Category: Cover Story

Our nation’s political leaders are looting the federal treasury and they expect ordinary citizens not to notice. Last week’s coverage of the release of the Social Security and Medicare Trustee’s Report proves one thing about contemporary news: Those who control the mic, control the sound byte…and our perception of reality. Despite the Trustee’s report clearly…

Most of you don’t even know his name. David Scott (rhymes with rot) is the most non-representative Black person in the U.S. Congress. The very worst. Rep. Scott, whose district lies south of Atlanta, runs with a gaggle of renegade rightwing House members that includes Harold Ford, Jr., of Memphis, Alabama’s Artur Davis and fellow…

“Privatization of social security is a road to government abdication, the cause of failed statehood.” – Henry C.K. Liu, “The Business of Private Security,” AsiaTimes. Too often lately in Black America, political discourse has become so parochial – so steeped in petty assessments of marginal advantages that might accrue to some portion of “The Race”…

Tennessee Republican luminaries grumbled that they couldn’t get enough tickets to Memphis’s Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, last Friday’s stop on George Bush’s Social Security privatization tour. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, a GOP U.S. Senate hopeful whose district includes parts of suburban Memphis, failed to appear at her president’s show, claiming she missed her flight…

It is a great mistake to view the Bush regime’s ferocious assaults on Black and poor America as simply a more vicious version of standard Republican behavior since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The Bush crowd is different than their predecessors; they don’t just want to defeat Black political leadership, but to replace it. The mass Black…

Far from ameliorating the crisis afflicting what’s left of organized labor in the United States, a number of “reforms” proposed by some of the nation’s largest unions appear as attempted rollbacks of historic gains won by Blacks, Latinos and women unionists a decade ago. Simply put, the vast changes in AFL-CIO structures demanded by the…

In a transparent bid to boost Republican fortunes among Blacks, billionaire Bob Johnson attempted earlier this year to convene a secret meeting of prominent African Americans at BET headquarters in Washington, DC. obtained a copy of the invitation to the “retreat,” scheduled for January 13 and 14 and ostensibly designed “for the purpose of brainstorming…

“A new survey of 1,001 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that fewer than half said they ‘very closely’ follow news coverage of the military occupation. Less than a third named ‘the war on terror’ or ‘peace in the Mideast’ as the most important issue facing America. Most others preferred…

Just in time for Black History Month, the nation enters a dialogue about race that could have important socioeconomic implications for generations of African Americans. At issue is President Bush’s charge that the Social Security system is unfair to African Americans because they do not live as long as whites and cannot draw down on…

The push to “streamline” and consolidate the structures of the AFL-CIO threatens to diminish the influence of Blacks in the labor movement. “They want bigger unions,” said Bill Lucy, head of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), referring to leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Teamsters and others. “They want power…