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Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
American Politics Only Pretends to Work
There is a pervasive feeling—rising up from the precarious working poor, through the illusory middle class, and now even brushing the edges of the elite—that something in America is broken. The carefully curated illusions of American life, which held just enough weight to seem real for much of my millennial lifetime, are beginning to collapse. These illusions were constructed in the shadow of post-Reagan neoliberalism, just as the rot began to eat away at the gains of the postwar economy. Poverty and racism have always made liberty and justice feel like empty promises for many, but for protected classes, the illusion could endure. So much so that by the time I reached college—coinciding with the first term of Barack Obama—it was fashionable to declare that we had entered a post-racial America. Now those delusions lie bloodied in the street. We have seen law-abiding citizens snatched off the street, a billionaire oligarch turned loose to deconstruct the civil service. Meanwhile, that chasm between those with more than enough and those with nothing keeps widening. If there was an 'Obama legacy,' then it's mostly vanished. The optics of progress have failed to mask its absence. On May 16, Maryland Governor Wes Moore—a Democrat, a Rhodes scholar, and the only Black governor in the country—sent a letter to the president of the Maryland State Senate, vetoing a bill passed by the state legislature that would have created a reparations commission to study the economic and social case for compensating Black Marylanders for the enduring harms of slavery and its legacy. The headlines suggested betrayal. 'Maryland Governor Vetoes Reparations Bill,' read The New York Times' headline. 'Gov. Moore vetoes bill creating a state commission to study reparations,' wrote The Baltimore Banner. But the governor's letter tells a more nuanced story. 'I strongly believe now is not the time for another study,' Moore wrote. 'Now is the time for continued action that delivers results for the people we serve.' The sentiment that a substantial body of research exists bears out. The evidence is already there. The impacts of slavery, redlining, racial violence, and economic exclusion have been documented in study after study by universities, think tanks, and government agencies alike. The racial wealth gap in America—which is a topic that does not want for robust news coverage or analysis—remains staggering: The average white family holds nearly 10 times the wealth of the average Black family. In cities like Baltimore and all across the country, formerly redlined neighborhoods remain poorer, sicker, and less resourced than their white counterparts. Economist Sandy Darity, the Brookings Institution, and the Federal Reserve have all produced rigorous economic models showing the effects of slavery and other racist programs on Black wealth and showing how reparative programs could substantially narrow these disparities—even lengthening the lives of Black Americans. Echoing these findings, The California Reparations Report proposed direct cash payments and broad institutional reforms—ranging from guaranteed access to health care and housing to tax-exempt status for reparations payments—as essential components of a comprehensive state-level strategy to repair the enduring economic and social harms of slavery and its afterlives. But here's the rub: The bill that Moore spiked was never actually about discovering new facts to lay alongside the vast mountain of already-obtained knowledge. Rather, it's a quintessentially American ritual. A performance of forward motion that, in reality, preserves the status quo: activity masquerading as achievement. We are not waiting for more data. We are waiting for the willpower of political elites to catch up to the facts we have already gathered about the state of the world. We are hoping that we might create a force strong enough to dissolve the lucrative web of mutual dependence that exists between politicians, their funders, and their funding recipients—an arrangement that allows the few to profit from the entrenched policies that impoverish the many. For much of my lifetime, the nation, like our tech devices, has operated like a machine engineered for planned obsolescence: appearing functional on the surface but designed to slowly degrade beneath the hood. Our dissatisfaction is tempered by the allure of a shiny new upgrade that promises new features each campaign cycle. Like our top-grossing movies, election cycles are reboots and franchises. That includes our politics. Our institutions don't just fail; they are built to delay, to degrade, to defer. We pretend they work, and when they don't, we hold another hearing, commission another report, launch another study, believe another is hardly the first to challenge these neglectful impulses. More than a decade ago, The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates's landmark essay 'The Case for Reparations.' It was not merely a manifesto but a meticulous historical excavation—from redlining in Chicago to the GI Bill's racist exclusions—that laid out in irrefutable detail how government policy, not just private prejudice, created Black disadvantage. It forced a national conversation. But again, the response was mostly talk. On June 1, however, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols—who once opposed reparations—announced a historic local plan for survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The city would fund direct payments and long-term support programs. It is a rare instance where moral clarity translated into material commitment. But Tulsa is the exception, not the rule. This policy of forever kicking the can down the road in the name of respecting some phantasmal process is not unique to reparations. The same pattern plays out across the political spectrum: Universal basic income pilots have consistently shown that giving people money reduces poverty, homelessness, and even mental illness—yet most federal assistance remains conditional and insufficient. Restorative justice programs show lower recidivism than punitive sentences—particularly for youth—yet U.S. incarceration rates have remained the highest in the world since 2002. The information is known. The solutions exist. They are simply not acted upon. The political class often blames this inertia on partisan gridlock. But that too is an illusion—one as fragile as it is convenient. The apparent opposition between parties masks a deeper consensus: Both benefit from a system that rewards performative conflict over substantive change, ensuring that donor interests and institutional power remain undisturbed regardless of which party holds office. What has not changed since the 1990s is the sheer number of Americans who do not vote at all. In 1992, Joan Didion wrote in The New York Review that political apathy was a misdiagnosis: the real condition was disenchantment, a loss of faith that the system could deliver anything meaningful. And while raw turnout numbers have rebounded from the dismal 1990s, it remains the case that disaffection is a constant presence. I saw it firsthand while teaching an introductory sociology class in Washington, D.C., in the autumn of 2024. As expected in a presidential election year, every discussion of social issues circled back to politics. My students, who represented the population of their majority-Black, working-class university, were thoughtful and interested but wary. One student offered the familiar argument: that nonvoters had only themselves to blame; they are uninformed and unengaged. But an older Black woman in the class cut in. She worked with unhoused Washingtonians who, she said, don't see much difference between life under either party. And how could they? Their material circumstances have not changed. In 2024, the Democratic Party—once the party of labor—ran its campaign flanked by billionaires and Bush-era Republicans. While Donald Trump performed populism in a McDonald's, Kamala Harris held fundraisers with Mark Cuban and the Cheneys. Campaigns are fought on vibes and not policy. While Kamala Harris had a 'Brat Summer,' Trump, a Manhattan-made real estate developer, played to rural crowds. Their policy disagreements and, especially, their pro-war consensus on foreign policy and neoliberal economics are rarely discussed. One party cosplays populism, and the other cosplays credibility. All that has shifted since the '90s is which party plays which role. What has changed since the Clinton era is not political substance but political spectacle. Social media has democratized access to information and sharpened our ability to see the rupture between what is promised and what is real. There is now a generation fluent in disillusionment. The Democratic National Committee itself has become a case study in illusion maintenance: from undermining Bernie Sanders as the leading candidate in 2020 to burying debates, to pretending Joe Biden's cognitive decline is a fabrication rather than a crisis of leadership. When David Hogg—a Parkland school shooting survivor and one of five DNC vice chairs—challenged the party's refusal to reckon with younger, more progressive voters and threatened to primary incumbents, he wasn't breaking ranks; he was breaking the fourth wall. And now his sentence may be ousting. My generation has watched the lives promised to us slip away based on a political consensus we were not alive to agree upon, conceived by a club we've not been invited to join. While a cycle of progress and backlash has emerged on some social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, neoliberal financial policies embraced by both major parties have left millennials unable to buy houses, afford kids, or even buy groceries without financing them through buy-now-pay-later apps like Klarna—which is now facing losses and pausing its IPO in part because we can't pay them back. Meanwhile, policies supporting deregulation of financial markets, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and austerity measures have persisted throughout our lifetimes. These are the policies that political elites keep recycling as 'solutions' to our problems; meanwhile, these strategies only further widen income inequality and economic insecurity. Banking deregulation under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 paved the way for risky financial practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Similarly, trade agreements like NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994, prioritized corporate interests over labor protections, resulting in job losses and stagnant wages for American workers. Just a few weeks ago, the Senate, by bipartisan acclamation, passed an industry-friendly crypto deregulation bill, the direct fruits of crypto donors drowning Washington in slush money. This is a deeply entrenched way of doing business, one that reflects a larger failure to adapt to changing economic realities and contribute to ongoing challenges faced by younger generations. We should think of Governor Moore's veto like this: He didn't reject reparations; he rejected this whole charade. And the culture is catching up. Even our consumer habits reflect the growing revolt against disposability. Across the country, citizens are fighting for 'right to repair' laws, demanding that tech companies let people fix their own devices rather than forcing them to buy replacements. Behind that demand is a deeper yearning—for durability, for agency, for something built to last. We should want the same from our politics. But our civic infrastructure is designed more for optics than policy action. Commissioned research is a dress rehearsal for a play that will never debut. A 25-hour 'filibuster' that blocked no bill is marketing for Senator Cory Booker's new book. Every moral breakthrough is deferred until the next election cycle. We have outsourced moral courage to process. Governor Moore's veto was a rare political moment that acknowledged what so many Americans now suspect: We are not in need of more evidence or rhetoric—we are in need of political will and action. We know how to fix what's broken. The question is whether we still have the courage to stop pretending and pick up the tools to repair it.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Despite national mood, Maryland lawmakers hopeful for reparations committee bill this year
Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's) testifies Thursday on a bill he's sponsoring to create a Maryland Reparations Commission. Muse spoke before the Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters) Despite the mood in Washington, supporters think this may finally be the year for passage of a bill to create a Maryland Reparations Commission to study the inequality African descendants faced in the state. Optimism over the bill, which has failed for several years running, comes as President Donald Trump's administration has mounted a full-scale assault on race-based programming and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives. But advocates said their hope is not based so much on Trump's antagonism as it is on the fact that the measure's time has just come. 'We do events all across the state, and one of the themes has always come back from Black Marylanders that it's past time for Maryland to address the issue of reparations,' said Del. Jheanelle Wilkins (D-Montgomery) during a Thursday briefing on the bill. 'The bill creates a commission to study various proposals on how we address the harms of enslavement.' Wilkins is chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland, which she said is endorsing the bill for the first time this year. Along with that newfound support, the bill has been scaled back from previous versions, and subsequently comes with a much smaller price tag. Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's) and Del. Aletheia McCaskill (D-Baltimore County) are lead sponsors of Senate Bill 587 and House Bill 1422, respectively. McCaskill said when a statewide reparations commission proposal came up several years ago, a fiscal note estimated the cost to create one at more than $1 million. The fiscal note for her bill and Muse's, however, estimates that the only new expenditures for fiscal 2026 would be $54,500 to hire one contractual archivist to help produce reports and conduct research. In addition, Morgan State University in Baltimore will be used as a resource to assist with additional research. A key phrase in the fiscal note: 'Expense reimbursements for commission members are assumed to be minimal and absorbable within existing budgeted resources.' McCaskill and others stressed that the bill will not focus strictly on financial payments to individuals. Recommendations from the commission could include help for underserved communities with affordable housing, access to public transportation and jobs. 'Some folks say, why now? Well, really, it should have been yesterday,' said McCaskill, who testified on her bill to the House Health and Government Operations Committee on Tuesday. 'The movement has to be now because it's long overdue.' Three states have passed legislation to create a commission to study reparations: California in 2020, Illinois in 2021 and New York in 2023. Several cities nationwide have also established reparations commissions, including Greenbelt in Prince George's County, among others. Voters there approved a referendum in November 2021 that called for the City Council to establish a 21-member commission to review and make recommendations for local reparations for African Americans and Native Americans in the city. 'These initiatives demonstrate a growing recognition of the need to address historical injustices through structured, research-driven approaches,' Muse said Thursday, as he testified on his bill before the Senate Education, Energy, and Environment Committee. 'By investing in justice, this will foster economic growth, stronger communities and a more inclusive Maryland.' Both measures would focus on 'individuals impacted by historical inequality,' which means those whose ancestors were enslaved in the state or 'impacted by inequitable government policies.' Amid national push against DEI programs, Jones leads push to maintain it in Maryland The specific policies would be from the federal, state or local between 1877 to 1965, informally known as the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. The bills say those years 'have led to economic disparities based on race, including housing segregation and discrimination, redlining, restrictive covenants, and tax policies.' The commission would also examine how public and private institutions may have benefited from those policies. Reparations could include statements of apology, monetary compensation, social service assistance, business incentives and child care costs, the bills said. The all-volunteer commission would consist of nearly two dozen people to include two members each from the Senate and House (with one Black caucus member from each chambe); two employees from one of the state's four historically Black colleges and universities with expertise in the history of slavery; the state comptroller or a designee; a Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce representative; and a representative from the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Eight members of the reparations commission would be appointed by the governor, including two people from the general public, a mental health expert and a representative of an African American financial institution. The commission would be tasked with submitting a preliminary report by Jan. 1, 2027, and a final report by Nov. 1 of that year. Nicole Bruno of Prince George's County said 'white allies' such as herself might not benefit directly from any form or reparations, but she still supports the measures. 'Acknowledging and repairing historical injustice is not the responsibility of Black communities,' she said Thursday in testimony before the Senate committee. 'It requires collective action and support from those in positions of power. Diversity, equity and inclusion are the strengths of our country's legacy, not its burden, and we have our responsibility towards that legacy.' No one spoke in opposition to the reparations measure Thursday, but a Maryland resident did submit written testimony against it. 'So now we are going to discriminate against all non-Black people and their businesses, because of an ugly time in our country's history that happened generations ago and that has nothing to do with current reality,' wrote Trudy Tibbals. 'No one can go back and change what happened, no matter how badly one wants to.' But the Rev. Robert Turner, pastor of Empowerment Temple A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, said that 'because Trump is in office, we need to make sure Maryland does right by citizens, because we can't depend on the White House to do anything for Maryland, especially black Marylanders.' 'Our issues don't give us the luxury of waiting 'til we have somebody sympathetic to our issues. We have to fight while we fight and pray that we win while we fight,' he said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Modernizing Maryland's HIV laws: A priority for Black Marylanders
HIV self-test kits in a community center in the Philippines, which have been affected by the freeze on U.S. Agency for International Development funds. Advances in medication and testing im the past 20 years have made HIV a manageable condition, allowing those with the virus to live long, healthy lives. (Photo by) As Black gay men living and aging with HIV, we have borne witness to profound loss and remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Together, we have dedicated our lives to service and advocacy through our work at AIDS United and our leadership of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and the U.S. People Living with HIV Caucus. Yet even as we lead national efforts to advocate for people living with HIV, the state laws that govern our lives and our hometowns lag far behind. We both live in Maryland, and we know it is past time for this state to align its HIV laws with modern science and justice. In our work, we often find that people are unaware of the stunning progress in HIV treatment and prevention. Let us share the good news: Thanks to scientific breakthroughs over the past 20 years, HIV is now a manageable chronic condition allowing us to live long and healthy lives without fear of dying of AIDS (one of us is over 60 and the other over 70!). People living with HIV who maintain treatment can achieve an undetectable viral load, meaning they cannot transmit HIV to sexual partners. The significance of this development cannot be overstated. Because of effective treatment, more than half of people living with HIV are now over 50 years old. Maryland Matters welcomes guest commentary submissions at editor@ We suggest a 750-word limit and reserve the right to edit or reject submissions. We do not accept columns that are endorsements of candidates, and no longer accept submissions from elected officials or political candidates. Opinion pieces must be signed by at least one individual using their real name. We do not accept columns signed by an organization. Commentary writers must include a short bio and a photo for their bylines. Views of writers are their own. Not only do we have effective treatment, we also have highly effective prevention medications: PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is essentially 100% effective in preventing HIV transmissions and PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) has been available for decades to address an HIV exposure within hours of occurring. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data reflect this progress and show declining rates of HIV transmission. Yet outdated laws continue to hold back progress. That is true for Maryland. Despite everything that has changed in science, medicine and social justice, Maryland's HIV laws remain stuck in the past. When Maryland passed its criminal penalties for HIV in 1989, there was no widely available test for HIV. Rapid testing would not be available until 1992. In the decades since then, Black Marylanders have faced unequal access to health care, as well as harmful state penalties targeting people living with HIV. The consequences have been devastating. In 2023, nearly 75% of Marylanders living with diagnosed HIV were Black. This stark disparity is amplified by the criminal justice system: In Maryland, the law that punishes people living with HIV is used against Black men 82% of the time. We can repeal this law and immediately reduce the stigma that holds people back from HIV testing to know their status and getting into life-saving treatment. Furthermore, the groundbreaking prevention medications are not widely available: Less than one in five of Marylanders who could benefit from PrEP and PEP can access them. Nationwide, only 9% of Black people who could benefit from PrEP received a prescription. Black and Latinx communities face particular challenges from uninsurance rates, medical mistrust rooted in historical discrimination and ongoing health care inequities. We know how to address these disparities. Maryland can make sure the Medical Assistance Program covers HIV treatment and prevention as prescribed by a doctor without any prior authorizations by patients' insurance plan. Black and Latino Marylanders face the greatest barriers to accessing these life-saving medications, and many are insured by the Medical Assistance Program. Increasing access will help us reach the more than 27,000 Marylanders who could benefit from PrEP, reduce new diagnoses and better serve the one in six who rely on the program for health care. The Maryland legislature is poised to pass overdue HIV reforms this year, joining 13 states with modernized HIV laws, including New Jersey, Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia. We can lead the way in ending the HIV epidemic by passing a comprehensive package of bills to reduce stigma and expand access, including one named in memory of our Maryland brother in HIV advocacy, Carlton R. Smith, whose work in Baltimore helped save lives. These commonsense reforms have bipartisan support and will immediately reduce stigma and increase access to care. For years, we have lobbied for federal action to end the HIV epidemic, and we helped craft the current national plan to do so. We cannot achieve this goal unless states like Maryland step up. With a new federal administration that does not share our values around civil rights and health care access, it is more important than ever that Maryland acts to protect our own. Together, we envision a Maryland where all people have access to life-saving HIV prevention and treatment, and HIV stigma and criminalization are relics of the past.
