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The Break – The Black Vote Pt.1

In this episode KC, Chris, Malcolm, Tash, Leisha, Shelby, Steve & Julius discuss the state of the black voting block in the U.S., the Michelle Alexander conversation with Chris Hayes, the emotional attachment for the Clintons, violent revolution, and choosing the lesser of two evils.

Music: Sam Gellaitry – To Earth and Back

Please leave your comments and feedback below or you can contact us via Twitter: @BLACKISONLINE; Facebook: Black Is Magazine; Email: kc@blackisonline.com; Voicemail: (323) 455-4219.

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Reviving the Inner-City Economy

Urban America, a term almost synonymous with minority and black America, is in crisis. That comes as a surprise to no one, of course. Urban life, inner-city life more particularly, is fraught with perils and starved of opportunity. Many of the themes of these crises are well known to us: high rates of crime, low rates of employment, inadequate access to healthcare, contentious relationships with police officers and governing authorities. The list goes on and on. Solutions to these crises however are not often easy to come across, so let me present a few here.

That an absence of broad-based economic opportunity is fundamental to the struggles of the urban centers of America, whether we are talking Detroit, south-side Chicago, or my own inner city Los Angeles, is hard to argue. Lack of income and financial independence is central to the instability of families and the unraveling of communities. Travel my home streets of Inglewood, Los Angeles and Watts, and in the midst of those who are making it okay, we find depressed and itinerant people struggling with an overburdened public transportation system, unkempt roads, a polluted environment and worn commercial properties serving as the ailing backbone of an economy tenuously held together by EBT.

How to fix the employment crisis? Reforming welfare and unemployment spending to couple these dollars with educational programs and occupational training that can turn the long term unemployed from frustrated recipients of government assistance to skilled and qualified students and trainees is a good place to start. Our current welfare and unemployment programs do little to provide for successful transitioning from dependence to employment. Many people who receive unemployment remain on unemployment for a long time, and by the time their benefits are near discontinuation  they find themselves seeking employment with an unattractive gap on their resumes and a lack of confidence that comes from not having participated in the workplace for an extended period. All of these things plague the inner city unemployed, making them undesirable to employers. Welfare and unemployment reform along these lines would go a long way to solving these problems.

A long way, that is, but not far enough. For while it is vital to incentivize education and training these things can only help black and inner city communities take advantage of the broader opportunities available to them. But if jobs are not prevalent in the inner cities, and they are not, than the urban population has to seek opportunity where it lies, and often it lies very far from our homes in the cities. That requires travel, and because gas is expensive and many poor blacks and Latinos do not have cars, we are left to rely on public transportation systems that are often underfunded, overcrowded, unpleasant and even dangerous. Funding public transport systems whose routes are effectively coordinated to deliver people from the cities safely, comfortably and expeditiously to those areas where job and career opportunities are prevalent is important. This would make it more possible for the unemployed to find jobs, to actually be able to get to those jobs and to get to school and daycare as well. Ultimately, as these measures enhance urban economies these municipalities would have more tax dollars to invest in the communities as a result.

While there is not room here to give a detailed account of the inadequacies of inner city healthcare, both in terms of access and quality, as a fundamental principle it is clear to me that the more we can expand competition between providers, the more affordable care will become a reality for people everywhere, including the urban communities. One step in that direction would be to do as former President Bill Clinton and others have suggested, and allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Certain features of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will also help to expand access, such as mandating the coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and extending the time children are available to remain on their parent’s plans. Other elements of the ACA however, including coverage mandates, threaten to raise costs and thereby limit access. On the local level then it is important for community groups to do what they can. (The First Ladies Health Day in Los Angeles, sponsored by Walgreens in association with a wide range of inner city churches, is bringing a diverse array of healthcare services to the urban poor in Los Angeles. It’s a great example of what the community and the business sector can accomplish when working together.)

The inner city suffers from many problems; but a healed economy is the first step in solving many of them. With the right policies in place, inner cities across America can be transformed into citadels of opportunity, empowering black America to take the reigns of its own economic future.

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The Substance of the Obama-Romney Debate

President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney have now had the first of their much anticipated (by me anyway, and my fellow political junkies) presidential debates. The winner? Well, Governor Romney by a landslide according to the polls and almost all the commentary from Democrats and Republicans, black and white. It is rare when a political party acknowledges it’s own presidential candidate’s defeat. Republicans at least made a cursory effort to suggest George W. Bush won his first (disastrous) debate against John Kerry (it should give hope to Obama supporters to remember that Bush came back to win that election) even if it seemed obvious that they knew otherwise. But every Democrat not working directly for the President seems to have declared their own man the loser; an astounding blow to Obama’s prestige and his intellectual reputation. And I agree; the president lost badly. He was sluggish in his comebacks, listless in his delivery, unable to hold Romney’s gaze and lacking his famous confidence during the most important debate of his career. Romney on the other hand was focused, direct, unhesitating (with better posture no less) and perhaps most importantly, looked directly at the President almost the whole time, conveying a willingness and eagerness to challenge the champion and to take his crown. In other words, Romney came to win, and it seemed like President Obama didn’t even want to play.

But with all this talk of style and delivery (which is very important in politics) it is unfortunate that what is lost in this is a stricter focus on the substance of what the candidates had to say. And on issues of substance, though I agree more with the trend of Mitt Romney’s comments, the truth is that the debate was much closer to even if anyone bothered to pay that close attention. Mitt Romney spoke with force and conviction about his tax plan, and was persuasive in saying that the President had mis-characterized it. Where Obama called it a 5-trillion dollar tax cut skewed towards the rich, Romney claimed adamantly that this was untrue, that by closing loopholes and deductions he would insure that the rich paid the same overall amount of taxes, while the middle class and small businesses would pay less because of reduced rates. To that Obama lamely cited some studies supporting his view and repeated, again without any energy, that that this was “math” and “arithmetic” (quoting Bill Clinton) and that Governor Romney could not do what he said he would do without either raising middle class taxes, or increasing the deficit. All of Romney’s replies to this were forceful and effective…and yet, President Obama was almost certainly correct. There are only so many loopholes and deductions available to be cut, and while they number in the hundreds of billions of dollars, Mitt Romney’s tax cut numbers in the trillions.That is a problem. Romney fills in the blank by saying the difference in revenue will come from growth, but while his approach may well grow the economy (I think it will), it’s a big “if” as to whether he can grow it so much that his tax cuts will essentially pay for themselves. So then what does he do if and when they don’t? Increase taxes? Or let the deficit rise? Obama basically said this, but he did not drive the point home. He hesitated, looked down, speaking without fighting. As a result nobody saw that Obama was on to something. Nobody noticed.

On Medicare the two candidates again made good points, but only one candidate made them effectively. Romney repeated the claim that Obama cuts medicare by 715 billion dollars, and substantiated it by noting that those cuts come directly out of the compensation the government pays to healthcare providers. If Medicare is to pay 3 quarters of a trillion dollars less to providers to care for Medicare patients (keeping in mind that Medicare already pays less to doctors and hospitals than private insurance…that’s my point, not Romney’s) you can expect far fewer medical professionals to care for Medicare patients, hence less Medicare. Romney’s critique was good, and it stuck. Obama’s counter was also good, substantively speaking. Obama made the point that the voucher program Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan support would cause the most vulnerable seniors to remain in traditional Medicare, ultimately crashing the program (because coverage costs would skyrocket and you would have a smaller pool of people paying into the system…again my point, not Obama’s) and leaving everybody therefore to the mercy of skyrocketing insurance premiums that are already killing us now. Obama’s point was good. But it did not stick, because he did not make it stick. Romney went on as if Obama had said nothing at all, and nobody noticed…including, it seemed, the President.

President Obama missed more opportunities than that. Romney scored big on Obama’s wasteful green energy subsidies, a trap Obama stepped into by talking about oil subsidies which is really small ball stuff compared to the overall budget. But Mitt Romney gave Obama a chance to gain those points back and then some. Mitt Romney claimed that people with pre-existing conditions would be covered under his health care policy. Barack Obama pointed out that that is only true for those who already have coverage and that those who don’t still would lack it, but again he did not press the point. The issue of pre-existing conditions is not just a minor policy distinction. Democrats frequently call Mitt Romney a liar. In this case at least, that’s close to being correct. Romney attempted to suggest that his healthcare policy would do what Obamacare does: cover people with pre-existing conditions, when in fact all it would do would leave things the way they already are. Obama’s actually extends coverage to those with pre-existing conditions who do not already have it, giving them protection that Mitt Romney is only pretending to offer. Obama said that, but he should have shouted it! He should have banged his fist on the podium! He should have looked Mitt Romney dead in the eye without flinching, turning away or looking strangely apologetic as he often did, and made it clear that Mitt Romney was flat out wrong. Instead Romney made the case, without saying it in so many words, that Obama was flat out incompetent, and because he seemed to mean it, what he said stuck while Obama’s case fell flat.

Politics is about substance, about policy, about ideas, but it is also about theatrics and performance, because that is the way you communicate and simplify those ideas into things people can understand. Barack Obama’s brilliance as a politician always seemed to be that he understood this better than anyone else. If he’s going to win re-election, it’s a lesson he will have to learn again. Politics is a battle. Be honorable, be honest as possible, but be real. You cannot win the fight if you don’t fight to win. Mitt Romney knows that. Time will tell if Obama remembers.

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Defending Black Republicanism (Part 2 of 3)

The thing that most drives African-Americans away from the Republican Party today, if one excepts the perceived Republican opposition to civil rights, are deep and fundamental differences in economic and domestic policy.  Given the long disadvantaged socioeconomic station which blacks have historically occupied it is easy to see why the public spending policies of the Democratic Party would have an enduring appeal to the many of us who are poor, struggling, and who need help where we can find it. But just because a certain set of policies may have an appeal to the poor and the working class does not mean  these policies are as beneficial as we would think. For an emerging black community coming into it’s own as business owners, college graduates, innovators and professionals, a different philosophy must begin to take root, one that allows us the means and the opportunities to control our own destiny as independent individuals, as secure families and as an increasingly prosperous community.

In recent days, former Republican Speaker of the House and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has made headlines, and met with fierce allegations of racism from some, for saying at a campaign stop in South Carolina, “The African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” His words made the blood boil of many progressives generally and many blacks particularly, but it is worth curtailing the emotion to at least acknowledge the legitimacy of the point. As President Obama himself has acknowledged, there are a segment of people, and surely we observe them in our own community, who are content to live off of the public dollar as long as they can without making a serious effort at sustaining themselves. Naturally this doesn’t characterize our community as a whole, but what is more broadly true is that even for the large majority of black Americans who work hard for a living or who are trying their best in this difficult time to be able to provide for themselves and their families, there is a sense that true social mobility for us in this society is mostly a bitter mirage. Therefore we think education won’t help us. We believe that corporate America will not accept us. We expect the legal system to hinder us. In our history there have been many reasons to feel this way. But in the 21rst century too many of us cling to these limiting attitudes even as the walls of institutional oppression have crumbled around us before the advance of the black condition and the opening up of American society. For all of our problems and even given the current economic climate, black Americans are more wealthy, more educated, and more influential in recent years than we have ever been before. Yet instead of tending towards policies that would open wider the gates of our opportunities, we support initiatives designed to make sure we will fall only so far.

There is a reason that perhaps the steepest historical decline in the black unemployment rate occurred as a result of the tax cuts of Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s. There is a reason that even with cuts in investment taxes and welfare spending black unemployment reached a historic low at the end of the Clinton presidency, to only be neared again under George W. Bush’s presidency as a result of, in my opinion, the Bush tax cuts for the upper and middle class. (We’re it not for the real-estate crash and the financial collapse the national unemployment rate would probably have remained under 5% for sometime.) These periods of high employment and increase of black wealth and American wealth and employment generally came not as the result of aggressive government spending and public assistance. They came as the result of people being able to save, spend and invest more of what they had earned. There is a psychological difference of course in being able to keep more of what you yourself own or produce as opposed to simply receiving for free of what has been taken from the pockets of others. People have more appreciation for what they earn than for that which is given them without effort. Like the song says, “God bless the child who has his own.”

That is not to say that food stamps and welfare are innately bad. For the many people who are trying hard in tough times to get by and who have nothing else to rely on (believe me I know what it’s like) it’s important to have this safety net. But growing the social safety net does not grow long lasting prosperity, which is what needs to happen if things are to genuinely get better. It has been the approach of the current administration to funnel money directly into state governments, pet projects and rebates in order to stimulate economic growth. And while it should be noted that a good deal of this massive spending came in the form of tax credits, these were temporary and insufficient to generate real economic growth. Meanwhile as we spend money with little restraint, the very funds needed to fund our social welfare programs are missing because the economy is languishing. Raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting defense spending can barely begin to cover these bills. It is only economic growth that can accomplish this.

One area where President Obama deserves more credit than he has gotten is in the area of education. For as willing as many of us are to roll in the mud over the issue of Affirmative Action, the affirmative action we should all be calling for is stronger performance on behalf of our children from an education establishment that rewards seniority over ability. Consequently our children suffer while the teacher’s unions protect themselves. We keep pouring money on the education problem, but study after study have shown that government funding does not impact student achievement and neither, in fact, does class size. What matters most is not funding, or surroundings, but teacher quality. We have only been subsidizing the mediocrity of a failing union culture. President Obama has at least shown the political will to say to the left wing teacher’s unions that performance should be the deciding factor when it comes to retaining and rewarding educators. This is a conservative sentiment that Republicans have fought for for some time, and it’s unfortunate that more Democrats have not voiced support for at least this element of the President’s educational agenda.

I do not believe that black Americans will long be content to accept government programs as more than a nominal factor in ensuring the welfare of our people. I do not believe that black Americans will long tolerate an educational system that has no expectations for our children. We as a people do have a higher sense of who we are and what we can accomplish. But the interests of the Democratic Party are largely served by our dependency on federal dollars and our belief in the illusion that the poverty of our surroundings prevents us from being able to learn. These are a couple reasons why some of us are Republicans. But it doesn’t matter whether one is a Republican or Democrat. What matters is that we look at the example of an exceptional black Democrat like Barack Obama to realize the wisdom of a great black Republican like Booker T. Washington, who said that “character, not circumstances, make the man,” and furthermore, that “we should not permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” We have the ability. It is only the embrace of freedom and opportunity that we need to able to succeed.