The Mason Moment, Dec 27, 2020

The Mason Missile, December 21, 2020

Greetings, Americans! At last! The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved both the vaccines to fight of the COVID-19, from Pfizer-BioNTech (https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine) and Moderna (https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/moderna-covid-19-vaccine) . I of course am overjoyed about this. The first recipients of the vaccines will be medical workers-nurses, EMTs, and ambulance drivers, then residents in senior living facilities. Unfortunately, there have been snafus in the distribution of the vaccine, with some states getting fewer than they were told they would get. (https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/vaccine-2649560534/) I hope those errors will be cleared up SOON, so that people can get their vaccines and we can begin to end this nightmare the nation has gone through-due to the incompetence of out alleged “president,” and his crew of racists and thieves. Let us call out Congress-members and Senators to demand that the vaccines be distributed fairly and safely to all jurisdictions. How’s this? Paul Alexander, an official with t---p’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had the bright idea of allowing the Coronavirus to spread among low-income people, as if they can just catch the virus and become immune-the notion of “herd immunity.” (https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/530490-trump-official-pushed-for-herd-immunity-calling-for-low-risk-americans-to) (https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-we-want-them-infected-chris-hayes-on-emails-revealing-truth-of-trump-covid-plan-97881669925?fbclid=IwAR0Rk4WA70eXSvNYo0ur3OckQSNCb_idrxNzZh5Ajw1nLrRekNZttesQ0fo) That idea is NO strategy at all; it stems from the idea that low-income people are expendable and can be thrown whatever garbage-political, intellectual, and physical-the ruling elite decide to dump on us. It also shows the unwillingness of this regime to do anything about the virus, including outright denial of its existence. More great news-the Electoral College votes have officially been counted, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. (https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-270-electoral-college-vote-d429ef97af2bf574d16463384dc7cc1e) I do worry about what influences he will have, due to the long-standing pro-corporate and anti-worker tendency the Democratic party has taken under Bill Clinton, and which has continued (with all due respect) under Barrack Obama. Our work is not finished; we have to push Biden and all the other Democratic officials towards a pro-worker, pro-low-income policy, benefiting working Americans. But alas, there are still those who refuse to accept the reality of t---p’s defeat, particularly the racist-fascist elements that has lingered on the edges of politics and the internet, now emboldened to terrorize those they hate. Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney-General, file a suit with the Supreme court to invalidate the electoral results in the battleground states t---p lost-Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/politics/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-supreme-court-case/index.html) Signing onto the suit were 17 Republican state attorneys-general, and 120 Republican Congress-members. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/trump-texas-supreme-court-lawsuit.html) (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/12/11/126-house-republicans-now-support-lawsuit-to-overturn-election-in-updated-brief/?sh=2dcd75a8e5db) Fortunately, the Supreme Court-including t---p’s appointees Barrett, Cavanaugh, and Gorsuch-refused to hear this petition. Paxton has his own legal issues, such as charges of securities fraud and bribery; perhaps that makes him the perfect representative of t---p. This shows how conservatives and Republicans truly feel about “democracy,” that it works so long as THEY get in power, but they do everything to prevent their opponents from voting, with such devices as voter ID laws and locating polling stations in inaccessible places. They believe that only THEY can rule the country, and their opponents are usurpers falsely attaining power, and enemies to be vanquished. Bill Pascrell, Congressman from New Jersey, is pushing a bill to prevent those 120 republican Congress-members from being sworn in the next session. This is based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution-the same Constitution those Congress-members and Paxton swore to uphold- passed after the Civil War, to prevent former Confederate officeholders, who were previously members of Congress, from entering the Congress again, after they tried to fight against the United States government and secede from the Union, to defend their precious system of chattel slavery. (https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/democrat-wants-to-use-civil-war-law-about-traitors-to-ban-126-republicans-from-being-seated-in-congress/) The section reads: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." To Republicans and conservatives, patriotism is relative; they’re loyal to the country if it suits their purposes, and bolsters their power and privilege. IF the lower orders, the people they oppressed previously, attain some control of the country, they will abandon the government, since it no longer serves them. On that same weekend, there was a march in Washington by the Proud Boys, one of the leading right-wing militias in the country; they assaulted counter-protestors, and burned the “Black Lives Matter” signs of two historic African-American churches. The theme was to try to keep t---p in office, and urge him not to leave, as part of t---p’s myth that he really won the election. Speakers at the rally included Alex Jones, the conspiracy-crazy webcaster; Sebastian Gorka, the former t---p advisor and Islamophobe; and Michael Flynn, former t---p National Security Advisor. (https://nypost.com/2020/12/12/proud-boys-anti-trump-protesters-tangle-in-dc-as-daytime-rallies-end/) (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/12/trump-march-brings-thousands-dc-ahead-electoral-college-vote/3882935001/) Biden, with all due respect, shouldn’t bother to try to “meet half way” or “reach across the aisle” to these people. They will perpetuate the “stolen election” fable, pretending that he really isn’t President, as part of their habit of treating anyone other than a conservative or a Republican as aa pretender to the throne. After decades of racially-motivated rhetoric about “welfare queens” and “law and order”; after the Citizens United decision from the supreme Court, ending limits on campaign contributions from corporations, thereby corrupting both parties; after a media system, including Fox News and Rush Limbaugh passing off misinformation as news, with Newsmax and OANN joining the team; after big-money donors paying millions to deny the science behind fossil-fuel based pollution; after people, under the guise of religion, fight for the right to discriminate against racial and sexual minorities- how can we reason with tem? The old liberal idea of “all classes and factions coming together for the good of the nation” has died; conservatives look at compromise and discussion as signs of weakness. We must go to the streets, to the grassroots, to our neighborhoods, to fight for the change we need in this country. That is what has created change for the better and not back-room dealing. These lunatic elements are the people t---p is listening to, in his fear of losing the Presidency and the immunity from prosecution that’s supposed t go with it. (But is that “immunity” rooted in law, or is it just “custom?”) One of these is Mike Flynn, former Army general and former National Security Advisor, convicted of lying about his Russia connections, and pardoned by t---p, posted on Twitter a message from the We The People Coalition, a far-right group in Ohio, calling of t---p to declare “limited” martial law, and the military supervise a new election, one skewed towards older white voters, or else the group would “take matters into our own hands and defend our rights on our own.” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-flynn-martial-law-new-election_n_5fc7d3e6c5b6f3fe59724a45) This is a call for the overthrow of the government, also called sedition; but I’m afraid Flynn would get the kid gloves and light sentence that extremists on the right always get when they threaten violence, like the Proud Boys and the terrorists who have threatened to kill election officials for the “crime” of accurately counting the votes of the American people. This is the fight on our hands; as I said, we must continue to hold ALL of our elected officials accountable, from President on down. We must be conscious of the forces arrayed against us that would take away our freedom to preserve their privilege, and of our power, and the history of protest in this country. We can do it, because we’ve been able to do it so far. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Enjoy your holidays! America will be free! Happy New Year!

Mason Moment, Dec. 19, 2020

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, December 11, 2020

The Mason Missile, November 24, 2020

Greetings, Americans! I take this time to honor the memory of Jim Moran-Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Area Project for Occupational safety and Health (PHILAPOSH), an organization dedicated to advocating for workers killed or injured while doing their jobs to earn their livings; Jim was instrumental in organizing in Philadelphia such events as Workers Memorial Day, late in April, honoring the memory of workers killed while trying to earn a living for themselves and their families; organized the Labor Day parade in September, where we celebrate ourselves, the working men and women in the Philadelphia area, and have fun doing it; and brought to Philadelphia the May Day celebration, where we celebrate the internationally recognized day honoring working people, and we learn the real history of the Labor movement in this country. Jim was a working –class kid from the heavily industrialized neighborhood of Kensington, and he helped other works find their pride and empowerment. Jim, may your memory continue to be a blessing and an inspiration. Rejoice! We did it! Joe Biden, after a long ballot-counting drama that lasted for a week, is elected the 46th President of the United States. He always had the larger popular vote over whatshisface, just like Hillary Clinton did in 2016; but we had to wait until the right number of Electoral College votes in each state-particularly Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada-were tabulated, so that Biden got over the 270 threshold. The Electoral College was a system formulated during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the framers of the Constitution-affluent white men, many of whom owned slaves-had no concept of what we now call “democracy;” the states had, at that time, requirements of property for white men to qualify to vote. Also, the delegates of the southern states, where slavery was predominant, knew they would be underpopulated compared to the northern states and thus outvoted in a popular election. There was also the longstanding fear among elites-still going on today-that the slaves would unite with lower-income whites to challenge the elites’ privileges and power (not at all a BAD thing!). Thus the Constitution-Article II, Section One-organized the system of the Electoral College, which has given disproportionate power to numerically weaker southern states, so they can continue their system of chattel slavery. The Electoral College has led to elections that had the person with the majority of votes losing, or else the election thrown to the House of Representatives for them to sort out in the wheeling and dealing, and oftentimes threatening the very existence of the country. This was shown in the election of 1800, where John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr ran against each other, and Alexander Hamilton’s influence swung the House’s votes from Burr to Jefferson. In 1876, Samuel Tilden had more popular votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, but questions of Florida’s electoral votes caused a threat of another civil war, just as the nation was recovering from the last one; a special commission was formed, but a deal was made-the Democrats would allow Hayes to be President, if he agreed to remove federal troops, who were protecting the newly-freed Blacks during the reconstruction period, from the South. Thus, the Republican Party, “the party of Lincoln,” betrayed the former slaves, their most loyal supporters, and left them at the “mercy” of the growing system of racial segregation known as “Jim Crow.” The Electoral College is a mechanism formed by oligarchs, to protect oligarchic privilege and power, and it is long overdue to be eliminated. I urge you to contact Congress members and Senators to do so, thereby ending a destructive element in our elections and our history. But more importantly, we must continue-after we catch our breath, of course-in fighting the Coronavirus, demanding that the Senate pass the relief bill passed by the House-in MAY!-to benefit working people who lost employment due to the pandemic; state and local governments who have borne the brunt of the pandemic, since certain of our “leaders” refused to deal with it, preferring to play political games while Americans get sick and die; and medical workers, such as nurses and EMTs, who have worked tirelessly to deal with our illnesses during and including the pandemic. This will take much serious grassroots organizing, from the bottom up, of working people, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and homeless people-people who have long traditionally been deliberately excluded from the decision-making process. Let us now and forever bury the once noble and necessary, but now impractical, idea of reaching a bipartisan consensus, “reaching across the aisle,” to work out deals for the benefits of our common nation and its people. The Republican Party is too far gone in its embrace of racism, religious fundamentalism, rejection of education and of scientific fact, and plutocracy to deal with on that score; this has gone on for, I would say, since the New Deal, when our capitalist class hated FDR for imposing controls over them and for encouraging the empowerment of workers through organizing into unions. This has gone on through the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964, where he rejected the Civil rights Act of 1964; to Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” where he sought the voters for George Wallace, and called for “law and order,” the buzzword for repressing Civil Rights activism, and with his “War On Drugs,” which was a cover for a war on the Black community and anti-war activists; Ronald Reagan’s proclamation, “I believe in states’ rights,” as he starting his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where, in 1964, the Civil Rights activists-Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman- were killed by the Klan for registering Black people to vote (showing how important voting is); the campaign of 1988, where the patrician George HW Bush, through his campaign manager Lee Atwater, waged the Willie Horton propaganda campaign, with the image of the scary Black man out to rape and kill. Whether or not the Republicans are personally racist is not important; playing to racially-based fears remains a long-standing republican propaganda tool. The behavior of trump and his minions during the period between the election and the inauguration has bene appalling. Such routine procedures as counting the ballots and certifying the election, as well as the General Services Administration (GSA) releasing funds to begin the transition to the new Biden administration-so that the new regime can make plans based on new evidence, on such serious issues as the pandemic-have seen trump’s lawyers going to court to find SOME excuse to stop the ballot count, or to deny the validity of the ballots-mostly from communities of color, like in Detroit. There have also been threats of physical violence and death to election officials. But fortunately, the GSA has finally released the funds for the transition, and the courts have recognized the futility of the trump attorney’s case, which has been no case at all. We must abandon trying to reason with the Republicans and their racist hangers-on, and stand fast for, and advance, the needs of working and low-income people, and for the rights and needs of communities of color and of LGBTQ+ people to advance in the world, and to simply live their lives without violence or abuse, by the agents of the State of anyone else. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Enjoy your holidays! America will be free! Bye!  

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, November 22, 2020

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, November 6, 2020