Testimony to the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee

The lawsuits regarding Flint have a resource available to them to make their case and that is decades of records at "Human Rights Watch." They should consider it. They testified before Congress and are recognized as a reliable source of information on many fronts regarding structural racism.

June 10, 2020

...Based on decades of investigations and advocacy in the United States, (click here) Human Rights Watch’s submission analyzes the links between current disparities in Covid-19 and racial disparities in protecting: 

(1) The right to health for communities of color, especially for women of color; (2) The rights to water and sanitation for communities of color; 
(3) The right to be free from racial segregation; 
(4) The right to be free from racially discriminatory and unnecessary policing and incarceration; 
(5) The right to safe and healthy working conditions; and 
(6) The right to the highest attainable standard of living. The United States is obligated under international human rights law to overcome the longstanding structural discrimination that is evident in Covid-19’s disparate racial impact....

...Access to safe and affordable water is essential to human health, and to following basic recommendations issued by US federal and independent public health experts on hand hygiene and Covid-19. Despite this, communities of color, especially Native Americans living on reservations, are facing Covid-19 without adequate access to water.

Despite the country’s wealth, many people in the United States live with unsafe drinking water. According to a UN expert, the United States ranks 36th in the world in terms of access to water and sanitation. Reports estimate that nearly 77 million US residents are served by drinking water systems with one or more violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. While the data are not available to disaggregate this number by race or income, we know that race and income are central factors in both urban and rural water vulnerabilities.

The human right to water is derived from the right to the highest attainable standard of living. However, the US government and state and municipal authorities have refused to acknowledge this basic right to water. In 2014, a US federal judge in Michigan ruled that there was “no enforceable right” to water after the city of Detroit started massive shut-offs of household water supplies if people did not pay their water bills.

The case of Flint, Michigan is well known.  Under state-appointed emergency management, Flint switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River as a cost-savings measure in 2014, causing the number of children with elevated lead levels in their blood to double—and in some neighborhoods to triple—after the water supply switch....

What's next, throw them to the lions?

It is time the USA make Health Care a basic human right. End this hate and discrimination by extremist government officials. It is no wonder to realize how Trump is in the White House. Besides the Russians, all the extremists and haters have him on their side. There is no moral content in this step by Trump.

June 12, 2020
By Selena Simmons-Duffin

The Trump administration (click here) Friday finalized a rule that would remove nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people when it comes to health care and health insurance.

"HHS respects the dignity of every human being, and as we have shown in our response to the pandemic, we vigorously protect and enforce the civil rights of all to the fullest extent permitted by our laws as passed by Congress," said Roger Severino, who directs the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, in written statement announcing that the HHS rule had become final. The rule is set to go into effect by mid-August.

This is one of many rules and regulations put forward by the Trump administration that defines "sex discrimination" as only applying when someone faces discrimination for being male or female, and does not protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Supporters of the rule say this is a necessary reversal of Obama-era executive overreach, and will reduce confusion about the legal meaning of "sex discrimination." Critics argue the rule could further harm an already vulnerable group — transgender people — in the midst of a pandemic and historic unrest spurred by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis....

UCLA Williams Institute School of Law:

April 2011
By Gary J. Gates

...An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States (click here) identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender.

This implies that there are approximately 9 million LGBT Americans, a figure roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey.

Among adults who identify as LGB, bisexuals comprise a slight majority (1.8% compared to 1.7% who identify as lesbian or gay).

Women are substantially more likely than men to identify as bisexual. Bisexuals comprise more than half of the lesbian and bisexual population among women in eight of the nine surveys considered in the brief. Conversely, gay men comprise substantially more than half of gay and bisexual men in seven of the nine surveys.

Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as LGB. An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2%) report that they have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior and nearly 25.6 million Americans (11%) acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction.

Understanding the size of the LGBT population is a critical first step to informing a host of public policy and research topics. The surveys highlighted in this report demonstrate the viability of sexual orientation and gender identity questions on large national population-based surveys. Adding these questions to more national, state, and local data sources is critical to developing research that enables a better understanding of the understudied LGBT community....

Increasing hatred and stigmatizing difference only places young people at risk.

March 29, 2017
By Jamie Seaton

I will never forget the father who told me, (click here) on a first date, about his transgender son, who was assigned female gender at birth but identifies as male. What stuck with me most wasn’t the fact that he had a transgender child, but the affectionate way he described his relationship with his son. He told me about how his teenager, who identified as a lesbian, came to him one night and explained that she was a he.

The father told me that he didn’t fully understand at first what his child was saying, but he knew he loved him, and that was all that mattered. So he educated himself and supported his child through the transition.

Not all parents are as accepting of their children. Too often, kids who come out to their parents are rejected, abused or thrown out of their home.

Up to 1.6 million young people experience homelessness in the United States every year. Forty percent of them identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender), according to a 2012 study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law. It’s estimated that LGBT youth represent about 7 percent of the population, which puts that 40 percent figure into heartbreaking context....

Secretary Sony Purdue is exporting garbage to China.

If a product cannot be consumed in the USA, then it isn't fit to export. This level of disrespect for any other country is only going to cause a loss of business to the exporting companies.

China needs to up it's game and outlaw pet food that does not meet minimal nutrition standards and includes ingredients that are undesirable.

We have enough trouble with people eating wildlife in China that then becomes a nightmare virus. The world does not need similar dynamics with pets or other animals. I would think the USA would put pressure on China regarding animal feed and export better quality animal feed than poor quality.

Washington, D.C., June 12, 2020 – The United States (click here) Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is announcing a protocol that will allow the use of U.S.-origin bovine ingredients and most imported ingredients in pet food being exported to China. The U.S. and China signed the pet food protocol on April 13, and the certification requirements were finalized May 21, with an implementation date set for June 15, 2020. There will be a two-month transition period to ensure companies currently exporting pet foods can comply with the new requirements.

APHIS will post the requirements on the APHIS International Regulations webpage to ensure manufacturers understand the conditions they need to meet in order to ship using the new ingredients (imported ingredients and/or ruminant ingredients). Facilities will have to meet China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs requirements for product registration, and companies will be able to export only after all of these details are complete.

This action is part of the continuing progress to implement the U.S.-China Phase One Economic and Trade Agreement.  The agreement entered into force on February 14, 2020, and this action builds upon measures that were previously announced on February 25, March 10, March 24, and May 21.

The PPE emergency is not resolved.

June 11, 2020
By Joe Carroll

Houston-area officials are “getting close” (click here) to reimposing stay-at-home orders and are prepared to reopen a Covid-19 hospital established but never used at a football stadium as virus cases expand in the fourth-largest U.S. city.

The announcement by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Thursday came a day after the Lone Star state recorded its highest one-day tally of new cases since the pandemic emerged....

Now is not the time for "letting up." Letting up means letting go. Now, is the time to dig in and win a safer and sane America.

"The Virus Will Win" (click here)
By Yascha Mounk

A Second Wave of the coronavirus is on the way. When it arrives, we will lack the will to deal with it. Despite all the sacrifices of the past months, the virus is likely to win—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it already has.

In absolute terms, the United States has been hit harder than any other country. About a quarter of worldwide deaths have been recorded on these shores. And while the virus is no longer growing at an exponential rate, the threat it poses remains significant: According to a forecasting model by Morgan Stanley, the number of American cases will, if current trends hold, roughly double over the next two months.

But neither the impact of mass protests over police brutality nor the effect of the recent reopening of much of the country—including the casinos in Las Vegas—is reflected in the latest numbers. It can take at least 10 days for people to develop symptoms and seek out a test, and for the results to be aggregated and disseminated by public-health authorities....

An increasing number of cases in the USA means increasing numbers of deaths, maiming and disabilities. This is not the flu. A full six percent of all Americans that contract the virus will die. These include mothers and fathers that will leave children scarred with the loss of a parent and forbid both parents.

"Sheltering at Home" is the best form of prevention and ending this virus in the USA. Competent leadership requires strong measures. Would everyone in the USA consent to a three week sheltering in place if it meant the end of SARS-CoV-2 completely? That is a real option that should not be ignored, but, there needs to be an apolitical approach that doesn't dismantle such a measure for the second time. Why expect a third escalation?

There are states like Maine that have mostly tackled the virus, but, they still have hotspots that could use a reset.

June 12, 2020
By Colin Woodard

Hospitalizations (click here) for COVID-19 continued to fall across the state over the past week, even in the parts of southern Maine that have continued to see significant numbers of people testing positive for the disease.

At Maine Medical Center, which has had nearly half of the state’s confirmed coronavirus inpatients through most of the crisis, the number of confirmed COVID-19 inpatients hovered at between 8 and 11 over the week ending Thursday, down from a peak level of 35 hit on both April 7 and May 25. The inpatient count Tuesday and Wednesday was the lowest daily number there since March 22, at the beginning of the crisis.

At Portland’s other major hospital, Mercy, the number of inpatients fell from five to zero during the period, down from five to eight the previous week and eight to ten the week before that, which had been the busiest that hospital had experienced during the pandemic.

In Androscoggin County, hospitalizations have fortunately not been paralleling discouraging trends in new cases. The county saw a dramatic spike in new COVID-19 cases in mid-May – going from a seven-day average of one case at the end of April to more than 15 on May 23 – and over the past seven days has averaged a still-high nine cases a day, according to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention....

While the USA needs a police reformation act, it needs a Race Reformation Act that includes a Supreme Court proof voter rights act.

Currently, the Republican governors have oppressed minority voters. They have placed voters in danger by refusing mail-in ballots. An extremely sad example of the attempts to eliminate voters from balloting was seen in Georgia when the Secretary of State's plans to suppress traditionally Democratic voters caused problems across the entire state.

A Vote and Voter Security Act needs to be passed to end the corruption of partisan Secretaries of State.

Everything is a photo op." Even Melania is a prop.

In Oregon, reports of counter protesters sent police sharp shooters to the roof.

No surprise here. Oregon has a population of White Supremacists (click here).

Canty-Jones: It was very much in the milieu, it was very much in the politics, and it’s very clear as you can see from George Williamson’s letter laying out the argument right before the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, that Oregon would be a place that neither had slavery nor free black people. And those were laws that were already in the books from the territorial government....

It is a known fact that governments, be they local, state or federal, have extraneous laws and/or regulations that do not apply to current standards of living. As a matter of fact, there are some laws/regulations that are counter to modern standards. In the case of Oregon, these laws/regs can go back into the 1800s which is nearly the beginning of the country. I have no doubt there will be an ongoing project to examine such annoyance and possibly dangerous domestic governing and policing laws/regs.

The discovery of actionable intelligence regarding the infiltration of White Supremacists into protest marches is no surprise. I am sure the police officials in Oregon were waiting for it to surface. Something needs to be done with HATE groups such as the KKK. The Southern Poverty Law Center (click here) has a vast collection of knowledge regarding these groups. Hate cannot be a reason for organizing. It has to stop.

My mistake this is actually Portland, Maine. It doesn't matter the same applies to the idea of eliminating draconian laws that support racism. Holy smokes, Portland, Maine. We have a problem.

Some Portland, Maine council members want an independent review of the police actions regarding the protests in that city. It sounds like a great idea for all major cities and even those with known racist problems.

Alert: US Senate Republicans (click here) have their own police reform bill. It needs to be scoured for corruption and racism, bigoted, and discriminatory content. I haven't read any of the content, but, a Republican President just assaulted protesters in Lafayette Park and erected a fence around the park nearly overnight.

Racist "Moscow Mitch" tapped an African American Senator to sponsor the legislation that no doubt McConnell wrote. Everything is a photo op.

There is also such a fence around the White House. Trump is scared of his "photo op" becoming a place where counter-photo ops would take place. The fences are to preserve Trump's definition of USA land that belongs to the people.

RETURN LAFAYETTE PARK TO THE PEOPLE!

June 12, 2020
By Randy Billings

Portland police say (click here) they stationed officers on top of downtown buildings at last week’s anti-racism protests after learning that armed counter-protesters planned to be there.

The disclosure — which differs from an earlier explanation that police were likely just observing the protests — comes a week after questions were raised, some in a flurry of social media activity, about police officers positioned on top of buildings, seemingly with rifles, scopes and other equipment.

Commander James Sweatt made the disclosure about the armed counter-protesters Wednesday night during a virtual meeting of the Police Citizen Review Subcommittee. He said police had received “actionable intelligence” that armed counter-protesters planned to demonstrate near the Black Live Matter protesters. He said the officers were deployed on buildings to protect the protesters, not to intimidate them.

“They actually did show up. They were actually armed. We intercepted them before they made it there,” Sweatt said at the meeting. “We also discovered other individuals in the crowd that were legally possessing firearms, but their intent was not known. I think that’s an important note to make.”...