Dennis Shipman, The Alternative Voice

Open Letter to My Friend Les Rosen

2011-10-18T10:01:00.004-04:00

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...

2010-11-11T18:31:00.002-05:00

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

2010-10-01T23:38:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-29T11:35:00.002-04:00

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?

2010-09-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-25T03:58:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-09-25T02:58:00.000-04:00

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.

Behind the Bushes

2010-09-25T02:47:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration’s startling revelation released yesterday by the White House Press office in the person of Bush spokesman Ari Flesher admitting that the CIA provided the president with daily briefings, which included information foretelling the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as well as the Pentagon, is a dramatic departure from past positions.

In the past, the administration’s official stance was that it had absolutely no knowledge of the voluminous intelligence known months ago by the alternative press clearly indicating that radical, fundamentalist Islamic fractions planned a “fatwa” or decree against the US. It persuasively illustrates that knowledge is empowering and why the government is assiduous in its efforts to deliberately keep its naïve denizens blissfully ignorant.

The Bush administration did not release this information of its own volition. It did so in response to the mounting pressure heaped upon it by scathing, thorough, and relentless reporting by a courageous independent media; a media unfettered by the single-minded pursuit of profits and the promotion of a fascistic agenda.

It is a free press determined to present the flip side of what really occurred on September 11th and, more importantly, why it occurred. Publically elected officials save for Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia), Maxine Waters (D-California), and Barbara Lee (D-California) all ought to be preparing for a heaping portion of crow.

What is especially incensing about this revelation is that the Congressional Black Caucus all marched lockstep without nary a word in face of the outrageous liberties, a wholesale rescission of the Bill of Rights, taken by the Bush administration all in the name of national security.

The administration in the persons of Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney, John Ascroft, Paul Wolfowitz used 9-11 to promote an agenda reeking of the new world order that conspiracy theorists so love to denounce vociferously. However, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Each one of these officials as well as National Security advisor Condelezza Rice and President Bush all have close ties to the energy and petroleum industry.

It is incredible that except for a blurb or two that may have been buried deep within the recesses of the New York Times (“all the news that is fit to print”) describing those ties, no exhaustive, investigative report has been undertaken by anyone in the so-called mainstream media.

The reason is that money talks, and bullshit walks. The energy and petroleum lobby is able to throw millions of dollars at our publically elected officials in the form of fund raisers, honorariums, campaign contributions and less legitimate means to turn a blind eye to its overwhelming influence on the executive branch; a branch of government virtually overrun with oil, gas, and energy executives; namely Cheney, Rumfield, and Rice (who sits on the board of a number of energy related multi-national corporations).

That may be a major reason that Secretary of State Colin Powell is having such a difficult time in exercising his mandate. US Foreign policy has been co-opted by the powerful, influential energy lobby and, as a consequence, is being run out of corporate boardrooms in Houston, Dallas, and to a lesser degree Los Angeles and New York.

Companies like the famously failed Enron wanting to increase its market share for a selfish American consumer hell bent on driving enormous gas guzzling SUVs, some like the Ford Excursion or Chevy Suburban that are rapidly approaching Charter bus size, just around the block to pick up a sack of burgers from White Castle need to aggressively expand its oil and gas drilling exploration simply to keep up with demand.

Various environmental groups and Native American tribes put up a vigorous fight to preserve Alaskan national refuge from the invasive, destructive exploration necessary to find and drill for “black gold.” To satisfy an insatiable American public and avaricious corporate raiders determined to engorge themselves on increasingly growing profits, the need for the vast oil field found in the region erroneously known as the middle east have taken on an increased significance.

We see a foreign policy being driven solely by these concerns, where young undereducated minority men and women are being put in harm’s way, indeed being used as canon fodder for massive, rich, influential multinational conglomerates seeking to increase their bottom line.

The American people are as guilty as anyone in the administration, though, because no one wants to ask the hard questions for fear of upsetting the apple cart. However, we all know that there are finite natural resources in the world. We use the vast bulk of those limited resources here in the United States.

Nevertheless, we are more concerned with preserving our lifestyles then we are with the sheer havoc that we are reeking over the entire globe to simply maintain this incredibly consumptive, indulgent existence.

But we do not want to admit to it. We want to be lied to. Our leaders just accommodate us. That is why no real reform will come from the current, strident rallying cry for “hearings” in the wake of this latest “unbelievable” revelation.

These cries are just palliatives spouted by career politicians who are loathe to bite the hand that feeds them while enabling us to continue living a collective delusion; an illusion that we are a fair, democratic, and just society.

In the end, though, alternate energy vehicles many that have been on the drawing board for as long as 40 years, will still give way to inefficient 5 mile per gallon behemoths that your children and mine will wind up fighting and dying for in some godforsaken two-city country with an unpronounceable name in the Middle East.

Onus of Operators

2010-09-25T02:32:00.000-04:00

Although it is true that unless an owner operator finds a lucrative niche market, he will not even earn what a union driver nets at say ABF, UPS, USPS, Roadway, Yellow, or New Penn per year @ close to $30/hour or $70,000/year, whose drivers are all represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, or even a good non-union local driver (I used to take home $800/week, drove less than 1,000 miles/week, and was home every night), but still have all of the responsibilities of an independent business person.

Because of the country's current economic climate, some of those union drivers have recently experienced give-backs ranging from $1.90 or more per hour. The Master Freight Agreement, which governs salaries, benefits, and union member working conditions, is generous to a fault. But it can also be used as a broad barometer of what a good owner operator ought to be grossing on a monthly basis.

After all what are you in business for if not to make money? To simply drive a "large car?" The most important component of a successful operation is to manage expenses by factoring all fixed costs against what a load is paying. One way of doing it is to know what your truck averages per mile in terms of fuel consumption, which is typically 6-9 miles/gallon, divide that by your average cost of fuel per gallon, and add .15/mile for maintenance (because it is not a matter of if the truck breaks down, it is a matter of when it breaks down). That number is your fixed cost. If you take your fixed cost and subtract it from what a given load is paying, you can easily employ this formula routinely to determine if you are running profitably, or at a loss and make adjustments.

Partnering with reputable trucking companies leasing owner operators, or finding a good broker, which is near impossible, will save you a tremendous headache because many chores associated with running your business efficiently - i.e., finding loads, backhauls, scheduling maintenance, inspection et cetera and getting you back around the way on a regular basis - will now be done in collaboration with a trucking company who needs to also make money, knows how to do it well, and has an incentive to keep you loaded, moving and happy.

Brokers are really unnecessary middlemen. Because every load they broker takes a percentage of the revenue from that load off the top, which cuts directly into your profits, diminishing your bottom line. I would avoid them like the plague, use them sparingly, or only in an emergency after you did your due diligence to determine if they run a legitimate operation. There are several websites that rates brokers for a small fee. The investment may just save you major problems down the road.

If you seriously want to be an owner operator, why not go for your own operating authority enabling you to bid directly with vendors, those wicked brokers, and even large, established trucking companies for freight? Unless you are hauling Class 1 Explosives, you only need 750k insurance policy, which you can obtain at very competitive rates through trade associations.

Although you would be paid net 30 days like any other business, you should have increased your gross monthly revenue by anywhere from 30% to 50% as a result of having your own "authority." Successful owner operators have to act like businessman if they want to "take home" 100k per year, and not just gross it - along with the inevitable headaches of footing the bill for exorbitant fuel prices, expensive repairs, and high road taxes.

If you want to be a successful owner operator, join organizations like OOIDA, which offers substantial discount on insurance, maintenance, legal and accounting services. Another source of steady, reliable, freight is around either the airports, or ports. Because of the security associated with these facilities, you now have to undergo a thorough background check called a risk assessment analysis by Homeland Security. If you are successful as 90% of the drivers undergoing this process are, you can obtain a port card and/or TWIC enabling you to get in and out of these facilities.

The side streets surrounding these places usually abound with freight forwarders, small privately owned trucking companies, or direct agents for air and ship lines, which offer pretty good deals where owner operators can average $1,000 to $2,000/week after expenses doing picks ups and deliveries within a 100 to 500 mile radius of the agent's location and, if you have a family, are typically home daily. Heavy haul is also very lucrative as is chemicals and Less-than-Truckload (LTL) freight. All require considerable experience, however, because of liability issues, and are also labor intensive irrespective of unfavorable weather conditions. Defense contractors also offer another potential source of high revenue loads. Contracting with one is not simply a matter of faxing over your operating authority and insurance policy information, however. Defense contractors are required by federal law to have prospective drivers obtain additional security clearances, which are involved, time consuming and intrusive for most owner operators to successfully navigate.

Another problem that causes too many owner operators to fail is buying too much truck: a large car with all the bells and whistles and large monthly payments to boot. Unless you have a 5 to 10 year, $250k to $1 million annual contract, you do not need, nor can you afford a $60k to $120k tractor. So, resist the urge.
Instead buy a good, clean, high powered, used owner operator or, preferably, fleet maintained tractor no more than 5-10 years old. Have the truck thoroughly inspected by a reputable technician to ensure that no major repair is imminent. Make sure the dealer services and inspects it before you pull off the lot, and provides you with the records; wash, have it detailed, put in a nice entertainment system, a good CB radio, invest in a wireless card for your laptop, an invertor, AVP, and call it a day. When it is time to have the motor overhauled, consider replacing it altogether with a more powerful, energy efficient one from any of the major engine - i.e., Cat, Cummins, or Detroit - manufacturers. All have really impressive product line-ups with horsepower ratings from 300-625 and significantly improved fuel mileage standards.

In short, not every driver is going to become a $130k/year union man. There just are not that many of those jobs to go around. Plus some drivers prefer the freedom of the open road. But what binds us all together is the need to make money for our families, have a little fun doing it, if not total enjoyment by our career choice, while moving our economy as well as the country forward.

DAC Darn Record

2010-09-25T02:25:00.000-04:00

Many potential drivers have asked questions regarding past criminal convictions relative to employment opportunities in the trucking industry. Federal law has gotten stricter regarding hazardous materials endorsement. But other than that, the old rule still basically applies: No DWI/DUI, transportation related felonies, or homicide, rape, weapon or drug offenses. All other convictions are up in the air, and decided by the recruiter, company HR representative, on a case by case basis, which is usually dictated by company culture and hiring policy. Many companies will not hire a driver with a felony no matter what. Most of these companies are not worth driving for anyway. So, they are not hurting your prospects for a driving career.

The Federal Trade Commission promulgates the minimum standards through the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when a background check is done by a third party known commonly as a credit report agency (“CRA”). The FCRA does not apply to employers that conduct their own background checks. It also does not apply to background checks for positions that pay more than $75,000/year. The most commonly used CRA in the trucking industry is DAC Services.

DAC Services has, over the last few years, undergone changes in both ownership and name. DAC Services was acquired, some time back, by USIS (US Investigations Services). USIS then spun it off to its current home at HireRight. Both USIS and HireRight are subsidiaries of Altegrity, which was formed in July 2009 as a holding company for USIS, HireRight, and Explore. Although DAC Services is now known as DAC Trucking Solutions, and operated by HireRight, DAC, still, is a Consumer Reporting Agency located in Tulsa, OK that supplies reports about prospective drivers to its subscribers.

According to the old DAC / USIS web site they "...continually assess industry needs and ensure that (their) product and service offerings meet compliance requirements and address issues such as negligent hiring, cargo theft and personnel security."

The new HireRight web site lets prospective subscribers know that a trucking company enlisting the services of DAC Trucking Solutions gets "...our expertise and unique solutions for the trucking market (that) have made HireRight DAC Trucking Solutions one of the most widely used offerings in the transportation market. When you select us for your screening and compliance needs, you join more than 20,000 other transportation companies in working with the background screening provider endorsed by the American Trucking Association (ATA) and a host of regional associations across the U.S."

An old DAC press release describes the report categories as follows: "In addition to transportation-specific services, DAC provides criminal records, motor vehicle records, social security number verifications, credit reports, drug/alcohol test histories and workers' compensation and injury reports." The new HireRight DAC Trucking Solutions has expanded on that list but the most important report, the report most requested by subscribers, is the DAC Employment History File which will include information such as number of accidents, reason for quitting or being terminated, rehire eligibility, type of driving, trailer types pulled, commodities hauled, et cetera.

What DAC Does

DAC Trucking Solutions assembles reports with information obtained from various sources including, but not limited to, a driver's previous employers. One thing to keep in mind is that the more often you change employers, the higher the likelihood that misinformation may end up on your report. Human error can occur at DAC, just like at any other credit reporting agency, and employers may not always provide objective interpretations of events. DAC is not required to verify the information supplied by employers unless or until a report is disputed by the driver.

How HireRight DAC Trucking Solutions Affects You

You can run but you can't hide! As a matter of fact hiding from, or ignoring, your DAC report can be one of the most damaging things you can do to your career. One insurance company report indicates that over 85% of the 200 largest carriers utilize DAC reports in their hiring decisions. Another report places the total number of carriers subscribing to DAC Services at more than 6000. Chances are good your name is in their database and chances are equally good that a prospective employer will be requesting a DAC report before any other pre-employment action. Another thing to consider is the possibility that, beside potential employers, potential creditors may have access to your DAC information. One thing mortgage lenders and other credit providers look for are indications of responsibility and stability or a lack thereof. Just like credit reports, you absolutely, positively, must know what is on your record. It's true that you're not the one responsible for providing information to DAC and you're not the one responsible for compiling the information into a report but you are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of your report. The only person that can or will effect a positive change in negative information is you.

Although I have had misinformation entered in my DAC report, which almost resulted in a disqualification, I personally found the company to be eminently responsive, relatively easy to get a hold of a customer service representative, or manager to clear up, dispute or clarify adverse information. This is not the experience of the vast majority of drivers who through no fault of their own have run afoul of DAC Services. More importantly, I am also formally educated and, consequently, know how to write effectively and access resources. They are aware of that, and less likely to try and battle with me over an entry that is not benefiting either me or them. But as I told one prospective driver back channel, at the end of the day, it always comes down to what state you are trying to get hired in. UPS may not offer a driver with a ten, twenty or thirty year old conviction a job in Virginia but may offer that same driver one in New York, because different states have different laws governing the disclosure of criminal history records. I have taken the liberty of compiling a short list. Make an intelligent decision.

Its Deregulation Stupid

2010-09-25T02:11:00.000-04:00

Often as we navigate skillfully around preoccupied four wheelers pulling stunts on the big road, we hear uninformed chatter on our CBs relative to how our country, the trucking industry, and our way of life is going to hell in a handbasket. Some drivers unfairly lay blame for this situation squarely at the foot of our current President.

But a great deal of the criticism of the Obama administration is simply misguided, motivated by racism, and, consequently, wholly inaccurate. Motor carrier deregulation was a part of a sweeping reduction in price and entry controls and collective vendor price fixing in United States transportation, which begun in the1970s with initiatives by the Richard Nixon Administration, carried out through the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter Administrations; and, followed up on in the 1980s, collectively seen as trucking deregulation.

Most of the problem stems from young, inexperienced, and unsophisticated drivers from the Deep South where there is little well paying work, or immigrants willing to pull all nighters for minimum wage. Not knowing their worth, they ignorantly conspire with venal corporate trucking companies engaged in a race to the bottom relative to driver wages and owner operator revenue percentage by taking virtually anything offered.

I recently had a fleet owner tell me with a straight face that he "starts" his drivers off with .21/mile, and if they show productivity in 5 years, he boosts it up by a half cent. Although that is slavery by any objective measure, there are drivers out there stupid enough to take it, or the guy would not still be in business! There is no conceivable way an average over-the-road company driver should not be grossing 100k/year given the sheer toil, disruption to his home life, and work on the road requires, period.

When I started in the industry as a young, wild kid finding his way in life, I worked for any number of household carriers commonly known as moving companies. I will never forget a conversation I had with one driver in the 80s where he bragged about making over 300k the year prior subcontracting for a moving company as an owner operator. This was in 1980! I still distinctly remember the brand new COE Pete with the 290 Cummins he was sporting.

Michael H. Belzer, a former long-haul trucker who now teaches industrial relations at Wayne State University, argues persuasively in his seminal book "Sweatshop on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation," (Oxford University Press, 2000) that drivers are fully responsible for allowing companies, vendors and brokers to take avantage of them in the manner they have driving - pun intended - wages down relentlessly while increasing productivity on the bowed backs of hardworking men and women just wanting to provide for their families.

US News & World Report asked the question, "low pay in the trucking industry making the nation's roads unsafe [?] With the U.S. economy booming and the demand for drivers mounting, why haven't working conditions for truckers improved?"

The Washington Post echoed that sentiment writing "conditions are so poor and the pay system so unfair that long-haul companies compete with the fast-food industry - e.g., Burger King - for workers. Most long-haul carriers experience 100% annual driver turnover!"

Hervy's - the Crazy Trucker, and owner of "Life As A Trucker" - own Atlanta Constitution wrote "The cabs of 18-wheelers have become the sweatshops of the new millennium, with some truckers toiling up to 80 hours per week for what amounts to barely more than the minimum wage."

In the years following deregulation in 1980, median truck driver earnings have dropped 45% and most over-the-road drivers earn less than half of pre-regulation wages. Work weeks average more than eighty hours. Today, America's long-haul truckers are working harder and earning less than at any time during the last four decades.

I have walked alway from too many companies wanting me to switch out multiple trailers after running all day while only paying mileage. Switching out trailers, shifting axles, doing paperwork, fueling and inspecting your equipment is work. Any work you do in any other profession you are fully compensated. Only in trucking are you supposed to switch out trailers, shift axles, do paperwork, fuel and inspect your equipment on your own dime. But we often hear misguided drivers justifying their own indentured servitude by saying "be glad you got a job." Huh? There was once a group of people in this country who toiled day and night, 21-14 hours per day, under the most brutal conditions imaginable. I do not believe them to be synomous to truckers.

I not only work to support my family but to earn enough to live comfortably in that little house with the white picket fence; not out on the road for so long that I drive past my house because I forgot where it is; or, walk past my kids because I did not recognize them, or bring home $250 after being on the road for 3 weeks; and, being forced to take advances just to eat an overpriced, bad meal in a choke and puke run by a chain congomerate preying on tired, overworked, lonely and hungry drivers employing lot lizards masquarading as waitresses.

Steven Robert Zellers makes similar arguments in his irreverant, zany but prescient book entitled "The Truth about Trucking" (Wordwizard Publishing, 2006). Zellers writes painfully about how he came home unexpectively after 5 weeks out only to find his beloved wife clasped in the buck with an abnormally well endowed neighbor.

Sweatshops on Wheels, however, raises crucial questions about the legacy of trucking deregulation in America and casts provocative new light on the issue of government deregulation in general. It is a must read for any person considering trucking as a career. Because you will be competing not with the best and the brightest but the worst and the stupidest. If you do not believe me, just turn on channel 19 for a few minutes.

It is up to the few professionals left standing in our beloved industry to lead reform efforts, making shippers and vendors pay for detention time (a article I plan on tackling next), hourly for any work done off-the-road, and demanding higher wages or settlement agreements and, most importantly, lower fuel prices. It can be done if we wield our considerable power as truckers collectively and not necessary shut the country down, but organize efforts to show the petro-chemical companies, shippers, vendors or end-users, and trucking companies that we mean business.

Racial Defiling: It only happens to the other guy. . .

2010-09-25T01:50:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny, Wednesday afternoon on March 21st. I was traveling Eastbound in Jackson, Mississippi on I-20 at approximately seventy miles per hour in a tractor owned by my trucking company, Shipman Trucking & Transport, and a fully loaded trailer owned by Mystic Express. We were down a driver and I decided to go out myself. I have held a valid Class A commercial driver's license almost since the CDL Act of 1986 called for a single, federally administered commercial driver's license for all professional drivers; it was supposed to reduce fraud and increase accountability for bad drivers.

The trip originated in North Brunswick, New Jersey with stop and a pickup in Chicago, Illinois, a delivery in Fort Worth, Texas and a backhaul in Tyler, Texas. I had just taken a nice, hot shower and eaten a small breakfast in Louisiana; routing myself to drive through Mississippi, Alabama - states I had never really spent any time in - before heading North back home.

I was making excellent time when I noticed that I was being tracked by a marked what I thought was a Mississippi State police unit. The driver kept pulling up, then slowing down, but it was apparent that he was setting up to fire his strobes and pull me over. There was nothing to be concerned about or so I though. All of my paperwork was in order: I had the bills of lading as well as manifest for the load, my CDL was valid, Hours of Service reports or logs were up-to-date and current and, more importantly, I was legit.

I had just past the turn off for I-55 when he stopped me. It was not the State Police, though, but a marked Mississippi Public Service Commission vehicle operated by a heavy set, six foot inch, thirty something year old African American officer whose name I later learned was Ronnie White; a black man with an uncanny resemblance to Al Roker. I dismounted and walked around my truck to meet him; the officer seemed very affable - disarmingly so. Affecting a simple country boy demeanor. It did not ring true, though, and immediately raised my hypersensitive New Yorker suspicions.

White asked me what I was hauling, where my paperwork was, and if I would allow him to search my truck all in the same breath. It would have been a virtuoso performance save that I did not play out my role to his satisfaction. I told Mr. White that under no circumstances would I allow a consensual search of my tractor. But that he could inspect my truck all he wanted. He asked me why I would not allow this search, and I responded because it is my constitutionally protected right under the 4th amendment of the US Constitution.

He then called the company I was leased to and spoke to Nancy, the accounts payable clerk, who told him that she could not authorize a search of my truck precisely because it was my truck. And "isn't it his right not to allow this search?"

Mr. White responded by saying a simple "okay," walked back to his cruiser, while I admired the Mississippi greenery. A short time later, he honked his horn, summoning me to the car. We started talking and he again broached the subject of a consensual search of my tractor/trailer. By this time another unidentified officer pulled up in a late model black Chevy Camaro with a blue strobe affixed to the windshield. He was also African American, approximately thirty something years old with a baldhead, dark shades, and a semi-automatic sidearm that he made a big show of exposing over his cheap windbreaker as he walked over to White and I. He asked me why I would not allow the search as White handed him my CDL [commercial driver license], and I regurgitated the same spiel I had given to White.

This guy was demonstrably less pleasant than White and simply walked away with a "take him over there," which I assume meant anywhere but where he was running what I later learned was an unauthorized background check on yours truly. White later confirmed this by asking why didn't you tell me you had been "arrested" before? I told him that I did not re-call him asking the question, and even if he did, it was immaterial to the pretense under which he stopped me. I am a legitimate businessperson, college graduate, graduate student, minister, and decorated volunteer EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] who, was actively involved in the recovery effort at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York. I had identified myself and, as a result, did not have anything to prove to anyone relative to "youthful excesses" committed well over twenty years ago - especially to this man.

By this time, however, another person pulled up this time with a dog. I laughed because I could not believe that these people honestly thought I was stupid enough to be running drugs through Mississippi in a commercial motor vehicle. The guy who brought the animal claimed after a perfunctory, what I observed was a coercive inspection, the dog "hit" on the trailer. He asked me if I "smoked marijuana." I laughed and told him no, and that I had no idea of why the dog "hit" on the trailer but again repeated that if they wanted to search the truck, then follow the law and put me "out-of-service," impound the vehicle, and search it 'til their heart's content.

Instead this officer and his supervisor, who he said authorized this action, subverted the law, blatantly lied, claiming that I "refused an inspection," arrested and incarcerated me in the Raymond Detention Center in Hinds County, Mississippi, where I was photographed, fingerprinted and treated like a common criminal: unable to make a telephone call because the 'phones are programmed improperly for only local calls. That means that persons arrested living outside Hinds County area code cannot even contact people to let them know where they are. It was an incredible situation: one that illustrates how backwards this area of the country still is.

To say that this type of malfeasance is unacceptable would be an understatement, moreover. In the years I have been in the trucking business, I have never had a law enforcement officer moronically claim that he needed to enter the cab of my truck to conduct an inspection. It is an insult to the collective intelligence of truck drivers coerced into waiving their constitutionally protected rights against unlawful search and seizure.

And as the Hinds County sheriff deputies all stated to a person, White and his superior were angered by my knowledge of the law and wanted to punish me. These two MPSC officers did so by abusing their substantial authority and falsely arresting me. These farm hands masquerading as law enforcement officials violated the very canon of ethics upon which they have been sworn to uphold in their irresponsible zeal to make the "big bust." However, they picked the absolute wrong driver to play out this malfeasance on.

I stated in an unanswered letter to Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore's office that this matter can be easily investigated. All one need do is call the company we were leased to at the time, and ask to speak with Nancy, the accounts payable clerk; she was the person who took the call White made from a cellular handset mounted on the dash of his cruiser. The billing records from White's cellular telephone provider will bear out the fact that he did indeed make this call - if he acts in character and tries to deny it. He did not ask if he could "inspect" but if he could "search" my tractor, which is a legally important distinction.

Nancy told him that I was a "good guy," a "minister and wouldn't have anything to hide. . . but he probably just doesn't want anyone in his truck." Those recommendations did little to dissuade White from recklessly pursuing this matter.

More importantly, though, the trailer, presumably the only area of the vehicle they claimed the search dog "hit" on, was never searched - irrespective of the fact that Bill Ward, the tow company owner, called the MPSC office and asked when they would be down to conduct this search because he wanted to leave and go home. By the next day, when cooler heads prevailed and I was released from detention and driven to pick up this tractor, it still had not been searched. A fact that farther lends credence to my allegation that White simply wanted to search the cab of my truck and would and in fact did use all means at his disposal to accomplish this flagrant violation of my constitutionally protected rights against unlawful search and seizure.

The fictitious charges White filed with the Hinds County District Attorney's office are simply a transparent attempt to justify the arrest and, consequently, cover his protuberant derriere. . . We have written to virtually every agency responsible for enforcing civil rights in these United States. To date, we are still awaiting a formal response from US Assistant Attorney General Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. who heads up the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division; Senator Hillary Clinton, Rev. Al Sharpton, the Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union in the person of executive director Gail Chadwick, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, and Kwesi Mfume of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

If this can happen to a published writer, activist, ordained minister, and legitimate businessperson with nary a blip on the national radar screen, then what happens to the thousands of other less prominent African Americans, Hispanics, Arabs that this is happening to with increasing frequency under the guise of national security? Those who claim to have taken up the challenge of articulating our collective outrage at racial profiling only seem to be interested in sound bites and getting their mugs plastered in as many newspapers and magazines as possible while doing as little as possible. . .

This farmhand wrote me up for three (3) misdemeanors in Hinds County to cover his own misfeasance as well as over zealousness, I do not have unlimited resources and cannot go into debt to fight them. But I will continue to write and agitate to ensure that officials involved in the decision to falsely arrest me are relegated to share cropping for the rest of their natural lives. I will not allow my character to be besmirched by phony allegations of criminality. It is an old Jim Crow tactic borne of the black code that has no place in present day America. And I urge all like-minded progressives to join in this struggle.

Cynthia McKinney Is 'Our' Hero

2010-09-25T01:29:00.000-04:00

On April 12th Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) released a press statement critical of the Bush administration's actions in responding to 9-11. It raised serious concerns about the United States government's foreknowledge of the brutal terrorist attacks on both the World Trade Center in New York City as well as the Pentagon in Washington, DC. McKinney argued, "The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11[th] is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. The press release from McKinney's office further stated "news reports from Der Spiegal to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many warnings were received by the [US] Administration."

There is considerable evidence that key players in the US intelligence as well as federal law enforcement community deliberately turned a deaf ear to persistent rumors that Mohammad Atta, who had been previously identified as a member of an extremist, fundamentalist group, was involved in a plot to bomb the twin towers.

If McKinney or her staff had engaged in the thoughtful but time consuming investigative process necessary to lend credence to her charges, they would have come across a number of articles written by courageous independent writers myself included that provided substantial factual evidence supporting her claims.

One piece in particular written by Tom Flacco and entitled Profits of Death 1: Insider Trading and 9-11 "revealed that the A.B. Brown (Alex Brown) investment arm of the banking giant Deutschebank/A.B. Brown had been headed until 1998 by the man who is now the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In fact, Krongard is but one name in a long history of CIA interconnections to stock trading and the world's financial markets."

Unfortunately, McKinney like her colleague from the 35th District of California, Maxine Waters (D-California) who raised similar concerns in the wake of allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency was directly involved in the importation of drugs into the US generally and her district particularly, McKinney took the path of the least resistance.

Consequently, the serious allegations she raised against powerful players in the Bush administration, without providing substantial evidence supporting her position, enabled her detractors to dismiss her allegations out-of-hand. By unfairly labeling McKinney unpatriotic, a conspiracy theorist, and member of an extreme left wing lunatic fringe, has caused her to lose substantial "credibility" with her herd-like colleagues in the Congress.

On Sunday, April 21st Black Entertainment Television's Lead Story hosted by Amy Holmes aired a segment where McKinney was roundly criticized by not only House Negro-in-Residence Armstrong Williams, who a shameless tout for conservative - read that: white - reactionary interests and a disingenuous apologist for racist American policy without an original thought to his credit, but also by moderate writer for Savoy magazine, Jack White, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered producer Brenda Wilson.

The dismantling of McKinney was an incredible display of collective ignorance by persons charged with the mission to bring us factual, objective information; information culled not only from the mainstream, co-opted, I mean, corporate media but from alternate sources as well. Government has long had it hand deep in the pocket of corporate media.

Mike Levin, the host and executive producer of The Expert Witness Show, which airs on NYC's WBAI 99.5 FM at 7:00 PM on Tuesdays once had a retired CIA operative brag on air that the agency had co-opted the corporate media in these United States.

In short, he claimed that virtually all of the major players would publish unedited releases written by bureaucrats in his as well as other US Intelligence agencies. The watered down, heavily censored reports we have been receiving from the likes of the Hearst corporation, Tribune, Knight Ridder, United News & Media, Dow Jones & Company on the Israelis-Palestinian conflict is a glaring contemporaneous case-in-point.

So it stands to reason that we ought to be extremely critical of information we read in those reactionary rags; papers published primarily to promote the Bush administrations' fascistic agenda. And ironically those publications were the very reference sources these black barely intellectuals cited in their mindless lockstep attacks on McKinney.

Moreover, to the point at hand, the airspace over the Eastern seaboard of the continental United States is the most heavily monitored, regulated and, more importantly, restricted airspace than anywhere else in the country! And with good reason. Old eastern seaboard cites housing the nation's Capital, three Federal Reserves, banking and finance centers of the country if not world.

We are supposed to believe that air traffic controllers in not one but seven different FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center regions two of which have ARO or Airport Reservation Office status - i.e., JFK in NYC as well as Regan in Washington, DC - meaning that they are specifically designated to process high density traffic requests all dropped the proverbial ball simultaneously.

Sources in the administration would have us think that these highly-trained Federal Aviation Administration workers most of whom are equally highly paid (with average annual salaries of approximately one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars), high-ranking, reserve non-commissioned officers in the US military, undergo through extensive federal background checks and hold high-level security clearances as a result, allowed three fully loaded passenger jets to wander hundreds of miles off course violating restricted airspace and slam into the twin towers in NYC, and the Pentagon in Washington, DC without sounding any alarm.

That is simply not believable. It is so unbelievable, moreover, that it raised more questions than non-existant investigations have answered; questions that no one in the Congress has had the courage to ask accept for Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia).

The fact of the matter is that these planes were tracked and fighter jets from east coast based US Air Force fighter wings were scrambled to intercept them. There is credible evidence to suggest that the downing of American Airlines Flight 11 - the plane that allegedly crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - a rural community approximately 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh - was not the result of heroism on the parts of the passengers on board the plane but the deliberate shooting by one of those fighter jets.

This persistent rumor has been floating about in the alternate press since it was revealed that the co-pilot was an African American reserve Air Force officer and pilot.

Famed essayist and writer Gore Vidal was featured on a two hour special public affairs segment hosted by Matthew Finch, public affairs director, at NYC's Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM on Tuesday, April 23rd. Vidal has a piece coming out in which he claims that five FBI special agents have brought suit against their supervisor for refusing to accept evidence that foretold of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

We could neither prove nor disprove this information during our research for this piece. However, it is this type of investigative reporting, fact checking, and research that makes for the compelling, factual, and critical information that is no longer available to us through the so-called mainstream media. It is frightening and speaks to McKinney's point, that "The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle."

Instead of being castigated and ridiculed by her colleagues in the congress and other black leaders - most of whom are too busy greedily feeding at the slop trough of public largess to do the important work they were elected to do - she ought to be lionized for exhibiting the courage to raise questions about a troubling aspect of the negligence demonstrated by several investigatory as well as oversight agencies in the US government.

The public's lack of skepticism relative to obvious unanswered conflicts surrounding 9-11 brings to mind another era and another figure in history: Roman Emperor Tiberius Gracchus, a famed war hero who upon assuming the throne was told by the Senate that his decrees would be passed without deliberations. Tiberius responded "so quick are they to become slaves. . ."

We presume that the government has our collective interests at heart when the historic record clearly contradicts that supposition. So quick are we, as black folks or people who ought to know better, to become slaves. . .

The Spook Who Sat Behind The Door: A Modern Day Tale

2010-09-25T01:01:00.000-04:00

Tyrone Powers, a former African American FBI special agent announced on NYC's urban contemporary radio station 98.7 KISS FM's May 19, 2002 airing of the Open Line show, hosted by news director and morning personality Bob Slade, that he had credible evidence strongly suggesting the Bush administration did in fact allow the September 11th attacks to further a hidden agenda.

Dr. Powers says that the administration miscalculated, though, and "didn't believe that [an attack] would be on this scale." Powers, author of critically acclaimed autobiography, "Eyes To My Soul: The Rise and Decline of a Black FBI Agent" is director of the Institute of Criminal Justice/Legal Studies and Public Service, and an assistant professor of law Enforcement and Criminal Justice at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland. Powers stated that "arrogant" US intelligence agencies underestimated the resolve of the terrorists.

They have the American people duped into believing that the fundamentalist Islamic lunatic fringe who carried out the attacks here in America are uneducated "fanatics." Powers says, though, that most of the terrorist leadership was comprised of highly educated, extremely "patient" ideologues with "legitimate" grievances against the United States -many having been educated right here in the US and hold degrees in "engineering" among other disciplines critical to the end that these radical factions seek.

Like Pearl Harbor, the US government needed a substantive excuse to enter World War Two and end German hegemony over Europe generally and England particularly. German domination over Europe grew rapidly into an expansionist policy once Italy and Japan join forces to rule the earth - or so we were led to believe.

The revisionists would have us believe that those altruistic objectives were the sole motivation for Franklin Roosevelt wanting to enter WWII and help his close friend an colleague British Prime Minister Winston Churchill whose country was under siege by a relentless German war machine.

Roosevelt was an extremely savvy politician, though, and knew that the relatively widespread anti-Semitism evident in the United States during the 1940's would effectively disrupt those objectives. So an environment had to be created causing an anticipated furor enabling the Roosevelt administration to declare war against this "axis of evil."

Does this scenario sound familiar? It ought to because Powers argues persuasively that the Bush administration has taken a page from history in its endeavor to maintain control over rapidly dwindling oil reserves in the world generally and in the middle east particularly. American culture is by nature duplicitous and hypocritical. We do not like to hear the truth, and when we are compelled to confront it, we simply refuse to concede to it.

The Bush administration relied strongly on these pathologies when it deliberately ignored warnings from stand up agents in Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and allowed what they only thought was going to be the "high jacking" of a single airliner.

They were prepared to "sacrifice" those citizens in the interest of national security. Powers claims that the Bush administration superciliously perceives itself to be the last world super power: an Empire and, by some misguided albeit self-serving divine right, has to sometimes make appalling decisions to further its imperialistic aims, which is the total, unequivocal domination of the world and, more tellingly, its mineral resources.

There is more than a little truth to this supposition. And Powers makes some very compelling arguments. The Enron debacle and this flagrant insult against the American people have definitive albeit tenuously proven ties that the mainstream media has conspicuously ignored. All concern oil, energy, and greed. Virtually all of the top management at Enron enjoyed an open door policy at the White House. Indeed, Vice president Dick Cheney has refused repeated requests from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to release material information regarding the nature of those frequent meetings with Enron executives. Meetings that took place in the nascent stages of the Bush administration when it was still formulating energy policy for the country.

"The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)." It began operating on February 24, 1975, with the appointment of its first Director, Alice M. Rivlin. CBO's mission is to provide the Congress with the objective, timely, nonpartisan analyses needed for economic and budget decisions and with the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process. Compared with the missions of the Congress's other support agencies -the Congressional Research Service and the General Accounting Office - CBO's mandate is relatively narrow.

But its subject matter gives it a broad reach, reflecting the wide array of activities that the federal budget covers and the major role the budget plays in the U.S. economy."

In short, the CBO's mandate is to provide congressional oversight to matters involving budgetary decisions made by the executive branch in furtherance of our system of checks and balances; a system that the Vice president of the United States has deliberately attempted to thwart. A situation so unprecedented, that the Congressional Budget Office brought suit against a sitting US Vice President to compel him to release information relating to exactly what he discussed with those criminal managers of the failed Enron Corporation, which is a first in the history of this country. But we hear little about the status of this case in the mainstream media. Why? Because "laws are made by the rich to protect the interests of the rich."

What is believed was discussed at those meetings is the domination of the oil and mineral reserves, and how the US government could use its considerable resources - i.e., political, diplomatic and military - to further this agenda. That is why Cheney has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent those conversations from becoming public, citing executive privilege, which a tenuous legal concept that simply does not apply to a vice president in a largely ceremonial post but perhaps to a sitting president. Given "Dubya's" demonstrable stupidity, there ought not be any wonder that Cheney had the effrontery to make this preposterous argument because he honestly feels he is the wizard behind the curtain and, as a consequence, does in fact run the Bush administration. It has always been believed that the role of president was a figurehead post. Cheney lends credence to this belief by the arrogance with which he has responded to the CBO's legitimate requests.

The events of 9-11 are tied to a failed intelligence operation to try and co-opt oil reserves in the Middle East; an operation that has direct ties to the current administration. The alternative press has been relentless in its reporting on this subject but the information is slowly but surely being leaked by a "deep throat" in the Bush administration fed up with its chicanery and machinations throughout the world; machination that he feels will drag us into a conflagration from which there will be no return. It is important that the American people dig the heads out of the sand and begin to ask the hard questions that will bring accountability to this administration.

New York's KISS FM 98.7 is Quietly looking for Morning Drive Host

2010-09-24T23:45:00.000-04:00

Since firing well known comedian DL Hughley late last month, New York's Adult Oriented Radio station 98.7 KISS FM, which is owned by Emmis Communications, has been quietly looking for a new morning drive host. Hughley was considered too offensive, irreverent and never really connected with the audience in spite of his brilliance as a comedian. His banter with co-host Jackie Reid sometimes made listeners wince in shame. One long time listener said, "it bordered on sexual harassment." Radio is a totally different world than stand-up comedy. Steve Harvey, who is marginally talented as a comedian and as an air on personality, has managed to successfully navigate that chasm on his nationally syndicated show, which is aired locally on Inner City Broadcasting’s flagship station WBLS 107.5. The best morning drive host KISS FM had was Ken "Spider" Webb followed by Comedian George Wallace and Jeff Fox. Their on air interaction was infectious, comical, and memorable. It was universally assumed by radio industry pros that DL Hughley was going to be a bad fit for KISS FM. He is a West Coast fixture with little understanding of the New York market who loves to “play the dozens.” So, he was doomed to failure. His former co-host Jackie Reid who has temporarily been pressed into service as host is skilled, attractive, and eminently easy to listen to. She has tons of experience, used to host BET News, co-host Tom Joyner, Al Sharpton, and Steve Harvey's shows like a journeyman giving both a crash course in broadcasting before PDs felt comfortable enough to allow them to go solo. Reid has appeared on or done numerous other shows. But she is not an on air personality. The heavy dose of music KISS FM now offers listeners with little or no kick-you-in-the-ass, and wake-me-up dialogue is not a sustainable format for a major market morning drive show. KISS FM is going to have to bite the bullet, and quickly hire a seasoned morning drive host, or go to another syndicated show. I would love to see Wendy William's old sidekick, Charlemagne Tha God, tapped to do the morning drive at KISS FM. He was unceremoniously canned by Philadelphia radio station 100.3 The Beat back in November after the station reported it wanted “change its format” although his numbers were through the roof. His firing came just days after he gave an exclusive interview with Rapper Beanie Sigel airing out his grievances with Rapper Jay-Z. Many people believe his termination was orchestrated by Jay-Z's camp. He is now on South Carolina's 92.5 The Box hosting a weirdly timed evening drive show. Although he is from the Palmetto State, a little young for KISS FM's demographic, he is very sharp, witty, knows the New York market, and listeners will love him in that spot if he can deftly switch gears from Hip Hop culture to Adult Oriented Radio. KISS are you listening? Stay tuned.

PEF Really Stands For The Professional Employee Fund

2010-09-24T23:36:00.000-04:00

Professional Employee Federation President Ken Brynien's inflated $137,622 salary is precisely why rank and file members are routinely denied effective representation for blatant labor-management violations that PEF is bound by state and federal law to handle. The paltry budget allocated for member representation by PEF executive committee is severely restricted enabling PEF management to garner salaries far in excess of that with which they would be entitled if they reverted to their state titles. The Public Employees Relations Board, which is the state agency charged with oversight of state labor unions, is in bed with PEF, CSEA and other state bargaining units, often serving as a foil thwarting meritorious improper practice filings by aggreived workers with highly unethical procedural machinations, or by simply kicking the can down the road with absolutely no accountability. PERB has long had an incestuous relationship with PEF, which unfairly inhibits aggrieved members from mounting prompt, effective challenges to blatant "improper practice" allegations. That corrupt practice allows both the state as well as entrenched interests in these bargaining units such PEF to maintain control in perpetuity, quell dissent among rank and file members, while surreptitiously sustaining the status quo. The only ones benefiting are Brynien and Donohue and other ineffective union leaders who collect outrageous salaries riding the bowed backs of hardworking rank and file workers, who deserve much better. Despite pleading with Brynien to represent me in not one but two flagrant violations of Civil Service law, his Civil Service Enforcement Director, Thomas Centrino, had the unmitigated effrontery to pen a curt, disrepectful and utterly dismissive email writing, "we already told you we cannot help you..." Despite the fact that ensuring job security is the primary function of a union, and that is precisely what that grievance was regarding. It cost me 48 months in lost wages with which I still have not recovered. The latest grievance is one where my agency simply told me to take "sick leave," charge it to my accruals, and leave the building, which is an indisputable violation of our collective bargaining agreement with New York State. Brynien's response was to delete my email "without being read." His arrogance is only exceeded by his considerable girth, and though he could parade out any number of co-opted loyal Council Leaders, shop stewards, rank and file members, cronies and flunkies swearing that he is an effective advocate for state workers, nothing could be further from the truth. So, we will see Mr. Brynien in federal court (1:10-CV-00941-GLS-RFT NDNY) in short order. PEF executive management can explain to our membership why its bargaining unit is spending finite resources engaging in a legal battle with a bona fide member who has a legitimate grievance with his hiring unit instead of representing him. Maybe after they end that short conversation, we can begin an equally short one discussing de-certification, because PEF has become too unwieldy, too bureaucratic, and too compromised to be of any help to its membership, with corrupt leadership that has become sleek, well feed, complacent and, as such, a broken mirror of the very agency management against which it is supposed to effectively but only ineffectually represents us.

Open Letter To Ms. Bev Smith, The Queen of Night Talk Radio

2010-09-24T23:27:00.000-04:00

Dear Ms. Bev,

Believing the LGBT community is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is one thing; actively advocating for a lifestyle that you claim erroneously is found in nature is quite another. Homosexuality is indeed found in nature but only as an aberration much like a mutation. There are few asexual organisms and virtually all are single celled. The few asexual insects can hardly be characterized as homosexual. The one aquatic vertebrate or fish example you cited "seahorse" is neither asexual nor homosexual as you misinformed your audience. The male seahorse is equipped with a brood pouch on the ventral, or front-facing, side. When mating, the female seahorse deposits up to 1,000 eggs in the male's pouch, which the male then internally fertilizes with his sperm. The male carries the eggs for about two months until they emerge, expelling fully-developed, miniature seahorses in the water. The father continues to protect the young until they are able to live on their own. There are no known mammals that engage in long term homosexual unions. Some primates do exhibit homosexual conduct, but only as "sex play" much like same sex experimentation observed in adolescent children, which brings me to my last and final point. Although anecdotal as I have no empirical data to support this hypothesis, I have long held to the belief that there are true homosexuals, people born attracted to members of their own sex. However, a significantly larger number - especially in our communities - more than likely have adopted this sexual preference due to inappropriate sexual debuts: a stepfather, boyfriend, or older relative molested the boy. I speak strictly about boys here because Lesbians have an even more complicated psychology, which I have no expertise to discuss. Nevertheless, I have heard too many biographical stories from Gay adult males including my former Pastor, Donnie McClurkin, who said they were introduced into homosexuality by an older male, a pederast. So, though it may be politically correct, chic even, to champion this lifestyle, except for a statistically minute percentage, most could benefit from gender confusion therapy. The LGBT and their well intentioned supporters abhor this approach, because it detracts from their larger agenda to acculturate society into believing that a very small percentage of persons (with the caveat excluding a statistically small percentage of that community who are truly homosexual) ought to dictate cultural norms. Gender confusion therapy is an effective evidenced based therapy, which has broad support in the medical community. The American College of Pediatricians (ACOP) says "that it is not uncommon for adolescents to experience transient confusion about their sexual orientation, and that most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged," which is not what the LGBT community wants. I love you, Ms. Bev. But you're widely listened to and, as such, have a responsibility to educate your audience me included based on actual fact irrespective of your personal beliefs...

Us Black Folk

2010-06-14T09:14:00.005-04:00

Unlike any other ethnic group or, more accurately from an anthropological perspective, sub-group in the United States, upwardly mobile blacks seem all too willing to sacrifice cultural affinity on the self-serving altar of rugged individualism than any other group on earth, which is a concept that does not exist among any indigenous group found in Africa. Social scientists, I among them, often argue only to be cast as apologists that this phenomenon is a lasting vestige of slavery.

Communalism is a philosophy that binds Africans however tenuously as a whole, and gives rise to a dichotomy, which fuels frustration many conscious blacks in the progressive movement feel at a segment of our community, which openly fosters an unapologetic I-got-mine-you-get-yours ethos. It is a conservative community, which eschews affirmative action although many of its most prominent members are unabashed beneficiaries of race based preferences either directly or indirectly and, ironically, can attribute their very success to the level playing field it championed.

Separatism often garbed under the deceptive cloak of nationalism holds many ethnic groups to a collective talking point, which enables them to marshal their franchise to the benefit or detriment of the whole. We see evidence of this phenomenon when poor and lower middle class whites, comprising huge, influential swaths of the mid-west beset by a wholesale loss of high paying, manufacturing jobs as a result of ill-conceived US sponsored trade policies, voted against their very own economic interest to support an ultra-conservative platform in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections respectively.

These poor and middle class whites abhorred being identified with a party that has been associated traditionally with both black and liberal causes irrespective of the demonstrable benefits to them by an agenda, which mirrors that of poor and middle class blacks: job security, affordable health care and sane energy policies; unlike those negotiated in the dead of the night by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who to this day has resisted efforts to disclose the participants of his infamous 2000 energy summit, which has resulted in now disastrous energy policies to not only the entire US middle class but the environment itself.

Unfortunately, white self-identity is so closely tied to race; collectively they unhesitatingly sacrificed their own self-interest in order to assume the dubious mantle of bona fide card carrying white folk. “The major point of contention, then, between Western [sociologists] and some African [ones] rests on the concept of individualism versus communalism as the desired goal in Western Culture, versus communalism in most African cultures – that is a concept, which takes precedence over the needs of the individual.”

Toni Morrison, writing about this point in Western literature, notes: “these community values, (I call them village values) are uppermost in the minds of black writers, and this may be a feeling of village values as opposed to Gopher Prairie despair that causes so much misadventure in white criticism of black writers: such critics tend not to trust or respect a hero who prefers the village and its tribal values to heroic loneness and alienation.

When a character defies a village law or shows contempt for its value, it may be seen as a triumph to white readers, while blacks may see it as an outrage.” Poet Renny Golden says, “A fundamental value that shapes Western European emphasis on the right to accumulate, and to ownership of property and people, is the right of the individual. Western law, for example, legalizes the individual right of property owners...

Communal rights, on the other hand, formed the moral and public codes and laws, which governed tribal life in the Americas and Africa. It is one’s obligation to community, not oneself, which is binding. Indians, blacks, and Latinos discover their identity in and through community.

“Slaves and maroons of the Caribbean and Latin and North America preserved the African tradition of Mati, which emphasizes a ritual of kinship that implies a friendship based on deep bonds of solidarity. This practice, referring to the experience of having shared passage on the same slave ship, extended the sense of community care and responsibility for the people that slave culture embraced. As in Indian’s culture, black identity is discovered through solidarity with one’s people, not through the Western hero’s quest.”

The communities our forebears knew before the middle passage ceased to exist largely due to the advent of integration in the late 1940s. Before that point, highly successful blacks had no choice but to live side by side with poor and lower middle class ones. These communities had expectations of success and, more importantly, standards of conduct, which no longer exist in the inner city.

Another unintended consequence was that desegregation became a driving force behind the unspoken class divide we now see evident in the black community. Wedge issues like equal opportunity, gay rights, Hip Hop culture and morality only serve to exacerbate the divide. The greatest growth of racial integration occurred as a direct result of the Civil Rights movement, which to a large degree was primarily funded, advocated for and led by young, middle class, college educated blacks and equally young, liberal Jews.

The best-known spokesman for racial integration during the Civil Rights era was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was himself a product of a solidly middle class upbringing. As a result of the movement he reluctantly spearheaded despite revisionist depictions of history, most of the legal basis for racial segregation was repealed. The primary barriers to racial integration that remained were strictly social and customary ones, which could not be repealed as easily as could laws, however.

Previously prosperous predominantly black communities such as the Greenwood area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose growth was spurred because blacks were forbidden by law to live or own businesses in the white city and were expected to be out of town by sunset (an onerous if unspoken rule, which was also known as the Sunset law in many states during post-reconstruction. Ignoring it frequently resulted in grave consequences to the uninformed).

However, “by 1921, the Greenwood area had grown to include 191 businesses and about 15,000 people, including lawyers, doctors and dentists, a movie theatre, hotel and newspaper. During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished—including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires.” Although few predominately black communities enjoyed the prosperity and growth epitomized by Greenwood, we can still see remnants of similar communities throughout the country.

In the late 1950s, early 1960s, upper middle class blacks began fleeing the inner city as fast as their charter bus sized station wagons and 20¢ per gallon lead gasoline would carry them straight to tangibly hostile, suspicious, barely welcoming suburbs; bused out neighborhoods cropping up like target duckies on the outskirts of major cities, which allowed these intrepid pilgrims to realize a vestige of the American dream. Urban decay, blight and rampant criminality, replaced the well maintained communities, which characterized the once solidly middle classed inner city neighborhoods left in their wake.

Fat, sleek and well fed, reviling in their own self-aggrandizement, posh country club memberships, exclusive secondary schools, fawning adherence to prosperity ministries, and enviable vacation destinations such as Oaks Buff (long the vacation destination of the black elite. Oaks Buff is outside of Martha’s Vineyard, and was once derisively described by famed jurist, the late, great Hon. Bruce Wright as “Spook’s Buff”), these black businessmen, ministers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, educators, tradesmen and civil servants - brought into the myth, fed by wall-to-wall commentary, and regurgitated by highly paid touts: ill-informed, racist conservative talking heads on some of the most reactionary radio and television shows on the air - that they had made it, why can’t “you people” (conveniently ignoring the structural inequalities that make success for a large segment of the black community an illusory dream)?

Although higher education has been the traditional means of upward mobility in the black community, any competent, graduate economic student can illustrate with precise mathematical graphs and charts, that the economy cannot absorb all of the college educated workers our colleges and universities graduate each year in the best of times.

Conservative pundits do not allow the facts to get in the way as they adroitly spin them to lay blame squarely at the foot of poor and middle class black students who major in “liberal arts,” as opposed to “hard sciences” such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering; suggesting simplistically that poor career planning is what causes a large percentage to be underemployed - if they manage to obtain employment after graduation at all. The ones that do not, rarely ever manage to obtain work in the field with which they majored.

Ultra-wealthy black entertainers, businessmen and politicians, many of whom originate from the black middle class, inwardly cringe in shame at the wholesale destruction of black inner city neighborhoods, which their parents and grandparents abandoned en mass leaving a hopeless void only to be filled by unremitting self-hate, anger and a prison mentality characterized by drooping britches leaving often dirty drawers in full view, which uninformed observers believe is reflective of Hip Hop culture, but in reality is only really reflective of the homo-thug culture popularized in jails and prisons throughout the country.

Instead their finite resources go into feel good projects they boast about in self-congratulatory conversation over Earl Grey tea and sweet crumpets, which serves communalism in concept but also sadly illustrates an elitist, despair ridden, attitude that upper, middle class blacks, unfortunately characterized by Comedian Bill Cosby who “took aim at blacks who don't take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits,” have toward less fortunate blacks.

In the antebellum south, black mammies, often unconsciously perpetuated this enduring pathos; white supremacy played out by adopting Eurocentric individualistic values in contrast to egalitarian ones represented by Afrocentric communalism, which ignore a straightforward sociological fact: whites given the choice will always hire, rent and loan capital to people who look like them regardless of their competencies, character or credit worthiness.

Mammies were socialized to enforce white supremacy with an iron hand among hapless big house slaves but also wielded considerable influence in socializing backward field-hands ignorant of plantation protocol. During the civil war these mammies were seen fiercely protecting Massa’s property often at the cost of their own lives.
We now see this scraping obeisance to white supremacist values being played out in corporate America, entertainment, and to a much lesser degree in politics.

Black females have been given positions of immense responsibility, influence and authority because they are considered less threatening then black men, but squander the opportunity to bring up ambitious brothers at every turn all while bemoaning a dismal lack of marriage eligible (read that: tall, handsome, heterosexual, buff, with a big dick, no children, criminal record, good credit, formal education, or vocational skill sets) black men in the same breath.

These unconscious sistas have become the new Aunt Jemimas: gatekeepers stoking the embers of inequality, fiercely guarding the status quo because they got theirs, why can’t the brothers get theirs; utterly oblivious to the institutionalized racism that fueled America’s economic engine from its inception, they ignore pernicious evidence of inequality in a weave flinging, hip swaying, sassy talking, finger wagging, irrationally loyal effort to go-along-in-order-to-get-along.

The image of the lone white hero still reigns supreme in popular culture. It is an image driven by art imitating life, which is in turn informed by rugged individualism: a visceral Eurocentric need to dominate, emasculate and own.

No other culture ignores its own collective interest in order to achieve individual success like black folks generally and black women particularly. Although all can share equally in how this persistent pathology eviscerates an entire generation of black boys and girls, it is the responsibility of those WEB Dubois termed the “talented tenth” to affirmatively remediate the problem through education.

We must educate each other to be conscious of the benefit to the whole, by raising up one. Dr. Dubois once wrote, “The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. (Dubois, WEB The Talented Tenth, September 1903).

Reflections

2010-06-13T23:56:00.003-04:00

Success seems to be an illusory dream for me as I comfortably entered middle age earlier this year. As of late, though, it has become an obsession of mine to determine anecdotally if fate, luck, or other intangible factor plays a role in how one achieves success in this life. The "rugged individualism" is a unique worldview, which still dominates realpolitik in these United States. The vast majority of overworked, underpaid Americans would still obdurately subscribe to a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstrap, work-your-ass-to-the-bone, stoicism that traditionally defined us as Americans, and promised a rainbow at the end of the proverbial tunnel. That rainbow typically manifested in demonstrable wealth, material acquisition, or maybe just a better opportunity with which to attain those things if not for ourselves, then certainly for our progeny. As the twilight sets on this American empire, I often wonder what life would have been like had I had been born in an emerging economy, much like China of today, and even one or two of the sub-Saharan African countries like economic powerhouse Nigeria, or the continent's technological showcase, South Africa. America is still the richest country on the face of the earth. But its economy was mature before I was born during the tumultuous 1960s. Opportunities that existed for upward mobility as I attained my majority were contingent on a veritable host of subjective factors, which all conspire against success, because institutional racism still abounds in this country, apologists, Uncle Toms, Aunt Jemimas, and sell outs notwithstanding. Now that America's economy is in a tailspin that President Obama has been futilely trying to stem like the BP oil spill, entrenched racists resentful of Obama's victory, cynically misuse that historic victory to now say we are in a post racial society. Social programs like affirmative action that leveled the playing field enabling us to obtain high paying jobs, or adequate capital to grow successful and, more importantly, enduring businesses had become anachronistic. The traditional means of wealth transfer in this country is still intergenerational. Unfortunately, neither one of my biological parents had much wealth or much by way of intelligence either. What deposable income they did have was quickly squandered on either themselves or their pet projects. Left to fend for myself, I did not realize "self actualization" as famed, humanist psychologist Abraham Harold Maslow termed it in his defining work "A Theory of Human Motivation." As I gaze lovingly at my infant son's pictures, I vow that he will not suffer as I have in this life, being intentionally thwarted by few internal but also many external forces from achieving note, success, or accoutrements thereof...

The Charisma Crisis

2009-06-02T17:24:00.009-04:00

We have a charisma crisis in our community where we blindly and uncritically follow any windbag exhibiting tangible charisma, while eschewing bona fide leadership. This old school model of leadership passed away with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who was assassinated on April 4, 1968 and was, arguably, the last charismatic leader in our community. The whack charisma exhibited by political hacks holding critical elected offices in Southeastern Queens is a sad testament to favoritism, cronyism, nepotism, and old machine politics still playing a central role in how access and influence is meted out.
In example, New York State Senator Shirley Huntley, a high school graduate whose husband owns a cleaning company with city contracts based in St. Albans, supposedly represents Queens 12th senatorial district. Misrepresents would, perhaps, be a more apt characterization of her leadership or lack thereof.
Since January I have been trying to get a meeting with Huntley whose public record of accomplishment does not extend pass a ribbon cutting ceremony at Intermediate School-I.S. 231 a few years ago and a couple of forgettable speeches. Despite this lack of demonstrable accomplishment, recognized expertise or just a formal education, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, himself an acknowledged maverick, saw fit to appease Queens Democratic Party leaders disgruntled over his own unconfirmed ascension to majority leadership in the New York State Senate by appointing Huntley to a powerful role as chair of the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Committee, which has oversight of NYS Office of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities.
I worked for OMRDD for a few years as a medicaid service coordinator without incident until I took a leave of absence for medical reasons. When I attempted to return to duty after being cleared by New York State Civil Service Commission, my "lay-off" unit claimed they did not have a position in my title for which they could offer employment. Civil Service placed me on a a preferred list and re-employment roster, which are mandatory re-hire lists that must be used before any offer of employment is extended to any other candidate.
I am the only one in my title in the entire State of New York on these lists. Suffice it to say that the new OMRDD administration ushered in an era of incredible stupidity, racism and incompetence, which resulted in OMRDD unlawfully holding a mandatory reinstatement in abeyance. I have shown Huntley's office who they claimed had a lawyer review my allegations that OMRDD's position is not only malicious but unlawful. Despite that she refuses to write a letter, meet with me, or, schedule a meeting, I asked her to mediate between myself, and OMRDD Commissioner Diane Jones-Ritter.
Problem is neither her staff nor Huntley has a clue. Consequently, they have done nothing more than make a single telephone call to OMRDD after which a "Director of Constituent Services" who sounded suspiciously like a sexually frustrated church lady we used to dread encountering during our weekly forays to worship services on Sundays back in the day, demanded that I supply OMRDD with records with which they are not legally entitled, and they would reinstate me.
Beyond her asinine position being a wholly simplistic, revisionist characterization of the problem, I knew from experience that the agency had no such intent, and tried futilely to convey this fact to the "church lady," who refused to hear anything I had to say, mischaracterizing my position, rudely interrupting, and finally just hanging up on me. To say she was unprofessional, rude and obstructive, would not be a problem if there was someone else in Huntley's office to whom an aggrieved constituent could appeal. Unfortunately there is not; "church lady" was an unfortunate composite of Huntley's entire staff.
Ultimately, the onus of responsibility falls flat at Huntley's feet, though. Whether Huntley knows personally or not is irrelevant because she is responsible for constituent services irrespective of who she hires to discharge this sensitive and critical role. Beyond that, she could resolve the situation with a single telephone call, which she refuses to do.
The larger issue thus is incompetence. How can we in good conscience elect people like Huntley with negligible skill sets, little formal education, and no demonstrable expertise to such a significant role as not only New York State Senator but chair of a powerful committee to boot? It is incomprehensible to me that we elect these people to represent us with little or no expectation of accountability. Not simply because she is an embarrassment but because we do have a talented cadre of youthful leaders waiting impatiently in the wings.
Young, smart, vibrant and dynamic leaders like Erica Ford get short shrift by well connected, well funded Democratic political machine spawned hacks represented in aging unqualified relics like Huntley recycled by avaricious party leaders and placed haphazardly into positions of incredible responsibility with considerable power and influence, which they squander recklessly at every turn, causing our communities incredible harm in the process with their abject lack of leadership. We do not need charismatic leaders in our elected bodies, we need compassionate and, more importantly, competent ones.
Help Wanted: Compassionate, empathetic, conscientious official with substantial leadership, conflict resolution, and negotiation experience in the private sector who will be responsive to the concerns of their constituents; JD, MA or PhD required; will represent Southeastern Queens in the NYS Senate. Nether Huntley nor Smith need apply.

Casual Killings: A Response

2009-05-04T19:36:00.007-04:00

Dr. McWhorter's analysis (http://www.nysun.com/opinion/casual-killings/60671/) put a shaky finger on one aspect of a serious pathology with-in a segment of the black community. However, he neglects to fully develop this thesis, the limitations of print media notwithstanding. Moreover, and more troubling, he adopts a blame-the-victim approach, which so many African American intelligentsia and conservatives embrace, broad-stroking a huge swath of the black community in the process, letting what family these kids had off the hook altogether for their failed parenting skill sets.

Fact of the matter is that a small, vocal group of black women exerted an inordinate amount of influence on the War on Poverty programs spearheaded by the Johnson administration during the late 1960s. This was at the very height of the social turmoil characterized by the civil rights and anti-war movements, respectively. Although their numbers were small relative to the total census of recipients receiving Aid To Families with Dependent Children [AFDC], during the racially tinged inner city upheaval, federal social policy was heavily and, most would argue, imprudently swayed by these small radical influences.

What these women said was that black folk never received compensation during post-reconstruction, and their men were coming home from a misadventure in Southeast Asia with drug and alcohol dependency issues scarred as they were by the experience. Consequently, they argued they had an absolute right to remain home to raise their children on the public dole, and unbelievably federal policy was shaped in large measure by this ill advised paradigm shift.

This is where I agree with McWhorter's analysis, it had tremendous counterproductive influences on the young black children left in the wake of the failed social experiment. The backlash that played out decades later under the Clinton administration with the elimination of AFDC, and the implementation of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF] has resulted in genuine hardship to people truly needing a short term social services safety net.

Back to Dr. McWhorter's piece, though. Instead of trying to rehabilitate young black men who in many instances have never been habilitated or properly socialized in the first place, and providing "prisoner re-entry programs," why not focus on preventive intervention programs, which capture (no pun intended) at-risk behavior before in results in the tragedies with which we as a society were all appalled.

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and National Action Network President Al Sharpton famously announced that they were collaborating on a 2nd Chance program, which would expunge criminal convictions after a pre-determined amount of time. The collateral consequences of criminal convictions has its genesis in Jim Crow, and was designed in large measure to inhibit black folk arrested and convicted of often trumped up charges (here the Jena 6 come to mind) from becoming employable.

This is where McWhorter's analysis become mired in a conservative ethos, which negates reason or, more importantly, critical analysis. In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with an extraordinary series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America.

The series, titled "Dark Alliance", revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.

Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to exchange hands at the expense of our communities. Congressional inquiries into these allegations are ongoing. Results of the internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department are pending. The kids McWhorter demonizes for their admittedly anti-social and, in some instances, socio-pathetic behavior, do not import drugs, or manufacture guns.

Society as a whole has a vested interest ensuring that preventive, interventions targeting these kids are fully funded enabling progressive, conscious black folk to do the work necessary to take back our communities, and give single mothers the supports and, more importantly, social programs necessary to have male role models - that have a work ethic, embrace education as a means of upward mobility, and value family - positively influencing their children...

Forging Business Ties With Liberia

2009-04-20T01:22:00.000-04:00

Liberians share a unique bond with African Americans unlike any found in Sub-Saharan Africa or anywhere else in the diaspora. We must foster the ties that bind our two communities instead of relying on white Americans, Asians and Europeans interlopers all who propped up former president Charles Taylor in spite of a dismal human rights record because of his "pro-American" stance. In that respect Taylor brilliantly leveraged his capital to essentially drain the country of crucial resources for years - causing unmitigated bloodshed in the process while leaving a legacy of poverty and squalor in his wake. Liberia is finally on the path to recovery, and now in the mist of rebuilding after decades of turmoil that caused the best and the brightest to seek out refuge in America, Europe and throughout the diaspora. I want to start forging these ties in my own modest way by just contributing to the dialog and suggesting that we African Americans are pulling for Liberia. We also wish to be considered good, ethical business partners with the capacity and potential to constructively create and develop lucrative business opportunities for both communities, and respectfully encourage the Sirleaf administration to proactively seek out African American businesses to aid in rebuilding Liberia.

Social Justice

2009-02-20T22:15:00.000-05:00

With the advent, ascension truly, of Senator Barack Obama [D-Ill] to Office of the President, and Eric Holder as attorney general, the death knell may have finally sounded for institutionalized racism in these United States. Holder set it off Wednesday when he said America was "a nation of cowards" on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues. The airwaves and world wide web were set ablaze as conservative talk show hosts and their fawning sycophants feigned outrage over Holder's hit-'em-in-the-head truism. For too long black folk have been force fed an unrelenting diet of racism masked as conservatism misinformed in diatribes by the likes of race-hate radio pioneer Bob Grant (WOR) followed quickly by his WABC replacement, a high school graduate named Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham and reigning champion Rush Limbaugh. Unabashed bigots all who only serve as bottom feeders fanning unsubstantiated fears by an ill-informed populace. Limbaugh's shameful dominance of conservative talk radio bespeaks an entrenched bigotry that Holder spoke to in his widely criticized [conservatives] but well received nonetheless [progressives] speech. With Holder at the helm over at Justice hopefully the attorney general will put some teeth into the 2nd Chance Act. The Second Chance Act of 2007, which was signed into law by President Bush on April 9, 2008 after receiving broad bipartisan support from Congress. The legislation reauthorizes the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (OCCSSA), authorizing grant funds that promote comprehensive planning and collaborative delivery of services to individuals recently released from prison. The Second Chance Act, H.R. 1593, was introduced by Representative Danny Davis on March 20, 2007. It passed in the House by a 347 to 62 vote on November 13, 2007 and cleared the Senate by unanimous consent on March 11, 2008.Stay tuned.

Debut

2009-02-19T17:27:00.000-05:00

Since its inception, the Internet using the world wide web has helped peeled back what had heretofore been a vast, forbidding and often mysterious world, exposing a wondrous, enticing facade under what frequently lies a sordid dark, dank underbelly. Together we will explore this world from a critical perspective. There are many captains undertaking this voyage all over the world wide web. I am gratified you have chosen my vessel on which to share this journey. Our voyage begins now...