Uh oh, HOT DOG!

Texas' government might go BOOM!  Why do you ask?  Well, the state has a $25 billion hole in its plot of its $1.2 trillion budget called a "deficit".  It's big enough to drive a mad truck, train, and plain through it.  However, pro-business pundits bills Texas a shining example of a "lean, mean, business-friendly" state, but what can they do if their majority healthcare and educational budget state going to do if they can't fill it?

In the Dallas Morning News back in October, newly re-elected Texas governor Rick Perry said on the campaign trail that he would be for doing away with Medicaid and Medicare-funded sCHIP (state Childrens' Insurance Program) altogether.  Now he is really trying to piss off the Babyboomers whom are the core of his voting base because if they can't get their health care then his ass will be burnt like toast.

Well, that's the $64,000 question that the GOP super-majority-led Texas State Legislature will have to figure out in the next few months...

Oh look at what DeKalb County is doing now...

The employment carnage that is known Dekalb County, Georgia has yet to truly see an ending.  Since late 2009, the various governmental agencies from the county government to county school district has been shedding jobs left and right like it's going out of style.  According to this past Wednesday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, they are planning on outsourcing custodial jobs. Although these are the lowest ones on the totem pole of functionality of a school district we knew who holds most of these positions... (***HINT*** It's folk ***HINT***)

Outsourcing is one of several suggestions that came up earlier this year as part of budget cuts. Facing an estimated $50 million shortfall in next year’s budget, the proposal is back on the table.

I'm more perplexed how a rapidly growing county in Metro Atlanta has been able to function over the past 15 years since they've seen the county population jump by 100,000 new residents.  The county itself has been in the spotlight of mismanagement from the cost-of-living pay raises that occurred for outgoing county commissioners staffers last fall in the midst of massive deficit while refusing to give county police officers raises  to the former county superintendent being indicted for racketeering to 430 school district employees being laid off to  the recommendation to close 14 declining enrollment schools to now this.  Chaos at its very worse in DeKalb.  Unfortunately, it's the one jurisdiction aside from Atlanta proper that I would prefer to reside in Metro Atlanta... ***SIGH***

Now what exactly is this going to prove?

I'm starting to wonder if the partisan purists of the Democratic party wants to see this fight blow up in the President's face.  Especially after today when House Democrats wants to block the resolution as is that would allow the passage of the combined bill allowing an long term extension of unemployment benefits in return for a 2-year extension of the tax cuts on the wealthy.  However, what most of them haven't anticipated is the American people will blame them meaning House and Senatorial Democrats in 2012 if they economy stalls because of this "proof of cuming political points" against Congressional Republicans.  I hate the idea of giving an extension to those whom makes $250K+ annually, i.e. the "Bush-era tax cuts".  Meanwhile, the people who are going to be punished is those whom make below this tax bracket and the long-term unemployed.  Every battle shouldn't be won if you are attempting to win a war, but I guess this notion is lost on deaf ears of some Democrats that wants revenge, political revenge.

All I can say let's hope the counter-deal that the Democrats are crafting is going to work....

And what exactly suppose to be said about the 'compromise'?

Let's see President Obama decided to 'co-opt' a 'compromise' with the Senatorial Republicans over the "Bush-era" tax cuts that are set to expire on 1/1/11 along with a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits which expired on 11/30.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.  However, so of my fellow more partisan-oriented progressives want to hold the unemployed hostage like what happened over the summer to prove a point.  Uh, how in the hell thinks this is a good idea?

Let's be realistic, Obama is setting the Republicans up to be exposed as the classist bastards they are in 2012 when the tax cuts are up for debate again.  Also he isn't going to be held to some delusional partisan ideal that some of my fellow progressives but also liberals will live and breathe by until they day they die.  Common sense will tell you that nothing in life is cut and dry especially in politics.  Now if some of my fellow progressives doesn't realize this then that is on them, but I know what is up with this 'compromise'.

The aggregavation of housing...

Some things I do wonder about the world we reside in such as housing.  It seems to be the fabric of our communities since they offer shelter for all of us.  However, that necessity seems to be seen as a luxury by many bureaucratic paper-pushers.  In the case of the Metro Atlanta area, where nearly all the public housing developments have been demolished and replaces with high-end condominium development.  On the surface, this looks as if it is a good thing since public housing seems to attract all the "undesirable" elements in our nation's society, but on deeper look reveals that many of these people have no where else to turn aside from being homeless.  This within itself is disheartening because you have to evaluate the entire situation before casting a broad judgment on housing for low-income residents.

Since 2001, the Atlanta Housing Authority has practically eliminated all the public housing in Atlanta (gotta love gentrification and its side effects).  Now suburban Marietta, in Cobb County, its housing authority is doing the same and hopes to shutter and demolish all public housing by 2012.  The replacements for such developments were vouchers given to former residents so they could either get into senior housing for older residents or at-market rate private housing or apartments for others.

On the other hand, the realization that most of the vouchers only pay for only 65% of such living costs associated with housing puts these people in a tougher situation.  Many people don't have the luxury of being able to afford private apartment, which most decent ones start at $600/month in rent in Metro Atlanta.  The lack of affordable housing is seriously lacking nationwide, but particularly in the South.  Ironically, most of those suffering from this dilemma are our fellow non-white citizens.

I know it's wonderful to see cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis, and other Southern cities move from their past images as low-income, crime-ridden places with projects everywhere.  However, you should never go from one extreme to another where you are pricing out your own residents to appease a reluctant crowd of non-natives of the city to move there.  It creates a new vacuum where you continuously force those whom need government assistance to another rough place.  There needs to be some type of median place where we can create affordable housing and not go from one extreme to another.

Birmingham city council's pattern of blaming the businesses instead the true problems

One thing I have noticed about the Birmingham City Council regardless of whom is sitting on it, is its level of ineptitude of on problem finding and solving especially when it comes to night clubs and bars.  First, in 2008, lead by then mayor Larry Langford, the Birmingham City Council pushed to have Banana Joe's night club closed via revocation of its liquor license after the shooting which led to the death of 21 year old by an underage teen.  Last year, Langford urged the City Council to have Club Zen shuttered on Morris Avenue in downtown after a Bessemer resident stabbed a club patron there.  Now on June 29th, the City Council moves to have the Continental ballroom and night club shuttered after allegations of complaints from police officers (not citizens) although there hasn't been any major incidents there in months.

It seems like to me that the Birmingham City Council is a pool of idiots more than they are a board of legislative representatives of the city.  You don't blame the business owners for the problems of the patrons when it clearly an issue that is nearly impossible to totally prevent.  You don't see in Atlanta governmental entities pushing to shutter every club or nightspot that has an incident occurs because they know that it is nearly impossible to remove that element from society only control it.  However, Birmingham has a pattern of shooting itself in the foot economically while attempting to claim to improve along the way.  NOT!!!! 

My advice is you know there will ALWAYS be a "hood club" in every city, but the business owners of these establishments should realize what type of cliente they are catering to while attempting to keep the potential of criminal activity to a minimum. 

On the other hand, this is the same entity that wants to vote fund $10,000 for the "Thunder on the Mountain" fireworks display over Red Mountain after the lead organizers said that is seeing a shortfall due to lack of sponsors.  This all the while Birmingham is facing a major budgetary shortfall themselves guaranteeing a 30% pay cut for civil protection such as police and firefighters.  SMH!

Links courtesy of the Birmingham News and al.com.

Some things about to occur

It irks me to no end to see Congress rejecting the extension of unemployment benefits for those who are trying to find another job in this abyssal recession/depression by a 261-155 margin. 

As the debate over unemployment benefits continue in Washington, here are somethings that those Democrats and Republicans blocking the extension saying it "makes people lazy" should think about.  One there are 1.7 million people who are looking for jobs for at least 6 months, but still no luck at all.  This will increase to nearly 3 million people if this isn't extended.  Second, these people are your constituents in primarily in swing states like Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada, where jobs aren't as plentiful as in the past, but these people will vote against you because of your callousness.  Third, the states that seem to be hurting the most are the reliably socially conservative states in the Deep South like Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, where unemployment is well over 10% of the employment rolls, but those idiots in DC like that  over the top effeminate closet case Lindsey Graham, the racist Jeff Sessions, the demented one Jim DeMint, and greedy fool like Richard Shelby are from these states.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin in the Huffington Post said that the claims that it will add to the deficit "lame", but he summed it quite well about the problem:

"The problem that exists -- 20 years ago I took a USA Today reporter out to an employment office and he interviewed the people in line waiting for their checks and it was a wide diversity of people, and it was a front-page story," Levin said. "The problem I have and you have is there's no place you can go to talk to the unemployment. They get their checks through the Internet -- the money's sent to them. So it's hard to put a human face on this, but there are 1.7 million human faces, plus their families, so we're determined to find a way to humanize this."

The media's negligence towards displaying the faces of this unemployment problem which should allow everyone including the recalcitrants in DC, who live off our dollars but couldn't give a damn about the people.

Another blow to blacks aspiring to obtain more upward mobility (economically)

Another study released by Institute of Assets and Social Policy (IASP) confirmed what has been going on for awhile now, white American families are more likely to have better choice of economic upward mobility than black American families.  This gap accelerated during the period from 1984 to 2007.

Now this doesn't take into account of these other issues already plaguing most black Americans since as high chances of dealing with poverty, lack of access to resources to provide an adequate education, so on.  It's like the same song, but more proof of its existence.  Now the real question is when will social justice and economic equitable policy will be enforced to improve this situation.

Oh yeah, h/t to African American Political Pundit on the calling out the NAACP on their dropping their predatory lending lawsuit against Wells Fargo so they would be a title sponsor of their annual July conference.  It just shows that the average, hardworking black family is practically on their own when it comes to having social groups lobbying for such social justice in public policy-making.  

Hmmm...

I've been away for about 2 weeks and now more craziness from Arizona ranging from bans on teachers with specific accents to now the ban on ethnic studies in secondary schools, colleges, and universities.  Meanwhile, the economy has made a "bounce", but it appears that those who saw the bounce now have just reentered the job market with the unemployment rate to increase.

I'm just tired of Arizona, but made it known about 3 weeks ago that the state is ran by bigoted white politicos who have a very reactionary constituency that will eat anything fed to them including bullshit.  Yeah, the economy does suck (I'm in graduate school and feel its effects even from here), and as I've been saying the Democrats need to stop chasing their tails.  When I mean chasing their tails, I mean following the rhetoric and reactions of the unsettled and foolish.  Those of us out here who are need jobs and some hope are losing what little is out here because there seems to be major droughts in the most diversified urban areas of the nation.  It's very interesting after watching the "Rebuilding America" on CNN has give me some major incite about the recession: 1) the most ethnically homogeneous metropolitan areas are the most recession proof (see Austin, Omaha, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Des Moines etc.), 2) State and local governments particularly in the most diversified areas are suffering the most with the hemorrhaging of jobs (positions held by usually non-whites or lower salary), and 3) College graduates are the main ones being shut out of the job market the most often because of their lack of "experience" even for entry-level positions.

Houston, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, etc. and the rest of the South, we have a problem.  There aren't any jobs for the young people, your future leaders, and they are either forced to take meager jobs that pays below the base living wage of the area or is hiding in the world of academia while accumulating tolls of college loan debt just to survive.  You have a growing diverse young population that can't even start their adult lives because of the unrealistic expectations of this group to attain a job, many of you harboring unresolved ethnic and racial bias leading to them be passed over for job although highly qualified, and the obvious unadulterated paranoia for nothing other than your lack of foresight for the future.  It's time for many of you guys to WAKE UP AND GROW UP! because you guys claim to be the adults but are carrying on worse than us "children" (as many of you claim we are to you).

College Cost Carnage nationwide!

Now this is something serious!  The cost of college will be going up in a number of states even for in-state students this year and this shit is bananas.  The curious case of Georgia where the State Assembly is predicting that there is going to be a $1 billion shortfall in the state budget, so that means an additional $300M cut from the  University of Georgia System budget including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech (yikes!).  

Well, a number of protests are scheduled and have occurred in response to this proposed cuts that will affect everybody practically.

More information about this story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/04/us.day.of.action/index.html

MARTA is slashing a quarter of its service

As of  March 30, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) will slash a funds for service due to a nearly $120M budget deficit in the Fiscal Year 2010 (sounds familiar?)...  For the second consecutive year in a row, the 1-cent sale tax revenues from Fulton and DeKalb counties have dropped drastically due to the deep recession.  The motion will force an entire restructuring of the entire system since nearly half of the systems buses routes will be affected.

MARTA could lose 66 of its 131 bus routes, or more than half. Bus routes could be dropped in some areas to make up for losses on other routes. Wait times for trains, which increased after last year's modest budget cuts, could stretch to 30 minutes on weekends before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m.  Rush-hour train intervals could be 12 minutes.

The Georgia General Assembly doesn't seem to care per say in the interim since the only plan on the table is one working with the helping with transportation funding starting in 2012 and 2013.  However, the current users of MARTA will be suffering because this will constrict the service to what those in Birmingham deals with the MAX system of BJCTA.  SIGH! 

Outgoing U.S. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky...

Is an ASSHOLE.

He knows he is one, but why waste our time telling him.  The jackass needs a beatdown like hell.  Oh yeah, if you don't know who Bunning is then here's the story about his assholery:

WASHINGTON — Two thousand federal transportation workers were furloughed without pay on Monday, and the Obama administration said they have a Kentucky senator to blame for it.
Federal reimbursements to states for highway programs will also be halted, the Transportation Department said in a statement late Sunday. The reimbursements amount to about $190 million a day, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The furloughs and freeze on payments were the result of a decision last week by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to block passage of legislation that would have extended federal highway and transit programs, the department said. Those programs expired at midnight Sunday.
The extension of transportation programs was part of a larger package of government programs that also expired Sunday, including unemployment benefits for about 400,000 Americans.
Bunning objected to the $10 billion measure, saying it would add to the budget deficit. He didn't respond to a request Monday for comment.
The impasse has provided the administration with an opening to excoriate Republicans for allowing popular programs to run out, even if only for a short time.

Bunning spent last Thursday and Friday filibustering the passage of the bill because he felt it was the time and place to bitch and moan about government spending.   During this tirade, he told one Democratic senator TOUGH SHIT about the filibuster of an unanimous vote to extend the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Benefits, federal funds to pay US DOT laborers, and Medicare benefits, which will cause people to lose their unemployment benefits along with others losing their jobs.

Here's a moment of how much of an asshole he is:


Interestingly, Senator Bunning has the Jim Bunning Foundation that has only raised $504,000 since its founding in 1996, and of that he paid himself $180,000 and only gave $136,000 to charities.  SCANDALOUS   Even his constituents in Ken-turkey are turning on him like an in-grown toenail!  In the words of a very close friend of mine would say, LET THE FLAMING BEGIN!

UPDATE:  The ass backpedaled and folded after the Democrats turned up the heat to the point that he would have made the entire Republican Party look bad, so he allowed for the vote to go through.

Something to think about...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34068710/ns/business-economy_at_a_crossroads/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/

The recession has compounded a decades-long problem for black workers, who began the downturn facing a far higher jobless rate than the general population and have fared worse since.

Now experts are worried that many blacks will remain in crisis even as the economy begins to recover, largely because the recession has eliminated so many working-class jobs in sectors like manufacturing and retail that are likely to come back slowly, if at all.

“Across the board right now the job prospects are slim, but for blacks even more so than average,” said Algernon Austin, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on issues affecting lower to middle-income workers.

Tariq Mustafa can relate. Mustafa, 30, has been looking for work since March, when he completed a temporary retail job after he was laid off from a hotel position. He estimates he has filed 100 online job applications as well as spending months pounding the pavement and visiting potential employers in person.

He said he occasionally feels that race plays a role in his inability to get a job, especially in this tight job market.

“Sometimes you come in and you ask for an application, and you know they’re hiring because it was on the Internet, and they’ll say, you know, ‘No, we’re not hiring,’ ” he said. “It’s just, it’s that vibe, just how people treat you.”

The numbers illustrate the sheer depth of the problem black workers are facing. For all the gains that black workers have made over the past 20 years, everywhere from corporate boardrooms to the White House, there remains a persistent gap between black and white unemployment rates.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the national unemployment rate has gone from 4.9 percent to 10.2 percent, while the the black unemployment rate has jumped from 8.9 percent to 15.7 percent, according to government figures.

In addition, blacks have been more likely to drop out of the labor force altogether as many have become so discouraged about job prospects that they have stopped looking for work.

The labor force participation rate for blacks has fallen from 63.4 percent of adults in December 2007 to 61.7 percent as of October. The overall labor force participation rate in the same period has fallen from 66 percent to 65.1 percent, the lowest level since 1986.

Black workers also are likely to take longer to find a new job. In 2008 blacks made up 19.3 percent of the total unemployed population but represented 25.4 percent of the people who had been unemployed for six months or longer, according to the National Employment Law Project.

In good times and bad, blacks face harsher employment prospects for many reasons, including a higher likelihood of past incarceration or homelessness, and less access to a network of friends and relatives who might have job leads. Discrimination, while less overt than in years past, still plays a role, experts say.

“The American labor market is less friendly to black workers than to white workers, and it has been for all of U.S. history,” Austin said....

Just another reminder why this nation needs to right the wrongs it has done generational and socioeconomically to people of color and still affecting us.  Institutional racial bias is a bitch and it still haunts our society with the way people of color are the last to be hired but first to be fired.

Racial Fatigue and why some want to say bitch and moan about the facts of society inequities for people of color

In nation where racial inequities are still prevalent even more with the high unemployment rates amongst people of color, but since the election of the current president Barack Obama, there seems to be more white Americans want to deny the existence of these inequities.

Now, I live in Birmingham, which is in Alabama and the heart of the Deep South, a region where race and ethnicity has always played a major role in the social landscape.  However, I know that the root of a number of our nation's issues lays with the generational views and level of cultural understanding of American whites on their understanding socioeconomic disparities between people of color and themselves.

I regularly read newspapers like the Birmingham News, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Washington Post where I've seen comments from people who are clearly white degrading blacks who are attempting to better themselves by saying how sick of hearing about the economic disparities that exist.  I've seen many want to denote who if southern states weren't home to so many blacks the issues such education rankings would be higher along with lower rates of poverty, single-parent households, median income, etc.  These comments alone give one a little incite on the mindset of some white Americans and how they feel about particularly black Americans as well as Latin Americans.  Both groups have been subject to social inequities and faced racism of the overt kind in the past, but the institutionalize and covert kind of modern times.

One thing that baffles me is how some whites will say "I have a black friend", "my son/daughter is married to a black...", or "my grandchild/nephew/niece is half black...", "I've had dated/married to a black..." as if having a black person in your life will via osmosis give you an profound incite of the issues, inequities, mindset, problems, and the culture of black Americans.  It doesn't because one has to either witness and have a direct and profound understanding to empathize issues that black people involving socioeconomic inequities.  Most whites still doesn't understand them because they either brush over the concepts assuming they understand it, just pretend like it doesn't exist, or become full of guilt commonly known as 'white guilt' over these issues.  None of the reactions are rational to understanding the issues facing people of color. Also many white assume that since we have a black president along with highly successful people like Oprah Winfrey and Bob Johnson that suddenly blacks have overcame these issues.  Here are the facts, most blacks are still more likely to face unemployment, i.e., 'last to be hired and first to be fired', grow up in a lower income to borderline impoverish households, lack the access to adequate education resources, face racial profiling, incarceration, and lack access to indignant health care.  These things are true regardless if they grow up in a single-parent household or grew up in the core of an urban area, suburbs, or rural areas.

The solution to this should be that the government still need programs in available for people of color and lower income residents to obtain their basic necessities such as educational grants for collegiate education and health care facilities.  I know there are a number of issues that can be discussed about about things such as nutritional habits, discussion of sexual behaviors, and rearing of children.  However, most of these things can be traced to the economic and education disparities because most parents have to work more than one job to support their household, thus taking away precious time from instilling values while rearing their children.  If we can fix these basic issues then people of color would likely have more resolutions to the social issues.

If you are black or Latino and male, chances are you are unemployed right now

Some very distrubing figures came out on Monday saying that unemployment amongst black and Latino Americans are more likely to be unemployed hands down. 

The Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights organizations are calling for a targeted aid package to put minorities back to work and stepping up pressuring on the White House ahead of its jobs summit next month where corporate CEOs, academics, labor leaders, community activists, and others have been invited to suggest any and all ideas to spur hiring.

The US unemployment rate among black workers soared last month to a 28-year high of 15.7 percent and the rate has risen to 13.2 percent for Latino workers - both well above the overall 10.2 percent national average. Despite early signs of economic recovery, many economists predict the jobless rate will continue to climb toward 20 percent in minority communities, which historically have higher unemployment than the general population.

The scary fact is that here in Alabama the numbers are even worse with 10.9% unemployment and rural, majority black counties like those in the Black Belt of West and South Central Alabama are facing unemployment numbers pushing 30%!  It's very scary out there for black and Latino folks hands down.  According to the Washington Post, unemployment numbers for 16-24 year-old black males have reached Great Depression levels at 34.5%.  For young blacks, race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens. Even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.


Word is floating around that if you are double minority, i.e. SGL/LGBT of color, then you are even more likely to be unemployed than your heterosexual counterparts.  I'm trying to do my damnest not to wind up in an awkward situation myself although I'm in school at the moment...

I know the President (Obama) claimed the economy his persay, but it would have been his one way or another either through admitting it or having it pinned to him by Republican opponents come next year or 2012...