Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell recently proclaimed: “The best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare, root and branch.”
Like Captain Ahab’s suicidal obsession with Moby Dick, the great white whale in Melville’s classic novel, GOP lawmakers like McConnell are so obsessed with killing America’s new health care law that they can’t say “hello” without adding, “Repeal Obamacare.” But do they actually mean it?
Not in Mitch’s case. You see, his state’s health care exchange, called “Kentucky Kynect,” was set up and funded through the Obamacare law – and it is both very successful and popular. About half a million Kentuckians are getting health coverage through the program, most of it paid for by the law’s expansion of Medicaid. So McConnell, who’s now in a tight reelection race, is trying to pull off a magical bit of political trickery. He will uproot Obamacare, he promises voters, yet – abracadabra! – their treasured Kentucky Kynect program will still flower.
Of course, magicians don’t perform magic, they perform illusions. McConnell’s trick amounts to nothing but a slick play on words. He’s telling voters that since Kentucky Kynect is “a state exchange,” it can operate separately from that big bad federal program.
The senator hopes his constituents will be so dazzled by this rhetorical flourish that they’ll suspend all rational thought, ignore the laws nature, and send the old trickster back to Washington to yank Obamacare out of the ground. Never mind that the national program, rooted in Medicaid, is what pumps the essential funding into Kentucky’s state exchange. Kill one, you kill the other.
Mitch would make a lousy gardener, but he’s even lousier at being an example of political integrity. Even if he wins, he’s already proven himself a loser.

“Mitch McConnell’s puzzling claims on insurance in Kentucky, post-Obamacare,” www.washingtonpost.com, October, 16, 2014.


Arms peddlers discover your town… and tax dollars

Don’t look now, but the overbearing power of America’s military-industrial-complex has probably snuck into your town.
The multibillion-dollar global armament giants have discovered a hot new growth market here at home: The militarization of police agencies. The people of Ferguson, Missouri, learned about the domestic proliferation of battlefield firepower the hard way this summer when their own police department came after them with a Bearcat tank, two armored Humvees, stun grenades, M-16 rifles, and other weapons of war.
It’s been widely reported that this push into combat gear (and the militant mentality that accompanies it) has largely come from a 1990 law authorizing the Pentagon to disperse surplus war equipment around the country. Less known, however, is that our corporate arms peddlers have lately leapt into direct sales, holding field demonstrations and trade shows to titillate the fancy of police chiefs and other officials.
LRAD Corporation, for example, makes the long-range sound cannon that was used in Ferguson, literally blasting away demonstrators with ear-shattering pain. Also, such tear gas makers as CTS are having a field day supplying and re-supplying police agencies. Then there’s Taser International’s electrocution gun (which can be heart-stopping), is now on the hip of nearly everyone with a badge.
In September, militarizers paraded their stuff at a Missouri shebang call Military Police Expo. LRAD, CTS, and Taser were there along with a horde of other venders, to schmooze and sell to a crowd of “civilian law enforcement and chiefs of police” who were invited to go on this military shopping spree.
A coalition of citizen groups are organizing to stop this pernicious sale of arms to be used against… well, us citizens.

For information, go to www.FacingTearGas.org.
“Tear Gas, Stun Grenades, Sound Cannons: Companies Profiting From Police Crackdowns Like Ferguson,” www.alternet.org, August 21, 2014.

Florida police swat at barbers

When it comes to policing an area, the good people of Orange Country, Florida are lucky, because they’ve got the astonishing law-enforcement team of DBPR and OCSO on the beat, eager to stop any possible criminal activity. Consider just one example of the truly-incredible vigilance of this dynamic policing duo.
The DBPR/OCSO target in this case was a suspicious enterprise calling itself Strictly Skillz, and the agents spent a month carefully planning a joint sweep operation, including a fully-armed SWAT team. On the day of the raid, the team first sealed off the parking lot; next, two undercover cops entered to size up the danger; and then – BAM! – the SWAT team hit the unsuspecting suspects. Wearing riot gear and brandishing guns, the team seized half-a-dozen of the enterprise’s kingpins and cuffed them, while officers searched the premises for more than an hour.
You might assume that this was a narcotics operation, but no. In fact, Strictly Skillz is barbershop. What possible criminal activity led to such a militaristic show of brute force? “Barbering without a license.” That’s only a 2nd degree misdemeanor, but even it was not violated in this case, for all licenses at the shop were valid. DBPR (The Department of Business and Professional Regulation) could’ve determined that by a routine inspection, but instead, OCSO (Orange County Sheriffs Office) got involved and decided to muscle the barbers. Why? Because... well, because it has a SWAT team and a military mentality, so it thinks it’s above the law.
In this case, a federal court not only yanked this abusive duo’s constitutional chain, but also ridiculed its Keystone Kops routine of SWATing at barbers. But it’s not funny – for police now run thousands of these farcical SWAT raids a year, and are rarely held accountable.
“Federal Appeals Court Ridicules Florida Cops For Using SWAT Team TO Check On Barbershop Licenses,” www.alternet.org, September 18, 2014.