Key to black liberation is political independence

Al Calloway, South Florida Times

- At least 90 percent of black people who vote Democratic and support Barack Obama for president are incensed by the high level of white nationalism orchestrated by the Clintons, supported by the media, and acquiesced to by the National Democratic Party.

It could be called a conspiracy, but, inexorably, it is historically white America being led by the Clintons to their usual racial abyss of fear, ignorance and a demonic Anglo-Saxon Priori, plus misuse of both the Judeo-Christian ethic and Democratic Ideal.

Black Independents and Republicans were never fooled by the Clintons or the Democratic Party. Readers of the 1994 published book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, by Terry Reed and John Cummings, know all about how Arkansas, with Bill Clinton as governor, was a state “run by Democrats in bed with a Republican administration in Washington, and both conspiring to evade Congress’ prohibition against aiding or abetting the Contras. It was so steeped in hypocrisy.”

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New Study on Economic Opportunities Finds that Americans Experience Upward Economic Mobility, But for Many the Magnitude of Their Movements is Minimal

- Nearly three-quarters of individuals born into the bottom half of the income distribution improved their economic standing relative to their parents by at least one percentile, yet less than half moved up more than 20 percentiles, and fewer than two in five moved into the top half of the distribution, according to a new report issued by The Economic Mobility Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The report is authored by economist and Economic Mobility Project advisory board member Bhashkar Mazumder. It introduces two new measures of relative upward mobility, which captures the extent that children can rise above their own parents’ income position when compared to their peers, and also explores various factors that might account for some of the differences in upward mobility rates by race.

“This study allows us to look at mobility through a higher-powered lens,” said John E. Morton, managing director of Economic Policy at Pew and director of the Economic Mobility Project. “While this report confirms earlier project findings that most Americans are moving up the ladder, it also finds that the number of rungs that many Americans climb is fairly modest, particularly for those at the bottom.”

According to the report, 71 percent of children born into the bottom half of the income distribution exceeded their parent’s income by at least one percentile. However, the magnitude of their upward movement was not large. Fewer than 40 percent from the bottom half move to the top half of the distribution and only about 45 percent of those born into the bottom half move up 20 percentiles or more.

“Overall, it appears that there is only a limited degree of upward economic mobility for those who start from a disadvantaged background,” said report author Mazumder. “It is also clear that good health, and the acquisition of academic skills as reflected by test scores during adolescence, play an important role in explaining upward mobility.”

The more granular level of analysis conducted by Mazumder uncovered considerable differences in the mobility rates for men and women. Only 27 percent of men born into the bottom quintile stay there as adults compared to 41 percent of women. Further, 51 percent of men born into the bottom half surpassed their parents income by 20 percentiles or more compared to only 38 percent of women from the same group.

Similar to the gender gap, the report shows a pronounced racial gap in upward mobility rates. While the vast majority of blacks born into the bottom half of the income distribution exceed their parents income rank, only 35 percent of blacks exceed their parents’ position by 20 percentiles or more; this compares to 50 percent of whites in the same circumstance. White men experience the highest rate of upward mobility out of the bottom quintile, followed by white women, black men and finally, black women.

“These findings lend urgency to the need for debate about policy solutions to address the lack of mobility affecting large numbers of Americans,” said Morton.

The report also sought to identify the key underlying factors that might explain differences in rates of economic mobility between races. When comparing blacks and whites, test scores can explain the entire black-white upward mobility gap. That is, both black and white children with the same test scores experience similar rates of upward mobility. Further, among those who finished four years of college, there is no racial gap in mobility, with both blacks and white experiencing high rates of upward movement.

Even when accounting for a child’s family structure at age 14, the racial gap in upward mobility rates remains; and for both races, upward mobility rates are similar whether the child is in single- and two-parent families. Further, while measures of good health and high self-esteem in adolescence seem to positively influence upward mobility, they do not explain the difference in mobility between blacks and whites.

This report drew upon the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which began with a sample of individuals who were between the ages of 14 and 21 as of January 1, 1979 and who have since been tracked through adulthood. The analysis is restricted to the sample of youth who were living at home with their parents during any of the first three years of the survey and for whom family income was directly reported by the parents in any of these years. Respondents also must have stayed in the sample to adulthood and been interviewed in one of the surveys beginning with 1998 and ending in 2004.

Comprised of a Principals’ Group of experts from The American Enterprise Institute, The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation and The Urban Institute, with guidance from an Advisory Board of leading academics and economists, the project seeks to investigate the status of economic mobility in America.

Obama distances himself from another clergyman

CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press

- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that he was “deeply disappointed” by a supporter’s sermon at his church that mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Chicago activist, also apologized for last Sunday’s sermon at Obama’s church, in which he said Clinton’s eyes welled with tears before the New Hampshire primary because she felt “entitled” to the Democratic nomination and because “there’s a black man stealing my show.”

In video circulating on the Internet, Pfleger said the former first lady expected to win the nomination before Obama’s sudden popularity.

“She just always thought that, ‘This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white.’ … And then, out of nowhere, came ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama.” And she said, ‘Oh damn, where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show,’” Pfleger said at Trinity United Church of Christ.

He then went on to parody Clinton, sobbing and wiping his face with a handkerchief.

“She wasn’t the only one crying,” he said. “There was a whole lot of white people crying.”

Obama won the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the nominating season, in January. Days later, Clinton’s eyes brimmed with tears and her voice broke as she talked with New Hampshire voters on the eve of the primary, which she won.

Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” by Pfleger’s comments.

“As I have traveled this country, I’ve been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that that unites us,” he said in a statement. “That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn’t reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.”

Pfleger, the white pastor of predominantly black Saint Sabina Roman Catholic Church on the city’s Southwest side, said he regretted his choice of words.

“These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them,” Pfleger said.

Clinton’s campaign denounced Pfleger’s comments.

“Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together and have no place at the pulpit or in our politics,” the campaign said in a statement. “We are disappointed that Senator Obama didn’t specifically reject Father’s Pfleger’s despicable comments about Senator Clinton, and assume he will do so.”

In March, Pfleger invited Obama’s embattled former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to speak at Saint Sabina, embracing Wright in the church.

Obama recently broke with Wright, who had been his longtime pastor, after video of his sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and his calls of “God damn America” became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks and created a political problem for the candidate.

Pfleger, known locally as a community activist and organizer, was arrested in June 2007 with the Rev. Jesse Jackson during a protest outside of a south suburban Chicago gun shop. The criminal trespass charges were later dropped.

He also has hosted Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, at St. Sabina and has called him “a gift from God to a sick, sick world.”

Obama campaign used party rules to foil Clinton

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press

- Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama’s staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.

Obama’s campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage - money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.

“Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. “They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not.”

Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.

Obama used the Democrats’ system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.

In a stark example, Obama’s victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.

The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama’s press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt’s presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.

Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.

What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and ’80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.

Until the 1970s, the nominating process was controlled by party leaders, with ordinary citizens having little say. There were primaries and caucuses, but the delegates were often chosen behind closed doors, sometimes a full year before the national convention. That culminated in a 1968 national convention that didn’t reflect the diversity of the party - racially or ideologically.

The fiasco of the 1968 convention in Chicago, where police battled anti-war protesters in the streets, led to calls for a more inclusive process.

One big change was awarding delegates proportionally, meaning you can finish second or third in a primary and still win delegates to the party’s national convention. As long candidates get at least 15 percent of the vote, they are eligible for delegates.

The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race - as long as they don’t run out of campaign money.

“For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system,” Devine said. “For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it’s a much better system.”

Another big change was the introduction of superdelegates, the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.

Much has been made of the superdelegates this year because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination without their support.

A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.

Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.

The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls.

“Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process.

“Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon,” said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.

In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won.

“The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. “They were very conscious and aware of these nuances.”

But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate.

“If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn’t have worked,” Fowler said. “The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good.”

McClellan not sure about McCain, intrigued by Obama

Jonathan Martin, Politico

- Scott McClellan, making the media rounds to promote his book and push back against the ferocious counter-attack by Bush loyalists, declined to come out tonight for John McCain and said he liked what he had heard from Barack Obama.

“I haven’t made a decision,” McClellan told Katie Couric on CBS’s “Evening News,” when asked if he was backing the Arizona senator. McClellan paid homage to McCain, saying that the Republican nominee had “governed from the center, and that’s where I am.”

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