This and that

I am reading “Indecent Assembly: The North Carolina Legislature’s Blueprint for the War on Democracy and Equality,” which lays out how former House Speaker Thom Tillis, current Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, along with former governor Pat McCrory have since 2011 waged war on the poor people of this state, black and white, but with special concentration on black voting.

“All-white Republican caucuses, dominating both houses, have behaved essentially like a white people’s party – attacking the participatory rights, antidiscrimination guarantees, educational opportunities, and equal dignity of African Americans,” wrote law professor Gene R. Nichol. Because of those actions, more than twice as many African American Tar Heels live in poverty as whites and twice as many as whites are unemployed. A disproportionate number of black children attend the state’s highest poverty schools, are much more likely than white students to be punished or suspended, many do not graduate from high school and far fewer than whites go on to secondary education. As adults, they are much more likely to be in prison – 57 percent of the prison population is black though they make up only 22 percent of the state’s population. Study after study has shown black people face disparities in housing, policing, employment and health care. Nichol calls it racial subordination. Our state government also repealed the Racial Justice Act, which required courts to vacate a death sentence where it could be proven to be “sought or obtained on the basis of race.” So it is not just subordination, it could mean death.

The war waged by the General Assembly included poor white people too; all women; the education system North Carolina used to brag about; the justice system; anyone who identifies as gay, bisexual or in any way outside the white Christian sexual boundaries; and, above all, the right of each citizen’s vote to count. Gerrymandering and voter suppression have been their tools to maintain power.

The Republican legislative majority has indirectly dismantled the network of local hospitals in rural areas by refusing to expand Medicaid. Without the support of a health system, poor people in the rural counties have not been able to afford health care and therefore could not use and support those local hospitals. At least 400,000 people have been denied healthcare, and the General Assembly leaders never have given a good reason. The message is “No additional poor Tar Heels are going to get free health care on our watch, even if the federal government wants to pay for it.”

If you are poor of whatever color, you pay more. The General Assembly has passed a flat tax rate, which means we all pay at the same rate, millionaire and chicken plant worker alike. Then they repealed the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit so that people making $30,000 to $40,000 had to pay more income tax. Next they slashed the state unemployment compensation rolls, taking more than 170,000 away from benefits they previously qualified for, and they cut the maximum weekly benefit from $535 to $350 as well as reducing the number of weeks from 26 to 12. The final burden added to the poor Tar Heels was adding sales tax onto car and appliance repairs. Oh, and they also passed a bill that cut off food assistance, SNAP benefits, in 77 of the poorest counties in the state, and never mind that the average $30 benefit was paid in full by the federal government.

All of us have experienced the attacks by Tillis, Moore, Berger and their white cronies on our voting rights. First and foremost has been their insistence on the necessity of a picture ID followed by a narrow list of acceptable IDs. They wanted to cut early voting; they packed the state Board of Elections. They never saw an environmental law they liked, and they loved to gerrymander voting districts to maintain their dominance in the legislature.

There is much more. It is a book packed with facts and a righteous anger. One early reader was William E. Leuchtenburg, William Rand Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of history, University of North Carolina, and past president of the American Historical Association: “In this electrifying new book, he [Gene R. Nichol] demonstrates that the assault of the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature on the poor is more than ultraconservative; it represents nothing less than a war of annihilation against our most revered, most fundamental constitutional rights.”

I cannot read more than a chapter, often less, because the facts and the figures make me so angry – and sad and hopeless. Tramadol is different from other traditional opioid drugs in that it not only acts as μ-opioid agonist, but also affects monoamines, modulating the http://medimagery.com/buytramadol/ effects of neurotransmitters involved in pain modulation (such as serotonin and norepinephrine, which activate the downward paths of pain suppression). Our only recourse is the voting booth or the mail-in ballot, but of course Republicans seem to want to outlaw them. Please read this book.

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