"Today's reality is harsh. But what's even harder for many to accept and admit is that our quality of life today is the making of the Democratic and Republican Parties. What our country has become through their public policy is reflective of their values. We will never get a United States that is reflective of different values if we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it. That's why I signed up to do something I've never done before so I can have something I've never had before: My country, made in the likeness of the values of the Green Party."
Helms' death Friday, at age 86, brings America a small step closer to the end of the post-antebellum era in our politics that saw the men who had battled to deny the franchise to millions of Americans because of the color of their skin -- and who fought even more aggressively to deny adequate education, nutrition and health care to African-American children -- make the easy transition to leadership positions in the "modern" Republican Party.
Each day across Manhattan, music peddlers work the sidewalks, selling their own voices, rhythms and poetry about gangs, cash and hustling to those with a few minutes and dollars to spare. For these rap artists hoping to make it big, Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square and the Village are paved with gold: packed with people who have money and maybe, just maybe, the connections that could lead to a record deal. Spending long hours outside in snow, rain and sun is a full-time job for the artists, and the money they earn each day goes to supporting their professional ambitions and their families.
The problem is the collaboration between Arbitron, which drastically undercounts Black listenership, and Madison Avenue, which insists that if their clients are to advertise on Black stations at all, they will only do so at discounted rates far below what they pay to advertise on “white” stations. After all, they figure, Blacks will buy their products anyway, so why pay to advertise on these stations?
"Of the top six or seven crews in the world, I'd say half of them are from Korea," says Christopher "Cros One" Wright, 33, an American dance promoter and b-boy who was recently in Suwon, South Korea, to judge the second annual global invitational hip-hop dance competition, called R16, that was held at the end of May. the world's biggest b-boy contest -- they won "best show" honors and a fourth-place trophy. Every year since, a Korean crew has placed first or second. Says Battle of the Year founder Thomas Hergenrother, "Korea is on a different planet at the moment."
Despite spending $230m an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy. The US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty than any of the world's richest countries. The US is far behind many other countries in the support given to working families, particularly in terms of family leave, sick leave and childcare. The country has no federally mandated maternity leave.
The New Yorker magazine hits the news stands today with a shocking cover a caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama depicting the presidential candidate in a turban, fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun slung over her shoulder, while the American flag burns in the fireplace. The cover is shocking in that it depicts the Obamas in bizarre caricatured images and associations which reflect the very stereotypes with which the conservatives, particularly Fox News, have been trying to frame both the Obamas.
Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans. Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens' rights of privacy from government intrusion.
At Fox News, media relations is a kind of rolling opposition research operation intended to keep reporters in line by feeding and sometimes maiming them. Shooting the occasional messenger is baked right into the process. As crude as that sounds, it works. By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years. Honesty compels me to admit that I have choked a few times at the keyboard when Fox News has come up in a story and it was not absolutely critical to the matter at hand.
Instead of "stick 'em up," it will be more like "pull 'em up" now that fashion police in New Jersey have started a crackdown on baggy pants. It's happening in Paterson, where city officials want to put the kibosh on this form of fashion. "We're tired of seeing your behind," Davis said. "We don't want to see your back side. We don't need to see your underwear. We don't need to see your drawers. Wear your pants."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson's offhand insult of Barack Obama last week has exposed a heated debate over whether Obama's groundbreaking presidential campaign - and his repeated challenge to the black community to straighten out its own affairs - is displacing and alienating some in Jackson's generation of black leadership, which held the government accountable for the plight of African-Americans.
When Obama started his "Impossible Dream," the number of unemployed stood at 6.9 million and the jobless rate was 4.5 percent. Since then, a trio of crises - housing, credit and financial - have rocked the economy. That's caused economic growth to slow to a crawl and businesses and consumers to tighten their belts. The country's economic problems are a top concern for candidates vying to win the White House; but they, and most of the country, are mute on more Black youth getting jobs. Overall teenage unemployment increased to 18.7 percent, while Black teens' unemployment remains over six times the national rate - 32.3 percent.
U.S. foreclosure filings rose 53 percent in June from a year earlier and bank repossessions almost tripled as deteriorating property values and higher payments on adjustable mortgages forced more people to give up their homes. More than 252,000 properties, or one in every 501 U.S. households, were in some stage of foreclosure, RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of default data, said today in a statement. Nevada, California and Arizona had the highest foreclosure rates.
