Seems pretty clear from this that Peters and the other holdouts on drug price reform are foregrounding Sinema deliberately to draw fire away from them and their industry-funded objections.https://t.co/I1TAZnzKiG

— David Dayen (@ddayen) October 11, 2021

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/10/13/6957875/christopher-columbus-murderer-tyrant-scoundrel?__twitter_impression=true

It’s somewhat old hat at this point to point out that Christopher Columbus — in whose name children are off school and mail isn’t delivered today — was a homicidal tyrant who initiated the two greatest crimes in the history of the Western Hemisphere, the Atlantic slave trade, and the American Indian genocide.

Here are just a handful of specific cases, mostly culled from Laurence Bergreen’s recent biography, Columbus: The Four Voyages, of almost unimaginable cruelty inflicted by Columbus and his crew during their time in the Caribbean.

1) Columbus kidnapped a Carib woman and gave her to a crew member to rape
Bergreen quotes Michele de Cuneo, who participated in Columbus’s second expedition to the Americas (page 143):

“While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful woman, whom the Lord Admiral [Columbus] gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked — as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought she had been brought up in a school for whores.”

2) On Hispaniola, a member of Columbus’s crew publicly cut off an Indian’s ears to shock others into submission
After an attack by more than 2,000 Indians, Columbus had an underling, Alonso de Ojeda, bring him three Indian leaders, whom Columbus then ordered publicly beheaded. Ojeda also ordered his men to grab another Indian, bring him to the middle of his village, and “‘cut off his ears’ in retribution for the Indians’ failing to be helpful to the Spaniards when fording a stream.” (Bergreen, 170-171)

3) Columbus kidnapped and enslaved more than a thousand people on Hispaniola
According to Cuneo, Columbus ordered 1,500 men and women seized, letting 400 go and condemning 500 to be sent to Spain, and another 600 to be enslaved by Spanish men remaining on the island. About 200 of the 500 sent to Spain died on the voyage, and were thrown by the Spanish into the Atlantic. (Bergreen, 196-197)

4) Columbus forced Indians to collect gold for him or else die
Columbus ordered every Indian over 14 to give a large quantity of gold to the Spanish, on pain of death. Those in regions without much gold were allowed to give cotton instead. Participants in this system were given a “stamped copper or brass token to wear around their necks in what became a symbol of intolerable shame.” (Bergreen, 203)

5) About 50,000 Indians committed mass suicide rather than comply with the Spanish
Bergreen explains, page 204:

“The Indians destroyed their stores of bread so that neither they nor the invaders would be able to eat it. They plunged off cliffs, they poisoned themselves with roots, and they starved themselves to death. Oppressed by the impossible requirement to deliver tributes of gold, the Indians were no longer able to tend their fields, or care for their sick, children, and elderly. They had given up and committed mass suicide to avoid being killed or captured by Christians, and to avoid sharing their land with them, their fields, groves, beaches, forests, and women: the future of their people.”

6) 56 years after Columbus’s first voyage, only 500 out of 300,000 Indians remained on Hispaniola

Population figures from 500 years ago are necessarily imprecise, but Bergreen estimates that there were about 300,000 inhabitants of Hispaniola in 1492. Between 1494 and 1496, 100,000 died, half due to mass suicide. In 1508, the population was down to 60,000. By 1548, it was estimated to be only 500.

Understandably, some natives fled to the mountains to avoid the Spanish troops, only to have dogs set upon them by Columbus’s men. (Bergreen, 205)

7) Columbus was also horrible to the Spanish under his rule

While paling in comparison to his crimes against Caribs and Taino Indians, Columbus’s rule over Spanish settlers was also brutal. He ordered at least a dozen Spaniards “to be whipped in public, tied by the neck, and bound together by the feet” for trading gold for food to avoid starvation. He ordered a woman’s tongue cut out for having “spoken ill of the Admiral and his brothers.”

Another woman was “stripped and placed on the back of a donkey … to be whipped” as punishment for falsely claiming to be pregnant. He “ordered Spaniards to be hanged for stealing bread” (Bergreen, 315-316). Bergreen continues:

He even ordered the ears and nose cut off one miscreant, who was also whipped, shackled, and banished from the island. He ordered a cabin boy’s hand nailed in public to the spot where he had pulled a trap from a river and caught a fish. Whippings for minor infractions occurred with alarming frequency. Columbus ordered one wrongdoer to receive a hundred lashes — which could be fatal — for stealing sheep, and another for lying about the incident. An unlucky fellow named Juan Moreno received a hundred lashes for failing to gather enough food for Columbus’s pantry.

8) Settlers under Columbus sold 9- and 10-year-old girls into sexual slavery
This one he admitted himself in a letter to Doña Juana de la Torre, a friend of the Spanish queen: “There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.”

9) Indian slaves were beheaded when their Spanish captors couldn’t be bothered to untie them
Benjamin Keen, a historian of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, noted that multiple sources confirmed accounts of “exhausted Indian carriers, chained by the neck, whose heads the Spaniards severed from their bodies so they might not have to stop to untie them.”

🤣🤣🤣

I want you to read this. I want you to understand what is happening on school boards across the country. And how Black educators are being targeted. Most of all, how there is a concerted action to take us back to the 50s. #TruthBeTold #ProTruth https://t.co/YfiQrBeKcg

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) October 10, 2021

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/576394-sanders-expanding-medicare-benefits-not-negotiable-in-package

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday that adding dental, hearing and vision benefits to Medicare in Democrats’ social spending package is “not negotiable,” drawing a firm line on an issue progressives have been championing.

“This to me is not negotiable,” Sanders said on a call with reporters. “This is what the American people want.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, added that Sanders’s view is also “the position of the House Progressive Caucus,” adding further heft to the position.

Progressives have long been pushing for expanding the Medicare benefits in President Biden’s Build Back Better package, but the new comments illustrate how key the issue is for them.

It adds to the complications for Democrats as they try to fit in an array of priorities while shrinking the overall size of the package below the original $3.5 trillion, given concerns from moderate senators.

There are other health care priorities with powerful backers competing for a limited amount of dollars.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, is a major proponent of extending enhanced financial assistance to help people afford premiums under the Affordable Care Act.

And House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) is pushing hard for a provision to expand Medicaid in the 12 GOP-led states that have so far rejected the expansion.

The original House version of the package fully funded both the ACA and Medicaid provisions, but did not start Medicare dental benefits until 2028, a move that helps save money.

Sanders has criticized the House bill for waiting too long to begin the dental benefits.

He also noted that parts of the health care industry are opposed to the Medicare expansion provision. The American Dental Association, for example, has been pushing to target the provision only to low-income people, given concerns about lower payment rates for dentists under the Medicare program.

“I do understand that the health care industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people,” Sanders said.

“There are millions of seniors who have rotting teeth in their mouths or are unable to hear what their grandchildren are saying,” he added.

Sen. ⁦@BernieSanders⁩ uses his coveted e-mail list to raise money for Buffalo Mayoral Candidate India Walton. Sanders rarely uses the list to directly fundraise for candidates. Walton- who won the Dem primary- is fending off a write in campaign from incumbent Byron Brown. pic.twitter.com/E9xViLEi0G

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) October 11, 2021