Corporate America's Black Trojan Horse politicians are stampeding through Black America, their saddle bags stuffed with cash. No, we are not talking about Black Republicans. Everybody knows who owns those mangy animals. The Black Trojan Horses we need to fear, the ones who have been broken in by pale, corporate riders, bear the Democratic Party brand. They are a dangerous and growing herd.

Black Republican candidates stand almost no chance of winning in majority African American voting districts. They haven't held a majority Black seat in Congress since 1935. Black Republicans serve only two purposes: they make white swing voters feel good about themselves and, with plenty of cash, they can peel off a small slice of the Black Democratic vote.

But the most serious corporate infiltration of the Black body politic is occurring on the Democratic side. Last month, the corporate Right captured City Hall in Newark, New Jersey. They rode in on the nominally Democratic horse named Cory Booker, who was picked by corporate media as a rising New Black Leader while only a yearling on the city council. Booker has no lineage, no history of progressive political struggle, although he did win praise as a young colt at Ivy League universities. But this Trojan Horse is well trained. He was put through his paces at George Bush's favorite rightwing institution, the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That's the outfit that spent millions, along with Wal-Mart's billionaire Walton family, inventing vouchers as a "Black" issue. Cory Booker was one of the Trojan Horses in the Bradley and Walton stable. They then sent him to the rightwing Manhattan Institute, for grooming, and paraded him in front of the national media. Before he won his second bid for the Newark City Hall Stakes, Cory Booker was already being talked about as a future presidential candidate. When white billionaires back a Black horse, the odds change dramatically.

Corporate money has now bought its way deeply into the Congressional Black Caucus, effectively splitting the Black Democratic body, rendering it incapable of performing as a national voice for African American interests. In the latest disaster, a majority of the Caucus voted with the telecommunications giants, setting the stage for a withering of dissenting opinion on the Internet, and stripping cities of hard-won gains in local access to cable television. Black Democrats, despite their party brand, are joining the Republican herd for the money feeding frenzy. African Americans will have to cut these Trojan Horses out of the herd, or we will find ourselves stampeded off a cliff. For Radio BC, I'm Glen Ford.

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