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Saturday, September 04, 2004

  $9 Trillion Didn't End Poverty -- What to Do?
The best way to reduce the poverty rate is to convince people to avoid poverty in the first place by finishing school, delaying parenthood, and getting a job (any job). High school dropouts are roughly three times more likely to end up in poverty than are those who complete at least a high school education. A common reason why teens drop out of high school is out-of-wedlock births. Teenage pregnancy initiates a single mother into a life of dependency that is difficult to overcome, especially if she goes on to have additional children. Over half of welfare money is spent on families that began with a teen birth.

Getting a job as a solution to poverty may seem like common sense. Granted, not every job pays a wage that will catapult a family into the middle class. However, every job provides job experience, and that leads to a better job. Maybe today's minimum-wage, service industry employee is not on a track for management. But he is showing that he is a reliable worker who can learn and perform duties, something a future employer will value.
...
So, listen this campaign season as candidates offer their solution to the rise in poverty. Be wary of promises to throw more money at the problem. That clearly doesn't work

  The Population of the United States is 293,027,571

According to Kerry "1.7 million jobs lost since 2000; 1.4 million more people without health insurance; and 1.3 million more in poverty in the past year". So over the last 4 years the number of people in poverty increased by 0.4%. Less than one 1/2 of one percent. Since things are usually twice as bad for black America I will assume our poverty rate has increased by 1%. I question whether these numbers are statistically significant ?


Friday, September 03, 2004

  Sean P Diddy Combs speaks out! on "The O'Reilly Factor"

For me this was my favorite part of the final night of the convention. Bill didn't pull any punches, and neither did Sean. I hope they replay it on the Sunday night best of the week show fox has so you all can see. Sean was very clear about not wanting to be a democrat or a republican. He was very clear that his goal was to make his Citizen Change into an AARP for Americas youth. He pushed the need for education and Bill shot back about all the money being poured into education, and Sean replied simply "I know its going into someone pocket because its not getting into the school" and Bill had no reply. My favorite part was at the end when Bill O'Reilly said "can I call you Mr. Combs" and he thanked him an called him a man of his word. For those who are unaware at the DNC P Diddy interviewed Bill.


  Only 3 Choices

Those who would call us ignorant for supporting Bush in the election are unclear on the concept of voting. Your choice is limited you can't get everything you want. Anyone who is in any relationship knows it involves compromises. The first choice was Nader who I couldn't support because he represented the green party in 2000 and I hate their communistist platform. That leaves me with two choices the Bush, or Kerry.

I have read Kerry website for the past 8 months. I think his plan for tax cuts for corporations is Wrong, with a capital W. I believe most of his policies are not well thought out and except for tax for corporations he wont be able to pass them. On Bush's side he passed the NCLB act with requires school to report the progress of their students and increases federal education funding by 30% or more. I see tax free health savings accounts. I see blacks appointed to high positions of power.

The choice is between Kerry and Bush. And Bush is better for black America, its as simple as that.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

  Sen. Zell Miller's Key Point that the media missed
        Or Why he is angry at the democrats.

In the post game shows they are all asking "why is so mad ?". Well if they listened to his speech and they understood how most American fell about their country instead of living in a leftist media bubble they would get it.
today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

  LOL: Annoy a Liberal


  Slavery is not dead : My Reparation Check
In his book "Disposable People," Bales says ownership is no longer an attractive proposition for most slaveholders because the price of slaves is so low. In 1850, a slave would cost about $40,000 in today's dollars. Now, you can buy a slave for $30 in the Ivory Coast. The glut "has converted them from being the equivalent of buying a car to buying a plastic pen that you use and throw away," he says. That makes maintenance of the "investment" a low priority, and little care is taken for slaves' well-being.
Please read this article on modern day slavery. At least 27 million people are slaves today. It includes a personal story about a boy from the Sudan.

Anyway about reparations, $40,000 in todays dollar was the cost of a slave in 1850. Assuming modest 10% interest rate over 154 years the compunded value of each slave is $183,012,873,563. So each family just needs to calculate how many family members were slaves, multiply that number by 183 billion. They then calculate how many living decendants of those slaves exist and divide their billions between then.


  The GOP's growing rainbow contingent
This year, the Republican National Committee boasts that minorities make up a record 17 percent of the delegates at the New York convention.

Bush's four-year snub of the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus was a calculated move to skirt the civil-rights leadership and make his conservative pro-business pitch to black moderates. Polls consistently show that a sizable percentage of black moderates are pro-life, pro-school prayer, anti-gun control and anti-welfare. Many enthusiastically support school vouchers, three-strikes laws and harsher sentences for crime and drug use. A significant percent oppose gay rights.

During his run for Texas governor (and, later, president), George W. Bush aggressively courted Latino voters, bagging nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote. The GOP took the cue and sharply accelerated the number of black and Latino Republican candidates. In 2002, 20 black and 40 Latino candidates ran as Republicans in national and state elections. They won the lieutenant governorships in Maryland and Ohio. There are Latino Republican caucuses in the Texas and California Legislatures. In Southern California, black Republicans now routinely challenge black Democrats in nearly all state and congressional races.

Democrats will lambaste Republicans for their showcase of African American and Latino delegates at the convention as a kind of minstrel show and a sham. It isn't. America's changing racial realities and political necessity have compelled the Republicans to put their version of the rainbow on display.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

  Understanding 'Middle-Class Squeeze'
Economists have found that people with identical incomes can wind up in very different places financially. A few years ago, Stephen F. Venti and David Wise examined the relationship between income and wealth for people nearing retirement age. If everyone had approximately the same savings behavior, then you would expect that most of the variation in wealth would be due to variation in lifetime income. High earners would have accumulated much more wealth than low earners, but within an income group the differences would be small.

What Venti and Wise found instead was that much of the variation was within an income group. You could find high-income people who had managed to accumulate very little wealth, and vice-versa. As Hal Varian noted, "Mr. Venti and Mr. Wise started their analysis by estimating the lifetime income of each household, then sorted the households into 10 equal-sized groups based on their estimate. Their most striking observation was the extreme variation in total asset accumulation within each income group. For example, the wealth held by the top 10 percent of households in the group just below the median was 35 times the wealth held by the bottom 10 percent of that same income group." To understand this observation, imagine two families with virtually identical incomes annual incomes of $40,000. After several decades one family has accumulated $700,000 in savings for retirement and the other winds up with just $20,000 in savings for retirement.

There is a parallel between the problems of middle-class squeeze and obesity. Self-control is required in order to live within one's means financially and in order to maintain a low body weight. .... Small changes in lifestyle can have large cumulative effects. A family that spends 92 percent of its after-tax income will accumulate substantial savings, while a family that spends 98 percent of its disposable income will not. On the surface, their lifestyles might not seem to differ, but eventually they will end up in very different circumstances.

Similarly, someone may consume 99 percent of the calories that her body needs each day, and someone else may consume 102 percent of the necessary calories. While they appear to be eating almost identical amounts, those two people will end up with very different body masses after several years.

Monday, August 30, 2004

  Tough Love

Today as I surfed the blogsphere I found myself giving out some constructive criticism to two new black bloggers I have been reading, Black Pundit a conservative and Black Introspection a lefty.

I realized I was critiquing both for the same thing. First preaching instead teaching. Second having arguments that are false. As anyone who had a good math teachers knows, how you get to the answer is critical for knowing if you have mastered the material. And they both argue with fact that are wrong, and to conclusions that don't follow the "facts" that they stated.

Each of the need feedback from people who don't already agree with them. So if you have a moment please visit their blogs and give some constructive criticism, if you believe that every black blogger is important.

Anyway these are the post I commented on today. "Black People" and Reparation Checks and How Socialism affects the economy.

Please note my comments to Black Introspection sounds a little harsher but that the only because we already know each other from a previous discussion on his "fallacy of capitalism post".
  The New Black Freedom Fighter

Fellow Conservative Brotherhood member has written an inspirational piece. Check it out.


  Half Full : A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

Please read the whole article its inspirational.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

  Why Koch is on BushÂ’s bandwagon

As I stated before I believe as an Black American the war on terrorism should not determine how you vote. But if you do think the war on terrorism is a top tier issue. You should read why former NYC mayor Ed Koch is voting for Bush.

Koch was surprised and impressed by Bush's resolve after Sept. 11. "He announced the Bush Doctrine -- he said we would go after the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. And he's kept his word." Koch doubts that the leadership of his own party could have mustered the grit to topple the Taliban or drive Saddam Hussein from power, let alone to press on in what is going to be a long and grinding conflict.

"Already, most of the world is caving. If you didn't have Bush standing there, you'd have everybody following Spain and the Philippines" in retreat, he says, trying to appease the terrorists instead of fighting them.

How much of his party does Koch speak for? ... he doesn't think he was the only one dismayed by what he saw at the Democratic convention in July.

From Michael Moore's seat of honor next to Jimmy Carter, to the thunderous applause that greeted Howard Dean, to the 9 out of 10 delegates who want to pull the plug on Iraq, the convention exposed the radical antiwar mindset that dominates the Democratic Party leadership.



  Kerry Can't be trusted: Or Kerry Lies Cubans Die

Notice the date on the above article, I found it on blogdex today. I am not amazed that the CNN and NYTIMES of the world have ignored Kerry's lies, I am just glad that I and a few other people on the web know.

'I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: ``And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.


The saddest part is this really illustrates how weak Kerry will be as a leader. He says he understands nuance but the fact is no bill, or plan will perfect and he seems unwilling or unable to understand that, a leader must be able to act even when the way ahead is not clear.

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