Paul LePage is a white supremacist

I’m not going to hold back in regards to my thoughts about Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage and his racist remarks about the heroin epidemic in Maine…LePage is a white supremacist.

Recently, LePage made racist remarks about the ongoing heroin epidemic in Maine and in America:

During an event Wednesday night in Maine, Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican, described the heroin trade in his state, suggesting it was being fueled by outsiders.

“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty — these types of guys,” he said. “They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” Mr. LePage told the crowd, according to The Portland Press Herald.

“Incidentally,” he added, “half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing, because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”

(emphasis mine)

If one is more concerned about a white woman being impregnated by a black man than actually doing something about the heroin epidemic in this country, than one is a white supremacist. In fact, the kind of racist meme that LePage used is a nearly identical meme to the one that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist perpetrator of the terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to, in his mind, justify mass murder. The only significant difference between the two memes is that LePage didn’t make an overt reference to rape, whereas Roof did.

We need a serious response to the heroin crisis in America, not racist remarks from right-wing politicians. I’m a lifelong resident of a downstate Illinois county that has faced a serious heroin problem in recent years, so heroin is a major political issue in my area. These are just my own ideas, but I believe that there should be a two-prong approach to addressing the heroin problem in America (I do recognize that heroin is something that can’t reasonably be legalized in the way that alcohol and tobacco currently are, and marijuana can be). First off, we should treat heroin addiction as a medical problem and not prosecute people for merely possessing and/or using heroin. Secondly, the criminal justice system should focus heavily on arresting and prosecuting people who are selling heroin, not prosecuting people who merely use heroin. I would more than welcome comments on other ideas about combating the heroin epidemic in America.

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Corporate media launches racist attack against Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges because she pointed at black guy

KSTP-TV, the Hubbard Broadcasting-owned ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ran a racist smear piece against Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayor Betsy Hodges on one of their local newscasts earlier this week because she was filmed pointing at Navell Gordon, a black community activist affiliated with a group called Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, during a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort in Minneapolis for the this year’s November elections.

KSTP has been the subject of frequent criticism since they ran that racist piece, in fact, the Twitter hashtag #pointergate has been trending non-stop on Twitter since not long after KSTP aired and published the piece. KSTP deserves to be criticized over this, in my opinion. This smear attack against Hodges is clearly racist, since KSTP wouldn’t have aired such a piece if the person she was pointing at was a white person like me.

KSTP responded to the criticism over their racist piece by claiming that they aired and published the piece because the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) asked them to do so. Given that most police officers in this country are more interested in hunting down black people than actually protecting and serving their communities these days, it’s even worse that KSTP admitted to being a public relations shop for the police department of Minnesota’s largest city.

It’s bad enough that there are tons of right-wing Republican politicians who launch Willie Horton-style attacks against Democratic candidates for public office. It’s even worse that the corporate media is doing the Willie Horton-style attacks against Democratic elected officials themselves. These kind of pieces by the corporate media do nothing but stir up racial tensions in this country.

Betsy Hodges is not a gangbanger, and for KSTP to effectively claim that she is amounts to nothing more than a racist attack against her. It’s about damn time that the corporate media got called out on their race-baiting and right-wing bias in a big way!