August 13, 2018

Black Pastors Demonstrate Skunk-like Behavior in Meeting With Trump at White House
By Rev. Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - ”Many of us have been indicted, arrested and our homes bombed, but when we stand before the Negro population at prayer meetings, we can repeat that it is an honor to face jail for a just cause.”

If only those words of just causes and sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the actions of thousands of others—both Black and White—had seared the souls of the black preachers who met with President Trump last week, they could not have praised a man who has vulgarly demeaned women, executed a policy locking brown kids into cages and labeled black African homelands as “shitholes.”

Yet their skunk- like presence could not have hit so hard, if more of the authentic preachers, who fancy themselves as moral leaders had stood up forcibly to the obscenity of the Trump brand. In the vacuum of leadership, the skunk-like pastors just walked into the tea party, became intoxicated by having a seat at the table and left a smelly scent over just causes of black communities.

The meeting was organized by Pastor Paula White, a White evangelical Trump supporter, to discuss prison reform but made no mention of the racial injustice that fuels it nor why black NFL football players protesting the broken criminal justice system are called SOB’s by the president. No dissent was voiced as one pastor praised Trump as one of the most “pro-black” presidents and belittled Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.

While Dr. King’s name was bandied about in the meeting, the ministers should have emulated him by speaking forcefully as moral leaders with an agenda that should have included taking Trump to task for his consistent disparaging of black leaders, such as CNN’s Don Lemon, Rep. Maxine Waters (D. Calif.) and LeBron James as dumb or low-IQ individuals.  While this character assassination may energize his base, it also helps make Black Americans vulnerable to hateful acts of harassment and discrimination.

Dr. King and his disciples, often had a seat at the table, meeting with presidents, but they were accountable to those who depended upon them to address their pain. In high level meetings, the King aides worked to control the content of the agenda, searching for a win-win position. Only if that failed, did direct action of boycotts and or marches follow.

No better model of the King non-violent methods was a meeting with President John F. Kennedy which resulted in the 1963 march on Washington after the president did not agree to forcibly press Congress to pass a strong federal civil rights bill. JFK’s initial reaction, reportedly, was that the march was Ill-timed, but the movement leaders decided there is no right time for injustice. The march resulted in the bill signed into law on July 2, 1964.

The movement’s model for speaking Truth to Power did not end with King’s assassination in 1968. Coretta Scott King, his widow, continued having a seat at the table and challenging unjust human rights policies. One incident, she recalled in my recent memoir of her, Coretta, My Life, My Love, My Legacy, involved her taking Richard Nixon to task.

“As a coalition leader I had made several trips to the Nixon White House to further our human rights agenda. Not only did Nixon refuse to implement any of our policy requests, he also blocked funds for construction of the King Center which we were building to carry on my husband’s non-violent domestic programs, which the nation sorely needed. While I went out of my way not to be offensive, at a press conference I strongly criticized him for playing to a Southern strategy that denounced black people via coded language and negative stereotyping.”

Like many other civil rights leaders of her ilk, Coretta King felt she had a moral obligation when she walked into the corridors of power to speak for the disenfranchised and to challenge rather than cheerlead unjust causes in order to keep her seat at the table.

Probably it was Rosa Parks the seamstress and NAACP secretary whose arrest launched the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the modern civil rights movement, who summed up the proper role for moral leaders and what motivated her not to follow orders and move to the back of the bus.

“If was a matter of dignity. I could not have faced myself or my people, if I had moved.”

The Trump preachers are apparently march to a different beat, but despite their failings they are only part of the problem because some black church leaders and major civil rights groups, who carry weight in the black community, have not raised their voices loud enough or cemented a strategy to counter the abuses of Trump and the GOP leaders who protect him.

So, what happens when there is silence among the righteous? The Ugly Truths have a party and convince themselves of their greatness.

Barbara Reynolds is an ordained minister, educator and columnist for USA TODAY. She is the author of seven books the latest is the award winning memoirs of Coretta Scott King, My Life, My love, My legacy was published in paperback this year.

August 5, 2018

New National Poll Finds Consumers Still Want Financial Regulation

By Charlene Crowell

Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A decade ago, the entire nation suffered through a financial crisis that led to the brink of a global financial collapse.  While Wall Street reckoned with its risky practices, America’s families suffered lost wealth of nearly $2 trillion, half of it coming from communities of color who were targeted for high-cost and unsustainable mortgages.

Now a new poll finds that even with the passage of a decade, consumers still support financial regulation and related enforcement. Moreover, when it comes to payday and car-title lending, consumer scorn has grown even stronger over the past year for these small-dollar, debt trap loans that come with triple-digit interest rates.

The 2018 poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting, found that among respondents more than 90 percent viewed regulation of financial services to be very important, and registered support across partisan affiliations. Among Republicans, 85 percent supported regulation, compared to 92 percent of independents and 96 percent of Democrats.

Further, a growth in the number of consumers supporting a rule to hold payday lenders accountable increased six percentage points in just the past year. Believing that payday lenders prey upon those who have the fewest financial resources – low-wage earners, working families, and elder Americans, 79 percent of survey respondents want the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to hold these predatory lenders accountable. A similar poll taken in 2017 tallied support of a CFPB payday rule at 73 percent.

When asked about the lack of enforcement against abuses by payday lenders, 81 percent were concerned about CFPB’s inaction. And again, these strong responses crossed party lines: 77 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents, and 85 percent of Democrats.

The telephone survey of 1,000 likely 2018 general election voters occurred between June 28 to July 7, 2018, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1.  The effort was jointly underwritten by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).

“Ten years after the financial crisis, the public knows what it wants,” noted Lisa Donner, AFR executive director. “But Wall Street and high-cost lenders are constantly pushing for deregulation and spending vast amounts of money to get it.”

The current federal deregulation trend can be traced to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, and then published in the Federal Register on February 3. The order directed all federal offices to repeal two existing regulations for every new one proposed. Secondly for Fiscal Year 2017, the incremental cost of every newly proposed regulation could not bring any costs.

To put it plainly, no proposed regulation could cost a cent. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was granted the sole authority to review and decide any requested written exceptions.

That official is Mick Mulvaney, who joined the Trump Administration as its OMB Director and has dually served as the Acting CFPB Director since late 2017.

So it is particularly noteworthy that 80 percent of survey respondents expressed concerns with three recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) developments:

1. Curbing the enforcement of fair lending rules;
2. Ending enforcement of payday lending rules; and
3. Restricting public access to the Bureau’s complaint database

The 2018 survey results speak to the stark differences between CFPB today and its era before Mulvaney’s arrival.

As of July 2017, CFPB received approximately 1.3 million consumer complaints that were investigated and in turn led to a series of enforcement actions that totaled $11.9 billion of restitution, forgiveness and other enforcement. As many of these were class action cases, an even larger number of consumers -- 29 million were helped.

Broad consumer contact and confidence was bolstered by the 41 cities where CFPB held either field hearings on a given issue or public town halls, 169 visits to military installations and 63 appearances to testify before Congress.

“Before Mick Mulvaney’s tenure at the agency, the CFPB was a champion for working families – giving back billions of dollars in relief to consumers who were cheated by financial companies,” noted Mike Calhoun, CRL president.

“Now, under the CFPB’s current leadership, payday lenders have preferred access because one of their own is leading the consumer bureau,” continued Calhoun. “We need to build on CFPB’s previous success, not block its progress of protecting consumers from abusive financial practices.”

Charlene Crowell is the Communications Deputy Director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Aug. 1, 2018

Ethiopian Leader Sparks Euphoria During a Whirlwind U. S. Trip

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) - It’s been called “Abiy-mania” – an impulse to reach out and hug the young new Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, who brought an end to his country’s two-decade-long war with Eritrea and other sweeping changes in the Horn of Africa.

This month, the 41-year-old Ethiopian leader landed in the United States where he met with thousands of his countrymen and women and reiterated his message of love and unity.

“He urged them to tear down the wall of hatred and bring home the culture of innovation that Los Angeles is known for,” his chief of staff wrote on Twitter.

His six-day journey took him to Washington,D.C., Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where “Kassa”, a researcher at North Carolina State University was heard to exclaim: “I want to hug him! He’s a hugger, I know, so I want to hug him.”

Abiy’s call to the Diaspora seems to have already softened the fiercest critics of the ruling party’s previous regime.

Among them was Abede Yimenu, a former major in the Ethiopian army and one of the 300,000 Ethiopians who live in the District of Columbia. He told the Washington Post he is also thinking of going home after being away for 17 years.

Tapping his red beret, he said: “This uniform shows that we believe in this prime minister and that we still love our country and that we still need to serve our country.”

Abiy also met with the leader of Patriotic Ginbot 7, an opposition group named for May 15, the date of a general election in 2005 marred by fraud and the deaths of about 200 people. The pro-democracy party was labeled a terrorist organization by the former government.

Aside from the peace treaty with neighboring Eritrea, Abiy has lifted the state of emergency and freed hundreds of political prisoners.

Meanwhile, in Washington, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, there was dancing, flag waving and ululation. Religious leaders began the rally with prayers, praising Abiy and celebrating the future of the country. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser declared July 28 “Ethiopia Day” to great applause.

Before embarking for the west coast, Abiy met with the head of the World Bank, the IMF and Vice President Mike Pence.  He also oversaw the reconciliation of rival synods of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and met the Muslim community.

The new prime minister has the advantage of speaking fluent Oromo, Amharic, and Tigrinya. He is also steeped in Islam and the traditions of the Orthodox Church. There is something to satisfy each element of the coalition, which controls all of Parliament.

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