Oct. 27, 2014

Black Leaders Skeptical of GOP’s Black Outreach Campaigns
By Zenitha Prince

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Black leaders and political analysts range from cautiously optimistic to downright skeptical of the Republican Party’s renewed campaign to reach African-American and other sidelined communities. The outreach arose out of the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project, a plan to reform the GOP after the stinging political losses of the 2012 election.

“Our efforts at the Republican Party to engage the Black community are sincere and we’re making a committed effort because people are hurting—regardless of color, but especially African Americans—as a result of the president’s (Barack Obama’s) policies and we have solutions to those problems,” said Orlando Watson, the RNC’s communications director for Black media. As part of their campaign, Watson pointed to their recognition of Black Republican trailblazers and Black military veterans during Black History Month and visits to HBCUs, Black churches and other meeting places and media-based efforts to familiarize African Americans with the party and its ideals.

“We have to talk to people we have not always talked to or listened to in the past,” he told the AFRO, acknowledging the GOP’s alienation of the African-American community. “It is on us to make up that ground, not only because the success of our party depends on it, but also the success of our country.” Some are dubious of the Republican Party’s latest promise to increase its inclusivity, however, saying it has become a tired refrain. “I’ve been watching the Republican Party talking about this for a long, long time,” said David Bositis, a longtime expert on Black voters and politics.

“I think it’s PR….There’s nothing there.” Some local leaders say they have not seen or heard about any outreach efforts in their area, which makes them question the veracity of the GOP’s stated goals. “I don’t think it’s real; I think they have written Maryland off,” said the Rev. Alvin Hathaway, senior pastor, Union Baptist Church in Baltimore. The well-known minister added, “I would think that in Baltimore – particularly when you think of the conditions of African Americans in the city – they would make a concentrated effort to offer a different option…[and] to recruit qualified Black Republican candidates.”

The Rev. Grayland Hagler, senior pastor, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C., mirrored that complaint. “I haven’t seen any outreach at all,” he said. “They reach out to those who share their conservative, reactionary views. They would have no problem if they had hundreds of thousands of Clarence Thomases or Condoleeza Rices but they would have a problem with other Blacks.” Watson conceded that the RNC’s campaign has a lot of uncovered territory but said their commitment is firm. “Our presence is growing—we have not reached the end goal yet, but we’re working to get there,” he said.

Still, Black leaders and political experts said their concerns about the GOP’s outreach efforts go deeper. “The party has no real outreach agenda because it does not want to change or evolve [and] they have allowed themselves to be hijacked even further to the right,” Hagler said. “Words are words. The reality is if you’re going to become diverse you can’t operate out of a racist paradigm.” Bositis added, “They want to still be the party of White Southern populists and want African Americans to come along and support the policies of the same people who used to lynch African Americans.”

Hilary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president of advocacy and policy and director of its Washington bureau, said Republicans’ attempt to make inroads in the Black community will require more than words. “It’s a great idea that they are outreaching but it will have to come with changes to their policies because that is what people are more concerned about,” he said. For example, Blacks are severely underrepresented as delegates to RNC conventions, which is reflected in the resulting agenda.

“If you don’t have African Americans at the table then the policies don’t reflect the real needs and concerns of the African-American community,” he said. Shelton expressed some optimism, pointing to Republican advocacy on issues such as Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner’s push to renew the Voting Rights Act, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul’s outspokenness on re-enfranchisement of ex-felons and poverty and more. “We are really happy to see that in some small quarters there is leadership on issues important to the Black community,” Shelton said.

“We have a few and that’s more than we had last year.” Bositis, however, was unimpressed and said most African Americans are similarly unconvinced by the GOP’s outreach. “They think African Americans are stupid. But I have news for you—they’re not,” Bositis said. “The vast majority [of African-American voters] think it is a joke.” 

Oct. 26, 2014

Eviction Plans Underway for Zimbabwe's Landless Poor

Special to the TriceEdneyWire.com from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Robert Mugabe’s land reform initiative turned lives upside down in the year 2000 and now upside down again as the settlers who moved onto lands that White farmers once owned now find themselves facing eviction by the same government.

About 8 million hectares of farmland owned by 3,000 white farmers in 1999 are now legally state-owned, according to the Valuation Consortium, a private, Harare-based body that collects information from evicted white farmers.  According to the constitution, leases cannot be given to new owners until the dispossessed white farmers are compensated.

In the meantime, many of the new Black beneficiaries have neither security of tenure or legal protection afforded to tenants and can be evicted at will.

This spring, the government announced a crackdown on settlers without proper ownership documents. “Those who settled themselves will be evicted,” said Douglas Mombeshora, minister of lands and rural resettlement. “Those farmers who have been staying for about 10 years should have their settlements formalized.”

Faber Chidarikire, minister of Mashonaland West, added: “People have been illegally occupying land and sometimes invading land which is not suitable for farming… Some people have settled on pastures, while others have invaded other people’s farms. We are going to evict these people.”

Settlers in some of the targeted districts cried foul, saying they had been waiting for ownership papers but received eviction notices instead. Some had their houses burned down. In Mazowe, some farmers said the evictions arrived as they were about to harvest their crops.

Meanwhile, with Pres. Mugabe approaching the advanced age of 91, his wife Grace has moved to center spot, using her bully pulpit to attack the incumbent vice president, Joyce Mujuru, prior to the upcoming party congress in December.

Speaking at Chipadze Stadium in the heart of the Vice President’s Mashonaland Central stronghold, Mrs Mugabe came out swinging, and warned her rival:  “If the President does not dump you, we are personally going to dump you.”

Party insiders say a secret ballot at the December meeting may be called to sweep Mrs. Mugabe into power or an amendment attached to the constitution to enable Mr. Mugabe to appoint senior officials, including vice presidents, so he can appoint his wife and leave out Mujuru. 

Oct. 26, 2014

Good News or More Hype?
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - One outcome of the 2007-2010 housing market meltdown was that people, especially those with less wealth, found it more difficult to buy homes.   With high unemployment (now dropping), flat incomes, and the requirement to put 20 percent down on a loan, homeownership had become an unattainable goal for many.

At a recent meeting of the Mortgage Bankers Association, Fannie Mae's CEO Timothy Mayopoulos says that Fannie will support banks that take as little as a 3 percent down payment on loans, and that they will buy mortgages from them that are written on those terms. Where Fannie goes, Freddie Mac follows, which means that banks will enjoy relaxed terms for selling loans back to the federal agencies charged with buying them and providing stability in housing markets.

Mel Watt, the former North Carolina Congressman, now leads the Federal Housing Finance Authority.  He says FHFA, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will work with those agencies to ensure that they develop guidelines for the 3 percent loans.  The goal is to increase access to loans for “credit-worthy but lower wealth borrowers”.  HUD Secretary Julian Castro joined Watt at the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting supporting the ways that federal agencies can support more flexible mortgage standards.

Here is the flexibility, who will gain from it, and who will require banks to follow up?  As somebody’s grandma (probably mine) used to say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.  Meaning, you can make things as easy for banks as you want to, but there is no guarantee that the banks will take advantage of those conditions.

Come on, now.  The bank bailout of 2008 was engineered to make it easier for banks to put money into the economy.  They were subsidized, and they were supposed to use their subsidies to lend to people who wanted to buy homes, start businesses, or take advantage of falling interest rates.  Instead, they tightened credit standards, requiring a credit score of 720 when 680 might have sufficed a few years ago.  Too many banks classically grab at subsidies without thinking they need to do something in return.

Too many have celebrated the headlines without reading the fine print.  The fact that Fannie and Freddie have said they’ll buy low down payment loans does not mean that they have relaxed lending standards.  Indeed, until the details have been spelled out, the new standards may mean little more than a token nod to the fact that homeownership is a key engine to economic growth.  Tightening lending standards often leaves out those who could make it on the margin – the self-employed who never missed a mortgage payment but manage the fluctuations of income that reflect market conditions; the high wealth individuals with low credit scores because they have been careless with their credit.  Congressman Watt says he wants to look at the “compensating factors” other than income and assets, to offer increased possibilities for borrowing.  The guidelines have not yet been developed, which suggests the celebratory headlines may be preliminary.

For millions of folks the goal was not to find new loans but to simply save the ones they had, or still struggle to manage.  As housing values dropped many found themselves “underwater” when the value of the loans exceeded the value of their homes.  While federal policy allowed many of these homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their loan, too many bankers refused to.   Now, federal financers are saying that banks can loosen the terms for borrowers without looking back at the ones they left behind.  It seems to me that the Mortgage Bankers Association might be directed to look backward before moving forward.  It seems to me that before writing low-down payment loans they may want to negotiate the folks they left holding underwater bag.  The headlines about relaxed loan terms seem like a move in the right direction, but only if you ignore the fork in the road.

This has special implications for moderate and middle-income consumers and especially for African-Americans.  Most wealth is accumulated as home values appreciate, and fewer than half (and 70 percent of Whites) use their homes to build wealth.  Too many African-Americans were at the periphery of our economy before the Great Recession, marginalized by underwater mortgages, and now ostracized by new developments that they will not be able to experience.  There is no public policy to close the income gap, the wealth gap, or the homeownership gap.  There are possibilities – Congressman Watt can push for special initiatives to include the least and left out in this wealth accumulation process.

While the Federal Housing Finance Authority, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and even the Department of Housing and Urban Development say they are making it easier for those with good credit and less wealth to enter the mortgage market, banks are going to do what they want to do.  The headlines may not be good news, but just another change to “wait and see” who can build wealth in this much-touted economic recovery.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist and author based in Washington, DC.

Oct. 26, 2014

Blackonomics

Black Vote in Vogue—Again
By James Clingman 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Black vote is said to be the determining factor in whether the Democrats hold the U.S. Senate.  President Obama is on Black radio shows, and of course “Little” Al’s TV show, giving us the rundown on how important our turnout is to next month’s election.  The Dems and Repubs are outwardly admitting that the Black vote is the X-factor in this election.  Isn’t it great to be wanted and needed, even if it is just for one day?  All across the nation, Black is popular once again, all because it’s voting time.

How should we react to this latest patronization of the Black vote?  Well, let’s look at our situation.  Black folks are being beaten, shot, and killed, and we are told to vote.  We have the highest unemployment, the lowest net worth, the highest incarceration rate, and many of our leaders tell us simply to vote.  We are treated unfairly by the criminal justice system, excluded from economic opportunities, and we are told to vote.

Young Black males are 21 times more likely to be fatally shot by police than their white counterparts.  The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data, show that Blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.  All of this, and we are told to vote.

It’s no wonder young Blacks are turned off by many of their elders.  They are the ones taking the tear gas, the batons upside their heads, the abuse, and the lethal methods used by police officers; it is only after that or between the real battles that the usual suspects show up to march, hold a press conference, make a speech, and high-tail it out of town on the next thing smokin’.

Political hacks are telling Black voters to cast our votes to make sure Democrats maintain control of the Senate during the last two years of the Obama Presidency.  My question is: What happened during the past six years of a Democrat controlled Senate?  Other than Obamacare, which was passed strictly along party lines in the Senate, what has that body done for Black folks?

One of our Black Senators, Republican Tim Scott, is busy “discovering” what it’s like to work at low level jobs in South Carolina; and since Democrat, Corey Booker, accepted a “challenge” to live on a $35.00 food stamp budget for one week, albeit, while earning $13,000 per month as Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, you can’t find him with a search warrant.  As Malcolm said, Black voters are political “chumps.”

To add insult to injury, the DNC is busy buying ads in Black newspapers, now that they need us again.  The ads, titled, “Get his back,” come after the 2012 Obama Presidential campaign raised $1 billion but only spent $985,000 with the Black press.

Since the Senate Democrat Class of 2008 took control, Black folks have done worse.  The Wall Street Journal (August 2014) reported, “The real median income of African-American households has fallen by 9.5%, more than any other major census classification.”  Since MLK spoke in 1963 we went to sleep and co-opted his dream; and we have not awakened yet.  No one can work while asleep.

Now we are being told we must keep the Democratic Senate in order to allow Barack Obama to build his legacy during his final two years.  Well, I ask:  What about our legacy?  What will be the legacy of Black voters, without whom there would not be a Black President?  Will our legacy simply be that of a bunch of emotional automatons who just felt good about having a Black President?   A naïve voting bloc that gave its entire “quid” but received no “quo”?

Politicians work for us; we don’t work for them.  At least that’s the concept.  Politics is, to borrow a phrase from Dr. Freddie Haynes, a “Cauldron of contradiction,” and we are lost in that morass of political never-never land, thinking that voting is the answer to all our ills.

Black people should not become lackeys for any political party, but in total contradiction to that, we allow ourselves to be taken for granted and used during every election.  The current message to Blacks is simply, VOTE!  They don’t have say for whom because they know we will vote Democrat.  That’s insulting to Black people, but it’s quite obvious that we don’t care.

But, in yet another effort to admonish and beseech the Black people to be critical and analytical thinkers, especially when it comes to voting, I leave you with two questions for this upcoming election:   What will Blacks gain if we vote?  What will we lose if we don’t?