Black Politics: Barack Obama Needs Support for Stimulus

President Barack Obama faces a barrage of questions on his plans to reinvigorate the economy with a massive stimulus bill and additional billions in bailout money for the financial markets.

Trips Monday and Tuesday to cities hurting under the economic meltdown and a prime-time news conference Monday night show that Obama and his advisers are worried about a looming Senate vote on the stimulus bill, which failed to gather meaningful Republican support during rare weekend debate. The question-and-answer sessions with citizens and later with news reporters will allow Obama to appeal directly for grass-roots backing of his plans.

Both trips were added to Obama's schedule as difficulties with the legislation on Capitol Hill increased. Originally, aides had insisted his time would be better spent in Washington to shepherd the bill rather than traveling the more traditional presidential route around the country, pressuring lawmakers from his bully pulpit.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. However, it must be reconciled with the House version, which totaled $820 billion in spending and tax cuts. With Senate and House negotiators preparing to deal, Obama is likely to push for a bill on his desk for his signature by mid-month.

 

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A Black Athlete Dies from Suspicious “Suicide” in Mississippi

Billey Joe Johnson Sr. opens the driver’s-side door of his dead son’s Silverado and begins to examine some of the leftover splatter. It clings to the dashboard, leeches out of air conditioning vents. Some of it even found a resting place on the truck’s exterior.

“There goes a hunk of meat right there,” the father said, pointing to a nickel-sized fragment of his son’s brain. “How’d it get over here?”

In the back seat, a geometry book rests next to camouflage clothing and empty boxes of buckshot. Billey Joe Johnson Jr. often woke up at 4 a.m. to hunt before heading to George County High School, where everyone knew him as the football star who would escape crushing rural poverty by running from it.

Piles of recruiting letters litter the back seat, the remnants of life as one of the most sought-after running backs in the Class of 2010. Alabama wanted Billey Joe. So did Notre Dame. And dozens of other schools. He was ready to commit to Auburn. By many accounts Billey Joe was a popular, big-dreaming, clean-living kid. So it’s no wonder his father stands in the yard next to a single-wide trailer, trying to play forensic expert. Searching – like many in this rural community – for answers about who shot his son.

Sheriff’s incident reports and radio reports.

Local authorities stopped Billey Joe for a traffic violation on the morning of Dec. 8, and they say the truck is simply the site of a terrible tragedy. But to the elder Johnson, it’s a crime scene.

Nearly two months later, only one fact is certain: Instead of running out of George County as a football hero, Billey Joe was buried beneath it at the age of 17.

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Prof Boyce Watkins, Madeline Create a New Show

African American Scholar Boyce Watkins and Madeline Talk Black Politics

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Dr. Ben Carson Gets Featured in a Film

TNT's "Gifted Hands" is one of those longform projects that has Emmy written all over it.

It boasts near-flawless direction from Thomas Carter, a vivid teleplay adaptation by John Pielmeier and uniformly magnificent performances, particularly from star Cuba Gooding Jr., who puts himself back onto the Hollywood map here in a way he hasn't since his Oscar-winning turn in 1996's "Jerry Maguire."

Gooding portrays the real-life world-renowned brain surgeon Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and author of a best-selling 1990 autobiography.

It's taken nearly two decades to get Carson's inspiring story to the screen, but Gooding does him more than proud with a portrayal at once sensitively wrought and quietly moving.

In lesser hands (if you'll pardon the pun), this biopic could easily have drifted off into maudlin sap, but Gooding keeps the character of Carson centered and human and the film honoring him wise and surprisingly graphic. (The surgical procedures are showcased in all of their bloody glory, but not so much as to cross the line to gratuitousness.)

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The Obama Artist Arrested for Outstanding Warrants

A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday.

Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called Supply and Demand.

Two warrants were issued for Fairey on Jan. 24 after police determined he'd tagged property in two locations with graffiti based on the Andre the Giant street art campaign from his early career, Officer James Kenneally said. One of the locations was the railroad trestle by the landmark Boston University bridge over the Charles River, police said.

Fairey, 38, of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Brighton District Court, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney. Wark said Fairey would also be arraigned on a default warrant related to a separate graffiti case in the Roxbury section of Boston.

Fairey has spent the last two weeks in the Boston area installing the ICA exhibit and creating outdoor art, including a 20-by-50 foot banner on the side of City Hall, according to a statement issued Saturday by the museum.

 

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Your Black President: Barack Obama Gets His Bill Passed

With job losses soaring nationwide, Senate Democrats reached agreement with key Republicans Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama's plan for combatting the worst recession in decades. "The American people want us to work together. They don't want to see us dividing along partisan lines on the most serious crisis confronting our country," said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of two GOP senators who signaled support for the bill.

Officials put the cost of the measure at $780 billion in tax cuts and new spending combined. No details were immediately available, and there appeared to be some confusion even among senators about the price tag as floor debate continued late into the night.

The agreement capped a tense day of backroom negotiations in whichSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid, joined by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, sought to attract the support of enough Republicans to give the measure the needed 60-vote majority.

In addition to Collins, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he would vote for the bill. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, remained uncommitted.

 

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Your Black News: Judge may toss some evidence in Barry Bonds case

A federal judge says she might toss some of the strongest evidence against Barry Bonds, a blow to prosecutors trying to prove the home run king lied when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said her "preliminary thoughts" were to exclude from trial three 2000-2001 positive drug tests that prosecutors say belong to Bonds unless there is a direct link that the urine samples came from the former San Francisco Giants slugger.

"If there's no testimony to establish that, I don't think any of them work," Illston said.

The only person who can do that seems to be Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who spent more than a year behind bars for refusing to speak to a federal grand jury investigating Bonds. And Anderson's attorney, Mark Geragos, has said his client will not testify against Bonds at the trial, scheduled to start March 2.

If her preliminary thoughts stand, the government's case against Bonds will suffer a significant blow — but not a fatal one, legal analysts said.

"It hurts, but the government still has quite a bit of other evidence," Golden Gate University law professor Peter Keane said.

That includes a recorded conversation between Anderson and Bonds' former personal assistant Steve Hoskins in which they discuss injecting steroids; a conversation Illston said she's inclined to allow at trial.

Illston will issue a formal decision on the evidence discussed Thursday at a later date. She also will hold a separate hearing on whether to allow testimony from expert doctors the government hopes would persuade a jury that changes in Bonds' body were due to steroid use.

 

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Barack Obama Says He Screwed Up

"I don't think Washington wins," President Obama tells NBC's Brian Williams in the interview that the TV network will broadcast this evening -- one of five sit-downs the president did with national news anchors this afternoon.

"The fact of the matter is Tom Daschle pulled out today," Obama continues. "And I'm here on television saying I screwed up and that's part of the era of responsibility; is not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that's what we intend to do."

The networks are sending out excerpts. Highlights from the others we've gotten so far:

• Obama tells ABC's Charles Gibson this was an embarrassing day for his administration, with the collapse of Daschle's nomination as Health and Human Services secretary and Nancy Killefer as chief performance officer.

"We're going to have some glitches," Obama adds, "and I understand that that's what people are going to focus on. And I'm focused on it because I don't want glitches. We can't afford glitches because, right now, what I should be spending time talking to you about is how we're going to put three to four million people back to work. And so this is a self-induced injury that I'm angry about, and we're going to make sure we get it fixed."

 

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Eric Holder Gets Confirmed as First Black AG

Eric Holder won Senate confirmation Monday as the nation's first African-American attorney general, after supporters from both parties touted his dream resume and easily overcame Republican concerns over his commitment to fight terrorism and his unwillingness to back the right to keep and bear arms.

The vote was 75-21, with all the opposition coming from Republicans.

Holder's chief supporter, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said the confirmation was a fulfillment of civil rights leader Martin Luther King's dream that everyone would be judged by the content of their character.

"Come on the right side of history," said Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Holder becomes the only black in the Obama administration in what has traditionally been known as the president's Cabinet. Three other African-Americans have been chosen for top administration positions that hold the same rank.

Holder was a federal prosecutor, judge and the No. 2 Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. Even his critics agreed that Holder was well-qualified, but they questioned his positions and independence.

The debate turned partisan in its first moments, when Leahy, expressed anger that a few Republicans demanded a pledge from Holder that he wouldn't prosecute intelligence agents who participated in harsh interrogations.

 

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Barack Obama's Message about the Middle Class

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Black Dads Irresponsible? Russell Simmons Sets the Record Straight on Child Support

In a letter addressed to critics, hip-hop music mogul Russell Simmons, 50, defended a child support ruling that was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court involving the hip-hop mogul and his ex-wife Kimora Lee Simmons, 33, and their two daughters Ming Lee, 8, and Aoki Lee, 5. Simmons set the record straight regarding the amount of child support he pays and why he's glad to pay it.

In the statement, Simmons stated the following:

Friends of mine have forwarded me gossip online about my custody agreement details with Kimora. The fact is, we’ve had a pretty good partnership at sharing the girls in the past.

There have been a few bumps in the road, and those bumps have led us to negotiate a minimum amount of time I’m guaranteed to see my kids. That deal is as follows: I have the girls one full week out of every eight, half of the summer, half of all the holidays, a full week at Christmas, and half of Spring Break.

Like in all good partnerships, contracts are meant to protect the partners but are usually not the only way the partners work together. If I show up in L.A., where she now lives, unannounced, I can call up Kimora and she will most likely send them right over. The same goes for when she comes to New York.

We have always had a school in New York and a school with the same curriculum in L.A., so when the girls are with me in New York, we can spend quality time together. I can get up with them, take them to school and just be together. Kimora consults with me about doctors or schools for the girls, but she’s always had final say in those areas. If we had an argument about a school, guess who’s going to win?

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Black Men, Black America, Black Fathers

Email from Justin White, a YBW Family Member from Cleveland, OH


A little personal background...This political process supports an hypothesis that I have submitted to students in classes for nearly 20 years while doing adjunct faculty work. Among other social science coursework, I teach social welfare policy and urban politics. Naturally, the current political culture, with respect to recent history, results in spirited discussion and interesting papers. I also speak as a brother; a baby boomer and; a resident of an almost exclusively black and not too prosperous suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.

The above mentioned hypothesis...It has been apparent to me for some time that African-Americans, for good reasons (and some not so good) do not understand the fundamental differences between electoral politics and protest politics. But, this election due to its duration and complexity, is becoming a graduate course for the community. Friends and colleagues are redefining themselves with respect to the manner in which they and other black folk should demonstrate civic participation. We are volunteering thoughts and feelings to each other unlike anything I have seen since the "rap sessions" of the early seventies.

Rather than applying the "conventional wisdom" that so frequently results in myths and derogatory conclusions, I believe we need dialogue and research that addresses the relationships between black civic/political participation and the existence (absence) of the types of institutions that engineer and support political participation. All the while remembering that African Americans are a minority people and the blueprint for these institutions generally reflects the dominant culture.

Today's political process, at least as we view the percentages of black voters who support Obama, indicates the utility of electoral politics as a factor in creating cultural bonds that offset social and economic divisions. (sounds like another hypothesis in the making)

I hope that of African American academics like yourself and Michael Dyson can assist us as we negotiate the political, cultural and social learning curves related to blacks taking on leadership responsibilities in electoral politics. This is not to place an unbearable onus on you. That would be unfair. The often amorphous, but real, "black community" must become engaged in every respect, by all forms of media to overcome the habit of ignoring its scholars. Your website is so important in that regard.

Barack Obama is living the "Jackie Robinson Syndrome" as he negotiates the dominant cultures' institutions in the absence of black institutions designed to support and strengthen him. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton forewarned us 40 plus years ago in the classic book Black Power about the need to develop political institutions that are reflective of the culture. Again, I believe there is a a basic assumption to be considered...politics, whether they be electoral, protest or those politics associated with specified public policy, can and will define culture.

Additionally, Black Power's thesis was, in some regards, old wine in new wineskins if the messages of DuBois, Garvey and some others are carefully examined.

So now that we have all been caught unprepared by the politics of today, the leadership of academicians who still have a semblance of a resonating voice, is "so welcomed". We must support you and dialogue with you just as we make every effort to do the same for and with Barack Obama. I hope Obama's organization functions so that he can be reasonably receptive. I worry because I do not see the strong black institutions required to support this idea.

Personally, I cringed twice-over at Obama's politicizing of black fatherhood just as you expressed on your website. I heartily agree with your sentiments about that. I also believe that Obama, as a politician needs the fuel for more cogent commentary and that must come from all of us...ie black educators, researchers, teachers, social workers etc.

In addition, that unfortunate commentary was an example of the need for social science to provide us all with knowledge that countervails the current diatribe that currently prevails about black folks.

Again, I highlight the merits of your website as well as Michael Dyson's book that answered Bill Cosby . I just wish I could receive your beautifully thought out sentiments directly. I will sign on again.

Very Sincerely,

Justin White