Sis. Kiilu Nyasha adds on to Mumia's essay: "With a 'Brutha' Like This":

Sis. Kiilu Nyasha adds on to Mumia's essay: "With a 'Brutha' Like This":
1/31/08 My 2 cents, KN

Bearing in mind that Black folks have always suffered the worst of America's ills, let’s not forget that in 1991, Billary was campaigning on promises of health care reform and welfare reform.

As Karim Hirji noted in his paper, Confused Consent , “The promise to reform the delivery of health care in the United States was a key factor which clinched Mr. Clinton’s victory in 1992...[W]hat Clinton could not do by legislation or fiat, major corporations achieved through financial power. Many nonprofit institutions were acquired by for-profit firms. Mega-mergers in the industry led to more hospitals and physicians coming under the control of fewer corporations.” The “stridently pro-corporate posture of the Clinton administration...led to direct to consumer (DTC) advertisement of prescription drugs, a practice in which the U.S. stood alone....by 1998, that expenditure rose to more than a billion dollars...That was in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising in medical journals, and a veritable horde of sales representatives, one per 15 doctors, that went directly after the physicians.” The end result was a dramatic increase in health care premiums and uninsured Americans, rising from 38 million to the current 47 million with no health coverage. HMOs are making profits in the billions while denying life-saving treatments to their clients. Patients are being deprived of adequate care due to policies that value profits over the good health of their "customers," who are being released from hospitals quicker and sicker every year. Some are just dumped into the streets. I know this from experience as well as observation.

"The 1st Black President" turned a blind eye to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans during the Hutu/Tutsi genocide. Then had the audacity to go to Rwanda and say he was "sorry." He's sorry all right.

Clinton also gave us the the Crime Bill of 1994 and the ‘96 Anti-Terrorist and Effective Death Penalty Act that raised the bar for death penalty appeals, added some 60 crimes to be punishable by execution, allowed immigrants to be jailed and deported for reasons of "national security" on the basis of secret evidence (paving the way for the Patriot Act); unleashed 100,000 new policemen on urban streets while gutting habeas corpus, provided for “three strikes and you’re out” laws and sentencing provisions requiring prisoners to serve 85% of their terms; awarded grants to states for new prison construction providing up to 75% of total construction costs.

As a result, 3,300 new prisons were built in the 1990s at a cost of $27 billion, with another 268 in the pipeline. The annual cost of running America's prisons now tops $60 billion from just $9 billion in 1980.

A report released in 2002 by the Justice Policy Institute titled "Cellblocks or Classrooms" found that in the past two decades the population of black male inmates grew three times as fast as the number of black men enrolled in higher education. One study reported that one in eight young Black men are imprisoned compared to one in 63 whites. The newest statistics note that Blacks are arrested at more than six times the rate for whites. For drug offenses, Blacks are arrested at 10 times that of whites, while drug usage among both groups is equal.

In signing the Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 and the subsequent 1997 budget compromise, Clinton broke the back of the New Deal. The government commitment to protect the poor against the worst ravages of the market was ended. The top 20 percent of income earners in the United States would gain after-tax relief, while the bottom 20 percent of Americans would suffer deepening poverty. And there would be no safety net to cushion the fall. Needless to say there’s been a dramatic rise in the poverty rate and homelessness, not to mention workers with three jobs.

The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida 2000 and elsewhere across the country further validates the following statement:

"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the Democratic parties." ( W.E.B. DuBois)