DarkStar Spouts Off

Work In Progress

Blacks And The GOP Google Notebook

Violence Prevention Program

Carnell Cooper, MD

The Violence Prevention Program is determined to reduce the frequency & the severity of recidivism for violent injury and criminal activity among persons living in and around Baltimore City. Committed to Dr. King’s vision of ‘The Beloved Community,’ our services focus on the enhancement of personal strengths, conflict resolution & the development of community relationships.

The VPP includes the Violence Intervention Project (VIP), the PHAT Project, an After-school initiative and donor-specific research projects.

http://www.umm.edu/shocktrauma/vip.htm
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-adamscolumn112106,0,1969532.column

Black Biz Stats

Just gathering some stuff.

http://www.census.gov/csd/sbo/blacksummaryoffindings.htm

Survey of Business Owners - Black-Owned Firms: 2002

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

In 2002, there were 1.2 million black-owned firms in the U.S., employing nearly 754 thousand persons and generating nearly $89 billion in business revenues. These black-owned firms accounted for 5.2 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the U.S., 0.7 percent of their employment, and 0.4 percent of their receipts.

The 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) defines black-owned businesses as firms in which African Americans own 51 percent or more of the stock or equity of the business. The data in this report were collected as part of the 2002 Economic Census from a large sample of all nonfarm businesses filing 2002 tax forms as individual proprietorships, partnerships, or any type of corporation, and with receipts of $1,000 or more.

KIND-OF-BUSINESS CHARACTERISTICS

In 2002, nearly 4-in-10 black-owned firms operated in health care and social assistance, and other services, such as personal services, and repair and maintenance, where they owned 9.7 percent of all such businesses in the U.S.

Retail trade, and health care and social assistance accounted for 28.7 percent of all black-owned business revenue. Fifty-four percent of the retail trade revenue was concentrated in motor vehicle and parts dealers. Table A (xls 18 kb) shows the industries accounting for the largest receipts for black-owned firms.

Quickies...

• If someone brought a house for $600K, on a total household income of $80K, how can that loan be restructured to allow them to continue living in the house that probably costs about $5K a month in mortgage?
• It's a good thing that in the past 2 or 3 weeks, public commentators have been starting to say that even if Obama is elected, he's not a miracle worker.
• If Obama doesn't have about a 15% lead over McCain, he's going to lose; a 6% lead (in the polls) won't do it.
• Clinton supporters were right, Obama can't handle the rough and tumble of politics at this level. Dude needs to stop whining.
• Gas has dropped $0.30 in the past 2 weeks in my area.
• Based on conversations at a family cookout this past Saturday, I decided to watch CNN's "Black In America." Too bad I didn't ignore it like I said I was going to do. WTF happened to balance?
• Michael Eric Dyson has the gift of gab. Dyson is the only person I've seen capable of shutting down Ann Coulter without being rude, just using eloquence of the English language. Even though Dyson can make some damn good points, I find most of what he says is just wrong or ideas I can't support.

Is Cal Thomas A Sellout?

Is Cal Thomas a sellout to conservatives for writing this?

Obama is to be commended for lecturing black men about their role as real fathers, not just sperm donors. But he is not the first to give that lecture. Rev. Jesse Jackson and comedian Bill Cosby have also given it. Yet, the targeted behavior has not changed. America's primary problems are not economic and political; they are moral and spiritual and there government cannot go, with or without "faith-based initiatives."

I don't recall people saying this when Bush got into office.

BlackFatherhood.com

BlackFatherhood.com

BlackFatherhood.com is an interactive web resource featuring, news, information, and links for Black Fathers and their families.

Our goal is to help Black Fathers embrace all aspects of parenting and to promote viable solutions in areas of concern for fathers today; marriage, divorce, family court, healthy communication and relationships for families.

Become a part of the BlackFatherhood.com community today!

The Fifth Ward Enrichment Program Incorporated

The Fifth Ward Enrichment Program, Incorporated

The Fifth Ward Enrichment Program Incorporated (FWEP) is a youth leadership and development program for at-risk males, ages 12 - 19, located in one of Houston 's most economically depressed neighborhoods.

Founded in 1984, FWEP offers to 250 inner-city African American and Latino youth more than 20 support services that deter chemical dependency, teen pregnancy, school delinquency and dropouts, while promoting self-discipline, personal accountability, and self-esteem. These services are provided year-round through the School-based Projects, and the Teen Enterprise Center (TEC).

The School-based Project is the core program and truly defines the holistic approach to youth development that FWEP embraces. This project is housed in five schools in the Houston Independent School District 's (HISD) Northeast District and provides site coordinators who monitor school activities, interact with teachers and administrators, and coordinate daily, after-school activities. The site coordinators are responsible for the delivery of the life skills curriculum, home visits, and individual and group counseling sessions. The site coordinator is recognized by the school's youth as their mentor "on campus".

Future Black Men of America, Inc

Future Black Men Of America

In 2002 Future Black Men of America, Inc. (FBMA) was born in the mind of its founder Antoine Medley.
"The young black boys of today need the help of black men in society. It is up to us and no one else." -Antoine Medley

The organization was formally organized and incorporated as a non-profit organization in February of 2004 in the state of North Carolina. The organization also received its 501(c)3 Tax Exemption Status from the IRS in 2004.

FBMA, truly believes that young black boys need to be exposed to positive African American male role models, and positive experiences. The organization believes that black boys need to know that with hard work, sacrifice, and faith they can achieve anything. FBMA provides a variety of programs to positively alter the futures of our African American boys. Currently there are many organizations that provide similar programs but no one organization can reach all of the young males in need and for this reason FBMA was born.

The National Organization organizes and provides college tours, community activities, and mentoring for our young black men. The current education gap between young African American boys and other races is quickly widening therefore all of the FBMA programs are all geared towards closing that gap. The National Organization is currently accepting applications for the creation of new chapters around the United States. Currently there are chapters pending in Washington, DC and Atlanta, GA.

The organization is only as strong as its members. Members are needed to provide and plan our programs. African American men are needed.
"We are inevitably our brothers' keepers because we are our brothers' brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Daddy's Promise

Daddy's Promise

Award-winning broadcast journalist, Ed Gordon created Daddy’s Promise, an initiative designed to focus the attention of the African-American community on the positive relationship that can and should exist between fathers and daughters.

Through a national campaign and a series of community engagements, including a father and daughter dance that will take place during Father's Day weekend 2009, the initiative will encourage fathers to be actively involved in their daughter's lives. The movement gives this relationship a voice and creates a nationwide conversation with African-American families, ultimately celebrating fathers and father figures.

Affordable Homes?

When I sold a home 8 years ago, I sold it at X. Today, homes in that area have an asking price for about 120% more than what I sold it for in 2000. Last year, if I sold my current home, I would have received twice what I paid for it, or, 100% more than I paid for it.

If my former home sold for 10-20% less than the asking price, for simplicity, it would still sell at 100% more than I sold it. If I sell my current house at the price houses have sold in my area, it would be at 90% of the price that I paid for my home. In other words, the current housing market has made my home more affordable.

With this Fannie and Freddie bailout, there is a possibility that my home value will not fall any more, nor will other homes fall any more, not much more. That means, if homes are unaffordable now, they won't be affordable later, thanks to the government bailout. So all of the people screaming about "saving the housing market," have just screwed young people trying to buy a new home. Your complaints and the congress listening, have caused homes to STAY unaffordable.

This Is So Wrong

Dead 3 Year Old Laptop

The Toshiba laptop I've had for THREE years died. Folks, that's THREE FRIGGIN' YEARS!

Somewhere I read where the new laptops for Toshiba are a good choice. No. I'll NEVER by a Toshiba computer again.

Dell? With there poor customer service and suspect quality, even if PC Magazine has one rated highly, I don't think I can go in that direction.

HP? Sony? Something else?

I do development on my laptop. Anyone have any suggestions?

*OUCH*

From Greg Kane:

John [ Edgar Hoover ] didn't like one Negro in particular: Martin Luther King Jr. John sent his agents to infiltrate and spy on communists, socialists, peace activists and those Negroes silly enough to think that the Constitution applied to them. John had his minions form the Counterintelligence Program - COINTELPRO for short - to infiltrate various groups.

For some of the black groups, John ordered his agents not only to infiltrate but to disrupt and neutralize. In addition to King, John's favorite target was the Black Panther Party. John's myrmidons used agents provocateurs and informants to create dissension within Panther ranks. Soon there were two Panther factions at war with one another. One eventually became the Black Liberation Army, an organization dedicated to killing cops.

If there's one moral to the little tale told above, one lesson to be learned, it's this: The FBI practically created the Black Liberation Army.

*OUCH*

She Got The Idea From Bill

Woman, 68, Accused Of Forcing Sex On Handicapped Man

A 68-year-old Tampa woman was arrested today for forcing a severally mentally handicapped man to perform oral sex on her, police say.

OK, what can you say?

NCLB: Figures Don't Lie But...

The idea behind No Child Left Behind is good, but like many people said, school systems will find a way to scam the intent because not all schools are equal. Maryland scammed the intent:

State education officials acknowledged yesterday for the first time that they had changed the Maryland School Assessment this year in a way that experts say contributed to an unusually large rise in student test scores.

According to experts, the test was shorter though not easier, which might have meant that students taking it were less tired. The tests have been given in grades three through eight in reading and math for the past five years."There was a psychological advantage," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland deputy state school superintendent. "They weren't as tired this year. ... It doesn't mean it wasn't as difficult."

In addition, some test questions were more directly aligned with the state's curriculum than before. That change occurred because Maryland substituted locally written questions for a small number that had come from a national standardized test in previous years.

...

Such large increases had not been seen before during the five years that the test has been administered and were a red flag to a standing panel of education testing experts - known as psycometricians - hired by the Maryland State Department of Education to advise them on the validity of test scores.

It's easier to scam the results than deal with and correct the results.

N* Goes The Weasel

So, let's think about this.

Fox has a tape of Jesse Jackson, Sr. saying some foul ish. Or better yet, O'Reilly has the tape and he planned on using a portion of it. The other portion "wasn't news worthy" but Jackson, Sr. came out and apologized before the tape was released.

Now, all of a sudden, "someone" releases the transcript and the tape but O'Reilly says he has nothing to do with it.

Right.

This Quote Can't Be Right

OK, I just heard a sound bite of Fed Chair Bernake (I'll fix spelling and stuff later) where he said he is less concerned about the soundness of institutions than with the credit availability that is needed to keep the economy going.

I have to hunt this down, because this can't be correct and if it is, I need context. That quote can be taken a number of ways, and frankly, all of them are bad IMO and is a prime reason the financial mess is occurring.

Spouting Off On: Public vs Private

So, again I have to ask, what is the difference between commenting "in private" vs commenting "in public"?

Blacks question attitudes of some Blacks in the barbershop, beauty shop, cook out, Black talk radio, and Black media. But that doesn't count as public? Why not? It's not like these conversations aren't known about among Black people. So why is saying it in public so much better especially when things were trying to be done when it was in private?

Peanutz

Yep. This is true. I heard a speech given by Jackson, Sr. at the time, and the following quote is accurate:

Jackson, too, has called for parental responsibility. I was part of the national media that gave glowing coverage to his PUSH for Excellence drive in the 1970s. Across the country he preached to black youths that: "You are not a man because you can make a baby. You're only a man if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby."

Fannie and Freddie Rescue

First (not really but let's start there) there was the [non]response by FEMA, state, and local officials during Katrina. Then, there was FEMA knowing about dangerous environment in the trailers they provided, now we have the government bailing out the quasi-public/private Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac companies.

So, you want national health care you say?

Net Connection Woes Backlog

My Internet connection has been down. Here is a backlog of things that I wanted to address but was unable to do so.

Personhood

LOS ANGELES -- A proposal to define a fertilized human egg as a person will land on Colorado's ballot this November, marking the first time that the question of when life begins will go before voters anywhere in the nation.

The Human Life Amendment, also known as the personhood amendment, says the words "person" or "persons" in the state constitution should "include any human being from the moment of fertilization." If voters agreed, legal experts say, it would give fertilized eggs the same legal rights and protections to which people are entitled.

Let me say something about this. While the pro-life people are backing this and the pro-abortion people are up in arms, those who should be concerned the most are people who use different fertility treatment methods to conceive. When eggs are harvested and fertilized in a dish, some are implanted while some are frozen. What happens to the embryos frozen but not implanted? If they are destroyed, then what? Will criminal charges be filed then? And if so, what does THAT mean to fertility treatment methods in general?

Off Colored (HAH!) Joke

"Being a president is tough 'cause you're not just running the country. You got to run your family too," Mac said. "Having a black first lady is different. You're still going to have to do the dishes and the laundry and all that … 'You got to pick up the kids. You didn't pick up the kids?'"

Bernie Mac tells an off colored joke and people get upset? Haven't they SEEN a Bernie Mac comedy routine?

Colbert I. King -- Funny Quip

The same might be said about the so-called African American perspective on other such disparate issues as faith-based initiatives, Obama's word choices, wife Michelle Obama, hip-hop, shoe and hair styles, what's beautiful, what's ugly, abortion, gun control, watermelon, California wildfires, chitlins, pit bulls, personal responsibility, societal responsibility, the Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, Jeremiah Wright, the Nation of Islam, missile defense, the estate tax and half-smokes.

Chitlins? Half-smokes? WATERMELON????? *ROTFL*

Skip Gates, I Could Have Told Your Behind This!

I worry even more that Watson confessed to me that "we shouldn't expect that [ethnically] different persons have equal intelligence, because we don't know that. And people say that these should be the same [that is, all ethnic groups] . . . I think the answer is we don't know." Later, he remarked that "we're not all the same," by which he meant genetically, across ethnic groups. Soon, some scientist somewhere will claim to have proved this, and that claim could be deeply problematic for the future of black people in this society, even if my rights to equal treatment under the law are not predicated upon the hypothesis that all human groups have the same genetic endowments. Watson's tendency to theorize about groups -- a very human tendency -- undermines his declared belief that humans should be judged as individuals.

Afterward, I realized what fear my conversation with Watson had confirmed: that the idea of innate group inferiority is still on the table, despite all the progress blacks have made in this society, and that the last great battle over racism will not be fought over access to a lunch counter, or the right to vote, or even the right to occupy the White House; it will be fought in a laboratory, under a microscope, on the battleground of our DNA. That is where we, as a society, will resolve the contentious claim that groups are, by nature, differently advantaged in the most important way: over the degree of reason or intelligence that they ostensibly possess.

People in my family faced this directly, and after the Civil Rights Act, and time to allow government to punish people and companies, it is "amazing" the progress many people in my family made. I don't understand why Henry Lewis Gates didn't understand this from the start.

Nutz To Sistah Souljah

I don't think Jesse Jackson, Sr's comments were staged as some people are wondering. I think he was caught a** out. Remember, I said this was an "old guard" vs. "new school" Black political fight. If the language were more temperate, then I would consider it to staged. So, cut (hah!) the Sistah Souljah reference on that one.

Now, what I want to know is WHY have Bernie Mac at a rally and NOT expect Bernie Mac to get a little raw? THAT is more of a Sistah Souljah moment candidate than Jackson, Sr.

Tony Snow, RIP

His suffering is over. May his family remember the good things about him as they rely on God to get them through this period in their lives.

R.I.P.

I Got Da Knife For Your Nutz

Mrs. D.S. thinks, out of respect, Jr. should have kept his comments out of the public and made them in private. I think Jesse Jackson, Jr. had to do this.

"I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Rev. Jackson's reckless statements about Sen. 

Barack Obama

. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee—and, I believe, the next president of the United States—contradict his inspiring and courageous career," he said in a statement.

"Rev. Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him," the congressman continued. "I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself."

Emphasis added. Talk about nuts being cut off!

Deez Nutz

OK, I'm late to this game but here it goes:

1. I think this is more than just Obama "talking down to" Black folks as Jesse Jackson, Sr. claimed. I think this is "old guard" vs. "new school".
2. Bill Clinton pimp smacked Jesse Jackson, Sr years ago when he commented on a rapper few people had heard of, Sistah Souljah. So, when that happened, I remember seeing video footage and still shots of Jesse Jackson, Sr. sitting at the podium, seething over what was being said. But, I don't recall Jesse Jackson, Sr. saying anything about that moment, in "hushed tones," to a brother, sister, or any other newscaster/talking head over an open mic.
3. What media savvy person DOESN'T assume all mics are open?
4. Mrs. D.S. was shocked that Jesse Jackson, Sr. said what he did. "It's one thing to criticize someone. That would have been fair game, but for a REVEREND to say something vulgar like that makes you wonder what else he has said.
5. My response was, "I haven't used reverend as a part of his title since news came out about the child he fathered outside of his marriage if not before then."