Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Cyprus, Not Cyprus Hill Negro
One of the biggest news stories thus far this year was the lead for the top German, Brazilian, Japanese and Canadian Television outlets yesterday. But it wasn’t even mentioned in the coverage offered by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS via broadcast transcripts - Thank God for PBS and the News Hour. Not to mention it wasn’t even a consideration for coverage by African American political bloggers or news sites the likes of The Root, Politics 365, The Grio or any other supposedly political news site that is run by African Americans. And no it was not Obama in Israel, or even Keisha Cole and Beyoncé, rather the run on banks and the EU central bank actions toward Cyprus. Yes to get a bailout from the EU central banks, banks are now allowed to take money from all bank depositors – all account holders.
Now I know many will ask, “What does that have to do with me?” A lot and I will attempt to explain, albeit I know it may be difficult for many of us African Americans because we never heard of Cyprus, care or know anything of substance of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, but such should be no excuse. See what happened over the weekend was that a group of EZ leaders, the IMF and newly elected President of the small tiny island nation with a GDP the size of Vermont and a population the size of Philly agreed to force all with a bank account to pay for the government’s debt. Banking will never be the same if folk can’t truth the banks and since they saw the could not trust the EZ, IMF, government or the banks they started to pull all of their loot out.
The EU central bank has decided it is ok for big banks to take money out of the accounts of private citizens to pay for the debt of the nation they live in. Yes that right, all under the guise of it being a new tax. Strange since taxes are the result of political legislation and don’t go back in time. But that is what the large global banks are doing and if they can do it there, they can do it here, especially given Obama’s lack of gonads to even prosecute and arrest bankers. Even funnier is the fact that the banks are taking citizen’s money for loans they did not ask for and which the banks knew were bad when they first made them to the government of Cyprus.
Some will naively assert that this is America and it could or would never happen here. Surprise, it already did, last year from on one of Obama’s boys – John Corzine of MF Global. What Corzine did is what we see happening in Cyprus right now – bank account seizure (tax) without due process. Thus if it can be done in Cyprus, it can and will be done in Italy, Ireland, Spain and even the US, since bankers who caused all this nonsense with the assistance of inept politicians will seek to get all their money from the governments they loaned them too to cover for the losses of the zillions of different complex papers they created that were then and still today basically worthless. But yawl don’t hear me though.
What I can say factually that the present Administration, as the last four are for the fat cat bankers and Corporations. Just from IRS statistics we know that Americans who made over $10 million in 2010 paid on average just under 24 percent of their incomes in federal income tax, less than a third what they paid in 1950. The end result of such practices is a nation in which corporate profits are setting records while typical workers continue to make less than they earned a dozen years ago.
You know there was a time in America when corporations paid taxes, no lie. Not anymore even when corporate profits have been growing per annum at a 20 percent rate. In fact, to find a year when corporations were grabbing as great a share of America’s income as they’re grabbing now, you have to go back to 1950. In the 1950s, the average corporation paid about 40 percent in annual taxes. Now, major U.S. corporations actually pay about 12 percent in taxes. Why is this a problem, well in 2011, the Institute for Policy Studies, reported that 25 major U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid in corporate income taxes. Then we can take alook at NYC where the number of residents receiving food stamps has more than doubled over the past decade under Mayor Bloomberg, according to data released yesterday. Now, 1.8 million receive food stamps, a jump from 800,000 in 2002, and the Independent Budget Office data show. But 99 percent of African Americans believe their President even against fact that the economy is growing. But it is not and if I accept this premise, then for whom is it growing?
First, the cost of the federally funded food-stamp program in places like NYC had increased dramatically to $3.4 billion from $1.28 billion over the past decade. True, naysayers and other average minded individuals reinforced on reciting lessor proofs proffered my weaker minds will say look at the stock market. I in return will say, yes, look at it. But reality notes that the stock market is not a good indicator for overall wealth of Americans since the average American’s wealth, if the happen to own a home is in home equity - real estate values are still down about $5.5 trillion from their peak. So thinking about, one has to ask if the economy is doing so well and growing as Obama describes it, why then are there over 47 million people in the US living on food assistance to survive. It is clear they are not obtaining any of this wealth.
The Administration is a top down machine just like it was when Ronald Reagan started the practice. The US financial system is buttressed upon trillions of dollars of bailouts and loan that result in risky speculation that cause incessantly financial bubble after bubble. Right now, America has a record debt of $16.7 trillion. Maybe this is why as quiet as it is kept, the Obama administration has announced policy that would allow the federal government to control private citizens 401k’s.
Plainly stated, it is the cost of borrowing money itself that has bankrupted Cyprus, Ireland, Spain and Italy. As it stands, the same shackles of debt are on the hands and feet of the US government and if history is any indication from a policy purview, the people will be the ones to pay for it. But this won’t happen, Obama and Bernanke are so stuck on “quantitative easing” even when they know and data points out that it is just making money out of thin air via a few zeroes added via a computer monitor. The problem with today’s QE is that it has put money into the pockets of the big fat Wall Street bankers but not into the pockets of consumers. What we need is to obviate all public debt and let the corporations and banks keep theirs and let them deal with the problems they created as a fiat. I mean default on the public debt has worked in Iceland, Argentina, Ecuador, and Russia, among other countries.
But this all makes too much sense and we African Americans don’t care if it hasn’t anything to do with a singer, rapper or anything on television. I know, I asked all of my classes if they were aware of what had occurred in Cyprus: one asked, “you mean Cyprus Hill?” I responded “naw Negro, Cyprus not Cyprus Hill.” Cyprus may be just the start. As of now banks are closed until Thursday. We will have to see if a run starts again and if it spreads to other European nations, if so, it could be the end of the Eurozone and the start of the demise of the US economy. Two years ago we exported 40 percent of our goods and services, this year its down to 21 percent.
Now I know many will ask, “What does that have to do with me?” A lot and I will attempt to explain, albeit I know it may be difficult for many of us African Americans because we never heard of Cyprus, care or know anything of substance of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, but such should be no excuse. See what happened over the weekend was that a group of EZ leaders, the IMF and newly elected President of the small tiny island nation with a GDP the size of Vermont and a population the size of Philly agreed to force all with a bank account to pay for the government’s debt. Banking will never be the same if folk can’t truth the banks and since they saw the could not trust the EZ, IMF, government or the banks they started to pull all of their loot out.
The EU central bank has decided it is ok for big banks to take money out of the accounts of private citizens to pay for the debt of the nation they live in. Yes that right, all under the guise of it being a new tax. Strange since taxes are the result of political legislation and don’t go back in time. But that is what the large global banks are doing and if they can do it there, they can do it here, especially given Obama’s lack of gonads to even prosecute and arrest bankers. Even funnier is the fact that the banks are taking citizen’s money for loans they did not ask for and which the banks knew were bad when they first made them to the government of Cyprus.
Some will naively assert that this is America and it could or would never happen here. Surprise, it already did, last year from on one of Obama’s boys – John Corzine of MF Global. What Corzine did is what we see happening in Cyprus right now – bank account seizure (tax) without due process. Thus if it can be done in Cyprus, it can and will be done in Italy, Ireland, Spain and even the US, since bankers who caused all this nonsense with the assistance of inept politicians will seek to get all their money from the governments they loaned them too to cover for the losses of the zillions of different complex papers they created that were then and still today basically worthless. But yawl don’t hear me though.
What I can say factually that the present Administration, as the last four are for the fat cat bankers and Corporations. Just from IRS statistics we know that Americans who made over $10 million in 2010 paid on average just under 24 percent of their incomes in federal income tax, less than a third what they paid in 1950. The end result of such practices is a nation in which corporate profits are setting records while typical workers continue to make less than they earned a dozen years ago.
You know there was a time in America when corporations paid taxes, no lie. Not anymore even when corporate profits have been growing per annum at a 20 percent rate. In fact, to find a year when corporations were grabbing as great a share of America’s income as they’re grabbing now, you have to go back to 1950. In the 1950s, the average corporation paid about 40 percent in annual taxes. Now, major U.S. corporations actually pay about 12 percent in taxes. Why is this a problem, well in 2011, the Institute for Policy Studies, reported that 25 major U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid in corporate income taxes. Then we can take alook at NYC where the number of residents receiving food stamps has more than doubled over the past decade under Mayor Bloomberg, according to data released yesterday. Now, 1.8 million receive food stamps, a jump from 800,000 in 2002, and the Independent Budget Office data show. But 99 percent of African Americans believe their President even against fact that the economy is growing. But it is not and if I accept this premise, then for whom is it growing?
First, the cost of the federally funded food-stamp program in places like NYC had increased dramatically to $3.4 billion from $1.28 billion over the past decade. True, naysayers and other average minded individuals reinforced on reciting lessor proofs proffered my weaker minds will say look at the stock market. I in return will say, yes, look at it. But reality notes that the stock market is not a good indicator for overall wealth of Americans since the average American’s wealth, if the happen to own a home is in home equity - real estate values are still down about $5.5 trillion from their peak. So thinking about, one has to ask if the economy is doing so well and growing as Obama describes it, why then are there over 47 million people in the US living on food assistance to survive. It is clear they are not obtaining any of this wealth.
The Administration is a top down machine just like it was when Ronald Reagan started the practice. The US financial system is buttressed upon trillions of dollars of bailouts and loan that result in risky speculation that cause incessantly financial bubble after bubble. Right now, America has a record debt of $16.7 trillion. Maybe this is why as quiet as it is kept, the Obama administration has announced policy that would allow the federal government to control private citizens 401k’s.
Plainly stated, it is the cost of borrowing money itself that has bankrupted Cyprus, Ireland, Spain and Italy. As it stands, the same shackles of debt are on the hands and feet of the US government and if history is any indication from a policy purview, the people will be the ones to pay for it. But this won’t happen, Obama and Bernanke are so stuck on “quantitative easing” even when they know and data points out that it is just making money out of thin air via a few zeroes added via a computer monitor. The problem with today’s QE is that it has put money into the pockets of the big fat Wall Street bankers but not into the pockets of consumers. What we need is to obviate all public debt and let the corporations and banks keep theirs and let them deal with the problems they created as a fiat. I mean default on the public debt has worked in Iceland, Argentina, Ecuador, and Russia, among other countries.
But this all makes too much sense and we African Americans don’t care if it hasn’t anything to do with a singer, rapper or anything on television. I know, I asked all of my classes if they were aware of what had occurred in Cyprus: one asked, “you mean Cyprus Hill?” I responded “naw Negro, Cyprus not Cyprus Hill.” Cyprus may be just the start. As of now banks are closed until Thursday. We will have to see if a run starts again and if it spreads to other European nations, if so, it could be the end of the Eurozone and the start of the demise of the US economy. Two years ago we exported 40 percent of our goods and services, this year its down to 21 percent.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Government Schools and Concentration Camps, I mean Classes
Me, I was reading before first grade, learned addition, subtraction, division, fractions and square roots all at home. Not to mention I learned every type of rock, plant, animal and chemical there was – all at home and prior to any formal government school instruction. I call it government schools because that is what my folks used to call it. They made it clear that the government public schools (at least in the 1960s) didn’t really want to teach African Americans anything of value. So it was common place to learn at home and hope the school supplemented that lesson. Those days are gone and now we have forgotten the mandates of government public schools – to do the bid of the state. Regardless if that means suspending African America males disproportionately to other races, sending students into severely overcrowded class rooms, and graduating a population with a high school degree but 80 percent of the graduates can’t read or do math on a functional grade level when in college.
Even as a kid (and yes I read Hegel at age eleven), I understood the Hegelian Dialectic or "Consensus Process." Simply put it is plain old brainwashing. To quote William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906 (1835-1909), “Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.” But what could be expected, the political father of the modern day public government education system was Woodrow Wilson. As then president of Princeton and addressing the Federation of High School teachers he stated: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks,' thus designing a school system that would prevent 'the masses' from learning anything liberating when they got there. Even the courts assert such. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in its Palmdale School District opinion, November 2, 2005 read: a “parents…”fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished. The constitution does not vest parents with the authority to interfere with a public school decision as to how it will provide information to its students or what information it will provide, in its classrooms or otherwise [See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 205].
The reality is that with a closed educational system we will never have an open political system. But politicians and leading educators in history didn’t hide this fact. It was John D. Rockefeller, whose family ironically founded the National Education Association, who said: "I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers." Even Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence even advocated that “our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property.”
This our hypocrisy, on the one hand broadly proclaiming the importance of individuality yet at the same time ignoring that we promote a one-size-fits-all schooling that is forced on us. Thus we proclaim our schools are free when they are not, over-looking that a "free education" is nothing more than a state-owned and socialized education. I suggest this because if the state pays and provides the area of what should be instructed, then they can only accomplish what John Stuart Mill characterized as shaping “people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.” This is not hard to see, as a parent or a teacher, it is obvious that as Curriculums become more standardized, government from the county to the feds end up having more and more control in the schooling process – notice how I didn’t say education. And since the public school system is funded by tax dollars, the more teachers and administrators are protected and seen as the main stakeholders as compared to the students and parents. It is supply and demand in reverse.
In last year’s state of the Union address, President Obama advocated that every state should require that “all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18,” which in simple terms is a federal. This is a bad idea and an omen. On the real, government public schooling isn’t education at all and serves to advance political dogma in the form of reducing opposition to wealth transfers via the old communist instructional tactic that such is the American democratic way (namely because systems of state-controlled and managed schools will only be free to teach whatever the state desires).
The Public government school System is in creation to continue “social re-engineering of the minds of our children. Folk forget or rather don’t know that the government public education machine prevalent today is rooted in what Massachusetts did around 1850, and that the people resisted, even with guns until the 1880's when the state militia forcibly took children to school. I can even give a real life example. My daughters school is teaching that General Olgethorpe was a great man. Ironically I had talked to her about it when she was in the first grade when she asked “who invented Georgia.” I told her about Oglethorpe, his treachery and the manner in which helped to colonize (take Georgia from the people who lived there) America. I received a not from her teacher indicating that my daughter, all seven years old of her stood up and informed here teacher that General Oglethorpe was not a hero in her eyes as the school was attempting to teach. The teacher shared it with the other teachers in the school and she asked me if we talked about that type of stuff a lot. I responded yeas, and she knows all the halogens on the periodic table also.
If America was truly free, then Obama would not make such a statement - a free nation doesn’t compel parents to send their children to school. If history is any indication and the objectives of the individuals I quoted are on the inside looking out, then it is no wonder that in most cases if one is an African American in an urban areas, our kids generally receive a poor quality of education. Making a segregated world exist even if the law states otherwise for the gap between the haves and have-nots, is growing. Some states are so open with it that they have set different standards of academic performance based on racial ethnicity. Other states have even stopped teaching certain subjects like algebra based on race. Maybe this is why the government and others are against home schooling, because it makes people think for themselves and produces people like me. I do not want to even think of where I would have been if my parents and realitives had not instructed me, or taught me the constitution at age 9 or how to hunt or fish. I know for certain I would not have learned such sitting in a Government Concentration Camps, I mean Classes, especially if I expected them to teach instead of school me.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
SEO Killed the Validity of African American Urban Media
Recently I was informed that articles and essays I have been writing, content wise, for the past 30 years, would no longer be published in an urban newspaper I have been writing for over the past 20 years since its inception. I would place links but I don't want to reinforce what many already know. The reason given was that my articles were not receiving enough page views. Never mind that over the past two weeks I cited at least eight that received on average 5000 views – this was the reason I was provided. The specific articles they directed my attention to were on the “sequestration,” the anti-biotic resistant virus becoming for prevenient,” the death of an openly gay black Mississippi mayoral candidate, Chicago Public Schools starting to teach sex education to five year-olds, and new research on how sugar in immediate environment contributes to increase risk of diabetes’s.
I have heard this before; from the same news outlet which once informed me that the essay of health risked associated with eating fast foods wouldn’t be run because many of their advertisers were major fast food corporations. And another urban outlet that which noted that I am too honest in pointing out breeches in President Obama’s social contract and specific neglect of African Americans via his Keynesian economic approach.
Why? All because of what is called Search Engine Optimization – SEO. It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search enginesAlong time ago MTV played its first music video – “video killed radio. Today SEO is killing the African American journalist and media platform. I find this both diseased and neglectful of the needs of the African American community. First, being more concerned with page views instead of content implies that we desire for African Americans to be ill-informed, celebrity and reality TV addicted consumerist. Truth be told, this is our problem. Consumption, specifically the consumption of pathology, infection and decay affiliated with taking in mental stimuli that serves no benefit other than to promote, vanity, materialism and downright ignorance in the effort to entertain.
Entertaining the masses is more important, via obtaining page views than empowering the masses. Now what is comical is the content directed towards African Americans as steered by Urban media that gets the most page views include the following: Weekly celebrity instagram photos, what twitter is saying (as if twitter is a person) about Blu Ivy baby pictures, Celebrity boob jobs, Celebrities with fake hair and the ubiquitous reality TV show update. Ironic unlike other ethnic groups, African American community media outlets top web portals typically attended to celebrity, music and entertainment. No other racial breakdown of topical preferences shows similar levels of interest toward celebrity idolization. I mean just take the top ten mainstream web sites and compare them to the top ten African websites (in terms of page views). Meaning our appeal that we direct services is on the pathology of voyeurism, given the top AA blogs content addresses, fashion, celebrity, gossip, music and beauty.
Urban media and news have dropped the ball and have followed the path of radio after the introduction of video (that is in urban communities). SEO and page views and the bottom line is all that matters. So what little kids blow each other’s heads off every day with illegal weapons, let’s play music about killing each other daily, or put and article up to see what’s Drake’s latest instagram post. Urban media is feeding into the massive levels of African American consumerism and excessive voyeurism in a time of higher than ever African American poverty, homelessness, incarceration, HIV and illiteracy not to mention violence. The goal is to spread visual garbage in print media (because posts that get most page views have pictures and no words).
By following the lead of mainstream media, urban media is serving as an accomplice to mental genocide. It pushes the agenda of what is commercial and popular instead of what is essential. In essence waiting for whatever it is mainstream media tells us is important for us to know and accepting their definition of what issues, topics and subjects, and running with the ball. In the past we would be out in front of mainstream government news simply because they left out our story from our perspective. Thus we broke news and information that was important for our community’s survival.
All of this reminds me of something I am often reminded of. It was Carter G. Woodson who said, “If you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his action…If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the backdoor. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” Forgetting that in times prior one couldn’t enter through the front door, has lead us to make backdoors today big and wide for all to enter. The demand for page views and being enamored by SEO has destroyed the overall tenor of the distribution of news and information; in fact actually disseminating information by urban media may actually already be in the grave.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Friday, March 08, 2013
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Black Eight Year old Girl handcuffed, jailed for two hours
Rickman was handcuffed and held by Alton Police for two hours after throwing a tantrum at Love Joy Elementary School late Tuesday morning school. School officials, not being able to deal with the 70 lbs. Girl called the Alton Police to handle the situation.
She was even taken to jail in the back of a police squad car with her hands cuffed behind her back. The police would not allow her to get her coat. According to KMOV News in St. Louis, Her guardian said, “Her eyes were swollen from her crying and her wrists had welts on them,” said Rickman’s guardian, “They cuffed her feet too and she asked to use the restroom several times and was ignored.”
The police officer believes he took appropriate action. School officials could not be found for a comment.
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