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Coalition to Empower MBEs Launched

For everyone except Wall Street banksters, insurance companies, lobbyists, automakers, and Fannie and Freddie, 2009 was an annus horribilis.

Back in February, President Barack Obama told Black Enterprise he was committed to “making sure goals are set that ensure participation of every type of business imaginable” in his economic recovery plan. But studies show minority business enterprises have been shoved aside from Washington, DC to Seattle, Washington.

MBEs have been shut out of stimulus contracts and loans. Indeed, La Opinión recently editorialized:

Community leaders are demanding an explanation and they are entitled to one. The stimulus package money comes from taxpayers and the banks are not assuming any risk at all with these loans, so the government should ensure that access to the program is equitable. It may have been smarter to have granted the loans directly through the Small Business Administration (SBA) rather than through the banks, which tend not to want to disclose how and why the make their decisions, even when they receive taxpayer assistance.

The program must be reviewed and measures must be implemented to facilitate access for minorities who, in many cases, are the main economic pillars of their communities.

In a New Year’s Day op-ed in the Philadelphia Tribune, my colleague, Della Clark of The Enterprise Center, noted that cash-strapped minority businesses cannot compete against primes who are also trying to keep their businesses afloat.

Della wrote:

In these tough economic times, competition for ARRA-funded contracts is fierce. But disadvantaged businesses cannot compete against prime contractors who are submitting low bids to weather the economic storm.

Sure, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell signed an executive order establishing an “aspirational goal” that at least ten percent of ARRA opportunities should go to disadvantaged businesses. But Della is not sitting around hoping for change. Instead, she is mobilizing minority entrepreneurs in an effort to remove systemic barriers to participation.

For this indefatigable visionary, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line:

In speaking truth to empower, the Coalition to Empower Minority Business Enterprises can change the culture in procurement offices across the commonwealth. In doing so, minority entrepreneurs will be better positioned to grow their business, create sustainable jobs and contribute to the economic recovery of Pennsylvania.

If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, then resolve to do something. To get involved with the MBE Coalition, send an email here.

Government Motors

I am a committed non-driver. I have not owned a car since, well, let’s just say in a long time. I am among the 67 percent of Americans who oppose bailing out General Motors.

President Barack Obama’s announcement of General Motors’ “restructuring” (read: bailout by bankruptcy) is an American tragedy. To date, the federal government has plunked down more than $50 billion in a company that’s been trying to save itself for decades. The nationalization of GM is uncharted territory.

On Saturday, I was reminded of GM’s iconic role as a symbol of America’s industrial power. The Museum of the African Diaspora presented a re-creation of Malcolm X’s 1964 speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet.” Malcolm observed:

So we’re trapped, trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped. Anywhere we go we find that we’re trapped. And every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just another trap. But the political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism -- the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism shows our people the importance of setting up these little stores and developing them and expanding them into larger operations. … General Motors [is] the same way. They didn’t start out like it is. It started out just a little rat race type operation. And it expanded and it expanded until today it's where it is right now.

Now, American taxpayers are trapped with a 60 percent stake in General Motors, whose market share has declined to 22 percent from 52 percent in 1964.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see consumers rushing out to buy cars that are designed good enough for government work.

Stormy Weather for Black Men

A new report from the Center for American Progress shows a BMW – black man working – is becoming as rare as a successful Detroit auto CEO.

The report, “Weathering the Storm: Black Men in the Recession,” found:

The recession is taking a toll on most Americans and has resulted in job losses not seen in almost 25 years, but black men have felt its effects particularly hard.

Black men have long faced limited employment prospects and disproportionately low rates of unemployment. Even as the economy thrived and the participation of low-skilled women in the labor force increased over the last two decades, many black men remained largely disconnected from the labor market. While the unemployment rate among black men has declined dramatically over the last few decades, the level of workforce participation among African-American men has not increased and remains stagnant. The current degree of job loss among black men is particularly alarming. These losses will likely only increase as the economic crisis deepens.

The report concludes:

In good times and in bad, the African-American unemployment rate tends to be about double that of whites, and in tough economic times, it rises higher and faster. In this recession, as in previous economic downturns, the effects on the labor force are not evenly distributed among the different demographic groups. In fact, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that African Americans had a higher rate of job loss in the fourth quarter of 2008 than did whites, Hispanics, or the catch-all category “other.”

What’s more, the recession overall has hit men much harder than women—so far, four out of every five jobs lost has been held by a male worker. Black men lead the unemployment surge, with an unemployment rate of 15.4 percent. This comes as a result of a range of barriers to employment, including disproportionate employment in vulnerable industries and labor market discrimination. Over a third of young black men ages 16 to 19 in the labor market are unemployed. In fact, a recent report found that 8 percent of black men have lost their jobs since November 2007.

The full report and recommendations are available here.

Start Spreading the Digital News

I am leaving for the University of Maryland to participate in a Knight Center for Specialized Journalism seminar on the economy. This crash course on the financial crisis and its impact on families and communities is welcome news.

But sometimes no news is good news, particularly if the news is provided courtesy of a government bailout.

Soon-to-be former Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks recently wrote:

If we’re willing to use taxpayer money to build roads, pay teachers and maintain a military; if we’re willing to bail out banks and insurance companies and failing automakers, we should be willing to part with some public funds to keep journalism alive too.

Actually, we’re not willing to bail out automakers, banks or insurance companies. Americans took to the streets on Saturday because like AP Chairman Dean Singleton, they’re mad as hell.

The legacy media conflate news with newspapers. News is a socially constructed category. Publishers bundle together different stories, information, e.g., weather, sport scores and stock prices, and ads. But as noted in the Wall Street Journal:

City newspapers are no longer the dominant way people get news or the main way advertisers reach consumers.

Indeed, readers are getting their news online. News consumers are not interested in bailing out failed news bundlers who are stuck on stupid an obsolete business model.

Old Media Public Enemy No. 2, Arianna Huffington, wrote:

As you’ll see, for me the key question is whether those of us working in the media (old and new) embrace and adapt to the radical changes brought about by the Internet or pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can’t be resurrected.

Huffington continued:

The great upheaval the news industry is going through is the result of a perfect storm of transformative technology, the advent of Craigslist, generational shifts in the way people find and consume news, and the dire impact the economic crisis has had on advertising. And there is no question that, as the industry moves forward and we figure out the new rules of the road, there will be -- and needs to be -- a great deal of experimentation with new revenue models.

Legacy media say without them, there would be no investigative reporting. Tell that to the voiceofsandiego.org, an online news outlet that investigated a real estate swindle that fueled the state's foreclosure crisis.

Huffington told MSM nemesis Jeff Jarvis:

In the two biggest stories of our recent time—the war in Iraq and our financial meltdown—investigative journalism did not fulfill its mission. We all have a real stake in not only preserving what investigative journalism is but in making it better.

So, start spreading the news. Newspapers are on a death watch, but digital news is alive and kicking.

CBC Wants Diversity in Bailout Contracts

The Congressional Black Caucus’ TARP/TALP Access Summit drew a SRO crowd of minority and women-owned professional services companies.

The CBC is pushing for the inclusion of diverse firms for the same reason that President Barack Obama pushed out General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner: The federal government should not reward failure.

CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee said:

Today’s discussions are a critical step in addressing barriers faced by minority and women-owned business enterprises to participate in the TARP and TALF programs.

It’s insane that the $700 billion bailout program is being managed by the same people who are responsible for the financial meltdown. The biggest contractor, Bank of New York Mellon, was so mismanaged that it needed $3 billion in TARP funds.

For Rep. Maxine Waters, co-chair of the CBC Economic Security Taskforce, diversity is in taxpayers’ interest:

It doesn’t make sense to trust just a few of the same old Wall Street firms with trillions of taxpayer dollars, especially since some of them are the same ones responsible for the crisis Americans are in now.

In recent weeks, we have heard much about prominent banks and other institutions being “too big to fail.” Today America’s minority- and women-owned business enterprises are exclaiming, “We have experience and qualifications that can help America out of the economic crisis, and we are too numerous to ignore,” and the CBC will make sure this does not fall on deaf ears.

It's also about accountability. The inclusion of minority-owned businesses must be the metric by which black folks measure whether the Obama administration is listening.

For more info, visit Tracking Change Wiki.

What’s Good for GM is Good for Country

President Barack Obama will unveil his plan to save General Motors and Chrysler this morning.

While bailed-out bank bunglers are allowed to stay, GM CEO Rick Wagoner is stepping down at the Obama’s behest. And for good reason: Wagoner is part of the problem, not the solution.

In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Obama said:

There’s been some serious efforts to deal with a combination of long-standing problems in the auto industry. What we’re trying to let them know is that we want to have a successful auto industry, U.S. auto industry. We think we can have a successful U.S. auto industry. But it’s got to be one that’s realistically designed to weather this storm and to emerge at the other end much more lean, mean and competitive than it currently is.

And that’s gonna mean a set of sacrifices from all parties involved — management, labor, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, dealers. Everybody’s gonna have to come to the table and say it’s important for us to take serious restructuring steps now in order to preserve a brighter future down the road.

A lot of dealers and their employees have already sacrificed: In the past 14 months, approximately 1000 dealerships have closed and 50,000 employees are out of work; thousands more have been laid off.

According to the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers (NAMAD), 200 minority-owned dealerships closed in 2008. Indeed, black auto dealers are particularly vulnerable.

Black Enterprise reports:

In many instances, minority-owned dealers are far more susceptible to lose money faster because the businesses are typically first-generation operations with smaller cash pools to ride out economic downturns.

While auto suppliers have been thrown a lifeline, auto dealers are on life support.

NAMAD Chairman Desmond Roberts recently co-signed a letter to the President asking for emergency floorplan financing. The dealers warned:

Unless this situation is corrected, efforts to stabilize the U.S. auto industry will fail, further complicating the revival of the broader economy.

Another week, another request for a bailout.

American Tea Party

Andy Warhol famously said, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Today, a TV rant can become a YouTube sensation and give birth to a “new revolution.”

A new Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent of Americans “say no bailouts period.”

Republicans are tapping into that anger and brewing up trouble. They're throwing a nationwide tea party today:

America is on the brink of another revolution. In a new American Tea Party, citizens across the USA are beginning to protest giant government programs that reach deep into their pockets. These programs create huge economic burdens on American families and threaten their livelihood now and into the future.

While I understand that some distressed homeowners deserve to be helped, 51 percent of Americans say that help is “unfair.”

I’m on my way to DC, where there's a Washington Tea Party.  I may stop by because I think it's unfair and unAmerican to use my hard-earned money to bail out bunglers whose greed got us into this mess.

For more info, go here.