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Tag: john kennedy
John Kennedy

Despite McCarthy Pledge, Republicans Demand Social Security Cuts

Two Republican lawmakers asserted the retirement age should be raised during Sunday morning interviews, Rolling Stone reports.

This comes as GOP members continue to insist they will keep their hands off of Social Security, since President Joe Biden called them out during his 2023 State of the Union address for attempts to make cuts to the social program.

The Recounttweeted, "'For people who are in their 20s, their life expectancy will probably be 85 to 90. Does it really make sense to allow someone who's in their 20s today to retire at 62?' — Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on why we should talk about changes to Social Security and Medicare."

Rolling Stone reports:

Kennedy added that current life expectancy is 77 and claimed that it will continue to go up, but life expectancy in the United States has declined since hitting a high of 78.9 years in 2014.

In the last year alone, average life expectancy decreased from 77 to 76.1, according to data from the CDC. Life expectancy for Black Americans is also significantly lower than for white Americans. Black men, for example, have a life expectancy of 68 years. Currently, 62-year-olds qualify for partial retirement benefits, but the full retirement age is transitioning to 67, due to legislation passed in 1983.

Furthermore, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), in a Sunday interview with CNN, asserted the conversation of raising the retirement age must be discussed.

Aaron Rupar posted clip from Mace's interview, tweeting, "I think that's something that has to be on the table we have to look at" -- Nancy Mace indicates support for raising the retirement age."

The congresswoman continued, "We do have to look at Social Security. We’ve got to look at spending in this country — mandatory and discretionary — if we're gonna take on fixing the Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, you name it. We've gotta get serious about it."

Watch the videos below or at this link.



Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

How Prison Authorities Hide The 'Unnatural' Causes Of Prisoner Deaths

How Prison Authorities Hide The 'Unnatural' Causes Of Prisoner Deaths

On August 12, 2017, Sirrena Buie of Birmingham, Alabama talked to her son Kedric. He was incarcerated in a federal prison, United States Penitentiary Atlanta, and called his mother from inside.

The next morning another call came; a prison administrator dialed Sirrena and told her that Kedric had died.

“I'm like, What happened? I just talked to my son. What happened to my child? What happened to my son?” she said she asked the woman who called her that Sunday morning.

To this day it’s not clear what happened to Kedric Buie. The official story, according to his death certificate and autopsy report, is that “hypertension and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease” snatched 26 year old Kendric Buie’s life.

But those explanations didn’t make sense to his mother. When Sirrena viewed Kedric’s body, she noted a gash on his head as well as swelling so severe that he looked looked like he had gained 100 pounds. Moreover, a note sent to the autopsy provider suggested that Kedric might have overdosed on black tar heroin but the official toxicology report stated that he didn’t have any drugs or alcohol in his system.

Led by his mother, the search for what happened to Kedric Buie has been ongoing since his death. But lawyers bounced her around. Reporters and investigative journalists never prioritized her son's story.

To compound the mystery, a well-known journalist provided Sirenna what purports to be an amended autopsy report that says blunt force trauma killed her son.

That document from the journalist is particularly troublesome because Sirrena Buie was told by people familiar with the situation that her son Kedric was beaten by guards after he balked at a guard allegedly spitting in his food.

So Kedric’s death was either a homicide or a sudden deadly illness. Not knowing which one is unacceptable.

I commenced an investigation into what happened to Kedrick Buie and the results so far are concerning. On May 19, 2021 I filed a simple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy of Kedric Buie’s file within the Bureau of Prisons.

Over a year later, the Bureau of Prisons is either unable or unwilling to furnish a copy of Kedric Buie’s file. The Bureau acknowledged the request on July 6, 2021 and noted that the pandemic had caused processing times to get longer; it might take as long as nine months to provide the records requested, an estimate they later increased to 12 months because of pandemic-induced understaffing. The FOIA unit claims to have sent several requests for the file to the archive holding his file.

I followed up several times and the Bureau of Prisons’ responses bordered on nonsensical. On February 16, 2022, a paralegal explained that Buie’s file is beyond my reach because it hadn’t been received by the office that sent it out. “A search is still being conducted for records responsive to your request. In [particular], the file has not been received by institution who sent into to Archives” the email read.

Vincent Shaw, regional counsel for the Southeast regional office of the Bureau of Prisons, promised to update me on May 10, 2022. He didn’t and he hasn’t responded since, including not returning a request for comment on the matter.

Either Kedric Buie’s file is there in the Bureau of Prisons records or it’s not. And if it’s not, there’s cause for concern because it looks like a potential cover-up.

Covid-19 woke up the public to the reality that people die in prison without an assist from a death warrant. We don’t know exactly how many inmate lives COVID claimed — the Marshall Project and the Associated Press estimate it was about 2715 last June – but the problems with notifying families of prisoners’ health statuses came into full view during the pandemic. Many had no idea that their incarcerated loved ones had contracted the disease, ended up hospitalized or even succumbed to it.

On May 20,

Senators John Ossoff (D-GA) and John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced the Family Notification of Death, Injury, or Illness in Custody Act of 2022. Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) introduced an identical bill late last year. If the bill becomes law, it would require federal prison administrators to contact a person’s next of kin within twelve hours (during the day), provide the circumstances of their loved one’s passing and whether an investigation has been opened into the death. The bill’s sponsors hope that it would provide a model for state corrections systems.

COVID or not, the bill will get good use if it passes. In 2018, the last year for which data exists, state prisons reported 4,135 deaths (excluding 25 people executed in those facilities). That’s more than 10 per day and it’s the highest number since the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) started tabulating mortality data in 2001.

Dividing deaths between natural (illness) and unnatural (suicide, homicide, accident or overdose) the BJS said 77 percent of all prison deaths in 2018 were natural but it might not remain in that proportion for long; the number of unnatural deaths is growing. They were 11 percent of deaths in federal prisons in 2015 and 14 percent in 2018.

Notifying family of inmates’ health status should be dignified and empathetic, so it should be standardized. But this notification bill does more to make people who aren’t incarcerated feel better than it does to protect inmates and make these systems truly transparent. The Buie case demonstrates exactly why formal notification requirements can end up being an end run around real transparency.

An administrator called Sirrena Buie well within 12 hours of her son’s death and therefore preemptively satisfied what lawmakers think is a reasonable expectation for timely communication. And that administrator wasn’t required to tell the grieving mother about any investigation because none had been opened — even though the facts apparent now certainly warrant an inquiry.

Requiring administrators to connect with inmates’ family and friends won’t stop corrections officers from stomping prisoners and raising that number of unnatural inmate deaths even higher — nor from preventing the discovery of what caused these deaths.

Unfortunately, homicide at the hands of correctional staff is a pretty common occurrence. Just last month, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement charged four guards with the murder of an inmate whom they allegedly beat to death. Another was charged in 2021. Those cases were unusual in that investigators identified perpetrators and held them accountable. Authorities held no one responsible for the murder of an inmate who was essentially boiled to death in a shower in 2012.

Kedric Buie’s death may be one of those cases where staff get away with murder even though they notified his family quickly and dishonestly. Without even a general file on his incarceration, it’s still up for grabs who’s going to answer the question of what really happened to him — if that question ever gets a reply at all.

Rep. Jim Jordan

Republican Civil War Erupts Over Infrastructure Vote

Reprinted with permission American Independent

Conservative Republican members of Congress appeared on Fox News and Newsmax on Tuesday night to lament the fact that 19 Republican senators voted for the bipartisan infrastructure package, along with every Democratic senator.

The $1.2 trillion package provides funds to repair and construct roads, bridges, and railroad systems across the country, among other projects.

Despite polling repeatedly showing widespread support for the infrastructure plan — across party lines — conservative outlets have frequently attacked it.

On Newsmax TV's Rob Schmitt Tonight, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) described the legislation as part of an agenda of "crazy ideas" offered up by Democrats.

He said the infrastructure bill was part of a package of "four stupid ideas" and said, "This is ridiculous, and the American people know it. Why senators, Republican senators, voted for it, I'll never know."

Appearing on Fox News' Hannity, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) sounded a similar note.

Kennedy said that Democrats wanted the bill's passage "like Ben [Affleck] wants J-Lo [Jennifer Lopez" and said Republicans "just got out-maneuvered, intelligence was chasing us and we got beat."

Conservative host Sean Hannity said Republicans "beat themselves" by voting for the bill and Kennedy agreed, replying, "that's what I'm saying." He went on to describe the bill as a "dumpster fire."

Fox News host Mark Levin on Tuesday called for a primary challenge to the Republicans who voted for the legislation, while the network has repeatedly attempted to claim that the infrastructure spending in the bill is not really infrastructure.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Stacey Abrams

GOP Senators Underestimated Stacey Abrams — And Got An Earful

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

File this under asked and answered. Former Georgia House minority leader and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams trended much of the day on Wednesday after Republican Sen. John Kennedy questioned whether she thought a restrictive voting bill signed into law last month is racist. "I think there are provisions of it that are racist, yes," the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate answered. Abrams was speaking during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on voting rights on Tuesday when Kennedy made the mistake of asking her for a list of the provisions she objects to in the Georgia legislation.

The former state legislator, who is nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her work to register voters of color in Georgia was perfectly prepared to fulfill Kennedy's request.

"It shortens the federal run-off period from nine weeks to four weeks," Abrams said. "It restricts the time a voter can request and return an absentee ballot application.

"It requires that a voter have a photo identification or some other form of identification that they're willing to surrender in order to participate in the absentee ballot process. It eliminates ..." Apparently seeing that she wasn't the stumbling, ill-equipped naysayer he might've assumed she was, Kennedy cut Abrams off to ask her other questions. Then he cut her off again when she attempted to answer them. "What else? What else?" the Louisiana Republican demanded. Abrams ignored the slights and just kept listing.

"It eliminates over 300 hours of drop box availability," she said. Kennedy responded with a hurried, "Okay, what else?"

"It bans nearly all out-of-precinct votes," Abrams said, "meaning that if you get to a precinct and you are in line for four hours and you get to the end of the line and you are not there between 5 and 7 PM, you have to start all over again."

Kennedy interrupted: "Is that everything?"

"No it is not. No, sir," Abrams responded with a chuckle. "It restricts the hours of operation because it now, under the guise of setting a standardized timeline, it makes it optional for counties that may not want to see expanded access to the right to vote. They can now limit their hours. Instead of those hours being from 7 to 7, they're now from 9 to 5, which may have an effect on voters who can not vote during business hours during early voting. It limits the voting hours ..."

Kennedy interrupted yet again. "Okay, I get the idea. I get the idea," he said.

Georgia Democrats had been fighting elements of the bill spread among other proposed legislation in the state for months when Republicans decided in the final days of the legislative session to hijack a tangentially related piece of legislation. They turned a two-page bill to make sure eligible voters didn't repeatedly receive absentee ballot applications into nearly 100 pages of voter suppression tactics. "The GOP just won't stop when it comes to making it harder for Georgians to vote," the Democratic Party of Georgia said in an earlier statement.

Abrams told Republican Sen. John Cornyn at the same committee hearing that she thought Georgia lawmakers made "deliberate attempts to suppress the minority vote."

When asked if she thought the law in question was a "racist piece of legislation," she responded that she did indeed. "I think there are components of it that are indeed racist because they use racial animus as a means of targeting the behaviors of certain voters to eliminate their participant and limit their participation in elections," Abrams said.