Barack Obama’s tax plan calls for a reduction of taxes on middle-class families (families that earn less than $250,000), and the ending of Bush’s tax cuts for the high income earners.
Is this “fair?” I don’t think anybody “wants” to pay taxes. But taxes are a necessary evil; in order for government to operate, someone has to pay them.
In considering how the tax burden should be distributed, these graphs provide some useful perspective:
Income for the top 5% of income earners has gone up almost 100% since 1980, but the share of federal taxes they pay has gone up by less than 60% during that time.
I wish we didn’t have to tax the rich, or anybody. But since the 1980s, it seems they’re the only ones making more money.
There are days in Florida when you feel like you are living in the 19th Century. Here is part of the text of an e-mail sent by the Chairman of the Hillsborough Republican Party (this is county that contains Tampa).
THE THREAT:
HERE IN TEMPLE TERRACE, FL OUR REPUBLICAN HQ IS ONE BLOCK AWAY FROM OUR LIBRARY, WHICH IS AN EARLY VOTING SITE.
I SEE CARLOADS OF BLACK OBAMA SUPPORTERS COMING FROM THE INNER CITY TO CAST THEIR VOTES FOR OBAMA. THIS IS THEIR CHANCE TO GET A BLACK PRESIDENT AND THEY SEEM TO CARE LITTLE THAT HE IS AT MINIMUM, SOCIALIST, AND PROBABLY MARXIST IN HIS CORE BELIEFS. AFTER ALL, HE IS BLACK–NO EXPERIENCE OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS–BUT HE IS BLACK.
I ALSO SEE YOUNG COLLEGE STUDENTS AND THEIR PROFESSORS FROM USF PARKING THEIR CARS WITH THE PROMINENT ‘OBAMA’ BUMPER STICKERS. THE STUDENTS ARE ENTHUSIASTIC TO BE VOTING IN A HISTORIC ELECTION WHERE THERE MAY BE THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT.
“On the news yesterday, they revealed a potential neo-Nazi plot against Barack Obama, and then they gave more details on the racially-motivated Ashley Todd hoax. It made my heart pound. My blood pressure rose precipitously,” said anthropologist Wende Marshall, professor of public health services, University of Virginia.
Barack Obama’s candidacy represents a pivotal moment in history, and many African American women are having a visceral reaction to the final, frantic days of the presidential campaign.
African-Americans could end up holding a majority of policymaking positions in Richland County, South Carolina this year, continuing a shift toward a younger generation of black leaders. Richland is the location of South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia.
From the General Assembly to County Council and City Hall, voters this decade have selected more black candidates, some of them breaking through racial barriers to win in white-majority districts.
These politicians are different from those who came of age in the Civil Rights era.
They are Democrats who don’t toe the party line. They run a different style of campaign. And their pragmatic approach to politics sometimes rubs those who came before them the wrong way.
“They were fighting for social equality while we are fighting for economic equality,” said Barry A. Walker Sr., 47, an Irmo town councilman who owns a restaurant and blues club in downtown Columbia. “I’m not running on the fact I couldn’t sit at the lunch counter. I can eat where I want — but wonder if I can afford it.”
The problem for the GOP is as I stated back in March in Politico in my article titled, “Obama Does Not Have a Race Problem, the GOP Does.” The proverbial chickens have come home to roost for my party because of years of “southern strategy” politics, neglect of black voters, and catering to mostly white southern conservative constituencies. This has laid the groundwork that anything McCain & Palin say will be wrongly construed as “race baiting” or worse.
I also reject that using Senator Obama’s middle name is somehow a racist thing to do. It is as former U.S. Civil Rights Chairman & longtime liberal Democrat Mary Frances Berry (who is also black) stated on CNN on Wednesday, October 8th, “I do not think it is racial “code” language to call Senator Obama by his name. After all it is his name and if he is elected –we will call him Barack Hussein Obama—as we did Lyndon Baines Johnson, George W. Bush, George HW Bush, and William Jefferson Clinton.”
What the past two weeks in American politics has proven to me is that we are still in some ways two separate and unequal Americas—less so on race—and much more so on social class and geographic divisions. That is key to understanding the McCain-Palin strategy. We all need to take a collective national breath and get a grip. We are in very serious and very dangerous economic times—I want the President who is going to lead America to brighter days and sustained prosperity—I don’t care what color he is or how old he is—like most Americans, I want results.
• Concerning a comment from the above link, {I do not think it is racial “code” language to call Senator Obama by his middle name}: the use of Obama’s middle name is not racial code, it’s religious code. One of the undercurrents in this year’s election season is religious bigotry against Muslims in particular and non-Christians in general. Colin Powell touched on this eloquently is his endorsement of Obama.
Perhaps the most horrific case of religious bigotry on the campaign is Republican North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole’s “Godless” ad attack on challenger Kay Hagan. The ad, in all its hateful glory, is here
The ad demonizes atheists, and implies that Hagan herself is “godless”. It has been condemned by GOP operatives like Ed Rollins and Alex Castellanos, and rightfully so.
This video from the AP discusses black voter turnout in Ohio.
This could be key for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s chances to win this state in November.
In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry got “only” 84% of the black vote in Ohio; meanwhile, he got 88% of the African American vote nation wide. Kerry wound up losing in Ohio by just two points (Kerry got 48.7% of the overall Ohio vote, versus 50.8% for Republican presidential candidate George Bush).
Had he won Ohio, Kerry would have been elected president.
Obama will certainly get more than 84% of the black vote in Ohio, and an expected increase in black voter turnout will also help him.
It remains to be seen if that will be enough for Obama to win this state. Kerry lost the Ohio white vote in 2004; Obama will undoubtedly lose the Ohio white vote this year. So Obama will need a good showing among black voters to get a “W” there for this election.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies recently conducted a National Opinion Poll which surveyed 750 African American adults from across the country. The survey was conducted between September 16 and October 6, 2008. The survey covers a range of topics including the politics of the 2008 election and various issues, including education.
This is a breakdown of the partisan identification for those in the survey:
African American Political Party Identification – 2000, 2004, 2008 Source:The 2008 Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies National Opinion Poll
Note: The table shows the percentage of survey respondents who consider themselves to be Democrat, Independent, or Republican. The numbers in the “Total” column reflect the count of persons who were surveyed.
Democratic identification among African Americans has grown from 63% in 2004 to 73% now. The percentage of blacks who identify themselves as Republican is down from 10% in 2004 to 4% now.
And what is the voter preference for president? From the Survey:
Suppose the 2008 Presidential election were being held today. Who would you like to see win, the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama or the Republican candidate, John McCain?
• Obama: 84%
• McCain: 6%
• Don’t Know: 10%
Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president has re-ignited the discussion of African American support for the Democratic and Republican Parties. It’s useful to take a quick look at black party identification patterns prior this election, as a way to provide some perspective on the eventual voting numbers we’ll see this year. Then we’ll be able to gauge just how much of an impact Barack Obama had on black voting behavior.
The following two charts are from reports prepared by the Joint Center for Political Studies. They show trendlines in African American identification with the Democratic and Republican Parties up to 2004.
Chart 1: Percentage of Blacks Who Identify Themselves as Democrats
Chart 2: Percentage of Blacks Who Identify Themselves as Republicans
What’s interesting is this: African Americans under the age of 30 were increasingly identifying themselves as Democrats through 2004. Meanwhile, the African American population overall was trending toward being less Democrat, and more Republican.
That’s an ominous trend for the Republican Party. Given the Obama campaign’s success in engaging both young and black voters, there will almost certainly be an increase in under-30 African Americans who identify themselves as Democrats following this election. The GOP’s job of attracting a new generation of black voters has become much more difficult – and it wasn’t easy before now!
This is in addition to the bad news for Republicans that the Obama candidacy seems to bringing many older blacks back into the Democratic camp.
While the 74 percent of African Americans who identify with the Democratic Party in the Joint Center’s 2004 National Opinion Poll is down from the recent high point (2000), there is ample reason for the Democrats to feel confident about their black support (especially with Senator Barack Obama as their 2008 presidential nominee), because the previous decline in support from young African Americans has been reversed. The 74 percent of African Americans who identify with the Democratic Party consist of 63 percent who clearly identify with the party, and 11 percent who are political independents who “lean” more to the Democratic Party than to the GOP.
Prior to 2004, declines in black Democratic identification had been driven by younger, i.e., under 35 year old, African Americans. In Joint Center national opinion polls conducted prior to 2004, only 50 to 60 percent of 18-to-25-year-old African Americans identified with the Democratic Party (Figure 2). However, since the Bush Administration launched the Iraq war, younger African Americans have moved decisively leftward, with 75 percent identifying with the Democrats in 2004. In the 2004 election, 18-29 year-olds were the only age cohort where Kerry defeated Bush.
VOTING IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Between the presidential election years of 2000 and 2004, the black Democratic presidential vote declined from 90 to 88 percent, which does not represent a statistically significant change. This suggests that the relationship between the Democratic Party and African Americans remained on very solid footing during those years. The black Democratic vote since 1964 has remained in the range of 90 ± 5 percent, except when H. Ross Perot ran as a third-party candidate. With Senator Barack Obama at the top of the Democratic ticket this fall, black support is likely to increase from these already high levels.
The prospects for an increase in the black Republican vote in 2008 are nonexistent. While black public opinion is neither as liberal nor as uniform as observers in the press, politics, and academia have thought, the poor economy, high gas prices, Bush’s unpopularity, and the war in Iraq—coupled with Obama’s popularity—suggest a possible 50 percent decline in black Republican support.
The Census Bureau estimates that in 2007, the United States had an African American population of 38,756,452. The total US population was estimated at 301,621,157. African Americans are 12.8% of the US population.
Blacks are the nation’s second largest minority. Hispanics are the largest minority. They number 45,504,311, and are 15.1% of the US population.
The count of African Americans (38,756,452) only includes those who identify themselves as African American. The Census Bureau now allows persons to be identified as multiracial. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 1,987,680 persons who are multiracial and have some African American heritage.
When multiracial persons are included, the count of African Americans comes to 40,744,132, which is 13.5% of the population.
85% of African Americans (not including multiracial persons) reside in just 18 states, all of which have at least a million black residents:
Almost 9% of all African Americans reside in New York state. Half of all African Americans reside in eight states: New York, Florida, Georgia, Texas, California, North Carolina, Illinois, and Maryland.
This table shows the change in the share of African American residents for the million person states since 2000:
The black reverse migration phenomenon we hear about is not so much a move from the north to the south, but rather a move to Florida, Georgia, and Texas from just about everywhere else, at least in this decade. Those three states have a higher share of the black population than they had in 2000.
Illinois, Michigan and Louisiana (thanks to Hurricane Katrina) have lost the most “black share,” but several southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) have lost share as well.
35 of the 41 black members in the House of Representatives come from the 18 sates with a million African American residents (note, this doesn’t include the delegates from the District of Columbia and Virgin Islands):
New York: 4 African American Congressmen
Florida: 3
Georgia: 4
Texas: 3
California: 4
North Carolina: 2
Illinois: 3
Maryland: 2
Virginia: 1
Michigan: 2
Ohio: 1
Louisiana: 1
Pennsylvania: 1
South Carolina: 1
New Jersey: 1
Alabama: 1
Mississippi: 1
In order for John McCain to win the presidential election, he has to win in one or two key northern states. So the McCain campaign is pulling out all the stops to eke out a win in places like Pennsylvania, for example.
What does “pulling out all the stops” look like? How about this:
AP, PHILADELPHIA – Pennsylvania Republicans are disavowing an e-mail sent to Jewish voters that likens a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to events that led up to the Holocaust.
“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008,” the e-mail reads. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year!”
A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was “Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA – Victory 2008.”
The story from the Associated Press notes that the Pennsylvania Republican Party was for the mailing before they were against it:
Political consultant Bryan Rudnick, identified as the strategist who helped write the message, was reached Saturday night and confirmed he no longer works for the party, which employed him a few weeks ago as a consultant to do outreach to Jewish voters.
“I had authorization from party officials” to send the e-mail, Rudnick said, but he declined to say who had signed off on it. “I’m not looking to drag anyone else through the mud, so I’m not naming names right now,” he said.
This comes on the heels of the story of an attempted hoax by McCain campaign volunteer Ashley Todd in Pittsburgh. Todd, a 20-year-old college student , had claimed that she was mugged at an ATM by a large black man who, upon seeing a McCain sticker on her car, scratched the letter “B” — for “Barack” — on her face.
If that story sounds unreal, it’s because it was. Todd has since admitted it was all a hoax.
Questions remian, though, about the complicity of the Republican Party in publicizing the hoax to the press. As reported at the website Talking Points Memo (TPM):
John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.
John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.
The McCain spokesperson’s claims… (are) significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.
It seems that the communications staff for the Pennsylvania Republican Party has been very busy lately.
Fortunately, the hoax was revealed before the police went on a witch hunt to find a “big black guy” who might have been responsible for the fake assault.
I’ve spoken with a lot of folks about this. Are these acts by the McCain campaign racist? No, not intentionally. But it does show that, in this time of desperation, some members of the McCain campaign have lost their moral compass, and will in fact say anything and do anything to get their candidate elected. I hope the voters are taking notice.
In the wake of the mortgage meltdown, many (overwhelmingly conservative and Republican) critics have tried to make scapegoats out of “unqualified minority home purchasers” in general, and the Community Reinvestment Act, in particular. The CRA is a federal law which was designed to expand home-ownership for minorities in light of a long history of discriminatory lending by American banks.
This idea has been debunked as being wrong and even offensive.Marc Morial, who heads the National Urban League, gave compelling testimony before the Senate last week in which he defended the CRA, and decried that black borrowers were the subject of “blame the victim” attacks.
I hoped that Morial’s remarks, which I heard on C-SPAN radio, might be put on YouTube so I could post it to this blog. No such luck.
I thought that maybe the NUL website would have a transcript of his testimony, parts of which I could cut and paste onto this blog. No such luck.
What’s up with that?
In times like these, groups like the NUL should be taking advantage of modern communication tools, like YouTube, to spread its message. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Recently, I’ve been reading the book The Practical Progressive: How to Build a Twenty-first Century Political Movement by Erica Payne. Payne makes the comment:
After the defeat of Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, conservative philanthropists began to build a set if ideologically-aligned institutions-academic centers, think tanks, legal advicacy institutions, watchdog groups, single issue groups, community organizations and media vehicles-to change the intellectual and political climate of the country.
In the last 40 years, this “infrastructure” has supported and promoted conservative ideology so effectively, that it ultimately assured its political dominance.
In 2002 progressives began to wake up to this enormous structural disparity. We began to understand that our candidates are losing not because they were bad candidates but because they were structurally outmatched.
We were sending David to fight Goliath without a slingshot. So we began to build new institutions outside of politics and to transform old organizations to meet the challenge.
Payne’s book contains profiles of several dozen progressive organizations, such a ACORN and ColorOfChange.org, which are part of the new “progressive infrastructure” that is working for positive change in our society.
The NUL was conspicuously absent from the groups which are included in the book. Apparently, it is not sufficiently transformed to be considered a reliable force among the network of progressive groups.
I’ll discuss this some more in a follow-up to this post. But the point I want to make now is this: It’s past time for groups like the NUL to evolve into effective 21st century vehicles for African American advocacy. That’s not just my opinion; the belief is widespread among many observers in the black community. Reportedly, the membership in these organizations is declining, and their reputation is taking a hit as well.
I’m not expecting the NUL or other older black groups like the NAACP or SCLC to change overnight. But is it too much to expect that these groups use Internet platforms like YouTube to capture and publish their message en masse? If they’re unable to do basic tasks like that, then real change within these organizations is going to be a long time coming.
This picture goes back to the 1960s, in Lousiana. The picture’s caption: “Reverend Joe Carter, expecting a visit from the Klan after he dared to register to vote, stands guard on his front porch, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.”
Reverend Joe Carter was the first African American in the twentieth century to register to vote in West Feliciana, even though two-thirds of the parish’s residents were black.
After his registration, there were concerns about what reprisals, if any, would come from white segregationists. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan burned at least one cross in response to Carter’s ground-breaking act.
The night after Carter registered to vote, vigilant neighbors scattered in the woods near his farmhouse, which was at the end of a long dirt road, to help him if trouble arrived. “If they want a fight, we’ll fight,” Joe Carter told photographer Bob Adelman. Hence, the picture of Carter on his porch, rifle in hand.
“If I have to die, I’d rather die for right, ” said Carter. “I value my life more since I became a registered voter. A man is not a first-class citizen, a number one citizen unless he is a voter.”
After Election Day passed, Carter said he “thanked the Lord that he let me live long enough to vote.”
This picture is from an excellent book titled Mine Eyes Have Seen: Bearing Witness to the Struggle for Civil Rights. The book features pictures from Life magazine photographer Bob Adelman, and chronicle the civil rights struggle in the South and urban black life in the North.
The book is moving and poignant, and reminds us of how far we’ve come. Was it really only 30-40 years that black people faced death threats merely for exercising the right to vote?
I highly recommend that you get this book, and even more, that you share it with the young. Many of them think that struggle is futile. They need to get an earful and eyeful from Rev Joe Carter.
McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. This period is also referred to as the Second Red Scare, and coincided with increased fears about communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents.
Originally coined to criticize the actions of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” later took on a more general meaning, not necessarily referring to the conduct of Joseph McCarthy alone.
During this time many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies.
- Wikipedia
A 1947 comic book published by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society warning of the supposed dangers of a Communist takeover.
—
There’s a saying from the Greeks that, whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Well, it seems like the Republicans are pretty mad right now.
And when Republicans get mad, they turn to one of their old stand-bys: characterizing Democrats and liberals as anti-American, unpatriotic, socialist, communist scum.
The poster child for this shameless post-McCarthyism has become Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota. This is from an interview of Bachmann with Chris Matthews on the MSNBC show Hardball:
MATTHEWS: You believe Barack Obama may – because of this relationship (to Bill Ayers) – have anti-American views?
BACHMANN: Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views.
MATTHEWS: How many in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti-American? You already suspect Barack Obama — is he alone or do you think there are others?
BACHMANN: The news media should do a penetrating expose … on the views of the people in Congress and find out if they’re pro-America or anti-America.
Although Bachmann has gotten the most notoriety for her comments, she’s certainly not alone in playing the McCarthy card. At a fund raiser in North Carolina, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation”… a comment that, by logical extension, means city and suburban folks-the types who vote for Democrats-are “fake” and “unpatriotic” Americans.
Keep in mind, this is coming from high level elected Republican officials. It’s not hard to imagine that even worse is being said by state and local Republican officials. (And we won’t even talk about what’s happening on talk radio.)
Now, there was a time when Democrats and liberals would cower in fear at these kinds of attacks. These are the same tactics that, after all, helped to spark the Reagan Revolution and get George W Bush elected and re-elected. But that was then.
Are you better off now than you were before George W. Bush took office? No. Heck no.
In an earlier post, I pointed to statistics which showed how the American economy deteriorated during the George Bush administration. But that looked at the overall economy. It didn’t focus on how the economic condition of African Americans was affected during the Bush era.
On all major economic indicators—income, wages, employment, and poverty—African Americans were worse off in 2007 than they were in 2000. Although the American economy has grown signifi cantly since 2000, African Americans have not shared in America’s prosperity. The current economic downturn and the subprime mortgage crisis bode ill for the immediate future for African Americans.
Overall, the economic condition of African Americans has worsened since 2000. Wage growth for the median black worker has stagnated, incomes and employment have declined, and poverty has increased. This Briefing Paper shows:
• African American median family income declined by $404 or 1% between 2000 and 2007. Th is is the first decline in black median family income in a business cycle of this length since World War II. Single, African American, maleheaded families saw the largest percentage decline—9.1%—in median family income.
• Worker productivity grew 19.2% between 2000 and 2007, but wage growth for American workers generally and African American workers specifically has stagnated. For black workers 25 to 54 years old, the median black weekly wage fell 0.6% from 2000 to 2007.
• The African American unemployment rate increased by 0.7 percentage points between 2000 and 2007, while the employment rate shows a 2.4 percentage-point decline, or three times the number not working indicated by the change in the unemployment rate.
• The black home ownership rate, after increasing to 49.1% in 2004, dropped to 47.2% in 2007. Because the foreclosures from the housing crisis have continued into 2008 and will likely continue into 2009, the African American home ownership rate is also likely to decline into 2009.
• The tight labor market of the late 1990s led to the largest decline in African American poverty since the 1960s. From 1989 to 2000, the black family poverty rate fell by 8.5 percentage points. In contrast, from 2000 to 2007, the African American family poverty rate increased 2.8 percentage points.
• Crime and criminal justice policies are increasingly entangled with the economic outcomes of African Americans and particularly of black men. If one adjusts the employment rate of African American men by counting men in prison as non-working, the already low African American male employment rate drops by about 3 percentage points.
This paper was released in mid-September, and pre-dated the economic crisis that led to the so-called Wall Street bail-out bill. Many experts are saying that economic conditions will probably worsen in the next few months.
There’s an old saying that “when white America catches a cold, Black American catches pneumonia.” If white America goes into a recession… will black America go into a depression? We’ll see…
