We Played Donald Trump Cheap; Now the Joke’s On Us By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

March 13, 2017

We Played Donald Trump Cheap; Now the Joke’s On Us
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “In several Southern states men long regarded as political clowns had become governors or only narrowly missed election, their magic achieved with a ‘witches’ brew of bigotry, prejudice, half-truths and whole lies.” - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

On Friday, January 20, America inaugurated a narcissistic misogynist millionaire who marketed to what Dr. King called the “White backlash” by playing to racist sentiments, bigotry and hatred. Just as he stole the line “Make America Great Again” from Reagan’s campaign, Trump also stole the racist page from Reagan’s play book.

As Reagan, then Governor of California, sought to reassure social conservatives (aka racists) by launching his presidential bid in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Trump has fanned the flames of xenophobia and ill-founded fears of terrorism.

His tweets and illogical rants were and continue to be a “witches’” brew of bigotry, ignorance, prejudice, half-truths and whole lies. We played him cheap and now the jokes on us.

Early on in the 2016 presidential campaign businessman Donald Trump was the media darling. CBS Chairman Les Moonves said at a Morgan Stanley conference, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS…It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

America could not get enough of Trump’s bombast, buffoonery and total disregard for truth and fact. Mainstream media was so entertained by the novelty of Trump that it ignored his inability to articulate substantive policy and lack of experience. According to a report from Harvard’s Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, “Only 11 percent of coverage focused on candidates’ policy positions, leadership abilities or personal and professional histories.”

It’s imperative that we clearly understand that this White backlash as Dr. King called it, or politics of resentment as Dr. Ronald Walters called it, is not new. What is the backlash in response to? What is this resentment directed toward?

The answer to the question is the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States. As Dr. Walters wrote in White Nationalism Black Interests – Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community, “Within American society, which includes contending social groups, there exists a balance of power that conforms to that society’s racial composition”. This balance must conform to the normal distribution of power if society is to remain in equilibrium. President Obama, in the minds of a many people became an indicator that the normal distribution of power was askew and in jeopardy.

Now this normal distribution of power has shifted so far to the right that it has placed America in jeopardy. President Trump recently tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

To date Trump has provided no evidence to substantiate this outlandish claim. But the man who ran on eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is now asking Congress to open an investigation.

The investigation should begin with Congress asking Trump to present to the public the information he used to make his claim. If not, how much tax payer money will be wasted researching another unsubstantiated claim by Trump?

The larger problem is it’s not just Trump, it’s also those around him. Here’s what Trump’s HUD Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, said about enslaved Africans: “That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity…There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.” Carson tried to “clarify” his statement by saying that anybody who’s come from a foreign place is an immigrant. Ignoring the fact that Webster defines “immigrant” as “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence”. A person “comes” to a country based upon their free will. Enslaved Africans did not come to America to take up permanent residence in pursuit of opportunity; they were brought to America against their will and worked to death.

Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently praised HBCUs as “pioneers” of the school choice movement. DeVos ignores the historical reality that in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana and other states it was illegal to teach and/or allow Africans in America - slave or free - to read. In Virginia, any slave or free person of color found at any school for teaching, reading or writing by day or night could be whipped, at the discretion of a judge, "no more than twenty lashes". Mississippi state law required a White person to serve up to a year in prison as "penalty for teaching a slave to read". The creation of HBCUs had nothing to do with choice and everything to do with the response to slave codes, Jim Crow laws and state sanctioned segregation.

During his first address to the joint session of Congress, Trump acknowledged the sacrifice of Navy Special Operator Senior Chief William ‘Ryan’ Owens, but failed to take responsibility for authorizing the raid in Yemen where he died. In fact, he tried to blame the Obama administration for authorizing the raid and leaving it for him to clean up. According to the Washington Post, In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday morning, Trump said the mission “was started before I got here.” He went on to say, “This was something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do… ‘And they lost Ryan,’ Trump continued.”

According to PBS, President Obama did not authorize the raid. It was suggested in early January that the decision be “deferred to the Trump administration, so they could run their own careful process. And President Obama agreed on that, that he would make no decision whether to do things like this, and instead that Trump should run his own process.”

Donald Trump is a man long regarded as a political clown. We mocked him, scoffed at him and dismissed him as we dismissed Sarah Palin; the lightest of lightweights. He worked his magic (and Republican thievery) and was elected by employing a “witches’” brew of bigotry, prejudice, half-truths and whole lies. A tactic he continues to employ.

You get what you vote for in America (or don’t show up to vote for). We played him cheap; now the jokes on us.

, Producer/ Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon,” on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126. 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

Revised Ban on Immigrants is 'Catastrophic', Critics Charge

March 7, 2016

Revised Ban on Immigrants is 'Catastrophic', Critics Charge

(TriceEdneyWire.com/Global Information Network) – A revised travel ban by the Trump administration is already in trouble with a leading aid agency, with the travel industry, and with the Nigerian government which has urged its citizens to postpone making trips to the U.S. without “compelling or essential reasons.”

The new travel ban, which still targets majority-Muslim countries, slightly modifies an earlier order that sparked chaos at airports across the country as travelers – even those with green cards – were denied entry by local officers.

One of the harsher critics of the new ban, the head of the NY-based International Rescue Committee, labeled it an "historic assault on refugee resettlement to the United States, and a really catastrophic cut at a time there are more refugees around the world than ever before."

“There is there is no national security justification for this ‘catastrophic’ cut in refugee admissions,” declared David Miliband, adding that the ban singles out "the most vulnerable, most vetted population that is entering the United States."

The IRC provides humanitarian aid in five African countries, six Middle Eastern countries, six Asian countries, three European countries, and 22 cities in the U.S.

Trump's latest order suspends the U.S. refugee program for 120 days, though refugees already formally scheduled for travel by the State Department will be allowed entry. When the suspension is lifted, the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. will be capped at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017.

But the new and higher bars to entry to the U.S. have the tourism industry biting its nails. Travel analytics firm ForwardKeys tallied the fall-off in major tourism-dependent U.S. cities as 6.5 percent in the eight days after President Donald Trump's initial travel ban was announced on Jan. 27th.

In New York City, analysts foresee some 300,000 fewer visitors from abroad this year than in 2016, a 2.1 percent dip. It's the first time for such a fall-off since 2008, says NYC & Company, New York's tourism arm.

Even some African countries are sounding the alarm. In Nigeria, for example, special presidential adviser Abike Dabiri-Erewa, urged Nigerians to consider postponing visits to the U.S.

“In the last few weeks, the office has received a few cases of Nigerians with valid multiple-entry US visas being denied entry and sent back to Nigeria,” she said. “In such cases, affected persons were sent back immediately on the next available flight and their visas were cancelled.”

Planned trips should be delayed, she advised, barring compelling or essential reasons, until there is clarity on the new immigration policy from Washington.

The latest action by the Trump administration could spell trouble for the 2.1 million African immigrants living in the U.S., 327,000 of whom were born in Nigeria, according to the Pew Research Center, published in February.

GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

Dr. Ben Carson Takes Over at HUD

March 5, 2017

Vice President Mike Pence swears in Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of HUD. Carson’s wife, Candy, and their granddaughter hold a Bible.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, author, and politician, was sworn in Thursday as the 17^th secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development after being confirmed in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 58 to 41.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has 8,300 employees and a budget of more than $40 billion.

Secretary Carson says he plans an ambitious listening tour of select communities and HUD field offices around the country, beginning in his native Detroit.

For nearly 30 years, Dr. Carson served as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. He is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School. He has written nine books, including four with his wife, Candy.

FBI Asked to Investigate Hanging Death of a Muslim Man By Frederick H. Lowe

March 5, 2017

FBI Asked to Investigate Hanging Death of a Muslim Man

By Frederick H. Lowe

Ben M. Keita

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Council of American-Islamic Relations in Seattle has asked the FBI to investigate the death of an 18-year-old black Muslim man who was found hanged in a wooded area near his home in Lake Stevens, Wash.

Ben M. Keita, a senior at Lake Stevens High School, was reported missing on Nov. 27, 2016.

Lake Stevens police conducted helicopter and ground searches on November 30, December 1 and December 7 but were unsuccessful in finding him.

But on January 9th young people walking in the wooded area found Keita’s lifeless body hanging from a tree. His feet were eight feet off the ground, Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, tells NorthStarNewsToday.com/BlackMansStreet.Today.

The Snohomish County Medical Examiner initially ruled Keita’s death a suicide. It is not known if a suicide note was found.

The cause of death, however, was subsequently deemed undetermined for at least two reasons. One was that Keita’s family indicated that he was a happy young man who was doing well in school and that he had no history of either anxiety or depression. The other reason given is that the rope used in Keita’s hanging was tied 50 feet up in the tree. The possibility that Keita had been lynched crossed the minds of many in the black community.

On Tuesday, CAIR asked the FBI to open an investigation into the death and called for the public to come forward with any information.

Ibrahim Keita, the teenager’s father, said his son was about to graduate from high school and that he planned to attend college and then medical school to become a doctor.

Bukhari said Keita worked at McDonald’s but police did not question any of his co-workers, Bukhari said.

The FBI said it is reviewing the case, but has not opened a full investigation.

Lake Stevens is near Everett, Wash. and north of Seattle. The small city’s population is just under 30,000. Eighty-five percent of its population is white, and approximately 1.7% of its residents are African or African American.

No Clues Yet as to New U. S. Policy for Africa, But Theories Abound

March 5, 2017

No Clues Yet as to Trump's Policy for Africa, But Theories Abound

africanyouthleaders

Young African Leaders in (YALI) DC, an Obama program on the chopping block.

(TriceEdneyWire.com/Global Information Network) – If U.S. President Donald Trump has an Africa policy in the works, he’s keeping the details close to his chest. So far, there is neither an assistant secretary of state for Africa nor an ambassador. The incumbent secretary, Linda Thomas Greenfield, retires on March 10.

Peter Pham, vice-president and Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. Is reportedly seeking a position.

In a strategy paper prepared for the Trump administration, Pham proposed an initiative he calls “earned engagement.”

The US, he says, should grant diplomatic recognition only to governments with legitimate sovereign control over their countries. Somalia, for example, would not be among those countries having had 15 transitional governments following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. None of these were recognized by Republican or Democratic administrations.

Recognition might also be withdrawn from the Democratic Republic of Congo if President Joseph Kabila fails to honor his commitment to retire this year after elections.

More resources would be channeled into Africom, according to Pham, not only to address insecurity directly, but also to continue to beef up African militaries.

Other clues as to the President’s Africa plans appeared last month in a New York Times article which revealed a retreat from development and humanitarian goals while pushing business opportunities across the continent.

New executive orders are reportedly being prepared with drastic funding cuts to U.N. peacekeeping operations – now almost a third of which are funded by the US – the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Population Fund, which oversees maternal and reproductive health programs.

Anton du Plessis, head of the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies fears that Trump will “securitize” US policy, funding and engagement in Africa, focusing heavily on security problems such as Boko Haram, while ignoring efforts to create stability in the long term through democracy, good governance and sustainable development.

Among such efforts would be one of former President Barack Obama’s most successful programs - the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) which brings several hundred young African professionals and entrepreneurs to the US for six weeks each summer.

“It is possible that Trump’s term in office will surprise us on Africa,” observed former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson. “Republican administrations have outperformed on this front before. President Bush certainly did, and his two landmark initiatives – PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation – remain extremely popular.”

But given the absence of any serious White House interest in Africa, Secretary Rex Tillerson, with limited knowledge of Africa having dealt mainly with corrupt and authoritarian leaders as head of ExxonMobil, may become the key American player on Africa.