The LuLac Edition #4,322, June 11th, 2020

WHY THIS FLAG IS NOT ABOUT HISTORY

 

BUT THIS 

The radical right is trying to tell us the Confederate flag is about history. It’s not, it’s about slavery.
The south left the union. They were TRAITORS to a constitution and Declaration of Independence they swore allegiance to. They killed their fellow countrymen and slaughtered African Americans who were fighting for the union instead of taking them as prisoners! They still refer to the war as not the civil war but the war of northern aggression.
These statues are an alternate historic stance to the Northern Aggression, privately financed through the efforts of the "united daughters of the confederacy "placed strategically to be in the center of towns to terrorize the now free slave population and hold dear the bronze age ideals they fought for... 1890-1950.
I am not questioning history just the way the south rewrote history. These monuments are not to some fanciful southern way of life with bonnets and mint juleps. They enslaved people for 300 years. Then turn around landfall it states’ rights. Where in the world and why in the world do you build a six story statue to a losing General? And then while continuing to fight integration and lynching people of color under the name of states’ rights? Jesus if NASCAR saw that, why can't these Facebook denizens?
After 100 years of changing the narrative of the war it’s time!

TRUMP ATTACKS 75 YEAR OLD PROTESTOR AND GOP SENATOR DUCK!

If there was ever a tweet from President Donald Trump that Senate Republicans didn’t want to touch, it’s this one. in four years, Senate Republicans have endured a regular gantlet of reporters’ questions about Trump tweets, ranging from attacks on their own colleagues to telling a handful of congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries they came from.
Trump’s tweet Tuesday morning attacking a 75-year old protester in Buffalo — who was shoved by the police and bled from his head after falling — stunned some in a caucus that’s grown used to the president’s active Twitter feed. After examining a print-out of the tweet, Sen. Lisa Murkowski gasped: “oh lord, Ugh.”
“Why would you fan the flames?” she said of the president’s tweet. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
But though the moderate Murkowski was nearly rendered speechless.
But those senators were the rare ones speaking out. Even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who marched with Black Lives Matters protesters and voted to oust Trump from office in the impeachment trial, seemed exasperated.
“I saw the tweet,” Romney said. “It was a shocking thing to say and I won’t dignify it with any further comment.”
Many GOP senators declined Tuesday to respond to Trump’s tweet suggesting Martin Gugino, the Buffalo protester, “could be an ANTIFA provocateur.’ The president added, without evidence, that Gugino may have been trying to “set up” the police officers who hurt him. The tweet did not come up at the Republicans' weekly lunch, according to an attendee.
Republican senators have a well-worn playbook by now if they don’t want to wade into the latest tweet-fueled controversy by saying they hadn’t seen Trump’s latest comments. Still, even when provided paper copies of the president’s tweet on Tuesday, many declined to view them.
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) declined to comment on the tweet, saying they hadn’t read it. When asked whether they wanted to see the tweet, both showed little interest. Sen Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he had “no information about that man or who he is.”
GUTLESS WONDERS WHO NEED TO GO!

CARTWRIGHT ANNOUNCES $8.7 MILLION IN CARES ACT FUNDING FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND HOMELESSNESS ASSISTANCE

Congressman Matt Cartwright (Photo LuLac archives)

U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright (PA-08)  announced the release of $8,790,046 to municipal governments in northeastern Pennsylvania. Authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, these operating funds provide municipal governments with additional resources to support services such as small business assistance, emergency housing payments, and homelessness assistance and prevention operations.
“The coronavirus pandemic has had a wide-ranging impact on our lives, livelihoods and economy, but it affects every community differently,” said Cartwright, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “This is a flexible relief program that enables local officials to put federal funding to use where it’s most needed. As people continue to struggle under the weight of this health care and economic crisis, Congress needs to work together to keep folks financially stable and safe.”
The following is a list of recipients in northeastern Pennsylvania, awards and amount provided:
The CARES Act allocated supplemental Community Development Block Grant funds (CBDG-CV) for a wide range of public services to prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus pandemic. This includes providing small business assistance and emergency housing payments as well as acquiring and rehabilitating structures for health facilities and food banks in addition to other public improvements needed to support community coronavirus response, preparation and prevention.
The ESG-CV funds can be used to assist individuals and families who are homeless or receiving homeless assistance, and support homeless assistance and homelessness prevention activities to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. This is the second round of funding for ESG grantees who have submitted and received approval of an action plan.

NAACP BRANCH STATEMENT ON CURRENT RACE SITUATION IN AMERICA

Editor:

As expressed earlier in phone interviews with various media outlets. The officers, executive committee, and members of the Wilkes-Barre NAACP express their sincere condolences to the families of AhmaudArbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Since Africans arrived here in 1619. We've endured over four hundred years of racism.

In '2020, on February 23rd we witnessed on video the murder of Ahmaud Arbery while peacefully

jogging in Brunswick, Georgia being tracked down like a deer by white racists.

On March 13th we heard about the brutal murder of Breonna Taylor who was shot eight times while sleeping in her own apartment by unannounced law enforcement officers in Louisville, Kentucky with no bodycam footage. While the person they were looking for was already in police custody.

On this past Memorial Day, while paying tribute to the men and women who served and sacrificed the lives serving in our armed forces and acknowledging a gruesome milestone of one hundred thousand Americans dying from the worst global pandemic ever witnessed, the horrific murder of George Floyd by four members of law enforcement in the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was viewed in a public videotape.

Anyone with a heart could not ignore what they were seeing right before their eyes. This was the modern day lynching of an unarmed black man by members of law enforcement. And, cities throughout the United States and the world responding with huge protests. Even here in the City of Wilkes-Barre we witnessed the largest protest in the City's history.

A new generation of freedom fighters of all stripes has taken to the streets. In the midst of a deadly

pandemic putting their lives and the lives of their loved ones at stake due to this deadly COVID-19

PANDEMIC saying "we're not going to take it anymore, and enough is enough". Seeing the diversity of protesters, I Again felt like I did after 9/11, that we were all in this together.

The Wilkes-Barre NAACP applaud the peaceful and nonviolent protesters of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Wilkes-Barre NAACP also would also like to applaud Mayor George C. Brown and the Police Chief Joseph Coffay for showing their support of the peaceful protesters by their attendance at the rally on Public Square this past Wednesday. However, the City of Wilkes-Barre like all others have some work to do. The lack of diversity in local and county government is appalling and must be addressed. The city should reflect te diversity of its residents.

As a roadmap we should review the policies of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing

compiled by the Obama administration and extract from them what may be useful here in the City of Wilkes-Barre. Policy without implementation has proven to be ineffective.

This movement has exposed four hundred years of systemic racism that has plagued our country and the bill has come due.

The energy that our millennials have displayed must be seized and followed through by their strength at the ballot box. America has acknowledged your protests now let America acknowledge your voice by your vote.

America is a strong and powerful nation continuing to evolve into a great nation. That comes from the respect of all its citizens.

Imagine the potential of all Americans without the elephant of racism on their backs.

Sincerely,

Ronald L. Felton

STATEMENT: RACISM IN AMERICA AND THE CURRENT MOMENT

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier and director of campaigns Kadida Kenner issued the following statement in response to the murder of George Floyd and the events of the last few days: “Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”- Dr. Martin Luther King
"The attention of the public and political leaders in our state and country has understandably been focused in the last few days on the civil disturbances in our cities and how to quell them. We write, however, to urge that we all return our attention as soon as possible to the profound issues facing our country, the issues elevated by the murder of George Floyd that have led tens of thousands of people—Black, brown and white—to engage in peaceful protests all over Pennsylvania, the United States, and around the world.
The Deeper Issues
The first such issue, of course, is police violence against Black men and women. There can be no hope for a truly equitable and decent society if Black and brown men and women cannot jog down the street, go to a public park, and live in the quiet of their own homes, without fear that an officer of the law may attack them with little justification and even kill them for no good reason at all. Yet in ways that too many white people have not understood, that is the circumstances faced by Black and brown men and women today. Though individual accomplishments—multiple degrees, prominence in their chosen field or homes in rich neighborhoods—should not matter in the eyes of the law, even they don’t protect Black and brown people from harassment and bigotry and police oppression. Indeed, we have seen people in wealthy neighborhoods whiteness and privilege in response to mere presence of a Black man or woman.
The second issue is continued economic inequality between Black and white people. The COVID-19 crisis has again revealed the extent to which we are still two nations divided by race. Black people have been suffering illness and death at far higher rates than white people, in part because they are overrepresented among low-paid essential workers and in part because are far more likely to be without access to health care, healthy foods, and good housing. And the stress of living in a racist society—including the stress of facing police violence—itself undermines the health of Black and brown people. What we have seen during the COVID-19 crisis is the product of centuries of racial discrimination and inequity. And despite some doors being opened to some Black people at the highest reaches of our society, the evidence is incontrovertible that inequalities in wages and income on the basis of race in our state and nation have increased in the last thirty years and been exacerbated by the general increase in inequality between the very rich and those with low and moderate incomes.
These two issues did not just arise in America. They have been with us for more than 400 years. And they are a product of deliberate policy—from segregation to poll taxes to redlining to Voter ID laws to overspending on polices forces that often do more harm than good. That means they can be reversed by deliberate changes in policy. This is not the place for details, but over the last few years we have set forth policies to change policing in this state and to address the deep structural sources of economic and racial inequities in income and education among other things. Inventing new policies reduce racial inequality is not enough. We need a moral commitment on the part of all of us and our political leaders to put into place the policies we already know will work.
The Current Moment
Finally, we want to address the immediate issue, the crimes against property that have been committed by what appear to be a very small number of Black and white people among the many who have been peacefully and calmly protesting the death of George Floyd in the last few days. We do not condone those actions—and we fear the political backlash to them. However, we understand that longstanding and legitimate grievances as well as the anger that results from them are responsible for the actions of some of those committing property crimes. We call into question any condemnation of random looting and property destruction that does not at the same time recognize the systemic looting and violence directed at Black and brown people throughout our history and continuing to the present day. And while we recognize the restraint of the police departments that have acknowledged that damage to property is far less important than the loss of life that might arise from a more repressive response, we are concerned about the actions of some police departments that appear to have escalated tensions and generated violence in our cities.
We also want to point to something we find troubling—the presence of provocateurs amidst the lawful protesters. It is important to keep two ideas separate here. One is the notion that the protests against the death of George Floyd and police violence against Black people are being organized, led, or stimulated by what are called “outside agitators.” This theme is meant to diminish the legitimacy and power of a genuine mass protest against injustice by attributing it to ideologically motivated outsiders to the community. There is absolutely no reason to think that is true.
The second idea is that there are some people among the protestors who appear to be bent on taking advantage of a legitimate mass movement by instigating trouble, stirring up destruction, and then walking away. There is some reason to think that this is happening now.
We believe the White House’s suggestion that the instigators are associates of Antifa is not true. (Antifa is not an organization and it is not appropriate to talk about their “members.”) Those who associate with anti-fascist groups do not believe in random destruction and they do not act alone. On the other hand, we have seen reports of far-right ideologues hijacking this genuine movement and encouraging destruction in order to call down repressive actions by the police—and perhaps later by the federal government. We have seen evidence of their activity—and also evidence of Black organizers and protestors at peaceful rallies calling out these provocateurs. We fear that the repressive response they aim for not only will exacerbate immediate tensions on the ground but might eventually interfere with our civil and political liberties. We call on Governor Wolf and Attorney General Shapiro to appoint a commission to better understand the role of these people in the civil disturbances we have seen in the last few days.
Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to working with our partners to advance the cause of economic and racial justice. We reject attempts to divide us from one another on the basis of race, gender, and place of birth and to divert us from countering a right-wing agenda that is deepening racial inequality and strangling working-class and middle-class people.
Together we will overcome the structural and systemic racism that oppresses Black people and other communities of color and finally create a just society in which everyone, no matter what they look like, where they live, or how wealthy they are, can thrive.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property will be safe.—Frederick Douglass.

MEDIA MATTERS

WALN TV

BOLD GOLD COMMUNITY FORUM

Bold Gold Forum is on hiatus. But when they come back after the Coronavirus situation, tune in Sunday morning at 6 on 94.3 The Talker; 6:30 on 1400-The Game, NEPA's Fox .Sports Radio and 106.7 fm; and at 7:30 on 105 The River.

ECTV PREVIEW

PennDot spokesman Mike Taluto joins host David DeCosmo on ECTV s PREVIEW program during the week of June 15th to discuss the impact of the virus pandemic on projects and outline highway construction projects throughout the district.
PREVIEW is seen 3 times daily on Comcast channel 19 and on the electric city television YouTube page.

BUDDY RUMCHEK

Want to hear some great parodies on the news? Tune in to WILK Radio at 6:20 and 8:20 AM on Mondays. As Ralph Cramden used to say, “It’s a laugh riot!”

BOBBY V’S DOO WOP SOCK HOP

SUNDAY NIGHTS!

1980

Our 1980 logo.

All 19 people on a TAAG Linhas Aéreas de Angola airliner were killed when the three engine Yak-40K jet crashed. [44] The plane went down about 17 minutes after taking off on a flight from Jamba to Lubango when it went down after being struck by artillery from "a foreign aircraft", possibly a Zambian Shenyang J-6 jet fighter. .....The Mandai massacre the Bengalis of the village of Mandai, near Agartala in the Indian state of Tripura was carried out by tribal insurgents. According to official figures 255 Bengalis were massacred in Mandwi, while foreign presses, independent sources and eyewitnesses put the figure anywhere between 350 and 400.
Elections were held in Hungary for the 352 seats of the Országgyűlés, the Hungarian parliament. Hungary's Communist organization, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSzMP) won 252 of the 352 seats set aside for it, and the remaining 100 going to independents selected by the party. With 367 candidates, 15 of the races had a choice for voter…..American comedian Richard Pryor was burned over half of his body after accidentally setting fire to himself at his home in Northridge, California. An emergency room physician at the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital said that Pryor had told him that the fire had been caused by an explosion while Pryor was freebasing cocaine in a crack pipe. Pryor's manager said that Pryor told him that he had accidentally set a glass of rum while lighting a cigarette. After spending 45 days in the hospital, and overcoming an injury that doctors said was fatal in 2 out of 3 cases, Pryor was released on July 24……Independent Network News, an expansion of New York City's WPIX primetime newscast, premiered as a syndicated television evening news program for U.S. television stations that weren't affiliated with ABC, CBS or NBC. On January 12, 1987, it would re-brand itself as USA Tonight that would run for ten years until June 8, 1990….Universities in Iran were shut down as part of the Iranian Cultural Revolution, with all higher education systems ceasing for over a year for a complete overhaul, by order of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The Ayatollah Khomeini declared that "All schools and universities established under the reign of the Shah must be placed in direct control in order to protect their students from the dangers of contamination by ideas contrary to the value of Islam."….. A jury in Chicago awarded MCI Communications $1,800,000,000 to be paid by AT&T for attempting to maintain its control over long-distance telephone calls, in violation of federal antitrust law The jury found $600 million in damages and the amount was trebled under the antitrust law. After 15 of the 21 charges were reversed on appeal, the case was remanded for a new trial on the issue of calculation of damages. On May 28, 1985, another jury found $37.8 million in damages which was trebled to $113,400,000. …..U.S. Representative John W. Jenrette, Jr. (D-South Carolina) was indicted by a grand jury on charges of bribery after being identified in the FBI's Abscam operation. Jenrette had been videotaped on December 6, 1979, accepting a $50,000 bribe from an undercover agent in return for promising to introduce legislation to allow an Arab businessman to remain in the U.S. Eleven days later, Jenrette won a runoff election for the Democratic primary election for his seat…and forty years ago the number one song in Lulac land and America was “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger.