Oct. 21, 2013

Oct. 21, 2013

Blackonomics

Political Ridiculousness 
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”  Thomas Sowell

Why do we keep electing the same people to the same office year after year, putting them in charge of our lives, despite having the absolute proof that they have not, are not, and will not work in our best interests?  The debt ceiling Kabuki Theater is yet another in a long line of what we have seen before - just a few months ago - in our so-called “government of, by, and for the people”

We, the electorate, are just stuck on stupid.  We have elected what has literally become an aristocracy to rule over us.  They play games with our lives by trying to trump one another with their pompous speeches and protestations.  All the while they are steadily piling up the dollars and becoming millionaires and, to add insult to injury, they are not subject to the rules they make for us.  As the above quote suggests, they pay no price and feel no pain from their ridiculous wrangling, debating, and decision-making.

They stroll out every now and then to give us their “insights” on what is going on in the “hallowed” halls of Congress, but then return to do nothing for us.  For themselves, however, they continue to draw their pay checks, play golf, laugh and joke, and live off the public coffers by working for a government many of them say is the problem.  What does that scenario say about those of us in the proletariat class?

"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."  Thomas Jefferson

So what do we have, folks?  Fear or tyranny?  I know one thing we do have is anger.  In some cases we have hopelessness, despair, and desperation as well. People are out of work, children are out of food, and families are out of time, while the boys and girls on Capitol Hill make decisions affecting our lives but exempting themselves and their children from the consequences of those decisions.  Have we come to the point where the inmates are running the asylum?  Many U.S. citizens are in fear for their very survival right now, and our Washington elites are conducting political business as usual, which means merely moving from one crisis to the next and asking us to vote for them the next time around.  Why should we?

The shenanigans we see on a national level also take place locally.  The “Bi-Polar Electorate” continues to put people in office who have demonstrated incompetence, a lack of business acumen, and a total disregard for “the people” who elected them.  They only come around when they want our votes, and many of them have absolutely nothing of substance to show for their previous stint of ruler-ship over us.  Yet we will allow ourselves to be swooned and swayed to vote for them again, for the simplest of reasons, knowing they have failed us in the past.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, voters passed a law that now allows council members to reign for four years instead of two years.  That means voters will have to suffer twice as long under the ineptness, the self-interest and pompous attitudes of individual politicians, and the myriad of financial crises that now plague the city.  That is, unless the voters elect folks who are not only concerned but competent, and candidates who have demonstrated their professional abilities and willingness to tackle and solve tough issues.

The ridiculousness of political engagement must stop, especially among Black people.  We must be informed to the degree that no one can simply hand us a flyer with a list of candidates for whom we should blindly vote.  We suffer the most from political incompetence and disregard, yet we are so loyal to those who do us wrong; we keep coming back to them the way an abused spouse keeps returning for more abuse.  We keep electing folks who make empty promises and lay out nebulous solutions that, in the end, never benefit us.  We keep listening to and believing political hacks that are only in the game for their own self-enrichment, as they lead us to the cliff and then step aside to allow us to plummet to the rocks below.

The Black electorate needs the most from politicians but obtains the least; our families are at the highest risk from do-nothing politicians; and we are the ones most affected by cuts, layoffs, pension fund reductions, and all the other negative aspects of political control.  Don’t you want local and national politicians who are competent, solution-oriented, and have the “audacity” to buck the status quo to get things done?

Ultimately, despite politics as usual, our caveat is clear:  We must “seek for ourselves,” as Richard Allen told Black folks back in the 1700’s.  Because, as someone said, “A government big enough to give you everything you need is a government big enough to take everything you have.” Wake up! Vote intelligently.

Oct. 21, 2013

Dr. Ben Carson 'Jumps Jim Crow' 
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery…it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control." - Dr. Ben Carson October 11, 2013  

Dr. Ben Carson is a world renowned American neurosurgeon. He is a brilliant physician with an incredibly compelling and motivational story. Born into poverty in Detroit in 1951 and raised by a single mother with a third-grade education, Carson became the first surgeon to separate conjoined twins and the youngest to head a surgical department. His focus, work ethic and commitment to excellence should be emulated by as many as possible.

Over the past year Dr. Carson has emerged on the political scene as a spokesperson for conservative interests.  Most recently he addressed the 2013 Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., making the remarks referenced above.

“Obamacare” or more accurately the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the worst thing in this nation since slavery?  Really?  I understand political diatribes and hyperbole but the worst thing in America since slavery?  How can reducing the number of uninsured Americans through an expansion of Medicaid and the creation of new health insurance exchange marketplaces be worse than slavery?

The 13^th Amendment abolished slavery in America except as punishment for a crime in 1865. Since then, African Americans have been lynched, had their farms confiscated, been denied the right to vote and have had limited or no access to public and private facilities. For an African American of Dr. Carson’s intellect and stature to publically make such assertions is historically inaccurate, irresponsible and promotes many of the racist stereotypes that are being used to garner support to overturn the law.

Does Dr. Carson really believe that the ACA is worse than the Tuskegee syphilis experiment of 1932?  This infamous clinical study was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service on 399 African American men from 1932 to 1972 to trace the natural progression of untreated syphilis.  These human “laboratory animals” thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.  By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.

Would Dr. Carson have us believe that the ACA is worse than the government sanctioned, racially motivated attack on the Greenwood district of Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921?  The Greenwood district of Tulsa, also know as Black Wall Street, was the wealthiest African American community in America. During a 16 hour period from May 31 and June 1, 1921 whites rioted, attacked the community and burned it to the ground based upon the rumor that an African American shoeshiner named Dick Roland touched a white female elevator operator named Sarah Page.

An estimated 10,000 African American residents were left homeless and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official death count by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of African American fatalities have been up to about 300.

From 1920 – 1970 the state of North Carolina forcibly sterilized more than 7,600 women.  Most of these women were poor and African American.  This eugenics program began as a means to control the birth rates of poor white woman and quickly expanded as an attack on African American woman. Woman were being sterilized like cats and dogs are spayed and neutered. Dr. Carson wants us to believe that the ACA is worse than this?

As Carson is being promoted in conservative political circles as an informed spokesman on the talk circuit he has quickly become a political minstrel show.  He’s jumping Jim Crow. Jump Jim Crow is a song and dance that was performed in blackface by a white comedian named Thomas Dartmouth around 1830, the early minstrel era of American entertainment.  It made a mockery of African Americans; lampooning them as dim-witted, lazy, and buffoonish.  The expression to Jump Jim Crow came to mean "to act like a stereotyped stage caricature of a black person" usually by a White person.

Dr. Carson has once again put his black face on political ideology that is contrary to the interests of the African American community and validates denigrating stereotypes perpetuated by its enemies. Earlier this year Carson told a CPAC audience that “Nobody is starving on the streets (of America). We have always taken care of them. We have churches which actually are much better mechanisms for taking care of the poor because they are right there with them. This is one of the reasons we give tax breaks to churches...”

He is lending his voice and using his personal narrative to validate the conservative “blame the poor” political agenda and undermine the social safety net in America. The argument is that the Carson’s of the world have overachieved in spite of the odds; therefore, the inability of the poor (stereotypically the “Black poor”) in America to rise into the middle class or beyond is due to personal failure, lack of drive, initiative, and dependence upon the government. Carson made it; why can’t they?

The ACA is far from perfect.  The flaws in the legislation will be flushed out and addressed over time or it will die a natural death.  How the Obama administration allowed the government web site to go live without beta testing, anticipating the problems and without immediate fixes for them is at least irresponsible.  These issues should not invalidate the reality that providing access to health care coverage for more Americans is a good thing.

As a physician Dr. Ben Carson should know better.  If he has problems with the ACA he should present his issues using accurate data and facts; not baseless political ideology and foolish hyperbole.

Dr Carson’s stature in the medical community makes his comments even more reckless. Even reasonable but uninformed people might try to find truth in his words. He is allowing the reputation that he has earned based upon his stellar professional accomplishments, focus, work ethic, and commitment to excellence as a surgeon to be used as a front by white ultra-conservatives. He is attempting to undermine greater access to health care and other social programs; the social safety net that is needed now more than ever before.

He’s a pitiful one-man minstrel show.  He’s Jumpin’  Jim Crow.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/ Host of the Sirisu/XM Satellite radio channel 110 call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon” Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com  © 2013 InfoWave Communications, LLC

 Oct. 21, 2013

'Yes, We Can'?
By William E. Spriggs

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Adults took over Washington, D.C., and now America can catch its breath after another manufactured crisis in our economy: 16 days of a federal shutdown that disrupted virtually every aspect of the economy, from small business loans to veterans' funerals. But, what now?

Clearly, Republicans hurt their brand, recklessly risking default on America's debt obligations they helped create with tax cuts for the rich. Republicans are now grappling with what to do with their tea party extremists whose obstinate behavior prolonged the crisis they set out to create. The American people have resoundingly rejected that sort of behavior of bargaining by ultimatum and taking the government and the American people hostage to their demands. Republicans must come to grips with having lost the presidential election and the national debate on their policy themes.

To show they can govern responsibly, they must now find how to offer constructive engagement in the national dialogue to gain compromise on the course of policies. Elections have consequences, one of which must be acceptance of the will of the American people to move in a different direction. Taking the course of passive resistance to refuse to do their work to pass budgets and pay America's bills is not acceptable.

But, having won this round, and in hopes Republicans understand their role is to be a partner in governing, the president also has challenges ahead. He must continue to take on and point out the extremist nature of the tea party demands. The tea party has made clear it does not negotiate, it does not compromise. The president is not negotiator in chief; his job is not to yield our nation's fortunes to the whims of a vocal, and wrong, minority like the tea party. His job is to unite the 80 percent of us who do not have their extreme views.

First, the president needs to recognize that since 2010, he has paid too much attention to pleasing the tea party and its views and too little attention and focus on the real issues at hand. Five years since the financial markets collapsed, the economy is not well. The tea party believes, and the president has compromised to help them get their policy view implemented, that the problem is government. He froze the pay of federal workers and has reduced the size of the federal workforce. He now has federal expenditures at levels lower than in 2008 under George W. Bush.

The federal deficit, measured against the size of the economy, is half the size it was when he took office, and the long-term debt and deficit outlook shows it is a diminishing problem. This is the economic frame of the tea party. It is a vision that if we shrink the government, all will be fine. If the government gets out of the way, corporations will be more profitable, the stock market will boom, the rich will get richer and investment in the economy will soar and the economy will expand.

And the tea party is getting the economy shaped, according their vision: corporate profits have soared during this recovery. They are higher and make a growing share of the economy while wages are a shrinking share. The stock market is operating at record levels for its indexes. The rich are getting richer. Their incomes continue to climb as their share of income reaches even higher levels.

But what has this austerity gotten us? We still have nearly 2 million fewer payroll jobs than in January 2008, and the share of Americans who are employed remains stuck at its 2010 level, more than 3 percentage points below its 2008 level. The median income of families is still lower than in 2008. The number of U.S. children in poverty is higher than in 2008. Our investment in our children's basic education, expenditure per pupil in kindergarten through high school, is near record lows. Families' number one debt after their mortgage is now loans to pay for college education to make up for the gap in investment we are failing to make in higher education.

This experiment with compromising with the tea party on its vision of what is hurting the economy is clearly failing. It isn't just that the tea party's tactics are wrong-it is that their policies take us nowhere. This isn't about compromising. It is about leadership and vision.

In 2008, President Barack Obama campaigned with the slogan, "Yes, We Can." To Americans convinced that George Bush had taken us in the wrong direction, it inspired a belief that we could transform from policies to serve the rich to policies that put America's families first. The American public bought into the idea that a new metric would rule: America is doing well if America's families were doing well. We wouldn't measure the economy by the stock market index and the health of Wall Street; we would measure success by our children and their well-being.

The vision of the tea party is clear. This economy is doing well. If most Americans are not doing well, it is because they are lazy malcontents. Corporate profits are soaring, Wall Street is all smiles, the rich are getting richer so those who aren't on one of those trains have only themselves to blame. We just need to continue on the path we are on: smaller and smaller government. We had an election in 2012 when Mitt Romney got to deliver that vision-and he lost.

President Obama must return to leading. There needs to be a clear vision of where America is headed. There has to be clear acknowledgement that this path is failing us. His speech on Thursday did not do that. Cutting people off from food-as the tea party-led House did with its cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that also would cut more than 200,000 children from reduced price school lunches-in service to helping shrink the government to make the world safer for corporate profits and tax-free lives for the rich is not measuring America's success by our children's well-being. Threatening the future of Social Security and Medicaid benefits for our children who currently have the lowest level of employment of any American generation, in jobs that pay poorly and provide no retirement benefits, in the name of smaller government and lower taxes for the rich is not a vision of a society that measures its success based on the well-being of its children.

Continuing to fight against funding for teachers to replace the hundreds of thousands lost to our children's classrooms, overcrowding their classrooms and cutting our investment in our children's education so the government can be smaller and the rich richer is not creating a society focused on the well-being of our children. Letting our infrastructure collapse, so our children will be faced with even higher bills to fix our roads, update our water and sewer systems and keep our ports operable, so the rich can pay fewer taxes, is not putting the welfare of our children first.

Can we use this moment to return to a vision where the American people get a government that works to create an economy that serves them, rather than a government that thinks the role of the people is to serve corporate profits? Can President Obama lead away from the destructive path we are on, stuck on tripling down on the tea party vision of even more deficit reduction? Can President Obama admit the economy is failing Main Street and set a new vision aimed at the security of America's families?

Can President Obama give voice to the concern of the unemployed who have their benefits threatened when they are set to expire in December, so they are part of the crisis? Can President Obama heal the damage being done to our federal civil servants who continue with frozen pay and serve as cannon fodder for political games rather than the respected protectors of our safety and providers of our civil life? Can President Obama stop selling trade agreements that boost corporate profits at the expense of American jobs and communities as the necessary sacrifice to corporations' health and instead focus on agreements that stop the global race to the bottom on wages, workers' safety and the environment?

In 2008, then-Sen. Obama extolled us, "Yes, We Can." In 2013, let's hope he still believes in America's people enough to double down the bets on us. He needs to lead in uniting the 80 percent who want to believe that we just won back our government, so the government can serve us: "Can We?"

Follow Spriggs on Twitter: @WSpriggs.

Oct. 20, 2013

Who Sounds Unpatriotic?
By Dr. E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) –Since President Barack Obama has been President, we’ve seen the best and the worst of behavior from some of our leaders.  When the President was elected, many of us felt America was at her best.  For one brief moment, we thought we’d at least come close to overcoming America’s racist past. Well, that didn’t last long.

We began hearing the questioning of the legitimacy of our President.  It was done in several ways.  His birth certificate was challenged over and over and over!  Insults have been yelled at him from the floor of Congress.  There is frequent talk of “taking back our country”—as if Black people don’t belong here.  Some questioned his education.  After criticizing his Christian faith, he was arbitrarily assigned the Muslim faith!  He was mocked as a chimpanzee.  He’s been called the “Kenyan”.  He’s had to endure unfair criticism of the First Lady and listen to silly rhetoric about her efforts to help America’s children realize a healthier lifestyle.  He’s been called a dictator, arrogant, lazy—you name it!

All the time, these over the top critics claim to be patriotic.  This led me to my dictionary to reaffirm the meaning of patriotism.  I came up with, “A patriot is one who loves his country and zealously supports its authority and interests”.  Surely the President fits that bill.  He’s endured the insults with grace.  He has worked hard to reduce the nation’s debt –and succeeded in a big way.  He’s promoted job growth in an effort to put the American people to work. He’s built positive relations with numerous leaders of other nations.  He’s worked to get immigration reform.  He’s championed an affordable health care plan for all in need of health care.  He’s supported a non-discrimination clause based upon pre-existing conditions.  He’s promoted women’s rights, signed the Violence Against Women’s Act, supported fair pay for women, named two women judges to the Supreme Court and the list goes on.

As for his critics, they caused the government to shut down, voted more than 40 times to take affordable health care away from the most vulnerable, blocked the Jobs Bill, defeated the Farm Bill,  threatened to take away basic subsistence from women, infants and children who’ve got no other means of support. They’ve tried to obliterate a woman’s right to choose health care and crash the economy. They blocked tax on companies that shipped jobs overseas, opened the floodgates for campaign donations that suppress human rights, blocked immigration reform that would’ve added over 1 trillion dollars to our economy in a decade, blocked benefits to homeless veterans, blocked healthcare benefits for 911 first responders who became ill from being at Ground Zero, blocked improvements to domestic violence programs, attempted to block the Unemployment Extension bill and more.  As soon as the President was in office, a team of critics met to figure out how to make him fail.

More reasonable people have begun to say, “This was all about trying to bring-down the President, and block any success for which he might get credit”.  All of this blocking is twisted behavior that goes beyond politics.  These actions are the essence of UNPATRIOTIC behavior.

The critics are the ones who shut down the government - an unpatriotic act - for over two weeks. This was an attempt to block the President’s efforts for the good of our nation, but they made life miserable for many.  Just in case I’m not clear on who the unpatriotic ones are, here’s what Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) said when midway through his opening remarks at a recent hearing.  He held up a small blue- edged mirror facing across the room and said, “If Republican colleagues will look at me, I will show you who is responsible.”

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