Anderson@Large

Happy Presidents’ Day

The thought of a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024 is dizzying. If only we could turn back the clock to 1964 and “Vote Dizzy.”

Election 2020: Counting on Democracy

I am a longtime voting rights advocate. Under the auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy, I monitored elections in Ethiopia and Nigeria, and led voter education workshops in Angola and Kazakhstan. The American democracy is the gold standard for free and fair elections. As votes are counted in the 2020 presidential election, it feels like déjà vu.

When the polls closed in the 2000 presidential election, the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush was too close to call. The winner would be determined by Florida’s electoral votes. For 36 days, the streets were filled with protesters chanting “Count Every Vote” and “Stop the Count.” At the same time in the suites, partisans on both sides were filing lawsuits. Gore asked for hand recounts in Democratic-leaning counties only. Bush took his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court stopped the recounts on the grounds they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With that decision, Bush won Florida by a margin of 537 votes out of six million cast.

Punch card voting machines have since been replaced by electronic voting machines. But then as now, the perceived loser is cherry-picking election results. President Donald Trump is challenging the vote count in selected states. Then as now Roger Stone is engaged in dirty tricks. Also then as now, partisans are spreading conspiracy theories. As in 2000, the absence of evidence of a conspiracy to “steal the election” is evidence of the conspiracy.

Trump’s baseless claims of “vote tabulation irregularities” undermine confidence in the integrity of the election. The machinery of our democracy has changed over the years. For instance, in 2000 I cast my vote on an 800-pound lever voting machine in Brooklyn. Now living in Philadelphia, I voted by mail and tracked my ballot status online. What remains unchanged is that public trust in the electoral process separates the American republic from, say, a banana republic.

Since 1989, The Carter Center, founded by former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter, has monitored more than 110 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia. For the first time, the Carter Center will monitor a U.S. election. CEO Paige Alexander said in a statement:

What we’re monitoring is what many people have been calling the hand recount. Because the margin in the presidential race is so close, this sort of audit essentially requires review of every ballot by hand. This is unusual, but it provides an opportunity to build trust in the electoral system prior to the state’s certification of results.

Voter trust is the bedrock of our democracy. The 2020 presidential election is yet another reminder that the right to vote and to have that vote counted cannot be taken for granted. As Pennsylvania and other states certify the election results, the whole world will be watching.

Voters to Trump: You’re Fired!

Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election after winning Pennsylvania and securing its 20 electoral votes.

Voters sent Donald Trump a clear message: You’re fired!

Cue the theme to “The Apprentice,” the reality show that propelled the grifter into the White House.

On January 20, 2021, it will be time for the worst president in modern American history to exit, stage right.

Black Male Joblessness

A new report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “was responsible for 2.2 to 2.8 million jobs through the first quarter of 2010.”

In a statement, Vice President Joe Biden said:

Bolstering the purchasing power of middle class families through Recovery Act tax relief and financial assistance hasn’t just helped the hardest-hit among us – it’s also created over 1 million good American jobs. From tax cuts to construction projects, the Recovery Act is firing on all cylinders when it comes to creating jobs and putting Americans back to work.

When the Recovery Act was signed, the black male unemployment rate was 17.9 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the jobless rate for black men was 20.2 percent in March.

An investigation by City Limits looked at the impact of stimulus spending on reducing black unemployment. Prof. C. Nicole Mason, executive director of the Women of Color Policy Network, told the magazine:

I don’t think there was enough understanding of what was going on in communities of color. I don’t think that happened on the first go-round. In the first stimulus bill they targeted construction, infrastructure. If you looked, you saw right away that blacks were underrepresented in those industries. And black- and Latino-owned firms have received disproportionately small shares of stimulus work.

Mason added:

I don’t think we can cut the unemployment rate in half without addressing some of the structural, historical barriers. There’s just no way around it. We really just have to roll up our sleeves and say, “What is going on here that’s different than the general population?” It’s not just that people aren’t building houses anymore. It’s a longer, more insidious problem that we haven’t had the opportunity to address. Maybe now we do.

Tonight at 6 p.m., City Limits and Medgar Evers College Male Development & Empowerment Center are sponsoring a town hall forum on black male joblessness.

The discussion will focus on the challenges and, more important, the solutions. The forum will be held at Medgar Evers College, 1650 Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn.

For info, send an email to: [email protected].

The Recovery Act: One Year Later

Today marks the one year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Barack Obama will commemorate the milestone with remarks on the economy later this morning.

In the meantime, Obama has dispatched administration officials to over 35 communities across the country “to survey Recovery Act progress to-date and continue the Administration’s push for additional job creation measures to put more people back to work.”

In his report to the President, Vice President Joe Biden says “approximately 2 million jobs have been created or saved thanks to the Act’s impact on hiring in the private sector, by local and state governments and by non-profits.”

Nearly departed Sen. Evan Bayh isn’t as sanguine. When asked about his future plans, Bayh said:

If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.

Bayh’s parting shot must hurt, but his view is shared by 94 percent of Americans. A CBS News/New York Times poll found that only six percent of Americans think the stimulus package has created any jobs.

Job creation, or more accurately, joblessness is a sore point for African Americans. A new report from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, “ARRA and the Economic Crisis: One Year Later,” found the impact of stimulus spending is even. The Recovery Act has had mixed results in assisting those most impacted by the Great Recession:

White unemployment has started to decrease (from a peak of 9.4% in October 2009 to 8.7% in January 2010), while Black unemployment rates continues to rise (from 15.5% to 16.5% during the same time period).

ARRA has done little for minority business enterprises’ bottom line:

Contracting and procurement are the primary ways ARRA can directly benefit private businesses and employers. Minority and disadvantaged business contracting is a critical source of job and wealth creation for marginalized groups and communities. Many concerns have been raised about the ability of minority firms to successfully compete for contracts. Although consistent state level data on ARRA contracting to minority firms is not widely available, figures from federal procurement indicate troubling and disparate contracting patterns. While Black‐, Latino‐, and Women‐ owned businesses represent 5.2%, 6.8%, and 28.2% of all businesses respectively, as of February 1, 2010, they had only received 1.1%, 1.6%, and 2.4% of all federally contracted ARRA funds.13 Of the $45 billion in direct federal contracts allocated by February 1st 2010, less than $2.4 billion (5% of the total) were allocated to Black‐, Latino‐, and Women‐ owned businesses.

So on the first anniversary of the Recovery Act, black folks are more likely to pop a gasket than pop a cork.

Stimulating Debate

With unemployment rising, a debate is underway about the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package.

Republicans have seized on the jobless recovery to chip away at Obama’s job approval, particularly among independent voters.

To be sure, Republican criticism is the same old, same old.

Speaking before the Thinking Big, Thinking Forward conference in February, Pulitzer Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman observed:

Republicans oppose government spending as a response to the crisis. They fear that people will start to think good things about government spending.

Still, the stimulus plan has raised voters’ concerns about government spending.

But Krugman says a second stimulus is needed:

And that’s what the Obama administration should be doing right now with its fiscal stimulus. (It’s important to remember that the stimulus was necessary because the Fed, having cut rates all the way to zero, has run out of ammunition to fight this slump.) That is, policy makers should stay calm in the face of disappointing early results, recognizing that the plan will take time to deliver its full benefit. But they should also be prepared to add to the stimulus now that it’s clear that the first round wasn’t big enough.

Krugman continued:

But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.

What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.

With African Americans bearing the brunt of the recession, it may be necessary for black leaders to weigh in on the debate.

Stimulus Do-Over?

With the nation in the grip of a jobless recovery, a second stimulus package may be on the way. In an interview with Fox News, President Barack Obama said:

I don’t take anything off the table when unemployment is close to 10% and a lot of Americans are hurting out there.

It drives me nuts when Obama talks about the specter of double-digit unemployment. An awful lot of African Americans are hurting right now. Ten percent unemployment would be a welcome change.

While a second stimulus package would give Obama an opportunity to get it right, it would be a tough road to hoe. A Rasmussen poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose a second stimulus.

Still, Obama is beginning to own the recession. A new Quinnipiac poll of Ohio voters shows that 48 percent disapprove of the way he is handling the economy.

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said:

The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America. These numbers indicate that for the first time voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems.

Until now voters have given President Obama high ratings on the economy, blaming former President George W. Bush for their problems. They might be taking out their frustration on President Obama, possibly deciding that the change he promised has not come as quickly as they expected.

The poll numbers got the White House’s attention. So on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden will be in Ohio, where he “will discuss how the Recovery Act is building a 21st-century economy in Cincinnati and across the nation.”

Hmm. What would it take for Biden to go to, say, Detroit, where the black middle class is in freefall?

Biden is in charge of the White House Middle Class Task Force. So, he can discuss what the Obama administration is doing to help the black middle class avoid “downward mobility.”