Pruneface

[Octafish]

Can we quote you on that? The greatest hits of Coleman Young

Detroit Mayor Coleman Young was certainly one of the more controversial figures to lead the city. People either loved him or hated him, but as more time passes and more facts come to light — such as the Free Press’ investigation “How Detroit went broke” — it is clear that he actually was one of the city’s five best mayors.

But he also is remembered for being one of the more colorful characters to lead the city, and his mouth — and his language — were legendary.

Here are 12 of Young’s greatest hits — or, at least, his greatest family-friendly hits — as excerpted from the book “The Quotations of Mayor Coleman A. Young.” For more, buy the book here from Amazon.com.

SNIP...

On the abandonment of Detroit:

“No other city in America, no other city in the Western world has lost the population at that rate. And what’s at the root of that loss? Economics and race. Or, should I say, race and economics.”

On Ronald Reagan, before the Republican was elected president:

“Pruneface.”

On Ronald Reagan, after the Republican was elected president:

“President Pruneface.”

CONTINUED...

[bobthedrummer]

1. Ronald Reagan and the Salvadoran Baby Skulls (R.Parry 1-30-07 Consortium News)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/012907.html

Pruneface drew from the bottomless pit of evil beyond his role as POTUS, he was an "actor" with a huge supporting cast.

[Octafish]

2. Pruneface did El Mozote

For some reason, the New York Times elected to, ah, bury the story.



Reagan Was the Butcher of My People

[JEB]

4. We are very good at burying things,

bodies, truth, shame.

[Octafish]

5. ...the past.

...which is all here now.

[MinM]

7. Edwin Meese

The 5 creepiest things about how the Koch brothers engineered the shutdown

This weekend, The New York Times revealed how the Koch Brothers and [font color=red]Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese[/font] engineered this here shutdown we’re dealing with right now, and how they’d been planning it ever since Obama was reelected. I wasn’t especially shocked by it, myself. Hell, half of the Tea Party people in the House actually campaigned on it. Which is why I have been annoyed as hell with the whole “Oh, well, it’s really both parties at fault here!” line of reasoning that some people have been trying to take...

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/207311/the-5-creepiest-things-about-how-the-koch-brothers-engineered-the-shutdown/

This current mess is just one reason it Still Matters .. because the powers that were directly implicated in or at the least 'benefited' from the removal of JFK were fascists like the Koch Bros.

Also in the case of Ed Meese we have somebody directly involved in the JFK coverup who is Still wreaking havoc with our Country...

...When he introduces Garrison's investigation it is essentially more of the same. For instance, about the arrest of Clay Shaw, Talbot writes, "But to Garrison, he was a CIA-linked international businessman. . .."

Today, there can be no "buts" about it. Shaw was not just "linked" to the CIA, he worked for them. We have this not just from the declassified files, but from FBI agent Regis Kennedy, who said, in referring to Shaw's association with Permindex, that Shaw was a CIA agent who had worked for the Agency in Italy. (Let Justice Be Done, by William Davy, p. 100)

To further downplay the importance of what Garrison uncovered, Talbot quotes former RFK aide, Ed Guthman. Guthman was working as an editor for the Los Angeles Times in early 1967. He tells Talbot that he sent his ace reporters to New Orleans and they discovered that Garrison had no evidence for his charges. Guthman calls them "great reporters". If Talbot would have dug a little deeper he would have found out a couple of interesting things these "great reporters" had done.

One of the "great" reporters was Jack Nelson. Nelson's source for Garrison not having any evidence was former FBI agent and Hoover informer Aaron Kohn. Kohn was, among other things, an unofficial assistant to Shaw's defense team. Another of Guthman's "great" reporters was Jerry Cohen. Cohen cooperated with FBI informant Larry Schiller in keeping Garrison from extraditing Loran Hall. This cooperation extended up to flying with Hall to Sacramento to speak to [font color=red]Edwin Meese[/font]. Further, Cohen kept up a correspondence with Shaw's lawyers and even Shaw himself. This is great reporting? ...

http://www.ctka.net/brothers.html

Of course Edwin Meese, with the blessing of his boss (Gov Ronald Reagan), would go on to deny Garrison's extradition request. This is just one small example of how Jim Garrison's case was undermined but it demonstrates how far back deep-state players like Ed Meese go.


Keep up the great work Octafish. You're doing the memories of Gaeton Fonzi and Roger Feinman proud.

[link:http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024361325#post33|
Edwin Meese is still in place too...]

[bobthedrummer]

10. You know the BFEE well enough to teach (thanks Octafish!) too, MinM, NGU. Kick n/t Meese...

[JEB]

3. My favorite.

On whether Detroit’s crime problem is related to it being a mostly black city:

“People who are hungry and unemployed commit crimes. People who have jobs and pride do not.”

[Octafish]

6. His Honor was profound.

While he wasn't perfect, he stood up to the bastards.

EXCERPT...

Mr. Young: I can only state that in being interviewed and being
asked questions, that I hope that I will be allowed to react fully
to those questions, and not be expected to react only in such a man-
ner that this committee may desire me. In other words, I might have
answers you might not like. You called me here to testify ; I am pre-
pared to testify, but, I would like to know from you if I shall be
allowed to respond to your questions fully and in my own way.

Mr. Tavenner. I have no objection to your answers, if they are
responsive to the questions.

Mr. Young. I will respond.

Mr. Tavenner. But I desire to ask you the question which I have
asked other witnesses: Are you now a member of the Communist
Party ?

Mr. Young. I refuse to answer that question, relying upon my rights
under the fifth amendment, and, in light of the fact that an answer
to such a question, before such a committee, would be, in my opinion,
a violation of my rights under the first amendment, which provides
for freedom of speech, sanctity and privacy of political beliefs and
associates, and, further, since I have no purpose of being here as a
stool pigeon, I am not prepared to give any information on any of
my associates or political thoughts.

Mr. Tavenner. Have you been a member of the Communist Party ?

Mr. Young. For the same reason, I refuse to answer that ques-
tion.

Mr. Tavenner. You told us you were the executive secretary of the
National Negro Congress

Mr. Young. That word is "Negro," not "Niggra."

Mr. Tavenner. I said, "Negro." I think you are mistaken.

Mr. Young. I hope I am. Speak more clearly.

JNIr. Wood. I will appreciate it if you will not argue with counsel.

Mr. Young. It isn't my purpose to argue. As a Negro, I resent the
slurring of the name of my race.

CONTINUED...

Communism in the Detroit Area (Congressional Hearings)

In 1968, he became the first African American to serve on the Democratic National Committee.

[hootinholler]

11. The testimony at your link could have happened yesterday if a few words were changed

Unamerican activities indeed.

[MinM]

8. Coleman Young Would Be A Hero If He Hadn't Confronted White People About Their Racism

Octafish .. here's a nice follow-up to that excellent free press piece.

Now that the Free Press has scrutinized Coleman Young’s financial stewardship and declared him the “most austere Detroit mayor since World War II,” maybe it’s time to re-examine other aspects of Young’s 20 years in office.

And maybe fair-minded observers will eventually conclude that Young was a much better mayor than his reputation in the 21st Century would suggest. And perhaps we can even agree that Young, at least for the first eight to 10 years of his two decades in the Manoogian Mansion, was even Detroit’s best mayor since the city began its 60-year decline...

In 2009, when Time magazine embedded its staffers in the city for a year, Daniel Okrent, writing the magazine’s cover story, said among the chief reasons “Detroit careened off the road” was “the corrosive two-decade rule of a black politician who cared more about retribution than about resurrection … a talented politician who spent much of his 20 years in office devoting his talents to the politics of revenge.”

That’s an evaluation that is shared by legions of Young critics. Yet such a negative interpretation doesn’t square with the Free Press’ findings that Young probably did more to steer Detroit away from the financial abyss than the eight other mayors who have run Detroit since 1950...

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/6447/coleman_young_might_be_a_saint_if_he_hadn_t_confronted_white_people_with_their_racism

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023732207#post6

[Octafish]

9. The Siege of Detroit: A War of Black Urban Removal

The “pause” in the draconian Detroit water shut-off is just a lull in “an escalating trajectory of systematically inflicted mass punishment and pain designed to make life in the city unbearable for a huge proportion of the population.” Wall Street has declared war against America’s “Chocolate Cities,” demanding “the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment.”

by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

“This is a war against a Black city, and a blueprint for future aggressions aimed at shrinking ‘chocolate cities’ across the nation.”

Like the rapist who insists his victim “wanted it,” Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr claims city retirees were expressing “strong support for the city’s plan to adjust its debts” when they voted to accept a 4.5 percent cut in their meager pensions. Corporate media echoed the state appointee’s interpretation of the court-ordered ballot, in which about half the 32,000 eligible workers and retirees participated. In reality, Detroit’s pensioners were violated in broad daylight, stripped of retirement protections and forced to choose whether to die in poverty or an even more extreme destitution.

Earlier this year, as part of the Shock and Awe of state-imposed bankruptcy, Orr threatened to cut pensions by 26 percent, in defiance of Michigan state constitutional protections. He was backed by federal bankruptcy court judge Steven Rhodes, who has brushed aside every objection from lesser, non-corporate beings. Rather than risk the loss of one-quarter of an already meager $20,000 a year pension, 73 percent of retirees and workers accepted the lesser cut, plus an end to cost-of-living increases. This was not an election, but the cruelest coercion – a rape of the elderly, who were forced not only to acquiesce to their own further impoverishment, but to give up the right to challenge the process in court.

SNIP...

“The 82 percent Black metropolis is under siege, in the Medieval sense of the term.”

Orr announced a 15-day “pause” in water cut-offs – similar to a temporary “truce” in siege warfare – as much to give cover to bankruptcy judge Rhodes who, while no less bestial than the managing dictator, seems more sensitive to public perceptions. United Nations experts condemned the shut-offs as constituting "a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights." Thousands demonstrated against the cut-offs in downtown Detroit, and others carried out direct actions, blocking the vehicles of disconnect crews. Two lawsuits have been filed to halt the water-torture. One, by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the Peoples Water Board, the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network, Moratorium Now, and a host of individuals, challenges Orr’s actions as a violation of residents’ constitutional and contractual rights. A class action suit, launched by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, says the cut-offs are racially motivated. The private companies that have been empowered to act for Detroit’s Water and Sewage Department “are basically Caucasian companies," said attorney Alice Jennings. "The folks who are being cut off are almost one hundred percent African-American."

And that is, of course, the whole point. The finance capitalists that run this country would like to disenfranchise the entire population so that money could exercise its exclusive “freedom of political speech” and action, unimpeded. In order to generate the least resistance, the model for urban corporate rule must be created in Black America, just as privatization of public education was modeled in the inner cities. White folks won’t care, and Black folks don’t matter – certainly, it doesn't matter to President Obama, who has signed off on the every element of the siege of Detroit (and has been far more effective than George Bush in privatizing the public schools, as well).

Most importantly, finance capital – Wall Street, the people who employ Kevyn Orr and his Jones Day law firm – demands the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment in the cities. Urban assets are devalued by the mere presence of large numbers of Black people, for the simple reason that most white people continue to refuse to share space with African Americans. Therefore, the “chocolate cities” must go, as a condition for urban “renaissance.” (See Black Agenda Radio, July 21, “Banksters Demand Black Removal as a Condition of Investment.”)

CONTINUED...

http://blackagendareport.com/content/siege-detroit-war-black-urban-removal

PS: We're only on this planet for the blink of an eye. Thank you, MinM, for knowing why it matters.

[MinM]

12. Ronald Reagan thought "Roots" was biased because it made white people look bad

@jonathanchait · Ronald Reagan thought "Roots" was biased because it made white people look bad http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/09/08/ronald_reagan_on_the_rather_destructive_bias_of_alex_haley_s_roots.html …

[Octafish]

13. News as History: Lost in 1977...

The millions of admirers of the TV presentation of Roots didn't include Ronald Reagan, who said, "Very frankly, I thought the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive." He added that he was impressed by the huge audience the series attained, but "I didn't know there was anyone who could stay home eight nights in a row."

-- Ronald Reagan, as quoted Feb. 14, 1977.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/09/08/ronald_reagan_on_the_rather_destructive_bias_of_alex_haley_s_roots.html

Thank you, MinM! The amiable dunce was more than ignorant.