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August 30, 2012

  • Black Men More Likely to Die Following Prostate Surgery

    surgery by Frederick H. Lowe Black men suffering from prostate cancer receive lower-quality surgical care than white men, according to a study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center that was published in the Aug.

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  • Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters

    Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters New America Media College students returning to campuses in states with new voter photo-ID laws may find registering to vote far more challenging than registering for classes.

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  • will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars

    will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars will.i.am, the frontman for the Black Eyed Peas, has sold 56 million records on Earth. So what’s the next challenge? Mars, of course. NASA held an educational event on Tuesday to share its findings with students about Mars.

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  • State and Local Jobs Shrink

    State and Local Jobs Shrink by Frederick H. Lowe Jobs in state and local governments declined last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll. In 2011, there were 16.

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  • Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin

    Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin The Missouri Baptist Convention violated its tax-exempt, non-profit status by endorsing controversial U.S. Rep. Todd Akin for the U.S.

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  • Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

    Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy by Frederick H. Lowe Morris Brown College, a Historically Black College, founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, citing debts of $10 million to $50 million and assets equal to that amount, according to court documents obtained by The NorthStar News & Analysis. In a U.S.

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  • Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies

    Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Police wielding tear-gas cannons attempted to disperse more than a thousand Togolese citizens rallying in the capital, Lome, for fair elections scheduled for October.

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  • Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries

    Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries The Art Africa Miami Arts Fair has issued a call for entries for the event that will take place Dec. 5-9, 2012, in the city’s Overtown neighborhood.

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  • FAMU Lifts Restrictions on Organizations

    Florida A&M University’s clubs and organizations will resume recruitment in September under new rules intended to prevent hazing, promote better academic performance and emphasize  community service.   Greek-letter organizations will be able to start their membership-recruitment process beginning September 11 through on-campus interest meetings for the fall 2012 semester, William E.

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  • New Orleans Property Owners Sue Over Displacement for Hospitals

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Businesses and homeowners in New Orleans say they were underpaid when they were forced from lower Mid-City to make room for the University Medical Center and Veterans Health Administration hospital—both of which are under construction now. Property owners are suing the state, and the concern is that the city may end up paying for jury awards.

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  • Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers

    Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers A judge in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case agreed Friday to let the defendant travel out of Seminole County but only to go to his lawyers' offices in Orange County, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

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  • Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win

    Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win Despite Mitt Romney-affiliated political action committees’ abilities to out fund raise President Barack Obama, most voters believe the president will be re-elected. A USA Today/Gallup Poll, which surveyed voters Aug.

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  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History August 30 through September 5 August 30 1932 ----- The United States Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute, conducted an infamous clinical study of syphilis from this date until 1972.  Black men were used exclusively as the research subjects.  A whistleblower’s report brought the specious 40-year study to a halt. Study researchers recruited poor, uneducated African-American men, most of whom were sharecroppers from rural Macon County, Ala., to study the progression of syphilis in the body.

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  • Jobs Are Priority No. 1 in South African Poll

    South Africans want the country’s government to create jobs as a way of ending double-digit unemployment. A Gallup Poll survey reported that 51 percent of South Africans wanted the government to create new jobs, compared with 18 percent who wanted the government to reduce corruption.

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  • Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School

    Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School New America Media BERKELEY, Calif. – Jennifer Le Barre, Oakland Unified School District’s nutrition services director, vows that students in Oakland’s public schools will know what a fresh peach is when they pick it up. Le Barre was speaking at a news briefing here August 16 on what some are calling a food revolution in Oakland’s public schools.

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  • Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity

    Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity Oprah continues her reign as Forbes magazine’s highest paid celebrity. Between May 2011 and May 2012, Oprah earned $165 million, besting filmmaker Michael Bay, who finished in the No.

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  • A Race About Race: Get Whose Country Back?

    A Race About Race: Get Whose Country Back? by A. Peter Bailey (TriceEdneyWire.com) - It was the 1992 Bill Clinton-George H.W. Bush presidential campaign that introduced the memorable political slogan: “It’s the economy, Stupid.

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  • Same Old Song

    Same Old Song by Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) - When I was all of 16 years old, I went to get a passport.  Why?  Richard Nixon had been elected president, and I was sure that he would impose such oppression that I might need to get out of the country.

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  • Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage

    Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage by Nadra Kareem Nittle (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Long before a little-known Illinois politician ran for president, the mainstream media focused on his race.

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  • Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio

    Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio ColorOfChange.org, a black online political organization, has launched an online petition drive demanding that Jon Husted, Ohio’s Secretary of State, extend early voting to weekends.

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  • Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention

    Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention Two Republican convention attendees threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman before screaming, “This is how we feed animals,” CNN said. “CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon.

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  • Right Attacks President Obama in New Film

    Right Attacks President Obama in New Film by Barry Cooper Conservative Indian-American writer and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza is back bashing Barack Obama again – just in time for the November elections.

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Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Jesse Jackson, Sr.

Romney’s Creed: Blessed Are the One Percent

by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Raise taxes on the rich? “Class warfare," the Republicans rail. Any discussion of inequality, says Mitt Romney, should be held privately “in quiet rooms.” Yet the Romney agenda for the country opens a new offensive in class warfare — only on the side of the few, not the many.

America’s inequality has already reached extremes not seen since 1929 before the Great Depression. In 2010, the richest 1 percent captured an obscene 93 percent of the nation’s income growth. The top 1 percent now has as much wealth as 90 percent of Americans.

As Warren Buffett, one of America’s richest men, told New York Times columnist Ben Stein: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Romney and Republicans demand extension of the extra Bush tax cuts that go to those earning more than $250,000 a year. In addition, Romney calls for slashing individual tax rates across the board by 20 percent, eliminating the estate tax that applies only to the multimillionaires and sustaining the concessionary 15 percent tax rate on capital-gains income overwhelmingly pocketed by the wealthiest Americans.

He promises to pay for these tax cuts by closing “loopholes,” but refuses to identify them. But even with the most generous assumptions, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center — a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution — found that the rich don’t collect enough in loopholes to pay for the proposed tax cuts. Romney’s tax plan would end with the richest Americans getting a tax cut while most Americans end up paying more.

Class warfare straight up.

On spending, Romney claims that he can cut federal spending while increasing spending on the military and putting off his (poisonous) plans for Medicare and Social Security for a decade (so that those 55 and over won’t vote against him). But neither Romney nor running mate Paul Ryan will reveal what they would cut. Ryan’s budget calls for devastating cuts in Medicaid and food stamps. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that more than three-fifths of the Ryan cuts in the first decade come from programs for the poor. Class warfare again.

Add to this the Romney “Bain Capital” economic policy. Romney criticizes Obama for not signing more corporate trade treaties, despite the fact that our trade policies not only ship jobs abroad but rack up more than $1 billion a day in trade deficits, more than half to China. (To be fair, Romney pledges to certify China as a currency violator, but every candidate promises to get tough with China, then folds once in office).

Romney also wants to repeal even the modest reforms of Wall Street that Obama got through Congress. He opposes raising the minimum wage and echoes Republican scorn of worker rights and unions. But the decline of unions has contributed to an economy in which workers no longer gain a fair share of the increased productivity and profits that they help to create. Once more, class warfare on the side of the CEOs and against working families.

Increasingly a Southern-based “whites only” dominated party, Republicans wrap their class warfare into scorn for “those people”: poor people of color. Can they consolidate support among white blue-collar workers, even as their policies attack those workers? Divide and conquer is an ancient strategy in warfare and in politics. Will it work for Mitt Romney, so clearly a man of, by and for the 1 percent?

We’ll know in November.


Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., is head of the
Rainbow Push Coalition, which is based in Chicago.

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