During the campaign, Donald Trump billed himself as the “last shot” for coal country. He alone could save regions like Appalachia that had long suffered from poverty and dwindling coal jobs. And voters in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky believed him — choosing Trump over Hillary Clinton by wide, wide margins.
So it’s striking that President Trump’s first budget proposal would slash and burn several key programs aimed at promoting economic development in coal regions — most notably, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. In recent years, these programs have focused on aiding communities that have been left behind as mining jobs vanished.
Even some of Trump’s staunchest allies were livid at the proposed cuts. “I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President’s skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, a senior House Republican from a key coal-mining district in southeastern Kentucky.
So what gives? It’s possible Trump just didn’t put much thought into these reductions — and didn’t realize (or didn’t care) that he was backhanding his biggest supporters. Or it’s possible Trump genuinely believes he’s going to bring back coal jobs in Appalachia, as he’s promised, and hence figured there’s no need for all those other government programs.
Except Trump can’t bring back all the mining jobs that have disappeared over the past 30 years — it’s just not feasible. That’s a promise he won’t keep. And now he’s cutting the region’s safety net, too.
Yes he’s stabbing his own voters in back. But it’s going to be a heavy lift for them to admit they were wrong. They aren’t much better at it than Trump is.
Attacking cities is the current offensive from the people who brought you the Defund the Left strategy. They’ve gone after private-sector unions. They’ve gone after redistricting and trial lawyers. Defunding 2.0, as Kevin Drum observed in 2011, involved passing voter ID laws, defunding ACORN, and decimating public-sector unions. Now it’s cities being targeted because that’s where the largest blocks of blue votes are.
GOP-led legislatures are implementing changes to governance and revenue streams, strategically starving cities of revenue, leaving city leaders with no choice but to raise taxes and/or cut services and piss off voters. It’s happening in North Carolina and elsewhere:
After a couple of cycles, Republicans will be running candidates who blame North Carolina cities’ financial woes on “mismanagement and waste” by Democrats, and counting on voters to forget by then who precipitated the crisis in the first place. They’ll succeed if we don’t remind voters at every opportunity that it’s their strategy. It is deliberate.
In response to local minimum wage laws, sanctuary cities acts, worker protection bills, fracking bans, etc., passed at the local level, legislatures held by the “government closest to the people governs best” party have taken to dictating local policies from state capitols. From Tallahassee, Florida, for example. TruthOut takes up the tale:
As “preemption” spreads and becomes all the more encompassing — or in other words, as more states remove specific or broad powers from local governments — it is beginning to smother basic elements of local democracy. “Home Rule,” which exists to safeguard an assumption of power for local governments, is being silently reversed.
Home Rule powers for municipalities were won decades — and in some states, a century — ago through state constitutional amendments spearheaded by the “Progressive Era.” With Home Rule, localities enjoy a presumption of power, which means that if the state is silent on an issue, municipalities can fill the void. Without Home Rule, all their powers have to be explicitly granted to them by the state, as was the case in Florida, before voters approved a Home Rule amendment in 1968. Municipalities were wards of the state. Home Rule tried to reverse that.
However, nothing in the Home Rule amendments placed a check on the state’s authority to unilaterally restrict and weaken Home Rule powers. For example, HB 17 and SB 1158, if passed, would rein in powers the 1968 Florida amendment won for municipalities. As the Florida League of Cities warns, “The bills would return Florida to a time when redress of local problems depended on a statewide body [the legislature] that took official action only once a year and from hundreds of miles away.”
North Carolinians still wrestling with repealing HB2 and fighting off state efforts to appropriate city-owned, revenue-generating public assets such as airports and water systems can only say, “Welcome to the party, pal.”
Dillon’s Rule states (as opposed to Home Rule states) treat “municipalities as ‘children’ of the state.” That works just fine for strict-father conservatives populating the American Legislative Exchange Council and promoting preemption legislation:
Created by the state, local governments exist to perform the tasks of the state at the local level. Typically, the state issues an enabling statute, which entrusts the local government with state power within a defined scope to achieve local objectives. Since the local government’s power is derived from the state, the local government is strictly limited to what the state delegates to it. If local government supersedes the authority it is given, the state has the power to modify or revoke its powers. Ultimately under the Dillon Rule, local governments are tenants of the state.
Sharecroppers, if you prefer. Home Rule and Dillon’s Rule are not mutually exclusive and many states use hybrid systems.
The strategic use of maximum preemption laws dates back to the 1980s, when localities began passing smoking bans and smoke-free requirements. As court documents later revealed, R.J. Reynolds began promoting preemption because, in its own words, “state laws which preempt local anti-tobacco ordinances are the most effective means to counter local challenges.” Although further grim research findings eventually dealt the tobacco industry’s campaign mortal blows, other groups learned from its efforts. The National Rifle Association used similar tactics in the 1990s when concerns about crime prompted local gun regulations; 43 states now have some form of maximum preemption preventing localities from passing additional gun regulations on top of state law.
In the last five years, as Republicans have captured an unprecedented number of state legislatures and as cities have become hotbeds for progressive organizing, the number of maximum preemption laws has grown dramatically. In 2011, after Wisconsin passed a bill limiting the local ability to require paid sick days, ALEC and the National Restaurant Association took up the cause, and now 15 states have preempted local paid sick day requirements. According to Grassroots Change, in 2015 at least 29 states introduced a maximum preemption measure and, of them, 17 considered more than one. The progressive source PR Watch reports that Florida alone considered 20 such measures. The bills’ concerns range from forbidding local plastic-bag bans to preventing towns from increasing the minimum wage. Last year saw a rise in what progressives call “super-preemption” bills, which both limit local authority and offer the right to sue non-compliant cities or counties to both individuals and corporations.
There are rumblings from Raleigh of more such bills ready to drop. But as Simon Davis-Cohen writes at TruthOut, cities are struggling for an effective response. In Florida, #DefendLocal has united SEIU Florida, Equality Florida, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Florida Alliance for Consumer Protection, Florida National Organization for Women, and the League of Women Voters of Tallahassee, among others. Their goal is “to send a message to our state lawmakers that local communities want local solutions to local problems, not more heavy-handed state government.” Davis-Cohen concludes:
Across the board, local self-determination is becoming a central demand of the grassroots and the American public in general. It is no secret that the centralization of political power is a root cause of broad political disillusionment. So it may not matter that the left as a whole currently lacks a clear, robust, alternative vision for local self-government in the 21st century. Calls for self-determination resonate with many people in the US and whispers of a vision for local self-determination are beginning to emerge and gain traction from the ground up.
Politicians really don’t like town halls. Especially when their constituents are upset.
I watched three Town Halls in Nebraska this last week, all Republicans: US Senators Deb Fischer, Ben Sasse and Congressman Jeff Fortenberry. I saw all three use multiple methods to control the message, the venue, the audience and the media. I’ll describe them in another post, some are subtle, others are blatant.
However, there are ways to get through to them in a Town Hall so your voice can be heard. But people need to prepare, because politicians and their staff are paid professionals, especially good at dodging answers and managing messages.
Going to a town hall without this understanding is like being a first time car buyer going up against a long time seller.
I was advising my friends at Nebraskans Against Gun Violence about the
tricks, like only allowing one microphone, last minute meetings and ringing the crowd with armed police.
To me the essential part of the event is to ensure the constituents are heard. But to the politicians it’s to show the Appearance of being heard. Because if they really heard the constituents who represent the voters, they would have to change their position.
Here is a case of a politician who, if she really listened to voters, should change her position. Instead she mouths a NRA taking point. But this constituent is prepared.
She did what our media should be doing, but aren’t. She points out the flaws in the Senator’s response. She asked a follow up. (Politicians hate this!)
I expect the politicians will adapt, they will next demand everyone submit all questions on a sheet of paper or make all town halls telephone only – where they control the audio.
In the meantime, enjoy this video of a woman, Angela Sorensen Thomas, questioning Sen Deb Fischer on her vote to allow mentally ill to buy guns.
Be sure to bookmark this for the first mentally ill person who kills someone because they could get a gun.
Angela Sorensen Thomas questions Sen. Deb Fischer vote to allow the severe mentally ill to buy guns. at Holdrege City Auditorium
Town Hall on March 16, 2017
Angela Sorensen Thomas: AST
Senator Deb Fischer DF
Photos by Eric Gregory Lincoln Journal Star
Angela Sorensen Thomas:
Recently you voted for house joint bill resolution 40. That allows people who are so mentally unstable they need a guardian or representative to manage their bank accounts to buy deadly weapons.
I have a brother-in-law who was one of the 75,000 people in this category. And it terrifies me thinking about him getting a gun. He lives here in Nebraska. Fortunately for us he’s in a protected setting and it wouldn’t affect him now.
But 10 years ago it would’ve been deadly for him. Not necessarily that he’s a threat to anyone in this room, but he is a threat to himself. Can you explain to me why it’s so important for people who cannot manage their own funds, because of severe mental illness, to be able to obtain deadly weapons?
(Applause)
Deb Fischer:
This was a resolution that I happen to agree with the ACLU and other groups on, that it should be reversed. And it’s because of the instances where a person on social security would ask or turn over the management of their finances, they would not be able then to able to obtain a gun.
AST: Only if they had been adjudicated as severely mentally ill. ONLY under those circumstances.
DF: So I just say to you that I agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union and others who felt that this regulation, that was put out, was a violation.
AST: I look at this thinking, there is a policy, there is a procedure for people who might have been on that list. 75,000 people who wouldn’t be able to get a gun! What about the young woman…
DF: It did not give them due process.
AST: in Missouri whose mother BEGGED, BEGGED the gun store not to sell her daughter a gun because she was so severely mentally ill? She went to the gun store. She bought the gun. She WENT home and shot her father.
Now we don’t have a way to stop these people. Adam Lanza was the same situation. But now we can’t.
They had gone through their due process and had been determined to be so mentally incompetent they can’t handle their own finances. But now [they] can just go out and buy a gun.
NE U.S. Senate Sr Deb Fischer Republican
NE U.S. Senate Jr Ben Sasse Republican
NE U.S. House 1 Jeff Fortenberry Republican
NE U.S. House 3 Adrian Smith Republican
Ryan to Trump: If I go down, I’m taking you down with me
by digby
Paul Ryan old Chris Wallace on Fox this morning that he’s going to make changes to Trumpcare that will “help bring market freedom and regulatory relief to the insurance markets to dramatically lower the price of the plan for the 50- and 60-year-olds.” But he wants the House to vote on it before the CBO can run any numbers.
It will be interesting to see if these House Republicans are willing to walk the plank without knowing whether they’re being set-up. If I had to guess I’d say he’ll get enough. It’s possible these people just want to pass this poisonous hot potato to the Senate and let them kill is so everyone can move on and this episode will be forgotten.
But whatever happens, Ryan isn’t going to be the only holding the bag. He’s dragged Trump into it:
Ryan says he is confident it will pass, despite his own admission that major components are still under construction. “The reason I feel so good about this is because the president has become a great closer. He’s the one who has helped negotiate changes to this bill with members from all over our caucus.”
If it fails, it’s because The Donald wasn’t quite the closer he’s stacked up to be. Sad!
It is now two weeks since Donald Trump first tweeted his still-unsubstantiated allegations that Barack Obama tapped his phones during the presidential election campaign. Since then, the chairs of both the Senate and House intelligence committees have said that they don’t believe the charge. But the story is now moving on from farce to serious political drama.
[…]
Nonsense it was, but the context was unsettling. Some of the intelligence behind current FBI investigations into contacts between the Trump team and Russian officials, and into the hacking of Democratic party emails, is reported to have come from British sources. Then there is the dossier prepared by a former British intelligence official, Christopher Steele, which itself makes a series of unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s links to Russia.
So London was understandably keen to kill off any suggestion, however nonsensical, that British intelligence agencies had been acting against the new president’s interests. The diplomatic machinery began whirring, and the press were briefed that Trump’s national security adviser had apologised to his British opposite number. In parallel, the British ambassador spoke directly to Spicer, to ensure that there would be no repetition.
There the story might have ended. But it was given fresh legs when President Trump, at a press conference with Chancellor Merkel on Friday, ducked a question about the veracity of the allegations and said simply that anyone who had an issue with them should talk to Fox News – who promptly issued a statement of their own saying they didn’t believe them. Sean Spicer – him again – then denied that any apology had been made, or that the administration had anything to regret.
Senior US figures, including Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice, have criticised the implication of the US’s “closest ally”. They know this is a dangerous game revolving around the pressure on White House officials to substantiate Trump’s allegations, the president’s famous reluctance to admit mistakes, and his suspicion of intelligence agencies and their product.
Dangerous it is. The intelligence relationship between Britain and America is unique and precious. It is critical to our shared efforts to counter terrorism, Russian aggression, the cyber-attacks of China, the nuclear threat from North Korea and much else. It is based on unquestioned mutual trust, between operatives and politicians on each side of the Atlantic.
That is something both countries have taken for granted since the second world war. Gratuitously damaging it by peddling falsehoods and then doing nothing to set the record straight would be a gift to our enemies they could only dream of. The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is heading to Washington this week. He needs to make very clear that this is not a game.
Peter Westmacott was British ambassador to the United States from 2012 to 2016 and was previously ambassador to France and Turkey.
There is a lot to criticize GCHQ for. They are worse on warrantless surveillance than the NSA. But this is not a thoughtful critique or a systematic change in the way intelligence does its business. This is a pointless and stupid row to assuage Trump’s lunacy.
All he’s doing is blowing up all the US alliances without anything to replace it but Steve Bannon’s half baked philosophical musings and a massive military build-up. What could go wrong?
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. The National Enquirer’s publisher David Pecker is a big Trump fan. And he hired Dick Morris to be the “political editor” just before the election.
Every time I go to the grocery store I’m astonished by what they are publishing on Trump. A sample:
These are headlines from the website:
It’s the Russian stuff that really fascinating:
Look at this. They are proudly advertising that weird Russian billboard:
Dick Morris made a video talking about Trump’s plan to ally with Russia to destroy China and Iran. (Yes, Iran … Russia’s ally. But whatever …)
Here’s this week’s:
I don’t quite know what to make of all this, especially the Russia stuff. But there are millions of people who see these headlines.
The latest dip to 37% approval to 58% disapproval comes in the week they introduced Trumpcare and the Carnage budget. They also doubled down on their slander that Obama wiretapped Trump.
Don’t write him off though. Other presidents have recovered from such low approval ratings. They often need a war to do it though.
After spending a lovely weekend in Paris celebrating my mom’s 80th birthday, I happily boarded my flight to return to the United States-something I have done countless times for 42 years after becoming a U.S. citizen. I had an enjoyable flight to New York’s JFK International Airport. On all of my prior trips, I was greeted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers with a warm smile and the usual, “Welcome home sir”. Not this time. I approached CBP Officer Chow who didn’t say anything when I handed him my passport and looked at me with a gruff expression and simply stated, “are you traveling alone?”, I knew this was a sign of trouble, I answered “yes”, he then said, “Let’s take a walk”.
I was taken to a back office which looked to be a re-purposed storage facility with three desks and signs stating, “Remain seated at all times” and “Use of telephones strictly prohibited” – my first sign that this was not a voluntary situation and, in fact, a detention. By this point I had informed CBP Officer Chow, the one that initially detained me, that I was a retired police chief and a career police officer AND a US citizen-he stated that he had no control over the circumstance and that it didn’t matter what my occupation was. He handed my passport off to another CBP officer who was working at one of the desks. The second CBP officer was indeed kind and appreciated the fact that I was a career police officer and tried to be helpful. He explained that my name was used as an alias by someone on some watch list. He stated that he sent my information to another agency to de-conflict and clear me, so that I could gain passage into the United States….my own country!!!
As I sat in the CBP detention center, numerous, at least 25, foreign nationals were also brought in and quickly released, their detentions were reasonable and appropriate, maybe 5 or so minutes while their passports were checked. I pointed out the irony of this fact to the CBP officer that was attempting to “clear me for entry”. I told him, as he avoided eye contact, how wrong this scenario was that the only US citizen, career US police officer and chief of police, out of the group of detainees, was the one with the longest unreasonable detention- I was held for an hour and a half. I asked several times, “how long of a detention do you consider to be reasonable?”, the answer I was given by CBP Officer Chow was that I was not being detained-he said that with a straight face. I then replied, “But I’m not free to leave-how is that not a detention?” I was in a room with no access to my mobile phone to communicate with my wife and family about what was happening, my movements were restricted to a chair and they had my passport………and he had the audacity to tell me I was not being detained. His ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment should disqualify him from being able to wear a CBP badge – but maybe fear and detention is the new mission of the CBP and the Constitution is a mere suggestion. I certainly was not free to leave. As former law enforcement, believe me, I agree that if certain criteria is met, a reasonable investigative detention is not inappropriate-the key here being “reasonable”.
As I continued to sit in the CBP makeshift Detention Center, watching numerous foreign nationals enter my country while I couldn’t, I began thinking about my numerous trips abroad -including five in the past year (all prior to inauguration) – with no problems upon my return and complete with the warm greeting of “Welcome home”.
Fortunately, a CBP officer that had just started her shift took interest in my situation and began to inquire with the “other agency” that was reviewing my information-she aggressively asked them for status updates and eventually called me over to tell me that I was cleared to enter the United States of America. I promptly thanked her and filled her in on how impactful this situation was-she apologized and I was on my way after an hour and a half detention.
I spent nearly 30 years serving the public in law enforcement. Since I retired as the Chief of Police in Greenville, NC, I founded a successful consulting firm that is involved in virtually every aspect of police and criminal justice reform. I interface with high level U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Court officials almost daily. Prior to this administration, I frequently attended meetings at the White House and advised on national police policy reforms-all that to say that If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone with attributes that can be “profiled”. No one is safe from this type of unlawful government intrusion.
As I left the CBP makeshift detention center, I had to go back through security to catch my next flight back to DC, ironically, due to my weekly air travel, I have TSA Pre-check and was whisked through security without a hitch and made my flight by minutes.
This experience has left me feeling vulnerable and unsure of the future of a country that was once great and that I proudly called my own. This experience makes me question if this is indeed home. My freedoms were restricted, and I cannot be sure it won’t happen again, and that it won’t happen to my family, my children, the next time we travel abroad. This country now feels cold, unwelcoming, and in the beginning stages of a country that is isolating itself from the rest of the world – and its own people – in an unprecedented fashion. High levels of hate and injustice have been felt in vulnerable communities for decades-it is now hitting the rest of America.
I have contacted my US senators, and my contacts at the NYT and other media sources to continue to tell the story of what is happening in the United States of America.
Don’t worry. The Customs agent was just having fun. We’ve finally taken their shackles off.
Judge Neil Gorsuch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
I once watched a noted physicist use the theory of relativity to refute religious truth claims to a gaggle of students. Truth, not just fact, was relative, a matter of opinion dependent on the viewer’s frame of reference. It seemed a curious claim at the time. It now seems we may get to examine whether the applicability of law is a matter of a believer’s frame of reference when Senate confirmation hearings begin tomorrow for elevating Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It seems Gorsuch sets great stock by religious opinions and believes that courts should defer to a believer’s conscience. Dahlia Lithwick explains at Slate:
Indeed, Gorsuch opened his concurrence in that 2013 Hobby Lobby case with the caution that:
… all of us face the problem of complicity. All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others. For some, religion provides an essential source of guidance both about what constitutes wrongful conduct and the degree to which those who assist others in committing wrongful conduct themselves bear moral culpability.
The real wrongdoers, then, are the judges who force people of faith to sin. The sinner’s conscience swallows all inquiry.
The way the physicist asserted relativity renders truth inoperative. Lithwick continues:
It’s not just the great deference Gorsuch shows religious adherents that is worrisome. He also believes that the views of religious adherents are beyond factual debate. Again in the Hobby Lobby case, he wrote that companies must pay for “drugs or devices that can have the effect of destroying a fertilized human egg.” That claim is simply false, even with regard to Plan B. It is a religious conclusion, not a medical or legal one. Whether that view is his or he simply declines to probe whether the religious conclusion is accurate, the effect is the same: He has written into a legal opinion a religious “fact” not supported by medical science.
This kind of thinking matters especially when the tremendous respect for religious dissenters is not balanced against the harms incurred by nonadherents. Gorsuch sometimes minimizes or outright rejects the third-party harms of religious accommodations. As Yuvraj Joshi points out at NBC, “while the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby considered the impact of the case on women, Judge Gorsuch’s opinion does not even acknowledge the harmful effects of denying access to reproductive health care on female employees and dependents. Instead, his sole concern is for religious objectors who feel complicit in the allegedly sinful conduct of others.”
Lithwick observes that this conception of religious liberty allows believers (of a certain sort, I might add) to trump objective fact and others’ concerns. It will be interesting to see if Gorsuch faces questions about this from the Judiciary Committee. Jeff Greenfield suggests otherwise, citing an unnamed scholar as predicting “a vapid and hollow charade, in which repetition of platitudes has replaced discussion of viewpoints and personal anecdotes have supplanted legal analysis.”
Jay Michaelson wonders whether Gorsuch’s leanings regarding corporate personhood will be on view in the Senate. He may not have ruled on cases like Citizens United, but in close cases, Michaelson writes, Gorsuch sides with businesses over indviduals:
The most telling of Judge Gorsuch’s opinions are his dissents, in which he frequently departed from his mostly conservative Tenth Circuit colleagues to stake out even stronger pro-business positions. A report by the left-leaning People for the American Way catalogued 35 such dissents, including four out of five workers’ rights cases where the court found for the worker, but Gorsuch dissented to support the company.
Michaelson concludes:
For too long, progressives have given conservatives a pass on the concept of “originalism.” It was never the Founders’ original intent to allow corporations to become as powerful as they are today. Quite the contrary; their original intentions were to limit them or even ban them entirely. It is absurd to suggest that Gorsuch’s pro-corporate rulings, or the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, in any way reflect the original intentions of the founders.
“I’m really going to be going to certain areas that serve what I consider his pro-corporate bias, which I think has been the bias of the court, the Roberts court,” Minnesota Democrat Al Franken tells the Washington Post. For the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian, tomorrow’s hearings are no laughing matter.
Neil Young sang: “Rock ‘n’ Roll will never die.” But damn, I think it just did. From today’s New York Times:
While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment.
“Master theorist”? “Conceptual genius”? Pretty heady declarations about a guy who strutted like a duck across the stage, played his guitar like ringin’ a bell, and and sang 4-chord songs about cars and girls. After all, its only rock ‘n’ roll, and I like it, like, yes I do…right?
Those declarations are not heady enough, actually. He was a poet:
Arrested on charges of unemployment, He was sitting in the witness stand The judge’s wife called up the district attorney Said you free that brown eyed man You want your job you better free that brown eyed man
“Arrested on charges of unemployment.” That is fucking genius. That’s from “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”. It gets even better:
Flying across the desert in a TWA,
I saw a woman walking across the sand
She been a-walkin’ thirty miles en route to Bombay.
To get a brown eyed handsome man
Her destination was a brown eyed handsome man
Way back in history three thousand years
Back every since the world began
There’s been a whole lot of good women shed a tear
For a brown eyed handsome man
That’s what the trouble was brown eyed handsome man
Beautiful daughter couldn’t make up her mind
Between a doctor and a lawyer man
Her mother told her daughter go out and find yourself
A brown eyed handsome man
That’s what your daddy is a brown eyed handsome man
Milo Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To get brown eyed handsome man
She fought and won herself a brown eyed handsome man
Two, three count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
It was a brown eyed handsome man
That won the game; it was a brown eyed handsome man.
Keep in mind…that song was released in 1956, long before James Brown wrote “(Say it Loud) I’m Black and I’m Proud”. Just sayin’.
As for those Chuck Berry riffs, they may sound simple…but they’re not. Just ask Keith Richards:
Granted, at 90, he was roundin’ third. But now he’s headed home. And we’ll always have the music; most importantly, the poetry. R.I.P.
