With all the lies being swirled about by the meanstream press, Mitt-twits, Ryan, Akin, and others in an effort to undermine President Obama, I would be totally remiss if I let this day end without sending this wonderful message to the President via Joel and Victoria Osteen.
Everybody needs a boost every once and a while, and that is as true of President Obama as any of the rest of us. And since I know that Blacks in America are praying for him every day, I thought I'd share this with him and the rest of us.
I received it online about 1:30 am on the morning of August 22, 2012 and thought, "how appropriate." The meanstream media is using scare tactics, alleging that he is trying to stop welfare and reduce benefits, cut Medicare, and other blatant lies, leaving several low income and middle class recipients in a quandry as to who to believe, what to do, and what will happen.
And President Obama handles all these slings, arrow, trickery, lies, and deceit with a smile, and a firm resolve. Here is the message from TODAY’S WORD from Joel and Victoria Osteen:
"Anytime you set out to do something great in life, there will be critics. If you’re going to be a great {PRESIDENT}, businessperson, coach, student, leader or employee, there will be opposition. The more success you have, the more opportunities there will be for distractions. The higher you go, the more haters will come out. When you start stretching to a new level and pursuing what God has placed in your heart, the jealous people, the critical people, and the small-minded people come out of the woodwork and start making negative comments, but you don’t have to let that distract you.
If you are under pressure today, if the critical voices are coming against you, know that it’s because you are making a difference. Don’t let them throw you off course. Instead, dig your heels in, set your face like a flint, and say, “I will not get distracted. I will not get drawn into battles that don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what others think; it matters what God thinks! Today, look beyond the critics. Stand strong in adversity. Press forward to what lies ahead and win the prize of life that He has prepared for you! A PRAYER FOR TODAY Father, today I choose to let go of the negative voices, offenses and hurts from critical voices. I choose to focus on You and the good plan You have for me. Give me Your peace and joy as I move forward in the victory You have prepared for me in Jesus’ name! Amen" — Joel & Victoria Osteen
Now, in the interest of “separation of church and state” let me say that this is a spiritual message, not a religious one; and I trust that it will be accepted in the spirit of which it was intended. GDW
That said, it appears that President Obama has already been following those very principles, as he takes on the lies that have been hitting the media as of late. Interestingly enough, it's apparently one of those “let's throw it up against the wall and see what sticks” news reporting types. Under the principle that by the time the truth surfaces, a sufficient number of people will have been so intimidated, they most likely will not have done their own due diligence, so that by the time the truth does come through, they will have panicked hundreds of others.
It really means that the President spends as much time doing damage control and debunking the lies, as he does with getting his own message out. However, the Obama campaign has wasted no time in hitting Mitt Romney on his lies about Medicare in an advertisement his campaign has been running in the last several days. The ad had been misleading seniors that Romney would not cut medicare for seniors, when in fact that is exactly what his plan calls for. Additionally, pick Paul Ryan’s budget plan calls for vouchers for seniors, and privatizing Social Security.
According to National Memo: “Paul Ryan has been boasting that he welcomes a debate on medicare because the Republicans have been using their mothers to scare seniors that Obama had cut medicare by $716 billion. Obama's ad uses the independent non-partisan AARP (which represents seniors) to rebut Romney’s lies, and the ad will run in several battleground states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.
The sad thing is that, since many of the battle ground states are, by definition, dominated by Rep-ugh-blicans, we have to make sure that the messages are getting through. So here's my recommendation: For those of you who have relatives in these states – and if you've immigrated to New York City, it's more likely that you do, than not, make yourself a committee of one to communicate with your relatives, friends, associates, classmates in these states, keeping them abreast of what Obama is doing, and the effort on the part of the detractors in their states to distort the truth.
If they are computer literate, or have a relative or friend who is, forward information via the internet, via email, to them. Get them into chat rooms and make sure they are saturated with the Good News about Obama's Plans for them. You have no idea how deprived they are of current information – especially the seniors, who, like my Mom, will probably never use a computer (she's 89); or my brother, who's computer is sitting on a desk in his home, never hooked up.
Send them updates. Call and have a conversation with them. Mail them material. Don't assume that it will be done by the local – although they are doing their best, it never hurts to hear it from a loved one, someone who is a little closer to the action.
We, as humans, do have the tendency to catastrophize about subjects, especially when we don't have current information. If you have it, share it – here in this neighborhood, and the neighborhood you left behind. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania California (yes, California), are in dire need of updates and info. If it was possible, I think it would be great to take bus loads to each of these states (we're going to Pennsylvania on the 25th) so people can see and hear first hand, what the rep-ugh-blicans are trying to suppress. When in doubt, you can log on to the President's Website, or the White House, and get updated.
In the interim, feel free to also appropriate the Osteen message for your own personal use, share it with friends, and at the same time share the fact that as in 2008, when Presidential Candidate said “Yes We Can”, in 2012, not only are we saying “Yes We Can Again,” we are saying “Yes We Will” RE-ELECT PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA.
Stay Blessed & ECLECTICALLY BLACK Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Well we're nearly in the middle of June, and this month has just been moving on, NON-STOP. There is so much going on simultaneously, you practically have to be on rollerblades, or clone yourself to do it all.
Not only is June Caribbean Heritage Month, celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of our brothers and sisters throughout the Caribbean, but it's also Black Music Month, celebrating the vast treasure trove of music we have contributed and continue to contribute to the world. This also Juneteenth, the celebration of the first pronouncement of the Emancipation Proclamation - though slaveholders in Texas and other southern states tried to hide the truth from our ancestors. This is a time for celebration and jubilation. We also lost our beloved Icon, Michael Jackson, in June.
Wow - of course for those of you who are June Geminis, the fact that this month speeds by twice as fast as any other month is perfectly normal to you. Being that you're twins, you are accustomed this break neck pace. My June Cancerians, on the other hand, have a way of mellowing the month out and taking it all in stride.
That being the case, those of you who are in Queens will definitely want to participate in this monumental community development event. I received it from my friend, Glenn Greenich, a co-member of NY CitiWorks:
Farmers Boulevard Empowerment Week to be held from June 14-16, 2012
Empowerment. Oppression. Historically these have been very forceful words that conjure up images and memories of the civil rights movement and similar struggles from the history of nations around the world. Farmers Boulevard Community Development Corp. (FBCDC) is using these terms in a somewhat different manner for a series of forums being held from June 14-16 called Farmers Boulevard “Empowerment Week.” We put forth that “empowerment” is a conscious decision to settle for nothing less than the best that you deserve and the best that you are capable of. Hence, “oppression” is a pattern of settling for less than your best. Are you living an empowered life, or an oppressed life?
Who are we to ask such an intrusive question, and how does this conversation relate to our mission of revitalizing Farmers Boulevard? Well, take a look at our agenda for Farmers Boulevard Empowerment Week 2012, and please join us in these important discussions about the development of our community: Entrepreneurial Empowerment Forum: New Idea to New Venture Thursday, June 14, 6:30 p.m.: Presented by Queens Economic Development Corporation in partnership with FBCDC. We have the goal of attracting new and vibrant businesses to fill the storefront vacancies along Farmers Boulevard. We need empowered entrepreneurs to achieve our goal, but this event is open to anyone considering starting a new business venture, whether you plan to locate on Farmers Boulevard or elsewhere. Artist Empowerment Mixer & Forum: First Comes Love, Then Comes Manage Friday, June 15, 7:00 p.m.: This ground-breaking event will be held at the soon-to-be reopened “triangle building” on Farmers Boulevard, which is being redeveloped as an event space. By registration only we are including painters, poets, authors, actors, playwrights, producers, musicians and many other types of artist in the June 15th social mixer and panel discussion about earning an income from your creative talent. Early Childhood Empowerment Forum: As We Rise, They Will Shine Saturday, June 16, 11:00 a.m:. Farmers Boulevard is a hub for a significant concentration of daycare centers, pre-schools and K-5 public elementary schools. Many of these programs have been experiencing a variety of challenges, including reduced enrollment, budget constraints, need for renovations, and other issues that detract from the teachers' ability to provide a first-class experience to these young children. Our June 16th forum will bring together parents, educators, pre-school directors and community stakeholders to identify the most important action steps and investments that we, as a community, must make to secure a bright start for our young ones.
Returning to Work Saturday, June 16, 4:00 p.m.: There are unspoken numbers of men and women in our local community who are unemployed or underemployed, and several who were formerly incarcerated. FBCDC recognizes that it is difficult for all kinds of people to find employment in this economy, but minorities and especially those among us with criminal records and without diplomas and degrees have a strikingly challenging battle to fight. The traditional channels of education and job-seeking do not always welcome everyone with these backgrounds, but we must identify the best ways to gain employment and to empower each member in our community to earn a productive living. The Empowerment Week events are free and open to the public, but pre-registration is necessary for the Artist Empowerment Mixer. All events will be held at the African Center for Community Empowerment, 111-20 Farmers Boulevard, St. Albans, except the Artist Mixer which will be held at the Triangle Building. If would like to attend any of the forums, please RSVP to events@farmersblvd.org. Thank you. Visit Us Online at www.farmersblvd.org Follow Us On Twitter http://twitter.com/farmersblvd Glenn Greenidge, Commercial Mortgage Consultant; Commercial Real Estate Specialist Unlimited Realty Services, Farmers Blvd Community Development Corp; Money Quest/Cost Segregation Services Inc. 347 776-7817 cell "Ask me how I can create Tax Savings for Commercial Property Owners for 2011 Tax Year" June is CARIBBEAN HERITAGE MONTH: In June 2005, the House of Representatives unanimously adopted H. Con. Res. 71, sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, recognizing the significance of Caribbean people and their descendants in the history and culture of the United States. On February 14, 2006, the resolution similarly passed the SenatE. Since the declaration, the White House has issued an annual proclamation recognizing June as Caribbean-American Heritage Month. This year marks the seventh anniversary of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month.
The campaign to designate June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month, was spearheaded by Dr. Claire Nelson, Founder and President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, to ensure that America is reminded that its greatness lies in its diversity. Caribbean immigrants from founding father Alexander Hamilton, to journalist Malcolm Gladwell, who have shaped the American dream, Shirley Chisholm and Una Clarke New York City Council; Yvette Clark, US Congressional Represent from Brooklyn's 11th CD; to the Mighty Sparrow, and so many others Celebrate June... Caribbean American Heritage Month JUNE IS BLACK MUSIC MONTH: In 1979 President Jimmy Carter named June Black Music Month. President Obama recenty announced it to the public as African American Music Month. It is a time to appreciate all that our musical talents, past, present, and future, have added to this rich culture.
That said, I, selfishly, chose to honor MANDRILL, a group whose music spans rhythm & blues, Latin, Jazz, Caribbean soul, including calypso and reggae.
The group, which now celebrates it's 42nd year, has consistently gone above and beyond the mundane when it comes to music, with as much appeal to our contemporary artists as they had to us Black in the day. Such songs as Fence Walk, Ape Is High/Git It All, Lord of the Golden Baboon, are as danceable to day as they were in the 70's.
MANDRILL continues to tour, as they stated in their recent interview on 900 AM WURD, Philadelphia, (WWW.900AMWURD.COM) hosted by Richard M. Cooper, Ph.D. MSW.
The Bad Boys from Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy (do or die) deserve much props for their continued commitment to excellence and quality through music and lyrics. They have shared the stage with legends such as Roy Ayers, Gil Scott Heron, the late Jon Lucien, Miles Davis, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Bootsie Collins, Tito Puente, Earth Wind & Fire, The Eagles, Santana, James Brown, Deep Purple and David Bowie, Randy Weston, War, among so many others. According to Kenneth Mallory, of the Washington Afro-American: “Mandrill’s music has shaped Rock & Roll history.”
To The Wilson Brothers: Lou*, Ric, Carlos and Wilfredo more power to you - in 2012 and beyond!!
To their many fans, if you happen to be on the West Coast, mark your calendars for MANDRILL LIVE IN CONCERT 2012, Presented by Mandrill on SATURDAY, AUGUST 4 @ 7:30 P.M. at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater. Hollywood will pulsate with excitement when MANDRILL, pioneers of Funk and World Music, comes "outta da bush!!"
For those of us on the East Coast, who want to see more of the group, start requesting - no, demanding - that they be included in the upcoming events, such as Summer Stage; and concert tours - are you listening LIVE NATION?
NAACP SILENT PROTEST MARCH AGAINST STOP AND FRISK: Sunday, June 17th
This Sunday, we'll be marching from Harlem in a disciplined silence, determined to put an end to racial profiling. And though we will march in silence, our voices will be heard loudly in New York City and nationwide thanks to thousands of supporters like you. Last week, the NAACP asked supporters across the country to serve as the voices of their silent marchers, who will walk to end "stop and frisk" this Sunday. Thousands submitted messages to appear on banners and posters. Now they just need someone to carry them. These words are strong, they are bold, and they say exactly what our silence on Sunday will mean. We're missing only one thing: YOU! Those of you who are either victims of "stop and frisk" tactics, or have friends or relatives who have been through this humiliation, must join the NAACP's protest march to put an end to this travesty.
NAACP President Ben Jealous shared the startling statistics last week: In 2011, New York City police made more stops of black men between the ages of 14 and 24 then there are black men between 14 and 24 living in the city.
This Sunday the NAACP is doing something to stop this. Thousands of supporters will silently march through the streets of New York to protest the "stop and frisk" policy. And millions across the country who know our children are being profiled and targeted because of the color of their skin will support them.
Their words will be my voice as I march in silence this Sunday. Take a stand against the profiling and targeting of our children—march with us to end "stop and frisk" on Sunday: SKIN COLOR IS NOT PROBABLE CAUSE TO STOP AND FRISK A BLACK YOUTH!!! Get involved. For details log onto: http://action.naacp.org/march-with-usPick up a poster and walk with me, Hazel Dukes, in the NAACP's silent march through New York to end "stop and frisk" on Sunday, June 17th. Last, but not least, June is the month that I officially launch "Obama A Day", which will include something positive about our President that will be included in every Blog I write from now on. I am also urging my fellow Bloggers, writers, BLACK journalists, ministers, activists to do likewise, as a pro-active measure against all the hate, lies, and garbage spewed out on an ongoing basis by the Rep-ugh-blicans, Koch Brothers, Tea Baggers, and corporations that would drag us back to the bad old days of segregation, racism and lynching.
This is my Obama-A-Day report for Wednesday, June 13, 2012
White House Report from June 2, 2012 - in case you missed it: Extraordinary People: On Tuesday the President awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to 13 extraordinary individuals. These people came from all walks in life, ranging from a doctor to a musician, the President said that each has made his or her mark on America, “Together, the honorees on this stage, and the ones who couldn’t be here, have moved us with their words; they have inspired us with their actions. They’ve enriched our lives and they’ve changed our lives for the better. Some of them are household names; others have labored quietly out of the public eye. Most of them may never fully appreciate the difference they’ve made or the influence that they’ve had, but that’s where our job comes in.”
A Step in the Right Direction: President Obama also signed a bipartisan, Import-Export Bank reauthorization bill to help strengthen our economy. “Soon, there are going to be millions of new customers for our goods and services in Korea, in Colombia and Panama. That way, even though we got some Hyundais over here, we’re also going to have some Chryslers and Fords and Chevys in Seoul that are imported from Detroit and Toledo and Chicago.” The President also took this time to reiterate that more needs to be done in order to fix our economy and particularly focused on the need for Congress to get to work on the “To-Do-List” that President Obama has been pushing for over the past month."
If you know of something positive, empowering, endearing, significant that our President has done, please feel free to share it with me and the rest of your friends, family and associates. Don't keep it to yourselves. Remember, an Obama-A-Day keeps the stupids away. Don't let corporations brainwash you into thinking that because they have more money they can determine the outome of the presidential election. Remember DOLLARS DON'T VOTE, PEOPLE DO. If you have an 18 year old in your household, make sure he or she is registered to vote. Instead of just a birthday card, give him or her a Voter Registration card as well. And hand deliver it to the Bureau of Voter Registration. We are each and all responsible for making sure President Barack Obama is re-elected to continue the good work he has started.
Stay Blessed & ECLECTICALLY BLACK Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Now, I didn't write this article. It was forwarded to me by one of my favorite blog-sisters, Eduadvocate. It is, however, so full of information, and so compelling a blue print as to why we have to get our acts together, and be both on the offensive and defensive, not only in reference to this upcoming re-election, but throughout the entire year, that I had to put it out here. You need to read it all, take notes, and begin to strategize what we can do individually and collectively to save ourselves and our country. And, yes,I said our country - for our cynical friends who have a problem with that, unless you've made definite plans to move permanently out of the USA, this, for all intents and purposes is our country. And WE, THE PEOPLE, Black, white, blue green and purple, are under seige by the rapacious rep-ugh-blicans who mean us absolutely no good. This article came out prior to the massive Occupy Wall Street movement. As more and more Americans wake up to this nightmare, and more and more Occupy movements form, I want to make sure that you are occupying the correct perpetrators - so that there is no knee jerk occupy copy cat against the wrong people - like the idiocy that wanted to demonstrate against President Obama in Harlem in front of the Apollo. Clearly clueless as to what the real deal is, and where these actions should be appropriately directed. At the same time, Democrats must step up their game and stop trying to appear to be Mr. and Ms. Nice person. We need to relanguage what we are about so people really get the message.
So read, and respond. We've got a lot to do to make sure that we don't let this information go to waste, and that we don't all end up on some soup and bread line somewhere, while they and their cronies live in these high rise, ugly assed glass houses that have been constructed to tower over us here in New York, a symbol of their disdain for those of us who work (or try to) every day and raise our families in the middle of this madness.
As you watch the Rep-ugh-blican clown show evolve on national TV, remember one of those clowns could end up being the president if we don't do our job, and VOTE.
Not only that, if you don't support those who are running for office in opposition to their oppressive ways, we will still not have delivered the goods we need to make American humane again.
Read the following and be afraid, be very afraid (if you thought Vampires were scary, check out the real ones below):
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult Saturday 3 September 2011 by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis
The article opens with two quotes from a movie entitled "Double Indemnity" (1944) Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten."
Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.
It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.
The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.
Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
In his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.
The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than the old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.
Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.
John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way: "Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).
The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"
Inside-the-Beltway wise guy Chris Cillizza merely proves Krugman right in his Washington Post analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. He wrote that the institution of Congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course, correct, but then he opined: "Lawmakers - bless their hearts - seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on their tremendous magnanimity." Note how the pundit's ironic deprecation falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the needless crisis and those who despaired of it. He seems oblivious that one side - or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.
This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.
This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious. Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.
This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.
You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base.
This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.
It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. During the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - while never unambiguously slapping down the myth. John Huntsman was the first major GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny - albeit after release of the birth certificate.
I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.
The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.
What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]
While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.
How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme? You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.
ARE YOU LISTENING DEMOCRATS??? HELLOOOOOOO!
It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.
Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.
As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing: 1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass.
Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs? Another smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for Mom's and Pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business' ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or some Democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. But the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses). And as data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment, a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Likewise, Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective rate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No, it paid zero.
When pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the America's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "Half of Americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. There are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes - among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire. All of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically, Republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.
And when misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's agenda, concealment is needed. One fairly innocuous provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. Note that it would not limit the compensation, only require full disclosure. Republicans are hell-bent on repealing this provision. Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
2. They worship at the altar of Mars. While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. McCain wanted to mix it up with Russia - a nuclear-armed state - during the latter's conflict with Georgia in 2008 (remember? - "we are all Georgians now," a slogan that did not, fortunately, catch on), while Graham has been persistently agitating for attacks on Iran and intervention in Syria. And these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the Sunday talk shows. About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same Republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow Chris Hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives.
A cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than the fact that Pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around Capitol Hill. That is true, but there is more to it than that. It is not necessarily even the fact that members of Congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs. The wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases nationally means that some areas, like Washington, DC, and San Diego, are heavily dependent on Department of Defense (DOD) spending. But there are many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the Pentagon than it receives back in local contracts.
And the economic justification for Pentagon spending is even more fallacious when one considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few jobs. The days of Rosie the Riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now require very little touch labor. Instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of political campaigns. A million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for Pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.
Take away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.
The results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the Democrats' cowardly refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally. It has made the United States less prosperous, less secure and less free. Unfortunately, the militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely to abate when the Treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the Dutch Republic and the British Empire.
3. Give me that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."
The Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to "share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory speech; or, some televangelist like Rick Warren dragoons the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, with Warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. Politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism - come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism? It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.
Televangelists have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. If you are wealthy, it is a sign of God's favor. If not, too bad! But don't forget to tithe in any case. This rationale may explain why some economically downscale whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.
The GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. The Old Testament abounds in tales of slaughter - God ordering the killing of the Midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the divinely-inspired genocide of the Canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants with the jawbone of an ass - and since American religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly that portion of the New Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount), it is but a short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. This sort of thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as Jerry Falwell once writing that God is Pro-War.
It is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent Armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought Saddam was the Antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in the realm of domestic political controversy. It is hardly surprising that the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was Michele Bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. What does it matter, anyway, if the country defaults? - we shall presently abide in the bosom of the Lord.
Some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witch trials. In any case, those consummate plutocrats, the Koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into Michele Bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.
Thus, the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a Republican could have written the following:
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." (That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in 1954.) It is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed dissection of failed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce Bartlett. I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.
During the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its conclusion. The economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of chicken roiled the markets even further. Foreigners could hardly believe it: Americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status of the dollar. Accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. Russia and China have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve currency - a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that can be imagined. If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power.
Footnotes:
[1] I am not exaggerating for effect. A law passed in 2010 by the Arizona legislature mandating arrest and incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business front group that drafts "model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. The draft legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.
[2] I am not a supporter of Obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies. But when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80 years, I wanted him to succeed, so that the country I served did not fail. But already in 2009, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was - jobs for Americans? Rescuing the financial system? Solving the housing collapse? - no, none of those things. His top priority was to ensure that Obama should be a one-term president. Evidently Senator McConnell hates Obama more than he loves his country. Note that the mainstream media have lately been hailing McConnell as "the adult in the room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the Tea Party freshmen
[3] This is not a venue for immigrant bashing. It remains a fact that outsourcing jobs overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert downward pressure on US wages. The consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. It does no good to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of globalization; Germany has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial base.
[4] The cowardice is not merely political. During the past ten years, I have observed that Democrats are actually growing afraid of Republicans. In a quirky and flawed, but insightful, little book, "Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred," John Lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.
[5] The GOP cult of Ayn Rand is both revealing and mystifying. On the one hand, Rand's tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so prevalent among the hard right. On the other, Rand exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing but contempt for Christianity. Apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist "values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over Rand at the same time they thump their Bibles never have to explain this stark contradiction. And I imagine a Democratic officeholder would have a harder time explaining why he named his offspring "Marx" than a GOP incumbent would in rationalizing naming his kid "Rand." Creative Commons License
Again, I didn't write this, but I did warn you!!
NOW THAT YOU KNOW, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? Stay Blessed & ECLECTICALLY BLACK Gloria Dulan-Wilson
It's hard to believe that fifteen years have passed since the First Wall Street Project opened in New York City. It was 1997, at at that time we actually were on Wall Street, with many of the events happening either in board rooms, on the trading room floors, or at the World Trade Center.
I can remember sitting in the top of the World Trade Center at one of the luncheons, in a facility where the ceilings were arched, and so low that you had to bend to be in there, and you could not see the speakers because the columns blocked your view.
They've come a long way from those early days of trying to make Black people more financially literate, investment action oriented, and move away from the mentality of a consumer to that of a producer.
It's important that I say this, and that you grasp this and how significant it is that Rev. Jackson saw, and understood early on - before the economic downturn, before the mortgage crises, before the rampant foreclosures - he understood the devastation of not having economic parity for Black people -whether here in the US, or Africa, the Caribbean, or anywhere else we reside.
His mission has been to provide us with as much education, exposure, opportunity and understanding of what Wall Street was about, and what it meant to us, who had been psychologically, physically, emotionally and economically kept out of the loop. The realm of investment, the marketplace, and the high stakes of finance had been relegated to the realm of whites and high rolling Blacks, the few who were allowed behind the "green" door. The rest of us were either part of conspicuous consumption, or the welfare state (at least that is where we were pushed).
When Rev. Jackson first enunciated plans to study Wall Street as a means of breaking down the next barrier of racism, many of his peers in the "movement" thought he had lost it. Others thought he had joined the ranks of the "capitalist pigs." Interesting, since we all need and want money how many of us tried to pick the idea apart as though it was some kind of pariah.
However, we who have given up more free labor on this planet than any other group of people in the world, and have not been compensated for our efforts - for the blood, sweat, tears and lives that went into building this nation - including the hallowed hall of Wall Street, Dow Jones, Broad Street and the other denizens of the almighty dollar. We, more than anyone, need to learn to work smarter, not harder, how to invest in growth funds, how to plan for longevity and retirement, how to make wise deals and purchases. When you think about it, the investment they made in bringing us here from Africa has paid off for everyone but us - big time.
Now it's time to learn how not to make the mistakes that the "smartest guys in the house" made, which caused the economic mess we're in right now, while at the same time begin to develop our own autonomous investment and banking systems, as have other groups, so that we too can underwrite our children's education, purchase our own homes, build quality communities - in other words, call the shots.
The most interesting thing about this is the irony that we live in New York City, the financial capital of the world. Yet we know nothing about it. The major industries in New York are FIRE - Finance, Insurance, Real Estate - yet they are not taught in any of our schools in a meaningful way. Neither we nor our children have ever been exposed to the inner workings of Wall Street. We know it's there, but except for the few Black proteges, we are more likely to see African Americans as security guards and custodians, than having a pivotal role in the high end banking, finance and investment arenas. The schools in New York may teach you how to count money, but they don't teach you how to use, invest, expand it. Why is that?
Last year, the Rainbow Push Coalition quietly celebrated its 40th Anniversary on December 25, 2011. The great thing is that they are as relevant and active today as they were when they were first formed. In October 2011, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. celebrated his 70th Birthday anniversary. And like these stellar programs he's created, he keeps getting better with age. There are few out there who can match his stride, his energy and his dedication to Black people. In celebrating these milestones, we are all winners as well, because he has taken the time to provide us with a blue print that we can follow out of this mess we're in - if we would but follow it (see gloriadulanwilson.blogspot.com - January 15, 2011).
The theme of the 2012 Wall Street Project is "Bringing Everyone to the Table." The Economic Summit this year will be lead by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and Terry J. Lundgren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Macy's Inc. It will feature such panels as: Wall Street Project Career Development; Retooling and Retraining Break Out Sessions; The Women's Luncheon; The Minister's Prayer Breakfast and Roundtable. Among the presenters will be John Grant, Author, Career Coach and Speaker; Staci Grant, President C&G Enterprises; Pat Thomas Motivational Speaker and career coach. There will be other speakers and surprise guests as the conference gets underway.
Rev. Jackson indicated, in a recent teleconference, that the possibility of putting together a mutual bank or credit union similar to the Black United Fund of New York, to make it possible for Black investors to underwrite their own programs, has been a consideration for quite some time. "I am quite familiar with the program and the principles established by the late Walter Bremond, and think it would be a powerful tool for Black Economic Development. It would be an natural resource builder for programs that are underserved or poorly underwritten by mainstream finance or charitable organizations." New York's Black United Fund, which was established by Kermit Eady, at its zenith raised more than $111 million a year, which was then put back into the Black community in the form of affordable housing, business incubator programs, scholarships, and business start up loans. (Many will remember it was destroyed by then persecutor Elliot Spitzer in his bid for the gubernatorial nomination - but that's another story for another day).
The most salient points of Rev. Jackson's teleconference was the fact that South Carolina continues to be the bastion of racism and abuse, despite the progress made under Dr. King to destroy many of the negative institutions. The new version of the prison industrial complex is proliferating there, where factories are actually being established within the prison walls, and those who are incarcerated are forced to work for pennies a day. Apparently there are also investors who are underwriting this heinous program in order to save money. If not curtailed, it will be a means of undermining President Obama's move to bring businesses home to make jobs available for Americans who have been out of work since the onset of the economic downturn. How to handle this will be one of the main focal points of this year's Wall Street Project.
Also of concern are our voting rights, which are being target by South Carolina and Arizona. Republicans are pushing these laws in states across the country claiming they are needed to deter voting fraud, but offer no evidence of its existence. In fact, the laws will disproportionately impact African Americans, Latinos and poor people — who are less likely to have a driver’s license. In South Carolina, the Dept. Of Justice concluded minority voters would be 20 percent more likely to be disenfranchised than white voters (excerpted from Rev. Jackson's weekly report)
He will also focus on foreclosures, building and developing decent affordable housing, home ownership, and quality of life issues. Stated Reverend Jackson: "Banks got bailed out; people got locked out." Millions of homes have been lost from the Black community - the largest land grab rip off in history. His 2011 panel dealt with more humane ways to help families in distress than the methods used by recalcitrant banks and lending institutions, who claim to not want their homes, but proceed to foreclose and take them anyway. This year's panel is set to take it to the next level. If you happen to have been a victim of these scams, you'll want to be there as well.
If you haven't attended any of the Wall Street Projects over the past 15 years, make this the time that you break that pattern. Make a paradigm shift. There are a great many contacts to be made, a lot to be learned - networking with peers, as well as establishing new contacts, and expanding those you already have. Come for the seminars - they're priceless! Your input is as valuable as the panel of experts sitting on the dias. With so many opportunities for innovation, you may well walk away with a solution to problems you considered impossible; or you just might make a connection that you thought not possible.
And lest you thought he has overlooked brothers and sisters in Africa, he's just returned from Johannesburg and Bloemfontein South Africa to join other leaders across the globe in paying tribute to the ANC and the people of South Africa. "This is not just an ANC celebration, but one for the entire continent and, indeed, for peace and freedom loving people around the globe. I look forward to giving a report to the American public upon my return," he stated.
Make no mistake about it, Reverend Jackson is “Bringing Everyone to the Table” in a way that has never been done before. We can be either at the table or on the sideline. As President Barack Obama said (sang) at the Apollo: "Let's Stay Together!" It's the only way we'll survive. It's the only way we will win. It's the only way we'll Succeed.
Here's a little history for those who are not familiar with how the organization began: In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appointed Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. to serve as the first director of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, IL. In 1971, three years after King's assassination in Memphis, TN, Rev. Jackson founded Operation P.U.S.H (People United to Save Humanity in Chicago to continue Dr. King's mission. In 1972, the idea of the "Black Expo" (Black Business Exposition) was developed to "expose" African-American businesses. In 1984, the National Rainbow Coalition was formed in Washington, DC following Reverend Jackson's first presidential campaign. Rainbow's focus was to unite progressive people, historically locked out of the mainstream of American politics, into a "coalition of conscience," dedicated to making America more inclusive. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is a progressive organization protecting, defending and expanding civil rights to improve economic and educational opportunity.
The organization is headquarted in Chicago, IL at 930 E 50th St., can be reached by calling (773) 373-3366. For information on this years 15th Annual Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project, visit www.rainbowpush.org. Rainbow PUSH Coalition ✆ publicservices@rainbowpush.org via bounce.bluestatedigital.com
The 15th Annual Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project is being held on January 25 to the 27, and the Sheraton Towers Hotel, 53rd Street and 7th Avenue, New York, New York. See you there.
Stay Blessed & ECLECTICALLY BLACK Gloria Dulan-Wilson
