There is no widespread epidemic of cops shooting and/or killing unarmed black men

"There is no widespread epidemic of cops shooting and/or killing unarmed black men. That's a false flag waved by the uninformed, the lazy and the crowd that needs Ebola and ISIS and disappearing airplanes for traction. Police killing unarmed men of any color is a man-bites-dog tragedy. It's rare, which is what makes the occurrence so television titillating. Of course, every instance is one too many, and as a society we should do everything we can to prevent it. But all this talk about "the talk" that black parents must have with their sons about interacting with police is slightly misguided."

If there is ever to be change we can believe in, Black and Brown first have to understand that your very existence dependents on your taking a stand and never deviating from it until that change is realized! The absence of jobs and upward mobilization is the formula used to deny and defile the existence of Black and Brown in America; fight that belief with improvement of your job skills!

It starts with the incarceration, it ends with the eradication of minorities in America. The most visible fact is the incarceration of the Native American American; a proud people quartered in lands strictly for their self-incarceration. You saw it with the interment of the Japanese during World War II; it is manifested in the segregation of Black and Brown in the quality of jobs and education, and it will continue with the murdering of Black and Brown on the streets of America.

You, Black and Brown America, must use the limited resources available to you resist those things that aid and abet those that would see Black and Brown remain hostage by the color of their skin. The power of Black and Brown to foster change lies in unity of effort - cater exclusively to your neighborhood entrepreneurs, businesses, social networks! Stop using enterprises that deny you upward mobility. If your employer hinders your growth, use the system to gain skills that will enable you to move up!

Disengage yourselves from the notion that your 'one' vote doesn't matter - it does! Go to the polls with the same intensity that you are garnering to march in protest to the ever deterioration of your rights to exist in a free society. Use the same will that urges you to stand in lines around the corner for an iPhone or a concert ticket to stand inline and vote for candidates that are willing to make a difference for your plight!

A united front, a one brother reaching down to pull another brother up concept sets the tone for comeuppance! The power of unity destroys the chains and bars that hold us down!

Share for a better opposition to the New Jim Crow in America!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Part 1 ~ What Republican's Are Doing Wrong!

The Republican Party is formidable when it comes to instituting the  suppression of the vote, restricting Civil Rights, and giving Corporations an equal voice in the government process! The Roberts Court has legislated from the bench by committing impeachable offenses.

Following the chart, we're going to demonstrate how each of these points, if Republicans were sincere, would not be what they are today!

1). At least 80 billion in State and Local subsidies to Corporations - States use incentives to lure jobs to their States and the cost is enormous, but do the returns justify the subsidies?

Let's start with New Jersey where there was a strong effort of bring in jobs using tax subsidies. Currently, New Jersey is lagging in job prospects for it's investment in tax subsidies! State taxes are a tremendous burden to residents of New Jersey; all issues that hurt the expansion of New Jersey's economy!

"Take three of the Urban Transit Hub tax credits as examples: Goya is getting $82 million to relocate its factory to Jersey City. Campbell’s Soup is getting $34 million to renovate its Camden headquarters. Panasonic will receive $102 million to move — from Secaucus — into new offices in Newark.

Those three awards, combined, represent a public investment of $218 million. The return on that investment, according to the Economic Development Authority’s numbers, will be 475 jobs. That’s a cost of $459,000 per job created. Even spread over 10 years, it seems a very high price to pay, especially with tax dollars."

These statistics for New Jersey are a common fallacy of subsiding the relocation of a corporation to a State solely for the possibility of an increase in jobs that may or may not come to fruition! The other issue that makes this quite destructive - Republican controlled States are all experiencing budget deficits and lost of credit ratings because of this practice, that is not a coincidence!

Here is what happened in Indianapolis, IN... 

"United Airlines got $320 million in taxpayer money to build what is by all accounts the most technologically advanced aircraft maintenance center in America. But six months ago, the company walked away, leaving the city and state governments out all that money, and no new tenant in sight."

The State of Indiana lost big! The State of New Jersey lost big! There are numerous incidents of this phenomenon occurring... Kansas is another State in disastrous economical failure! Subsidies don't work! Republicans don't see it that way and continue to enforce a policy that is flawed.

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Reducing the Cost of Everything That Matters

For some time now, I have concentrated my thoughts on ways that America can improve the well-being of its citizens and accelerate the recovery of our economy.  Cutting the deficit is paramount.  Tax cuts, as they have been proposed in the pass, are not the solution, but part of the problem.  It is also essential that any recovery of our economy has to include the unemployment ratio of those not working and those who are working.

My solutions are meant to stimulate thought processes; I don’t portent to be a ‘solution guru’, just a blogger voicing alternatives to a status quo condition that is creating one of the most partisan Congresses to date.  Divisions within the Legislature body will solve none of the pressing issues facing our country at such a critical time - unity with a common cause will.

One of the issues is creating jobs – the lack of a cohesive plan!  My solutions are simple and have a long term effect on recovery.

1.       By creating a job skills program for Americans out of work for more than ninety weeks we:

a.      Reduce the number of people out of work.

b.      Increase the amount of taxes collected by the Government, States, and Municipalities.

2.      Subsidize the industries that manufacture ‘Greenhouse’ friendly products.  America is not the manufacturing nation that it was twenty years ago.  Outsourcing has destroyed the middle-class and reduced the number of minimum wage workers.

a.      Reducing the tax write-offs of companies that outsource American jobs increases the taxes collected by the Treasury and helps to ensure that we can support the working classes in their time of need.

b.      Remove the ‘political’ involvement of those government agencies that should be supporting the creation of jobs in America.  Chamber of Commerce President, Tom Donohue is very good example of how a certain entity is working against the welfare of the American people.

3.      Subsidize the industries that are developing new products and pharmaceuticals.  Those companies electing to use government subsidiaries to develop their products would be forbidden to pass on the cost of development and research of that product to consumers.  This would increase consumption and keep cost low for all of America’s consumers buying the end-product.  Targeted tax cuts push entrepreneurs to go where the money is and that is a good thing.

4.      The Health Care legislation doesn't, as it is currently written, meet the needs of all parties concerned and needs to be amended to keep cost down; however, it is essential that America have a national health care system because…

a.      The cost of Health Care discriminates against hospitals and the general public, in that; our hospitals can’t continue to treat all entering their doors via the emergency room.  Statistics have shown that those hospitals that are failing – going out of business - do so partially because of the cost overruns associated with emergency room patients.

b.      The insurance industry, with the support of Federal, State, and local municipalities, feels the need to protect banks, mortgage companies, and other ‘big ticket item’ producers and their investments.  Liability insurance protects the other person from a loss of property in the unlikely event that you cause a collision with another car or property.  Hospitals can’t turn away anyone, but absorb the cost of treating those that do not have health care insurance – a formula for failure, and yet, we ignore it!

c.       Preventive health care reduces the number of visits by everybody to medical centers and promotes better performance by the job force, thus increase production.

5.      There are other areas where cutting cost can affect the economy in a good way…

a.      Granting greater subpoenas powers to the FDA and EPA.

b.      Re-evaluating the ‘Most Favorite Nation’ status of those countries refusing to allow reciprocal access to their markets.

c.       Placing the weight of responsible on the shoulders of those who benefited the most from the Bush tax cuts to contribute more in the way of paying their share of taxes, instead of putting the full responsibility of reducing the deficit on the poor and unemployed by cutting services and programs that help the poor and disenfranchised survive this economic crisis.

Your thoughts? 

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

The GOP is doing the same thing that the Obama Administration did for two years in trying to dismantle the legislation from the previous two years - focusing on everything but jobs.. More to the point, popular opinion is gravitating to acceptance of the legislation put in place by a Democratic Congress.

Greenhouse friendly jobs will do more than anything else to stimulate the economy. Introducing a job skills program that will help out-of-work individuals re-invent themselves for the workplace. These are readily available alternatives for increasing the GDP.

We need jobs Congress!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Remember When

If you are old enough to remember when your job was a given and the ability to pay your mortgage was not in question, then you are old enough to vote. I ask you to consider the State of the Nation prior to the 2000 elections. Bill Clinton brought prosperity to the United States of America – we had jobs and the middle-class supported the manufacturing of American products and paid the bulk of the taxes in support of our government. President Clinton even left a 1.3 trillion surplus to his successor!

Compare those days under Clinton with eight years of George Bush, the 43^rd. Eight years of runaway spending for two wars, one of which was based on pure unadultered lies! Tax cuts that benefitted the rich! Budgets that hid the cost of the war in Iraq with the condonement of a then, Republican led Congress. The deregulation of Wall Street saw the collapse of major banks, requiring drastic tactics to keep this country afloat. Tax laws that rewarded those companies out-sourcing our jobs became the accepted thing to do!

You have been warned of the foreign money that is being used by unscrupulous groups to finance the campaigns of Republican candidates for office. If we allow these despicable acts to change the way our legislators are elected, we will have none to blame save ourselves. Give this President the tools to combat these irregularities in election laws. Remember that it was a Republican appointed Chief Justice that changed a precedence regarding finance campaign laws. Never before has the Supreme Court been so bold as to contradict precedence by a misinterpretation of the Constitution!

I now remind you of the turn-around that has been accomplished by a Democratic Congress led by a Democratic President. Sure money has been spent, but aren’t we better off as a result of it? Remember when we were losing seven hundred thousand jobs every month due to the policies of ‘Bush 43' and a Republican led Congress – I do? It is a fact, Bush the 43^rd, spent more of our taxes without a return, then any other President in the history of our government – eight trillion dollars.

Much has been accomplished by President Obama, and a Democratic Congress, in just two years; think of what can be accomplished if this president were to work with majorities in both houses of Congress for the next two years. We have a national insurance policy that will enable all of us to receive the medical care that we justly deserve and need. We have withdrawn our troops from the sovereign grounds of Iraq at great cost of life and limb, a cost that can be directly attributed to ill-advised decisions on the part of a Republican president. We have reined in the reckless acts of Wall Street and arrested the degradation of our banks and economy, but there is more to be done. We have a duty to reform the immigration laws, create more jobs, and most of all – Stop the out-sourcing of American jobs to foreign nations whom we know are now trying to buy our election processes.

Don’t allow the return of yesteryear – give your support to our President and Democratic lawmakers up for election

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Unemployment and Welfare Entitlements

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – no I’m not talking about the book, nor the movie. I am talking about the way some Americans are treated by systems that are meant to help and improve their status in life. I see Unemployment Insurance as a necessary evil and Welfare Entitlements as just as bad. While I am a liberty Democrat, I am not so liberty as to want to give away the people’s money without anything in return.

I would have expected our elected officials to have resolved this problem prior to my having to provide them with the necessary guidelines to achieve an end result that makes everybody happy. Here is my take…

Any decision to support an applicant for Welfare or Unemployment should have been accompanied by a solution to get that person off of the ‘social’ support that they requested.

Let me explain… currently, if you are on Welfare, you are required to do the same things that the unemployed are doing when they are receiving payments – look for a job! In some instances, Welfare recipients are required to come into their local office and use the facilities there to find a job. If you have children, you are required to request a voucher for the money that you would need to pay a baby-sitter while you cut out employment notices.

Why not institute this… ascertain the qualifications of the person receiving benefits to see where they stand in the job market. In most instances, re-tooling the individual to better meet the requirements/demands of the job market gives them a better chance to find a job sooner that will keep them employed for some time to come. The sooner the person can qualify for a job currently in demand by the job market, the sooner they are off of unemployment/welfare. Sounds too easy – doesn’t it; sometimes the best solution can be the easiest solution… then why is it not policy?

I asked an official within the Anne Arundel County Welfare Department why was it so hard for this idea to take root. His explanation… we are not required to re-educate people coming to us for help. The Welfare System is not responsible for re-tooling its applicants so that they can get a job and get off of Welfare – duh! I am thinking that the average person on Welfare collects those entitlements (food stamps, WIC, etc.) to the tune of more than thirty thousand dollars per year – multiply that by five years and you could have supported the schooling that would have gotten that person into the job market. It takes approximately six to eight months to finish school to be a Licensed Practical Nurse – we need qualified persons in the medical field. It takes even less time to produce a plumber, electrician, or other skill set that will keep a man working.

The same can be applied to unemployment recipients. No one wants to be receiving a ‘handout’ as has been said so many times by Republicans. Truly, the situation has never been worst for minorities – Blacks in particular! Education is the answer for any situation that involves destitute persons. The lack of an education is the common factor in all instances of the poor. A Rocket Scientist may be out of a job because of a layoff, but he is not going to be out of work for long. The same cannot be said for an uneducated man. Our responses in the past have been based along this policy line. Somebody has to get smart and make the change!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis