Tag Archives: referendum

just another rant … Republican … david perdue

I actually searched his website for information and I found that he is seemingly doing business with folks for folks and by folks overseas and NOT for the US… This is a bit scary! I admit I could be wrong, but I can see American jobs being subjected to lower wages and or going overseas where we all know a living wage just does not seem to exist. I am willing to be corrected, but this person seems bad for trade, for jobs and again, do your research. I am no expert nor am I a one-issue voter, but any candidate that advocates “a right to life” definitely chooses to ignore “a Woman’s right to exercise choice” from all backgrounds and the need to control their own lives and or engage in family planning is a person without compassion or knowledge. I wonder if David Perdue, is one of those Republicans that should stay a businessperson, though if you go to his website, jobs, Women and a safer country all seem at risk in his hands in my opinion … anyway, David Perdue on the issues as a Senate candidate… Furthermore, I don’t know if running for Governor changes anything stated below

Defending Our Values

There are principles I share with a majority of Georgians. I believe that we should promote a culture that values life and protects the innocent, especially the unborn. I also believe that we must protect traditional marriage, keeping it clearly defined as between one man and one woman. Being pro-life and believing in the sanctity of marriage are my deeply held personal convictions. I will not waver in defending them if I have the privilege of serving you in the U.S Senate.
See David’s response to National Right to Life

The National Debt

The crushing national debt has surpassed $17 trillion. We must act now to rein it in before it becomes unsustainable. Of course we have to cut wasteful spending and unnecessary bureaucracy. We have to eliminate the billions of dollars in failed government programs and redundant agencies. However, the best way to begin getting the debt under control is to grow the economy without a tax increase.

Comprehensive Tax Reform

In the midst of a terrible economy, this would be the worst possible time to raise taxes on anyone. Too many families and too many businesses are struggling to get by. I will not support a tax increase of any kind. Furthermore, the federal tax code is too complicated and misaligned. It should be completely overhauled as a means to promote growth and encourage more domestic economic investment. My preference is the Fair Tax.

Term Limits

I have never run for public office before, which in my opinion is a good thing. Just look at the results we have gotten from career politicians. They have created a crisis in Washington. We can’t expect them to fix it. That’s why I support term limits: a maximum three terms in the House, two terms in the Senate. I’ll stick to that commitment myself. Until we get term limits in place, we should enforce them at the ballot box by voting the career politicians out of office.
See David’s term limit pledge

Balanced Budget Amendment

Every Georgia family understands that you can’t perpetually spend more than you take in without going bankrupt. The problem is that the professional politicians in Washington won’t make a tough decision. I would absolutely vote for a balanced budget amendment. However, we need immediate tax and regulatory reforms along with appropriate spending cuts so that we have a right-sized, responsible budget sooner rather than later.

Repeal ObamaCare

ObamaCare is an overreaching federal program that will actually reduce the quality of health care and increase costs. I am one of the millions of Americans that had my personal policy cancelled after being told I could keep it. To make matters worse, Obamacare is discouraging full-time job creation. The consequences of politicians passing a massive bill without reading it continue to emerge. We need to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with more affordable free market solutions.

Revitalizing American Manufacturing

I believe that we are on the verge of revitalizing American manufacturing. The private sector is primed to create quality jobs by manufacturing innovative products that require a skilled workforce and high-tech facilities. These products are needed for domestic consumption and more importantly for exports to foreign markets. But the manufacturing industry’s renewal can be stunted if we don’t correct bad energy policies, the lack of infrastructure, failures in education, and the punitive tax code.

Increasing American Exports

The best opportunity for long-term economic growth is to boost our exports to emerging economies worldwide. In fact, I have started my own exporting business where we ship American-made products overseas. They have an increasing demand for American goods, both quality manufactured products as well as other needs such as agriculture products. Increasing exports requires elected leaders who understand global trends and how to remove barriers to growth. If so, we can create a new age of American prosperity.

Local Control of Education

I grew up the son of two teachers. I married a teacher. I have seen firsthand that parents and local educators make the best decisions on how to meet the unique needs of students. For example, my mother started a program for gifted students that is still a model for schools across Georgia to this day. True innovation starts at the local level, not in Washington. We should dismantle unnecessary federal bureaucracy, including the push for Common Core, and get that funding into the classrooms.

Energy Independence

Decades after an oil embargo led to gas rationing and long lines at the pump, we still don’t have a plan for energy independence. Instead, our own government limits our options by being overtly hostile towards domestic energy producers. In the process, they force us to rely on energy resources from countries that wish to do us harm. With the right leadership, we can finally have a domestic energy policy that is environmentally responsible in the long-term while meeting our current needs.

Secure Our Borders

Securing our borders is a matter of national security. The debate in Washington over illegal immigration has become unnecessarily complicated. Out-of-touch politicians have created another massive bill, like ObamaCare. Simply put, we need to strictly enforce current laws and any new laws should be straightforward, focusing on true border security. Until the federal government gets serious about immigration security and enforcement, discussing anything else is pointless.

The Right to Bear Arms

Growing up in Middle Georgia, I have been hunting since I was young, but I understand the 2nd Amendment is not only about hunting. It is hard for me to question the wisdom of the Founders. They crafted a Constitution that has only been amended 27 times in over 225 years. Ten amendments were their own, designed to explicitly protect certain rights. The 2nd Amendment is clear. We have ample gun laws on the books now, and I believe we should focus on enforcing them.
See David’s response to the National Rifle Association

source: His website

If anything is incorrect, please comment … Vote For Stacey Abrams – Nativegrl77

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Politics | Funding for black farmers, Indians stalls again |blame Republicans

06/21/2021 Nativegrl77

Repost

August 5, 2010

Funding for black farmers, Indians stalls again

Despite broad support, legislation to finalize $4.6 billion in settlements with black farmers and American Indians stalled in the Senate again Thursday amid partisan bickering.

By BEN EVANS

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON —

Despite broad support, legislation to finalize $4.6 billion in settlements with black farmers and American Indians stalled in the Senate again Thursday amid partisan bickering.

Lawmakers from both parties say they support resolving the long-standing claims of discrimination and mistreatment by federal agencies. But the funding has been caught up for months in a fight over spending and deficits, with Republicans and Democrats arguing over how to pay for them. Read more …click on the link below

Politics | Funding for black farmers, Indians stalls again | Seattle Times Newspaper.

July 22, 2010

Senate rejects $3 billion Indian trust settlement

The U.S. Senate has rejected a $3.4 billion government settlement with American Indians that had been added to a much larger war-funding bill.

The Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. —The U.S. Senate has rejected a $3.4 billion government settlement with American Indians that had been added to a much larger war-funding bill.

The Senate passed the almost $60 billion bill funding President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan late Wednesday – but not before stripping out the settlement and $20 billion in other domestic spending approved by the House.

The Senate’s approval would have given the Obama administration the authority to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont. Between 300,000 and 500,000 Native Americans claim the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held in trust by the government.

The House attached the settlement to the war-funding bill earlier this month.

Thursday’s vote marks the second time the settlement has failed to pass the Senate. It was originally included in the Democrats’ jobs-agenda bill that was caught in a filibuster last month.

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Massai seek return of the ancestral lands they lost at gunpoint

06/03/2021 Nativegrl77

Jeevan Vasagar in Laikipia district, Kenya

a repost

Sunday 25 July 2004 20.39 EDT

Using a long stick with a hooked tip, Mary Kinyanga tugs a branch of the thorny savannah tree and brings juicy green seed pods cascading down for her goats.

As her flock munches audibly, she casts an envious glance at the neighbouring white-owned ranch, where guests are arriving by light aeroplane for a wedding party.

“They are giving us big problems,” Ms Kinyanga says of her neighbours. “They have grass. We need the land. It belongs to us, but if somebody goes grazing there, they get put in jail.”

Driven from their land at gunpoint in 1911, Masai tribes in Kenya’s Laikipia district are demanding the return of their ancestral territory. Their campaign pits them against a handful of white farmers whose families created vast ranches on the land after the expulsion of the tribes.

But the farmers accuse the Masai of destructive overgrazing of the land, and fear that attempts to reclaim the territory will spell doom for its wildlife and ruin a lucrative tourist trade.

The Masai campaign is based on a belief that a treaty signed with the British colonial government in 1904 gave the colonial power a 100-year lease on their ancestral lands, which will expire next month.

“Everyone is aware of the impending land issue,” says Michael Dyer, whose family owns the 13,000-hectare (32,000-acre) Borana ranch. “We had nothing to do with the ancestral land being taken away. We do recognise there is an issue [but] we are concerned about the ecological preservation of a very valuable resource.”

The vast Laikipia plateau stretches across 2m acres of mountain, savannah and forest from Mount Kenya in the east to the Rift valley in the west. Local wildlife experts say it is home to more endangered wildlife than anywhere else in Kenya, including more than half the country’s rhino population and 80% of the world’s population of Grevy’s zebra.

In recent years, prompted by falling beef prices, the white ranchers have shifted from farming to ecotourism for the ultra-rich: prices at some lodges top $500 (£270) a night.

“It does not matter to me who owns the land,” Mr Dyer says of the Masai claim. “It is more important what happens to it. Sections of the land are vastly overgrazed.”

There is a stark and visible contrast between the regions of Laikipia where the Masai are free to wander and the commercial ranches. The hills where Mary Kinyanga’s goats graze are bare and brown; the grass is baked a bright yellow in the dry season, and there is little sign of wildlife.

The white ranches are lusher and vast herds of elephants, giraffe and antelope roam behind electric fences.

But an expert on the resettlements argues that the Masai were forced into overgrazing by British colonial policies which took their best land and confined them to reserves.

“Of course they overgrazed,” says Lotte Hughes, an east African historian at St Antony’s College, Oxford. “They were confined to reserves, banned from leaving them, and banned from selling their surplus cattle because the British were obsessed by the idea of ‘disease-infested’ native cattle alongside exotic, imported stock.”

Dr Hughes criticises the wildlife preservation argument as the “Fortress Conservation model”.

“People don’t seem to realise that the landscape is shaped by people and their domestic herds,” she says. “For centuries there was no problem.”

The campaign to win the return of Laikipia was launched at the weekend by Osiligi, the community group which was instrumental in the Masai’s successful campaign for compensation from the Ministry of Defence for alleged injuries from British army ordnance.

In September 2002 a group of Massai and Samburu tribesmen received a £4.5m settlement for injuries and deaths blamed on munitions left over from British soldiers’ training exercises. That payment, and a further £500,000 settlement in February this year, has encouraged the belief that the Masai can win further compensation.

At a press conference staged with theatrical flair, the community group gathered 18 Masai elders, who dressed in their traditional scarlet robes and chanted a battle song adapted to their new theme.

“God, give us back our land,” a wizened Masai chief crooned, while the men who sat around him in a semi-circle cried their assent with a deep-throated “heh”. “May the world listen to us,” the chief chanted.

James Legei, manager of Osiligi, says: “The movement of the Masai from Laikipia marked the end of us conducting our [religious] ceremonies, because there are sacred sites that are now within electric fences.

“We hope that by August 15 our land will get back to us, and we can go to visit the graves of our great fathers.”

The belief that there is a 100-year lease expiring in August 2004 is the Masai equivalent of an urban myth, however. The 1904 agreement cleared the tribe from prime land to make way for white settlers. Their territory was reduced by two-thirds, but they were permitted to stay in Laikipia. But rather than a lease, the treaty promised the Laikipia plateau to the Masai in perpetuity.

That promise was broken between 1911 and 1913 when the Masai were forced to move from Laikipia to distant reserves.

Dr Hughes says: “I have every sympathy with the Masai. Their sense of betrayal at the hands of the colonial British government is justified and rooted in strong historical evidence that I have spent several years researching.

“But I must point out – with the greatest respect to my Masai friends – that some of the claims [they are making] are factually incorrect. [The 1904 agreement] was not a lease.”

The descendants of the white settlers are conscious of the need to contribute to the wellbeing of the people the British dispossessed. Even in the colonial era, some Masai returned to work for the British and built close ties with white landowners.

Some ranches in the district are now “community-owned” – run by Masai as farms and tourist lodges with the aid of their white neighbours.

Profits from the big ranches have been spent on mobile clinics and schools for the Masai, and the white farmers employ many Masai as park rangers, drivers and domestic staff.

Both the white residents and some Masai fear that the land claims will lead to violence, which will scare away the tourists and ruin livelihoods. David Masere, community liaison officer for the Laikipia Wildlife Forum, says: “It is a fact that this land was taken from the Masai. But if force is used, then we are going to have conflict and we are going to lose a lot.”

~ Culture & History, ~ In the Library

FREEDOM RIDERS : A Stanley Nelson Film : American Experience – In memory

05/14/2021 Nativegrl77

Get Inspired

The World Premiere: In 2010 at Sundance Film Festival, US

A Documentary Competition

Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Murder of Emmett Till) returns to the Sundance Film Festival with his latest documentary FREEDOM RIDERS, the powerful, harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders’ belief in non-violent activism was sorely tested as mob violence and bitter racism greeted them along the way.

FREEDOM RIDERS features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the rides firsthand.

“I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, I won’t be back today because I’m a Freedom Rider. It was like a wave or a wind that you didn’t know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there.” — Pauline Knight-Ofuso, Freedom Rider

Despite two earlier Supreme Court decisions that mandated the desegregation of interstate travel facilities, black Americans in 1961 continued to endure hostility and racism while traveling through the South. The newly inaugurated Kennedy administration, embroiled in the Cold War and worried about the nuclear threat, did little to address domestic Civil Rights.

“It became clear that the Civil Rights leaders had to do something desperate, something dramatic to get Kennedy’s attention. That was the idea behind the Freedom Rides—to dare the federal government to do what it was supposed to do, and see if their constitutional rights would be protected by the Kennedy administration,” explains Raymond Arsenault, author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, on which the film is partially based.

Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” came from all strata of American society—black and white, young and old, male and female, Northern and Southern. They embarked on the Rides knowing the danger but firmly committed to the ideals of non-violent protest, aware that their actions could provoke a savage response but willing to put their lives on the line for the cause of justice.

Each time the Freedom Rides met violence and the campaign seemed doomed, new ways were found to sustain and even expand the movement. After Klansmen in Alabama set fire to the original Freedom Ride bus, student activists from Nashville organized a ride of their own. “We were past fear. If we were going to die, we were gonna die, but we can’t stop,” recalls Rider Joan Trumpauer-Mulholland. “If one person falls, others take their place.”

Later, Mississippi officials locked up more than 300 Riders in the notorious Parchman State Penitentiary. Rather than weaken the Riders’ resolve, the move only strengthened their determination. None of the obstacles placed in their path would weaken their commitment.

The Riders’ journey was front-page news and the world was watching. After nearly five months of fighting, the federal government capitulated. On September 22, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued its order to end the segregation in bus and rail stations that had been in place for generations. “This was the first unambiguous victory in the long history of the Civil Rights Movement. It finally said, ‘We can do this.’ And it raised expectations across the board for greater victories in the future,” says Arsenault.

“The people that took a seat on these buses, that went to jail in Jackson, that went to Parchman, they were never the same. We had moments there to learn, to teach each other the way of nonviolence, the way of love, the way of peace. The Freedom Ride created an unbelievable sense: Yes, we will make it. Yes, we will survive. And that nothing, but nothing, was going to stop this movement,” recalls Congressman John Lewis, one of the original Riders.

Says Stanley Nelson, “The lesson of the Freedom Rides is that great change can come from a few small steps taken by courageous people. And that sometimes to do any great thing, it’s important that we step out alone.”

CREDITS
A Stanley Nelson Film
A Firelight Media Production for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Produced, Written and Directed by
Stanley Nelson

Produced by
Laurens Grant

Edited by
Lewis Erskine, Aljernon Tunsil

Archival Producer
Lewanne Jones

Associate Producer
Stacey HolmanDirector of Photography
Robert Shepard

Composer
Tom Phillips

Music Supervisor
Rena Kosersky

Based in part on the book Freedom Riders by
Raymond Arsenault

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is a production of WGBH Boston.
Senior producer
Sharon Grimberg

Executive producer
Mark Samels

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I have been to the Mountaintop: April 3 ~ 4,1968

04/04/2021 Nativegrl77

April 4, 1968, The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King, pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.

In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people’s marchon Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers’ protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.

On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop…And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King’s casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.

The evening of King’s murder, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gun running enterprise. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. The investigations all ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him–such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4–Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who informed them of his intent to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He died in 1998.