Obama: Melissa Harris-Perry's Santa Claus

I am putting down “Lords of Finance” by Liaquant Ahmed to write this. It is history of the first great depression and Second World War Last week I read an essay on the nation.com written by Melissa Harris-Perry. As most of her commentaries, the focus was on President Barack Obama. IN a nut shell, she asserted that “Electoral racism, “specifically “the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts” is the causal predictor variable in Obama’s decline in support among whites from 61 percent to 33 percent currently.

To support her claim, she notes that Obama’s “legislative record for his first two years outpaces Clinton’s first two years” and offers several other comparisons. However she seems to avoid several factors and even fails to lack a more substantial comparison with one President Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, who in policy are more akin to the President than Clinton. Notwithstanding, the impact of a political climate in which people are equally disappointed in all politicians inside the beltway regardless of party affiliation.

Now not being white, or a political “scientist” (emphasis on the word scientist) or as astute on the matters as Professor white, my sciolism may be lucid for all to see. However being an academic as well, with a focus on behavioral epidemiology and a specialty in statistics, it is difficult for me to discern how she can come to such a conclusion as a reasonable answer for his drop in support among white liberals. First, incumbents serving in severe economic times always have lower approval and popularity ratings. Add to this, incessant high unemployment which has remained very high, military involvement in an increasing number of countries, and political paralysis in Washington. There is plenty of reason to question Obama's effectiveness.

Obama is more of a conservative than a liberal truth be told. This is evident from his consistent promotion of conservative corporate policies that serve the wealth more than the poor and middle class. But this is not important in Dr. Harris-Perry’s analysis. As an Obama apologist, she only can compare and list his accomplishments, unfortunately his record is clear. He serves Wall St and K street first and foremost and has demonstrated himself to be “more neo-conservative than any neo-conservative and seems to use “regime change” just as much as George W. Bush and his inner circle. “Just looking at the reckless manner in which we disrespect and lessen the value of lives there via the US policy of using drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to kill civilians in the hundreds daily is evidence of this alone.
The Obama administration put into place a legal standard albeit it untested, that allows for the singular approval from the Executive branch of the federal government, without proof to allow the federal government to target individual American citizens for assassination.

He has ignored his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, and instead has persecuted and prosecuted more government whistleblowers than ever in US History.

Last and more important, one can simply examine how he works with his economic team to objectively examine his skill set in terms of management ergo concluding something is lacking. I can use the dysfunction of Obama's retinue of economic advisors to demonstrate why I have this opinion and come to the aforementioned conclusion. To start off with, Larry Summers (former Director of National Economic Council), Paul Volcker (former Federal Reserve Chairman), Christina Romer (former Economic Advisor), Elizabeth Warren (former Special Advisor to the Treasury Secretary), Peter Orszag (former Budget Director), and Tim Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury) alone provide me with more than enough substance to make this argument. Just looking at documented occurrences covering the Volcker rule, issues regarding Citibank, the bailout and the first stimulus, gives one an additional layer for discussion.

For example, the Obama administration’s $500 billion plus proposal was only beneficial to the banks and big dollar investors at the expense of the US tax payer.
All I can say is that for Dr. Harris Perry to blame his failing numbers on racism is feculent and ignores the aforementioned. Not to mention that she does not separate support falling between liberals versus independents in her statement that it has fall among “whites.” And I know she will get on me since for me to openly criticize the economic approach of President Obama is tantamount to being an uncle tom, racist or something even worse. Albeit it has nothing to do with the person, his race and/or political affiliation, and more a dissonance with Keynesian economic philosophy, because I am an African American my position is untenable and unreasonable.

Even if I state what I agree with and approve of that the President has implemented thus far, I am still considered against the President just because I am in disagreement with a single policy. I was supportive of the administration’s efforts to implement tougher regulations that would have reduced the amount of federal financial aid flowing to for-profit colleges that prey on mainly low income African Americans. However, I eventually became disappointed when his administration caved to the industry’s lobbyists and their campaign against the Obama administration. I was able to applaud the first bill he signed into law on approving legislation that expands workers' rights to sue over discrimination and the fact that so far he is setting records for the number of women and minorities nominated to lifetime appointments at the level of the Federal Courts. Nearly half of the 73 candidates he has tapped for the bench have been women. In all, 25% have been African Americans, 10% Hispanics and 11% Asian Americans. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships, far exceeding the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent).

I was also supportive of President Obama’s $1.15 billion measure to fund a settlement for African American farmers reached more than a decade ago via the 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Agriculture Department over claims of discrimination. This made it possible for approximately 70,000 African American farmers to receive cash payments and debt relief from the federal government. However when I question the decision to pander to #ocupywallstreet protesters and the same night attend an upper East Side DNC $35,800 a plate fundraiser resulting in $2.4 million added to his re-election campaign from Wall Street financiers and call it hypocrisy, my position was vilified. When I spoke out against the President’s policy decision to ask Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cell phones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other debt owed the federal government using robo calls I was condemned.

If I speak out and say I disagree with the Obama’s administration decision to waive legally mandated penalties for countries that use child soldiers and provide those countries U.S. military assistance, just like he did last year I am a hatter. The White House will issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars, for Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last year, the White House didn't even tell Congress when it ended the Child Soldiers Prevention Act penalties. Their rational was suspect at best.

Dr. Harris-Perry would like to reduce Obama’s lack of support among whites and maybe even other racial/ethnic groups on racism but doing so in my purview misses the point. As such it places here in the class of other Jerry Springer-esque political pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Eric Dyson and Sean Hannity. As scientist we must base causation on facts and not emotions. For it seems it has never crossed her mind that Obama may not being a good job and this standard as such has nothing to do with race. I guess Obama’ is her Santa Claus. Meaning it is ok to tell kids that he brings toys, rides on a sleigh pulled by reindeer and slides down the chimney to bring kids toys, even when the house doesn’t have a chimney.

The President, Congress, Senators and Wall Street: The True Sodomites

Now I am no biblical scholar, but I can admit to reading the Bible as well as the teachings of Buddha from cover to cover. The reason I am writing this is based on what I isolated in a post last week regarding the West-Obama narrative. Now I basically pounced on Black and Africana studies for two reasons, first it is not an area of science and singularly doesn’t mandate scholarly or intellectual discorvey pertaining to African descendents and our culture via existence. Secondly, it seems to promote more discussion regarding the use of the word black as a descriptor and issues of race and racism than pedagogy.

Many found that Dr. West statements regarding President Obama as a personal attack. In some accords they were but in other I do not think so and in fact would wager that if he had not used the descriptor black his statements would have accurately described every President since `1980 and nearly every politician within the beltway. West described Obama as being a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats."

Now if he had just called Obama a “mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a puppet of corporate plutocrats,” he would have been 100 percent on point. That’s why it seems strange to me that the quasi intellectuals who want to make a big deal of this appear to only focus on the use of the word “black” and name-calling.

The reality is they cannot tackle the content of the assertion for the reality is that Wall Street is handled as if it is more important than the people of America. They get bailed out and we loose our jobs and homes. Wall Street bankers have amassed and wield more power than Harry Potter, or the politicians they purchase like EMF’s.

Obama, just as Bush and Clinton and Regan before him are all guilty and regardless of color, “mascots of Wall Street oligarch (A very rich businessman with a great deal of political influence). Yes they are for oligarchs of big business and Wall Street have employed large amounts of loot to corrupt both Democrat and Republican politicians equally. I wonder why Prof. Melissa Harris-Perry piece in the nation doesn’t even discuss this.

Why is it wrong to note that without Wall Street, in particular Goldman Sachs (Obama's Top contributor), that Obama would have never been elected. Why is it wrong to note that the Obama policy assisted in giving bankers on Wall Street $700 billion after his election when most folks were just satisfied to have his picture on the wail on the side of Jesus opposite martin Luther King, Jr. in the front room.

Like Bush, he has sang the GOP and big business song that deficits are what we need to deal with first before we deal with the poor and middle class. In Ezekiel 16:49 the problem with those of Sodom was that they “had pride excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”

I have been saying all along that Obama was no different than the crooks that occupied the Whitehouse before him. That he was another in a long line of sodomites who give it to the populous with no Vaseline. Although sodomy is used to refer to gay sexual acts, there is no mention of such in the bible – none. Who ever came up with this was like an old television show I grew up watching, “Lost in Space.” In today’s world in the United States, The President, Congressmen, Senators and bankers Wall Street are the true sodomites, for while millions of Americans, of all ethnic/racial distinctions have lost jobs and homes, politicians like the president and others inside the beltway have turned a blind eye to the criminal activities of Wall Street’s banking and finance system. All we see are the outcomes – the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the uber-wealthy oligarchs. But what can one expect for a collection of millionares the likes of Obama and the wolk on Capitol Hill.

West-Obama Narrative: Shows all Wrong with Black Academy and African Studies

I have always wondered what was the importance and utility of Africana Studies Departments around the Nation, as well the utility of a doctorate in such a field. Over recent weeks I have come to the personal conclusion that there value in the grand scope of collective community betterment is miniscule. This has been personified in recent weeks through the unmerited recapitulation of what some may call the West-Obama narrative.

First, this is not a question of intellect or lack thereof, for I do note the brilliance in many current public relations scholars including but not limited to Cornell West, Eric Dyson, or a Melissa Harris-Perry. But what is more than oblivious is the overt need of such persons to be heard and seen, all scholarship aside.

Now it may just be my locution that is misplaced – one that sees intellectuals as being scientist and researchers first over the pedantic. Although I too am considered to be an intellectual by many, most see me as a scientist first, as my research abides by scientific methods although my academic training is in psychology and statistics. However, I see such rigor lacking in the work of many that proclaim the banner of Africana Studies.

In past regardless of discipline, if one expertise was history, religion, sociology, chemistry or biology, their natural science or philosophy was justification enough to document their intellectual prowess in their said field even when it entailed the study of Africans and their descendants.

The discourse attributed between the confederates of both sides of the West-Obama discussion reflects all that is wrong with the cannon of Africana studies intellectualism. It is an aspersion that one the one side portrays a dismaying senescence and on the other, an “inchoate mutterings” to use the words of Howard Thurman. They miss the need of oration for the sake of science singular for the mundaneness of sound bites and public relations.

Strange it is to me, that when I am called to NIH by a Nora Volkov (Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse) for example for my expertise in infectious disease, I never see representatives of Africana studies. Strange it is that John Hope Franklin, Howard Thurman, W.E.B Dubois or Benjamin E. Mays never claimed the banner of Africana or Black studies. Frantz Fanon was a Psychiatrist, Dubois a Historian and economist, Charles Drew, a Chemist, yet all considered them scientist of their discipline first who served their race through their science.

Even our greatest minds, who did not attend universities, were developed in a discipline like John Henrik Clarke, Fredrick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Now, there are some scientists that do such that happen to be of African descent who place their discipline of study to better their race without using race as a jumping point. Economist Roland G. Fryer Jr is one example.

I know some would assert I am or may be jealous, but truth be told, I couldn’t tell you about any of the work most in Africana or black studies do. And it has nothing to do with where they work. I mean I was on faculty and conducted research at Emory University for 14 years, and from where was department head in the department of Community and Preventative Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine. But they are not the folk I look up to and no where close to a Chekih Anta Diop, who was a physicist, chemist and paleontologist as well as historian.

I respect the intellectualism of any scholar, but I will use my science to solve problems and proffer discussion to solve problems as opposed to speak for the purpose of being heard or to propound that I am blacker than another person. For the simple truth remains that such does nothing to tackle food inflation, the 21 percent of children living in poverty in America, the inordinate disparity of disease and incarceration in our community or that somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

Yes, I may be wrong but I was taught scholarship and intellectualism was to serve the needs of the people, not the self. So I advise all considering doctorate degrees to avoid a PHD in black studies, we need more in math, chemistry and physics, for we are top heave in pedantic who expound expertise in the study of the color black.