Open Letter to My Friend Les Rosen

That is a fascinating piece of history, Les. And we agree but for difference reasons. Obama is very weak as a negotiator, and his leadership skills can be justifiably questioned by extension, but basically he is a very smart, decent guy who tried to hit the ground running unlike Bush 43 whose presidency was simply disastrous. The other piece you're missing is racism. Many people do not like Obama because he is black. Their criticism is couched in coded terms like "incompetent," though. Conventional wisdom likens him to Jimmy Carter, an equally smart peanut farmer from Georgia with an engineering degree from Annapolis, whose single term was marred by crises after crises. Your assessment of how Obama came out of nowhere upsetting the proverbial [powerful Clinton political machine] apple cart is point on. They repaid him in kind by lending loyal Clinton staffers to his administration without any of the bonds that typically characterize such high level, critical even, appointments. The mixed messages, in-fighting, and lack of focus became apparent early on to anyone paying attention. But to his credit he has passed more legislation whether you like or hate it than any other president in these United States. The policies proposed by the Republican Party would absolutely destroy any remnant of a middle class left standing in America, however. It is a party that wants to dismantle FDR's New Deal, and take us back to 1929, when the Great Stock Market crash augured in The Great Depression and there were no social safety nets. It was every man to fend for him or herself. The elderly, poor, children, women, minorities and other vulnerable folks literally starved to death. You cannot remember that, but your father certainly would have. I do not want to return to those times. And though the concept of a Welfare state is also loaded from a sociological perspective, it actually means to provide assistance to the most vulnerable among us. But compassion has not been an attribute evident in the Republican party as of late driven as it is by a populist fervor fueled in equal parts by blatant racism, flagrant ignorance; a yearning for unfettered capitalism, military expansionism, and continued imperialistic world dominance. Listen to what Romney said on the campaign trail... "The United States should always retain military supremacy to deter would-be aggressors and to defend our allies and ourselves. If America is the undisputed leader of the world, it reduces our need to police a more chaotic world. I will reverse the hollowing of our Navy and announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate from 9 per year to 15. I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system. I will order the formulation of a national cyber security strategy, to deter and defend against the growing threats of militarized cyber-attacks, cyber-terrorism, and cyber-espionage." Absent in this patriotic saber rattling is any indication of how Romney plans to pay for this "big military," which is one we simply cannot afford any longer and arguably one that has contributed mightily to our current economic woes. At this point personally and professionally, I need money, and plenty of it, not empty platitudes; or, a return to American imperialism that does nothing to line my pocket. The hustles I used to rely on to supplement my now meager income have evaporated. This economy is still set up for self-employment, though, which is why I have always loved trucking. It is an unambiguous barometer of the country's economic climate. Right now there is evidence that the economy is no longer gasping for life but sputtering along trying to gain steam. We do not need tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. If tax cuts were stimulative, Bush 43's ones enacted in the wake of two wars, would not have left us with a 554 billion dollar deficit. . . We need massive public works projects financed by "Rebuild America" bonds that would not only rebuild crumbling infrastructure; but put thousands, millions of people to work in relatively good paying jobs for years while these projects are being completed. What could be more stimulative?

Strangled By Cable, Here Is An Alternative...

Instead of paying exorbitant prices upwards of $250/month for cable and/or broadband television service, which have lost substantial value over the last 20 years seriously consider investing in a high quality, large directional rooftop antenna like a Winegard HD8200U with a roof mount, and pre-amp. The set-up would be approximately $200 to $300, and you can wash your hands of ever paying a cable bill again. If you have your heart set on watching Bill Maher Friday nights on HBO, you can invest in a surplus C band dish at least 12' in diameter ($200-$300). Purchase a HDTV receiver ($300), low-noise block converter or LNB for both C and Ku bands ($150-$250), have all the hardware set-up by the retailer, tuned and installed ($200-$300); subscribe to a wholesale satellite programming service like National Programming Service, LLC. (NPS), which serves large commercial customers like sports bar, casinos, hotels, and stores but will sell programming al la carte (you pay only for what you order) to residential customers in the contiguous United States. The most expensive package offered by NPS, the "Movie Lovers" package consists of HBO 14 Digital Feeds, Cinemax 12 Digital Feeds, Sundance 1 Digital Feeds, Starz! 14 Digital Feeds, Encore 2 Standard Definition Feeds that at $60/month is a veritable bargain in comparison to standard cable. Although the initial set-up costs and out-of-pocket expenses are much more expensive to subscribing to standard cable, which typically waives these installation fees, the commercial cable companies get you on the backend with exorbitant monthly costs that can easily amount to $2,000 to $3,000 per year. The added benefit of owing your own satellite system are "wild feeds"; literally thousands of free-to-air High Definition channels beyond your antenna's (yes, you would still need a good, large directional antenna for local over-the-air HDTV service) capacity, and superior picture quality. C-Band satellite systems do not go out like cable TV often does after a thunderstorm. This is one of the reasons why C-Band is the delivery method of choice used by virtually every TV and radio station in the U.S. to receive their network programming feed from New York and over 90% of the popular TV shows that you watch on local TV.

Confused and confusing: customizing gender. Its all the rage

For the last few days, like most folk, I have been clumsily grappling with the alleged sexual exploitation charges levied against a prominent black Bishop, Eddie Long, of New Birth Baptist Missionary Church in Lithonia, Georgia, which is right outside of Atlanta. He has allegedly had sexual liaisons with as many as 200 hundred boys from the inception of the church in 1996 until now.

A few opportunistic hacks have come out saying they have been writing about “pimps in the pulpit” for years but conspicuously neglected to mention our ancestor who first wrote about it brilliantly in 1967 and followed it in 1971 by another searing indictment on our most beloved institution, the black church.

The writer was an obscure black playwright from Chicago named Robert H. DeCoy. The tomes are “The Nigger Bible,” (Holloway House, 1967) and “Cold Black Peach.” (Holloway House, 1971) Both are seminal to our understanding of the black church and its leaders.

More importantly, they give context to Eddie Long's saga albeit from an inside out perspective. It has reluctantly led all of us, progressive and conservative alike, into a broader discussion of how a behavior as complex as human sexuality fits into a narrow parochial religious paradigm such the three major monotheistic belief systems predominate in these United States.

It is all a mere blur now, but I believe the speaker our mean ex-Catholic-nun-turned-closeted Lesbian instructor had brought in was a transgendered African American female, which in this case was a biological female who had undergone major surgery, hormone therapy and, I believe (hope) a great deal of pre-opt counseling to appear male to the undiscerning eye.

There were actually two speakers scheduled. One was the person I described. The other was also a transgendered male but was Caucasian with a full beard. I know. Bear with me. Because it is all so confused and confusing to even with us who labor to remain open minded. But I tell you sitting in that lecture was an exercise in restraint.

I write about this topic weighed down heavily by political correctness gone wild but needing nevertheless to comment on some obvious contradictions.

We Americans in a zeal to be ostensibly all inclusive, although we only just accepted Blacks as full citizens less than 50 years ago, have abandoned reason in the broader debate over LGBT rights. Although I still feel that everyone has the absolute right to self-expression there are some ethical not necessarily religious issues we have not quite fully worked out in this thorny debate.

The Black speaker was a relative successful pharmaceutical salesperson. According to "him" Pennsylvania Law allows for the gender of a person who has undergone sexual reassignment surgery, which is a fancy way of saying sex change, to petition the Courts to have their birth certificate legally altered to reflect whatever gender a petitioner has chosen to assume.

Okay. Now this is where it gets way too confusing for me. The speaker goes on to say that "he" neglected to go this route instead preferring to deceive her employer into believing she was male from birth.

This deception has ramifications for many reasons but let me share one from a medical perspective. Simply saying something is true does not make it so. Sexual reassignment surgery is akin to customizing a car. Even if the customizer [surgeon] is outrageously skilled, whatever the vehicle was originally still in fact remains.

So, in other words, no matter what a transgendered persons outward appearance, she still has all the inner plumbing of her biological sex. So what? Well not so fast. Woman suffer distinctly different diseases or even the same disease as a man but often with pathology that is gender specific.

So if you are a transgendered male, and purchase a million dollar life insurance policy, but then promptly expire from a disease, which is statistically unique to females, I can virtually assure you, insurance companies will be in the federal courts so fast, if you're between them and the courthouse doors, you're going to get run over.

Why? Fraud. Plain and simple. Whether one chooses to self-express as a man or as a woman, has a sex change, and plays the role to the hilt, at the end of the day, that person is still the gender he or she was born as biologically, if not necessarily psychologically.

But back to our two speakers. One of the most troubling issues with the Black guy's recital was dating. He mentioned several occasions where he met a woman with whom he wished to pursue a romantic relationship. But when it came to intimacy because he was not “equipped” to consummate, he engaged in sleigh of hand both literally and figuratively speaking to “get the job done.”

Obviously these ploys precluded any successful long term opposite sex relationship. So he is now living with a Lesbian. Okay. I am too exhausted trying to figure it all out myself. The issue here is one of simply honesty. I would never want to be deceived into believing that intelligent, tall, attractive and sensuous “female” I was dating but refused to have vaginal-penis sex with me was in reality a biological male incapable of opposite sex intimacy because her plumbing was not surgically altered properly.

Then there is the issue of wanting children both by and with your mate. Transgendered males can become impregnated, and transgendered females can product sperm. But why bother? In a relationship where your significant other has not disclosed this fact to you prior to your involvement, or maybe even was deceptive as the speaker in our class admitted is an issue we gloss over because we do not want to offend the LGBT community.

But I do have a dog in this fight. I have a son. I would be horrified if he came home with a transgendered female sterile by virtue of her biological gender, insisting they were in love and he wanted to marry her. Obviously, I cannot broad stroke all transgendered folks. I do not know enough to do so. But I would love to have a simple debate about this issue as we slide precariously down into a morally relativistic chasm propelled by good intentioned but blindly apologetic supporters of the LGBT community by neglecting to ask these tough moral questions.

Because the speaker in question said that “he” flat out lied to his employee (by extension their insurer), his lovers, and who knows how many other because “he” did not want to suffer approbation. He had the absolute right to self-expression but not to deceive folk into believing he was something that he was actually not when that deception impacts on employment, interpersonal relationships, and one's personal integrity.

And “Joe,” his assumed name, ought to know better because in her past life, she was an attorney.

Workplace violence

In response to recent egregious examples of workplace violence, a renewed discussion has arisen among Human Resource, Personnel and AA/EEO executives about how they ought to be dealing with disguntled or disaffected employees in the workplace.

David Abel and Jack Nicas for the Boston Globe reported:

A truck driver caught stealing beer from the distributor where he worked killed eight co-workers before turning a gun on himself yesterday morning after company officials told him to resign or face being fired, employees and authorities said.

The man, identified as Omar Thornton by police, went on the deadly rampage at Hartford Distributors, where he had worked for two years. He also wounded two people.

In less than a day, two somewhat competing narratives, drawn from news accounts and Internet postings, have emerged to shape interpretations of this tragedy:

1. Thornton was a disgruntled psychopath who reacted violently after losing his job for good cause.

The scenario of a disgruntled, rank-and-file worker suddenly “going postal” after losing a job due to alleged misconduct has become strongly identified with concerns about workplace violence. News reports about the Connecticut killings frequently referred to past workplace killings that, at least on the surface, appeared to be similar.

Fears of dismissed employees reacting violently have fueled attention to the question of how to terminate people in a way that minimizes these risks. They have led to practices that, in my judgment, can increase the risk of angry and perhaps violent responses, such as “exit parades” whereby workers are escorted out of the premises by security personnel, sometimes in view of their co-workers.

2. Thornton was a victim of racial discrimination whose concerns were ignored by his employer.

According to the Globe:

Thornton, 34, who was black, had complained of racial harassment and said he found a picture of a noose and a racial epithet written on a bathroom wall, the mother of his girlfriend told the Associated Press.

But union officials said Thornton never filed a complaint of racism.

Some are seizing upon this piece of the story to paint another interpretation of events: Thornton was a victim of a hostile workplace that ignored concerns about racial harassment, and he finally snapped after he lost his job.

It is difficult to know whether the “disgruntled psychopath” or the “victim pushed over the edge” story is more accurate than the other. It’s also possible that elements of both are true. In any event, we should be cautious about lumping stories of workplace violence and aggression into easy categories because there is usually alot of blame to go around.

OHSHA reported that after they updated 2005/2006 data, the total number of fatal work injuries in 2005 was revised to 5,734, an increase of 32 fatalities from the preliminary count of 5,702 reported in August 2006.

In addition, the updates led to changes in the classification of worker, job, and case circumstances for some fatalities. Among the changes resulting from the updates were the following:

Fatal work injuries to men increased by 28 to a revised total of 5,328 workplace fatalities. Fatalities to women in the workplace were revised up to 406, but this total still represents a series low for women workers.

Fatalities to workers aged 55 years and older were revised up 12 from 1,499 to 1,511.

The number of fatalities to foreign-born workers was revised up 22 to 1,035.

The revised number of fatal occupational injuries incurred by Hispanic or Latino workers increased by 6 to 923, though the fatality rate for Hispanic or Latino workers remained unchanged.

Fatalities related to transportation activities increased by 13 (from 2,480 to 2,493) in the revised data, most of which were attributable to highway incidents (9 of the 13 cases). Fatalities involving truck drivers increased by 5 (from 831 to 836).

The largest increases in new cases by State were in California, which rose from 453 to 465, and in Louisiana, which reported an increase from 106 to 111 cases.

Fatal workplace injuries attributable to hurricanes were revised up 3 to a final count of 32 fatal work injuries. These statistics do not look at causation, however. And most NYS agencies are reactive as opposed to proactive.

Therefore, proactive prevention policies with teeth include a viable, effective and prompt means of redressing grievances against managers by rank and file. Not the system currently in place in New York State for example, where co-opted Personnel administrators doing the bidding of their handlers, deliberately drag their feet on processing grievances, which segues into another pernicious problem that is often under reported.

Little has been said about unfair labor-management practices by employers and even corrupt labor unions whom are supposed to protect rank and file members from improper practices that unfairly impact them from retaliation, overwork, underpay or poor working conditions.

So, if a grievance is not "settled," and does manage to rise to a tier 3 grievance, the union often neglects to "pick it up." That is neither fair nor judicious but, unfortunately, the rule and not the exception with how corrupt union officials quell dissent among rank and file.

It is easy to cast a "fired" worker as a malcontent, bad worker, thief, racist, and ne're-do-well after they have been killed by the police, taken their own lives, or have been tried, convicted and imprisoned.

And admittedly their violent behavior is not socially acceptable because innocent people, many of whom are from the rank and file, often get killed as a direct consequent of these extreme, last resort, attempts to resolve grievances.

Working for the State of New York off and on for the last 10 years, I can say emphatically that cronyism and favoritism rule. The Inspector General whose office, ostensibly has oversight, is itself is highly politicized and, as such, compromised. NYS OIG comes out a few times during the year with a well publicized case of a grade 9 stealing "time." Once is a blue moon, they will famously announce a high ranking state official usually at the end of their career, who has been "referred" to their respective agency for one impropriety or the other.

But you rarely see high ranking administrators in the middle or beginning of their careers taken to task for their illegal excesses on a routine basis. I personally know several who work other jobs while on state time. One is the same administrator who would conspire to hinder me from obtaining a transfer because I am not in the loop with these inept, corrupt, bungling and politically connected managerial/confidential employees.

Another major problem is Civil Service who promulgates rules governing merit system examinations. In New York State after grade 29, most if not all M/C positions are filled non-competitively, which means those vacancies are filled at the discretion of upper management. There are no "tests," and a wholly subjective evaluation of "education and experience."

So, you have many instances where notoriously unqualified managers lacking advanced educational credentials, demonstrable competencies, skill sets and, more importantly, temperments are being pressed into service in highly sensitive, critical roles in these agencies.

The end result is the Peter Principle ("in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence") gone wild. There is absolutely no accountability because these incompetents portentuously masquerading as senior and executive managers are more concerned with covering their fat asses, than getting off of them to actually walk out into the offices, visit the programs, and talk to rank and file, instead of conspiring with middle-management to oppress them.

Back when we still had large institutional campuses, these managers could expect to become victims of workplace violence. They would often come out after a hard day spouting racist or other insulting comments, nitpicking and harassing, and generally oppressing subordinates to find their cars "keyed," tires slashed, or windshields broken.

The possibility of knowing that damage to their property or even assault to their person could result from their unrestrained conduct often served as an effective barrier against heavyhanded, unchecked managerial policies that in several, recent highly publicized cases resulted in people getting shot and killed.

Although I am not a pacifist, I would never advocate violence against anyone except in the event where one's life, the lives of one's family, or larger society is at imminent risk of harm.

However, I do feel that not everyone has the same internal controls enabling them to deal with frustration by venal, arrogant, incompetant and, often, racist managers.

The managers in question are invariably unresponsive. When confronted by their own lack of responsiveness, often stonewall, circle wagons, and when his or her refusal to redress an issue is referred to oversight, or executive management as a last gap measure, outright dissemble, or close ranks.

It is this type of flagrant injustice, fostered by politics, stupidity, cronyism and favoritism, which fuels workplace violence, not the converse where a disguntled worker is dismissively characterised as a malcontent, bad worker, thief, racist, and ne're-do-well.

Maybe if workers return to these old effective institutional labor-management practices, executive management, oversight agencies, and the unions would get out of bed long enough to address these persistent issues bringing integrity and, even more importantly, accountability back into the merit system as a consequence.

Academic narcissism...or elitist exclusivity?

I have long been an avid proponent of both lifelong as well as distance learning, which has been nurtured indeed fostered by enrollment at Empire State College where I was graduated with an associates in arts (1997), and bachelor of science (1999).

It was simultaneously an exhilarating and liberating experience. The most memorable part of that experience stemmed from my relationship with my mentor, Dr. Rudy Cain. Cain undoubtedly helped shepherd me through an arduous process. I will never forget him once telling me that “you need a credential” then assigning readings.

Those readings would inform my perspective while resulting in reports that were grounded in critical analysis. These exercises taught me not only about the material in question but how to deconstruct it. Like persons graduating from prestigious schools such as the Ivy League universities, I am very proud of my affiliation with Empire State College, because it is the first successful American distance learning institute in America. It was founded in 1971 under the aegis of Dr. James Hall. But it was not the first “open university” in these United States.

In 1883 a correspondence school based at Cornell University was established, but was poorly managed and, as such, never got off the ground. ESC has been doing “distance education” so well with an innovative pedagogy, cutting edge technology, and state-of-the-art instructional systems, it has become an international model for effective, evidence based delivery of distance learning degree programs. ESC's program is one upon which other colleges and universities such as Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey and Charter Oak State College in Connecticut have modeled their own offerings.

Distance learning has become a mature, peer reviewed and, as such, accepted vehicle for non-traditional students to “get a credential.” But some critics in academia have been vocal opponents of extending this model to doctoral programs. Except for well known problems with unaccredited “diploma mills” cropping up in states with liberal chartering provisions, those objections make little sense unless we look at them from an exclusivity prospective.

It simply takes a long time to obtain a doctoral degree as it well ought to being the highest academic credential university faculty can confer. These programs have a notoriously high drop-out rate, which is an issue of concern in many countries, including the USA (where students need between six and nine years to complete a doctorate depending on the subject and also on the institution).

Doctoral programs take the longest in the humanities, while doctoral students in the life sciences compete their programs more rapidly. In Canada, the average time for completion of a doctorate is more than five years in all subjects (an average of 5 years and 10 months across all disciplines), with students in the humanities and social sciences requiring more than 6 years.

When I was accepted to Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine's Psy.D program after being graduated from SUNY Buffalo State in 2005 with a master of science in multidisciplinary studies, a straight A average, and a thesis, I thought I had it made until I peeked behind the curtain to speak with the wizard.

The program was 7 years in duration. It cost $20,000/year. At the end of the grueling process, if one persevered, did not become destitute, challenge egotistical instructors most of whom were barely out of graduate school themselves, while others had never published anything of import in peer reviewed journals, and fulfilled a curriculum heavy on make work, I could hope to earn between $70k to $90k in private practice, little more in academia, and slightly more than that in federal or state service.

The math just did not add up. I would be roughly $150k in debt, middle aged, only to have an earned doctorate, which is not worth $150k in student loans, to show for it. Why was an expensive 3 year professional program structured to be extended to 7? If you look at the compensation packages for full time faculty most of whom are tenured or on tenure track, a full professor at PCOM earns $150,000 in the School of Psychology.

Consequently, there is an economic incentive to extend a three year program to seven years. That incentive is an exorbitant compensation package to faculty. There is no empirical peer reviewed data suggesting PCOM Psy.D graduates perform any better or worst then their peers at local area colleges and universities on The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP).

The experience was so negative, encountering obstructionism, racism, egotism, and elitism by trained psychologists who - simply put - ought to know better, it turned me off from pursing a career in psychology altogether. I am still interested in human behavior. And I am now enrolled in the DLitt et Phil program in anthropology at the renown University of South Africa, which is a premier international "distance learning" institute in Pretoria, which also offers "brick and mortar" undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

The "research-only" doctoral model is more traditionally found in the oldest European, Asia and African universities, then in the market driven, overly structured, paternalistic and lengthy PhD programs found in American and Canadian universities. Although there is a clear trend in Europe to give doctoral education more structure, e.g. in the form of graduate schools or doctoral programs, the traditional ‘professor-pupil’ model is still widespread.

The problems with the professor-pupil model are well known: there is a high degree of personal dependence on the supervisor, a frequent lack of quality in supervision, high drop-out rates and often there is an overly long period before the degree is completed.

In Europe, the time-to-degree varies considerably depending on the subject and on how the doctoral education and training takes place. In short, whether it is within the framework of a program or school or if it follows the traditional professor-pupil model. Like most subjective assessments it comes down the two people involved.

The professor-pupil model has served me extremely well while at Empire State and to a lesser degree when I attended graduate school at Buffalo State. It is extremely difficult for me to sit through a 1, 2, or 3 hour lecture with an egoistic instructor droning on interminably neglecting to provide audio-visual aids to illustrate his or her material utterly oblivious student engagement.

When I became a part time adjunct professor at Camden County College, I immediately ordered a series of DVDs from PBS with which to provoke debate, spark enthusiasm, and instill a sense of excitement in my students. It worked. Classes were full every semester.

The academy now is replete with people simply wanting to successfully navigate the doctoral process, which is strictly prescribed. Take this research course, that methodology course, this statistic course, that seminar, a few advanced subject area courses, some independent readings, a comprehensive examination, which no longer includes a foreign language, compile, write and present your research and after an average of 10 years if you are lucky, you will be awarded a bona fide PhD.

Those idealistic students foolish enough to have endured this grueling process at a university other than those in the top echelon of academia in North America now portentously lay claim to the mantle of elitism. These fledgling academicians believe narcissistically there are no other avenues with which to obtain an earned doctorate except though the North American model of exclusivity.

This exclusivity permeates not only academia, but its very institutions; important funding sources like the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Education, and even some private foundations. That presumption has never been based on fact, however. Original research is defined by Wikipedia (retrieved September 2010 “What is Original Research? Original research is considered a primary source. Thomas G. Carpenter Library University of North Florida”) as “research that is not exclusively based on a summary, review or synthesis of earlier publications on the subject of research. This material is of a primary source character. The purpose of the original research is to produce new knowledge, rather than to present the existing knowledge in a new form (e.g., summarized or classified).”

Few approved dissertations at even the best universities in America accomplish that singular, all important objective and actually “produce new knowledge.” And I have actually taken the time to ready many. I know my doctoral “thesis” will produce "new knowledge" shaped as it is by rigorous adherence to the scientific method, careful oversight by a brilliant supervisor, and motivated by a burning desire to demonstrate that knowledge is not an abstraction, which can be relegated to the Ivory Tower, but can be of practical use in resolving pernicious issues with which society is confronted.

Velma Hart, Us Black Folk

Despite numerous high profile legislative successes to cap his first two years in office, President Obama has been dogged by negative reporting, which many pundits attribute to a puny White House communications office effort.

In short, President Obama has been getting hammered by the right wing media, which dominates political discourse in these United States. Former White Communications Director Ellen Moran stepped down to take a role as Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Commerce. Her departure could not have come any sooner because by all objective measures, she has done a piss poor job of getting Obama's victories in print, radio or on television.

Daniel Pfeiffer returned to a role he held during Obama's campaign. He has his work cut out for him with mid-term elections looming like a dark cloud over this administration. But there may be a silver lining in that cloud if Pfeiffer launches an all out media blitz championing Obama's accomplishments while cleverly using sound bites conservative talk show hosts wielded like a smoking gun in a collective effort to diminish Obama's record.

One that immediately comes to mind is turning Velma Hart's, Aunt Jemima masquerading as an accomplished successful black woman, critique around, when she stood up on national television saying,

"I am one of your middle class Americans and, quite frankly, I'm exhausted... I'm exhausted of defending you. I'm exhausted of defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for. And I'm deeply disappointed with where we are right now.

I have been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I am one of those people and I'm waiting sir. I'm waiting. I don't feel it yet. And I thought, while it wouldn't be in great measure, I would feel it in some small measure... And quite frankly Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly: Is this my new reality?"

Pfeiffer can accomplish this public relations coup de grâce by spinning it truthfully to say if not for Obama's policies, you would not be in the middle class but cleaning someone's nasty ass.

Levity aside, I do not agree with Obama when he says in response to veiled criticism by black progressives that he needs to do more for blacks folks that a rising tide lifts all boats. I agree with Boyce Watkins, the new marquee black scholar on the block, who writes in response to Ms. Hart notoriety, "if the first black president doesn't help us to overcome [economic] inequality, is his victory anything more than symbolic?"

Behind Closed Doors: Have Black Journalists Become Casualties Of The Information War?

Corporate control of the media has become a problem of great import as of late – especially in the wake of the recent terrorist activity on American shores. Reactionary members of the Bush administration – i.e., Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, his boss, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Vice President Richard Cheney - have taken a page from the Gulf War by effectively closing out the mainstream media in general and black press in particular. These men especially have always held extreme right wing views and seem to be the ideological brain swell of the Bush presidency; driving many of the excessive, some would argue, fascistic policies of this administration.

Former DEA special agent Mike Levin, host and executive producer of The Expert Witness Show, which airs on NYC’s WBAI FM 99.5 every Tuesday evening at 7:00 PM, has had former high-ranking CIA officials on his show.

These men have boasted on air how they have conscripted the fourth estate. All of this information comes straight from the mouths of these former government officials and is archived for review on Levine’s web site at http://www.radio4all.org/expert/program.html. Reporters requesting information from Pentagon, State or Justice sources are often given sanitized releases prepared entirely by the press offices of those agencies. These releases are printed or aired virtually unexpurgated by the media.

Most of the recent legislation advanced by the Bush administration under the guise of promoting national security or stimulating the economy would never past the smell test in peacetime.

However, these demagogues have succeeded in scaring the wits out of an already frightened American public. The proposed (15) fifteen year, retroactive tax break to corporations; a ($200,000,000) two hundred billion dollar contract to Lockheed Martin; a national identity card; an Anti-Terrorism bill with legislation to suspend the constitutional rights of those who run afoul of its draconian provisions. All of these initiatives will have definite negative, long-term ramifications for not only the black community but also every dark skinned immigrant in the United States.

Nevertheless, except for a few African American conservatives, or Negro apologists depending on which side of the PC equation one stands, spinning the Bush administration’s version of this information for major media outlets, there has not been any of the deep, insightful analysis one would expect from minority journalists. It is as though black reporters have not been able to effectively access the breaking news conferences where this high profile information is being released.

Wayne Gillman, News Director, of New York City’s Inner City Broadcasting, which operates the popular Urban Adult Contemporary radio stations 107.5 FM WBLS and equally well regarded Caribbean oriented 1190 AM WLIB relies almost exclusively on the associated press [AP] for news releases.

The accuracy of his reporting has gotten so bad that during last week’s Sharp Talk Show, the Reverend Al Sharpton’s segment which airs regularly at 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM on 1190 AM WLIB, Alton Maddox, Sharpton’s co-host, had to clarify misinformation being written by the very wire new service in question relative to an alleged $37,000 payment that Maddox supposedly had made to Steven Pagones.

Pagones was a former Westchester County assistant district attorney who Maddox, C. Vernon Mason, and Al Sharpton had implicated the infamous Tawana Brawley abduction and rape. Pagones brought a defamation suit against all three activists and prevailed. Although Mason and Sharpton had in fact paid their portion of the judgment, Maddox has refused to pay any part of his.

Last week, however, Maddox was ordered by a White Plains court to show up with what he claimed was only a bond. On another show, Politics Live which is hosted by Mark Riley, that aired the very next day on 1190 AM WLIB, Alton Maddox explained to Riley that he in fact did not offer the $37,000 in settlement of the outstanding judgment against him but that the money was indeed to pay a contempt bond to prevent from going to jail. An embarrassed Wayne Gillman who had reported exactly what AP wrote rushed back on air in the middle of Riley’s show to apologize to an angry Maddox.

This situation was probably a combination of Gillman’s own slovenly reporting, and his inability to get to timely, primary source material for on-air reports. Nevertheless, this type of problem is one that has its genesis in an administration that has succeeded in all but suspending the Bill of Rights; the constitutional protection that affords us freedom of speech.

Ironically, another proposal being bandied about is a blatantly unconstitutional bar to the release of information that the executive branch unilaterally deems not in the interest of the public domain. It is an outrageous proposition that has gone under the wire with nary a critical analysis by the mainstream more or less the black press.

The argument being made by many black media owners, however, is that the black community does not support their service. The demise of the very well written Emerge magazine that had been headed up by George Curry is a case in point.

Consequently, black owned radio, print and TV companies are forced to make economic decisions that often adversely impact or at the least severely compromise their news gathering functions. With deeply discounted inventories, they are unable to sustain the first class operations of a Reuters, UPI, Bloomberg, or AP.

Moreover, the national press corp is practically devoid of dark skinned reporters. The ones who are allowed in are rounded ignored when they attempt to ask the tough questions that the President or his press secretary would rather not answer.

The corporate welfare package that the Bush administration is currently touting will cost the country close to $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) in the form of reduced entitlements, student aid, and higher consumption taxes. The $200,000,000 (two hundred billion dollar) contract to Lockheed Martin will be paid for with monies that were earmarked for extended unemployment benefits to workers adversely impacted by the fallout from both the WTC and Pentagon disasters, respectively. The Anti-Terrorism bill speaks for itself.

The black press has allowed itself to be closed out of the most historically significant period in modern American times. The war effort and resulting legislation is something that directly and negatively impacts black America. Broadcasters, reporters, editors and producers ought to be challenging their media corporations or bosses to allow them to get in on the fight because if we lose this one, we stand to lose over fifty years of hard fought civil and human rights.