The Curry Report

February 6, 2011

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In This Issue

Democrats and Republicans Should End Corporate Welfare

NFL's coaching diversity means everybody wins

Ronald Reagan: A Better Friend of Blacks than Obama?

Census Finds Hurricane Katrina Left New Orleans Richer, Whiter, Emptier

Africa: France Plays Suspicious Role in Countries in Crisis

Human Rights Expert Blames All Sides for Ivory Coast 'Fiasco'.

Right-Wing Civil Rights Commission Trumps Up Report On Phony New Black Panther Party Scandal

Nun Mary Turcotte recants accusation of rape after police release sketch of made-up suspect

Delany, 'Father of Black Nationalism'

Researchers criticize AIDS spending, stigma

Democrats and Republicans Should End Corporate Welfare

By George E. Curry

NNPA Columnist

Speaker of the House John Boehner wants to cut at least $100 billion from the federal budget. President Obama agrees that there should be some spending reductions, but the budget shouldn't be balanced on the backs of poor and working-class Americans. There is a way that both camps can have their way - end corporate welfare.

According to the Cato Institute, a liberatarian policy group in Washington, corporate welfare cost American taxpayers $92 billion in fiscal 2006, a figure that has grown to approximately $125 billion per year. And the beneficiaries include such major companies as Boeing, Xerox, IBM, Motorola, Dow Chemical and General Electric.

The Cato Institute defined corporate welfare as "any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries." Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies of the think tank, conducted a detailed policy analysis of the issue in 2007 titled, "The corporate Welfare State: How the Federal Government Subsidizes U.S. Businesses."

The report shows that despite all of the public pleas for the federal government to play a reduced role in private businesses, many Fortune 500 companies are using the federal government as their personal ATMs and have made no moves to get off of the dole.

In fiscal 2006, the study found, the federal government spent $92 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to businesses and private-sector corporate entities.

"Supporters of corporate welfare programs often justify them as remedying some sort of market failure," the report stated. "Often the market failures on which the programs are predicated are either overblown or don't exist."

That notwithstanding, the report is replete with examples of the type of wasteful government spending that both Democrats and Republicans pretend to abhor. The largest subsidies studied in the report were granted by the Department of Agriculture ($43.7 billion). Much smaller subsidies were provided by the Department of Defense ($11.8 billion), the Department of Transportation ($5.7 billion), the Department of Housing and Urban Development ($5.1 billion) and the State Department ($4.6 billion).

The Export-Import Bank is a perfect example of unjustified federal spending. The stated purpose of the bank is to finance the purchase of U.S goods in foreign countries. Its 2008 budget request said it was needed "to sustain U.S. jobs by financing U.S. exports."

The Ex-Im Bank, as it is known, does that "by using taxpayer money to subsidize loans to foreign purchasers of U.S. products and to provide loans and loan guarantees to U.S. companies seeking to enter the export market. It also provides insurance for companies investing overseas," the Cato report stated.

Boeing, the aircraft giant, receives 54.5 percent of long-term guarantees, causing some to refer to the Export-Import Bank as "Boeing's Bank." Other major recipients include General Electric and Conoco Phillips.

"Supporters of the Ex-Im Bank suggest that government credit is needed to level the playing field for U.S. companies as they compete against foreign countries that receive support from their government. Yet, the Ex-Im Bank's most recent annual Competitiveness Report points out that fewer than one-third of all its loans and guarantees go to counter subsidized competition."

The Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency Market Access Program "provides the trade associations of private agricultural firms with taxpayer dollars to help offset their foreign advertising cost," the study noted. "At least 20 percent of this spending goes to promote brand-name products overseas."

Why should American taxpayers subsidize the foreign advertising budgets of McDonalds, General Mills, Campbell's Soup, Pillsbury, Miller's beer and Gallo wines, as has been the case in the past?

The largest direct subsidy program in the federal budget is for crop and farm subsidies. Even though Congress voted in the late 1980s to phase out agricultural subsidies, they have instead increased over the past years, rising from $9.3 billion in 1990 to 24.3 billion in 2005.

According to the study, the proportion of Americans living on farms has declined 16.3 percent in 1948 to approximately 2 percent in 40 years. Yet, because of technology, farm productivity is at its highest level.

Most farmers don't receive direct subsidies from the federal government," the report states. "The taxpayer-financed handouts go to only about one-third of the nation's farmers and ranchers. So where does all the taxpayer money spent on farmers actually go? Mainly to large corporate agribusinesses and the richest farmers. In 2005...the richest 10 percent of all subsidy recipients received 66 percent of all subsidies."

Cash-strapped states will be forced to re-examine state corporate welfare. In Pennsylvania, for example, the state provided more than $40 million in subsidies to a Sony plant, only to see it leave the state just as Volkswagen, the previous owner of the site, had done earlier.

Recognizing the powerful intersection of lobbyists, elected officials and money, the Cato report recognized that reforming corporate welfare is not likely to come about through the works of federal lawmakers heavily influenced by lobbyists. It therefore recommended creating a corporate welfare reform commission.But given the success of Obama's high-profile deficit commission, his eagerness to make peace with he business community and the Republicans' traditional pro-business positions, Congress and the executive branch are unlikely consider ending corporate welfare as we know it.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

NFL's coaching diversity means everybody wins

Mike Tomlin Took Advantage of 'Rooney Rule'

By George E. Curry

Philadelphia Inquirer

BEYOND THE SPIN

February 6, 2011

It was considered major news four years ago when Lovie Smith's Chicago Bears squared off against the Indianapolis Colts, coached by Tony Dungy. It was the first time an African American coach - in this case, two black coaches - had led an NFL team to the Super Bowl.

Now another black coach, Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers, leads a team that will face the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, the seventh time in the last 10 years that a team with a black head coach or general manager has reached the game. Next season, there will be eight minority coaches in the NFL, including seven African Americans.

Of the four teams competing in the NFC and AFC championship games this season, two were coached by African Americans. That's a long way from 2002, when Dungy and Herman Edwards were the only black head coaches in the NFL.

How did the NFL make such dramatic progress?

Everybody points to the "Rooney Rule," named in honor of Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

Ronald Reagan: A Better Friend of Blacks than Obama?

Ronald Reagan

By George E. Curry

(c)TheDefendersOnline.com

January 28, 2011

There they go again. First, conservatives ranging from anti-affirmative action foe Ward Connerly, to combative talk show host Glenn Beck, claimed to be acting in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as they sought to dismantle everything he fought for. Now, one of Reagan's sons has made the outlandish assertion that Reagan was a better friend of African-Americans than the nation's first black president.

By David Mildenberg

February 4, 2011

Five years after Hurricane Katrina drove Lena Johnson from New Orleans, her family's home since the 1930s, she misses its food, music and Mardi Gras. And she never wants to live there again.

"It was like a bird leaving a cage," said Johnson, 60, a New Orleans Chamber of Commerce employee for 24 years who left for Dallas and recently earned a college degree there. "I'm in Texas because there's opportunity for me to grow. Home is still suffering."

The extent of the exodus after the August 2005 disaster can be gauged by 2010 Census data released yesterday. New Orleans lost 140,845 residents, a drop of 29 percent from 2000. The percentage of black population fell to 60.2 percent from 67.3 percent. The loss in New Orleans translates into one fewer congressional seat for Louisiana -- now six instead of seven.

"The city is more affluent, more Latin and a little whiter than it was before Katrina," said Jacques Morial, a community organizer whose father and brother were its first and third black mayors.

Africa: France Plays Suspicious Role in Countries in Crisis

French President Nicolas Sarkozy

By Julio Godoy

January 27, 2011

PARIS - The three African states in which political crises have recently erupted - Côte d'Ivoire, Niger and Tunisia - all feature a strong French economic presence as well as close military and political ties to the former European colonial power, with France at times playing a protective role towards elites accused of abuses.

In Tunisia, where a popular revolt earlier in January ousted kleptocratic dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power, some 1,250 French enterprises constitute the core of the country's economy.

Human Rights Expert Blames All Sides for Ivory Coast 'Fiasco'

By George E. Curry

NNPA Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Although the most recent presidential election in Côte d'Ivoire was the most "painstakingly prepared" in African history, mistakes were made at every step that virtually guaranteed the process would end up in chaos, a former international human rights official has concluded.

In an analysis of the election in which both candidates - incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and his challenger, Alassane Ouattara - claimed victory, Pierre Sane, former secretary general of Amnesty International pointed to errors that left the outcome of the voting unresolved.

Right-Wing Civil Rights Commission Trumps Up Report On Phony New Black Panther Party Scandal

January 28, 2011

On January 27, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission released a report on the Department of Justice's investigation into the New Black Panther Party case. USCCR's report largely adopts the right-wing media's bogus allegations that President Obama's Justice Department engaged in racially charged corruption in the case. This is unsurprising; the USCCR is dominated by conservative activists, and the witnesses they rely upon are J. Christian Adams, a longtime GOP activist deeply tied to the Bush-era politicization of the DOJ, and Christopher Coates, who reportedly became "a true member of the team" during that administration.

By Alison Gendar and James Fanelli

February 1, 2011

A Brooklyn nun from a fringe Christian sect has confessed to an unholy lie: telling cops she was sexually attacked and left unconscious in a snowbank, sources said Monday.

After a police search for a hulking black man was launched, the 26-year-old white woman from the Apostles of Infinite Love convent in East Flatbush recanted, the sources said.

She told cops she made up the story in an attempt to cover up a consensual sex romp with a bodega worker inside the Glenwood Ave. residence.

Delany, 'Father of Black Nationalism'

Martin Delany

Friend and rival of Frederick Douglass argued that African-Americans should emigrate to Central or South America, later to Africa

By Mark Roth

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

February 6, 2011

In 1846, the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass came to Pittsburgh.

His purpose? He wanted to persuade a fellow African-American, Martin Delany, to become co-editor of his new newspaper, The North Star.

The editorial alliance of the two young men lasted only 18 months. But from the time of that meeting, Douglass and Delany would remain lifelong friends -- and often bitter rivals.

Today, Frederick Douglass remains well-known to many Americans. Every year, schoolchildren are assigned to read his autobiography, and his face, framed by a shock of white hair, is a familiar visage.

Except to history buffs, though, Martin Delany has largely disappeared from view.

Researchers criticize AIDS spending, stigma

By Donna Bryson

February 3, 2011

JOHANNESBURG- Nearly 3 million lives have
been saved by HIV/AIDS treatment but scarce
resources are being misspent and stigma is
still keeping the most vulnerable from seeking
help, according to a new book by researchers
commissioned by the U.N.

The failings are particularly worrying at a time
when worldwide recession and donor fatigue a
re hurting spending on AIDS, the researchers
say.