Al Mariam’s Commentaries /June 23, 2022
“A villain with a smiling cheek”
Senator Thom Tillis, the junior senator from North Carolina, is a piece of work.
Tillis is one of the triad of co-sponsors of S.3199, “Ethiopia Peace and Democracy Promotion Act.” The other two co-sponsors are Senator Chris Coons, D-DE and Jim Risch, R-ID.
S.3199 is not-so-affectionately known as the “crippling sanctions against Ethiopia” bill.
S.3199 provides for the unleashing of coordinated multilateral sanctions to destroy Ethiopia: “The United States shall immediately suspend all security assistance being provided to the Government of Ethiopia.”
It further mandates the US Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce to sanction Ethiopia by
engaging with members of the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, the African Union, and any other relevant actors to achieve a coordinated imposition of multilateral sanctions on Ethiopia.
In other words, S.3199 would impose paralyzing, crippling and the mother of all sanctions on Ethiopia.
The not-so-hidden aims of S.3199 are three-fold:
1) Force the Ethiopian government to negotiate with the terrorist TPLF by creating false equivalency between a terrorist organization and the democratically elected government of Ethiopia.
2) Use negotiations as a Trojan Horse of attrition to sap the energy, attention and resources of the Ethiopian government with the ultimate aim of restoring the terrorist TPLF to power, and if that fails,
3) Dismantle Ethiopia by orchestrating ethnic and religious warfare, making Ethiopia the Libya/Syria of Northeast Africa.
The bill in so many words says, sanctions would be lifted if the Ethiopian government negotiates terms of surrender with the terrorist TPLF and allows the TPLF to continue its interrupted 27-year despotic rule.
I will bet my bottom dollar Tills NEVER read a word of S.3199 .
I believe Tillis was snookered by Coons, the mastermind of the crippling sanctions, into co-sponsorship of the bill.
I am willing to bet my bottom dollar Tills cannot point Ethiopia on the map.
Truth be told, Tillis cannot punch his way out of a paper bag let alone champion a global cause of human rights!
Even though Tillis is one of three co-sponsors of S.3199, Tillis has not issued a single statement on the bill though his two other co-sponsors have been virtual mouthpieces for the terrorist TPLF.
Indeed, Tillis has no connection whatsoever with Africans or Africa.
Since his election to the US Senate in 2014, Tillis has not issued a single statement or sponsored a single bill on any issue affecting Africa.
Since his election to the Senate Tillis has served on two dozen plus committees and subcommittees, and not a single one of them has anything to do with Africa.
Tillis fights for the human rights of black Africans in Ethiopia while taking away the voting, medical and educational rights of African Americans in North Carolina
Tillis was elected to the United States Senate in 2014. He served in the North Carolina House of Representatives between 2006-14. He was the speaker of the House between 2011-15.
Speaker Tillis was the mastermind and ringleader of one of the most restrictive voter suppression laws in the US requiring voters to show identification before they can cast a ballot, eliminated same-day voter registration and seven days of early voting, and prohibited out-of-precinct voting.
In 2016, a federal appeals court ruled Tillis’ voter suppression law is unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Court ruled: “We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,”
The court noted the Tillis’ law “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
As speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Tillis also masterminded a plan to block the expansion of Medicaid, a federally mandated medical program for children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities under the federal poverty level.
Over 2 million low income people in NC, one out of every five people in the state, depend on Medicaid.
In 2017-18, women and girls made up 58 percent of total Medicaid enrollments in NC.
As a result of Tillis’ blocking of Medicaid, 500,000 North Carolinians, mostly African Americans, lost medical coverage!
Tillis voted several times in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a/k/a Obamacare) which aims to make affordable health insurance available to more Americans.
Before ACA, 44 million Americans lacked any health insurance coverage.
Tillis repeatedly boasted he would vote to get rid of ACA “every time it comes to the floor.”
Tills advocated to allow insurance companies to discriminate against and refuse coverage for preexisting health conditions.
In other words, Tillis worked to make it possible for insurance companies to refuse coverage if a person has a preexisting condition such as cancer, diabetes, and even pregnancy before applying for insurance.
In 2013, the poverty rate in North Carolina was 18 percent, and a disproportionate percentage of the poor people in that state were African Americans.
In 2017, 21.1 percent of Black North Carolinians lived below the official poverty line compared with 9.8 percent of whites. The rate for Latinx was 24.8 percent, 20.1 for American Indians, and 12.8 percent of Asian Americans.
In 2012, Tillis talked about NC’s “traditional population” and compared them to others suggesting he “doesn’t think of African-Americans and Latinos as being, well, real North Carolinians, or Americans for that matter.”
During his speakership, Tillis passed a budget that eliminated 9,000 teaching and teaching assistant positions in North Carolina which resulted in the mass exodus of competent teacher out of that state. Tillis also cut $115 million for textbooks and instructional supplies increasing student-teacher ratios.
Schools in high-poverty areas could not attract high quality teachers and African Americans suffered disproportionately from Tillis’ education cutbacks.
A 2019 122-page study of more than 1.5 million North Carolina students found significant gaps in both educational access and outcomes between racial groups, particularly between white students and non-Asian students of color.
That study report concluded:
Our core conclusion that systemic barriers to access and opportunity feed educational disadvantage among student groups of color in our state, is a betrayal of the promise of public education.
Tillis denies poor people, especially African Americans, in his state medical care, minimally adequate education and voting rights but now sheds crocodile tears for the health, well-being and welfare of Black people in Africa!
What has Tillis done for the people and State of North Carolina as a US Senator?
Tillis has sponsored 29 bills in the 117th Congress (2021-22).
Not one of the 29 bills had anything to do with people or the State of North Carolina.
Passed= O
Tillis sponsored 47 bills in the 116th Congress (2019-20).
Not one of the 47 bills had anything to do with people or the State of North Carolina.
Passed= O
Tillis sponsored 18 bills in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
Not one of the 18 bills had anything to do with people or the State of North Carolina.
Passed= O
Tillis sponsored 11 bills in the 114th Congress (2015-16).
Not one of the 11 bills had anything to do with people or the State of North Carolina.
Passed= O
Thom Tills: Does the Merchant of Hate and Division have the moral right to lecture Ethiopians on human rights?
In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare wrote:
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
Tillis who became a US Senator merchandising hate and division now preaches the gospel of human rights to Ethiopians.
Tillis preaches human rights to black Ethiopians while drowning his own black constituents in a sea of poverty, disease, ignorance and electoral privation.
Tills cannot remove the black man’s burden in North Carolina but now wants to carry his White Man’s Burden into Black Africa.
Yes, indeed!
Tillis is a Shakespearean villain with a smiling cheek, a heart of stone, and mind congenitally afflicted by the disease of white supremacy.
Tillis is a North Carolina zero trying to become an African human rights hero!