The Doo-Doo Chasers

Now I may not be able to tell you what happened on some cable television program or pontificate of what I think may happen on some contrived artificial reality show, but I am in a position to conjure and offer perspectives on other contrived non-events such as what is frequently called politics. More specifically issues of somewhat basic precepts of democratic centralism and constitutional republics.
 

I have been told by the brain trust in the vicinity of the Beltway that self-determination means nothing anymore, unless it is decided upon by individuals who have no stake on such self-determination. I say this because from the President down, seems that the SEO meter is running on a simple phrase that the referendum in Crimea is illegitimate and illegal, and even that as such, the United States will not (never ever ever ever even) recognize its right to self-determination.

This is not only sociopathic but also inconsistent with the plurality evinced in our own constitution, but even more so in the articles of confederation, the bill of rights as ascribed via the Treaty of Paris.  It is as if just by saying such, it makes it a fact or truism.

Since the PEOPLE of Crimea voted over-whelming for their independence from the Ukraine, every nut and bolt politician in the United States has been saying the same thing, which can be summed up by the statement made by Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, who openly informed the world that the Obama Administration would not recognize the results of the referendum in Crimea calling what Russia did as being “dangerous and destabilizing”. Thus by fiat extending the assertion that the population of Crimea has no right to conduct a democratic referendum via the ballot, to decide if it wants to remain with the Ukraine or join Russia.

Fascinating, I mean a constitutional scholar (in theory) asserting anti-constitutional beliefs. This when, if it wasn’t for Washington, and even the EU helping to overthrow a democratically elected leader of another sovereign nation (Ukraine), we wouldn’t even be in this mess. Moreover, what makes even more absurd in the logic offered for this position by the Obama administration, which for the record asserts that the referendum cannot be valid unless the entire population of Ukraine votes and agrees with the decision by Crimean’s. A funny and strange position to take when you study past U.S. history with respect to the South Sudan (all of Sudan didn’t vote) and Kosovo from Serbia (no Serbians were allowed to vote via U.S. dictate). 

Then we have the audacity (like hope) to ridicule Putin for what Bill Clinton did in in Serbia, Bush in Iraq, and by Obama in Afghanistan, Libya, and trying to do currently in Syria. Were we this up set in 1967 when Israel committed a real act of war when it took Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Jordanian-administered West Bank, or in 1981 when the same nation, Israel took the Golan Heights.  

The simple fact of the matter is that we, America, should mind our own business and tend to the home front where we have real interest and not just the plutocratic interest of the ultra-wealthy. From a historical perspective WE KNOW that the two elephants in the room that no one is really discussing are: (1) the historical US/NATO desire to be able to surround Russia militarily and (2) access to the Artic, in particular since all these international bodies being so concerned with ‘global warming”, have green lighted more drilling there. These folks have to contain the Russian military because it will be the only way they can try and get all of the natural gas it has as well as access the infinite northern border Russia has with the Arctic.

Again, the United States has no interest that is national in the Ukraine when compared to Russia. Not only do the Russians have a large naval facility in Crimea, the folk there do speak Russian and it was conquered originally by Catherine the Great. Moreover, Moscow is not about to invade Ukraine and we all know this, it just sounds good to make folk believe that should be a reason for us to be upset. Outside of that, what is our national interest in the Ukraine? Is it to spread democracy like we did in Libya and Somalia? I mean fact is where ever we try to spread democracy all we get is a lot of dead Americans, a destabilized nation, and large Blackwater contracts.

We should just stay out of this and admit our only goal is really western control of oil and gas in the region. The Crimean Supreme Council is already on record saying Crimea wants Gazprom to develop the peninsula's oil and natural gas deposits and not any western (US company).

This time we have messed with the wrong cat, a cat from a nation with conviction, who has very strong leadership skills, and even more than this REAL national interest in the region.  This is aint no doo doo chaser, this is Putin.

A Ten Hour Glorified Lunch

Today, the three leaders of North America: President Barack Obama, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, meet in Mexico to supposedly discuss issues of trade between the three nations.  This on the 20-year anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as (NAFTA), which was signed into law by Bill Clinton in January  of 1994.

Before the meeting, it could have easily been guessed that the agendas of each leader were similar yet different.  I am certain Obama wanted to discuss security and immigration, and that Mr. Harper wanted to discuss the Keystone pipeline to take Canadian oil to the Gulf of Mexico, and that President Enrique Peña Nieto wanted to discuss immigration. But I also suspect that all wanted to get down to the nitty gritty with respect to the on the proposed trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The concern the average thinking American should ask is why is the US involved in another far reaching, sovereignty reducing trade pact that will supersede constitutional parameters that benefit the people over large, and in many cases foreign corporations? Although some purport the divinity of NAFTA, what we do know is that it was responsible for more than a million jobs leaving America for Mexico by incentivizing U.S. manufacturers to move production to lower-cost Mexico and that through Chapter 11 of the agreement, allows corporations or individuals of foreign governments to be placed on the same footing as Americans. As a consequence, many of the manufacturing jobs that once used to be in states like Michigan left and consequently, allowed companies that did stay in America to suppress wages of workers. So regardless of all the good it was supposed to do, what America really got was massive unemployment  and a massive U.S. trade deficit especially in the manufacturing sector with respect to Mexico of about  $100 billion which is still growing.

What President Obama should have mentioned was the concern with the criminal justice system in Mexico and the problems of violence perpetrated by the numerous drug cartels in the region, but he didn’t?  He should have discussed openly, that he wants the Keystone pipeline, but it would be hypocritical for him to do such given the oil from the Canadian Tar Sands would produce more of what he calls “carbon pollutants” and because much of the oil will not be used in the U.S. but rather sold and shipped abroad.  And lord knows Obama didn’t want to go on the record saying he supported foreign corporations like Trans-Canada having the right to claim imminent domain in America.

After I read the releasedjoint statement, it was obvious that this was just a waste of time. It had nothing to do with real issues, but more about show and photo ops.  I should have known Obama would not go on the record about the TPP, an agreement he is keeping so hush-hush, that he won’t even share it with the American citizenry openly and no one yet knows the broad scope of its reach. An agreement so hidden that we wouldn’t even know about its breath if it wasn’t for Wikileaks. All we do know is that Wall Street and the big banks and all associated with it are racking up big bonuses and it aint even law yet.

But as, unusual, I actually expected a meeting to be productive, and that American leaders should (the conditional) work on the best interest of U.S. citizens. But I was wrong, all this was it seems was a ten hour glorified lunch meeting, I just wonder how much tax payers spent for this, seeing that it could have been conducted via Skype.

Detroit Is the Future

One thing for certain, is that in politics, ethics and morality is a sign of cowardice.  They are the dead weights of any autocratic disposition when it comes to profits and financial gain, in particular when buttressed on the backs and hard work of those whom anyone seeking and securing the highest office in these United States of America – the presidency, need to obtain power.

Thus it should come as no surprise, as was the case with presidents before him, that Barack Obama has learned this lesson well.  Since he has taken office, while implementing the same policies of Bush and Clinton before him, U.S. businesses have never had it so good. As we speak, the masses are working harder than ever before, that is if they have a job or if under employed.  The global banking houses and large multi-national corporations have more loot than they can ever use and continue to add more and more each day, whether we are speaking in terms of cash on balance sheets or in terms of their proportion of ownership of the U.S. economy.

I start with Clinton because it was in the 1990s when our service industry began to bloom and our manufacturing base declined, and it may have had its signature moment when he signed into law, with Republican approval, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (welfare reform) in 1996. Yes, this was the start of the rapid growth of the so-called 1 percent, which Obama has increased more dramatically in economic prosperity in five years than the sixteen combined years of both Bush and Clinton.  It continued when Clinton ended Glass-Stegall, Signed GATT and NAFTA into law and implemented the Commodities Futures Modernization act which not only gave way to new fancy smancy accounting methods but also the mass proliferation of various complex papers based on selling debt.  And with a debt based economy come the obvious, less jobs, less employment, less value in the dollar, a decline in available jobs and an increase in overall poverty.

You see, it isn’t particle physics, but rather the natural result of Keynesian political/economic philosophy that results in what we see in places like Detroit. In simple terms, from this perspective, growth in corporate profits is directly correlated to people being paid less and less. This means that if profits continue to grow for the few, wages will continue to decline for the majority. And as wages continue to decline the US labor market will never ever be able to reach full employment – ever. Namely because companies make their profits by employing as few workers as possible and by transporting what jobs are available abroad to places like India and China.

This is not by accident. As I pen this, we are in a time in which working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps. It used to be the elderly and children. All because government polices produced within the beltway are nothing more that state supported economic theft and terrorism. Policies that over leverage economic gain singularly toward the direction of corrupt plutocrats in the form of capital misallocation courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank in the form this time of what is called Quantative Easing. In 2012 alone, more than 200 people became billionaires which when added to the more than 1400 billionaires in the US, gives them an estimated $5.4 trillion in combined net worth.

President Obama’s focus on deficit spending doesn’t and will never help the folk who may or may not have voted for him but it does help those whom he appoints to political positions and his other large campaign contributors. The people on Wall Street have access to funding, at a cheap price too given the Federal Reserve Bank’s penchant for hold down interest rates near zero while people who are the heart of America see their rent and food and gas cost steadily rise.  Many call this outcome “internal devaluation,” and is what we have seen abroad in Europe especially in nations like Italy, Greece, Spain  and more recently the Ukraine.

Now if you watch TV or even listened to the President’s State of The Union Address, you probably think it is all good, but that is only because of “newspeak” and selectively telling you what they want you to know.  For example, the only reason they can report that American competitiveness increased by over 10%, is because folks are getting paid less and due to all the benefits and wealth that is counted is what is on the books of big corporations.  They will tell you that  in December that that employment grew by 74,000 jobs and that as a consequence, the unemployment rate went from 7.0% to 6.7%.  But what they won’t say is that to keep up with the new folk entering the work force (which are not counted as unemployed) the nation needs 250,000 jobs just to maintain pace for this group of available workers alone. Or that the same month, the net number of folk with jobs (full-time and part-time) fell by 400,000 to a 35 year low. Then to add insult to injury, they will say that American economic productivity has grown in the area of about 7 percent since 2007, as if that is a good thing, but won’t say that during the same period in China it grew 90 percent.

 These are dire times in America and unfortunately, President Obama and his economic team are not making things any better for the majority of US citizens. What they are doing is developing the middle class in China at the expense of the middle class here for all the jobs that were once middle class (like in Detroit) are now in China. And this is their game, to artificially promote fake progress, while lowering the wages of Americans and growing unemployment, while the rich get richer, because they want a global market place with a global labor pool that they can pick and choose who to pay what.  By doing this, American job seekers will by default have to take lower wages, meaning the middle class is gone and that Detroit, is the future of America.

The Problem is Darkness

As a people, in particular a nation – we some dumb folk. I really wanted to use another word that conjoins a female parent with the act of copulation, but that is beside the point. I know I have been harping on the inadequacy of the general populous in concert with what is supposed to be leadership, especially as it pertains to legislation implemented for show in the perverse attempt to protect folk from themselves via the impossible act of legislating morality, just so happen this time it deals with gun control, assault weapons ban and across the board registration requirements.

Now, all this reminds me of something I heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. say on a talk show once when I was a kid. I think I was in Kindergarten at the time. Back then TV and television watching was a social event and when Dr. King was on, everybody in the household watched. Otherwise, if I was inside and not playing outside and had to watch TV, all who knocked on my door asking for me to come outside, and I said I couldn’t, that I was watching TV, knew I was on punishment. Back then you only stayed in to watch TV when you were on punishment.

On the show, the two tortoise-shelled rim glasses wearing white cats asked Dr. King if those who rioted in America who were black took away from his cause and his message of non-violence. He quoted Victor Hugo and stated: “Where there is darkness crimes will be committed. The guilty one is not merely he who commits the crime but he who caused the darkness.”

Now it seems to me the weight in which I look at Dr. King’s mental prowess is like a ton to an ounce when I compare it to the likes of a Barack Obama or a Rahm Emanuel. It seems that the latter two gentlemen are so caught up on the propaganda (and banning guns), more than the root causes of the ailments of our social predicament, or saving lives. Fact is when the gun laws are put in place (and I doubt if they will be) the social ills that precipitate our violent oriented society will still remain. First it is not the tool, for we see around the world car and suicide bombs can and do as much damage as assault rifles. Second, the darkness which the metaphorically inclined Hugo made and Dr. King referenced is still going undealt with. The darkness that produces crime is a historic occurrence based in the economic deprived citizenry of our nation who just so happen mainly to be folk the same color as I. It is this loss of opportunity, or really, the lack of opportunity that facilitates the “I will get mine even at the expense of yours mentality. It is not guns but the reality of the environmental circumstances in which we see 25% of blacks in poverty – a rate which is at its highest in the past 60 years and snow-balled downhill just by chance when America has its first African American President.

Yes, TV watchers watch the subscribed and pre-prepared news broadcast and say the economy is getting better but outside of make-believe facts do not support this. Truth be told, thanks to our declining economy, poverty is ravaging out city like some exotic parasitic infection. Add to that the millions of young folk, who only watch TV, play video games and self-medicate in our materialistic culture, and whom are unemployed, do not even have the prospects of long-term or temporary employment for that fact. In Detroit for example, more than 60% of folk fewer than 18 years of age live in poverty – an increase of 40 percent since 2009. And this is one reason why 80% of the murders in Detroit or a Chicago are gang-related. These numbers are staggering, especially in urban areas from New York, to Oakland, to Memphis to New Orleans. Across America, more than 150 million folks live in poverty. Not to mention more than 1 million US school children are homeless. This is the darkness the aforementioned spoke of. Where there is darkness there will be crime. But no, to accept such requires logic and reason, two things that are severely lacking in modern American culture. Our status quo instead is to accept what is being told without query and let the government deal with it, since the government is the only solution and only folk with the answers (albeit their track record suggest otherwise).

Even if you go to college it doesn’t translate in to success or economic stability. One recent study published by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity revealed that Almost half of college educated workers are over qualified for the jobs that they do have.

And we black folk go along with everything being feed us as if we were still expecting master to drop some chittlings on our plates. Because if gun control do pass, we gone be stuck with the same thing we got with mandatory minimums and three strike laws – more black men in prison. Yep, I said it; I can add that the man who Obama asked to work out something on guns, Joseph Biden, is the same cat who came up with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. If I must remind you, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 3355, Pub.L. 103–322, (commonly referred to as the Assault Weapons Ban) was originally written by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. In the Bill, Biden as a lawyer mandated that people in prison were not to be allowed to get an education in the form of a high school diploma or a college degree and also created the 3 strike law, which sent a lot of black people to prison for life. Democrat Bill Clinton sign this into law in 1994. Biden’s law also made many new provisions to be considered as capital offenses including but not limited to gang membership, and created several new federal death penalty offenses, including murders related to drug dealing, and drive-by shooting murders. And this new bill, well it will be the same, just a disproportionate number of black men being incarcerated.

I write this to suggest that most politicians and Americans (especially African Americans are lost, misguided and lack the critical thinking required to both problem solve and address what is wrong within our communities. It is we who are the problem and as such only we can proffer answers and solutions to deal with such. It is darkness that creates the crime and the folk who create the problem are just as much as fault as the tools of criminals. I can honestly say that before Obama 32 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps. That the Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years, which means it has fallen even more for the average African American. And it will only get worse with America losing half a million jobs to China every single year and with a future that will have robots working in fast food restaurants and the service industry. Again, our problem is not guns it is darkness and no one can see the light.

The Incompetence of Susan Rice

Okay, maybe it is just me, but for some reason I do not see why folk are all up in arms and extremely supportive of Susan Rice. Sometimes I think it is the 98 percent of black folk syndrome that believes Obama or Rice can never be wrong, or make mistakes, intentionally misinform of even worse – never lie.

Rice, I suspect is thought by many to be Obama's top pick for secretary of state, if you asked me based on what I understand, her statements and her policy, she is dangerously incompetent to be SOS. Now she is smart, but the only way I can support her selection is if all we want is an incompetent war monger in the office. True, she is a Stanford University graduate and Rhodes Scholar who worked for the reknown McKinsey & Company before she joined the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, and from there she became President Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, but job promotion has nothing to do with utility of being a competent SOS.

The merit is there, no question, but when one looks at intent, and attributes siding with liberty, freedom and truth, Rice gets no points. Whether or not she intentionally and willfully misled the American people on the Benghazi attacks, or ran misdirection for the Obama Administration in denying a terror attack prior to his re-election is not the point. The bottom line is that she is not the best choice for the job if you look at the world from an African American who takes prided in having the first African American President albeit I agree with less than 10 percent of his policy – foreign, domestic and economic, Rice is a major point of consternation.

Starting with Africa and Rwanda specifically, Rice’s lack of action pertaining to genocide in that nation shows that she has no backbone to assert democracy and liberty on behalf of America. Not to mention the manner in which she should have broken her neck on behalf of the Clinton Administration to deny assistance to the Tutsis. Yes, based on her recommendations as a part of Bill Clinton's National Security Team in 1994, her refusal to suggest action in the Rwanda genocide that left more than 800,000 men, women, and children to be hacked to death by machete in the fastest genocide ever recorded will always be a scarlet letter on her dress and make her this generations Hester Pyrnne.

This was nothing, she even went farther by obstructing the efforts of other nations to stop the slaughter. Instead, although in April 1994 the Canadian UN commandeer in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, declared that he required only 5000 troops to stop the genocide, she advocated that the UN force under Dallaire reduced by ninety percent to 270 troops.

Samantha Power of the Atlantic said it best as the author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem of Hell who referred to Ambassador Susan Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton Administration as Bystanders to Genocide said it best when she quoted Rice in her 2002 book "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November congressional election?" Meaning - Rice's saw genocide as being less important than partisan politics interests. This is not partisan on Power’s behalf, seeing that presently Power currently is a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama.

Rice also has a troubled past as it pertains to the Iraq war and invasion by President Bush which she vehemently supported. In one instance she stated in 2003 to NPR: “I think he has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don’t think many informed people doubted that.” In another, she stated: “It’s clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It’s clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that’s the path we’re on. I think the question becomes whether we can keep the diplomatic balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward, as we must, on the military side.” I can also throw in Libya where she clearly was the main person to move the President to take action against Gaddafi and Syria, where she promotes armed intervention against Syria. In general, Rice has a track record of doing all I hated that George Bush did or attempted to do -- advocate nation-building in failed states. Add to this her support for more troops in Afghanistan, she appears to be no different that Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz.

She supports Israel unconditionally, speaking of democracy in Egypt, Libya and Syria but not for Palestinians. And she has not said one word on Israel rounding up African to intern and deport thousands deemed a threat to the Jewish character of the state. She is silent of rounding up members of a different racial group and holding them in camps for deportation and the overt hostility towards blacks in general, where the nation or tax payers fund refer to blacks and Africans as a cancer and an AIDs virus on the Israeli people.

Add to the aforementioned incompetency and a policy that seems to support Israel no matter what and African neocolonialism, she has even more baggage. If she is selected by the President to be SOS, she will have a major conflict of interest. Currently, Rice holds millions of dollars in investments in Canadian oil companies and banks that have keen interest and investments in the $7 billion Keystone XL Pipeline. If she was to become the next Secretary of State, she would have the final say in determining if the pipeline gets approved and built or not. According to the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council and financial disclosure reports, Rice has MAJOR INVESTMENTS in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would benefit from enhancement of the Canadian tar sands industry and the building of the KPL. Open record reports indicate that approximately a third of Rice's personal net worth (stimated in 2009 to be between $23.5 million and $43.5 million) is in Canadian oil production and other off shoot markets. Not to mention that Rice has between $300,000 and $600,000 invested in TransCanada, the company trying to get permission from the State Department to construct portions of the KPL from Oklahoma to Canada.

When we look at her investments in banks, the conflict of interest issue becomes more lucid. She has “investments totaling at least $5 million and up to $11.25 million in Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto Dominion.” A report by the Dutch consulting firm Profundo Economic Research notes that some of these banks are largely responsible for underwriting the expansion of Canada’s tar sands industry.

And I will not mention that Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine including Enbridge, (company responsible for spilling more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 -- the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history).

Susan Rice is smart, that is not the point, and she just should not be the SOS.  Now she may have another stage of genocide on her hands as she did with the invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda which left six million Congolese dead begining in 1996. Now with the capture of Goma, an eastern Congolese city of one million, by “rebels” under Rwandan and Ugandan control complete with the support of western nations the United States and the United Kingdom (who are arming,training and equipping the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries). Afterall our U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice is the main one responsible for keeping information on Rwandan and Ugandan role in the ongoing genocide out of international policy.  It was Rice who blocked the UN Security Council from demanding that Rwanda endsupport to M23 rebels.

The way I see it anyone who supports Susan Rice either doesn't read, think for themself or is mentally retarded. The saddest thing about it for me is seeing black folk support her without question. Maybe idiots shouldn’t vote

How Obama and Black Politicians Have Reinvented the Negro

Politicians of African descent in America, in concert with the non-concern of their voting constituency have reinvented the Negro, or better yet made the Negro retro chic. What do I mean by this? Well from an etymological perspective, the word Negro is Spanish for black. The Spanish language comes from Latin, which has its origins in Classical Greek. The word Negro is derived from the Greek root word necro, meaning dead. It was a reference to the state of mind for millions of Africans. Politicians thrive and live on the fact that folk are negro as opposed to self determined individuals with the ability to reason and problem solve, thus ensuring their hold in politics. But what they fail to understand that if they truly want to deal with the economic plight of African Americans, they need to face the fact that economic improvement cannot be accomplished within the context of mass incarceration and the environment of the criminal justice arena that foster incessant Jim Crow-like practices. For the same dynamic that led to Jim Crow after the Civil war and emancipation proclamation has led to the present day mass incarceration of African Americans.

Just as slavery, Jim Crow and today’s focus on mass incarceration operates within the context of a system of institutions, policies and laws that function in concert to subordinate and disenfranchise a select group of folk defined mostly on race. Until our political figure heads address this and make this connection, nothing economically will improve in areas with high concentrations of African Americans. Only difference is the type of laws. There used to be “vagrancy laws,” “eye rape,” or “insulting gestures,” that could serve to keep newly freed African American men and former slaves in check. Now they have new names under the war on drugs such as “stop and frisk.” Even the way in which we were incarcerated during the era of the Jim Crow period are similar – to date all white jury’s convict black men for crimes that whites would never be take to trial for. Could you imagine white folks being prosecuted for marijuana possession offenses at the rate young African Americans are today? No because white politicians would change the laws.

More clearly defined, the way the prison and justice industrial complex operates is merely a continuation of the maintained of Eurocentric power and hegemony by changing the rules and names of those rules. In theory the 13th amendment abolished slavery, but it was always accepted by law that slavery still was an acceptable punishment for crime. As it is today, for the way in which law and order is mandated politically today, the only sure result is the arbitrary arrest of African Americans disproportionately to their numbers in the nation and according to the crimes.

If our elected officials from the Executive branch to or local level truly are interested in addressing the economic woes of our community, then they must deal and address mass incarceration and the disparate manner in which the criminal justice system is designed to race-neutrally target African Americans. If they do not, not only do they ignore the math involved in economic revitalization, but are equal in action to a George Wallace who stood in front of Schools in the segregated south blocking the entry of African Americans. We have to have our elected figures address the unconstitutionality of the obviation of our collective 4th amendment rights and fight “stop and frisk” laws and court sanctioned “race-neutral” racial profiling.

Prison is used to force African Americans into a system and existence of oppression and control today as Jim Crow and slavery were employed centuries ago. It is a direct result of the conservative position observed in the Jim Crow period in which they perceived that special laws (abolition of slavery) moved blacks ahead of them in position and standing. This was unacceptable so Jim Craw laws and the black codes were developed and designed to keep poor and uneducated blacks in a permanent subordinate political and economic position for it is their argument, from Goldwater, to Nixon to Regan to Santorum that poverty is caused by black culture.

Our present coteries of African American politicians hide behind the illusion of progress, especially economic progress in terms of the idolatry of having an African America President. Unfortunately their delusional states prevent them from comprehending that there cannot be any real economic progress in our communities if those locked up behind bars and ostracized from the community are not included in the poverty or unemployment statistics. To do so is saying our political representatives are no better than the slave masters and house Negroes and Klansman who maintained hegemony via legal and violent subjugation and marginalization. Thus what we confront via this legal mode of operandi is a caste system equal to that propounded by the Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, for what we faced then in practice and outcome is no different than what we encounter today through our extant criminal justice system’s convention of mass incarceration.

Why? Well first, after the assassinations of King and Malcolm, the civil rights movement stagnated. This was during a period of a rise in conservatism that centered on animosity of the recent and quick gains of Africa Americans. In addition, it was a time in which African American, especially males were not need to sharecrop the fields and technology was replacing low wage jobs unskilled and uneducated African Americans typically received. It was the start in the disproportionate rise in black unemployment, which conveniently happened on the heels of Regan and Clinton’s war on drugs, which made unemployment even worse.

The simple reality is that there is no such thing as a color blind society and that nothing is race neutral as the Justice system would like for us to accept. Please explain to me the difference between hiding behind a white sheet and a badge? To assert such is like asking me to view the world as green, when I see blue skies and black asphalt. I could prove and state that I only see green but the reality is that I see more. Yes the Negro has been reinvented by our present power hungry corpus of black elitist politicians. Before we had poll tax, literacy test and felon disenfranchisement – these were staples of the Jim Crow legal system. However then, we had warrior activist and scholar politicians who were not afraid to voice support for the people if it meant losing their political clout. Today we have marijuana possession laws, stop and frisk, and felon disenfranchisement – staples of mass incarceration under the auspice of fighting a war on drugs. Only thing different is that we have a lot more cowards in leadership lining their pockets than before. Strange, Obama and black politicians quick to say Republicans are at “WAR WITH WOMEN” over the contraception issue, but run like scared dogs with their tails between their legs before they will say there is a “WAR ON BLACK MEN.” Strange, President Obama can call to comfort a Georgetown Law Student who was called a slut but not the parents of Travon Martin.