You Need Health Insurance to Be Tested: Definitely not

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

By Dr. John E. Warren

Publisher

America and our communities are experiencing what others in the world have lived with for decades: the loss of comfort and convenience as we have known it. This is a difficult thing for many people who have grown selfish and privileged. Such characteristics can do almost as much harm as the virus because they put others at risk.

But with every hardship there comes an opportunity to learn. For many of us it will be how to live with less and be grateful for the opportunity. Life will now require less greed and more sharing. For those without the virus in the midst of so many becoming ill around us, health will become the new wealth, despite the other economic challenges: food, shelter and loss of income for so many.

The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint will continue to share news and information. We will provide updates of Federal, State, County and local emergency measures, feeding sites and instruction for our children. In addition to our weekly print edition, we will provide online website updates and some real time reporting on facebook when and where possible. We also welcome your comments, emails and photos that we might share with others.

We are committed to keeping in touch with our faith based community. It is anticipated that some of our churches will be involved in providing services beyond the bans that now exist on group gatherings. In such cases these facilities might become drop off and pick up sites to help with the delivery of goods and services. This is an evolving issue.

Remembering what was said earlier about life changing as we have known it, we urge that you shop and spend wisely. Don’t engage in panic buying and reacting to what others are doing without checking out the facts that will go with all valid information. The run on toilet paper is an example of panic buying without understanding the relationship to the issue.

We urge you to read and keep the back page of this issue that includes the existing Emergency Ordinances now in affect. But remember all these Ordinances are subject to change as the impact of the virus changes. Let’s try to act prayerfully and wisely for the sake of all of us.

OPINION: THE POLITICS OF DECLARING MARTIAL LAW

By David L. Horne Ph.D

In a way, the jig is up. Clearly, the Trump administration has shown itself to be patently incompetent regarding the coronavirus problem in the USA. It has simply lied too much, bungled too much, and left the country underprepared and virtually helpless in the face of what is certainly a slow-moving, massive assault on the American way of life.

For a constant showman and flim-flam man, this is not good news. It will be less so as more and more Americans get infected---or are simply shown through public testing to already be infected---and die. There is no vaccine in sight, and the inevitability of the disease’s advance make this a nightmare situation just as the 2020 election activity kicks into high gear.

The negative pull on the stock market, the closing of famed educational institutions like UCLA, USC, Stanford and Harvard, with many public schools already planning to follow suit, can all collectively make Mr. Trump ‘want to holler’ !

But wait ! Along comes a hint from Fox News or one of Trump’s White House minions, and the POTUS is reminded of another power he has that he had forgotten briefly: the power to declare martial law, or simply declare a national emergency. Both give Mr. Trump virtually unlimited powers to front, swagger and pretend that he is really in charge. That pretense may play very well through the regular media and the Internet. It may be just the con he needs to fool a handful of people beyond his base. He may yet make himself competitive this election season.

The fact is that once Trump declares martial law or a national emergency, as POTUS he instantly acquires over 120 statutory powers that Congress cannot impede, nor can any American institution block, save the Supreme Court. Those powers can virtually make Mr. Trump an autocrat who cannot, alone, cancel the November election, but who can refuse to abide by it if he is not re-elected. As comedian-host Bill Maher keeps saying, Trump will refuse to leave the White House if/when he loses the election, and his emergency powers can actually help him pull that off. We’ve already seen that this POTUS has no problem provoking a constitutional crisis for his own benefit.

Presidents have had access to this kind of authority for a long time, and Congress has allowed the power to grow uninhibited for the last 70- odd years. The SCOTUS (Supreme Court) has had to step in to stop former president Harry Truman from seizing control of the steel industry and the railroads during the Korean War, allowed Roosevelt’s order for the arrest and re-settlement into prison camps of Japanese Americans, and allowed George Bush to establish a nationwide wiretapping program and torture activity for suspected terrorists.

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 is supposed to control this kind of presidential latitude to seize direct control of national power, but it does not do so. Actually, nothing can really stop a determined POTUS right now who is hell-bent on staying in power, not even the November election.

Not only is that more than scary, it is shocking to realize the full extent of this country’s affinity with the so-called “banana republics” of the world. Short of the SCOTUS stepping up to the plate to protect the integrity of American democracy, the rest of 2020 looks like it will be one hell of a ride, with a madman at the wheel careening down a mountain curve with no brakes.

Don’t pity the others, said the Seer, pity yourselves !!

Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank.

This commentary originally appeared in Our Weekly.

The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/ or contributing writers are not necessarily those of The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint.

EXCLUSIVE OP-ED: SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER AND STACY ABRAMS, ‘IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK!’ Voting Rights are Under Attack

By Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Senate Minority Leader

This year’s presidential election will propel many issues into the spotlight: the economy, health care, foreign policy, our education system and much more. One issue that gets far too little attention, often mentioned as just another item on a long list of priorities, is voting rights. We write to argue that voting rights in America should be at the top of that list in this election. It is from the right to vote that all our other rights as Americans derive. And today, in 2020, that fundamental right to exercise the franchise is being challenged and, in many cases, eroded, in states across the country.

IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK.

Saturday, March 7, marked the 55th anniversary of one of the most significant moments in the history of our democracy. On the morning of March 7, 1965, nonviolent activists, including a young John Lewis, set out on a 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to bring national attention to the plight of African-American citizens who were being denied their constitutional right to vote by the racial terror of the Jim Crow South. At the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marchers were met by state troopers and county possemen who hurled tear gas and attacked them with billy clubs and police dogs. Spectators cheered. The horrific events of this day, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” shocked the conscience of the nation, and compelled President Lyndon Johnson and a bipartisan majority in Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act (VRA) less than five months later.

The VRA provided the federal government with the tools to finally uphold the 15th Amendment’s guarantee that no citizen can be denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin. For half a century, the law stood as a powerful force to prevent the type of racial discrimination in voting that plagued our nation’s history for generations. In the decades after the VRA, both parties in Congress worked to defend voting rights. The law originally passed with leadership from both the Republican and Democratic parties and was reauthorized under Republican presidents on four separate occasions: President Nixon in 1970, President Ford in 1975, President Reagan in 1982, and President Bush in 2006.

Only in the past few years has that bipartisan consensus around voting rights collapsed. In 2013, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder gutted critical provisions in the VRA that until then had allowed the federal government to prevent states with a history of discrimination from implementing changes to their voting rules without pre-approval.

The response to Shelby was sharp and immediate. Republican-led state legislatures rushed to pass new laws and drew new legislative districts with the explicit purpose of disenfranchising minority voters. Texas legislators immediately re-imposed the strictest voter-ID requirement in the United States. North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature passed a wave of new laws designed to limit access to the ballot box, including a new photo-ID requirement, drastic cuts to early voting, and the end of same-day registration. Federal courts deemed these laws intentionally discriminatory, finding that, in North Carolina, the GOP efforts “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

In Georgia, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp oversaw the closure of 214 voting precincts across the state from 2012-2018. According to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, these closures, most of which occurred after the Shelby decision, likely prevented an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting ballots in the 2018 election. The AJC found that the impact was greater on black voters, who were 20% more likely than white voters to miss elections as a result of these closures.

Today, in state after state, Republicans are working to purge voter rolls, draw partisan district lines, and limit the impact of minority voters. Democrats have to fight back in every possible way. We must challenge these insidious attacks on our democracy in the courts and in Congress and out in the country.

See FIGHT page 15