Bob Lord

When Hillary Clinton last night vowed not to ever raise taxes on the “middle class,” which she defines as anyone making under $250,000 per year, how do you suppose CEO’s in the health insurance industry reacted?

I’m guessing they poured themselves glasses of fine champagne. And perhaps traded in their private jets for larger models.

The indirect consequences of Hillary’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge are too numerous to identify. Some may even benefit the actual middle class, as opposed to the folks making $225,000 per year and living in a McMansion whom Hillary labels middle class. On balance, however, her pledge was a cynical ploy to let those at the top know she’s not coming after them, while pretending to be a candidate of the people.

Consider just a few of those indirect consequences:

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[cross-posted from the IPS Government and Politics Blog]

By Bob Lord and Karen Dolan

An 18-year-old Mike Brown was walking to his grandmother’s house one summer afternoon in Ferguson Missouri. An officer stops him for jaywalking. He ends up lying dead in the road for four hours. Walter Scott is  pulled over for a broken taillight in a high poverty area in South Carolina. He flees- presumably out of fear of back child support owed to the state. Minutes later, he is dead on the ground, shot in the back. A 16-year-old girl is thrown across a classroom by a school cop for failing to relinquish her cell phone. A 17-year-old boy with a small knife, walking away from officers, is shot 16 times — 15 of those bullets pumped into his already dead body in the middle of the Chicago road.

The list of these tragic deaths is long. Over 1,000 deaths have occurred at the hands of law enforcement so far this year. Black males are 3.5 times more likely to become victims than their white counterparts.

Cell phone videos of police brutality have forced this country to confront the ways poverty and race play out in city after city, school after school, jail after jail.  We know the factors underlying America’s legacy of racism contribute to this crisis. But one factor largely has been overlooked.

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A Facebook friend asked: What will happen first, World War III or Civil War II?

That was before the latest round of mass shootings. Oh wait, we don’t have rounds of mass shootings anymore. They’re regular occurrences now.

Speaking of regular occurrences, cops murder black and brown people daily, with the risk of indictment and imprisonment far too remote to stem the tide of further killing. When the victimized population rises up to say their lives matter, we ignore them, but when they lash out in anger, we  demonize them.

And our political leaders?

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Since the murderer who shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado screamed “No More Baby Parts,” asking what he heard, or read, that motivated him?

Over the course of the past few days, I’ve replayed in my head Carly Fiorina’s vile statement about Planned Parenthood at a Republican debate at least 50 times. And I keep thinking she effectively committed murder.

At least one person agrees with me. In Blood on Republican Hands: Killer Screamed “No More Baby Parts” at Planned Parenthood, Colin Taylor reviews the remarks of Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Fiorina that could have motivated the murderer. I couldn’t agree more with his concluding remarks:

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