Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 3-31-17

Editorials/Columns
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN
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Florida’s New Hunting License
hen lawmakers in
Tallahassee an- nounced that they were going to address the controversial "Stand Your Ground" law a few years ago I, like many people, thought they might repeal the legislation based on its unpopularity and the negative publicity it received from across the nation. But, apparently, that wasn't the
case.
Instead, the Florida Senate
decided to make things easier for Floridians to legally kill each other by re-tooling the language in the law so that the onus of proving whether or not a person's belief that his or her life was in immi- nent danger now falls on the prosecution.
In other words, if this law is placed into effect, in the event that someone commits murder and then says he or she was in fear of his or her life, the government would have to present indisputable evidence that the individual
in question didn't feel threat- ened at all. The dilemma for state attorney's being that they would have to present an argument to invalidate an individual's level of fear.
The official name of this new legislation is Senate Bill 128. But it might as well be called "The Saving George Zimmerman" Act because it seems to be de- signed to give Zimmer- man-like a--holes the green light to take more lives.
The thing that worries me the most about this new ver- sion of “Stand Your Ground,” besides the fact that it places more Black lives in jeopardy, is that it gives the illusion that any citizen, in a situation where he or she feels as though his or her life is threatened, can automati- cally resort to lethal force jus- tifiably. But the reality is that it will probably never be that cut and dry.
It is just hard for me to con- ceive that a Black kid, who
uses “Stand Your Ground” as a defense after killing a white person on Davis Island, will get the same benefit of the doubt as a white guy who uses the same defense after killing a Black man or woman off 34th Street. Re- gardless of how the law is "supposed" to be interpreted, the end result will always come down to two things: the aggressiveness of the State Attorney's Office and the mentality of the jury.
If recent history is any in- dication of what the future may hold, it means that the kid in the Davis Island sce- nario, even if he was in the right, would probably still wind up with the short end of the stick.
The bottom line is that the new “Stand Your Ground” proposal was written with the sole purpose of making a cer- tain affluent segment of the population feel safe. For them it's a license to kill with impunity.
Unfortunately, for the rest of us, it might as well be the sound of a trumpet signaling that the hunt is, indeed, on.
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Paul Ryan: The Loneliest Man In The World
n almost every major newspaper in America if not the
world, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s portrait was center on the front page. Indeed, we and millions of other readers could not help but study his face, half-hidden by an unsure hand as he stared bleakly into an oblivion that not even a Hollywood script writer could create. Why?
Being part of a political party that currently controls not only the Capitol Hill Senate, but the majority of the House of Representatives, that has a political native son sitting in the Oval Office, and will probably set Supreme Court policy for the next half-century, yet and still with all this power at his command, as House Speaker, he is unable to bring to bear his Chief Executive’s dream of undoing previous Pres- ident Barack Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, which makes Paul Ryan brutally aware of what someone meant a long time ago who asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
If anybody knows what those words mean, you can bet at this moment, Paul Ryan is the one.
And why does he know? Don’t read his words. Read his expressions. Recall the evening he sat behind a newly elected President who seemed to have cast aside his rene- gade rags and tried for the world to speak like a legitimate President.
Ryan was Marcel Marceau, comically straight-faced, with an obvious spark of hope. Then fast forward several days ago. Capitol Hill having come down around him, like a spit- ting image of Shakespeare’s King Richard, Ryan sat amidst the smoldering ruins of utter failure, and one could read in Ryan’s gaze the plaintive scream, “A HORSE! MY POLITI- CAL PARTY FOR A HORSE!” And where was Trump? There was no Trump . . . only echoes while there sat alone, Paul Ryan who, no doubt, for the first time in his life, knew the reality of biblical betrayal. Should we weep for him?
I
$600 billion or more in tax cuts, American citizens negative $600 billion. Public schools lost $418 million to charter school and private school choice programs; college graduates will have to pay higher interest payments on delinquent student loans; the $4.3 billion planning and preconstruction phase of the Mexico border wall will be paid for by cuts to Pell Gants and other scholarship programs, cuts to affordable and homeless housing programs, by cuts to employment training programs, and by cuts to urban development funds, legal services for low income citizens, community and public broadcasting stations, and cultural arts program- ming.
By the way, citizens with Obamacare health coverage will lose their monthly stipend, but will be able to deduct that amount from their income taxes at the end of the year. What good will the tax credit do for people who don’t have the $200 or more per month as a copayment? It is time for Americans to speak up about the favoritism the GOP and Trump is showing to American businesses and the rich.
Time To Speak Up!
K eeping up with Trump’s Executive Orders, the impact of proposed budget cuts, GOP repeal legislation, Russ- ian-Trump connections, attempts to repeal Obamacare, and budget increases for charter schools instead of public schools has been a bit testy. By our account, the major bene- factors of anything accomplished in Washington for the past 69 days have been the coal mining industry, the Koch Both- ers, major health insurance companies ‘executives, billion- aires, millionaires, and people earning $250,000 or more
annually.
In addition, Energy Transfer Partners (ETD- builders of
the Dakota Access Pipeline) and Trans-Canada Corporation (builders of the Keystone Pipeline Project) will be allowed to put Midwest citizens’ drinking water in danger by running the oil pipelines under water resources (lakes, rivers).
So far, the score appears to be businesses/ rich people
PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2017