Rev. Pat Robertson admonished Haitians for rejecting God and thus, he maintained, they were to blame for what has befallen them. I do not go that far but I do believe we ultimately pay for our sins and abuses.
Bret Stephens has written an op ed piece that gets to the core of the matter of dependency and the moral corruption that comes with welfare and unending aid. Though Bret did not bring up the Palestinian issue the same applies and even more so. Israel has moved forward and the Palestinians are still trapped in their own cocoon of hate and external blame.
We would never raise a child or family the way "do gooders" suggest and when we do we create a dependent society incapable of doing for self, The Haitians and Muslims have created societies stuck in a rut and off by the side of the road while the world has marched forward. (See 1 below.)
Obama is coping with a earthquake of his own but this one is centered in Massachusetts. Like the Haitians, he too disregarded the laws of human nature and now the pendulum, which he thought he could push as far as he arrogantly chose, is swinging back with a vengeance.
Americans are slow to act and re-act. We are a large nation geographically speaking and a diffuse attitudinal populace. However, when Uncle Sam's chin whiskers have been tweaked too far, Americans responds and with a focus and determination that has proved invincibly effective - ask Germany and Japan and Sadaam if he can be reached.
A Republic is a terrible thing to waste.
This is the message of Massachusetts. (See 2 below.)
This is a bit ironic. Because of the economic downturn the powers that be in Chicago and Illinois have decided to rid the McCormick Convention Center of its union force, turn them into public servants incapable of striking and then changing the union mandated rules which govern the Center's operation.
I thought Democrats just let the unions off the hook when it comes to health care costs to the tune of $60 billion. (See 3 below.)
Even more Ironic is the White House has now begun to seek advice from Capitalists who only a short while ago they set up and attacked for being 'Greedy Pinatas.' (See 3a below.)
One can only hope what we are witnessing will finally reach the liberal bowels of D.C.
My son is concerned that should Scott Brown win it will take the wind out of the sails of those who want change come 2010- change back to the nation we once were before the Obama reformer crowd took over. He has a point.
On the other hand, a defeat today in Massachusetts of the Democrats could actually add more wind and really cause the sails of the 'take back our government citizens' to unfurl and billow forth as we have not seen for eons. Time will tell and hope springs eternal.
Unsolicited my son also took it upon himself, from 7 to 9PM last night, to make some 30 random calls on Scott Brown's behalf. He reported the people he spoke to were receptive, most were eager to vote, some engaged him in thoughtful conversation and virtually all were unaffiliated party wise.
Until then, we must draw comfort from the fact that we have hit momentary pay dirt and just may have the 'D.C. evil doers' on the run. If their is a God hear our prayers! (See 4 below.)
Bob Herbert reminds us, as I did yesterday - Martin Luther King's message was about more than just Civil Rights. (See 5 below.)
While the media and the news are focused on America's efforts in Haiti - were GW still president he would be accused of a nation building takeover opportunity - the tiny nation of Israel has sent over a full field hospital. It landed, began immediately to set up its operation and start performing miracle life saving surgery and other medical needs. It has been proceeding 24/7. Not a dime from Muslim nations to date. (See 6 below.)
But being good at what you do, successful in what you try carries the risk you will be hated for being powerful and competent. Jealousy knows no bounds. (See 6a below.)
A friend recently urged I suspend writing memos because I was getting angry. I replied I was not angry just disenchanted but I was also leaving for California to attend a celebration luncheon honoring the life of a dear, dear friend who recently passed away so my absence would have the same effect.
My friend stood less than 5 feet tall, was a school teacher in California's toughest neighborhood and she was elected teacher of the year. She taught kids who were rough, taller and facing a life of desperation but she taught them well and stood her ground when it came to any aberrant behaviour.
She was raised by her sister after their immigrant father passed away and she married and went on to raise her own family all of whom are educated and highly productive. They have , in turn, raised families of their own etc. It is the story of America. It is a story that Obama and his 'do gooder' types do not understand and cannot relate to because they did it on their own without government aid and always held themselves responsible for their own survival and progress.
Dick
1)To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid: For Haitians, just about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity.
By BRET STEPHENS
It's been a week since Port-au-Prince was destroyed by an earthquake. In the days ahead, Haitians will undergo another trauma as rescue efforts struggle, and often fail, to keep pace with unfolding emergencies. After that—and most disastrously of all—will be the arrival of the soldiers of do-goodness, each with his brilliant plan to save Haitians from themselves.
"Haiti needs a new version of the Marshall Plan—now," writes Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald, by way of complaining that the hundreds of millions currently being pledged are miserly. Economist Jeffrey Sachs proposes to spend between $10 and $15 billion dollars on a five-year development program. "The obvious way for Washington to cover this new funding," he writes, "is by introducing special taxes on Wall Street bonuses." In a New York Times op-ed, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush profess to want to help Haiti "become its best." Some job they did of that when they were actually in office.
All this works to salve the consciences of people whose dimly benign intention is to "do something." It's a potential bonanza for the misery professionals of aid agencies and NGOs, never mind that their livelihoods depend on the very poverty whose end they claim to seek. And it allows the Jeff Sachses of the world to preen as latter-day saints.
For actual Haitians, however, just about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity. It will benefit the well-connected at the expense of the truly needy, divert resources from where they are needed most, and crowd out local enterprise. And it will foster the very culture of dependence the country so desperately needs to break.
How do I know this? It helps to read a 2006 report from the National Academy of Public Administration, usefully titled "Why Foreign Aid to Haiti Failed." The report summarizes a mass of documents from various aid agencies describing their lengthy records of non-accomplishment in the country.
Here, for example, is the World Bank—now about to throw another $100 million at Haiti—on what it achieved in the country between 1986 and 2002: "The outcome of World Bank assistance programs is rated unsatisfactory (if not highly so), the institutional development impact, negligible, and the sustainability of the few benefits that have accrued, unlikely."
Why was that? The Bank noted that "Haiti has dysfunctional budgetary, financial or procurement systems, making financial and aid management impossible." It observed that "the government did not exhibit ownership by taking the initiative for formulating and implementing [its] assistance program." Tellingly, it also acknowledged the "total mismatch between levels of foreign aid and government capacity to absorb it," another way of saying that the more foreign donors spent on Haiti, the more the funds went astray.
But this still fails to get at the real problem of aid to Haiti, which has less to do with Haiti than it does with the effects of aid itself. "The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape," James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, told Der Spiegel in 2005. "For God's sake, please just stop."
Take something as seemingly straightforward as food aid. "At some point," Mr. Shikwati explains, "this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the U.N.'s World Food Program."
Mr. Sachs has blasted these arguments as "shockingly misguided." Then again, Mr. Shikwati and others like Kenya's John Githongo and Zambia's Dambisa Moyo have had the benefit of seeing first hand how the aid industry wrecked their countries. That the industry typically does so in connivance with the same local governments that have led their people to ruin only serves to help keep those elites in power, perpetuating the toxic circle of dependence and misrule that's been the bane of countries like Haiti for generations.
A better approach recognizes the real humanity of Haitians by treating them—once the immediate and essential tasks of rescue are over—as people capable of making responsible choices. Haiti has some of the weakest property protections in the world, as well as some of the most burdensome business regulations. In 2007, it received 10 times as much in aid ($701 million) as it did in foreign investment.
Reversing those figures is a task for Haitians alone, which the outside world can help by desisting from trying to kill them with kindness. Anything short of that and the hell that has now been visited on this sad country will come to seem like merely its first circle.
2).The Message of Massachusetts: A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit.
Whether or not Republican Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts, the special Senate election has already shaken up American politics. The close race to replace Ted Kennedy, liberalism's patron saint, shows that voters are rebelling even in the bluest of states against the last year's unbridled pursuit of partisan liberal governance.
Tomorrow marks the anniversary of President Obama's Inaugural, and it's worth recalling the extraordinary political opportunity he had a year ago. An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities and faced a dispirited, unpopular GOP. With monetary policy stimulus already flowing, Democrats were poised to get the political credit for the inevitable economic recovery.
Twelve months later, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President's, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government, and a Republican could pick up a Senate seat in a state with no GOP Members of Congress and that Mr. Obama carried by 26 points.
What explains this precipitous political fall? Democrats and their media allies attribute it to GOP obstructionism, though Republicans lack the votes to stop anything by themselves. Or they blame their own Blue Dogs, who haven't stopped or even significantly modified any legislation of consequence.
Or they blame an economic agenda that wasn't populist or liberal enough because it didn't nationalize banks and spend even more on "stimulus." It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt, that another $1 trillion would have made all the difference. But that's the latest left-wing theme.
The real message of Massachusetts is that Democrats have committed the classic political mistake of ideological overreach. Mr. Obama won the White House in part on his personal style and cool confidence amid a recession and an unpopular war. Yet liberals in Congress interpreted their victory as a mandate to repeal more or less the entire post-1980 policy era and to fulfill, at last, their dream of turning the U.S. into a cradle-to-grave entitlement state.
We had been encouraged a year ago by Mr. Obama's selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff because we thought he would have learned from the Clinton failure of 1993-1994 and knew enough to stand up to the Congressional left. How wrong we were. Mr. Emanuel and his boss have instead deferred to Congress's liberal barons on every major domestic policy.
These committee chairmen are all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.
While Mr. Obama campaigned as a young postpartisan Democrat who wanted a new era of comity in Washington, his victory has instead empowered these ancient left-wing warriors. These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama's de facto cabinet.
• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn't mention carbon.
• Wisconsin's David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.
• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.
• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the "public option."
• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he's from California.
• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.
It is the combination of all of these and other policies that has ignited the political revolt we are now seeing in Massachusetts, and first saw last November in Virginia and New Jersey. Had Democrats modified their agenda to nurture a fragile economy and financial system, they could now claim their policies worked and build on them later.
Instead, their frenetic agenda has frightened voters and businesses about the vast expansion of government power and enormous tax increases to come. The resulting uncertainty and the anticipation of higher costs for labor, taxes and energy have undermined what ought to be a more robust pace of job creation and overall recovery.
The lesson of Mr. Obama's lost first year is that an economic crisis is a terrible thing to exploit. As they have each time in the last 40 years that they have had total control of Washington, Democrats are proving again that America can't be successfully governed from the left. If that is the lesson Mr. Obama learns from Massachusetts, he might still salvage his Presidency.
3)Chicago Loses Cachet as Convention Center By JOE BARRETT
CHICAGO—The sprawling McCormick Place became America's convention headquarters when it opened here 50 years ago, hosting buyers and sellers of products from candy bars to windmill turbines.
But in recent months, a gradual drop-off in business here has turned into a rout as a string of high-profile shows have pulled out. With the recession cramping convention business across the U.S., exhibitors say Chicago's high costs and complex work rules make other venues more attractive.
Chicago's Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which runs McCormick, had an operating loss of $3.6 million in the fiscal year ended last June and expects to lose $24 million this year. The authority also expects to fall short by $53 million over two years on its debt payments, which are financed by taxes on tourist-related businesses. The state has to make up the difference.
Last week Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the authority board proposed legislation that would restructure the facility's debt and convert McCormick's union workers to state employees. That would strip those workers of the right to strike and give facility managers the ability to rewrite work rules that have brought complaints from exhibitors.
Lawmakers instead passed alternative legislation that would toss out the current board and replace it with a smaller group charged with figuring out how to make Chicago more competitive. Mr. Quinn said he would sign that.
Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie called the authority's woes "a fiscal meltdown" that required careful study. "We should not be drawing a blank check without figuring out what will make the whole situation better," she said in an interview.
The original McCormick Place opened in 1960, the first facility built expressly to hold large national conventions, said Doug Ducate, chief executive of the Center for Exhibition Industry Research in Dallas.
"It was very much ahead of its time," he said.
Today the modernistic complex on Chicago's lakefront just south of the Loop is still the largest convention space in the U.S., with 2.6 million square feet of exhibition space. Total attendance at major events in 2008 was about 2.3 million people, down from three million in 2001.
The convention business nationally was down about 3.1% in 2008 from a year earlier, according to an index put out by Mr. Ducate's research group, and likely was off in the double digits for 2009, he said. In Chicago, revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30 is expected to be off about 18% from the previous year.
Over the years, complaints have mounted about tough union rules and high costs in Chicago. New facilities in Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., offered not only better winter weather and other attractions but also more flexible work rules.
Now the recession has put Chicago's high costs under a spotlight. In November, a big triennial plastics show that had been bringing as many as 75,000 people to Chicago since 1971 jumped to Orlando, saying it expected to save $20 million for its members through the move.
After one taste of Chicago in April 2009, the Health Information and Management Systems Society—which brought 27,500 people to the city—decided it wouldn't come back, said H. Stephen Lieber, the group's president and chief executive.
Exhibitors found costs for electricians in Chicago were four to eight times as high to construct the same exhibits used in Orlando in 2008, Mr. Lieber said. McCormick officials said electricians in Chicago do much of the work that might be done by other trades in other cities.
"The temperature has been rising for a long time, but now it's at the boiling point," said Phil Brandl, president of the International Housewares Association, which has been holding a show drawing as many as 60,000 visitors to McCormick for some 40 years. The show is booked in Chicago through 2011, but is seriously considering other venues to save money, he said.
Labor leaders, noting that they had lowered their rates and provided greater flexibility three times in the last 15 years, on Friday called for more transparency in pricing.
"The whole business model must change, not just labor contracts," said Dennis Gannon, Chicago Federation of Labor President, in a statement.
Juan Ochoa, chief executive of the authority, said the financial mess was providing a unique opportunity. "All the attention that we're getting has given us the ability to do things that we couldn't under any other circumstances," he said.
The authority has cut salaried payroll to about 400 from 700 five years ago, he said. Last September, it cut its roster of union electricians to 50 from 150, with plans to replenish the pool with the most productive union workers.
Complaints about high labor costs persist. Last week, Kerry Kahle, sales manager of Carl Stirns Marine Inc. of Aurora, Ill., was standing amid about a dozen speed boats he had brought in for the Chicago Boat, RV and Outdoors Show. He said he decided against hanging a sign from the ceiling this year, because it cost him $1,000 in labor last year.
3a).White House, CEOs Talk Management
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama has tongue-lashed business leaders one day and courted them the next. Now, he's looking for their advice.
Mr. Obama last Thursday took time out from the Haiti crisis and health-care negotiations to welcome 50 chief executive officers from an array of companies including soft-drink giant PepsiCo Inc., apparel maker Liz Claiborne Inc. and farm-machinery maker John Deere & Co. to discuss how to make the government run more efficiently. It is the first of what the White House hopes will be a series of such brainstorming sessions.
"There may be a little bit of a cultural clash here," Mr. Obama said. The resulting discussions, captured on video, bore out the president's prediction.
Administration officials asked: How could the government get employees to go along with its information-technology overhaul? Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, said her company did it by offering "performance bonuses on top of regular bonuses."
That produced pained looks from some of the government officials in the room. Just that morning, Mr. Obama had slammed Wall Street bankers for "obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people."
CEOs Management Tips Hear management advice from CEOs who attended Obama's forum, in earlier video clips from The Journal's Lessons in Leadership series.
Steve Ballmer: Running meetings Steve Ballmer: Making decisions Peter Darbee: Handling poor performers Peter Darbee: Developing leaders .
Peter Darbee, CEO of power utility PG&E Corp., on the topic of change in a big organization, said that "while it starts with what I describe as a white-hot commitment from the CEO, it becomes a revolution among the people at the bottom—almost difficult to control." Department of Transportation Deputy Secretary John Porcari suppressed a laugh.
The confab comes amid what some CEOs said was a new effort in the past two months by the White House to seek their opinion and ideas on issues like job growth and green energy.
Not everyone in the business community has been wooed—administration officials said there was little political downside to calling out "fat cat" bankers, as Mr. Obama has done three times in the past week alone. And some CEOs said the administration's antibusiness rhetoric has chilled relations with the broader business community.
That's something top advisers to Mr. Obama want to fix, because pushes on climate change, job growth and further stimulus initiatives aren't likely to fly without broad business support.
Office of Management and Budget spokesman Kenneth Baer said the invitees came from a list of CEOs who had used technology well in their companies—as opposed to the government, which processes patent applications manually and takes three years to approve one.
Liz Claiborne CEO Bill McComb said he believed he was invited in part because his company is a well-known American manufacturer with a diverse work force. "We're not attached to a lot of big scary issues like health care, big tobacco or anything controversial," he said.
To dig into specific topics, the CEOs broke up into small groupsin the Eisenhower Executive Office building. One was convened in a wood-paneled conference room with a mantelpiece painting of George Washington that was obscured by a chart on an easel.. Deputy Veterans' Affairs Secretary Scott Gould and three deputy cabinet secretaries guided the discussion on "streamlining operations." Mr. Gould said the group would talk about inspiring top performance from government employees. Then he explained that this inspiration would have to be done without much in the way of financial bonuses, threats of firing or promotions that leapfrogged the normal civil-service rules.
Cabinet Affairs Secretary Chris Lu pointed out that government managers worry that if they slash costs, "next year your appropriations go down."
The CEOs gave it a shot. Jeff Fettig of Whirlpool Corp. said, "It's about better customer benefit for a lower cost, faster."
Government needs to do what John Deere did, said Sam Allen, its CEO. "Get 32 handoffs down to one handoff."
Ms. Nooyi, the PepsiCo chief, said the government needs "a Project Manhattan type mentality to stop and say we're going to do it and we're going to go all the way."
Department of Energy Secretary Dan Poneman picked up on that. "Do we have a Manhattan Project? Actually we were the Manhattan Project. That was us." Everyone but Mr. Poneman laughed.
After the session wrapped up, Mr. Gould said the findings and ideas from the forum would be live-streamed on the White House Web site so the public could follow along.
The ultimate result, he said: a report.
But that would take 30 days.
4)The filibuster rule is the least of Democrats' problems: The Senate race in Massachusetts, in which Republican Scott Brown could win Ted Kennedy's former seat, reflects a direct repudiation of Democratic governance.
By Jonah Goldberg
As of this writing, Bay State voters appear poised to do the unthinkable: elect a Republican to fill the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly half a century. Even more amazing is that the Republican in question, Scott Brown, turned his campaign into a referendum on healthcare reform, the keystone of the Obama agenda and the North Star of Kennedy's career.
Even if Brown loses today, that it was even close should shake Democrats to their core. They outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 in a state Barack Obama won by 26 points. Massachusetts hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since 1972, when Edward Brooke (the first popularly elected black senator) was reelected, and haven't sent even a nominal conservative since velociraptors roamed Beacon Hill. All this on the heels of stunning GOP gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia last fall.
It's impossible to imagine a more direct, and democratic, repudiation of Democratic governance.
Will Democrats get the message? Doubtful. It seems the only way the Democratic leadership can catch a clue is if it is hammered into their pates with a ball-peen hammer.
Over the weekend, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York told the Wall Street Journal that if Brown wins, Democrats will race to cram the healthcare bill through while fending off Brown. "We're going to have to finish this bill and then stall the swearing-in as long as possible," Weiner said. "That's our strategy, a hurry-up-and-stall strategy."
Perhaps even more telling, Democrats are obsessively blaming their problems on the Senate's filibuster rule. Under the filibuster, it takes 60 senators to get controversial things done. As a result, many of the preferred policies of the left -- the "public option," soak-the-rich taxes, etc. -- had to be pulled out of the bill in order to win support from moderates like Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). That's how the Senate is supposed to work. It was designed to cool the passions of the more democratic House.
Nonetheless, it seems every prominent liberal pundit has come out in favor of interring this "undemocratic" impediment to unobstructed Democratic rule. They hated the filibuster before many of them even knew who Scott Brown was, but now that this alleged bumpkin from the sticks looks like he will crash his truck into healthcare reform as the "41st senator," they are becoming positively unglued.
New York Times columnist Gail Collins offered her own, aptly titled, "special rant" against the filibuster last week, bemoaning how a handful of red states can hold up the Democrats' entitlement to enact their agenda unimpeded. She points out that it would only take the senators from the 20 least populated states, representing "10.2% of the country," plus one to hold up legislation. But so what? The GOP doesn't solely represent the smallest states -- hello, Texas? -- or represent a mere 10.2% of the nation.
Regardless, the real problem with Collins' argument, and others like it, is a deep contempt for America's political system joined with an abiding sense of entitlement. "People, think about what we went through to elect a new president -- a year and a half of campaigning, three dozen debates, $1.6 billion in donations. Then the voters sent a clear, unmistakable message. Which can be totally ignored because of a parliamentary rule that allows the representatives of slightly more than 10% of the population to call the shots.
"Why isn't 90% of the country marching on the Capitol with teapots and funny hats, waving signs about the filibuster?"
What an odd way to bemoan the lack of majority rule: mocking the majority of Americans for not agreeing with you! Indeed, it seems lost on the anti-filibuster chorus that it wouldn't be so hard to have their way if what they wanted to do was actually popular (a new Democracy Corps poll finds that only one-third of respondents support Obamacare).
Now, I don't support raw majority rule or government by polling. We all agree that unelected judges should be able to buck popular sentiment when the law or the Constitution requires it. Likewise, both the House and Senate have some anti-majoritarian rules precisely because our system was designed to defend against the tyranny of majorities just as much as the tyranny of minorities. The Senate was designed so it could dilute popular passions, a point Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and other Democrats made ad nauseam just a few years ago when the GOP ran things.
As Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley is learning, the Democrats are unpopular now because they're rightly perceived as arrogant, ideological and fixated on an agenda not supported by the people. Blaming their problems on the filibuster will make them worse.
5)Blacks in Retreat
By BOB HERBERT
It has been easy for people to forget in the decades since we lost the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he was a passionate fighter for economic justice as well as civil rights. The two goals were as closely linked as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water.
The historic gathering in 1963 at which Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
And when Dr. King was murdered in Memphis in 1968, he had gone there to support sanitation workers who were striking for higher wages and better working conditions.
Jobs and freedom. In America, you can’t have one without the other. Democrats are in deep trouble right now — just a year after their giddy celebration of Barack Obama’s ascendance to the presidency — because so many millions of Americans are out of work, unable to find the gainful employment that would unlock the door to a stable future for themselves and their families.
The president and his party may be obsessed with health care, but unemployed and underemployed Americans want a job. Why this has been so hard for the Democrats to realize, I can’t say.
As the nation continues to wallow in the trough of widespread unemployment, black Americans are bearing a disproportionate burden of the joblessness. The election of a black president may have been important to African-Americans for myriad reasons, but it hasn’t done much for their bottom line, which continues to deteriorate.
For example, without a dramatic new intervention by the federal government, the poverty rate for African-American children could eventually approach a heart-stopping 50 percent, according to analysts at the Economic Policy Institute. Already more than a third of black children are living in poverty.
Present trends are not good. Communities of color are being crushed economically and the national news media have not fully focused on the carnage. The official unemployment rate for blacks is 16.2 percent and could well pass 17 percent before the year is out. The real jobless rate is far more ghastly. The Boston-based group United for a Fair Economy noted that even “college-educated black men are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as their white, college-educated counterparts.”
In some poor neighborhoods, a man or woman with a traditional full-time job is the exception, not the rule. In five Midwestern states — Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Oklahoma — the jobless rate for blacks is at least three times as high as that for whites.
Some decades ago, you would have heard a sustained outcry against such dire conditions among blacks, and there would have been loud demands for policy changes designed to bring more black Americans into the economic mainstream. You don’t hear much of that now. Too many so-called black leaders are much more interested in invitations to the White House and positive profiles in mainstream publications than in raising any kind of ruckus that might benefit people in real trouble.
What the politicians and today’s civil rights types won’t tell you is that we’re looking ahead to many long decades of grief and strife in America’s black communities because of our failure to respond effectively to the horrendous impact of the Great Recession and the policies that led up to it. Black Americans are going backward economically, and right now no one is stepping up to stop the retreat.
United for a Fair Economy, in its latest “State of the Dream” report, which is released annually around the time of Dr. King’s birthday, is urging Congress and the president to identify communities with the highest unemployment rates and develop specific job-creation initiatives for them.
That kind of targeted effort is desperately needed, but don’t hold your breath. There is precious little sentiment for programs that would provide real help to communities trapped in the nightmarish depths of this downturn, whether the residents are mostly black, mostly white, mostly Hispanic, or whatever.
Speaking about one of his many antipoverty initiatives, Dr. King told Look magazine in 1968: “We called our demonstration a campaign for jobs and income because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people, and poor people generally, were confronting.”
That was then. The loudest voices against poverty and economic injustice of all kinds have long since faded. The government, reclining comfortably on a vast cushion of campaign contributions, has allied itself with big business and the big banks against the interests of ordinary Americans. Millions upon millions of families are suffering, but mostly in silence.
We honor Dr. King with a national holiday, but his long campaign for economic justice has been all but forgotten.
6)GOD BLESS ISRAEL!!!
YWN EXCLUSIVE: Only Operating Room In Haiti Is Israeli Field Hospital
Port-au-Prince, Haiti - The only operatingroom (O.R.) in earthquake-ravaged Haiti is that of the Israeli Field Hospital.
YWN has spoken to the IDF Field Hospital Deputy Commander Danny Moshayov on the ground in Haiti just a few moments ago, along with veteran Hatzolah Paramedics Shlomo Zakheim & Eli Rowe -- who described the scene in great detail.
Although many many government's across the globe have sent search & rescue teams, aid, and funds to the area, what is most notable is the fact that Israel came from halfway across the globe and was from the first countries to establish a fully functioning hospital.
"Our hospital has the only functioning O.R. in Haiti currently, and we have treated well over 100 people since we started," Moshayov told YWN.
"Israel is from the smallest countries in the world, and yet we have close to 200 Israeli's working aggressively to save & preserve lives. We have a full staff of surgeons, pediatricians, internal physicians, and emergency medicine physicians working round-the-clock on victims of the 7.0 earthquake, he said.
"I am proud to be a part of this tremendous Kiddush Hashem".
Meanwhile, two veteran Hatzolah Paramedics, Shlomo Zakheim (Flatbush Division), & Eli Rowe (Queens Division), made the trip to Haiti, and are working at the hospital assisting patients with a multitude of injuries.
"What the Israeli Government has done in Haiti is truly amazing," Zakheim told YWN.
"I can't begin to describe you the incredible amount of equipment they brought with them in such a short time, and established so quickly.
"Everything from incubators (for premature births), to a full-blown ICU, an O.R.".... It's just incredible. They plan on being here for a month. They even came with a Rabbi and Shulso they can daven with a Minyan and say Kaddish."
"The word is out in Haiti," Eli Rowe told YWN.
"The victims have heard that the best care available currently is that of the IDF, and people are streaming to their hospital."
So far, Shlomo Zakheim & Eli Rowe have treated over twenty victims - in just a few hours.
"The scene is horrific" Zakheim said.
"People areburning bodies in the streets to prevent epidemics, and there is still no electricity and no running water in the area. One time our vehicle stopped for a moment, and dozens of peopletried to break into our car - just to get water. Everywhere you look there are childrenstanding and crying - with no parents standing with them. "
Additionally, three Search and Rescue units were sent to areas damaged by the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. The units are under the command of company and division commanders of the search & rescue unit of the Homefront Command and include rescue officers, security officers, and the famous Oketz canine unit which utilizes dogs in order to find survivors.
At this very moment of posting, the crew is working ata building where search & rescue teamshear someone alive, and are frantically working to free the trapped victims.
6a)MI Chief: Israel's success battling terror has turned world against us
By Jonathan Lis
Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said Tuesday that Israel's success against Palestinian terror has turned the international community against both the state and its activities.
"The Palestinian Authority is encouraging the international arena to challenge Israel's legitimacy and its activities," Yadlin told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
"The paradox of the current situation is that one of the primary sources that has led to the discussion on Israel's legitimacy is precisely its success against terror," Yadlin said.
The fact that Israel is no longer suffering from terror or from an immediate military threat has made it easier for the international community to accept claims against Israel's security activities," he added.
Yadlin also said that the Palestinian Authority's struggle against Hamas in the West Bank stems from its internal security needs and not from "a love of Israel."
"They don't want to find themselves in the same situation that Fatah did in Gaza," Yadlin said.
He added that the Palestinians are also trying to persuade the international community to force Israel to return to peace negotiations, but on their terms, which include a compete halt to settlement construction including in East Jerusalem.
Yadlin went on to address Iran's nuclear program as well, saying that Tehran is continuing work on it and the international community is preparing to impose sanctions against Tehran.
"As long as Iran is not under heavy pressure, it doesn't feel the need to renounce this crucial issue," Yadlin said.
The military intelligence chief went on to discuss the recent tension between Israel and Turkey, and said that ithe past the two shared mutual interests that strengthened ties between them. For example, he cited, "during the 1990s Turkey saw Syria as an enemy country, meaning we had a mutual enemy and joint interests."
"In the past Turkey strived to get closer to the West more than they wanted to get closer to NATO, they wanted to be part of the European market and they thought their relations with Israel would give them leverage with the American market," Yadlin said.
"But the Europeans turned their back on them, and they didn?t get what they wanted. Therefore they changed their policy and are currently in a process of distancing themselves from secular views and becoming more and more radical," Yadlin said.
No comments:
Post a Comment