A Most Evil Cut. By Eric Smith

Starting tomorrow the sequester is going to start causing severe cuts in food stamp programs across America which means that because of these damn Republicans people; men, women, and children. are going to go hungry. Yet if these same folks in turn resort to violence out of desperation due to seeing they and their families being denied needed food to eat because of tone deaf cold hearted Republican politicians, these same bastards who are starving these folks will get on their high horse and condemn them for resorting to violence because they are being forced to go without food. This is immoral, this is wrong, this is wicked, and it is evil!

Let me tell your something, if these folks do go off they will be more than justified because you don't go around starving people and then expect them to act within the law and remain peaceful. It doesn't work that way. Starting tomorrow we may very well see the beginning of food riots in this nation; the kind we used to see in Communist countries and in impoverished nations today and if it comes to something like that don't go blaming those starving fellow citizens of ours who are rioting; blame those who will really be responsible for this; those political parasites in the Republican Party who evilly believe that it is sound public policy to literally starve their fellow citizens for partisan gain!

At the Mountain Top. By Eric Smith

The fatal miscalculation now being made by Senator Ted "Lynch" Cruz and his fellow crazy racist reactionary Republican colleagues is that while they are primarily motivated by a racist hatred of African Americans in general and President Obama in particular, it will not just be we African Americans who rise up en mass to conquer them. For we live in a new time; a time where the American people as a whole celebrate and embrace diversity.

It is a time when in spite of all the terrible things that are happening before us, we really are entering a post racial era. I have no doubt; no doubt whatsoever, that there are many who are alive today, albeit very young, who will live to see a truly post racial United States; an America where racism is truly a thing of the past. Some will swear that I am naive at best and crazy at worst, to make such a prediction in light of all the virulent racist hatred now infecting so many parts of this land.

Yet a large part of this faith comes from the quality of the people that I know. It comes from my realization of their having planted the seeds not so much of tolerance but of acceptance without question of those who are different and that that message of acceptance will be passed down from one generation to the next; with each of these generations taking the place of a generation dominated by racial intolerance as it dies off.

That is how we have gotten this far and why I believe all claims that racism will infect us forever are false. I see that change coming and I feel it coming with every fiber of my being. We of this time and place are now standing where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the night of April 3rd, 1968. We are standing at the mountain top and through our growing collective embrace of diversity, we are peering over that Mountaintop and seeing before our very eyes the Promised Land. It matters not if you or I will ever get there. What matters is that you recognize that we as a people; we the American people will get there for we the people, we the American people have come too far to allow anyone to turn us around now.

A Line in the Stand. By Eric Smith

This is what Senator Ted "Lynch" Cruz and his fellow racist Republican crazies will really be up against if they seriously attempt to carry out their plan to return America to the dark days of slavery, segregation, and Judge Lynch. We in the African American community have absolutely nothing to lose and if necessary we will collectively stop at nothing to stop them!

"If We Must Die"

by Claude McKay

"If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"

Senator Ted "Lynch em' high!" Cruz. By Eric Smith

Today, during a Congressional Hearing on Stand Your Ground Laws, Senator Ted Cruz said to Trayvon Martin's mother that those who seek to change these laws "are exploiting and inflaming racial tensions." No, what is inflaming racial tensions is racist Teabagging firebrands like Ted Cruz who either turn a blind eye to or encourage his followers to wave the Confederate flag in front of the White House with an African American president & his family in residence! If there is a race war in these United States it will be triggered by the likes of Ted Cruz and his racist reactionary Republican Party colleagues who are collectively determined to return America to the dark days of slavery, segregation, and Judge Lynch!

The Real Culprits Behind Our National Debt. By Eric Smith

To those Conservative/Republican friends of mine (yes, I have a few) who say that we can't keep raising the debt ceiling because doing so only encourages us to keep spending money we don't have let me remind them that we only need to borrow money to pay our bills when we are running a deficit. On January 20th, 2001; the final day of Democratic President Bill Clinton's presidency, America did not have a deficit; it had a surplus. We did not need to borrow money to pay our bills because our government was bringing in more money than it was spending.

So what happened over the next eight years? Why Republican President George W. Bush, with the support & encouragement of those very Republicans in Congress who are now screaming about the dangers of deficits and deficit spending gave tax cuts to the wealthy and funded two wars and a prescription drug plan without raising taxes in order to meet the added expense of these three things. As a result our surplus disappeared, we again had a deficit, and Congress again had to go back to borrowing money in order to acquire the funds needed to pay the bills it wracked up.

Had it not been for the deficit spending of President Bush and the Republicans in Congress we would by this time have been so far ahead in terms of bringing in revenue that exceeded our expenses that we would no longer need to raise the debt ceiling today; in fact we wouldn't need the debt ceiling period because our nation's coffers would be growing exponentially by the day; providing more than enough money to fund Social Security & Medicare to infinity; rebuild our roads & infrastructure, build high speed rail, and eventually lower unemployment to the point where we could conceivably eradicate poverty itself, and reduce the number of economic classes in the United States to two; the wealthy and the middle class.

This is the sane fiscal path President Clinton and the Democrats in Congress set us on. It was a Republican President and Republicans in Congress alone who screwed this up. No one else bears any responsibility for the resulting economic calamity for it was of course the Republicans who held both the presidency and the House of Representatives in the first six years of the Bush Administration when these destructive economic policies took root. In fact, it was Republican Vice President Dick Cheney who said in 2004 that "deficits do not matter." Well of course he was wrong but as anyone who has ever worked with a budget will tell you; once you are in a deficit situation you must first momentarily increase that deficit and spend more money and spend that money wisely in order to eventually get out of it.

That's what President Clinton did in the 1990's when he reordered our national fiscal priorities in order to undo the damage done to our economy caused by exploding deficits under the Republican presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. That's what President Obama has been doing since he took office in 2009 and as a result our national debt has been dropping at a faster rate than it ever has in our history and but for Republican obstructionism in Congress we may very well have been operating at a surplus already with no need to even worry about the debt ceiling because we'd be bringing in more than enough money to pay our bills like we were doing at the end of the Clinton Administration.

So to my Conservative/Republican friends who keep complaining about runaway spending & deficits, don't be pointing your fingers at this president and those of us on the Left because we didn't vote for the fiscal idiots who put this country in this fix; you did! This disaster was caused by one party and one party alone; the Republican Party and so if there is any blame to be had; if you really wish to know who is actually responsible for this, then all you have to do is point to that mirror. The person looking back at you will be the person who bears ultimate responsibility for our national debt and our need to raise the debt ceiling for it is the person looking back at you who voted for those people who turned a national deficit back into a deficit.

A Question of Human Rights. By Eric Smith

To put the current LGBT debate in proper perspective, a person who is born gay has no more idea as to what it is to love a person of the opposite sex than we heterosexuals have of what it is to love a person of the same sex. It just so just happens that for whatever rhyme or reason it is heterosexuals who have gotten to make the rules when comes to determining what is love and who should and who should not marry whom. That doesn't make the heterosexual way of doing things any better. It is just a different perspective, that's all.

People are entitled to be opposed to the gay lifestyle. They are entitled to feel that marriage should only be between a man and woman and to use their religious beliefs as a justification for having such a position. Yet that is where the thing stops for while we have the right to belief as we wish on these matters, we do not have the right to use our beliefs as a justification to impose them on others.

We as heterosexuals do not have the right to tell the LGBT community that their love is invalid, that they can't marry the person of their choice, and should be condemned for a lifestyle and world view that is no more their choice than the lifestyle and world views we have as heterosexuals for in the end we are not dealing with LGBT rights or heterosexual rights; we are dealing with human rights, period.

A case can be made that homosexual behavior is a matter of choice. Well the same can be said for heterosexual behavior as well. We can come up with any kind of argument to de-legitimize or denigrate any kind of lifestyle or life choices that we personally find offensive but that doesn't make us right.

Now some will compare the LGBT lifestyle to that of people marrying an animal, a man marrying a boy, and a woman marrying a little girl. This kind of reasoning, if you wish to call it that, is not only flat out wrong, it is pure garbage. Why, because the animal and the child have no choice in the thing. In these matters the acts of love & marriage are not matters of choice, but acts of force; they are imposed by the human/adult and that negates the whole idea of love & marriage itself for love & marriage is grounded on mutual respect, mutual consent, and an understanding of both the two adult parties involved.

Again such is not possible when one discusses love & marriage between a human being and an animal or an adult and a child for neither the animal nor the child understands the true meaning of love & marriage and therefore by lacking this understanding it is not possible for either to give their informed consent to the actions in question and that is why comparing LGBT love & marriage to this is so fundamentally wrong for in the case of LGBT love & marriage we are talking about actions taken by two consenting adults and therefore that makes their actions & justifications for their actions identical to those of us heterosexuals in every way save the gender of their partners.

So again it all comes down to simple human rights; the fundamental right of two consenting adults to love and marry the person of their choice. The respective gender of the couples involved is completely irrelevant and if we find the image of a man kissing a man or a woman kissing a woman personally offensive then fine; we have the right to turn away but we do not have the right to try to stop them; we have no right to stop them whatsoever regardless of our personal beliefs or convictions to the contrary since it is their lives in question are not ours and thus how they choose to live their lives & with whom is none of our business. Let me repeat, the LGBT community has the exact same right as we heterosexuals do to live their lives however they see fit and to love and marry the person of their choice. In the end it is as simple as that.

The True Nature of Conservatism. By Eric Smith

I am a Liberal because of social issues and by that I mean I support a social safety net and I am 100% opposed to discrimination and policies that lead to discriminatory results on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and economic class. If these five things were taken out of the equation I'd be a Conservative hands down because i have no problem with smaller government if by smaller government you mean a smaller government streamlined to eliminate waste.

I have no problem with trickle down economics so long as the wealth that does trickle down is sufficient to put out the fires of poverty and keep the middle class afloat. I have no problem with a strong military and the use of military force to protect our national interests so long as it is properly determined that these interests are at risk and a failure to protect them poses a clear and clear and present danger to the nation.

I believe that Conservatism when exercised in the true spirit of Conservatism is beneficial to us all but that is not and has sadly never been the case in this nation. Conservatism in theory is a system where everyone shares equally in the sacrifice to make a country more lean and fit. it is practiced however in a manner that is equivalent to an exercise instructor and/or dietitian pushing their charges to the point of exhaustive starvation while at the same indulging in and getting fat off those very donuts they say it is unhealthy for everyone else to have.

Conservatism as practiced is really a form of Soviet Communism when you get right down to it. They keep telling everyone to do without, to tighten their belts, to stop spending so much while like the leaders of the old Soviet politburos they indulge in the very luxuries such as government regulated health care paid for by the taxpayers that they swear is bad for everyone else. Take a look at these so called Conservative leaders who keep preaching the virtues of fiscal abstinence. Take a good look at the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Louis Gohmert, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, Ted Cruz, and John Boehner and then ask yourselves when did these so called fiscal dietitians last miss a meal? When did they last not spend like a drunken sailor to indulge themselves in material goods they keep telling their fellow Americans to deny themselves; goods paid for in the form of taxes paid by those very Americans they keep urging to go on a fiscal diet?

These so called Conservatives are no different than those self indulgent pigs in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." These people are not Conservative; they are snout nosed moochers who grow ever more fat by feeding themselves at the public trough; denying sustenance to those they would rule while they get bloated over the spoils of public largess that they claim to be theirs and theirs alone.

To be a true Conservative, fiscal prudence does not equal social injustice. It does mean in leaving people behind, forcing people to fend for themselves, or those in need being forced to do without. True Conservatism does not mean scapegoating other people to advance partisan interests and nor does it mean seeking to rule by dividing Americans along the lines of race, gender, class, religion, economic status, and sexual orientation.

Yet most importantly true Conservatism does not believe in selfish self indulgence on the part of those who are privileged to lead for a privileged class is the antithesis of Conservatism in that a privileged class is one where you have leaders who tell the masses "to do what I say and ignore what I do."

A true Conservative believes that one should practice what one preaches rather than do what these so called Conservatives are doing today and that is to preach what they don't practice. So if Conservatism is to ever again be viable in this country it must become what it really is and stop being what it is now and has been for far too long; code for discrimination, intolerance, selfishness, and self indulgence.

The Truth About the Civil Rights Act of 1957. By Eric Smith

If the Republican Party of today was like the Republican Party of 1960 and by that I mean the Republican Party of Nelson Rockefeller, Lowell Weicker, Edward Brooke, etc., many African Americans, myself included, would probably be a Republican. Let me remind everyone that it was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon who argued that a determination of voter disfranchisement in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 be a determination that was made by the Federal Government which was later the case in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It was Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, supported by then US Senator John F. Kennedy who successfully argued that a determination of voter disfranchisement be left to local juries which of course meant that in those segregated times African Americans would never win a claim of being prevented from voting because of race. As racist as they were, it was Eisenhower & Nixon who argued that the poll tax & literacy tests should be eliminated and had these two had their way, it can be argued that the subsequent Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's would not have been necessary.

That is why so many African Americans were wary of JFK in 1960 including among many my parents & Jackie Robinson who actually voted for Richard Nixon and made no apologies for doing so at the time. President Eisenhower wanted to secure the African American vote for the Republican Party forever; that's why he did what he did. Lyndon Johnson did not want to lose his Senate seat or any shot at the presidency by supporting Eisenhower on this. He knew he would have to keep the South solid if he ever had any chance of becoming president which would not have happened if he supported the president and vice president's version of the Civil Rights Act of 1957; so too did John Kennedy which is why he supported the Majority Leader on this.

It was only after the violence associated with the sit ins, the Freedom Rides, and the Birmingham demonstrations that JFK finally came to his senses regarding Civil Rights and there is little doubt that had he lived Civil Rights would not have advanced as far as it did as soon as it did because he simply lacked the political wherewithal to push something like that through Congress. Johnson had those skills and the nation, chastened by the tragedy in Dallas, went along with him.

We on the Left do not do ourselves any favors by denying the obvious; by refusing to acknowledge what actually happened because it happens to be politically uncomfortable to do so. It doesn't matter what the other side does to distort the truth to fit their partisan purposes; what matters is our willingness to take ownership of what happened and not emulate our adversaries by trying to whitewash history in a foolish & doomed attempt to make our side look better in hindsight than it actually was. Let them, our adversaries, do that. Let's not do this ourselves. Let them be the hypocrites; not us, for only by owning up to who we were can we truly make ourselves better now and ensure that we are better tomorrow than we are today.

Bensonhurst Surprise. By Eric Smith

A few days after Yusef Hawkins was lynched on August 23, 1989 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn NY, my curiosity got the better of my common sense (as it often did back then) and I decided to walk alone and unannounced through Bensonhurst to the place where he was killed to say a silent prayer in his memory and to get an up close look at the type of neighborhood and people who'd killed. I didn't tell anyone I was going there that day because they would have said I was nuts and probably rightfully so but my experience with the Ku Klux Klan in Cummings GA two years earlier had made me damn near fearless.

As I rode the D train on its elevated tracks to my destination whatever concern I may have had about the possibility of being seriously hurt evaporated and I found myself being filled with rage over Hawkins death since his was the third such lynching in the Greater New York area in the past seven years with Willie Turks having been slain in Brooklyn in 1982 and Michael Griffith in Queens in 1982. Now the first two had been roughly my age but Hawkins was somewhat younger with myself being 24 at the time and him just 16 when he was killed. I was not prepared to swallow this craziness without protest; I'm still. Now I knew Reverend Sharpton was planning a major demonstration in Bensonhurst in protest of Hawkins death around the same time I made my venture into the area but I was neither sure of when or where.

So I got off the train, descended the stairs to the street, and began to make my way to the site of the shooting. Even though this was a Saturday, the area was strangely deserted; it was too quiet in fact and that raised my antenna because something didn't seem right. All of a sudden mobs of young white men appeared out of nowhere running past me with baseball bats & lead pipes screaming their heads off. I thought some sort of attack was imminent. They just ran past me with their pipes and their bats in the air as though I was not there and it wasn't like I wasn't conspicuous because from what I could tell there wasn't another person of color for miles.

In the midst of all this I saw a catholic priest standing in front of his church watching the passing mob and being suddenly unsure of the exact location of where Hawkins had been shot I walked up to him to ask for directions. Seeing me approach he yelled "take your hands out of your pockets!" He actually thought that I was literally coming there to rob him in broad daylight in the midst of all that craziness. When he realized that I wasn't there to harm him he asked me if I was looking for the staging area of the impending demonstration. Again I hadn't really thought about it to be honest; I was more interested in seeing where Hawkins had died than to march at that point.

Well he said that the gathering place was just a blocks up the street in the direction I was going. I thanked him and he said "you really don't intend to make your way there in the midst of all this, do you?!" he said while pointing to that huge bat & pipe wielding mob rushing past us. I just shrugged my shoulders and said "I really don't think I have a choice."

With that this priest shook his head and proceeded to give me the Last Rites of the Roman Catholic Church right there in the street in front of his church. We shook hands and he said "be safe son" at which point I disappeared into the mob.

Approaching the area where the police had gathered I came across a cop in full riot gear. His jaw damn near dropped to the street when he saw me, this scrawny ass black guy emerge unscathed through a mob of raging white men to ask him to point me towards the staging area. Without saying a word he raised his nightstick and pointed to where I needed to go. Moments later I joined the procession which marched up the same street from which I'd come. Those same jokers who'd rushed past me moments earlier were now screaming racial epithets at me & my fellow marchers at the top of their lungs.

There were throwing everything at us. I mean I had to do some serious ducking that day, let me tell you, but that didn't phase me because I expected it and of course been through that type of experience before. No, what got to me, and what has stayed with me ever since was what I saw moments. In the midst of this crowd and standing with his "white" friends was a black man as dark as coal giving us the finger and screaming "N*****s go back to Africa!" I kid you not, this really happened.

Making eye contact with him I yelled "Dude, have you lost your goddamned mind?" He just laughed with his "white" friends, gave me the middle finger with both hands and yelled "Hey n****r! YOU go back to Africa and take yo' black momma with you!" So if by chance you all happen to see a black man or woman at these Teabagger rally waving a Confederate flag and calling President Obama an ape don't be surprised. Sadly, there are a few of them out there; something I learned to my eternal amazement on that day in Bensonhurst so many years ago.

Grand Theft. By Eric Smith

Republicans are trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, pensions, etc. because they say they are entitlements. Well yes they are entitlements but they are entitlements people paid for out of their own pockets and when you pay for something guess what, you are entitled to have it.

Republicans say that what they're doing is reform. No, what they're doing is not reform, it is outright theft. They are seeking to take away and deny people those benefits that they paid for. They are literally stealing from the aged, the sick, and the infirm. In regards to their efforts to reduce benefits to veterans & their survivors they are literally stealing from those who paid for these benefits with their health and their lives.

Why the hell are so many people putting up with this? Why is it being tolerated in so many quarters? Stealing is stealing and it doesn't matter if that theft is being perpetrated by some rich white guy in Congress or some poor African American fellow in our inner city. It is the same damn thing because what it all comes down to is someone taking from or denying someone that which they didn't pay for, which doesn't belong to them, and which they have no right to have.

Just because that rich white guy uses a piece of legislation rather than hold a gun to someone's head like that poor African American fellow does in the inner city to steal from somebody doesn't make this thievery any less of a crime or any less evil. These two kinds of scoundrels are cut from the same soiled cloth. They are crooks; nothing more and nothing less!

Unconditional surrender! By Eric Smith

Those who are unreasonable lose their right to expect others to be reasonable with them. Those who are intolerant lose their right to expect others to be tolerant of them. For years the Republican Party & the Far Right has flat out refused the pleas of President Obama and others on the Left to meet them halfway, to be reasonable and to work things out through genuine compromise where each side gives a little and gains a lot. It has always been their way or the highway; their way or nothing at all.

It is telling how after the debt limit standoff of 2011 Speaker John Boehner said "We got 98% of what we wanted." This is telling for this reason; Republicans/Conservatives define "compromise" as getting 95% to 98% of whatever they ask for. The problem is not so much that this is how these people really think but that we Democrats in general and we on the Left in particular have allowed them to get away with this way of thinking & attendant behavior for far too long; so long in fact that it would be unrealistic on our part to expect them to think any other way now.

We have historically caved, given in, whenever they have accused us of being unreasonable, of refusing to meet them "halfway" whenever we have refused to give them at least 90% of what they've asked for and I'm like what type of damn fools have we on the Left been?! Seriously, if the Republicans/Conservatives want to accuse us on the Left of being unreasonable or unwilling to meet them "halfway" because we and President Obama have finally come to our collective senses and realized that giving them 98% of what they want is not compromise but conquest, so what?

Let them scream, let them holler, let them throw all the tantrums they want but don't give another inch of ground. Compromise, real compromise, is a 50/50 split; it is straight down the middle and if they can't accept that then fine; we will be more than within our rights to demand 100% of what we want and not allow them to have anything because we have allowed them to get too much of what they've wanted for far too long. There comes a time when the only sane thing to do once you have your foot on an opponent's neck is not to lift it up but to keep pressing down on your opponent's neck until you feel that neck break.

That is where we on the Left stand in relation to the Far Right now. We must press our foot down on its neck until it breaks. Forget compromise, forget being reasonable; we must say to them what President Truman said to the Japanese in 1945 and that is that nothing less than "unconditional surrender" is acceptable at this point. We must mean it and we must act accordingly. Unconditional surrender is what we Democrats and those of us on the Left must demand of the Republican Party & the Far Right. Nothing else will do and in light of their history and current conduct, nothing less than unconditional surrender makes a damn bit of sense.

The Economic Madness of Income Inequality. By Eric Smith

Today my friends I want to discuss income inequality; namely the difference in the amount of money a man earns and a woman who does the same job and works the same hours. Now it is generally understood that on the average for every dollar a man earns a woman only earns seventy seven cents. So forgetting deductions for taxes, Social Security etc; for every $10.00 a man earns a woman earns $7.70.

Now let's say the man and the woman work an eight hour day. In the course of that day the man will earn $80.00 whereas the woman will earn only $61.60 because remember the woman twenty three cents for every dollar she makes doing the same job and working the same amount of hours as the man and she is losing these twenty three cents not because the man is doing the job better but only because she is a woman. In short she is losing $18.40 a day for no other reason than that she's a woman.

Now let's go to the typical forty hour work week. A man earning $10.00 per hour working eight hours a day and five days a week will earn $400.00 because of course eight times five is forty. Now a woman who only earns only seventy seven cents for every dollar a man makes will earn what? Multiply $7.70 by 40 and you will come to $308.00. In other words a woman who does the same job and works the same hours as a man will earn $92.00 less than a man for no other reason than that she is a woman.

Now let's look at how income inequality stacks up over the course of a month. With a forty hour workweek you are talking about on the average four weeks so multiply forty by four and you come to one hundred and sixty. So a man who earns $10.00 hour will over the course of 160 hours earn $1,600.00. That will be his monthly taken. Now factoring in income inequality where the woman will only earn seventy seven cents for every dollar a man makes, what will be her take for the month? Multiply $7.70 times 160 and you will come up with $1,232.00. In other words with income inequality a woman who does the same job and works the same number of hours as a man will earn $368.00 less per month than the man not because she doesn't do the job as well but only because she is a woman.

Now let's top it off by looking at yearly income. A person works one hundred and sixty hours per month and there are twelve months per year. So to come up with the number of hours worked per year multiply 160 times 12 and you will come up come up with 1920 working hours per year. So a man earning $10.00 per hour will earn how much if he works 1920 hours per year? Multiply 10 times 1920 and you will come up with a yearly income of $19,200.00 for the man. Now a woman earning seventy seven cents for every dollar a man earns will make how much over the course of the year doing the same job and working the same number of hours. Multiply her $7.70 times 1920 and you will come up with a yearly income of $14,784.00. Now with income inequality how much less will the woman make per year solely because she is a woman. Subtract $14,784.00 from $19,200.00 and you will come up with $4,416.00.

So here is the deal with gender inequality. With a woman earning only seventy seven cents for every dollar a man makes who does the same job and works the same number of hours that the man does will earn $18.40 less per day, $92.00 less per week, $368.00 less per month, and $4,416.00 less per year than the man who does the same job and works the same amount of hours and earns $10.00 per hour, $80.00 per day, $400.00 per week, $1600.00 per month, and $19,200.00 per year!

That my friends is income inequality! Not only is it wrong and immoral; from a purely economic standpoint it is profoundly stupid since that lost income for a woman is taxable income; it is money that if paid could be used to help fund our schools, police & fire departments, among other things. It is taxable income that could be used to put additional funds back into Social Security to be used for higher Social Security payments upon retirement or in the event of disability. It is extra money that could be used to pay for food, clothing, housing; money that could be returned to the economic pot in the form of buying goods & other products; increasing the demand for them and necessitating the number of more people to help meet those demands and lower unemployment and pull more people out of poverty.

In short, income inequality based on gender ultimately shortchanges us all for it collectively lowers the quality of life for the nation, it makes woman economic second class citizens, and it starves our economy of needed funds in the form of additional taxable income. That is why it must be addressed and why it must be eliminated for income inequality has no place in a society that professes to be free for its existence denotes the absence of full freedom and is a sign of economic stupidity of the highest order.

My Dishonorable Heritage. By Eric Smith

Growing up I naturally wondered the origins of my ethnic makeup and being a light skinned African American in these United States I early on concluded that somewhere in my distant family past a white slave owner went into the slave quarters and raped someone. During a family reunion in 2004 I learned that that's exactly what happened. Sometime between 1800 and 1810 a man emigrated from Prussia (which is now Germany) and settled in either Kentucky or Tennessee (I'm not sure which). Anyway, like many immigrants he came to America in search of a better life & in order to be free and unfortunately like many such European immigrants in search of freedom he purchased slaves to tend to his property and help raise his kids.

One day in the time frame I have described, he went into the slave quarters and raped one of his female slaves. I don't know if she was still a girl, a young woman or what. It doesn't matter to be honest because she was of child bearing age and as such she bore him a son. The names of these three individuals; the slave owner, the slave, and her son, have been lost to history but that baby began the male lineage in my family. It is from him that I, my father, his father, and so on down the line are descended.

Now while I am not privy to the specifics I do know that this Prussian immigrant had children with his wife who later became slave owners themselves and who's descendants in turn fought on the side of the South in the Civil War; using the Confederate flag as the symbol of their "nation" while at the same time keeping the African side of my family in chains. In fact it is entirely probable that some members of my family owned other members; to my white ancestors the Confederate flag was a sign of freedom while of course on my colored side of my family that same flag symbolized their enslavement.

Now of course some will say, a century & a half down the line why can't I bury the hatchet; why can't I let bygones be bygones and accept the Confederate flag as a part of my heritage because the fact of the matter is that it is a part of my heritage; I have family members who are direct descendants of those who lived under & fought & died for that very flag.

Yet I never have and I never will feel anything other than contemptuous contempt for that part of my history because that history was borne out of enslavement and rape. I feel no pride in my slave holding ancestors. I do not honor the memory of those family members of mine who lay in Confederate graveyards someplace. I don't give a damn about their alleged bravery or their willingness to die for a cause. What cause? A cause dedicated to keep their fellow family members of color in chains? A cause determined to tear America in two so some Americans could continue to hold their fellow Americans in bondage? That's a cause for me to celebrate & honor?

I don't think so. I honor the memory of that woman, whoever she was, who was raped. I honor the memory of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I honor the memory not of my slave holding ancestors but rather those who were slaves; my ancestors in bondage who felt the lash from their fellow family members who saw them not for the brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins they were, but as the personal property they wrongly believed them to be.

If I were to in any way honor the heritage of the Confederate flag I would in effect be honoring the memory of that Prussian immigrant who came here in search of freedom for himself only to enslave others and damn the nature of the times that man is not worthy of any honor from me. So my hatred of the Stars & Bars runs deep. Yes it is a part of my heritage too but it is a part of my heritage for which I feel no pride, only contempt. The ghost of my raped & enslaved ancestor calls upon me to fight with everything I have against the mindset and symbol of her enslavement & rape and I will forever honor her memory and those of her enslaved descendants by never failing to heed that call; to speak out forcefully against all intolerance and all tolerance of that intolerance. To the memories of my ancestors in bondage, I owe nothing less.

Symbol of Hate. By Eric Smith

It sticks in my craw that not one member of the Republican Party, not one member of the Tea Party, and not one member of the Libertarian Party called out that racist Texas yahoo who waved the Confederate flag and gave a rebel yell in front of the White House during the government shutdown; not one and I am seething over that. I remember calling my parents in New York to say goodbye to them in January of 1987 because I was half convinced that I was going to get killed when I participated in second Cummings GA march the following day and so did they.

I remember the Confederate flags being waved by racist lunatics who had shotguns clearly visible in the back seat. I remember seeing signs like "N*****s ain't got no God!" and of a little boy getting slapped silly by his parents after smiling and waving at me as I marched past. I remember the sharpshooters on every overpass as our bus made the 35 mile trip from Atlanta to Cummings and I recall being told by the marshal on board not to rest my head against the window for fear that a sniper would shoot it off.

I recall the sign "Welcome to Cummings!" right next to which stood three people holding a large flag of the Ku Klux Klan; the flag that had a cross with a drop of blood in the center. I remember entering the town square just at its edge and being pressed against National Guardsman who stood between us and a murderous mob. I remember my college roommate saying "E, you wanted to see a Ku Klux Klansman well there he is!" and then looking over and seeing one of those clowns in full white sheets & pointed hood waving the Stars & Bars.

Yet most of all I remember seeing those three helicopters hovering overhead, the lowest of which was no more than twenty five or thirty feet above us and telling folks nearby that if one of those racist yahoos managed to shoot it down or it crashed on its own accord we were all dead. I remember how after the demonstration was over and we began to make our way back to the buses along the route from which we'd come, I broke ranks and rushed to the aid of a woman who had fainted and then hearing loud screaming as I stepped away after realizing that she was okay; only to be cursed out by my roommate who said that in the commotion I had nearly backed into that very Ku Klux Klansman I had seen earlier and who had caused the Guardsman to lower their face masks and charge into the crowd after calling one of them the "n" word and trying to throw something, probably a panic bomb designed to trigger a fatal stampede, and of course I recall that guard ordering me to look away as the National Guardsmen began to make their charge and my responding "Hell no! If I'm to die here I'm determined to see who does what!"

So from where I sit, the fact that those in the GOP, the Tea & Libertarian Parties stood silent in the face of that atrocity in front of the White House tells me that they are complicit in it; even if it is only a complicity of silence. You see people were enslaved because of that flag; people died because of it, and our nation was almost destroyed because of it. I am not interested in hearing sugarcoated platitudes or excuses for that kind of hateful conduct; to me words of dismissive justification are empty because I almost lost my life opposing that flag and for standing up against the hate and evil it represents.

To me that flag and all those who support it for whatever rhyme or reason are my mortal enemies. There is no middle ground; no room for compromise, accommodation, or debate with anyone or any party that thinks it is in any way acceptable; even if that acceptance is conveyed through one's refusal to speak out against it. The Confederate flag is pure evil, period, and by either embracing or showing tacit acceptance of that flag through a refusal to condemn it, the GOP, and the Tea & Libertarian Parties are equally evil; evil not only in their embrace of a hateful symbol of slavery, segregation, and Judge Lynch but of treason as well for make no mistake, that flag was ultimately created for one reason and one reason alone; to keep human beings enslaved and to forever rip the United States of America apart and if that wasn't the essence of evil then I don't know what is.

What if? By Eric Smith

There are two words that will forever haunt me from this latest political crisis in Washington and those two words are what if? What if we Democrats had been this united when we went up against Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972? What if we Democrats had been this united when we went up against Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush in 1980, 1984, and 1988? 

What if we Democrats had been this united in the Congressional midterms in 1994 and 2010? What if we Democrats had been this united when we went up against George W. Bush in 2000 & 2004, and what if we Democrats had been this united in the January 2010 Massachusetts senatorial race? What if? What if? What if?

If the lessons of these past two weeks have taught us nothing else, it is that we Democrats have not lost as we have for the past forty five years do to a dearth of good ideas. We have lost due to our lack of a backbone. We have lost because we lacked the courage to stand up & fight for our convictions. We have lost because we have allowed ourselves to be bullied, and we have lost because we showed the fear of cowardice in the face of zealotry.

In short we have lost because we have not been united, because we have not recognized our strength, and the power we have to make this a more just nation and mold a better world. We have lost because we have not been true to ourselves.

So let that be our lesson; that united we stand, divided we fall, and that whenever we fall, whenever we falter, so too does America.

Race is the reason. By Eric Smith

History will one day rightly record that in the end there was one reason and one reason alone that the United States of America for the first time in its history defaulted on its national debt and tanked its economy as well as that of the global economy and that reason consists of but one simple, four letter word; race. The Republican Party in general and its core constituents in particular consisting of the Tea Party hates the color of President Barack Obama's dark skin. Period! End of story! That's it! It is racism and racism alone that is responsible for this economic disaster. Nothing more and nothing less.

Hijacked By Hate! By Eric Smith

The terror felt by those doomed souls on the four hijacked planes of 9/11 echoes the growing sense of fear as more and more of us awaken to the realization that these Republican terrorist radicals who have hijacked our country, now stand on the verge of crashing our economy just as those terrorists crashed those planes. What we the American people see now are our own Twin Towers & our own Pentagon rushing towards us. Let us hope that our fate as a nation is far better than the fate of the passengers of those planes; that in this case though the crash will be terrible & devastating that in the end only the hostage takers themselves will die and that we the people of these United States and our beloved nation will somehow survive.

Hate By Any Other Name. By Eric Smith

Every person of color who is anti gay needs to understand that their homophobic intolerance is the moral equivalent of the Confederate flag as it relates to people of color for at the heart of both is a blanket condemnation of people not because of what they've done but because of who they are and over that which they have no control. The same Bible used by those who are anti gay to say that homosexuality is immoral and runs counter to the Will & the Word of the Almighty is the same Bible that was used to justify the enslavement of people of color and to say that we are less than human and considered immoral & dirty in the eyes of the Almighty.

There is no separating of the two. Hate is hate. Intolerance is intolerance and as such racism, sexism, and homophobia are all cut from the same cloth of bigotry, intolerance, and hatred. One cannot say that they are not one and be any of the other two for if you are one of them you are all of them. If you are a racist you are no different than a person who is sexist and homophobic. If you are a sexist you are no different than someone who is racist & is homophobic, and if you are homophobic then you are no different than someone who is racist or sexist.

You are either none of these things or you are all of them for each is built upon the same foundation of intolerance & built of the exact same stuff; only the outward appearance of each edifice is different. In every other respect they are identical.

So if you are a person of color who is anti gay or sexist, keep your objections to the Confederate flag & to racism to yourself for you have forfeited your right to proclaim them to be objectionable. If you are a woman who is racist & homophobic, then don't complain about your potential loss of your reproductive rights and your inability to earn equal pay for equal work for if as a woman you are racist & homophobic you have forfeited your right to complain about the ill treatment you receive because you are a woman, and if you as a gay person are racist & sexist, then do not complain about those who would deny you the right to marry the person of your choice because you are gay because by being a racist or a sexist you regard those of a different race & gender as not being fully human, and as such you lose your right to complain about those who treat you as being less than a full human being because you are gay.

What it all comes down to is this; our right to expect to be treated justly is predicated on our willingness to do justice by others. It is grounded on the simple rule that if we are to expect just treatment from others that we must first be willing to treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated; to either practice what we preach or stop preaching what we don't practice. It is all as simple as that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/10/14/when-veterans-attack/?hpid=z2

Why I am Pro Choice. By Eric Smith

Upon entering my classroom in the Fall of 1975 or the Spring of 1976 I noticed some literature in the form of a magazine on my desk, on the desk of my fellow students, and that of our teacher. It was early and the teacher had not gotten in there yet and it was just me an a few other students milling around killing time before class started. Now at the time I and my classmate were all ten, eleven years old so being naturally curious we picked up the printed material and looked it over. What I saw gave me nightmares for years afterwards and the images haunt me even to this day.

What I saw that day in full color were pictures of recently aborted fetuses in test tubes and jars. Some were shredded beyond recognition. Others had fully developed features including a full head of hair. No one had to tell me even then that what I was looking at were human beings and of course when I realized what was behind these pictures I instantly developed a personal hatred of abortion that persists to this day.

However, as horrified as I was I knew that there had to be something more to this than what I saw. That's when I started asking questions of grownups such as my teacher, my older siblings who by then were all in their twenties, my parents, grandparents, and neighbors. Dad of course was enraged that I had seen those images because he knew they had been placed in that classroom by a local Right to Life Conservative group upset over the recent Supreme Court decision in Roe versus Wade which had come down only a few years earlier in 1973 but that said he and others saw it as a teachable moment for me and acted accordingly by educating me on abortion and its history.

That's when I learned about the back alley abortions of coat hangers, pliers, etc., that before Roe versus Wade had been the tragic lot of women who lacked the resources to leave this country and have their abortions performed where abortions were safe and legal. It was during the period immediately following my shock of having seen these graphic images of recently aborted fetuses that I realized that there had to be some logical reason why women would be compelled to go this route that was beyond the full understanding of any male.

It was then that I learned that while a male could make a baby by giving his sperm, that only a woman bore the burden of carrying that child inside of herself to term. As a male I knew even then that I could not and could never begin to grasp what it was like to carry a life inside of me for nine whole months; to understand the profound changes it would make on me in terms of how I felt and how I looked. I knew that as a male I could not begin to grasp the awesome sense of responsibility that goes with carrying a child to term and even more than that I knew that I could never grasp what went into deciding to abort that life before it was born; of being forced to decide whether or not the fate which awaited that child once born would be far worse than never allowing that child to be born at all.

That is why within a few short weeks of seeing those horrible pictures I became Pro Choice and have been so ever since because as I man I knew that I would be forever free of having to bear the burden of carrying a child to term and thus be spared the agony of having to decide whether or not that future child would be better off aborted or born.

There are times when it is more important to support a person's right to do something than it is to oppose that right because doing so means that we seek to stop that which gives us personal offense. There are times when we have to respect the right of others to do that which we personally oppose because by being unable to walk in their shoes and thus see life as they see it, we are not qualified to pass judgment on their decision making or the reasons they reach such these decision. Such is the case in regards to abortion.

I am a man and as such I have absolutely no idea what it is like to be a woman; to experience what a woman experiences; especially when it comes to bearing a child. So when it comes to abortion & women's reproductive rights I have to defer to the woman, period, because by not being a woman I know that any attempts I make to impose my beliefs, and viewpoints on her are likely to be wrong because I will be approaching it from a male's perspective, not a woman's, and as such my assertion that my judgment in these matters should trump hers will be rightly perceived by the female as my regarding her as being less than a full human being because my feelings will trump hers on matters that only she as a woman can possibly understand.

Why Republicans really hate President Obama. By Eric Smith

Let's cut to the chase and that is what Speaker John Boehner and his Tea Party Hatriots are doing in regards to shutting down the Federal Government and threatening the full faith and credit of this country has little, if any, to do with differences in policy and everything to do with a hatred of the color of the skin of the President of the United States. In Speaker John Boehner's eyes and the eyes of his fellow haters of the GOP & the Far Right, the sight of a person of color occupying the presidency is an abomination of the highest order. Just as the exploits of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the magnificent play of Jackie Robinson on a Major League Baseball diamond in 1947 did, the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama turns turns all notions of white supremacy and a master race on its ear.

Every action that Speaker John Boehner is taking right now & every utterance he makes at this point is saying in effect that "the American people do not want a black man calling the shots." That's it in a nutshell for what else about President Obama besides the color of his skin can any reasonable or sane person find objectionable? This man, the product of a mixed race marriage and growing up without his father managed to put himself through Columbia University and secured a law degree from Harvard University while becoming the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Rather than seek to enrich himself after acquiring his education he chose instead to help the least fortunate among us by serving as a community organizer.

He later taught law itself and married a magnificent woman who was an outstanding lawyer in her own right and he went on to be a faithful husband to his wife and a wonderful father to his two little girls. No shadow of personal scandal has come close to touching this man and since assuming the presidency he has conducted himself in a cool, calm, and compassionate manner that has brought credit to the presidency and the United States itself.

President Obama is the American Dream made real and so it is not surprising that his rise has earned the enmity of those to whom America's promise of full equality & equal opportunity for all are nothing more than sweet sounding soundbites to be uttered whenever convenient. For people like Speaker John Boehner may speak of their belief in freedom for all but as proven by their thoughts, words, and deeds what they really believe in is freedom for the few. What they really believe in is an America where the poor and the middle class cater to the needs & whims of the privileged and the rich; an America where white is always right, and white males should always reign supreme.

President Obama strips these Rights Wingers feelings of entitlement arising out of their white skin & male gender like an emperor is stripped of his clothes, revealing their naked bigotry and their intellectually puniness to the world. That, along with the color of his skin, is why they so hate him because by merely existing and holding his high office, President Obama exposes the lie that is their lives and casts a harsh light on the vanity of their false pride and phony distinctions.

This is why those of us who really believe in the American Dream, and so celebrate this country's greatness and promise, honors this president and holds him in that high esteem that through his life & living example he come to so richly deserve. For in the end when we honor the best among us we celebrate the best within ourselves forever glorifying the kind of people we are and the type of nation we may yet become.

Traitor Boehner

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Traitor-Boehner/339408882872576

Wake up!

Well, well, well. It's morning. Wake up everybody! Wake up! Wake up and smell the Republicans! Unfortunately we can smell these fools everywhere nowadays and the stench ain't pretty. Wake up America and gag at the filth we have wrought. So wake up, wake up, and wake up!

Green over Black. By Eric Smith

Here's something to keep in mind and that is even the most Conservative Republicans in the most Conservative of districts receive Social Security and disability payments. Those checks, while unaffected by the current government shutdown, will stop cold on October 17 if the debt ceiling isn't raised by then and America goes into default. 

Green trumps black every time and so when these white Conservative Republicans who see their Social Security & disability checks stop coming they're not gonna hate the black man in the White House, they're gonna hate those white Conservative/Republican fools in the Congress who took the green from their wallets. That's where this is headed and no amount of spin from these Republicans is going to change that fact for as the old saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks.