WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dorothy Irene Height, a pioneering voice of the civil rights movement whose activism stretched from the New Deal to the election of President Barack Obama, died Tuesday. She was 98.
Height, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, was known for her determination and grace -- as well as her wry humor. She remained active and outspoken well into her 90s and often received rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was easily recognizable in the bright, colorful hats she almost always wore.
Height died at Howard University Hospital, where she had been in serious condition for weeks.
In a statement, Obama called her ''the godmother of the civil rights movement'' and a hero to Americans.
''Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way,'' Obama said.
Vice President Joe Biden said Height was one of the first people to visit him when he first took his seat in the Senate in 1973.
''She remained a friend and would never hesitate to tell me or anybody else when she thought we weren't fighting hard enough,'' he said.
Height's was the second death of a major civil rights figure in less than a week. Benjamin L. Hooks, the former longtime head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Thursday in Memphis at 85.
Former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, a close friend who has spoken for Height's family and called Height her mentor, said funeral arrangements were pending.
Height received two of the nation's highest honors: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
In awarding the congressional medal, then-President George W. Bush noted that Height had met with every U.S. president since Eisenhower, and ''she's told every president what she thinks since Dwight David Eisenhower.''
In a statement Tuesday, Bush hailed ''her grace and her determination. Our nation will never forget Dr. Heights efforts to make America a more compassionate, welcoming and just society.''
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, in a joint statement, said, ''Our nation is poorer for her loss but infinitely richer for the life she led, the progress she achieved and the people she touched.''
Height was born in Richmond, Va., before women could vote and when blacks had few rights. Her family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was 4. Distinguishing herself in the classroom, she was accepted to Barnard College but then turned away because the school already had reached its quota of two black women. She went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University.
As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, ''Stop the lynching.'' After earning her degrees, she became a leader of the Harlem YWCA and the United Christian Youth Movement of North America, where she pushed to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces and reform the criminal justice system.
She traveled to Holland and England as a U.S. delegate to youth and church conferences, and in 1938 was one of 10 young people chosen by Eleanor Roosevelt to spend a weekend at the first lady's Hyde Park, N.Y., home preparing for a World Youth Conference at Vassar College.
One of Height's sayings was, ''If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'' She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said the three effective ways to fight for justice are to ''agitate, agitate, agitate.''
In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading not to underestimate their female counterparts.
Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous ''I have a dream'' speech at the March on Washington in 1963.
''He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak,'' Height recalled in a 1997 Associated Press interview. But after he was done, it was clear King's speech would echo for generations, she said, ''because it gripped everybody.''
She lamented that the feeling of unity created by the 1963 march had faded, that the civil rights movement of the 1990s was on the defensive and many black families still were not economically secure.
''We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off,'' she said. ''This is my life's work. It is not a job.''
When Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, Height told Washington TV station WTTG that she was overwhelmed with emotion.
''People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen, and I said, `If you didn't have the dream, you couldn't have worked on it,'' she said.
Height dedicated most of her adult life to the National Council of Negro Women, where she first worked under her mentor, Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the group. Height took over in 1957 and led it until 1997, fighting for women's rights on issues such as equal pay and education. She developed programs such as ''pig banks'' to help poor rural families raise their own livestock, and ''Wednesdays in Mississippi,'' in which black and white women from the north traveled to Mississippi to meet with their Southern counterparts in an effort to ease racial tensions and bridge differences.
To celebrate Height's 90th birthday in March 2002, friends and supporters raised $5 million to enable her organization to pay off the mortgage on its Washington headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks from the White House. Herman said Height ''believed very strongly that we as black women deserved to be on this corridor of power.''
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
'Mean spirited, vicious racism' comes to surface during debates about president and U.S. politics
When will bitter protests, hateful speech and political upheaval end?
Since President Barack Obama signed the landmark health reform bill, the split between Americans, extreme right wing opponents and supporters of the legislation and ideologues, has widened, but many say this division is rooted in racial hatred, rather than health reform.
Racist and hateful acts have been carried out by supporters and those whose ideology reflects the Tea Party Movement, considered to be anti-tax, anti-government and anti-Barack Obama.
"We're in now a second phase of Reconstruction because Black governors now are being turned out. A Black president, they hope, will be a one-term president should he last four years and Black mayors, Black elected officials are being taken out of office. And when the cry comes up, they should be hounded out of town and out of office and hassle them, then the country is in for an explosion and all it needs is a spark and the people will arise and blood will be in the streets of the United States of America," warned the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan during a live, web-streamed interview with Cliff Kelley on WVON on March 24.
One Tea Party protester called Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) n----r multiple times and someone spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-KS) as the two men made their way through demonstrators to vote March 21 on a major health reform bill.
Several congressional offices were vandalized by brick throwers, and at least 10 members of the Democratic Party and their families have received death threats.
What people are witnessing, Min. Farrakhan said, is the beginning of the end of a civil society, because America is in the throes of Divine Judgment, according to the Bible and Quran. "From wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in diverse places, all of these judgments of God are coming down on America, not for her foreign policy and its wicked effect on the world, but because of her treatment of Black people in her midst," Min. Farrakhan said.
Much of the hateful rhetoric against President Obama has been revved up by Republican lawmakers, and much is being driven by conservative radio and TV talk show hosts, like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the like.
On March 27, Mr. Beck and some 8,000 fans, gathered in Orlando, Fla., for his American Revival, a daylong event aimed at taking back, or regaining America. Media Matters reported that Mr. Beck, who has been accused of "spewing such incendiary language," urged followers to stock food and water for a coming showdown. "If we don't face the truth right now, we'll be dead in five years—this country can't survive," he said, Media Matters reported. Mr. Beck also promised to put forth a federal budget that would cut spending by 50 percent. "Clearly stung by a wave of accusations that right-wing radio and Fox News are ginning up death threats and potential violence against members of Congress and progressives, Beck also expanded on a new theme that resistance to what he claims is growing socialism in America must be non-violent—again invoking Gandhi as well as Martin Luther King," said the watchdog group.
The day after Pres. Obama signed the bill, according to reports, Mr. Limbaugh told his audience, "We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. … They must my friends, be hounded out of office ..."
It is their influence on that rabid, racist side of the equation that ferments and forments potential violence in the country, Min. Farrakhan said.
According to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service, since the first Black president took office, the rate of threats against Mr. Obama have increased 400 percent from the 3,000 a year under former President George W. Bush.
Like the Republican politicians, right wing religious extremists have fueled the flames over months.
Last September, protesters in Arizona confronted Baptist pastor Steven Anderson, who delivered a sermon called, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and then called on his parish to pray for the president's death. The day after, ABC reported, one of his parishioners brought a loaded semiautomatic rifle and handgun to a rally where President Obama addressed a veteran's group. Last June, Wiley Drake, a pastor in Buena Park, Calif., said he was praying an imprecatory prayer against President Obama, meaning he was praying for the president's death.
The important challenge now, said Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Columbia University, is to come together to think about ways to heal a nation that is deeply fractured by race, class, gender, and sexuality.
"People are using the health care debate as a kind of secret agent talk that they can use to actually smuggle in conversation about a deep disdain, deep disregard, for some of the most vulnerable citizens ... it's a sad moment," Dr. Lamont Hill said.
"The irony is that health care reform is being challenged on the grounds that it's anti-ethical to American values ... and in the midst of doing that they are holding up signs about killing people. You have Sarah Palin putting gun cross-hairs on maps."
Dr. David Horne, executive director of the California African American Political and Economic Institute, believes the climate is growing more explosive daily because:
This is the first time in 80 years, that the Democratic Party has been able to get health reform legislation off the ground, despite the $250 million pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and their lobbyists spent to try to kill the effort.
The Republican Party has been throwing rocks and trying to hide their hands, but because they have committed to undermining President Obama to make him fail, they have stirred up thugism and extremism, which they cannot rein in.
Some people who do not read, are ignorant, and will not get any facts, actually believe that what opponents say about the president is correct.
"What has happened right now is the mean spirited, vicious racism that is the bedrock of this country has been given the opportunity to come out and show itself and they're not even trying to disguise it or stop it. The Republican Party should come out publicly and say it doesn't condone this activity, but it won't come out and do that. They want it to continue," Dr. Horne told The Final Call.
Although politicians have behaved badly toward each other, cursed each other out, and even had boxing matches while in session, their negative treatment of President Obama is a first, Dr. Horne said and the reason the Republicans have no problem with showing crude and uncivil behavior is because a Black man is the brunt of their insults.
Dr. Wilmer Leon, III., political analyst and XM Satellite radio show host, told The Final Call Tea Party protesters insulted every Black person in America when they insulted Rep. Cleaver and Rep. Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement. But the offenders were given a pass, by Reps. Lewis and Cleaver, and especially mainstream media, he continued.
"Can you imagine if at the Million Man March, we had been walking around strapped; if we had been walking around with signs with gun sights on them with Bill Clinton's picture? They would have run Min. Farrakhan off the planet. They would have gone to every African American of note and pushed a microphone in their face and said, ‘Do you support this sentiment? Isn't this racist?,' " Dr. Leon argued.
"The press would have even called track and field great Jesse Owens from the grave to get him to denounce it," Dr. Leon added.
Dr. Leon argued the problem isn't with free speech, but with statements going unchallenged. Plus, people must connect the dots between their so-called free speech and the vandalism and the death threats, he added.
"They don't want to talk about domestic terrorism and that's what this is. What? White folks can't be terrorists all of a sudden?" Dr. Leon asked.
For example, he said, for two weeks, he could not get away from the face of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 30 in a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas last November. People labeled Maj. Hasan a Muslim terrorist and the media kept the story running for two weeks, yet, made every attempt within 24 hours to report that Joseph Stack, a software engineer who flew a plane into an IRS building in Texas, was not connected in any way to an act of terrorism.
Dr. Leon wondered why Tea Party members, who are upset over healthcare and consider themselves protectors of the Constitution, were conspicuously absent when former President George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney were lying about the connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, 9-11, and when the Bush administration rushed the Patriot Act and wireless wiretapping through Congress.
"There is a direct link between White nationalism and Black public policy. Folks don't want to talk about White nationalism, but that's what this is ... People don't understand that because Whites are the dominant group in our democracy, they don't have to say that race is their motivation. They couch it in terms of national interest," Dr. Leon said.
Since President Barack Obama signed the landmark health reform bill, the split between Americans, extreme right wing opponents and supporters of the legislation and ideologues, has widened, but many say this division is rooted in racial hatred, rather than health reform.
Racist and hateful acts have been carried out by supporters and those whose ideology reflects the Tea Party Movement, considered to be anti-tax, anti-government and anti-Barack Obama.
"We're in now a second phase of Reconstruction because Black governors now are being turned out. A Black president, they hope, will be a one-term president should he last four years and Black mayors, Black elected officials are being taken out of office. And when the cry comes up, they should be hounded out of town and out of office and hassle them, then the country is in for an explosion and all it needs is a spark and the people will arise and blood will be in the streets of the United States of America," warned the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan during a live, web-streamed interview with Cliff Kelley on WVON on March 24.
One Tea Party protester called Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) n----r multiple times and someone spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-KS) as the two men made their way through demonstrators to vote March 21 on a major health reform bill.
Several congressional offices were vandalized by brick throwers, and at least 10 members of the Democratic Party and their families have received death threats.
What people are witnessing, Min. Farrakhan said, is the beginning of the end of a civil society, because America is in the throes of Divine Judgment, according to the Bible and Quran. "From wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in diverse places, all of these judgments of God are coming down on America, not for her foreign policy and its wicked effect on the world, but because of her treatment of Black people in her midst," Min. Farrakhan said.
Much of the hateful rhetoric against President Obama has been revved up by Republican lawmakers, and much is being driven by conservative radio and TV talk show hosts, like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the like.
On March 27, Mr. Beck and some 8,000 fans, gathered in Orlando, Fla., for his American Revival, a daylong event aimed at taking back, or regaining America. Media Matters reported that Mr. Beck, who has been accused of "spewing such incendiary language," urged followers to stock food and water for a coming showdown. "If we don't face the truth right now, we'll be dead in five years—this country can't survive," he said, Media Matters reported. Mr. Beck also promised to put forth a federal budget that would cut spending by 50 percent. "Clearly stung by a wave of accusations that right-wing radio and Fox News are ginning up death threats and potential violence against members of Congress and progressives, Beck also expanded on a new theme that resistance to what he claims is growing socialism in America must be non-violent—again invoking Gandhi as well as Martin Luther King," said the watchdog group.
The day after Pres. Obama signed the bill, according to reports, Mr. Limbaugh told his audience, "We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. … They must my friends, be hounded out of office ..."
It is their influence on that rabid, racist side of the equation that ferments and forments potential violence in the country, Min. Farrakhan said.
According to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service, since the first Black president took office, the rate of threats against Mr. Obama have increased 400 percent from the 3,000 a year under former President George W. Bush.
Like the Republican politicians, right wing religious extremists have fueled the flames over months.
Last September, protesters in Arizona confronted Baptist pastor Steven Anderson, who delivered a sermon called, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and then called on his parish to pray for the president's death. The day after, ABC reported, one of his parishioners brought a loaded semiautomatic rifle and handgun to a rally where President Obama addressed a veteran's group. Last June, Wiley Drake, a pastor in Buena Park, Calif., said he was praying an imprecatory prayer against President Obama, meaning he was praying for the president's death.
The important challenge now, said Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Columbia University, is to come together to think about ways to heal a nation that is deeply fractured by race, class, gender, and sexuality.
"People are using the health care debate as a kind of secret agent talk that they can use to actually smuggle in conversation about a deep disdain, deep disregard, for some of the most vulnerable citizens ... it's a sad moment," Dr. Lamont Hill said.
"The irony is that health care reform is being challenged on the grounds that it's anti-ethical to American values ... and in the midst of doing that they are holding up signs about killing people. You have Sarah Palin putting gun cross-hairs on maps."
Dr. David Horne, executive director of the California African American Political and Economic Institute, believes the climate is growing more explosive daily because:
This is the first time in 80 years, that the Democratic Party has been able to get health reform legislation off the ground, despite the $250 million pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and their lobbyists spent to try to kill the effort.
The Republican Party has been throwing rocks and trying to hide their hands, but because they have committed to undermining President Obama to make him fail, they have stirred up thugism and extremism, which they cannot rein in.
Some people who do not read, are ignorant, and will not get any facts, actually believe that what opponents say about the president is correct.
"What has happened right now is the mean spirited, vicious racism that is the bedrock of this country has been given the opportunity to come out and show itself and they're not even trying to disguise it or stop it. The Republican Party should come out publicly and say it doesn't condone this activity, but it won't come out and do that. They want it to continue," Dr. Horne told The Final Call.
Although politicians have behaved badly toward each other, cursed each other out, and even had boxing matches while in session, their negative treatment of President Obama is a first, Dr. Horne said and the reason the Republicans have no problem with showing crude and uncivil behavior is because a Black man is the brunt of their insults.
Dr. Wilmer Leon, III., political analyst and XM Satellite radio show host, told The Final Call Tea Party protesters insulted every Black person in America when they insulted Rep. Cleaver and Rep. Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement. But the offenders were given a pass, by Reps. Lewis and Cleaver, and especially mainstream media, he continued.
"Can you imagine if at the Million Man March, we had been walking around strapped; if we had been walking around with signs with gun sights on them with Bill Clinton's picture? They would have run Min. Farrakhan off the planet. They would have gone to every African American of note and pushed a microphone in their face and said, ‘Do you support this sentiment? Isn't this racist?,' " Dr. Leon argued.
"The press would have even called track and field great Jesse Owens from the grave to get him to denounce it," Dr. Leon added.
Dr. Leon argued the problem isn't with free speech, but with statements going unchallenged. Plus, people must connect the dots between their so-called free speech and the vandalism and the death threats, he added.
"They don't want to talk about domestic terrorism and that's what this is. What? White folks can't be terrorists all of a sudden?" Dr. Leon asked.
For example, he said, for two weeks, he could not get away from the face of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 30 in a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas last November. People labeled Maj. Hasan a Muslim terrorist and the media kept the story running for two weeks, yet, made every attempt within 24 hours to report that Joseph Stack, a software engineer who flew a plane into an IRS building in Texas, was not connected in any way to an act of terrorism.
Dr. Leon wondered why Tea Party members, who are upset over healthcare and consider themselves protectors of the Constitution, were conspicuously absent when former President George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney were lying about the connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, 9-11, and when the Bush administration rushed the Patriot Act and wireless wiretapping through Congress.
"There is a direct link between White nationalism and Black public policy. Folks don't want to talk about White nationalism, but that's what this is ... People don't understand that because Whites are the dominant group in our democracy, they don't have to say that race is their motivation. They couch it in terms of national interest," Dr. Leon said.
In Memoriam: Eugene Allen (1919-2010)
Eugene Allen, White House Butler For 8 Presidents, Dies At 90
By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2010
Eugene Allen, who endured a harsh and segregated upbringing in his native Virginia and went on to work for eight presidents as a White House butler, died March 31 of renal failure at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. He was 90.
Mr. Allen and his wife, Helene, were profiled in a Washington Post story in 2008 that explored the history of blacks in the White House. The couple were excited about the possibility of Barack Obama's historic election and their opportunity to vote for him. Helene, however, died on the eve of the election, and Mr. Allen went to vote alone. The couple had been married for 65 years.
Afterward, Mr. Allen, who had been living quietly in a simple house off Georgia Avenue NW in the District, experienced a fame that he had only witnessed beforehand. He received a VIP invitation to Obama's swearing-in, where a Marine guard escorted him to his seat. Eyes watering, he watched the first black man take the oath of office of the presidency.
Mr. Allen was besieged with invitations to appear on national TV shows. There were book offers and dozens of speaking requests, all of which he declined. He also received hundreds of letters, some from as far away as Switzerland, from people amazed at the arc of his life and imploring him to hold on while thanking him for his service to the nation. People in his neighborhood would stop him and explain to their children the outlines of his life.
"He liked to think of himself as just a humble butler," his only child, Charles, said Thursday. Aside from his son, Mr. Allen is survived by five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mr. Allen was born July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va. He worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and later at a country club in Washington. In 1952, he heard of a job opening at the White House and was hired as a "pantry man," washing dishes, stocking cabinets and shining silverware for $2,400 a year.
He became maitre d', the most prestigious position among White House butlers, under Ronald Reagan. During Mr. Allen's 34 years at the White House, some of the decisions that presidents made within earshot of him came to have a direct bearing on his life -- and that of black America.
Mr. Allen was in the White House when Dwight D. Eisenhower dealt with the Little Rock desegregation crisis. Eisenhower once asked him about the cancellation of Nat "King" Cole's TV show, which the president enjoyed. Mr. Allen told him that the show had difficulty attracting advertisers, who were worried about white Southern audiences boycotting their products.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Allen was invited to the funeral. He declined for the most generous of reasons: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral," he told The Post. When first lady Jackie Kennedy returned to the White House afterward, she gave him one of the president's ties. Mr. Allen had it framed.
Mr. Allen served entertainers including Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Elvis Presley. He flew aboard Air Force One. He sipped root beer at Camp David with Jimmy Carter and visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg after he left the White House. There were always Christmas and birthday cards from the families of the presidents he had served.
He looked up one evening in the White House kitchen to see a lone figure standing in the doorway: It was Martin Luther King Jr., who had insisted on meeting the butlers and maids. Mr. Allen smiled when King complimented him on the cut of his tuxedo.
Mr. Allen served cups and cups of milk and Scotch to help Lyndon B. Johnson settle his stomach when protesters were yelling outside the White House gates during the Vietnam War. He longed to say something to Johnson about his son, who was serving in Vietnam at the time but dared not -- save for acknowledging that his son was alive when Johnson asked about him.
It pained Mr. Allen to hear vulgar words, sometimes racially charged, flowing from Johnson's mouth; and it delighted him when Johnson signed the historic civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965.
Sometimes Mr. Allen's own life seemed to stop beneath the chandeliered light. First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him one afternoon, and Mr. Allen wondered whether he or a member of his staff had done something wrong. She assured him that he had not but also told him that his services would not be needed at the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Mr. Allen tensed, wondering why.
"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself,' " he recounted in the Post interview. Mr. Allen thought he was the first butler to receive an invitation to a state dinner. He and Helene -- she was a beautiful dresser -- looked resplendent that night. The butlers on duty seemed to pay special attention to the couple as they poured champagne for guests -- champagne that Mr. Allen himself had stacked in the kitchen.
Mr. Allen was mindful that with the flowering of the black power movement, many young people questioned why he would keep working as a butler, with its connotations of subservience. But the job gave him great pride, and he endured the slights with a dignified posture.
"He was such a professional in everything he did," said Wilson Jerman, 81, whom Mr. Allen hired to work at the White House in the early 1960s. "When my wife, Gladys, died in 1966, he told me not to worry about a thing. I didn't think I could get through that period, and he just took me by the hand. I'll never forget it."
Mr. Allen retired in 1986, after having been promoted to maitre d' five years earlier. He possessed a dazzling array of framed photographs with all of the presidents he had served, in addition to gifts and mementos from each of them.
The last item to be framed and placed on Eugene Allen's basement wall was a condolence letter from George W. and Laura Bush. It arrived from the White House just after the death of Helene.
By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2010
Eugene Allen, who endured a harsh and segregated upbringing in his native Virginia and went on to work for eight presidents as a White House butler, died March 31 of renal failure at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. He was 90.
Mr. Allen and his wife, Helene, were profiled in a Washington Post story in 2008 that explored the history of blacks in the White House. The couple were excited about the possibility of Barack Obama's historic election and their opportunity to vote for him. Helene, however, died on the eve of the election, and Mr. Allen went to vote alone. The couple had been married for 65 years.
Afterward, Mr. Allen, who had been living quietly in a simple house off Georgia Avenue NW in the District, experienced a fame that he had only witnessed beforehand. He received a VIP invitation to Obama's swearing-in, where a Marine guard escorted him to his seat. Eyes watering, he watched the first black man take the oath of office of the presidency.
Mr. Allen was besieged with invitations to appear on national TV shows. There were book offers and dozens of speaking requests, all of which he declined. He also received hundreds of letters, some from as far away as Switzerland, from people amazed at the arc of his life and imploring him to hold on while thanking him for his service to the nation. People in his neighborhood would stop him and explain to their children the outlines of his life.
"He liked to think of himself as just a humble butler," his only child, Charles, said Thursday. Aside from his son, Mr. Allen is survived by five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mr. Allen was born July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va. He worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and later at a country club in Washington. In 1952, he heard of a job opening at the White House and was hired as a "pantry man," washing dishes, stocking cabinets and shining silverware for $2,400 a year.
He became maitre d', the most prestigious position among White House butlers, under Ronald Reagan. During Mr. Allen's 34 years at the White House, some of the decisions that presidents made within earshot of him came to have a direct bearing on his life -- and that of black America.
Mr. Allen was in the White House when Dwight D. Eisenhower dealt with the Little Rock desegregation crisis. Eisenhower once asked him about the cancellation of Nat "King" Cole's TV show, which the president enjoyed. Mr. Allen told him that the show had difficulty attracting advertisers, who were worried about white Southern audiences boycotting their products.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Allen was invited to the funeral. He declined for the most generous of reasons: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral," he told The Post. When first lady Jackie Kennedy returned to the White House afterward, she gave him one of the president's ties. Mr. Allen had it framed.
Mr. Allen served entertainers including Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Elvis Presley. He flew aboard Air Force One. He sipped root beer at Camp David with Jimmy Carter and visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg after he left the White House. There were always Christmas and birthday cards from the families of the presidents he had served.
He looked up one evening in the White House kitchen to see a lone figure standing in the doorway: It was Martin Luther King Jr., who had insisted on meeting the butlers and maids. Mr. Allen smiled when King complimented him on the cut of his tuxedo.
Mr. Allen served cups and cups of milk and Scotch to help Lyndon B. Johnson settle his stomach when protesters were yelling outside the White House gates during the Vietnam War. He longed to say something to Johnson about his son, who was serving in Vietnam at the time but dared not -- save for acknowledging that his son was alive when Johnson asked about him.
It pained Mr. Allen to hear vulgar words, sometimes racially charged, flowing from Johnson's mouth; and it delighted him when Johnson signed the historic civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965.
Sometimes Mr. Allen's own life seemed to stop beneath the chandeliered light. First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him one afternoon, and Mr. Allen wondered whether he or a member of his staff had done something wrong. She assured him that he had not but also told him that his services would not be needed at the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Mr. Allen tensed, wondering why.
"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself,' " he recounted in the Post interview. Mr. Allen thought he was the first butler to receive an invitation to a state dinner. He and Helene -- she was a beautiful dresser -- looked resplendent that night. The butlers on duty seemed to pay special attention to the couple as they poured champagne for guests -- champagne that Mr. Allen himself had stacked in the kitchen.
Mr. Allen was mindful that with the flowering of the black power movement, many young people questioned why he would keep working as a butler, with its connotations of subservience. But the job gave him great pride, and he endured the slights with a dignified posture.
"He was such a professional in everything he did," said Wilson Jerman, 81, whom Mr. Allen hired to work at the White House in the early 1960s. "When my wife, Gladys, died in 1966, he told me not to worry about a thing. I didn't think I could get through that period, and he just took me by the hand. I'll never forget it."
Mr. Allen retired in 1986, after having been promoted to maitre d' five years earlier. He possessed a dazzling array of framed photographs with all of the presidents he had served, in addition to gifts and mementos from each of them.
The last item to be framed and placed on Eugene Allen's basement wall was a condolence letter from George W. and Laura Bush. It arrived from the White House just after the death of Helene.
Monday, March 22, 2010
King Center Custodian To Take Control Of Esteemed Organization
Appointee plans big changes for King Center
First step: Remove King siblings from control
Atlanta, GA -- A court-appointed outsider plans to make Atlanta’s King Center live up to its full potential by removing the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and their allies from control.
Custodian Terry M. Giles believes the underused center on Auburn Avenue honoring the martyred civil rights leader should be on par with a presidential library and should continue its original mission of using nonviolence to bring social change around the world.
To accomplish that, Giles told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he plans to restructure the bylaws and governance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change — an institution mired in conflict for more than 15 years — to ensure a national board controls it rather than the King family.
Giles said he hopes to persuade King’s heirs — Martin, Dexter and Bernice King — and their relatives to support creating a diversified board that can raise tens of millions of dollars and hire top-flight management, but he said he has court authority to act unilaterally.
“We want the best people we can get,” he said. “I know the family has been concerned that this would allow them to lose control. Maybe there are some family members who would be perfect for those parts, but maybe not.”
Andrew Young, who received a lifetime appointment to the King Center board, told the AJC that the revamping was “probably overdue. The center originally started with a 35-member board and had prominent people from around the nation and Atlanta , but many resigned and others were not reappointed after Dexter King became chairman in 1994.”
Dexter King wanted to build an interactive museum at the center — which didn’t come to pass — and under his stewardship the nonviolence and social activism training programs that had been so dominant faded, Young said.
“He was basically a businessman who didn’t know Martin Luther King and didn’t know a lot about the movement and he was exercising a lot of authority,” Young said. “If we can get a new board and a new structure, then I think it would help solve some of the institutional problems of management and give us a new opportunity to start again.”
Giles, a prominent Houston lawyer and businessman, became the new power broker at the King Center because of a family feud. In 2008, Martin and Bernice King filed a lawsuit accusing Dexter of mismanaging and looting King Inc. — the family corporation that controls Martin Luther King’s copyrighted material, image and intellectual property, and which has generated millions of dollars.
Dexter King — head of King Inc. and chairman of the King Center — fired back with a lawsuit that accused his brother of misusing the assets of the King Center , a nonprofit corporation that Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s widow, founded in 1974.
Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville appointed Giles as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.
Martin and Bernice King declined to discuss the custodian or whether they support his plans. Both said they wanted to wait for Giles to do his work. “The [court] order speaks for itself,” Bernice King told the AJC on Friday. “It is a consent order with all our signatures. That speaks volumes.”
Critics have long charged that the center largely served to employ King family members. Martin King was once the president with a $150,000 salary, until removed by his family at a board meeting in 2004. Dexter King is currently the board chairman and chief operating officer, with a salary and deferred income of $197,000. His cousin Isaac Farris Jr. is the chief executive officer, with a salary and deferred income totaling nearly $96,000, according to tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009 for the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Attempts to reach Dexter King were unsuccessful. Farris declined to comment, saying the Kings had requested he not comment about the center.
In the tax document, the most recent filed, Dexter King, 49, maintains he spends 40 hours a week on center business from his home in Malibu, Calif.
The tax document also shows the center paid $696,163 to Dexter King’s company, Intellectual Properties Management, as a management consultant for 2007-08 fiscal year. The fee in the past has often been more than $1 million. The King Center has maintained the money is to repay IPM for salaries it paid center employees, currently numbering about 20.
Giles told the AJC the IPM payments appeared to be legitimate but resulted in a lack of transparency that created family friction and fueled public suspicions.
“They actually kept it pretty straight — it was the first thing I looked at to make sure it was being done right,” Giles said. “IPM was not taking a fee. IPM was being reimbursed for the actual number that IPM was spending on salaries. It was only being reimbursed for actual expenses from everything I have seen. Now maybe something will pop up and surprise me.”
Bernice and Martin King alleged in court documents that their brother also might be under investigation by the inspector general for the federal Department of Education for misusing a $600,000 federal grant. The education department would not confirm whether there was an investigation.
Dexter King tried to support the center by marketing the life story and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. commercially — an approach that angered many members of the old civil rights guard — but the approach was largely unsuccessful, Young said.
Giles said the result was that King Inc. ended up underwriting financial shortfalls at the King Center , which receives about $2 million a year in federal grants, fund-raising and sales.
“King Inc. has been keeping the center afloat and that is something we have to turn around,” he said. “If you actually went through the numbers, King Inc. would probably be owed a couple of million dollars.”
Giles said the center first needs to hire a small group of turn-around officers to get the center properly financed and functioning.
He said the nonprofit’s 16-member board has offered little oversight. The bylaws were changed so that only the chairman could call a board meeting.
“It has literally been years since they had a real board meeting and the center has been run with absentee management — that is never a good idea,” Giles said. “The only public relations they have had so far has been bad and we need to turn that around.”
The King Center has filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court to intervene in the lawsuit because of concerns of how Giles’ appointment might impact the center. Giles said he planned to work closely with the family. “I know right now there is a lot of angst,” he said.
Disciples of Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence, including Dorothy Cotton and Bernard Lafayette Jr., both of whom once headed the King Center’s programs, said the center had used that philosophy for everything from helping end conflict in families and among street gangs to teaching neighborhood activists how to get their share of public dollars.
Coretta King also envisioned the center as housing her husband’s papers — which wound up at Morehouse College after the city of Atlanta helped organize their purchase from the family for $30 million — and continuing his teachings, said Lynn Cothren, a longtime aide to King’s widow. But she wanted to support her son’s ideas for the center, Cothren said.
“It doesn’t have the mission Mrs. King envisioned — it changed under Dexter,” said Cothren, now director of administration for the Girl Scouts of the USA in New York . “I think Mrs. King was brokenhearted that the King Center , which she considered her fifth child, was not what she envisioned it to be. That was her legacy and she watched it fade away during her lifetime.”
Giles said the center should serve as an archive for material related to King and the civil rights movement and as a location for national and international conferences. More importantly, it should renew its commitment to teaching nonviolent tactics and organizing.
“I want to get as close to what Mrs. King wanted,” Giles said. “This is not an attack on the family. It is simply let us join together and make the center the best thing it can be. That is what the family wants, that is what the community wants and that is what Dr. and Mrs. King deserve.”
First step: Remove King siblings from control
Atlanta, GA -- A court-appointed outsider plans to make Atlanta’s King Center live up to its full potential by removing the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and their allies from control.
Custodian Terry M. Giles believes the underused center on Auburn Avenue honoring the martyred civil rights leader should be on par with a presidential library and should continue its original mission of using nonviolence to bring social change around the world.
To accomplish that, Giles told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he plans to restructure the bylaws and governance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change — an institution mired in conflict for more than 15 years — to ensure a national board controls it rather than the King family.
Giles said he hopes to persuade King’s heirs — Martin, Dexter and Bernice King — and their relatives to support creating a diversified board that can raise tens of millions of dollars and hire top-flight management, but he said he has court authority to act unilaterally.
“We want the best people we can get,” he said. “I know the family has been concerned that this would allow them to lose control. Maybe there are some family members who would be perfect for those parts, but maybe not.”
Andrew Young, who received a lifetime appointment to the King Center board, told the AJC that the revamping was “probably overdue. The center originally started with a 35-member board and had prominent people from around the nation and Atlanta , but many resigned and others were not reappointed after Dexter King became chairman in 1994.”
Dexter King wanted to build an interactive museum at the center — which didn’t come to pass — and under his stewardship the nonviolence and social activism training programs that had been so dominant faded, Young said.
“He was basically a businessman who didn’t know Martin Luther King and didn’t know a lot about the movement and he was exercising a lot of authority,” Young said. “If we can get a new board and a new structure, then I think it would help solve some of the institutional problems of management and give us a new opportunity to start again.”
Giles, a prominent Houston lawyer and businessman, became the new power broker at the King Center because of a family feud. In 2008, Martin and Bernice King filed a lawsuit accusing Dexter of mismanaging and looting King Inc. — the family corporation that controls Martin Luther King’s copyrighted material, image and intellectual property, and which has generated millions of dollars.
Dexter King — head of King Inc. and chairman of the King Center — fired back with a lawsuit that accused his brother of misusing the assets of the King Center , a nonprofit corporation that Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s widow, founded in 1974.
Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville appointed Giles as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.
Martin and Bernice King declined to discuss the custodian or whether they support his plans. Both said they wanted to wait for Giles to do his work. “The [court] order speaks for itself,” Bernice King told the AJC on Friday. “It is a consent order with all our signatures. That speaks volumes.”
Critics have long charged that the center largely served to employ King family members. Martin King was once the president with a $150,000 salary, until removed by his family at a board meeting in 2004. Dexter King is currently the board chairman and chief operating officer, with a salary and deferred income of $197,000. His cousin Isaac Farris Jr. is the chief executive officer, with a salary and deferred income totaling nearly $96,000, according to tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009 for the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Attempts to reach Dexter King were unsuccessful. Farris declined to comment, saying the Kings had requested he not comment about the center.
In the tax document, the most recent filed, Dexter King, 49, maintains he spends 40 hours a week on center business from his home in Malibu, Calif.
The tax document also shows the center paid $696,163 to Dexter King’s company, Intellectual Properties Management, as a management consultant for 2007-08 fiscal year. The fee in the past has often been more than $1 million. The King Center has maintained the money is to repay IPM for salaries it paid center employees, currently numbering about 20.
Giles told the AJC the IPM payments appeared to be legitimate but resulted in a lack of transparency that created family friction and fueled public suspicions.
“They actually kept it pretty straight — it was the first thing I looked at to make sure it was being done right,” Giles said. “IPM was not taking a fee. IPM was being reimbursed for the actual number that IPM was spending on salaries. It was only being reimbursed for actual expenses from everything I have seen. Now maybe something will pop up and surprise me.”
Bernice and Martin King alleged in court documents that their brother also might be under investigation by the inspector general for the federal Department of Education for misusing a $600,000 federal grant. The education department would not confirm whether there was an investigation.
Dexter King tried to support the center by marketing the life story and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. commercially — an approach that angered many members of the old civil rights guard — but the approach was largely unsuccessful, Young said.
Giles said the result was that King Inc. ended up underwriting financial shortfalls at the King Center , which receives about $2 million a year in federal grants, fund-raising and sales.
“King Inc. has been keeping the center afloat and that is something we have to turn around,” he said. “If you actually went through the numbers, King Inc. would probably be owed a couple of million dollars.”
Giles said the center first needs to hire a small group of turn-around officers to get the center properly financed and functioning.
He said the nonprofit’s 16-member board has offered little oversight. The bylaws were changed so that only the chairman could call a board meeting.
“It has literally been years since they had a real board meeting and the center has been run with absentee management — that is never a good idea,” Giles said. “The only public relations they have had so far has been bad and we need to turn that around.”
The King Center has filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court to intervene in the lawsuit because of concerns of how Giles’ appointment might impact the center. Giles said he planned to work closely with the family. “I know right now there is a lot of angst,” he said.
Disciples of Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence, including Dorothy Cotton and Bernard Lafayette Jr., both of whom once headed the King Center’s programs, said the center had used that philosophy for everything from helping end conflict in families and among street gangs to teaching neighborhood activists how to get their share of public dollars.
Coretta King also envisioned the center as housing her husband’s papers — which wound up at Morehouse College after the city of Atlanta helped organize their purchase from the family for $30 million — and continuing his teachings, said Lynn Cothren, a longtime aide to King’s widow. But she wanted to support her son’s ideas for the center, Cothren said.
“It doesn’t have the mission Mrs. King envisioned — it changed under Dexter,” said Cothren, now director of administration for the Girl Scouts of the USA in New York . “I think Mrs. King was brokenhearted that the King Center , which she considered her fifth child, was not what she envisioned it to be. That was her legacy and she watched it fade away during her lifetime.”
Giles said the center should serve as an archive for material related to King and the civil rights movement and as a location for national and international conferences. More importantly, it should renew its commitment to teaching nonviolent tactics and organizing.
“I want to get as close to what Mrs. King wanted,” Giles said. “This is not an attack on the family. It is simply let us join together and make the center the best thing it can be. That is what the family wants, that is what the community wants and that is what Dr. and Mrs. King deserve.”
Democratic House Approves Health Care Reform Bill Amid Republican Opposition, Protests
WASHINGTON-Delivering a hard-fought victory in President Barack Obama's year-long pursuit of a national healthcare overhaul, a divided House tonight narrowly approved legislation which both supporters and opponents call historic in its sweep.
The House's 219-212 vote tonight on a Senate-passed bill will deliver to the president's desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.
Thirty-four members of the president's party joined all the House's Republicans in voting against the healthcare bill.
The House then approved, by a vote of 220-211, a package designed to reconcile differences between the Senate-and-House-approved bill and another which the House already had approved in November.
Together, the two measures would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.
The second measure still must go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.'' Any changes made in the Senate, however, would return that to the House before the President signs it.
"I know this bill is complicated, but it's also very simple,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone. In that shared strength is our nation's strength.''
"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership's closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,'' the speaker said "this legislation if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.''
"Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said near the close of debate. "We should be looking with pride on this legislation, and our work. But it is not so. Today we are looking at a healthcare bill that nobody in this body believes is satisfactory.''
As the outcome of the vote appeared certain, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the House: "Perhaps it's time for Washington to stop talking and start listening. I'm listening to the thousands of citizens who traveled to our nation's capital this weekend to tell us in no uncertain terms, they want us to kill this bill.''
At an estimated cost of $940 billion over 10 years, supported in part by additional taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the legislation is projected to offer coverage to some 32 million uninsured people.
Democratic leaders hail the healthcare measure as "historic,'' legislation on a par with the enactment of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s. Underscoring that sense of history, House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) brought to the floor and read from a copy of the typed 1939 letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to Congress asking it to make a national healthcare program part of the Social Security Act.
"This is a historic day, and we are happy warriors,'' said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union. said. "We will be a part of history, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt's passage of Social Security, Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare and now Barack Obama's passage of healthcare.''
Republicans deride it as "a government takeover of healthcare.''
"Some say we're making history. I say we're breaking history,'' said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), near the end of the debate.
"Only in Washington, D.C., could you say you're going spend $1 trillion and save the taxpayers money,'' Pence said. "This Congress is poised to ignore the will of the majority of the American people…. This is the people's House, and the people don't want a government takeover of healthcare.''
The bills augurs the creation of "a European nanny-state,'' said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) during an afternoon-long series of debates on the House floor. "The American people don't desire more oppressive, intrusive government in control of their health.''
"This trillion-dollar tragedy is just bad medicine,'' said Rep. Lee Terry, (R-Neb.), during final evening debate.
Although House leaders were confident of winning a close vote heading into the floor vote today, a critical logjam was broken when the White House announced that Obama will issue an executive order after expected passage of the healthcare legislation in the House asserting that it will not interfere with an existing ban on federal funding for abortions.
The move was designed to allow bill-critics concerned about abortion to vote for the healthcare bills, and several said they would.
"While the legislation as written maintains current law,'' White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in an issued statement, "the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation's restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.
"The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent'' on abortion, Pfeiffer said. "The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle.''
The move was a signal to conservative Democrats in the House, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, that they could lend their votes to the legislation. With House leaders fighting to corral the votes needed, support from Stupak and other holdouts would cement that final vote.
In a news conference following the White House announcement, Stupak and six of his Democratic colleagues said they would vote for the bill. Making no apologies for holding the bill up until the agreement was reached, Stupak said, ''We've all stood on principle. We've always said we were for health care reform but there was a principal that means more to us than anything the sanctity of life.''
"An executive order is not law,'' Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) argued on the House floor, asking abortion opponents not to be swayed.
The House's Democratic leaders have secured a narrow victory over monolithic Republican opposition as well as resistance from some wary Democrats in the approval of the healthcare bill which the Senate passed in December. The Senate passed it on a 60-39 vote cast strictly along party lines in a Christmas Eve session.
This bill would require most individuals to buy health insurance, offer federal subsidies to help pay premiums, impose penalties on employers that don't offer affordable polices and create a new insurance marketplace of exchanges for people with employer-supported coverage.
In addition, insurers would be prevented from denying coverage based on preexisting medical conditions or setting any lifetime cap on the benefits that they pay. Young adults also will be allowed to remain on their parents' plans longer, until they are 27 years old.
A momentous day began with protesters assembling early on the plaza of the Capitol. Opponents of the bill milled around in front of the House side calling out derisively to House Speaker Pelosi ``Naaancy, Naaancy, come outside,'' shouted one protestor. Another, with an anti-abortion slogan on her sweatshirt, knelt in prayer at the stairs leading to the Capitol dome.
In a closed-door caucus for Democrats, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the Civil Rights movement who reportedly faced racial epithets from protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday, reminded his colleagues that they were acting on healthcare on the 45th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights marches. Lewis was beaten in an infamous confrontation with police during the first of those marches.
As the caucus meeting ended, Pelosi joined Lewis in leading a caucus march through the street to the Capitol, almost daring protesters to repeat the previous day's slurs. Surrounded by a phalanx of security officers, Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer linked arms with Lewis and led House Democrats through a gauntlet of angry protesters.
On the House floor later, Lewis emotionally implored his colleagues to "answer the call of history… Give healthcare a chance.''
A familiar counterpoint between Democrats and Republicans aligned against the bill had played out all day long.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) quoted his father, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a career-long champion of healthcare reform until has passing last year.
"The parallel between the struggle for Civil Rights and the fight to make healthcare affordable for all Americans is significant,'' he said. "Healthcare is not only a Civil Right. It's a moral issue".
Democrats are hailing the measure for its deficit relief with an estimated $138 billion reduction in the annual federal budget deficit over 10 years. Republicans are dismissing the projection of the Congressional Budget Office as phony math.
"The oldest trick in the book in Washington is you can manipulate a bill to manipulate the results,''' Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told the House.
"This bill is a fiscal Frankenstein,'' Ryan said.
Even as the year-long legislative journey came to a climactic House vote, the debate was shrouded in uncertainty about how and whether the legislation would work and about how the politics will play out in the fall. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats who support the bill will face "a price to pay'' in the midterm congressional elections.
That is fitting for a debate that, at every stage, has been riddled with unpredictable twists and turns.
The progress of the healthcare bill has been buffeted by unexpected events, such as the death of Sen. Kennedy, the he patriarch of the drive for universal health care; the loss of the Democrats' 60-vote majority in the Senate when Kennedy was replaced by Republican, Scott Brown; an abrupt and well-publicized boost in health insurance premiums charged by Anthem Blue Cross in California; and the proclaimed death and resurrection of the" public option,'' a government-run alternative for which liberal Democrats had fought, time and again. It is absent from the final bills.
More importantly, consumers face vast uncertainty about the impact of the bill. Democrats and Obama plan to devote the next few months to making sure consumers understand its benefits immediate (insurance regulation) and in the future (insurance purchasing exchanges); concrete (closing the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage) and abstract (sense of security).
Democrats believe that one of the most important documents in their arsenal is a list prepared by their leadership of the provisions of the bill that kick in almost immediately, including the guarantee that children will not be denied coverage for preexisting conditions and the provision allowing young adults to remain on their parents' policies.
But some Democrats are still anxious that voters will now blame the President and the Democrats for every thing that goes wrong from long lines at the pharmacy to delays in processing insurance claims whether they are attributable to the health care bill or not.
President Obama's Remarks Following Health Care Reform Bill Passage
The House's 219-212 vote tonight on a Senate-passed bill will deliver to the president's desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.
Thirty-four members of the president's party joined all the House's Republicans in voting against the healthcare bill.
The House then approved, by a vote of 220-211, a package designed to reconcile differences between the Senate-and-House-approved bill and another which the House already had approved in November.
Together, the two measures would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.
The second measure still must go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.'' Any changes made in the Senate, however, would return that to the House before the President signs it.
"I know this bill is complicated, but it's also very simple,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone. In that shared strength is our nation's strength.''
"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership's closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,'' the speaker said "this legislation if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.''
"Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said near the close of debate. "We should be looking with pride on this legislation, and our work. But it is not so. Today we are looking at a healthcare bill that nobody in this body believes is satisfactory.''
As the outcome of the vote appeared certain, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the House: "Perhaps it's time for Washington to stop talking and start listening. I'm listening to the thousands of citizens who traveled to our nation's capital this weekend to tell us in no uncertain terms, they want us to kill this bill.''
At an estimated cost of $940 billion over 10 years, supported in part by additional taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the legislation is projected to offer coverage to some 32 million uninsured people.
Democratic leaders hail the healthcare measure as "historic,'' legislation on a par with the enactment of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s. Underscoring that sense of history, House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) brought to the floor and read from a copy of the typed 1939 letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to Congress asking it to make a national healthcare program part of the Social Security Act.
"This is a historic day, and we are happy warriors,'' said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union. said. "We will be a part of history, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt's passage of Social Security, Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare and now Barack Obama's passage of healthcare.''
Republicans deride it as "a government takeover of healthcare.''
"Some say we're making history. I say we're breaking history,'' said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), near the end of the debate.
"Only in Washington, D.C., could you say you're going spend $1 trillion and save the taxpayers money,'' Pence said. "This Congress is poised to ignore the will of the majority of the American people…. This is the people's House, and the people don't want a government takeover of healthcare.''
The bills augurs the creation of "a European nanny-state,'' said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) during an afternoon-long series of debates on the House floor. "The American people don't desire more oppressive, intrusive government in control of their health.''
"This trillion-dollar tragedy is just bad medicine,'' said Rep. Lee Terry, (R-Neb.), during final evening debate.
Although House leaders were confident of winning a close vote heading into the floor vote today, a critical logjam was broken when the White House announced that Obama will issue an executive order after expected passage of the healthcare legislation in the House asserting that it will not interfere with an existing ban on federal funding for abortions.
The move was designed to allow bill-critics concerned about abortion to vote for the healthcare bills, and several said they would.
"While the legislation as written maintains current law,'' White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in an issued statement, "the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation's restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.
"The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent'' on abortion, Pfeiffer said. "The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle.''
The move was a signal to conservative Democrats in the House, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, that they could lend their votes to the legislation. With House leaders fighting to corral the votes needed, support from Stupak and other holdouts would cement that final vote.
In a news conference following the White House announcement, Stupak and six of his Democratic colleagues said they would vote for the bill. Making no apologies for holding the bill up until the agreement was reached, Stupak said, ''We've all stood on principle. We've always said we were for health care reform but there was a principal that means more to us than anything the sanctity of life.''
"An executive order is not law,'' Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) argued on the House floor, asking abortion opponents not to be swayed.
The House's Democratic leaders have secured a narrow victory over monolithic Republican opposition as well as resistance from some wary Democrats in the approval of the healthcare bill which the Senate passed in December. The Senate passed it on a 60-39 vote cast strictly along party lines in a Christmas Eve session.
This bill would require most individuals to buy health insurance, offer federal subsidies to help pay premiums, impose penalties on employers that don't offer affordable polices and create a new insurance marketplace of exchanges for people with employer-supported coverage.
In addition, insurers would be prevented from denying coverage based on preexisting medical conditions or setting any lifetime cap on the benefits that they pay. Young adults also will be allowed to remain on their parents' plans longer, until they are 27 years old.
A momentous day began with protesters assembling early on the plaza of the Capitol. Opponents of the bill milled around in front of the House side calling out derisively to House Speaker Pelosi ``Naaancy, Naaancy, come outside,'' shouted one protestor. Another, with an anti-abortion slogan on her sweatshirt, knelt in prayer at the stairs leading to the Capitol dome.
In a closed-door caucus for Democrats, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the Civil Rights movement who reportedly faced racial epithets from protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday, reminded his colleagues that they were acting on healthcare on the 45th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights marches. Lewis was beaten in an infamous confrontation with police during the first of those marches.
As the caucus meeting ended, Pelosi joined Lewis in leading a caucus march through the street to the Capitol, almost daring protesters to repeat the previous day's slurs. Surrounded by a phalanx of security officers, Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer linked arms with Lewis and led House Democrats through a gauntlet of angry protesters.
On the House floor later, Lewis emotionally implored his colleagues to "answer the call of history… Give healthcare a chance.''
A familiar counterpoint between Democrats and Republicans aligned against the bill had played out all day long.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) quoted his father, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a career-long champion of healthcare reform until has passing last year.
"The parallel between the struggle for Civil Rights and the fight to make healthcare affordable for all Americans is significant,'' he said. "Healthcare is not only a Civil Right. It's a moral issue".
Democrats are hailing the measure for its deficit relief with an estimated $138 billion reduction in the annual federal budget deficit over 10 years. Republicans are dismissing the projection of the Congressional Budget Office as phony math.
"The oldest trick in the book in Washington is you can manipulate a bill to manipulate the results,''' Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told the House.
"This bill is a fiscal Frankenstein,'' Ryan said.
Even as the year-long legislative journey came to a climactic House vote, the debate was shrouded in uncertainty about how and whether the legislation would work and about how the politics will play out in the fall. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats who support the bill will face "a price to pay'' in the midterm congressional elections.
That is fitting for a debate that, at every stage, has been riddled with unpredictable twists and turns.
The progress of the healthcare bill has been buffeted by unexpected events, such as the death of Sen. Kennedy, the he patriarch of the drive for universal health care; the loss of the Democrats' 60-vote majority in the Senate when Kennedy was replaced by Republican, Scott Brown; an abrupt and well-publicized boost in health insurance premiums charged by Anthem Blue Cross in California; and the proclaimed death and resurrection of the" public option,'' a government-run alternative for which liberal Democrats had fought, time and again. It is absent from the final bills.
More importantly, consumers face vast uncertainty about the impact of the bill. Democrats and Obama plan to devote the next few months to making sure consumers understand its benefits immediate (insurance regulation) and in the future (insurance purchasing exchanges); concrete (closing the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage) and abstract (sense of security).
Democrats believe that one of the most important documents in their arsenal is a list prepared by their leadership of the provisions of the bill that kick in almost immediately, including the guarantee that children will not be denied coverage for preexisting conditions and the provision allowing young adults to remain on their parents' policies.
But some Democrats are still anxious that voters will now blame the President and the Democrats for every thing that goes wrong from long lines at the pharmacy to delays in processing insurance claims whether they are attributable to the health care bill or not.
President Obama's Remarks Following Health Care Reform Bill Passage
Friday, March 19, 2010
NYC Elderly Couple's Home Targeted At Least 50 Times By NYPD In Botched Police Raids For Suspects
Brooklyn World War II vet Walter Martin and his wife, Rose, aren't at the top of the NYPD's most wanted list - it just feels that way.
Cops have swooped down on the law-abiding couple's modest Marine Park home at least 50 times in the last eight years hunting bad guys - only to learn they were chasing a bad address.
They've come looking for murder and robbery suspects. Once, cops came hunting for one of their own - an NYPD officer accused of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter.
In each case, NYPD officers from commands ranging from the north Bronx to Staten Island somehow confused the Martins' two-story home with the hideout of a suspect or key witness - a different person nearly every time.
"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, said. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"
The Martins' nightmare began in 2002 and has grown to ridiculous proportions.
The latest came at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the Martins were jolted awake by police fists pounding on the home's front and back doors.
The startling wakeup call strained 83-year-old Walter Martin's heart, and he felt dizzy as he dressed hurriedly.
"You're not the first," he told the amazed officers. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people. ... After they left, I felt funny."
He said he took his blood pressure - and it was soaring. "It finally went down to normal after about three hours," he said.
The Martins have documented the unending police pop-ins - and have amassed a sizable collection of cops' business cards.
The lifetime Brooklyn residents bought the home in 1997 to be closer to their children.
All was fine until early 2002, when junk mail, court documents and arrest warrants began arriving for a motley collection of strangers.
Then, the police began knocking on their door - again and again and again.
"Police! Open up!" became a familiar phrase to the Martins, who have had police at their door as many as three times in a week.
Most of the time, the officers quickly realized they had hit the wrong address - and left in frustration, saying little.
Other visits have been more memorable.
In June 2002, two female officers from the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau showed up looking for a woman who had accused a police officer of sexual misconduct.
The most bizarre mixup came on Oct. 10, 2006, when cops and FBI agents rolled up, hunting for then-cop Angel Negron, who was later charged with raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fired.
"That is one I can't get over," Walter Martin said, unable to understand how the NYPD could not know how to quickly find one of its own.
Frustrated and scared, the Martins wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter - but officers are still pounding on their door more than three years later.
Police brass are baffled. "Our identity theft squad is investigating the matter," said Inspector Ed Mullen, an NYPD spokesman.
"If they're getting that many visits we have to find out why," a police source said.
The NYPD's 61st Precinct once called it a computer glitch. Postal officials suggested the couple get a post-office box.
After the Daily News began making inquiries, the couple's address was run through the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center. Police sources said databases spit out 49 pages of documents, including complaints, 911 calls and stop, question and frisk forms. A News computer search of the address lists 15 other people living there. The Martins know none of them.
Rose Martin said cops have always been respectful and never crashed in.
Still, as she wrote to Kelly, she worries something tragic could happen if the problem is not corrected.
"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," she wrote.
Cops have swooped down on the law-abiding couple's modest Marine Park home at least 50 times in the last eight years hunting bad guys - only to learn they were chasing a bad address.
They've come looking for murder and robbery suspects. Once, cops came hunting for one of their own - an NYPD officer accused of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter.
In each case, NYPD officers from commands ranging from the north Bronx to Staten Island somehow confused the Martins' two-story home with the hideout of a suspect or key witness - a different person nearly every time.
"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, said. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"
The Martins' nightmare began in 2002 and has grown to ridiculous proportions.
The latest came at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the Martins were jolted awake by police fists pounding on the home's front and back doors.
The startling wakeup call strained 83-year-old Walter Martin's heart, and he felt dizzy as he dressed hurriedly.
"You're not the first," he told the amazed officers. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people. ... After they left, I felt funny."
He said he took his blood pressure - and it was soaring. "It finally went down to normal after about three hours," he said.
The Martins have documented the unending police pop-ins - and have amassed a sizable collection of cops' business cards.
The lifetime Brooklyn residents bought the home in 1997 to be closer to their children.
All was fine until early 2002, when junk mail, court documents and arrest warrants began arriving for a motley collection of strangers.
Then, the police began knocking on their door - again and again and again.
"Police! Open up!" became a familiar phrase to the Martins, who have had police at their door as many as three times in a week.
Most of the time, the officers quickly realized they had hit the wrong address - and left in frustration, saying little.
Other visits have been more memorable.
In June 2002, two female officers from the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau showed up looking for a woman who had accused a police officer of sexual misconduct.
The most bizarre mixup came on Oct. 10, 2006, when cops and FBI agents rolled up, hunting for then-cop Angel Negron, who was later charged with raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fired.
"That is one I can't get over," Walter Martin said, unable to understand how the NYPD could not know how to quickly find one of its own.
Frustrated and scared, the Martins wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter - but officers are still pounding on their door more than three years later.
Police brass are baffled. "Our identity theft squad is investigating the matter," said Inspector Ed Mullen, an NYPD spokesman.
"If they're getting that many visits we have to find out why," a police source said.
The NYPD's 61st Precinct once called it a computer glitch. Postal officials suggested the couple get a post-office box.
After the Daily News began making inquiries, the couple's address was run through the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center. Police sources said databases spit out 49 pages of documents, including complaints, 911 calls and stop, question and frisk forms. A News computer search of the address lists 15 other people living there. The Martins know none of them.
Rose Martin said cops have always been respectful and never crashed in.
Still, as she wrote to Kelly, she worries something tragic could happen if the problem is not corrected.
"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," she wrote.
Second Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty In New Orleans Police Coverup Case; More Fallout Expected
A former New Orleans police officer has been charged with concealing his knowledge of an alleged police cover-up in the Danziger Bridge shootings shortly after Hurricane Katrina.
The former officer is Jeffrey Lehrmann, an investigator who arrived at the scene of the Sept. 4, 2005 shootings shortly after they happened. Lehrmann was charged in a bill of information Feb. 22, which was unsealed by prosecutors Tuesday.
Defendants who are charged by bill of information, rather than grand jury indictment, have typically signed plea agreements with the federal government to cooperate. Lehrmann is charged with misprision of a felony -- or knowing about a crime and failing to report it -- a charge often filed against cooperating witnesses.
Lehrmann, who had been a detective in the 7th District, participated in some of the investigation in the weeks after the shooting, according to police documents. He also rode in an ambulance to West Jefferson Medical Center with the four surviving shooting victims.
A plea hearing is set for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
It's unclear when Lehrmann's apparent cooperation with federal investigators began, but the bill of information says his concealment of the cover-up ended in October 2009. He is accused of concealing a conspiracy, as well as participating "in the creation of false reports and the provision of false information to investigating agents."
Lehrmann is the second former New Orleans police officer to be charged in the scheme.
Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to conspiring to obstruct justice by orchestrating a cover-up of what he considered to be a "bad shoot." Lohman said officers planted a gun and altered witness statements to make it appear that the shooting of six people, two fatally, was justified. He also admitted to falsifying the police report.
Unlike Lohman, who was a 21-year NOPD veteran, Lehrmann was on the force for a short period of time. After serving more than eight years as a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office, Lehrmann was hired by the NOPD in March 2005. He left the job in Sept. 2006, according to civil service records.
At some point after leaving the NOPD, Lehrmann joined the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He is currently employed in the Phoenix ICE office, according to an agency spokesman, who declined to comment further on his work status.
Although Lehrmann was an NOPD officer for only a year and a half, he did participate in one of the most high-profile investigations in recent years: the Central City shooting deaths of five teenagers in the summer of 2006.
Lehrmann was the detective in the investigation who interviewed the sole eyewitness, whose testimony led to the arrest of Michael Anderson, said Richard Bourke, a defense attorney representing Anderson. That case was recently overturned when a judge found that the Orleans Parish district attorney's office improperly withheld a videotaped interview with that eyewitness that contained information helpful to the defense.
The former officer is Jeffrey Lehrmann, an investigator who arrived at the scene of the Sept. 4, 2005 shootings shortly after they happened. Lehrmann was charged in a bill of information Feb. 22, which was unsealed by prosecutors Tuesday.
Defendants who are charged by bill of information, rather than grand jury indictment, have typically signed plea agreements with the federal government to cooperate. Lehrmann is charged with misprision of a felony -- or knowing about a crime and failing to report it -- a charge often filed against cooperating witnesses.
Lehrmann, who had been a detective in the 7th District, participated in some of the investigation in the weeks after the shooting, according to police documents. He also rode in an ambulance to West Jefferson Medical Center with the four surviving shooting victims.
A plea hearing is set for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
It's unclear when Lehrmann's apparent cooperation with federal investigators began, but the bill of information says his concealment of the cover-up ended in October 2009. He is accused of concealing a conspiracy, as well as participating "in the creation of false reports and the provision of false information to investigating agents."
Lehrmann is the second former New Orleans police officer to be charged in the scheme.
Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to conspiring to obstruct justice by orchestrating a cover-up of what he considered to be a "bad shoot." Lohman said officers planted a gun and altered witness statements to make it appear that the shooting of six people, two fatally, was justified. He also admitted to falsifying the police report.
Unlike Lohman, who was a 21-year NOPD veteran, Lehrmann was on the force for a short period of time. After serving more than eight years as a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office, Lehrmann was hired by the NOPD in March 2005. He left the job in Sept. 2006, according to civil service records.
At some point after leaving the NOPD, Lehrmann joined the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He is currently employed in the Phoenix ICE office, according to an agency spokesman, who declined to comment further on his work status.
Although Lehrmann was an NOPD officer for only a year and a half, he did participate in one of the most high-profile investigations in recent years: the Central City shooting deaths of five teenagers in the summer of 2006.
Lehrmann was the detective in the investigation who interviewed the sole eyewitness, whose testimony led to the arrest of Michael Anderson, said Richard Bourke, a defense attorney representing Anderson. That case was recently overturned when a judge found that the Orleans Parish district attorney's office improperly withheld a videotaped interview with that eyewitness that contained information helpful to the defense.
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