tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-238974922024-03-13T14:12:15.457-04:00Hip Hop Republican | Music, Politics & CultureUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger874125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-26230696277321828412017-10-06T19:53:00.003-04:002017-10-06T19:55:30.688-04:00Cleo Brown - To Be Loved: A Film Review of ‘Loving’<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ABQN1R6JMAk/WdgXUzu_IyI/AAAAAAAAAHA/CK4n7jFiyy0nRkFCMIaf1htSmyq7bFYVQCLcBGAs/s1600/villet_grey_4C9_28_PLF-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="620" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ABQN1R6JMAk/WdgXUzu_IyI/AAAAAAAAAHA/CK4n7jFiyy0nRkFCMIaf1htSmyq7bFYVQCLcBGAs/s400/villet_grey_4C9_28_PLF-620x350.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">For my birthday this year, a good friend took me to see the movie <i>Loving. </i>Written
and directed by Jeff Nichols; the focal point of the film is an
interracial couple named Loving who illegally married one another, in
effect, violating Virginia’s miscegenation laws. The film stars a
beautiful and demure Ruth Negga and a stoic yet handsome Joel Edgerton
as Mildred and Richard Loving.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">At first glance, the film appears
tedious and boring moving at a snail’s pace. Before I knew it, however, I
was caught up in the struggles of this extraordinary couple, and their
three children who were banished from Virginia for a period of
twenty-five years. Eventually, the case of <i>Loving vs. Virginia</i> became a landmark 1967 United States Supreme Court civil rights case invalidating all miscegenation laws in the United States.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Unfortunately, the film ends much too
soon, with the high court’s ruling. The film, having gotten so caught
up in the struggle of the Lovings, we the viewers are left
pondering about the outcome of this family in the aftermath of the
decision.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Nevertheless, film couldn’t have come at the right time<b>, </b>a time<b> </b>when when blacks and whites in the United States are polarized along racial lines. Perhaps in some small but significant way, <i>Loving</i>,
the story of a white man and black woman who only sought to love each
other and raise their children in peace and harmony serves as a powerful
example to all of us throughout this holiday season to get along, to
love and to be loved. For to love and to be loved is all that the
Lovings and their children sought.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">On a scale of from one thru ten I rate LOVING a 9+.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Cleo Brown is the movie reviewer for HipHopRepublican.com. She lives in Manhattan and has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis and has done work on a Ph.D. in education at The University of San Francisco. She has published several poetry books and is featured in Who’s Who in Poetry</span></i></div>
Publisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00093800163791183175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-24546610858694285392016-09-14T17:32:00.002-04:002017-10-06T19:55:53.133-04:00How the GOP will change after Trump<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xM1dEjjcLHI/V9nB8AT6iMI/AAAAAAAAAGA/NJ78Yri4Qv4FuXVOG2yPTRZtm6ith7NegCLcB/s1600/download-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xM1dEjjcLHI/V9nB8AT6iMI/AAAAAAAAAGA/NJ78Yri4Qv4FuXVOG2yPTRZtm6ith7NegCLcB/s400/download-620x350.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
How much will the Republican Party change after the Trumpocalypse? Zero. Nada. None at all.<br />
<br />
Leaders at every level have signaled that white nationalism is now acceptable in the Party of Lincoln. From Paul Ryan to Scott Walker to Marco Rubio, senior figures have confirmed that tax cuts are a higher priority on the Republican agenda than basic human rights and civil liberties.<br />
<br />
No one can unring that bell.<br />
<br />
Many Republicans fantasize that after Trump’s defeat the party will execute a miraculous “pivot,” restoring sanity and regaining some semblance of relevance. Unfortunately, our embrace of racist groups will dictate the party’s short, grim future. A change of direction is impossible because all of the party’s feedback mechanisms have been systematically dismantled.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="https://goplifer.com/book-the-politics-of-crazy/">The Politics of Crazy</a></i> has eroded the social capital institutions that once blunted the influence of dumb ideas and daffy candidates. <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://goplifer.com/2013/12/02/why-the-right-has-such-lousy-information/">A conservative entertainment complex</a> has destroyed any means by which Republican voters might confront dissonant information. Whatever organizational structure the party once enjoyed has been replaced by a vampire squid of grift, a matrix of interconnected cons <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164">funneling contributions down a bottomless hole</a>.</span><br />
<br />
Very few of the people who built this mess have any stake in the outcome. If RNC Chairman Reince Priebus fails to retain his position next year, he’ll leave the worst job on the planet to quadruple his income (at least) with a fat position on K street. For Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and the rest of the conservative entertainment complex, the show will go on without pausing to apologize. The same people who bought tickets to see Dinesh D’Souza’s <i>2016: Obama’s America</i> will fork over more cash for next year’s low-budget sequel. Nobody pays for getting it wrong.<br />
<br />
With the party stripped of feedback mechanisms, Trump’s defeat will do nothing to interrupt the GOP’s decline. The kind of people who think climate change is a hoax aren’t going to reconsider their life choices just because some guy lost an election.The Reagan coalition is dead, but the remaining members can’t smell the corpse. They don’t understand why their rhetoric falls flat. They have no idea why younger voters have rejected them. They can’t comprehend why their policies are failing in the places that have adopted them. Most of all, they refuse to rethink the positions and rhetoric that have driven non-white voters from the party.<br />
<br />
After November, Republican leadership will pretend that Trump was some kind of anomaly, an act of God like a hurricane or earthquake. There will be so-called “reforms.” Fresh slogans will be spray-painted over the same flaming dumpster. Smiling, cooperative, “well-spoken” black people will be paraded on stage at Republican events all over the country. No effort to soften the party’s tone will change the fact that 70% of Republican primary voters supported either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in 2016. Those voters aren’t going to get smarter overnight. They aren’t going to reflect on their choices. And they aren’t going away.<br />
<br />
Absent a fundamental reconstruction of the party it will never again nominate a competitive candidate for President. That reconstruction isn’t coming anytime soon, because there are no forces in the party capable of delivering it.<br />
<br />
What does this mean for the party’s future?<br />
<br />
The party’s shift toward <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2013/10/can-the-gop-survive-as-a-white-nationalist-party/">a more open white nationalism</a> is a terminal event that will play out across the next four years. Big losses in 2016 will probably be tempered somewhat by a fleeting recovery in 2018. Forces that boost Republicans in off-year races remain at work, <a href="https://goplifer.com/2015/11/04/republicans-demographic-trap-on-display/">though they continue to weaken</a>. A few wins in 2018 will not be enough to staunch the bleeding.</span><br />
<br />
By 2020 the demographic forces that have driven the party out of contention nationally will be impossible to ignore. That will be the first election in which a significant number of millennials have hit the real voting age – 35 – the age at which people start to participate reliably in politics. In the next Presidential election millennials will be <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/25/170240786/forget-2016-the-pivotal-year-in-politics-may-be-2020">nearly 40% of eligible voters</a>. Beyond 2020 they will completely dominate our politics.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Their coming of age will coincide with the emergence of a massive younger wave of Hispanic voters, far more politically engaged than their parents. These two forces are the hammer and anvil waiting to crush the weakened remnants of the GOP. Their arrival in serious numbers will finally break the party’s state and local successes in nominally red states that have large urban areas.<br />
<br />
Whatever talk show host or religious fanatic the GOP nominates in 2020 will enter the race polling just ahead of the Libertarians and Greens. If that sounds unlikely, take a look at Trump’s current polling in Utah and New York. The future is now.At this point there’s only one thing that can rescue the Republican Party – the Democratic Party. In this political climate, a Democratic coalition large enough to win 55% of the vote in a Presidential election is too large to be structurally sound.<br />
<br />
There’s reason to believe that Democrats might suffer their own <i>Politics of Crazy</i>-style disaster. In 2016 Democrats came very close to nominating <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://goplifer.com/2015/08/12/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-and-the-triumph-of-entertainment/">the left’s version of Ron Paul</a>. Based on that 2016 close call, 2020 could be rocky. Larger social, economic, and political forces that have overwhelmed the Republican Party may be just one or two cycles away from ruining the Democrats.</span><br />
<br />
Barring such a failure by Democrats in 2020, a Republican implosion will trigger a powerful and potentially destabilizing scramble to occupy the second spot in our two-party system. How that plays out is impossible to predict. We can be sure though that Trump’s defeat will not change the Republican Party’s trajectory. No advice or warnings will be heard. It’s too late now to take this train off the tracks.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>####</b><br />
<b></b><br />
<i>Chris Ladd is a Texan in exile. After growing up in Beaumont and working for more than a decade in Houston, he moved to suburban Chicago, where he is a Republican precinct committeeman. He has a day job that he loves in the software industry. In his free time he has written for David Frum’s blog, the Washington Times Communities, the Houston Chronicle, and the Huffington Post. Back in Texas he interned at the Legislature, worked on numerous state and local Republican campaigns, and volunteered for a statewide PAC. Chris graduated from Beaumont’s Central High, earned a degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas (the Harvard of Williamson County) and received his JD from the University of Houston. He currently has a new book out entitled “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X1EM3AW">The Politics of Crazy: How America Lost Its Mind and What We Can Do About It</a>.”</i> Publisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00093800163791183175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-33132973649405481072015-07-08T20:00:00.001-04:002015-07-08T20:00:05.058-04:00Joseph Hunter: The Case for Jeb Bush<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H7jclTFdYnY/VZ25bPnQ8_I/AAAAAAAADNY/RNSbmHJJ_Pw/s1600/RaaKlx8d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H7jclTFdYnY/VZ25bPnQ8_I/AAAAAAAADNY/RNSbmHJJ_Pw/s320/RaaKlx8d.jpg" width="283" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"><strong>A</strong>fter months of
Hamlet-like vacillation, John Ellis (Jeb) Bush decides to join the 2016
Presidential race. The leader among all of the declared and undeclared
Republican presidential candidates, Bush offers something most of the
candidates do not–executive experience running a state that the GOP must
win in order to win the 2016 election. Still though, many Republicans
remain skeptical of Mr. Bush, some flatly refusing to vote for “another
Bush.” Here are 3 reasons why Republicans should keep an open mind about
the Jeb Bush candidacy.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Reason One: Jeb Bush Joins the Race Enjoying Advantages the Other Candidates Envy</b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><hr />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">Martin O’Malley, Carly Fiorina, and Ben
Carson share a common first hurdle to a successful White House
bid–earning widespread name recognition. For some candidates, their
relative obscurity serves them well: Senator Marco Rubio, for example,
can define himself on his own terms. Martin O’Malley, on the other hand,
struggles to get any attention at all. For Jeb Bush, name recognition
cuts both ways: on the one hand, Bush enjoys the benefits of belonging
to a respected political family that Americans feel as if they know.
After all, the only Republicans to win the White House since Ronald
Reagan were Bushes. Still, though,Jeb must make the case that he is his
own man, worthy of the job on his own merits, not just because of his
last name. That task represents an opportunity similar to Senator
Rubio’s.</span> <span style="color: black;"> Being from such a successful political family brings with it two more important advantages–networking and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/jeb-bush-2016-fundraising-money-campaign-118950.html" style="color: black;">money</a>. Leading up to his announcement, Bush has been cobbling together <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/jeb-bush-2016-campaign-staff-power-players-119012.html" style="color: black;">an enviable campaign team</a>
of big names like Danny Diaz, Heather Larrison, and Alex Lundry. Many
of these people worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign and worked for
George W. Bush as well.</span> <span style="color: black;">Heather Larrison leads Bush’s dynamic fundraising team <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jeb-bushs-war-chest-far-outpacing-field-of-gop-contenders/2015/02/13/1fd3c076-b2f1-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html" style="color: black;">that has been greatly outpacing his rivals’</a>. Mr. Rubio, also from Florida, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/politics/jeb-bush-marco-rubio-fundraisers/" style="color: black;">has been struggling</a>
to build his fundraising base upon Florida donors, because Bush’s
influence in the state is deeper and wider-reaching. In fact, whichever
candidate performs worse in Florida’s winner take all primary will
likely end his White House bid immediately thereafter.</span> <span style="color: black;"> Name recognition, deep political networks and strong fundraising abilities are important aspects to running a winning campaign.</span><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Reason Two: America Values Individual Accomplishment More than Bloodlines</b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><hr />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">By far, the most braindead “argument”
against a Jeb Bush presidential run (and in fairness, against Hillary
Clinton as well) is “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2015/02/18/not-another-bush-please/" style="color: black;">Not Another Bush</a>.”
This reticence to support Mr. Bush purely based on his last name
indicates immaturity and irrational thinking. For those of us who have
siblings, would it be fair to say that knowing one of you is the same as
knowing the other? Do you think the same as your siblings on all
matters? Do you think the same as your father on all matters? Most
matters?</span> <span style="color: black;">Most bothersome about the “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/16/tom-coburn-jeb-bush_n_6335344.html" style="color: black;">Not Another Bush</a>”
line, is that it runs contrary to America’s greatest ideal, that which
sets us apart from our European kin: America values the individual more
than the bloodline. And we should continue to do so. Betraying that idea
betrays the notion that anyone can “make it” in America if he or she
just works hard and plays by the rules.</span> <span style="color: black;">By
this standard, Jeb Bush has earned his right to be taken seriously
along with the other candidates because he governed Florida successfully
and conservatively. At present, he appears to be an upstanding man with
a good family (<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9373195/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/florida-gov-jeb-bushs-son-arrested/#.VYA-nUZSJKg" style="color: black;">all families face challenges, of course</a>).
He holds his own policy positions that may vary from his brother and
father, and still fall within the conservative spectrum. On these
elements should he be judged, not on his family lineage.</span> <span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Reason Three: Jeb Bush Falls within the GOP Mainstream</b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><hr />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">The 2016 GOP candidate will surely need
the support from the broadest coalitions of the conservative movement.
He or she will need to speak most of all to social conservatives,
economic conservatives, and defense-minded conservatives. On the issues
most important to these constituencies, Jeb Bush falls within the
mainstream. Unlike George Pataki, Bush holds a consistent record
opposing abortion. Unlike Mike Huckabee, Bush does not need to defend
himself against allegations of reliance on federal funds during his
governorship. Unlike Rand Paul, Bush speaks clearly about reinstating a
forward-leaning foreign policy.</span> <span style="color: black;"> Furthermore,
for Bush’s conservative bona fides, he strikes a moderate tone–an
important ingredient for any GOP candidate to win the general election.</span> <span style="color: black;">Without
a doubt, Mr. Bush faces a list of challenges and formidable candidates
in his 2016 bid. While he leads the pack in most polls, his lead wanes–<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/jeb-bush-florida-quinnipiac-poll-116607.html" style="color: black;">most notably, in Florida</a>.
Still, though, Bush represents a serious candidate in whom Republicans
can take pride. A welcome addition to the large field of candidates, Jeb
Bush deserves serious consideration in his own right.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>#####</strong></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"><strong>About the Author:</strong> Joseph Hunter is a conservative writer from Chicago who blogs at <a href="http://www.blkandred.com/">Black and Red</a>. You can follow him on twitter <em><a href="https://twitter.com/blkandred">@blkandred</a></em>.</span></span></span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-54934411244544058032015-07-08T19:57:00.002-04:002015-07-08T19:57:39.341-04:00Cleo Brown: The Conservative Case for “Housing First”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7GeDdQhOwI/VZ244Q1kGxI/AAAAAAAADNQ/zn63_YtAxUA/s1600/fiqtTH3IRBuSbPfpcurp1Q-620x340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7GeDdQhOwI/VZ244Q1kGxI/AAAAAAAADNQ/zn63_YtAxUA/s400/fiqtTH3IRBuSbPfpcurp1Q-620x340.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">According to the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD), homelessness is defined as “people
who are living in a place not meant for human habitation, in emergency
shelter, in transitional housing, or are existing in an institution
where they temporarily reside for up to ninety days; or people who have
lost their primary night-time residence, which may include a motel or a
hotel.”</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Similarly, the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia, defines homelessness as “the condition of people without a
regular dwelling-people who are homeless are most often unable to
acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing, or lack
“fixed, regular and adequate night-time residence. The term ‘homeless’
may also include people whose primary night-time residence is in a
homeless shelter, a warming center, a domestic violence shelter, a
vehicle, cardboard boxes, a tent,” etc. The United Nations defines
homelessness as “rooflessness.” This includes people “living in the
streets without shelter”; and “persons with no place of usual
residence…including dwellings, shelters, and institutions for the
homeless or other living quarters.”</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">As of 2005, there were at least 100
million homeless people world-wide. There are currently, according to
the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, between 2.3 and 3.5
million people experiencing homelessness in the U.S.A. And, according
to a 2008 study by HUD, in January of 2007, 671, 888 people experienced
homelessness. The study concluded that about 58 percent lived in
shelters and transitional housing while the other 42 percent were
unsheltered. In 2010, another group, AHAR (Annual Homeless Assessment
Report) found that 1,593,150 individuals were homelessness, of which 85
percent were single and 75-80 percent were male.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">“NOW,” a PBS station found that the
states with the highest rates of homelessness as of 2009 were: Alaska,
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island,
Washington State and Washington D.C. According to the Institute for the
Study of Homelessness and Poverty, an estimated 254,000 men, women and
children experienced homelessness in Los Angeles during some part of the
year while, according to The Coalition For The Homeless, as of April
2015, there were approximately 59, 285 homeless individuals (including
14,132 families and 24,267 children) in New York City. Also, according
to The Coalition For The Homeless, “the numbers of homeless New Yorkers
sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 72 percent higher than
it was in 2005.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Keeping these statistics in mind,
according to HUD and the United Nations, it costs taxpayers and the
government between $35,000 and $150,000 per year to maintain one
homeless person in the U.S.A. Similarly, it has been reported that in
Salt Lake City, Utah, the cost for maintaining one homeless person for a
single year ( although an isolated incident ) was one million dollars.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">In states, however, such as Colorado,
Florida, New York and Utah, where “Housing First” programs have been
implemented to house and care for the homeless, these costs have been
reduced significantly to, in some instances, as low as $7,000 per person
per year.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Why is homelessness so expensive?</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">The costs of hospitalizations,
including frequent use of the emergency room; use of the police to
control the homeless including the incarceration of the homeless in
jails and prisons; and the use of the shelter system including patronage
of soup kitchens and food pantries by the homeless all adds up to, on
an average, $40,000 per year per homeless person. With the cost of
hospital rooms exceeding $2,000 per day and the salaries of physicians,
nurses, hospital administrators, police, court officials, attorneys and
social services staff growing annually, it is no wonder.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">What is “Housing First”?</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">“Housing First” programs house the
homeless first and then, using on-site supportive services, work to
correct a host of problems causing the homelessness such as substance
abuse, parole from jail and prison, mental illness, domestic violence,
discharge from the military and loss of income, are cheaper to implement
and use. Formerly, social scientist sought to cure these problems
first. This delay was costly, and often, was responsible for an
escalation of the problem(s) causing the homelessness.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">With “Housing First” however, the
immediate need is to house the homeless first, then help correct the
contributing factors to homelessness. In Colorado, Florida and Utah the
cost of maintaining one homeless person was reduced to $7,000 per year.
In New York City, one nonprofit housing organisation was able to use a
“Housing First” approach and reduced the cost of maintaining one
formerly homeless person to a little over $16,000 per year. Although.
$16,000 is more than double. $7,000 it is still much cheaper than
$40,000 per year per homeless person.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">In conclusion, while the shelter system
and supporting social services ( medical services, clothing,
transportation, food, recreation) are necessary for the millions of
homeless people who depend upon their existence for their day to day
survival, the sounder economic policy is to utilize an approach that
offsets cost to the taxpayer while meeting the needs of the homeless.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><strong>#####</strong></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><strong>About the Author:</strong> Cleo
Brown is the movie reviewer for HipHopRepublican.com. She lives in
Manhattan and has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American
History from The University of California at Davis and has done work on a
Ph.D. in education at The University of San Francisco. She has
published several poetry books and is featured in Who’s Who in Poetry.</span></span></span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-11168175600203019972015-04-10T07:36:00.002-04:002015-04-10T07:39:57.664-04:00Why Rand Paul’s presidential bid should matter to black America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PmPUF6Vpu1k/VSe1oPFOckI/AAAAAAAADMY/UbZh34wV-Ms/s1600/rand-paul-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PmPUF6Vpu1k/VSe1oPFOckI/AAAAAAAADMY/UbZh34wV-Ms/s1600/rand-paul-620x350.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is official.</span></span><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is running for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. But why should black America care?</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pay close attention to his views on mass incarceration and the war on <a class="auto-link" href="http://thegrio.com/2012/04/20/slideshow-the-top-10-potheads-in-hip-hop/#s:bone-thug-jpg-2" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">drugs</a>, which could move the Republican Party forward on criminal justice reform and possibly attract blacks, younger voters and other Democratic base voters. But don’t lose sight of the senator’s past statements against civil rights, which sound a lot like the same ol’ GOP story. And that story, brought to you by the tea party, has not been very friendly to black people these days.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government,” Paul said on his <a href="http://randpaul.com/about?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">campaign website</a>.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: The Grio. <a href="http://thegrio.com/entertainment/2015/04/07/rand-paul-presidency-black-america/" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-21781499150825258172015-04-10T07:32:00.002-04:002015-04-10T07:32:57.127-04:00A Republican Governor Is Leading the Country’s Most Successful Prison Reform<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Joagk2a_Wpo/VSe0nafH_gI/AAAAAAAADMQ/l1X9n2D-ew4/s1600/nathan-deal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Joagk2a_Wpo/VSe0nafH_gI/AAAAAAAADMQ/l1X9n2D-ew4/s1600/nathan-deal.jpg" height="165" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #302517; color: white; font-family: aktiv-grotesk-std, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: start;">Photo: Davis Turner / Getty Image</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="dropcap"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="dropcap">D</span>uring his second inaugural address this past January, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal <a href="http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/01/12/four-takeaways-of-nathan-deals-inaugural-speech/" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">shared</a> the story of Sean Walker. After serving 12 years of a life sentence for murder, Walker was paroled in 2005 and began working in the governor’s mansion while in a state transitional center. At the time of Deal’s address, Walker was working for Goodwill as a banquet catering sales coordinator and was nominated for Goodwill International Employee of the Year. As of January, Walker was planning to take college courses with the hope of becoming a counselor.</span></span><br />
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</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deal, who got to know Walker at the governor’s mansion, shared the story to underscore his own “message to those in our prison system and to their families: If you pay your dues to society, if you take advantage of the opportunities to better yourself, if you discipline yourself so that you can regain your freedom and live by the rules of society, you will be given the chance to reclaim your life.” He continued, “I intend for Georgia to continue leading the nation with meaningful justice reform.”</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: The New Republic <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121425/gop-governor-nathan-deal-leading-us-prison-reform" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">Read full article.</a></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-69060685787486217612015-04-10T07:29:00.000-04:002015-04-10T07:29:46.638-04:00Republicans for Same Sex Marriage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6TvEi6ObUY8/VSez5JIr_gI/AAAAAAAADME/qvA7lIDeO5Q/s1600/110711-national-same-sex-marriage-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6TvEi6ObUY8/VSez5JIr_gI/AAAAAAAADME/qvA7lIDeO5Q/s1600/110711-national-same-sex-marriage-620x350.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is what the GOP might look like when the culture wars finally end.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Republicans in Massachusetts have <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/04/baker-joins-supreme-court-challenge-gay-marriage-bans/9GPOM0MWkKz7Zu5EJQYgXO/story.html" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;">openly backed same sex marriage</a>, joining an amicus brief filed by former RNC Chair and Bush Administration official Ken Mehlman.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Almost all of the party’s major figures in Massachusetts have signed the brief including new Governor Charlie Baker. Also signing the brief are Maine Senator Susan Collins and Republican donor David Koch.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The brief makes the conservative case for same sex marriage rights, citing a laundry list of favorite conservative cases and authors. This quote from Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative is particularly biting:</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The Conservative is the first to understand that the practice of freedom requires the establishment of order: it is impossible for one man to be free if another is able to deny him the exercise of his freedom. … He knows that the utmost vigilance and care are required to keep political power within its proper bounds.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A few other excepts:</span></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><em><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The governmental bans at is-issue here rest on similarly ungrounded, archaic, and obsolete beliefs—however sincerely, strongly, or long held—and thus the Fourteenth Amendment requires recognition of the bans’ invalidity.</span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><em><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This Court has repeatedly made clear that although legislators and voters may generally exercise power over certain subjects—including many contentious social issues—the government’s power is limited when it comes to injurious incursions upon the freedom of minorities.</span></em></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No one at any point in this decades-long debate has been able to describe any credible harm that might rise from same sex marriage. Cut through all the bullshit, and the argument against same sex marriage is absolutely singular – “my religious convictions dictate that homosexuality is wrong.” That’s it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">People are asking the government to discriminate against homosexual couples on the basis of sectarian religious beliefs. There is absolutely no defense for that practice under our Constitution.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When same sex marriage is finally settled law in this country, religious people will remain free to hold their beliefs about the sinfulness of gay couples. They will lose their ability to use those beliefs to constrain the basic Civil Rights of other people. We all have a right to our religious beliefs. No one has a right to legislate their religious beliefs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This isn’t a dispute about religious freedom. <a href="http://goplifer.com/2015/01/31/evangelicals-and-white-supremacy/" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;">This is a dispute about cultural supremacy</a>. That’s why the last, most bitter holdouts against gay marriage are the same institutions, people and states who were the last bitter holdouts against the Civil Rights movement.</span></span></div>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border-left-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 5px; color: #5d5d5d; float: right; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 20px 31.0085220336914px; padding: 2px 20px 0px; width: 279.176116943359px;">
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-size: 2.2em; margin: 1em 0px; z-index: 3;">
<span style="color: black; display: block; font-size: 0.5em; font-style: normal; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gay marriage is likely to destroy something, but it’s not marriage. The fight over gay marriage is going to severely damage the lingering cultural supremacy once enjoyed by white Protestants.</span></span></h2>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We are on the cusp of experiencing real pluralism for the first time in the country. That’s why same sex marriage matters and that’s why the battle lines are drawn across the same boundaries as in the Civil Rights movement.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Massachusetts Republicans are recognizing, a little late, what most of the rest of the country has already come to terms with. If the party at large has the good sense to drop this issue then a lot of future harm can be avoided.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The full text of the conservative amicus brief in favor of same sex marriage <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/257815641/Kenneth-B-Mehlman-Et-Al" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;">can be found here</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">#####</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">About the Author:</span> Chris Ladd is a Texan who is now living in the Chicago area. He is the founder of Building a Better GOP and has served for several years as a Republican Precinct Committeeman in DuPage County, IL, and was active in state and local Republican campaigns in Texas for many years.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-86246637184067526472015-04-10T07:26:00.000-04:002015-04-10T07:26:00.520-04:00HHR Interview with Leah Wright Rigueur, author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oicz7QfMf1g/VSey5rjIWJI/AAAAAAAADL0/YDvoMV4j1P4/s1600/DgCBzDzXDLsJHLnuJmFfTBCJ-620x350%2B(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oicz7QfMf1g/VSey5rjIWJI/AAAAAAAADL0/YDvoMV4j1P4/s1600/DgCBzDzXDLsJHLnuJmFfTBCJ-620x350%2B(2).jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E23">Like most Ivy League professors, Leah Wright Rigueur is not a Republican.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E24"> Yet </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E25">like most African-Americans, she</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E26">found it curious that</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E27"> anyone would </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E28">be.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E29"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E30">“African-Americans should not be Republicans, n</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E31">or should they be conservatives</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E32">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E33"> Rigueur </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E34">opens</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E35"> her new book,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E36">The Loneliness of the Black Republican</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E37">.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E38"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E39">And yet they are.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E41">Rigueur wanted to know why.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E42"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E44">Consequently,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E45"> she gives us a 310-page history</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E46"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E47">which introduces us to</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E48"> figures from the obscure (Arthur Fletcher) to the notorious (Barry Goldwater); and facts unknown about the famous</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E49"> –</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E50"> both revered (Jackie Robinson) and reviled (Richard Nixon).</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E52">On first blush, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E53">Rigueur may</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E54"> not endear herself to her book’s subjects by calling them “lonely.” But the Harvard historian points to Clarence Thomas as having first characterized black Republicans as “lonely”; and </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E55">the conservative scribe </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E56">Shelby Steele who did the same.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E57"></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jmR6gy9PGxo/VSezHBxd8aI/AAAAAAAADL8/i9xjY4p0gvE/s1600/11014981_812447125502262_3258380843485450596_o-199x300%2B(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jmR6gy9PGxo/VSezHBxd8aI/AAAAAAAADL8/i9xjY4p0gvE/s1600/11014981_812447125502262_3258380843485450596_o-199x300%2B(1).jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E59" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">More importantly, in her new book</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E60" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E61" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Rigueur wants us to know that black Republicans haven’t just been “lonely,” they’ve been integral to the American civil rights struggle. The Kennedy School historian delved through what she estimate</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E62" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">d</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E63" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, in an interview with HHR, to be some 20,000 documents shedding light on some 44-years of American history.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E64" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> And she tells </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E65" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">44-years </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E66" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of American history </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E67" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">through</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E68" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E69" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">t</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E70" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">he lens of a group she maintains has had un</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E71" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">der</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E72" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">appreciated influence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E74">“At times,” </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E75">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E76"> writes:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E78">“</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E79">…we find not a peculiar group of blacks, desperate for white acceptance or out of touch with American realities but rather a movement of African-Americans working for an alternative economic and civil rights movement.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E80">”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E82">That passage defines the book</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E83">’</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E84">s approach. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E85">Subtitled “Pragmatic P</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E86">olitics and the Pursuit of Power</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E87">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E88">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E89"> the book </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E90">locates conservative Africans-Americans making pragmatic trade-offs, working </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E91">on</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E92"> the American Right whilst simultaneously</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E93"> working to advance black interests.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E95">A</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E96">t turns</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E97">, both</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E98"> critical and laudatory, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E100">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E101">’s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E103"> narrative </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E104">coins seemingly-oxymoronic concepts like “progressive conservatism,” reacquaints us with ideas which have fallen into disuse with the passage of time like “Black Capitalism,” and delivers what (to some) maybe be implausible news that the Father of Affirmative Action was a Republican.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E106">Yet</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E107"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E108">w</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E109">e</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E110"> also</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E111"> learn that “#</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E113">NegroSpotting</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E115">” at Republican conventions isn’t something that was invented by</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E117">Baratunde</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E119"> Thurston in 2012, but black satirists have been doing that since at least the 1972 </span></span>convention.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E122">Black Capitalism was – and is –</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E123"> an</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E124"> attempt “</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E125">to use economics as a way to move past traditional protest politics</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E126">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E127">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E128"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E129">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E130"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E131">explains</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E132">.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E133"> “Black capitalism is black power in the best sense of the word,” read a glossy ad</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E134">vertisement</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E135"> Richard Nixon’s campaign took out in the 1968 issue of </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E136">Jet</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E137"> magazine.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E138"> And </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E139">she</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E140"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E141">chronicles</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E142">the impressive investments made by administrations like Nixon and Fords in historically black colleges & universities, school desegregation, black businesses grants, and contracting with minority businesses at Nixon’s Inauguration and GOP functions – to the tune of billions of dollars.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E144">Yet, when </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E145">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E146"> trains her critical lens on the GOP outreach project, she </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E147">explains, that </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E148">the </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E149">GOP </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E150">has</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E151">perennially suffered from a cynical s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E152">train </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E153">in the party which believed a</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E154">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E155"> Goldwater </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E156">groane</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E157">d</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E158"> in 1964, “We’re not going </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E159">to get the Negro vote as a </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E160">bloc,” so why</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E161"> bother trying to get any of it – culminating in Pat Moynihan’s infamous “benign neglect” memo.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E162"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E165">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E166">’s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E168"> greatest </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E169">achievement in this book</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E170"> might be offering this insightful tool to analyze the GOP:</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E171"></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E172">great GOP policy has often been undercut by horrendous GOP politics. Nixon was a pioneer in de</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E173">segregating</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E174"> schools, but severely hobbled its success by </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E175">undermining</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E176"> the political will needed to achieve it.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E177"> Likewise, combating negative black stereotypes visa-vi Black </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E178">Capitalism was undermined</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E179"> by the political strategy that spoke in terms of “law and order” and “welfare queens</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E180">.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E181">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E182"> All of which, left many in Nixon’s black Cabinet “collectively searching their </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E183">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E184">ouls to justify their own participation” in the party.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E186" style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">HHR interviewed Professor Rigueur about her book. What follows are highlights of that interview.</span></span></h2>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E188">HHR:</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E189"> </span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E190">You in</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E191">troduce us to lots of obscure</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E192">, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E193">yet historically</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E194">-important,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E195"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E196">figures in this book whom many have probably never heard of before –</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E197"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E198">black Republican White advisors to Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and the RNC – names like: E. Fred Morrow, Bob Brown, Stan Scott, Helen Thoma</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E199">s, and Transpo</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E200">r</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E201">t</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E202">ation Secretary Bill Coleman.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E203"> A notable </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E204">one is Arthur Fletcher. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E205">In a 2005 </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E206">NPR </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E207">interview, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E208">his</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E209">granddaughter, Phyllis Fletcher, explained her father </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E210">had T-shirts</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E211"> made which read:</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E212"> “Father of Affirmative Action” he handed out at speaking engagement,” and she said:</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E214" style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Art Fletcher did something good for black people—something that belongs in the history books…I knew he was frustrated people didn’t know his name like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X…The T-shirts—I’m sure they’re headed for Goodwill. But with any luck someone will see one and get curious, they’ll find a computer and they’ll look up ‘The Father of Affirmative Action,’ and they’ll find the stories that made his life so frustrating [yet] so meaningful.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E216" style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Art Fletcher and Rosa Park died in the same year, why does everyone know about one but not the other?</span></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E218">LWR: </span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E219">Right.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E220"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E221">Most people know about affirmative action…</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E222">but not too many people know that the Philadelphia Plan and affirmative action are birthed through the Nixon Administrati</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E223">on and through Arthur Fletcher. I knew a little bit about affirmative action, from what I’d see</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E224">n</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E225"> in the news, and my studies, I knew about affirmative action from the perspective of Kennedy and the Johnson Administration. But I didn’t realize just how much of an impact Richard Nixon and Art Fletcher had on the policies. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E226">I mean,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E227"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E228">Ebony</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E229"> called [Fletcher]</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E230"> the </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E231">“</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E232">watchdog of labor</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E233">.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E234">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E235"> And they do all these spread</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E236">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E237"> on him from 1969, roughly through 1975. He gets standing ovations everyone he goes. People love this man! And it was</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E238"> just peculiar</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E239"> to me how this man just kind of disappeared</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E240">, along with many other</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E241">people that I look</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E242"> at</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E243">…</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E244">and why no one is r</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E245">eally paying attention to them.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E247">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E248"> Why did they recede from the national attention and limelight?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E250">LWR:</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E251"> </span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E252">Yes</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E253">. So, another one is Stan Scott</span><span id="E254"> </span><span id="E255">– </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E256">t</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E257">he Pulitzer Prize winner who takes</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E258"> th</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E259">e photo of Malcolm X after he’</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E260">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E261"> been</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E262"> shot</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E263"> in 1965 [and was later a Nixon-Ford White House advisor]. I think it’</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E264">s a combination of factors. Many of them work for Republican administration</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E265">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E266">. And you find when those administrations go out of favor, many of these men and women kind of pull back…some of them go back to law, corporate law, and non-profits. There’s also [a] tension…you don’t really know what to do with these figures. We don’t know where to categorize them. They don’t fit nicely and </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E267">neatly into a</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E268"> quote-un-quote</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E269">“</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E270">box</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E271">”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E272">; so…</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E273">we’re not really comfortable ack</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E274">nowledging the role they played in modern politics or policies; especially if it’s not an antagonistic role</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E275">. The other part of this is, as the people – like Art Fletcher – are doing things that are incredibly groundbreaking and progressive for civil rights there are those within their party that are doing things to undermine those very advances.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E277">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E278"> It maybe makes a little sense for these obscure figures, but much more curious are these mega-watt black celebrities who make appearances in your book – Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain, Lionel Hampton, even Ralph Abernathy. How is it</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E279"> that</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E280"> their involvement with the Republican Party has gotten lost to history?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E282">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E283"> Well I should confess that one of my projects in the pipeline</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E284"> is</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E285"> – to write about these black celebrities in the Republican Party. But you’re right. Everybody knows Jackie Robinson for baseball; very few people know that he is a pretty devote Republican – until he isn’</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E286">t. H</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E287">e becomes an Independent toward the end of his life, but he still dabbles with the </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E288">Republican P</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E289">arty; and describes himself as a “</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E290">militant black Republican,”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E291"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E292">o</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E293">r Wilt Chamberlain who escorts Richard Nixon to Martin Luther King</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E294"> Jr.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E295">’s funeral. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E296">Most people don’t know about that. This can be chalked up to a number of things. One, a lot of these black celebrities end up having pretty antagonistic relationships with very specific people in the Republican Party. This is what happens with Jackie Robinson, where he feels incredible frustrated</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E298">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E299"> …after Goldwater?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E301">LWR:</span></span> No, after Nixon, who he campaigned for in ’60; but in ‘68 he says ‘I’m done.’ Well he’s not <span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman">really done. But this is pretty widespread; the same thing happens with Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown who make these really big declarations: “It’s too much. I’m not going to be political. I’</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E303">m going</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E304"> to remove myself from the spotlight in that respect, but privately I’m going to continue with my Republican politics. There’s also an element where their management doesn’t want people to know that they’re involved in partisan politics, because they think the damage amongst their fan base will be too high.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E307">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E308"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E309">You said </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E310">“we’re uncomfortable talking about some of their roles.’ Talk about that in terms of Black Capitalism – which dominates so much of your book – there’s some ambivalence in the</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E311"> way you describe</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E312">d</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E313">: this conservative/Republican alternative approach to civil rights. Blacks in </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E314">business seem to get distinctly</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E315"> secondary treatment in our telling of the civil</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E316"> rights history in this country.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E318">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E319"> Ambivalence is a good word.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E320"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E321">When we talk about civil rights, we have this kind of mythological understanding…No one ever talks about King as an economic empowerment figure. Black civil rights figures, in general, are very interested in economics. Jackie Robinson is one of the founders of Freedom National Bank in Harlem, and says that black capitalism can be used as an econo</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E322">mic empowerment tool and he looks at this bank as one way of doing it. And who puts his prize money from winning the Nobel Peace Prize</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E323"> in there, but M</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E324">artin Luther King, Jr.? So here we have individuals that are working together – who, even though they may have radically different visions of what bla</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E325">ck economic freedom looks like –</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E326">are still invested in this idea of economics as a mode of uplift.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E327"> Art Fletcher actually repeats Martin Luther King’s very famous quote: what good is sitting at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E329">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E330"> Yeah, and Michael Steele says the same in his 2006 run for Senate in Maryland: the first civil rights movement was about ability to sit at a lunch counter, the new one is about owning the whole diner.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E332">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E333"> Right, right. So part of what figures like Art Fletcher are trying</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E334"> to do is, they truly believe </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E335">they can change the nature of black economics in this country</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E336">, that it</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E337"> what will eradicate racism. And even though I may not agree with all the premises of</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E338"> that, I find it intriguing</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E339"> they </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E340">were </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E341">trying to use economics as a mode of moving past traditional protest politics, or even moving past politics. Even the language they use – Arthur Fletcher says: we need to get black people a bigger piece of the pie. We’ve been denied our piece of the pie for so many generations. So this is us getting a fair share of the pie. That’s kind of…</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E343">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E344"> Radical</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E345">?</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E346"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E348">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E349"> Yes, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E350">that’s kind of radical language…and when he first introduces the idea in 1969, he says, if we do this according to plan, by 1980 African-Americans will be on equal playing field with the rest of the country. So it’s not about having all African-Americans out of poverty, because that</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E351">’s not the nature of capitalism, b</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E352">ut say</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E353">ing</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E354"> there should be a fair distribution, in the same way there’s a quote-un-quote </span></span>‘fair’ distribution among white Americans.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E357">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E358"> What, then, is your assessment of that argument, because in the book, as now, you definitely seem not sold on that argument?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E360">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E361"> I’m not. I have to confess that I’m not sold.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E362"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E363">The people who are enacting these plans are overly-optimistic about what their policy p</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E364">roposals can do.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E365"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E366">[Some] </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E367">are good ideas but, then, they fail to account for things like Nixon completely undermining their policy successes, or…</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E369">they underestimate</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E370">d</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E372"> </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E373">the</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E374">significance and depth of black American poverty or focus exclusively on a black middle class; and they assume by expanding the black middle class it’ll pay dividends for the Republican Party. And, unfortunately, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E375">what they find out is, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E376">that’s not enough.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E377"> It’s just not enough.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E379">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E380"> That definitely was a central point of your book – GOP appeals being targeting at the black middle class and more-or-less ignoring the black poor.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E382">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E383"> Well that’s exactly it. Many of their appeals just ignore the black poor and black working class, which is interesting because the broader Republican Party definitely goes after the American working class. But they say [the black poor], they’re a lost cause, let’s focus on the black middle class. Clarence Towns, who’s an [African-American] Republican strategist in the 1960’s and 1970’s writes a memo to several </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E384">people in t</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E385">h</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E386">e</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E387"> Nixon Administration in which he says, we cannot continue to ignore the black poor and working class. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E388">We have to include them in our outreach efforts…the problem here is: you also have strategist saying if we focus on the black working class are we going to lose the black middle class?</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E390">the</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E392"> black wealthy?… I’m not sure that’s an either-or thing….Here you have [the party’s] best black strategists saying: we can focus on black working class people and make inroads, and they’re ignoring that</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E393">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E394"> much to their </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E395">detriment.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E397">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E398"> I’m amazed by this 1968 </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E399">Jet </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E400">magazine ad – which the Nixon campaign took out. The seminal line of which is, “Black capitalism is black power in the best sense of the word.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E401">” What an interesting appeal.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E403">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E404"> It’s a remarkable appeal. The first time I saw it, I had to do a double-take and say is this really the Nixon-Agnew campaign that’s making this appeal? But it makes sense. The ad is well-put-together. It looks good…the idea is for black power to run itself and operate itself and get behind this idea of personal accountability and self-determination, and local power. That’s a powerful thing that the Nixon Administration is tapping into.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E406">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E407"> Yea, as </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E408">curious</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E409"> as that ad is on some level, you </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E410">kind of </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E411">square it a few pages later</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E412"> you quote Whitney Young [National Urban League president who worked with Nixon], saying “nobody who’s working for black people is moderate; we’re all militant is different ways.” I found that quote interesting.</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E413">(</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E414">Nixon would later eulogize Young at his 1971 funeral</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E415">, saying: he</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E416"> “was not a moderate man in terms of his goals, but he knew the uses of moderation in achieving his goals”)</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E417">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E419">LWR:</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E420"> </span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E421">Right. I love that quote.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E423">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E424"> Reminds me, too, </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E425">of </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E426">Harold Cruse – a Marxist – writing in his books </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E427">Rebellion or Revolution</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E428">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E429"> “Black Power is nothing but the economic and political philosophy of Booker T. Washington, given a 1960s militant shot in the arm</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E430">.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E432">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E433"> And there’s an interview between George S</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E434">chuyler</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E435"> [mid-century black conservative writer] and Malcolm X, he says to Malcolm X, “You know</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E437">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E439"> you and I are not that different.” And, of course, everyone on that panel says abs</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E440">olutely not;</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E441"> and they move on to other topics. But, in </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E442">some ways, they’re </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E443">not</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E444"> that different. Think about what black self-determination means, what black economic power means, these kind of bootstrapping ideas, ideas about personal accountability. And I think the reason for that is there’s this very long history of black conservatism in African-American communities that is not necessarily tied to partisanship.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E446">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E447"> Finally, link for me the “law and order” discussion in your book with present-day event</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E448">s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E449"> in the news: post-Ferguson protests, and “die-in” demonstrations, and the #</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E451">BlackLivesMatter</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E453"> campaign. You talk about “law and order </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E454">with justice</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E455">.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E457">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E458"> Yea, the justice part is crucial. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E459">Ed Brooke</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E460"> [the first elected black Senator in U.S. history]</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E461"> – he’s a lawyer by training – he really recognizes you can’t use the phrase “law and order” without adding on justice, because for black voters – all kind of underrepresented groups – the phrase “law and order” carries a very specific meaning. It means: repression of black bodies and black communities…it feels like a targeted-attack on African-Americans especially when none of these solution are talking about deep, deep-rooted issues in black communities. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E462">Ok, so what are the roots of riot</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E463">s? What are causing African-Americans to riot? What about institutionalized racism? Poor living conditions? Police brutality? </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E464">…so one of the things Brooke argues is: we have to introduce notion</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E465">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E466"> of justice and equality into the phrase “law and order.”</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E467"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E469">HHR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E470"> Can you tell us where you see this going from here, future lines of research?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E472">LWR:</span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E473"> I’m thinking the next project is going to be somewhat of a continuation of what I’m doing now, so looking at black Republicans 1981 to 1992</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E474">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E475"> or so, because we have Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and they appoint a significant amount of African-Americans to high-ranking positions with their administrations.</span></span></span></div>
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<em><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E477">Professor </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E478">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E479"> is also considering</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E480">, in the future,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E481"> a biography of former Senator Ed Brooke</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E482"> (R-MA)</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E483">,</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E484"> who served from 1967-79 & who </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E485">Rigueur</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E486"> interviewed</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E487"> for this book. </span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E488">Wright calls</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E489"> him</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E490"> “a precursor to Obama” and explains “people are calling him the next Vice-Presidential nominee in the 1960s</span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E491">.” He </span></span><span class="qowt-font2-TimesNewRoman" id="E492"><span style="color: black;">died January 3 of this year</span>.</span></span></em></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>About The Interviewer</em>:</span> <em>Charles Badger is a Republican political strategist and speechwriter, currently working in New Jersey State government. (</em><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em><a href="https://twitter.com/charlesbadger" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">@charlesbadger</a>)</em></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-19583494315650055282015-03-16T14:21:00.002-04:002015-03-16T14:21:39.595-04:00Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report<h2 class="subtitle" style="background-color: white; margin: 1em 0px; z-index: 3;">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s unfortunate, the way news is consumed and interpreted in the age of twitter. Everyone feels tremendous pressure to form an opinion quickly and state it loudly and with certainty. Once this has been done, people are highly resistant to changing their minds and they become impervious to new evidence, often dismissing out of hand outright facts just because they are reported by a given source (e.g., “the media is untrustworthy” or “you can’t trust the Holder Department of Justice.”) Perhaps nowhere has this phenomenon been more obvious (or regrettable) than in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Interpreting the news out of Ferguson has become a part of ideological tribalism in which, if you are a conservative you stand for the Ferguson PD and if you are a liberal you stand against them. Thus, liberals have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened. Conservatives, on the other hand, have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that the Ferguson PD – as with many other municipal police departments in the country – truly is out of control, in that it recklessly violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ferguson and does so in a manner that has a clearly disproportionate impact on minorities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;">Source: Red State.</span> <a href="http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/15/many-conservatives-blowing-it-ferguson-doj-report/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-75607982001392089472015-03-16T14:18:00.002-04:002015-03-16T14:18:52.569-04:00Why Conservatives Must Engage Urbanism<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is there a place for conservative urbanism?</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">That was the question prompted by Charles Marohn’s recent New Urbs article, <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative-case-against-the-suburbs/" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">“The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs.”</a> Ben Adler, an environmental reporter over at Grist, said <a href="http://grist.org/cities/these-conservatives-make-the-case-for-vibrant-cities-most-of-their-friends-ignore-them/" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">the conservative base will never listen</a> to the lonely (though growing!) conservative urbanist voices. Keith Miller at Mere Orthodoxy argued conservative urbanists are <a href="http://mereorthodoxy.com/american-conservative-against-suburbs/" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">abusing Ronald Reagan</a>’s political legacy in favor of elitist technocratism. Both pieces help illustrate just how limited urbanist politics have been, and just how important the New Urbs project (along with our like-minded friends across the conservative landscape) could be for broadening this discussion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adler documents how “urbanism is actually growing in popularity among a small cadre of conservative intellectuals,” who “understand that the traditional town design favored by urbanists—houses that face the street, with porches and stoops, sidewalks, public parks, and shared mass transit—fosters strong communities.” Yet he warns: “Just don’t expect their ideas to catch on in conservative America.” He continues, “The main problem for conservative urbanists isn’t the quality of their arguments, but rather that they fall on deaf ears within their own movement.” Adler argues that popular American conservatism is about tribalism before principles, and subsidized suburbia suits them just as Tea Party retirees are fiercely defensive of their own entitlement checks. American conservatives are <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/rolling_coal_conservatives_who_show_their_annoyance_with_liberals_obama.html" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: black; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">coal-rollers</a>and Sarah-Palin-Big-Gulp celebrators, who “have adopted pro-market, small-government values as a loftier framework for their politics of resentment.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: The American Conservative. <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/why-conservatives-must-engage-urbanism/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-71768363559048334462015-03-16T14:16:00.001-04:002015-03-16T14:16:05.222-04:00Jay-Z’s Ideas on Policing and Criminal Justice Reform Matter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">In light of the recent police brutality cases occurring across the nation, Democratic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo met with the mogul and nineteen-time Grammy Award-winning rapper Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter to discuss criminal justice policy. With the clear intention of being insulting, the writers of an article, which was posted at both the New York Post and Fox Nation, referred to Carter as a “former crack dealer.” The text of the article further posits that Carter “earned most of his expertise in crime as a crack dealer.” Those who are critical of people like Jay-Z contributing to criminal justice policy demonstrate their lack of dedication to serious criminal justice reform.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">First, it is important to note that there is something deeply repulsive about dismissing all of Jay-Z’s glittering achievements and referring to him by a name that reflects the worst part of his history. Not everybody has sold crack, but everybody has aspects of their pasts upon which others can look down. It takes a peculiar level of wickedness, however, to see a man who has risen to the status of having a combined, legal net worth of $1 billion with his wife, the seventeen-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist and musician Beyoncé, and use his past to devalue his undeniable contribution to society as an upstanding citizen. </span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">It is interesting that those who pay continued lip service to the idea of the disadvantaged lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps and turning their lives around are the same people who are the first lobbing cruel rhetorical grenades at those who have worked hard, defied the odds, and reached the zenith of their professions.</span></div>
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<strong>Source: Change the Game: <a data-mce-href="http://www.ctghq.org/commentary/jay-zs-ideas-policing-and-criminal-justice-reform-matter" href="http://www.ctghq.org/commentary/jay-zs-ideas-policing-and-criminal-justice-reform-matter">Read full article</a>.</strong></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-33470294515230122202015-03-16T14:14:00.000-04:002015-03-16T14:19:30.088-04:00William Reed: Celebrating and Critiquing “The Great Society”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">Having the nation's first African-American president at the Civil Rights Summit speaks to the immeasurable success of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency. The Civil Rights legislation LBJ pushed through Congress is the most transformational political legislation since Reconstruction. Legislation Johnson offered and leadership he proffered has contributed to the betterment of African Americans’ lives in ways no president has since Abraham Lincoln. Contemporary Black Americans would be advised to take note of how a president stepped into the breach and helped our race in the realization of America’s promise.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">When Black Americans measure Obama with LBJ, they will see “a man with a plan” versus an empty suit. Many Blacks can’t see beyond the symbolism of the Obama presidency. While Obama shies away from Blacks and their issues, LBJ had a vision for America, that problems of housing, income, employment, and health were ultimately a federal responsibility; and from that premise Johnson used the weight of the presidency and his formidable political skills to enact the most impressive array of reform legislation since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. He envisioned a society without poverty or discrimination, in which all Americans enjoyed equal educational and job opportunities. He called his vision the "Great Society."</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">When Black Obama loyalists say “He’s doing the best he can” and “they won’t let him,” tell them about LBJ and what a real and committed president can do toward our cause. A major feature of Johnson's Great Society was the "War on Poverty." The federal government raised the minimum wage and enacted programs to train poorer Americans for new and better jobs, including the 1964 Manpower Development and Training Act and the Economic Opportunity Act, which established such programs as the Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps. To assure adequate housing, in 1966 Congress adopted the Model Cities Act to attack urban blight, set up a cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and began a program of rent supplements.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">In 1966, new legislation led to the more than 150, five-year long, Model Cities experiments to develop new anti-poverty programs and alternative forms of municipal government. The ambitious federal urban aid program succeeded in fostering a new generation of Black urban leaders.Local Blacks elected as local and state officials in the 1970, 80s and 90s came from Model Cities’ initiatives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">The Model Cities programs created a new program at HUD intended to improve coordination of existing urban programs and provide additional funds for local plans. The program's goals emphasized comprehensive planning, involving not just rebuilding but also rehabilitation, social service delivery, and citizen participation.</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">On the downside, Model Cities’ funds strengthened local Democratic machines and clubs more than they did for the communities at large. Too often, city hall parceled out contracts and jobs, but brushed aside neighborhood activists. Because of the political undertow, the Model Cities’ programs garnered wide political controversy. Detroit was one of the largest Model Cities projects. Mayor Jerome P. Cavanaugh (1962-69) served on Johnson's task force. Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which used $490 million to try to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a model city. Elected officials that came into office in the past 30 years graduated from Large Model Cities’ programs such as those in Atlanta and Chicago.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">Fifty years after the Civil Rights Act, and decades after Model Cities experiments have expired, America remains economically, politically and racially divided. The divide is both ideological and the result of the vastly different perspectives of each party’s core constituencies. Back in the day, Republicans and Democrats from outside the South worked together to pass the Civil Rights Act. Today, the majority of Whites votes Republican and sees racial discrimination against Blacks as mostly a thing of the past; Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic and view Republicans as “racist.”</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">Blacks loyal to the party and president, will do all they can to help shoulder Obama through his presidency’s remaining years. All Blacks would do well to recognize LBJ’s prodigious legislative legacy. The seminal laws he championed continue to resonate.</span></div>
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<em><span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">The views expressed above are solely that of the author.</span></em></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;"><strong>About the Author:</strong> William Reed is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Black Press International. He has been a Media Entrepreneur for over two decades. A long-time Washington insider, Reed’s special strengths include: public and community relations; grass-roots organizing; script and speech writing, legislative affairs tracking and research; and access to a network of national and local government, business and organizational policy-makers and public opinion-molders.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-10045155592907770032015-03-16T14:09:00.005-04:002015-03-16T14:09:56.098-04:00What If You Live in a Bad City?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is something I’ve thought about a lot. And it applies to living in a “bad” town or rural area, as well. What if you live in a place that is ugly, broken-down, dangerous, bereft of community? Is it better to leave? And if you stay—how do you help transform such a place?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There are different kinds of “bad” cities, and thus different ways of trying to involve oneself in the betterment of those cities. If any commenters have thoughts on “bad” cities or towns they’ve lived in, and how they’ve worked to get involved in those places, I would love for you to share your thoughts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the first sorts of “bad” cities that comes to mind would be the dangerous one—a city that has enough crime and hostility within it to make inhabitants feel uncomfortable and alone, a city in which it’s difficult to trust people. There are rural areas like this, too—indeed, cities aren’t any more dangerous than rural areas,<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130724-surprising-facts-cities-safer-rural-areas-injury-deaths/" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">according to the numbers</a>. How to build community here is a difficult question, one that I don’t have a holistic answer to (and it’s probably a question that doesn’t have a perfect answer). But one potential answer comes from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-Place-Matters-Geography-Identity/dp/1594037167/ref=as_sl_pc_ss_til?tag=theamericonse-20&linkCode=w01&linkId=LQZIJLVTKUS5S2GR&creativeASIN=1594037167" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;" target="_blank"><em>Why Place Matters</em></a>, an excellent book recently published by <em>The New Atlantis</em>. William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, wrote an essay for the volume about “Place and Poverty,” in which he tells the story of Family House, a ministry in inner-city Milwaukee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Source:</span> <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/olmstead/what-if-you-live-in-a-bad-city/" style="text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-14439440123918018032015-03-16T14:08:00.000-04:002015-03-16T14:08:23.708-04:00Chidike Okeem: Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Black History Month<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.08333em;">Eminent black historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926, which intended to redress the lack of attention paid to black achievement in society and in academia. This later morphed into Black History Month. However, Black History Month, as it exists today, is a lukewarm version of what Woodson envisaged. Woodson wanted Negro History Week to be a celebration of black achievement, history, and culture. However, looking at the tepid practice of Black History Month today, one would be excused for erroneously believing that the bulk of black historical achievements began in the 1950s.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the second African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University after renowned sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, was famously both pro-African and pro-capitalism. Woodson understood the freeing power of capitalism and the potential it has for self-uplift. For serious, solution-oriented black conservatives today, Woodson provided a model of how one can be enthusiastically pro-market, doggedly anti-Marxist economics, and do so while being unapologetically African. He demonstrated that endorsement of free market economics does not have to coincide with self-hatred and anti-blackness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ideally, Black History Month is something that should be unnecessary in the Western world in the 21st century. Those who make the argument that black history should not be relegated to a limited period of time on the calendar make a point that is worthy of noting. However, Woodson’s goal in creating Negro History Week was to encourage the widespread appreciation of black historical achievements, and it was a necessary tool when he created it. The fact that Black History Month still continues today demonstrates the sheer extent of the erasure of blackness from the great achievements of history. It demonstrates that blackness is still undervalued, unappreciated, and only recognized when it can be attached to abjection and negativity. By now, the Western world ought to be at a point where black achievements are afforded as much respect as the achievements of other groups.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If Black History Month is to stay true to Woodson’s vision, then promotion of black achievement needs to be the focus. Rather, as it exists today, Black History Month predominantly focuses on Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other breakthroughs from oppression that occurred during that period. It is crucial to note that Woodson died in 1950—before the monumental events and milestones of the modern civil rights movement began. Given that Woodson was not alive for the bulk of the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s, the modern civil rights movement could not have been part of his vision for the recognition of black achievement. Woodson astutely believed that asserting the importance of black people to world civilization was an inextricable component of reducing the prevalence of anti-blackness and racism in the Western world. Spotlighting freedom from oppression was not the primary goal of Negro History Week, inasmuch as Woodson knew there was more to black achievement and black culture. Woodson understood that the history of black Americans does not begin with slavery; rather, it begins with grand, ancient civilizations in Africa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In many ways, Negro History Week as envisioned by Woodson is as much about the African continent and African ancestors as it is about African Americans. He knew that African Americans would never live up to their potential without an integral understanding of who black people are and what the African has contributed to world history and civilization. In his magnum opus, The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933, Woodson wrote:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; display: block; font-style: normal; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In history, of course, the Negro had no place in this curriculum. He was pictured as a human being of the lower order, unable to subject passion to reason, and therefore useful only when made the hewer of wood and the drawer of water for others. No thought was given to the history of Africa except so far as it had been a field of exploitation for the Caucasian. You might study the history as it was offered in our system from the elementary school throughout the university, and you would never hear Africa mentioned except in the negative. You would never thereby learn that Africans first domesticated the sheep, goat, and cow, developed the idea of trial by jury, produced the first stringed instruments, and gave the world its greatest boon in the discovery of iron. You would never know that prior to the Mohammedan invasion about 1000 A.D. these natives in the heart of Africa had developed powerful kingdoms which were later organized as the Songhay Empire on the order of that of the Romans and boasting of similar grandeur.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Woodson’s point about no thought being given to African history except where Caucasian exploitation is concerned is particularly poignant. Arguably one of the cleverest artifices of white supremacy is the thorough scrubbing out of African civilization and human existence before contact with Europeans. This is why, according to dishonest Western history books, African history begins with European contact and civilization—and, in the American context, African American history begins with slavery. When oppression and subjugation are falsely presented as the genesis of black human identity, it provides a pseudo-intellectual justification for the marginalization of black people both on the African continent and in the diaspora. Moreover, it provides a justification for self-hatred among black people who are not taught any better.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 1.08333em;">If Woodson were alive today, he would no doubt be disappointed that his brainchild has been degraded. He would be distressed to learn that his goal of the widespread understanding and recognition of black historical achievement is not being realized. Also, he would most likely be pilloried and accused of being a black militant or an extremist—labels that are customarily placed on any black person who attempts to seriously debunk the brazen mendacities that are shamelessly presented in Western history books as unimpeachable. Indeed, the civil rights gains in America during the 1950s and 1960s are monumental, and they are an unquestionably important part of African American history. However, that cannot and should not be the principal focus of Black History Month. Black Americans have African ancestors who were marvelously accomplished, built civilizations, and were intrepid innovators. African Americans,despite a history of oppression, have demonstrated that same entrepreneurial spirit throughout American history. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 1.08333em;"> </span><span style="color: black;">The convenient white supremacist fiction that Africans lived in mud huts before the arrival of Europeans is arrant balderdash. The history of black people does not begin with slavery or colonialism—nor does black achievement begin with gaining civil rights in the West. Black History Month needs to depict the full historical picture of black brilliance—just as Dr. Woodson envisioned.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: bold;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR: </span>Chidike Okeem is a conservative writer. Born in Nigeria, raised in London, England, and now living in California, he writes about race, culture, religion, and politics. </i><i>You can follow him on Twitter @VOICEOFCHID and read the rest of his writings on his website at <a href="http://www.hiphoprepublican.com/chidike-okeem-the-end-of-artificial-black-conservatism/www.voiceofchid.com" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">www.voiceofchid.com</a>.</i></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-9283350257421637552015-03-16T14:04:00.002-04:002015-03-16T14:04:15.309-04:00The Republican Who Ended Homelessness<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<em><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Philip Mangano may have created the model for ending homelessness in America.</span></em></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.08333em;">Say what you will about George W’s tenure as POTUS, but apparently his homelessness czar Philip Mangano knew what he was doing. Mangano was a major proponent of a “housing first” approach to homelessness, which actually seems to be working. “Between 2005 and 2012, the rate of homelessness in America declined 17 percent.” Furthermore, studies now show that it actually costs three times as much money to leave the homeless on the streets and pay for subsequent problems, than find them housing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Source:</span> <a href="http://philly.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/09/an-economical-incentive-to-house-the-homeless.php" style="text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-6043996247897260432015-03-16T14:00:00.001-04:002015-03-16T14:02:00.725-04:00HHR Music Videos of the Month: V. Nova – How It Is ft. David Godfrey<div style="text-align: center;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-19556098730902337332015-03-16T13:44:00.001-04:002015-03-16T13:44:10.813-04:00A Republican Against Prisons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.08333em;">Mark Earley is not the only conservative who now sees mass incarceration as a social evil rather than a policy solution. But like other mass traumas, the prison explosion has generated thick clouds of mythological fakelore. For instance, many conservatives ardently believe that mass incarceration is somehow a byproduct of the welfare state’s postwar growth. But like it or not, nations with more lavish welfare states, as in Northern Europe, have radically lower incarceration rates than those of the United States. On the left, it’s widely believed that ending the war on drugs would speedily end mass incarceration. But the fact is, even if every single nonviolent drug offender were released tomorrow, the U.S. would still have the highest imprisonment rate in the world, barring a few tiny outlier island nations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: The American Conservative <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-republican-against-prisons/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">Read full article</a>.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-83421091386719607872015-03-16T13:41:00.004-04:002015-03-16T13:59:41.990-04:00Sean Jacobs - From the Solomon Islands to Houston: the harmful trend of government dependence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.08333em;">At a recent dinner in Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, a friend commented on the unprecedented and increasing level of government dependence in the idyllic South Pacific nation of half a million. National elections, taking place at the time, were about how much the Solomon Islands could do for you rather than what you could do for the Solomon Islands (to muddle John F. Kennedy’s famous words).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">This trend is not just confined to ‘the Happy Islands’ – it’s clearly a discussion taking place among rich and poor at dinner tables around over the world. Annual budgets in </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">neighboring</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> Australia, for example, stir pockets of outrage that the ‘government should do more’ or ‘is not doing enough’ in areas it wishes to ease spending taxpayer money.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Political leaders now spend considerable time preparing citizens for a ‘killer budget’ – as if preparing for major surgery or going to war. In the United States the government routinely plays the role of ‘Santa Claus’, in the words of one commentator, by showering ‘the public with something for nothing in every department – free health care, free retirement security, free protection from hazardous consumer products and workplace accidents.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Certainly, from crumbling roads to lousy policing, state performance leaves much to be desired in the developing world. But, regardless of where we are, excessive government dependence is a growing and ultimately harmful trend.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">Government expectations as we now understand them </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">weren't</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> always at their current default levels. ‘The Greatest Generation’, for example, enduring a depression and two world wars, </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">would've</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> felt embarrassed in having the government pay their medical bills or living a responsibility-free life on the state. Historically, in the South Pacific, government dependence eased with exposure to the outside world, and where commercial and community activity thrived. Strangely, however, state expectations have emerged in an era of free markets where competition, </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">privatization</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> and less regulation have pushed government to the side.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">So what has changed? Many point to a change in cultural attitudes in the late 1960's and early 1970's, which not only opened an era of ‘flower power’ and Vietnam moratoriums but coincided with the rise of feminism, multiculturalism and victim politics. In just a few decades </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">we've</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> seen increased state expectations combining with government activity, becoming fixed and then incredibly difficult to roll back. ‘A government bureau,’ Ronald Reagan famously said, ‘is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.’ And ‘vested interests,’ wrote Barack Obama in </span><em style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">The Audacity of Hope</em><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">, ‘stifle even the best-intentioned politician.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In places like the Solomon Islands government departments rarely deliver but will almost never be abolished, while vested interests keep genuine reform at arm’s length. Patronage South Pacific politics – a legacy of rigid tribal attachment – not only increase government expectations but reinforce the corrosive idea of ‘something for nothing.’ Keeping office for many of the Pacific’s leaders means simply servicing the people that brought you to power and recreating dependence over creating scope for individual enterprise. Governing beyond narrow interests is rarely found because, quite simply, it’s unneeded. Large discretionary grants and flimsy financial oversight also make correcting this system very difficult.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The idea of debt-financing has also driven government expansion. The process of ‘tax and spend’ grew considerably in the 1930s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, today, remains the pinnacle solution for pro-government advocates in curing social and economic problems. Notably, the majority of spending in Western countries is now in health and social security – areas that the government rarely used to be involved in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Why, after all, is government growth a problem? Clearly not all government activity is obstructive to progress. ‘Peace, easy taxes and the tolerable administration of justice’, to borrow from Adam Smith, greatly benefits society and deserves proactive government administration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But big government ultimately has two costs. First, it subtracts rather than enhances liberty. In the US, for example, government intervention can range from the absurd to simply bad business, from literally putting people in prison for making their own home renovations through to limiting energy exploration. In the developing world economic liberty is crushed by government-sheltered industries, the thwarting of competition and the failure to streamline business processes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;">Second, big government undermines ideals like responsibility and duty. Although welfare dependence </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">isn't</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> possible in the Solomon Islands – there is no state welfare system – the ill effects of dependence can be seen in the political process and, in particular, the political leadership. Vote-buying aside, I have been in rooms with some political leaders refusing to </span><span style="font-size: 17.3332805633545px; line-height: 20px;">fulfill</span><span style="font-size: 1.08333em; line-height: 20px;"> their elective duties unless they receive some additional form of payment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps the most useful question to ask, then, is how to limit government? Here there are no new answers but simple ideas found by re-visiting core democratic principles. First, political leaders must ask themselves, does government action enhance choice, give room for the private sector or strengthen the family? This is critical for new or existing initiatives and is not so much about cutting government for the sake of it but making government more effective, which helps reduce waste and is a practical compromise for political leaders interested in reducing government dependence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Making space for community and commercial activity are also effective ways to reduce state demand. James Tedder, a post-World War Two colonial official in the Solomon Islands, interestingly observed that the presence of European traders and planters ‘together with the strong role of the Church, tended to reduce Government almost to irrelevancy.’ This observation is entirely consistent with liberty’s core idea – limiting government but increasing private and individual action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Many people in both the Solomon Islands and developed countries live tough and difficult lives. Limiting government reliance is not about completely pushing government to the side but creating the settings for individuals to do well. A future where individual freedoms and responsibilities are properly respected is worth defending in any democracy. Ultimately, however, it will mean less and not more government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">About the Author: </span>Sean Jacobs is an Australian and co-founder of <a href="http://pngcommerce.org/" style="text-decoration: none;">New Guinea Commerce</a> – a website he runs in his spare time which promotes good governance, economic growth and next generation leadership in the Indo-Pacific. He has previously worked as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development to Fiji, a consultant to the United Nations in Papua New Guinea and as a federal policy adviser in the area of national security. He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-42973208678932602882014-10-05T02:56:00.003-04:002014-10-05T02:56:27.412-04:00Book Review: The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World<div style="text-align: right;">
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<span style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif;"><i><b><span style="line-height: 20px;">The Wilder Shores of Marx visits five countries which still labor under systems inspired by the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other luminaries of the left.</span></b></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">The most decisive thing that’s happened in my political lifetime,’ said John Howard in a 2009 </span><a href="http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/26722" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #eeeeee; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">interview</a><span style="color: black;">, ‘is the collapse of Soviet imperialism. It dwarfs anything else.’ This is significant from Howard, whose political life covers nearly half a century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">His observation, however, is lost on a generation of younger Australians. Certainly, oppressive regimes exist today but are fewer in number, while command and control economics have been trounced by liberal market capitalism and globalization. For anyone under forty the idea of growing up on a planet of rivaling superpowers with conflicting ideologies is no doubt strange.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Tearing around New Zealand on a recent trip I found time to wade through Theodore Dalrymple’s <em>The Wilder Shores of Marx</em>. Dalrymple first published this back in 1991 after visiting the heights and ruins of communism in Albania, North Korea, Romania, Vietnam and Cuba. With usual wit and insight, he elucidates both the absurdity and grimness of life under the banner of Marxist-Leninism.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">The absurdities are endless. An Albanian phrase book, for example, reminds him of a 1986 visit to Soviet-influenced Somalia where the travel pages brimmed with useful phrases such as ‘pass me the Opera glasses please.’ Somalia was, at this time, in the throes of a cholera epidemic. Kim Jong Il sank eleven holes-in-one on his first day of golf and his birth was, supposedly, foretold by a swallow. Fidel Castro once rose for a toast when dining with guests in Havana and, ten hours later, finally took his seat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">With these comical accounts one can almost lose sight of an ideological system </span></span><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225229/forgetting-evils-communism/jonah-goldberg" style="-webkit-transition: initial 0.8s ease-in-out initial; color: black; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none; transition: initial 0.8s ease-in-out initial;">estimated</a><span style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> to have killed 94 million people (some feel this estimate is too low). And the less exquisite details about communism, especially in the Soviet Union, weren't well-understood or broadcast until after the Cold War.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">There were, however, some that knew of the deception and tyranny. Here, for example, is a telling extract from the historian Robert Conquest’s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest" style="text-align: center; text-decoration: none;">Wikipedia</a><span style="text-align: center;">: In fact many leading ‘thinkers’ journeyed from the West to the Soviet Union and left excited and impressed. ‘For decades,’ writes Dalrymple, ‘they blinded themselves to the obvious.’ We can add to this list the Australian historian Manning Clarke.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><em>After the opening up of the Soviet archives in 1991, detailed information was released that Conquest argued supported his conclusions. When Conquest’s publisher asked him to expand and revise The Great Terror, Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.</em></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Today the horrors of communism are so tragic they’re hard to fathom, especially for a younger generation who have known slim alternatives to freedom and prosperity. Che Guevara shirts are sported with ignorance by some while, for others, the modern imperfections of representative democracy are comparable to life in Pyongyang.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">These actions and utterances aside, it’s interesting when reading Dalrymple to note the flatness that communism both requires and administers. ‘Under communism,’ writes Dalrymple, ‘green is the tree of theory, but grey is life.’ Communism ‘infantilises people, makes them beholden to authority.’ ‘Opacity’, ‘banality’, ‘without meaning’ and ‘dishonest’ are Dalrymple’s social descriptors of life under constant tyranny.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">As the demise of communism shows, the complete evacuation of any individual liberty, vigour, drive or imagination does nothing for the advancement of a society. Tradition and history can’t be flogged out of people but are important for national character.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Today of course we’re less worried by communism. It lost badly but limps on in varying forms. In the epilogue to this edition, for example, Dalrymple touches on meeting a British-Korean academic at a dinner party comparing Rupert Murdoch to Kim Jong Il. We’d do well not just to celebrate communism’s demise but cast aside the careless comparisons that, in some way, keep it alive.</span></div>
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<span class="st"><em><span style="font-weight: 700;">You can purchase the book</span></em> online at: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wilder-Shores-Marx-Vanishing-ebook/dp/B00846MX0W" style="-webkit-transition: 0.8s ease-in-out; color: #444444; text-decoration: none; transition: 0.8s ease-in-out;">Amazon.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: black;">About the Author: </span></span><span style="color: black;">Sean Jacobs is an Australian and co-founder</span> of <a href="http://pngcommerce.org/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">New Guinea Commerce</a> – <span style="color: black;">a website he runs in his spare time which promotes good governance, economic growth and next generation leadership in the Indo-Pacific. He has previously worked as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development to Fiji, a consultant to the United Nations in Papua New Guinea and as a federal policy adviser in the area of national security. He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia.</span></div>
Publisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00093800163791183175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-86583421562387755142014-10-05T02:47:00.000-04:002014-10-05T02:48:11.692-04:00Patrick Derocher – Can the GOP Win Over Hipsters?<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q1bIAem4f1k/VDDpePlR3UI/AAAAAAAAAC0/L1LxVyAMH90/s1600/Hipster2-30b9b4bb828e85e2f2904792bb6ed9bf8961e1c0-s6-c30-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q1bIAem4f1k/VDDpePlR3UI/AAAAAAAAAC0/L1LxVyAMH90/s1600/Hipster2-30b9b4bb828e85e2f2904792bb6ed9bf8961e1c0-s6-c30-620x350.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his home borough of Brooklyn are nothing if not shorthand for the policies espoused by the burgeoning populist wing of the Democratic Party. (Generally in a less than positive way.)<br />
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Separately, the same borough has become synonymous with hipster culture and its affinity for fixed-gear bicycles, obscure music, and putting birds on things. (The de Blasio – hipster connection has not gone unnoticed.) Intuitively, the link makes some sense; hipster enclaves like Chicago’s Wicker Park, Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties, and the entire city of Portland, Ore. represent some of the bluest and most culturally liberal parts of the country.<br />
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But what if instead of treating hipsters with derision, Republicans embraced the trend? Although conservatives often chafe at the trappings of hipsterdom, including esoteric coffees, vintage and faux-vintage clothing, and $15 artisanal cocktails, the fact remains that every quirky brunch spot, every reclaimed furniture shop, and every combination coffee shop/craft beer bar is a business, many of them small, and all of them employing people. Moreover, these are all instances of individual entrepreneurs who saw a need in the market and in their community, and seized the opportunity to fill that need while employing others, growing the local economy, and, yes, turning a profit. These are values Republicans have espoused for years, and we should champion them wherever they provide benefit to communities. Regardless of the beards.<br />
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Beyond individual businesses and their employees, the hipster ethic has the potential to transform entire neighborhoods and cities, and Brooklyn is perhaps the best example of this. Twenty years ago, the borough was a pariah, abandoned on the crime-ridden outskirts of New York City culture. Now, it represents the most sought-after brand in the city, and is the fastest-growing borough in terms of both population and economic strength. Though Brooklyn represents a somewhat extreme example of this shift, it exists on a much smaller scale: further upstate in New York, Ballston Spa has transformed from a case study in post-industrial economic stagnation to a thriving community of small, unique businesses and entrepreneurs who have poured their time, energy, and passions into rejuvenating their economy. (To be clear, this is no defense of the faux-entrepreneurs who spot an easy opportunity to co-opt hipness solely for their own gain). Moreover, there is reason to believe that Republican fiscal and regulatory policies can and will appeal to entrepreneurial 20- and 30-somethings. <br />
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For starters, more small business owners means more people with an incentive for lower taxes, and while this is not a uniformly Republican demographic, they are by and large more pragmatic in their politics and less likely to be straight-ticket voters. On a more micro level, GOP initiatives like the Uber petition serve to bring free-market solutions to immediately relatable problems that urban voters encounter on a daily basis. In the longer term, school choice has the potential to be strong selling point to a generation of individualist entrepreneurs getting ready to send their children off to school.<br />
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A hipster-inspired model of small-scale economic investments has the potential to be a template for economic growth in struggling cities across the country, and the Republican Party would be wise to encourage it.<br />
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About the Author: Patrick Derocher is a native Upstate New Yorker and graduate of Fordham University. In his spare time, he enjoys bike rides, the more obscure fiction of C.S. Lewis, and all manner of trivia.Publisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00093800163791183175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-55949815978115116622014-08-23T11:33:00.005-04:002014-08-23T11:33:57.421-04:00The Case for Urban School Vouchers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black;">Urban public schools are failing tremendously. The causes: a lack of school competition, a greater percentage of kids with learning disabilities, and insufficient parental supervision. It cannot only be poverty, the fallacy we have been trained to accept, because developing countries have well educated kids. The reality is: urban youth take a look around, and realize that their success cannot be measured by their surroundings, in turn; they do whatever seems necessary to change those surroundings, as fast as possible.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Some sell drugs. To those that do, it leads to a quick fix. The goal: make enough money to move out of the ghetto. This –despite however lucrative the trade is– is by its very nature a rather dangerous career choice. No more dangerous than joining the military or becoming a police officer –because you are surrounded by elements of extreme risk– but dangerous none the less.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Fixing urban schools is not an easy task. Democrats are ardent supporters of the public school system. In suburban areas, where population density is less stagnant, this makes sense. But In Urban school districts, where teachers become outnumbered by the demands of their students, “it’s retarded,” to borrow a phrase from urban vernacular. Instead of trying to fix the public school system, which has met with little to remote success, Republicans focus on giving urban youth a decent education through school choice.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">School choice programs offer learning opportunities in a better, and more stable environment; an environment that can foster student growth, enhance achievement, and produce outcomes that parents can be proud of. When Democrats fight against school choice and voucher programs they are inevitably saying to urban youth, we will pay for you to get a bad education to ensure that we get re-elected. Republicans say, a good education is better than gold. Voucher programs give students the ability to attend schools outside of bad neighborhoods at an affordable price.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">The proponents of public schools would argue that public schools take all comers, and that non-public schools have the ability to be selective. Which makes sense! Students work that much harder to get into those schools, and it rewards parents who care most about their kid’s education. The upside for public schools, once school choice becomes widely accepted, is that the classrooms become more manageable, giving teachers more time, to work hands on with the students that are less proficient, and need extra attention.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><strong><span style="font-family: Thread-000016b8-Id-0000001f;">Wikipedia had the following to say about Vouchers:</span></strong> “The oldest continuing school voucher programs existing today in the United States are the Town Tuitioning programs in Vermont and Maine, beginning in 1869.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman argued for the modern concept of vouchers in the 1950s, stating that competition would improve schools and cost efficiency. In Maine, the geographic layout is such that, building public schools was not feasible. Instead they relied on the established parochial schools. Friedmans’s argument is the backbone of the conservative movement in favor of offering education choice to urban youth.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Looking at the data from the New Jersey Dept of Education we see Urban enrollment diminishing as children get older; when, however you look at suburban school district’s enrollment, it stays the same throughout. This is ample evidence that student retention is those areas are subpar. Some suburban areas actually enroll more students in 12th grade than they did in 1st and 2nd grade.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Wonder why Urban public schools don’t do so well? Well I do. I asked a few teachers, some from charter schools, others from public schools. Teacher pay was one of the biggest complaints. Individuals switched from public to charter schools for better pay, and because charter schools had a more responsive administration, responsive in terms of the needs of the pupils. </span><span style="color: black;">How then are these public schools receiving, and asking for more money, while teacher pay stays the same. Complex as the question seems, the answer has to be in wastefull bureaucracy; hence the need for both smaller government, and legislated school choice programs. </span><span style="color: black;">If non-public schools have the infrastructure and the willingness to help alleviate the problem of overcrowded schools, why then would anyone not support such a phenomenal concept? Why did it take a Republican Governor to shine the light on the need for innovative solutions to urban youth’s most basic need –a proper education.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">The “Opportunity Scholarship Act”; which establishes a pilot program in the Department of Treasury, providing tax credits to entities contributing to scholarships for low-income children; met with “No” votes from the following Democrats: Sarlo, Paul A. , Buono, Barbara , Greenstein, Linda R. , Van Drew, Jeff , Cunningham, Sandra B.1 While the Bill was co-authored by a Democrat, it shows the empty promises that Democrats keep when their pockets are lined with the future of young kids.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">The future of Urban youth is in their tenacity to succeed, some will make their way out of public schools, but more can make a decent life for themselves, and their families if Democrats would hurry up an accept the fact that Public schools are overcrowded, and that voucher programs can solve that problem.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Until then, we will be watching smaller and smaller classes of graduating seniors from our urban public schools, thanks to Democrats.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><strong><span style="font-family: Thread-000016b8-Id-0000001f;">About the Author:</span></strong></span> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kerry-baynes/63/222/5a0">Kerry Baynes</a> <span style="color: black;">was born on May 9, 1980. He currently attends Bloomfield College in New Jersey, his single residence for the past 15 years. As a research assistant for the New Jersey State Senate he was responsible for preparing research on: economic, budget/fiscal issues, and the impact of tax policy. He holds a degree in Business Management, and has 2 years of legislative policy experience.</span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-71848827604997438522014-08-23T11:24:00.001-04:002014-08-23T11:29:30.061-04:00HHR Book Review: Dennis Kimbro on Black Wealth Creation<span style="color: black;"><strong><span style="font-family: Thread-000016b8-Id-0000001f;">Dennis Kimbro, <em>The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires</em>, New York, 2013, Palgrave Macmillan</span></strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">In 1955, when Martin Luther King Jr. led the Montgomery Bus boycott, there were only five Black millionaires in the United States. There are now 35,000. </span><span style="color: black;">Dennis Kimbro has done a great service for those aspiring to similar heights in his latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Choice-Success-Millionaires/dp/0230342078"><em>The Wealth Choice</em></a>. These pages aren’t just for black Americans but anyone interested in sustaining the values for wealth creation and carving a path to prosperity.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">In his years interviewing and profiling black millionaires Kimbro purposely avoided the ultra-rich – entertainers like Oprah and Jay-Z. Black Americans, he feels, need to emulate the everyday successes built away from the spotlight. And the economic stats on Black America suggest there hasn’t been a more crucial time to promote the message of wealth creation:</span><br />
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<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">The median wealth of White households is 20 times that of Black households</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Nearly one-third of White households own 401(k) or thrift savings accounts, compared with less than one-fifth of African American households</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Approximately 35 percent of African Americans had no wealth or were in debt in 2009</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Twenty-four percent of African Americans spend more than their income compared with only 14 percent of all Americans</span></li>
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<span style="color: black;">Early in the book Kimbro emphasises that wealth isn’t about cold hard cash or mindless materialism. ‘Wealth and abundance are not measured in terms of possessions and money,’ he writes, ‘but in relationships, values, knowledge, and action; in what we do, not what we know.’</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;">These are things that can obviously grow in the absence of money. ‘I was wealthy when I was dead broke,’ as one of Kimbro’s respondents said. ‘I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew I’d do it. It was only a matter of time.’</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">The importance of finding a passion is central to wealth. 70 percent of his respondents, for example, agreed with this adage: ‘Do what you love and the money will follow.’</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">And decent financial habits – prudent spending, limited extravagance and so forth – aren’t a part time gig but central to the millionaires Kimbro surveyed. ‘They don’t implement wealth-generating habits only when they feel the need to do so; rather, they habitually live in a state of wealth.’</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">When asked to list the keys to their success, millionaires rank hard work first, followed by education. </span><span style="color: black;">The majority of those profiled, for example, rise at 5.30am and retire at 11pm. ‘Millionaires,’ Kimbro notes, ‘are five times more likely to say they are always available for business by e-mail or phone and three times more likely to admit that they regularly work evenings and weekends.’</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Education doesn’t always consist of certificates or testamurs but means constantly growing and absorbing information. In fact, as Kimbro said in one interview, many millionaires only began their education once they finished university. This reminded me of Stephen Fry’s witty underscore that an education is what you get in the time between classrooms and tutorials.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Ideally, <em>The Wealth Choice</em> should be absorbed with some more practical financial tips, especially if you’re a young person. For example, when turning the pages I was reminded of <a href="http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/"><span style="color: black;">Ramit Sethi’s</span></a> advice, which promotes automating your savings and focusing on big wins rather than financially eeking your way through life.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Regardless,<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Choice-Success-Millionaires/dp/0230342078"> <em>The Wealth Choice</em> </a>is a good philosophical building block and a recommended read for anyone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Thread-00002508-Id-00000031;">About the Author: </span></span></span><span style="color: black;">Sean Jacobs is an Australian and co-founder</span> of <a href="http://pngcommerce.org/" style="color: #444444;">New Guinea Commerce</a> – <span style="color: black;">a website he runs in his spare time which promotes good governance, economic growth and next generation leadership in the Indo-Pacific. He has previously worked as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development to Fiji, a consultant to the United Nations in Papua New Guinea and as a federal policy adviser in the area of national security. He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia.</span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-36918013511764582662014-08-23T11:19:00.002-04:002014-08-23T11:19:42.435-04:00What caused the Ferguson riot exists in so many other cities, too<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fCCj4DNi_tQ/U_iw_hezyvI/AAAAAAAADHc/TIaqN415Aaw/s1600/article-2724113-207EED2800000578-865_634x414-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fCCj4DNi_tQ/U_iw_hezyvI/AAAAAAAADHc/TIaqN415Aaw/s1600/article-2724113-207EED2800000578-865_634x414-620x350.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>Experience teaches black men that police officers exist not to protect them, but to criminalize and humiliate them. Few black boys get through adolescence without a story of police harassment, and with age, their stories proliferate. Aggressive police tactics turn black males into subjects of suspicion and skeptical scrutiny. This makes them vulnerable to harassment, whether their crime is real or imagined. Black men engaged in innocuous activities — walking home from a corner store, holding a BB gun at Walmart, leaving his bachelor party — become targeted as criminals by authorities. <br />
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With each negative encounter, black men build up antagonism toward law enforcement. They develop defense mechanisms and toughen up to protect their pride and perceived respectability. With this built-up hostility, interactions over minor offenses, like suspicion of selling loose cigarettes, become quickly charged.<br />
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<strong>Source:</strong> <strong>The Washington Post.</strong> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/13/what-caused-the-ferguson-riot-exists-in-so-many-other-cities-too/">Read full article.</a>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-24808197977097198352014-08-23T11:14:00.001-04:002014-08-23T11:14:51.642-04:00Michael Brown, Ferguson, and Black Attitudes to Policing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black;">Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who was a few days away from starting college, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri—a region with a prominent African-American population. The circumstances surrounding his death are still unclear; however, eyewitnesses have said that Michael Brown had his hands in the air when he was shot dead. As a result of the killing of Michael Brown, the city of Ferguson has been in uproar, and the anti-police sentiment is palpable. While most of the protesters have been peaceful, there have been some opportunists who used the disarray as an opportunity to steal from stores throughout the neighborhood. Of course, those who revel in presenting the worst images of black America have obsessively focused on the looting—as if the looting by some makes Brown’s death justifiable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">The angry protests in Ferguson are the natural consequence of decades of frustration that black communities across America have been harboring due to abusive policing. It is intellectually dishonest to try to address the issue of negative attitudes among blacks towards the police without first addressing the underlying concerns black citizens have about law enforcement. Fundamentally, the reason why negative attitudes about police exist is precisely because of policing practices and policies that fail to recognize and respect the humanity of black citizens. It is nonsensical to continue a policy like stop-and-frisk that casually violates the Fourth Amendment rights of young black citizens of the United States—and then wonder why many young black citizens have a negative view of the police. Moreover, keeping violent and heartless officers on the streets and trusting them to ethically police communities that they are culturally disconnected from is a recipe for disastrous social conflict.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">While many are quick to point out the moral reprehensibility of supporting cop killers, those same people are reluctant to repudiate the actions of even the most corrupt and violent police officers. Support for cop killers and support for corrupt, murderous officers are both morally reprehensible actions; however, it is indisputably true that the culture of loathing law enforcement—which, in its most vicious form, is evidenced by killing police officers—is an outgrowth of the years of brutality that black people have experienced at the hands of violent police officers. Again, although both are unmistakably evil, it is important to acknowledge that one evil precipitates the other.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">One of the most popular refrains whenever a black man is unjustly killed by a white police officer is, “Most murders of black people are committed by other blacks. Why do we only care when it’s a white-on-black murder?” One cannot help but notice that the intent of this line is not to demonstrate any concern for the loss of black life. The fundamental concern of those who gleefully repeat this incantation is the exoneration of whites who kill blacks. Those who repeat this line demonstrate a deep sociopathic callousness that only a thorough dehumanization of blacks can engender. Imagine if blacks routinely responded to the deaths of white police officers at the hands of black cop killers by saying, “Most murders of white people are committed by other whites. Why do we only care when it’s black-on-white murder?” If that rhetorical question sounds weird to you, but the former rhetorical question about black-on-black crime is simply an inoffensive run-of-the-mill comment, perhaps you need to check your soul.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">It is not only black people who should engage in vociferous protestations against police brutality and extrajudicial killings of young black men, but it should also be true believers in the rule of law. Even if it turns out that Michael Brown was guilty of a robbery, as some suggest, by what logic can believers in the rule of law argue that he deserved to be assassinated in the middle of the street without being afforded his constitutional right to a trial by jury? Are we now supposed to believe that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not apply to young black males in 21st century America? It is either one supports the rule of law or one does not. The fact that the majority of mainstream conservatives could not care less about the glaring constitutional issues vis-à-vis the shooting death of Michael Brown demonstrates the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the mainstream conservative movement.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">The black disdain for the police is an outgrowth of the abuse of blacks by the police. Policing is both important and necessary, but when evil police officers abuse their positions of power and victimize black people, it leads to a segment of the population having distrust and hatred for a vital institution that, when properly utilized, should lead to improved lived experiences of African Americans. Those who believe in the inextricably important role that judicious police officers play in maintaining a peaceful society should be most perturbed and outraged whenever any police officer acts in manifestly extrajudicial and terroristic fashions.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><strong><span style="font-family: Thread-000016b8-Id-0000001f;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR: </span></strong>Chidike Okeem is a writer. Born in Nigeria, raised in London, England, and now living in California, he writes about race, culture, religion, and politics. You can follow him on Twitter @VOICEOFCHID and read the rest of his writings on his website at <a href="http://www.hiphoprepublican.com/michael-brown-ferguson-and-black-attitudes-to-policing/www.voiceofchid.com">www.voiceofchid.com</a>.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23897492.post-79937616049864391942014-08-13T15:16:00.001-04:002014-08-13T15:16:13.298-04:00Deterring criminals in Papua New Guinea<br />
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeKIGN5CNNo/U-u5adaM-NI/AAAAAAAADHA/1m3vd-BmzTg/s1600/07-618x400-618x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeKIGN5CNNo/U-u5adaM-NI/AAAAAAAADHA/1m3vd-BmzTg/s1600/07-618x400-618x350.jpg" height="226" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">A recent decision by Papua New Guinea’s
(PNG) government to strengthen the nation’s criminal code has
re-awakened the debate over the role of deterrence in reducing crime.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Much of the commentary surrounding the proposed changes has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-04/carr-voices-objection-to-death-penalty-in-png/4669804" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">focused</span></a> on the reinstatement of the death penalty.<span id="more-35911"></span> But PNG’s parliament is also considering a range of harsher <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/papuanewguinea/10032575/Papua-New-Guinea-proposes-death-by-firing-squad.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">measures</span></a>
including life imprisonment for rape, 50 years for drug cultivation, 30
years for armed robbery, 20 years for illegal brewing, and the
criminalisation of sorcery.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">The rationale behind imposing harsher
sanctions for convicted offenders is relatively straightforward and
appears to be popular among the citizens of PNG. The theory is that
PNG’s young men, who are responsible for much of the high crime rate,
will assess the harsher penalties and conclude that their actions are
not worth the risk.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<span style="color: black;">But some groups are less enthusiastic
about tougher measures for criminals. Their reservations primarily
relate to concerns about ‘human rights’ violations in the <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/amnesty-slams-png-death-penalty-plan-20130503-2iy21.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">case</span></a>
of the death penalty. Many also assume that ‘root causes’ such as
inequality and a lack of job opportunities force the nation’s <a href="http://www.pngblogs.com/2011/07/unemployment-concerns-for-papua-new.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">surplus of unemployed</span></a> young men to commit crime. They suggest that rehabilitation and jobs are a much better way to attack PNG’s crime rate.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Before unpacking the shortfalls of this
approach, two broad observations about PNG’s current criminal justice
system should be made. First, criminals are very unlikely to be ‘caught
in the act’ in PNG. The size of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary
(RPNGC), measured as a ratio of <a href="http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1757.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">5000 police officers</span></a> to <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/country/papua-new-guinea" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">7 million</span></a> citizens, is roughly 1:1400. In some <a href="http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20130131/news14.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">parts of the country</span></a>
the ratio is as wide as 1:2700. The average citizen, let alone a
criminal who is seeking to avoid police contact, is therefore unlikely
to come across an RPNGC officer.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Secondly, PNG does not appear to put many offenders in prison. Despite its reputation for violent crime, its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">incarceration rate</span></a> is a very low 58 per 100,000 people (ranked 187 in the world). As <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/what-to-do-about-crime/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">evidence</span></a>
from other parts of the world suggests, the average criminal is likely
to commit multiple crimes rather than just one. Incapacitation often has
a tremendously high but under-acknowledged impact on reducing crime.
Yet PNG’s low imprisonment rate prevents this benefit from being fully
realised.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">It is therefore difficult to conclude
that state-led deterrence has been properly applied in recent years.
This may undermine the case for pursuing a tougher criminal code,
particularly given that criminal punishment in PNG can take place in
‘non-state’ forms, such as retribution from rivals or through community
justice mechanisms. But the ‘non-state’ approach to justice, especially
through community mechanisms, has its own problems. The emphasis on
mediation over punishment, which has long been a foundation of cultural
justice in PNG, is difficult to sustain in the face of poor results and a
changing cultural landscape.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Establishing large-scale job programs to dissuade young men from crime also <a href="http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/02/14/riding-with-square-wheels-governing-in-png/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">has its own challenges.</span></a>
Calls for this approach are not unique to PNG. For example, similar
hopes of providing jobs to crime-prone youth were a main motivation
behind the ‘Great Society’ programs in the United States in the 1960s.
But <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/crime/wilson.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">some studies</span></a> indicate that these programs had a limited impact on crime reduction, despite high-resourcing and political investment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">Other <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">research</span></a>
has found that the link between unemployment and crime is tenuous. To
again draw from the United States, even during the Great Depression,
when unemployment reached 25 per cent, crime did not skyrocket as many
would presume but stayed relatively flat, consistently with other times
of high unemployment in US history. As one theory asserts, jobless
parents may have helped to deter adolescent delinquency through an
unusual period of domestic supervision. This would also apply to PNG,
where a re-emphasis on family bonds and ties may serve as a particularly
strong ‘domestic’ or household deterrent to crime.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">In response to the <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1085647/sorcery-law-repeal-in-png-after-witch-burnings" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">recent violence</span></a> that has taken place in PNG, simply <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/png-attorney-general-wants-death-penalty/story-e6frfkui-1226563463784" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">saying</span></a>
‘there is no empirical evidence’ for deterrence may be too premature,
especially of what may be the ultimate deterrent: the death penalty.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">But tightening criminal legislation in
PNG may be futile without corresponding moves to implement a
comprehensive state criminal justice apparatus. The relationship between
a nation’s criminal code and its underlying society can produce some
surprising results. To use <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335848/gun-control-ignorance-thomas-sowell" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">gun ownership as an example</span></a>c,
some countries can have high rates of legal gun ownership but very low
murder rates, as witnessed in Israel, New Zealand and Finland. By
contrast, some countries — Russia, Brazil and Mexico for example —
employ strict gun control laws but endure stubbornly high murder rates.</span><br />
<span style="color: black;">Ultimately, youth job creation and
tougher penalties for criminals in PNG need not be opposing options.
Both strategies are worth pursuing. In the coming years, combining a
swifter and more deliberate criminal justice system with a commitment to
strengthening families, a better-quality police force and opportunities
from an expanding market economy, could create scope for crime
reduction in PNG.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; text-decoration: underline;"><i>Above Image Photographed by: Vlad Sokhin </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><b>About the Author:</b> Sean Jacobs is an Australian and co-founder of <a href="http://pngcommerce.org/about/"><span style="color: black;">New Guinea Commerce </span></a>–
a website he runs in his spare time which promotes good governance,
economic growth and next generation leadership in the Indo-Pacific. He
has previously worked as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development
to Fiji, a consultant to the United Nations in Papua New Guinea and as a
federal policy adviser in the area of national security. He currently
lives in Brisbane, Australia.</span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0