The New Jim (Recession) Crow – Older Educated Black Workers Hit Hardest

Unemployment in America is increasingly becoming targeted towards older, more experienced workers – with the people with skills being the first to lose their jobs, and the last hired. When you add the New Jim Crow to that, it has a disproportional impact on black Americans.

Recession hits older blacks in what should be their prime

America’s economic recession has hit African Americans who are middle age and older much harder over the last year than it has the general public, according to a new survey released Tuesday by the AARP.

In telephone surveys, more than twice as many African Americans ages 45 and older reported having trouble paying their mortgage or rent, having to cut back on medications and having borrowed money to pay living expenses in comparison to the general population.

Twice as many blacks also reported losing a job and having a spouse who either lost a job or had to take a second job. Nearly twice as many blacks had difficulty paying for essential items such as food and utilities.

These older, established black workers also lost their job-based health coverage at higher rates, were more likely to raid their retirement savings prematurely and provide financial help to their parents and children more often than their age-equivalent peers, the survey found.

The data reinforces what many experts have said for months: that the recession is really a depression for many blacks, particularly in areas where black unemployment has surpassed or hovers around 20 percent.

AARP Vice President Edna Kane-Williams said the disparities reflect the tough circumstances and tough choices blacks are making to survive the economic downturn.

“The recession has driven many African Americans to make hard choices now that may lead to serious problems down the road,” Kane-Williams said. “Raiding your nest egg or ending contributions, even in the short-term, will have long-term consequences because you will have less time to make up the losses.”

The troubling findings paint a gloomy financial picture for African-American workers during what should be some of their prime earning years, said Algernon Austin, who heads the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute.

The data also bodes ill for the future of these workers, Austin said, since many are using their retirement savings to pay for living expenses, health care and education costs and to support adult children.

“These findings suggest we shouldn’t be surprised if we see increases in poverty rates for blacks 65 and older in the coming years because a number of them are spending down their retirement income to try to get past this Great Recession,” he said.

Equally troubling is that older blacks aren’t consulting financial planners or using the Internet for financial assistance at the same rates as their non-black peers. Instead, they’re relying more on financial advice from friends and family members.

The survey did find that blacks were more likely to be training for a job in a new field, looking for a job and taking part in job fairs.

Nationally, the black unemployment rate is 16.5 percent, compared with 9.7 percent for the nation as a whole. The jobless rate is 8.7 percent for whites, 12.6 percent for Hispanics and 8.4 percent for Asians.

“I would have no problem saying (blacks are) in a depression,” Austin said. “There are different technical definitions and debates about what is or isn’t a depression, but to me, when you have unemployment close to 20 percent or above, the community is economically depressed.”

The AARP survey was conducted by phone in January and involved a national random sample of 1,407 respondents, of which 405 were black. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points for the non-black respondents and 4.9 percentage points for the African-American sample group.

 

The New Jim Crow – SCUMUS 5 And Employment Discrimination

The SCUMUS 5 are at it again in their ongoing effort to assure the safety of Jim Crow in America.

Appropriate Attire for the 5 Thugs In Robes Sitting the Supreme Court

Supreme Court to consider another case on racial bias in hiring

Chicago firefighters say they were illegally discriminated against through test scores. A lawyer calls it the flip side to last year’s case involving white firefighters in New Haven, Conn.

Reporting from Washington – The controversy over racial bias, testing and firefighters that blew up at both the Supreme Court and the Senate last year returns Monday, this time as the justices decide whether blacks who were not hired in Chicago because of their test scores are due damages for years of lost wages.

The potentially $100-million civil rights case comes before a high court that has already shown its skepticism toward such claims.

Last year, the justices ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were victims of illegal racial discrimination when the city threw out the results of a promotion test. The whites had earned high scores and would have gotten nearly all the promotions. City officials dropped the test results because they feared being sued by blacks who were denied promotions.

 

The New Jim Crow – Report: Minority-owned firms have tougher time raising capital

Every few days it seems that some clown or another is standing up with – “What has President Obama done for the black community?” as if President Obama should be making special laws, just for black people.

How about just leveling that playing field?

Report: Minority-owned firms have tougher time raising capital

The nation’s 4 million minority-owned firms face large disparities in accessing capital, making it even more difficult to weather the recession, according to a new report by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency.

The report found that minority-owned businesses outgrew their counterparts in the number of firms, employment and size of payroll from 1997 to 2002, but face significant long-term growth constraints. One of the biggest barriers is that minorities obtain less debt and equity, pay more for capital and are rejected more often for bank loans.

“For all businesses, especially those that are minority owned, access to working capital can really mean the difference between success and failure,” said agency director David Hinson. “Limited financial, social and human capital and racial discrimination are primarily responsible for the discrepancies in minority business financing.”

Minority-owned companies contribute significantly to the economy by creating jobs, paying taxes and leading innovation, but their “growth potential is largely untapped,” Hinson said. In 2002, minority-owned firms employed 4.7 million people and generated $661 billion in revenue.

With greater access to capital, minority-owned firms could create 16 million jobs and $2.5 trillion in annual revenue, the report concluded.

 

The New Jim Crow – Sucessful, Black… And Invisible

Listen to any politician, newsman or pundit – and one of the things you will never find out is that black Americans who are educated, hold jobs in major corporations, or own their own businesses, and make over $150,000 a year…

Exist.

You know – all those black folks who aren’t sports stars, TV pundits, or performing artists.

How to Reach Affluent African Americans
By not targeting this key segment, some marketers may be missing out

Of all the sins marketers commit, few evoke more scorn from peers than that of “leaving money on the table.” If there’s a population willing and able to buy what you’re selling — if you’d only ask, in a reasonably competent way, that it do so — then failure to reach those people is a needless blow to your brand. A forthcoming book, titled Black Is the New Green: Marketing to Affluent African Americans, makes the case that luxury marketers are guilty of missing out on one such lucrative market. Written by Leonard Burnett Jr. (co-CEO and group publisher of Uptown Media Group and Vibe Lifestyle Network) and Andrea Hoffman (CEO of consultancy Diversity Affluence), the book also offers counsel on how to go about reaching “AAAs,” its shorthand term for “affluent African Americans.”

Slated for publication in March via Palgrave Macmillan, the book says many luxury brands appear oblivious to the fact there’s any such thing as an AAA audience, even though such households now deploy some $87 billion in disposable income. With the image in their heads of a handful of wealthy black athletes and entertainers, these marketers overlook the existence of 340,000-plus AAA households — headed by professionals, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and the like — with yearly income of at least $150,000.

But there are also, as the book notes, brands that have been savvy enough to go after AAAs, though not savvy enough to do it well. One problem is that marketers often seem to adopt a hip-hop approach as their default mode in addressing black consumers, irrespective of the age or social class of the audience they’re hoping to reach. Sure, interest in hip-hop has broadened over the years. “However, the reality is that the vast majority of the significant affluent African American niche is not part of hip-hop culture,” the book explains.

THEIR TASTES HAVE MATURED
It’s partly just a function of AAAs’ age: “They are no longer 18 to 34 years old,” says the book, “but 28 to 44 years old.” It ought not to surprise anyone that they’ve outgrown some of the interests they had in their younger, less-prosperous days. “Their tastes, and their pocketbooks, have matured,” the book remarks. Referring to a Gucci campaign that features Rihanna, the book adds: “Just as any well-heeled adult is likely to be unresponsive to a call to the good life from, say, Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, AAAs have no aspiration to be like — or, critically, even seem to be like — an 18-year-old music star.” That brand “might have made a better choice in terms of reaching the AAA audience by choosing to employ an image of Halle Berry, or Phylicia Rashad, or even an undiscovered black model from Africa in their ads — in other words, choosing someone who registers on the AAA radar, someone who inspires their aspirations.”

 

The New Jim Crow – Locking Minorities Out at Law Schools

One of the ongoing efforts by conservatives in this country has been to reestablish Jim Crow though a series of legislative and legal moves. Conservatives were stung badly during the 50’s and 60’s by a series of legal decisions which overturned most of the Old Jim Legislation and penalized many Jim Crow practices. Recognizing that in any fair court of law they could not win – conservatives put a 30 year full court press on the Judiciary, and formed legal associations like the Federalist Society to attack advancements in Civil Rights, and get “their” Judges appointed at the Federal Level who would rule in support of their platform – regardless of the Constitutionality or legality of the issue. These attacks culminated in the current 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court – fully supporting the establishment of the New Jim Crow.

The Difference Between the New Jim Crow and the Old Jim Crow is in how it is implemented - not their objectives.

We see the result of that effort to seed the courts in the volatile judicial appointment battles during the Clinton and Bushit Administrations, and the steady attacks upon Affirmative Action by misnomered organizations supported by the Federalist Society such as the Center for Equal Opportunity,  The Center for Individual Freedom , and the National Association of Scholars which functionally have replaced the old White Citizen’s Councils in suing and legally blackmailing schools and Universities into racially segregating policies.

And, of course at least one “black” organization headed by the usual suspects to add a racial defense in terms of the short lived Center for New Black leadership, created solely to provide cover for the right’s offensive against Affirmative Action (equal opportunity) – whose leadership consisting of Peter Kirsanow, Gerald  Reynolds, and Brian Jones were all appointed to high level positions within the Bushit Administration as a reward for their Tomming in the University of Michigan Case (Grutter v Bollinger). The CNBL was set up by Federalist Society Lawyer Mitchell Pearlstien, and funded by the “Foundations” which fund many of the racist, and white supremacist organizations on the right – the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Donner Foundation.

 

Racism, the Right – and Hate Crimes

Found this garbage over at the DC Examiner. Since they are very unlikely to let my response to Mr Kane go though – I’ll post it here.

Ex Baltimore Sun Columnist Gregory Kane

First, Mr. Kane’s Uncle Tommery diatribe:

Gregory Kane: Hate crime laws attempt to criminalize thoughts
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
December 7, 2009

This story comes to us from Broward County, Fla. Teah Wimberly, 16, is charged with murdering Amanda Coll, a friend and classmate at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale. Both girls were 15 at the time of the shooting.

According to police, Ms. Wimberly wanted more than just a friendship with Collette, whom she’d known since childhood. Wimberly wanted a lesbian relationship with Collette, who rebuffed the idea, news reports indicate. On Nov. 12 of last year, police say, Wimberly took a .22-caliber handgun to school and fatally shot Collette.

Wimberly’s trial started last week and is expected to continue this week. This may be the first time you’ve read about the case, unlike when Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming or when James Byrd was dragged to death in Jasper, Texas.

 

The New Jim Crow – Legally Sanctioned Job Discrimination

African-American joblessness – nearly twice the national rate – is quickly becoming the first showdown between Black leaders and the nation’s first Black president as national Black and civil right leaders raise their voices telling the Obama Administration it’s time to end the jobs crisis in the Black community.

“We’re sending a strong message to the president and Congress that we need to step up. We need immediate jobs – not some time six, eight and 10 months down the road,” National Urban League President Marc Morial said in an interview with the NNPA News Service. “African-American leaders are not just saying do something. We’re offering solutions.”

Morial has sent a letter to the Obama Administration and Congressional Leaders outlining specific recommendations for job creation as President Obama prepares for a job summit this week in the wake of national unemployment numbers that grew into double digits – 10. 2 percent – in October. In his letter, dated Nov. 24, Morial reminds the Administration that the Black community has suffered double digit jobless rates for well more than a year.

“While I applaud the Administration for publicly acknowledging the gravity of our nation’s employment situation, I would add that double-digit unemployment has been a reality for communities of color since last summer – for African Americans since August, 2008, and for Latinos since February, 2009,” he writes. “As President and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream, I have firsthand knowledge of the tremendous obstacles these families have been facing, not just since national unemployment reached 10.2 % in October, but for over a year now.”

That’s great press – but it is a massive oversimplification of the issue. The issue is that there continues to be irrefutable and documented evidence of employment discrimination. Discrimination which is severely impacting that portion of the black population who did the right things, went to college, and developed successful resumes based on accomplishment. This is a continuation, and legacy of the Bushit Justice Department intentionally ignoring cases of real job discrimination, in favor of the racially driven search for “reverse discrimination” which produced the same results as searching for WMDs in Iraq.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.

College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.

Various academic studies have confirmed that black job seekers have a harder time than whites. A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50 percent fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names.

A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did.

The discrimination is rarely overt, according to interviews with more than two dozen college-educated black job seekers around the country, many of them out of work for months. Instead, those interviewed told subtler stories, referring to surprised looks and offhand comments, interviews that fell apart almost as soon as they began, and the sudden loss of interest from companies after meetings.

So the real issue here – is why hasn’t the Obama Administration put on a full court press on job discrimination?

 

Drugbo’s Newest Minstrel Show

Where did this motherscratcher come from affecting this “ghetto” accent?

A regular Amos N Andy show.

“Yo, Yo, Yo” – Y’er Ass!

Here is the “official transcript” for this Buckdancing Uncle Tom’s rant.

 

A Perverted Conversation About Race

This is a “documentary” conversation about race in America – or at least race in Denver Colorado by filmmaker Craig Bodeker…

This one got added traction because of Carol Swain, a black conservative commentator and professor at Vanderbuilt’s glowing review of the film (Hat Tip – Booker Rising) –

Carol Swain, Vanderbilt University Professor, Comes Under Heavy Criticism for Backing Film that Calls Racism a Myth

Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, a black scholar who is known for her conservative positions on race and immigration, has been accused by the Southern Poverty Law Center of being an apologist for white supremacists and posted a blog commentary critiquing the documentary, “A Conversation About Race,” which stated that the complimentary comments made by Swain lent the film some credence. Swain, a professor of law and political science, responded by posting a blog commentary on the Huffington Post and told the Tennessean in an interview that she feels she is being attacked by the SPLC.

Carol got sucked in to supporting white nationalists – but that isn’t the entire issue I wanted to address today. So – this Blog wasn’t initially going to bash Carol as an official card carrying member of the black conservative “Tom Squad”, because she wasn’t – at least to the dozen or so articles I’ve read that she has written up until her defense posted at HuffPo. I’m not terribly sure how the Carol Swain who wrote this –

In addition, there is a pressing need for a national conversation about the continued job discrimination that many black men and women experience despite the existence of civil rights laws and statutes. Some of this discrimination occurs in low wage, low skill jobs where blacks find themselves at a disadvantage when competing with whites and immigrants. Racial preferences in employment and college admissions do almost nothing to address larger problems of societal discrimination that might be amenable to more creative solutions.

Got flipped into full Uncle Ruckus caricature. And – don’t get this wrong, Carol is arguing against “Affirmative Action” – but, what separates her from the Tom Squad so far in my view is recognition of the continuing discrimination issue, and the proposition of solutions. She unfortunately, like every other black conservative can’t define or elucidate those solutions, but like the X Files – “they are someplace out there”…

But here is Carol’s own defense –

I’m sure many of the SPLC staff endorsed some aspects of the Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine film. In doing so, they are likely comfortable separating their endorsement of a particular feature of that film from the unconditional endorsement of its maker. In their case, Bowling for Columbine could be valuable in a classroom setting, even if Michael Moore isn’t beyond reproach. Similarly, they probably appreciate the artistic value of some Roman Polanski films even though Polanski is a convicted child rapist. Yet, they seem to conflate my endorsement of A Conversation about Race with a comprehensive endorsement of Mr. Bodeker, and his newly exposed familiarity with racist thought.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-m-swain/guilt-by-association-the_b_316107.html

The first thing the Tom Squad conservative learn suckling between their Massa’s knees is the false equivalencies defense. Polanski fully deserves to spend the rest of his days behind iron bars for his reprehensible actions as part of his personal life. But even his most severe critics balk at any claim that his films promoted and defended pedophilia. As to Moore, she would have to let us in on the secret. However, a better choice might be Moore being a fat guy, making a movie about the excesses of fast Food in “Super Size Me”. That is about as close as it gets, which is still different from Bodeker where we have the accusation of  a racist, making a movie promoting racism.

So Swain isn’t defending the film’s content, she is criticizing her detractors – which is wholly counterfeit. She’s de facto admitting Bodeker is a racist, without offering up a mea culpa for not examining Bodeker’s background before endorsing his film. She is now denying that a racist making a film on race might not be intellectually “honest”…

And denying culpability for that through false equivalencies.

Notice, not one word defending the actual content of the film.

So to cover that accusation that Mr. Bodeker is a racist – Who is Mr. Bodeker – and does he have a “message” he wants to get across here beyond a rather superficial examination of race and racism?

The Southern Poverty Law Center did their homework, unlike Carol Swain. Bodeker frequently refers to black folks as “Monkeys”, and has even called President Obama’s election as “Monkeys in the White House”-

“…The only way an advanced culture can PROOVE [sic] it’s not ‘racist,’ is for it to elect MONKEYS as public servants…”

On Van Jones –

This is a TYPICAL BLACK MAN speaking!
He has a limited intelligence, but is CERTAIN of his Intellectual Superiority over us common-folk!
He’s been privileged all his life, yet he believes he’s PERSECUTED!
He HATES white men, but we don’t call it hate!
Wake-up America! Because these EVIL monkeys are DESTROYING the greatest nation ever built!”

What is wrong with the film?

It starts with the hypothesis expressed at the 2:40 mark –

“Who are the ‘select few’ racists”? White people like me.”

At 3:20 Bodeker sets the bait with his plan to “Interview some of racism’s believers”. Any of you who have ever watched the old Jay Leno Tonight Show routine – “The Jaywalk All-Stars” should recognize the set up. You can construct a group of people, seemingly at random to pretty much believe anything you want. You want 6 people who believe Christopher Columbus is President of the United States – it’s all in the numbers.

As such, there is no validation of whether the folks selected represent the “Conventional Wisdom” claimed by Bodeker. Especially in light that he skillfully avoids asking anyone who might have expertise in the matter. Bodeker admits interviewing 50 people, but we only see a very small slice of the responses, only those which justify Bodeker’s racism.

At the 30:20 mark, Bodeker proposes a question “If any of the interviewees could come up with a name of a public figure who was racist.” He claims that none of the 50 or so interviewees could. A staggering claim 2 years into first the campaign, and second the election and office of President Obama, with charges and counter-charges of racism flying, and not ONE of 50 interviewees had any idea?

That is a setup for the next question – “Is Jesse Jackson a racist?“, for which we only see two responses – the second of which, a white lady who believes Jesse Jackson represents black people (he doesn’t, he’s an anti-racism activist who has been roundly, and righteously accused of racism because of his “Hymietown” comments), who when asked, “Can you name an advocate for white people“… Draws a blank.

To which Bodeker concludes –

“Get that, being an advocate for one’s racial group is a good thing, as long as the group is not white people.”

Sound familiar? Where exactly did this conclusion come from?

There is another curious asymmetry about American racism. When non- whites advance their own racial purposes, no one ever accuses them of “hating” another group. Blacks can join “civil rights” groups and Hispanics can be activists without fear of being branded as bigots and hate mongers. They can agitate openly for racial preferences that can come only at the expense of whites. They can demand preferential treatment of all kinds without anyone ever suggesting that they are “anti-white.”

Whites, on the other hand, need only express their opposition to affirmative action to be called haters. They need only subject racial policies that are clearly prejudicial to themselves to be called racists. Should they actually go so far as to say that they prefer the company of their own kind, that they wish to be left alone to enjoy the fruits of their European heritage, they are irredeemably wicked and hateful.

Read the piece above from David Duke – after watching the film. You will understand where the argument came from – and who (and what) Mr. Bodeker is.

Which puts Carol firmly in the Tom Squad.

So the question becomes, how did the erstwhile  Professor Swain get suckered into giving (talking) head to  a white supremacist espousing the doctrine of David Duke’s KKK? The answer to that is even uglier. Much of the KKK Doctrine as defined by David Duke and other white nationalist organizations has become part an parcel of conservatism as practiced by the Republican Party. The Republican Party under the leadership of the Bushit was the “White People’s Party”. The fable of the white victim became so ingrained in conservative thought the Bushit DOJ spent 8 years and hundreds of millions of dollars searching for examples of reverse racism…

With not much better success than finding WMD in Iraq.

Black conservative reflex is to defend their fellow white conservatives – no matter how egregious their behavior. Swain probably couldn’t tell the difference between KKK Bodeker and your average white conservative southerner...

They are, after all – one and the same.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-m-swain/obama-and-the-politics-of_b_227916.html

 

Hannity’s Minstrel Show

One of the trechniques Hannity uses on Faux News is to pit a sold out Uncle Tom like Jesse Lee Peterson against a weak black “Liberal”, while controlling the conversation such as to get across his racist points.

Here, we have as the guest Uncle Tom, a Michael Meyers of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. More on why Michael is an Uncle Tom, and how he’s bought an paid for after the video –

Now – Steven A. Smith plays the liberal foil (or fool) on this one – who is obviously intellectually way in over his head. Steven’s delivery and accent make perfect cannon fodder. Where Steven fails is when Hannity inserts the first false equivalency – ergo, his comment about Jesse Jackson buying a team…

Allowing Meyers to get fully up onto the porch with his “racial buffoonery” comment.

The simple fact is, niether Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton had a damn thing to do with the NFL’s opposition to Limbaugh’s ownership bid – the level of self-generated controversy to 12 million listeners a week by Limbaugh himself did.

The first question you should be asking is who is Michael Meyers, and who is the New York Civil Rights Coalition? If you go to their website – there is a biography of Meyers. Looks great, until you get all the way down to the bottom where it says –

His other board service has included membership on the Advisory Board of the then Washington, D.C.-based Center for Equal Opportunity; the Philadelphia, PA-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); and The City Club of New York.

The Center for Equal Opportunity is Linda Chavez’s outfit which opposes “Affirmative Action” and Civil Rights. It is essentially a white supremacist organization fully funded by the usual suspects. FIRE is a right wing organization battling what they perceive is the restriction of First Amendment rights of Republicans and Conservatives on college campuses. They are funded by, and led by the usual suspects, and their Board of Directors includes individuals from The Hoover Institute, Heritage Foundation…

So who funds the New York Civil Rights Coalition? I couldn’t find a Donor Report but something interesting popped up looking at the Board of Directors –

NYCRC Board of Directors
Johanna Bialkin
Dr. Kenneth B. Clark **, Chair Emeritus
Tamar Jacoby, Assistant Secretary
Michael Meyers, President/Executive Director
Dr. Orlando Patterson
Rabbi Ronald B. Sobel, Chairman
Fredrik S. Stanton, Secretary/Treasurer
Juan Williams

The first name which jumps out is “Uncle” Juan Wiliiams, undoubtedly responsible for vetting Mr. Meyers for his buckdance on Hannity. A key to who Mr. Meyers actually works for, is in the name Tamar Jacoby, who is director of the uber-conservative, racial psuedo-science, neo-conservative Manhattan Institute of Charles Murray – The Bell Curve fame.

Is Meyers an Uncle Tom on the Jesse Lee Peterson scale?

You betcha!

Is the NY Civil Rights Coalition a real organization?

About in the same way Peterson’s BOND is a real organization.

Been a tough month for conservative race pimps, driven by their massive overreach against President Obama. The kickback on that…

Is gonna hurt.

 

Uncle Tom Alert! The HNIC to the Defense!

Thomas L, Friedman recently wrote an OP-ED piece in the NYT entitled Where Did We Go, discussing the chilling similarities between the current status of right-wing efforts to de-legitimize President Obama and the same efforts against Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin leading to his assassination…

I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.

I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

Notice two things about Friedman’s piece:

1. He limits his criticism to “far right”, and “extreme right”.
2. He says nothing about race.

Along comes Uncle Mikkie, stumbling all over himself to suck conservative weenie, and defend his conservative Massas – even though the “far right” and “extreme right” make up (theoretically) only a small segment of the Party his HNIC for –

 

The HNIC Steele Plays the Race Card

Uncle Mikkie plays the race card in the White House’s request for Governor Paterson of New York not to run for re-election…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “The HNIC Plays the Race Card“, posted with vodpod

 

President Obama and that Racism Thing…

President Obama, for fairly obvious reasons has fronted that the opposition to his policies, and in particular the virulent opposition we’ve seen by the right to his proposals, isn’t based on race –

Faux News, one of the major perpetrators of that opposition, and whose commentators formulate much of the racial animosity and racism…

Agrees. Again – for obvious reasons.

It doesn’t make an MIT Math Graduate to figure out that if one were to select 10 random groups of 1000, Democrats and 1,000 Republicans – you probably aren’t going to wind up with more than 10 black people total on the Republican side – while 30% of the Democrats will likely be black.

Is that racism? No. Although the driving reasons that came to be, and some of the defenses thereof…

 

Hate Care – The Root of Republican Opposition

First up, Former President Carter clarifies his statements of the previous day at a talk at Emory University –

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration does what they do best…

Backpedal.

The administration obviously isn’t going to back Carter’s statements for purely political reasons. The “Post racial” first officially black President of the United States isn’t going to stand at the podium and state that his opponents are in any way driven by racism, short of South Carolina seceding again and raising the Stars and Bars. First and foremost because any cynical observation shows there is unimpeachable proof that some of that opposition is driven by the oldest of political concerns…

Money.

Health Care Lobbyists are writing some very, very large checks to anyone willing to sell out America. Using a well trod path, they have purchased an entire political Party, the Republicans – and even acquired some Democrats (Max Baucus, and some dogs showing a “blue” tinge).

So… While Carter is correct in his carefully chosen condemnation – the White House is going to stand pat.

 

The New Jim Crow – Excluding Black Owned Businesses

Now… You KNOW things are truly screwed up when the National Black Chamber of Commerce, a black front organization on the level of Project 21 for conservatives and Republicans needing to rent a Kneegrow to say the “right things” – AKA racism cover – is griping about the pitiful state of contracts being awarded to minority owned firms.

Have Black contractors been driven off the road?

The National Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. has recently received contracting data from the U.S. Department of Transportation concerning federally funded highway projects. Nationally, Black contractors only participate in 1.1 percent of the total federal dollars allotted through state departments of transportation.

There are twelve states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Ver­mont and Wyoming) that do no business with Black contractors at all. California, New York, Texas and Florida don’t do much better. “California, which is 54 percent minority, is indeed the poster child of this disparate impact,” says NBCC President/CEO Harry C. Alford. “They get $2 billion annually and do their best not to include minority business in their business activity, particularly Black businesses. The state does 0.1 percent (one-tenth of one percent) with Black contractors and they wear this bigotry with pride. Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) and the local chapters of the Associated General Contractors organization stand vigilant to make sure no Blacks are allowed,” according to Alford.

No surprise here about – Alaska (22k – 3.4%), Arizona (158k -3%), Hawaii (22k – 1.8%), Idaho (5.5k – 0.4%), Montana (2.7k – 0.3%), Nevada (135k – 6.2%), New Mexico (34k – 1.9%), North Dakota (3.9k – 0.6%), Oregon (56k – 1.6%), Puerto Rico, Ver­mont (3k – 0.5%) and Wyoming (3.7k – 0.8%). The non-Hispanic black population of these states sans Arizona and Nevada  probably couldn’t fill a professional sized football stadium (105k)… Added together. The real question then is California – which BTW has a Republican Governor (the Terminator).