Report Links the Tea Party to Extreme Racist Elements
From this link:
The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization declares the Tea Party“permeated with concerns about race” in a new report that is likely to reignite a feud between the two groups.
The report by the NAACP, released Wednesday morning, argues that Tea Party groups “have given platform to anti-Semites, racists, and bigots,” and have attracted white nationalists looking for recruits.
“The Tea Party movement has unleashed a still inchoate political movement who are in their numerical majority, angry middle class white people who believe their country, their nation, has been taken from them,” argues the report, called Tea Party Nationalism.
Written by Leonard Ziskind, an author who has written extensively on white nationalism, the report looks at what it calls six nationwide Tea Party networks at the core of the movement. It says that leaders of all but one —FreedomWorks
, a libertarian group in Washington headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey – have raised questions about President Obama
Most of the groups the report focuses on are better described as social media networks that predate the Tea Party movement but have become popular among Tea Party activists, among others. The core of the movement remains local Tea Party and 9/12 groups, which are harder to analyze because of their diffuse nature; the report explicitly notes that it did not make an effort to examine these groups.
And a foreword from the group’s president, Benjamin Todd Jealous, notes that the vast majority of Tea Party supporters “are sincere, principled people of good will.”
But the NAACP also points to signs at Tea Party rallies with explicitly racist or racially charged language. It notes that several black congressmen accused Tea Party supporters of shouting racial epithets at them in March, during a rally against health care legislation on Capitol Hill. And Mr. Jealous called on Tea Party leaders to repudiate this kind of racism, as well as ties to white supremacist groups and “birthers” within the ranks of the movement.
The NAACP passed a similar resolution seeking such a repudiation at its convention in July. Tea Party leaders reacted angrily, saying there was said that there was no proof that the incidents outside the Capitol had occurred. And they have long said that they do not harbor racists.
Still, the NAACP report notes that slowly, Tea Party leaders have expelled leaders accused of making racist remarks – a move it calls “welcome first steps.”
Video: GOP’s ‘southern strategy’ rises again, posted with vodpod
From this link:
Now that most U.S. military forces have left Iraq, the American diplomats left behind face serious security problems the State Department
That’s the grave message the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan presented to Congress on Thursday.
Much of the security once provided by the military will have to be done by private contractors, yet the department does not have the money to hire the number needed nor the capability to manage them.
“Even if State could obtain the funds for more than doubling its private-security force, it is not clear that it has the trained personnel to manage and oversee contract performance of a kind that has already shown the potential for creating tragic incidents and frayed relations with host countries,” Michael Thibault, commission co-chairman, said in a statement to the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee.
A July 12 report by the commission said the State Department has about 2,700 private-security contractors in Iraq but will need up to 7,000. It goes on to cite a troubling situation beset by “weaknesses in contract management and oversight, not to mention funding and hiring challenges.”
The problem is even more complicated because Iraq “appears unable to provide normal host-country security and services,” Thibault said.
The Pentagon has worked with the State Department but could provide much more help even as the military withdraws from Iraq. The Defense Department has yet to respond to a six-month-old State Department request for assistance seeking, among other things, helicopters, trucks and mine-resistant vehicles.
The July report quotes an April 7 letter containing the request from Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy. The letter said resources of the department’s Diplomatic Security Service are “inadequate to the extreme challenges in Iraq.”
Citing the lack of response, committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) said the Pentagon’s “apparent lack of cooperation is unacceptable.” A Defense Department spokeswoman said the Pentagon is preparing a reply.
The letter, the report and the commission’s testimony draw a disturbing picture of a State Department that is not equipped to deal with its biggest job ever.
“After the departure of U.S. Forces, we will continue to have a critical need for logistical and life support of a magnitude and scale of complexity that is unprecedented in the history of the Department of State,” Kennedy said.
Without that assistance, the department would be forced to rely on less effective equipment and “as a result, the security of [State] personnel in Iraq will be degraded significantly, and we can expect increased casualties,” Kennedy warned.
For example, Thibault told the committee about a “counter battery system” that allows the military to determine the location of rocket or mortar launches against U.S. positions. “As a result, enemy insurgents seldom fire more than one rocket, as they know they will be targeted,” he said.
But the State Department does not have that capability.
“Enemy insurgents will be delighted when they learn and experience that they will not be immediately targeted and brought under fire by the military. Where our enemies worked very hard to launch a single rocket, there will be little reason not to launch entire batteries of rockets,” Thibault said. “The safety of Americans, government and contractor employees will likely be jeopardized. This is simply unacceptable.”
This has upset members of the committee, including the top Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa of California. He complained that “the government is inadequately prepared to ensure that our diplomatic personnel are properly supplied and protected, now that our combat troops have withdrawn from Iraq.”
The report lists 14 security related jobs that are a good fit for the military but are not in a diplomat’s job description, including recovering dead and wounded personnel, recovering downed aircraft and bomb disposal.
If the department does not have enough private contractors to do those jobs, who will? And if contractors do those jobs, will they cross the line and perform inherently government functions that are the province of government personnel?
“Even basic questions of what military equipment will be transferred to the State Department and who will apply rules for the use of force still have not been settled,” Towns said.
All of this isn’t the State Department’s fault, Thibault said. The department, he said, has been dealt a bad hand that includes “unknown contract and program support from the Department of Defense; funding limitations likely to impact mission capability; and the need to contract for and perform functions that have never been done by their department.”
The devastating consequences of the war against Iraq are not over yet.
1/2 Of All Black Wealth Could be Wiped Out by Foreclosure
From this link:
By Devona Walker
The American middle class has been hammered over the last several decades. The black middle class has suffered to an even greater degree. But the single most crippling blow has been the real estate and foreclosure crisis. It has stripped black families of more wealth than any single event in U.S. history. Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion.
To fully understand why the foreclosure crisis has so disproportionately affected working- and middle-class blacks, it is important to provide a little background. Many of these American families watched on the sidelines as everyone and their dog seemed to jump into the real estate game. The communities they lived in were changing, gentrifying, and many blacks unable to purchase homes were forced out as new homeowners moved in. They were fed daily on the benefits of home ownership. Their communities, churches and social networks were inundated by smooth-talking but shady fly-by-night brokers. With a home, they believed, came stability, wealth and good schools for their children. Home ownership, which accounts for upwards of 80 percent of the average American family’s wealth, was the basis of permanent membership into the American middle class. They were primed to fall for the American Dream con job.
Black and Latino minorities have been disproportionately targeted and affected by subprime loans. In California, one-eighth of all residences, or 702,000 homes, are in foreclosure. Black and Latino families make up more than half that number. Latino and African-American borrowers in California, according to figures from the Center for Responsible Lending, have foreclosure rates 2.3 and 1.9 times that of non-Hispanic white families.
There is little indication that things will get much better any time soon.
The Ripple Effect
If anything, the foreclosure crisis is likely to produce a ripple effect that will continue to decimate communities of color. Think about the long-term impact of vacant homes on the value of neighborhoods, and about the corresponding increase in crime, vandalism and shrinking tax bases for municipal budgets.
“The American dream for individuals has now become the nightmare for cities,” said James Mitchell, a councilman in Charlotte, NC who heads the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials. In the nearby community of Peachtree Hills, he says roughly 115 out of 123 homes are in foreclosure. In that environment, it’s impossible for the remaining homeowners to sell, as their property values have been severely depressed. Their quality of life, due to increases in vandalism and crime, diminished. The cities then feel the strap of a receding tax base at the same time there is a huge surge in the demand for public services.
Charlotte, N.C. Baltimore, Detroit, Washington D.C. Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago and Philadelphia have historically been bastions for the black middle class. In 2008, roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 40 million blacks made upwards of $75,000 per year. But now, just two years later, many experts say the foreclosure crisis has virtually erased decades of those slow, hard-fought, economic gains.
Memphis, where the majority of residents are black, remains a symbol of black prosperity in the new South. There, the median income for black homeowners rose steadily for two decades. In the last five years, income levels for black households have receded to below what they were in 1990, according to analysis by Queens College.
As of December 2009, median white wealth had dipped 34 percent while median black wealth had dropped 77 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s “State of Working America” report.
‘Emerging’ Markets Scam v. Black Credit Crunch
While the subprime loans were flowing, communities of color had access to a seemingly endless amount of funding. In 1990, one million refinance loans were issued. It was the same for home improvement and refinance loans. By 2003, 15 million refinance loans were issued. That directly contributed to billions in loss equity, especially among minority and elderly homeowners. Also at the same time, banks developed “emerging markets” divisions that specifically targeted under-served communities of color. In 2003, subprime loans were more prevalent among blacks in 98.5 percent of metropolitan areas, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
One former Wells Fargo loan officer testifying in a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against the bank says fellow employers routinely referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans” and black people as “mud people.” He says he was reprimanded for not pushing higher priced loans to black borrowers who qualified for prime or cheaper loans. Another loan officer, Beth Jacobson, says the black community was seen “as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania.”
“We just went right after them,” Jacobson said, according to the New York Times, adding that the black church was frequently targeted as the bank believed church leaders could convince their congregations to take out loans. There are numerous reports throughout the nation of black church leaders being paid incentives for drumming up business.
Due in part to these aggressive marketing techniques and ballooning emerging market divisions, subprime mortgage activity grew an average of 25 percent per year from 1994 to 2003, drastically outpacing the growth for prime mortgages. In 2003, subprime loans made up 9 percent of all U.S. mortgages, about a $330 billion business; up from $35 billion a decade earlier.
Now that the subprime market has imploded, banks have all but abandoned those communities. Prime lending in communities of color has decreased 60 percent while prime lending in white areas has fallen 28.4 percent.
The banks are also denying credit to small-business owners, who account for a huge swath of ethnic minorities. In California ethnic minorities account for 16 percent of all small-business loans. In the mid-2000s roughly 90 percent of businesses reported they received the loans they needed. Only half of small businesses that tried to borrow received all or most of what they needed last year, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.
In addition, minority business owners often have less capital, smaller payrolls and shorter histories with traditional lending institutions.
Further complicating matters is the fact that minority small-business owners often serve minority communities and base their business decisions on things that traditional lenders don’t fully understand. Think about the black barber shop or boutique owner, who knows there is no other “black” barber shop or boutique specializing in urban fashions within a 30-minute drive. While that lender may understand there is such a niche market as “urban fashions,” they likely won’t understand the significance of being “black-owned” in the market as opposed to corporate-owned. Or think of the Hispanic grocer with significant import ties to Mexico who knows he can bring in produce, spices and inventory specific to that community’s needs, things people cannot get at chain grocery stores. That lender might only understand there is a plethora of Wal-Marts in the community where he wants to grow his business.
Minority business owners are often more dependent upon minority communities for survival, which of course are disproportionately depressed due to subprime lending. Consequently, minority business owners have a lower chance of success. Banks, understanding that, are even less likely to lend. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s beginning to resemble the traditional “redlining” of the 1980s and 1990s.
“After inflicting harm on neighborhoods of color through years of problematic subprime and option ARM loans, banks are now pulling back at a time when communities are most in need of responsible loans and investment,” said Geoff Smith, senior vice president of the Woodstock Institute.
Believe it or not, no one in a position of power to stop all this from unfolding was blindsided. Ben Bernanke was warned years ago about the long-term implications of the real estate bubble and subprime lending. Still, he set idly by. He told the advocates who warned him that the market would work it all out. Perhaps they thought the fallout would be limited to minority communities, or perhaps they just didn’t care.
Devona Walker has worked for the Associated Press and the New York Times company. Currently she is the senior political and finance reporter for theloop21.com.
Black Unemployment Continues to Eclipse Whites
[T]he nation-wide suffering for African Americans has just intensified with the recent unemployment data delivered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s most recent report showed that while white unemployment only went up from 8.6 percent to 8.7 percent, black unemployment went up from 15.6 percent to 16.3 percent. This increase is at a rate that is 700 percent higher than the increase for white Americans.
The numbers tell an interesting and sad story about the forgotten economic hardships being felt by black people all across America. First, black unemploymentis nearly double that of white Americans. While the rest of America finds itself screaming in pain over unemployment rates between eight and nine percent, black America is asked to remain silent about unemployment rates as high as 15 – 16 percent.
Black male unemployment is shockingly high, rising from 16.7 percent to 17.3 percent. This compares to a rate increase of 8.8 percent to 8.9 percent for white males. In other words, black male unemployment is 94 percent higher than the rate for white men. Unfortunately, this has become the norm for the African American male.
Black women also watched their unemployment rate rise from 12.9 percent to 13.2 percent, while white women saw no increase at all. At this point, white females have the lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group. Black women have an unemployment rate that is roughly 85 percent higher than white females.
The worst group of all are black teenagers. Their unemployment rate already stood at a startling 40.6 percent last month. This month, it rose to 45.4 percent, which is not only the highest unemployment figure of any group, it is also 90 percent higher than the unemployment rate for white teenagers, which held steady with a modest increase from 23.5 percent to 23.8 percent. The high unemployment rate for African American teens is likely one of causes for massive amounts of teen violence and persistently high rates of black incarceration. When kids don’t have jobs, they find something else to do. What they choose to do on their own is not always productive.
What’s so interesting about having a black president is that the presidency has made us feel uncomfortable as a community about asking that our specific issues be addressed. I am not sure how bad things have to get, how many black people have to be homeless or how many unemployment applications we must fill out before we can get our leaders in Washington to realize that while 9.6 percent unemployment is horrible for the nation, 16.3 percent unemployment in black America is absolutely devastating.
What’s worse about the recent black unemployment numbers is that they aren’t going to go away. When this recession ends, and white unemployment drops to four or five percent, black people will still have unemployment rates which match or exceed the rates that white Americans are experiencing today. But while white privilege gives other Americans the right to moan, groan and complain about eight or nine percent unemployment, black Americans will be considered to be trouble makers for speaking against numbers of the same magnitude. Rarely, if ever, do we see a greater indicator of racial economic inequality than this.
There was a time when black people were legally considered to be three-fifths of a person. Today, we have an economic version of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which says that it is an acceptable and comfortable outcome that white unemployment will never be more than three-fifths that of black Americans. As long as this disparity holds constant, our government officials don’t see a problem, and don’t expect us to see one either. In all of the talk about helping the nation out of this recession, almost never has any advisor in President Barack Obama‘s economic cabinet even mentioned the idea of reducing the disparity between black and white unemployment. Their silence is both deafening and perplexing to the black people who put him in office. I wonder
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.
From this link
By George F. Will
Sunday, August 29, 2010; A21
Various figures denote vexing social problems. They include 10,000 (the number of new baby boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare every day), 10.2 percent (what the unemployment rate would be if 1.2 million discouraged workers had not recently stopped looking for jobs), $9.9 trillion (the Government Accountability Office calculation of the gap between the expected revenue and outlays for state and local governments during the next 50 years), $76.4 trillion (the GAO’s similar estimate of the federal government’s 75-year fiscal shortfall).
Remedies for these problems can at least be imagined. But America’s tragic number — tragic because it is difficult to conceive remedial policies — is 70 percent. This is the portion of African American children born to unmarried women. It may explain what puzzles Nathan Glazer.
Writing in the American Interest, Glazer, a sociology professor emeritus at Harvard, considers it a “paradox” that the election of Barack Obama“coincided with the almost complete disappearance from American public life of discussion of the black condition and what public policy might do to improve it.” This, says Glazer, is the black condition:
Employment prospects for young black men worsened even when the economy was robust. By the early 2000s, more than a third of all young black non-college men were under the supervision of the corrections system. More than 60 percent of black high school dropouts born since the mid-1960s go to prison. Mass incarceration blights the prospects of black women seeking husbands. So does another trend noted by sociologist William Julius Wilson: “In 2003-2004, for every 100 bachelor’s degrees conferred on black men, 200 were conferred on black women.”
Because changes in laws and mores have lowered barriers, the black middle class has been able to leave inner cities, which have become, Glazer says, “concentrations of the poor, the poorly educated, the unemployed and unemployable.” High out-of-wedlock birthrates mean a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males without male parenting, which means disorderly neighborhoods and schools. Glazer thinks it is possible that for some young black men, “acting white” — trying to excel in school — is considered “a betrayal of their group culture.” This severely limits opportunities in an increasingly service-based economy where working with people matters more than working with things in manufacturing.
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the “startling” fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. This means “progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination.”
Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents, which partly explains why, while only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average day, 59 percent of their black peers do. (Privileged children waste their time on new social media and other very mixed blessings of computers and fancy phones.) Black children also are disproportionately handicapped by this class-based disparity: By age 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working-class family and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family — a child often alone with a mother who is a high school dropout.
After surveying much research concerning many possible explanations of why progress stopped, particularly in neighborhoods characterized by a “concentration of deprivation,” the ETS report says: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.” And: “It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers” to effect that.
So, two final numbers: Two decades, five factors. Two decades have passed since Barton wrote “America’s Smallest School: The Family.” He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.
