I Am King, You Are King, We are All King

As the nation celebrated the 81st Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is clear that for some people, the legacy of King perhaps reached its climax with the election of President Barack Obama. However for people like myself, the legacy of King only reached yet another pivotal moment with the election of Obama and that the climax of King’s legacy has yet to be reached. King’s legacy is not for debate but what is up for debate is the service of action in King’s legacy in the eyes of us the people and how much we have lived up to King’s service action orientated legacy.

Therefore, it is time for us as people to understand that King’s legacy and the climax of it has not been reached. King said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” So with that said, some might say that leader is President Obama but I say King wasn’t speaking of a politician but he was speaking of us as people to lead our families and communities by molding them to stop being divided but working on what we all can agree on and build off of that consensus in the hopes that it pulls them closer to solving other issues.

King said, “A lie cannot live.” Well he’s right, we must defeat lies and we must admit the lies we have told to others in our lives in the hopes of putting it out there in the universe in order to start telling the truth and healing our own souls of the demonic demons that latch on to us to pull us down. Still King’s legacy is far greater than perhaps any of us can understand but the embodiment of it is, “A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.” Therefore what are you living, what are we living for. We all should be living not for self but for the service of others and to make this world better than how we found it.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Independent, Republican, or if you belong to any other political party in this nation, the reality is that we all have a job to do which is to uplift, encourage and give hope to those of us who are sick, in despair and in need of help. As Dr. King said, “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” Therefore, we all need to invest in the young Generation of Americans in order to help them become more educated than previous generations as well as to make them stronger to take the criticisms that might be thrown their way. We all have an obligation to make our minds strong and hard to withstand nonsense and b***s*** that won’t amount to anything than dragging someone down.

Still it is not enough that we invest in our youth but us as a people must make sure our nation and other nations are investing in the empowerment of the people rather than the empowerment of military defense. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If we as a society are investing more in military defense than social uplift than we are already dooming ourselves according to King and we can just look at America to see how bad things really in terms of social uplift. Just look at the fact we are at war in two nations and are spending nearly $800 billion per year on the wars.

Dr. Benjamin Jealous, the national President of the NAACP recently wrote, “Much of Dr. King's work was to end the scourge of poverty and he began to question the essence of our prevailing economic system. "We must ask the question why there are forty million poor people in America. And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy."” Therefore it is clear that much of King’s social action legacy still must be worked on. During King’s lifetime, Dr. King spoke of nearly 40 million Americans being poor, living in poverty or living near the poverty line meaning one paycheck away from poverty. Now if we look at those numbers today 39.2 million Americans still are living in poverty. Thus the greed and excesses of our system has led to one of the worst recessions in history no matter how anyone tries to look at it.

Dr. King was not just about civil rights but he was about equality and justice for all as well social-economic issues. King championed labor describing the labor movement as the "principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over our nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society," he said. Today, the laws on union organizing have been weakened and the percentage of unionized workers has fallen from 36 percent in 1945 to 12.4 percent of American workers, only 7.6 percent in the private sector.

And Dr. King asked us all to give of our time and our voice to change the injustice around us. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," King said. Therefore King devoted his entire life to the rights of people and making sure people got the rights that they deserved because King believed, “A right delayed is a right denied.” So think about today and the rights of our neighbors, our friends and our family and ask ourselves are their rights of equality and justice being denied in any way and if so than we need to work on their behalf to stop the delay of those rights.

Most of all we all must remember, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Therefore the time we invest in the social action movement and progression of uplifting the lives of others will not come easy but the rewards will come with true excellence in doing what is right. When is doing what is right ever too late? When is it ever too late to do the right thing? If we as a people remember that than we will always do the right thing even after we have done something wrong. We must do the right thing because it is never too late to do the right thing.

At the same time, we must be patient in what we do to serve others. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle,” said King. We as people must be consistent in our acts of service and we must not be discouraged when the results of our actions are slow to come because the results of our hard work and commitment to serving others will pay off in all due time. King’s legacy is one that lives in each and every one of us but it is up to us to live up the potential of that legacy. Are we as people going to continue to live darkness or are we going to come into the light to live up to our own potential of greatness and the potential to help King’s legacy occur.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” said Dr. King. So are we going show love to others so that we can lead humanity out of the darkness of hate that only tears down our society from the very foundations that we live on. Are we as people going to live in the light of love and showcase each and every day even if we know the world around us is going to pieces with the darkness of hate. Well King said, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” So if King could understand this nearly 40 plus years ago than why can’t we. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness,” said King. Are we as a people going to walk in the light or in the darkness? This is ultimately the decision we face today.

The decision we face today is to be great by serving others because greatness is accomplished when we give more of ourselves to make the lives of others better. Dr. King said, “Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” Our greatness is right here for us to take and live up. The ability to live up to the greatness of the legacy of King is one that we all can accomplish but we must want it.

“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So now is the time to fully understand that all of which we see before us today didn’t happen by chance or circumstance but they happened because all the signs pointed to it happening but many of us just didn’t follow the signs to realize it. We as a people can be great but it begins with faith because as King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.” Do we as a people have faith to take the first step even when we don’t see the whole staircase and do we have the faith to know that what we are working toward will happen because we have begun the process to accomplish it?

Are we as a people willing to make sure to release love into the atmosphere in order to defeat hate which only kills life. “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it,” said King. Love is just that powerful that it can overcome anything that hate does but we as people must overcome our hatred for people and things. We as a society must exhibit love no matter what because King said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” This is why we can’t participate in hate and we must not exhibit hate because by doing it, we are just as guilty as those who do hateful acts especially if we don’t fight against hatred.

King said it best when he said, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” We are all good people but when we do bad things, we are considered bad; however we make redeem ourselves for our bad by not being silent in the face of injustices done to others. Dr. King said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” So will we give more of us tin order to continue the progression of humanity or will we sit by and do nothing as so many others have done throughout our history.

King’s legacy is about social action not just against injustice and for equality but for the salvation of humanity to live amongst each other peacefully. King said, “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” So are we adjusting our life styles to help those who are less fortunate than us and who are underprivileged. We as people must be selfless and while some of us might crave power, we must not crave power that is immoral. “I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the only type of power that we all should be interested in but it must be in a selfless power that is moral, that is right and that is good because that is the only power that will benefit all of society.

King believed that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. King understood that while the right thing can be temporarily defeated, it cannot be defeated forever. We as people must understand that when we do the right thing we can never be defeated and that we must always strive to do the right thing no matter how tempting evil might seem. We as a society must understand that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere as King believed because if an injustice takes place in Alaska, Maine, New York, Alabama, Michigan or California, we as a people must fight against it. An injustice anywhere can lead to the downfall of our society and if we don’t fight for it today than when will we fight against it.

King also went on to say, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This is why we must always believe that what we are doing today will affect future generations and what future generations do, will affect another generation of people. Nothing we do as a people will just affect us or those around us because everything that we do will have a direct or indirect affect on this world.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So with that said, we must act now to change the fate of our nation and this world we live up. If you were silent on the social issues that plague the young, the sick, the elderly, the underprivileged and the poor prior to this year than now is the time to speak up. If you were silent on any of the social issues that don’t allow for equality and justice for all than now is the time to speak up and be heard. This is the moment for all of us to King because “I Am King, You Are King, and We are All King!” We just have to live up to the legacy now more than ever before.

Reclaiming the Dream…The Legacy is Alive

As the nation prepares to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, it is time that many in the nation hopes Americans from all over know it is time to “Remember! Celebrate! Act! A Day On, Not a Day Off!” So three days after King’s original birthday, which is January 15, the nation will gather for various events that will range from marches, luncheons, community service activities, speeches and other celebrations aimed at making sure the nation remembers not only the dream of Dr. King but the legacy of the civil rights movement and the peace movement he brought to the shores of America.

So as the nation celebrates “The Dream of a King”, it is important to remember that many in this nation especially our youth don’t know who Dr. King is yet alone how important his legacy is. While some many of us can ask our youth who the President of the United States of America is or to rap Lil’ Wayne’s latest lyrics but if you ask them about Dr. King, they don’t know who is. If for a minute you think I am playing, I am not but I do understand why our youth today don’t know about who many of our civil rights leaders are but for any youth to not know who Dr. King is, it is a shame particularly since everyone from Pre-school to High School is given one assignment a year on Dr. King either a coloring assignment or a worksheet.

Nonetheless, if we as a nation are to reclaim the Dream of Dr. King, it begins with reclaiming our youth and the dream that they all can achieve success through the power of education. Reclaiming the dream is not simply electing the first black president in our nation’s history or having little black boys and girls go to school with little white boys and girls but it is about taking care of neighbor and our neighbor’s children as if they are our own family members. Reclaiming the dream is not about teaching hate or preaching hate but it is about teaching and preaching love as well as tolerance for other cultures.

King’s dream was a universal dream of peace and love but one that was clear and easy to understand. Therefore the legacy of King is very much alive because we all have benefitted from the dream of King and the dreams of other civil rights leaders but now is the time to live up to that legacy and their dreams. It is sad to look at our youth today and for them to have some of the lowest reading and math scores than those in other countries. What is even sadder is that less than 25% of our nation’s youth are college ready? This is not the dream that King or other civil rights leaders envisioned.

Thus the legacy is alive but the dream is one that we have not fully completed when we look around this nation and see more people living in poverty than any other time in our nation’s history since becoming the richest nation in the world. The fact that we have an unemployment rate of 10% is not surprising considering what we have had deal with over the last two years but what is surprising is that for the last two decades our nation’s unemployment has hovered around 5% while other less wealthier nations unemployment has been lower.

Reclaiming the dream begins today by taking care of not just us and our loved ones but others loved ones. Reclaiming the dream begins with understanding that we can’t judge others by the color of their skin anymore and that those who do are insecure with their own skin color and self worth. Reclaiming the dream begins with giving more time and money to the poor, the underprivileged, the sick, the uneducated, the educationally challenged and the elderly. The legacy of King and the civil rights movement is one that begins with empowering those in our own communities and neighborhoods to be greater than they are now. The legacy and the dream is alive but it is one that we all must embrace and live up to by looking beyond self and more toward helping others.

Therefore it is time to reclaim the dream and make sure the legacy stays alive generation after generation no matter what because this is the only way our nation is going to improve socially, culturally, economically, and politically.

We Want Our Money Back

The President Proposes Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee

President Obama explains the proposed Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee that will ensure that the largest financial firms meet their obligations to repay American taxpayers for the assistance provided to Wall Street.

President Barack Obama is going after Wall Street stronger and harder than he did in his first year in office. Recently the Obama administration has proposed a new bank tax in order to recover the rest of the American people tax dollars that were invested in Wall Street as anger over Wall Street bonuses has gotten louder and stronger. The White House proposed its "fee" on the 50 or so largest banks and Felix Salmon summarizes, it's "a 0.15% tax on bank liabilities excluding deposits (which already come with an FDIC fee attached). It would be paid by roughly 50 firms, including GE Capital, and would raise something on the order of $90 billion over 10 years. That’s an average of $180 million per firm per year."

Now if what you're trying to do is recoup the TARP losses, this is a smartly designed tax. But we should be more ambitious than that. The financial industry's share of the national dollar has grown even as the tax laws dictating their contribution to the American economy have weakened. Under George W. Bush, of course, tax rates on the richest Americans fell precipitously. And under Bill Clinton, the tax rate on capital gains fell from 28% to 20% (and then Bush brought it down to 15%). Meanwhile, Wall Street got richer and richer and richer...

The tax Obama is proposing will raise $90 billion over 10 years, and refund the direct losses taxpayers suffered in the bailout. But that wasn't the only cost of the financial crisis. The recession -- which has cost the federal budget far more -- was also triggered by Wall Street. We're not even here, not by a long shot. But this isn't about getting even. It's about good policy. Restoring the 1996 tax rates on the rich, and on large capital gains, would improve the nation's finances without harming anything of value. It would raise far more than $90 billion and it wouldn't sunset after 10 years. The tax Obama is proposing is not ideal from the point of justice -- Wall Street owes us far more than that -- but it's also not ideal from the point of federal finances and tax equity.

Still, US subsidiaries of foreign banks like HSBC and Deutsche Bank will be taxed; it’s unclear whether foreign subsidiaries of US banks will be as well. The aim of the tax is to ensure that the entire TARP fund gets repaid in full — not just the money lent to the banks directly, but also the money lent to the banks indirectly, through the AIG bailout. The tax is not, however, designed to repay the cost of rescuing Fannie and Freddie which is a whole another story. Nonetheless, I like the way the tax is structured: it’s simple, and the liabilities-minus-deposits formula naturally puts more of the onus on investment banks than commercial banks. It also encourages banks to fund themselves with equity rather than debt.

Will the fee be passed on to bank customers? Well, it doesn’t apply to deposits, so retail banking customers shouldn’t be affected, but you never know. If they are, at the margin that might be no bad thing, if it encourages bank customers to move their money to small-enough-to-fail banks and credit unions. Critics of the tax are certain to focus in on the rhetoric surrounding the announcement, and to denounce it as politically-motivated populism. Which might even be true. But just because a policy is popular doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. And this one makes a lot of sense.

I am just pleased with the tone of President’s Obama’s announcement and the firm rhetoric he used toward the banks. Still, I won’t be completely satisfied until the new bank tax is paid and to a degree, I can’t help but wonder will the $90 billion over 10 years along what the banks paying what they borrowed from the government $700 billion TARP program be enough to pay us the American people back for all that was dealt to Wall Street. For now, I will wait to criticize not the Obama administration but our federal government and all the politicians who voted for TARP including candidate Obama at the time and majority of Democrats who pushed for it to pass.

For now though, the American people should rejoice that President Obama is finally being tougher with Wall Street than he was during this first year but let’s not fully celebrate until the bill is signed.

The President Proposes Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee

President Obama explains the proposed Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee that will ensure that the largest financial firms meet their obligations to repay American taxpayers for the assistance provided to Wall Street. January 14, 2010.

Show Me the Jobs

This is a new year but it seems like the same old discussion is taking place in politics and that is where the jobs are. It is time for the politicians who voted for and against the unprecedented stimulus plan last year to show the American people where the jobs are. Last year's stimulus package spurred up to 2 million more jobs than the country would have had otherwise, the White House said earlier this month. White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer called it "truly a stunning, important effect of the act."

However she needs to try telling that to the 10 percent who are unemployed and many critics argue that President Obama's stimulus efforts haven't worked and shouldn't be expanded on in the new legislation he is requesting this year in the form of the Jobs for Main Street Act which is just a continuation of the same policies that Congress passed in last year’s stimulus package.

Still a CEA report released said about half of the $787 billion stimulus bill enacted last year is spent or already promised. The stimulus bill added between three and four percentage points to economic growth during last year's third quarter and between 1.5 and three percentage points in the fourth quarter, according to the report. While Republicans have called the White House claims overblown. But Romer cited similar figures on jobs and gross domestic product growth from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and private industry experts.

While Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Government Oversight Committee, wasn't buying it. "What's the American public going to believe? Self-serving and deceptive numbers being put out by the White House on the stimulus, or the numbers that say we're at 10 percent unemployment when the Obama administration promised the stimulus would keep it below 8 percent? Another word for it is 'propaganda,' " Issa said.

Regardless if you are a Republican or Democrat, the fact is that the jobs figures have become a political football just as Congress gears up to consider a White House request for more stimulus money for infrastructure programs like road building. Obama had promised 3.5 million jobs from the first stimulus bill. But the recession has proved a more difficult adversary than expected. In December, another 85,000 jobs were lost. But Romer said the economy was losing an average of 691,000 jobs a month in the first quarter of last year. "In the absence of the recovery act, we would be 2 million jobs lower than we are now," she said. "It has done exactly what we anticipated it would do."

Therefore the jobs battle is one that will be watched as we head in the midterm elections of this year. Many politicians will champion that without the stimulus package things would be worse while other will argue that the stimulus package hasn’t done what it was intended to do. No matter which side of the debate you are on, the fact is that with an official unemployment rate of 10 percent and an unofficial rate of close to 20%, it is clear that something has to be done about job creation in this nation that the original stimulus package failed to do in the first place.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the job figures are pivotal in the fight over whether to spend more on a stimulus. Baker predicted that Obama will get about $30 billion to $40 billion for aid to state and local governments -- well shy of the $180 billion their budgets are short -- and maybe half the money he wants to spend on new infrastructure projects. On the other hand, David M. Smith, associate professor of economics at Pepperdine University, said the administration should be careful about ordering up more stimulus when much of the first bill is still unspent, because its effect on the economy hasn't yet been felt. Too much stimulus could end up causing inflation and increasing the nation's debt, Smith said. This is something that I have touched on previously and I am not an economists, just someone who studies the economy, politics and life like the student we all should be, meaning striving to obtain knowledge about what we don’t know.

To be fair, another set of job creation figures will come out at the end of this month from the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the independent agency that is overseeing the stimulus funds. Romer's CEA numbers look at the impact from tax cuts, aid to state and local governments, and infrastructure programs. But the recovery figures include only jobs created or saved by contracts, grants and loans -- which amounts to only about one-third of the stimulus package. The administration estimated that about 640,000 jobs were created or saved in the third quarter by those infrastructure projects. But after complaints about how those numbers were figured, the administration quietly changed the system. In reports from recipients of the money, the job figures now will apply to any position paid for with stimulus money, even if the job was not new or in danger of being cut without the stimulus funding.

Thus critics aren't happy with the new accounting, and Issa called it moving the goal posts. "Their new definition is, 'If we spend taxpayer money, we're successful,' " he said. Recently a study done by The Associated Press looked at local unemployment figures across the country and found little impact from the stimulus spending. But Baker said that's because the infrastructure-spending portion of the stimulus is too small a percentage of the entire economy to make a dent in the employment rate. The number of jobs will continue to fall for a few more months, Baker predicted. And when things get better, discouraged workers -- who don't count as unemployed because they aren't looking for jobs -- will come back, which is a part of the 20 percent unofficial unemployed numbers. So they will keep the employment numbers depressed for a while as they are added back into the total of job seekers.

Even when the nation isn't losing jobs, Baker pointed out, the country needs to add 125,000 jobs each month just to keep up with the number of new workers in a growing population. Although Romer said she still thinks it is possible for last year's stimulus bill to add up to 3.5 million jobs, many economists say that may be overly optimistic. "I don't think it's a nutty number. Maybe it will be 3 million after two years," said Baker. The money for infrastructure programs has gone out much more slowly than aid for extra unemployment benefits and tax credits, which don't have as big an impact on jobs, Romer said. Direct spending on projects has a "bigger bang" because construction workers buy cars and restaurant meals and other items that create yet more jobs, she said. Economists say it's impossible to know the exact number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus bill because they don't have a way to measure what would have happened if it hadn't passed.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which said of the job debate you on or if you are a Democrat or a Republican, what matters right now is that we create jobs. Living in hypothetical’s will not create jobs and debating whether or not the stimulus package saved or created 2 million jobs last year as the administration and some in Congress what us to believe or not believe will not help. The fact is that things could be worse without the stimulus package but it can also be better if the stimulus package was structured and targeted better. Thus right now it is time out for politicians to stop playing politics with job creation. Instead they need to really focus on what will work and what will give the American people a better bang for taxpayer dollars in creating jobs rather than wasting it on projects that are wasting our tax dollars.

Double Standards on Race

When it comes to race in America, it seems as if there a double standard that exists between Democrats and Republicans. For nearly all of 2009, many people accused Republicans and conservatives of being racist while also accusing some news outlets such as Fox News as being a mantra for racism. Still when word broke on Friday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that Barack Obama is light-skinned and has no “Negro” dialect during the 2008 Presidential election as he referred to why Obama could win during a private chat about Obama’s odds at becoming President.

While Reid has apologized for his comments and many Democrats as well as African Americans such as Jesse Jackson Sr., and Al Sharpton have accepted his apology. Other people particularly Republicans and even the Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele have called for Reid’s resignation. Steele went as far to say, “What’s interesting here, is when Democrats get caught saying racist things, an apology is enough. If that had been [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying that about an African-American candidate for president of the president of the United States, trust me, this chairman and the [Democratic National Committee] would be screaming for his head, very much as they were with Trent Lott.”

Lott lost his leadership post in 2002 after saying that the country would have been better off if Sen. Strom Thurmond — a segregationist — had been elected president in 1948. The comments — or at least the interpretations of them — were obviously different: While Lott words could be interpreted as a call for the continuation of racial segregation, Reid's were not an argument for race-based policies but rather a characterization of racial attitudes among voters today. Still, Steele said: “There has to be a consequence here if the standard is the one set in 2002 with Trent Lott.”

Also Lott’s comments came at a birthday celebration for Thurmond while Reid’s comments were made privately as Reid has pointed out while saying he wished those private comments never came out. The other point that others who are calling for Reid to step aside is the fact that Nevada Senator John Ensign relinquished his leadership post last year after admitting that he had an affair with a staffer after Democrats and others screamed for his removal from GOP leadership. So the calls for Reid’s relinquishment of leadership are not uncommon.

Still in the day since Reid's comments were first reported, the majority leader has reached out to black leaders for support — and gotten it. Reid called Obama on Saturday to apologize to the president directly for his statement, made during an interview for the new book, “Game Change.” The book quotes Reid, who backed Obama’s candidacy, as saying that Obama is "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." "Harry Reid called me today and apologized for an unfortunate comment reported today,” Obama said in a statement released on Saturday. “I accepted Harry's apology without question because I've known him for years, I've seen the passionate leadership he's shown on issues of social justice and I know what's in his heart. As far as I am concerned, the book is closed."

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, came out in support of Reid, as did Nevada Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, the top black pol in Reid’s home state. Al Sharpton, the vocal civil rights leader who has inserted himself in the middle of many of the biggest racial fights over the past 25 years, said that while Reid “did not select the best word choice in this instance,” the Nevada Democrat should not be forced to step aside.

Now remember Clyburn came out harshly criticizing former President Bill Clinton during the Democratic Presidential Primary season after he made some racially charged comments about candidate Obama. However in this case, Clyburn came out fast supporting Reid and other black leaders are doing the same in order to make sure that healthcare gets past and feel Republicans are just using this incident to try to derail the final passage of healthcare reform.

Even D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat and an African-American, is warning Republicans against trying to make hay out of Reid’s comments. The nonvoting member of Congress said Reid's opponents “will not find a welcome mat in the black community” if they try to seize on the Nevada Democrat’s remarks. Reid has also reached out to Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus and other influential African-Americans, including Donna Brazile, Julian Bond and Wade Henderson.

With top African Americans supporting Reid or saying nothing, he has been able to avoid— up until this point— having the furor become a full-fledged media firestorm. “The difference between Lott and Reid is that Democratic members of Congress are not calling on Reid to step down, especially CBC members,” said a GOP insider involved in the Lott scandal. “That’s what drives the media. Is he safe or not safe? But if members are not calling on [Reid] to step down, that won’t drive the media.”

Reid’s office quietly circulated talking points over the weekend on the majority leader’s record on racial issues and social justice. Reid’s aides said the majority leader “has always been a friend to Nevada's African-American community, and as Nevada families struggle in these difficult times, his leadership is needed now more than ever.” They highlighted Reid’s support for the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, health care reform, expanded college loans and HIV/AIDS funding, all of which were key issues to minority groups, as well as his high career ratings from the NAACP.

In addition, Reid backers pointed out that Reid has run an internship program for the past five years with Howard University, a leading black college in Washington, D.C., designed to provide more diversity in Senate staffing. Lott came under fire in December 2002 after saying, at a birthday celebration for Thurmond that his home state of Mississippi had supported him in1948 and was "proud of it." "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either," Lott said.

Unlike Reid, Lott initially refused to apologize for his comments, which were seized on by the blogosphere and by Democratic critics, including the then-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe. While Obama quickly put out a statement backing Reid, the top African-Americans in the Bush administration, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, did not publicly back Lott, despite private pleas from the Mississippi Republican for help. Then Education Secretary Roderick Paige, an African-American, also refused to support Lott. Although Lott went on Black Entertainment Television to try to quell the furor, his appearance was unsuccessful in stanching the outrage. President George W. Bush and other top White House officials, as well as his Senate GOP rivals, including former Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, seeing an opportunity to bring Lott down, did not publicly back him either, and Lott ultimately resigned his leadership post. Frist then took over as majority leader. Lott was reelected to the top ranks of Senate Republicans four years later, before he resigned in 2007 to become a lobbyist.

Is there a double standard on race in America when it comes to Democratic and Republican politician? The answer is perhaps yes to a degree but what isn’t factor into the discussion when discussing this is the timing and the circumstances. The reality is that Lott came from a southern state where he was not well liked in the African American community to begin with and his record on African American issues was not good. Now when Clinton made his comments about Obama, it was doing a hotly contested Democratic Presidential primary season and America was virtually split between Clinton and Obama with African Americans backing Obama two times over.

Thus fast forwarding to the present, Reid’s comments come at a time when Democrats need all the votes they can get to pass healthcare reform without any outside disruptions. So the Democratic Party and many of its African American leaders as well as other African American organization will not allow for distractions to derail the final passage of healthcare reform. Now if healthcare reform was already passed than perhaps Democrats wouldn’t be rolling out a defensive to save Reid as they start the week.

In conclusion, double standards on race all depend on the timing of the comments not necessarily the circumstances because in life, everything is about timing. Still what Reid’s comments do reveal is that the race issue in America is one that is badly in need of discussing and with 4 days until Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, this issue only highlights how badly race still plays a role in not only politics but life in general.

Political Openness and Transparency is Rhetoric

When you mention political openness or transparency in politics, it seems like it is only rhetoric that politicians use while on the campaign trail or at press conferences. For 8 years, Americans have complained about government not being politically open to the people it is suppose to represent. Even in 2006 after the Democrats took control of Congress, soon to be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promised that the newly controlled Democratic Congress would be the most transparent Congress in the history of our nation.

However this week, when Congress was coming off of holiday break, Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leaders of Congress were asked would they oblige to C-SPAN’s President letter requesting that the conference committee that will convene to hammer out the differences between the House and Senate healthcare bills be broadcasted on television. Still Pelosi and Democratic leaders claimed the process has already been transparent enough and even when one reporter asked about candidate Obama’s promise to have negotiations broadcast on C-SPAN, Pelosi and her colleagues laughed as the Speaker said, “He said a lot of things.”

Thus, is political openness and transparency simply rhetoric used when it is convenient for politicians to use it. Well by watching this week it seems that one but then again, perhaps we are missing a larger picture in regards to transparency in government. Recently I read an article that eloquently said:

“Transparency, transchmerency. C-SPAN, the network known for wall-to-wall video coverage of the boring stuff that constitutes 99% of congressional activity and the really juicy stuff that makes up the other 1%, is against top Democrats's plans to hold some healthcare reform discussions behind closed doors. In a letter to House and Senate leadership on Dec. 30, C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb argued that since any healthcare bill the two branches hammer out will affect every single American, the public should be able to watch the proceedings on TV. (The upside -- or downside, depending on who you are -- of merging the House and Senate bills in private is that that will prevent a Republican filibuster.)”

While it might be wise not to broadcast the backroom deals on TV in order to prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Still is such a political and tactical move fair to us the American people when we are the ones who will be affected by what 435 members of Congress pass. It is already bad enough that Congress wastes times and hours passing bills and proclamations that are meaningless to majority of Americans. Now when it comes to things such as healthcare, education, the economy and a host of other bills that pass both Houses of Congress, we are left out in the dark when they are being negotiated in committees that will merge the bills together. Remember what happened with the stimulus package when it went behind closed doors where soon to be retiring Senator Chris Dodd put a stipulation in that bill that said Wall Street could get their bonuses which set off an uproar throughout Washington and across America.

Thus the reality is that, backroom deals are not new in D.C. or in getting political bills finalized done but in the age of YouTube and gossip bloggers, let’s put this in perspective, transparency in politics is needed like never before. For far too long, people have been unaware of what really goes into political bills but like Obama’s presidency people have become intrigued with the political process than ever before. So while White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday that he hadn't seen the letter by C-SPAN, then added "I do not believe the American people have lacked for information on what's in these bills" and changed the topic. We the People still deserve the opportunity to see which Congressional leaders will go to bat for our interests rather than big insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The fact that candidate Obama pushed for such transparency on the campaign trail especially during a debate against Hillary Clinton in January 2008, Obama said, "That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are." Gotcha! Now let those cameras in! Why are Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats so scared of such access to the real negotiations? Why is White House Press Secretary Gibbs, avoiding the fact that we the American people deserves to see all the information as it is being created instead of after it is created and almost finalized with just a possible vote stopping it.

The last time, I checked, Congress represents us the people and the fact that no Democratic leader is willing to go to back for us the people to see the negotiations of finalizing healthcare reform on C-SPAN makes me wonder, do they really care about us the people knowing what takes place behind closed doors. It’s as if Congress treats us the very people who elected them to office as their children. Remember as a child when your mother and father would go behind closed doors and discuss business or fight and argue and when they came out from behind closed doors, they were smiling as if nothing was wrong.

Well, it seems as if that is what Congress is doing. Congress wants to go behind closed doors as usual and bicker and fight but then come back and act as if all is well with the healthcare bill while we the people probably won’t figure it out until years later. We the American people should be at the table, watching all those politicians who will finalize healthcare reform for us especially since they will not be opting into the same healthcare reform they are creating for us.

Political openness and transparency shouldn’t be negotiable and it is our nation’s politicians realize that we the American people will eventually find out the truth no matter how much they want to hide it. Transparency in politics can no longer be used as rhetoric on the campaign stomp or during press conferences and we the people have to let our politicians know that once and for all.

Congress Has A Need for Speed

The word unprecedented has gotten thrown around a lot in politics but what Congress is attempting to do to get healthcare legislation passed quickly is truly unprecedented. For years many pieces of legislation have gotten back logged or bogged down by our nation’s apathetic Congress who would rather be reactive to issues than proactive. Thus with healthcare reform being closer to passing than any other time in our nation’s history, it is evident that political pressure is mounting for not only President Obama but Congress to get it done so they are possibly going to bypass usual negotiations between the two chambers in the interest of speed.

Congress has a need for speed when it comes to passing healthcare reform but let’s hope they use this same attitude to this year to create jobs that are really needed like never before in this nation. Let’s hope that Congress adopts this need for speed attitude when it comes to fixing our nation’s educational system and the horrible “No Child Left Behind” Act that not only left the money behind but left children behind not only academically but socially.

Congress is attempting to set a new precedent in our nation’s history when it comes to resolving pieces of legislation in the House and Senate that have significant and core differences. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Dick Durbin all spoke to President Obama on Tuesday either in person or by phone and agreed that Congress will not set up a formal conference committee to resolve differences between health bills passed last year by the House and Senate. Instead the House will simply work off the Senate’s version where they will amend it and send back to the Senate for final passage, in what some House leadership aides are saying.

Nonetheless, Congress is looking to speed through healthcare reform which can be a good thing and a bad thing but in terms of the bad, time will tell that. For now, Congress or should I say the Democrats want to get a final bill to Obama's desk before the State of the Union address sometime in early February which may boast for Democratic polling numbers as the 2010 election heats up. For now though, we the American people have to ask ourselves is speed what we want in these troubling times in our nation.

Does changing how Congress usually operate help us the American people in the short and long term since as the bills are written, major provisions of healthcare reform won’t go into effect until 3 or 4 years from now. Just look at what Congress did when they rushed through the unprecedented Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act or as some call it the stimulus package. While some supporters of the Act might say it worked, critics say it didn’t work but what neither side is saying is that the act worked in some areas but not in the most crucial area which is job creation.

If the stimulus package was any example of how the need for speed could backfire than Congressional leaders need to pay close attention so that healthcare legislation is strengthened to the best of Congress abilities since both versions are flawed in many ways. Since Congress will try to speed through healthcare reform by not going through the traditional steps that take place in the formal conference committee then let’s up this new precedent leads to Congress tackling other issues more quickly than usual. The time for bogging down important legislation in Congress is over and the need for action has never been more important than any other time in our nation’s history. However we the American people must understand that simply reacting to problems is just as bad as not doing anything. This is why Congress need for speed must also be accompanied with proactive ideas that deal with short and long term problems plaguing our nation. Otherwise speed in Congress just means we will temporarily fix decade old problems and pass these same old problems on to the next decade of leaders to see if they will come up with longevity solutions.

Healthcare Reform deemed Major but Implementation is Delayed

America is the closest it has ever been to healthcare reform than any time in its history. Both houses of Congress passed Healthcare legislation in 2009 that could pave the way for a sweeping overhaul of America’s healthcare system. For years and for decades we have heard the reasons why reforming healthcare is important and even last year as well as doing the 2008 election cycle we heard many politicians speak about the urgency of getting healthcare reform done.

Even as many Congressional leaders spoke on the floor of Congress and on television talk shows as well as wrote Op-Eds listing why reform needed to happen now more than ever, it was as if once reform was passed no more than a year later, major reforms would be enacted. Still that seems only rhetoric because the major overhauls of healthcare reform will not take effect until 2013 in the House version and 2014 in the Senate version. Thus with more and more political pundits saying that the House version of healthcare reform seems less likely to pass the Senate as the House and Senate bills go to conference committee to come up with a compromise bill that will pass both houses of Congress.

While healthcare reform was deemed so major as politician after politician made it seem as if not passing it, America’s healthcare system would collapse without such a major overhaul. However the implementation of this very important healthcare reform is not as important as getting the passage of the bill done because many of the major reforms that most Americans need will have to wait until 3 or 4 years from now. This to some people might seem okay but when politicians and others constantly speak about the between 30-45 million Americans who are currently uninsured, 3 or 4 years from now that number could have nearly doubled at the worse.

To be fair, the current healthcare bills as they stand do have some immediate benefits particularly for parents who may have hit up against limitations of their existing health insurance. Within six months, the Senate bill would allow dependent, unmarried children to remain on their parents’ policies until their 26th birthday; the House bill would allow an additional year of dependent coverage, until the 27th birthday. Right now it varies from state to state. The Senate bill would also bar insurers from denying coverage to children under 19 years of age based on pre-existing medical conditions. And the House bill would require insurers to cover reconstructive surgery for children born with deformities. In many cases, the requirements, including the extended coverage for adult children, would apply only to new insurance plans, though insurers could apply the changes to existing policies.

While there are some perks to the current healthcare legislation, it needs to be duly noted that many major provisions still would not take effect for several years. As previously stated, new federal subsidies to help moderate-income Americans afford coverage would not begin until 2013 under the House bill, and 2014 under the Senate bill. A new requirement that nearly all Americans obtain insurance would take effect at the same time that the subsidies become available. Now on the flip side, many of the new taxes and fees that will help pay for the legislation would take effect much sooner. For this reason, some Republicans have criticized the bill as akin to legislation on a layaway plan: pay now for benefits later.

So the real question is why Americans have to wait 3 or 4 years from now for government subsidies to take affect while certain taxes aimed at paying for much of the government subsidies will take effect as soon as the legislation is passed. Who’s to say that the taxes that the federal government collects from these taxes now will be there 3-4 years from now when the government subsidies become available to us, the American people. While the whole concept of collecting taxes before government gives assistance is not unprecedented because in 1965, when Medicare was created, the payroll tax began six months before the insurance coverage began for Americans age 65 and over. The fact that we the American people will have to wait 3-4 years before we see perhaps the most important provision of the healthcare reform bill is just not the same as Medicare. Government subsidies not being available until 3 or 4 years from now to millions of Americans who are uninsured and the other millions of Americans who might not be able to afford healthcare at the of this year yet alone two years from now is just now acceptable seems healthcare reform was deemed so important.

Still, the lengthy gap between the expected completion of the legislation in early 2010 and the effective date of many major provisions has left Democrats working to answer the criticism with lists of “immediate deliverables.” Here are some of the benefits that Democrats say would be available soon after the legislation is adopted:

--No annual or lifetime limits Both the Senate and House versions of the legislation ultimately seek to prevent insurers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on coverage in new health policies. In the final package of amendments to the Senate bill, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, added new language giving the secretary of health and human services the authority to regulate annual limits from six months after the bill is enacted until the broader insurance provisions take effect in 2014. Such limits are a serious concern to people with chronic illnesses like cancer that can require expensive treatments within a relatively short period of time, and the change proposed by Mr. Reid was prompted by inquiries from the American Cancer Society.

--Limits on insurance company profits Beginning in 2011, the Senate bill would set tight restrictions to force insurance companies to spend the bulk of their revenues on providing medical care to beneficiaries. The legislation would require insurance companies in the large group market to spend at least 85 percent of their revenues on care and insurers in the individual market to spend at least 80 percent of revenues on care. Critics of the private health insurance, including Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said setting such requirements on what insurers call “medical loss ratios” was needed to tamp down on profiteering.

--Short-term expansion of state high risk pools To help people who cannot obtain insurance because of pre-existing conditions, both the Senate and House bills would provide $5 billion to increase the availability of coverage through state high-risk insurance pools. This provision would take effect 90 days after enactment of the legislation, but many details remain to be worked out.

--New financing for community health centers The House bill provides $12 billion in additional financing for community health centers, which serve needy populations, particularly in rural areas. Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, won the inclusion of $10 billion in financing for community health centers in the Senate bill. The final dollar amount will be decided in negotiations between House and Senate leaders, but the money would be available for five years beginning in the current fiscal year.

--Closing the Medicare drug “doughnut hole” The legislation would increase the amount of drug costs covered by Medicare by $500 in 2010. And beginning on July 1, 2010, the bill would provide 50 percent discounts on brand-name drugs and biologics that low- and middle-income beneficiaries have to pay for themselves once the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole begins.

--Prohibition on rescinding existing coverage Both the House and Senate bills would bar insurance companies from rescinding existing coverage other than “in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact.”

--Small business tax credits The Senate bill would offer tax credits to small businesses beginning in 2010 for up to 35 percent of premium costs. The full credit would be available to firms with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages of $25,000. Reduced credits would be available to firms with up to 25 employees and with average annual wages of up to $50,000.

--Patient protections For new health plans, beginning six months after enactment of the legislation, the Senate bill would prohibit insurers from requiring prior authorization before a woman sees an obstetrician or gynecologist. The bill would also require coverage for emergency care.

--Discrimination protections for lower-income workers The Senate bill would bar group health plans from setting any eligibility rules for coverage that favor higher-wage employees. This provision would take effect six months after enactment of the legislation.

--Cobra extension through 2013 Anyone currently paying for an extension of health benefits as permitted under federal law — for instance, after a loss of employment — would be permitted under the House legislation to continue Cobra coverage until the major insurance coverage provisions of the legislation take effect in 2013.

--Reinsurance program for early retirees Both the House and Senate bills would provide federal financing for a new reinsurance program to encourage employers to maintain health benefits for employees and early retirees age 55 to 64.

--Consumer assistance provisions Both the House and Senate bills would begin to impose new requirements aimed at making it easier for consumers to interact with insurers, including a requirement that health plans adopt uniform descriptions of plan benefits and appeals procedures and that they begin using identical forms.

While the list is a good list of some things that will provide immediate results to many Americans, it still doesn’t explain why Congress has deemed it necessary to collect taxes for 3 or 4 years before government subsidies are handed out to those who need these subsidies and assistance like the very next day healthcare legislation is signed into law by President Obama. So if healthcare reform is as important as I and many others know it is than Congress shouldn’t delay the implementation of the government subsidies for 3 or 4 years.

A year delay is perhaps understandable although that is too long as well because think of the many lives that could lost due to the fact they couldn’t afford insurance even after what is deemed as major healthcare reform legislation is passed. This is just not acceptable and we the American people only have a month to make sure our Congressional leaders know that we want healthcare reform but the major provisions can’t wait 3 to 4 years from now because too many valuable lives could be lost between now and then without having healthcare insurance. The sooner the government subsidies are made available to the uninsured and those who might be uninsured, the more lives we can perhaps save once healthcare legislation is passed.

Remember another day of delay, another week of delay, another month of delay or even a year of delay on healthcare reform is just another day, week, month and year that we perhaps passed the important to save one of our fellow Americans lives. That same standard and logic needs to be applied to the government subsidies and other major provisions that could save our fellow Americans who die each year due to not having health insurance or the adequate healthcare needed to save lives.

The War on Our Youth: Rising Teen HIV rate

A new decade for our youth only means more problems our youth have to face, some known and some unknown. Outside of dealing with education issues and violence, our youth have many health issues to combat that stem from not only from the previous decade but decades prior. Still if we as Americans are going to win this war on our youth once and for all this decade we must all work together like never before. For instance, while the youth in Chicago are continuing to be plagued by violence and the youth in Detroit have educational issues to mainly worry about it, it is clear that health issues throughout this nation will perhaps be one of the major hurdles our youth face this decade.

While reading an article in the Michigan Citizen last week, I saw a headline titled “Rising teen HIV rate prompts concern.” While the article only spoke of the HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, rate amongst black teens in the state of the Michigan. The truth is that this issue is something that all Americans should be concerned about especially since our youth today are having sex like never before in our nation’s history. Still depending on who you are, the major problem isn’t that teens are having unmarital sex but the real issue is that they are having unprotected sex on top of having unmarital sex.

Since I can only speak of my home state of Michigan and the problems we face in terms of dealing with 85% of new cases being among black teens. It is very alarming for the African American community to see that 85% of new cases are black teens but whenever there is a problem in the black community, it seems to hit black males even harder. 62% of new cases are among African American males who had sex with other males accords to the Department of Community Health which released a report for World AIDS Day, saying the rate of new cases among 13-to-19 years old in Michigan more than doubled between 2003 and 2007.

Still Michigan is following the national trend of increasing HIV diagnoses among teens. This is why this type of news is not just a problem or Michigan but it is a problem that all of us in America must deal with this decade once and for all. Since HIV and AIDS were introduced to the world, it seems as if it has been on the increase in American especially amongst the African American community more so than any other community. Now this doesn’t mean there is some conspiracy or something but the truth is that like the unemployment rate disparity in this nation, their also exists a health disparity but better than that, there exists a communication within the African American community.

Just think about when Earvin “Magic” Johnson came out in the early 1990s and said he had the HIV virus, many in the African American community didn’t know how he contracted it yet alone what it actually was. Now nearly 20 years later, when you look at the African American community and the fact that the teen HIV rate has doubled than it is clear that many African Americans are not speaking about the HIV and AIDS issue as they should be. However this doesn’t mean that we as a nation can’t combat this trend because the truth is if our youth is our future than we must deal with the rising teen HIV rate now rather than later.

The abstinence only programs of the Bush administration did not prevent teens from having sex and didn’t put a dent in the teenage pregnancy rate, so learning from that, we as nation must now not only talk about waiting for sex but we must stress the importance protection to our youth who indulge in it. Now more than ever we have to educate our youth about not only HIV and AIDS but all STDs but this must be a community driven effort that starts in the home and school but is talked about in the barbershop, beauty salon grocery store, gas station and the church. Education and community awareness have to be ongoing and renewed with every new generation of youth if we are to decrease the rising teen HIV rate.

So if we are to win this war on our youth, we have deal with not just educational problems and violence but we must deal with health issues such as the rising HIV rate. We must deal with it starting today by talking to our youth about using protection especially if they indulge in sexual activities. While some might say, we should tell our youth not to have sex: point, blank, period. Simply telling them not to have sex is not good enough because our youth today are starting to indulge in sexual activities at a younger age just about every year on average. While 20 years ago, the average age for when a teenager had sex probably was 15 or 16, today it is not even in teen years, the average is more so 11 or 12 according to many surveys.

Thus, if we are to fight the rising teen HIV rate not only in Michigan but as a nation, we must start discussing the dangers of sexual activities and the importance of either waiting to make mature decisions or at least using protection if partaking in the activities. In fact, we should even stress to our youth to consult with their parents before partaking in sexual activities but this line should be coming from parents and guardians. Nonetheless we are all responsible for trying to put a dent in the rising teen HIV rate because it takes a village to raise a child and it is time we all start doing our part to raise our children of the village properly.

Jobs for Main Street Act = Growth of Federal Deficit

Before the House went on holiday in 2009, they voted and narrowly passed what many call the “Jobs for Main Street Act”. In fact it was the final vote for the House of the year and decade and it passed 217-212, without a single Republican supporter. Although the House passed the bill, it might be harder to pass in the Senate due to the fact many Senators have questions in regards to how effective this bill will create job.

Thus Senators are beginning to ask themselves will the latest jobs bill really produce jobs and is it worth plunging the government even further into debt by at least tens of billions. Now the House passed a $174 billion package last month and to some degree it is referred to as the son of the stimulus, the $787 billion economic recovery plan of nearly a year ago that many especially Republicans say was ineffective in producing jobs. Therefore if the original stimulus package was to produce jobs and many of which were created immediate but will be created this year and in 2011.

While the Democratic House bill plans to spend $75 billion in infrastructure and public sector spending: tens of thousands of new construction jobs, 5,500 more police officers, 25,000 additional AmeriCorps members, 250,000 summer jobs for disadvantaged youth, 14,000 part-time jobs for parks and forestry workers. These are the same jobs that the original stimulus package was created to do but it seems as if the House Democrats feel that the stimulus has been too little and too slow in creating jobs so they hope that the son of the stimulus will help in job creation.

Another key thing to point out is that the “Jobs for Main Street Act” will use $75 billion from the Wall Street bailout fund, better known as TARP, to offset some of the costs. Still some skeptics believe this is no more than a shell game because unused bailout money is supposed to be used to reduce the deficit, which hit $1.4 trillion in the 2009 budget year. So the appetite for another costly round of economic stimulus measures seems unlikely in the Senate especially since the Senate already has a vote on tap for January 20 to again raise the ceiling on the government’s total debt just a month after upping it to $12.4 trillion.

The “Jobs for Main Street Act” is yet another reactionary measure by Congress to deal with one of the problems plaguing our nation which is jobs. While some might applaud the House for trying to create jobs but who’s to say the amount of jobs they are predicting to create will be created from this package and most of these jobs are temporary not permanent. So the real question is what are Congress and President Obama as well as American companies both big and small doing to create more permanent jobs in this jobless market?

Now President Obama has a Jobs Summit where he outlined some things that the federal government as well as the financial industry could do to help small businesses create jobs. Still two key things that Obama outlined after the Jobs Summit were not included in the House version of the “Jobs for Main Street Act. The House plan leaves out Obama's proposals to attack unemployment through tax credits for small businesses that create jobs and for homeowners who make their dwellings more energy efficient. A job-creating tax credit for small businesses has support among some Democrats in the Senate, even though critics fear it may be too complex to work. Critics argue that small business people have too much to do just to keep their business afloat than to try and figure out some fancy, complex credit. While supporters of the credit say it would empower growing small businesses and if these credits have even a marginal incentive on even a few … employers, the bang for the buck in terms of job creation would be one of the highest of any of the types of incentives that the government has created thus far.

Still not everyone is buying into such a notion and the reality is that job creation issue is complicated because of the money in the House bill goes to programs that may stimulate the economy but don’t appear to directly put people to work. For instance, $41 billion goes to extend unemployment benefits for six months and $12.3 billion to extend a health insurance subside for people who have lost their jobs. Now the unemployment benefits extension is not a bad idea but it would not be needed if Congress actually thought of ways to create jobs or to help with job creation rather than continuing to extend ideas that were put in the original stimulus package that hasn’t panned out as good as many thought it would when it was passed nearly a year ago. Also the extension of a health insurance subside for people who have lost their jobs better known as COBRA, is very costly because most people without jobs can’t afford COBRA.

The House bill also includes the extension of a child tax credit for poor families, $23.5 billion to help states cover Medicaid costs and $23 billion so states can support some 250,000 education jobs over the next two years. An additional $2.8 billion goes to clean water and environmental restoration projects. Even the investment in "shovel-ready" highway and bridge projects may not immediately translate into a reduction in the nation's 10 percent unemployment rate. Republicans cited government figures showing that, as of Sept. 30, only 9 percent of $27.5 billion for highways in the first stimulus bill had been spent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that of the $39 billion in the new House jobs bill directed to the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, only $1.7 billion will get spent before next October.

The CBO has estimated that employment was 600,000 to 1.6 million higher in the third quarter of 2009 because of the stimulus act. The criticism over the latest jobs bill has already begun and many supporters of the bill are hurrying to show why it is needed but whenever the CBO speaks, I tend to listen considering that they are a non-partisan group and their numbers are usually close to reality than any of the numbers that other government organizations and officials give. Nonetheless the reality is that job creation must be a must this year. Most importantly if we are going to continue to grow our federal deficit and debt than we have to make sure we are getting enough bang for our buck in the short term. If we are going to grow our deficits and debt than we have to make sure we putting the money toward programs and projects that will create jobs for the American people as quickly and efficiently as possible.

While supports of the first stimulus like to say that a lot of jobs have been saved by the stimulus act but what they don’t say is that in many cases federal money is basically replacing lower levels of private or state investment. If those same supporters looked at the fact that the unemployment rate in the construction industry remains at about 19 percent, almost double the national level than they would see that despite all the upcoming construction projects, unemployment in the construction industry will remain high until states and the private sector are able to find the funds necessary to construct. Simply put the stimulus was nothing more than a needed shot in the arm, but the real solution is a long-term highway and transit investment bill which Congress has put off consideration of a six-year $450 billion infrastructure measure to replace the highway and transit act that expired in September. No one is saying that this would wipe out the double digit unemployment but at least it would put money toward something that would make America’s infrastructure stronger and faster in various ways. Nonetheless, Congress is looking at the short term problem as usual and this will only lead to our nation’s deficit and debt growing but the real question is what can we say we got for all this spending 5, 10 or 20 years from now.

Jobs for main street should be have been a priority of Congress last January but now more than ever, it is needed but it is needed in a smarter way since it is clear as a nation we will continue to spend outrageously to fix our economic woes.

References:
Information on the bill, H.R. 2847, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/
Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/
Background on the Jobs for Main Street Act: http://tinyurl.com/yz2ryx9

Weekly Address: The Fight Against Al Qaeda

The President discusses the recent attempted act of terrorism on the Christmas day flight to Detroit, and his broader strategy to fight Al Qaeda. January 2, 2009.

HBCUs--Historical or Non-Existent

Historically Black Colleges and Universities will always be historical but it seems as if many of them might become non-existent this decade if lawmakers particularly Governors get their way. It all started in 2008 with the state of Georgia where State Senator Seth Harp put forth a proposal that would merge two HBCU’s with predominately white institutions. In fact Harp’s proposal would merge the historically black 3,400-student Savannah State University with Armstrong Atlantic State University, a majority white school. Also, Albany State University, which has about 4,100 enrolled, would combine with nearby Darton College, which also has a predominantly white student body. The new campuses would keep the names of the older and more established black colleges.

Now in 2009, in Louisiana in particular state lawmakers are discussing dissolving Southern University’s higher education board and merging it with predominately white institutions (PWIs) educational boards. Yet another attempt to try to dismantle the funding and governing powers of another HBCU. However towards the end of the 2009 and the decade, in the state of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour made announcement that shocked not only the residents of Mississippi but it sent shockwaves throughout the HBCU communities. Governor Barbour announced that the state of Mississippi should consider merging colleges and universities and one proposal was for Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State to merge with Jackson State. The campuses will remain open but under the umbrella of Jackson State University. Still Barbour is only proposing this but if the lawmakers of Mississippi agree with Barbour’s budget plans in 2010 or the coming years than the state will only have one HBCU in existence along with 4 other colleges and universities.

Thus the new decade has arrived and the fact is that perhaps after all these years and surviving decades of progress, it seems that if HBCUs are going to survive past this decade than they need to do more than just march and protest unfair treatment and funding practices by state governments. If the previous decade was a warning sign to the future of HBCUs than the future looks pretty dim. Especially when you look at the fact the state of Mississippi even after losing a federal lawsuit in the early 1990s about the funding of HBCUs compared to PWIs, still have not lived up to the funding obligations as decreed in the lawsuit settlement. So HBCUs have to look to improve not only its financial capitol in the new decade but its political capitol because it is clear that HBCUs need all the financial help and political allies it can muster if they are going to prosper into the next decade.

If the last decade taught America anything and if states learned anything from the previous decade that is that states must change if they are to balance future state budgets while still supporting its citizenry the way it has in previous years as well as decades. This is way some states especially those with HBCUs are considering ways to merge some of its higher education institutions or at least hold them more accountable in terms of the education they are delivering to students especially since states are giving thousands of millions of dollars to higher education each year. Some people will say that for years people have tried to get rid of HBCUs and that states like Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi probably have found the final key pieces to do away with Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Elder historians and HBCU lovers will say that for years as well as decades, HBCUs have been underfunded by state governments or state lawmakers have tried to force HBCUs to increase their minority student population (i.e. non-black students) or risk funding being cut due to not following such stipulations. Now it seems as if state governments and lawmakers see yet another opportunity to close HBCUs and many people see this is perhaps the final nail in the coffin of many HBCUs if such plans are made. In the wake of states trying to fix their budget woes from not just 2009 but looking to make sure state budgets are solvent in 2010 and future years to come, states are looking at perhaps saving money by either getting rid of many of the colleges and universities higher educational boards and putting them all under one big higher education board. Also states are looking at merging some colleges and universities in order to avoid raising tuition (20-30%) as high as the state of California did for all of its colleges and universities in order to fix its state budget woes. So some states are using reasons such as low enrollment, low graduation rates, or financial instability at some of its colleges and universities as reasons for such merger talks but it seems at every state that is talking about merge involves the merging of at least one or more HBCUs.

The New Year as well as a new decade has arrived but this decade will tell a lot about the future of HBCUs as much of the talk that began at the end of the decade continues to loom into this decade especially with the state of Texas looking at perhaps taking over Texas Southern University, another HBCU due to financial problems they are having. So HBCUs have to do a better job this decade than it did in the previous decade or for the first time in a long time, many public HBCUs will slowly but surely become non-existent which is something no HBCU lover wants to see. Not only do alumni need to invest financially in HBCUs but HBCU employees need to invest political capitol in building relationships beyond the HBCU. In fact HBCUs need to show now more than ever why their academic programs are just as good or greater than PWIs because this decade will tell a lot about HBCUs academically, culturally, economically, financially, geographically and politically.

HBCUs this decade must be innovative and they must think globally if they are to survive into the next decade because like what happened to Morris Brown at the beginning of the last decade, it can happen to other HBCUs at the beginning of this decade. While Morris Brown is slowly but surely trying to come back, it still has not rebounded as fast as some people would think it should. Thus HBCUs need to think more outside the box of simply building new buildings, creating new schools or colleges on campus but they need to think more globally in terms of creating schools in other nations as well as building partnerships governments of other countries as well with colleges and universities that go beyond student exchange programs.

HBCUs need to not look any further than the beginning of the movie School Daze to understand that if they don’t think globally than they will continue to behind the Harvard’s, Princeton’s, and Brigham Young’s of the world. No longer can HBCU’s think domestically and expect to survive but most importantly no longer can HBCUs be stagnant on prior accomplishments but they need to always be looking to expand their accomplishments in not just research academic fields but in all academic fields. HBCUs are not just competing against each other but they are competing against the nearly 400 plus colleges and universities and counting. This is why HBCUs must stick together in this decade because there is strength in numbers and right now that is all HBCUs have to stand on but numbers alone won’t prevent many of them from becoming non-existent but it is the actions they make this decade as a whole that might pave the way for all of them seeing the next decade ahead.

Hopefully HBCUs change for the better this decade because if they don’t many of them if not all of them will learn what many financial companies and the auto industry learned at the end of the previous decade. That fate is not something that is good because even as we enter this decade, the fate of the auto industry is still murky and the financial industry looks to be recovering but still some smaller bank doors that were open to began last year, aren’t open this year. This is why HBCUs need to think innovation and globally this decade but do so with a stable financial footing, stronger academic standards and higher graduation rates. These things will stave off any talk of mergers or takeovers which will loom for at least the first couple of years of this decade but let’s hope not for the rest of the decade because HBCUs should be stronger than ever midway through the decade.


References:
Barbour budget has education mergers
http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/nov/16/barbour-budget-has-education-mergers/

Barbour: Mississippi Should Merge Universities
http://www.wapt.com/money/21630793/detail.html

HBCU's Economic Struggle Prompts Calls for Merging
http://www.insightintodiversity.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137%3Ajeana-graham&catid=51%3Abreaking-news&Itemid=159

HBCUs Drawing Scrutiny
http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/dialog/news/2009/01/30/hbcu

Idea to Merge HBCUs in Georgia Facing Resistance
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=print/news/the_black_diaspora_news/4513

Is it the end of an era for black universities?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/05/18/what.matters.black.universities/index.html

Threat to Black Colleges
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/17/hbcu

Flip Flop Jim Webb

Flip Flop Jim Webb

America is Broke

Were broke. Americas broke. All year long, our friends on the other side of the aisle have been on a massive spending spree that our nation cant afford. We had a trillion-dollar stimulus bill that was supposed to created jobs immediately, and yet unemployment is now at ten percent in America and three million people have lost their jobs since it was signed into law. Weve got a budget thats going to double the national debt in five years, triple it in ten years. Weve got a $12 trillion national debt. We brought a national energy tax bill to the floor thats going to cost a trillion dollars passed it. We had a health care bill here several weeks ago another trillion dollars passed it. When are we going to say, enough is enough? Here we are today wrapping six appropriations bills together. Were going to spend half atrillion dollars. And its got over 5,000 earmarks in it. Things like: $292,200 for the elimination of slum and blight in Scranton, Pennsylvania; $300,000 for music and education programs at New York Citys Carnegie Hall, where they pay the employee who oversees the props more than $530,000 in salary and benefits; and theres plenty in here for Washington as well: $150,000 for the National Building Museum and $250,000 for the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, a concert venue. Listen, I dont know how worthy any of these projects are, but I do have to ask a question: are they more important than our kids and grandkids, who are going to have the pay the debt because we dont have the money to spend on this? Its our kids and grandkids who are going to pay for it, and yet we cant find ways to cut spending. Before taking office, the President said he would go through the budget and these bills line-by-line, page-by-page. After Congress passed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill with more than 9,000 earmarks, the President signed it, and said, well that was last years business. Now the President says reducing the deficit is next years business that we need to spend our way out of this economic recession were in. Well I think the President ought to go through this bill line-by-line and page-by-page, all 2,500 pages of it. And then maybe hell figure out, we dont need to be spending this money that we dont have and piling more and more debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids. Instead, our bond rating, our AAA bond rating is in jeopardy and our Democrat friends want to raise the debt limit next week by $1.8 trillion. Instead, lets stop the madness and vote no.

CBS News Reports: Stimulus Funds Go to Martini Bars, Puppet shows

CBS Evening News reported on yet another revelation of stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse. The latest news of stimulus waste came courtesy of a study released by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ), entitled Stimulus Checkup, which took a closer look at 100 projects funded by the Democrats $1 trillion stimulus and highlighted 100 wasteful stimulus projects worth at least $7 billion but saved or created few actual jobs.

The latest projects that taxpayer dollars are funding include: a martini bar, a Brazilian steak house, a water pipeline, a money-losing golf course in San Francisco, fossil research in Argentina, puppet shows - and much, much more.

As CBS News reported:

The public's overall assessment of the condition of the national economy remains grim; 77 percent of Americans say the economy is in bad shape. The economic stimulus package was supposed to help with that. As of the end of November, the government has spent $217 billion in stimulus, and two Republican Senators say that at least 15 percent of it has been pure waste.

You probably wouldn't guess that a martini bar and a Brazilian steak house would be on tap for stimulus funds. But in St. Joseph, Missouri the two privately-owned facilities are getting $100,000 of your tax dollars.

The contrast with the latest report of stimulus waste and a Memorandum to Head of Departments and Agencies penned by Obama Administration Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on February 9 is remarkable. They wrote:

We cannot overstate the importance of this effort. We are asking the American people to trust their government with an unprecedented level of funding to address the economic emergency. In return, we must prove to them that their dollars are being invested in initiatives and strategies that make a difference in their communities and across the country.

Clearly, their own stimulus has failed to meet that test.

As early as next week, Democrats will move to raise the debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion nearly twice what had been assumed in last springs budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year, Politico noted today. Judging by the way out-of-touch Washington Democrats spent taxpayer money in just one year, why should the American people trust them with one more dime of their hard-earned money?

The American people deserve better than the out-of-control spending, borrowing, and taxing Washington Democrats have been offering up all year. Republicans have a better solution: a no-cost jobs proposal, which House Republican Leaders discussed just yesterday with the President.

Boehner: It's Time to Shut Down TARP

http://gopleader.gov House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement after House Democrats rejected a GOP motion-to-recommit that would have amended Democrats financial regulatory legislation (H.R. 4173) to shut down the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and require that TARP funds be used to pay down the national debt:

Today, House Democrats voted to continue TARP and go right on spending taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon. After a year-long spending spree, out-of-touch Washington Democrats are looking for money in all the wrong places to fund more of the same stimulus programs that arent working. Not only do Washington Democrats have no exit strategy for TARP, they want to keep the program alive so it can serve as a slush fund to bail out politicians.

"The American people are sick and tired of these open-ended bailouts and all this wasteful Washington spending. Taxpayer money paid back to the government should be used for debt reduction. Only Republicans are offering common-sense proposals to get government out of the bailout business and stop piling debt on our kids and grandkids.

NOTE: Democrats rejected a common-sense GOP motion-to-recommit proposal on the House floor today that would have amended Democrats financial reform legislation (H.R. 4173) to shut down TARP and require that TARP funds be used to pay down the national debt. The Republican motion-to-recommit also included a provision to lower the nations debt limit by an amount equal to that from shutting down TARP.

12/12/09 Weekly Republican Address: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

Rep. Blackburn: "If President Obama has his way, the Copenhagen conference will produce mandatory emissions limits that would destroy millions of American jobs and damage our economic competitiveness for decades to come."

Weekly Address: Learning from History to Reform Wall Street

The President explains that while he continues to focus on jobs, it is also profoundly important to address the problems that created this economic mess in the first place. He commends the House of Representatives for passing reforms to our financial system, including a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and blasts Republican Leaders and financial industry lobbyists for their joint pep rally to defeat it. December 12, 2009.

12/5/09 - Carly Fiorina Delivers Weekly GOP Address

In the weekly Republican address, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, describes how she was diagnosed with and beat breast cancer.

She explains why the recent recommendation on mammograms from a government-run panel was so troubling, especially because costs were a significant factor in the decision.

She points out, "The health care bill now being debated in the Senate explicitly empowers this very task force to influence future coverage and preventive care."

She wonders, under the Democrat health bill, "Will a bureaucrat determine that my life isn't worth saving?"

"Do we really want government bureaucrats, rather than doctors, dictating how we prevent and treat something like breast cancer?" she asks.

Weekly Address: Pushing Forward on Jobs

Following the best jobs numbers since 2007, the President recognizes that such trends are cold comfort to those who are struggling and pledges to continue pushing forward towards positive job growth. He looks back at the Jobs Forum he hosted days before and looks ahead to further action. He emphatically restates why he ran for President in the first place: to fight for a country where responsibility is still rewarded, and hard-working people can get ahead. December 5, 2009.