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In the second round of the Democratic Party's candidate "debates" (more like quasi-free-for-alls) on June 27, Senator Kamala Harris of California challenged Joseph Biden Jr. on his anti-"busing" record, meaning in effect his opposition to school integration. (The millions of kids who are bussed to school daily NOT for integration purposes doesn't bother the opponents of "busing.")
In his response, he continued his practice of blatant lying, which he's been doing starting just before he officially announced his run for the presidency:
"I do not praise racists, that is not true," Biden emphatically insisted. This is lying on a Trumpian level. Blatant, outrageous, in your face absolute inversion of reality. He has repeatedly praised the worst racists in the U.S. Senate. Either he's denying his own words, including of just a few days ago, when he lauded two of the worst Southern crackers to an audience of rich swells in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City whose money he wants for his campaign for president, or he's denying that the likes of James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, were racists. Either assertion is absurd.
"I ran because of civil rights..." WHAT! There he goes again. Presumably he means ran for U.S. Senate, or maybe vice president with Obama. He also ran twice before for president, in 1988 and 2008.
Or maybe by "because of" he meant "in order to oppose civil rights." But I assume he runs for office because he's driven by personal ambition and a lust for power, and for Senator to defend and advance the interests of big banks and credit card companies, which are the main powers in his state, Delaware. This is the guy who got a law on the books forbidding the discharge of student loan debt by bankruptcy, among other awful acts.
Harris launched her challenge by relating her personal experience as a child, how "busing" was critical to her education and subsequent success. Biden replied that there was no problem because her locality was okay with busing. Telling Harris things worked out fine because her local government bowed to Constitutional law as set down in 1954 ignores the fact that the vast majority of U.S. localities ONLY integrated grudgingly, if at all, and only under pressure. And massive resistance continues to this day in many places, especially the South, where private all-white "academies" were created to ensure that pure "white" youth would not mingle with and be contaminated by "black" ones.
Biden disingenuously bellowed at Harris that he wasn't against "busing," he was merely against the Federal government mandating it. HE wanted to leave enforcement of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to local city councils. But it is precisely BECAUSE such local "authorities" (and states too) adamantly REFUSED for DECADES after the Brown decision to integrate their schools, and continued to consign "black" children to grossly inferior ones, that the Federal government was finally forced to do SOMETHING. Biden denounced the 1954 Supreme Court decision, and opposed racial integration of schools for decades, indeed apparently until a month or so ago, when under pressure he suddenly belched out some mendacious, mealy-mouthed, revisionist rhetoric.
EVEN IF his abrupt change under political pressure were genuine (which there is no reason to believe is the case), his entire political history would have to weigh a hundred times greater in considering the man for the presidency.
In fact, in the debate of June 27, Biden took the segregationist position that it should be up to local government to integrate, NOT the Federal government. That is precisely the "states" rights" argument of Southern racists. However, this went unnoticed in the bourgeois blatherariat that is corporate media "commentary."
And the fact that, of all the Democratic Party hacks he could have chosen to be his vice president, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama chose a segregationist, speaks volumes about the cynical, completely amoral character of Obama. And how thoroughly duped black Americans were and are about Obama. Not to mention his other supporters.
Biden insists he's not a racist ("I don't have a racist bone in my body") and his rival Democrats have carefully avoided saying he is. But what is a person who supports segregation? That is objectively racist. So whatever Biden's subjective consciousness is, however he "feels" about "black" people, he is objectively racist by his actions over decades of time.
And of all the U.S. Senators that he's known over a long career, the ones he chooses to fondly reminisce about are the very worst racists!
Some propagandists thought Harris crossed some invisible line of political propriety. Rachel Martin, a co-host of the "news" program "Morning Edition" on the U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR, said of Harris in a scandalized tone of voice that "she's making it personal" and "she's attacking his record on civil rights." Actually Harris was accurately describing his record of opposition to civil rights, and calling him to account for it. If you aren't supposed to talk about politicians' actual records of what they did and said, what CAN you discuss, Rachel? (NPR, "Morning Edition," npr.org, June 28, 2019.) Harris did preface her anecdote about her own childhood schooling by saying the issue was "personal" for her. It was NOT a "personal attack" on Biden, unless critiquing someone's political record is too "personal" to do!
Here's an extended quote of Biden from the debate, responding to Harris:
"It’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true, number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I’m happy to do that. I was a public defender; I didn’t become a prosecutor. I came out, and I left a good law firm to become a public defender. …" [That was a dig at Harris, who was a prosecutor and indeed later California state Attorney General, before snagging a Senate seat. She actually compiled a terrible record of repression, protection of police criminality, and imprisoning innocent defendants as state AG. But on the other hand, she did cut at least one criminal a break: Stephen Mnuchin, Trump's U.S. Treasury Secretary. Mnuchin controlled a bank in California, OneWest, of which he was CEO, which Harris' staff found committed 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure fraud, and estimated they could find another 1,000 if they kept looking. Harris killed the investigation into this racketeering bank. Mnuchin showed his gratitude with a $2,500 campaign donation to her. That makes Harris not just a political prostitute, but a very cheap streetwalker of a political prostitute.]
In his response, he continued his practice of blatant lying, which he's been doing starting just before he officially announced his run for the presidency:
"I do not praise racists, that is not true," Biden emphatically insisted. This is lying on a Trumpian level. Blatant, outrageous, in your face absolute inversion of reality. He has repeatedly praised the worst racists in the U.S. Senate. Either he's denying his own words, including of just a few days ago, when he lauded two of the worst Southern crackers to an audience of rich swells in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City whose money he wants for his campaign for president, or he's denying that the likes of James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, were racists. Either assertion is absurd.
"I ran because of civil rights..." WHAT! There he goes again. Presumably he means ran for U.S. Senate, or maybe vice president with Obama. He also ran twice before for president, in 1988 and 2008.
Or maybe by "because of" he meant "in order to oppose civil rights." But I assume he runs for office because he's driven by personal ambition and a lust for power, and for Senator to defend and advance the interests of big banks and credit card companies, which are the main powers in his state, Delaware. This is the guy who got a law on the books forbidding the discharge of student loan debt by bankruptcy, among other awful acts.
Harris launched her challenge by relating her personal experience as a child, how "busing" was critical to her education and subsequent success. Biden replied that there was no problem because her locality was okay with busing. Telling Harris things worked out fine because her local government bowed to Constitutional law as set down in 1954 ignores the fact that the vast majority of U.S. localities ONLY integrated grudgingly, if at all, and only under pressure. And massive resistance continues to this day in many places, especially the South, where private all-white "academies" were created to ensure that pure "white" youth would not mingle with and be contaminated by "black" ones.
Biden disingenuously bellowed at Harris that he wasn't against "busing," he was merely against the Federal government mandating it. HE wanted to leave enforcement of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to local city councils. But it is precisely BECAUSE such local "authorities" (and states too) adamantly REFUSED for DECADES after the Brown decision to integrate their schools, and continued to consign "black" children to grossly inferior ones, that the Federal government was finally forced to do SOMETHING. Biden denounced the 1954 Supreme Court decision, and opposed racial integration of schools for decades, indeed apparently until a month or so ago, when under pressure he suddenly belched out some mendacious, mealy-mouthed, revisionist rhetoric.
EVEN IF his abrupt change under political pressure were genuine (which there is no reason to believe is the case), his entire political history would have to weigh a hundred times greater in considering the man for the presidency.
In fact, in the debate of June 27, Biden took the segregationist position that it should be up to local government to integrate, NOT the Federal government. That is precisely the "states" rights" argument of Southern racists. However, this went unnoticed in the bourgeois blatherariat that is corporate media "commentary."
And the fact that, of all the Democratic Party hacks he could have chosen to be his vice president, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama chose a segregationist, speaks volumes about the cynical, completely amoral character of Obama. And how thoroughly duped black Americans were and are about Obama. Not to mention his other supporters.
Biden insists he's not a racist ("I don't have a racist bone in my body") and his rival Democrats have carefully avoided saying he is. But what is a person who supports segregation? That is objectively racist. So whatever Biden's subjective consciousness is, however he "feels" about "black" people, he is objectively racist by his actions over decades of time.
And of all the U.S. Senators that he's known over a long career, the ones he chooses to fondly reminisce about are the very worst racists!
Some propagandists thought Harris crossed some invisible line of political propriety. Rachel Martin, a co-host of the "news" program "Morning Edition" on the U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR, said of Harris in a scandalized tone of voice that "she's making it personal" and "she's attacking his record on civil rights." Actually Harris was accurately describing his record of opposition to civil rights, and calling him to account for it. If you aren't supposed to talk about politicians' actual records of what they did and said, what CAN you discuss, Rachel? (NPR, "Morning Edition," npr.org, June 28, 2019.) Harris did preface her anecdote about her own childhood schooling by saying the issue was "personal" for her. It was NOT a "personal attack" on Biden, unless critiquing someone's political record is too "personal" to do!
Here's an extended quote of Biden from the debate, responding to Harris:
"It’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true, number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I’m happy to do that. I was a public defender; I didn’t become a prosecutor. I came out, and I left a good law firm to become a public defender. …" [That was a dig at Harris, who was a prosecutor and indeed later California state Attorney General, before snagging a Senate seat. She actually compiled a terrible record of repression, protection of police criminality, and imprisoning innocent defendants as state AG. But on the other hand, she did cut at least one criminal a break: Stephen Mnuchin, Trump's U.S. Treasury Secretary. Mnuchin controlled a bank in California, OneWest, of which he was CEO, which Harris' staff found committed 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure fraud, and estimated they could find another 1,000 if they kept looking. Harris killed the investigation into this racketeering bank. Mnuchin showed his gratitude with a $2,500 campaign donation to her. That makes Harris not just a political prostitute, but a very cheap streetwalker of a political prostitute.]
Biden again: "In terms of busing, the busing—I never—you would have been able to go to school the same exact way, because it was a local decision made by your city council. That’s fine. That’s one of the things I argued for, that we should not be—we should be breaking down these lines. But so, the bottom line here is, look, everything I’ve done in my career—I ran because of civil rights. I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights. And those civil rights, by the way, include not just only African Americans, but the LGBT community."
Oh shut up, man. You're no progressive. That's the segregationist line. Let the white racists choose whether or not to integrate.
"I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed. I did not oppose—" and then he stopped.
Of course this is totally disingenuous, as I explained already.
Biden collaborated with the Southern racists in the Senate to pass his own anti-busing bills. That is what he's referring to when he says they "worked together to pass legislation." Biden even wanted to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban the use of busing for school integration. That is pretty extreme.
Biden is a typical reactionary Democrat of the "old" school. He is the most rightwing of all the politicians vying for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. And THAT is why much of the "elite" establishment media keeps promoting him as the "front runner" with the "best chance of beating Trump." (Coincidentally, the line that he has the best chance of beating Trump is Biden's line too. Fancy that.)
The propaganda system always promotes the most rightwing politicians they think they can put over on the populace.
Guess it's only "asinine" if it's to integrate schools.
Kamala Harris Confronts Joseph Biden, Jr., on his opposition to "busing."
For more on this horrible segregationist's history of hostility to black advancement, see for example "When Joe Biden Collaborated With Segregationists," The Nation, June 6, 2019;
"Jonathan Kozol on 'When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists,'” DemocracyNow!, June 26, 2019;
"Jonathan Kozol: Joe Biden Didn’t Just Praise Segregationists. He Also Spent Years Fighting Busing," DemocracyNow!, June 25, 2019; and
"How Joe Biden worked with and praised a longtime opponent of civil rights," CNNPolitics, May 28, 2019.
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