Black People: Don’t Buy Into the Great American Myth
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One of the biggest problems that we have in the Black community is how we allow ourselves to be portrayed in the media. There tends to be a blanket profiling of Black people by the media as little more than dysfunctional hood rats with a few functional Black people sprinkled in for the sake of appearance, but as aberrations, and the poverty pimps among us have a vested interest in perpetuating that myth in order to feather their own nests.
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But the fact is, the truth is just the reverse. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the vast majority of Black people in this country are middle class or above. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses, and 47% of Africans Americans own their own homes. So the kind of dysfunctional Black people commonly being portrayed in the media are a minority of the Black community, but they are a highly vocal, flamboyant, and inordinately publicized minority.
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If White people were portrayed in the media in the same way as Black people, we'd think that the majority of White folks were barefooted Hillbillies. So if you’re a Black person and reading this article, simply look at your own situation, and that of your family and friends. The chances are overwhelming that you and your close associates are living at a level comparable to the average White middle-class individual. The same is true of myself, my family, and virtually all of my friends.
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So the Black community is doing itself a huge disservice by just sitting back and allowing ourselves to be portrayed in this distorted and negative fashion. It sends the wrong message to our children. When they sit around for hours on end watching the antics of Lil’ Wayne and others flaunting the very worst of who we are, it sends the message to our young people that they have a moral obligation to be stupid in order to demonstrate their Black pride. They’re, literally, being instructed in what it means to be Black by sources other than ourselves. They’re being taught that being Black means wearing pants saggin’ off their asses, engaging in reckless and irresponsible behavior, scarring their bodies with ugly tattoos that can prevent them from obtaining employment, and giving priority to chasing "bling," momentary pleasure, and superficial trinkets over pursuing education, knowledge, and investing in themselves as individuals.
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If we’re tolerating these things in our homes, we have no right to complain when the rest of society refuse to hire us, and profile us a superficial and irresponsible idiots. But the fact is, we’re not only tolerating it, we’re making people filthy rich by supporting an industry that thrive on producing videos that are nothing short of ten minute commercials being circulated around the world saying that the very womb of our culture are sluts and whoes who are only good for abuse, and that Black men want everything out of life but a job - and will do anything to get it.
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That’s not who we are as a people, but that’s the way we’re being portrayed. That’s who our young people are looking up to, and that’s the way the rest of the world sees us. So if we allow this to continue, whose fault is it when the rest of the world believes their lying eyes? No wonder unemployment is so high among Black people. I wouldn’t hire anyone like that either - would you?
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So the Black community needs to come down on the media like a sledgehammer, and stop them from slandering our community. We also have to start letting our children know, in no uncertain terms, that stupidity’s not cute. We can't start to disseminate that message too soon, or too early in a child’s life, and since kids tend to gravitate toward those things that they’re rewarded for as "cool," it’s not enough to simply address this issue as individual parents - we might as well be spittin’ in the wind. We have to address this issue as a COMMUNITY.
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We’ve got to let BET know that if they want the community’s continued support, they’re going to have to change their call letters to stand for Black Excellence Television, and their programming is going to have to reflect that. We have to make it clear to BET, MTV, and the rest of the media that if they want the support of the Black community that they’re going to have to air programming that’s consistent with our agenda as a community - programming that reflects manhood as having the character to face and defeat adversity, and strength as being tender enough to sooth the wounded feelings of a baby girl.
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But in order to do that, we need an organized community, and a big obstacle to that is the self-serving poverty pimps among us who benefit from our suffering. We’ve got to eliminate these people. These are the ones who are primarily responsible for the plight that we currently find ourselves. When Martin and Malcolm were alive, the only thing they wanted from the White man was for him to leave us alone and allow us to live our lives in peace. My grandfather had a little verse that reflected their attitude. He used to say, "The only thing I want from this whole damn nation, is a pretty little wife, and a good foundation." I didn’t realize it at the time, but in that one little verse he was teaching me the meaning of life - and he had that, and more.
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But after the death of Martin and Malcolm, the poverty pimps swopped in to try to take their place, but both their philosophy, and their agenda, were much different. They convinced the Black community that we couldn’t make it on our own. They convinced us that we were incapable of such a monumental feat. They told us that we needed the White man’s help to move forward, so it was incumbent upon us to hire them as our official emissaries to the White man. That was in the late sixties and early seventies. But since that time, the "emissaries" have all profited greatly, while we’ve been sitting on our hands suffering, whining, and begging for the past forty years, and still waiting for the White man’s response. Sure we want our piece of America's pie, but the only way to get that is by organizing and making ourselves a strong enough political force to DEMAND it, not pay poverty pimps $30,000 an hour speaking fees to talk about how unjustly we're being treated. First, we already know that; and secondly, the only one it's benefitting is the poverty pimp. We're actually PAYING him to help spread the word, and profile us, as an hopelessly inept culture.
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So it’s time to bring the poverty pimp hustle to an end. We don’t need one voice speaking for millions; we need millions speaking with one voice. We also need to re-embrace our self-esteem, and begin to recognize who we are, what we represent, and the dignity of what we’ve managed to overcome. We're not puppies who need to be defended. We are a strong and vibrant people. One of our number has risen from the very bottom to become President of the United States. That's one of the most amazing accomplishments in the history of mankind. It's the equivalent of a captured slave rising to become the emperor of Rome, and it also speaks volumes about the American people's respect for excellence. But the poverty pimps have a vested interest in playing that down. They have a vested interest in playing you down.
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But our history is clear. In spite of the fact that many of us have been dragged through the pits of Hell, we've managed to come out the other side as well adjusted and relatively well educated individuals. A study was done that shows that a White man with felony conviction has an equal chance of being hired for a job as a Black man with a spotless record (http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hire/)That alone says it all. While we've been forced to engage in a 100 yard dash where our White counterparts were spotted 25 yards, we've still managed to remained competitive. So the fact is, adversity has made us MORE, rather than less.
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So don't buy into the great American myth. Yes, there are Black people who are struggling and at the bottom of the heap, but there are also many White people in that very same condition, and, in spite of having every advantage in life. So if you're Black and middle class, you've remained competitive with your White peers in spite of the fact that you were forced to wear lead boots during the competition. So you have much to be proud of - and not just the superficial pride of having Black skin, as James Brown suggested, but a genuine pride in what you’ve accomplished IN SPITE of your Black skin. So let us not allow our detractors have us confuse WHAT we are, or the title on our door, with WHO we are. We should ALWAYS invest in ourselves, because a great man will ALWAYS be a great man, even if he's on Skid Row.
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Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores. So I know who you are and what you're capable of, because I know who I am and what I'm capable of - thanks to you.
President Obama: Respect workers’ Rights - Emancipate United States Postal Workers
PART III
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We thought it would be instructive if we took the time to reprise in part an article that we did in December of 2009. During that time we wrote a series of articles pointing out that the United States Postal Service was a microcosm of America as a whole, so to ignore the plight of it’s employees would come back to bite middle-class workers as a whole. . At this writing, Ohio voters are in the process of voting to repeal a Draconian assault on middle-class workers by Governor John Kasich and his Republican legislature. It’s one of many votes across the country that’s only necessary because American workers refused to wake up to the fact that the only way to fight for their own justice, is to fight for the justice of others. . Ohio voters wouldn’t have had the problem they’re facing if they wouldn’t have ignored the threat that the GOP posed to workers when they elected Kasich, but they thought he was only a threat to others. But now they’ve found out the hard way that injustice toward some is a threat to the justice of all, and it’s much more difficult to fight off injustice when you wait until the boots are at your door. . The Tea Party abruptly woke up to this fact as well. By the way, when was the last time you heard from the Tea Party? I'll tell you when - when the GOP started talking about attacking Social Security, Medicare, and the programs that have a direct impact on their lives. Isn't it funny how fast people begin to see the light when the quality of THEIR lives are under attack?
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The Role of Poor, Minorities, and Middle Class in the New World Order
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The phrase New World Order says it all. But in our blind naivete' and the belief that it can't happen here, the vast majority of American people believe the phrase refers to the reshuffling, in terms of importance, of the various nations around the world. We fail to understand that the change is much more profound than that. The new world order not only applies to a geo-political reshuffling among nations, but the reshuffling of the internal economic structure within individual nations as well.
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That means that as the world moves from many separate national economies to one global economy the class structure of the various nations of the world must be adjusted to accommodate the new state of affairs. In turn, that means that the high standard of living enjoyed by the American middle class since WWII can no longer be sustained in an economy where many of America's competitors are paying their workers less per week than many of us spend on lunch per day. That accounts for why American jobs are being outsourced to other countries, and Walmart, one of the largest retail corporations in the world, has based its business model on purchasing most of its merchandise from China in order to undercut the price demands of its competitors.
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Walmart is a microcosm of the revised American business strategy under the new world order. Must only look at Walmart's business model, and the socioeconomic profile of its employees, and see exactly what direction American business, and our society, is headed as a whole.
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Walmart's business strategy is to hire easily replaceable and low skilled employees who are at, or very near, the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. It then takes advantage of their precarious economic condition to squeezes every dime of profit out of the company's operation . They aggressively fight organized labor to hold down employee wages and benefits, and deny their employees anything approaching affordable healthcare. That, essentially, is the American business model under the new world order.
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But now there is a new wrinkle. Now, the United States government has embraced this anti middle class business model. In the past the U.S. government was dedicated to enhancing the standard of living of workers all over the world to conform to the standard of living of U.S. workers, but now, as evidenced by the abusive employment practices of the U.S. Postal Service - the second largest employer of middle-class workers in the country - the United States has clearly embraced the corporatist philosophy that it’s easier to lower the standard of living of American workers to conform to that of third world countries.
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Thus, at this point, American workers are on their own. Neither business nor government are on our side. Where business was once our partner in a symbiotic relationship, it is now a predator to consumers and employees alike. Our parents could pull into a gas station and a guy in a white shirt and bow tie would run out to check their oil and water, then put air in their tires as he pumped twenty-two cents a gallon gas into their tanks. I know, gas is no longer that cheap, but what happen to the service?
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The reason for the change is greed. When the United States had a thriving industrial economy, one class complimented the other. Labor was well paid and given the security of knowing that they had a job for life, so they had the confidence to purchased goods that the corporations produced. That allowed the companies that sold the goods to prosper, to the benefit of the investor class.
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But now, in a global market, in order to remain competitive with countries that pay their workers just above slave wages, corporations have to squeeze every penny and every concession out of the labor class that they can get. And since the heads of these corporations must make huge profits to justify their unconscionably oversized bonuses, they prey on their workers by undercutting their benefits and outsourcing the very jobs that the economy is dependent upon to sustain the corporation, and the nation. But since these corporate heads live from bonus to bonus and only think about themselves, they never stop to consider the negative impact of their irresponsible behavior on the economic viability of the nation.
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So now, when Wall Street or the Fed announces that the economy is thriving, they're not talking about the American economy as a whole - they're only talking about the monetary return of the investor class. A thriving economy means they're successfully squeezing the American worker to the limit and gouging the consumer of every penny that he can afford to part with - and a few that he can't. It is that kind of greed and irresponsibility that led to the 2008 economic disaster, and nothing has changed.
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In the global economy of the new world order, corporations no longer need the American worker to sustain their profits. Now that they can outsource their labor, and purchase and sell their goods overseas, the American worker is no longer a partner in the corporation's viability. the worker has now been relegated to the status of field hand. The only time they need us is when they want to tap the treasury for our tax dollars to pay off their gambling debts.
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An article in Wikipedia points out that the AIG Financial Products division, headed by Joseph Cassano, in London, had entered into credit default swaps to insure $441 billion worth of securities originally rated AAA. Of those securities, $57.8 billion were structured debt securities backed by subprime loans. So not only did the American taxpayer pay off this insurance company's debt, but we paid off a debt that originated in another country.
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Now, your money is being taken once again, but this time, they're taking YOUR money, to pay YOUR representative, to block an attempt by President Obama to stop them from cutting your throat in a time of crisis, just like they did to the corporations on Wall Street. But there's one very big difference - you and you're family are NOT too big to fail, so without the benefit of a robust, job creation program like the one proposed by president Obama, but being blocked by the GOP, you're simply gonna bite the dust - and with the corrupt and able assistance of many of your very own representatives.
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Think about that, and urge president Obama to step up to the plate and emancipate United States postal Workers, because they represent the American middle class as a whole.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
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President Obama: Respect workers’ Rights - Emancipate United States Postal Workers
PART II
As pointed out in Part I of this series, on August 13, 2011, after Carrier Sylvester Burton inadvertently left part of his mail in the station, he alleges that U.S. Postal Service supervisor, Juanita Hamblet, of Rimpau Station in Los Angeles, came out to his route and subjected him to severe verbal abused. According to Mr. Burton and an independent witness, Ms. Hamblet came out to his route and began to verbally accost him in a very hostile and aggressive manner. Then when Burton asked the supervisor why she was harassing him, the following exchange took place:
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“She then walked up to me, her hand in my face and said, ‘I CAN HARASS YOUR ASS AS MUCH AS I WANT, AND I WILL CONTINUE TO HARRASS YOUR ASS. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU BURTON - I THINK YOUR ASS IS GAY. TAKE YOUR ASS BACK TO THE STATION, I’M GONNA CALL THE POSTAL POLICE ON YOUR ASS!’
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“So I pulled about 8 feet away from her and parked, wondering if I should follow this woman’s instructions or ignore her and finish delivering mail. Then she walked up to me again, and said, ‘I SAID TAKE YOUR ASS BACK TO THE STATION! THAT’S A DIRECT ORDER!’
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When we got back to the station she ran into Mrs. Stanley’s office and told the manager that I called her a bitch, I threatened her, and that I almost ran over her. She also said that I was a coward and she was intimidated by my presence.”
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One of the customers on the route wrote a statement substantiating Mr. Burton’s account of the incident, adding, “My entire family including my seven year-old niece had to witness this entirely unprofessional vulgar outburst. The cursing and swearing peppered with the f-word and the homophobic remarks was nothing less than shocking and completely inappropriate. I was extremely offended by her homophobic remarks and I am myself gay, not to mention the cursing and swearing in front of our child . . . You need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS WOMAN. While representing the USPS no one should be able to behave that badly and make that big of a scene in public plus publicly attacking a subordinates sexual orientation and be allowed to keep their job. If Mr. Burton sues for harassment I will gladly be a witness on his behalf.”
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There have been several complaints regarding the behavior of this supervisor in the past. Subsequent to the incident with Mr. Burton, one employee summoned the courage to write the following:
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“To whom it may concern:
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“I, Vyonnie Garbutt, can attest to the fact that Mr. Sylvester Burton is a respectable, hardworking carrier at Rimpau Station. He always treats everyone with respect and carries himself in a professional manner.
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“I would also like to attest to the fact that I have personally witnessed Carrier Supervisor Juanita Hamblet unprofessionalism and lack of dignity and respect for several employees at Rimpau Station. These employees include window clerks, distribution clerks, carriers, custodians, TE’s and PTF carriers. Some of these employees I personally witnessed include Marcus Smith (Carrier), Antoine Denson (Carrier), Charmaine Hepburn (Clerk), Ms. Franklin (TE), Mr. Sonny (Custodian), Ms. Joi (PTF),Vyonnie Garbutt (Clerk), Sylvester Burton (Carrier).
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“Supervisor Juanita Hamblett has been in combustive verbal altercations on the workfloor too many times. She creates an extremely hostile work environment for Rimpau Station.”
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Unfortunately, this sort of behavior is far from an aberration by far too many postal managers and supervisors. In fact, it’s become protocol. Postal management routinely use threats, aggressive behavior, and intimidation to get employees to work off the clock without pay. So when the postal employees refer to the postal service as “the plantation” they’re not speaking figuratively - and the various agencies within the government such as the Office of Inspector General and the EEOC, who are charged with protecting employee rights, are at best, indifferent to employee abuse, and at worst, in collusion with the agency to protect its impunity from repercussions. Thus, poor and middle-class workers have but one recourse, to address their plight as a political issue.
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As a United States government agency the U.S. Postal Service should be in the very forefront of the fight to protect employee rights, yet, in the Equal Employment Opportunity mediation initiated by Mr. Burton on this matter, instead of the postal service bending over backwards to correct what is clearly a toxic work environment, the agency went into damage control. The postal service didn’t even require Supervisor Hamblet to attend the mediation. Instead, they had an attorney, Kristi Ashman, come in her place to try to negotiate the issue away.
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Mr. Burton indicated that during the "mediation" he felt like he was trapped alone in a den full of jackals, and essentially he was. He was one worker trying to fight for his rights against the full weight of the federal government. He was alone in the room with his manager, his area manager, a post office attorney, a mediator who improperly urged him to accept the postal service's "lame resolution," and a union representative who the postal service's attorney pulled out the room to talk to out of Mr. Burton's earshot. So initially he signed the agreement as a result of feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest. But to his credit, he came to his senses and rescinded the agreement within the remaining three-day time limit. In addition, the participants are sworn to secrecy regarding what takes place in the mediation, which is also slanted against the interest of the worker.
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The United States Postal Service is a microcosm of America as a whole, and the above situation is a perfect metaphor for the gross assault on poor and middle-class workers in this country as a whole.
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The working conditions created by the inept and irresponsible managers within the postal service is not only un-American, but creates a serious danger to the unsuspecting public at large. The reckless and self-serving irresponsibility of bonus-seeking postal managers constitute nothing less than a United States government agency sending ticking time bombs to every business and home in America six days a week. Dr. Stephen Musacco, an organizational psychologist, a therapist with thirty years experience in the postal service, and the author of "Beyond Going Postal,” says the following:
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“Prior to my retirement from the USPS, at a former district I worked for, there were three suicides within a two year period that I concluded were contributed to in significant part by how these employees were treated in the workplace. The third employee, a city letter carrier, fatally shot himself in a postal jeep and left a letter stating that he could no longer take the job. The night before he committed suicide he told his wife he did not know if he would be able to handle his job anymore. How do I know? His wife told me this one day after his suicide. He was one of the best employees in the office. The District Manager and I interviewed his coworkers after his death, and they stated he would urinate in a bottle while on delivery route for fear he would not meet an artificial deadline set by postal management. During the interviews, one of the postal supervisors told the District Manager and me that the day before the suicide she gave a letter to all the city letter carriers in the station, noting that any future over time used for their routes would be considered unacceptable performance. The suicide at the Gastonia postal facility was the second since December 2005.
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“Many people have asked: Why is there so much stress and workplace tragedies in the U.S. Postal Service? The answer to these questions is because the postal culture embraces and reflects core values that center on achieving bottom-line results with little or no regard for employee participation, respect, dignity, or fairness. Additionally, there is little or no accountability for the actions of top management in the Postal Service. Many postal facilities consequently have toxic work environments, and they can be a catalyst or trigger for serious acts of workplace violence, including homicide and suicide. The associated rewards system for behavior consistent with the postal culture core values, moreover, enables systemic organizational and individual bullying of employees at all levels of the organization.”
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One of the criticisms of the "Occupy" movement is that it doesn't seem to have a well defined objective. But in defense of the movement, it is commendable that it's not allowing itself to be co-opted by any particular political party or group. One way to resolve that conflict is for the movement to simply target instances of glaring middle-class abuse and focus its energies on addressing those issues one at a time, and there's no better target for beginning that process than the United States Postal Service, for several reasons.
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First, there is not a more flagrant example of middle-class abuse anywhere in the world than the way the U.S. Postal Service treats its employees right here in the United States. Secondly, the postal service is the largest civilian employer in the United States after Wal-Mart, so that alone makes it directly representative of the way middle-class workers are being abused as a whole in this country. And finally, the postal service also highlights the fact the U.S. government has now embraced the corporatist philosophy of profits over people, which, by definition, is blatantly un-American.
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We also have to confront the hypocrisy of our government. Again, in a June 9, 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama told the people of Egypt, “ But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.” . Thus, during this election season we need to confront our president with the fact that he seems to be preaching a much better sermon than he's prepared to live. We want to believe in him, but facts don't lie. The following fact is a case in point:
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If we can sacrifice the lives of our young people to bring justice to others around the world, certainly the president can make a simple phone call to bring justice here at home to the families and former comrades of those who are putting their lives on the line. After all, veterans are postal workers too.
Postal Service Employee Abuse Spur Call for Citizen Action Group
Do you know the names of any of the 29 coal miners who died in Montcoal, West Virginia on April 5, 2010, or what has happened to their families since that needless tragedy? Can you tell me the names or condition of the families of the 11 oil workers who were vaporized during the explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf on April 20? Can you give me just one name of the many innocent postal workers who have been killed, maimed, or disabled due to irresponsible postal management over the past several years?
Of course you can't, because the limitless greed of the corporate community - including much of the corporate press - has relegated these poor and middle-class workers to the wastebin of 'unfortunate collateral damage' in their blind pursuit of the dollar. As a direct result, a citizen's action group has been proposed to address the diminishing quality of life of America's poor and middle-class workers.
Since it has become abundantly clear that many of our unions, civil rights activists, and even our government are either unable, or unwilling, to address this issue, an umbrella organization encompassing a coalition of human rights organizations has been proposed to address this issue. Tentatively, the suggested name for the umbrella organization is "Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse" - CARMA, a play on the Buddhist term Karma, or "action" - a sort of C-Party so to speak.
It has been suggested that this coalition be headed by Lewis Maltby. Mr. Maltby is the founder and president of the National Workrights Institute. He also founded the National Workplace Rights Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, and holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Maltby is a nationally recognized expert and prolific writer on human rights in the workplace. He's also the author of Can They Do That? : Retaking Our fundamental Rights in the Workplace. In addition, until 1988 Maltby was a senior executive in the corporate community, so he brings extensive knowledge of the mindset of corporate executives. He indicates that during the time he was in the corporate world he learned that "human rights and corporate efficiency are not only compatible, but mutually reinforcing," so he would also bring a great deal of common sense to what is certain to be a vigorous national discussion. His final decision is currently pending.
Since the U S Postal Service, with more than 600,000 employees, is the second largest employer in the United States, second only to Walmart, it will be a natural target of this new organization. The postal service will also be a target due to its long history of time fraud, blatant abuse, and intimidation of its employees. But what makes the postal service a particularly large target is as a United States government agency it should be in the very forefront of the fight for workers' rights.
For decades U.S. presidents have gone all over the globe lecturing world leaders on human rights. Yet, our very own United States Postal Service is among the worst abusers of workers' rights outside of the third world.
As mentioned in previous columns in this series, the postal service's policy of forcing employees to work four to six hours without pay, falsifying clock rings and deleting hours of employees who were gainfully employed, then intimidating the employees in order to prevent them from reporting the matter is routine business on a daily basis within the postal service. One postal supervisor even reported to this writer that she personally witnessed a manager forge an employee's resignation. This sort of activity is unconscionable, and must come to an end.
On Thursday, April 22, President Obama went to Cooper Union College in New York City and lectured the financial community on the need to curb its corrupt business practices. He pointed out that their business model led directly to this nation's financial crisis, and brought severe hardship upon millions of American people. But ironically, his words also serve to condemn the business practices of his very own United States Postal Service.
The corporate assault on the middle class has become blatant. The Massey Energy Company ignored 1,342 safety violations going back to 2005. That led directly to the death of 29 coal miners. And according to platform-worker, Tyrone Benton, British Petroleum ignored several safety concerns on the oil rig 24 hours before the explosion. That saved the company $500,000 a day in down time, but it led to the untimely death of 11employees, and the worst oil spill disaster in United States history. Similarly unconcerned about the welfare of its workers, the U.S. Postal Service is committing Blatant felonies against its employees with complete impunity on a daily basis.
So the trend is clear. Corporate America has set a policy of ignoring the safety, rights, and financial interests of the American poor and middle-class in their blind pursuit of ever more wealth - and the United States government has no intention of doing a thing about it. In fact, Republican congressman, Joe Barton of Texas, apologized to British Petroleum for having to take responsibility for its criminal negligence.
This has been going on for years. Michelle Mairesse wrote,
"Judicial Watch represents hundreds of postal workers from the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington, DC. Until the Brentwood facility was finally condemned by the CDC, Brentwood postal workers handled all of the mail for Washington, DC, including the ‘official mail’ that contained the anthrax-laden envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy. While Capitol Hill workers received prompt medical care, Brentwood postal workers were ordered by USPS officials to continue working in the contaminated facility. Two Brentwood workers died from inhalation anthrax, and dozens more are suffering from a variety of ailments related to the anthrax attacks. A variety of legal actions are being planned for the disparate treatment and reckless endangerment the Brentwood postal workers faced."
If we want America to remain America, we must fight this sort of reckless disregard for American workers.
When I was a teenager my grandfather once told me that when you start thinking that everyone else is crazy, it's time to look in the mirror. Well, it must be my time, because this country is looking more and more like a Stepford society to me every day.
It must be something in the water, because every since the Reagan era the American people seem to be walking in their sleep, allowing the government and multinational corporations to cut their throats at will.
During Iran-Contra we simply stood by while Ronald Reagan sold arms to the very people that our troops are now facing, and there is strong evidence that suggest that he made a deal with the Iranians to hold American hostages until after the election. Then we watched in complete and utter silence as he flooded our inner cities with drugs in order to support his illegal excursion into Nicaragua. We also stood idly by while under Reaganomics he allowed speculators to dismantle our industrial base and sell off some of our largest corporations one piece at a time to benefit a small handful of people.
But the Republicans told us to not to worry. They said, if you'll just give up the right to write off the interest on your credit cards and other debts temporarily, the rewards that the rich are enjoying will eventually "trickle down," and you'll all be showered with the benefits of a robust economy. But their promise never came to past. The only thing that trickled down was our having to pay the tax burden of the rich - and even as I write, the rich are enjoying additional tax breaks while we still haven't regained the simple right to write off the interest on our debts.
As a direct result of our apathy, we're still suffering from the effects of our stupidity today, thirty years later, and due to the assault on our educational system we haven't learned a thing. So now the Republican Party and their corporate cronies have an entirely new generation of victims in which to feed that nonsense. They recycle their crap about every ten years, after the American people have time to forget the disaster they created previously. A simple review of history will show that going all the way back to 1900, with few exceptions, every time the Republicans come into office the middle class has to pay a price. Republican policies were responsible for the Great Depression, but let's just look at recent history.
Due to the freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion, while the American people just stood around and watched.
In 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement. Yet, again, we just stood by and watched.
In 1989 there was the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal, involving Charles Keating and John McCain. Lincoln went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars. Thereafter, John McCain was censuredby the Senate for trying to use his influence to protect Keating, who ended up going to the federal penitentiary. Yet, again, we simply stood around with a blank look on our faces.
We also stood by and watched while Dick Cheney, under Bush Sr, reconfigure our military to sell off many of its most vital functions to private corporations. The Republicans are always talking about wasteful spending. Well, consider this - we now spend billions of dollars to have the most awesome military force in the world guarded by private security guards. How does that make any fiscal sense?
Well it certainly made sense to Cheney, because he walked right out the door into the arms of Haliburton to make a killing on the windfall profits from this scam. And if that wasn't enough, he then returned as vice president to expand the money-making potential of the scam by lying to the American people in order to invade Iraq.
That led to the death and maiming of thousands of American troops, and nearly a million Iraqi citizens - and all in the name of exhausting our national treasury and transferring the nation's wealth into the pockets of his friends, cronies, and colleagues. But still, the American people didn't say a word. We simply continued to walk around like zombies with a blank look on our collective faces as we stared into the void of MTV, BET, and ESPN.
The level of our stupidity must have even shocked them. So they looked at one another and said, "What the Hell, we've exhausted the national treasury, but they still have a few dollars in their pockets." So they hit us with the Wall Street scam. Yet, even with that, we're still walking around in a stuporous daze.
They're able to get away with what they have because our current population is so undereducated and distracted by our hedonistic pursuits that we have no sense of history. Also due to our lack of education, they've been able to convince many of us that any attempt to protect ourselves and our families from this corporate fraud constitutes socialism. It's the American way to allow Haliburton to raid our treasury to electrocute our troops and provide them with contaminated water, but it's a socialist plot to spend a dime on putting Americans back to work, or provide our families with affordable healthcare.
Thus, the American people are rapidly sliding down a slippery slope where corruption is considered the norm. That's why I'm weighing in so heavily on the corruption that's taking place in the postal service. In the past, the government protected the American people from fraud and abuse, so private corporations had to steal from us covertly. But gradually the mores of our society changed to where private corporations could do it openly. But now, the government has gotten in on the act. The United States Postal Service has now embraced the philosophy that it's perfectly alright to commit acts of abuse, intimidation, and actual felonies against American citizens - and many the victims of these moral atrocities are the very veterans that this nation claims to honor.
When are we going to say enough is enough? It had better be soon, because at the rate that America is descending into the despotic abyss, it won't be long before Washington's corporate puppets outlaw our right to dissent.
Where are you, President Obama? The postal service is a United States government agency. You could improve the lives of over 600,000 Americans with a simple phone call. Why hasn't that call been made, Mr. President? Where is that change you promised that we could believe in?
The Postmaster General, and Inspector General, must go!
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Edolphus Towns
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-5051
Mr. President: How About a Little of that Change We Can Believe in?
While writing this series of articles I've had the great privilege of becoming acquainted with Dr. Stephen Musacco. Dr Musacco is a therapist, an organizational psychologist, and the author of the book"Beyond Going Postal." In addition to his credentials as a psychologist, Dr. Musacco also has the specialized knowledge of having worked for the postal service for over thirty years.
As a professional and former insider with a through understanding of the inner workings of the postal service, the doctor's assessment of the working environment within the agency is so chilling that one can't help but wonder how such corruption employee abuse, and adminsitrative indifference have been allowed to exist in a United States government agency. Thus, I'm going to devote this week's column to an excerpt from the doctor's professional assessment, a man who is uniquely qualified to speak to what he calls the "toxic environment " that postal workers are forced to endure on a daily basis.
In doing so, I sincerely hope that the public will take heed to this mental health professional's warnings. It is absolutely essential that the American people press our self-serving Washington establishment into stepping up to the plate to prevent yet another American tragedy BEFORE it happens for a change. This can be done, and it must be. In this election year the American people must realize that the only way they will ever be secure in their own lives is to make the political establishment insecure in theirs.
Justice is not cheap. The doctor's words clearly demonstrate that in spite of what we might have been taught in grade school, justice is not a birthright. One must be prepared to fight for justice. His words also demonstrate that the time has come for the American middle-class to flex its political muscle - and fast.
At 600,000 strong, plus family, friends, and neighbors - and in an election year where incumbents are hanging on by their fingernails - postal employees are in the driver's seat of a tank. Yet, they're allowing themselves, and their families, to be robbed by a guy with a butter knife - and not just once outside a liquor store, but repeatedly in what is supposed to be the sanctity of their workplace. This has got to come to an end.
Why are so many union officials missing in action? Where are your congressional representatives? And President Obama, where are you?!!
On the morning of June 2, 2009, a city letter carrier went to work and reportedly fatally shot himself in the head in the locker room at a postal facility in Gastonia, North Carolina. The Gaston Gazette online news report stated that the "Gastonia Police are investigating an apparent suicide this morning at the post office. . . . One of the employees is inside dead from a gunshot wound."
Prior to my retirement from the USPS, at a former district I worked for, there were three suicides within a two year period that I concluded were contributed to in significant part by how these employees were treated in the workplace. The third employee, a city letter carrier, fatally shot himself in a postal jeep and left a letter stating that he could no longer take the job. The night before he committed suicide he told his wife he did not know if he would be able to handle his job anymore. How do I know? His wife told me this one day after his suicide. He was one of the best employees in the office. The District Manager and I interviewed his coworkers after his death, and they stated he would urinate in a bottle while on delivery route for fear he would not meet an artificial deadline set by postal management. During the interviews, one of the postal supervisors told the District Manager and me that the day before the suicide she gave a letter to all the city letter carriers in the station, noting that any future over time used for their routes would be considered unacceptable performance. The suicide at the Gastonia postal facility was the second since December 2005.
Many people have asked: Why is there so much stress and workplace tragedies in the U.S. Postal Service? The answer to these questions is because the postal culture embraces and reflects core values that center on achieving bottom-line results with little or no regard for employee participation, respect, dignity, or fairness. Additionally, there is little or no accountability for the actions of top management in the Postal Service. Many postal facilities consequently have toxic work environments, and they can be a catalyst or trigger for serious acts of workplace violence, including homicide and suicide. The associated rewards system for behavior consistent with the postal culture core values, moreover, enables systemic organizational and individual bullying of employees at all levels of the organization.
I define a toxic workplace environment as a workplace where there is a high incidence of stress-related illnesses. These stress-related illnesses are manifested by psychological and physical deterioration. In other words, these types of environments seriously erode employees' health and well-being. The primary factors contributing to a toxic workplace environment are high job demands, low job control, and low social support. Low social support generally entails a lack of respect and validation of employees' dignity by their "superiors". It also oftentimes includes organizational practices and methods that encourage the bullying of employees to meet corporate goals.
The name of the city letter carrier who committed suicide in Gastonia, NC on June 2, 2009 is Steven Spencer age 60. According to his obituary, Steven was married and leaves two daughters and three grandchildren. He was a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers/ and state representative for Muscular Dystrophy Association. He was the founder of the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive for Gaston County. He was very active in Scouting, attaining the highest rank of Eagle Scout. He also was a member of the Order of the Arrow. Steven was a veteran of the Vietnam War serving his country proudly in the US Navy.
I find it highly improbable that an employee will kill himself or herself in a postal facility or while on a postal route unless it is to send a clear message that a toxic workplace exists and the person can't handle it anymore. Sadly, it also may be a tragic attempt to better the lot of one's fellow coworkers by drawing attention to the tragic event itself.
Prior to Steven's suicide, I was contacted by a relative of an employee at the Gastonia post office in April of this year. She was concerned because of what she reported as a toxic workplace environment at the Gastonia post office, lack of accountability to address employees' concerns, and that the situation may lead to another workplace tragedy. Unfortunately, her worst concern became a reality on June 2, 2009. She further indicated several employees have resigned their positions at the office because of the toxic workplace environment and others were suffering from negative psychological and physical effects because of this environment.
I was told employees' attempts, mostly city letter carriers, to have their concerns addressed over a two-year period included: filing of discrimination complaints and grievances, unprofessional workplace assessments, town hall meetings, contacts to congressional representatives both locally and nationally, contacts to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and petitions to Charlotte postal District officials as well as to national representatives of the Postal Service and the NALC. She further indicated that none of these measures contributed to fully addressing the workplace environment or alleviating its negative impact for the employees at the Gastonia Post Office.
In order for the U.S Postal Service to become a safe and healthy organization and thereby prevent future workplace tragedies, which have been at an epidemic level over the past three decades, there is an urgent need for congressional intervention and legislation to address its toxic postal culture. Dr. Gary Namie and his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, along with their colleague Dr. David Yamada, have for years pushed for such legislation at the state and federal level. In order for national legislation for the prevention of workplace bullying to have the intended impact, it would require sanctions to employers or their representatives who are in violation of a new workplace statute that defines workplace bullying as a harmful and illegal activity.
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The Postmaster General, and Inspector General, must go!
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Edolphus Towns
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-5051
A reader contacted me last week wanting to know why I've become so fixated on what's going on in the post office. The answer is quite simple. First, since I worked for the postal service for over twenty-seven years of my life, I care about postal workers. They're a part of my extended family and I have an intimate understanding of the hardships that they have to endure.
But there's another reason that's just as important. As a political animal I understand that the postal service is a microcosm of America as a whole, so it's clear to me that the injustice that postal employees are being forced to endure today is a prelude to what American workers as a whole will have to face in the days to come - and the reader's remarks clearly demonstrate why.
The reader went on to say,
"Now any organization with hundreds of thousands of employees is going to experience graft, fraud and so forth on all levels from time to time, but you don't seem to have made a case for this being a particularly noteworthy problem at the USPS. The organization, which has with the growth of email and competition from FedEx, UPS and even Twitter, become increasingly superfluous in recent years. It must downsize, become vastly more efficient, and employees whether in management or on the line will simply have to be more productive, and in thousands of cases released, as the "product" produced by the USPS is increasingly shunned. This is not some evil fascist government plot conspiring to trod upon the weak. It is reality."
First, let's dispose of the myth. The postal service isn't failing due to competition; the postal service has competition due to its managerial failures. FedEx and UPS owe their very existence to post office incompetence - and the fact that they both exist clearly atests to the fact that there is a market for the service that the postal service is suppose to provide. But in one sense the reader is correct. What's going on in the postal service is indeed a part of today's reality - but it's a reality that simply shouldn't exist in America.
Due to a thirty-year assault on our educational system and an endless fare of mind-numbing titillation - both fiction and nonfiction - over our airways, this reader, and America, has been conditioned to believe that "a little corruption every now and then" is simply the American way. Well, it's not the American way, and if we allow ourselves to embrace that philosophy the American middle class, of every race, every creed, and every color, is doomed - and due to the corporate media, we're headed in that direction as fast as we can go.
For example, we all know that the oil spill in the Gulf is a major catastrophe. At this point the media has made that clear. But the media hasn't become fixated on this story because it's an environmental disaster - they're just covering that angle because it can't be ignored. There are only three reasons why this story has drawn so much media attention - eleven people were killed, the live video of oil rushing out into the ocean provides compelling video, and the disaster is going to cost a lot of important people a lot of money, trouble, and controversy. That's it. Informing the people has nothing to do with it.
The fact is, the media is not as interested in informing the public as it is providing revenue-enhancing drama. So the primary reason that we know the Gulf spill is a major disaster is because it's managed to tear the media's attention away from what they consider the really important stories, like Tiger Woods' sex life.
That reflects the new journalistic standard of what's news worthy. The new standard for 'news' is that it must be either titillating, gruesome, have great visuals (the wives of coal miners crying over the bodies of their dead husbands), or that it has a negative impact on important people.
The mainstream media has become voyeurs. They're peeping Toms, and totally reactive. They no longer have any interest in digging beneath the surface to keep the American people informed, but they become giddy with excitement over the chance to exploit the resulting misery of the very people they've failed. Where was the media that should have been investigating the rationale behind the invasion of Iraq? I'll tell you where they were - they were getting film footage of themselves riding through the desert on tanks - in bed with the very government officials that they should have been investigating. If they'd focused on good journalism instead of self-service, they might have saved the lives of thousands of American troops, and nearly a million Iraqis.
Corporate media never becomes interested in a story until there's an explosion - twenty-nine mineworkers trapped in a poisonous coal mine, eleven oil workers vaporized in the Gulf, or when a postal worker snaps from abuse and walks into the post office with an M16 and brings death and destruction to his co-workers. But what's happened to the families of the twenty-nine mineworkers, eleven oil workers, or victims of postal mayhem since? We'll never know, because they've been relegated to the trash bin of yesterday's news cycle.
Now the postal service is pushing for a five-day delivery schedule under the pretext of saving on fuel costs. But is the media investigating that contention? Not on your life - the story's not sexy enough. If they did investigate it they'd find that what the postal service is actually trying to do is dump the consequences of their irresponsible management in the laps of the workers - yet again.
Just because the postal service will only deliver five days a week doesn't mean that mail won't continue to come in seven days a week. Unlike a manufacturer that can simply cut back on production, the postal service is going to get the same amount of mail regardless to whether it delivers five days a week or six. So what the postmaster is actually saying is, he wants the employees to continue to do six days of work, while only being paid for five. It also means that on Monday letter carriers are going to be forced to process and deliver 24 hours of mail in eight hours - the mail for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. As a result, the postal sevice will have an incentive to steal even more of their overtime.
The postal service is simply trying to institutionalize the robbery that's already currently going on. But you won't hear about that in the mainstream media - at least, not until someone snaps and kills innocent postal workers, or God forbid, goes berserk on someone's front porch. But mark my words, once that does happen, and it's going to, you won't be able to get passed the hordes of media with a blowtorch - and never once will the media suggest that the problem lies in senior post office officials being criminally negligent. So someone has got to bring this to the attention of the American people.
"The USPS should immediately present a plan to ensure that workers are immediately reimbursed for their lost wages, and that appropriate disciplinary action is taken. Those individuals responsible for cheating New Hampshire families out of hard earned wages must be held accountable . . . In May of this year, I wrote to USPS Inspector General David Williams requesting that his office investigate claims that the United States Postal Service had altered letter carriers' timesheets on an electronic time system for the last six years. "
Arbitrator Sherrie Rose Talmadgesaid in her December 2, 2009 decision that "Management's violations were so egregious over a period of many years that punitive damages were awarded to deter the service from further clock ring violations." But even after all of that admonishment, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)finds that time fraud within the postal service is continuing.
The American people should be aghast over the fact that a United States government agency is casually committing a felony against American citizens. But the fact is, poor and middle class workers in this country are being rapidly conditioned by both the government and the corporate media to meekly accept the ethical standards - and soon, the living standards - of a banana republic.
So with that, I'll answer the reader's question with a question of my own. How can any responsible journalist NOT continue to beat a drum over this issue?
Fight Government Corruption!
Postmaster General Potter and Inspector General Williams must go.
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Edolphus Towns U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-5051
Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.
BIO
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."
Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.
Am I a hater, you ask? You're damn right I'm a hater. I hate injustice. I hate hypocrisy. I also hate demagoguery, apathy, and the stupidity that allows it to exist. Hater? Absolutely. I'm a big time hater. I hate what I see happening to this country, and I hate watching the development of a culture that embraces ignorance with a stupid sense of pride. So yes, I am indeed a hater, but not only that - I'm a hater with a very low threshold for bullshit, so step off.
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