Black Unemployment Rate Jumped to 11.4 Percent in July by Frederick H. Lowe

August 3, 2014

Black Unemployment Rate Jumped to 11.4 Percent in July
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - July was a bad news month for African-American workers, although nonfarm payroll employment increased by 209,000.

The overall unemployment rate on a seasonally adjusted basis for Blacks climbed to 11.4 percent, up from 10.7 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning.

The jobless rate for Black men 20 years old and older was 11.1 percent in July compared to 10.9 percent in June. And the unemployment rate for Black women 20 years old and older was 10.1 percent in July, dramatically up from 9 percent in June.

The jobless rate for Black workers is twice as high or even higher than other racial or ethnic groups. The unemployment rate for Whites was 5.3 percent in July, the same as it was in June. The jobless rate in July for White men 20 years old and older was 4.8 percent, down from 4.9 percent in June.

The number of White women 20 years old and older who were out of work in July was 4.9 percent, up slightly from June, which was 4.8 percent.

Hispanics also fared better in the job market compared to African-Americans. The jobless rate for Hispanics was 7.8 percent in July, the same as June.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the Asian unemployment rate was 4.5 percent in July, down from 5.1 percent in June.

BLS reported the overall unemployment rate in July was 6.2 percent. Businesses added jobs in professional and business services, manufacturing and construction.

Holder is Correct: Racial Animus Plays Role in Obama Opposition by Morris Dees

July 27, 2014

Holder is Correct: Racial Animus Plays Role in Obama Opposition
By Morris Dees

NEWS ANALYSIS

President Obama and Attorney General Holder spoke last year

during reception honoring lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

PHOTO: White House

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Right-wing pundits have jumped all over Attorney General Eric Holder for daring to suggest that “racial animus” plays a role in the “level of vehemence” that’s been directed at President Obama. They've denounced him for “playing the race card” and “stoking racial divisions.”

But who do they think they’re fooling? The rhetoric is what’s hateful. Calling people out for it is not.

The racism Holder described has been obvious since the 2008 campaign, when Obama was portrayed as someone who was not a “real American” – a Muslim, a Kenyan, a communist, even a terrorist sympathizer. Since then, an entire movement has been built around the thoroughly discredited notion that the president’s birth certificate is a fake. And that’s just the beginning.

Newt Gingrich has called Obama the “food stamp president” and referred to his “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

Rush Limbaugh has said Obama – and Oprah Winfrey, too, by the way – have reached the pinnacle of their professions only because they’re black. He added this week that “so-called conservative media types” praised Holder’s nomination only because he’s Black.

Glenn Beck has said the president, whose mother was White, has a “deep-seated hatred for White people, or White culture.” Conservative hero and former rock star Ted Nugent, who was invited to campaign with the GOP nominee for Texas governor, called the president a “subhuman mongrel.”

A Confederate flag was waved in front of the White House during last year’s “Million Vet March.” U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina screamed “You lie!” during the president’s address to Congress in September 2009. When has that happened to a president before?

All manner of overtly racist posters have been seen at Tea Party rallies, including one depicting the president as a “witch doctor.”

We’ve repeatedly seen stories about conservative politicians sharing racist jokes about Obama.
And, we’ve seen an explosive growth of radical-right groups, including armed militias, since Obama was elected, and repeated threats that violence is needed to “take our country back” from the “tyranny” of Obama. This is part of a backlash to the growing diversity in our country, as symbolized by the presence of a Black man in the White House.

I grew up in rural Alabama during the Jim Crow years and lived through the civil rights movement, when White supremacists did everything they could, including committing violent atrocities, to turn back the tide of progress. And I’ve stared across the courtroom at some of America’s most vicious hatemongers – men like neo-Nazi Frazier Glenn Cross, who recently killed three people and once targeted me. I know racism when I see it.

No one, of course, is suggesting that merely disagreeing with Obama is evidence of racism. That’s clearly not true.

But we have a political party and a right-wing media machine that pander incessantly to the racist reactionaries in our society, often through code words. It’s been going on since Nixon implemented his “Southern strategy” of appealing to White resentment in the wake of the civil rights movement. I wish it weren’t so. But it is simply undeniable. We should call it what it is.

Howard University Names Surgeon and MBA as President by Frederick H. Lowe

Howard University Names Surgeon and MBA as President
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Howard University Board of Trustees has named Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., a cancer surgeon, as the Washington, D.C., school's 17th president.

"I am deeply honored to be selected by the board of trustees to lead this great university," Frederick said. "Howard University has been an unparalleled catalyst since its founding, opening doors and expanding opportunity for untold individuals while driving research, innovation, service and excellence. On the cusp of our 150th anniversary, I could not be more humbled to accept the mantle of leadership and embrace the sacred trust of our motto, Truth and Service."

Howard, which is named in honor of Union Army Gen. Oliver O. Howard, was founded March 2, 1867. In 2012, the school's enrollment was slightly over 10,000. The university's endowment now stands at $600 million, the highest it has been in the school's history.

The presidential search committee, chaired by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., on Monday selected Frederick to succeed Sidney Ribeau, Ph.D., who announced in October 2013 that he would retire in December after five years at the helm. Ribeau was 65 years old at the time.

Frederick had served as Howard's interim president since Ribeau's announcement.

Frederick has a long history at Howard.

He enrolled in Howard as a 16 year-old from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to become a physician. Frederick earned a bachelor's of science degree and a M.D. at the school.

At 22 years old, Frederick entered the surgical residency program at Howard University Hospital. He completed a post-doctoral research fellowship and surgical oncology fellowship at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

He also earned a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Howard University's School of Business. Frederick, 43, is married and he and his wife have two children.

Trying to Understand What Makes Sense By William Spriggs

July 27, 2014

Trying to Understand What Makes Sense

By William Spriggs

Two boys at the Detroit Water Rally held July 18. Photo: Courtesy/National Nurses United

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Last month, a United Nations panel held that cutting off water to Detroit residents suffering from high unemployment rates and low incomes, leaving them unable to afford their water bills, was a violation of basic human rights. This past weekend, actor Mark Ruffalo and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) joined close to a thousand protesters in a march organized by National Nurses United from Detroit's Cobo Center to Hart Plaza. The chants of the crowd included "We got sold out, banks got bailed out." And there were renewed calls for a financial transaction tax, commonly referred to as a "Robin Hood tax."

It was announced this week that the water shutoffs would be temporarily suspended for 15 days.

During the Great Depression there was a stock market bubble that burst on Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929. But there also was massive land speculation that collapsed the local economies of Texas, Florida and California, leading to more than 2,000 municipalities and municipal corporations being in default. The uncertainty of resolving the issue led Congress in 1934 to create a special chapter of the federal bankruptcy law to handle municipal bankruptcies.

Chapter 9 bankruptcies have spiked in each of the last three recessions. They have not reached the heights of the Great Depression. This has allowed room to treat each bankruptcy as a unique case-but the trend clearly suggests these are not independent events.

In the case of water and sewage bonds and the city of Detroit, the hike in water rates involves the perverse logic Chapter 9 was intended to avoid. A rash of foreclosures from the housing crisis helped escalate a depopulation of Detroit, while the largest drop in automobile demand in U.S. history that was part of the Great Recession meant a loss of employment in Detroit. The result of depopulation and less economic activity of course meant less revenue for the water authority-but the bonds still needed to be paid. So that means a hike in water bills for an unemployed and poor population.

The full costs of the Great Recession still are being tallied. Regrettably, distant from the free fall of 2008, the stories have been pointing blame at Detroit, Flint, Puerto Rico, Sacramento and the hundreds of other local government authorities that still need to meet basic government functions-like the provision of clean water-but with big drops in revenue.

In fact, while the number of payroll positions have reached their 2008 peak, public employment still is down, and state and local governments continue to shrink their budgets. But we still have children to educate, roads that must be repaired and in cities like Chicago, public order and safety to maintain.

So, how does it make sense that President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen could bum rush Congress into a huge, multibillion-dollar deal to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but there is no national outcry when a city the size of Detroit can't provide affordable water to its citizens? If banks are too big to fail, don't we have cities too big to fail? Where Hurricane Katrina caused too much water that drowned New Orleans, isn't it also a catastrophe when thousands of households surrounded by potable water can't afford a drink? Doesn't the plight of Detroit at least warrant a White House convening?

The current level of cynicism created by our political leadership feigning impotence to deliver solutions to simple problems like affordable water is dangerous. In the case of Detroit, it is the same indifference to the poor we saw in New Orleans after Katrina. It is a mixture of two odd beliefs: That the poor created this problem-too lazy to pay rising water bills or too lazy to flee the rising waters from a broken levee-and, if it will cost money, then it isn't something that government should fix.

The government can solve the problems of rich Wall Street banking firms that can't pay their bills-even if it means creating a whole new government apparatus like the TARP. But the government cannot refinance the water system of Detroit, repair our roads or come up with the funds to keep our schools from closing in Chicago or Philadelphia?

This set of inconsistencies fuels the right-wing fanaticism of the Tea Party and the nihilism of the violence we see in cities like Chicago. Both are too dangerous to ignore.

We need a financial transactions tax to ensure we never have to ask how we can afford the government we deserve.

Follow Spriggs on Twitter: @WSpriggs. Contact: Amaya Smith-Tune Acting Director, Media Outreach AFL-CIO 202-637-5142

Ordered to Prison Sept. 8, Ray Nagin Files Appeal Notice

July 27, 2014

Ordered to Prison Sept. 8, Ray Nagin Files Appeal Notice

c.raynagin

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin last week filed a formal notice of appeal in the corruption case that resulted in a guilty verdict on 20 of 21 criminal counts and a 10-year prison sentence, The Associated Press reported.

Nagin, a Democrat and businessman who campaigned for mayor on an anti-corruption platform, was convicted in February on charges including conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. The charges stem from his two terms as mayor from 2002 to 2010 — including the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.

During his first term in office, Nagin often referred to himself as a “change agent” who was committed to rooting out public corruption.

With the support and backing of the New Orleans business community, Nagin was able to move up from the back of a crowded field of mayoral candidates to defeat former NOPD Supt. Richard Pennington in the 2002 mayoral race.

Three years later, the mayor’s woes began to mount with the colossal challenge of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city. With the pressures growing to make it possible for displaced New Orleanians to return home and get the city back up and running, Nagin tried to reassure displaced Black residents that they would always be welcome in post-Katrina New Orleans by uttering his now-infamous comments about New Orleans always being a “Chocolate City.”

The brief notice said the appeal will cover the verdict, the sentence and an order that Nagin forfeit over $500,000 acquired illegally, as well as court rulings prior to the verdict.

The notice was filed in U.S. District Court, and the appeal will be considered by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to court papers, the appeal is “including but not limited to the court’s judgment on the jury’s verdict, sentencing, fine, assessment and forfeiture, as well as all other prejudgment interlocutory orders and rulings in this case.”

Nagin, 58, has been ordered to report to the federal prison in Oakdale, La. on September 8.

A defiant Nagin continues to insist he is innocent and that he is paying the price for standing up to powerful people in New Orleans. On the local WBOK radio station, Nagin has talked often about a “shadow government” that controls everything that happens in the Crescent City.

His remarks puzzled some residents who disapproved after Nagin huddled with wealthy White business owners from New Orleans in Dallas, Texas shortly after Hurricane Katrina to devise a blueprint for post-Katrina New Orleans, When criticized by some residents and questioned by the media, Nagin said he saw nothing wrong with Blacks not being a part of that meeting because Blacks don’t participate in New Orleans’ economy in a meaningful way.

Until his indictment in 2013, Nagin was perhaps best known for a widely heard, profanity-laced radio interview in which he angrily blasted the federal response in the days after levee breaches flooded most of the city during Katrina.

He had been elected as a reformer, but prosecutors said graft in his administration pre-dated Hurricane Katrina and flourished afterward. The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business, Stone Age, LLC.

While Nagin appeals his case, prosecutors may appeal as well. They had pushed for a sentence of about 20 years, pointing out that the former convicted mayor has shown no remorse. Federal prosecutors objected when U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan departed from federal guidelines with the 10-year sentence.

Robert Jenkins, Nagin’s lead attorney, had argued that Nagin should be spared a stiffer sentence because he was a first-time offender for whom a 20-year sentence would be a “virtual life sentence.”

Judge Berrigan seemed to agree, explaining that she didn’t believe Nagin was a criminal ringleader and perhaps made questionable decisions because of his desire to help those around him.

A decision on whether to appeal will be made by the U.S. Solicitor General in Washington, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“It’s interesting that Ray Nagin has been painted like some kind of champion of Black people’s rights in New Orleans because his record as mayor does not reflect that,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “During his tenure, cops were killing Black people like we were going out of style, the Road Home program was methodically shortchanging many Black homeowners in New Orleans, thousands of Black teachers, administrators and school staffers were fired by the state and the city’s housing projects were torn down without any input from the people who lived there.

“White people are now disappointed that Nagin just received a 10-year prison sentence, but that vendetta was sparked by the ‘Chocolate City’ remark,” Aha added. “Many people seem to forget that it was the white business community that went out and found Ray Nagin, recruited him to run for mayor and threw its support behind him to catapult him to victory. Those same people in the business community now take no responsibility for putting Ray Nagin in the driver’s seat at City Hall.”