Jim Webb, Democratic senator-elect from Virginia, whose race was so close that had his Republican candidate refused to acknowledge defeat could have resulted in recounts that would still be going on today, whose race was ultimately the decider as to whether the Senate would be split 50/50 or would be Democratic, had a few choice words for the American people that he’s vowed to serve, and published them in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.
He returned to a common campaign issue of his during the election season; the fact that many Americans, not just Virginians, are tired of the broad gap in socioeconomic inequality in America; they’re completely tired of working harder and harder all of their lives for companies that can write multi-million dollar checks to their CEOs for bonuses alone, but complain publicly about the high cost of health care and shuffle more and more of those costs down to the employees that work to make their CEOs richer. They feel the disconnect between the upper and middle classes sharply, and are disgusted when its rubbed in their faces with things like tax cuts for the rich, the wealthiest Americans arguing for the repeal of one of the few taxes they can’t get out of paying (read: the Estate tax), union breaking by large companies, airline and auto executives who claim that “the way forward” is to lay off thousands of workers while depositing huge dividend checks, and so on.
Webb says;
Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.
[ Class Struggle: American workers have a chance to be heard ]
Source: The Wall Street Journal
From the “good news” department, which I sense has been somewhat revived thanks to the results of last month’s political power shift, it appears that the Pentagon’s much-hated database of anti-war activists that it collected in the name of “national security” is being challenged by the upcoming Congressional leadership. The Democrats, coming into their own power, are quick to bring Congress back to its duty of policy oversight, and is asking the Pentagon to see the database it’s collected, presumably to ensure that the data being collected is being collected with respect for the privacy of Americans and respect for their rights to gather and dissent, and that the data is not being kept or used in an inappropriate manner.
Naturally the Pentagon is resisting, and I’m sure the reasons why have something to do with what I just said about how the data was collected and how it is currently being used, but regardless, it’s important that the Democrats, as they rise to power in Congress, continue the pressure to bring our constitutional rights back to the mainstream and defend them from the halls of power. Part of the reason that the Democrats were elected in such large numbers-and I believe they know this-is because many Americans were deathly afraid of and tired of their individual rights being trampled on by a conservative government whose interests are not shared with the American people.
[ Dems Want to See Pentagon's Citizen-Monitoring Database ]
Source: MSNBC
Bill has the best intentions, he really does. And in many ways, his reflections on the degredation of black culture and the black community are spot on, and are harsh words that the black community should reflect on as much as they may be angering, and consider for their truth aside from their outright disappointment over the condition of our communities, our schools, and more importantly, the condition of our struggle for equality.
However, when Bill says that the roots of racial inequality, especially social and economic inequality, lay at the feet of the black community, he’s sadly mistaken. He may make some credible points, but overall, he neglects the over-arching spectre of white privilege and a reinforced socioeconomic structure that not only excludes black people, but isolates them entirely, leaving many at times close enough to put their ears to the doors of success, but remain simply unable to open them because they don’t know the secret knock.
Algernon Austin and Jared Bernstein, the former of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC and the latter of the Theora Institute, explain that Cosby’s railings are misguided at best (as I believe them to be) and destructive at worst (as they fear), and explain in so many words:
One key to the success of the cultural argument is the omission of inconvenient facts about social and economic trends. For example, people arguing that African-Americans are suffering from a culture of poverty stress that blacks are much more likely to be poor than whites. True, but this fact misses the most important development about black poverty in recent years: Its steep decline during the 1990s.
Black poverty fell 10.6 percentage points from 1993 to 2000 (from 33.1 to 22.5 percent) to reach its lowest level on record. Black child poverty fell an unprecedented 10.7 percentage points in five years (from 41.9 percent in 1995 to 31.2 percent in 2000).
The “culture of poverty” argument cannot explain these trends. Poor black people did not develop a “culture of success” in 1993 and then abandon it for a “culture of failure” in 2001.
What really happened was that in the 1990s, the job market finally tightened up to the point where less-advantaged workers had a bit of bargaining clout. The full-employment economy offered all comers opportunities conspicuously absent before or since. Since 2000, black employment rates have fallen much faster, and poverty rates have risen faster, than the average.
What this episode reveals is how we squander our human resources when slack in the economy yields too few decent employment opportunities for those who want to work.
Black poverty is only the most visible example. The “bad black culture” argument also overlooks positive trends in critical areas such as education, crime and teen pregnancy (pregnancy and birth rates among black teenagers are down 40 percent since 1990).
Those same critics are too dismissive of anti-black discrimination in the labor market. Mr. Cosby says black people use charges of discrimination to avoid dealing with their cultural failings. The Manhattan Institute’s John H. McWhorter claims they “spit in the eye of [their] grandparents” when they say their lives are limited by racism. Journalist Juan Williams argues that poor black people are squandering opportunities opened up by the civil rights movement.
Yes, there are far more opportunities available to black Americans today, but the conclusion that racial discrimination is no longer a serious issue is simply not supported by the evidence.
In two recent studies, Princeton University sociologist Devah Pager showed that young black men who have played by the rules and have no criminal record are much less likely to be offered a job than similar white men. In fact, white men with criminal records had an equal or better chance of being hired than did young black men with no records. Contrary to Mr. McWhorter’s assertion, ignoring this racial discrimination is “spitting in the eye” of everyone, black and white, who struggled for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
[ Why Bill Cosby is Wrong ]
Source: TomPaine.com
