WASHINGTON – A confidant of the man Barack Obama defeated in November said Wednesday that the president-elect has earned enormous global good will and "a moment in time" to re-engage other nations with the United States.
The assessment by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was noteworthy because he is a conservative Republican and one of Sen. John McCain's closest friends. Graham campaigned vigorously against Obama in last year's presidential race.
Noting himself that he had been "one of the chief opponents" of Obama, Graham pronounced himself now "very pleased" with the president-elect's attitude and policies toward the countries they visited.
Graham appeared Wednesday with Vice President-elect Joe Biden at Obama's transition headquarters. Biden and Graham were there to brief Obama on what they learned during a just-completed five-day, bipartisan fact-finding mission to Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan andIraq.
"I cannot tell you how much enthusiasm we saw in Pakistan for this new president," Graham said, sitting in a chair to Obama's right. "There is a moment in time here for this country to re-engage the international community, to make sure that we have international support to stabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq."
MIAMI - There is no box on U.S. Census forms that accurately describes Ray Gongora.
The Belize-born naturalized citizen grew up in an English-speaking Central American country, a former British colony where African slaves were once sold. He emigrated in 1986 to a country that deemed him Hispanic based on the geography of his birth.
"I identify myself as 'other'," Gongora says. "I am black, so to speak - a brown-skinned Caribbean person. You cannot identify yourself as a black American because our cultures are so totally different."
He doesn't worry about not being counted, though. Not with President-elect Barack Obama set to take office Jan. 20.
Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, will be the first black U.S. president, fulfilling the dreams and promise of the civil rights era. But for black immigrants and their children, Obama's swearing-in realizes other dreams.
In Obama, they recognize their own parents, who saw themselves as outsiders, and the children they raised to believe that education was the road to success. His election superseded not only color, but also economics, family divisions, government failures and nagging questions of identity.
"It's an individual accomplishment for each of us," Gongora said.
Poverty: Policies and Possibilities
By: Shannon Joyce Prince
Reprinted From Black Agenda Report
"Poor people can use themselves as weapons against poverty."
With the recession imperiling the nation's well-being, poverty is on everyone's mind regardless of their political orientation. Yet too often the poor are cast as ignorant and impotent pawns needing either a kick in the pants or a magical cocktail of resources and programs. The dialogue typically stalls around what "we" must do for or to "them" as though the poor lack ingenuity and agency.
In this commentary I identify four ideas that can be used to battle poverty: ending marriage penalties, deregulating selected industries, creating tax-funded social programs run by the poor, and creating community gardens. These four ideas are based around two central beliefs. The first is that people should not be punished by having their fight to escape poverty retarded when they choose to marry or profit from their personal knowledge. The second principle is that creative projects such as tax-funded, poor people-led social programs and community gardens help the poor to martial their efforts to fight the penury in their environments. While these two principles and the policies I propose based upon them may seem disparate, they are united by one central idea - that the poor themselves are resources. The minds and spirits of the poor can be marshaled in the fight against the poverty. If their family structures aren't undermined, if their personal knowledge isn't penalized, and if their labor and ideas are supported and nurtured, poor people can use themselves as weapons against poverty.Part 1 of this commentary focuses on marriage penalties and deregulation.
"Uncle Sam has no more right to break up families than slave-owners did."
The first policy change we should make is to stop the government from dictating to the poor how to organize their homes. Uncle Sam has no more right to break up families than slave-owners did. Currently, poor women receiving government aid face being further impoverished if they choose to marry because the additional income of their husbands often makes them ineligible for government aid. For example, as former Mayor Steve Goldsmith of Indianapolis pointed out, "In my state, a mother qualifies for welfare only if she does not marry her children's father, and a teen-age mother qualifies only if she leaves home." Furthermore, public policy consultant Wendell Cox gives the following example of how Temporary Assistance to Needy Families punishes women who choose to marry:
"For example: the typical single mother on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families receives a combined welfare package of various means-tested aid benefits worth about $14,000 per year. Suppose this typical single mother receives welfare benefits worth $14,000 per year while the father of her children has a low wage job paying $18,000 per year. If the mother and father remain unmarried, they will have a combined income of $32,000 ($14,000 from welfare and $18,000 from earnings.) However, if the couple marries, the father's earnings will be counted against the mother's welfare eligibility. Overall, welfare benefits will be nearly eliminated and the couple's combined income will fall substantially."
"It is unacceptable for the welfare system to tyrannically regulate women's lives."
According to the Center for Marriage and Families, "marriage penalties" can lower a family's income by twenty percent. The Center goes on to say that many poor parents either secretly cohabit or live near each other as they are unable to marry without punishment. It is unacceptable for the welfare system to tyrannically regulate women's lives by penalizing them for certain choices they make such as marrying their children's fathers. This system undermines impoverished families, which are disproportionately families of color, forcing men to sneak to see their children and treating would-be wives like slaves sold to a different plantation.
Cox also points out anti-marriage discrimination in public housing policy. He notes:
"In the case of subsidized housing, the typical single mother receives a subsidy worth about $5,000 per year; if she marries a male with earnings the value of the rent subsidy will be reduced. The more the male earnings the greater the loss of housing aid, and, if she marries a male with earnings around $18,000 per year (a typical sum for unmarried fathers), the housing subsidy will be completely eliminated. Thus, in general, low income couples can maximize their welfare income by remaining unmarried."
Cox suggests that this could be remedied by not lowering women's benefits if when one thousand dollars of her husband's income is ignored she is still eligible for public housing and by making exceptions for men with criminal records (who are normally excluded from subsidized housing) if they are married to and supporting the children of women who live in subsidized housing. I agree. In the Victorian era Dickens lamented how husbands and wives were separated from each other when they entered poor houses. Victorian aid was frequently contemptuous and based on the belief that the poor had no family bonds one need respect - they were like puppies who could be separated at the will of those more powerful. It's the twenty-first century now, and it's time to take a stand and affirm that marriage is a right, not a luxury.
"Several states have exempted hair braiders from needing to have cosmetology licenses."
In addition to not undermining the family structures of the poor, anti-poverty policy should not undermine the efforts of the poor to profit from their skills and talents either. The problem often isn't that the poor aren't pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, but rather when they do so they are told they don't have the appropriate credentials. The deregulation of some industries could help poor people to use self employment to become more financially stable. For example, many poor black women braid hair as a way of making money. However, as the National Center for Public Policy Research points out, many states have threatened these women with arrest because they don't have cosmetology licenses; licenses that often demand taking courses that cost around $10,000, and frequently don't even cover hair braiding in their curriculum. Several states have exempted hair braiders from needing to have cosmetology licenses after black women asserted that by using a traditional skill they were keeping themselves off welfare.
Furthermore, as noted in this September, 2006 AP article, the law punishes African immigrants who don't speak the English necessary to get a license and only possess the knowledge of hair braiding as a marketable skill. More and more black women are using individual and class law suits to change the laws of their states. State laws requiring the licensing of hair braiders must be revoked.
"Wall Street corporate leaders may need someone looking over their shoulders, but black women don't need supervision to braid."
One concern about industry deregulation, however, is quality control. I do not feel that all industries should be deregulated; however, I do think that we should, whenever possible, avoid regulating industries that have shown themselves capable of functioning ethically and monitoring their own quality levels independent of regulation. We know that since time immemorial black women have braided hair in open air and in kitchens and on front porches without licensing, to no societal ill effect. Wall Street corporate leaders may need someone looking over their shoulders, but black women don't need supervision to braid. In their case, I think it would be unjust and unnecessary to require government regulation of their industry. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent those believing that quality control can only be managed by the regulation of industry from going to a hair braider with a cosmetology license. Deregulation may not make small scale entrepreneurs become the next Sheila Johnson, but it can fight poverty by opening up avenues for people to profit from skills they possess.
Next, Part 2 - Social programs run by the poor and community gardens.
Ms. Prince can be contacted at Shannon.J.Prince@Dartmouth.EDUThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
The detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the flawed justice system created to try terrorist suspects held there are among the most complicated legacies of the Bush administration. They're Obama's problem now. The president elect has said he will shutter Gitmo and put some of the detainees on trial in American criminal courts or military courts martial (his campaign did not return calls seeking comment.) But the prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up. Here are four reasons the controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.
The Yemeni Factor. Any route to closing Guantanamo involves repatriating most of the roughly 250 detainees still held in Cuba. Sending detainees home requires negotiating the terms of their release with the home country. Since Yemenis make up the largest group of prisoners in Cuba, talks with the government in Sanaa will be key. But Yemen has been the hardest country to engage on the issue, according to a former senior official familiar with the process. The Bush administration has asked home countries to impose restrictions on the returnees. Saudi Arabia, for example, has imprisoned some Gitmo veterans, limited the travel of others and put those it thought it could co-opt through a "de-radicalization" program. "Yemen doesn't want to be seen as doing anything for the United States," says the former official, who declined to be named discussing sensitive diplomacy. Even if it agreed to U.S. demands, Yemen might not have the capability to honor them. "It has areas of the country that are poorly governed and its borders are porous," said the former official. If the new administration is willing to release detainees without demands on the home country, the process can go quickly. But the risk is that some might pose future security threats to America.
Other detainees face possible torture if sent home—most notably Gitmo's 17 Uighurs from China. Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank headed by former Clinton White House aide (and Obama ally) John Podesta, has suggested the United States. ask its allies to help create an international resettlement program for those detainees who can't return to their countries. The goodwill Obama has already generated in Europe and elsewhere will help. But the process will take time.
Did Tiger Woods pave Barack Obama's path? Are you joking?
By: Dave Zirin
Originally Appeared In NY Daily News
It's always dangerous, but never boring, when a newspaper sports columnist uncorks a political thesis. Enter Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. Bianchi thinks that there are some unsung heroes who deserve credit for helping put a black man in the White House - and they are athletes. "If you're searching for tangible reasons why it became possible for Barack Obama to make his historic run at the presidency ... look no further than the golf course, basketball court or football field."
Bianchi believes that, since sports have conditioned white America to accept African-Americans as heroes and leaders, black sportsmen deserve a pat on the back. He wonders: "Where else but sports can you go to Amway Arena and see 15,000 mostly white fans cheer and celebrate the accomplishments of a team that is mostly black?"
Sounds lovely. But it happens to be embarrassingly wrong - and an insult to the reason that millions waited on long lines to cast their vote.
For more than a century, masses of white audiences have cheered black entertainers and athletes. And for most of that time, blacks struggled mightily to climb the corporate or political ladder. Why? Because being wowed by the ability of blacks to perform on a field or stage is not in the same ballpark as accepting their political leadership. Not even close.
More to the point, the rare black athletes who have dared to make waves have been pilloried for not knowing their place. After men like Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos got too political, the phrase "just shut up and play" emerged - to smack down future jocks for trying to do more than entertain.
This is not just a hypocrisy of the musty past. On Thursday, Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall caught the winning touchdown pass against the Cleveland Browns. He then - horror of horrors - wanted to take out a black and white glove to make a statement. "I wanted to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me, our multicultured society," he later said.
But we will never know how the public might have received even this tame message because teammates, led by Brandon Stokely, put the kibosh on him. Commentators then came down on Marshall like blitzing linebackers. ESPN anchor Neil Everett said, "It's not about you and what you think. It's about the team."
Our sport-mad culture has hardly softened the ground for black political leadership. If anything, it's produced a value system that prizes material gain and the almighty scoreboard over any kind of collective responsibility.
Bianchi writes, "the two most successful product pitchmen of the modern era - Tiger and Michael Jordan - are both black men who won over white corporate America." But at what cost? These are also the two most aggressively apolitical athletes to ever walk the earth. They live by the creed that taking serious stands gets in the way of good business. If anything, Obama has had to overcome the racial landscape these two have charted, which says you must wear the cool mask and betray nothing.
Dungy is a different case. One of the most respected coaches in the NFL, he is also an evangelical Christian who has raised funds for the Indiana Family Institute. IFI organizes anti-gay marriage initiatives and takes part in the process of what's called "praying the gay away."
In fact, when you think about it, Woods, Jordan and Dungy - signifying respectively disengagement, corporate greed and the right-wing side of the culture wars - hold the values many voters wanted to repudiate.
No doubt, black American athletes unafraid to be political will be part of charting us out of this wilderness. But it will not be those content to be money-making sideshows when the main stage is a real-world battle for change.
