January 19, 2022
You're On Mute
by Steve Cickay

Congressman Fitzpatrick:

This week I was reading stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer about struggling families who were having difficulty in this cold January making ends meet because of the failure by you and Congressional Republicans to renew the Child Tax Credit. Working parents had to make difficult decisions about paying for rent, food for their children, or medical care for themselves and their family.

There was no mention in your newsletter of this pain felt by thousands across our country, including many in your congressional district.

This week I was also reading stories about the continuing attack on our planet and its diverse species by the existential threat of human-induced climate change. The year 2021 was the Earth’s sixth-hottest year on record. It was also the 45th consecutive year that saw global temperatures rising above the average. What’s more, the years 2013 through 2021 all rank among the ten warmest years since record keeping began in 1880. The United States experienced twenty extreme weather events in 2021 that cost $145 billion in damages.

There was no mention in your newsletter of this attack on our life-sustaining planet and no proposals for dealing with this emergency.

This weekend we are on the verge of our national celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday. Your Republican Party is hard at work eroding the progress this great man sacrificed his life for, as you systematically make it more difficult for people of color to cast their vote. You reject the improvements and protections that federal legislation would confer on our democracy. Meanwhile, at the state level, your Party installs election officials and passes legislation which, as our President Biden says, would strike at the throat of our democracy.

There was no mention in your newsletter of this attack on voting rights.

This week charges of sedition were filed against the Oath Keepers for their conspiratorial efforts to obstruct the lawful Congressional act of the peaceful transfer of power to President Biden on January 6, 2021. Republicans refused to participate in the commemoration of the first year anniversary of this unprecedented attack on our Capitol and our democracy.

There was no mention in your newsletter about this critical development in the investigation of this violent attempt to overthrow our democracy and no denouncement of the Big Lie supported by so many Republican leaders and believed by so many Republican voters.

The eradication of poverty, the preservation of our planet, and the protection of our democracy are values which should be championed by all American citizens and by its leaders. You and your Republican leaders are fighting relentlessly against these public values. Why?

Do you honestly and sincerely believe that poverty should be met with indifference, that climate change is a hoax, and that the attack on our democracy begun on January 6, 2021 is not still underway? Or are you controlled by your Party and by powerful economic interests rewarding you for your blindness and obedience?

Either way, the citizens of Bucks County deserve better leadership.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Youre-On-Mute-14/

January 18, 2022
Fitzpatrick Phone "Town Hall" Notes
by Hal Wright

The meeting focused on COVID-19 mitigation.

Call ends at 8:15pm without Fitzpatrick and with others signing off.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Fitzpatrick-Phone-Town-Hall-Notes-15/

January 15, 2022
We're Doing It Wrong, Why Won't You?
by Hal Wright

I recently became aware that one tool ReOpen Bucks folks are using to reach out directly to school board members is a graph of positivity rate vs. time, disaggregated by school district masking policies. Unsurprisingly, there is little correlation between masking in schools and what ReOpen calls "community prevalence."

I say unsurprisingly, because ReOpen makes no attempt to control for other variables leading to community spread. As anyone living in Bucks County knows, our communities have largely given up mitigating the spread of COVID-19 via common sense measures. Many of us, maybe most, are behaving as though we live in a post-COVID world. Absent any attempt to account for the myriad ways COVID-19 is spreading in our communities, the ReOpen data compilation is worse than useless. In essence, it's a call for schools to do nothing about COVID-19 because much of Bucks is doing nothing about COVID-19.

It's telling that Doylestown Hospital has asked Central Bucks School District's board members to beef up their COVID-19 mitigation plan, because they are overwhelmed with COVID-positive patients. Healthcare workers do not have the luxury to ignore the presence of a pandemic in our community — until those workers give up out of exhaustion or disgust, as some are doing.

We know ReOpen doesn't care about public health. If they did, their web page would include statistics about how the unvaccinated are clogging the ICUs of Bucks County hospitals right now. They would be exploring creative ways to help local businesses thrive in spite of the pandemic. Instead, they accept sickness as a necessary consequence of turning a profit. And they promote a peculiar form of "dignity" which derives from the absence of any concern for one's neighbors and from sticking one's head in the sand.

If the lack of something essential can be regarded as a malignancy, ReOpen Bucks is a malignant expression of a lack of realism and of empathy for the vulnerable among us.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Were-Doing-It-Wrong-Why-Wont-You-12/

January 11, 2022
Jefferson and Hemings and Network TV
by Hal Wright

I first became aware of the existence of Sally Hemings when I watched an episode of Head of the Class in the 1980's. In the episode, called "The Way We Weren't," Darlene, a brilliant Black high school student (played by Robin Givens, in her breakthrough role) wrestles with the knowledge that she is a descendant of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.

It's not that I had never heard of or read about Hemings before that. It's that I had never felt any part of the weight of the story until I saw a young Black woman tell it.

Yesterday, I bought and rewatched the episode. It wasn't as groundbreaking as I thought at the time. And the script was... awful. Darlene's White history teacher, played by series star Howard Hesseman, tells Darlene exactly what she should think about her fifth great grandparents. He says historians think Jefferson and Hemings were in love and that the times demanded he keep her enslaved, as this was the only way they could be together. The teacher cites writings by Hemings' son Madison as proof of the loving nature of the Hemings-Jefferson relationship, claims that Jefferson's having brought Hemings to Paris is proof of his affection for her, and states that Jefferson granted Hemings her freedom upon his death. Darlene's anguish soon evaporates.

The trouble with this explanation is that it stinks like the manure on Jefferson's fields.

We will never know exactly what Hemings and Jefferson held in their hearts. But we can learn a great deal more about the circumstance of their connection than what this television show and most popular sources reveal.

Hemings was a child of 13 or 14 when she accompanied Jefferson's daughter Maria to Paris as her maid-servant. According to Madison Hemings, at age 16 Hemings agreed to leave France, where she could have remained as a free woman, and return to Monticello with Jefferson so long as he agreed to free all of her unborn children by age 21. That Hemings was worried about unborn children in Paris, and that she gave birth to Jefferson's child shortly after her return to Monticello, provides important context.

More context comes with the knowledge that Sally Hemings was Jefferson's deceased wife's sister, his sister-in-law. Martha Jefferson's father John Wayles enslaved and raped Hemings' mother Elizabeth. Sally Hemings and her family came to Monticello when Martha inherited her father's wealth, including the people he had enslaved.

Sally Hemings likely bore seven children by Thomas Jefferson, four of whom lived to adulthood. All remained enslaved until the age of 21. Sally Hemings was never formally released from bondage, though after Jefferson's death in 1826 his daughter Martha allowed her to leave Monticello and to live as a free woman in Charlottesville with her son Madison.

Jefferson enslaved Black Americans for the entirety of his adult life, over 600 in all, and granted freedom to only a few of them.

Returning to Head of the Class, Darlene's classmate and rival Allen expresses envy that Darlene is related to a founding father. Darlene says, "I win the snob contest because Thomas Jefferson slept with a distant relative of mine? He owned her Allen. He could have set her free but he didn't until after his death. A little late. Am I supposed to be proud of that?"

The teacher then presses the false narrative that Jefferson brought Hemings to Paris as the "woman of the house."

Darlene says, "A happy slave story? No thank you." No thank you indeed. Undeterred, Darlene's teacher doubles down.

I will share more about Jefferson and Hemings on a different day. For now, I will do what Darlene's history teacher should have done, what all history teachers should do: leave you to process your own thoughts and feelings, if you wish.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Jefferson-and-Hemings-and-Network-TV-11/

January 9, 2022
Fitzpatrick Ignores the Facts of January 6
by Hal Wright

In a recent interview, Fitzpatrick says he was frightened by the mob on January 6, and that they cannot claim to respect law enforcement while bashing officers on the head with flag poles and fire extinguishers. Fitzpatrick places the events of January 6 in no context at all, except that Americans attacking Americans is very, very bad.

Absent other information, one might conclude from Fitzpatrick's remarks that the insurrection was a random event, like a thunderstorm or a fender bender. Many other political leaders, including President Biden and Fitzpatrick's fellow Republicans Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, have highlighted the obvious nexus between Trump's Big Lie and the insurrectionist attack, and reminded us that the purpose of the Big Lie and of the attack was to prevent certification of a free and fair election — to destroy the democratic process as defined in our Constitution.

Fitzpatrick has watched Kinzinger's and Cheney's careers as Republicans spiral the bowl, and has done the math. Defending the pillars of democracy against domestic enemies would anger the fraction of Bucks County Republicans who have not already branded him a traitorous RINO, and alienate Democrats still soothed by the Fitzpatrick name. More importantly, it would shut off the flow of cash and advocacy from a Republican Party gone fully ride or die with Trump.

That Fitzpatrick joined his fellow Republicans in boycotting the January 6 memorial for Capitol officers at which Biden spoke and that he made no statement at all on the anniversary of January 6 calls into question the depth of Fitzpatrick's support for law enforcement. Such support seems to end at the doors of his wealthy donors and at Mar-a-Lago.

The thousands of Bucks County residents from both parties who understand that our Republic is in peril await some sign from our elected member of Congress that he "gets it." As Steve Cickay has so passionately expressed in a recent piece for DailyKos, we wait for you to stop being the mouse with no roar, scrounging for morsels dropped by your Republican benefactors. We wait for you to discover your purpose as a member of the most important deliberative body in the world.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Fitzpatrick-Ignores-the-Facts-of-January-6-10/

January 1, 2022
Support the January 6 Committee
by Martin J. Raffel

My wife and I attended, for our first time, the Christmas Day reenactment of George Washington’s 1776 Delaware River crossing and subsequent pivotal defeat of Hessian forces in Trenton. Still in its cradle, American democracy was saved by the courage and sacrifice of Washington and his men. I couldn’t escape thinking about January 6, 2021, the first anniversary of which is fast approaching, when a much more mature American democracy came under assault, not from the British, not from Hessians, but from fellow Americans.

I wanted to believe that those of us at Washington Crossing State Park on Christmas shared the outrage I felt on January 6 watching our Capitol desecrated, members of Congress and the vice president threatened with death, and the mauling of law enforcement personnel with bear spray, fire extinguishers and even American flag poles – all in the service of trying to prevent the peaceful transition of power. I wanted to believe that, like me, they wanted to get to the bottom of what took place that day and the period leading up to it, to hold accountable those responsible -- including political figures who incited, aided, and abetted the attack -- and to make sure something like that could never be allowed to happen again.

Yes, I wanted to believe. Yet, sadly, I knew that some of those at the reenactment who cherish George Washington’s heroism still believe the “Big Lie,” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. They still reject important efforts of the House select committee investigating January 6 and support obstruction of those efforts by former President Trump, some prominent members of his administration, and members of Congress, including Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry.

So, this coming January 6, to honor George Washington and all those Americans in uniform who have served over the last almost two and a half centuries to protect our democracy, contact Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick and PA's two U.S. senators to voice your support for the House select committee. It’s the least we can do.

Link: https://halwrightnewtown.info/blog/Support-the-January-6-Committee-9/