Erykah Badu - Bag Lady

How Bitcoin could help the world's poor

(From Foreign Affairs Magazine)

Roughly 2.5 billion adults in the world don’t have access to banks, which means somewhere in the order of 5 billion people belong to households that are cut off from a financial system that the rest of us take for granted. They can’t start savings accounts. They don’t have checking accounts. They can’t get credit cards. They live in places where banks don’t want to go, and because of this, they remain effectively walled off from the global economy. They are called the unbanked. But they are not unreachable, not by a long shot, and one of the biggest and most exciting prospects bitcoiners talk about is using their cryptocurrency to bring these billions of people roaring into the twenty-first century.

The Caribbean is an area of the emerging-market world where a strong case can be made for locals to use bitcoin to get around a restric­tive financial system. 

Read complete article here

Book Review: The E-Myth Revisited - By Michael E. Gerber

In short, The E Myth Revisited explains why most small businesses fail, and then illustrates an easy-to-follow roadmap for owners and leaders to get out of trouble and drive toward success.

The sobering fact is that an overwhelming majority of businesses fail in the first five years of operation, and these failures tend to follow a pattern. Gerber illustrates that successful businesses excel not by happenstance but by following a particular model that has proven to work—franchises, with overwhelmingly high success rates at five years, are given as a prime example.The E Myth Revisited explains, in often broad and sometimes specific terms, the approach that is required for a business to not only persevere, but to prosper.

Read complete article here

The Coulibaly Chronicles

The rappers and ex-cons in the terrorist’s inner circle were none too bright.

Amedy Coulibaly in an undated photo

 (From The City Journal )

While there was nothing even slightly amusing about the recent attacks in Paris on the journalists of Charlie Hebdo and the customers of a kosher supermarket, there was an element of dark humor in an article that appeared in Le Monde on February 16 about Amedy Coulibaly, the young man of Malian descent who shot a policewoman dead and then killed four hostages he had taken. Coulibaly was an armed robber and racketeer who found Islamic extremism much to his liking. Just before Christmas last year, preparing for his attack, he insisted that a former rapper who owed him 30,000 Euros ($36,000), presumably for the performance of some illegal service, should repay the money because, he said, he needed it urgently. “I naively thought it was for the holidays,” the former rapper told the police. I’d have liked to see their faces when he said that.

Read complete article here

Quote of the Day

"An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers.... Their delusive good intention is no excuse for their presumption." — Edmund Burke

G.K. Chesterton — In the matter of "reforming things"

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."  — The Thing: Why I am a Catholic by - G.K. Chesterton 

John Legend’s Oscar statement about prisons and slavery

Lonnie Lynn aka Common and John Stephens aka John Legend accept the Best Original Song Award for "Glory" from "Selma" onstage during the 87th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on February 22, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

(From The Washington Post)

It's true. There are some, as Politifact has written, 1.7 million black men under some form of correctional control, including probation and parole, excluding those held in local jails on any given day. That is about twice the 870,000 or so black men at least 15 years old who were enslaved in 1850, according to the Census (warning: big file).

In some ways, of course, the comparison is misleading. Although there are more blacks under correctional control now than there were slaves before the Civil War, the population has a whole has grown tremendously in that time. The Census that year found that roughly nine in 10 of the nation's 3.6 million blacks were enslaved. By contrast, one in 11 blacks is under correctional supervision today, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Read complete article here

What Clarence Thomas Learned from Malcolm X

 (From Reason Magazine)

Thomas certainly does reject many of the government solutions now in vogue for dealing with racial problems. But the source of that rejection is frequently misunderstood—especially by Thomas' liberal critics, who seem to think that he disfavors certain forms of affirmative government action because he believes racism to be dead and gone. New York Times columnist Charles Blow, for example, gave voice to that critique last year when he faulted Thomas for "being unable to acknowledge and articulate the basic fact that race was—and remains—a concern."

In point of fact, Thomas clearly believes that racism is a concern just as he clearly believes that the long shadows of slavery and Jim Crow continue to harm black Americans. Where Thomas differs from most liberals is in his pronounced lack of faith in the ability of ostensibly benevolent government officials to do the right thing.

Read complete article here

Kenya’s Unemployed Face Terror’s Lure | The New York Times

As international terror warnings deflate Kenya’s coastal tourism industry, growing unemployment leaves many vulnerable to recruitment by Islamic extremist groups like the Shabab.

     

(Randian) Dr. Anne Wortham: Afro-Centrism, Euorpean Individualism and African Collectivity

Randian means pertaining to the writer Ayn Rand, who created objectivism, a philosophy that asserted that “the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (or rational self-interest),” among other tenets.

Andrew M. Mwenda — What can YOU do for YOUR country?

Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan libertarian  journalist and founder of The Independent, argues in his latest piece that "we should stop complaining about what our country has failed to do and ask what we can do".

Why we should stop complaining about what our country has failed to do and ask what we can do - See more at: http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/9732-what-can-you-do-for-your-country#sthash.tnUjWZ5v.dpuf

Andrew Mwenda is a Ugandan journalist, founder and owner of The Independent, a current affairs newsmagazine. He was previously the political editor of The Daily Monitor, a Ugandan daily newspaper and was the presenter of Andrew Mwenda Live on the KFM Radio in Kampala, Uganda's capital.

It is very hard to get things done, even at the smallest level. But it is very easy to sit and complain about things. Reading social media, one gets the sense that we have increasingly become a complaining nation, not a doing nation. Everywhere complaints abound of our failing healthcare and education system, of corruption and abuse of office. But one hardly reads a story of what those complaining are doing to change the situation. Are we waiting for intervention from God?

Two caveats: First, complaining is okay if you are doing something about the problem. As Kwame Nkrumah said, “organise, don’t agonise”. Second, accusing our elites of turning Uganda into a complaining nation may be an unfair indictment of our people since social media may not represent the majority of our citizens. It is possible that those who keep complaining on social media are idle (which is another way of saying they are doing nothing). So they have a lot of time at their hands to complain. By implication this means that people who are busy doing things don’t have time to quarrel, heckle, complain, and insult others on social media.

So it was with great inspiration that I read an article in Daily Monitor of January 28, 2015 by Silver Mwesigwa, the speaker of Isingiro district council. Mwesigwa, a holder of a masters’ degree was working with an international NGO and earning good money. He is widely travelled across Africa and the world. But each time he went to his home village, he was saddened at how bad public services were. In 2011 the district had produced only two students in First Grade; most pupils were failing PLE, if they had not dropped out of school. The local health center had little or no drugs while medical personnel were reporting for work late, if at all. There was no clean water.

Like most Ugandans, Mwesigwa could have taken to social and other media to complain about the sorry state of his home district. He would have denounced President Yoweri Museveni and his NRM for their corruption and incompetence. And at one point he did. But none of this would have solved the problems of his community. So he asked himself: what can I do about it? He decided to enter politics and use it as a vehicle for progress. He joined FDC and hit the villages to mobilise people for change.

- See more at: http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/9732-what-can-you-do-for-your-country#sthash.tnUjWZ5v.dpuf

John Burnett — How Do You Regulate Bitcoin? Very Carefully

John Burnett, the black, moderate-conservative writer for U.S. News & World Report opines about the future of virtual currency.

John Burnett is a financial services executive with over 20 years of experience in risk management, operations, governance and compliance at some of the world’s top financial services and business information companies, such as Citi, McGraw-Hill Financial, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. Follow him on Twitter: @IamJohnBurnett.

For all the extraordinary promise that virtual currency offers, there are many significant questions hanging over this nascent industry that should give consumers and investors pause, particularly as policymakers struggle to keep pace with this new technology.

Consider the fact that virtual currency, also known as bitcoin, is largely unregulated, with a Tokyo-based exchange known as Mt. Gox collapsing last year after it lost 850,000 Bitcoins valued at about a half billion dollars in a security breach. More than that, though, the value of an actual bitcoin has fallen sharply. In 2013, the value of bitcoin peaked at more than $1,200. Now, a bitcoin’s worth is down to $240 – a decline that has not, however, dampened overall enthusiasm for cybercash. Finally, and perhaps most important, policymakers and regulators seem unsure about how to deal with this emerging market, potentially exposing consumers and investors to a level of risk that might be avoidable with the proper regulatory precautions.

My concerns over the freewheeling nature of this industry were heightened last week when troubling questions surfaced over the launch of Coinbase Inc., a company that opened a Bitcoin trading system that reportedly has slightly more than $100 million in backing from significant investors, including the New York Stock Exchange. Just days after Coinbase opened for business, a top financial regulator in New York challenged what appeared to be the company's unfounded claim that it was under regulatory oversight in the state. A spokesman for the New York State Department of Finance issued a statement saying that the company did not have the licenses necessary to operate as a virtual currency exchange in the state.

Read complete article here

Donny Hathaway - Little Ghetto Boy

Thomas Sowell — Damaging Admissions

 Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are "cherry-picking" the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do.

Many controversies about how students should be admitted to educational institutions, especially those supported by the taxpayers, betray a fundamental confusion about what these institutions are there for. This applies to both schools and colleges.

Admitting students strictly on the basis of their academic qualifications, which might seem to be common sense, is rejected by many college admissions committees.

Read complete article here

Chidike Okeem — Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Black History Month

Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950) was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, Woodson has been cited as the father of black history. In February 1926 he announced the celebration of "Negro History Week", considered the precursor of Black History Month

(From HipHopRepublican.com)

If Black History Month is to stay true to Woodson’s vision, then promotion of black achievement needs to be the focus. Rather, as it exists today, Black History Month predominantly focuses on Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other breakthroughs from oppression that occurred during that period. It is crucial to note that Woodson died in 1950—before the monumental events and milestones of the modern civil rights movement began. 

Given that Woodson was not alive for the bulk of the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s, the modern civil rights movement could not have been part of his vision for the recognition of black achievement. Woodson astutely believed that asserting the importance of black people to world civilization was an inextricable component of reducing the prevalence of anti-blackness and racism in the Western world. Spotlighting freedom from oppression was not the primary goal of Negro History Week, inasmuch as Woodson knew there was more to black achievement and black culture. Woodson understood that the history of black Americans does not begin with slavery; rather, it begins with grand, ancient civilizations in Africa.

Read complete article here

Can Reforming Culture Save Black Youths?

In a new book, Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson explores the way in which culture can be used to understand and improve the lives of young African Americans.

 (From The Root.com)

Considering recent tragedies and protests involving black youths, the police and the legal system—along with the centuries of devastation wrought by racial bias—a work exploring the impact of culture is both timely and welcome. Though we are far from achieving a post-racial society, what Ralph Ellison called conscious culture can point a way.

Culture—“that which separates the behavior of Homo sapiens from other species”—is so fundamental, Patterson proclaims, that “the question, then, is not whether culture matters but how.” He begins the 688-page anthology with an account of the concept, which he explains as two processes that dance. The first is shared “ideas, narratives, metaphors, and beliefs, formal and informal rules or norms, and specific as well as ultimate values.” The second is how these apply in social interactions with others, where individuality and creativity can be exercised “within limits set by practical rules of engagement that take account of status, power, and context.”

Read complete article here

Leah Wright Rigueur — The Forgotten History of Black Republicans

Leah Wright Rigueur is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2015) covers more than four decades of American political and social history, and examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians.

 (From The Daily Beast)

Our assumptions about blacks in the Republican Party are teleological and ahistorical, informed by the Republican Party as it exists in the present; thus our views are often flat, lacking historical depth. Surely this understanding denies us the messiness that is at the heart of our beliefs and at the core of our personal politics: the ongoing debate that each one of us has with ourselves and with others about which politicians and policies we should support and about what ideologies we should embrace.

Our implicit views of black Republicans—either as strange alien creatures or as noble exceptions among their duped Democratic brethren—reject the notion of political choice; too often we assume that blacks in America are Democrats by default; though not intentional, that assumption denies agency to an entire group of citizens. In this scenario, black Republicans are simultaneously invisible and hypervisible: isolated political misfits who provoke extreme reactions. These views, whether voiced by liberals or conservatives, of any race, are troublesome, muting reality and history and ignoring the complex ways that race and politics inter- sect in the United States. Simply put: our views obscure the fascinating diversity that exists within this “strange” group known as black Republicans, obscuring their historical significance over the past three-quarters of a century; this, in turn, conceals a richer understanding not only of black politics but of American politics more generally.

Exploring black politics over nearly half a century, disrupts many of our perceptions about African Americans who support the GOP; at times we find not a peculiar group of blacks, desperate for white acceptance or out of touch with American realities but rather a movement of African Americans working for an alternative economic and civil rights movement. At other moments, we see a cadre of figures who make cynical concessions in order to maintain a modicum of power.

Read complete article here

Dr. Stephen L. Carter — What Will Obama Give You for Your Privacy?

Stephen L. Carter, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of law at Yale University, where he teaches courses on contracts, professional responsibility, ethics in literature, intellectual property, and the law and ethics of war.

Suppose that the government were to ask each of us to wear an unremovable bracelet that allowed our location to be determined in an emergency. The responsible agencies would promise never to use this authority in the absence of a court order. True, there would be a potential threat to privacy, but supporters would contend that the trade-off was worthwhile: Terrorists and child kidnappers would be easier to catch.


I’m not sure how much you would like this suggestion. I for one would fight it tooth and nail.

Although we’re certainly nowhere near that point, there is a bit of the same flavor in the government’s pressure on smartphone makers not to use encryption so strong that law enforcement agencies can’t break it when they have to.

Read complete article here

When Fascists Tried to Remake Ethiopia

Picture of Benito Mussolini and Fascist Blackshirt youth in 1935 in Rome.

via The American Conservative:

When Mussolini’s army invaded and ultimately occupied Ethiopia, the Italian fascists did more than expand Italy’s African empire; in their eyes, they obtained an opportunity to build a capital from scratch.
 

As Rixt Woudstra details at Failed Architecture,

The idea of Ethiopia as a tabula rasa—a blank slate—was omnipresent in the writings of architects and urban planners occupied with the designs of the colonial capital between 1936 and 1939, who considered the country devoid of any structures of architectural significance. Contrary to the fascination of Libyan whitewashed courtyard house – their simplicity, colours and volumes perfectly in tune with modern taste – the round houses of the Ethiopians were regarded by Italian architects as irrational and unhygienic.

Modernist architecture’s obsession with rationality and supreme planning looked askance at a city even as relatively new as Addis Ababa for not proceeding out of the geometries and ideals en vogue in Europe. Within months of the Ethiopian capital’s conquest, no less an architect than Le Corbusier, one of the icons and pioneers of modernism, composed a sketch to accompany a letter he sent to Mussolini instructing “how a city for the modern times is born,” and offering his services as a midwife.

 Read complete article here

Quote of the Day

"Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors." ― G.K. Chesterton

This African Country Was Once the World’s Third Poorest. Here’s How It Turned Things Around.

 Botswana embraced democracy, free markets and the rule of law. In other words, economic freedom.

Botswana, buried in the heart of Southern Africa, is a success story that could be a model for the rest of the continent—and the rest of the developing world. | http://dailysign.al/1yzuZAJ

Jonathan Blanks — Reclaiming Malcolm X

Jonathan Blanks, a black libertarian writer, offers a candid look into the political and racial context that shaped Malcolm X, the man and his political views.

This weekend marks the 50^th Anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination. Malcolm has always had a deep influence on my writing, beliefs, and intellectual life. His unflinching commitment to justice and dignity are the hallmarks of his legacy.

Oh, and scaring the hell out of white people.

But seriously, there’s nothing I’ve ever read or seen attributed to Malcolm that would put him anywhere near the Progressive Left, who tend to embrace him. The late author of his most recent major biography, professor Manning Marable, attempted to rationalize his placement in the Progressive pantheon. But there was no real link in his well-researched and well-written biography. At best, he mentioned some “anti-capitalist” rhetoric  in speeches to colleges (text by Damon Root):

In a 1992 speech at Colorado's Metro State College, Columbia University historian Manning Marable praised the black minister and activist Malcolm X for pushing an "uncompromising program which was both antiracist and anticapitalist." As Marable favorably quoted from the former Nation of Islam leader: "You can't have racism without capitalism. If you find antiracists, usually they're socialists or their political philosophy is that of socialism."

In historical context, Malcolm was living in the Cold War political dichotomy. The Soviet Union and other communist nations were pitted squarely against the United States and the capitalist countries. If United States capitalism permitted Jim Crow, backed assassinations in Africa, and supported South African Apartheid, I’d be against it too. But where politics and economics converged to the detriment of American minorities, the culprits were the American government and its tolerance and furtherance of American racism, not a system of free exchange and entrepreneurship.

Read complete article here

Chidike Okeem — Scott Walker’s Lack of a College Degree Matters

Chidike Okeem, a independent conservative writer, confronts what he sees as a growing anti-intellectualism in the mainstream conservative movement.

The fact that some conservatives are trying to make criticisms of Walker’s lack of a college degree about snobbery and elitism, rather than him not meeting a perfunctory expectation of the Leader of the Free World, only goes to show the embarrassing way in which anti-intellectualism is treated as a sought-after virtue within mainstream conservatism.

There is an alarming number of people in America with graduate degrees who are incapable of finding jobs commensurate with their educational attainment and, in some cases, finding jobs at all. At a time when this is occurring, it would be monumentally absurd to elect someone who couldn’t be bothered to finish college to the highest office in the land. If the highest office in the land, and indeed the most important job in the world, can be whimsically occupied by someone who couldn’t be bothered to find the time to finish his undergraduate education, then what is the point of anyone slogging through college and earning a degree? Are those who suggest that college dropouts should be routinely considered for the office of President of the United States arguing that the presidency is less tasking or important than the plurality of jobs listed on Craigslist that specify only holders of a baccalaureate degree should apply?


Read the rest of this entry »

Larry Walker ― Affordable Care Excise Tax, Part III

In Tax Simplification, Part II, I expounded on a 2010 Annual Report to Congress, in which National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson focused on the need for tax reform as the No. 1 priority in tax administration. In particular, she focused on the problem of delivering social benefits through the tax system, which complicates the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in a dual mission of welfare administration as well as revenue collection. But instead of taking heed, the federal government doubled down, adding a new health care excise tax and health insurance premium tax credit to the IRS’s burden.

Telephone hold times with the IRS can sometimes run as long as four to seven hours these days, and if you don’t believe me try calling yourself. A taxpayer facing a federal tax lien, levy or wage garnishment doesn’t have a choice. He or she must call immediately in order to prevent an adverse action, but unless they have a day to spare and a very powerful battery, may wind up on the phone for several days just trying to get someone on the line. The federal government has taken an agency best suited for revenue collection, and turned it into a socialist style welfare office, long lines and all.

In Part 2, I affirmed that the shared responsibility payment isn’t a fee, because nothing is received in return. Nor is it a penalty, because failure to purchase health insurance doesn’t constitute a crime. The individual shared responsibility provision imposes an excise tax on a tiny minority of U.S. residents who don’t have government-mandated health insurance or qualify for one of several exemptions. Although Internal Revenue Code – Section 5000A refers to it as a penalty, in general, if it involves filling out a federal income tax form (i.e. Form 8965), and is assessed on and payable with your personal income tax return, it’s a tax.

 

Read complete article here

Overcriminalization in America: Fishing for Justice

A federal prosecutor criminally charged commercial fisherman John Yates with improperly disposing of evidence because he allegedly caught undersized red grouper and then threw the fish overboard. Instead of issuing Yates a civil citation, the prosecutor charged the fisherman with violating the “anti-document-shredding” provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as if he was destroying accounting records.
 

Deroy Murdock — Scott Walker Has No Degree . . . Like Most Americans

(via the National Review entire piece linked below).

Approximately 100 percent of the people I know graduated college. Many of them also have master’s degrees, J.D.s, and MBAs. In my world, those without such credentials are almost exotic.

But my world is unusual. As a Manhattan-based political commentor and think-tank scholar, I work and play with other members of the chattering classes who occupy newsrooms, TV studios, research institutions, and university classrooms in the so-called Bos-Wash corridor. This coastal strip, between the Charles and Potomac rivers, houses the Eastern elite. In this habitat, my Georgetown A.B. and NYU MBA are rather unremarkable. The bankers, consultants, and publicists who are my neighbors also festoon their offices with framed diplomas.

Read complete article here

The Gender Gap... Who the hell cares???

   

Dr Ben Carson — We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Not Us

(via the National Review entire piece linked below).

The graphic pictures of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive by militants from the Islamic State (or ISIS) were chilling and raised doubts about the humanity of the Islamic terrorists capable of such barbarism. This, coupled with beheadings and crucifixions, gives us a better understanding of the evil we along with the rest of the world are facing.

These terrorists have stated their intention to annihilate Israel and to destroy the American way of life, which they consider corrupt and evil. Undoubtedly, we in America have our faults just as every other country inhabited by human beings does, but it requires the suspension of knowledge of accurate American history to believe, as some do, that we are the source of much of the trouble in the world. Conditions in the world have improved more dramatically since the advent of the United States than at any other time in human history. Our innovation and compassion have provided one of the highest standards of living in the world while lifting conditions in many other nations.

Read complete article here

Thomas Sowell — Susan Rice is wrong about the threat we face

(via the National Review entire piece linked below).

When Alfred E. Neuman asked “What, me worry?” on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his national-security adviser, Susan Rice.

In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his “happy talk” message by someone whose credibility was already thoroughly discredited by her serial lies on television about the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012.

   Unfortunately — indeed, tragically — the world today is about as far from a musical comedy as you can get, with terrorists rampaging across the Middle East, leaving a trail of unspeakable atrocities in their wake, and with Iran moving closer to producing a nuclear bomb, with an intercontinental missile on the horizon.

Read complete article here

Progressive Liberalism: Sources and Themes

Dewey, Croly, and Rauschenbusch sought to transform classical liberalism's emphasis on individualism.

(via The American Conservative entire piece linked below).

There is legitimate debate over whether “progressive liberalism” constitutes a radical departure from, and even betrayal of, the basic commitments of “classical liberalism,” or whether it represents the next logical step in liberalism’s development. Both positions have merit.

Many of the original architects of “progressive liberalism” begin with an explicit rejection of several of the main constitutive beliefs that undergird “classical liberalism.” Foremost among those arguments is a critique of classical liberalism’s “anthropological individualism,” that is, the beliefs expressed by the proto-liberal Hobbes and liberalism’s architect John Locke that humans are understood to be by nature autonomous wholes, driven fundamentally by self-interest and instrumental reason. By extension, architects of “progressive liberalism” reject classical liberalism’s insistence that these basic features constitute the unchanging nature of human beings; rather, figures like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx argue that man’s nature is not “fixed” in this way, but rather evolves and develops in historical time. Man’s nature is more “fluid” than proposed by classical liberals, a belief that lies at the heart of progressive liberalism’s greater optimism in the project of creating a universally equal and just regime—even, in the words of several authors under consideration today, ushering in the “Kingdom of God.”

Read complete article here

Kiron K. Skinner — The U.S. Cannot Wish Away Its Present Security Concerns

The article was written last year, but timely given the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Grand strategy requires states to have a long-term plan. It also requires that means and ends be clearly articulated and calibrated to each other. The Obama administration’s long-term plan appears to shift U.S. economic and military assets away from the Middle East and toward Asia.¹ The Middle East, however, shows no signs of relinquishing its role as the world’s central battleground. Furthermore, means and ends are mixed together as priorities under the Obama doctrine.

The Obama doctrine holds that fiscal constraints, including the need to reduce the deficit and debt, and rebalancing of the U.S. military away from the “wartime strategy” of the last decade dictate national priorities in defense and foreign policy.²These priorities are: protecting the homeland; ending U.S. involvement in the two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; countering terrorism and dismantling terrorist organizations, especially in the Middle East and North Africa; rebalancing U.S. economic diplomacy and military resources toward the Indo-Pacific region; enhancing existing relationships with allies in Europe and elsewhere; developing new partnerships with states and regional organizations; maintaining a leadership role in major international organizations; controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction; reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles; resizing the military and reducing the rate of increases in defense spending; and improving and using cyber techniques, drones, and special operations forces to combat state and transnational threats as much as possible.

Read complete article here

John Burnett — T-Mobile Should Not Get Leg Up Over

John Burnet a moderate-conservative Republican blogger in New York City, argues that "T-Mobile shouldn't get a leg up from the government against its competitors".

The other day, John J. Legere, the brash chief executive of T-Mobile, sent out a tweet that may have gone over the heads of all but the most discerning telecommunications expert. “Looking forward to sharing my opinion once the quiet period is over,” he wrote to his more than 1 million Twitter followers.

The quiet period that Legere is obliquely referring to is, in fact, a gag order that Federal Communications Commission has imposed on communication company executives regarding recent government efforts to sell valuable airwaves of wireless broadband known as spectrum.

But no one should be on the edge of their seats waiting for Legere, who is something of a showman, to make good on his cryptic promise to share his thoughts. Time and again, we have heard the same from T-Mobile, with its pleas to the government for help in competing in the wireless market. Specifically, Legere’s T-Mobile is seeking special treatment in an upcoming auction of spectrum, a vital component of the wireless industry, by asking the FCC to set aside more of it for smaller carriers (i.e. not Verizon or AT&T).

Read complete article here

Hakizimana on the Cultural Effects of Corruption

Lydie Hakizimana of Rwanda describes the effects of corruption on the human spirit. The problem of corruption extends beyond dollars and cents. It crushes the entrepreneurial spirit of a people.

 

Report says lynchings in US South were more common than previously thought

(The Telegraph)


Lynchings of black Americans in the US South were more common than previously thought with nearly 4,000 cases documented by researchers in a new study.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) compiled details of "racial terror lynchings" in 160 locations between 1877 and 1950, finding 700 deaths that were not included in prior counts.

Read complete article here

(NYT) Sierra Leone loses track of millions in #Ebola funds

A health worker and patient at the Borma Foya Hospital in Sierra Leone. A report says government ministers lost track of millions of dollars in emergency funds to fight the Ebola virus. CreditDaniel Berehulak for The New York Times

   

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — A report by Sierra Leone’s national auditor says government ministers lost track of more than $3 million in internal emergency funds to fight the Ebola virus, impairing the response to the disease.

Delays in testing are causing serious bottlenecks at treatment centers. There is no paperwork to support payments of 14 billion leones, or $3.3 million, from government Ebola accounts, while $2.5 million in disbursements had incomplete documentation, the country’s auditor general, Lara Taylor-Pearce, said in the report. 

The accounting lapses ultimately resulted in “a reduction in the quality of service delivery in the health sector,” according to the report, which was posted on the Audit Service’s website. It was presented to Parliament on Friday.

Read complete article here

Jonathan Blanks ― James Comey Can't Handle the Truth

Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey gave an impassioned speech about the “disconnect” between many minority communities in America and the police officers charged with keeping them safe. He listed four “hard truths” that the police and the public need to come to terms with in order to fix the current system.

The first “hard truth” was that “at many points in American history,” law enforcement has been used to oppress ethnic and other minorities through violence, intimidation, and brutality. Well, rather, Comey said, “law enforcement enforced the status quo…that was brutally unfair.”

This is less a hard truth than it is a watered-down history lesson. Convict-lease systems, in many respects, extended slavery well into the 20^th century by using vagrancy and other charges to incarcerate black men and sell them into dangerous industrial slavery. Police were used to enforce segregation and violently break up peaceful marches throughout the Civil Rights Era. And, throughout our history, blacks have been the victims of wanton police violence for any number of reasons from John Lewis to Rodney King to Michael Brown to Eric Garner and countless others in between. Since Emancipation, when they lost the protection as a master’s property, black people—particularly young black men—have had an antagonistic relationship with the police, effectively without interruption.

Read complete article here 

Southern Evangelicals & The Southern Strategy

An excellent article on the Republican Party and the religious right.

From HipHopRepublican.com 

While Mainline Protestants North and South had lined up fairly consistently in favor of Civil Rights, Southern evangelicals, especially the powerful Southern Baptist congregations, had been solid defenders of segregation. Within a decade after their decisive failure to protect Jim Crow they had emerged from their defeat under a new brand.

The Moral Majority and other groups mobilized initially to block the desegregation of religious schools but very quickly adapted their rhetoric behind an officially race-neutral “culture war.” Starting in the late ‘70’s they were the first to begin organizing precinct-level activism inside the Republican Party in the South.

Before the fundamentalists began to mobilize inside the ‪GOP‬, the grassroots structure of the party in the South was practically empty. By the mid-80’s, the party had been able to elect Senators and even a few Governors in Southern states, but the absence of ‘feet on the street’ made it nearly impossible to compete for most state and local positions. The Southern Strategy assembled by Nixon’s strategists did nothing to fill that gap.

Local party officials, where there were any, were mostly business figures, a few Taft Republicans and Birchers, and a collection of migrants with Northern Republican roots. The party was commercially oriented, anti-union, and quietly sympathetic to Civil Rights in a manner similar to Republicans elsewhere. Fundamentalist activism in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s began to change the character of the party and led to clashes with the so-called Republican “establishment.”

Read complete article here 

Lift Every Voice And Sing by Former representative Barbara Jordan (D-Tex.)

Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London

                    

A Black Republican wrote "Lift Every Voice & Sing"

NAACP'S NATIONAL ANTHEM James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938)

Every time the NAACP sings its national anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, it honors a black Republican, James Weldon Johnson. This inspirational song, which was also adopted in the 1940's by millions of black Americans as the Negro National Anthem, was written in 1900 by Johnson in collaboration with his talented musician brother, John Rosamond Johnson, to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The NAACP itself was founded on President Lincoln’s 100th birthday, February 12, 1909, by white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats.

Johnson, who was born and educated in Jacksonville, Florida, served as field secretary for the NAACP in 1916 when he was offered the position by Joel E. Springham after attending the Armenia Conference on racial issues. In 1920, Johnson became the general secretary of the NAACP, the first black man to hold that office. He resigned from his position with the NAACP in 1930 after serving the organization for nearly 15 years.

Read complete article here

Gladys Knight & BeBe Winans "Lift Every Voice & Sing"

Conscience of a Black Conservative: The 1964 Election and the Rise of the Negro Republican Assembly

Leah M. Wright

In the immediate aftermath of the election of1964, no group was more visibly alienated by the candidacy of Barry Goldwater than the black electorate. Abandoning the Republican Party enmasse, black voters cast 94 percent of their votes to Lyndon Johnson in the national election. The percentage was a stunning decrease from the 32percent Richard Nixon received in his 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy, and the 39 percent that Dwight Eisenhower amassed during his 1956re-election over Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson.

Black voters rejected Goldwater’s brand of politics for many reasons, most notably the Arizona senator’s outspoken support for states’ rights and opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Roy Wilkins, executive director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP), attempted to explain the rationale behind African Americans’ anti-Goldwater sentiment, noting that the senator’s stance was akin to leaving civil rights in the hands of Alabama Governor George Wallace or Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.3 For many, the party’s “open armed welcome” of South Carolina senator and 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate Strom

Thurmond, was the final unpardonable offense. Reflecting on the campaign in a November 1,1964, letter to the Wichita Eagle, reader Paul McBride noted that there was terrible incongruity in allowing “the candidate of the party of Lincoln to trample the right of the Negro.”The irony of the situation was not lost on the party’s most precarious faction—black Republicans.African American loyalists were disheartened by the party’s apparent inability to support civil rights, a position that reinforced black Republicans’ historically marginal role within the organization. In Connecticut, for instance, black Republican and attorney general of Hartford William Graham adamantly refused to vote for Goldwater in the general election, arguing that the senator’s nomination was not indicative of the majority feeling on civil rights in the party. Frustrated, Graham felt he could not vote for Lyndon Johnson either on the basis of the president’s “liberal economic and foreign policy views.

For many black Republicans, endorsing Goldwater was tantamount to betraying their race. Athlete-turned-activist Jackie Robinson aggressively promoted New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as a respected alternative to Goldwater; he asserted that any black leader who demonstrated support for the nominee would lose power and influence since “The Negro is not going to tolerate any Uncle Toms in 1964.”7 Likewise, in an August 1964 editorial letter to the New York Amsterdam News, Jackson R. Champion, a black party member from New Rochelle, announced he would not join the Goldwater coalition. “Any Negro who helps the cause of Goldwater, should be declared anything but a Negro, because they will be a traitor to the Negro people.” Despite his ties to the party, Champion said he would resist the national “slap in the face” by working for the election of Johnson as if he was “being paid by the Democratic Party.


For those black individuals who remained affiliated with the party, the 1964 moment placed them in an unstable position; they were simultaneously shunned by the black community and subordinated by the Republican machine. Such a situation forced black Republicans to assert a voice and define an independent identity that addressed these seemingly irreconcilable loyalties. The Los Angeles Sentinel ruthlessly pointed out this bizarre relationship in December 1964,arguing that the election made “wishy washy Negro Republicans take open stands on topics they had skirted or about which they had double-talked for years.” Scornful tone aside, the Sentinel’ swords reveal the urgency that informed black Republican politics in the 1960s. The 1964moment—in essence, the public nadir of the Republican institution—served as a catalyst for black party members. Galvanized into action, these black Republicans fought aggressively for greater voice and recognition both within the party and within the effort to shape the future of black activism. The hallmark of their activity and ideology was the promotion of a unique agenda of racial equality and black advancement. Once reconciled with civil rights, black Republicans claimed that the “Party of Lincoln” would be uniquely suited to meet the needs of African Americans. The New York Amsterdam News highlighted the contradictions inherent to this relationship between black Republicans and their party, observing that in order to survive, the mainstream party needed to collaborate with a group it consistently scorned.

Read complete article here

Oh Freedom! - The Golden Gospel Singers

Dr. Walter E. Williams ― Defense Against Demagogues

The attempt to explain human behavior by greed is foolhardy. If we define greed as people wanting much more than what they have, then everyone is greedy.

 When gasoline sold at record prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “I think it's time to say to these people, 'Stop ripping off the American people.’” When the average price of regular gas was close to $4 a gallon, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for Congress to look into breaking up giant oil companies. The claim was that “Wall Street greed (was) fueling high gas prices.”

Today in some places, gasoline is selling for less than $2 a gallon, less than half of its peak price in 2008. The idiotic explanation that attributed high oil prices to greed might now be adjusted to argue that big oil executives have been morally rejuvenated. They are no longer greedy and no longer want to rip off the American people. My guess is that everyone in the oil business would like to charge higher prices. Plus, there’s no legal prohibition against big and powerful Exxon Mobil's selling its regular gas today for $4 a gallon. Exxon stations don’t do so because the market wouldn’t bear that price.

The attempt to explain human behavior by greed is foolhardy. If we define greed as people wanting much more than what they have, then everyone is greedy. Show me someone who doesn’t want more of something, be it cars, houses, clothing, food, peace, admiration, love or war. The fact that people want more is responsible for most of the good things that get done. You’ll see Texas cattle ranchers this winter making the personal sacrifice of going out in blizzards to care for their herds. As a result of their sacrifice, New Yorkers will have beef on their grocery shelves. Which do you think best explains cattlemen's behavior, concern about New Yorkers or their wanting more for themselves?

Read complete article here

Dr. Anthony Bradley ― The KKK, Selma, and Southern Christianity

Two January 2015 film releases provide great opportunities for Christians to examine the not so admirable aspects of American church history in order to learn from the mistakes and successes of the past. First, the newly released movie Selma tells of the story of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the public protests leading up to LBJ signing the bill into law.

My parents were born and raised during Jim Crow and the movie does a great job of depicting life during that era for people like my parents and why federal government intervened to override voting restrictions in the South because of overwhelming resistance by white southerners to allow African Americans proper access to voter registration. The film focuses on Martin Luther King, Jr’s leadership of the Southern Christian Leader Conference during the organization of a march from Selma, Alabama to the Alabama State capital in Montgomery as a protest. The film does not shy away from the flaws in the movement, including MLK’s marital infidelities.

During the film, we learn about the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African-American protestor, who was gunned down in a town near Selma. After his murder by police, King issued a clarion call to anyone in America who wanted come to Selma and join him in the cause to fight for voting rights.

As a theologian, this is where the movie became really interesting. Those who joined King were mainly Jewish, Protestant mainliners from the North, Roman Catholics, and Greek Orthodox. Conspicuously absent were conservative Protestant evangelicals, especially those from the South. In fact, Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was the highest ranking non-black religious figure in America to join King in the Selma march. This raised several questions for me: What was different about Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions that allowed them to freely join the fight for voting rights while evangelicals chose to do nothing or join the cause to support Jim Crow? Where were the Calvinists who believed in total depravity? Where were the evangelicals? Where was Billy Graham? Where were the Jonathan Edwards fans? Where were the Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, Methodists, and so on? I am asking because I do not understand.

Read complete article here