April 21, 2013

CNN Blasted Over Erroneous “Dark-Skinned” Bomber Report
By Hazel Trice Edney

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (left) was killed during a gun battle with police; his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was captured, but remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the throught. Authorities have said he has been unable to speak.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – CNN, which has prided itself as a world leader of news and information, has come under scorching criticism after reporter John King, a senior correspondent for the station, erroneously described the Boston Marathon bombing suspect as a “dark-skinned male”.

Both suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brothers of Chechnyan descent, turned out to be white-complexioned, a fact that has drawn scorching criticism from civil rights leaders and even fellow journalists who described King’s reporting as irresponsible and racially inflammatory. Dzhokhar is now hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Tamerlan died amidst a gun battle while running from police.

“The false reporting by the media in the Boston bombing case was offensive and inflammatory, including specific references by CNN’s John King who labeled the alleged suspect as a “dark-skinned male” perpetuating a stereotypical characterization devoid of relevant facts about the suspects identity,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton in a statement after criticizing King on his MSNBC show, PoliticsNation. “It was irresponsible and misleading to characterize the suspect by his race and it made every dark skinned male in Boston a suspect. If I reported that a “white skinned male” was being sought after, I would be publicly maligned as a “racial agitator.” The media must be responsible and put facts in proper context.”

The two bombing blasts that took four lives, wreaked havoc in Massachusetts, causing rippling affects across the nation. Memories of Sept. 11, 2001 were quick to return; especially with the uncertainties of the motive for the blast and who exactly had committed the attacks. Also similar was the tendency to falsely accuse people of color even before there is evidence or proof. 

The NAACP piled piled on the "inflammatory" reporting.

“The fact that this information was false is only part of the problem,” said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous in a statement. “Our concern is that CNN used an overly-broad, unhelpful and potentially racially inflammatory categorization to describe the potential suspect. History teaches us that too often people of color are unfairly targeted in the aftermath of acts of terrorism.”

In the NAACP statement, which described the reporting as “irresponsible, reckless, and counterproductive”, Jealous concluded, “We ask that CNN and all media outlets exercise caution and weigh the potential implications of such categorizations in future reports.”

On Monday this week, CNN had issued no statement in response to the criticism. But King has vehemently defended himself, according to Twitter posts reported by Richard Prince’s Journal-isms. " 'Source of that description was a senior government official. And I asked, are you sure? But I'm responsible. What I am not is racist,' the anchor wrote Thursday," according to Prince’s report, quoting a story by Erick Hayden of the Hollywood Reporter.

Though King has been apologetic for the error, some of his own colleagues say that doesn’t goes far enough. Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor, said the network; not just King, should apologize for the report.

"I cringed when I heard it," Brazile was quoted in a Prince story covering her during a forum at George Washington University, where she was speaking on "Race and the Race for the Presidency." She continued, "Without a picture. . . . just putting that statement out. It brought me back to my childhood, when they would always describe the color of a person's skin …I believe an apology is owed, not just to dark-skinned people," she added.

Typically, when a reporter makes an extreme mistake, the station or news agency will take responsibility for issuing an apology. CNN has not said why it feels exempt from the professional protocol.

Among others, the National Association of Black Journalists also weighed in on the criticism, giving a bit of advice:

“NABJ in no way encourages censorship but does encourage news organizations to be responsible when reporting about race [and] to report on race only when relevant and a vital part of a story,” the organization said in a statement. “Ultimately this helps to avoid mischaracterizations which might encourage potential bias or discrimination against a person or a group of people based on race or ethnicity.”

April 14, 2013

NEWS ANALYSIS

President’s Budget: Another Attempt to Reach Fiscal Deal
By Michael Linden

President Barack Obama talks with Jeffrey Zients, Acting Director of Office of Management and Budget, in the Oval Office, April 10, 2013. PHOTO: Pete Souza/The White House

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Center for American Progress

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget is unlike any previous presidential budget request in recent history. It is not a statement of the president’s vision for the federal budget. It does not represent what he thinks is the best course of action for spending, taxation, and broader federal fiscal policy. It is not, in short, his preferred budget plan. Rather, for the first time ever, it is a preemptive compromise budget.

It includes more than $1 trillion in additional spending cuts, on top of the $1.9 trillion that the president has already accepted and signed into law. It includes significant changes to entitlement programs, as well as further cuts to a portion of the budget that was already cut down to historic lows. And it includes far less new revenue than the president has called for in the past. All told, President Obama’s compromise budget would raise less revenue and set government spending at approximately the same levels as the much-ballyhooed bipartisan plan proposed by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles in 2010. By that standard, the president’s compromise budget is to the right of Simpson-Bowles.

And yet, for all the president’s willingness to make major concessions, conservative leaders in Congress already appear to have rejected the compromise out of hand. Last Friday before the full budget was even released, House Speaker John Boehner characterized it as "no way to lead and move the country forward." 

This immediate refusal to even consider the president’s generous offer is remarkable and indefensible when you consider the full scope of the deficit reduction it contains. Since the start of fiscal year 2010, Congress has already passed and the president has signed into law about $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction. Of that amount, nearly three-quarters were spending reductions, while only one-quarter was revenue increases. When you add to that the additional spending cuts that the president is willing to accept in return for some additional revenue, the totals swell to approximately $3 trillion in spending cuts and to about $1.3 trillion in revenue. This is a ratio of well over $2 in cuts to every $1 in revenue. Considering that the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases in the Simpson-Bowles proposal was only about 1.4-to-1, the president’s proposal goes well past halfway to try to meet his political opponents on common ground.

Indeed, in nearly every portion of the federal budget, the president signaled his willingness to accept policies that fall far short of what he considered optimal in the past. To start with, his new compromise budget includes additional cuts to a category of spending known as “non-defense discretionary.” This blandly titled category actually includes most of the critical, foundational public services and economic investments that make up the day-to-day operations of the federal government. Despite this, it has already absorbed enormous spending cuts as the lion’s share of the programmatic spending cuts that Congress already passed was directed at this one category of spending. As a result, funding for everything from education to highways to food safety is now—even without additional cuts—projected to decline to its lowest levels on record. Yet the president is willing to accept even further cuts in this area.

The president’s compromise budget also again signals his willingness to make significant changes to entitlement programs. “Again” is an important descriptor here. Proposing reforms in health care programs to save the government money is nothing new for the president. In each of his previous budget plans, President Obama put forward policies to improve efficiency in Medicare and to reduce spending. In this new compromise budget, the president upped his offer to $400 billion in reforms to federal health care programs. In fact, the president’s compromise offer includes more Medicare savings than does the House Republican budget.

On top of the $400 billion in health care reforms, the president also proposed $200 billion in changes to other mandatory programs. He also included a change to the way that inflation, commonly called “chained CPI,” is calculated. These changes would reduce Social Security benefits compared to what is scheduled in current law, producing another $130 billion in reduced spending.

This proposal to change the indexing formula for Social Security is an especially large concession. This is especially given that conservatives in Congress have given no reciprocal movement on revenues, and given that they may not accept this proposal as the final parameters of a large-scale budget deal.

And while a few progressive groups, including the Center for American Progress, in the past called for the switch to chained CPI in policy proposals, it was always done in the context of a comprehensive plan to resolve the long-run shortfall in Social Security. Additionally, it was always paired with progressive reforms to the payroll tax and always included protections for low-income families and the elderly—populations for whom the chained index likely understates inflation. To the president’s credit, he does include the latter protections, but his compromise offer does not include a comprehensive strengthening of the Social Security system, nor any reforms whatsoever to the payroll tax. Even the Simpson-Bowles plan, which also proposed switching to the alternative measure of inflation, included revenue-raising reforms to the payroll tax as well.

All told, the president is proposing more than $1 trillion in additional spending cuts. And what is he asking for in return? With his oft-stated commitment to a “balanced plan,” one might expect him to propose a similar amount of new revenue. But that is not the case. The president’s budget includes only $580 billion in new revenue, plus another $100 billion in additional tax revenue generated from the switch to chained CPI. And recall that the deficit reduction to date is already significantly tilted toward spending cuts. Even combined with the $600 billion in revenue generated from the American Taxpayer Relief Act, better known as the fiscal cliff deal, that still leaves him well short of the revenue of his previous budgets, which were already lower than the levels proposed by bipartisan experts. Yet another compromise.

Of course, compromise means both sides giving up something to reach an agreement. And certainly the president is hoping and expecting that conservatives will be reasonable and accept his proposal for this eminently moderate amount of additional revenue. Moreover, the president’s specific proposals for how to raise that revenue are equally reasonable. Right now, for example, itemized deductions such as those for mortgage interest and income exclusions such as the one for employer-provided health insurance benefit higher-income households more than middle- and low-income households. President Obama’s budget wouldn’t eliminate these breaks for anyone, but would limit their value for higher income tax payers so that the benefits aren’t quite so skewed. That alone would raise $530 billion.

The president’s compromise proposal also includes numerous other smart offers. It includes $50 billion in immediate job-creating investments—an absolute necessity given the fact that getting our budget in order will be impossible if unemployment remains high. In the realm of health care, the president’s suggested policies focus on improving the efficiency of Medicare without harming beneficiaries. Indeed, his reforms largely mirror those proposed by the Center for American Progress. The president also proposed some additional cuts to military spending, though certainly less than he could have.

But it is outside the confines of his compromise budget offer where one can find the president’s best ideas. The president’s call to expand quality pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, for example, is an important step toward ensuring the country’s future competitiveness in a global economy. He correctly identifies billions of dollars in inefficient, unnecessary, and wasteful business tax breaks that are ripe for reform. And we sorely need to reinvest in transportation infrastructure, as the president suggests.

Unfortunately, most of these good ideas are relegated to a kind of second-class status. They are not part of the president’s compromise budget offer, despite the fact that each and every one of them is fully paid for and would not add to the deficit or debt. As a result, the president’s compromise budget is fundamentally constrained despite the presence of many good ideas. It is constrained not by actual fiscal limits, but by perceived political limits. And those constraints have produced a budget offer that looks decidedly compromised when compared to the president’s previous budget plans, when compared to other progressive budget plans, and even when compared to bipartisan budget plans.

Michael Linden is the Managing Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.

April 21, 2013

Black-owned Car Dealerships Disappearing Across the Nation
By Fred Jeter

Harry Lee Harris and his wife, Vanessa, stand in front of the Universal Ford dealershiphe is selling in Henrico County. The sale price was not disclosed. PHOTO: Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - After spending most of his life in the automotive business, 60-year-old Harry Lee Harris is shifting gears. Owner of Universal Ford since 1986, Harris will on May 1 complete the sale of his successful black-run business to Richmond Ford.

“There is a time to buy and a time to sell,” said Harris, referring to his dealership at 10751 W. Broad St. in Henrico County near Richmond, Va. “My wife and I are looking forward to traveling all over the big globe and being super grandparents. We’ll play lots of golf, too.”

Ron Kody, who is White, owns Richmond Ford. The ownership change means there will not be a single Black-owned, new car dealership in the Richmond area. Virginia, at best, has just a handful of Black-owned dealerships. In Northern Virginia, there are three, Infiniti of Chantilly, owned by Reginald L. Brown Jr., formerly of Richmond, and BMW of Sterling and MINI of Sterling, both owned by Thomas A. Moorehead.

Across the nation, the number of Black-owned, new car dealerships peaked at 532 in 2002, but has fallen by 50 percent since. As of 2012, there were 261 such dealerships, according to Automotive News, an industry trade journal. Those dealerships comprised just 1.5 percent of the 17,653 new car dealerships in the U.S.

In response to a question, Harris elected not to disclose his selling price. “The purchase price was sufficient for Mrs. Harris (Vanessa) and I to retire comfortably. And the Kodys certainly purchased a profitable and premium franchise in the Richmond market, and we wish them luck.”

As of May 1, Universal will change its name to Richmond Ford West. Harris said all Universal employees will be retained as part of the transaction. That includes Geneva Harris, a manager, who is Harris’ daughter.

The youngest of 11 children, Harris was born in Arkansas and grew up in St. Louis. His role model was his older brother, Sam Johnson, one of the nation’s first minority auto store owners. Harris got his start as a teen when his brother put him to work washing cars at his dealership, Metro Lincoln-Mercury in St. Louis.

An unquestionable workaholic with king-sized dreams, he rose to managerial status. “I fashioned myself after Sam,” said Harris. “I used his blueprint to get where I am today.”

His first car was a pre-owned 1962 Chevy Impala that he purchased for $250. He’s been upgrading ever since. Harris and Johnson became partners and transferred to Charlotte, N.C., in 1977 to run Johnson Lincoln-

Mercury. In 1986, with the help of the Ford Motor Minority Dealer Program, Harris purchased Universal Ford. The original location was in the Virginia Commonwealth University area where the Siegel Center now stands. The business moved to Innsbrook in Henrico County in 1989.

Harris has been ranked as high as No. 53 on Black Enterprise magazine’s annual list of the 100 top Black-owned dealerships. In 2012, he received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Metropolitan Business League, the area’s largest Black business group, of which he is a longtime member. He also belongs to the Ford Minority Dealer Association, the Ford Lincoln Mercury Alumni Association, the Urban League of Greater Richmond and the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers. He served on the board of the Garfield Childs Foundation, whose members included former governor and current U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine.

Harris, Harry’s wife of 37 years, is something of an entrepreneur herself. For nine years, she owned and ran Shoes Etc. at Sixth Street Marketplace.

Harris has two brothers, Clyde and Eli Harris, who own and operate used car lots in the Richmond area. The decision to sell will free him and his wife “to do things we’ve never had the time to do,” Harris said. Until now, he said, life has totally revolved around work.

“Nothing is forever,” said Harris. “We’re no different than Thalhimer’s, Bill’s Barbecue, Dick Strauss Ford. All those owners have moved on, too. I’ve got my own bucket list of goals, and I’ve pretty much reached them.”

In retirement, he hopes to speak to business classes at Virginia Union University and other schools. Harry and Vanessa’s four children are graduates of either VUU or Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte. They have three grandchildren.

Life is good. The Harrises reside in a home along the 18th fairway at plush Dominion Golf Club in Wyndham in Henrico. Harris says both he and Harris are “avid golfers,” but “she can  outdrive me because she’s had so much more practice.”

Now, Harris, in “Chapter Two” of his life, will have more time to chase the dimpled ball around the course. You might say he’s trading cars for pars. Being a shrewd businessman, it’s a deal he couldn’t pass up.