Progressives (Liberals)

I may be guilty of saying something like that so I guess I have to respond.



But there have been men — even "uncolored" men — who have worked effectively to right those wrongs. And while it may be good for young female members of minorities to see a black woman in that role, it's good for young white males to see men who aren't examples of toxic machismo. Hell, it's good for everyone to see leaders who are actively and responsibly working for the public good.

I'm glad to see the defense of Harris's record as a prosecutor. I thought it was a bum rap from the start.

About Kamala the cop by AfroPunk

https://afropunk.com/2019/01/kamala-harris-has-been-tough-on-black-people-not-crime/

KAMALA HARRIS HAS BEEN TOUGH ON BLACK PEOPLE, NOT CRIME

By Blake S. January 25, 2019 69.2K Picks

A couple months ago, I was chillin’ at my potna house watching football. During a commercial break, we started talking about Kamala Harris — and my potna’s older cousin shouted, “Kamala Harris! She been lockin’ niggas up at Renee (referring to the Oakland courthouse) since way back in the day and was doin’ it with a smile on her face.” He wasn’t wrong. Kamala Harris has spent her career as the district attorney of Alameda County, San Francisco, and as the Attorney General aka The Top Cop of California.

As someone from the Bay Area and living in Oakland, I am constantly reminded of her history of locking up Black people in the Bay Area. Her track record consists of terrorizing Black communities through the prison industrial complex and she has consistently shown herself to be an enemy to the masses of Black people.

While I admit the symbol of having a Black woman as president sounds nice, it doesn’t exclude Kamala from being critiqued. I operate under the political belief that there are no good presidents. Presidents are just figureheads for the white supremacist settler colonial state. I aim to have a principled critique of her record that advances Black political thought, yet Twitter has been full of misogynist critiques of Kamala. It is important we critique her while avoiding misogynoir, as there is no place for misogynoir in the Black liberation movement.

Whether it was declining to advocate for legalization of marijuana in California, in which Black people are arrested at the highest rate. Or her failure to support body cameras for the police while simultaneously opposing legislation that would require her office to independently investigate police shootings. Kamala is not for the people. She even defended the 3 strikes law, in which Black people are incarcerated at a rate 12 times higher than whites. Kamala Harris has demonstrated through her actions that she does not value Black lives, but rather supports our death via the carceral state.

Kamala’s support of the death penalty, which is a modern day form of lynching that has executed hundreds of innocent people, and also disproportionately affects Black people proves that she doesn’t value Black lives. Kamala even advocated that an innocent Black man named Kevin Cooper, who was a death row inmate and had a trial that was rooted in overt racism and corruption, be executed. She advocated for this even though Kevin had DNA evidence that proved his innocence yet Kamala Harris opposed it until the New York Times exposed the case.

Furthermore, America has no moral ability to be able to decide who lives and who dies. The death penalty is fundamentally racist, yet Kamala supports it — furthering her record as a tough on crime politician.

Not only has she failed to support policies that might improve the lives of Black people, she has defended the need for prison slavery. What’s dangerous about Kamala is that she weaponizes “civil rights” language however her actions prove otherwise. For instance, she said “the idea that we incarcerate people to have indentured servitude is one of the worst possible perceptions…I feel very strongly about that. It evokes images of chain gangs.” Despite making the connection between prison labor and chain gangs —she “pushed back against a federal order to expand an early parole program, arguing that it would deplete their stock of prison labor, especially inmates who fight wildfires”. These inmates make a dollar an hour, which is a form of slavery. Kamala is not only a super cop, but an adamant defender of the institution of policing that is rooted in slave patrols.

Kamala Harris evokes the language of being a civil rights leader for Black people. In her video announcement for president, she weaponized words like “truth, justice, and equality” and her campaign slogan is “for the people”. This is propaganda, and this campaign strategy isn’t something new, rather it follows what I refer to as the Obama Plan. The Obama Plan is a campaign strategy that will center a civil rights type narrative such as “hope” and will also use all the elements of Blackness we like in order to get a Black person elected. This campaign uses the popular aesthetics of Blackness despite the actions of Harris being fundamentally anti-Black.

Kamala used this plan by announcing her run for presidency on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day that celebrates the radical legacy of a Black man who stood for the liberation of Black lives with both an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist politic. Kamala Harris announcing her run for presidency on MLK Day is disrespectful to King’s legacy and is a spit in the face to the Black radical tradition. Her announcing on MLK day is propaganda. It’s meant to fool Black people that she’s actually for us, despite her actions terrorizing the Black community through her role as a prosecutor. It shows us how Black liberals will weaponize the aesthetics of a freedom fighter in order to strengthen the united states colonial empire.

It is important that we understand that the “criminal justice system” is built upon the legacy of chattel slavery, and that it’s primary role is to lock up Black, Brown, and poor people to maintain a workforce (re: slaves) that supplies America an endless amount of free labor. This being said, Kamala has been the slave auctioneer and sending Black people to prison in order to maintain this endless supply of free labor. Yet some claim that she was a “progressive prosecutor”. How can there be a progressive prosecutor if the foundation of the criminal justice system is rooted in slavery and the genocide of the indigenous? If she truly was a “progressive prosecutor or a good prosecutor,” she would make sure that prosecutors do not exist. There were no good slave owners, or slave auctioneers, just as there are no good prosecutors.

Kamala Harris is what the Black radical tradition calls a neo-colonialist. Neo-colonialism is the integration of a colonized person into the colonized system in order to enact the policies of the colonizer. That being said, Kamala is a Black face doing the job of a white supremacist system. Neo-colonialism is white supremacist colonial propaganda, and it is meant to fool the masses of oppressed people that becoming the oppressor leads to freedom. Don’t be fooled by symbolism. As Obama’s presidency showed us, symbolism does not mean progress for the masses of Black people.

It is clear that Kamala Harris is not for the people. She is for the American empire. Don’t let her identity as a Black woman, or her identity as an AKA, or her status as an alumna from Howard University fool you into thinking she is actually for us: Kamala don’t give a **** about you niggas.

In both cases, whether it's Medicare for All or reforming our immigration policies, the forces of outraged populism will turn the argument into "They're going to take away your private insurance plan" and "They're for open borders". It's difficult to defend these accusations in a few words — that's partly why populist outrage is so successful at commandeering the sound byte debate.

Obviously Sanders, or any of the other M-for-A Dems should they win the election, aren't going to abolish the private health insurance market on Day One. But that is what millions of contented voters now depend on. And no one knows whether a wide-scale socialization of healthcare can be achieved. It's surely going to run into trouble in the courts, if it even makes it into legislation at all.

And sure, it's just as important for an illegal alien to receive medical care as it is for a citizen. I really can't see us letting them die, "Sorry, no medical attention for you." And if these people are treated in emergency rooms the public will end up paying for their care the same way we pay for the care of indigent, uninsured citizens. But it's very easy for populist outrage to overpower this argument — as the push for the ACA so clearly demonstrated, for many people "poor lives don't matter".

Don’t I know it! California blacks are pretty consistent in their negative opinions of her.

I think that the author - more or less - speaks from the European point of view - for instance, liberalism has a different meaning here than in the USA; Labour unions act different to those in the USA.
(In Germany - to speak of my experiences - trade unions have a history reaching back to the liberals of the German revolution in 1848. They still play an important role in the German economy and society - any collective agreement in any kind of work is done with a trade union as one of the partners, with quite a great spirit of cooperation between the two sides of industry.)

I agree that immigration plays a part in the ‘happiness’ scale. I know there are solutions.

But, another huge element in the equation is corrupt, unresponsive government. As I said, the lower countries are still grappling for control. The Nordic countries passed that mark.

Kamala earns 2 Pinocchio 🤥 for dodging the truth about her Marquis de Sade prosecutorial history.

Dang, Hightor. Why do you defend her?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/29/kamala-harriss-careful-answer-jailing-parents-whose-kids-missed-school/%3foutputType=amp

I'm not so sure. It has become increasingly difficult to find a doctor in the Bay Area who will accept Medicare (and in some cases any form of insurance). This is simply the reaction of the producers of services to attempts by others to put limits on their charges for them, and how they deliver their services, particularly in cases where the potential demand exceeds the available supply. Frankly speaking, I don't know of any system other than competition and increased supply to achieve better services at lower prices.

Medicare for all will simply degrade the quality of service provided for all its beneficiaries, particularly for those getting it now. If enacted it will simply become a universal equivalent to Medicaid. The only way to make it work will be for the government to, in effect make all medical service providers its employees and subject to its rules for what is provided - a very bad outcome for everyone.

Mere redistribution solutions don't work because those involved change their behavior to protect their self-interest. Government action to increase the supply of doctors and medical practitioners and make the markets for their services, and the costs attendant to them more transparent and visible to the consumers will likely work much better.


A lot here depends on who does the reorganizing; what they do; and what are the other consequences of their actions - the usual stuff that reformers & Progressives leave out of their calculations.

Agreed. However, in my comments I was carefully using the terms and meanings suggested by the author: that included the European definition of Liberalism. Indeed I identified my own views using his categories.

I agree with you about the character of Unionism in Germany. However the cooperation you describe is a bit unique. It certainly doesn't figure much in the history of Unionism in the UK, the United States, Italy or France.

A lot of doctors like to refuse Medicare patients—because healthcare in the US is a for profit business. People die.

Everybody will accept Medicare under the new program.

It is a travesty that people are turned away because of a profit margin.

Don’t you think so, George?

Our system will fundamentally change. I barely remember what it’s like to be able to go to the doctor every time I need to.

How do you know that? Will providing medical care under the terms and prices established by a new government bureaucracy be required of all medical practitioners? I believe that would be a violation of our Constitution, not to mention the freedom of the people who choose to enter the medical profession.

I’m going to go dig into that, but if healthcare is a human right, doctors wouldn’t be able to turn people away.

I am interested in the language of this policy, so I’ll get a look at it.

Thank you for a very rational response. Disagreement on these threads usually yields a very different result.

The tough part here is rationalizing the postulated right of people to medical care with the freedom of those who choose to study hard and provide it. They aren't slaves.

I'll readily agree that our current system is a rather odd combination of some of the worst features of government and capitalist controls, and, further, that the notion that we now have a free market in which consumers even know the cost of the services provided, is mostly an illusion.

I’ve always appreciated and respected your conversational tone—and you’ve tipped me off to more specific reading, so well worth my time.

Lash, at this point I'm not endorsing her. My "defense", such as it is, is that I simply feel that the issue has been blown up out of proportion. No, I don't know every detail of each case. In general, I think kids should go to school, and if an investigation reveals parental negligence the law must be enforced.



Now, as with "three strikes and you're out" the law may be too draconian; that's not Harris's fault, it indicates that the legislation was flawed. But I'm not going to attack her for fulfilling her role as a prosecutor.

What countries qualify as "lower countries"?

In the conversation, the countries George and I mentioned were the Nordics and the UK, US and France. I was pretty sure he'd know which ones I meant.

I quite sure she meant to write "low countries", a term which we both know refers to their elevations above sea level. Indeed, I believe her intended meaning was evident to all, including yourself..

I understand being attacked for doing your job having served on the town board of my little town for 20 years. And if Lash were doing her job correctly she would also understand. I know many teachers and not one was not attacked for doing their job by irate parents.

I felt pretty clear that you weren't endorsing her, but when you said you thought her behavior as prosecutor had been overblown-- that is a defense-- and I'd like to know what it's based on.

She's already been trying to mend fences over it. She wasn't simply 'doing her job', she championed the policy.

Kamala Harris regrets California truancy law that led to arrest of some parents
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-kamala-harris-truancy-20190417-story.html

Her behavior as prosecutor seems closely tied to the D party Clinton was seeking to create. Clinton's anti-black policies were designed to attract conservatives and shake the party free of progressives. He created a climate in the D party that demanded some public slap back of blacks. He handled the 3-strikes law, Biden authored part of that, Kamala threatened parents in CA with jail for truant kids... Clinton had his Sister Soulja moment...

I can't understand why blacks in politics put up with that ****. Mind boggling that some still do.

Sorry. I just went off on that. I guess my problem with her is she does and says what is best for her career at the time. I suppose most politicians do, but her specific behavior really terrorized a lot of poor people-- and that affects mostly black people -- and now, she wants to use the colors of the African flag in her campaign and weaponize her color against those people. Crap, sorry. I went off again.

I'd just like to know why you defend Kamala.