Category Archives: SC News/Commentary

Can we hear the call for change?

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By the Rev. Dr. Bennie Colclough
Co-Chair of the SC Progressive Network

The African-American community should pay close attention to what Sen. Barack Obama has said about equality for gay and lesbian Americans and the correlation of religion-based bigotry and discrimination against African-Americans.

The struggle for justice, equality, and dignity for gay and lesbian Americans continues and Sen. Obama and other leaders have engaged the African-American faith community on this issue.

Are we listening?

As an African-American minister, I many years ago heard the call for change on this issue and it is still my resolve today to be a missionary for justice and equality, to be courageous, true to my faith, and challenge the African-American faith community, to love God with our whole heart and our neighbors as ourselves.

The African-American faith community must defend the human dignity of all people as distinguished leaders in our community are calling us to this task.

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Playing the race card

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By Kevin Alexander Gray
Columbia

I hesitantly step into the Hillary Clinton – Barack Obama family scuffle over South Carolina’s black vote. Both candidates are products of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton is a DLC star, chair of its American Dream Initiative touting free markets, balanced budgets and middle-class know-how, while Obama’s political action committee, the Hope Fund, has raised money for half of the DLC’s representatives in the Senate. This is how America measures progress: the DLC, founded as a vehicle for pro-business Southern white men, is now the arena advancing a black man and a white woman who talk as if the more populist Southern white man in the race were invisible.

The “controversy” over Clinton’s Martin Luther King comment (“it took a president to make the dream a reality”) was, if anything, a set up to push Obama to talk race, something he has taken pains to avoid beyond the occasional King quote he tosses into the mix. Talking race in a white media echo chamber works to Clinton’s advantage. First, it is a subtle nod to subconscious and not so subconscious racism. Secondly, it gives her the chance to expound upon the Clintons’ fictional race history with blacks.

What Bill knows, Hill knows. And Southern politician Bill Clinton has always played race politics to perfection. Many have perhaps forgotten about Bill, speaking in the last pulpit King stood in, telling blacks in 1993 how disappointed “Dr. King would be [in them] if he were alive today”, because of black on black crime. “Crime” has long been a white politician’s code to signal, “I can stick it to blacks.” In his first presidential race Governor Clinton supported the death penalty at a time when the country was split almost down the middle on the issue. For good measure, he made sure to oversee the execution of convicted killer Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black man, in the heat of the primaries.

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Doctors give Massachusetts health care reform failing grade

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Poor early outcomes raise red flags: only private insurers profit
Physicians for a National Health Program

Over 250 Massachusetts doctors have signed an open letter to the country warning that the health reform model enacted by Massachusetts is failing and that a single payer program is the only alternative.

“It is urgent that the rest of the country know that Massachusetts is a living laboratory for the health care reforms being pushed in California and by the Obama/Clinton/Edwards campaigns. Right now the Gov. Romney/Massachusetts’ plan gets a failing grade on the ground,” said Dr.Rachel Nardin, Assistant Professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

We write to alert colleagues and the nation to the disturbing early outcomes of Massachusetts’ widely heralded approach to health care reform. Although we wish that the current reform could secure health insurance for all, its failings reinforce our conviction that only a single payer program can assure patients the care they need.

In 2006, our state enacted a law designed to extend health coverage to virtually all state residents. Political leaders in other states, as well as several Democratic presidential candidates, have embraced this model.

Massachusetts’ law mandates that uninsured individuals must purchase private insurance or pay a fine. The law established a new state agency to ensure that affordable plans were available; offered low income residents subsidies to help them buy coverage; and expanded Medicaid coverage for the very poor. (Immigrants are mostly excluded from these subsidized programs.) Moneys that previously funded free care for the uninsured were shifted to the new insurance program, along with revenues from new fines on employers who fail to offer health benefits to their workers. In addition, the federal government provided extra funds for the program’s first two years.

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Principles before personalities

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Michael O’McCarthy, Greenville

Social revolutionaries and “progressives” have now come to a point more important in time other than perhaps the “War for Southern Independence,” as called by the Southern revisionists. We are now challenged to make a very difficult choice. The choice is between principles and personalities – between the principles that demand a major, structural social change vs. corporate state politics; of those candidates and democratic activists who scream “electability” which is a clarion call for yet another form of “Lesser Evilism.” That strategy may had value in choosing between capitalism and Nazism, democratic socialism and the varying brands of Stalinism, but offers no discernible hope for the change needed in this country.

There were difficult theoretical as well as practical issues in that time and of course the Lesser Evil was capitalism. Today there really is no difficulty. While the political ideologues of the corporate state would have us believe that we are either on their side, as Bush and Cheney have raved, or on the side of the hordes, (represented by the terrorists,) the real choice is between the State and the people. I choose in the interest of the people of the world.

Indeed, like no other time in modern history, we have little ideological structure or international support for either our analysis or our struggle. We are left herein to our own devices. We do so under a national government that has only contempt for the people and little other purpose than of exploiting or destroying the rest of the world.

Thus, the Duopoly and its vehicle of “globalization” and its military imperialism now face us with the consolidation of corporate state rule, not democracy. This Lesser Evilism is no longer a valid choice for those of us who know the need for fundamental social change if democracy is to survive. In fact it is a continuing path to Hell.

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Fighting for free speech – again

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Bursey Continues Fight in Free Speech Appeal
Document Reveals Disturbing Strategy By White House Advance Team

BY DANIEL TERRILL
Free Times

Local political activist and organizer Brett Bursey is persevering in his struggle to win a free speech case that has received national attention.

On Dec. 28, Bursey’s attorneys filed a motion in federal court in Columbia arguing that the U.S. government withheld evidence of White House involvement in suppressing protesters at presidential rallies.

Bursey’s attorneys recently obtained the Presidential Advance Manual, which contains detailed instructions on handling protestors and other disruptions during presidential events.

Bursey, director of the South Carolina Progressive Network, contends that the White House has been using the Secret Service to protect the president politically. “It’s really chilling,” he says. “It’s very bad news for the Bill of Rights, free speech and democracy.”

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US torture and interrogation policy

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Former military leaders speak out

The public is invited to panel discussion moderated by Dean Charles Bierbauer at the Lumpkin Auditorium (8th fl. USC Business Admin. Bldg), College St., today beginning at 3pm.

Participants: 

Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, USN (Ret.) Vice Admiral Gunn served as the Inspector General of the Department of the Navy and commanded the USS Barbey and the Destroyer Squadron “Thirty-one,” a component of the Navy’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Destroyer Squadrons.

Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni, Jr. USN (Ret).  Vice Admiral Konetzni served as the Deputy and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. He has received two Distinguished Service Medals, six awards of the Legion of Merit, and three Meritorious Service Medals.

Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.).  General Haynes is a combat veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He was a captain in the regiment that raised the American flag at Iwo Jima in 1945. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations he served as Pentagon Director for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. He commanded the Second and Third Marine Divisions, served as the Senior Member of the United National Limitary Armistice Commission in Korea, and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Marine Corps Research and Development. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)  Brigadier General Irvine was on the faculty of the Sixth U.S. army Intelligence School where he taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for several hundred military personnel. General Irvine is an attorney and practices law in Salt Lake City and has served four terms as a Republican legislator in the Utah House of Representatives.

Brigadier General Stephen N. Zenakis, USA (Ret).  Dr. Zenakis served 28 years in the United States Army as a medical corps officer with a specialization in clinical psychiatry. He has written widely on medical ethics, military medicine and the treatment of detainees.

This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by The Walker Institute of International and Area Studies and the non-partisan human rights organization, Human Rights First.

Yellow Rose bus goes up in flames

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Columbia MFSO activist Wade Fulmer forwarded this news about Jim Goodenow’s “Yellow Rose” bus. Jim was on his way to South Carolina.

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Many of you may remember Jim Goodenow and his bus, the Yellow Rose, who was here in Oklahoma last year as part of his one man impeachment tour. In recent months, Jim has been providing transportation to Iraq Veterans Against the War for their various tours and other activities. Last night, Jim escaped a fire of suspicious origins that destroyed the bus. Luckily Jim is all right, this message was passed on by Bill Perry, a vet and anti war activist. I will pass on any further news of this incident.

Jeri

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The bus was destroyed by fire around 9:30 pm, Friday night, 1/11/08

This bus, often mired in controversy since the IVAW “Dirty South” tour that left Philly in June, and had Active Duty BBQ’s at Ft Meade, Ft Jackson, Camp Lejeune, Ft Benning, and other Southern Military Posts (including an IVAW benefit by Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, and AudioSlave, in Virginia) as well as backdrop for many a Demonstration, and Ft Drum, NY, organizing parties, has finally died.

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Jim Goodnow pulled into a South Jersey Truck Stop, to catch a 3 or 4 hour nap. Jim saw, in retrospect, some suspicious activity outside the bus, and about 20 minutes later, the entire engine compartment, and back of the bus was engulfed in flames.
   
Stay tuned…

Be Well, RAISE HELL !
Bill Perry
Delaware Valley Veterans For America
Disabled American Veteran, VVAW, VFP, VFW, VVA

Closing the gender gap in SC politics

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A press conference was held yesterday at the State House in Columbia to announce the formation of the Southeastern Institute for Women in Politics, which aims to identify, recruit and support female candidates for political office in South Carolina.

The Palmetto State ranks 50th in the percentage of women office holders, with only nine percent serving in the State House, Senate or statewide office. Only two women serve in the State Senate.

The Institute will hold its first day-long workshop on Feb. 8. Keynote speaker will be Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, whose impressive political career demonstrates the impact women in power can have on health care, education and other issues critical to women and families.

The Institute proposes to change the gender imbalance in South Carolina politics by:

* Identifying women already elected or appointed to local government councils, committees, and task forces, and women members of PTOs and other leadership organizations;

* Recruiting women from private sector professions such as law, real estate, and education who have potential for serving as public officials;

* Building a grassroots network of these politically-viable women, including conferences, a web site, issue resources, and training in advocacy, fund-raising and campaigning skills; and

* Researching, district by district, demographic, attitudinal, partisan and other political factors that affect election outcomes.

For details, call 803-206-0901 or e-mail wil@campaignsystems.com.

Read more in today’s The State.

Candidates urged to reject voting machines

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South Carolina’s system causes particular concern

A group of state-based civic organizations has urged presidential candidates to call for paper ballots in all 2008 primary elections.

In a letter sent to the major Democratic and Republican candidates last week, the groups Georgians for Verified Voting, Iowans for Voting Integrity, the North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting, and the South Carolina Progressive Network offered evidence of the unreliability of paperless electronic voting systems, and expressed special concern about the paperless machines to be used statewide in South Carolina’s presidential primaries on Jan. 19 and Jan. 26.

“Many of the world’s best computer scientists have concluded that paperless e-voting systems are vulnerable to error and fraud,” said Brett Bursey, director of the South Carolina Progressive Network. Last year, a task force that included Howard Schmidt, former chief security officer of Microsoft, called strongly for voter-verified paper records of each vote cast. 

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