Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

Back-to-Back-to-Back Taser Deaths Kicks Off Crusade

2009-11-20T15:18:00.002-07:00

INFORMATION RELEASE
TO: Media Networks
Event: TASER WAR CRUSADE
Release Date: December 4, 2009

Back-to-Back-to-Back Taser Deaths Kicks Off Crusade
By Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

Since the maker of the 50,000-volt electronic stun gun control device (ECD), TASER International, issued a new directive and warnings in an October 12, 2009 memo, there has been six more death, three in a matter of four days this past week:

• 453. November 13, 2009: Herman George Knabe, 58, Corpus Christi, Texas
• 454. November 14, 2009: Darryl Bain, 43, Long Island, New York
• 455. November 16, 2009: Matthew Bolick, 30, East Grand Rapids, Michigan

The word about tasers is obviously not getting out. There is still a general public acceptance of tasers as an better alternative to more deadly force, and the common belief among law enforcement that the instrument saves more lives than are lost. But is it saving lives of officers in the field at the expense of the lives of innocent people and thereby endangering the general public’s safety?

Truth Not Tasers blogsite now list the names of 455 people in North America who have lost their lives by tasers.

In a continuing effort to raise public awareness about the deadliness of the weapon, and the memory of those who needlessly died, we are waging a blogging campaign on December 4, 2009. The purpose of the Stop Taser Torture Blogging for Justice Day is “to unite the world’s bloggers” in America, Canada, and throughout the world to join in on the effort to stop tasers.

[Blog Registration through StopTaserTorture@gmail.com]

AfroSpear Network Blogger, Eddie G. Griffin (BASG), has joined the campaign to register the grievances against TASER International on behalf of Fort Worth, Texas families who have lost love ones to the device.

• 424. April 18, 2009: Michael Jacobs Jr., 24, Fort Worth, Texas
• 228. August 23, 2006: Noah Lopez, 25, Fort Worth, Texas
• 138. June 24, 2005: Carolyn Daniels, 25, Fort Worth, Texas
• 116. April 3, 2005: Eric Hammock, 43, Fort Worth, Texas
• 86. November 2, 2004: Robert Guerrero, 21, Fort Worth, Texas

Eddie G. Griffin (BASG), an Adult Friend of World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, Mariefred, Sweden, raise the issue of tasers used against children, contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Resolution 44/25, adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1989, which states in Article 6 that “every child has the inherent right to life”, and in Article 37 (a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

These are children who died by taser.

• 7. December 15, 2001: Hannah Rogers-Grippi, 6 months fetus, Chula Vista, California
• 144. July 12, 2005: Kevin Omas, 17, Euless, Texas
• 249. October 29, 2006: Roger Holyfield, 17, Jerseyville, Illinois
• 351. March 20, 2008: Darryl Wayne Turner, 17, Charlotte, North Carolina
• 379. July 22, 2008: Michael Langan, 17, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• 408. January 8, 2009: Derrick Jones, 17, Martinsville, Virginia
• 417. March 22, 2009: Brett Elder, 15, Bay City, Michigan
• 421. April 10, 2009: Robert Mitchell, 16, Detroit, Michigan

Although the United States is not a signatory party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these voiceless children have need of an advocate to speak on their behalf.

417. March 22, 2009: Brett Elder, 15, Bay City, Michigan

Hello, my name is Bethany and I have been reading a lot about how to try and change the state laws in Michigan. I was very close to the 15-year old boy Brett Elder (Dewy). I think about him every day and there is nothing I can do to bring him back, but there is something I can do, and that is to start a Petition. As you may know there have already been two deaths of minors in the State of Michigan this year. I am currently in the process of creating a petition (Dewy’s Minor Taser Protection Act).

If you have any advice for me please feel free to e-mail me. I have also a myspace:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=474323826

Bethany A. Schuster, Bay City, Michigan (Tinkerbell283125@comcast.net)

[Editor's Note: As I write, a 10-year old girl has been tasered.]

TASER WARS: Another Chapter

2009-11-12T10:50:00.003-07:00

TASER International Zaps Non-lethal Claim with Video
By Eddie Griffin

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Who knows what Taser International chairman and co-founder Tom Smith was trying to prove when he zapped reporter Noah Shachtman with an X3 taser. What in the world was WIRE.com thinking when they allowed Shachtman to volunteer for a one-second jolt of 50,000 volts of electricity?

“It was brutal,” said Shachtman, “like sticking your finger in a socket over and over and over again. I screamed in pain as he zapped me. I screamed some more after it was over. Then I cursed, and put my fingers to the bridge of my nose.”

On the video, Smith and his assistant laughs lightheartedly. “Kind of like hitting a funny bone,” the chairman remarked. “Like a good workout.”

“Not exactly,” writes the reporter. “Five hours later, I was still tingling.”

It may have started out as a stunt to offset the rising negative image of tasers. But clearly in the end, the public relations repair backfired, as Shachtman became angry at the effects and after-effects of being tasered. That's when he began asking Taser International executives some hard questions.

“What I keep wondering is", Shachtman writes, "Who would inflict that kind of pain?”

So when we hear stories about grandmothers and kids and handcuffed prisoners and even runaway sheep getting tased, I asked Smith, what does that say about the stun gun’s impact?

He and his colleagues gently ducked the question, saying it was up to individual police forces and military units to teach their troops how and when to use the electroshock weapons. “All we can do is build in as many features as we can think of,” said Brian Beckwith, vice president of product development.

“Any new tool has to have good policy and good training,” Smith said. His VP of public relations, Peter Holran, added, “You’re not just going to give someone a BlackBerry and expect them to use it.”

My colleague Steven Levy then asked about that 72-year-old Texas woman who was tased during a traffic stop. “I felt it was justified,” Smith replied. “Just because she was 72 doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong,” one his associates answered.

Levy then tried to determine how old a lady has to be before she’s considered ineligible for zapping. Holran took it as an accusation. He said angrily that “we can’t change the U.S. Constitution.” After another minute or two, the question was repeated. Smith said there was no upper age — or a lower one, for that matter. The only guidance the company gives cops and soldiers is not to use the stun guns on pregnant women, or people with heart conditions or epileptics.”

By what notion does Peter Holran invoke the U.S. Constitution? The Eighth Amendment prohibits Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

From Tasers to Homicide: The Dividing Line on Torture

2009-11-10T13:03:00.009-07:00

U.S. Department of Justice
Community Relations Service
Harwood Center
1999 Bryan Street, Ste. 2050
Dallas, TX 75201
Tele. 214-655-8190
Fax: 214-655-8184

Attn.: Synthia Demons,
Senior Conciliation Specialist, SW Region
synthia.demons@usdoj.gov

RE: From Tasers to Homicide: The Dividing Line on Torture

Dear Synthia Demons:

We are grateful to have the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice given in this matter of grievance against Tasers, and appreciate your appointment as Conciliation Specialist to help us reach a resolution with the City of Fort Worth and the law enforcement community.

As an advocate of peace, I published “Towards Closure and Resolution in Taser Death of Michael Jacobs Jr.”, August 29, 2009. But there is still a disconnection in communications with government, and an irreconcilable breach with TASER International, manufacturer of the taser device.

The company’s statement aired Saturday on 33 NEWS concedes that tasers are not “risk free”, but nevertheless claim that the devices provide a safer alternative to deadly force. (See Saturday demonstration and read TASER International’s statement at http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-march-for-dignity-story,0,5385639.story).

We contend that the taser is deadly force insofar as 50,000-volts of electrical output have the capacity to literally cook a person’s internal organs. If we can show that Jacobs was electrocuted, charred inside like fried chicken, the public would be horrified, and city leaders should be ashamed. This is why we are asking for public disclosure of the autopsy report.

For those who contend that tasers save more lives than lives lost, we do not see this as a trade-off. An innocent law-abiding citizen should not be subjected to the risk.

In May 2006, the Lake Como Church of Christ convened an education panel to discuss plans police officers had for using tasers in the schools. Panelist included FW Chief of Police Ralph Mendoza, school board members T.A. Sims and Juan Rangel, Judges L. Clifford Davis and Sharon Newman, FWISD representatives Loester Posey and Cecile Standfield, and Civil Rights lawyer Bobbie Edmonds.

It was then we publicly opposed using tasers on middle school age children.

In July 2008, Amnesty International USA announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was looking into 30 taser related deaths, and could possibly investigate up to 180 cases. Since then, there has been no progress report from USDOJ.

We are hopeful with a new administration and a new Congress that the issue will again merit attention.

On April 19, 2009, I delivered a Resolution to the Family of Michael Jacobs Jr. at the funeral on behalf the international blogging community.

(Ref. http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/2009/04/resolution-for-michael-patrick-jacobs.html.)

Another Day of Blogging for Justice against Tasers is scheduled for December 4th. (See announcement: http://stoptasertorture.wordpress.com/partners/)

In the meantime, we continue to circulate a petition to Congress. (See http://www.petition2congress.com/2/1822/taser-torture-in-america-call-congressional-hearings/)

Ms. Demons, it would be of great help if you would describe the function of your office and an update on your findings and how you would hope to reconcile city leaders with the families and friends who have been touched by tasers. As you know, whenever government no longer listens to the grievance of the people, we are forced to raise our voice to the next higher level, from national to international. Ultimately, our last appeal will be before the throne of grace, because TASER International will not heed our plea.

How does the USDOJ offer to reconcile this military contractor with those maimed, injured, and killed by its weapons?

An answer to these questions will go a long way in our understanding the role of federal authorities to redress the grievances of citizens whose right to life have been extinguished by the summary judgment of a law enforcement officer, acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
AfroSpear in the News

A copy of this correspondence is forwarded to the addresses below:

OHCHR-UNOG
Committee against Torture
8-14 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Telephone Number (41-22) 917-9000
Fax Number (41-22) 917-9006
E-mail to urgent-action@ohchr.org

Mantel of Peace upon President’s Shoulders

2009-11-05T10:08:00.002-07:00

By Eddie Griffin (BASG)

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Today has been declared the day to Blog Blast for Peace. For us, it is a day to meditate the meaning of Peace within the context of a complex world at war.

President Barack Obama is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he contemplates sending more troops into Afghanistan. On the other, the world community has placed the mantel of peace upon his shoulders by awarding him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

It is an agonizing dilemma, a paradox in a box, a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situation.

I remember the face of President Lyndon B. Johnson as he agonized over the war in Vietnam. It is a hard situation to be in, because there were forces on both sides: some for war and some for peace, the same as we have today.

The problem has always been our nationalistic pride versus the cost of war, not the mention the damn-it-hell at all cost dogmatic attitude. We have been groomed and conditioned to think that just because we are Americans, we are always right and we must always win. We are intolerant of our enemies. We will not even listen to what they have to say. We have no respect for their being.

If they have a grievance against us, we will not hear it, because we are Americans, and we are always right. Whatever grievance they have against us is unrighteous and false.

We have no respect for the world community. We hate the United Nations that we created, because most of the member nations do not agree with us, like the puppet governments of the past. We no longer dominate the world. We no longer control global thinking.

But our hearts are hardened like Pharaoh. We declared a war, when there was no war, only rogues who committed a horrendous act of terrorism on September 11, 2001. But our anger and thirst for hasty revenge led us into the quagmire that we are now in.

Before a leader goes off to war, he should first sit down and count up the cost. So says the bible, a copy of which should be at the right hand of any president.

But, in the current situation, we did not sit down and count up the cost. Some in the previous administration believed that we could dispatch with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, along with Saddam Hussein, in a matter of months. All we needed was a convenient believable excuse to start, and what could be more terrifying after 9/11 than to declare that the enemy had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction).

Off to war we go. Mistakes were made, we all admit. We were not as right or righteous as we originally thought in our collective nationalistic hearts. President Barack Obama inherited these messy wars. They are now his to conquer, or his to resign his forces. It is an impossible situation to be in. It will be impossible to please everyone.

No, this is not a decision to be made by consensus. The country is divided almost 50-50. This is a decision for the President and the President alone.

Those who will criticize him for not sending more troops are the very ones who will criticize him if he does. This is strictly partisans, after the vintage of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and FOX commentators, along with politicians who capitalize on this type of partisan divide.

That there is division is a fact of life in American. Some of us are sick of war and still have the bitter taste of the WMD fiasco in our craw. It is impossible to start an unrighteous war and win it in the name of God. There is something else at work here.

To date, I have allowed some of my children to pursue military careers without uttering a word of dissent, knowing that they would be sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. To serve one’s country is the highest honor a soldier can achieve. And, there is no more noble sacrifice than a man lay down his life for his friends, family, and nation.

But I question the nobility of the war itself. I feel as though the American people are left in the blind, as to what this war is all about. For those who believe that radical Muslims hate democracy are brainwashed. Everybody loves freedom. But the Taliban wants freedom on their term, in their own country, under their own sovereignty, whether America likes it or not. These are tribal people with tribal government. A central government means nothing to them, but a loss of autonomy.
This is an unconditional line in the sand.

It is rather late in the game to go back and sit down and count up the cost of these wars. We have already paid a heavy toll in the initial investment. But the cost of war must coincide with what we mean by the concept of “War”.

War, to me, is one thing. War, to the Taliban, is another. I cannot superimpose my meaning of war upon my foe, for he fights a “holy war” in his mind, a Jihad, something Americans cannot even phantom.

Only an insurgent understands the meaning of Jihad. It means fighting down to the last man, woman, and child. It is a generational fight, bred into the minds of the children of our enemy from birth.

Have we lost a page from history? The Crusade lasted 505 years. Did we factor this into the cost of our wars? Are we prepared even for a 100-year war? Only arrogant eyes are too short to see.

Now the Mantel of Peace is upon the shoulders of President Barack Obama. People of the world believe that he has opened up a new chapter in global relations. He is a thoughtful man and well spoken. He is considerate of his neighbors. Instead of talking at neighbors and talking down to our allies, he confers with them in earnest, and listens to and respects their views. He has extended an olive branch to our foes.

Though many hate him for this conciliatory attitude, insofar as he is not brash and abrasive as his predecessors, he nevertheless is wise enough to ponder rather than be pressured.

I am reminded of a prophet who was forewarned of God not to be troubled by the hard faces of his foes, whether they hated him, whether they were angry at him, or whether they were simply hard hearted against his word. The word is this:

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. (Psalm 34:14)

The President should listen to his enemies and weigh their words, in the light of day. If, for no cause, they fight us, and if it is war, down to the last man, woman, and child, then so be. And, God help us all.

Annihilation for the sake of peace is a valid option.

March Against Tasers Targets City

2009-11-04T13:26:00.004-07:00

STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FROM: Eddie G. Griffin 817-721-7439

March Against Tasers Targets City

FORT WORTH, Texas – On Saturday, November 7, people will march from downtown City Hall to the uptown County Courthouse, starting at noon, to highlight the increasing number of deaths related to tasing. The march dubbed as a March for Dignity is part of a growing movement around the country and the world to end the use of tasers deployed by law enforcement.

The Fort Worth demonstration is aimed to make a statement to city leaders and law enforcement.

The controversy arises at the same time the number of taser related fatalities approaches 500. At the same time, however, Taser International, the maker of the electronic control device (ECD), continually insists the weapon is non-lethal.

In Fort Worth, when Carolyn Daniels (#138) was died on the floor in the county jail after being tasered on June 24, 2005, hardly anyone paid notice. They said she had crack cocaine in her system. Had she not, we were led to believe, she would have survived the shocking.

But Michael Jacobs Jr. (#424) had no such foreign substance in his system when he was tasered and died on April 18, 2009.

As an emissary who stood over the coffin of the 24-year old young man, I delivered a Resolution to the family on behalf of the international community, and a network of supporters. From Amnesty International to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and bloggers around the world, we raised our voices against this form of torture and death.

I shed a tear for Michael. I shed a tear for Carolyn. I shed a tear for Deacon Fredrick William (#56) whose video electrocution was shown all over the internet, shocked repeatedly in the neck until dead. The remaining 22 minutes of the video was devoted to trying to bring him back to life, and the egg-look on the face of the officers.

But I shed more tears for the living and the unborn. When Valreca Redden was tasered by Trotwood police, she was pregnant. No one can imagine the trauma to the unborn fetus as his mother was being electrocuted with 50,000 volts of electricity. She was guilty of nothing except being distraught. The baby was completely innocent.

We are just now realizing some the lingering after-effects of tasing. Some who have been tasered in the past are now beginning to show signs of involuntary neuromuscular convulsions, what we otherwise would call the “twitches”.

Imagine, if you will, the last minute of Michael Junior’s life, for that is just about how long it took Officer Stephanie Phillips to summarily electrocute him and terminate his life.

For one minute, hold your breath, and close your eyes, and imagine sticking your finger into a light socket. Hold it there for one minute, while 240 volts of electricity race through your body. Are you still holding your breath?

That is what happened to Michael Jacobs Jr. But instead of 240 volts, it is 50,000 volts, blazing inside his body, for one whole minute. At the first jolt, the muscles contract and hold, and hold, and hold, until there is a release. If there is no release, the organ muscles shut down and organs began to pop.

Michael could not breathe, even if he wanted to. The lung muscles shut down. The heart muscle shut down. The bile burst, and the organs fried like chicken, for one eternity of a minute. Thus, what the coroner saw was ruled a homicide.

Consider the Poem by Willie Jolley:

I have only just a minute, only sixty seconds in it
Forced upon me, can't refuse it
Didn't seek it, didn't choose it,
But it's up to me to use it
I must suffer if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute
But Eternity is in it.

In memory of Michael Jacobs Jr. by Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

Larger than Life Limbaugh: REJECTED

2009-10-15T07:53:00.002-07:00

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Bite the bullet, Rush. It’s not personal, it’s only business. Where you seek to plow and profit is a ground cursed to you. You will profit, but only at the expense of the league, the players, and the integrity of the game. As your revenues go up, America’s image goes down the tube.

Sorry, Rush, the NFL is looking for tunas that taste good, not tunas with bad taste.

Whatever distractions you bring to the game would cost your business partners dearly. I assure you, even I would hate to watch my favorite pasttime sport, knowing you were part owner of a team.

And even if you represent as much as 49% of the American listening audience, 51% owners say NO, NO, NO… HELL, NO!

Have a good day, Rush, and give your ego a break and your tonsils some rest. You are beginning to sound like a spoiled brat.

And, don’t even think about suing.

Eddie Griffin, BASG

Seek Peace

Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. (1 Peter 3:8-12 KJV)

Nobel Peace Prize Committee Honors President Barack Obama

2009-10-13T09:14:00.003-07:00

What it means

By Eddie Griffin

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The key word here is not Barack Obama, but “Peace”, something people seems to have a lost a sense of, here, recently.

Rush Limbaugh called the Peace Prize “a joke”. He obviously mistakes the message with the messenger. Hence, he announces that he and the Taliban are “on the same side”, as if an irony. Barack Obama, says Limbaugh, should not receive the honor.

Ross Douthat, New York Times News Service, writes this article for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “Barack should have turned down the Nobel Peace Prize” (excerpted):

Obama gains nothing from the prize… He’s the Nobel laureate who’ll probably fail… the prize leaves Obama more open to ridicule. It confirms, as a defining narrative of his presidency, the gap between his supporters’ cloud-cuckoo-land expectations and the inevitable disappointments of reality... "the world’s biggest celebrity," famous more for being famous than for any accomplishment… Great achievements may still await our Nobel president. If Obama goes from strength to strength, then this travesty will be remembered as a footnote to his administration, rather than a defining moment.

But by accepting the prize, he’s made failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear.

Eddie Griffin from Cloud-Cuckoo-Land to Ross Douthat @ New York Times News Service

Notwithstanding, according to the bible, there will be wars and rumors of wars, Ross Douthat now elevates Rush Limbaugh’s hope of President Barack Obama’s failure to a prophecy of inevitability. Note that he says “the Nobel laureate who’ll probably fail”, followed by “failure, if and when it comes”.

Notice in history: Failure and black men go together like white on rice… bleached, processed, and conditioned.

Otherwise, those of us who voted for Obama and support him have been relegated by the writer to Cloud-Cuckoo-land, with our idealistic Utopian expectations. Far enough, except when I hear Rush Limbaugh says that he is “ironically” on the same side as the Taliban, I wonder who is on Cloud-Cuckoo-land. It seems to me, birds of a feather flock together.

The Taliban hates peace, because the conditions of peace favor the Americans more than the Taliban. That, I can understand. But when an American talk show radio host identifies with and agrees with the Taliban, he spurns the message of peace because he hates the messenger. He insults the very people who voted for Obama. He assails our hope.

Says Limbaugh, Barack Obama should not receive the Nobel Peace Prize honor. But then, what does Limbaugh know about “honor” and giving honor to who honor is due? Instead, he slanders the award in order to demean the man.

Critics say Obama has only been in office 10 months, and the award is premature, that he has not earned it yet. And then, there is that “thin narrow minority” (which Jimmy Carter described) who hate to see a black man honored at anything. They hate the fact that he is President to begin with, let alone winning the Peace Prize.

I’m not surprised. I’ve heard it all before. Martin Luther Coon should not get the Nobel Peace Prize because he is a Communist, and the most dangerous man in America. The advocate of Peace won. The Prince of Peace was crucified on the cross. Martin was martyred, not as a saint, but a man they hated because of the color of his skin.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27)

In Martin’s day, they were enemies of peace, because keeping Negroes in their place was the only type of peace they wanted. Now, they extol MLK as some kind of saint, posthumously, of course, with all the other so-called saints and prophets.

When Christmas time comes, they will do like the typical hypocrite. They'll send out a card that proclaims: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will towards men. (Luke 2:14) Needless to say, good will is needed before we can ever hope for peace.

That was the message.

The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. (James 3:18) The hateful cannot make peace nor can they find peace within.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. (James 4:1-2)

BlogBlast For Peace: November 5, 2009

I Just Saw the Doctor:

2009-10-02T11:28:00.003-07:00

Sobbering words from Michael Burgess, M.D.

I just came from seeing the doctor. I’m fine. But the doc is kinda sick, at least by my diagnosis. That would be my congressman, Dr. Michael C. Burgess, U.S. Representative for the 26th District.

One on one, we talked at each other, some hits, some misses, and how much really stuck, I don’t know. I am sick and tired of hearing about healthcare. All I want for my people is that they get medical treatment, when they need it, at an affordable cost. That’s the bottom line.

It was not my job, as a constituent, to read a 1,000-page healthcare proposal, and follow and track every major and minor change. That’s why we sent him to Congress.

Had I ever wavered in my confidence in him? No. I even publicly recommended that he and President Barack Obama meet and go through the bill, line by line. [Obviously, the President had said some idiocy like he would meet with any member of Congress and go through the bill, line by line, and Burgess called his bluff and got snubbed.]

I liked Burgess' healthcare co-opt financing plan, as a compromise, and a few other good ideas. And, as for healthcare cost reduction through tort reform, there was room for negotiations (less legal fees and support from the legal and labor industries). We understood the bill was being shaped by competing interests.

But cost reduction by efficiency never came into the discussion. Instead, the congressman only wanted to do was explain his NO vote against the healthcare proposal, and why he would probably vote NO at the end, and why he did not conduct a town hall meeting in the minority community.

He was concerned also about how the economic downturn was impacting this, the poorest community in his district. One of the reasons he opposed the healthcare bill, he claims, was because all the new healthcare clinics was going to Democratic districts. And, it was appearing that all the stimulus money was going up North.

How were we fairing in Southeast Fort Worth?

"To the victor go the spoils", I reminded him. He had had his heydays, during the last Republican administration, when our community was most neglected. To the victor went the spoils, then. To the victor should go the spoils, we agreed... end of that discussion.

Poverty was being mitigated, but infant mortality was still high.

The congressman described some of the town hall meetings he had conducted on the healthcare issue. Some forums were vocal and volatile. He could not see inviting such volatility into our minority community, which was mainly pro-Democratic, and contrary to his party line vote. To do so would be like inviting the Tea Party to The Hood. At the very thought, I could see the terror in his eyes, as we sat nose to nose at a table over a cup of coffee. "Security," he muttered.

The African-Americans in our community would act civilly, I assured him. That wasn't the problem. He wasn’t too sure about his people.

“Teach them how to be more civil,” I said, alluding to Rep. Joe Wilson's recent gaff remark, and how he, Burgess, had been caught flatfooted on MSNBC TV. The reported had asked him pointedly, if he thought Joe Wilson's remarks were civil. Burgess replayed about how Bush was booed, and evaded answering the question, altogether.

“You," he He laughed, "a former Black Panther, are going to tell me about being civil?”

I replied, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” And that was that.

We have our work cut out for us ahead. He concedes that healthcare reform, in some form or another, will pass, without his approval. The insurance companies want mandatory coverage, with a punishment clause for those who do not purchase insurance. There will be no public option. Although he supports co-opts, in lieu of the public option, he will probably not support any bill.

He assured me of his precarious political position as a Republican representative of our district. Just talking to me, he would be branded as a traitor. On the other hand, I know Democrats who depises my talking to a Republican.

"That’s why we put you in the hot seat," I reminded him, "in order for you can take the flack. It’s not my job to take heat."

In the next election, he may be opposed by a member of his own party, and he assured me that if he had a successor, his opponent would be East of Eden in conservatism.

I must acknowledge the forces that would make Barack Obama, a disappointed one-term president like Jimmy Carter, who, in my opinion, the best man ever to hold the office before now. Burgess, on the other hand, still calls George W. Bush “his president”, and refuses to recognize the presidency of Barack Obama.

There is a page in obscurity reserved for the presidency of Barack Obama, if the revisionists ever have their way. Other one-term presidents have been rendered into obscurity. Therefore, all I can say is:

Let us work, while it is day. For the night cometh when no man can work (John 9:4).

We are a Hopeless Society

2009-10-01T07:51:00.003-07:00

By Eddie Griffin

Thursday, October 01, 2009

I know it is not a nice thing to say, but our society is Hopeless. To that end, I am glad that I have not put much hope in the people that make up this society. That many people are hopeless comes as no surprise. Just pick up the newspaper: “Man abducts 11-year old and holds her captive for 28 years.” This is insane. How could such a person live among us for 28 years without notice? The answer is: He looked and acted “normal”.

The Bell Curve of Normalcy is totally out of whack.

What would make it acceptable to a group of juveniles to bash another kid in the head and kill him? Isn’t this insane?

No, it is too much like sane acceptable behavior, because everybody thinks they have a right to do their own thing. There is no forethought of consequence. Who ever does consider the consequences, anyway? Society is so hopelessly self-satisfied and perfect in its own eyes.

Consider this contradiction: President Barack Obama ran on a campaign of Hope… hope for the future, hope for the nation, hope for the children, and hope for the downtrodden. Another man, Rush Limbaugh has hope also. He hopes the President fails. Too many people agree with the latter hope.

But hope for failure is self-destructive, but it own motive. Hope for success is plowed in high expectations. It takes collective work and responsibility to succeed. It takes nothing to fail.

That our society is hopeless does not kill my joy, because my hope is not in this world, neither is my hope in fallible man. My hope is in the life after.

And so, I rejoice in a hope that the world does not have, nor can receive. The house is on fire. Nero played the fiddle because it was hopeless. I rejoice in hope of a rescue from Christ Jesus out of the flames.

I voted for Barack Obama because he espoused and inspired hope. That there are hope killers goes without saying.

Former President, Jimmy Carter, was right, including his assertion that the majority of the white people in the South oppose the President because of the color of his skin. People will admit to the abstract existence of racism, but they will never put the tail on the donkey. It is always: “I know racism exists, but not me.” It is the wolf in sheep’s clothes to deny, deny, deny.

Like Carter, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck in Texas.

It is prudent for President Barack Obama not to acknowledge it publicly, less he gives it more life, credence, and legitimacy. For all intent and purpose, however, the wolf has lost its teeth. It can only espouse hatred and violence.

I am propounded daily by select colleagues professing: The wolf is over here. Come and help us before we are eaten.

The Republicans are coming. The Republicans are coming. They are going to try to take back the Whitehouse in 2012.

What is that to me when society is hopeless? Should I care if the next president is black or white, Democrat or Republican? Who holds the future, anyway?

This does not say that I do not care. No, I just do not care for the path our society is following. I care for those who are being led into self-destruction, particularly the innocent children.

A speech by the President aimed at school children was dubbed as “propaganda” and an attempt at “brainwashing”. This being said long before the words of the speech were published.

It’s the same old same old. I teach your kids and we call it education. You teach my kids and we call it brainwashing. What is brainwashing except the selective exclusion of facts, and inclusions of myths, distortions, and lies?

I often asked myself, while growing up in Texas, why there were no Negroes in the history books. I discovered a deliberate attempt many years ago to exclude Colors out of the newspapers, except for negative image stories. Where can I learn of my forefathers contributions to society? It was never intended that I should.

The talk about propaganda and brainwashing is a pure hoax, in the context of advocating hope, because hope is without substance, something yet unmade. Hope is not seen. It is only envisioned. And, without a vision, the people perish.

Which brings us back to today, and why we are a hopeless society.

GOOD MORNING: Good News

2009-09-23T07:35:00.002-07:00

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

GOOD MORNING:
What’s so good about this morning? I have good news. The doctors say that my 9-year old grandson, Little Ed, is cancer free. After 13 weeks of radiation treatments, he will not require surgery for cancer in the colon and lower intestine. The bleeding ulcers are gone also.

I am still guardedly hopefully and prayerful that his recovery will be complete. His stomach and intestines are still raw from the treatments. He must drink Ensure three times a day until his insides heal.

Through it all, he never lost a beat. Maybe a few days out of school, otherwise his illness never took one iota of joy from his being a nine-year old kid. He has been vibrant, energetic, and no one could tell that he was so sick. In fact, everybody thought he was faking, at first- his school, his parents, and even his little sisters.

One day, he got sick while eating some cheese at school. [He is allergic to cheese]. It was a mistake, only to be repeated. However, I fault no one for the mistake. But his daily visits to the nurse’s office caused grandpa some concerns, because no conceived how seriously he was ill. I intervened and insisted on a full diagnosis, and that is when they discovered the cancer after extensive examination.

The X-ray pictures and scopes looked good at first. This reinforced the suspicion that he was faking. But the biopsy came back positive.

I was devastated, and made some vows that I must now keep. I vowed to shave my head, cut off my beard, and shave my mustache, so that Little Ed and Big Ed could be hairless together. It was an expression of the depth of my pain. Afterwards, I felt as weak as Sampson with no hair. I looked and felt like the 63-year old grandpa that I am. In fact, hairless, nobody recognized me, not even my own 84-year old mother.

I would tell Little Ed that he would be fine by the time our hair grew. Today, he is cancer free and back at school, with special doctor’s orders and permits.

The treatment took its toll, of course. At church, we had put him on our continuous prayer list. Then he was stricken with pneumonia and had to miss a few early school days. We updated our prayer list. Then, he fell off a trampoline and required seven stitches in his bottom lip.

He claims that some kids pick on him at school because they know he is sick, and he is also biracial. He was suspended for punching a girl who pushed him into another boy. [Needless to say, grandpa will be fighting for to expunge the disciplinary record.] He tells me that it is painful whenever a kid hits him in the stomach. And now, his stomach will get a chance to heal. He is on an Ensure diet.

He and I have been hanging out together more and more, since shaving our heads. We talk, grandpa to grandson, and visa versa. Never once, in all of our conversations, did he express fear, dismay, or hurt about his illness. There was not a hint of self-pity. In fact, he has been chipper all the while and even a bit mischievous at time. So, we talked about his punching the little girl and using poor judgment. [He is grounded for a month].

So, we talked extensively about behavior at school, church, home and everywhere, about being good and doing the right thing. I put a question to him. While driving along, we passed a neighborhood store where winos and drug addicts hang out. I told him that I did not want him to waste his life like this.

He is a kid who speaks so matter-of-factly. That was the way he spoke of his illness, and that was the way he replied. “I know I’m not going to wound up like that,” he replied, confidently.

He has a reputation in the family as being Mr. Know-It-All, so I asked, “How do you know?”

“I’m going to be a Christian,” he matter-of-factly answered.

For once, grandpa was dumbfounded and proud. His reply put a ton of lead in my belly. This was the same 9-year old who told me that he wanted to be like Barack Obama. He wanted to be President of the United States. How will he overcome the obstacles of poverty, deprivation, and degradation? He wants to be a Christian.

To show his sincerity and seriousness, he picked up the church bulletin in the car seat, looked at the church calendar, and said: “And I want to go to this, this, and this.”

Woe is grandpa on the spot. Now, I must pick him up for church, every Sunday, every Wednesday night, and every time the church doors open. Grandpa must now go to the nursing homes with the church on our given Saturdays, and preach when it is his time to preach.

Didn’t he know that grandpa was exhausted?

I wish and pray that I can make all the events at church and at school. Everybody and everything else in my life has been re-prioritized.

Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
http://eddiegriffinbiblestudy.blogspot.com/

[This is the story of just one of my 10 grandchildren. They each have a different and unique story with grandpa]

The Texas Tea Party Deluge

2009-09-15T07:40:00.002-07:00

Dear Bill O’Reilly,

I am writing to clear my conscious of any ill will I may have had against the Tea Party rally in Fort Worth on Saturday. I admit that I was dismayed to learn of the Glenn Beck inspired rally, when I wrote: “It is a somber gray rainy day in Fort Worth. To everything, there is a season.” (See email, Sept. 12, 2009, 1:11 pm). I had watched the rally broadcasted by FOX, and I received an email invitation to attend.

I was sad for America, because in the midst of it all, some of our children were being taught to hate… hate the President… hate his race… hate the poor and uninsured… hate whatever else is “hateable”, because there is not love within them.

I saw the rally in Fort Worth on FOX, and my own Congressman Michael C. Burgess in attendance. I thought he was my friend.

Then I wrote another email (See email, Sept. 12, 2009, 4:19 pm) with this P.S.: I'm disappointed that the rain in Fort Worth was so light. But then, God knows best.

I am ashamed that I wished more rain upon the heads of those who attended the rally for hateful purposes. I wished no ill-will upon the good-hearted people. After all, our church children had a picnic on the same day, at the same time, and it was forced inside.

No, I did not pray for more rain. Instead, I tried to find comfort in the scriptures which said: God causes it to rain upon the just and the unjust. I found it in Matthew 5:45. But I found, also, more than what I was looking for. It reads:

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Accordingly, I have adopted a different attitude.

Nevertheless, it has rained and rained and rained in North Texas, from the time that the first drizzle dropped on the head of the Tea Party attendees. Surely, the Lord causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. And, if you listen to the unjust, they will blame the rain on the just.

I am reminded to be careful not to pray for ill-will upon those who hate me.

Yet the rain fell... and the floods came... Who considers God in these matters.

Eddie Griffin (BASG)
http://eddiegriffinbiblestudy.blogspot.com/

Towards Closure and Resolution in Taser Death of Michael Jacobs Jr

2009-08-29T12:06:00.002-07:00

By Eddie Griffin (BASG)

Saturday, August 29, 2009

CLOSURE

We now have closure in the Fort Worth Police Department’s taser death case of a 24-year old man, who had been diagnosed with mental illnesses. We have closure insofar as the Tarrant County Medical Examiner ruled the death of Michael Jacobs Jr. as a “homicide caused by the officer’s use of the Taser”. We have closure insofar as the officer admits administering two jolts of 50,000 volts to Jacobs’ body longer than the 5-second limitation. A 49-second jolt, followed by a 5-second jolt, caused a “sudden death during neuromuscular incapacitation due to application of a conducted energy device”, i.e. Taser.

Tarrant County ME Dr. Nizam Peerwani also ruled: “Repeat postmortem toxicology studies were negative for all drugs including psychomotor stimulant drugs and ethanol.” In other words, here was an innocent 24-year old African-American man with no drugs in his system at all. He was clean as a baby and healthy. And yet, in less than a minute, he is dead after being shocked with a taser.

A healthy man shocked to death in less than a minute says something of the lethality of the weapon used, i.e. Taser.

We now have closure in the cause of death: Homicide. But was it negligent homicide, by not taking the preliminary and necessary precautions as required?

Cpl. Stephanie A. Phillips claims that she “unknowingly kept the Taser trigger engaged for an unknown amount of time when she first applied the Taser, thus increasing the pre-programmed shock duration cycle of five seconds.” In other words, she over-road the pre-programmed limit for shock duration.

The objective of the Taser X26 is to incapacitate. A five second during may not be lethal. Beyond that, the Taser is obviously lethal, as proven by over 500 deaths since 2001. To override the non-lethal level of deployment, an officer runs the risk of summary punishment by electrical execution. An officer should not override the product safety guidelines. To “unknowingly” override the product safety limit, Officer Phillips went beyond the purpose of incapacitating the subject Michael Jacobs.

The officer was negligent in the deployment of lethal force. Tasers can kill.

I believe that Cpl. Phillips and the entire Fort Worth Police Department are not convinced of the lethality of Tasers. They are too quick and easy to use, and officers have a willy-nilly attitude about using them. It makes their job easier. But, by the same token, it endangers the public.

If there had been a single trace of drugs in Michael Jacobs’ body, the Medical Examiner would have ruled like other medical examiners. It has been easy to attribute the cause of taser deaths to drugs inside the subject’s system, but not in this case. It is not the victim’s fault that he died in less than a minute after being tased. It was the Taser that killed him, albeit the officer may have thought it less lethal.

RESOLUTION

I attended the funeral of Michael Jacobs Jr. and delivered a Resolution on behalf the thousands of the church and Internet community of readers and supporters. In the Resolution or Michael Jacobs Jr., I wrote:

We also know that Michael did not have to die like this because we have been warning police departments all across the United States for years that Tasers Kill. These devices send out a 50,000-volt charge. If one of us shocked ourselves on an electrical outlet at home, we would get jolted with only 120 volts, and all of us know how that feels. This was 50,000 volts, not 120 or 240. Even when the state of Texas executed men on death row by electric chair, “Old Sparky” could only generate 20,000 volts.

TASER International, Inc. insists that it is not the voltage but the amperage, yet we know so little about the body’s own neurological electrical system. Dr. Peerwani was specific in determining the cause of death: “neuromuscular incapacitation”. In other words, the electrical signals from the brain to the muscles in the body completely shut down, including the heart muscle.

It is a fact that people in highly agitated states should not be tasered. Maybe it is because the neurological activities in the brain are more susceptible to increasing the amperage of the electrical shock. Some survive. Some die. Everybody’s neurological system is different.

World Renowned Medical Examiner Ruled Taser Death: Homicide

2009-08-28T10:44:00.003-07:00

UPDATE: The Michael Jacobs Case

Friday, August 28, 2009

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports reads: “Fort Worth Taser Death Ruled Homicide”.

FORT WORTH — The Tarrant County medical examiner ruled Thursday that the death of a mentally ill man in April who was shocked twice by a Taser stun gun wielded by a Fort Worth police officer was a homicide.

It was the fourth time that a person shocked by a Taser has died in Fort Worth police custody since the department started using the devices in 2001, according to the Police Department.

But the death of Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr., 24, is the first that Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani has ruled to be a homicide.

From Eddie Griffin (BASG)
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/2009/05/taser-fight-in-fort-worth.html

In an interview with Fort Worth Weekly writer Peter Gorman, Tarrant County Medical Examiner Dr. Nizam Peerwani says, “It's still very difficult to determine the role a Taser charge may play in a death, but what we can learn from history is that there are people in certain excited states who perhaps should not be shocked.”

When asked if he about the maker of the taser device, the doctor noted the actions of TASER International had "a policy of suing medical examiners who find Tasers as having contributed to or caused a death".

“That can be very intimidating, of course,” he said. But, he added, it doesn't affect his decisions. “We are working on a case right now where the Taser was used, and we are looking at it very closely. And if we determine that the Taser was a contributing factor, we will be clear on that.”
(Ref: http://www.fwweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1463%3Adissecting-the-evidence&catid=30%3Acover-story&Itemid=375)

Who is Nizam Peerwani?

Dr. Nizam Peerwani is probably the highest-profile medical examiner in the United States. His territory covers four counties, but he's been called upon often to lend his expertise as far away as Afghanistan and Bosnia.

Peerwani has traveled a great deal for organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights, the United Nations, and Human Rights Watch, investigating claims of genocide and other abuses in far-flung corners of the globe - all pro bono.

Asked about his international work, Peerwani launched into a story about going to Rwanda in 1996, where his group had to be protected by Nigerian special forces under the banner of the U.N. while they searched for mass graves. "We found one that had 550 bodies in it. Our group only did one grave, but there were many more from that time."

Such work has taken him to killing fields in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, El Salvador, Iraq, and Peru. He was called to Afghanistan in 2002, shortly after the United States sent in troops, to investigate what had happened to about 2,000 suspected Taliban and al Qaeda members who allegedly had surrendered to a local warlord and U.S. ally and then been killed. Their bodies had not been located, but human rights officials believed they'd been buried in mass graves in the desert. Peerwani and others with Physicians for Human Rights questioned local shepherds, found the bodies, and identified them as those of the men who had surrendered to the warlord.

There's another area of human rights work where Peerwani is a player in a much different way. Amnesty International and other groups around the world for years have complained about the abuses of Taser electric-shock weapons by police agencies - especially in the United States and in Texas in particular.

Questions have been raised about several cases in which people died after having been tasered - in most cases, repeatedly - by Fort Worth police. Those deaths, in part, led the police department to change some of its policies on Taser use a few years ago.

Some local attorneys question Peerwani's willingness to go along with Fort Worth police on cases involving deaths by Taser. And there's some controversy about Peerwani's work for the federal women's prison hospital at Carswell. Judges, attorneys, former inmates, and families of inmates who died at Carswell or at local hospitals are outraged about the poor quality of the prison's medical care, which evidence suggests has led to many deaths. And yet, because Peerwani's private company holds the contract to do Carswell autopsies, families of inmates can't get copies of his findings on the deaths of their loved ones.

Columnist Bob Ray Sanders writes:

Speaking of the April 18th tasing death of Jacobs, who was also diagnosed as bipolar and schizoid, Columnist Bob Ray Sanders writes: “While that seems like a long time, we do want the medical examiner’s office to get it right.” Sanders recommends that the Fort Worth Police Department issue a moratorium “on the use of Tasers until there is another thorough review of the department’s policies on the stun guns and until there can be more independent analyses of their effectiveness versus their danger. For the most part we’ve depended on the manufacturer’s analysis.”

WHAT NOW?

The taser death ruling as “a homicide”, coming from a world renowned Medical Examiner needs our attention. The Taser Death Case of Michael Jacobs Jr. will go before a Grand Jury.

Who will present the case?

District Attorney Joe Shannon said his office will review reports from police and Peerwani and present a case to a grand jury to determine what, if any, charge the officer might face. The grand jury likely will also hear testimony from witnesses.

Shannon emphasized that the homicide ruling does not necessarily mean that anyone will be charged with a crime.

“The word homicide does not mean crime,” he said. “It just means that the death involved another person.”

Charges involving death typically range from criminally negligent homicide to murder, but there are many other possibilities, Shannon said.

"There are probably 20 possibilities that could come out of this," Shannon said. "I don’t know if it will be any."

WHEN IS A HOMICIDE NOT A HOMICIDE?

Answer: When it is done with impunity and without consequences.

Someone must be held responsible for the death of an innocent man by lethal application of an officer’s weapon. Who is responsible for the death of the innocent, mentally ill Michael Jacobs?

Previously, Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead supported the officer’s use of force, as being consistent with department policies.

If policies for taser deployment were followed, as claimed, and it resulted in “homicide”, have we legalized “homicide” in the hands of the police?

And, what of these “20 possibilities” of homicide, are they saying there is an invention called “accidental homicide” defense?

Clearly, the district attorney has no heart for this… as does no one else in the community. But the facts must be laid bare, and the chips fall where they may. Let Justice reign instead.

If the Fort Worth Police Department still supports the policy and officer in question, then their only defense would be that they were “duped” by TASER International’s sales pitch of non-lethality.

RESPONSE FROM TASER INTERNATIONAL

“Taser International is always concerned when a death tragically occurs in police custody. While we have not been provided a copy of the medical examiner’s report, we continue to stand by the safety of our Taser technology,” said Steve Tuttle, Taser International’s vice president of communications.

Someone Must Take Responsibility for an Innocent Man’s Death

The Jacobs Family has endured emotional trauma and financial hardship since the death of their son. Four months of waiting for a ruling is too long for settling an insurance death claim, out of which comes funeral expenses and debt. And, only lately, as an after thought, the family gets condolences from the Chief of Police.

Who will pay the death damages? How much is Michael Jacobs’s life worth to the City of Fort Worth? Is the police department liable for wrongful death?

President Obama will not sign a Health Care Reform Bill, unless…

2009-08-15T12:36:00.002-07:00

AS OF THIS WRITING, there are several versions of HR 3200 and no agreement within Congress as to which bill to use for a mark up.

President Obama will not sign a Health Care Reform Bill, unless...

The Bill accomplishes three goals:

1. To lower the cost of health care for the customer;
2. Make sure those Americans who are currently happy with their health care coverage can keep it; and
3. Provide coverage for all those who are currently uninsured, whether because of pre-existing conditions or because they simply cannot afford it.

NOW WHICH OF THESE OBJECTIVES DO YOU OBJECT TO?

Eddie Griffin
evansavenue76104@yahoo.com
www.eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com

OVERALL OBJECTIVE: Fix what is broken. As a precondition to fixing the problem, government should not come between doctor and patient. A patient should have a full right to choose.

What are the Options of Choice?

OPTION ONE: The existing health care system, as is. Those who are happy with the current system, the option to keep the health care coverage is protected by provisions in Sec. 102 of the Affordable Health Choices Act

OPTION TWO: An alternative option under which the Uninsured can have Affordable Health coverage.

Currently, the Uninsured neglect needed medical services until health issues become a crisis. It is then they seek healthcare in the emergency room (ER Care). This charity healthcare comes at the expense of our county.

Early treatment could prevent the latter cost. In fact, a combination of preventative care, early diagnosis, and early treatment could very well help an expectant single mother access prenatal care, as opposed to an abortion for a medically neglected fetus. HOWEVER, this bill should fund, in any way, abortions.

The infant mortality rate among African-Americans in Tarrant County is over 17.0 per 1000. This is comparable to a Third World country.

The problem here is inaccessibility to healthcare and a lack of public information. It is now a cumbersome process to become Medicare/Medicaid qualified, plus the inability of most poor being able to pay the co-pay (sharing obligations). Single mothers in their teens to twenties fall through the gap, between Medicare, Medicaid, and charity care.

Of this group are the unemployed, underemployed, marginally employed, and temps. These “at will” workers are also “at risk” workers. For example: The immigrant employee who servers a finger in an OJT accident. As a small business with no employee healthcare coverage, he pays the doctor bill only, and sends the worker back to work, as if it is the worker’s fault.

Should there be a reduction in tort liability for medical malpractice?

In the above case scenario, whose responsibility is it to provide healthcare coverage? Who is responsible for covering accidents on industrial property? There must be equity and fairness in the treatment of employees, as it relates to company healthcare liabilities. An employer should not be self-insured, unless they have sufficient capital reserves in store or provide a covetable (affordable) COBRA program. [COBRA provides continuity in existing employment healthcare insurance programs]

As for doctors who pay high medical liability insurance cost, this is the CURRENT SITUATION, and not necessarily the future situation. For sure, health insurance premiums are going to go up and up, with or without Tort Reform. It is simply the escalating cost of doing business, with provisions for profits.

Despite the rising business and personal health insurance rates, the insurance companies have profited beyond reason. Just look at the property holdings of insurance companies as proof of what becomes of “excessive” profits. They buy buildings and businesses. In the meantime, the customer gets no reduction in rates.

If nothing changes, this is the scenario with which we will continually live.

The insurance companies must be forced to reduce its profit rate at the expense of customers desperately in need of health care coverage. The American people should not be held hostage to the insurance companies and its system of arbitrary coverage and denial of service without notice to the terminally ill.

Under the current employment-based healthcare plans, most employees are satisfied, despite their level of payroll deduction. Under these plans, people are satisfied with their coverage and their family doctors. But some employment-based healthcare plans may not option to become Qualified Health Benefit Plans (QHBP). Self-insurance should not become an option.

And, what of those employers who opt for the government QHBP Exchange option, WOULD THIS FORCE EMPLOYERS TO DROP THEIR CURRENT EMPLOYEE-BASED HEALTHCARE PLAN AND BUY INTO GOVERNMENT INSURANCE? WILL THIS DESTROY THE PATIENT-DOCTOR RELATIONSHIP?

We should phase out frontier medicine, where doctors are woefully behind the times in medical record keeping, technology, and knowledge. Although some patients may love their frontier family doctor, that a family may have had for over 100 years, at some point medical records will outlive doctors, and these patient records should be accessible through a centralize medical database system to insure continuity of health care.

FINANCING by Upside Down Tax

Those of the upper income bracket should be able to pay a little more in order to insure more people. We should, therefore, start taxing at the richest of the rich, and work our way down.

There is already a bottom-to-top tax financing system, through worker payroll deduction.

FICA Taxes
The Federal Insurance Contributions tax consists of both Social Security and Medicare taxes. Social Security and Medicare taxes are paid both by the employees and the employer. Both parties pay half of these taxes. Employees pay half, and employers pay the other half. Together both halves of the FICA taxes add up to 15.3%

. The 15.3% FICA tax is broken down as follows:
• Social Security (Employee pays 6.2%)
• Social Security (Employer pays 6.2%)
• Medicare (Employee pays 1.45%)
• Medicare (Employer pays 1.45%)

FICA CAP LEVELS

FICA CAP for 2000 was $76,200.00
FICA CAP for 2001 was $80,400.00
FICA CAP for 2002 was $84,900.00
FICA CAP for 2003 was $87,000.00
FICA CAP for 2004 was $87,900.00
FICA CAP for 2005 was $90,000.00
FICA CAP for 2006 was $94,200.00
FICA CAP for 2007 was $97,500.00
FICA CAP for 2008 is $102,000.00

FICA CAP for 2009- [An Upward adjustment here would be viewed as a tax hike on the middle class]

Start at the Billionaire level.

BEYOND

COBRA premium assistance credit. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) provides certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children the right to temporary continuation of health coverage at group rates. COBRA generally covers multiemployer health plans and health plans maintained by private-sector employers (other than churches) with 20 or more full and part-time employees. Parallel requirements apply to these plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Under the Public Health Service Act, COBRA requirements apply also to health plans covering state or local government employees. Similar requirements apply under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and under some state laws. For the premium assistance (or subsidy) discussed below, these requirements are all referred to as COBRA requirements.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) allows a credit against “payroll taxes” (referred to in this publication as “employment taxes”) for providing COBRA premium assistance to assistance eligible individuals. For periods of COBRA continuation coverage beginning after February 16, 2009, a group health plan must treat an assistance eligible individual as having paid the required COBRA continuation coverage premium if the individual elects COBRA coverage and pays 35% of the amount of the premium.

An assistance eligible individual is a qualified beneficiary of an employer's group health plan who is eligible for COBRA continuation coverage during the period beginning September 1, 2008, and ending December 31, 2009, due to the involuntarily termination from employment of a covered employee during the period and elects continuation COBRA coverage. The assistance for the coverage can last up to 9 months.

The 65% of the premium not paid by the assistance eligible individuals is reimbursed to the employer maintaining the group health plan. The reimbursement is made through a credit against the employer's employment tax liabilities.

The Security You Get from health insurance reform

2009-08-13T11:39:00.001-07:00

Health Insurance Consumer Protections

View more documents from White House.

Burgess Meeting with President on Affordable Health Choices

2009-08-10T14:31:00.002-07:00

U. S. Representative Michael C. Burgess
WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE
1224 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
P: (202) 225-7772
F: (202) 225-2919

RE: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act & Meeting with the President

Dear Congressman Michael C. Burgess:

I recently read of your acceptance to meet with President Barack Obama about your concerns related to the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200). Please convey our well-wishes to the President and First Family.

If never we have agreed on anything, we have agreed on this:

FIRST: As far as medicine is concerned, Americans are ready for change.

You state: “The U.S. Congress must: (1) enact laws that provide a safety net for the poorest of the poor; (2) take less taxpayer dollars so they can be used to pay for the cost of a family's health coverage; and (3) provide new incentives for families and individuals to save for their health expenses… As the cost of medical care continues to increase, businesses are more and more reluctant to provide coverage for their employees.

Without national legislation, health costs will continue to climb, health insurance premiums will become more burdensome for employers and employees.

If ever so slowly, I believe we are moving toward a system where basic health care will be accessible to all, while retaining the option for individuals to access unlimited care – a modified version of the mixed public and private healthcare system we have now.

I would like to bring all parties to the table and send a bill to the President that addresses this issue.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Congressman Michael C. Burgess represents Texas 26th District, a gerrymandered district where once our voices were heard, but are no longer heard.

Our congressman has a misperception of healthcare as a right or a privilege. If healthcare means extending the right to live, it is a constitutional right, insofar as we have a right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

The misperception comes in when the Congressman looks upon healthcare as a privilege. He states: “It is market-based healthcare that is and will be essential to maintaining the world-class ‘premium’ medicine that people travel across the globe in search of.” This premium medicine that people travel across the globe to receive in the United States consists of (1) screening for preventable diseases, (2) advanced technology like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized tomography (CT), and (3) heroic late-stage treatment measures.

This so-called culture of ‘premium’ medicine is based upon the book “Crisis of Abundance” by Dr. Arnold Kling.

MR. PRESIDENT:

I have assured my congressman that the “poorest of the poor”, for which he assumes to speaks, do not suffer from the “crisis of abundance”, and neither spoiled by “culture of ‘premium’ medicine.”

Remember, we are the Uninsured. We take what we can get. And, most of the time, it is charity care, at the expense of the County Hospital.

Congressman Burgess, to date, has held only two one-hour Town Hall meetings. On Saturday, August 8, he visited Denton, from 10 am to 11 am, and from 2:00 pm to 3 pm, he visited Gainesville.

These are communities of people who are already has health insurance. These are the ones with the “premium” healthcare expectations.

Since Sec. 102 of the Affordable Health Choices Act. Protects the choice to keep current coverage:

[Sec. 102(1)(B)(2) prohibits private insurers from changing terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing on or after the First Day of Y1. Therefore, it would be illegal for private insurers to raise the rates on old policies]

[Sec. 102(1)(B) (3) specifically states:

The issuer cannot vary the percentage increase in the premium for a risk group of enrollees in specific grandfathered health insurance coverage without changing the premium for all enrollees in the same risk group at the same rate, as specified by the Commissioner.]

CITIZEN’S ALERT: Speak- Don’t Shout

2009-08-07T09:21:00.006-07:00

By Eddie Griffin

Friday, August 07, 2009

I am as interested as anyone in the Healthcare Reform bill, but I cannot get any answers because too many people are shouting. Let us hear the issue. Then let us speak our minds.

We want to be heard also, not drowned out by mindless, disrespectful chanting. What I have seen so far of this Recess Rally is a lot of shouting, and no clear answers. No one is allowed to speak. There is an atmosphere of intimidation, apprehension, and fear. This is not good for America. After all, there are two sides to the issue: Those who have access to healthcare and those who do not.

There are those who have health insurance already, and access to doctors and the best medical care. There are those who do not. These are the ones who show up in the emergency rooms of hospitals every day, about ready to die, with no health coverage.

Why should those who have shout out those who have not?

Those who attend these public forums are the ones who already have health coverage. But they have been misled to believe that allowing coverage for the uninsured poor is going to destroy them. Is it wrong to advocate for the uninsured poor?

The bill clearly states that a person can keep what they have. If they have insurance coverage they are pleased with, they can keep it. If they have a doctor they are pleased with, then they can keep their family and personal physicians. These luxuries and privileges are not afforded to all Americans.

People must be sensitive to both sides.

What the Obama administration recognizes is the cost of healthcare is tied up with health insurance costs. If anyone has noticed, insurance costs keep going up, and premiums keep rising, and will continue to rise if not checked.

The federal health insurance option offers a competitive rate insurance plan, for those who subscribe. The plan would offer more affordable coverage, which will reduce the cost of small business owners who provides medical coverage (in part or in whole) to their employees. For those who lose their jobs in this economic downturn, the government insurance program may be a better and cheaper option than post-employment COLA coverage.

There is the marginally employed, whose employer provide them with no health coverage. They are unable themselves to earn enough to pay for a health insurance in the current market. Maybe a government insurance policy would be affordable for them. Although it may be the Cadillac plan people are now so afraid of losing. Any healthcare is good healthcare for those who have been medically neglected.

If the insurance of the rich covers cosmetic surgery and the poor does not have the option, this is not a matter of disparity. It is a matter of choice.

Subtitle B-Public Health Insurance Option, Sec. 221(a): For years beginning with Y1, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide for the offering of an “Public Health Insurance Option” that insures (1) choice; (2) competition; and (3) stability of affordable, high quality coverage throughout the United States.

Now what is wrong with this plan? And where, in the bill, is it falling short?

http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/

We Agree & Disagree on Health Reform

2009-08-06T11:59:00.002-07:00

U. S. Representative Michael C. Burgess
WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE
1224 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
P: (202) 225-7772
F: (202) 225-2919

RE: Health Reform Bill

My Dear Congressman:

You stated: “I voted no on this legislation, but I will admit that there are parts of this bill that are good, such as the increased steps to tackle the problems of waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. I am pleased that several of my bipartisan amendments that make needed improvements to the bill were accepted. But, despite Republican attempts to improve the bill, many parts are still missing, such as medical liability reform.

Thank you for stating your position, openly and honestly. I agree with you, in part, and differ in other parts. Maybe this would be a good starting point for consensus between you and my community.

We agree: Americans want quality health care that is affordable. I also concur that some Americans want to be able to keep their current health insurance and doctor. But the assertion, “this bill takes those decisions out of their hands and into the hands of the government,” I beg to differ, after going over the bill.

All health insurance policies in effect prior to Year (Y1) will remain in effect and continuous for as long as the policyholder wishes, or until the insurance company drops coverage. However, a government insurance alternative, created to force down the cost of healthcare coverage, may be turn out to be a cheaper and better option than their current policy with annual escalating costs.

Your formula for cutting health insurance cost by medical liability reform may be a good idea. But I believe medical liability claims should be judged and awarded by juries, and the medical industry must come to grips with the severity of people's judgment in tort cases. (Here again, this is just my option, and has nothing to do with the current legislation).

You also wrote: With this bill, the Democrats will drastically expand the federal government’s involvement in health care by adding millions more to the rolls of Medicaid.

Are there people currently not receiving healthcare treatment, simply because they cannot get on the Medicaid rolls? How about my daughter-in-law and the millions like her, medically neglected every day? So, what’s wrong with adding millions more to the Medicaid rolls. Raising the cap of Medicare payroll deduction from $87,000 to wage and salary earning up to $1 million. That would insure Medicare/Medicaid solvency and allow more medically neglected individuals to be added to the rolls.

You also claim that this bill creates a new government entitlement – the government-run health insurance option. The health insurance industry has held the American public hostage from the beginning. Every year, the insurance companies raise our rates, and there is nothing we can do about it. There is no truly competitive alternative. This bill gives the public an out.

If this is an “entitlement” by your definition, then the American public is certainly entitled to it.

Finally, you claim that this bill will strap billions of dollars in new taxes and penalties on the backs of hard-working Americans and small businesses. They will replace choice and freedom with new federal mandates.

We have heard from the small business community. If they can keep insurance cost down, they can invest more in their businesses and provide health coverage for their employees. This is not currently possible with annual insurance rate increases. However, a competitively priced government insurance program would afford them a more economical alternative to private insurers.

As a medical doctor, you are probably looking at the proposed oversight task force as intrusive upon your private practice. But you must realize that the public needs protection from being subjected to unnecessary medical procedures for practitioners’ profits. (And, you have to look no further than the case of Michael Jackson to find proof.)

We both hope that the American people will make their voices heard and demand that Congress pass real health care reform that will fix what is wrong and build on what works.

Looking at the investment on the preventative (or wellness) side of the bill, we might wisely speculate that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This is another way of saying that there is real cost saving in preventative care.

How much? We cannot say. You are the doctor. Tell us how much prevention can save on medical cost down the road.

Therefore, this notion of more government spending, more federal debt, higher taxes, and more government control over their everyday lives is more hysteria and paranoia than facts.

Sincerely
Eddie Griffin

FCC Complaint filed against Rush Limbaugh

2009-07-30T11:46:00.003-07:00

Filed: By Eddie Griffin, BASG

Mr. Limbaugh is generating racial hatred by mischaracterizing the President of the United States as a "black militant" and Judge Sotomayor as a "racist". This language is aimed at creating hostilities among the races for the purpose of political gain. He gives aid and comfort to right wing terrorism by his extreme rhetoric, and thereby inflames negative sentiments and arouses public fears. [Complaint #09-C00140612]

Anyone who promotes himself as “the All-Knowing, All-Sensing, All-Everything Maha Rushie” is essentially declaring himself to be a deity. This is pathologically sick.

Ask any doctor: A brain damaged by drugs is never the same again. Thinking yourself to be an All-Everything god, may be fodder for your worshippers and followers, but it is a typical psychosis of a man on drugs.

Lest you forget your own hypocritical words about drug use and punishment:

"There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too." -- Rush Limbaugh show, Oct. 5, 1995

Even as you condemned others, calling for their arrest and incarceration, you yourself were using drugs. You were busted, not once, but repeatedly as the record shows.

(CNN) -- Rush Limbaugh announced on his radio program Friday that he is addicted to pain medication and that he is checking himself into a treatment center immediately.
"You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life," the conservative commentator said in a statement on his nationally syndicated radio show.

"I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication."

Law enforcement sources said last week that Limbaugh's name had come up during an investigation into a black market drug ring in Palm Beach County, Florida. The sources said that authorities were looking into the illegal sale of the prescription drugs OxyContin and hydrocodone.

And, again in 2006:

MIAMI, April 28 -- Talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh surrendered to authorities Friday on a charge of committing fraud to obtain prescription drugs, concluding an investigation that for more than two years has hovered over the law-and-order conservative…

The charge will be dropped in 18 months, said his attorney, Roy Black, provided that Limbaugh continues treatment for drug addiction, as he has for 2 1/2 years.

According to the story, Limbaugh’s housekeeper ratted on him. The charges would be dropped in 18 months, and Limbaugh would continue treatment for 2 1/2 years.

The question never asked is how much brain damage Rush Limbaugh might have suffered from drug usage. As any addict will admit: “Once an addict, always an addict.” The talk show host has been treated for drugs, because the psychological damage is evident.

NOW YOU SAY THE SKY IS FALLING

Who do you think we are? Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey? We know who Foxy Loxy is? But do you expect us to believe the sky is falling, Chicken Little?

A Peacemaker in this Gates-Crowley Affair

2009-07-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am a peacemaker in this Gates-Crowley Affair, with President Barack Obama caught in the middle. Let me say that, in terms of public opinion, I would rate it a 50-50 situation. There was a basis and rationale for every action and reaction taken by each party. There were justifications on both sides of the issue, though neither side can ever seem to see the other. And, you can bet your boots, somebody is going to exploit the difference.

We are peacemakers. We take a mess like that above and turn it into a golden opportunity to learn better, to do better.

Of course, I know impartiality rubs some people the wrong way. Sorry, but bring it. Eddie Griffin can handle it.

I was once a peacemaker better warden and inmates, while in prison, according to my massive FBI files. I was a flash point inmate who could promise the warden peace and no riots if the guards acted civilized. The warden and I were equals. Making peace does not necessarily mean not using strong-arm tactics. Quite the contrary, peace is offered always by the stronger and superior force.

I could always offer peace without loss of ego, manhood, dignity, or respect, not because I was the weaker party. On the contrary, I made peace first with death. My adversary is aware that in this mindset I am not afraid of dying.

The seed of peace is sown in the hearts of those who make peace. If peace is what they truly desire, then it will be easy for them to find peace. Gates, Crowley, and Obama should be able to walk away as friends, in the spirit of fraternal brotherhood. That would be the ideal.

Of course, some will do everything within their power to keep the breach open and the controversy alive. The condition of peace is predicated upon our ability to keep the peace-breakers at bay, from creating hostile opposing camps, and dividing the nation along polar color lines.

President Barack Obama has the opportunity to address the important issue of mass incarceration of minorities. But we must be willing to hear, rather than run off at the mouth with our narrow-minded opinions.

As I said, bring it on!

I have taken on cops like Sgt. Crowley and little bourgeois wimps like Gates. Crowley could not have tricked me into an arrest. If he did indeed arrest me, it would have been under false pretenses. I am conscious of where the line of the law is etched in the sand and I never cross it. I do not cross into enemy territory sober, and I do not drink. If a cop arrests me, then be it known that he would have to work overtime, and end the day stressed out, and ready to quit. My motto used to be: Wear ‘em down, wear ‘em down, wear ‘em out, wear ‘em out the front door. If you are not Eddie Griffin, don’t try it.

And, if the jailer had put Gates in the same cell with me, I would have rolled up his bunk and tossed it out on the tier. Whatever he had to say when he hit the cell door, I wouldn’t want to hear it. Enter my cell as a man, and stand like a man.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
(Matthew 5:9)

Eddie Griffin

ALERT: In Defense of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr.:

2009-07-23T11:53:00.002-07:00

Did a rogue cop intentionally provoke the professor in order to entice him into an arrest? Can rogue cops be behind the negative image of some police departments? Are they why some people charge racism and discrimination?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Now that President Barack Obama has weighed in on the debate in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., it takes national attention. The response against the heavy-handed handling of the arrest has drawn spotlight on the Cambridge Police force.

CNN Soledad O’Brien interviewed the professor, after President Obama stated that the police acted stupid.

When the commander-in-chief makes a statement like that, we can rest assured that he has a Justice Department file on the case, and knows more than the average public.

"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played," Obama said Wednesday night while taking questions after a White House news conference.

Cambridge authorities dropped disorderly conduct charges against Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Tuesday.

Obama defended Gates on Wednesday night, while admitting that he may be "a little biased," because Gates is a friend.

"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, No. 3 ... that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

It’s as simple as 1-2-3. Even a caveman can understand it.

Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons talks with American Morning about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates.

Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
http://educationofeddiegriffin.blogspot.com/
http://eddiegriffinbiblestudy.blogspot.com/

Drugs and Gun Violence: Two Peas in the Same Pod

2009-07-20T11:17:00.003-07:00

By Eddie Griffin

Monday, July 20, 2009

During the revolution, it was our business to know all the ins and outs of the drug trade. We were an intelligence unit known as The Collective, an underground revolutionary think tank that some people comely identify as “The Black Panthers”. We were the first to engage in, what became know as, “The War on Drugs”.

We were the good guys, but we were not perfect. We had serious vulnerabilities, and we were susceptible to the very problem we were trying to eliminate.

Inside the think tank, we developed strategies for breaking the Supply and Demand side of the drug trafficking equation, with the help and blessings of the betrayed kingpins that were sent to prison for life.

The irony of learning the insides of Organized Crime arises from strange bedfellows in prison. To keep from killing each other off behind bars, the Panthers had to establish a peace pact with old nemesis. They had to coexist with their former enemies, such as drug lords and white supremacists, so as not to continually kill each other off in gladiator combat. It was an unholy alliance of dialectical exchanges.

We learned much from them, especially from the big wig masterminds of the trade. The drug lords were peons in the distribution chain. Inside the think tank, we knew that the U.S. government was engaged in drug trafficking in the early stages.

Subversive wars, like the Iran-Contra Affair, were secretly financed by drug money. But this was only one component of a complex situation. There was also the distribution chain comprised of financiers and importers and distributors. In the middle of the food chain was the Organized Syndicate, commonly called the Mafia.

When the CIA is on one end and the Mafia on the other end, the illegal drugs wound up in the black community. CIA concocted LSD drugs wound up in the white radical community, all at a time when the Nixon administration was under siege.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon announced that the Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, was preparing a comprehensive new measure to more effectively meet the narcotic and dangerous drug problems at the federal level by combining all existing federal laws into a single new statute.

Also during this time, Nixon commissioned the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse—known as the Shafer Commission after its chairman, Raymond P. Shafer—to study marijuana abuse in the United States. During his presentation of the commission's findings to Congress, Shafer recommended the decriminalization of marijuana in small amounts, saying, "[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only 'with the greatest reluctance." Nixon buried this commission's findings and went on to sign the Controlled Substances Act.

Illegal drugs began showing up in our communities around 1963. In some parts of the country, it broke out earlier. But generally, as late as 1959, drug addiction was an anomaly. One of the old timers told me the story of how he simply walked into a hospital to be treated of his addiction only to find the doctors and nurses dumbfounded by ignorance. Later, they made addiction a crime.

The original peddlers were white, pretending to be part of the black jazz culture. They brought with them painkillers in capsule and tablet form. They introduced the drug as freebees, just to be accepted in the black community; next came the addiction, followed by drug overdoses. The Demand skyrocketed.

We watched how they created the drug kingpins. They gave them drugs on credit, and allowed them to buy protection from the police and the courts. We saw how they fattened the drug lords up like pigs, busting them every now and then to skim off some of the drug proceeds by bail bondsmen, lawyers, and payoffs. They gave them enough liberty to keep selling drugs. And then, when they were fat enough, they would take them down.

I listened to a plot to rob a drug kingpin. The mastermind behind the robbery was the very man who supplied the kingpin his drugs. So, he knew where and when the kingpin would make his next $50,000 purchase of drugs. He provided this secret information to the stickup boy. Sometimes, it was the unwitting Panther gangsters, who were under the illusion that they were fighting drug trafficking.

I also knew a banker who had financed drug buys, laundered money, and organized their own banks to be robbed. He was a hometown banker who went to prison after my downfall, convicted of laundering drug money.

The Black Panthers were anti-capitalist for this very reason. Black people chasing the “almighty dollar” could wound up selling the souls to the devil. In the underworld of drug trafficking, there is one way in and no way out. Some of our children were finding out the hard way that selling drugs was a fatal business. They usually find entry at the bottom of the food chain and found later with a bullet in the back of the head. We all knew what the signature killing signified.

It is a bitter pill to swallow when a man discovers that the mob is taking you on a one-way ride. Sometimes, as in my case, it is made to look like a one-way ride. Their objective was to keep a man guessing, intimidated, and in constant fear of their lives. My white contact to the underworld was forced to watch a hit. The assassins used baseball bats. He was in constant fear of his life, and he put me in constant fear of my life, just by our mere association. I learned never to ride in the same car with a gangster.

They also ran a side business that could be described as rent-a-gun. When peons on the food chain are called upon the make a hit, rob a bank, or retaliate, he is required to use a “clean gun”. They will rent him the gun if it is returned unused. If the gun is used, the peon is forced to purchase it, and told to dispose of it. Most peons keep their killer weapons.

I remember seeing guns sold from the truck of a car at night, under the streetlights. My underworld contact wanted to show us something in the truck of the car. It was a beautiful cache of weapons, still fresh in their original packaging and box, with manufacturers grease still all over it. The smell of new guns for some Black Panthers was enticing. For three times the price, a man could purchase anything.

With him was a list of black snitches, directly from the police department and FBI. He was “connected”, as they say.

He was the same man who sold guns to the drug kingpins, along with their drugs. Guns, for kingpins, were used for protection. Gun sales to the Panthers were the Robbing Hoods who would relieve them of their cash; one capitalist, the other anti-capitalist. We lost the culture war. After our downfall, everybody bought into the pimp and hustler and drug dealer image, of conspicuous wealth and lavish lifestyles.

The Nicky Barnes type drug lords, who averaged millions of dollar per month on the street level, purchase police protection by paying “shakedown”. Every crooked cop accepted shakedown money. But sometimes the bounty on the old drug kingpin is worth more than the shakedown. They fall, and they fall hard. They are given life sentences, and they will gladly share they life story with anyone that will listen.

I knew Leroy “Nicky” Barnes as well as any man in prison. I remembered his story from Times magazine before I met him face to face.

On June 5, 1977 The New York Times magazine released an article titled, Mr Untouchable with Barnes posing on the front cover. They say he averaged $5 million per month in the drug trade, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas that he would give out turkeys in the community. His swagger infuriated the Jimmy Carter administration. So, they took him down with a life sentence in 1978.

They sent Nicky Barnes to Marion shortly thereafter. Immediately, the government started playing mind games on him. First, they put him on a tier in a cellblock all by himself. We could hear his screams through the brick wall between us.

When they released him to the prison compound, I found him to be a very competent chess player, and he loved the challenge. He was a smart man, very intelligent, and cocky. He would move a chess piece, jump up from the table, shout “Chess move”, and then walk a circle around the table. I never understood what that ritual was all about, but I never let him win a game.

I pulled up Nicky Barnes on the internet several times since the 2007 release of the movie “American Ganger”. He was portrayed in the movie by Cuba Gooding Jr.

Leroy Barnes was sent to prison in 1965 for low level drug dealing. While in prison he met Colombo crime family member Joe "Crazy Joe" Gallo[5] and Lucchese crime family heroin dealer Matthew Madonna.[3] Gallo wanted to have more of a stake in the Harlem Heroin market but didn't have any personnel to deal in the mostly black Harlem. It is believed Gallo passed on his knowledge of how to run a drug trafficking organization to Barnes and asked Barnes to assemble the necessary personnel.[5] When Gallo got out of jail he provided a lawyer for Barnes. The lawyer got Barnes' conviction overturned on a technicality and he returned to New York City.

Nicky Barnes started out as one of the first black hit men used by the Mafia. He whacked a Mafia don for Crazy Joe, and rose up in the ranks.

Barnes' operation in 1976 consisted of seven lieutenants, who each controlled a dozen mid level distributors, who supplied upwards of forty street level dealers each. During this time Barnes was given the name Mr. Untouchable, after successfully beating numerous charges and arrests.

Barnes was convicted in 1978 of multiple counts of RICO violations, including drug trafficking and murder, for which he was sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole.

When I met him at Marion, he was still obsessed with the legalities of his case. He had accumulated law books. But something in his demeanor began to change. The Feds were whispering to him that his wife was having an affair with his lieutenant. As I recall, the lieutenant was also having an affair with Barnes underage daughter.

From Wikipedia

According to Barnes, while in prison, he discovered that his assets were not being taken care of, The Council stopped paying his attorneys' fees, and one of his fellow council members, Guy Fisher, was having an affair with his mistress/girlfriend.[7]The Council had a rule that no council member would sleep with another council member's wife/mistress. In response, Barnes became an informant. He forwarded a list of 109 names, five of which were council members, along with his wife's name, implicating them all in illegal activities related to the heroin trade. Barnes helped to indict 44 other traffickers, 16 of whom were ultimately convicted.[7] In this testimony, he implicated himself in eight murders.

In prison, Barnes turned state's evidence against his former associates in “The Council”. In exchange for his testimony, Barnes was released into the Federal Witness Protection Program in August, 1998.

While in prison, he won a national poetry contest for federal inmates, earned a college diploma with honors and taught fellow inmates math.[1]

COMMENTARY

Sometimes it is the company that an inmate keeps. Both Nicky Barnes and I were lovers of math and chess. I also taught math to my fellow inmates. I remember that he was among the writers and poets in prison. But he must have earned his college degree in Protective Custody.

The last I remember of Nicky Barnes at Marion was that he disappeared suddenly from the prison compound. I was not surprised that he double-crossed his friends. They had double-crossed him.

I remember how he set each one up. He would call outside of the prison to his wife or one of his lieutenants. He acted as if he was still in charge, still setting up drug dealers, but all the while following an FBI script.

Over a chessboard, I watched him agonize over turning into a snitch. But he wanted another life, a second chance, which was not possible with a life sentence with no parole.

Why They Will Never Legalize Drugs in U.S.

2009-07-13T13:24:00.003-07:00

With the tragic death of musical superstar Michael Jackson and the swirling rumors about drug usages, I am drawn to the writings of Ryan Grim, senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post. Ryan recently appeared on CNN promoting his new book, “This Is Your Country on Drugs”, and advocating legalization of certain drugs in order to combat the violence associated with illegal drug trafficking.

It behooves the Mexican Cartels and Mafia to keep prohibited drugs illegal. Legalization would reduce the price of drugs and dry up the black market. It would reduce drug related gun violence, and hence the black market for weapons. As it stands now, automatic gun sales keep rising and ammunition sales are off the charts, and so on. Drug trafficking fuels gun sales and gun sales fuel violence.

It is a known technique to distribute drugs among competing gang factions, and then instigating retaliatory violence between them over turf, for the sole purpose of selling more guns. Therefore, it would be no surprise to see the NRA and gun rights advocates oppose legalization. Gun shows, which are legal, have always provided an avenue for gangsters to get their hands on weapons. With more drug money, the more expensive and powerful the weapons sold.

Wherever there is big money, such as that generated by the drug trade, there will always be corrupt officials and police willing to take a piece of the dirty pie. FOR EXAMPLE: There is the story of an informant, willing to testify against his drug supplier in exchange for leniency on another charge. Two police officers arrived at his home and promised to take him and put him into protective custody. He never made it. Instead, the two officers delivered him to the drug kingpin.

No doubt, crooked cops and crooked politicians are probably as prevalent in Mexico today as once in the United States. As long as drugs are kept illegal, they will continue to get a slice of the action. Therefore, opposition to legalization from police associations and politicians may be tainted by the influence of those who now benefit from the trade.

The pharmaceutical industry, like the weapons industry, has a vested interest in seeing illegal drugs remaining a banded “controlled substance”. But most illegal drugs began with the pharmaceutical companies.

Heroin (Diacetylmorphine) was synthesized from morphine in 1874 and brought to market by Bayer in 1898. Coca-Cola was invented in a drugstore by John Pemberton and originally intended as a patent medicine. The formula called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup in 1891. Coca-Cola did once contain an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, but in 1903 it was removed.

Did cocaine and heroin disappear from market demand? Or, did it seek out a new, more lucrative underground market after becoming a “controlled substance”?

Changing the Balance of Power

2009-07-07T11:08:00.006-07:00

To: The Next Generation of Leadership
From: Eddie Griffin (BASG)

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Consider the Balance of Powers and the imbalances. This was a lesson taught to a prison warden, because people with police authority on the front line sometimes get besides themselves.

I remember a lieutenant in particular who liked to call black prisoners the N-word. He, and the men under him, feasted on hostilities and combat. It seemed like they loved putting on the black jack boots, black riot vests, and black German bucket helmets, and go charging into an inmate's cell. They were a pretty sight for machismo image making, but a facade when confronting a balance of power crisis.

In the latter days, after many battles, I could sit in the warden’s office and chit-chat over coffee, and talk old time sakes. I always believed that one faithful man, plus God, constitutes an absolute invincible majority. Thus, the Balance of Power is never in question in the mind of a man of faith.

I remember the day I hand delivered a list of prisoners’ grievances to the warden. It was July 4, 1976. I remember the day so well because the country was celebrating its Bicentennial 200th Birthday, and Gerald Ford was President, after Nixon’s fall from grace. That day, the prison population initiated a hunger strike.

Prison administrators consider such strikes as an attempt on the part of the inmates to takeover the prison. They usually responded with brutal force. The Balance of Power always appeared to be in the hands of those in authority.

Passive resistance by hunger strike should have been met with the least force possible. Whenever there is a legitimate grievance, it is best between parties to negotiate. But prison authority abhorred the thought of negotiating with inmates.

Since I was the one who collected the inmates’ list of grievance and drafted the press release, I was made official spokesman for the other prisoners in super-max. It was the reason the warden summoned me to his office on the morning the strike kicked off.

The grievances were designed to embarrass the administration. The first demand was “for the administration to hire more minority prison guards”. The insinuated rationale was this: Black prisoners were tired of being called the N-word and being beaten by an all-white goon squad. We needed eyewitnesses and referees.

The second grievance demanded an end to using prisoners in involuntary mind control experiments. We had documented the entire history of the CIA and FBI secret program to use Chinese brainwashing techniques against incarcerated political dissidents.

On the morning of that Fourth of July, the warden received a phone call from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, inquiring about the prison hunger strike. The element of complete surprise hit the warden. The fact that no inmate came to breakfast never struck any of the guards as strange. Thus, the warden was uninformed. Even more important, no inmate betrayed the plan.

The warden’s first reaction was to throw me in the dungeon known as the Control Unit. The prison was locked down and the guards put on high alert. Their job was to isolate and segregate all the suspected ringleaders.

Every inmate had been instructed to put up as much passive resistance as possible without catching an assault charge. The inmates burned toilet paper, bed sheets, paper, mattresses, and everything else ignitable. They clogged commodes and flooded their cells and barricaded the doors. One by one, they were dragged out and sent to segregation, where the same scenario erupted again.

The guards found themselves fighting on every front. They fogged the cellblocks with Big Bertha, the teargas machine, and went after inmates without regard to excessive force. In brutal combat terms, it was a fair fight, but it gave us grounds for more grievances. The list grew longer. And, every inmate’s grievance was rubber stamped DENIED.

Here was a flaw in the system, recognized later by the courts. Instead of rubber stamping inmates complaints as baseless, the courts instituted an Informal Resolution process, whereby inmates and staff could work out their difference. But the prison administration would have none of that. It was an insult to communicate as equals.

We appealed to regional authorities, and again rubberstamped denied, until our grievances reached the national Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C. This was the exhaustion level of the legal process, before going to court. Rubberstamped rejections had to have legal basis and foundation. Otherwise, an institution’s arbitrary actions could open the doors of the court.

My job in the dungeon was to keep the grievance paperwork flowing upstream. Any failed legal response on the part of the administration could make its way into court. Therefore, they kept a team of lawyers on hand just to respond to our complaints.

As the grievances kept coming, and the paperwork flowing up the inverted pyramidal hierarchy, inevitably the system would become paper jammed. Responding to each and every inmate’s complaint was time consuming from staff, with each personnel having to provide an interview and written report, justifying their action. And having to use lawyers to properly word the administration’s response was also costly. Besides, having to respond to media inquiries was demoralizing within itself.

The Balance of Power shifts to the side of the one with the psychological edge. Some prison guards began feeling guilty and started testifying against their cohorts. We lost the battle, but won the war. Within a few weeks, there were new minority and women guards throughout the federal system.

This alone, however, did not change the Balance of Power in this situation.

A lesson I learned is that a man is confronted by two enemies: The enemy within, and the enemy without. Subduing the first is instrumental in subduing the second. Self-restraint is the key to conquering the enemy within. Keeping my mouth close and saying only what I meant was a source of empowerment, because then my few chosen words would have greater worth in appreciation.

A man must say what he means and means what he says without mincing words.

Locking up a quiet, passive inmate for refusing to eat simply because he has grievances was not good PR for the prison administration. This is the image I gave to the media when interviewed scores of times during this period, including an interview with a Russian magazine. It never failed, however, that the warden had the final rebuttal.

It was a propaganda war that we were able to escalate to the national and international level. At this level, the warden was not so big and not so bad.

Instead of complaining about cold food and brutal guards, as inmates did traditionally, I drew a wider battle circle to encompass the whole issue of human rights. The warden found himself thinking at the micro-management level to an international arena. He told the media that the prison was used to control "revolutionary attitudes". The fight was bigger than his eyes could see.

In the struggle over the Balance of Power, it would be better to widen the circle to include a larger arena. It changes the agenda of the superior force by changing the enemy’s focus.

Here was a principal: Tell the CIA what you plan to do, and they will change their plans to counter you. Then, who is manipulating whom?

Recognize when the Balance of Power has shifted. Some leaders continue to fight on, fighting the same battle, the same tired way, endlessly uphill, because they do not recognize when there is a shift.

Here is an analogous anecdote.

Once my enemy within is conquered, the enemy without can do no harm. The only way my enemy can harm me is only by being allowed to.

A certain prison guard, a lieutenant, liked using the N-word and making threats to black inmates. On the contrary, I was trained and conditioned for close quarter combat, and not to be concerned about my adversary until his punch was six inches from my face. Only then would I feel justified in responding.

It is well known to those who guard jails and prisons how vulnerable they are around potentially violent inmates. Back in history, guards carried guns on the premise, but these weapons could easily be taken by inmates during an uprising. Therefore, guards today walkabout on the inside, unarmed, knowing that they could be attacked and killed at any time, by any inmate.

On the line, the Balance of Power favors the inmates.

When I was finally segregated from other inmates and eventually isolated and held incommunicado, cut off from the outside world and lawyers, the Balance of Power appeared to favor the lieutenant when he and another guard came to pay me a midnight visit.

The lieutenant strode around the hospital cell, where they had confined me on suicide watch. Hunger strikes were construed as a suicide attempt, the lieutenant explained.

It was a mistake on my part, to be manipulated into a position where I would be isolated and alone.

I remember the tall lanky cowboy boot-wearing lieutenant pacing the floor, looking around the ceiling, while another guard stood watch at the door. When I asked him what he was looking for, he was frank.

“A place where you might hang yourself,” he replied.

He was all smiles. I was all smiles also, but for a different reason. My closest enemy was not the one within, but the one within my reach. In a one-on-one, the lieutenant was no match for me. So, I let him know, in no uncertain terms.

“You’re mine, if anything happens,” I replied.

All I am required to do is defeat the enemy closet to me, to take him out because he represents the greatest immediate threat to my own life. And even in prison, I was not planning to just lie down and let these hooters kill me. If I were going to leave this world, the lieutenant was going out with me.

I nodded. “You first.”

There was something I realized about when a man is in doubt of a life-death win-lose situation, and have a reasonable fear for his life, he will usually respect his adversary if it appears that the adversary is going to fight to the death.

Therefore, the Balance of Power favors both a man with a good bluff and a man with God on his side. And if a man should bluff on his life, he should be prepared to back it up.

Man in the Mirror: The Alien

2009-06-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

By Eddie G. Griffin

Monday, June 29, 2009

When I cut off all my hair, including my black militant beard and mustache, I was trying to show solidarity and empathy with my grandson who has just started his treatments for colon cancer. Indeed, I was so torn up inside that, in the pain of my anguish, I vowed to cut off my hair so that he and I could be baldheaded together. But when I got up out of the barber’s chair and looked in the mirror, I was shocked.

Suddenly, the man sharing at the man in the mirror was not the same man. I looked my age, all 62 years of it, and I was trying to become acclimated to the new look. This was not me a few moments ago. I hardly recognized the alien staring back at me.

Even worse, my own 84-year old mother did not recognize me, and neither did my sister. Nobody in the family recognized me. It was, all of a sudden, they had to get used to a new man- a new brother, a new uncle, and a new grandpa. They each were devastated. They were looking at the man behind the caveman that they had known all of their lives, and they did not know just how to react.

When I went to church on Sunday, everybody was trying to figure out who was this new man sitting in Brother Griffin’s usual seat, on the front row. Some thought I was a visiting preacher. The minister was even bewildered in the pulpit. So, when I got up to serve the communion, I felt compelled to reintroduce myself to those who did not recognize me.

The transformation in my appearance made me feel uncomfortable going back out into the public eye. But I had to question myself, was it worth it? Then I remembered why I did it in the first place. My grandson had cancer, and it pained me to my heart. Sure, it was worth the sacrifice of hair.

The face of the man in the mirror may be different. But the heart is still the same.