Commissioner Howard T Spence

Some of you may recall a few weeks ago I spent some time in the McLaren Emergency Room and in their recovery hospital?

Well, I survived that. I felt terrible, was dehydrated, and had great stomach pains, and thought if I had another saline solution feed stuck in my arm the next move was to hospice. LOL

Well, I survived and ended up in Urgent care a week or so ago with recommendations that I go back to McLaren emergency for further diagnosis and/or treatment for stomach pains.

Fortunately, the stomach clog resolved before I could make it back to an energency room. Never had a bowel movement been so welcome. Ithink it may have been caused by "food poisoning" from eating a potato that had started to sprout! [I have sworn off potatoes and even posted a reel explaining the dangers of food poisoning from sprouting potatoes on my feed. Check it out!]

Thanks be to divine oversight, the continuing concern and care of my sister Dr. Ollie Taylor, and some "Wormwood" she sent to me. Everybody should have someone check in on them occasionally!

SO WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS POSTING? IT IS TO ADVOCATE FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AS MENTIONED BY BERNIE SANDERS. OLD PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE DENIED CARE, COVERAGE EVEN IF THEY HAVE BASIC MEDICARE/MEDICAID, BECAUSE THEY HAVE MANAGED TO REACH AN OLD AGE AND MANAGED NOT TO DIE. IT BECOMES A COST/BENEFIT $$$ ANALYSIS. WHEN DOES YOUR AGE AND HEALTH BECOME UNINSURABLE ACCORDING TO MEDICARE/PART C GUIDELINES?

I took a picture of the bill from my state of Michigan retirees defined benefit health coverage. It is considered to be "Cadillac" health care. But it helps make my point. The emergency room and recovery at McLaren Hospital in Okemos bill came to almost $14,000. Because of my Medicare Part C coverage McLaren reduced the total bill to about $3000. My bill? $127...

I know some of my friends who have elected to go without insurance because they did not have it as a retirement benefit from an employer who laid them off or went out of business. They are generally younger than me. Some have told me that they could not afford real insurance and if worse came to worse, they would just die...

BUT, if the pain is bad enough, you will sign on the dotted line, go bankrupt, or resign yourself to dying - hopefully in a hospice bed...

SO NOW, I ASK YOU, DO YOU APPROVE OF ADDING A TRILLION DOLLARS TO FUND THE MAGA GOP WAR MACHINE AND MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. INSTEAD OF A FEW DOLLARS OF TAX REDUCTIONS FOR TIPS YOU DIDN'T EVEN GET, WOULDN'T YOU RATHER HAVE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE OR EVEN UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE? THE US SPENDS AS MUCH NOW FOR OUR MILITARY AS ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD SPEND FOR THEIR AGGREGATE MILITARY BUDGETS. BUT MANY OF THEM DO PROVIDE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR THEIR ENTIRE COUNTRY...

Two Black Men, roughly the same age and coming from the same Negro poor uneducated caste of the segregated south... Both trying to do what their current "Black Jobs" are in 2026 in Amerikka...

Clarence Thomas and I have many parts of our heritage and professional development that have moved forward on similar tracks and coming from similar religious backgrounds of having our childhood faiths instilled in our personal lives for many decades. Thomas is a Black Catholic Conservative from Georgia. I am a Black Evangelical Christian from the Church of Christ originating in Mississippi. Both of us were instilled in those environments with clear understanding of Jesus' teachings and developed convictions and clear understanding that the words in the Declaration of Independence upon which our nation- now the United States of America - was based or established upon the highest principles of Christianity (not Judaism).

Our understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ was that ALL men - of all races - were equal before God and in the minds of the true founders of America who signed the Declaration of Independence. Both of us seem to agree that in our democratic republic all power in the government is there to assure and protect the rights of ALL MINORITIES including Negro slaves - many of whom gave their lives for our country during the Revolutionary War and later during the U. S. Civil War.

I have often criticized and disparaged Clarence Thomas. My criticism was based upon the fact that he clearly has on a personal level assumed that his position of authority and duty as a Black Conservative SCOTUS justice was to follow his understanding of what the developed juris prudence was, or in most cases what he saw as precedents. Thomas did opine during an interview that the Dred Scott case was definitely wrongly decidedand led to an era of Jim Crow and Negro intimidation for many years in the interview I share here. Let's see where he ends up on the issues associated with citizenship pending before the Trump SCOTUS!

Thomas seems to atrtribute Jim Crow and deviation during Reconstruction times fro what the founders of our country understood at the time of the Declaration of Independence to be guaranteed equality of everyone in the colonies under God to the attempt of "government" during reconstruction to control minorities rather than allow the will of the people who founded America to control a government that "the People" later failed to control.

I became interested in some of the summaries of what Clarence Thomas supposedly said at a speech earlier this week at the University of Texas at Austin Law School where he had been invited to speak. I went out and "googled" to see if there was a public link to the entire speech and audience question session online and found the UTA full program on youtube. I am sharing that link with anyone who might be interested in knowing what was actually said and shared at that public speech at UTA -

https://www.youtube.com/live/ddqLhcmZ8Uk?si=fIz25-T84Gm54ysg

https://www.youtube.com/live/ddqLhcmZ8Uk?si=fIz25-T84Gm54ysg

[The YouTube version may or may not have ads. My postings that I myself share are not monetized and therefore do not have (to my knowledge) any ads on YouTube or elsewhere.]

The entire presentation can be a very worthwhile investment of a full hour and a half for those who have legal training or understanding of American law and civics beyond the most basic levels.

The one thing that stood out to me was that what Clarence Thomas shared with the UTA Law school audience that may not have been quite what they were expecting. His comments on race and minority rights and government accountability revealed that Chief Justice Rehnquist had approached him after his appointment by George Bush where he sensed that Justice Thomas was struggling with his own historical environmental understanding of what was Jesus' teachings on equality, justice, minorities, slavery, miscegination or racial mixing, war and the power of the people to control their government. Justice Rehnquist simply told Clarence Thomas to "just do your job."

So, many of the strange decisions that Thomas has taken on issues of race, religion, sex-gender, and caste have, according to Thomas, just been him as a SCOTUS conservative judge "Doing his JOB."

Both Thomas and I have our own "BLACK JOBS."

Thomas approaches his Black Job as a conservative justice deciding cases which may be contrary to his own personal beliefs and understandings.

Thomas DOES criticize "progressives" generally and points out that progressives are by and large for big regulatory government that controls the people and restricts the power of the people to control their own government and to demand God given rights of liberty, freedom, and equality. He points out that big government regulation was when the 28th president of the US Harding compared "progressive" and similar progressive government control efforts to movements even in N**i Germany.

People have occasionally asked me why I take pains to portray myself as a "Black Progressive" Voice or Advocate rather than just as a Progressive voice.

I view "MY BLACK JOB" as being an advocate for oppressed people who live in a system that takes them for granted, wants to limit or denigrate their rights, liberties, and freedoms, and/or regards them as not even deserving of receiving the same treatment, liberties, freedoms or even respect that "My Jesus" tells ME that the signers of the Declaraton of Independence from King George proclaimed that I have on an equal basis as others in America.

MY BLACK JOB is not to be a conservative SCOTUS Justice like Clarence Thomas. MY BLACK JOB is to be a politician or advocate for people like me (and like Clarence Thomas) to know in my heart that racism, slavery, gross immorality, war mongering, etc. are not consistent with the Declaration's aspirational promise that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL...

One thing I have learned from watching this "attack" by Clarence Thomas on Progressives is that he is no dummy. He just has not given himself the "freedom" to use his own experience and personal beliefs in the course of performing his BLACK JOB on the bench...

[I often write posts that are longer than 90% of my audience do not want to take time to read or comment on. I focus my efforts as a Black Progressive politician on advocating for meaningful change in the lives of oppressed people. Hopefully some who do read my posts will digest them, critique them, and then share concepts and ideas with others in a more succinct or condensed version.]

These topics are mentioned and discussed by Thomas in his hour presentation at ATU Law School earlier this week:

1. Thomas never took a Constitutional Law Course at Yale. I never took a Constitutional Law Course at Michigan.

2. He lived out of a car and could not pay rent or credit card debt while in DC initially. I have been there, or felt like I was there.

3. The best and brightest lawyers do not necessarily go to either Yale or Harvard, although 8 of the nine justices on SCOTUS are graduates of those two schools.

4. Strong leaders may arise and try to assume powers that are not their own, but should be in control of "the people."

5. No government should control the liberties and rights of the people unless by "their consent."

6. "Progressives" and their governments in Europe and elsewhere have led to fascism and nazisim and genocide.

7. There is no question but that the intent of the founders who signed the Declaration of Independence contemplated that ALL Americans including Negro slaves and women were entitled to the freedoms and liberties for which Nathan Hale who signed the Declaration of Independence was executed by the British for "treason" to King George.

8. True patriots have existed in America from those who signed the Declaration of Independence to the hundreds of thousands who died in the U. S. Civil War fighting for the end of slavery and the securing of Freedom, Liberty, and Equality for ALL Americans.

9. Thomas is happy that UTA has developed a program in their Law School that will work to return Civics, History, and Civility in America.

10. His parents told him and his brother in 1955 when the Brown v Topeka Board of Education integration case was decided that "We don't have no education and no chance, but 'You boys' are going to have a chance."

11. Young people today don't have that dedication to America today to think that they should have that same devotion to Freedom and liberty that the soldiers storming the Beaches of Normandy had.

12. "People gain positions of Power and then you find out who they really are..."

13. Thomas did not agree or follow Justice Scalia or his philosophy much at all, but by different reasoning and contemplations they often ended up signing the same majority opinions.

14. Thomas read and was impacted by Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man."

15. Thomas insinuated that a group of clerks and others took Scalia out and he may have had a few too many. They all made a joke with Scalia apparently that what he was drinking was "a liberty destroying cocktail."

16. There are many other interesting and revealing comments that I will leave for those truly interested to discover and contemplate from the remarks and responses of SCOTUS justice Thomas. I found this presentation to be informative and showing a side of Clarence Thomas that I would not have anticipated...

But, when all is said and done, I prefer MY BLACK JOB as a Black Progressive politician or advocate over Clarence Thomas' BLACK JOB as a conservative justice on SCOTUS in 2026...

CBS Austin WATCH LIVE: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Delivers Lecture at UT Austin

RACE, RELIGION, SEX-GENDER, AND CASTE...

KNOW WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE AND THE VALUE OF HAVING MEANINGFUL COALITIONS THAT WILL AT LEAST CONSIDER YOUR PRIORITIES AND NEEDS FOR RECOGNITION AND NOT TAKE YOU FOR GRANTED OR GAS LIGHT YOU...

IF A CANDIDATE IN EITHER PARTY ACCEPTS AIPAC CONTRIBUTIONS OR WAXES ON WITH INDIGNATION ABOUT HOW VICIOUS AND EVIL MUSLIMS, ARABS, OR LEBANESE PEOPLE ARE BECAUSE OF "HAMAS" OR "HEZBOLAH", WHY WOULD YOU VOTE FOR THEM. AND YES, ACTIONS DO SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS...

BUT I RECOMMEND THAT ABOVE ALL MAKE YOUR EVALUATION OF YOUR OWN WELL BEING AND DIGNITY AS A VOTER AND DO EXERCISE YOUR VOTE BASED ON YOUR ASSESSMENT OF WHICH CANDIDATES ARE MOST ACCEPTABLE TO YOU. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, ASK A CLIENT TO RESPOND WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR THEM BASED UPON THEIR POSITION(S) ON ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO YOU... WHETHER THOSE ARE BASED ON RACE, RELIGION, SEX-GENDER, OR CASTE!

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, I HOPE MY FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS WILL AGREE THAT WE ARE AMERICANS IN AMERICA FIRST - NOT JEWS LIVING IN AMERICA, PALESTINIANS LIVING IN AMERICA, NOT DESCENDANTS OF NEGROS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS LIVING IN AMERICA, NOT NETANYAHU ISRAELIS LIVING IN AMERICA, NOT MUSLIMS LIVING IN AMERICA, NOT ASIANS LIVING IN AMERICA, BUT AMERICANS LIVING IN AMERICA WHO DERIVE FROM MANY DIFFERENT PLACES IN OUR WORLD WHO ARE HAPPY TO BE IN AMERICA WITH AMERICANS...

https://www.localsyr.com/news/ap-politics/ap-trump-promised-peace-in-the-middle-east-in-dearborn-michigan-it-feels-farther-away/

https://www.localsyr.com/news/ap-politics/ap-trump-promised-peace-in-the-middle-east-in-dearborn-michigan-it-feels-farther-away/

Trump promised peace in the Middle East. In Dearborn, Michigan, it feels farther away DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Eighteen months after the nation’s largest Arab American community helped propel Donald Trump to a second term as president, the prayers have not stopped. In Dearborn, …

RACE, RELIGION, SEX-GENDER, AND MONEY (CASTE)

IN THE WORDS OF OF MAYA ANGELOU, WE ARE ALL MORE ALIKE THAN WE ARE DIFFERENT!

While we may all have our own tastes and preferences, none of us has the right to denigrate others who are sincere and honest and of good will...

Myself and my family memories have our memories and roots deriving from the Old South - Tennessee and Mississippi... I respect and want to share the best of all the cultures that make me and my family on both sides who we are. One of my grandfathers smoked a pipe, played a guitar, sang hill billy, and occasionally passed for being "white" in the censuses that bothered to count him and did not know what do do with people who were perhaps melangeons, mixed with native americans, and negros. On the other side of the family tree was a grandfather who was descended directly from a grandmother who had been a slave - producing plenty of babies for the slave owner including some, of course, mixed race.

I came across this story of Elvis Presley and how he did the unthinkable - appearing to sing Precious Lord at an evangelical Penocostal church of poor Black and Negro workers on the South Side of Chicago in 1957. The story of that appearance at the request and encouragement of Mahalia Jackson had an impact on me and reinforced a lesson that I had known and forgotten about tolerance, honesty, sincerity in our religious culture. It reminded me that there is a very wide styles and experiences that represent how one sincerely has his or her own relationship with their God. I may not be into "rap" music of younger Americans, but I must respect the sincerity of the presenters and their relationships they develope in their sincere relationships.

Country music is Rythym and Blues, just a bit "off key." Ray Charles and Beyonce can explore and show their roots in American music and emotion. Some would become protective and jealous and criticize their music. "Why are they trying to sing "our music?"

If you have tme and interest in learning a lesson about the value of honest and sincere relationships and faith and true emotion, I invite my friends to listen to the 20 minute dramatized lesson of the story of Elvis Presley and his courage to appear in a critical Black Church environment in a very segregated and skeptical environment of Jim Crow in 1957, and the willingness of Mahalia Jackson to share her sincere religious love of her God with a young white rock and roll singer at that time, click on the YouTube link I share with you from my YouTube premium subscription below.

What song did Elvis sing? Elvis sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" - a song written that has a very special meaning to members of the Black Church and the Black community generally. It was one of my Mother's favorites...

The second link is to an actual rendition of Precious Lord by Elvis. It also will give you to see other white country gospel renditions of some of my own favorite songs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFe1m9A7mds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6qB6CkrwQo&list=RDc6qB6CkrwQo&start_radio=1

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E78rEruqH/

Mahalia Jackson INVITED Elvis to Sing in Church — What He Chose Shocked Everyone Elvis Got INVITED to Sing in Church by Mahalia Jackson — His Song Choice Shocked EveryoneElvis Rewind is where we press play on the King’s story — but with a...