013. He would constantly follow her around in their backyard, standing next to her "blind side."

"He became more attentive to her needs, leaning on her and cuddling," VanHusen explained. "He even cleans her ears and face, where her eyes used to be."

It took Keller a little longer. At less than 2 years old, the dog wasn't fully attentive at first, VanHusen said, but he's getting there.

"It's amazing to watch," Blue Pearl Veterinary Partners Ophthalmologist Dr. Gwen Sila, who performed Kiaya's surgeries, said in a news release. "It's clear the other dogs are trying to protect her. Their sense of loyalty is really remarkable."

VanHusen said she has never considered training the pair to be service dogs. For now, they'll just continue to take care of their sister, Kiaya, who turns 11 next month.

"She may be a special needs dog, but to us she's just special," VanHusen said. "When we ask her where her eyeballs went, she replies: 'They're in the garbage, I didn't need them anymore.'"

With her brothers stepping in to assist her, that statement couldn't be more true.




“On a rough day, Kiaya collapsed on the cold living room floor, unable to make it to her queen-sized dog bed. Within minutes, her two "brothers" snuggled up on each side of her. …. . Without any commands, the dogs decided on their own to be her guides. "The boys both respect her fully," VanHusen told CBS News. "[They] allow her to eat first, they lean her up against the side of the car when we are traveling to stabilize her." …. The dog has been by Kiaya's side ever since her first eye was removed in July 2013. He would constantly follow her around in their backyard, standing next to her "blind side." "He became more attentive to her needs, leaning on her and cuddling," VanHusen explained. "He even cleans her ears and face, where her eyes used to be." …. . "It's clear the other dogs are trying to protect her. Their sense of loyalty is really remarkable."

The similarity of dogs and humans in our social relationships has been noted in one book I read about the development from wolf to dog, which was both psychological and biological. We are natural companions, more so than cats and humans. I personally like the undemanding quiet companionship of a cat sitting on the bed with me. They like me, but they don’t need me. Dogs are fully and sometimes annoyingly companionable, licking my hands or face – often very wetly -- when I would rather be left alone. Dog lovers usually like them best for that very reason, and call cats “cold.”

There is no question in my mind that dogs are at least to some degree more intelligent that most cats, but I have had a number of very smart cats. Some people who are very patient like to spend lots of time teaching them tricks, but I have always mainly wanted to see their exquisite beauty, touch their silky fur and play games with them. My ex-husband had a cat trained to run up in great excitement when he crushed his empty cigarette pack. The cat knew that sound meant that he was going to throw it, and the animal would tear off in great excitement after the pack, then bring it back to be thrown again. If a cat chooses to lie in my lap that’s good, too. You have to understand a cat. When your feline brings you a dead bird or mouse she is helping you by bringing you some food. She’s saying you’re her human. She loves you. When my cats have brought me these things I have always thrown them immediately in the trash can, but I pet her to show I understand and love her, too. I have never tried to stop a cat from hunting, because that is a necessary part of their survival kit of instincts. A lost cat needs to kill birds for food.