Today, President Obama hosts some 130 business, labor and thought leaders at the White House to discuss ways to create more jobs. Finally.
There has been a noticeable absence of a unified, cohesive economic message during these lasts few weeks as the President and Congressional leaders have hunkered down to debate Health Care and come to a decision on the Afghanistan conflict. But now, with unemployment in double digits for the first time in decades (not counting the levels of unemployment being observed in urban and predominantly black communities), Democratic lawmakers are probing the idea of a second economic stimulus aimed directly at job creation.
All of this sounds like there is a concerted effort being made to address the massive levels of unemployment we are experiencing, however, there is to my knowledge no real strategy being presented to effect the challenging times we face, and as such the Obama administration looks to walk into the same problem they’ve had with the Health Care debate. Coming to the table without having fleshed out what they want to see in a jobs creation plan. One could make the argument that this was and is the looming reason that conservative pundits like Limbaugh and Beck have been able to produce such a visceral response by the Right’s extreme Fringe – they were fighting the ethereal.
It’s easy to create a boogey-man when what’s in front of you is ambiguous.
We need a plan of action. Forums discussing the construct of joblessness are fine, but unemployment in the United States is pervasive in black America, and is quickly becoming so in the rest of the nations at risk demographics. We need a complete and comprehensive strategy on the level of President Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA. A federal program which before it concluded was the largest employer in the country. Providing nearly eight million jobs to those without work.
The success of President Roosevelt’s packaged plan of action, needs to act as a model for President Obama’s administration. But instead, we hear the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs saying that the
“private sector is the engine of job growth and wants to hear from CEOs on ways to increase hiring.”
A sideways denial of the ability of the federal government to greatly impact the unemployment epidemic – a tragic dereliction of responsibility in my opinion. Lest we and the administration forget that the vaunted private sector has been purging it’s workforce now for some 13 months. I don’t know, but I have a problem giving the keys to our economic engine to the folks who have been systematically off-shoring American jobs, hiring undocumented workers, reducing force without economic downturn, etc. Exactly what do we think the CEO’s of these “splendid” institutions are going to offer in the way of “CHANGE”? You guessed it zero.
African Americans are suffering disproportionately during these depressed economic times. The Washington Post reports that the jobless rate for black men ages 16 to 24 was 34.5 % in October, a number equal to the black unemployment during the Great Depression. Further, the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University reports that lower income white teens are more likely to find work before upper income blacks do, and that African Americans who graduate college experience joblessness at double the rate of white college graduates.
These statistics are deplorable. But, seemingly being ignored. Most mainstream media haven’t discussed this metric in any detail, and what of our Federal response…nothing. It would appear that the old adage “when America gets a cold, black America gets the flu” is still true. Exactly why has this extraordinary leap in the national statistic gone essentially without a thorough discussion in the seat of debate – prime time news programming? I am loathe to say, but must invoke the concept that the Rev. Walter Fauntroy once used to determine the reason why the District of Columbia was being and is still denied adequate voting representation in Congress. He said it was because the city was
“too urban, too liberal, too democratic and too black”
I would revise Rev. Fauntroy’s statement a little in this instance to say bluntly, it is because the effected unemployed is
“too urban and too black!”
The facts are the facts, race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in the morbidly high rate of unemployment for black America than any other group, even more than EDUCATION! Here are the facts:
- Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University;
- blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers;
- Young black women have an unemployment rate of 26.5 %, while the rate for all 16-to-24-year-old women is 15.4 %.
- Black male job applicants with clean criminal records fare no better than white men just released from prison.”
Those are the facts. In each case the common denominators are the same, if you are black and unemployed, regardless of being on an equal playing field educationally, or a advantaged position economically, you are more likely to find yourself in an unemployment line. (Still think affirmative action is bad Justice Thomas?)
We need to put a magnifying glass on the issue of unemployment in this country, but in the black community it is especially necessary, and if the silence of the MSM is any indication – we, the African American community will have to shine the light on this egregious state of affairs by ourselves, and for ourselves.
Yesterday, President Obama visited New Orleans. After holding a four (4) hour town hall, where GOP Gov. Jindal joined him, Pres. Obama visited one (1) school, where his interaction with one of the young students has garnered great media attention. Afterward, the President left New Orleans to attend a DNC fund-raising dinner in San Francisco, held for 160 people at the extravagant rate of $34,000 per couple.
Pres. Obama’s administration has gotten mostly universal praise for its work on Gulf Coast recovery, but his first visit to New Orleans was less than five hours. A visit that did not include the most ravaged parts of the Gulf Coast, in particular, the lower 9th and Mississippi. Today, he’s getting some heat. The question some would ask, is the scrutiny fair?
It is true that President Obama has sent Cabinet members on multiple trips to New Orleans— he’s even commented that he has sent “more Cabinet members to this region than anywhere else in the country.” However, a Cabinet member, though powerful, is not the President – and is certainly not the first Black President. Brentin Mock, of the Root, gives a from the ground perspective of the President’s involvement in New Orleans recovery. Quoting Louisiana Housing Finance Agency president Milton Bailey:
“I hear him saying he’s making movements, but I don’t see that movement manifesting in a real way on the ground.” His town hall speech at the University of New Orleans was disappointing. He spoke vaguely about broad issues, before quickly being whisked off to a fundraiser in San Francisco. It was as if he was speed-dating, and New Orleans got swiftly “next’d.”
Mr. Bailey may be harsh in his terminology, but his assessment holds merit. Pres. Obama, and Democrats across the country felt it obligatory to skewer Pres. Bush’s cursory visit to the Katrina ravaged Gulf Coast. His fly in to St. Peter’s Square for a speech and immediate departure. His lip service to the plight of the under-privileged citizen’s of a devastated metropolis.
How different was this trip by “our” President? Seemingly not so much.
Pres. Obama did not tour the lower 9th, he did not touch down in the lower portions of the Mississippi delta, he didn’t even detail his further actions to alleviate the disenfranchisement of those under-valued citizens who had lost their homes, their history, in some instances never to get any of it back. He never spent the time to hang around and help the people (the lower economic rung of the city) get a symbolic sense of wholeness with his presents. He gave a speech reviewing what he had already committed, and jetted-off in pursuit of money.
Cornel West, the noted black intellectual, and activist has often been heard saying:
“You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people.”
Pres. Obama has a history of leading by loving people. It’s what propelled him to be a community organizer and to seek higher office. However, I am growing concerned that he has reinforced himself, his administration that is with too many folks beholden to their entrenched interests – too compromised to see past their own political maneuverings to see the good needing doing. This last trip (if I can call it that) to our country’s greatest single testament to its apathy toward the underprivileged speaks to this greatly. The juxtaposition of the poor and devastated of New Orleans/Mississippi and the gainfully employed, personally wealthy of San Francisco is blinding example of the misplaced priorities of our government.
I believe that Pres. Barack Obama, is potentially a figure that can be transcendent, however he must stay true to himself. The values that drove him to office. The idea of change as a means of betterment, that people from smallest to most powerful have value – those values. It would appear that those values have been side-barred in instances such as this trip to New Orleans, or the characterization of the recession as declining (in the face of record setting unemployment, sky rocketing health care, and still occurring foreclosure) because the stock market is rebounding speak to a visionary losing sight of the vision, or worse of vision succumbing to the co-opted efforts to appease the entrenched politics of our system of democracy. Politics that are lead by the morally indifferent. Because as West says,
“It’s fashionable to be indifferent to other people’s suffering”
It has been said that governments are rated accordingly by the ways they attend to their most underprivileged. I would hope that at the end of these 4 years a failing grade won’t be given to a government led by a member of this countries perennial undervalued…if you don’t know what I mean, let me quote John Howard Griffin: “Black like me.”
I have watched this week, as every political pundit advised the 44th President of these United States to “avoid the issue”. That issue of course was race.
I have watched as the Obama White House announced their belief that race has not been a primary issue in the angry fervor of the right-wing protesters.
I’ve watched…and inside I have cried.
I’ve cried inside because the denials of the truth are condemning us. It is condemning African-American’s to continue on with the feelings of animus and despair. With the feeling that redemption is an ideal best left for the short of memory. But it has long been the ability of African people to hold history as precious, because it has been our teacher.
It (our history) once again recalls the words of Baldwin, as he described the plight of an African-American experience:
“To be an Afro-American, or an American black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend – which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn – and who yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new, to make it honorable and worthy of life.”
We are living these words. When a former President admits to the racist underpennings of many of the critics of Pres. Obama and the answer from our leadership is slight regard, denial, and in the case of the opposition, passing it on as partisanship we (those people of conscious) are compelled to condemn.
We are compelled to condemn a confederate flag defending, “you lie!” screaming Congressman from South Carolina as having racist tendencies…we are compelled to call protesters who seek to illegitamize an elected President as a foreigner bigots…we are compelled to condemn the mischaracterization of African heritage on protests signs…we are compelled to condemn talking heads like Rush Limbaugh (who has called for segregated busing for school children)!
We are compelled to condemn their actions in the nae of patriotism as decidely unpatriotic, and un-American!
We are compelled to do this because we wish to see the “new” and make this nation “honorable and worthy of life.”
It is my hope that the evil argument that is being made will not go silently challenged by leaders, will not be brushed off by those seeking a false post-racialism. We must combat ignorance with truth and accountability. It’s the only way we can all be the “Change” we believed possibly in reach on a Tuesday evening in November 2008.
During a press conference today, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), who released his health care reform bill this morning, said,
“This is a good bill. This is a balanced bill. This can pass the Senate.”
The tragedy of the entire process led by Sen. Baucus, and his gang of six is the reality that what we got in his proposal today, was what we should have expected. Baucus’ headlong dive toward a “bipartisan” bill…a bill that could “pass” the Senate was an exercise in futility. As fellow member of the Senate Finance Committee Jay Rockefeller said, as reported by the Politico:
“I’m not very happy about that obviously,” Rockefeller said of the process. “I think it was predictable that the bipartisan thing was not going to work. And we spent virtually an entire year with most of the Finance Committee being excluded, and a lot of us have a long history in health care and have very strong ideas and good ideas. … His [bill] was changed last night and I haven’t yet seen it this morning.
“You don’t run a committee that way,” Rockefeller continued. “That’s just process talk, the American people don’t care [about process], but they should because it means they are not getting as good a bill unless we could amend it properly.”
The Baucus process has burned bridges in the Finance Committee and has garnered for its overtures not one iota of GOP support. But worst of all, the bill is a grab bag of giveaways to the Health Insurance special interests. Look at some of the provisions offered:
- Employer Contributions Through Salary Reduction. In a time where working people have received next to no pay increases, Baucus’ plan makes the decision that we would be better served by adding further deductions to our pay for the same level of health care. How can this not be a new tax on the middle class;
- Interstate Sale of Insurance. We’ll have to wait until 2015 to be able to purchase insurance over state lines in the form of “Health Care Choice Compacts”. Another delay tactic;
- National Plans. In lieu of a public option, Sen. Baucus hands us state level licenses. Another way of stemming the move toward a alternative to the private insurance monopolies. Baucus knows that any “national plan” that does not have the Federal moniker on it will not have the leverage to force the bad players in insurance to return to a level playing field.
We need to send a strong message to compromised leaders like Sen. Baucus by flooding his and any other of our elected officials phone lines with our rebuke.
We want real reform, not lobby led concessions.
