Tag: news

Alligator Auschwitz

Pat Liberty

The difference between Alcatraz and Auschwitz is the difference between having due process to convict one of crimes versus rounding up people who look suspicious simply because of their black or brown skin. The facility in Florida is a concentration camp. Full stop.

The conditions of the camp are also reminiscent of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. According to truthout.org, detainees (read prisoners) are “enduring inhumane conditions including inadequate and maggot infested food, inability to bathe, flooding and denial of religious practice.” There are also documented cases of sexual violence against women, failure to give adequate care during pregnancy and lack of treatment during a miscarriage.

The people imprisoned at Alligator Auschwitz are supposedly the “worst of the worst” criminals, but there are documented cases of US citizens being detained despite having no criminal record or current charges against them. Even if they WERE the “worst of the worst” they deserve to be treated as human beings.

The facility uses outside contractors to run day-to-day operations. This amounts to millions of dollars in federal funding given to the occupant’s cronies. Less than $2.00 per day is spent on food for those imprisoned at the camp. Prisoners receive one meal a day and inadequate water to tolerate the stifling heat.

It is nauseating to realize that there is merchandise advertising “Alligator Alcatraz.” Mugs, T-shirts and hats are available online and connected to the Republican party in Florida.

Cruelty has always been the point. This is not primarily about deportation. It is about treating people as less than human and scaring them into admitting just about anything to get out of there. If this facility were operating outside the United States, there would be political and social condemnation. There is precious little protesting from the American people, a sad commentary on our apathy and willingness to acquiesce to avoid landing on the occupant’s radar.

It will not be long before people die, suffer mental breakdown or attempt suicide. Given the fact that there is not even an accurate list of who is in the camp, loved ones may never know the fate of the prisoners.

This is below inhumane. This is torture sanctioned by the state of Florida and the occupant’s authoritarian regime. Somehow the news that all people are created in the image of the Divine and bear the imprint of God’s love and grace has not reached the Everglades in Florida.

In addition to the conditions at the prison, there is also impact on the delicate Everglades ecosystem. The degradation of this environment endangers the entire state of Florida and beyond. There are also tribal lands that are being desecrated by this monstrous monument to the depth of human cruelty. Apparently, the sanctity of God’s creation and the inherent dignity of tribal peoples have not reached the occupant or the Florida government.

And we who are aware of these atrocities are complicit if we keep silent. Contact your Senators and Representatives. This is not a partisan issue. This is a human dignity issue. This is a moral crisis for our nation and for each person who claims this nation as home. The lack of public outcry and the willingness of so many to purchase merchandise advertising this human rights debacle signals that the country is okay with this. Make it clear that it is not okay. Phone calls, letters, e-mails are all ways to register your outrage about Alligator Auschwitz. Act today. People are waiting for relief and justice.

Unfit for Office

Pat Liberty

While one could reasonably argue that the entire administration of the occupant is unfit for office, the particular focus of this blog is the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..

Historically this position has been held by a physician with a broad knowledge of public health. Kennedy is neither a physician nor does he have a grip on the complex issue of public health. Under his reign of error, we are seeing vaccine rates diminish. So far this has led to a measles outbreak in Texas. It is only a matter of time before we see other diseases previously eradicated make a comeback due to declining vaccination rates.

Currently there is a resolution in the Senate (S.Res.217) which expresses the sense of the Senate that Kennedy does not have the confidence of the Senate or the American people to faithfully carry out the duties of his office. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Kennedy said to Congress: “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” Well, no kidding.

Kennedy is overhauling the Department of Health and Human Services and slashing millions of dollars from its congressionally approved budget. This is part of the occupant’s war on science as key health agencies are being closed. The norms for scientific review of health data are being ignored, research agencies are being defunded and public health department funding is being slashed.

According to NPR, the US public health service started in the 1700’s when doctors cared for seamen who were sick or injured. Their work helped prevent the spread of yellow fever and smallpox in the 1800’s and led to research on sanitation as a way to prevent disease.

Around 1900 the federal government started making sure that the food and medicine Americans consume is safe. Both the public health corps and the food regulation organization operated independently until President Dwight Eisenhower created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953.

Today the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for Medicare and Medicaid and the marketplace for health insurance created by the Affordable Care Act. Under Kennedy’s errant guidance, the HHS budget is being slashed by $880 billion over the next ten years, most of it affecting Medicaid.

Medicaid is jointly financed by states and the federal government but administered by states within broad federal rules. Cuts to Medicaid at the federal level leave states with difficult questions about how to fund the gap.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading independent sources for health policy, research, polling and news, these cuts represent 29% of State Medicaid spending per resident, 6% of state taxes per resident and 19% of education spending per pupil. No matter how you do the math, the impact is profound.

What we can expect as Medicaid is slashed is poorer health outcomes for America’s most vulnerable populations, increased hospital admissions and increased mortality. The population hardest hit by Medicaid cuts will be the poor, who already have disproportionately higher mortality rates. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs assures that poverty will continue to claim more lives.

The mark of any civilized society is how well it cares for its most vulnerable members. With Kennedy at the helm, the poor are even more screwed than they already are.

Kennedy is unfit to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Contact your Senators today to encourage their support for S.Res.217 calling for Kennedy’s ouster.  

Word Scrubbing: An Exercise in Making People Invisible

Pat Liberty

Word scrubbing is the practice of erasing language that points to particular people or things. Word scrubbing makes a whole list of vulnerable people invisible. According to Elizabeth Power, M.Ed., Adjunct Instructor, Georgetown University Medical Center and founder of The Trauma Informed Academy, the following are words that can trigger additional scrutiny in a grant application or request for program funding from the Federal Government:

  • Activist, activism, advocate, advocacy, background, barrier, barriers, biased, bias, BIPOC, Black and Latinx
  • Community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive
  • Disabilities, discrimination, discriminatory, diversified, diversity
  • Enhancing, equality, equal opportunity, equitable, ethnicity, excluded
  • Female, fostering, gender, groups, hate speech, Hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias
  • Inclusion, inclusive, increase, indigenous community, inequalities, inequity, institutional
  • Justice, LGBTQ, marginalize, minorities, multicultural, polarization, political, privilege, prejudice, promoting
  • Race, racial, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, status, stereotype
  • Trauma, underappreciated, underrepresented, underserved, victims, women

This list includes most of the people Jesus spent his life reaching out to, loving and ministering to.

Jesus fed the hungry, made the blind see, cared for the poor and included everyone in the circle of God’s concern and love.

By removing these words from the lexicon of public programming and grant funding, the populations represented behind these words are essentially removed from public view. They are “disappeared” like political dissidents in authoritarian regimes. It also ensures that these populations will continue to be underserved and underrepresented in the public arena.

By erasing these words, the US is rewinding the clock at least 50 years to a time when the differently abled, wounded, gender divergent, and abused, to name just a few, were routinely excluded from resources, programs and funding that helped heal and empower them. Removing funding for these groups also isolates them from the mainstream of human life by taking away resources they need to function in society.

Many of Jesus’ miracles were as much about restoring people to their community as they were about healing physical maladies. For instance, in biblical times, women who were menstruating were considered ritually unclean and had to absent themselves from their community. In the story from Luke 8, a woman with an issue of blood was perpetually isolated from her community. When she was healed, not only was her physical health restored, she also was able to rejoin her community.

This word scrubbing policy directive in our time is a move toward a historically unkind and limiting time in the lives of many people. It is despicable that this is now public policy for funding initiatives. It begs the question, what kind of programs will be funded? Summer camp for blond hair, blued eyed rich kids from the suburbs? Private limo transportation for Buffy and Muffy to their piano lessons?

It is yet another of the occupant and his cronies’ fly by night slash and burn public policy initiatives that stay under the radar.  If the day’s news hasn’t given you reason to contact your legislators, this is it. If we stay silent, the populations that are being “disappeared” don’t have a chance.

The Changing Face of Education

Pat Liberty

Last week the occupant signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. Ultimately the Department can only be abolished by Congress, but with a Republican majority in the House and Senate this should not be a problem.

What is a problem, however, is the implications of this action. The occupant is moving to privatize education through block grants given directly to states. States already control a majority of the money that funds education, so his stated reason for dismantling the department is disingenuous at best.

Federal dollars are approved by Congress and given to the Department of Education to allocate to states. Giving the money to states as block grants means that parents could use vouchers to send their children to private schools. As Project 2025 states, parents should have the authority to determine how their children are educated. Translation: parents can use public monies to send their children to private school.

In the current system, federal funds are primarily used to support underperforming schools and offer additional resources for poor children. Children with disabilities, 95% of whom are educated in public schools, will have less access to adequate education that accommodates their disabilities. Block grants that allow parents to purchase vouchers means that public schools, especially those in low-income communities will have fewer resources.

The Department of Education champions enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in education and assuring that every student has access to an education that will help them reach their potential. Dismantling the department means defunding programs that feed, educate, and protect vulnerable and underserved students.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), eliminating programs like Title 1 will divert money from schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty. Support such as reading specialists and smaller class sizes would be eliminated. Reading scores nationally are falling. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), national reading scores declined for both fourth and eighth grade students. Reading scores fell to a record low in 2019 and 2022. A record number of students performed below basic reading competency.  Eliminating reading specialists seems ill advised at best. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, 180,000 teaching positions could be lost, affecting 2.8 million students in low-income communities.

It is likely that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be moved to the Department of Justice. This would practically eliminate the Office’s capacity to protect students against discrimination based on gender, race and disability. The absence of strong federal oversight would leave millions of students vulnerable to discrimination.

Under this cockamamie plan the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would be transferred to another agency, as yet undefined. Over 7.5 million students, or 15% of the student population, receive special education services. Administering funds as block grants to states is unlikely to result in funding special education programs. The public schools that will get the left-overs after parents purchase their private school vouchers will have inadequate resources to fulfill the Individual Education Plans (IEP’s) that many students have to accommodate their learning disabilities.  

The overall goal is to privatize education which will leave the poorest and most vulnerable students, especially those with special needs, in underperforming public schools. The whole of Project 2025 is geared toward victimizing our most vulnerable populations. The Department of Education is just the latest casualty assuring that those in greatest need will get the fewest resources.

The Department of Education is four percent of the entire national budget. Surely eliminating four percent of the budget does nothing to address the national deficit, but it consigns thousands of children to inadequate education that will allow them to function in the future.

Assuring that every child gets an education is a foundation of a stable society. Students that are unable to read or function in the work-a-day world will be trapped in low-wage jobs that will continue the cycle of poverty. How this claims to have Christian values is mind-boggling. Jesus railed against unjust social and political systems that trapped people in poverty. Dismantling the Department of Education is just the latest casualty in Trump’s misguided plan to victimize the poor and under-resource those in most need.  

More on Policy 2025: Department of Health and Human Services Goal 3# Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families

Pat Liberty

Project 2025 is the conservative agenda for social, political and economic policy. It repeals crucial protections for marginalized populations, slashes social safety net programs and penalizes the poor. The following is an excerpt from the Health and Human Services section of Project 2025.

“Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families. Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children, but the United States is experiencing a crisis of fatherlessness that is ruining our children’s futures. In the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems. By contrast, homes with non-related “boyfriends” present are among the most dangerous place for a child to be. HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies. In the context of current and emerging reproductive technologies, HHS policies should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them. In cases involving biological parents who are found by a court to be unfit because of abuse or neglect, the process of adoption should be speedy, certain, and supported generously by HHS.” (Project 2025, Page 453)

Here is the practical translation of what this means for an already marginalized segment of Americans:

  • Hard won civil rights for the LGBTQI+ community are on the chopping block. In Trump’s first reign of error the administration repealed all healthcare regulations that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. As a result, LGBTQIA+ persons can now be denied both public and private health insurance, including Medicaid.
  • Equal marriage may be made unconstitutional. Repealing equal access to marriage has devastating consequences for thousands of families. Family health insurance policies will end. Visitation rights during times of illness will be curtailed because gay partners are not “family.” If same sex marriage survives at all, it will be seen as inferior to heterosexual marriage.
  • The Gender Policy Council (GPC) will be dismantled. This was established by President Biden to advance gender equity and equality at home and abroad. The GPC developed policies addressing economic security, access to healthcare, gender-based violence and education for women and girls with special focus on marginalized communities.
  • The Trump administration will threaten the Biden administration’s expansion of gender and gender identity discrimination protections. Biden’s policies were in alignment with the landmark Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. This ruling affirmed that LGBTQIA+ individuals are protected under federal nondiscrimination laws. It also recognized gender identity as a protected class of gender.
  • The current administration will erase and criminalize transgender behavior. The broad expression of transgender behavior will be seen as pornographic. By labeling transgender expression as pornography and then outlawing pornography, the trans community’s identity will be erased in the United States.
  • Project 2025 will change the name of the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Life. 
  • Funding for gender affirming care for children and adults will be cut or eliminated.
  • Lack of treatment for children with gender dysmorphia will likely lead to increased depression, anxiety and rates of suicide.
  • LGBTQIA+ families will be banned from the Foster Care system. There is already a critical shortage of foster homes. This will exacerbate the problem considerably.
  • Same sex couple adoption will be banned. Same sex couples have higher adoption rates (21%) than different sex couples (3%).
  • Sex education for minors will end.
  • Transgender military service will end.
  • Parental rights regarding how their children are referred to and which pronouns are used will be outlawed.
  • Tax advantages will be extended to ONLY heterosexual married couples.

This is far from an exhaustive list. Those who believe that God’s love extends to all people regardless of age, sexual/gender identity or sexual orientation should rightfully be horrified. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is a God of compassion, mercy, justice and love. Hatred and injustice have no place in God’s being and it should have no place in those who claim to be God’s followers.

There is thinly veiled “religious” language throughout the Project 2025 document. It is fundamentalist, socially archaic and spiritually abusive to anyone who is not white, heterosexual and married with children. The guarantee of religious freedom for all people means that those who claim a different, more loving stance toward the human family should have an equal say in the legal process that defines religious expression. Make no mistake, the lines of separation between church and state are becoming dangerously thin. The “religion” that is shaping the state is White Christian Nationalism.

There needs to be a howling pushback to the religiously repressive undertones of Project 2025. Our legislators are hearing far too little from their constituents about the social and political implications of Project 2025. They are hearing even less from people of faith. If you are concerned about your freedom to practice your religion as you see fit, you need to write to you legislators and object on legitimate religious grounds. Our religious rights as well as our social and political rights are on the chopping block.

Period

Pat Liberty

Period

No, it’s not the one that comes at the end of a sentence. It’s the one that comes about every 28 days to women of particular ages. In a post Roe v. Wade world, there is increasing fascination about menstruating people.

This has nothing to do with the health of those menstruating people.

Rather, it is about controlling their bodies. It is about limiting access to abortion and birth control. It is about usurping agency from their own being. A total of 41 states restrict access to abortion in some way. Some states, like Alabama and Arkansas, make no exception for rape or incest. Other states allow abortion under specific circumstances such as fetal viability, gestational duration, or threat of harm/death to the pregnant person. Even in states where there are exceptions for rape or incest, they are essentially meaningless. In order to qualify under the law, the sexual assault must be reported within forty days. Incest must be reported to law enforcement within one hundred and forty days. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 63% of rapes are not reported. Only about 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to law enforcement. With such a dismal reporting rate, and the stipulations imposed, the rape/incest exception is useless. Further, even if the criteria for pregnancy termination are met, there is often no one to perform the procedure. This means travelling to another state, which is not an option for many poor pregnant people, who are disproportionately BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

In other states, abortion care must happen before six weeks of gestation. Most pregnant people do not even know they are pregnant at that time. It is another “allowance” that is essentially meaningless.

According to http://www.ReproductiveRights.org, Project 2025 outlines a detailed plan to limit access to abortion care and other reproductive services. This includes but is not limited to:

  • Ending access to medications like Mifepristone, which accounts for 63% of all abortions.
  • Allowing hospitals to deny medical care to pregnant persons in crisis.
  • Prosecuting people for shipping or transporting abortion pills and supplies across state lines.
  • Establishing an abortion surveillance system requiring states to report personal data of all patients receiving abortion care.
  • Restricting access to birth control, emergency contraception and other reproductive health services.
  • Tracking pregnant persons who are “at risk of having an abortion” (Missouri).
  • Paying a bounty of $10,000 to individuals who report a person seeking abortion care by crossing state lines (Texas).
  • Tracking pregnant persons through their internet search histories and social media. (Platforms track data using algorithms and selling the data. Setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and using encryption can limit access to search history, but it isn’t foolproof. A public computer is a better choice.)

These tactics are front line ammunition to control menstruating people who may unintentionally get pregnant. They also feed the larger goal of keeping those who give birth subservient to and dependent on men (though there are few consequences for men who do not support the children they create). 

While access to reproductive health services is being severely limited, social safety net programs are being slashed: WIC, SNAP and Early Intervention to name a few. As a result, persons with children, particularly BIPOC people are trapped in a cycle of poverty that is almost impossible to escape.

Sr. Joan Chittister writes, “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t?” Because you don’t’ want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.”

For many conservative evangelicals and white Christian nationalists, all their anti-abortion rhetoric is wrapped in a neat little package, branded with a Jesus sticker and called Christian. In truth, Jesus was unwaveringly concerned about and committed to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. What was true then is still true…the most vulnerable among us are women and children.

You would think the government has better things to do than peer in the windows of women’s bathrooms and see who is peeing on a stick. But it is all part of the re-entrenchment of a patriarchal society where white, cisgender, heterosexual men are in charge. Whatever progress we have made in dismantling the patriarchy is on the line in Project 2025. And it all begins by trolling your social media.