caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer and songwriter Albert Washington. Enjoy!

Preparatory to ending the ban on transgender military service, which is expected to happen this Spring, the Department of Defense has proposed a new rule in regard to TRICARE benefit coverage.

This proposed rule seeks to comprehensively update TRICARE mental health and substance use disorder benefits, consistent with earlier Department of Defense and Institute of Medicine recommendations, current standards of practice in mental health and addiction medicine, and our governing laws. The Department of Defense remains intently focused on ensuring the mental health of our service members and their families, as this continues to be a top priority. The Department is also working to further de-stigmatize mental health treatment and expand the ways by which our beneficiaries can access authorized mental health services. This proposed regulatory action is in furtherance of these goals and imperative in order to eliminate requirements that may be viewed as barriers to medically necessary and appropriate mental health services.

Things are very different in China than they are in the United States. For instance, try to imagine this sentence referring to America's wealthy.

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Wednesday February 2, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: A Report on the Youngstown Massacre

This month's edition of the Review offers an overview of the Youngstown Massacre:

Capitalist Violence at Youngstown

By JOHN RANDOLPH

A GANG of gunmen broke loose in Youngstown, Ohio, on the night of January 7. When they got through with the paid job they came to Youngstown to do, three union workingmen were dead, twenty more labor rebels had bullet wounds on their bodies, and somewhere over $1,000,000 worth of property lay smoking in ruins.

Not a life was lost nor a bullet gash received by the enemies of labor, according to reports so far arriving. Of the $1,000,000 and more property destroyed practically all was owned by somebody else than the big steel sheet and tube works, whose workers were on strike.

Look at it. Three working class rebels are dead, murdered by hired gunmen. Who paid the gunmen and where did they come from and what were their orders? Nobody is telling. The one certainty is the dead are dead.

over at Daily Kos. Looks like we're fully on track, now, for the superdelegates to deliver the nomination to Clinton while the Sanders supporters head for the Stein camp. Musical accompaniment:

The Evening Blues - 2-1-16

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues singer and guitarist Melvin "Lil' Son" Jackson. Enjoy!

Brittany Tovar works as a nurse practitioner for Essentia Health at Essentia's hospital in Ada, MN. As such, she and her family are supposedly insured under Essentia's medical insurance provider, HealthPartners.

At least that's what she thought until she sought medical care for her transgender son, Reid Tovar Olson.

I was really disappointed with my employer. It's hard coming to work, and my employer considers my son a second-class citizen.

So Tovar has filed suit in federal court.

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Tuesday February 1, 1916
Indianapolis, Indiana - Mother Jones Addresses Convention of United Mine Workers, Part II

Yesterday's Hellraisers presented part one of the speech delivered by Mother Jones during Saturday's afternoon session of the United Mine Workers Convention, now coming to a close in the city of Indianapolis. Today we are pleased to present part two of her speech wherein we hear her response to a mine owner who longs for her death.

You have made more progress in government, boys, in the last three years than you had made in 125 years prior to that. We have got more recognition in the last three years than in all that time. The Secretary of Labor, who is a member of the President's cabinet, was in Pennsylvania when the strike at Arnot took place. That was before the anthracite strike. I was sent for and went there. The men were going to work next morning. I addressed a meeting that afternoon. Nobody went to work next morning, but I was thrown out of the hotel at eleven o'clock at night—I was an undesirable citizen. I went up the mountain. I saw a light and kept crawling up until I got there. When I got to the house a man there said, “Did they put you out of the hotel?” I said, “Yes, but I will put them out before I get through with them.”

The president of District No. 2 worked day and night and gave ail he had to that strike. One night I sat in W. B. Wilson's house. He was there with his feet bare. About eleven o'clock at night we were talking about a move I was going to make when a knock came on the door. Wilson opened it. I left the room. Three men came in, sat down and discussed the strike. One of them said, “Say, Wilson, we can make it twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars if you go away and let this fight fall to pieces. You can take the old woman with you.”

(I’m sorry it’s so long; I’m not even sure I’d read it if I hadn’t had to…)

Monica Loera was shot and killed on her front doorstep on January 22.

Although police have made an arrest in the case and a suspect has been charged, there’s been no public acknowledgement of her death or the community that has been further traumatized in its wake. And that’s wrong.

Reading the arrest affidavit or local news reports about the death, you’d have no idea that the victim was a transgender woman. The wild curls and wide grins from her Facebook page – and above all else, her chosen name – have been omitted to a staggering degree. Instead Loera has been described using her birth name and masculine pronouns.

--Nina Hernandez, Austin Chronicle