Urban News Features

A Solid Foundation By James Clingman

May 21, 2016

Blackonomics

A Solid Foundation
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For decades several conscious and committed Black men and women have spoken, written books, taught, advised and, more importantly, initiated economic empowering projects and movements to help propel us to a higher level of mutual support and, thus, creating a solid foundation upon which our children can stand and build upon. We have demonstrated, in many ways and by several means, the solutions to the economic problems to which many of our “leading Blacks” just give lip-service.

This article is dedicated to Black folks who are willing to pay their blessings forward by helping others among us. It also cites, by way of relevant example, the magnitude and power that has accrued to one relatively small group of people in this country who work collectively in support of one another.

Sheldon Adelson, the international casino magnate, with a net worth of $25.5 billion (Source: Forbes Real Time Ranking), is among the ten wealthiest persons in the U.S. and ranks high among the wealthiest in the world. Of course, if you have not heard, he gives hundreds of millions to the Republican Party and its candidates. But he also started the Adelson Family Foundation in 2007, the primary purpose of which is to strengthen the State of Israel and the Jewish people; the Adelson Medical Research Foundation focuses on healthcare.

Aside from Adelson’s political ideology, something most of us would concentrate on and spend hours discussing, he is using his wealth to empower his people and to pay for medical research, special housing for the afflicted, and education for children with special needs—laudable by any measure. His is just one example of a member of what could be called a “minority group” that should, among other things, cause us to reflect on our philanthropic actions toward one another, that is, the power to control our collective financial assets to empower ourselves.

Sometime in the very near future, the Blackonomics Foundation will be introduced; formally established a few months ago, it will not be unveiled for several more months. Timing is everything, you know. Until then, and even afterward, there are Black foundations that are doing great work and are worthy of our praise and our dollars.

In my first two books (1998 and 1999) I lauded basketball great, Dikembe Mutombo and his foundation, whose mission it was to build a hospital in the Congo. I also acknowledged Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning for contributing to that worthy cause. By the way, only three or four NBA players helped Mutombo in his effort to raise $49 million for the hospital. (The lack of support for our foundations, however, does not only exist among those who are super-rich; those of us at the lower rungs of the economic ladder fail to support them as well.)

There are others, but here is a great example: For nearly two decades now, NBA Hall of Famer, Alonzo Mourning, and his wife, Tracy, have headed many charitable efforts as part of their commitment to “give back” to their community, especially to the young people of Miami. The Mourning Family Foundation has raised tens of millions of dollars toward that end and helped thousands of people; they are truly exemplary of what more Black folks should be doing.

In 2013, Mourning hired the former President of the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce, Bill Diggs, who invited me to speak at a chamber function in Miami a few years ago. With Diggs at the helm as President, and the Mourning’s having paved the way and set the tone, their Foundation will continue to maintain its high standards of excellence for years to come.

You folks in Miami should direct some of your money to the Mourning Family Foundation and show that you are willing to support this worthwhile charitable organization. Go online, check it out, and make it a monthly recipient of your overall tax-deductible donations. We must do a better job of supporting those who support us and our children.

Relatively speaking, each of us can do better, not only rich athletes but also the rest of us. If we would simply reflect on the greatness of our ancestors, their will to live and to provide for us, their progeny, we would do better. If we would consider the benefit of collective economic activity, the potential treasures we could amass for our progeny with our resources, Black people would surely live up to the greatness that is within us all.

Mutombo cited a proverb to drive home his message, “Judge not the poor for their poverty, but judge the community for its indifference.” Well stated; but well-done beats well said every time. So I also say, “Well Done,” Alonzo and Tracy Mourning.

America Must Renew Its Infrastructure or Face Decline by Jesse Jackson

May 23, 2016

America Must Renew Its Infrastructure or Face Decline
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - America is literally falling apart. In Flint, children were poisoned by the lead contamination of the water. In Washington, the subway system is plagued by fires and delays. Arlington Memorial Bridge — which connects the North to the South, the Capitol to Arlington National Cemetery — may have to be closed soon. Kennedy’s eternal flame may burn forever, but the bridge is on its last legs.

The American Society of Civil Engineers released a report last week once more warning the country of a massive investment deficit — an estimated $1.4 trillion shortfall over the next ten years — coming on top of years of underfunding and neglect.

This isn’t a matter of money. The Obama administration has announced it plans to spend over $1 trillion to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and the planes, missiles and submarines that deliver them. These are weapons that can never be used. We have spent over $2 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to date, with the final costs estimated at $4 to $6 trillion. The war in Afghanistan — an impoverished country where we have no strategic interest — is already the longest in our history and continuing.

We have the money. U.S. corporations stash trillions abroad to avoid paying taxes. If they paid what they owe — now estimated to be $700 billion — it would provide a down payment on rebuilding America. The federal tax on gasoline — dedicated to paying for infrastructure — has not been raised since 1993, even though gas prices have plummeted.

Interest rates on U.S. bonds are now so low that the Treasury could issue Rebuild America bonds, put people to work to rebuild the country — and the growth and increased productivity that results would generate revenues to repay the bonds. Even establishment economists like Lawrence Summers argue that the program would literally pay for itself. And it would respond to the pleas of the bastion of economic conservatism — the International Monetary Fund — that is pleading with the U.S. and other advanced countries to expand public investment to forestall a return to recession. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. will suffer a stunning $4 trillion in lost GDP by 2025 from the costs of decaying tunnels, railways, waterways and other basic infrastructure. It will cost us more to decay than it would to rebuild.

But Washington is frozen. The Republican Congress rejects President Obama’s modest plans for infrastructure investment, though they are supported by a massive coalition that includes the conservative Chamber of Commerce as well as the AFL-CIO. All three presidential candidates call for expanding investment in infrastructure (although only Bernie Sanders comes close to meeting the shortfall that the civil engineers warn about). But it will require a wave election — a sweeping rebuke to the obstructionist Republican Congress — for anything to happen.

This is how great nations decline. Investments that are essential to any modern civilized nation — from schools and bridges to electric grids and clean water systems — are neglected. Money is squandered on foreign adventures or lost to the tax evasions of corporations and the rich. Private speculators profit from privatizing public services. We build the most modern and powerful military in the world but are ever more crippled by decaying services that we depend on every day.

Politics as usual won’t change this. It will change only if people rise up and hold their politicians accountable. How many bridges must collapse or children must be poisoned or businesses must be shuttered before that happens?

Keeping Faith With Our Sisters by Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

May 23, 2016

Keeping Faith With Our Sisters
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) -– I'm blessed to have the opportunity to lead a major national women's group, the National Congress of Black Women (NCBW). My personal desire has always been to facilitate the enhancement of the lives and opportunities for African-American women, women of color, and their families' welfare. Since my personal goals coincide so perfectly with the goals of our organization, I consider my role to be a singular opportunity to bring positive change to our communities and to our nation.

My job is to drive awareness of the most pressing issues we face. The long list includes: domestic violence, immigration reform, childhood obesity, criminal justice reform and equal access to education. Atop that list are the challenges posed by carbon pollution and climate change. We live under the threat of an environmental, economical, and public health crisis – and it’s only getting worse. The rest of our challenges mean little if we don't have a healthy environment in which we can thrive.

Costs to our communities aren't imaginary. Sixty-eight percent of African-Americans live within 30 miles of a polluting coal-fired plant. Without escape or refuge from the constant cloud of toxic-waste, African-Americans average 350% more emergency room visits than white Americans.

Harms to our children are especially alarming. Living so close to polluting power plants, African-American children experience asthma attacks at much higher rates than their white peers. They are two to three times more likely to be hospitalized and/or die from asthma. Adding to the impact of their illness, their mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers – many who are the sole economic providers for their families – miss hours or even days of work. The visit to a pediatrician is costly enough. Affording inhalers or missing work only makes it worse.

Carbon pollution and climate change are real. We can’t ignore them; nor can we allow other issues to subordinate them on our list of essential priorities.

Among the most timely of options is the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan. The Plan, finalized by President Obama in August 2015, sets the first federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants and encourages the development of safer, cleaner renewable energy. It’s the most significant action ever taken by the U.S. to cut carbon pollution and combat climate change.

The Plan's life-saving rules will yield great health and climate-related benefits – up to $54 billion annually by 2030. By reducing or cutting carbon pollution by nearly a third by 2030, will reduce asthma attacks by 90,000 and prevent 300,000 missed days of school and work. Most importantly, the Clean Power Plan will reduce premature deaths by up to 3,600.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is lifesaving – and it needs our support against those who value profit over lives. In February, the Supreme Court temporarily paused implementation of the clean air standards. Corporate polluters and their political allies have sued to stop the rules in an attempt to block critical health benefits and the economic benefit of the creation of thousands of associated new jobs.

Those who value the health and well-being of American families are not alone. In April 2016, a coalition of businesses, faith groups, elected officials, medical professionals, and environmental and health organizations filed “friend of the court” briefs in support of the Clean Power Plan. They defended the strong legal foundation of the rules and touted the immense economic and public health benefits the Clean Power Plan provides across the nation.

Even with this broad coalition supporting the President’s Clean Power Plan much remains left to do. You can write your elected officials expressing your support of the Clean Power Plan and demand they do likewise. I'm confident that working together, we can keep millions of women and children from exposure to harm.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President of the National Congress of Black Women. 202-678-6788. www.nationalcongressbw.org)

Bernie and the Donald: Angry White Men by Julianne Malveaux

May 23, 2016

Bernie and the Donald: Angry White Men
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For all their dueling ideologies, Senator Bernie Sanders and “presumptive Republican nominee” Donald Trump are two sides of the same coin. Both of them are angry, so intensely so, that they are inciting a destructive anger among their followers. When Republicans brawled and pushed and shoved at Trump rallies, I never anticipated the flip side – the fisticuffs and rhetoric at Nevada caucuses, the likes of which might have put Trump terrorists to shame. Both the Chump Trumps and the Berning Bernies are being led by whining, angry, entitled white men, separated by ideology, but joined by both outrage and naiveté.

I don’t think either Bernie or duh Donald planned to get as far along in the presidential process as they have so far. Senator Sanders proudly carries the redistributionist flag with rousing rhetoric about social and economic justice. His agenda seems to have been to raise these issues aggressively, and he did. His presence in the campaign pushed Hillary hard to the left and made her engage with constituencies she might otherwise have ignored. For all his success, I don’t think Sanders expected to have more than 1500 delegates to his credit. And now that he has them he doesn’t know what to do with them. Both he and duh Donald are publicly floundering, signaling that they never had a winning, or graceful losing, plan.

Secretary Clinton and her followers shouldn’t be so hard on Bernie, though. While they should not demand that he get out of the race, he is well advised to tone is rhetoric down. I sat with women at the 2008 campaign who sobbed their way through then-Senator Clinton’s concession speech and appeal for party unity. I debated a PUMA (Party Unity my Hind Parts) activist who swore she would not support nominee Obama. In 2008, Hillary devotees were as passionate as Bernie devotees are now. The kumbayaa moment comes in July in Philly, not just yet. It reflects poorly on the Hillary camp to dismiss or ignore those who are passionate about Senator Sanders.

At the same time, it is important to note that extreme anger is a unique privilege of white men. Imagine then-nominee Obama raging at Hillary in the way that Bernie has. His temperament would have been sliced and diced and parsed and inspected and he would have been so damaged by the conversation that it might have affected his electoral results. If Secretary Clinton ever managed to get her voice to Bernie’s decibel, if she every managed to project such rage, she’d be written off as a crazy lady and peripheralized. But when the angry white men yell and scream and whine and lie, they are celebrated not condemned. Double standard.

Both Bernie and duh Donald are whining about rules they say are rigged against them, but the rules may have favored them. Donald Trump has garnered a greater percentage of delegates than votes because of the way some states have chosen to award delegates. He wants more, but he failed to invest as much time learning the rules as some of his competitors did.

Senator Sanders says he should have more delegates, but if he had to play under republican rules, he’d have fewer. Democrats are more likely to award delegates on a proportional basis, which means that a close race might give each candidate nearly the same amount of delegates. Sanders has no standing to call the system rigged. He has kept his distance from the Democratic Party for most of his career, never participating in the rules process. If he wanted to write his own rules, he should have run for President as an independent.

Sanders and Trump have positioned themselves as outsiders, but they want insiders to roll out the red carpet for them because they jumped into a game they haven’t mastered. They haven’t worked at establishing a foundation, but they are demanding the keys to the house. They aren’t wiling to put the work in to reforming our flawed two-party system. Instead, they are finding unfairness when none is there, whining when work might make a difference, and leveraging their angry white maleness into voter approval.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based is Washington, D.C. Her latest book, “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy is available via amazon.com and juliannemalveaux.com

Morial Releases 'Main Street Marshall Plan' Saying the State of Black America is 'Locked Out' by Hazel Trice Edney

May 18, 2016

Morial Releases 'Main Street Marshall Plan' Saying the State of Black America is 'Locked Out'
By Hazel Trice Edney

Standing room only audience applauded often as Morial spoke. The address was livestreamed and televised live on C-SPAN

NUL President/CEO Marc Morial gives the State of Black America Address at the Newseum. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Declaring that the state of Black America is “locked out” of economic, social and educational equality, National Urban League President/CEO Marc Morial said in his State of Black America Address this week that at least $1 trillion must be invested in America’s urban communities in order to bring a semblance of justice.

“As President Obama wraps up his final months as the nation’s first African-American president, we begin to assess the progress Black America has made under his administration. How well has the nation recovered from the worst economic crisis it has seen in generations? How much closer to the goal of universal healthcare coverage has the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – gotten us?

“As President Obama himself said in his commencement address at Howard University, ‘My election did not create a post-racial society.’” Morial said. “Mr. President, you are right. The 2016 National Urban League Equality Index tells an all too familiar story of persistent racial disparity in American life. Your Presidency has made a difference, yet we cannot, in eight short years, eliminate America’s long-standing challenges around racial inequity.”

An enthusiastic audience of hundreds packed into the Knight Studio in Downtown D.C.’s Newseum, May 17, in commemoration of the NUL’s 40th annual State of Black America.

“With this milestone 40th Anniversary State of Black America, the National Urban League proposes a sweeping and decisive solution to the nation’s persistent social and economic disparities. We call it the Main Street Marshall Plan: Moving from Poverty to Prosperity,” Morial said in the speech, which was also livestreamed and televised on C-SPAN. “This bold and strategic investment in America’s urban communities requires a multi-annual and multi-pronged commitment of $1 trillion over the next five years that would course correct our main streets.”

The following are some of the $1 trillion solutions, from the NUL perspective, outlined in this year’s State of Black America(SOBA) report:

• Universal early childhood education
• A federal living wage of $15 per hour, indexed to inﬂation
• A plan to fund comprehensive urban infrastructure
• A new Main Street small- and micro-business ﬁnancing plan focusing on minority-and-women-owned businesses
• Expansion of summer youth employment programs
• Expanded homeownership strategies • Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
• Targeted re-entry workforce training programs administered through community-based organizations
• Doubling the Pell Grant program to make college more affordable
• Expansion of ﬁnancial literacy and homebuyer education and counseling
• Expansion of the low-income housing voucher “Section 8” program
• Establishment of Green Empowerment Zones in neighborhoods with high unemployment
• Affordable high-speed broadband and technology for all
• Increased federal funding to local school districts to help eliminate resource equity gaps

To stress the urgency of the improvements, Morial gave the results of NUL’s 2016 Equality Index of Black America, which is a calculation to illustrate the level of disparity and inequality in specific categories. He said the overall equality index for African-Americans currently “stands at 72.2 percent compared to a revised 2015 index of 72.0 percent.”

Others are as follows:

Education took the biggest rise going from 76.1 percent in 2015 to 77.4 in 2016;
Economics went from 55.5 percent in 2015 up to 56.2 percent in 2016.
Social justice went from 60.6 percent in 2015 to 60.8 in 2016.
Civic engagement index “declined sharply over the last year” from 104.0 percent to 100.6 percent;
Health declined slightly from 79.6 percent last year to 79.4 percent.

Morial's speech was punctuated with graphics, including a video to stress the pains experienced by African-Americans such as police killings of unarmed people. Another graphic was a photo of former NUL Executive Director Vernon Jordan, who served from 1971 to 1981. SOBA was introduced by Jordan 40 years ago.

Morial referred back to that time, four decades ago, when Jordan rolled out the first SOBA as a message to the next president. He quoted Jordan:

“'It is our hope that this document will pierce the dark veil of neglect that has thus far smothered efforts to right the wrongs of the past and the present. I hope that it will be read closely in the White House and in Congress that it will influence decision makers to open their eyes to the plight of Black Americans. I hope it will be read by all the candidates in both political parties whose campaigns largely exhibit a refusal to grapple with the concerns of Black citizens. I urge Black people to educate themselves to the issues, to register, and to vote in the upcoming primaries and election. For this election could be the most crucial in recent history for Black people. The implications of the mass impoverishment of Blacks and the massive assault on our newly-won rights demand that every Black vote be mobilized in defense of Black interests and aspirations.'”

Morial concluded, "That was Vernon Jordan’s message to the next President. My message to the next President is this: The disparities are real. The conditions are tough. The times demand real leadership. Does our nation have the leadership and the will to confront yesterday’s problems, to forge a better tomorrow? And that is the State of Black America."